Thursday, June 18, 2015

Charleston Shooting Suspect Dylann Roof Was a 'Loner'

The kid's an emo-prog racist loner.

He was definitely not a classic Southern red neck, and he wasn't raised that way. Frankly, he's not fitting into the left's cookie-cutter "white supremacist" narrative. They never do, in fact. Virtually all the mass shooters in recent years have been leftists, to the one.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Charleston Shooting Suspect Dylann Roof Became a Loner in Recent Years":

About a month ago, Dylann Roof’s family was concerned. The once-quiet, bright boy from a middle-class South Carolina family was espousing troubling racist views.

“He apparently told people that he was involved in groups, racist groups,” said a woman who said she was the mother of Mr. Roof’s former stepmother. “He was kind and sweet and polite to my daughter. He didn’t even want her to know what kind of things he was doing. She told him she didn’t approve.”

Mr. Roof, 21 years old, was the son of a contractor, did well in school in early years and loved animals, his relative said. But he stopped going to high school and was adrift, she said.

“He turned into a loner in the last couple of years and no one knew why,” she said. “He just fell off the grid somehow,” she said. The woman was reached at the home of Mr. Roof’s former stepmother, who couldn’t be reached to comment.

Mr. Roof repeated ninth grade at White Knoll High School in Lexington, S.C., and left in 10th grade in February 2010, a spokeswoman for Lexington County School District One said. A month later, Mr. Roof enrolled as a ninth-grade student at Dreher High School in Columbia, S.C., according to Richland County School District One. He attended through May of 2010 but didn’t return, a district official said.

Police said Mr. Roof fatally shot nine people who had gathered Wednesday evening at a historic black Charleston church for a prayer meeting. They called the shooting a hate crime and said Mr. Roof had shouted antiblack sentiments at his victims.

He was arrested Thursday in Shelby, N.C. Mr. Roof’s last known address was in Eastover, S.C., a rural community about 15 miles southeast of Columbia, the state capital. The property has two homes, and people at both homes declined to comment.

Mr. Roof lived off and on with his father, Ben Roof, in Columbia, a family friend said. He described the father as a hard-working, friendly, churchgoing man who had recently expressed concerns about his son’s lack of direction, the friend said. He was trying to get his son to be productive, to stop playing as many video games and stay employed, said the friend.

The friend described the suspect as a lanky young man who looked younger than his age, and a loner who rarely smiled. “You could see that he was troubled,” he said.

The elder Mr. Roof has a racially diverse set of friends, and wouldn’t have taught his son racial intolerance, the friend said. “There are African-Americans over at that home all the time,” he said.

Police blocked off the Columbia street where the elder Mr. Roof lives, and he couldn’t be reached for comment.

Dylann Roof was acting suspiciously in the months before the shooting, according to a police report. On Feb. 28, he was arrested for drug possession at a Columbia mall, where the report said he was wearing all black and rattling employees at two stores with unusual questions about staffing and operating hours.

In the incident report, the arresting officer said Mr. Roof was nervous and said his parents were pressuring him to get a job, though he acknowledged he hadn’t asked for an application from the stores. He consented to a search, and the officer found an unlabeled bottle with multiple, orange-colored square strips in a jacket pocket, the complaint said. Mr. Roof said the strips were Listerine, but they were the pain drug Suboxone, for which he didn’t have a prescription, the report said.

Mr. Roof was released two days later from the Lexington County Detention Center on a $5,000 personal recognizance bond, said Maj. John Allard, a spokesman for the county sheriff...
And note this at the New York Times, "Dylann Roof, Charleston Suspect, Wore Symbols of White Supremacy":
On Twitter, a black woman named Kimberly Taylor who said she had gone to school with Mr. Roof wrote, “Dylann use to be a super emo, with long blonde hair and he was pretty quiet.” She was apparently referring to a type of music sometimes known as “emotional hard-core.”
Yeah, an "emotional hard-core" drug-addled Southern white supremacist loner whose father gave him a gun for his 21st birthday. Well, blow me down! FBI profilers will be stumped. Stumped I tell you!

PREVIOUSLY: "Dylann Roof, Southern Democrat Throwback, is Drug-Addled 'Wannabe Emo Anarchist' with Androgynous Haircut."

Oh My! Rafe Esquith, Award-Winning Teacher, Removed from Classroom for Reciting Passages from 'Huckleberry Finn'

My goodness.

This guy is like the superhero of public education. I attended a one-day conference with him at Cerritos College a couple of years ago.

He's so good you just say to yourself, "I don't know if I can match that kind of tireless energy and advocacy." A real inspiration. And he's a major author too. I got a signed copy of his latest book, Real Talk for Real Teachers: Advice for Teachers from Rookies to Veterans: "No Retreat, No Surrender!"

Taking your best teachers out of the classroom is like Stalin purging his entire general staff in 1937, virtually guaranteeing a military calamity on the first stages of World War II.

That's the left for you. The revolution eats its own eventually.

At CBS News Los Angeles, "Award-Winning Teacher Removed from Classroom Gives LAUSD an Ultimatum":
KOREATOWN (CBSLA.com) — A distinguished elementary school instructor is fighting to teach again.

Rafe Esquith was removed from the classroom at Hobart Elementary — a LAUSD school in Koreatown — after a fellow teacher complained about Esquith reciting a passage from Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” The book, of course, is a classic but often criticized mainly for continual use of the N word. Although it is not clear what the complaint was officially.

High-profile attorney Mark Geragos is representing Esquith and on Thursday issued an ultimatum to the Los Angeles Unified School District: publicly apologize and let him get back to work, or battle a lawsuit.

Geragos said on Monday: “The State of California has thoroughly investigated and cleared Rafe, who is a nationally recognized and award-winning teacher. If LAUSD does not immediately reinstate Rafe and issue a public apology, we will file immediate legal action.”

A district spokesperson would only say that Esquith is still on the payroll. He is left in what parents call Teacher Jail.
CBS’s Jeff Nguyen spoke to many parents Thursday hoping to get Esquith a get out of jail free card.

More than 50 parents and students met Nguyen in front of the school to show their support for the award-winning teacher.

Emanuel Cuapio, 11, says his beloved teacher was notably absent during graduation earlier this month.

“It was really hard graduating because we weren’t with Rafe… we all grieved,” Cuapio said.

A lawyer with Geragos’ firm said the district hasn’t been upfront about the suspension...

Charleston Shootings Undercut Hope Obama Brought for Better Race Relations

Hope and change came and went.

The country's most polarizing president fails in his long-forgotten pledge to unify the country against racial division.

It's a failed presidency. Obama's going down as one of the worst ever. Particularly sad to see him push the tired gun control narrative before the last rites were read for the dead. But that's the scope of things with the far-left Democrat Party these days. Political and moral bankruptcy, with the president barely able to phone it in before he leaves office in 2017.

At the New York Times:



WASHINGTON — The shooting massacre of a black pastor and his parishioners at a South Carolina church on Wednesday night once again confronted President Obama with a moment of racial turmoil in a country that for all its progress has yet to completely shed the burden of hatred and division.

After a series of police shootings, protests and riots, this latest eruption of violence reflected a country on edge and a president struggling to pull the American people together. Any hopes of what supporters once called a “post-racial” era now seem fanciful as Mr. Obama’s second term increasingly focuses on what he termed “the darker part of our history.”

In a pattern that has become achingly familiar to him and the nation, Mr. Obama on Thursday strode down to the White House briefing room to issue a statement of mourning and grief as he called on the country to unify in the face of tragedy. This time, though, the ritual was made all the more poignant because Mr. Obama personally knew the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, the pastor slain at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., as well as other members of the congregation.

“This is not the first time that black churches have been attacked and we know that hatred across races and faiths pose a particular threat to our democracy and our ideals,” Mr. Obama told a national television audience. “The good news is I am confident that the outpouring of unity and strength and fellowship and love across Charleston today from all races, from all faiths, from all places of worship indicates the degree to which those old vestiges of hatred can be overcome.”

