Pamela Geller Targeted in Foiled Boston Beheading Plot

At Atlas Shrugs, "CNN: Jihadi shot in Boston was planning to behead Pamela Geller," and "CNN VIDEO: Erin Burnett Attacks Pamela Geller in Wake of Boston Beheading Plot."

Pam Key of Breitbart writes:

Wednesday on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront,” American Freedom Defense Initiative president Pamela Geller reacted to reports that the Boston terror suspect plotted to behead her and said, “This is a war.”

“This is a showdown for American freedom,” she said. “Will we stand against the savagery or bow down to them and silence ourselves?”

Geller said, “Well, they targeted me for violating Sharia blasphemy laws. They mean to kill everyone who doesn’t do their bidding and abide by their law voluntarily. This is a showdown for American freedom. Will we stand against this savagery or bow down to them and silence ourselves? It won’t end with me, no matter what happens to me or the cops. This is just the beginning. The one thing that’s being ignored that came out of Garland, Texas, is that ISIS is here. Islamic terrorism is here. now. Will the media realize what’s at stake and that their heads are next? Or will they continue to target me because they hate my message of freedom? That’s the question.”

When Brown quizzed Geller on the controversial ad she runs to counter Islamic extremists Geller said, “Of course I’m not surprised they would target me. This is a war and they seek to impose the Sharia. The ads that I’ve done across the country were in response to vicious anti-Israel, anti-Semitic ads already running. And my question to you is, do we not want to defeat jihad? i mean, what is wrong with those ads? there is nothing wrong with the cartoon. there is nothing about the cartoon that incites violence. It is within established American tradition of satire. And if America surrenders on this point, the freedom of speech is a relic of history.”

When Brown asked if Geller relished being the target she shot back, “Relish being the target? Who self-promotes to get killed?”

Also at Jihad Watch, "Boston jihadis originally planned to behead Pamela Geller."

Dana Loesch Criticizes Bruce Jenner's Sexual Appropriation

At Dana's blog, "No To Sexual Appropriation":

I'm not welcoming Bruce Jenner into the sisterhood. We frown upon appropriating culture, so, too, do I frown upon appropriating sexuality (more on this later). It's not that I care what someone does on their own time -- and if that's what this was, people minding their own business and living their lives, it wouldn't be an issue -- but it's no longer on someone's own time. People used to say "what goes on behind closed doors ..." but things are no longer behind closed doors and it's not simply that the doors are open, either; it's that some are forcefully ushering everyone else into the room and told to legitimize with their approval the lifestyle choices of the individual in question. I and other females are told that we are no different from someone who buys a tube of Mac lipstick and the best plastic surgery in town. We are told that our sex, our gender, is a nothing more than a new product at retail. You can identify, but I will not.

More, as well as audio, at the link.

EARLIER: "The Rise of Authoritarian Transgender Politics."

Teresa Palmer Sextastic!

At Egotastic!, "Teresa Palmer Busty Cleavy Swimsuit MILFtastic in Maui."

Secret Memo Shows Leftist Contributors Souring on Hillary Clinton Campaign (VIDEO)

I love it!

This is not only major, it's no surprise.

Hillary's crashing on multiple fronts. And it's still early!

At Politico, "Secret effort to sell Hillary Clinton to rich liberals: Campaign targets unenthusiastic donors on the party’s left":

Hillary Clinton’s allies are working to win over unenthusiastic rich liberals by pitting her against the Koch brothers and prospective GOP rivals rather than more progressive Democrats, according to a draft of a secret memo obtained by POLITICO.

The memo was prepared for Clinton enforcer David Brock ahead of a major donor meeting in April in San Francisco. But the concerns it reveals about liberal donors’ coolness toward her presidential candidacy — with some even holding out hope for a robust primary challenge from the left — are just as acute today, Clinton allies say.

Winning over such donors is seen as critical to Clinton’s White House prospects.

The Clinton forces are counting on a constellation of allied outside groups to raise as much as $500 million to take on a Republican big-money machine that has been raking in cash from dozens of super-rich and highly engaged partisans. By contrast, the main super PAC supporting Clinton, Priorities USA Action, has struggled to collect million-dollar checks.

Part of the donors’ reluctance stems from liberal queasiness about the expanding role of big money in politics since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. But there’s also some discomfort with Clinton, the former New York senator and secretary of state, who is seen as too hawkish on foreign policy and insufficiently progressive on key issues like fighting climate change, income inequality and the role of big money in politics. Additionally, Democratic finance operatives say, efforts to rustle up seven-figure checks are suffering from a lack of a single, unifying enemy on the right.

All those concerns are addressed in the Brock memo, which appears to have been drafted in preparation for his appearance at the annual spring meeting of the Democracy Alliance — a major liberal donor club — in April in San Francisco. The memo is written as a question-and-answer exchange between Brock and Democracy Alliance donors.

The memo suggests that Brock, who has built a fleet of deep-pocketed groups aligned with Clinton, is taking a conciliatory approach to assuage donors’ concerns — conceding she’s not as liberal as some donors wish but emphasizing her progressiveness in public service and minimizing the prospects of a vigorous Democratic primary.

“You say the Kochs represent all that is bad in this broken system, yet our presumptive nominee is in the pocket of big Wall Street banks,” begins one of the memo’s hypothetical donor questions. “Aren’t we going to have a hard time going after the Kochs’ big money when some could argue that Sec. Clinton is bank rolled by Wall Street and therefore there is a pox on both our houses?”

The answer Brock should give, according to the memo: “It is no secret that Sec. Clinton is fair-left and not far-left. I think it is safe to say that there will be a dramatic difference between Sec. Clinton and whoever is the Republican opponent. She has spent a lifetime advocating for women and children and fighting for the middle class and there is not one GOP candidate who has that record.”

Brock did not dispute the authenticity of the memo, which leaves a pair of questions about the internal politics of the Clinton big-money effort unanswered. But he declined to comment on the memo, or whether it reflected his fundraising approach or his presentation at the Democracy Alliance gathering, which was closed to the news media.

The three-day meeting of the Democracy Alliance — a group that includes more than 100 individual and institutional donors and various unions — took place at San Francisco’s Four Seasons Hotel just as Clinton officially launched her campaign.

Heh, when leftist big-money hypocrites are worried about forking over big money to Hillary, you know something's not right in leftist la-la land.

More.

PREVIOUSLY: "Hillary Clinton Crashes in Public Opinion."

The Rise of Authoritarian Transgender Politics

Everything's escalating to DEFCON levels.

"Call me Caitlyn, or else."

From Brendan O'Neill, at the Spectator UK, "The Cult of Caitlyn confirms that there is nothing progressive in transgender politics":

The Vanity Fair photo of Bruce Jenner in a boob-enhancing swimsuit is being described as iconic. Bruce, one-time American athlete, now wants to be known as Caitlyn, having recently undergone some gender transitioning. And he’s using the cover of the latest Vanity Fair to make his ‘debut as a woman’. Next to the headline ‘Call me Caitlyn’, he’s all photoshopped svelteness, pampered hair and look-at-me breasts, in what many experts are already describing as ‘an iconic image in magazine history’.

The photo is indeed iconic. And not just in the shallow celeb meaning of that word. It’s iconic in the traditional sense, too, in that it’s being venerated as an actual icon, a devotional image of an apparently holy human. It’s an image we’re all expected to bow down to, whose essential truth we must imbibe; an image you question or ridicule at your peril, with those who refuse to genuflect before it facing excommunication from polite society. Yesterday’s Jennermania confirms how weirdly authoritarian, even idolatrous, trans politics has become.

