VIDEO: Jihad Preacher Anjem Choudary Confirms Terrorism is Part of Islam

Via Astute Bloggers, "ANJEM CHOUDHARY CONFIRMS TERROR IS PART OF ISLAM."

Choudary: Well, you know, as a lecturer in Sharia law I would say to the people in Russia, the Muslims and the non-Muslims, that every action for a Muslim must be based upon the Koran, the word of Allah, and the teachings of the messenger Mohammed...who is the final messenger for mankind. I mean I would first invite the people to think about and embrace Islam but those who are already Muslim must know that Allah mentions in the Koran, in fact if you look in chapter 8 verse 60 he said prepare as much as you can "steeds of war" to terrorize the enemy. So terrorizing the enemy is in fact part of Islam. I mean this is something that we must embrace and understand as far as the jurisprudence of Islam is concerned.

As I've been saying, Choudary is telling the truth.

Leftist defenders of Islamofascism are foisting the big lie on the West.

'The only way to win a war is to kill the enemy, all of them if possible, and that means total war with unconditional surrender...'

Today's Democrats don't do "total war," and we're all the worse for it.

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Thought of the Day: Islamic Brutality, We Have Seen this Picture Before."

The Ranks of Street Vendors Have Swelled to Include Laid-Off Professionals, War Veterans, Single Mothers

But hey, let's push for a $15.00 minimum wage and put more people out of work.

The Democrats are f-king morons.

At LAT, "More Angelenos are becoming street vendors amid weak economy."

Secretary of State Debra Bowen, Suffering From Depression, Now Lives in Trailer Park

Secretary Bowen is speaking out. She's suffered from depression in the past, and is currently having a relapse. She mentioned that she wanted to go public with her illness, especially in light of Robin Williams' death. She's termed out of office after this year, but now folks are questioning her continuing fitness to serve.

At LAT, "Secretary of State Debra Bowen tells of struggle with depression."

Also, "Secretary of state's disclosure of depression draws support, concern."

Feces, Urine Dumped on Autistic Boy Participating in Ice Bucket Challenge

This kind of cruelty is simply unfathomable to me.

But then again, leftists would abort a child with autism of they could diagnose it in the womb, so dumping feces and urine on an autistic boy is another evil that we bear in this "progressive" culture.

At Gateway Pundit, "Awful. Bucket of Urine & Feces Poured on Autistic Teen in Ice Bucket Challenge (Video)."

Intelligence Gaps Crippled Mission to Rescue U.S. Hostages Held by Islamic State

It wasn't just intelligence gaps, but White House indecision as well.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Intelligence Gaps Crippled Mission in Syria to Rescue Hostages James Foley, Steven Sotloff":

How intelligence gaps foiled an Army Delta Force raid to rescue James Foley and Steven Sotloff http://t.co/6T7RVKzlVr pic.twitter.com/EmSHzWuuyQ

— Mark Scheffler (@markscheffler) September 6, 2014

U.S. Raid on Oil-Storage Facility Was Too Late to Save Hostages Held by Islamic State:WASHINGTON—On a moonless night in early July, several dozen Army Delta Force commandos touched down at an oil-storage facility in eastern Syria.

The plan: Neutralize the terrorist guards, search a makeshift prison, find American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and other hostages, and fly off to safety. It was all supposed to take 20 minutes.

More than an hour later, the Army team was headed back to its launchpad outside Syria empty-handed.

"It was a dry hole," a senior U.S. military official said, using jargon for a mission whose target couldn't be found.

One model for the operation was the 2011 mission that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, down to choosing the darkest of nights to cloak the raiders. But this raid, the first known U.S. incursion into Syria since its civil war erupted, was in many ways a far bigger gamble, according to current and former U.S. defense and government officials.

The U.S. had limited visibility into Syria, including the suspected prison site just miles from the main operations base of Islamic State, the militant group once known as ISIS that has overrun large parts of Syria and Iraq. Weeks before the raid, the Pentagon drafted a plan for surveillance flights in Syria but dropped the idea after concluding the White House wouldn't approve them, U.S. officials said.

A senior administration official said the only Pentagon request for surveillance flights the White House received came just before the mission.

Before the commandos' helicopters landed in the early morning hours of July 3, the Joint Special Operations team, part of the elite Delta Force, had been practicing for several weeks at a U.S. base in North Carolina—based on intelligence showing the makeshift prison between storage containers, oil derricks and other structures in a bleak desert landscape.

They had prepared for contingencies such as booby-trapped buildings and a large militant force guarding the hostages. Delta Force took part in the ill-fated 1993 "Black Hawk Down" raid in Somalia, and some officials worried the Syria operation carried similar risks.

As they drilled, the team conducting the mission was anxious to get the green light. "There were lots of rehearsals. They were ready for a period of time. It was a matter of waiting on a decision," said a defense official. "Once the decision was made, they went."

They went too late. The U.S. now believes the militants moved the hostages away as little as 72 hours earlier.

The Islamic State's communications discipline was strong, the U.S. officials said, honed by its leaders during the U.S. war in Iraq, making it hard to track the hostages. The U.S. had few informants on the ground to fill gaps in intelligence from satellites and other systems, they said, and the country the U.S. first approached about providing a base for the operation didn't want its territory used as the launch pad.

Videos showing the brutal killing of Messrs. Foley and Sotloff emerged a few weeks later, galvanizing U.S. and international calls to more directly counter Islamic State.

A reconstruction of events surrounding the failed rescue, based on interviews with current and former U.S. officials and foreign diplomats, and with other people familiar with the hostage situation, shows the extent to which it was a calculated gamble under intense time pressure.

The Pentagon proposed and President Barack Obama approved an elaborate operation in hostile territory with imperfect information. The Pentagon, worried about the risk to commandos and hostages, deployed a bigger-than-usual force, including a large team poised to intervene if the raid went sour.

The president "accepted a higher degree of risk than we expected," said one of the U.S. defense officials.

U.S. military and government officials defended their approach, noting that they had to make difficult choices quickly and that intelligence is always incomplete. Even in the bin Laden raid, a spectacular success, American officials were far from certain he was even at the targeted compound.

Officials also were painfully aware the hostages would be at even greater risk once Mr. Obama ordered airstrikes against Islamic State. Officials believed such a decision was imminent, which narrowed the window for any raid.

They also worried that putting drones overhead before the operation risked tipping off the militants. While such flights might have increased U.S. awareness about militant facilities, these officials said, they may not have changed the outcome and might have endangered the hostages if detected.

Officials involved in planning the mission said they concluded that the hostages' survival chances were already so low that a risky raid was the best option. "These are all tough decisions," said one of the officials.

Mr. Obama has for years expressed caution over becoming entangled in Syria's civil war, reflecting his concern that even a small intervention could lead the U.S. into another major Middle Eastern conflict and potentially run afoul of international law.

But over time, the White House has inched toward playing a greater role in Syria and Iraq, pushed by events on the ground. Two years after completing the U.S. pullout from Iraq, Mr. Obama secretly agreed to resume surveillance flights in Iraq to gather intelligence on Islamic State camps near the Syrian border. The group was one of the most effective forces battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces. The program was tiny, initially one drone flight a month.

In June, after Islamic State militants seized Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, the Pentagon drafted an order that called for deploying military advisers to Baghdad and allowing what it called "intrusive" surveillance flights into Syria.

But Pentagon leaders revised the order to take out the overflight authorization because they believed the White House would reject it. A senior defense official said that decision was made after some consultation with the White House. White House and some Pentagon officials argued that incursions into Syrian airspace would violate the country's sovereignty and deepen U.S. involvement in the civil war. "The president wasn't ready to go there," said one of the U.S. officials.

A senior Obama administration official said the Pentagon didn't bring the initial June order for surveillance flights in Syria to the White House for consideration.

