Tuesday Teaching

More blogging tonight.

Until then, shop Amazon!

'I can feel it coming in the air tonight, Oh Lord...'

Phil Collins, from yesterday afternoon's drive-time, at the Sound L.A.

Changes
David Bowie
4:56

In the Air Tonight
Phil Collins
4:51 PM

Same Old Song and Dance
Aerosmith
4:47 PM

The Letter
The Box Tops
4:45 PM

Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)
The Rolling Stones
4:41 PM

Once In a Lifetime
Talking Heads
4:37 PM

A Horse With No Name
America
4:33 PM

Paranoid
Black Sabbath
4:30 PM

Mama Told Me (Not to Come)
Three Dog Night
4:27 PM

Any Way You Want It
Journey
4:24 PM

BURNIN' FOR YOU
B.O.C.
4:20 PM

Couldn't Get It Right
Climax Blues Band
4:10 PM

More Than a Feeling
Boston
4:06 PM

The Communist Playbook

Not at all different from the Obama-Democrat playbook, at iOWNTHEWORLD.

Megyn Kelly Interviews Ward Churchill

Man, the dude is so full of hatred.

And he won't apologize for calling those killed in the 9/11 Twin Towers attacks "little Eichmanns."

James O'Keefe Video: Ebola-Infected #ISIS Jihadi Could Sneak Into U.S. from Canada

At London's Daily Mail, "Filmmaker shows 'Ebola-infected ISIS terrorist' sneaking across Lake Erie from Canada to Cleveland – and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – without being challenged once" (via Instapundit).

Analysts Warn of 'Unprecedented' Threat from #ISIS Foreign Fighters

Chilling warning.

At Free Beacon, "CNN Analysts Warn of ‘Unprecedented’ Threat from ISIL Foreign Fighters."

Fracking, New Energy Production, Spurs Rust Belt Economic and Industrial Rebound

Reality continues to intrude on the left's mindless, mendacious, and malignant ideological program.

At the New York Times, "Boom in Energy Spurs Industry in the Rust Belt":

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Waist-high weeds and a crumbling old Chevy mark the entrance to a rust-colored factory complex on the edge of town here, seemingly another monument to the passing of the golden age of American industry.

But deep inside the 14-acre site, the thwack-thwack-thwack sound of metal on metal tells a different story.

“We’re holding our own,” said Greg Hess, who is looking to hire draftsmen and machine operators at the company he runs, Youngstown Bending and Rolling. “I feel good that we saved this place from the wrecking ball.”

The turnaround is part of a transformation spreading across the heartland of the nation, driven by a surge in domestic oil and gas production that is changing the economic calculus for old industries and downtrodden cities alike.

Here in Ohio, in an arc stretching south from Youngstown past Canton and into the rural parts of the state where much of the natural gas is being drawn from shale deep underground, entire sectors like manufacturing, hotels, real estate and even law are being reshaped. A series of recent economic indicators, including factory hiring, shows momentum building nationally in the manufacturing sector.

New energy production is “a real game-changer in terms of the U.S. economy,” said Katy George, who leads the global manufacturing practice at McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm. “It also creates an opportunity for regions of the country to renew themselves.”

The environmental consequences of the American energy boom and the unconventional drilling techniques that have made it possible are being fiercely debated nationwide. New York officials have imposed a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, because of concerns that the fluids injected into the shale to free oil and natural gas deposits might contaminate the local drinking water.

Although that danger worries environmentalists here as well, there has been much less opposition because residents are so desperate for the kind of economic growth that fracking can bring, whatever the risks.

Vallourec, a French industrial giant, recently completed a million-square-foot plant in Youngstown to make steel pipes for the energy industry, the first mill of its kind to open here in 50 years. The facility, which cost $1.1 billion to build, will be joined next year by a smaller $80 million Vallourec plant making pipe connectors.

The change is evident in the once-moribund downtowns of northeastern Ohio cities as well as in the economic data for the state as a whole.

Ohio’s unemployment rate in July was 5.7 percent, well below the national average of 6.1 percent. That’s a sharp reversal of the situation four years ago, when unemployment in Ohio hit 10.6 percent, significantly above the country’s overall jobless rate at the time, as manufacturers here and elsewhere hemorrhaged jobs. In the Youngstown area, the jobless rate in July was 6.7 percent, compared with 13.3 percent in early 2010.