There is a palpable religiosity to the wild hailing of Bruce/Caitlyn as a modern-day saint, a Virgin Mary with testicles. Within four hours, more than a million people were following Bruce/Caitlyn’s new Twitter account, hanging on her words like the expectant horde waiting for Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai. Her every utterance, all banal celeb-speak, was retweeted tens of thousands of times. Celebs and commentators greeted her as a kind of messiah. ‘We’ve been waiting for you with open arms’, said an overexcited editor at Buzzfeed. Across the Twittersphere Caitlyn was worshipped as a ‘goddess’, a ‘goddess in human form’, a ‘goddess made manifest on Earth’. ‘Caitlyn Jenner could fucking stab me right now and leave me for dead and I’d die fucking overjoyed we are not WORTHY OF THIS GODDESS’, said one trans tweeter, and she wasn’t joking.

In the media, the talk is of how Caitlyn and her iconic likeness might give an adrenalin shot to humanity itself. A writer for the Guardian describes Caitlyn as a ‘queen’ and instructs us to ‘bow down, bitches’, telling us her icon on the front of Vanity Fair is ‘life-affirming’. Treating Caitlyn as a kind of Christ figure, only in a push-up bra rather than smock, Ellen DeGeneres says this goddess brings ‘hope for the world’, and we should all try to be ‘as brave as Caitlyn’. Susan Sarandon celebrated Bruce/Caitlyn’s mysterious ‘rebirth’ while Demi Moore thanked him/her for sharing with humanity ‘the gift of your beautiful authentic self’. A writer for the Huff Post says the name Caitlyn means ‘pure’ – ‘what a perfect meaning, right?’ Truly, yes, for St Caitlyn, reborn to educate us all, is most pure.

With its millions of agog followers, its worship of an iconic image, its insistence we all ‘bow down’, the Cult of Caitlyn gives Catholic mariolatry a run for its money in the blind-devotion stakes. And of course, as with all venerated icons, anyone who refuses to recognise the truth of Caitlyn’s Vanity Fair cover has faced mob punishment or finger-wagging corrections of their goddess-defying blasphemy.

So when Drake Bell, a former American child star, tweeted ‘Sorry… still calling you Bruce’, he became the subject of global fury. The Cult of Caitlyn went insane. Even after Bell deleted his blasphemous comment, tweeters mauled him, suggesting he deactivate his Twitter account, or better still, ‘deactivate his life’. Meanwhile, a Twitter robot called @she_not_he has been set up to correct any ‘misgendering’ of Caitlyn. Winning high praise from much of the media, this bot is ‘scrubbing Twitter, looking for anyone who uses the “he” pronoun in conjunction with Caitlyn Jenner’s name’. The bot’s inventor says he is delighted that these misgendering miscreants have been ‘apologetic in their replies to the bot’, and ‘some have even deleted their original tweet’.

In short, they’ve repented...

Well, payback's a bitch.

Folks can only estimate how long it'll be before "Caitlyn" flames out in divine glory. If the Kardashians are any guide, we'll be having many more cycles of soap opera madness before the crash and burn of "Caitlyn." Who knows what's going to happen? Either way, society's pretty fucked up.

More.

question for the male media types/extremist activists (but I repeat myself) insisting that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman: Would you fuck her?

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

this question isn't as crude as it sounds. It's merely direct. If you are insisting that "Caitlyn" is in all ways a woman, then naturally...

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

..."she" would be on your list of possible sexual partners. Y'all keep saying how hot she is. So is she on your list of possible partners?

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

if "she" is not on a straight progressive man's list of possible romantic dalliances, are you saying "she" is not entirely a woman?

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

what is the truth here? The actual truth? Not the progressive falsehood we pressure people into agreeing to?

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

I have no problem or interest in Caitlyn Jenner' decisions, except when it becomes formally demanded of me that I repeat a falsehood.

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

Should she be credited as holding all Decathalon records for a female athlete?

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

This is of a piece with the left's constant demand that we accept the crudest, most extremist restatements of their political desiderata.

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

And these are "Political truths," by which I mean, Not Truths: absurdly crude falsehoods urged as true by a faction of the Prog caucus.

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

the media, as always, swoops in as the angel-winged, spear-carrying Valkerie for segments of the Democrat political coalition.

— TheClassyLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 3, 2015

Flight Attendant Who Denied Islamist Tahera Ahmad Diet Coke Won't Be Serving Customers

Islamists escalate jihad on all fronts.

At ABC News, "United Apologizes After Muslim Chaplain's Soda Complaint."

And at LAT, "Flight attendant who denied soda can to Muslim will no longer serve customers":

Tahera Ahmad, diet coke lady, Muslim 'activist' Muslim Brotherhood links, met Obama. #Islam http://t.co/XJn2XbufAu

— Jihadi Kermit ☮ (@islamlie2) June 3, 2015

United Airlines says a flight attendant involved in a dispute with a customer over a can of Diet Coke, leading to accusations of discrimination, won’t be serving customers on the airline any longer.

The dispute arose after Tahera Ahmad, a Muslim American chaplain at Northwestern University, claimed she was told she couldn’t have the unopened can of Diet Coke she requested because passengers “may use it as a weapon” on the plane.

When the man sitting next to Ahmad received an unopened can of beer, Ahmad said she protested. A fellow passenger then allegedly yelled, “You Muslim, you need to shut the … up,” and that “You know you would use it as a weapon.”

Ahmad wears a hijab in a photo on the university's website, but it's unclear what identified her as Muslim on the plane.

Both United Airlines and the company that was operating the flight characterized it as a “misunderstanding regarding a can of diet soda,” a statement Ahmad and others pilloried on social media as trivializing. United says it has apologized to Ahmad, and will also be sending her a written apology.

According to a United statement released Wednesday, the flight attendant “will no longer serve” United customers.

“United does not tolerate behavior that is discriminatory – or that appears to be discriminatory – against our customers or employees,” the company said in the statement. Employees at United and Shuttle America, the company that employed the flight attendant and was operating the flight, will undergo cultural sensitivity training, the airline said.


It’s not clear whether the flight attendant has been fired; officials at Republic Airways Holdings, which owns Shuttle America, declined to discuss the employee’s status, citing personnel issues.

There is no policy barring flight attendants from providing full, unopened beverage cans to customers upon request, Republic Airways Holdings said, and no policy regarding speculation as to how passengers may use the can.

In a statement, the company said Wednesday that it “deeply regrets the poor judgment and lack of sensitivity” the flight attendant demonstrated toward Ahmad. Both companies say they have opened investigations into the incident, and Republic Airways Holdings says it is “confident that this is an isolated incident.” Officials there are reviewing company training policies, Republic Airways said, and are “in the process” of reaching out to Ahmad to apologize.

Also at Bare Naked Islam, "MUSLIM BITCH who accused United Airlines of “racism” (What ‘race’ is Islam?) for refusing to give her an unopened can of Diet Coke has ties to Islamic terror-linked groups and individuals."

And at Jihad Watch, "Diet Coke Muslima has ties to Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood groups."

Hillary Clinton Crashes in Public Opinion

Her ratings are tanking.

At CNN, via Memeorandum, "Poll: New speed bumps for Clinton."

'Standing Athwart History Shouting: 'Fuck Me Up the Ass!'

Kathy Shaidle pisses off the beta males of National Review.

Denounced by @KevinNR, my 'Standing Athwart History Shouting: 'F Me Up the Ass' column now has 350+ comments! http://t.co/CGKNt8pNpZ #tcot

— Kathy Shaidle (@kshaidle) June 3, 2015

Arianna Vissarionovich Stalin

Heh.

I did read the Gawker piece, and it's good. I just don't care to post links to any of Nick Denton's properties, but I'll embed tweets and folks can click through.

The Huffington Post? Or a Stalinist state? http://t.co/Bv1BXrdvid

— R.M. Schneiderman (@RMSchneiderman) June 2, 2015

Drive Safely!

And don't wait until the last second to make that lane change!

Found on Facebook, heh.

Caitlyn Jenner is Cliché

From Christopher Knight, at the Los Angeles Times, "Caitlyn Jenner's courage is bold, Annie Leibovitz's portrait cliched":

Everybody is required to play along in the game of Celebrity Fantasy Dress Up With "Caitlyn" or else you're a HATER!