If those words of optimism were belied by his own grim face and subdued tone, perhaps it reflected a certain weariness or frustration over the limits of his ability to change the nation he leads. While his own election nearly seven years ago once seemed to harken a new era in race relations, the events of the last couple years especially seem to continually mock that hope.

The racially charged killing of Trayvon Martin, the fatal encounters with police in places like Ferguson, Mo., Staten Island and North Charleston, S.C., and the upheaval in Baltimore have all served to put the nation’s unfinished business back on the agenda. By virtue of his own background, Mr. Obama has addressed them with a personal perspective none of his predecessors in the White House ever could. And yet easy solutions elude him just as they did them.

“Part of what I take from this is on the one hand the realization that this struggle still continues and despite profound change there is still profound hatred,” said Lonnie Bunch, the founding director of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, set to open in Washington next year. “It is a fundamentally different country. It’s a country that has changed in ways that are amazing. But it is still a country that is still torn apart by race.”

Such a realization occurs at a moment when the president who responds with words of comfort and the attorney general who announces a vigorous joint investigation are both African-Americans.
Mr. Obama has spent much of the last couple years addressing race in a more expansive way than he did in his first term, because of stark events as well as because of the anniversaries of iconic moments in the civil rights movement. He has started an initiative called My Brother’s Keeper to help young Latino and African-American men, and he indicated that effort will be one of his primary missions after leaving office.

In the meantime, it seems likely that issues of race and violence will shape the conversation for the rest of Mr. Obama’s tenure as well as during the campaign to succeed him. Many of those aspiring to Mr. Obama’s job have been wrestling with how to address the nation’s persistent divide, and they weighed in about the latest violence with statements of grief and outrage...
Ed Morrissey has more, at Hot Air, "Obama: This kind of violence doesn’t happen elsewhere, you know."

Temperatures to Hit 100 Degrees in Parts of Southern California

You'll want to head to the beach, or just chill in the shade at your homestead.

(Hangin' inside watching TV with the air condition on counts for chillin' as well, heh.)

At LAT, "Southern California temperatures expected to hit 100 degrees this weekend."

Poll: Democrats Shift to Extreme Far-Left of Political Spectrum — Bernie Sanders Leads the Way!

At Gallup, "Democrats in the U.S. Shift to the Left" (via Memeorandum):
PRINCETON, N.J. -- Democratic candidates for the 2016 presidential nomination face a significantly more left-leaning party base than their predecessors did over the last 15 years. Forty-seven percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents now identify as both socially liberal and economically moderate or liberal. This is compared with 39% in these categories in 2008, when there was last an open seat for their party's nomination, and 30% in 2001.

This combined group of Democrats consists of 25% who are pure liberals -- identifying as liberal on both social and economic issues -- and 22% who are social liberals but moderate on the economy. At the other end of the ideological spectrum, a scant 7% of Democrats are socially and economically conservative. Most of the rest of Democrats have more mixed ideological leanings, with 18% moderate on both social and economic issues, and 12% socially moderate or liberal but economically conservative.
Almost half of rank-and-file Dems are very far left. And notice how this shift coincides with the hatred fueled by the ideological demonization of the G.W. Bush years, and then consolidated into the crypto-Marxism of the Barack Obama presidency. The left has taken the country to the extreme left fringes of the political spectrum, and it's not likely to ease up any time soon. As Frank Newport notes at the entry:
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton faces a more liberal base than she did when she last ran for president in 2008, and no doubt will be calibrating her positions accordingly. The shift in the electorate may help explain the attention being garnered by long-shot candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont who has used the label "socialist" to describe himself and who is avowedly liberal across the board. Two other announced Democratic candidates -- former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and former Republican senator from Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee -- have taken liberal positions in the past. In the 2016 election, they will be seeking to connect with the electorate on that basis, while also attempting to position themselves against Clinton on specific issues.
Yes, and the socialist Sanders is pulling up close to Hillary in the polls, "surprisingly" close. See WaPo, "Hillary Clinton only beat Bernie Sanders by 8 points in a straw poll. So?"

And at the Hill, "Sanders surges in New Hampshire poll":
Sen. Bernie Sanders is surging in New Hampshire, where one poll shows him just 10 percentage points behind Hillary Clinton and tied with the front-runner among self-identified liberals.

Sanders (I-Vt.) gets 31 percent in a new Suffolk University poll, compared to Clinton’s 41 percent. It’s one of his best showings in the Granite State.

The two are also tied among liberals at 39 percent, though Clinton holds a 20-percentage-point lead with centrist Democrats.

Clinton also holds strong leads with white voters and female voters, while Sanders has a slight lead among men.

The results come just one day after an opt-in poll from the Morning Consult showed Sanders within 12 points of Clinton.

Sanders has emerged as the leading liberal challenger to Clinton with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) declining to enter the race.
So Sanders ties Hillary among hard-core liberals at 39 percent at the Suffolk poll?

You think the Vermont socialist might pull the old "centrist" grandma to the left?

Well, check out this beautiful graphic at the Monkey Cage. The fulcrum of the Democrat presidential field is tilting way over to the left, and Hillary's going to have to out socialize Sanders on the trail -- if she's hoping to skate to her supposed coronation. And then how's that pivot back to the "moderate" center going to work out for her, heh? Boy, this is going to be a blast of a presidential primary season. Sanders even said he's in it to win. He's no spoiler!


Dylann Roof, Southern Democrat Throwback, is Drug-Addled 'Wannabe Emo Anarchist' with Androgynous Haircut

First of all, thank goodness the suspect is in police custody and unable to mount any new racist attacks.

The main story's at Charleston's Globe and Courier, "Suspect in Charleston church shooting arrested in North Carolina traffic stop."

And see "Charleston shooting suspect: White supremacy patches, Confederate flag, drug arrest."

Also at Memeorandum.

It turns out the suspect, Dylann Roof, is an ideological amalgam of old-line Southern segregationist Democrat KKK white supremacy combined with 21st century emo-progressive-anarchist sensibilities. Top that off with a horrendous androgynous emo bowl cut and a drug arrest, and you've got a poster child for new age leftist counter-culture abomination.

The guy is a product of the Democrat Party and contemporary moody emo-oriented pop-cultural leftism. As commenter firstHat points out at Althouse:
Sorry, that isn't the hair cut of a good ole boy. It's the haircut of an wannabe Emo Anarchist more interested in how he looks to the world than anything else. Waiting for the next shoe to drop (somewhere outside the earshot of the Main Scream Media no doubt).
All these pro-Obama leftists online whining about white supremacy need to take a good look in the mirror and face the logical outgrowth of their decades-long ideological agitation and hatred. From 1960s-era racial segregation to modern racist, Israel-bashing ideological extremism, the dude Roof is perfectly at home on the far-left of the political spectrum. He's a product of the left. He's a Democrat terrorist, just like the Klan terrorists of the Democrat Party South.

Democrat Party photo 99924bbc-5350-460e-8cc1-b7d3540470ed_zps91f59586.jpg

The kid is a classic leftist loser, stuck in the racist stereotypes of the Democrat Party South, with a confused androgynous moody identity. Turns out he was something of a loner as well.

I've never met a conservative like this, but far-left emo anarcho-progressives like this are a dime a dozen. Hopefully their parents don't buy them guns for their 21st birthday.

ADDED: According to Kathy Shaidle, an "instant classic," from Jim Goad on Adam Lanza and Sandy Hook, at Taki's, "Gunsville, USA":
Maybe those who claim they’re earnestly seeking an answer to Friday’s bloodbath should focus less on Gunsville and more on Pillsville. But right on the heels of their howling about NO GUNS came cries for MORE PSYCHIATRY. I don’t expect these remnants of 1960s ethics to ever blame drugs for anything. But what puzzles me is their newfound blind support of government. How did they turn from being the harshest critics of “The Man” in the 1960s to being his most brainwashed advocates today?