“Both Youngstown and Canton are places which experienced nothing but disinvestment for 40 years,” said Ned Hill, a professor of economic development at Cleveland State University. Now, “they’re not ghost towns anymore. You actually have to go into reverse to find a parking spot downtown.”

Youngstown and surrounding Mahoning County is hardly Silicon Valley or even Pittsburgh, which long ago bade farewell to its industrial past and sought out growth in new sectors like health care and education. Broad swaths of Youngstown look almost rural, the result of a decade-long campaign to tear down abandoned homes and factories, letting sites that were once eyesores return to nature.

And the new factories that have gone up — like Vallourec’s new complex, or a $13.2 million plant that Exterran opened in May 2013 to make oil and gas production equipment for local customers — employ only a fraction of the workers who once labored at Youngstown’s mills. Vallourec’s state-of-the-art pipe mill has about 350 workers; the old Youngstown Sheet & Tube plant that once stood on the site had a work force of 1,400 when it shut down in 1979.

But the improvement is undeniable, especially to those who grew up here. “It’s a night-and-day difference,” said Robert E. Roland, a Youngstown native who moved away when he was 18, and is now managing partner at one of Canton’s biggest law firms, Day Ketterer. “It was extremely depressed, and nobody was downtown except for people who were down and out.”

More.

Just think if we'd been pursuing a national economic program based on American energy independence and competitiveness. The success stories of Ohio would be spread across the entire nation. Instead, the Dems have brought us homosexual marriage, "equal pay," ObamaCare, and retreat from global leadership.

2016 can't come soon enough.

At Least Two Dead in Arizona Flooding

At the Arizona Republic, "Pima, Pinal county motorists die as vehicles swamped."

But also at Tucson's Arizona Daily Star, "A 76-year-old woman was killed when she was swept away in a flooded wash today near Oracle Junction."

Also at KABC-15 Phoenix:

Rothenberg Predicts Substantial Republican Wave in November

Stuart Rothenberg's quite bullish on GOP prospects in November.

See, "Rothenberg: Senate GOP Gains At Least 7 Seats":

After looking at recent national, state and congressional survey data and comparing this election cycle to previous ones, I am currently expecting a sizable Republican Senate wave.

The combination of an unpopular president and a midterm election (indeed, a second midterm) can produce disastrous results for the president’s party. President Barack Obama’s numbers could rally, of course, and that would change my expectations in the blink of an eye. But as long as his approval sits in the 40-percent range (the August NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll), the signs are ominous for Democrats.

The generic congressional ballot currently is about even among registered voters. If that doesn’t change, it is likely to translate into a Republican advantage of a few points among “likely” voters. And recent elections when Republicans have even a small advantage have resulted in significant GOP years.

The map, which has always been the single biggest reason why Republicans will gain Senate seats, continues to give Republicans plenty of opportunities and Democrats relatively few (though the Kansas developments change that slightly). In an anti-Obama election, most of those Democratic opportunities will evaporate.

Given the president’s standing, the public’s disappointment with the direction of the country, the makeup of the midterm electorate and the ’14 Senate map, I expect a strong breeze at the back of the GOP this year.

And if there is a strong breeze, most of the races now regarded as competitive will fall one way — toward Republicans. That doesn’t happen all of the time, of course, but it’s far from unusual...

I can't wait!

The Dems are going to get hammered!

Oh, and even Larry Sabato's getting more bullish on the GOP's chances, at Politico, "Surf's Up: Will there be a GOP wave in the Senate—or a wipeout?"

Ashley Judd Attends 'Dolphin Tale 2' Los Angeles Premiere

At Egotastic!, "Why can't Ashley Judd wear a revealing dress top just because she's pimping a cute animal flick for the kids?"

Ray Rice Booted by Ravens After Brutal Elevator Knock-Out Video Goes Public

Following-up from this morning, "Ray Rice Fiancée Elevator Knock-Out Video."

At the Los Angeles Times, "Ray Rice is released by Ravens and suspended indefinitely by NFL."

Looks like the dude sucker-punched himself out of an NFL career.

More at Memeorandum.

Bob Schieffer: 9/11 'Forgive Me, But I've Been Through This Before...'

I like Bob Schieffer.

A great commentary yesterday morning:

Ray Rice Fiancée Elevator Knock-Out Video

At TMZ, "Ray Rice -- ELEVATOR KNOCKOUT ... Fiancee Takes Crushing Punch (Video)."

And at WaPo, "Graphic new video shows Ravens’ Ray Rice domestic violence incident."