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) June 2, 2015

I'm happy to call Bruce Caitlyn because people can switch names. I will not call him a woman because he isn't one.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 2, 2015

In recent years, the LGBT civil rights movement has been making huge strides. It has taken decades, but transgender men and women are now an essential part of the necessary equality mix. Jenner, by effectively stage-managing her transition, has largely avoided what could have been a cruel and ugly scenario.

Yet the Vanity Fair photograph seems a missed opportunity — a picture from the past rather than the present. Maybe that's because all its conventional, glamour-girl signals weigh down the lively fluidity swirling at the center of gender identity.

Leibovitz and Jenner, photographer and subject, are both 65. They were raised in an era when gender ideas were more stable, fixed and binary than they are today.

In 1991, Los Angeles photographer Catherine Opie blew up those inflexible conventions in a now famous suite of 13 color photographs titled "Being and Having." The artist shot tight, close-up portraits of lesbian friends against screaming yellow backgrounds. Each suddenly ambiguous face sports an exaggerated mustache, beard, sideburns or other masculine props — tattoos, piercings, a do-rag or shades.

Fakery and play mingle with authenticity and solemnity. In these iconic images, identity is a question, not an answer. Homosexuality unfolds as something marvelously heterogeneous.

By coincidence, the series followed the 1990 publication of "Gender Trouble," the landmark book by UC Berkeley philosopher Judith Butler pointedly subtitled "Feminism and the Subversion of Identity." In it, she persuasively argued that gender is not rooted in biological fact but in culturally determined symbols, signs and images.

Butler's trailblazing notion is that gender isn't natural — it's a performance. But Jenner's performance on the cover of Vanity Fair is predictable.

During her celebrated career, Leibovitz has made many photographs that skillfully represent popular symbols. She has pictured dozens of celebrity subjects as visual puns.

The New York artist Christo stands in Central Park wrapped up like one of his sculptures, mummified in his art. Paralyzed Marine Corps veteran and antiwar activist Ron Kovic is seated in his wheelchair at the shallow edge of the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica — a man of peace "walking" on water.

Lauren Hutton is sprawled naked in the Mississippi mud, an all-American Earth mother. Bette Midler, publicizing her Oscar-nominated role as a doomed pop star in 1979's "The Rose," lies sprawled beneath a dense tangle of crimson buds — life is a bed of roses, albeit hiding thorns.

Leibovitz's Caitlyn Jenner is a newfangled Vargas girl, one of those airbrushed cuties from the old pages of Playboy. Is that all there is?

RTWT.

Terror Suspect Usaama Rahim Killed by FBI in Boston

At Jihad Watch, "Boston: Jihad terror suspect shot after threatening cops with military knife," and "Slain Boston jihadi “radicalized by ISIS,” part of terror network."

Usaama Rahim allegedly wielded large, military knife before he was shot, killed in Roslindale http://t.co/Bjm5RLXBYE pic.twitter.com/nPLvfsbRTC

— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) June 3, 2015

'He was someone we were watching for quite a time,' police said of man who was shot and killed in Roslindale http://t.co/zs9AQOj78I

— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) June 3, 2015

Man shot and killed by police in Roslindale was under 24-hour surveillance http://t.co/nGhwCKnVju pic.twitter.com/nm5DFMNxAS

— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) June 2, 2015

Darla Renee Jackson, Suspect in San Diego Road Rage Death, Pleads Not Guilty

This case is freakin' hardcore.

At the San Diego Union-Tribune, "DA: Road-rage death was 'intentional act': Woman accused of running over a motorcyclist on I-5 in Chula Vista":

CHULA VISTA — A 25-year-old Imperial Beach woman deliberately ran over over a motorcyclist on a South County freeway "in a purposeful and intentional act”, a prosecutor told a judge Tuesday.

Darla Renee Jackson pleaded not guilty to a charge of murder in the hearing.

Jackson was in her Nissan Altima Thursday when she and motorcyclist Zacharias Buob, a 39-year-old chief petty officer in the Navy, got into a dispute on north Interstate 5 near E Street about 5:30 p.m. Thursday, California Highway Patrol officers said.

Deputy District Attorney Laura Evans described it in court as “some sort of back-and-forth altercation” between the two.

The dispute continued as the two vehicles transitioned from I-5 to state Route 54, where Jackson chased the victim, crossing into all lanes of traffic, and then hit the back of his Ducati, Evans said. Jackson is accused of pushing the bike some 300 feet until both Buob and the motorcycle went down. Her car then ran Buob over, the prosecutor said. He died at the hospital.

Evans told the judge witness accounts indicated “this was a purposeful and intentional act.”

“She endangered the life of herself, other motorists and ultimately killed the victim in this case,” Evans said.

The prosecutor argued for $3 million bail, citing the danger Jackson poses to the community, but Chula Vista Superior Court Judge Patricia Garcia said $1 million bail was sufficient.

Defense attorney Stephen Cline said Jackson’s version of events differed from that of authorities, saying after the hearing that she told him Buob kicked her car and they later collided.

Jackson, her hands shackled at her waist, trembled and rocked in her chair as she cried during the short hearing.

“She’s very sorry, she’s very upset and she’s very traumatized,” Cline said outside the courthouse.

More.

Shop for Father's Day

At Amazon:

New #ObamaCare Rate Hikes On the Way — Insurers Seek Massive Increases!

Hey, it's working just as critics said it would!

At WSJ, "More Health-Care Insurers Seek Big Premium Increases":

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration published more information Monday about hefty premium increases for 2016 sought by large insurers selling plans under the health law.

Major carriers from around the country are proposing big increases in the premium rates paid by consumers who buy insurance policies on their own.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois is looking to raise rates by averages of 29% or more. In Pennsylvania, Highmark Health Insurance Co. is asking for 30%, according to proposals submitted by insurers for the year ahead. Around the country, some of the main market leaders are looking for double digit increases.

The new requests for premiums come at a time when the political and legal future of the law hangs in the balance. The Supreme Court is set to issue a decision later this month on the validity of the law’s tax credits to offset the cost of premiums for lower-income consumers in most states in the country.

Republicans opposed to the health law still plan to make it part of their 2016 election campaign, and for the law’s Democratic supporters, the proposed rate increases mean a tough conversation about how the law is working.

Some of the significant increases being sought were first reported in The Wall Street Journal.

As part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, insurers must justify increases of 10% or more to the Obama administration, which published those explanations online Monday. The administration cannot force insurers to reduce rates, but many state regulators can negotiate with health plans, and the rates could come down.

The Obama administration sought to emphasize that point on Monday.

“The rate review process kicks off an important set of steps designed to provide consumers and others the opportunity to weigh in on proposed rate increases of 10% or more,” said Andy Slavitt, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the health law’s implementation. “These specific rates will be subject to vigorous rate review and revision.”

Some of the insurers couldn’t immediately be reached for comment following the Department of Health and Human Services’ publication of the data Monday.

But Greg Thompson, a spokesman for the Illinois insurer, said rate proposals reflected the health plan’s medical claims, and noted provisions in the health law that require insurers to spend the vast majority of premium income on claims or refund the difference to consumers.

Other insurers also have said their rates for the year ahead reflect the impact of the law’s sweeping changes to the way health insurance is sold and priced.

Under the health law, plans have to sell coverage to everyone, regardless of their medical history, and can’t charge people who are more seriously ill higher rates. Health-plan officials say that means they are bearing bigger medical claims than they had expected.

Moreover, insurers have said they face substantial pent-up demand for health-care services from the newly enrolled, including for expensive drugs.

Consumer groups contend they want state and federal regulators to be as tough as they can on insurers’ requests to raise rates...

More.

Dick Cheney Ramping Up New Policy Push

I mentioned the new book coming out previously, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

I'm looking forward to it.

Meanwhile, at the Wall Street Journal, "Former vice president to release book and mount lobbying campaign that is likely to play into 2016 presidential election":

CASPER, Wyo.—Few people noticed the 74-year-old in the tan Stetson at a high-school rodeo here. Dick Cheney was happy to blend in.