It’s also mildly amusing/disturbing how closely all the nerdy, medicated, spree-killing geeks resemble the progressive pundits who are caterwauling for unilateral disarmament of the citizenry. They look nothing like the fat and hairy—yet unmistakably male—Georgia hilljacks who milled around the gun show in Gainesville. And although I’m supposed to fear those “angry white males,” I felt far less hostility emanating from the convention floor than I do whenever I’m around leftist girly-boys.

9 Killed in Mass Shooting in Charleston, South Carolina

God have mercy.

At the Charlotte Observer, "9 fatally shot at historic black church in Charleston, S.C.":


CHARLESTON, S.C. - A white man opened fire during a prayer meeting inside a historic black church in downtown Charleston on Wednesday night, killing nine people in an assault that authorities described as a hate crime. The shooter remained at large Thursday morning.

Police Chief Greg Mullen said he believed the attack at the Emanuel AME Church was a hate crime, and police were looking for a white male in his early 20s.

“The only reason that someone could walk into a church and shoot people praying is out of hate,” said Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley. “It is the most dastardly act that one could possibly imagine, and we will bring that person to justice. … This is one hateful person.”

The attack came two months after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man, Walter Scott, by a white police officer in neighboring North Charleston that sparked major protests and highlighted racial tensions in the area. The officer has been charged with murder, and prompted South Carolina lawmakers to push through a bill helping all police agencies in the state get body cameras.

In a statement, Gov. Nikki Haley asked South Carolinians to pray for the victims and their families and decried violence on religious places.

“While we do not yet know all of the details, we do know that we'll never understand what motivates anyone to enter one of our places of worship and take the life of another,” Haley said.

Soon after Wednesday night’s shooting, a group of pastors huddled together praying in a circle across the street.

Community organizer Christopher Cason said he felt certain the shootings were racially motivated.

“I am very tired of people telling me that I don’t have the right to be angry,” Cason said. “I am very angry right now.”

Even before Scott’s shooting in April, Cason said he had been part of a group meeting with police and local leaders to try to shore up better relationships...
More.

And at the Charleston Post and Courier, "Nine shot, multiple fatalities reported in downtown church shooting":
Nine people were shot, some fatally, inside one of Charleston’s oldest and most well known black churches tonight. A bomb threat complicated the investigation and prompted police to ask nearby residents to evacuate.

Reporters and other onlookers huddled at the scene awaiting details on what could prove to be one of the worst mass shootings in South Carolina history.

Mayor Joe Riley confirmed there were fatalities.

“We’re still gathering information so it’s not the time yet for details,” he said. “I will say that this is an unspeakable and heartbreaking tragedy in this most historic church, an evil and hateful person took the lives of citizens who had come to worship and pray together.”

Riley said city police were being assisted by sheriff’s deputies, the State Law Enforcement Division and the FBI.

Police and emergency vehicles swarmed several blocks surrounding Henrietta and Calhoun streets, just east of Marion Square. Barricades blocked off several streets to traffic, and police asked nearby residents to leave their homes.

The shooting occurred around 9 p.m. inside Emanuel AME Church at 110 Calhoun St. Police were seen exiting the 19th century church, and their presence extended blocks beyond the site.

Police were still looking for the gunman late Wednesday, and helicopters are hovering above. Police spokesman Charles Francis described the suspect as a 21-year-old white male in a gray sweatshirt/hoodie and jeans with Timberland boots. He has a slender build.

There are victims involved, but police have not said how many. No deaths have yet been reported. A chaplain is on the scene.

State Sen. Marlon Kimpson, D-Charleston, said he has been talking with Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon and said, “It’s my understanding that there are some very serious injuries and possibly deaths.”
More.

And the update, "Nine dead after ‘hate crime’ shooting at Emanuel AME."



Also at Memeorandum.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

New York Times Slams Irish Student Visa Program as 'Source of Embarrassment' — #BerkeleyBalconyCollapse

A "drunken" source of embarrassment at that.

Stereotype much?

Maybe they could've waited a few days to push, ahem, a hard-hitting piece about the J-1 visa program? Well, no.

The piece slams the student visa program in general, but the writers are so tone deaf it's sickening.

See, "Deaths of Irish Students in Berkeley Balcony Collapse Cast Pall on Program":
BERKELEY, Calif. — They come by the thousands — Irish students on work visas, many flocking to the West Coast to work in summer jobs by day and to enjoy the often raucous life in a college town at night. It was, for many, a rite of passage, one last summer to enjoy travel abroad before beginning a career.

But the work-visa program that allowed for the exchanges has in recent years become not just a source of aspiration, but also a source of embarrassment for Ireland, marked by a series of high-profile episodes involving drunken partying and the wrecking of apartments in places like San Francisco and Santa Barbara.

Early Tuesday, 13 people, most of them young Irish students here on the visa program, were crowded onto a fourth-floor balcony off Unit 405 for what neighbors described as a loud party when the balcony collapsed, sending people tumbling onto the street below.

Six people were killed; five were Irish and the sixth had dual Irish-American citizenship, according to the Irish Embassy. Three of the dead were men, three were women, and all were in their 20s. At least seven others suffered injuries, some serious...
And see the Guardian UK, "New York Times apologizes to Ireland for ‘insensitive’ ​balcony collapse story":

The New York Times apologized on Wednesday after a story about a balcony collapse in California that left five of Ireland’s citizens dead was denounced by the country’s government officials.

The article said that students traveling to Berkeley, California on J-1 visas, like those that died in the collapse, were “not just a source of aspiration, but also a source of embarrassment for Ireland”.

The tone of the piece inspired widespread condemnation from a country reeling from the deaths of the five young people, all aged 21 or 22. One person with dual US-Irish citizenship also died.

“It was never our intention to blame the victims and we apologize if the piece left that impression,” said New York Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy in an email.

The students in Berkeley were celebrating a 21st birthday when the apartment balcony collapsed. Six people died in the incident and seven others were injured.

The New York Times article was “intended to explain in greater detail why these young Irish students were in the US”, said Murphy. “We understand and agree that some of the language in the piece could be interpreted as insensitive, particularly in such close proximity to this tragedy.”

Anne Anderson, the Irish ambassador to the US, said that language used in the article was “insensitive and inaccurate” in a public letter to the New York Times editor.

“No one yet knows what caused the collapse of the fourth-floor balcony; the matter is under urgent investigation by structural engineers,” Anderson wrote. “The implication of your article – that the behaviour of the students was in some way a factor in the collapse – has caused deep offence.”

She said that it is “quite simply wrong” to portray the visa programme as a “source of embarrassment”.

“Yes, there have been isolated incidents of the type to which your article refers. But they are wholly unrepresentative: bear in mind that 150,000 young Irish people have participated in the J1 program over the past 50 years, and some 7,000 are here for Summer 2015,” she said. “From all the feedback we receive, we know that the overwhelming majority of our J1 participants behave in a way that does Ireland proud.”

Ireland’s junior minister for new communities, culture and equality, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, said on Twitter that the newspaper’s reporting about the collapse “is a disgrace”.

He also called the newspaper’s apology “pathetic”...''

Treasury Department to Remove Alexander Hamilton from $10 Bill

I like Hamilton, but Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew says he's got to go --- in favor of a woman!

At Pajamas, "Treasury to Go All Aaron Burr on the $10 Bill, Bump Off Hamilton."


Stunning Kate Hudson Bikini Shot on Greek Island of Skiathos

She's so sweet.

On Instagram.

Story at People Magazine, "Kate Hudson Models a Teeny Bikini – and Flaunts Her Insane Abs – While Vacationing in Greece."

The Left, Losing the Debate on Homosexuals and Transgenders, Always Resorts to 'Biological Basis' Fall-Back Position

This is great, from Daniel Payne, at the Federalist, "Left Resorts to ‘Gaslighting’ Tactics In Transgender Debate."