In early summer, U.S. intelligence agencies narrowed their search for the American hostages to a small building near an oil facility southeast of Raqqa, the effective capital of Islamic State. Mr. Obama secretly authorized Special Operations forces to begin planning for a rescue mission, which would be led by the Pentagon with support from the Central Intelligence Agency.

Still more at that top link.

Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea Hot 'Booty' Teaser

At London's Daily Mail, "Two hot! Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea get suggestive as they flaunt their figures in sexy swimsuits for Booty remix teaser."

And watch it: "Jennifer Lopez - Booty (feat. Iggy Azalea) [Teaser] #JLoBooty."

L.A.'s Venomous White Cobra Sent to San Diego Zoo

The snake was putting a little fear into the local community where it went missing, with good reason. How'd you like to get nipped by that thing?

At LAT, "White cobra caught in Thousand Oaks arrives at San Diego Zoo."

U.C. Berkeley Chancellor Places Limits on 'Free Speech'

The ultimate in civility bullshit.

Christina Hoff Sommers tweets:

Place this annoying letter from Berkeley Chancellor to all students in file called "mealy-mouthed doublespeak." http://t.co/UV3ASn4azZ

— Christina H. Sommers (@CHSommers) September 6, 2014

And see Downtrend, "U.C. Berkeley Sets Free Speech Limits: Must Be Courteous and Respectful."

'The more feminists tell me I shouldn’t objectify a woman’s body, the more I want to...'

Heh.

At iOWNTHEWORLD, "Let’s Get Critical, Critical."

Critical of Kate Upton, that is.

So, Alex 'Ping Pong Balls' Pareene Is Blogging at Andrew Sullivan's?

Alex Pareene, some might recall, is the Salon alumnus who attacked Michelle Malkin with racist Asian "ping pong balls" jokes back in 2006.

So, I guess there's ample irony in his posting --- as an invited guest blogger, no less --- at Andrew "Trig Truther" Sullivan's the Dish.

See, "A Second Look At The Giant Garbage Pile That Is Online Media, 2014."

Birds of a feather.

If you work in the media, you need to bookmark this @pareene story and read it tomorrow after you've sobered up. http://t.co/u6xUdZTZTQ

— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) September 6, 2014

Cuba's Communist Intelligence Services Aggressively Recruiting Leftist American Academics as Spies and Influence Agents

Well, they'd be hitting the mother load at Lawyers, Guns and Money, lol.

At Free Beacon, "FBI: Cuban Intelligence Aggressively Recruiting Leftist American Academics as Spies, Influence Agents."

Pamela Geller on Rick Amato Show Discussing Obama's Capitulation to Global Jihad

At Atlas Shrugs, "VIDEO: Pamela Geller on One America News Network Discussing US Journalist beheading, Obama’s epic failures, and global jihad."

#GamerGate: Online Gaming Community Gets Violently Misogynistic

I'm not a gamer, so the gamer culture is completely foreign to me, but the threatening nature of the Internet underworld is not. These threats ultimately spin out of control and end up hurting people in real life.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Gamergate-related controversy reveals ugly side of gaming community":

A startling number of women I know are quitting games writing or considering quitting due to the ongoing torrent of misogyny and harassment.

— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) September 4, 2014

With every threat I wonder why the hell I keep doing this, but I do it because it’s so much bigger than just games. This is about justice.

— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) September 4, 2014

This is nothing short of psychological warfare. It is completely unacceptable.

— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) September 6, 2014

The emotional, mental & physical impacts of being targeted by hateful sociopaths everyday are immeasurable. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.

— Feminist Frequency (@femfreq) September 6, 2014

This column is usually dedicated to discussing video games, but in the past week and a half, you’d be forgiven for not having the stomach to play one. I haven’t.

Infighting, finger-pointing and the airing of dirty laundry have dominated the late summer in video games. For those who have played an online multiplayer game, this may sound like any other day in video games. But it’s not. Now the attacks are so threatening in nature that even the FBI has taken notice.

A long-simmering schism among select, very vocal members of the gaming community and others in the industry has come to the fore over the last two weeks, resulting in unprecedented levels of death threats and harassment directed at game designers and writers — many of them women.

This is not, to be clear, some trash-talking in a “Call of Duty” match. The hateful social media posts, a number of them threatening rape and crippling injury, have been so violent that some intended targets have gone into hiding.

The fury started in mid-August. The exact incident, in which the spurned ex of a female independent game designer reportedly published embarrassing personal details of their relationship and accused her of infidelity, is now beside the point. That moment has become an excuse, an opportunity to rail against designers and writers who are attempting to intellectualize the medium — “social justice warriors,” as they’ve been labeled by their online assailants.

These “social justice warriors” are seen as capable of destroying the very essence of what some players love about video games: violence, fantasy and scantily clad women.

Far from making a point, the ugly reaction has instead exposed the rage and rampant misogyny that lies beneath the surface of an industry that’s still struggling to mature.

Much of the ire has been aimed at Anita Sarkeesian, a respected pop-culture critic whose series of videos under the Feminist Frequency banner analyzes sexism in mainstream video games. On Aug. 26, she posted to Twitter that “some very scary threats have just been made against me and my family. Contacting authorities now.”

Sarkeesian, whose biting, unflinching observations have long made her a punching bag for those who feel she’s attacking the games they love, has been candid on social media in exposing the recent barrage of harassment. “I hope you die” is one of the few tweets slung her way this week that’s actually printable.

Her most recent supposed offense is posting a video that analyzes how top-shelf video games often resort to using women as background decorations, such as a cringe-inducing strip-club setting of the gunfight in “Mafia II: Joe’s Adventures,” in which bullets soar over the body of a dead, barely clothed exotic dancer.

Attempts to reach Sarkeesian this week have thus far been unsuccessful, as have attempts to reach a number of the other women affected. But anonymous message board postings calling for a game designer who’s been outspoken on social issues to receive a “good solid injury to the knees” is not uncommon.

More.

Ed Morrissey has more, at Hot Air, "A few more thoughts on GamerGate."

ADDED: As the necessary caveat, I've gotta add these tweets from Christina Hoff Sommers, via Ed Morrissey's post:

College deans,news editors,politicians--ran for cover when gender hardliners made strident demands.Gamers--male & female--fighting back.

— Christina H. Sommers (@CHSommers) September 5, 2014

The gender warriors made a huge tactical error when they went after the gamers. Wrong group to irritate.

— Christina H. Sommers (@CHSommers) September 5, 2014

Nervous Senate Democrats Force Obama to Delay Amnesty for Illegal Aliens

Well, the news keeps getting worse for the Democrats all around, on the economy, foreign policy, and even ObamaCare.

No surprise that idiotic amnesty is off the table for now.

At NYT, "Obama Delays Immigration Action, Yielding to Democratic Concerns."

And it's all the GOP's fault, naturally:

WASHINGTON — President Obama has delayed action to reshape the nation’s immigration system without congressional approval until after the November elections, bowing to the concerns of Senate Democrats on the ballots, White House officials said on Saturday.

The decision is a striking reversal of Mr. Obama’s vow to take action on immigration soon after summer’s end. The president made that promise on June 30, standing in the Rose Garden, where he angrily denounced Republican obstruction and said he would use the power of his office to protect immigrant families from the threat of deportation.

“Because of the Republicans’ extreme politicization of this issue, the president believes it would be harmful to the policy itself and to the long-term prospects for comprehensive immigration reform to announce administrative action before the elections,” a White House official said. “Because he wants to do this in a way that’s sustainable, the president will take action on immigration before the end of the year.”

More.

No worries. We're good with only 10 percent of the workforce illegal immigrants for now. Your kids may still be able to find entry level jobs.

America's Dangerous Aversion to Conflict

A great piece, from Robert Kagan, at WSJ, "The U.S. increasingly yearns to escape the harsh realities of war, but as recent events make clear, raw force remains a key element in international politics."

Al Qaeda Wasn’t 'On the Run'

Of course not.

Lies are the only thing that spew from O's mouth.