That is about to change. The former vice president is looking to make a splash on the national stage with a new book to be published in September and a group he and his daughter Liz launched to advance their views.

The effort is sure to play directly into the 2016 presidential debate, in which national-security policy is already a point of difference between the Republican candidates, many of whom are looking to turn the page on George W. Bush’s administration.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal at the Central Wyoming Fairgrounds, Mr. Cheney previewed some of his likely positions:

• He characterized one leading GOP contender, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, as an isolationist. “He knows I think of him as an isolationist, and it offends him deeply,” Mr. Cheney said. “But it’s true.”

• An early critic of nuclear talks with Iran, he thinks the U.S. should be prepared to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. He also favors additional arms shipments to U.S. allies in Eastern Europe and further military exercises in Poland to send a signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• And he scoffed at the debate that tripped up Mr. Bush’s brother, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, over whether or not he would have invaded Iraq with the virtue of hindsight. (Mr. Bush, after some back and forth, eventually said he wouldn’t). Mr. Cheney instead said Republicans should scrutinize the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq under President Barack Obama.

Mr. Cheney’s overarching message, and the theme of the book he is co-authoring with his daughter Liz Cheney, is that the U.S. needs to assert itself more on the world stage. “We thought, looking forward to 2016, it was very important to make sure those issues were front and center in the campaign,” he said.

By weighing in, Mr. Cheney is bound to make himself a flash point in the 2016 debate, stoking further questions about which policies of the George W. Bush administration Republicans embrace and which they reject, from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the bulk collection of phone records and interrogation policy. That could prove particularly uncomfortable for Jeb Bush, who has struggled to define himself apart from his brother.

Mr. Cheney already exerts quiet influence over his party, making semiregular trips to the Capitol to address House Republicans and advising some GOP White House hopefuls. He wouldn’t discuss those conversations. Two of his top foreign-policy aides have signed on with Jeb Bush. And he is headlining donor events all over the country for the Republican National Committee.

“The party is very fortunate to have an active and engaged Dick Cheney for this upcoming political cycle,” said Reince Priebus, the party’s chairman, noting the number of candidates and elected officials who turn to the former vice president for advice. “He’s a top fundraising draw, in high demand.”

Holly Shulman, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said “there’s no one happier about Dick Cheney becoming a foreign policy surrogate than we are…If he needs any assistance getting out his message, our team would be happy to help book him for interviews.”

Keep reading.

Blacks 75 Percent More Likely to Get Pulled Over in Missouri

Blah, blah, blah.

After everything else in Ferguson has turned sour for the race-baiting left, here's the ho-hum racial "disparity" statistics on Missouri traffic stops.

At the New York Times, "Missouri Reports Wide Racial Disparity in Traffic Stops."

And at 41 Action News Kansas City, "Report: Major racial disparity in Missouri traffic stops."

RELATED: For common sense perspective, see Heather Mac Donald, at City Journal, "Ferguson’s Unasked Questions: In the Missouri city and elsewhere, the media clings to predetermined conclusions."

Albert Pujols Homers Twice, Mike Trout and David Freese Also Go Yard, in #Angels 7-3 Victory Over Tampa Bay

The boys are on fire, finally.

At the O.C. Register, "Final: Trout and Pujols homer to lead Angels over Rays, 7-3."

#HaloRecap: #Angels keep their bats hot with home runs from @PujolsFive, @MikeTrout & @Freeser6 in tonight's victory! pic.twitter.com/BrIQeyHrh0

— Angels (@Angels) June 2, 2015

Introducing Caitlyn Jenner

The obligatory Caitlyn Jenner transgender debut post.

See the reactions at Memeorandum.

I'm so happy after such a long struggle to be living my true self. Welcome to the world Caitlyn. Can't wait for you to get to know her/me.

— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) June 1, 2015

Another Jenner world record, and at 65? Who'da thought! Humbled & honored to have reached 1M followers in 4 hrs. Thank you for your support.

— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) June 1, 2015

I'll call you Caitlyn but you're still just a dude who tucks his dick between his legs😂😂😂 #CaitlynJenner pic.twitter.com/z1QzmUjQaT

— The Anti-Feminist (@FemsHaveBallz) June 1, 2015

What is it with trannies that they feel they have to dress like sluts? For God’s sake, you’re 65 years old. Decency! https://t.co/lerU80YnoC

— Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) June 1, 2015

'Some of us now struggle to recognize the culture we live in...'

From Quin Hillyer, at National Review, "Where 'Normal' is Defined as 'Deviant'":

At Sea in an Alien Culture, Where ‘Normal’ Is Defined as ‘Deviant’ http://t.co/Qz8XRxs1kc pic.twitter.com/6ZbRzkPgdz

— National Review (@NRO) May 25, 2015

Elderly Man Accidentally Runs Over Wife in Studio City

Man, that's heartbreaking.

At CBS News Los Angeles, "Husband Accidentally Runs Over, Kills Wife In Studio City Crash."

Country Music Consultant Wants Fewer Women on Radio

Hey, it's just good business!

At WaPo, "One industry expert offers his plan to help country radio: Fewer songs by women."

And at CBS This Morning, "Miranda Lambert lashes out at radio exec."

California's Mandatory Water Restrictions Take Effect

At LAT, "As California drought worsens, experts urge water reforms":

As mandatory water restrictions took effect Monday across California, a panel of experts called upon the drought-plagued state to upgrade its water infrastructure and reform its antiquated water rights system.

"The reservoirs we built in California over the 20th century were designed for a climate with extensive snowpack, and frequent wet periods," said Juliet Christian-Smith, a climate scientist with the California office of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"We know that this drought is a bellwether of future conditions," Christian-Smith said. "This year's record-low snowpack is projected to be close to normal by the end of the century."

Christian-Smith was one of a handful of experts who spoke to reporters during a telephone news conference organized by the science group.

With droughts in California and other western states likely to grow more frequent because of global warming, planners needed to explore new methods of water conservation, they said.

Among the solutions was devising new ways to capture rainwater runoff so that it could be stored in soils, floodplains and groundwater basins.

"It's not about building bigger and higher dams," said Joseph McIntyre, president of the not-for-profit food sustainability organization Ag Innovations.

Instead, McIntyre said the state should focus on "capturing and storing water everywhere in the system -- on small ponds, on farms, in urban rainwater harvesting projects and in small-scale reservoirs. The future is small and distributed."

Michael Hanemann, a professor of environmental and resource economics at UC Berkeley, said also that the state's system of water rights was in serious need of updating.

However, he said the Legislature has showed "no appetite" to make reforms.

Among the most senior water rights holders in California are those who hold riparian rights -- that is, the right to siphon water from a river or stream that runs through or along a property owner's land. Those rights date back to the founding of the state in 1850.

Also, from Joel Kotkin, at the O.C. Register, "Why California's salad days have wilted."

The Soft-Soaping of Socialism in the U.S.

At IBD:

Bernie Sanders is coming on as a presidential contender, while polls show surprisingly large parts of the public look favorably on the socialism he espouses. The public apparently has forgotten socialism's record.

For years, Sanders, an avowed, unapologetic socialist, was viewed as an anomaly of U.S. political life, an eccentric whose atypical ideology reflected the supposed quirkiness of his home state of Vermont.

Now that's changed, and with Democrats worried about the scandals surrounding their top candidate, Hillary Clinton, Sanders is attracting ever-bigger audiences on the campaign trail. Polls show him at 15% of the Democratic tally.

Maybe that's because Sanders is portrayed in the media as "a normal guy" — as a Washington Post headline put it — while liberal media doyen Bill Moyer headlined a [news item "Despite What Corporate Media Tells You, Bernie Sanders' Positions Are Mainstream."
In the Huffington Post, Distinguished Professor Peter Dreier of Occidental College, one of Barack Obama's alma maters, declared, "Bernie Sanders' Socialism Is as American as Apple Pie."

Such is the new narrative about Sanders, 73, whose ideology grew out of the same 1930s roots as all past socialist movements, even as America since the Reagan era has moved toward free markets and taken much of the world with it.

Sure, Sanders calls himself a "democratic socialist" and says that his model is the all-encompassing welfare state of Sweden, not the Soviet Union. No comment from him, however, about the reforms that Sweden has made over the last decade to rid itself of the state embrace that's choked economic life or the demographic losses endured as the young move out or lose interest in forming families.

Also under the democratic socialist banner is Venezuela, where citizens have lost not only all their prosperity and access to goods but their civil freedoms as well.

Every last government agency there has been politicized since the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez, ending civil society, while the separation of powers has been rubbed away in the name of "the revolution."

As a result, political dissidents have been thrown in prisons without trial. Others have lost the right to leave the country. Still more have had their businesses expropriated. More still have been victims of political thuggery from government-sponsored private goons.

Like Sweden, Venezuela is no country for young men. A study of professors at Gervasio Rubio Rural Pedagogic Institute reported last week in El Universal showed that large numbers of Venezuela's young would rather deal drugs than go to school.

More.

We're surrounded by leftist idiots. But I repeat myself.

Elon Musk Defends $4.9 Billion in Government Subsidies

Background at Instapundit, "ELON MUSK’S BUSINESS STRATEGY: Take full advantage of government subsidies."

And see the Los Angeles Times, "Elon Musk defends $4.9 billion in government money for his companies."

Imagine the National Economy with a $15.00 Minimum Wage

I suspect if local governments, like Los Angeles, phase in the $15.00 minimum wage over a few years, the negative economic repercussions will be minimized. Still, once businesses relocate to more competitive cities and states, it's hard to get those enterprises back.

And as always, huge numbers of workers are going to be displaced as businesses shift to increasing automation and flexible (shorter), non-benefit, hours.

At the Los Angeles Times, "A new dawn for the minimum wage":

What has long been a hypothetical question may soon become a real one: What would the national economy look like with a $15-an-hour minimum wage?

Community activists and politicians see a $15 minimum wage as the antidote to the ills of rising inequality, a way to reduce poverty and stimulate the overall economy. Business owners warn it will tie their hands in downturns, drive small employers out of business and lead to millions of layoffs.

The reality is not that simple: An increase to $15 an hour would ripple through the U.S. economy in some unexpected ways that are, generally, not as bad nor as beneficial as each side claims.

The push for a higher minimum wage has gained momentum over the past few years. Seattle, San Francisco and most recently Los Angeles have adopted a floor of $15 an hour to take effect over the next few years. That's more than double the current federal minimum-wage law of $7.25.

Other cities such as Chicago. Oakland and Washington, D.C., have raised the minimum wage, but not as much. At least a dozen other cities and states, including New York and Oregon, may soon follow.

The recent movement is rooted in years of stagnant wages and a general disaffection from the slow and uneven recovery since the Great Recession officially ended in 2009. Like the Gilded Age in the late 1800s, the last quarter-century has seen fabulous income gains for corporations and individuals at the top, but very little for everybody else.

It's true that higher minimum wages would address some of that inequality, lifting many Americans from poverty.

Almost 60% of workers who are paid on an hourly basis — some 44 million people — currently make less than $15 an hour, Labor Department figures show. If the minimum went up to $15 tomorrow, nearly half of those workers would get at least a 50% bump in pay.

And it's not just teenagers and young adults who would benefit. More than 8.4 million people earning less than $10 an hour today are in the prime of their work life, between ages 25 and 54. About 62% of these workers are women, many with children.

Yet the benefits from higher wages would be offset for many by a reduction in government benefits that low-wage workers now receive, such as child-care subsidies or public aid for food, housing and medicines.

Millions of workers would have more money in their pockets to spend, boosting demand for goods and services. But they would also likely face increased prices in the marketplace as retailers, restaurants, child-care centers and other businesses that employ low-wage workers shift the higher labor costs to their customers.

When Oakland's minimum wage jumped from $9 an hour to $12.25 in March, residents noticed many stores tacked on a dime or a quarter to an assortment of items. Creole food caterer David Smith went further, jacking up the price of his dishes by $2 to $3 a plate. "I had to," says Smith, 35, who has three employees.

Longer term, many low-paid workers could lose their jobs or find fewer openings as employers cut back to cope with the higher wage requirements.

An analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office last year estimated that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, which some lawmakers had proposed, would result in a half-million jobs lost. At $15 an hour, the hit would likely be in the millions.

"Fifteen dollars still scares me," says Harry Holzer, a Georgetown University economist, adding that what might be doable in high-priced cities like Seattle and San Francisco could prove more difficult in other areas...

More.

PREVIOUSLY: "Businesses Will Raises Prices and Cut Employee Hours Under Obama Minimum Wage Hike," and "$15 Minimum Wage Will Hurt Workers."

Drake Bell Disses Caitlyn Jenner

It's been awhile since "Drake and Josh" was topping the charts, so I guess fading actors take to Twitter to stay relevant, or something.

Still, the responses are pretty hysterical.

At Twitchy, "‘Burn in hell': Drake Bell branded ‘transphobic idiot’ after posting ‘still calling you Bruce’."

George Will: The Commencement Speech Every College Graduate Needs to Hear (VIDEO)

Old George is going to ruffle some super-sensitive feathers, via Prager University:



BONUS: At the Washington Post, "A summer break from campus muzzling":

Progressives frequently disparage this or that person or idea as “on the wrong side of history.” They regard history as an autonomous force with its own laws of unfolding development: Progress is wherever history goes. This belief entails disparagement of human agency — or at least that of most people, who do not understand history’s implacable logic and hence do not get on history’s “right side.” Such people are crippled by “false consciousness.” Fortunately, a saving clerisy, a vanguard composed of the understanding few, know where history is going and how to help it get there.

One way to help is by molding the minds of young people. The molders believe that the sociology of knowledge demonstrates that most people do not make up their minds, “society” does this. But progressive minds can be furnished for them by controlling the promptings from the social environment. This can be done by making campuses into hermetically sealed laboratories.

In “The Promise of American Life” (1909), progressivism’s canonical text, Herbert Croly said, “The average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to a serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.” National life should be “a school,” with the government as the stern but caring principal: “The exigencies of such schooling frequently demand severe coercive measures, but what schooling does not?” “Unregenerate citizens” can be saved “many costly perversions, in case the official school-masters are wise, and the pupils neither truant nor insubordinate.” For a survey of today’s campus coercions, read Kirsten Power’s “The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech.”

In “Kindly Inquisitors” (1993), Jonathan Rauch showed how attacks on the free market in speech undermine three pillars of American liberty. They subvert democracy, the culture of persuasion by which we decide who shall wield legitimate power. (Progressives advocate government regulation of the quantity, content and timing of political campaign speech.) The attacks undermine capitalism — markets registering the freely expressed choices by which we allocate wealth. And the attacks undermine science, which is how we decide what is true. (Note progressives’ insistence that the science about this or that is “settled.”)

For decades, much academic ingenuity has been devoted to jurisprudential theorizing to evade the First Amendment’s majestic simplicity about “no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” We are urged to “balance” this freedom against competing, and putatively superior, considerations such as individual serenity, institutional tranquillity or social improvement.

On campuses, the right of free speech has been supplanted by an entitlement to what Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education calls a right to freedom from speech deemed uncongenial. This entitlement is buttressed by “trigger warnings” against spoken “micro-aggressions” that lacerate the delicate sensibilities of individuals who are encouraged to be exquisitely, paralyzingly sensitive.

In a booklet for the “Encounter Broadside” series, Lukianoff says “sensitivity-based censorship” on campus reflects a broader and global phenomena. It is the demand for coercive measures to do for our mental lives what pharmacology has done for our bodies — the banishment or mitigation of many discomforts. In the social milieu fostered by today’s entitlement state, expectations quickly generate entitlements. Students are taught to expect intellectual comfort, including the reinforcement of their beliefs, or at least those that conform to progressive orthodoxies imbibed and enforced on campuses. Until September, however, the culture of freedom will be safe from its cultured despisers.

The New Nationwide Crime Wave

From Heather Mac Donald, at WSJ, "The consequences of the ‘Ferguson effect’ are already appearing. The main victims of growing violence will be the inner-city poor":

@SykesCharlie @WSJ Libs don't care. This was never about Black lives mattering. It is about energizing the Black base for 2016 election.

— David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) May 30, 2015

The nation’s two-decades-long crime decline may be over. Gun violence in particular is spiraling upward in cities across America. In Baltimore, the most pressing question every morning is how many people were shot the previous night. Gun violence is up more than 60% compared with this time last year, according to Baltimore police, with 32 shootings over Memorial Day weekend. May has been the most violent month the city has seen in 15 years.

In Milwaukee, homicides were up 180% by May 17 over the same period the previous year. Through April, shootings in St. Louis were up 39%, robberies 43%, and homicides 25%. “Crime is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” said St. Louis Alderman Joe Vacarro at a May 7 City Hall hearing.

Murders in Atlanta were up 32% as of mid-May. Shootings in Chicago had increased 24% and homicides 17%. Shootings and other violent felonies in Los Angeles had spiked by 25%; in New York, murder was up nearly 13%, and gun violence 7%.

Those citywide statistics from law-enforcement officials mask even more startling neighborhood-level increases. Shooting incidents are up 500% in an East Harlem precinct compared with last year; in a South Central Los Angeles police division, shooting victims are up 100%.

By contrast, the first six months of 2014 continued a 20-year pattern of growing public safety. Violent crime in the first half of last year dropped 4.6% nationally and property crime was down 7.5%. Though comparable national figures for the first half of 2015 won’t be available for another year, the January through June 2014 crime decline is unlikely to be repeated.

The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months.

Since last summer, the airwaves have been dominated by suggestions that the police are the biggest threat facing young black males today. A handful of highly publicized deaths of unarmed black men, often following a resisted arrest—including Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., in July 2014, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014 and Freddie Gray in Baltimore last month—have led to riots, violent protests and attacks on the police. Murders of officers jumped 89% in 2014, to 51 from 27.

President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, before he stepped down last month, embraced the conceit that law enforcement in black communities is infected by bias. The news media pump out a seemingly constant stream of stories about alleged police mistreatment of blacks, with the reports often buttressed by cellphone videos that rarely capture the behavior that caused an officer to use force.

Almost any police shooting of a black person, no matter how threatening the behavior that provoked the shooting, now provokes angry protests, like those that followed the death of Vonderrit Myers in St. Louis last October. The 18-year-old Myers, awaiting trial on gun and resisting-arrest charges, had fired three shots at an officer at close range. Arrests in black communities are even more fraught than usual, with hostile, jeering crowds pressing in on officers and spreading lies about the encounter.

Acquittals of police officers for the use of deadly force against black suspects are now automatically presented as a miscarriage of justice. Proposals aimed at producing more cop convictions abound, but New York state seems especially enthusiastic about the idea.

The state’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, wants to create a special state prosecutor dedicated solely to prosecuting cops who use lethal force. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo would appoint an independent monitor whenever a grand jury fails to indict an officer for homicide and there are “doubts” about the fairness of the proceeding (read: in every instance of a non-indictment); the governor could then turn over the case to a special prosecutor for a second grand jury proceeding.

This incessant drumbeat against the police has resulted in what St. Louis police chief Sam Dotson last November called the “Ferguson effect.” Cops are disengaging from discretionary enforcement activity and the “criminal element is feeling empowered,” Mr. Dotson reported. Arrests in St. Louis city and county by that point had dropped a third since the shooting of Michael Brown in August. Not surprisingly, homicides in the city surged 47% by early November and robberies in the county were up 82%.

Similar “Ferguson effects” are happening across the country as officers scale back on proactive policing under the onslaught of anti-cop rhetoric. Arrests in Baltimore were down 56% in May compared with 2014...

Keep reading.

And at Twitchy, "‘The New National Crime Wave’ explores the consequences of the ‘Ferguson effect’."

Today's Feminists Are Too Fragile to Read

From Glenn Reynolds, at USA Today, "When a professor criticizes equal rights law, it is not a violation of equal rights":

They told me that if I voted for Mitt Romney, campus witch hunts would leave professors afraid to write about feminism. And they were right!

Barack Obama is the president, of course, not Mitt. But Obama's Department of Education has taken such a broad view of the federal Title IX antidiscrimination law ("No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.") that we have reached the ultimate in absurdity: Feminist students silencing feminist professors in the name of equality.

Feminist professor Laura Kipnis of Northwestern University published an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education in February, decrying "sexual paranoia" on campus and the way virtually any classroom mention of sex was being subjected to an odd sort of neo-Victorian prudery: "Students were being encouraged to regard themselves as such exquisitely sensitive creatures that an errant classroom remark could impede their education, as such hothouse flowers that an unfunny joke was likely to create lasting trauma. ... In the post-Title IX landscape, sexual panic rules. Slippery slopes abound."

This article sat poorly with campus activists, who in response reported her for sexual harassment, on the theory that this article (and a follow-up tweet — yes, that's right, a tweet) somehow might have created a hostile environment for female students, which would violate Title IX as interpreted by the Education Department. Because, you see, female students, according to feminists, are too fragile to face disagreement. And they'll demonstrate this fragility by subjecting you to Stalinist persecution if you challenge them, apparently...

More.

Read about the professor (me) brought up on Title IX charges over an essay. My Title IX Inquisition https://t.co/7arRrbuUv6 via @chronicle

— laura kipnis (@laurakipnis) May 29, 2015

TITLE IX Update: After 72 days it turns out that a preponderance of the evidence doesn't support the allegations. https://t.co/EmIdJEWhYK

— laura kipnis (@laurakipnis) May 31, 2015

"My Title IX Inquisition." Here's a link to a PDF version. http://t.co/aaR3ZgjxaT

— laura kipnis (@laurakipnis) May 31, 2015

Gifts in Kitchen & Dining

Shop for Father's Day,Shop Amazon - Gifts in Kitchen & Dining.

Bernie Sanders' Foul Socialist Odor

From Michelle Malkin, at FrontPage Magazine:

Elect @BernieSanders and we'll have more hunger, not less. That's how #socialism works. http://t.co/FFGGyzXIr1 pic.twitter.com/1YitjBNqGB

— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) May 31, 2015

Smells like socialist spirit! Mocktastic Bernie 'Old Spice' Sanders puts the 'rant' in 'deodorant' http://t.co/fYZRzIR5fE

— TwitchyTeam (@TwitchyTeam) May 26, 2015

Our store shelves have too many different brands of deodorant and sneakers. Just look at all those horrible, fully stocked aisles at Target and Walgreens and Wal-Mart and Payless and DSW and Dick’s Sporting Goods. It’s a national nightmare! If only consumers had fewer choices in the free market, fewer entrepreneurs offering a wide variety of products and fewer workers manufacturing goods people wanted, Sanders believes, we could end childhood hunger.

Nobody parodies the far left better than far-leftists themselves.

In an interview with financial journalist John Harwood on Tuesday, Sanders detailed his grievances with an overabundance of antiperspirants and footwear. “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country. I don’t think the media appreciates the kind of stress that ordinary Americans are working on.”

Try to suppress a snicker: Sanders, Decider of Your Sanitary and Footwear Needs, is casting himself as the Everyman in touch with “ordinary Americans” to contrast his campaign with Hillary “my Beltway lobbyist and foreign agent operator Sid Blumenthal is just a friend I talk to for advice” Clinton.

Blech. By the looks of the 2016 Democratic presidential field, liberals really do practice the anti-choice principles they preach.

More.

Plus, from yesterday's morning talk shows, "Bernie Sanders Addresses 1972 Sex, Rape Fantasy Essay on Meet the Press."