I had to chuckle a couple of times, although the implication of the argument supports the idea that radical homosexual leftists will ratchet ever increasing totalitarian methods to shut down opposition to the left's regressive agenda.


AQAP's Most Dangerous Man Is Still Alive

From Yochi Dreazen, at Foreign Policy, "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s Most Dangerous Man Is Still Alive":
The CIA drone strike that killed the head of al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate took out a militant Washington has been hunting for years. An even more elusive and dangerous member of the group remains at large, however: the master bomb-maker who almost blew up an American airliner and poses what U.S. intelligence officials see as a genuine threat to successfully down one in the future.

In a rambling 10-minute video Tuesday, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula confirmed that its leader, Nasir al-Wuhayshi, died in an American strike last week. A spokesman for the group, Khaled Saeed Batarfi, praised Wuhayshi as a “brave commander” and promised to take revenge. “To the caretaker of disbelief, America, Allah has left for you those who shall blacken your faces, embitter your living, and make you taste the bitterness of the war and taste of defeat,” Miqdad said, according to a translation from the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks jihadi social media.

Militant groups routinely release defiant statements after a top leader is killed, but the group may have more reason than most for its confidence about one day carrying out a successful strike against the United States. Wuhayshi commanded the group, but he didn’t actually build the sophisticated nonmetallic explosives that keep Western counterterrorism officials awake at night.Wuhayshi commanded the group, but he didn’t actually build the sophisticated nonmetallic explosives that keep Western counterterrorism officials awake at night. Those bombs, carefully designed to evade detection by metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs, have instead been assembled by a shadowy former Saudi chemist named Ibrahim al-Asiri. And a U.S. official said Tuesday that Asiri, despite multiple U.S. attempts to kill him, is thought to still be very much alive.

“Asiri and his skills remain a key strength of the group,” said Michael Morell, a former acting director of the CIA. When asked about Asiri’s technical expertise as a bomb-maker, Morell had a blunt answer: “He is the best.”

Bruce Riedel, a former high-level CIA official, said Asiri presented a significant threat to the United States because the longer he remained operational, the more militants he could train in the fine art of building explosive devices capable of evading Western screening technologies.

“Asiri is a danger not just because of his skills, but because he has educated a cadre of bomb-makers to be his legacy,” Riedel said.

The White House has trumpeted Wuhayshi’s death as a significant accomplishment, with National Security Council spokesman Ned Price saying Tuesday that it “strikes a major blow to AQAP” and to al Qaeda more broadly. The CIA strike, Price added, “removes from the battlefield an experienced terrorist leader and brings us closer to degrading and ultimately defeating these groups.”

Both Morell and Riedel question that assertion, arguing that AQAP may actually be more dangerous than ever before because it has been able to take advantage of the violence and political instability wracking its home base of Yemen. The United States yanked most of its intelligence and Special Operations personnel out of Yemen earlier this year after Iranian-backed Houthi rebels captured the capital of Sanaa and broad swaths of the country. Saudi Arabia has mounted a broad air campaign to dislodge the group, but it has so far notched few tangible victories.

“AQAP is stronger today than ever, even without Wuhayshi, because of the chaos in Yemen,” Riedel said.  “It has a very dangerous stronghold now in the far east of the country.”

The threat posed by the group stems, in large part, from Asiri’s continued ability to evade the combined might of the CIA and the secretive Joint Special Operations Command and continue his work...
More.

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Cybersecurity and US-China International Relations

In light of the supposedly catastrophic OPM hack, I went back to the Winter issue of International Security to read Professor Jon Lindsay's lead article, "The Impact of China on Cybersecurity: Fiction and Friction" (in PDF here).

A great piece, non-alarmist, with a fabulous 4x4 typology on the nature of international cyber threat narratives.

Fortunately, Lindsay has a beautiful summary of the article at the Huffington Post, "Inflated Cybersecurity Threat Escalates US-China Mistrust":

The rhetorical spiral of mistrust in the Sino-American relationship threatens to undermine the mutual benefits of the information revolution. Fears about the paralysis of the United States' digital infrastructure or the hemorrhage of its competitive advantage are exaggerated.

Policymakers in the United States often portray China as posing a serious cybersecurity threat. In 2013 U.S. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon stated that Chinese cyber intrusions not only endanger national security but also threaten U.S. firms with the loss of competitive advantage.

One U.S. member of Congress has asserted that China has "laced the U.S. infrastructure with logic bombs." Chinese critics, meanwhile, denounce Western allegations of Chinese espionage and decry National Security Agency (NSA) activities revealed by Edward Snowden.

The People's Daily newspaper has described the United States as "a thief crying 'stop thief.'" Chinese commentators increasingly call for the exclusion of U.S. internet firms from the Chinese market, citing concerns about collusion with the NSA, and argue that the institutions of internet governance give the United States an unfair advantage.

Chinese cyber operators face underappreciated organizational challenges, including information overload and bureaucratic compartmentalization, which hinder the weaponization of cyberspace or absorption of stolen intellectual property.

More important, both the United States and China have strong incentives to moderate the intensity of their cyber exploitation to preserve profitable interconnections and avoid costly punishment. The policy backlash against U.S. firms and liberal internet governance by China and others is ultimately more worrisome for U.S. competitiveness than espionage; ironically, it is also counterproductive for Chinese growth.

The United States is unlikely to experience either a so-called digital Pearl Harbor through cyber warfare or death by a thousand cuts through industrial espionage. There is, however, some danger of crisis miscalculation when states field cyberweapons.

The secrecy of cyberweapons' capabilities and the uncertainties about their effects and collateral damage are as likely to confuse friendly militaries as they are to muddy signals to an adversary.

Unsuccessful preemptive cyberattacks could reveal hostile intent and thereby encourage retaliation with more traditional (and reliable) weapons. Conversely, preemptive escalation spurred by fears of cyberattack could encourage the target to use its cyberweapons before it loses the opportunity to do so. Bilateral dialogue is essential for reducing the risks of misperception between the United States and China in the event of a crisis.
Keep reading.


Just Wow! Rachel Dolezal Denies Larry and Ruthanne Dolezal Are Really Her Biological Parents (VIDEO)

This woman is truly psycho. She's so deep into her ideological cesspool of lies that she threw her (biological) parents under the bus on national TV.

Honestly, I didn't blog Dolezal yesterday, considering her a peak loser, but once again she comes through with an even deeper and elaborate degree of leftist evil.

Sick, sick, sick.

The video is here: "Rachel Dolezal Full New Interview : 'Nothing About Being White Describes Who I Am'."

Also at Politico, "Rachel Dolezal: No 'biological proof' I'm my parents' daughter."

And at the Los Angeles Times, "Rachel Dolezal throws doubt on her biological parents: 'I haven't had a DNA test'":

Rachel Dolezal photo thumbnail_2_7586030b_v2_zpsofil72pj.jpg
Rachel Dolezal's daylong media blitz in which she denied that she is a white woman posing as black culminated Tuesday night with a claim that she's not sure her white parents are her real parents.

"I haven't had a DNA test. There's been no biological proof that Larry and Ruthanne are my biological parents," Dolezal said in an appearance on "NBC Nightly News."

"There's a birth certificate that has your name on it and their names on it," interviewer Savannah Guthrie responded.

"I'm not necessarily saying that I can prove they're not," Dolezal said. "But I don't know that I can actually prove they are. I mean, the birth certificate is issued a month and a half after I'm born. And certainly there were no medical witnesses to my birth."

Earlier Tuesday, Dolezal, a former Spokane, Wash., NAACP leader, said she had viewed herself as black since childhood and knows what it’s like to “live black,” despite critics’ allegations she is a poseur.

In back-to-back interviews with NBC’s “Today” show and MSNBC on Tuesday morning, Dolezal did not offer any apologies and said she was being attacked in a “viciously inhumane way,” even as she remained committed to fighting for human rights.