From Stephen Hayes, at the Weekly Standard, "Why haven’t we seen the documents retrieved in the bin Laden raid?":

In the early morning hours of May 2, 2011, an elite team of 25 American military and intelligence professionals landed inside the walls of a compound just outside the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. CIA analysts had painstakingly tracked a courier to the compound and spent months monitoring the activity inside the walls. They’d concluded, with varying levels of confidence, that the expansive white building at the center of the lot was the hideout of Osama bin Laden.

They were correct. And minutes after the team landed, the search for bin Laden ended with a shot to his head.

The primary objective of Operation Neptune Spear was to capture or kill the leader of al Qaeda. But a handful of those on the ground that night were part of a “Sensitive Site Exploitation” team that had a secondary mission: to gather as much intelligence from the compound as they could.

With bin Laden dead and the building secure, they got to work. Moving quickly—as locals began to gather outside the compound and before the Pakistani military, which had not been notified of the raid in advance, could scramble its response—they shoved armload after armload of bin Laden’s belongings into large canvas bags. The entire operation took less than 40 minutes.

The intelligence trove was immense. At a Pentagon briefing one day after the raid, a senior official described the haul as a “robust collection of materials.” It included 10 hard drives, nearly 100 thumb drives, and a dozen cell phones—along with data cards, DVDs, audiotapes, magazines, newspapers, paper files. In an interview on Meet the Press just days after the raid, Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas Donilon, told David Gregory that the material could fill “a small college library.” A senior military intelligence official who briefed reporters at the Pentagon on May 7 said: “As a result of the raid, we’ve acquired the single largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever.”

In all, the U.S. government would have access to more than a million documents detailing al Qaeda’s funding, training, personnel, and future plans. The raid promised to be a turning point in America’s war on terror, not only because it eliminated al Qaeda’s leader, but also because the materials taken from his compound had great intelligence value. Analysts and policymakers would no longer need to depend on the inherently incomplete picture that had emerged from the piecing together of disparate threads of intelligence—collected via methods with varying records of success and from sources of uneven reliability. The bin Laden documents were primary source material, providing unmediated access to the thinking of al Qaeda leaders expressed in their own words.

A comprehensive and systematic examination of those documents could give U.S. intelligence officials—and eventually the American public—a better understanding of al Qaeda’s leadership, its affiliates, its recruitment efforts, its methods of communication; a better understanding, that is, of the enemy America has fought for over a decade now, at a cost of trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives.

Incredibly, such a comprehensive study—a thorough “document exploitation,” in the parlance of the intelligence community—never took place. The Weekly Standard has spoken to more than two dozen individuals with knowledge of the U.S. government’s handling of the bin Laden documents. And on that, there is widespread agreement.

“They haven’t done anything close to a full exploitation,” says Derek Harvey, a former senior intelligence analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency and ex-director of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Center of Excellence at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).

“A full exploitation? No,” he says. “Not even close. Maybe 10 percent.”

More disturbing, many of the analysts and military experts with access to the documents were struck by a glaring contradiction: As President Obama and his team campaigned on the coming demise of al Qaeda in the runup to the 2012 election, the documents told a very different story...

More.

Ron Washington Resigns as Rangers Manager

I guess he needed to spend more time with his family.

At the New York Times, "Ron Washington Resigns as Manager of Rangers":

Sources tell me Ron Washington's personal reasons for resigning as manager are that the team has 48 wins on September 5th.

— Spencer Patterson (@spncrpatterson) September 5, 2014

Statement from Ron Washington: http://t.co/0Y1Y1pyj4x pic.twitter.com/owHhUEmNza

— MLB (@MLB) September 5, 2014

Texas Rangers Manager Ron Washington unexpectedly resigned Friday, saying he needed to devote his full attention to an “off-the-field personal matter.”

The announcement came one day after the Rangers lost their sixth straight game and became the first team to be mathematically eliminated from playoff contention. Three years ago, Texas reached its second consecutive World Series under Washington.

Washington said in a statement that his resignation had nothing to do with the disappointing season. The statement did not disclose details of why he was leaving.

Washington, in his eighth season and until Friday expected back in 2015, said that it had been a privilege to be part of some of the best seasons in Rangers history and that he was grateful for the opportunity.

Gwyneth Paltrow Converting to Judaism

At the New York Post, "Gwyneth Paltrow is converting to Judaism":

Gwyneth Paltrow is converting to Judaism after her conscious uncoupling with husband Chris Martin, sources tell Page Six.

The actress is quietly converting after years of following Kabbalah, which originated in Judaism, and being friends with Michael Berg, co-director of the Kabbalah Centre.

While Paltrow’s rep didn’t respond to numerous requests for comment, her late father was film producer Bruce Paltrow, a Jew, while her mother, Blythe Danner, is a Christian. The “Iron Man” star has previously revealed that she was raised both Jewish and Christian, which “was such a nice way to grow up.”

Alessandra Ambrosio at New York Fashion Week

At WWTDD, "Alessandra Ambrosio Is Always Working."

VIDEO: Henry Kissinger Slams Obama's 'Measured Response' to #ISIS as 'Inappropriate'

Kissinger's something else.

Gotta love that understatement, "measured response is inappropriate," heh.

How the Seahawks Changed the NFL

At the Wall Street Journal.

Plus, at the Seattle Times, "Seahawks make opening statement, beat Packers, 36-16."

'Joan Rivers, circa-1965, had a fire-and-reload style of joke telling that seemed both establishment and cutting edge...'

The caption at the Los Angeles Times' photo of Joan Rivers:



And the L.A. Times' Rivers obituary is the best I've read so far, much better, for example, than the Old Gray Lady's: "Joan Rivers dies at 81; driven diva of stand-up comedy, TV talk."

U.S. State Department Releases Anti-ISIS Propaganda Video

Everybody's in the propaganda business these days.

At Motherboard, "Here's a Very Low-Budget Anti-ISIS Video, Courtesy the US State Dept."

Al-Qaeda Eclipsed by Brutality and Influence of Islamic State

Clearly ISIS has taken al-Qaeda's inhumanity to a higher level.

And of course Ayman al-Zawahri's not pleased at being overshadowed.

At USA Today, "Al-Qaeda overshadowed by Islamic State's influence":

WASHINGTON — Al-Qaeda's call Thursday for a jihad (holy war) in India is the latest sign of how the terror group is battling to stay relevant in the face of the rival Islamic State's savage rampage in Iraq and Syria.

The Islamic State, an al-Qaeda breakaway group whose brutality has gained it global notoriety, is overshadowing the old-guard terrorist group from which it sprang.

"They are today's story as compared to al-Qaeda, which is definitely yesterday's story," said Omar Hamid, an analyst at IHS, a consulting firm.

The rivalry between the two groups and the growing power of the Islamic State have forced the United States to rethink its approach to combating terrorism in the region.

President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron, writing a joint newspaper opinion piece Thursday, called the Islamic State "brutal and poisonous" and urged NATO leaders meeting in Wales to confront the militant group.

The Islamic State "threatens to outpace al-Qaeda as the dominant voice of influence in the global extremist movement," Matthew Olsen, director of the U.S. government's National Counterterrorism Center, said Wednesday.

Particularly worrying to Olsen are 100 Americans and more than 1,000 Europeans recruited by the Islamic State to fight in Syria's 3-year-old civil war. "These foreign fighters are likely to gain experience and training and eventually return to their home countries, battle-hardened and further radicalized," Olsen said.

"Everybody wants to join ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) because ISIS looks like it's on the march," said Evan Kohlmann, an analyst with the security firm Flashpoint Global Partners.

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri released a videotape Thursday calling for the establishment of a wing of the group based in the Indian subcontinent.

"Our brothers in Burma, Kashmir, Islamabad, Bangladesh, we did not forget you and will liberate you from injustice and oppression," the al-Qaeda leader said.

Analysts say the plea is less about expansion than it is an attempt to prove its relevance in a world where its influence is declining...

More.

Unexpectedly! Syria May Have Hidden Chemical Arms, U.S. Says

At the New York Times (via Memeorandum):

The United States expressed concern on Thursday that Syria’s government might be harboring undeclared chemical weapons, hidden from the internationally led operation to purge them over the past year, and that Islamist militant extremists now ensconced in that country could possibly seize control of them.

The assertions by Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations and current president of the Security Council, were made after the Council received a private briefing on the Syria chemical weapons disarmament effort from Sigrid Kaag, the United Nations official appointed last year to coordinate it. Under Ms. Kaag, 96 percent of Syria’s declared chemical weapons stockpile, including all of the most lethal materials, have been destroyed.

But Ms. Kaag told reporters after the briefing that Syria had yet to address what she described as “some discrepancies or questions” about whether it had accounted for all of the chemical weapons in its arsenal. She also said Syria had yet to destroy seven hangars and five tunnels used for mixing and storing the weapons — which is required under the chemical weapons treaty that Syria has signed. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the Hague-based group that collaborated with the United Nations in overseeing the Syrian chemical disarmament, is now responsible for ensuring that Syria honors its promise.

“It’s a discussion that’s continuing in Damascus as well as The Hague,” Ms. Kaag said.

More.

VIDEO: George W. Bush Prophesied Barack Obama's Clusterf-k Capitulation to #ISIS in Iraq

At the Daily Signal, "Flashback: President George W. Bush Warned of What Would Happen If the U.S. Withdrew From Iraq Too Early."

Whatever Happened to Global Warming?

From Matt Ridley, at WSJ (via Watts Up With That):

Doesn't matter what Al Gore and Global Warming Nazis choose to call it... #PJNET #TCOT #LNYHBT #RedNationRising pic.twitter.com/7P4s2dBqVY

— Judy Stines (@jstines3) July 14, 2014

On Sept. 23 the United Nations will host a party for world leaders in New York to pledge urgent action against climate change. Yet leaders from China, India and Germany have already announced that they won't attend the summit and others are likely to follow, leaving President Obama looking a bit lonely. Could it be that they no longer regard it as an urgent threat that some time later in this century the air may get a bit warmer?

In effect, this is all that's left of the global-warming emergency the U.N. declared in its first report on the subject in 1990. The U.N. no longer claims that there will be dangerous or rapid climate change in the next two decades. Last September, between the second and final draft of its fifth assessment report, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change quietly downgraded the warming it expected in the 30 years following 1995, to about 0.5 degrees Celsius from 0.7 (or, in Fahrenheit, to about 0.9 degrees, from 1.3).

Even that is likely to be too high. The climate-research establishment has finally admitted openly what skeptic scientists have been saying for nearly a decade: Global warming has stopped since shortly before this century began.

First the climate-research establishment denied that a pause existed, noting that if there was a pause, it would invalidate their theories. Now they say there is a pause (or "hiatus"), but that it doesn't after all invalidate their theories.

Alas, their explanations have made their predicament worse by implying that man-made climate change is so slow and tentative that it can be easily overwhelmed by natural variation in temperature—a possibility that they had previously all but ruled out.

When the climate scientist and geologist Bob Carter of James Cook University in Australia wrote an article in 2006 saying that there had been no global warming since 1998 according to the most widely used measure of average global air temperatures, there was an outcry. A year later, when David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London made the same point, the environmentalist and journalist Mark Lynas said in the New Statesman that Mr. Whitehouse was "wrong, completely wrong," and was "deliberately, or otherwise, misleading the public."

We know now that it was Mr. Lynas who was wrong. Two years before Mr. Whitehouse's article, climate scientists were already admitting in emails among themselves that there had been no warming since the late 1990s. "The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998," wrote Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia in Britain in 2005. He went on: "Okay it has but it is only seven years of data and it isn't statistically significant."

If the pause lasted 15 years, they conceded, then it would be so significant that it would invalidate the climate-change models upon which policy was being built. A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) written in 2008 made this clear: "The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more."

Well, the pause has now lasted for 16, 19 or 26 years—depending on whether you choose the surface temperature record or one of two satellite records of the lower atmosphere. That's according to a new statistical calculation by Ross McKitrick, a professor of economics at the University of Guelph in Canada.

It has been roughly two decades since there was a trend in temperature significantly different from zero. The burst of warming that preceded the millennium lasted about 20 years and was preceded by 30 years of slight cooling after 1940.

More.

Joan Rivers, 1933-2014

I find myself surprisingly --- and sadly --- shaken up by her death.

A gallery of stories, at the Los Angeles Times.

Obama, Cameron Warn Against Isolationism in the Face of 'Barbaric' Islamic State

At the Los Angeles Times, "Iraq crisis prompts Obama, Cameron to revisit U.S.-Britain ties":

President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron began Thursday by making a joint call to action in a newspaper piece against “barbaric” terrorists in Iraq. They also visited an elementary school in the morning before attending the NATO summit, where they were seatmates, to discuss the crisis in Ukraine.

A year after an embarrassing stumble in U.S.-Britain relations over Syria, the two leaders seemed determined to show that their relationship is, indeed, still special.

Obama came to Wales this week searching for allies to confront Islamic State militants, and Cameron appeared the most eager to volunteer. The prime minister declared that he had not ruled out airstrikes on the group's forces in Iraq and Syria, echoing language frequently used by the White House to preserve the option of increased military action. He vowed, as Obama has in recent days, not to shy away from confrontation.

“Countries like Britain and America will not be cowed by barbaric killers,” Cameron and Obama wrote in their joint opinion piece in the Times of London. “We will be more forthright in the defense of our values, not least because a world of greater freedom is a fundamental part of how we keep our people safe.”

The Iraq crisis is shaping up as a do-over for a prime minister and a president whose relationship has been overshadowed — some say haunted — by the exceptional and problematic closeness of two of their predecessors, Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George W. Bush.

Like many Americans, Britons remain wary of new military engagements after more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the British, there is the added perception that they were led into war by a leader too eager to please his American counterpart...

More.

Woman Beheaded in London

Of course there's no link to terrorism (wink, wink).

At Pamela's, "UK: Woman Beheaded in Broad Daylight by Machete-Wielding Muslim, Police Rule Out Terrorism."

Obama Given Detailed Intelligence on #ISIS Over a Year Ago

Via IBD:

Obama Ignored Islamic State Intelligence For A Year http://t.co/zAtHKyN780 … #IBDEditorials via @IBDinvestors - pic.twitter.com/FQa1LcQvgr

— Daniel John Sobieski (@gerfingerpoken) September 4, 2014

'The United States cannot shrink from this fight...'

From the letters to the editor, at the New York Times, "After Beheadings, Pressure on Obama":

To the Editor:

Re “ISIS Says It Killed Second American After U.S. Strikes” (front page, Sept. 3):

For at least the third time in my life, the United States is at war in Iraq. That’s an inconvenient truth for an administration that wanted to end the war there in 2011. Recent bombings and beheadings in Iraq and Syria only underscore this point.

We — the United States, the West and our allies in the Middle East — are at war with the most destructive, nihilistic and radical fanatics we can imagine. Today’s ground zero is on a battlefield the United States abandoned a few years ago.

I served four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as a military intelligence officer and am under no illusions about this enemy. It is ruthless and clearly not on the run. Its capacity for harm has grown over the last three years, and it has made it abundantly clear that it wants to do our homeland harm.

The United States cannot shrink from this fight, just as it could not declare victory and go home because we grew tired of wars overseas. That kind of wishful thinking ignores hard realities. We tried it in Iraq, and we have reaped the proverbial whirlwind there.

JAMES D. EDWARDS
Herndon, Va., Sept. 3, 2014

The writer is a retired United States Army colonel.

More.

'War Has Been Declared Against Us'

At the Gatestone Institute, "Geert Wilders: A Speech in the Netherlands Parliament."

New USC Report Finds Illegal Aliens Make Up Nearly 10 Percent of California's Workforce

Alien-nation on the left coast.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Immigrants illegally in California comprise nearly 10% of workforce":

Immigrants who are in California illegally make up nearly 10% of the state's workforce and contribute $130 billion annually to its gross domestic product, according to a report by researchers at USC released Wednesday.

The study, which was conducted in conjunction with the California Immigrant Policy Center, was based on Census data and other statistics, including data from the departments of Labor and Homeland Security. It looked at a variety of ways the estimated 2.6-million immigrants living in California without permission participate in state life.

Among the study's findings:

• Immigrants who are in California illegally make up 38% of the agriculture industry and 14% of the construction industry.

• Half of the immigrants in the state illegally have been here for at least 10 years.

• Roughly 58% do not have health insurance.

• Nearly three in four live in households that include U.S. citizens.

USC sociology professor Manuel Pastor, who worked on the report, said the data show how integrated immigrants are into California society.

"It's a population deeply embedded in the labor market, neighborhoods and social fabric of the state," said Pastor, who is a co-director of USC's Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration.

Advocates for more inclusive immigration policy say the economic contributions of immigrants are another reason they should be allowed to stay...

I'm guessing the study's authors --- Manuel Pastor and others --- are just slightly pro-amnesty. Just slightly, mind you.

More.

Teaching Today

Thursday's a long day on campus.

More blogging tonight.

Meanwhile, buy some books:

New York Times Bias on Rotherham

Actually, it's not bias on the part of the Times. Each and every one of the British papers refused to identify the Rotherham sex perps as Muslims as well. It's a global moral inversion.

But this is good nevertheless.

From Walter Russell Mead, "PAPER OF RECORD? Grey Lady on Rotherham: Your Bias Is Showing."

PREVIOUS Rotherham blogging here.

Porsche 911 by Singer Vehicle Design

I love this.

At the Wall Street Journal, "The Legendary Porsche 911, Remastered":

Singer Vehicle Design has fashioned the most retro-looking supercar on the road today—a bespoke remix of the classic air-cooled Porsche 911.

Jihadists Killed Steven Sotloff Because of Who He Was

A concise --- and essential --- editorial on the murder of Steven Sotloff, at the Wall Street Journal: "Steven J. Sotloff":

Sotloff was not in Syria as an avatar of Western imperialism or American unilateralism. He was not an agent of any particular form of politics. He was killed because of who he was, not what he did. No change in America's Mideast policies will ever alter the fact.

That makes it all the more necessary for the U.S. to destroy the Islamic State, whether we do so with allies or alone. The murder of Steven Sotloff is a warning of what his killers intend not only against their other hostages, but against all of us. The response to ISIS must be to defeat it by killing its killers.

Lily Aldridge

Lily Aldridge in a kitchen preparing food: sublime.

Here's to sending Amanda Marcotte into fits of rage:

L.A. Schools Superintendant John Deasy Defends Apple iPad $1 Billion Corruption

A mind-boggling story, at the Los Angeles Times, "L.A. schools Supt. Deasy defends his dealings with Apple, Pearson."

NBC's Richard Engel: 'Quite Ridiculous' for Obama to Have 'No Strategy to Deal With #ISIS...'

As I've been saying, Engel has been ripping the White House.

Tyranny of the Home-Cooked Family Dinner

It's Amanda Marcotte, who continues to outdo herself day after day.

At Slate, "Let’s Stop Idealizing the Home-Cooked Family Dinner."

And Dana Loesch nails it:

Not shocking that someone who believes in baby murder is aghast at feeding them at the family dinner table.

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) September 3, 2014

Parents of Navy SEAL Killed in Action Call for Obama's Resignation

At London's Daily Mail, "'Your cowardly lack of leadership has left a gaping hole': Parents of SEAL Team Six soldier killed in action call for President Obama's resignation in searing open letter about his handling of ISIS."

It's Bill and Karen Vaughn. Their only son Aaron Carson Vaughn was killed when his Chinook copter was shot down in Afghanistan. Read their open letter at the link.

Anais Encore!

We had Anais Zanotti the other day, and hey, apparently she spends a lot of time in bikinis.

At Egotastic!, "Anais Zanotti Bikinis on the Beach in Miami."

French model and sexy person Anais Zanotti looked incredibly hot in a teeny tiny bikini on Miami Beach pic.twitter.com/t0K8DlRnhi

— Julio Trenard (@jutreme) September 3, 2014

Are U.S. Troops Already Fighting in Iraq?

From Ford Sypher, "Are American Troops Already Fighting on the Front Lines in Iraq?":

Over the past several days, Kurdish Peshmerga forces have massed in the thousands around the northern approaches to Zumar. Heavy equipment including rockets and mortars were positioned for the assault. Kurdish political and officials also told The Daily Beast that they would be utilizing weapons that had been flown in from countries including the United States and Germany, during the offensive.

At sunrise on September 1, trucks and vehicles packed the highway west of the Kurdish city of Erbil, capital of the autonomous Kurdish region, heading toward Zumar. In one direction The Daily Beast observed large numbers of Kurdish Peshmerga. In the other direction drove countless numbers of Iraqi refugees, fleeing the fighting with their families and personal belongings. “The fighting is too heavy. We’re looking for safety,” said Hassar, a resident of a small village near Zumar, as he sped away in a small sedan loaded with his family.

The battle began in the early hours of the morning with American airstrikes hitting ISIS positions in and around Zumar. Shortly after the bombs stopped falling Peshmerga infantry units began their advance. Initial reports indicated that the Kurdish fighters were advancing with light resistance, but that quickly changed as ISIS mortar and rocket fire began to rain down.

At the last checkpoint before the battle raging ahead, a little more than a five-minute drive from our position, my Kurdish security team got news from the front line that the fighting would be heavier than expected. Not only had the mutual shelling intensified, but word came that ISIS had reinforced its positions overnight with fighters from Syria.

As the fighting raged we sat and baked in the sun waiting to be brought closer. Then, the news came that our escort, a Peshmerga intelligence official, had been ambushed in route to pick us up. He had escaped, but two of his deputies were killed in the assault. By this time, Kurdish forces had opened up their second line of offense, moving in from both the northeast and northwest, attempting to envelop ISIS fighters in a pincer movement.

My Kurdish contact and I decided to approach the battle from western side of the Mosul Dam reservoir, the strategic dam that had been captured by ISIS before U.S. airstrikes allowed Kurdish and Iraqi military forces to retake it.

At around 10 a.m., the Peshmerga halted our movement. Fearing that the situation was changing rapidly, we asked the Kurdish security element accompanying us what was happening. “We don’t know,” they said, “we just got information that you cannot move forward.” Repeated calls were met with the same firm statement that we could not move forward.

Stuck out in the open with no clear sense of what was occurring in the battle that required us to be stopped, we made contact with high-level Peshmerga ministries, both in Erbil and on the ground in Zumar. “Yes, we want to let you in, but we can’t,” said one high-level Kurdish government official. “We have visitors, you’ll see them,” he stated. As we tried to decipher his cryptic response our answer came: multiple armored Toyotas swept down the mountain, passing within feet of us. The Toyotas were packed with what appeared to be bearded Western Special Operations Forces. I watched the trucks pass and saw for myself the crews inside them. They didn’t wear any identifying insignia but they were visibly Western and appeared to match all the visual characteristics of American special operations soldiers.

RTWT.

The Islamic State vs. al Qaeda

From J.M. Berger, at Foreign Policy, "Who’s winning the war to become the jihadi superpower?":

In the spring of 2014, [Ayman al-] Zawahiri disavowed the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) -- at the time considered an al Qaeda affiliate -- essentially firing it for failing to follow his orders. After seizing a substantial amount of territory in Iraq during June, ISIS renamed itself the Islamic State and declared that it is a "caliphate," essentially asserting that it holds dominion over Muslims around the world and demanding that jihadi groups swear loyalty to its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, now restyled as Caliph Ibrahim.

