John Yoo, Defender in Chief

At Amazon, John Yoo, Defender in Chief: Donald Trump's Fight for Presidential Power.

Blue Exodus: California Is a Failed State

It's Jon "Ex-Jon" Gabriel, at the Arizona Republic, "California is a failed state. How do we know? They're moving to Arizona in droves":

Driving across Arizona, it’s hard not to notice a surge in California license plates. The reason for this is becoming more apparent every day. California is a failed state.

After nearly a decade of one-party rule, the once-Golden State is tarnished, possibly beyond repair. Listing all the problems facing our neighbors across the Colorado River would require several books, so I’ll only highlight a few.

The fifth-largest economy in the world and home to many of the greatest technology companies on Earth can’t keep the lights on. The state’s three largest utilities turned off power to more than 410,000 homes and businesses on Friday, Aug. 21, then again to half as many Saturday, Aug. 22.

Gov. Gavin Newsom sprung to action on Monday by announcing more blackouts. "We failed to predict and plan these shortages,” the governor said. “And that's simply unacceptable."

But accept it he did, noting that the state’s near-religious promotion of solar and wind power left a gap in the reliability of its power grid. You don’t say.

Wildly unpredictable events, like August being hot, never occurred to Newsom last October when he signed six more bills to kill off his state’s fossil fuel industry. Shutting down one of California’s two nuclear plants certainly didn’t help. Perhaps their plan to close the second one in 2024 will have different results.

So have those to stop homelessness

Documentary filmmaker Christopher Rufo’s latest work reveals the tragic failure of the city’s homeless policies. In “Chaos by the Bay,” he shows the results of well-meaning progressive efforts, from decriminalizing homelessness to plying addicts with free drug paraphernalia, alcohol and cannabis. For the most part, rampant mental illness has been left untreated...

Still more.

Jennifer Delacruz's Returning Heatwave Forecast

The lovely Ms. Jennifer continues to use her home as a broadcast station.

For ABC News 10 San Diego:

Francesca Cipriani

At Taxi Driver, "Francesca Cipriani Sunbathing."

Working-Class Voters' Seismic Shift Toward Republicans

It's Salena Zito, who I don't see on Twitter anymore, probably because leftists got her suspended, at the Washtington Examiner, "Ohio county tells story of the seismic shift of working-class voters toward GOP."

Trump Supporter Killed by Violent Democrats in Portland (VIDEO)

At the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "One Person Dead in Portland After Clashes Between Trump Supporters and Protesters."

And Gateway Pundit, "4Chan Users Appear to Have Identified Portland Rioter Who Shot and Killed Trump Supporter."

Bear Spray

Watching the street-fighting videos this last couple of days, I noticed that the Trump supporters always have bear spray. The canister's are high-powered projectile devices. If you're hit in the face you're probably needing medical attention, dang!

People have had it with blocking streets. https://t.co/6FOabaIlVJ

— Kathleen McKinley (@KatMcKinley) August 30, 2020

Leah Pezzetti's Cooler Weather Forecast

Ms. Leah's the new weather hottie at ABC News 10 San Diego.

I haven't seen Ms. Jennifer Delacruz lately, but she's still with the station.

Personal Selfie: Monterey Bay 2018

From my 2018 family vacation to Monterey Bay. I'm going through old photos and wanted to post it here just to have it on file lol.

Trump Bets on Law-and-Order Message to Sway Swing Voters

Hell, I'd take that bet!

At WSJ:

President Trump and his supporters have seen an opening in the presidential race in recent weeks as protests against racial injustice have at times turned volatile, with images of violent clashes in the news https://t.co/oMLswoBbPw

— Catherine Lucey (@catherine_lucey) August 29, 2020

President Trump and his supporters have seen an opening in the presidential race in recent weeks as a fresh wave of protests against racial injustice have at times turned volatile, with images of violent clashes playing out in the news.

Mr. Trump emphasized law and order in his speech Thursday accepting the Republican nomination, saying that if Democratic nominee Joe Biden won the White House, “No one will be safe.” Vice President Mike Pence used almost the same words in his speech a day earlier, and one of the campaign’s most-aired recent ads employs similar language.

With Mr. Trump trailing the former vice president in national polls, and by a smaller margin in many battleground states, his team is banking that the chaotic images from places such as Kenosha, Wis., and Portland, Ore., won’t just rally their base, but sway undecided voters and suburban voters who had been moving away from Mr. Trump. “The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order,” Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told Fox News this week.

Mr. Biden’s team rejects that notion, saying most of those voters support what have been largely peaceful protests against police shootings of Black people, and noting that the unrest is taking place under Mr. Trump’s watch. “This happens to be Donald Trump’s America,” Mr. Biden said on Thursday. He added: “I condemn violence in any form, whether it’s looting or whatever it is.”

Democrats spent much of their convention focusing on the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 180,000 lives in the U.S., the most of any country in the world. They think Mr. Trump’s handling of the pandemic is the issue that will define the 2020 election.

But the unrest that has emerged since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody on May 25 has become a wild card in the last months leading up to the election. It regained national attention this past week after the police shooting Sunday of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, in Kenosha stirred protests there. Some anti-Trump strategists have expressed concern that violence stemming from the protests is a vulnerability for Democrats.

Sarah Longwell, strategy director for Republican Voters Against Trump, which produces ads opposing the president’s re-election, said she had conducted recent focus groups with women who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 but are reconsidering their support. “Six or seven weeks ago, as I was listening to these voters, they were very clearly upset by the way President Trump had handled the racial crisis, even more so than the pandemic,” Ms. Longwell said.

More recently, however, she said, “Everybody jumps to the violence and the looting. There was still a lot of criticism of Trump, but they were immediately focused on what was happening to businesses, violence in the streets.”

It remains unknown who is responsible for damage to businesses and other buildings in Kenosha, though authorities have suggested that outside agitators with no connection to the peaceful daytime protests were responsible for some of the violence after nightfall. A 17-year-old resident of Antioch, Ill., was arrested and charged in connection with the shooting of protesters near midnight Tuesday that left two people dead and one injured.

In July, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that voters in growing numbers believed that Black and Hispanic Americans are discriminated against and that support was rising for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Polls vary on where voters rank crime as an issue. A Journal/NBC News survey this month found crime to be well behind the economy, coronavirus and other matters as a top concern for voters. A recent Pew Research Center survey that asked likely voters about issues of importance in the election found that “violent crime” ranked fifth overall, narrowly behind coronavirus and well behind the economy and health care. But for Republicans, it was the second-most important issue after the economy...

That Biden "peaceful protests" line is so much bull.

Jonathan A. Rodden, Why Cities Lose

Jonathan A. Rodden, Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide.

Taking Attendance Online

My classes start Monday, American, comparative, and international politics.

It's going to be lit, lol.

At LAT, "LAUSD’s liberal student attendance policy raises eyebrows."

They don't really take attendance, you know. They're just warehousing students smdh. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯:

In a policy that has raised flags among some teachers and principals, but appears to be permitted by state law, students in the nation’s second-largest school district have several relatively easy ways to be counted as present for a day of school:

* If a student does nothing more than send an email, text or talk to a teacher on the phone at any point in the day, the student will be counted as present. This communication does not have to be with the student — it can also take place between a parent or guardian and the teacher.
* If a student appears in a live session with a teacher or classmates on Zoom, however briefly, the student is counted as present for the day.
* If students skip these live sessions, but turn in work, they are also credited for attendance.
* If a student simply logs in to an online school account but does nothing further, it’s likely that the student also will be counted as present.
* “I have a problem with that,” said a teacher in reference to the log-in policy during a training session that The Times witnessed via Zoom.

Making sure that students attend class and keeping a record of that attendance are important and required tasks, state officials say.

“Ensuring that we are reaching and engaging every student is more critical than ever to ensure students already at greater risk of falling behind can stay connected to their learning,” said Daniel Thigpen, director of communications for the California Department of Education.

The key component of being marked as present is that daily engagement — in whatever form — must take place during the same school day before midnight. If at 12:01 a.m. a student has been silent in all ways, the student will be definitively absent.

The new practices, although not demanding of students, represent a return to formal attendance-taking. When schools closed in mid-March during the onset of the coronavirus emergency, state officials did away with requiring teachers to take attendance.

But both anecdotal reports and episodic tracking indicated that student engagement sagged — and also that some teachers provided limited learning opportunities.

Los Angeles Unified reported that 78% of middle school students logged in three times or more per week several weeks after schools closed. And an internal report showed disparities in engagement along lines of race, ethnicity and family income — with students from low-income families and Black and Latino students participating in fewer learning activities than peers from higher-income families and white and Asian students.

With most California campuses closed for the start of the new school year, the state established rules that mandate daily live lessons, restored requirements for minimum instructional minutes and reinstated taking roll.

One principal complained in an interview with The Times that a superior told her that if a student logged in for one minute, that student was present for the day.

“Would that be fraud?” the principal wanted to know.