Dolezal also denied switching racial identities for opportunistic reasons, even though she sued Howard University for allegedly discriminating against her when she was a white graduate student there, and years later described herself as black on job applications.

“I identify as black,” a composed, smiling Dolezal said during a 10-minute interview on “Today,” less than 24 hours after she resigned as president of the NAACP's chapter in Spokane, Wash.

Dolezal, 37, said she hoped the passions aroused by the episode would be channeled into a deeper conversation on ethnicity and race.

“The discussion really is what it is to be human,” she said.

Asked if she would again make the same choices that led to the uproar, Dolezal replied: “I would.”
More.

The woman is insane.

The Same-Sex Marriage Bait-and-Switch

From Jonathan Last, at the Weekly Standard, "You Will Be Assimilated":
You may recall Brendan Eich. The cofounder and CEO of Mozilla was dismissed from his company in 2014 when it was discovered that, six years earlier, he had donated $1,000 to California’s Proposition 8 campaign. That ballot initiative, limiting marriage to one man and one woman, passed with a larger percentage of the vote in California than Barack Obama received nationally in 2012. No one who knew Eich accused him of treating his gay coworkers badly—by all accounts he was kind and generous to his colleagues. Nonetheless, having provided modest financial support to a lawful ballot initiative that passed with a majority vote was deemed horrible enough to deprive Eich of his livelihood. Which is one thing.

What is quite another is the manner in which Eich has been treated since. A year after Eich’s firing, for instance, Hampton Catlin, a Silicon Valley programmer who was one of the first to demand Eich’s resignation, took to Twitter to bait Eich:
Hampton ‏@hcatlin Apr 2

It had been a couple weeks since I’d gotten some sort of @BrendanEich related hate mail. How things going over there on your side, Brendan?

BrendanEich ‏@BrendanEich

@hcatlin You demanded I be “completely removed from any day to day activities at Mozilla” & got your wish. I’m still unemployed. How’re you?

Hampton ‏@hcatlin Apr 2

@BrendanEich married and able to live in the USA! .  .  . and working together on open source stuff! In like, a loving, happy gay married way!
It’s a small thing, to be sure. But telling. Because it shows that the same-sex marriage movement is interested in a great deal more than just the freedom to form marital unions. It is also interested, quite keenly, in punishing dissenters. But the ambitions of the movement go further than that, even. It’s about revisiting legal notions of freedom of speech and association, constitutional protections for religious freedom, and cultural norms concerning the family. And most Americans are only just realizing that these are the societal compacts that have been pried open for negotiation.

Same-sex marriage supporters see this cascade of changes as necessary for safeguarding progress against retrograde elements in society. People less deeply invested in same-sex marriage might see it as a bait-and-switch. And they would be correct. But this is hardly new. Bait-and-switch has been the modus operandi of the gay rights movement not, perhaps, from the start, but for a good long while.

It began at the most elementary factual level: How many Americans are gay? For decades, gay-rights activists pushed the line that 1 out of every 10 people is homosexual. This statistic belied all evidence but was necessary in order to imbue the cause with a sense of ubiquity and urgency. The public fell so hard for this propaganda that in 2012 Gallup did a poll asking people what percentage of the country they thought was gay. The responses were amazing. Women and young adults were the most gullible, saying, on average, that they thought 30 percent of the population was gay. The average American thought that 24 percent of the population—one quarter—was gay. Only 4 percent of respondents said they thought homosexuals made up less than 5 percent of the population.

But even 5 percent turns out to be an exaggeration. The best research to date on American sexual preference is a 2014 study from the Centers for Disease Control with a monster sample of 34,557 adults. It found that 96.6 percent of Americans identified as heterosexual, 1.6 percent identified as gay or lesbian, and 0.7 percent as bisexual. The percentage of gays and lesbians isn’t much higher than the percentage of folks who refused to answer the question (1.1 percent).

Then there’s the matter of the roots of homosexuality. Important to the narrative behind the same-sex marriage movement has been the insistence that sexual orientation is genetically determined and not a choice. But now that same-sex marriage is a reality, some activists are admitting that this view might not, strictly speaking, be true. For instance, in the avant-garde webzine n+1, Alexander Borinsky argued that sexuality is a characteristic to be actively constructed by the self. He was making a philosophical argument from the safety of gay marriage’s now-dominant position. Others were less philosophical and more practical. Here, for instance, is how the dancer and writer Brandon Ambrosino tackled the subject in the New Republic in January 2014:
[I]t’s time for the LGBT community to start moving beyond genetic predisposition as a tool for gaining mainstream acceptance of gay rights. .  .  .

For decades now, it’s been the most powerful argument in the LGBT arsenal: that we were “born this way.” .  .  .Still, as compelling as these arguments are, they may have outgrown their usefulness. With most Americans now in favor of gay marriage, it’s time for the argument to shift to one where genetics don’t matter. The genetic argument has boxed us into a corner.
It’s always a little unsettling when a movement that claims the mantle of truth, liberty, and equality starts openly admitting its arguments are mere “tools” to be wielded for their “usefulness.” But that’s where the movement is these days. Remember when proponents of same-sex marriage mocked people who suggested that creating a right to same-sex “marriage” might weaken the institution of marriage itself: How could my gay marriage possibly affect your straight marriage? Those arguments have outlived their usefulness, too. Here’s gay activist Jay Michaelson last year in the Daily Beast:
Moderates and liberals have argued that same-sex marriage is No Big Deal—it’s the Same Love, after all, and gays just want the same lives as everyone else. But further right and further left, things get a lot more interesting. What if gay marriage really will change the institution of marriage, shifting conceptions around monogamy and intimacy? . . .

[T]here is some truth to the conservative claim that gay marriage is changing, not just expanding, marriage. According to a 2013 study, about half of gay marriages surveyed (admittedly, the study was conducted in San Francisco) were not strictly monogamous.

This fact is well-known in the gay community—indeed, we assume it’s more like three-quarters. But it’s been fascinating to see how my straight friends react to it. Some feel they’ve been duped: They were fighting for marriage equality, not marriage redefinition. Others feel downright envious, as if gays are getting a better deal, one that wouldn’t work for straight couples. . . .

What would happen if gay non-monogamy—and I’ll include writer Dan Savage’s “monogamish” model, which involves extramarital sex once a year or so—actually starts to spread to straight people? Would open marriages, ’70s swinger parties, and perhaps even another era’s “arrangements” and “understandings” become more prevalent? Is non-monogamy one of the things same-sex marriage can teach straight ones, along with egalitarian chores and matching towel sets?

And what about those post-racial and post-gender millennials? What happens when a queer-identified, mostly-heterosexual woman with plenty of LGBT friends gets married? Do we really think that because she is “from Venus,” she will be interested in a heteronormative, sex-negative, patriarchal system of partnership? . . .

Radicals point out that gay liberation in the 1970s was, as the name implies, a liberation movement. It was about being free, questioning authority, rebellion. “2-4-6-8, smash the church and smash the state,” people shouted.
Slate’s Hanna Rosin agrees, suggesting that gay marriage won’t just change “normal” marriage, but will do so for the good:
The dirty little secret about gay marriage: Most gay couples are not monogamous. We have come to accept lately, partly thanks to Liza Mundy’s excellent recent cover story in the Atlantic and partly because we desperately need something to make the drooping institution of heterosexual marriage seem vibrant again, that gay marriage has something to teach us, that gay couples provide a model for marriages that are more egalitarian and less burdened by the old gender roles that are weighing marriage down these days.
Of course, not everyone in the same-sex marriage movement wants to help traditional marriage evolve into something better. Some want to burn it to the ground. Again in the New Republic, for instance, one member of a married lesbian couple wrote about her quest to use her own brother’s sperm to impregnate her wife. Why would she seek to do such a thing? Because “The queer parts of me relished the way it unsettled people. Uprooting convention, collapsing categories, reframing and reassigning blood relations was a subversive wet dream.” This is quite intentionally not, as Andrew Sullivan once promised, a “virtually normal” view of marriage.