He's a freakin' crackpot.

Tony Hawk Remembers His First 900 Air at the X-Games

This is really cool.

Barack Obama’s Anti-Semitism Test

From Caroline Glick, at FrontPage Magazine:

Is U.S. President Barack Obama an anti-Semite?

This question has lingered in the air since his first presidential bid in 2008. It first arose due to the anti-Semitic sermons that Jeremiah Wright, his pastor for more than 20 years, made as Obama and his family sat in the pews.

Throughout the six-and-a-half years of his presidency, Obama has laughed off the concerns.

But he has not dispelled them. And this failure has hurt him.

So last week, Obama went to significant lengths to answer the question about his feelings toward Israel and the Jewish people once and for all.

The timing of his charm offensive wasn’t coincidental.

Obama clearly believes he has to dispel doubts about his intentions toward Jews and Israel in order to implement the central policy of his second term in office. That policy of course is his nuclear deal with Iran.

Obama’s agreement with the mullahs is supposed to be concluded by the end of next month.

Obama argues that his deal will prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. But as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained in his address before the joint houses of Congress in March, from what has already been revealed about the nuclear deal Obama seeks to conclude, far from preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear arms, the deal will provide several pathways for Iran to at a minimum become a threshold nuclear state, capable of developing nuclear weapons at the drop of a hat. If Iran cheats on the deal, it can develop nuclear weapons while the agreement is still in force. If it abides by the agreement, it can develop nuclear weapons as soon as the agreement expires.

Beyond his desire to conclude a nuclear deal that will empower a regime that has pledged to destroy Israel, there are Obama’s reported plans for changing the way the US relates to Israel at the UN Security Council.

For the past half-century, the US has used its veto power at the Security Council to prevent substantive anti-Israel draft resolutions from passing. But Obama and his top advisers have hinted and media reports have provided details about his intention to end this 50-year policy.

Obama reportedly intends to enable the passage of a French draft resolution that would require Israel to withdraw to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines.

As these two policies, which bear directly on Israel’s ability to defend itself and indeed, to survive, near implementation, Obama is faced with the fact that he has a credibility problem when it comes to issues related to the survival and existence of the Jewish state.

In a bid to address this credibility problem, last week he invested significant time and effort in building up his credibility on Jewish issues. To this end, he gave an extensive interview to Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic, and he gave a speech before Adas Israel, a large, liberal Conservative synagogue in Washington, DC.

To a degree, Obama was successful. He did put to bed the question of whether or not he is anti-Semitic.

In his interview with Goldberg, Obama gave a reasonable if incomplete definition of what anti-Semitism is. Obama said that an anti-Semite is someone who refuses to recognize the 3,000-year connection between the Jews and the Land of Israel. An anti-Semite is also someone who refuses to recognize the long history of persecution that the Jewish people suffered in the Diaspora.

According to Obama, an anti-Semite is someone who refuses to understand that this history of persecution together with the Jews’ millennial connection to the Land of Israel is what justifies the existence of Israel in the Land of Israel.

Moreover, according to Obama, anti-Semites refuse to understand that Israel remains in mortal danger due to the continued existence of anti-Semitic forces that seek its destruction.

And that isn’t all. As he sees it, even if you do understand the legitimacy of Israel’s existence and recognize the continued threats to its survival, you could still be an anti-Semite.

As Obama explained to Goldberg, there is still the problem of double standards.

In his words, “If you acknowledge those things, then you should be able to align yourself with Israel where its security is at stake, you should be able to align yourself with Israel when it comes to making sure that it is not held to a double standard in international fora, you should align yourself with Israel when it comes to making sure that it is not isolated.”

To his credit, Obama provided a clear, well-argued and constructive definition of anti-Semitism.

But there’s a bit of a problem. Right after Obama provided us with his definition of anti-Semitism, he endorsed and indeed engaged in the very anti-Semitism he had just defined.

As Goldberg, who is sympathetically inclined toward Obama, put it, Obama “holds Israel to a higher standard than he does other countries.”

Both in his interview with Goldberg and in his speech at the synagogue, Obama judged Israel in accordance to what he defined as Jewish values.

According to Obama, Jewish values require Jews to prefer the interests of others over their own interests in order to “repair the world.”

As Obama reads Israeli history, the state’s founders didn’t only seek to build a Jewish state.

They set out to build Utopia.

Obama explained, “I care deeply about preserving that Jewish democracy, because when I think about how I came to know Israel, it was based on images of… kibbutzim, and Moshe Dayan, and Golda Meir, and the sense that not only are we creating a safe Jewish homeland, but also we are remaking the world. We’re repairing it. We are going to do it the right way. We are going to make sure that the lessons we’ve learned from our hardships and our persecutions are applied to how we govern and how we treat others. And it goes back to the values questions that we talked about earlier – those are the values that helped to nurture me and my political beliefs.”

In his address at the synagogue, Obama made his expectations of Israel explicit. As he sees it, Israel’s concerns for Palestinians should outweigh its concerns for itself.

“The rights of the Jewish people… compel me to think about a Palestinian child in Ramallah that feels trapped without opportunity. That’s what Jewish values teach me.”

In other words, when Obama thinks about Israel, he cannot avoid blaming Israel for the feelings he assumes Palestinian children feel.

It is important to mention that in neither of his attempts to address concerns about his perceived biases regarding Jews did Obama note the behavior of the Palestinian Authority. He ignored its endemic corruption and authoritarianism.

He ignored the wild anti-Semitic incitement and indoctrination practiced at all levels of the Palestinian governing authority. He ignored the longstanding Palestinian refusal to accept an independent state that would peacefully coexist with the Jewish state.

So in the end, Obama’s charm offensive did provide a clear answer to the question of whether he is anti-Semitic.

It bears noting that the fact that Obama failed his own test of anti-Semitism doesn’t necessarily mean that he hates Jews. It is certainly possible that he likes Jews.

But loving Jews and being an anti-Semite are not mutually exclusive...

Still more.

Obama hates Israel and the Jews. All this, seriously, is an exercise in futility. Don't give him the benefit of the doubt. The sooner the Democrats are out of power the safer Israel will be.

General Stanley McChrystal (Ret.) on the Battle to Defeat #ISIS in Iraq

From CNN's State of the Nation yesterday:

Carly Fiorina on Fox News Sunday, May 31, 2015 (VIDEO)

I still don't expect her to get too far, mainly because she'll be destroy by the media, and ultimately, she'll be subjected to the Herman Cain treatment --- although I expect, having run for office previously, Ms. Fiorina's much more prepared for the left's character assassination.

In any case, she's extremely well-informed and loquacious.



More from Ashe Schow, at the Washington Examiner, "Carly Fiorina breaks top 10 of 2016 GOP candidates in latest national poll."

And from Katie Pavlich, at Town Hall, "While Rick Santorum Whines About Rules, Carly Fiorina Steps Up To GOP Debate Challenge."

Michael LaCour and the 'Endemic Problems' of Political Science

From Steven Hayward, who is the Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy 2014-2016, at Pepperdine University's School of Public Policy.

He's a cool dude!

Why everyone's missing what's really wrong with the retracted La-Court-Green Science magazine article: http://t.co/yVQbOw51D1 @powerlineUS

— Steven F. Hayward (@stevenfhayward) May 31, 2015

Some "clear subtexts of this article that reveal endemic problems within the world of academic political science": https://t.co/8eqcKM0Qjn

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) May 31, 2015

And ICYMI, "Michael LaCour, 'Gay Canvassers' Fabulist, Responds to Attacks on Retracted Homosexual Marriage Study."

Roasting 'Progressives of Palor' LOL!

You gotta love Twitter!