More, at Hot Air, "Newly released video calls NFL action on Ray Rice into question … again; Update: NFL says they never saw it."

Amanda Marcotte on the Unbearable Unfairness of Ideals

From Darleen Click, at Protein Wisdom.

Islamic Rape Gangs: #Rotherham is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

From James Delingpole, at Breitbart London.

PREVIOUS Rotherham blogging here.

Ted Cruz #ISIS Strategy: 'Take Them Out'

Via Truth Revolt.

Government Now the Villain in Pop Culture

Via Nice Deb, "Culture Trend? Government Now the Villain in Pop Teen Movies & Books."

Is Canada Now More American Than America?

From John Fund, at National Review:

The merger of U.S. hamburger giant Burger King with Tim Hortons, Canada’s favorite coffee shop, will create the world’s third largest fast-food company, with a total of 18,000 restaurants in over 100 countries. It is also a piercing wake-up call for the U.S., because the new company will make its global headquarters in Canada’s province of Ontario. That underscores what savvy businesses everywhere have learned — the U.S. is an increasingly less attractive place to do business. “Canada has quietly and politely become, well, more American than America,” says columnist Stephen Green.

Since 2003, more than 35 major U.S. companies have moved their headquarters and reincorporated overseas. Rather than rail against such “inversions,” as President Obama does, or call for an economic boycott, as Ohio’s Democratic senator Sherrod Brown does, we should figure out what is driving U.S. companies offshore. Here’s a clue: The U.S. now has the highest corporate tax rate of any industrialized country, and the Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama administration is “even now looking for ways it can unilaterally raise corporate taxes without going to Congress.”

Without going to Congress?

Same as it ever was...

More.

PRESIDENT COWARD

From Bill Whittle:

#Angels Sweep Twins in Spectacular Style

Outstanding baseball from the Angels, especially yesterday's comeback win.

But today's game was a blowout. The Twins looked hapless.

At LAT, "Angels have strong all-around performance in 14-4 win over Twins."

Final from Target Field: #Angels 14, #Twins 4. Halos' fifth sweep of a four-game series this season.

— Mike DiGiovanna (@MikeDiGiovanna) September 7, 2014

Nice series for #Angels 2B Howie Kendrick, who goes 10 for 18 with two 2B, two 3Bs, a HR, 3 R and 8 RBIs in 4 games vs. #Twins.

— Mike DiGiovanna (@MikeDiGiovanna) September 7, 2014

With #Athletics loss, #Angels have 7-game AL West lead with 20 games to play. Halos' magic number is 14.

— Mike DiGiovanna (@MikeDiGiovanna) September 7, 2014

#Angels are 19-6 in last 25 games, going from four games behind #Athletics in the AL West to seven games ahead. Stunning reversal.

— Mike DiGiovanna (@MikeDiGiovanna) September 7, 2014

Is the Boycott Movement Anti-Semitic?

Indeed it is, argues Professor Cary Nelson, at Inside Higher Ed.

Why Pamela Geller's Hate Speech Should Be Barred — But BDS Allowed http://t.co/ZZ3r0UDheE via @jdforward
— W. James Casper (@repsac3) April 14, 2013

BONUS: From Jonathan Marks, at Commentary, "“Scholarship and Politics Don’t Mix!” Say Those Who Mix Scholarship and Politics."

Hottest Instagrams of the Week

At Co-Ed, "THE TOP 40 SEXIEST INSTAGRAM PICS OF THE WEEK [SEPTEMBER 1ST - 6TH]."

Callie Bundy is particularly hot, heh.

Remembering the Munich Massacre

At Atlas Shrugs, "In Memoriam: Victims of Munich Jihad Massacre at the 1972 Olympics."

Tampa Bay's David DeJesus Inside-the-Park Home Run

Amazing.

How a liner to the gap becomes an inside-the-park home run: http://t.co/BokChCgXi8 pic.twitter.com/gIUoSj2OTr

— MLB (@MLB) September 7, 2014

'Anti-Fascist' Demonstrators Face-Off Against Police in Calais

"Anti-fascist" is correct-speak for leftists and communists.

At Telegraph UK:

Police and anti-fascist demonstrators were involved in a standoff on Sunday in the French port town of Calais.

The stand off came during a march by left-wing activists who were protesting at a separate march by far right anti-immigration activists.

Calais is facing rising tensions over immigration with about 1,300 migrants from the Horn of Africa, Sudan and Afghanistan currently there.

Protesting leftists said they were defending the migrants and were trying to disrupt the demonstration by anti-immigration activists protesting the influx of migrants camping out in Calais while they wait to try and sneak across the English Channel into Britain.

Police barricaded streets and sought to keep the groups apart.

Also at London's Daily Mail, "Calais migrant tensions simmer as Britain offers to send fences from Nato summit."

And previously, "Calais is 'besieged by gangs of migrants': Fury of port chief as riot police are called in and France accuses Britain of being a soft touch."

Joan Rivers Talks to Her Daughter Melissa Before Surgery

Video, from 2011, "Joan Rivers Moments Before Surgery - No Makeup."

Via Ann Althouse, "'I don’t want some rabbi rambling on; I want Meryl Streep crying, in five different accents'."

'As the Left becomes more and more tied to Islamic fanatics, anti-Semitism is going to become more and more of a staple of leftist dogma...'

From Caroline Glick, "The dilemma of the Jewish leftist."

Tilly Bagshawe

Louise Mensch's sister, who is also a novelist:

My awesome sister Tilly. I love that vintage dress it's my favourite of hers http://t.co/rdO73McYWF

— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) September 7, 2014

Obama to Outline Plan to Take on #ISIS in National Speech Wednesday

At NYDN, "'The next phase is now to start going on some offense,' Obama said Sunday in a preview of the highly anticipated speech, which will occur a day before the 13th anniversary of 9/11. Obama has repeatedly vowed to take the fight to ISIS in the weeks since the bloodthirsty jihadist group posted gruesome videos of its members beheading U.S. journalists."


Here's the full transcript of Obama's remarks, via Memeorandum:

Below is the full transcript of Chuck Todd's exclusive interview with President Barack... http://t.co/G60APXSNC4 http://t.co/gd5DLuX82c

— memeorandum (@memeorandum) September 7, 2014

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."




Also at Randy's Roundtable, "Friday Nite Funnies," and Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's SUNDAY FUNNIES."

More at Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Not A Hard Choice."

CARTOON CREDIT: William Warren.

Elizabeth Drew Tries to Put Lipstick on a Pig

Here's Elizabeth Drew trying her damnedest to blame Republicans for the current disaster that is the Obama administration at year six.

At the New York Review of Books, "Obama & the Coming Election":

Obama did much to pull the country out of the deep recession he inherited, including a rescue of the automobile industry, but a lot of people still don’t benefit from the improved economy, or have dropped out of the labor market, or have been forced into part-time jobs and lower wages.

No doubt it would have been beneficial if more money had been approved for rebuilding the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, but the votes in Congress weren’t there, just as they weren’t for a single-payer health system, and no amount of presidential rhetoric or arm-twisting—about which there is a fair amount of mythology—would have made a difference.

Obama’s one great disappointment was the failure to win comprehensive immigration reform. After the 2012 election the Republicans were panicking that if they didn’t back immigration reform, Hispanics would punish them mightily in 2016. But then they panicked that if they did back it, Tea Party candidates would upset them in their primaries in 2014.

It’s been evident for quite a while that a certain chilliness on Obama’s part has affected his relations with Congress, but it’s also questionable how much substantive difference this has made. A Cabinet officer said to me, “He’s a loner, and one result is that few Democrats are willing to take the hill for him.” Obama rose swiftly in politics and essentially on his own—he’d been on his own for most of his life—and political camaraderie is of little interest to him. His golfing foursomes are most often made up of junior White House staff and close nonpolitical friends from Chicago. This might not make much difference in the number of bills passed but it has had one very serious effect on his presidency: the Democrats’ unwillingness to praise, defend, much less celebrate the president has left the field clear to his multitude of attackers.

Obama tended to proceed on the theory that if he made some concessions to the Republicans—say, by speeding up deportations of undocumented immigrants—they might be more cooperative; but this hasn’t worked out. It’s true that he is innately cautious, and it’s also true that it is a lot easier to declare what he should have done than to show how he could actually have gotten the votes for that. Little is as simple in the Oval Office as it is to outside critics...

Hmm. Ms. Drew's still in the early stages of grief at the utter collapse of the Great Promise of American Politics, Barack Hussein Obama, who was supposed to be accompanied by unicorns and rainbows.

More at the link.

'Radicals didn’t “hijack” feminism. Radicals own the feminist plane. Anyone woman who buys a ticket on Feminist Airlines should not be surprised when she arrives at her lesbian destination...'

Another #RadFem opus, at the Other McCain, "Is Rachel @Maddow’s Haircut Waging War Against Heteronormative Patriarchy?"

Is Rachel @Maddow's Haircut Waging War Against Heteronormative Patriarchy? http://t.co/Fpqq6uaA5G cc @LADowd #tcot pic.twitter.com/4BPi3r5G6s

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) September 6, 2014

Controlling Home-Grown Western Islamic Terrorists

From Professor Michael Curtis, at American Thinker:

Theresa May, the home secretary in the British Conservative government, in a speech in the House of Commons on September 3, 2014, spoke of ISIS as a “group of murderous psychopaths.”  The videos of the two American journalist hostages about to be brutally beheaded show a level of evil that should draw the attention of the World Council of Churches, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Alice Walker, and the “scholars” of the American Studies Association, hitherto almost exclusively preoccupied with criticism of alleged violations of humanitarian rights by Israel.

The beheading of the second journalist, Steven Sotloff, is even more poignant than that of James Foley based on the knowledge that he was the grandson of Holocaust survivors, and the son of a mother who taught at a Jewish school in Miami.  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is not alone in regarding this cruelty of ISIS as “an act of medieval savagery by a coward hiding behind a mask.”  We are now aware that ISIS has committed other such acts, especially the execution by firing squads in desert areas of Iraq of more than 500, and possibly as many as 770, people.

Almost everyone, except perhaps for those named above, now appreciates that ISIS is not simply a “manageable problem,” as President Barack Obama described it, but is a group that must be crushed.  It is not sufficient to condemn the violent Islamist preaching with which the West has become familiar.  It is essential to end the brutality and the menace of ISIS by every means in the Western armory.  The wheels of judgment should not grind exceeding slow....

At the NATO meeting on September 4, 2014 at Celtic Manor near Cardiff, Wales, President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron urged their fellow members of NATO to confront the “brutal and poisonous” Islamic state.  A possible NATO coalition may be created to implement this response through a variety of measures: military power, diplomatic activity, and economic constraints.  However, it is disappointing that no specific pledges of action have been agreed upon.

It was more encouraging that NATO members understood that the more urgent and important issue facing the alliance is not the threat of Russia, however objectionable the policy of Putin towards Ukraine, but the Islamic threat from ISIS and other terrorist groups not only in Iraq and Syria, but also in their own countries.

It should be an international priority to end the caliphate announced by ISIS as soon as possible before it spreads its control over areas in the Middle East.  But equally urgent is the need for policies to deal with the threat of Europeans and Americans – namely, home-grown terrorists, who have fought for ISIS and may return to their countries of origin and undertake terrorist activities.

This issue is not easy to resolve, because what animates Western jihadists remains a mystery.  What makes Muslim citizens of Europe and the United States leave to join the ISIS group and be prepared to commit murderous attacks in their countries of origin when they return?  Are they psychopaths, or are they motivated to act through conviction on political and social issues?

Psychologists tend to suggest that there is no conclusive evidence to determine if terrorists or others who take pleasure in violence are insane, disturbed, or abnormal.  Regarding non-Islamic issues, one can identify the lunacy of the multi-murderer Ted Bundy, an apparently charming man, who confessed, “I just like to kill.  I wanted to kill.”  Likewise with the murderous Baader-Meinhof group (Red Army Faction), the far-left militant group in West Germany from 1970 1998 responsible for bank robberies and the deaths of at least 34 people.  They may have genuinely believed they were engaged in an anti-imperialist struggle and were acting on behalf of the counter-culture.

More.

No. 14 USC Rallies to Beat No. 10 Stanford 13-10 On the Road

At LAT, "USC rallies to defeat Stanford, 13-10":

USC faced an uphill battle Saturday, opening Pac-12 Conference play at Stanford, which was owner of a 17-game home-field winning streak.

The streak was the longest in the nation. Past tense.

Andre Heidari kicked a career-long 53-yard field goal with less than three minutes to play and USC’s defense fell on a last-minute Stanford fumble as the Trojans came away with a 13-10 victory.

It was Heidari's second game-winning kick against the Cardinal in the last two seasons.

USC’s last five games against Stanford have been decided by seven points or less.

"It just always seems to come down to the last series of the game and our guys did just a great job of executing," USC Coach Steve Sarkisian said during a televised postgame interview.

More.

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."