Other changes are coming...
I'm sure they are.

No surprise to me, of course. I warned about many of these developments over the years since Prop. 8. The hate campaign against dissenters is the least surprising of all. It's been a constant in the news for years now. What's next is the continued marginalization of religion from the public square, and the further evisceration of robust public morality.

Keep reading, in any case.

Again, more specific expectations going forward depend on what happens at the Supreme Court in the coming days. Once we find out how the Court rules, we'll have a better sense of the coming arc of the homosexual agenda. That, and the virtually inevitable majority backlash against same-sex licentiousness and immorality. As I always say, social issues are not settled. Support for homosexual marriage in public opinion has probably peaked. Aggressive hate campaign by the left will drive public opinion back down. This is the worst outcome for the radical left's homosexual activists and SJWs, and they'll do anything to prevent the emergence of a traditional marriage movement rivaling the pro-life movement (and all its successes). This includes destroying lives with complete impunity and even using political violence against dissenters.

America's in for a long cultural war, with thanks to the left's ideological demons of hate and perversity.

Seven Reasons the GOP Should Fear Donald Trump

Seems like Trump's more of a carnival barker, but he says things no other candidates are willing to say, and sometimes he inflicts casualties.

He won't win the nomination. And I don't think the top-tier candidates have anything to fear in him. But you never know.

At Politico, "He’s a nuisance, a hothead and totally unqualified. But that’s what they said about Ross Perot":

Donald Trump, you’ve already performed one campaign miracle. You’ve cheered me up.

Frankly, I didn’t think anyone could lift my spirits so quickly after the season finale of “Game of Thrones.” But Trump’s entry into the 2016 race has everyone in Washington smiling again. Especially the Democrats. How much fun did the folks at the DNC have over crafting this response? “Trump’s entry adds much-needed seriousness to the GOP field.” (Whoever came up with that line is just clever enough to be dangerous.)

Of course, the Democrats can afford to laugh, but the Republicans – well, not so much. And for seven key reasons...
Keep reading.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras Attacks IMF's 'Criminal Responsibility' for Greece Economic Crisis

What a soap opera, sheesh.

At the Telegraph UK, "Alexis Tsipras launches scathing attack on IMF as Greek authorities vow to fight desperate state cash grab":
Greek premier says IMF bears “criminal responsibility” as authorities vow only to transfer reserves if its the "last drop of blood" that will save the country from a euro exit.

Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras escalated his defiance towards the country’s official creditors, with a pointed attack on the International Monetary Fund, accusing the institution of “financial asphyxiation”.

In a firebrand speech to his parliament, Mr Tsipras said the IMF bore "criminal responsibility" for his country’s cash crisis.
"The fixation on cuts...is most likely part of a political plan...to humiliate an entire people that has suffered in the past five years through no fault of its own,” said Mr Tsipras.

This is the first time the Greek premier has targeted his government’s ire at the Fund in such a public manner. The IMF, which holds the position of senior creditor in the country's €240m rescue, is demanding Syriza cross its sacred red line on pensions, which they calculate as amounting to 16.2pc of GDP.

The combative speech came after the prime minister had met with his parliamentarians and leader of opposition centrist To Potami party. According to reports, Mr Tsipras told his counterparts the country would not fulfil its latest IMF repayment on June 30 if no deal was reached.

His defiant address further exposes the rift between Greece’s troika of lenders, whose competing demands on the country have led to a five-month negotiating stalemate.

“Our biggest battles [with creditors] still lie ahead and we must be ready to fight,” added Mr Tsipras.

IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard has admitted the debtor country will need a further write-off on its mounting debt pile - a measure which has all but been ruled out by Greece’s European paymasters...
More.

Six Dead in Berkeley Balcony Collapse

At the San Francisco Chronicle, "6 dead, 7 hurt in Berkeley balcony collapse."

And at CBS News San Francisco, "Raw Video: Irish Students Among 5 Dead, 8 Injured In Berkeley Balcony Collapse," and "Chopper Aerials of Deadly Berkeley Balcony Collapse.

Plus, "Team Coverage of Deadly Berkeley Balcony Collapse."

So, This 'Unequivocal' Climate Science Dude Isn't Too Bright

Two tweets, and actually just one actual rejoinder, was enough to send this climate cultist heading for the tall grass. [ADDED: Clicking back over on this dolt's handle I see he's got me blocked, and again that's after just one reply. That's it. Towering intellectuals over on the left's "scientific" bench, lol.]

It's a religion with these people. Seriously, climate change politics is actually a faith, and it's so far gone now that you have a real religious leader --- the Pope --- marching at the front of the shock troop formations of the global left. It's pretty fascinating as a study in mass hysteria.

Katrina vanden Heuval prompted this with her piece, at WaPo, "Cracks appear in the climate change deniers’ defenses."

France's National Front Announces New 'Far Right' Coalition in European Parliament

Geert Wilders is on board.

At LAT, "Far right forms coalition in European Parliament":
France's National Front announced Tuesday it had formed a new far-right bloc in the European Parliament that will qualify for up to nearly $20 million in funding over the next four years.

Marine Le Pen, leader of the FN, said the group would be called Europe of Nations and Freedoms.

Her allies share Le Pen's desire to curb immigration and the influence of Islam in Europe -- a concern that critics have described as xenophobic. They include the Dutch Party for Freedom, the Freedom Party of Austria, Italy's Lega Nord and Vlaams Belang from Belgium as well as lawmakers from the Polish KNP party.

At a press conference in Brussels, Le Pen described it as a "political strike force that will go far beyond our previous situation." She said far-right parties like the FN had “growing support” in Europe.

“This group is the result of a year of efforts, and our wish to avoid making dubious alliances like other groups. It’s good news for our countries, our people, our freedom,” she said.

Geert Wilders, a member of the European Parliament from the Dutch Freedom Party, told reporters: "Today is D-day, it’s the beginning of our liberation. ... I really believe today is a historical moment."

He added: "We are the voice of the European resistance, we defend national identity, our prosperity and our sovereignty. This is an excellent day because we will gain influence in the European Parliament with the newly formed group."

Wilders then addressed the European far-right’s major concerns: immigration and Islam. "The timing is right. A catastrophe is coming to the European Union and Europe today,” he said. “One million people are trying to arrive from northern Africa and this mass immigration should be stopped.”

He said the group would fight the “Islamization" of the continent and “stand for our own national values.”

As well as more money, the group will get more speaking time during European parliamentary sessions, more staff and access to key posts increasing its influence across the continent.

Reaction from more centrist European parties was dour. A German member of the European Parliament, Herbert Reul of the center-right Christian Democratic Union party, told journalists it was a "bad day for Europe."

European Parliament groups must be made up of at least 25 members from at least seven countries...
More.

And at WSJ:


St. Louis Cardinals Investigated by F.B.I. for Hacking Astros

Talk about a change of pace, wow.

At the New York Times, "Cardinals Face F.B.I. Inquiry in Hacking of Astros’ Network":
WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors are investigating whether front-office officials for the St. Louis Cardinals, one of the most successful teams in baseball over the past two decades, hacked into internal networks of a rival team to steal closely guarded information about player personnel.

Investigators have uncovered evidence that Cardinals officials broke into a network of the Houston Astros that housed special databases the team had built, according to law enforcement officials. Internal discussions about trades, proprietary statistics and scouting reports were compromised, the officials said.

The officials did not say which employees were the focus of the investigation or whether the team’s highest-ranking officials were aware of the hacking or authorized it. The investigation is being led by the F.B.I.’s Houston field office and has progressed to the point that subpoenas have been served on the Cardinals and Major League Baseball for electronic correspondence.

The attack represents the first known case of corporate espionage in which a professional sports team has hacked the network of another team. Illegal intrusions into companies’ networks have become commonplace, but it is generally conducted by hackers operating in foreign countries, like Russia and China, who steal large tranches of data or trade secrets for military equipment and electronics.