Love it when progressives of pallor get roasted ==> https://t.co/LtGi2aFrnW

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) May 31, 2015

'Show the GOP who is the party of old, fat, white people': Instapundit mercilessly mocks Bernie Sanders event http://t.co/ygAeE4qydN

— TwitchyTeam (@TwitchyTeam) May 31, 2015

TV's 'Golden Age' Won't Last Because You're Not Watching Enough

A lot of times after I've watch a ball game or a favorite show I'll just turn off the tube and cruise my iPhone and Twitter. I can go for a couple hours easily, especially if all my apps are working properly, heh. (LAT's app was screwed up for awhile and wouldn't load, but it's been working beautifully lately.)

In any case, here's this a Bloomberg, "Quality, expensive TV shows need more viewers to be sustainable, but audiences are dwindling":

The entertainment industry will air more than 400 original TV shows this year, lavishing hundreds of millions of dollars on top talent and exotic locations in the hopes of creating the next “Mad Men” or “Game of Thrones.”

The gusher of quality programs has prompted TV critics to proclaim a Golden Age of Television. But as any viewer knows, keeping up with all the shows is impossible. You’d have to watch TV 24 hours a day for at least eight months to catch every scripted series that aired last year, according to a Bloomberg calculation. With too many shows chasing too few viewers, say industry executives, most original programs lose money and half the shows now running probably will disappear by next year.

“The market is flooded with too many people chasing the same prize,” said Jeff Wachtel, president of NBCUniversal’s cable unit, which includes the USA and Syfy channels. “What used to be the golden age of television has now become a gold rush.”

With production costs soaring and shows being canceled with increasing frequency, executives say many niche channels will vanish as networks with the most popular shows swallow rivals that fail to create enough hits of their own.

More.

Yu Tsai Emily Ratajkowski Photo Shoot for Sports Illustrated

Lovely.

#SISwim photographer @yutsai captured @emrata like you've never seen her before! http://t.co/FdNGaji3RZ pic.twitter.com/pFrAg0HaUX

— SI Swimsuit (@SI_Swimsuit) May 21, 2015

And after the show its the... pic.twitter.com/zTfjms54ZN

— Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) May 6, 2015

The Feminist-Industrial Complex: Fat Lesbians vs. the ‘Heteronormative Gaze’

At the Other McCain:

Does the “fat acceptance” movement “destabilize the heteronormative gaze”? Can women overcome “gender inequality” by a “radical rejection of beauty as feminine aspiration”? Those possibilities are suggested by two Canadian sociologists in an article, included in a leading Women’s Studies textbook, that compared Dove’s “Real Beauty” advertising campaign to a protest by lesbian activists in Toronto.

FEMINISM: "We are angry because we are oppressed by male supremacy. We have been f**ked over all our lives ..." http://t.co/KTpYIcE5ke #tcot

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) May 31, 2015

Why #feminists fear #heteronormativemalegaze http://t.co/JEGXhqtWwp #heteronormative http://t.co/j6XO1nyVAn @rsmccain pic.twitter.com/WJmwJQOL9L

— JeSuisEBL (@MsEBL) May 31, 2015

The Obama 'Recovery' Stalls Again — U.S. Economy Shrank 0.7 Percent in First Quarter!

Yay progs!

At WSJ, "U.S. Recovery Stumbles Yet Again":

Why U.S. GDP shrank: http://t.co/w1ZE5tZmnw pic.twitter.com/5diRPfaBqi

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) May 29, 2015

The U.S. economy shrank during the first quarter as another brutal winter highlighted the fragility of the nearly six-year-old expansion, a historically choppy stretch during which the nation has struggled to thrive in an uneven global environment.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the U.S., contracted at a 0.7% annual rate during the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department said Friday.

That was far worse than the agency’s initial estimate that showed 0.2% growth, marking an abrupt reversal from the prior nine months when growth surged and the economy appeared on the verge of a long-delayed breakout.

The economy has now contracted in three separate quarters since the recession ended in mid-2009, a series of disappointments unmatched since the expansions of the 1950s.

Harsh weather, a strong dollar and a labor dispute at West Coast ports appeared to be the biggest culprits this time, all sapping demand for American goods at home and abroad.

“When you’re this weak, little things can knock you off course, whether it’s the Arab Spring…or ‘Snowmageddon,’ ” said Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at brokerage firm BTIG. “We have an incredibly weak economy that’s susceptible to momentary interruptions.”

The Federal Reserve has viewed the first-quarter stumble as due largely to transitory factors—such as the stronger dollar—that will dissipate in coming months. The central bank is looking for signs of a rebound soon as it plots when and how quickly to raise short-term interest rates, which have been near zero since December 2008 to stir economic growth.

Economists generally expect the economy to bounce back this spring, as it did after first-quarter contractions in 2011 and 2014. But they warned growth will likely remain modest, in line with the roughly 2% overall pace of recent years. The first half of 2015 is shaping up to be one of the weakest six-month stretches of the expansion, with economists predicting annualized growth of between 2% and 3% during the current quarter. By comparison, the economy grew more than 3% a year on average between 1983 and 2007.

Further complicating the outlook is that other signs point to the economy humming along at a steady, though modest, growth pace. Company layoffs are exceptionally low and hiring across the U.S. remains solid. Mortgage applications are up amid other signs of growing housing demand.

“We’re still growing at a relatively steady pace, although one that just doesn’t feel satisfying,” said Richard Moody, chief economist at Regions Financial Corp. “Six years into the recovery, we still really haven’t absorbed all of the idle capacity in the economy. When your underlying trend of growth is so slow, it doesn’t take much to just kind of stop the train.”

Some of the strongest headwinds facing the U.S. are tied to economic woes around the globe, including the U.S.’s biggest trading partners. Canada reported Friday that its economy unexpectedly contracted at a 0.6% annual pace in the first quarter. Mexican officials recently slashed their forecast for growth this year after reporting that the economy grew in the first quarter at the slowest pace in more than a year.

The stronger dollar, which makes U.S. goods more expensive abroad, also hasn’t helped. Friday’s GDP report showed that U.S. exports of goods fell by the most since early 2009, during the waning months of the recession. While a key measure of U.S. corporations’ after-tax profits grew 3.1% over the period, it wasn’t on pace to match the growth of the prior two years.

“We have a macro-slowdown around the world,” Stephen Angel, chief executive of industrial gas supplier Praxair Inc., told analysts this past week. “There’s less capital investment. China is decelerating…so there’s less proposal activity.”

His company, based in Connecticut, is one of many being hit by depressed oil prices. While the price of oil—around $60 a barrel—is up in recent months, it’s far from the 2014 peak of $107.26.

The oil-price drop has boosted consumers’ finances by lowering their gasoline bills, a development expected to boost the economy throughout this year. But the most dramatic effect thus far has been a drop in business investment, with energy companies holding off on drilling and equipment purchases as they deal with squeezed profits.

A measure of business spending on construction, machinery, and research and development fell at a 2.8% pace in the winter. That was the biggest decline since late 2009.

The strength of an economic rebound will hinge largely on the health of consumers. Consumer spending, representing more than two-thirds of overall economic output, grew at a 1.8% rate in the first quarter, far slower than the fourth quarter’s 4.4% growth. Household spending on long-lasting manufactured items was the weakest in nearly four years...

'Ted 2' Star Jessica Barth 'Very Sexy' for Playboy

I expect "Ted 2" has got to be one of the stupidest movies ever, but then Jessica Barth is a smokin' hottie, so I'll forgive her for foisting this demented leftist drivel.

Watch: "Jessica Barth Taps Into Her Sex Appeal for Playboy."

Former Marine George Hood of Carlsbad Sets Abdominal Plank Record of 5 Hours and 15 Minutes

The video's cool. They're down at the Oceanside Pier, at the amphitheater.

He went 5 hours, 15 minutes, and 15 seconds.

Watch: "Local man sets new record for longest held plank."

And at the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Marine vet obliterates 'planking' record."

Bob Schieffer's Final Commentary at CBS 'Face the Nation'

He's a lefty, but a good patriotic lefty, a throwback to an earlier era. I'm going to miss him.



More at LAT, "Bob Schieffer signs off from 'Face the Nation' and 46 years at CBS News."