When all the world's Muslim militants failed to drop to their knees, the online supporters of the Islamic State were baffled and disappointed. The realist leadership of the group probably knew that the announcement would not produce immediate breakthroughs, but it may have been disappointed at the volume of the first wave of rejection. Given how tightly the Islamic State synchronizes its media strategy, it is telling that the group could not arrange even a single high-profile pledge within the first week after the announcement.

Fast-forward to the end of August, and the Islamic State has continued and even expanded its ground war, seizing new territory in Syria, where it is battling and often winning against both the regime and other Islamist rebels, including al-Nusra Front. The Islamic State has now emerged as the world's second jihadi superpower and possibly the dominant one. And it wants what al Qaeda has -- global terrorist credibility and the respect, support, and loyalty of the world's jihadi organizations.

After a rough start, the Islamic State has gained traction against al Qaeda thanks to a number of developments, but its battle is far from over. Here's a look at where the struggle for the Terrorist World Championship currently stands...

More.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz: 'Scott Walker has given women the back of his hand...'

At the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, "DNC chair Wasserman Schultz rips Scott Walker on women's issues."

And a video with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, "CNN: DNC Chair’s "Very Controversial” Comments Are “Blowing Up Big Time”."

Obama Offers Muddled Message in Face of Crises

Well, this morning we were going to "manage" the threat from ISIS. But now, Chuck Hagel's saying we're going to "degrade and destroy" the bastards. Somebody over there needs to work on basic messaging, that's for sure.

At Time, "Obama Offers Muddled Message to Europe in Face of Crises."

Battalions of unicorns are going wisp away the ISIS threat any time now.

"Whenever cultural Marxists try to trip you up or bully you with the increasingly meaningless term 'racist,' turn it around and ram the word right back down their throats..."

Well, punch back twice as hard, actually.

At Moonbattery, "Univision Reporter Gets Owned."

George Washington University Battleground Poll: 'Not Good News for #Democrats'

At Free Beacon, "GWU Poll: Nation on Wrong Track, ‘Not Good News for Democrats’."

Steven Sotloff Family 'Furious' at Obama Administration's Inaction and Leaks

Louise Mensch tweets the literal bottom line on the New York Times story, "ISIS Says It Killed Steven Sotloff After U.S. Strikes in Northern Iraq."

NYT makes clear #Sotloff family disgusted with #Obama, furious at his inaction and leaks http://t.co/PvIN9SxohT

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) September 3, 2014

As ever, leftie @NYT tries to bury and hide the #Sotloff family's rage at #Obama - end article http://t.co/PvIN9SxohT #tcot #ISIS

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) September 3, 2014

Apologies, link is bad. #Sotloff family hates #Obama's inaction and leaks, says @NYT http://t.co/RMUykTheSn

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) September 3, 2014

Obama's New World Disorder

From VDH, at National Review, "The New World Disorder":

In just the last five or six years the world has been fundamentally transformed. Instead of the old accustomed Western-inspired postwar global order, crafted and ensured by the United States and its European and Japanese partners, there is now mostly chaos, from Ukraine to Syria to the South China Sea. Or, rather, there may be emerging new rules, given that we are still frozen in a Wild West moment, when everyone in the saloon has drawn his six-shooter, paused, and is wondering what happened to the sheriff — and wondering, too, who will be the first to dare start shooting.

The general cause of the unrest is that, fairly or not, the world senses that the United States is tired after its recent interventions, cutting back its defenses, and all but financially insolvent. We might scoff at Neanderthal notions like a loss of deterrence inviting aggression, but Neanderthals do not.

Barack Obama apparently believes that such a retrenchment was both inevitable and to be welcomed. He thought that most U.S. interventions abroad had been either wrong or futile or both; he questioned the world’s status quo and certainly felt, for example, that the widespread persecution of Christians in the Middle East was not nearly as much of a problem as Islamophobia in the West. He came into office believing that Iran, Hamas, and Russia had all been unduly demonized, especially by George W. Bush, and could be reached out to by a sensitive president whose heritage and attitudes might not appear so polarizing.

To Obama, old allies like Britain and Israel either did not need unflinching U.S. support or did not necessarily warrant it. The postwar world that the U.S. had once ensured was no fairer a place than is America at home, and certainly did not justify the vast investment of American time and money — resources that could be far better be spent at home addressing inequality and unfairness. A program of higher taxes, huge budget deficits, and enormous increases in entitlement spending did not have budgetary space for the sort of defense required to keep things calm abroad.

As a result, we now are witnessing a world in transition — a world of regional hegemonies that are filling the vacuum after the abdication of the United States...

More.

Jennifer Garner 'Musical Chairs' for Capital One

Alec Baldwin's out.

Jennifer Garner's in.

A welcomed improvement:

The Murder of Steven Sotloff

From Dexter Filkins, at the New Yorker: "... the ostensible objective of securing an Islamic state is nowhere near as important as killing people."

Obama: 'We Will Not Be Intimidated' by Islamic State (VIDEO)

I'm underwhelmed here.

At LAT, "Obama says U.S. won't be intimidated by Islamic State militants' acts of barbarism."

Apple Denies iCloud Breach in Nude Photo Leak

At WSJ, "Apple Denies iCloud Breach: Tech Giant Says Celebrity Accounts Compromised by 'Very Targeted Attack'."

RELATED: At TechCrunch, "Apple Should Be More Transparent About Security."

Under Armour Signs Smokin' Supermodel Gisele Bundchen

At USA Today, "Gisele Bundchen: Under Armour's $590 Million Woman?"

Marie Harf: #ISIS Acts Like They're 'Operating in the Name of Islam, And That's Just Not True...'

Well, we wouldn't want to accuse Islamic State of representing the true face of Islam, or anything. Might be accuses of "racism," or something.

PolitiChicks on Fox & Friends

Morgan Brittany, Gina Loudon, and Ann-Marie Murrell on yesterday's Fox & Friends.



Their new book is What Women Really Want.

They're trying to sell their spiel as a "new feminism." Good luck with that.

Krauthammer: Obama's 'A Man in Denial, On the Verge of Delusion...'

Once again, from the inimitable Charles Krauthammer:

Devastating Megyn Kelly Segment: Obama Just 'Doesn't Know What to Do...'

Megyn Kelly opens with a breathtaking account of today's news of the Sotloff beheading, and then Brit Hume just eviscerates the president as completely flummoxed that the world didn't cotton to his assumed unique global-healing abilities, as well as Obama's utter cluelessness in the face of international dangers as great as any time during the post-Cold War era

Just devastating:

GRAPHIC VIDEO: #ISIS Beheads American Journalist Steven Sotloff — CAUTION! GRAPHIC BEHEADING!

There are two clips.

At Creeping Sharia, Sotloff makes his statement denouncing the United States and President Obama, "ISIS beheads second American journalist (video)."

And at Bare Naked Islam, an edited video of the beheading, "Second American journalist Steven Sotloff reportedly has been beheaded by the Islamic State (ISIS)."

More at Atlas Shrugs, "“‘I’m back, Obama’: Islamic State’s ‘Jihadi John’ taunts Obama as he beheads second US journalist."

Plus, the background at the Wall Street Journal, "Video Purports to Show Beheading of U.S. Journalist Steven Sotloff."

And from ABC News, at Memeorandum, "Video Appears to Show ISIS Execution of Second American Steven Sotloff."

PREVIOUSLY: "Death of James Foley Demands We Bear Witness, Not Craven Self-Censorship."

Back to School

I'm back to teaching today after the long holiday weekend.

And more and more students are heading back to college.

In any case, more blogging tonight.

Jacob Heilbrunn Reviews Henry Kissinger's World Order

At the National Interest, "Kissinger's Counsel":

WHEN HENRY KISSINGER celebrated his ninetieth birthday in Manhattan’s St. Regis Hotel in June 2013, he attracted an audience of notables, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Valery Giscard D’Estaing, Donald Rumsfeld, James Baker and George Shultz. Kerry called Kissinger America’s “indispensable statesman,” but it was John McCain who, as the Daily Beast reported, electrified the room with his remarks. McCain, who was brutally tortured in what was sardonically known as the Hanoi Hilton, earned widespread respect for courageously refusing to accept an early release from his Vietnamese captors after his father had been promoted to commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

At the party, McCain recounted for the first time the specific circumstances of that refusal. He explained that when Kissinger traveled to Hanoi to conclude the agreement ending the war in 1973, the Vietnamese offered to send McCain home with him. Kissinger declined. McCain said:

He knew my early release would be seen as favoritism to my father and a violation of our code of conduct. By rejecting this last attempt to suborn a dereliction of duty, Henry saved my reputation, my honor, my life, really. . . . So, I salute my friend and benefactor, Henry Kissinger, the classical realist who did so much to make the world safer for his country’s interests, and by so doing safer for the ideals that are its pride and purpose.

It was a poignant moment. On one side was a scion of one of America’s preeminent military families who went on to become a senator championing a hawkish foreign policy that precisely reflects the neoconservative wing of the GOP. On the other was a Jewish refugee who had personally witnessed the descent of his homeland into ideological fanaticism and fled it with his parents to embark upon a new life in the United States, where he became a premier exponent of realist thought in foreign policy and a world-famous statesman. Both were bound together by events that forged a bond between them that was deeper than any differences they may have about America’s role abroad.

THE COMITY they displayed at the birthday gala is especially striking in the context of the contemporary Republican Party, where the principles that Kissinger has espoused over the past seven decades have not simply been abandoned. Again and again, they have been denounced as antithetical to American values. And this denunciation has come from both the left and the right...

Keep reading.

The book is out on September 9th. Order it here.

Mayor Eric Garcetti Calls for $13.25 Minimum Wage in Los Angeles

The dude's a closet Marxist.

At LAT, "Garcetti calls for boosting minimum wage to $13.25 after three years."

Britain Ready to Take Fight to Jihadists, Warns David Cameron

At the Telegraph UK, "UK could join American air strikes in Iraq and Syria, warns David Cameron":

The Prime Minister said he would use a Nato meeting to review whether “military measures” were needed against the “barbaric” extremists of Isil.

David Cameron has raised the prospect of Britain joining American air strikes in Iraq and Syria, stating that he is prepared to “act immediately” without first informing MPs if national security is threatened.

The Prime Minister said he would use a Nato meeting this week to review whether “military measures” were needed against the “barbaric” extremists of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

He used a House of Commons statement to set out a series of measures to protect Britain from the thousands of European citizens who have travelled to Iraq and Syria and want to “wreak havoc on our country”.

However, there were fears on Monday that the plans could unravel after Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, threatened to block a key plank of the new anti-terrorism laws amid concerns that they infringe on human rights.

Mr Cameron was also accused of delaying measures to ban British citizens from returning to Britain if they have travelled to Iraq and Syria to fight alongside Isil terrorists.

In his statement, Mr Cameron announced plans to give the police powers to temporarily seize passports at the border if people are thought to be travelling to Iraq or Syria.

He also said the Government will push through laws to either force terrorist suspects to relocate from their home towns or create “exclusion zones” where they are not allowed to travel.

More.

British Jihad Preacher Anjem Choudary on #CNN: 'There's Nothing Called a Radical or Moderate Form of Islam...'

Oops. Anjem Choudary not sticking to the accepted leftist talking points on Islam.

The idiot Brian Seltzer tries to get Choudary back on point, "Wait! Wait! You're warping the religion!"

Actually, he's not. Leftists are warping the religion. Anjem Choudary's telling the truth.

And of course, Choudary did a sound check "jokingly" blurting out "9/11, 7/7, 3/11" and so forth, the dates of the big attacks against the West, in New York and Washington, London and Madrid. Just a sound check, of course. Seltzer gets his big indignation on, but in the end remains as clueless as ever.



HAT TIP: Blazing Cat Fur, "A CNN host let a Muslim cleric speak freely. What he said about journalism, terrorism and sharia law in America left the host speechless."

FBI Joins Hunt for Hackers Who Leaked Nude Photos of Hollywood Celebrities Online

Well, Hollywood's in the tank for the Dems, so it's no wonder the FBI stepped right up with an investigation.

At LAT, "FBI joins hunt for hacker who leaked nude photos of actresses."

RELATED: At BuzzFeed, "Those Jennifer Lawrence Pictures Aren’t Scandalous."

Angels Cautious Heading Into September Pennant Race

At LAT, "Angels remain cautious despite five-game lead going into pennant race":

The Angels players held their fantasy football league draft after Sunday's game, which means two things: The NFL season is about to begin and so are the baseball pennant races.

The Angels will enter their race with a five-game head start after completing a four-game sweep of the Oakland Athletics with an 8-1 rout Sunday. But a big lead, even in September, doesn't guarantee anything. Just ask catcher Chris Iannetta, who played on a Colorado Rockies team that once made up a five-game deficit in the final 10 games of the season to reach the playoffs.

"It can swing like that," he said. "There's a lot of baseball left. There's one month, but there's many games."

And Iannetta isn't the only one preaching caution.

"We've got a long way to go. I know a lot of people are counting down. Not us," said Manager Mike Scioscia.

Added outfielder Mike Trout: "We can't get too excited yet."

Maybe. But it's hard to imagine how the Angels could be in a better position entering the home stretch. Especially when you consider where they were just three weeks ago.

When the Angels woke on Aug. 11, they were four games behind Oakland in the American League West and had just lost starting pitcher Tyler Skaggs to Tommy John surgery. But the next day they started a streak that featured them winning 15 of 19 games, turning that four-game deficit into a five-game lead, the team's largest division lead since 2009.

The sweep of the A's also gave the Angels six straight wins and a baseball-best 83-53 record after 136 games, matching the franchise record. The last time they did that was 2008, when the team went on to win 100 games.

Add it all up and … well, it means absolutely nothing, Iannetta warned.

"It can go the other way just as fast," he said. "You could find yourself 10 games back. It could be that bad. You just have to keep it in perspective and say, 'You know what? We've got to keep going. We've got to keep grinding it out.'"

The Angels did that and more against Oakland's Scott Kazmir on Sunday, scoring six times in the second inning when Kazmir walked four batters — including two with the bases loaded. Erick Aybar contributed a run-scoring single to the rally, running his hitting streak to a career-best 16 games, while Trout knocked in two runs.

Obama Delivers Populist, Campaign-Style Speech on Labor Day, Launching Drive to Hold Senate

Well, campaigning's the only thing he knows how to do, and the November results will show that he's not even very good at that anymore.

At LAT, "Obama tries to rekindle hope in Labor Day speech."

Labor Day Rule 5

Happy Labor Day!

Here's Wombat-socho's Rule 5 roundup from yesterday, at the Other McCain, "Rule 5 Sunday: Labor Day Weekend Lovelies."

At Althouse, "'Celebrities, make it harder for hackers to get nude pics of you from your computer by not putting nude pics of yourself on the computer'..."

And Blackmailers Don't Shoot, "You Won’t Find Nude Pictures of Jennifer Lawrence Here."

More at the Nug, "Jessica Kylie aka Miss Rabbit!"

Also, at 90 Miles From Tyranny, "Hot Pick of the Late Night."

And see Proof Positive, "Friday Night Babe: Viviana Greco."

At Doubletroubletwo, "Boobies ... Enjoy ;-)."

Crazy Uncle Bubba has "A Hot Placeholder."

At Drunken Stepfather, "Hacked-tackular."

Odie has "Playing Poker ~OR~ Rule 5 Woodsterman Style."

Knuckledraggin', "CAMEL TOE!!!"

At Instapundit, "YOUR DAILY MEMO from the Thought Police. Also the Junior Anti-Sex League."

At Pirate's Cove, "If All You See……is an evil plastic water bottle and several evil beer bottles causing seas to rise and temperatures to scorch, you might just be a Warmist (HUGE BREASTS!)"

In a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World has the "Friday Pinup."

More at Daley Gator, "DALEYGATOR DALEYBABE TARA BOOHER."

And Dana Pico, "Rule 5 Blogging: The Яussians are coming, the Яussians are coming!"

Still more from Wine, Women and Politics, "Babe of the day."

Also at Randy's Roundtable, "Thursday Nite Tart...Kaley Cuoco."

At Soylent, "Your Morning Coffee Creamer."

And at EBL, "Burning Man 2014 Rule 5."

VIDEO: Bill Whittle at Defending the American Dream Summit — #Dream14

The one and only Bill Whittle, at AFP's Dream Summit this weekend:

Legacy Media: The Lost Decade In Six Charts

Interesting.

At the Monday Note, "Ten years. That’s how far away in the past the Google IPO lies. Ten years of explosive growth for the digital world, ten gruesome years for legacy media. Here is the lost decade, revisited in charts and numbers."

Oh, That's Mary Winstead!

I'm trying to remember who this lady is, so I check Wikipedia, and it turns out that Mary Elizabeth Winstead is "Gwen," the dreamy little welcome girl in the 2005 Disney movie "Sky High." I've watched it many times with my kid. She ends up being a bad lady after all, a nemesis to "Will," the shy little goofball who inherits his parents' superhuman powers.

I embedded Ms. Winstead at the post last night, although I didn't make the connection.

Also at Twitchy, "Mary Elizabeth Winstead ‘can only imagine the creepy effort’ that went into nude photo leak."

Evolution of Propaganda: How #ISIS Uses Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, SoundCloud, and More

When I read articles like this, it's like you're supposed to be surprised that terrorists use modern social media to get their message out. It's 2014 for crying out loud. What else would these murderers be using?

At the New York Times, "ISIS Displaying a Deft Command of Varied Media."

New College Board Guidelines Forcing High Schools to 'Teach U.S. History From a Leftist Perspective...'

From Stanley Kurtz, at National Review, "How the College Board Politicized U.S. History":

The College Board, the private company that produces the SAT test and the various Advanced Placement (AP) exams, has kicked off a national controversy by issuing a new and unprecedentedly detailed “Framework” for its AP U.S. History exam. This Framework will effectively force American high schools to teach U.S. history from a leftist perspective. The College Board disclaims political intent, insisting that the new Framework provides a “balanced” guide that merely helps to streamline the AP U.S. History course while enhancing teacher flexibility. Not only the Framework itself, but the history of its development suggests that a balanced presentation of the American story was not the College Board’s goal.

The origins of the new AP U.S. History framework are closely tied to a movement of left-leaning historians that aims to “internationalize” the teaching of American history. The goal is to “end American history as we have known it” by substituting a more “transnational” narrative for the traditional account.

This movement’s goals are clearly political, and include the promotion of an American foreign policy that eschews the unilateral use of force. The movement to “internationalize” the U.S. History curriculum also seeks to produce a generation of Americans more amendable to working through the United Nations and various left-leaning “non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) on issues like the environment and nuclear proliferation. A willingness to use foreign law to interpret the U.S. Constitution is likewise encouraged.

The College Board formed a close alliance with this movement to internationalize the teaching of American history just prior to initiating its redesign of the AP U.S. History exam. Key figures in that alliance are now in charge of the AP U.S. History redesign process, including the committee charged with writing the new AP U.S. History exam. The new AP U.S. History Framework clearly shows the imprint of the movement to de-nationalize American history. Before I trace the rise of this movement and its ties to the College Board, let’s have a closer look at its goals...

Well, you can see where this is going, but keep reading.

HAT TIP: Instapundit.

Jesus, Self-Defense, and Teaching Your Kids to Use Deadly Force

An interesting piece, from Doug Giles, at Clash Daily.

Cloud Storage Hacked in Jennifer Lawrence Nude Photo Leak

Following-up from yesterday, "Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton Nude Photos Leaked Online."

Here's CNET's Dan Ackerman, from CBS "This Morning":

'Wage Theft' Claims: The Latest Left-Wing Scam to Bilk Employers — Happy Labor Day!

You'd think that overtime laws were just invented yesterday. In fact we've had overtime laws since the New Deal of the 1930s, and no doubt employees have long made claims against bosses for unfair pay practices.

But all of a sudden we're now hearing about the scourge of "wage theft," as if employers just discovered that they can "steal" workers' overtime earnings to bulk up profits, or something.

At the New York Times, "More Workers Are Claiming ‘Wage Theft’":

MIRA LOMA, Calif. — Week after week, Guadalupe Rangel worked seven days straight, sometimes 11 hours a day, unloading dining room sets, trampolines, television stands and other imports from Asia that would soon be shipped to Walmart stores.

Even though he often clocked 70 hours a week at the Schneider warehouse here, he was never paid time-and-a-half overtime, he said. And now, having joined a lawsuit involving hundreds of warehouse workers, Mr. Rangel stands to receive more than $20,000 in back pay as part of a recent $21 million legal settlement with Schneider, a national trucking company.

“Sometimes I’d work 60, even 90 days in a row,” said Mr. Rangel, a soft-spoken immigrant from Mexico. “They never paid overtime.”

The lawsuit is part of a flood of recent cases — brought in California and across the nation — that accuse employers of violating minimum wage and overtime laws, erasing work hours and wrongfully taking employees’ tips. Worker advocates call these practices “wage theft,” insisting it has become far too prevalent.

Some federal and state officials agree. They assert that more companies are violating wage laws than ever before, pointing to the record number of enforcement actions they have pursued. They complain that more employers — perhaps motivated by fierce competition or a desire for higher profits — are flouting wage laws.

Many business groups counter that government officials have drummed up a flurry of wage enforcement actions, largely to score points with union allies. If anything, employers have become more scrupulous in complying with wage laws, the groups say, in response to the much publicized lawsuits about so-called off-the-clock work that were filed against Walmart and other large companies a decade ago.

Here in California, a federal appeals court ruled last week that FedEx had in effect committed wage theft by insisting that its drivers were independent contractors rather than employees. FedEx orders many drivers to work 10 hours a day, but does not pay them overtime, which is required only for employees. FedEx said it planned to appeal.

Julie Su, the state labor commissioner, recently ordered a janitorial company in Fremont to pay $332,675 in back pay and penalties to 41 workers who cleaned 17 supermarkets. She found that the company forced employees to sign blank time sheets, which it then used to record inaccurate, minimal hours of work....

Here's the bottom line:

Business groups note that the lawsuits against McDonald’s have been coordinated with the fast-food workers’ movement demanding a $15 wage. “This is a classic special-interest campaign by labor unions,” said Stephen J. Caldeira, president of the International Franchise Association. In legal papers, McDonald’s denied any liability in Ms. Salazar’s case, and the Oakland franchisee insisted that Ms. Salazar had failed to establish illegal actions by the restaurant.

Lee Schreter, co-chairwoman of the wage and hour practice group at Littler Mendelson, a law firm that represents employers, said wage theft was not increasing, adding that many companies had become more vigilant about compliance. But that has not stopped lawyers from bringing wage theft complaints because of the potential payoff, Ms. Schreter said. “These are opportunistic lawsuits,” she said...

Yep, totally opportunistic leftist labor scam

More.

75th Anniversary of Start of World War Two

Nazi Germany invaded Poland 75 years ago today.

At the Tampa Bay Times, "75 years ago today: the start of World War II:

Today marks the 75th anniversary of Germany's invasion of Poland, thus beginning the start of World War II. By the end of the war in 1945, more than 50 million, and by some count millions more, soldiers and civilians had died. The atrocities of the Holocaust stand sorely at the center of the tragedy of the war.

Also at Time, "World War II Erupts: Haunting Color Photos from 1939 Poland."

Also, at Deutsche Welle, and interview with British historian Anthony Beevor, "'Moral choice explains fascination with WWII'."