Another principal advised her teachers that she wanted them to consider the content of an email contact before accepting it for attendance. She expected the student or parent to explain why the student could not attend class — and the explanation or the excuses should not be considered evergreen. Teachers can’t allow students to be marked as present simply because they send an email every day claiming that they were unable to log in, she said.

The names of principals interviewed have been withheld because they were concerned about talking freely without permission from the school district. The principals do not have tenure protection in their assignments and they said they feared retaliation.

District officials were unwilling to discuss the topic — even though the L.A. County Office of Education, an oversight agency, could not identify any improper practices based on an explanation of the policies provided by The Times.

Given a week to confirm information about attendance-taking practices, which The Times gleaned from interviews and documents, the district refused to make anyone available to explain the content of the teacher trainings or the attendance policy and would not review information submitted for verification.

Instead, the school system supplied a brief statement. “Los Angeles Unified’s attendance practices are in compliance with SB98 and CDE guidelines” — referring to Senate Bill 98, which established teaching guidelines for the fall, and the state Department of Education.

The district reported that first-day-of-school attendance rates last week were 86% this year compared with 90% last year. Officials refused to provide attendance numbers for any additional days...

Ben Buchanan, The Hacker and the State

At Amazon, Ben Buchanan, The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics.

Make America Civil Again

It's Karlyn Borysenko, for Prager University.

She's on Twitter as well.

Milana Vayntrub Speaks Out

I guess she was slut-shamed for exposing her massive honkers in a super low-cut cocktail dress (cleavage!) a few years back.

Trolls online are hurting her feelings. Photos at the link:

The 33-year-old actress has recently been going viral on social media after returning to the "Lily the AT&T Girl" role earlier this year. https://t.co/AEjVAL862l

— Brotips (@brotips) August 28, 2020

Craig L. Symonds, World War II at Sea

At Amazon, Craig L. Symonds, World War II at Sea: A Global History.

Panic! at the Disco

Their rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody" is like wow.

Just phenomenal --- I'm impressed.

Their Wiki page is here.

Golden State Killer Sentenced to 26 Life Terms

At LAT, "Golden State Killer given life in prison for rapes, murders that terrorized a generation":

The crimes began as window peeping in DeAngelo’s hometown of Rancho Cordova. They progressed to bedroom burglaries and panty thefts in Visalia, and then the murder of Claude Snelling, a college instructor who caught the intruder attempting to abduct his 16-year-old daughter from her bedroom in 1975.

The rapes that ensued became more violent as DeAngelo began to attack couples together and, later, to kill them.

While DeAngelo typically dragged women out of bed and away from their husbands to rape them in other rooms, crime scene evidence shows the couples he murdered died in bed beside each other.

“It wasn’t enough for him to rape or beat or shoot his victims,” said Santa Barbara County Dist. Atty. Joyce Dudley. “He wanted to take inflicting human pain to the highest level possible. Therefore, he often ensured that their loved ones saw or heard their loved ones being killed. That’s who Joe DeAngelo is.”

The investigations were often botched by law enforcement agencies refusing to cooperate, but the crimes also instigated major advances in criminal justice laws and tools. They were cited by women’s rights advocates to successfully increase the penalties for rape. A political crusade launched and funded by the family of murder victim Keith Harrington fueled a California law requiring felons to add their DNA to a databank used to hunt criminals.

Harrington’s older brother, Ron, used his victim statement in court this week to make the case for overriding privacy concerns and preserving police access to consumer genealogy sites, like the one detectives used to identify DeAngelo.

As part of a plea deal with prosecutors, DeAngelo admitted to carrying out 53 attacks on 87 victims in 11 counties, starting in 1975 and ending with the rape and murder of a teenage girl in Orange County in 1986. Authorities believe he is also responsible for two more sexual assaults and a shooting for which he was not charged.

In exchange for his plea, prosecutors agreed to spare him the death penalty. He was sentenced to 11 life terms without the possibility of parole, to be served consecutively, plus 15 life terms and eight years...

More.

Cooling Off

It's a freakin' heat wave, but it's also only summer (for all of those climate alarmists out there).

Time to cool off:

DM for credit please pic.twitter.com/uaIBby8VHP

— Sexy Bomb (@SexyB0mb) July 31, 2020

And don't forget the sunscreen for these huge tatas.

Holy Smokes!

What a lady, on Twitter:

📷 ig@bribale22💘⠀ pic.twitter.com/XmW3ryA2AK

— Hotty Chiks (@ChiksHotty) August 2, 2020