Major League Baseball “has been aware of and has fully cooperated with the federal investigation into the illegal breach of the Astros’ baseball operations database,” a spokesman for baseball’s commissioner, Rob Manfred, said in a written statement.

The Cardinals officials under investigation have not been put on leave, suspended or fired. The commissioner’s office is likely to wait until the conclusion of the government’s investigation to determine whether to take disciplinary action against the officials or the team...
 Fascinating.

Continue reading, as well as the responses at Memeorandum.

ADDED: More from Bill Shaikin:


Are Social Issues Hurting Democrats?

From the letters to the editor, at the Wall Street Journal, "Do Social Issues Hurt Democrats?":
Karl Rove asks, “Are Social Issues Hurting Republicans?” (op-ed, June 4). I wonder why his question is rarely, if ever, asked about Democrats. Do they not lose as well as gain votes by the positions they take on sociocultural issues? Are the political platforms of the Democrats less laden with these concerns than those of the GOP? I wonder how many votes the Democrats lose because of their position on such issues as late-term abortion, same-sex marriage, their encouragement of dependency on government, their opposition to school choice through vouchers and charter schools, limits on religious freedom, distribution of contraceptives and referrals for abortion to school children without parental consent. Are these social issues hurting Democrats?

Edward Maillet
Charlottesville, Va.
Great questions.

Democrats got hammered last November in the congressional elections, and not just on the economy. I expect we're reaching the tipping point on many of the social issues addressed at the letter, and if the Democrats struggle to mobilize commensurate numbers of voters from 2012, the party's nominee could get hammered in 2016. Immigration, especially, is bound to be a hot-button issue, as it raises both economic and social issues. Homosexual marriage continues to be explosive, even more so with so much uncertainty going forward on constitutional grounds. (Folks like the lying sack Michael LaCour aren't doing the Democrats any favors either.) On racial issues in particular, don't be surprised if the Democrats get tagged with unflattering connections to Rachel Dolezal, especially on racial preferences in the workplace and campus political correctness.

The Democrats are the fringe party of American politics. The media elite also happen to be fringe whackjobs, which is why Hillary can count on a least a two-to-three point handicap going up against the generic GOP nominee, and perhaps even more.

Doctor Linked to Drug Deaths Allowed to Practice on Probation

This story's a blast from the not-too-distant past.

The brother of one of my students, a lovely young woman, was one of the patients discussed in a 2012 report at the Los Angeles Times, "DYING FOR RELIEF: Legal drugs, deadly outcomes."

Now it turns out the doctor at the center of the case, Van H. Vu, is still practicing medicine.

See, "Doctor linked to drug deaths allowed to practice on probation":
An Orange County doctor accused of gross negligence in the care of two patients who fatally overdosed on drugs he prescribed has been placed on probation by the Medical Board of California.

Van H. Vu, who owns a busy pain clinic in Huntington Beach, agreed not to contest the board's accusation, to take classes in prescribing and record keeping and to submit to an outside practice monitor for five years. In exchange, the board allowed Vu to keep his license and continue prescribing potent painkillers.

A 2012 Times investigation revealed 16 patients' overdose deaths associated with Vu's practice and raised questions about the medical board's oversight of doctors who prescribe dangerous narcotics. The Times found that even when the board sanctioned doctors for problem prescribing, in most cases it allowed them to continue practicing and prescribing with few or no restrictions. Eight doctors disciplined for excessive prescribing later had patients die of overdoses or related causes. Prescriptions those doctors wrote caused or contributed to 19 deaths, The Times found.

A board spokeswoman said the agreement with Vu, which took effect Friday, served the public interest by avoiding the expense and uncertainty of a trial.

“It makes the resolution faster,” spokeswoman Cassandra Hockenson said. “We still have the upper hand. He will be watched very, very closely.... If he deviates one iota from these probationary requirements, revocation is back on the table.”

Lawyers for Vu did not return calls.

Sally Finnila-Sloane, whose brother died after getting a prescription from Vu, said she was disappointed with the board's decision.

“He had his hand slapped, and my brother's dead,” she said.

The Times revealed that Karl Finnila, 43, died on a sidewalk hours after getting a prescription from Vu. The medical board faulted Vu for prescribing to him even after learning he was suicidal and seeking drugs. The coroner left half a dozen messages for Vu asking for information about Finnila, but the calls went unreturned, records showed.

“How is that right? How is that fair? Where's justice?” his sister asked. “The worst thing that's happened is the guy had his name published in the newspaper.”

A criminal investigation opened in the wake of the Times report is ongoing, according to law enforcement sources familiar with the inquiry.

In interviews in 2012, Vu described himself as a conscientious, caring physician. He declined to comment on individual cases, citing confidentiality laws, but he said he treats many “very, very difficult patients” whose chronic pain is sometimes complicated by substance abuse and depression, anxiety or other mental illness.

“Every single day, I try to do the best I can for every single patient,” he said. “I can't control what they do once they leave my office.”

Clarissa Ward Reports: An Inside Look from Yemen -- A Country in the Midst of Civil War

This is excellent reporting, from last night's CBS Evening News:


How to Destroy Islamic State?

A symposium, at National Journal, "What Should the U.S. Do About ISIS?"


Justine Ezarik and Tony Hawk

Not expecting to see this pairing.

From iJustine on Twitter:



Charlotte McKinney Poses in Super Revealing Sheer Lingerie for Nicholas Routzen

At Egotastic!, "CHARLOTTE McKINNEY SHEER LINGERIE REVEALS HER BLONDE GOODIES."

Megyn Kelly Interviews Larry and Ruthanne Dolezal

There's still more steam to this story, as Rachel Dolezal is expected to hit some major network talk shows today, especially the Today Show on NBC.



Critics Say L.A.'s Minimum-Wage Victory is Tainted by Organized Labor's Push for Exemptions for Union Workplaces

You think?

At the Los Angeles Times, "Labor leaders' credibility slips in minimum-wage debate":
L.A.'s decision to boost the minimum wage should have been the sweetest of victories for organized labor.

Mayor Eric Garcetti helped union leaders and their allies achieve a long-sought goal Saturday, signing an ordinance that moves the city's hourly minimum to $15 by 2020.

But for some partisans on each side of the debate, that historic moment has been tainted by labor leaders' last-minute push for an exemption for unionized workplaces. The request for a union waiver — proposed and then abruptly shelved — drew national attention, much of it negative, to the county Federation of Labor and its recently installed top executive, Rusty Hicks.

When Hicks and his allies advocated for the increase, "they basically said everybody who works in Los Angeles is entitled to $15 an hour — that that's the minimum people should be paid so they can pay rent and support their families," said lobbyist Steve Afriat, who bucked other business officials by endorsing a $15 minimum wage last fall. "And then … they hardly take a break before they say, 'We want our members exempt from it.'"

That request hurt the credibility of union leaders, Afriat said, particularly among L.A. leaders who are not their "knee-jerk" supporters. Other assessments were similarly harsh.

Political analyst Harold Meyerson, an expert on organized labor, called Hicks' handling of the proposal a "self-inflicted disaster" in an op-ed in The Times. The gossip site Gawker outright mocked backers of the idea.

And USA Today's editorial page said the opt-out clause showed labor was looking to use the minimum wage increase as "a weapon to pressure companies to unionize," since unionized companies would then have the ability to negotiate a subminimum wage.

Hicks said he broached the idea of an exemption to the citywide minimum wage last month, in phone calls to staffers with City Council President Herb Wesson and Councilman Curren Price. Those calls took place after the council had backed a plan for raising the wage but before its vote on the specific language. Once the information got out, spurring a backlash, Hicks held a news conference to explain that city leaders would take additional time to study the idea.

Wesson is now planning a discussion of the issue this fall. But others say labor leaders might have done better to let the idea die a swift and public death...
Continue reading.


Ted F'king Cruz!

He wasn't in the news yesterday, but Jeb "Amnesty" Bush was, heh.

Cool.



Broad Questions About Race After NAACP Chapter Leader's Resignation

A great piece on the Dolezal phenomenon, at WaPo.

Universal Pictures Announces 'Pitch Perfect 3'

Anna Kendrick's got a profitable franchise going there.

At WSJ:



Brace Yourself: Huge Majority Expects Nationwide Racial Unrest This Summer

The poll's from April, "Baltimore Riots: Poll Finds 96% Expect More Racially-Charged Unrest Nationwide."

But John Fund's picked up on it, at National Review, "Most Americans Expect a Long, Hot Summer of Racial Unrest. Moynihan Would Not Be Surprised."

No justice. No peace.



Watters' World: What's Off Limits in Today's PC-Drenched Cultural Minefield?

From yesterday's O'Reilly Factor, a great segment with Jesse Watters:



Monday, June 15, 2015

Reactions to 'Game of Thrones' Season Finale

This is good. At the Los Angeles Times, "All these people are done with 'Game of Thrones.' Are you?"

Plus, a great interview with Kit Harrington, at Entertainment Weekly, "Game of Thrones star on that shocking death: 'I'm not coming back'."

And at BuzzFeed, "29 Questions I Have After the “Game of Thrones” Season 5 Finale."



Syria's Aleppo Shows Toll of Nearly Three Years of War

A great piece, at LAT, "In war-shattered Aleppo, some of Syria's toughest civilians stay put":

A series of checkpoints and barriers cobbled together from tumbleweeds, discarded furniture and assorted urban detritus mark the path to one of the world's most storied sites: Aleppo's ancient covered market, the heart of the Old City.

Much of the magnificent souk, with its vaulted ceilings, stone arches and hanging lamps, is now a charred ruin. Labyrinthine corridors trod upon for centuries in this former Silk Road terminus stand silent, abandoned except for Syrian army special forces.

The troops are posted about 30 yards away from rebels who occupy the other half of the bazaar, the core of the Old City, a United Nations World Heritage site. Below ground, the two sides engage in tunnel warfare: Rebels seek to blow up military positions from their tunnels, while soldiers aim to thwart subterranean assaults from their own passageways.

At street level, the staccato of gunfire and thud of mortar rounds sporadically break the stillness. And then there are the hellish improvised bombings, loud explosions followed by the cries of anguished survivors.

"If we only had six months of peace, people would come back and this could all be reconstructed," a Syrian army commander said as he strolled through the market, noting that many of the centuries-old stone walls were still intact, albeit blackened by fire.

But a rare visit by a Western correspondent to the government-controlled neighborhoods of Aleppo makes clear the jarring toll of nearly three years of warfare.

This historic city, once Syria's commercial hub, is divided between government forces and various Islamist rebel groups, whose brigades form a semicircle around the town. A stalemate set in almost three years ago, and shows no sign of abating.

President Bashar Assad has vowed not to withdraw forces from the once-bustling city of about 3 million, despite recent rebel gains elsewhere in the north against an overstretched military.

Power and water shortages, along with daily mortar and sniper attacks, leave the estimated 2 million who remain here on edge. The Internet and other communications are spotty. Many of the factories that made Aleppo a thriving industrial capital have been looted and destroyed, the machinery and wiring carted off to neighboring Turkey, business leaders say.

In May 2014, rebels with Al Nusra Front managed to cut off most of the water supply to government-controlled areas for 13 days. The Al Qaeda affiliate is one of several opposition factions in Aleppo. Islamic State, the Al Qaeda offshoot that is a rival of Al Nusra, was driven out of Aleppo city in early 2014 by other rebel groups, but maintains a presence in the rural Aleppo region.

With the airport mostly out of service, the army keeps the city resupplied via a circuitous eight-hour road link to Damascus that skirts rebel territory...

Wet and Wild Erin Heatherton

Here's a break from the fake black woman blogging, lol.

Via Sports Illustrated Swimsuit.

I love this lady. She's not a malnourished waif:



More: "Erin Heatherton Body Paint," and "Victoria's Secret Model Erin Heatherton Shows Off Bikini Body During St. Barts Photo Shoot."

Eastern Washington University Scrubs Rachel Dolezal from Africana Studies Department Homepage

Well, her mug used to be proudly displayed at the department's website, but it's gone now. The Google search for her name there redirects as well, lol.

From John Nolte, at Big Government, "RACHEL DOLEZAL’S NAME REMOVED FROM UNIVERSITY FACULTY PAGE":

Rachel Dolezal photo enhanced-10513-1434072564-1_zpsoilkzrb8.png

Early Monday afternoon, Rachel Dolezal, the 37 year-old blonde-haired, freckle-faced white woman who was caught pretending to be black last week, was still listed as a professor of Africana Studies at Eastern Washington University.

Dolezal’s name and profile have now been removed from EWU’s website.

In the wake of Dolezal’s resignation from the NAACP Monday, Breitbart News reached out to EWU to ask about her status. At 1pm ET, when we left numerous voice mail messages for EWU’s media relations department, Dolezal’s name and profile were still live on the web page.
More.

Leftists Explain Away 'Ferguson Effect' Crime Wave

This is one of those "just wow" pieces that makes you shake your head. Man, I still get flabbergasted as the left's shameless depravity.

From Heather Mac Donald, at the Wall Street Journal, "Explaining Away the New Crime Wave."

Hat Tip: Elizabeth Price Foley, at Instapundit, "NOTHING TO SEE HERE, KEEP MOVING: Explaining away the Ferguson Effect. Heather MacDonald explains the price of anti-police agitation by the political left."

Also at Memeorandum.

Austrian Brothel in Salzburg Offers Free Sex to Protest High Taxation

Well, they were offering free drinks too, but I'll bet men were coming for the free sex, heh.

Watch: At Ruptly, "Austria: Brothel offers free SEX in protest against taxation."

Defiant Rachel Dolezal Refuses to Apologize After Stepping Down from Spokane NAACP

She's a disgusting moral reprobate. And a leftist. But I repeat myself.

At London's Daily Mail, "EXCLUSIVE PICTURES: Race-faker Rachel Dolezal puts on a bold front as she steps down as NAACP chapter president - but still REFUSES to apologize for lying about being white, not black."



'Vexatious' Rachel Dolezal Sued Howard University for 'Racial Discrimination' in 2002

Man, this lady is the consummate operator who's been working all the angles. Sheesh.

The Smokin' Gun has the story, "NAACP Imposter Sued School Over Race Claims: Rachel Dolezal Alleged She Was Victim of White Discrimination."

And from the comments at Black America Web:
Rachel Dolezal has not always pretended to be black. In 2002, when I worked at Howard University, she filed a lawsuit against the University and the incoming chairman of the Art Department, as “Rachel Moore,” her married name at the time, asserting various grounds of discrimination, including her race (Caucasian), color, gender and pregnancy. She alleged that the defendants refused to grant her a scholarship and Teaching Assistant position for her second year, and a faculty position upon graduation based upon her race, pregnancy and gender. She lost the case on all counts in the D.C. Superior Court. The case was Rachel Moore v. Howard University, Civ. No. 02-7193 (D.C. Super. Ct. 2002). She also lost her appeal to the D.C. Court of Appeals, App. No. 04-CV-00234 (D.C. 2004). She seems to be an opportunist and clearly embraced her white race when she filed the lawsuit.
At the time, Dolezal was using the surname of her ex-husband, Kevin Moore.

She lost the case, lost an appeals case, and had to pay court costs to Howard University, even found to be "vexatious" litigant.

She hadn't "transitioned" to black quite yet. See, "When Rachel Dolezal Attended Howard University, She Was Still White."

Added: More at Hot Air, "Revealed: Rachel Dolezal sued Howard University for … discriminating against her because she’s white."

Plus, the blogs beat the mainstream media to this story --- again, heh.

At Telegraph UK: