Here We Go: At the New York Times, Council of Conservative Citizens Promotes White Supremacy and Ties to GOP

Folks may have seen the news that Earl Holt, president of the Council of Conservative Citizens, has given tens of thousands of dollars in contributions to Republican candidates over the last few years. When approached with the information, so far each of the GOP candidates questioned has renounced the CoCC and either returned the contributions or given them to charity.

But that's not enough. It's going to be a feeding frenzy against the so-called racist Republican Party. Here we go.

At the Old Gray Lady, on the front page, "Council of Conservative Citizens Promotes White Primacy, and G.O.P. Ties":

The Council of Conservative Citizens opposes “all efforts to mix the races,” and believes “that the American people and government should remain European in their composition and character.” It would severely restrict immigration, abolish affirmative action and dismantle the “imperial judiciary” that produced, among other rulings, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that integrated American education.

Those are among the core principles of the council, a Missouri-based organization with a long history of promoting white primacy. Now the massacre of nine black parishioners in a Charleston, S.C., church has propelled the organization, which in recent years seemed in decline, back onto the national stage and embroiled the Republican Party in new questions about its ties to the group.

Many of the themes promoted on the council’s website resonate through an online manifesto apparently written by Dylann Roof, who has been charged in the killings last week in Charleston. The manifesto traced the motivation for the shootings to a twisted epiphany: a Google search that led to the council’s website, where “pages upon pages of brutal black on White murders” were tallied and described.

“I have never been the same since that day,” the manifesto attributed to Mr. Roof said.

Since it rose in the 1980s from the ashes of the old and unabashedly racist White Citizens’ Councils, the Council of Conservative Citizens has drifted in and out of notoriety. But it is clearly back in: Last weekend, three Republican presidential candidates — Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky — announced that they were returning or giving away donations from the council’s president, Earl Holt III.

Since 2011, Mr. Holt has also contributed at least $3,500 to Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican who is expected to run for president. A spokesman for Mr. Walker said he would donate the money to the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund, which is helping families of the Charleston massacre. All told, Mr. Holt, who did not return calls for comment, has given at least $57,000 to Republican candidates for federal and state offices.

But those contributions, first reported by The Guardian, tell only part of the story of the council’s ties to Southern Republican officeholders. In the 1990s, the council counted influential Republican friends from town halls to the halls of Congress. Among those who have addressed its meetings were Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, at one time the Senate majority leader; Haley Barbour, a former national Republican chairman who was campaigning for governor in Mississippi at the time; and Mike Huckabee, the presidential candidate who was then Arkansas’ lieutenant governor. More recently, Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina dropped a council official in her state, Roan Garcia-Quintana, from her re-election campaign’s advisory committee in 2013 after his ties to the group became public.

In 1999, a cascade of reports linking Mr. Lott and other prominent Republicans to the council led the party’s national chairman, Jim Nicholson, to urge all Republicans belonging to the group to quit the organization, calling it racist. Back then, the council claimed 15,000 members, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups, and was among the largest such groups in the country.

In the past decade, the council appeared to have lost its old vigor. “We were wondering whether they would survive,” Heidi Beirich, the director of the law center’s Intelligence Report, who investigates such groups, said in an interview. “They don’t hold as many events; they don’t have as many chapters.”

But the manifesto attributed to Mr. Roof, posted on a website called lastrhodesian.com, suggests that the council continues to have influence among followers of so-called white power ideology...

Well, folks know my views on Dylann Roof and the origins of his racist manifesto, but the GOP's made numerous own-goals here, and it's patently stupid for any Republican to have the slightest association with the group. It's simply too perfect a gift to the Democrats and the leftist press, and frankly there's no defending the CoCC's views.

One good thing is that all of this is happening now, still about 16 months from the 2016 general election. You'd think Republicans would have some operatives with enough savvy to know that any associations with groups like this are highly radioactive and could doom GOP chances in the general.

But I'm not serving as an adviser to the Republican National Committee, nor to any of the individual campaigns, too bad for them.

More.

True Detective's Adria Arjona

Via GQ:

Professor Caroline Heldman: 'We Are a White Supremacist Society...'

I can remember when she used to come off as a traditional "liberal" feminist, but she's been radicalized these past few years, drunk with power from her rape culture campus shakedown, and now's she's an epic caricature of the fever-swamp LWNJ.

I seriously feel sorry for her, an actual professor of political science.

Oh, Hey Democrats, Don't Forget Your Segregationist Icon George Wallace: 'Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever!'

Adam Baldwin offes us the timely reminder.

And flashback video: "George Wallace 'Segregation Forever' Speech."

In 1968, four years after the Civil Rights Act passed, Wallace swept five Southern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, and Mississippi --- all stronghold of Democrat Party racism, segregation, and domestic terrorism.

More Democrats: pic.twitter.com/XvcON4onlK

— Adam Baldwin (@AdamBaldwin) June 23, 2015

The Next Generation of Race-Baiters

At National Review:

Step Aside, Reverend Al: The Next Generation of Race-Baiters Has Arrived http://t.co/9K2ugvdLQY pic.twitter.com/UE5TX9mjoa

— National Review (@NRO) June 23, 2015

Democrat Governor Ronnie Musgrove Refused to Take Down Mississippi's Confederate State Flag in 2001

In 2001, Mississippi's Democrat Governor Ronnie Musgrove refused to take down the state's Confederate Battle Flag, running from the opportunity to pass state legislation tearing down the Democrat Party's symbol of racism, segregation, and domestic terrorism.

Coward is the word that comes to mind.

Instead up providing executive leadership on the flag's removal, he cravenly punted on the issue, putting it up for a referendum of the people. (There's little surprise how that vote turned out.)

Now angry activists are already pushing Mississippi as the next battleground over Southern heritage, with new demands to take down the racist Democrat Party state flag.

See Jackson Clarion-Ledger, "Petition seeks to change Mississippi flag":

The debate whether to remove the Confederate battle flag from South Carolina's state capitol, touched off by last week's Charleston church shooting, has arrived in Mississippi.

A moveon.org petition dropped over the weekend seeks the removal of the Confederate emblem from Mississippi's official banner, the one that flies over most every government building. "In the wake of the devastating hate crime perpetrated at Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston, it is time to remove all symbols of hate from state and other government buildings. It is time for us to come together and move into the future in solidarity," the petition's background reads.

As of Monday afternoon, the petition (which can be viewed here) had gotten more than 3,000 signatures.

Jennifer Gunter, a Jackson native and two-time Ole Miss graduate who now pursues a Ph.D in American History at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, dropped the petition Saturday.

"I tell people that the flag that flies in front of the statehouse here, at least that's not your official state flag," she said in a phone interview Monday morning. "It's still a part of mine. I figured if we were going to change it, this would be the time. Are we still going to be the last to take it down?"

Oxford restaurateur John Currence was among the first 100 people to sign Gunter's petition. He called former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove's and lawmakers' decision to put the flag issue to a vote – rather than change it themselves like Georgia's legislature did in the early 2000s – an "insult."

"What's ironic more than anything else is that this simple act would be an enormous change for the state," Currence said in an interview Monday. "Other states, like Georgia, have prospered because of this, and we continue to stubbornly fight it."

Gunter said she would like for the petition to receive a minimum of 100,000 signatures before delivering it to lawmakers and to Gov. Phil Bryant. South Carolina's petition, as of Monday, had earned more than 400,000.

The calls to remove the flag from that state's capitol included a lot of Republicans, and not just state officials. Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney made his position known over the weekend, Tweeting from his verified account that the flag was "a symbol of racial hatred." Current GOP contender Jeb Bush called for the flag's removal Monday.

The mood is different among Mississippi Republicans.

""A vast majority of Mississippians voted to keep the state's flag, and I don't believe the Mississippi Legislature will act to supersede the will of the people on this issue," Bryant said in a statement Monday. He was referring to the 2001 vote in which 64 percent of those who voted made the flag with the Confederate emblem the state's official banner. Bryant spokeswoman Nicole Webb said the governor voted with the majority...

The governor's decision was an "insult." A cowardly insult upholding Democrat Party racism, just like in South Carolina where Governor Fritz Hollings, a Democrat, hoisted the Confederate Flag over the statehouse back in 1961.

Republicans today are renouncing the heritage of the Democrat racist flag, and the Mississippi Republicans pining for old times are out of step with the national leadership, which has joined in with Nikki Haley in repudiating the heritage of Democrat Party racism.

Response to Stogie at Saberpoint on Southern Heritage and the Confederate Flag

My old friend Stogie disagreed, at the comments, with my earlier post, "Response to Stogie at Saberpoint on Southern Heritage and the Confederate Flag."

Click that link to read my response there, but Stogie's posted a full entry on the debate at his blog, "Note to Confederate Descendants: Don't Back Down on the Confederate Flag #Charleston #Confederate."

Here's the comment I left a little while ago:

Stogie, I've always respected your opinion on this, and I've learned a lot from you.

Honestly, though, I find your take on the Civil War and Southern heritage rather bizarre. Of course, I'm not from the South, so it's not a visceral issue for me. My dad, however, was born in Missouri, a slave state. His grandparents were slaves. How am I supposed be sympathetic to the "heritage" argument when that heritage includes proud support for chattel slavery? I'm sorry you get hatred in your heart when others simply don't agree with the heritage argument. I think the culture is to the point, on the left and right, that it's simply no longer acceptable to revere the heritage and discount the racist slave roots of the Confederacy.

See Jonathan Tobin, "A Flag and the Fatal Intersection of Heritage and Hate":

"For those who plan to respond, as they always do, to discussions about this topic with emails regurgitating neo-Confederate talking points about the Civil War being a conflict about state’s rights rather than slavery, let me state up front that I’m not buying it and neither is any other serious student of history. The Civil War did hinge in part on constitutional questions but the notion that slavery was incidental to the outbreak of the conflict is simply absurd. Without slavery, there would have been no war. The south seceded because it feared limits on the expansion of slavery would eventually doom the institution. To protect a heritage built on the uncompensated labor of slaves and their vast investment in human “property,” the states that formed the Confederacy waged a bloody war that costs hundreds of thousands of American lives and left the south in ruins. It would take a century for the region to recover completely."

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/06/19/confederate-flag/?...

I'm going to leave it at that.

One of the things most interesting to me about this whole debate is how uninvested I am with it. I can live with those who want to understand the Civil War as a "War Between the States," since I believe that's how their ancestors saw it. And it doesn't matter to me if these same folks reject the idea that at base the Civil War was indeed about the issue of slavery. That matter's been settled, on the battlefield, in the Constitution, and in the history books. Frankly, Southern revisionist looks like crackpots sometimes. I think now with this flap over South Carolina Republicans will unequivocally reject any lingering sympathy with the Southern heritage argument. Watch, the South Carolina state legislature is going to come under relentless pressure to repeal the authorizing legislation on hoisting the state flag on statehouse grounds. It's become a divisive side issue for the GOP presidential field --- unfairly, I'd add. But politics ain't beanbag.

Pres Lincoln - REPUBLICAN John Wilkes Booth - DEMOCRAT Raising of flag in SC -DEMOCRAT REMOVAL OF FLAG - REPUBICAN pic.twitter.com/S6kCje5eWj

— Color Me Red (@ColorMeRed) June 22, 2015

In any case, I'm fine to agree to disagree with folks on this. But what I'm not fine with is the continue smearing of "the right" as down with segregation and racism. The Democrats will always be the party of Jim Crow segregation and domestic terrorism. Call me a crazy bigoted Yankee if you will, but that's my piece and I'm sticking with it.

Mariah Carey Aquatic Wardrobe Malfunction

Heh.

How's that for a change of pace. At London's Daily Mail, "Mariah Carey suffered an aquatic wardrobe malfunction while on vacation with her new beau."

Republican Governor Nikki Haley Calls for Confederate Flag to Come Down — #SouthCarolina

This is a really big story.

At the Charleston Post and Courier, "Gov. Nikki Haley moments ago called for the removal of the Confederate flag from the Statehouse grounds, saying the killings of nine church-goers at Emanuel AME in Charleston last week mandated a change in the state’s heart."

Republicans are going tear down that flag. Democrats put it up in the first place.

ICYMI: "Democrat Governor Fritz Hollings First Raised Confederate Flag Over South Carolina Statehouse in 1961."

ADDED: Here's the speech:

Nikki Haley & officials call for Confederate flag to be removed from state capitol grounds: http://t.co/upRhWlRMrK pic.twitter.com/WGxN7OCnnN

— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) June 22, 2015

Democrat Governor Fritz Hollings First Raised Confederate Flag Over South Carolina Statehouse in 1961

The Confederate Flag was first raised over the South Carolina statehouse in 1962, when Democrat Ernest "Fritz" Hollings was governor.

Here's a great interview with HIstorian Daniel Hollis, "The Day the Flag Went Up":

In 1959, Gov. Fritz Hollings appointed Hollis to serve on a commission to plan the state's observance of the 100th anniversary of the War Between the States. President Dwight Eisenhower had commissioned a national Civil War Centennial, and the state centennial commissions were to coordinate activities.

"I'm the only one on the commission left alive," Hollis said in an August interview. "I tried to get them to call it the `Civil War Centennial,' but they insisted on calling it the `Confederate War Centennial.'

"I was the only Civil War historian. There were three UDC girls on it, and John May was chairman. May was a state representative from Aiken. He called himself `Mr. Confederacy' and wore a Confederate uniform to our meetings. I called May an inveterate Confederate.

"They would argue that the war wasn't fought over slavery but states' rights. That's ridiculous. Without the slavery issue South Carolina would not have seceded. You think they would have gotten angry enough about tariffs to start shooting?

"The ruling elite that ran this state all owned slaves. They denied the war was over slavery, insisting that it was over states' rights. But it was over the states' right to own slaves and enforce white supremacy," Hollis said.

In fact, the 169 men who formed the South Carolina Secession Convention all supported slavery and acknowledged in their "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union" that slavery was the central issue.

The racist Southern Democrats resisted the Kennedy administration's efforts to promote integration during the events:

The day the Confederate flag went up over the State House, the opening ceremonies of the centennial in Charleston were marred by controversy. Newspapers reported the open and ugly feuding between South Carolina and the national Centennial Commission, calling it "the second battle of Fort Sumter."

The centennial delegations from New Jersey and Missouri included blacks who were refused entrance to the segregated Francis Marion Hotel, where the events were to be held. The South Carolina hosts refused to allow the black delegates to participate. In response, the Charleston NAACP organized protests.

The situation was only partially resolved when President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order moving the centennial meetings to the Charleston Navy Base, one of the few integrated facilities in town. South Carolina led the South in leaving the national commission, and holding its own segregated events in the hotel.

And racist Democrat Governor Fritz Hollings later when on to represent South Carolina in the U.S. Senate, and he spewed vile white supremacist hatred right up until 2005, when he left office.

Here's a aggregation of reports on Hollings at Free Republic, "Sen. Fritz Hollings: SC Democrat led fight against 1960's lunch counter integration":

With recent controversy surrounding Trent Lott, the leftist media has been woefully negligent when it comes to Democrat senators who have committed far worse offenses. In part, conservatives have responded by pointing out the bigotted past of former Ku Klux Klansman Robert Byrd (D-WV), who recently used a racial slur on television. There's another Democrat senator out there with a similarly embarassing past, but also one who has recieved much less attention, even among conservatives: Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-SC). Like Byrd, Hollings has a recent history of racial slurs. Less known is his history as governor of South Carolina in the early 1960's, when he was a leading segregationist. To fill this gap here's a glimpse of Senator Hollings' segregationist past and history of racial slurs:

SEGREGATIONIST GOVERNOR: As Governor of South Carolina, Ernest F. Hollings personally led the fight against lunch counter integration in his state. The New York Times reported that Hollings "warned today that South Carolina would not permit 'explosive' manifestations in connection with Negro demands for lunch-counter services." The Times reported that Hollings called a news conference on the subject where he "challenged President Eisenhower's contention that minorities had the right to engage in certain types of demonstrations" against segregation. Hollings told reporters at the press conference that Eisenhower was "confused" and had done "great damage to peace and good order" by supporting the rights of minorities to protest segregation at the lunch counters. (SOURCE: "Warning by Hollings." New York Times, March 17, 1960.)

ANTI-INTIGRATION ORGANIZER: Governor Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina is listed as a leading participant at a July 23, 1961 conference of "leading segregationists" in Atlanta to organize a "segregationist bloc" voting lobby to resist pressures for integration. Hollings was one of four governors who attended, with seven more having been invited. The others were Orval Faubus of Arkansas, Ross Barnett of Mississippi, and John Patterson of Alabama. The strategies discussed at the meeting heavily involved using the White Citizens Council, a segregationist organization. (SOURCE: Sitton, Claude. "Segregation Bloc Seeks Vote Lobby." New York Times, Jul 24, 1961.)

RACIAL SLURS: Senator Ernest Hollings has a long history of using racial slurs. Following a poor showing in the 1983 Iowa Straw Poll, Hollings remarked "You had wetbacks from California that came in here for Cranston," a reference to Alan Cranston who finished second. Hollings also made derogatory references to an African delegation at a 1993 international conference, suggesting they were cannibals. He stated "Everybody likes to go to Geneva. I used to do it for the Law of the Sea conferences and you'd find these potentates from down in Africa, you know, rather than eating each other, they'd just come up and get a good square meal in Geneva." He once referred to Sen. Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio, who was Jewish, as "the senator from B'nai B'rith." The South Carolina Democrat also allegedly referred to blacks with the slur "darkies" in a 1986 interview and once called the Rainbow PUSH coalition the "blackbo coalition."

Folks, the Democrats have racism hardwired into their physiological being. It's who they are.

Democrats didn't just throw off their racism in 1964 like flipping a switch. It's in their DNA. They'll always be the party of segregation.

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 22, 2015

Arnold Schwarzenegger Pranks Fans at Madame Tussauds

He's so cool.

Apple Backs Down Over Music Royalties After Taylor Swift Controversy

My son's seen her in concert twice, so I asked him what he thought about it.

He said he understood the royalties issues but thought Taylor Swift was being greedy. "She's like a billionaire or something," he said.

Well, I doubt she's that rich, but it's in the 100's of millions of dollars, for sure.

In any case, at Telegraph UK, "Apple changes policy on paying artists after criticism from Taylor Swift."

And see Taylor Swift, "To Apple, Love Taylor":

Taylor Swift will withhold her latest album “1989” from Apple Music, says lack of royalties during three month free trial hurts smaller artists.

'Black Lives Matter' Graffiti Vandalism on Confederate Monument at White Point Gardens in Charleston

Now this is just pathetic.

You'd think it'd be hard for leftists to get any lower, but no. This is who they are. This is what they do.


At WCIV-TV ABC News 4 Charleston, "Confederate statue vandalized downtown."

While #Charleston citizens gave God the honor and worked together for good of city The outside agitators did this pic.twitter.com/h1U9aFJIho

— DupreeNation ★彡 (@WayneDupreeShow) June 22, 2015

Charleston Post & Courier Honors the Victims

At Instapundit, "THE CHARLESTON POST & COURIER rightly makes it about the victims, not the perpetrator."

And at the Post & Courier, "Emanuel AME Church reopens with display of faith, hope and unity."

NYPD Cops Get Pummeled by Black Onlookers While Trying to Make Arrest (VIDEO)

Unreal.

This video's gone viral.

At Twitchy, "Cops as ‘punching bags’: Video showing NYPD officers getting pummeled by onlooker during arrest goes viral."

And at Weazel Zippers, "Video: NYPD Cops Pummeled by Onlookers as They Try to Make Arrest of Resisting Suspect."

Democrats Will Always Be the Party of Racism and Segregation

Lying racist Democrats are desperate to weasel away from their racist past. It's pitiful.

Continual efforts to blame GOP for tragedies like #CharlestonShooting fall short, ignore history http://t.co/BXqfzjwSx8

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) June 21, 2015

So who voted for this guy? pic.twitter.com/lbSpCmQ3PT

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) June 21, 2015

The most powerful evidence that the South has definitively rejected slavery, insurrection, and racism is that it stopped voting Democrat.

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) June 21, 2015

More Republicans voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act than Democrats: http://t.co/gLHwNmRj02

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 22, 2015

The assertion that white Southerners began voting Republican in 1964 is simply incorrect. http://t.co/I6dIl6FnQ2 #Charleston

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 22, 2015

Democrats didn't just throw off their racism in 1964 like flipping a switch. It's in their DNA. They'll always be the party of segregation.

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 22, 2015

Leftism is one big magic fairy tale wrapped in a rainbow and delivered by a unicorn. https://t.co/VjKqOeLgfD

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 22, 2015

So you mean this flag? #takedowntheflag pic.twitter.com/Lcnx3Sbvlh

— iPayMyJizyaWith.357 (@SonofLiberty357) June 22, 2015

Democrat Bill Clinton Commemorated the Confederacy on Arkansas State Flag in 1987 — #TakeDownTheFlag http://t.co/QjiWMEMNVL @Instapundit

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 21, 2015

Emma Quangel, Feminist Who Outed Dylann Roof Manifesto, is Militant Communist Who Wants U.S. 'Eradicated'

I posted on Emma Quangel last night, "Far-Left 'Anti-Racist' Says the United States Should be 'Eradicated'."

She's the self-proclaimed communist who wants the United States destroyed.

"White America" doesn't deserve anything better than complete and utter destruction

— Emma Quangel (@EMQuangel) June 18, 2015

The United States was founded on white supremacist values and the eradication and enslavement of hundreds of millions of people of color.

— Emma Quangel (@EMQuangel) June 18, 2015

The United States continues its global domination by enslaving and butchering people of color worldwide. White America should be erradicated

— Emma Quangel (@EMQuangel) June 18, 2015

She's starting to get some prominent media coverage for her role in sleuthing the Dylann Roof manifesto. See the Daily Beast, for example, "How Twitter Sleuths Found Dylann Roof’s Manifesto":

It took two independent writers working together on Twitter and $49 to make what could be one of the biggest discoveries yet in the case of Dylann Roof. In a South Carolina courtroom on Friday, Roof was charged with nine counts of murder for the killing of nine black parishioners who invited him into their Bible study group. A webpage registered under Roof’s name contains a trove of photos of the suspected killer, and a white nationalist political manifesto.

Emma Quangel, the nom de guerre of writer and Twitter user @EMQuangel, discovered the website that appears to contain Roof’s manifesto. After I congratulated her for her investigative work, Quangel told me that she saw it as her duty. “As a communist,” Quangel said, “it is my duty and obligation to spend at least $49 to help ruin this guy’s insanity plea.”

As you can see from her tweets, Ms. Quangel's a proud communist, and as seen at her Daily Beast interview, she's got the perverted propensity to reply to inquiries with the ideological self-identification, "As a communist..."

More specifically, it turns out Ms. Quangel's also a radical feminist and a militant Maoist. She's a contributor to the "Feminist Current" website and runs the far-left Manyfesto blog (ironically), where we find this robust ideological defense of "red" communism and genocidal regime of Mao Mao Tse-tung, "Red-baiting as the cliff approaches":

I’m a red. The people dearest to me in this life are reds. I have immense respect for Mao Tse-Tung, who liberated the Chinese people not only from imperialism, but also from poverty. Maoism inspired millions of people worldwide to struggle towards their own liberation. And I don’t recall Maoists in China kidnapping women and putting heads on spikes, but perhaps this is a part of the story Maz might not want to discuss. Regardless, back to the context – really? Are reds in a position of power as ISIS is? Can we fairly compare the two? Or is this is a smear against reds in the same tradition as the US State Department video mentioned earlier.

As any "sane and educated" person would know (to borrow from the commenters at my place), Chairman Man was the most murderous totalitarian leader of the 20th century, if not in world history. Tens of millions died in the revolutionary spasms of Mao's puritanical communist program. As Lee Edwards points out, at the Heritage Foundation, "The Legacy of Mao Zedong is Mass Murder":

Can you name the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century? No, it wasn’t Hitler or Stalin. It was Mao Zedong.

According to the authoritative “Black Book of Communism,” an estimated 65 million Chinese died as a result of Mao’s repeated, merciless attempts to create a new “socialist” China. Anyone who got in his way was done away with -- by execution, imprisonment or forced famine.

Sixty-five million people. That's more than ten times the number of Jews who perished in the Holocaust. That's even more than the number of total lives lost, military and civilian, during World War II (about 60 million).

Folks like Emma Quangel, Marxist-Leninists and Maoist totalitarian collectivists, just do not care about human rights or "BlackLivesMatter." They care about the global revolutionary transformation that eliminates capitalism in the name of the so-called proletarian classes. Leftists exploit race and "racism" as a front for the communist ideological struggle. They don't care how many people die for the dialectical cause of anti-imperial Utopianism. Their practical program is to align with any and all murderous dictatorships and tyrannies committed to war against the United States and its Western allies.

Talk to any hardcore leftists and they'll tell you that the crimes of 20th century Communism were a perversion of the Marxist ideal, that "actually existing socialism" was a criminal deviation from the pure Utopian vision of the original Marxist paradigm of dialectical materialism. Of course, that's one of the left's Big Lies of the last 100 years. As Jamie Glazov indicates in his book, United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror:

The Left habitually attempts to distance itself from its own history and obfuscate any straightforward analysis of its political motives, goals, and allegiances. In so doing, the Left intentionally blurs its own complicity in the greatest crimes of the twentieth century.

There is no defending a murderous psychopath like Dylann Roof. But there's not a single person on the co-called "right" of the political spectrum who is defending the murders in Charleston. Not one. Rather, what we've seen is far-left activists and the Democrat-Media-Complex mounting a full-court press to attack conservatives and Republicans for the Confederate Flag (which is in fact a symbol of Democrat Party racism, segregation, and domestic terrorism).

It's a good thing that the full truth is emerging on Dylann Roof's mental deterioration and his dabbling with historical Democrat Party racism and white supremacy. And if the release of the manifesto helps prosecutors gain a prompt conviction, all the better.

But the motives of people like Emma Quangel aren't anti-racism and racial integration. These are people whose entire ideological lives are bent on division and disruption. #BlackLivesMatter itself is a revolutionary communist movement and professional protesters have descended on Charleston to foment a new round of communist agitation.

Every time a crazy person shoots up a place, the press demands Republicans -- who had nothing to do with it -- answer for the crime.

— jon gabriel (@exjon) June 20, 2015

It would be a waste if this moment of crisis were to devolve simply to a lower common denominator of decrepit and wicked leftist exploitation and opportunism, but when you look at the ideological bona fides of "sleuth" Emma Quangel, it's obvious that Americans will once again get played by communist deception to further demonize regular patriotic conservatives and Republicans.

Democrat Bill Clinton Commemorated the Confederacy on Arkansas State Flag in 1987 — #TakeDownTheFlag

Look, leftists aren't too well informed on their racist history.

I'm getting all these lunatic commenters screaming about how it's really the Republicans who're the KKK confederacy racists. That takes some serious denial bordering on literal insanity, but then, that's what you get in today's genuinely unhinged Democrat Party left.

Here's the low down on Bill Clinton's racist commemoration of the Confederacy when he was serving as the Democrat Party governor of Arkansas in the 1980s:

Flashback: As Governor, Bill Clinton Honored Confederacy On Arkansas Flag http://t.co/NXKhaKfigR

— The Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 20, 2015

You cool with Arkansas flag that flew at Bill and Hillary's house for 12 years and his library today? @chrislhayes pic.twitter.com/8yJ5ExLDzA

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) June 21, 2015

#TakeDownTheFlag pic.twitter.com/2053dwVpmA

— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) June 21, 2015

So you mean this flag? #takedowntheflag pic.twitter.com/Lcnx3Sbvlh

— iPayMyJizyaWith.357 (@SonofLiberty357) June 21, 2015

Well, isn't THAT interesting? pic.twitter.com/HBVdnC5h5Y

— Bill Sanderson (@mrgeology) June 21, 2015

The designer of the second national flag of the #Confederacy, explaining what it stood for: pic.twitter.com/KY8nlO8mgp

— Jonathan Wilson (@jnthnwwlsn) June 18, 2015

Democratic Strategist Maria Cardona Says Bernie Sanders Could Win New Hampshire Primary (VIDEO)

Well, the Vermont socialist grandpa looks to make it a race, heh.

And of course at the same time he'll pull the Democrats to the left and make them own their party's hardline radical left socialist ideology.

Shoot, Cardona suggests that Cankles Clinton could lose in Iowa as well. Hell, that's going to be a treat!

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Cartoons."



Also at Theo Spark's, "Cartoon Round Up...", and Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's SUNDAY FUNNIES."

Cartoon Credit: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Jurassic Tactics."

New Research Says Dads' Goofy Play Helps Babies Grow and Develop

I love this.

The hilarious thing is of course dads know this intuitively. It's how they raise kids and make it fun. It's natural, in other words.

At WSJ, "Moms, Let Dad Be Dad":

That goofy teasing and hyper play actually help young children develop, according to new research.

Far-Left 'Anti-Racist' Says the United States Should be 'Eradicated'

There's extremely few Democrat-leftists who will go on the record like this, but if they did, this is what they'd say:

"White America" doesn't deserve anything better than complete and utter destruction

— Emma Quangel (@EMQuangel) June 18, 2015

The United States was founded on white supremacist values and the eradication and enslavement of hundreds of millions of people of color.

— Emma Quangel (@EMQuangel) June 18, 2015

The United States continues its global domination by enslaving and butchering people of color worldwide. White America should be erradicated

— Emma Quangel (@EMQuangel) June 18, 2015

Rest in Power: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, killed June 1953 pic.twitter.com/0FkdfSIMq4

— Emma Quangel (@EMQuangel) June 18, 2015

"White America" is an identity built on dispossession, genocide and mass enslavement. @DevinRice @PhilGreaves01

— Emma Quangel (@EMQuangel) June 18, 2015

"White America" is a relation to settler ideology. It's an identity based on racist ideology. Fuck it, end it. @DevinRice @PhilGreaves01

— Emma Quangel (@EMQuangel) June 18, 2015

White Supremacy Continues to Provide Protection for Imperialism http://t.co/5u1WACHCHx

— Emma Quangel (@EMQuangel) June 19, 2015

Bush Knocked Down the Towers https://t.co/IaG7wdUaFk

— Emma Quangel (@EMQuangel) June 19, 2015

We call ourselves all sorts of things but I'd rather just be called a communist, thanks in advance..

— Emma Quangel (@EMQuangel) June 20, 2015

As a communist it is my solemn duty and obligation to hate and fight racism with every inch of my being!

— Emma Quangel (@EMQuangel) June 20, 2015

From Ferguson to Charleston and Beyond, Anguish About Race Keeps Building

Oh brother.

Here we go. Black radicals are "anguished" and ready for an all out "race war."

At the New York Times:

Ferguson. Baltimore. Staten Island. North Charleston. Cleveland.

Over the past year in each of these American cities, an unarmed black male has died at the hands of a police officer, unleashing a torrent of anguish and soul-searching about race in America. Despite video evidence in several of the killings, each has spurred more discord than unity.

Grand juries have tended to give the benefit of the doubt to police officers. National polls revealed deep divisions in how whites and blacks viewed the facts in each case. Whites were more likely to believe officers’ accounts justifying the use of force. Blacks tended to see deeper forces at work: longstanding police bias against black men and a presumption that they are criminals.

Then, on Wednesday night, a young white man walked into a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., and joined a group of worshipers as they bowed their heads over their Bibles. He shot and killed nine of them. In his Facebook profile picture, the suspect, Dylann Roof, wore the flags of racist regimes in South Africa and the former Rhodesia.

The massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston was something else entirely from the police shootings. But it, too, has become a racial flash point and swept aside whatever ambiguity seemed to muddle those earlier cases, baldly posing questions about race in America: Was the gunman a crazed loner motivated by nothing more than his own madness? Or was he an extreme product of the same legacy of racism that many black Americans believe sent Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Walter Scott and Tamir Rice to their graves?

The debate has already begun.

“I just think he was one of these whacked-out kids,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a white Republican from South Carolina who is running for president, said in a telephone interview with CNN, echoing a sentiment that had begun to blossom. “I don’t think it’s anything broader than that. It’s about a young man who is obviously twisted."

Mr. Graham later amended his remarks, calling Mr. Roof “a racial jihadist” and saying that the only reason the victims had died was their race.

Bryan Stevenson, a black lawyer who has specialized in death-penalty cases and chronicled the legal system’s unfairness to African-Americans, sees deep and systemic connections between Mr. Roof’s actions and the police killings of black males, as well as the rough actions of a police officer breaking up a pool party in McKinney, Tex.

“This latest violent act is an extreme and terrifying example, but not disconnected from the way black men and boys are treated by police, by schools, by the state,” Mr. Stevenson said in an interview. “The landscape is littered with monuments that talk proudly about the Confederacy and leave no record about the lynchings of the era.”

America is living through a moment of racial paradox. Never in its history have black people been more fully represented in the public sphere. The United States has a black president and a glamorous first lady who is a descendant of slaves. African-Americans lead the country’s pop culture in many ways, from sports to music to television, where show-runners like Shonda Rhimes and Lee Daniels have created new black icons, including the political fixer Olivia Pope on “Scandal” and the music mogul Cookie Lyon on “Empire.”

It has become commonplace to refer to the generation of young people known as millennials as “post-racial.” Black culture has become so mainstream that a woman born to white parents who had claimed to be black almost broke the Internet last week by saying that she was “transracial.”

Yet in many ways, the situation of black America is dire...

Yes. Dire.

Because a literal lone wolf leftist murdered some beautiful black Christians in the Old South.

Leftists never let a crisis go to waste.

More.

Dylann Roof Planned College Campus Shooting Instead of Church, Says Black Drinking Buddy Christon Scriven

At London's Daily Mail, "Charleston killer planned to shoot up college campus instead of a church, claims black drinking buddy who says they were 'homeboys'."

Yeah, his "drinking buddy" was a black kid, just like all the Southern homeboys hanging out with their black bros.

Stogie at Saberpoint has more, "Sick Freak Murders Nine in Black Charleston Church; Irrational Outpouring of Outrage Ensues."

PREVIOUSLY: "Leftist Flag-Burner Dylann Roof's 'Last Rhodesian' Manifesto Rooted in Democrat Party Ku Klux Klan Racism."

And, "Crazy Emo-Prog Dylann Roof Doesn't Fit the Left's 'Right-Wing Racist White Supremacist' Narrative," and "Dylann Roof, Southern Democrat Throwback, is Drug-Addled 'Wannabe Emo Anarchist' with Androgynous Haircut."

Leftist Flag-Burner Dylann Roof's 'Last Rhodesian' Manifesto Rooted in Democrat Party Ku Klux Klan Racism

Well, one thing's for sure.

Dylann Roof hates the American flag like any classic leftist today.

On top of that, his manifesto is a throwback to the white supremacist racial segregation era of the Jim Crow Ku Klux Klan Democrat Party South. The kid confesses right off the bat that he wasn't raised in a racist home --- obviously because his family just doesn't fit the left's white supremacist stereotypes. As he writes at his racist left-wing screed:

Segregation was not a bad thing. It was a defensive measure. Segregation did not exist to hold back negroes. It existed to protect us from them. And I mean that in multiple ways. Not only did it protect us from having to interact with them, and from being physically harmed by them, but it protected us from being brought down to their level. Integration has done nothing but bring Whites down to level of brute animals. The best example of this is obviously our school system.

Interestingly, Roof combines his Democrat segregation-love with classic leftist BDS-style anti-Jewish hatred. He spews perfectly dead-on memes of the left's global anti-Semitic, anti-Israel annihilationist ideology:

Unlike many White naitonalists, I am of the opinion that the majority of American and European jews are White. In my opinion the issues with jews is not their blood, but their identity. I think that if we could somehow destroy the jewish identity, then they wouldnt cause much of a problem. The problem is that Jews look White, and in many cases are White, yet they see themselves as minorities. Just like niggers, most jews are always thinking about the fact that they are jewish. The other issue is that they network. If we could somehow turn every jew blue for 24 hours, I think there would be a mass awakening, because people would be able to see plainly what is going on.

And he's no anti-immigration "Minuteman," as he indicates that he likes Hispanics and Asians. And he just hates the American flag. He hates it with all the combustible disgust of America that you'd find in an Occupy Wall Street rape-infested protest camp. He's a perfect emo-prog flag-hating loser:

I hate the sight of the American flag. Modern American patriotism is an absolute joke. People pretending like they have something to be proud while White people are being murdered daily in the streets. Many veterans believe we owe them something for “protecting our way of life” or “protecting our freedom”. But im not sure what way of life they are talking about. How about we protect the White race and stop fighting for the jews. I will say this though, I myself would have rather lived in 1940's American than Nazi Germany, and no this is not ignorance speaking, it is just my opinion. So I dont blame the veterans of any wars up until after Vietnam, because at least they had an American to be proud of and fight for.

He's a sick, racist deluded lefty-prog who glommed onto sick anti-American, pro-Confederacy hate sites. A weird product of progressivism, Israel-hatred, and segregationist Democrat legacies.

He's a weirdo, frankly.

More at the the Telegraph UK, "Dylann Roof: The Charleston killer's racist manifesto."

And at the New York Times, "Website With Manifesto and Photos of Suspect Surfaces."

PREVIOUSLY: "Crazy Emo-Prog Dylann Roof Doesn't Fit the Left's 'Right-Wing Racist White Supremacist' Narrative," and "Dylann Roof, Southern Democrat Throwback, is Drug-Addled 'Wannabe Emo Anarchist' with Androgynous Haircut."

Indira Esparza, Illegal Immigrant Student, Unfurls Mexican Flag at U.C. San Diego Graduation Ceremony

This is unreal.

And to think, this girl has been in the U.S. since she was 2-years-old. How's that assimilation going for you, leftist open-border fanatics.

At the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Undocumented UC San Diego student waves Mexican flag at graduation, unfurls controversy":

Illegal Immigrant Waves Mexican Flag During Graduation Ceremony From Taxpayer Funded University… pic.twitter.com/CCQcc4bAHt

— I'm your Huckleberry (@BringTheFlag) June 19, 2015

University graduates routinely show great emotion (spontaneous and sometimes scripted) as they stand in front of crowds to mark momentous occasions. Onlookers clap and cheer, hoot and holler, and then wait to see what the next student (or student body) will do.

But one UC San Diego student's Mexican flag-waving exuberance has sparked a conversation that's transcended her brief moment Sunday.

Indira Esparza, a 22-year-old undocumented student who moved to the U.S. when she was 2, proudly unfurled the green, white and red flag of Mexico as she walked across the stage.

Lyndsay Winkley, a reporter with The San Diego Union-Tribune, covered the graduation while U-T photographer John Gastaldo captured images. As colleges often do with media outlets at this time of year, UCSD had suggested we focus on Esparza for several reasons.

As Winkley wrote, she overcame financial insecurity, anxiety over losing family members to deportation and judgment from others because of her Mexican citizenship. She helped establish the Undocumented Student Services Center at the university so students like her could talk about their struggles. She wants to become an educator. And she refuses to waste any time beginning a master's program at UCSD; she started two days after the ceremony.

Winkley made the flag unfurling the lead of her story, which ran underneath Gastaldo's image and with photos of other students.

Reaction to Esparza's demonstration was immediate -- and visceral. Read on then take our poll at the bottom of this post.

Winkley received nine emails and two phone calls about the story, well above her norm. When one reader called Esparza's action "a slap in the face to the United States," Winkley replied: "I don’t think Indira meant any disrespect toward America/Americans nor was she trying to express ungratefulness by unfurling the flag of Mexico during her graduation. I think she is proud of her Mexican and her American heritages. While she plans to use her own experiences as an undocumented student to help others with similar struggles, I don’t think that precludes her from being supportive of students from all walks of life in their pursuits of higher education. Thanks for your email."

Discussion continued with dozens of posts in the story's comment section...

Keep reading.

Obviously, if the girl loves Mexico so much she should go live there.

Whoa! Greece Consumers Withdraw €1 Billion in Banking Run as ECB Pledges New Funds to Stave Off Grexit

This is amazing.

At the Telegraph UK, "Greek debt crisis endgame: ECB agrees to pump more money into Greece's banks as Russia enters the ring."

Plus, "European authorities forced to stave off Greek banking collapse as capital controls loom":

ECB increases tap on emergency funding as prospect of capital controls and bank closures beckon before Monday's emergency summit.

Greece's banking system was saved from a weekend collapse after the European Central Bank was forced to pump emergency rescue funds and halt the immediate threat of capital controls.

The ECB took the unusual move to raise its emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) twice in the space of three days as a further €1.2bn fled the financial system on Friday. The ceiling on ELA was reportedly raised by €1.8bn according to reports, and came following a request from the Bank of Greece.

The Frankfurt-based central bank took the drastic action after its officials warned European finance ministers that Greece's banks may not be open for business on Monday. Total deposit flight has now soared to €4.2bn this week as full-blown panic over the country's eurozone future has set in.

ELA funding is one of the last critical links keeping Greece in the single currency.

Without the funds, Greece would likely find itself in the midst of a bank run, forcing the Leftist government to impose draconian capital controls to prop up the banking system. Such measures, which include deposit withdrawal limits, were last seen in the eurozone in 2013 in Cyprus after the ECB had threatened to cut the life support for Nicosia's financial system.

The drip feed of cash will now be reviewed by the ECB's governing council on Monday, when EU leaders and finance ministers will convene for a last ditch attempt to thrash out their differences with Athens.

Donald Tusk, the man chairing summit, confirmed that Athens would be delivered an ultimatum deal as the country's future reached a "critical" point.

"We are close to the point where the Greek government will have to choose to accept what I believe is a good offer for support, or to head towards default," said Mr Tusk.

"The game of chicken needs to end, and so does the blame game. There is no time for more games."

He added the meeting would not produce a final resolution to the country's five-month negotiating impasse, with any ultimate decision remaining with the eurozone's finance ministers.

"There is time, but only a few days. Let us use them wisely," said Mr Tusk...

More.

I still don't believe that European leaders will allow Greece to exit the EMU. It'd be the beginning of the end of the modern European Union, setting a precedent in other states, especially the PIIGS nations --- Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain --- and create centrifugal pressures on the system.

It's going to be an interesting week next week.

Charleston Shooting Reignites Debate About Confederate Flag

I don't care about the Confederate Flag. I think it's a kind of scary emblem when I see it displayed on redneck pickup trucks, and what not. But folks from the South routinely speak about the symbolism and heritage. Stogie at Saberpoint had ancestors who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. He speaks often eloquently about that heritage, but he's no racist. His family is multicultural in fact. So it's an extremely complicated issue.

If you're on the left it's an easy call because the Confederate Flag is supposedly the ultimate symbol of racial oppression. Ta-Nehisi Coates posted an emotional and overwrought harangue against it earlier, at the Atlantic, "Take Down the Confederate Flag — Now." That's just race-bait for the hateful demons of the regressive left's fever swamps.

Still, lots of good black folk down in South Carolina are pained at this image, regular folks, holding down jobs and holding together families. I imagine they'd like to see it go.

In any case, the New York Times reports, FWIW, "Charleston Shooting Reignites Debate About Confederate Flag":

On Thursday, hours after a white gunman killed nine people in a black church in Charleston, S.C., a Confederate flag continued to fly over the grounds of the state’s Capitol.

The Supreme Court ruled the same day that Texas did not violate the First Amendment by refusing to allow the flag on its license plates.

The conflict over the banner of the Confederacy has been raging for decades between those who feel it is a symbol of free speech, and others who see it as a symbol of white supremacy. But with a photo emerging of Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old suspect in the Charleston church shootings, posing in front of a car with Confederate plates, the debate has been reignited on social media and beyond about whether the flag should be displayed, and whether politicians should continue to defend the flag as a symbol of Southern heritage.

Representative Mark Sanford of South Carolina, a Republican, and the state’s Republican governor, Nikki R. Haley, are both drawing criticism for their views on the flag. On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Mr. Sanford called the idea of removing the flag a “Pandora’s box” and a “complex issue within our state.”

Ms. Haley, who on Friday called for Mr. Roof to face the death penalty, was also facing criticism for referring to the flag as a “sensitive issue” but refusing to remove it in the past.

A Haley spokesman told ABC that use of the Confederate flag — seen flying high in the South Carolina capital while other flags flew at half-staff — could not be altered without approval from the state Legislature.

Cornell William Brooks, national president of the N.A.A.C.P., said on Friday that those who said the flag was “merely a symbol of years gone by” had it all wrong. The flag, he said, is an “emblem of hate” that should be banished from public life.

“That symbol has to come down,” he said, speaking at a news conference in Charleston. “That symbol must be removed from our state Capitol.”

Several hashtags, #takedownthatflag, #takeitdown and #ConfederateTakeDown, were also being used Friday on Twitter as an informal campaign to prompt South Carolina politicians to remove the flag.

Elsewhere, writers and academics found fault in the argument that the flag was meant to preserve a Southern way of life. In a post for The Atlantic titled “Take Down the Confederate Flag — Now,” Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote that the argument that the flag preserves a heritage of racist behavior was what motivated Mr. Roof to attack black people.

“More than any individual actor, in recent history, Roof honored his flag in exactly the manner it always demanded — with human sacrifice,” Mr. Coates wrote.

Edward E. Baptist, a professor at Cornell University who specializes in the history of slavery, said in a series of posts on Twitter that the flag had been used as justification for attacks on blacks since the Civil War...

Continue reading.

Obama Pushes U.S. Mayors on Stricter Gun Control

I'm really kinda shocked how fast the Gun Grabber-in-Chief started exploiting the Charleston massacre. It's just shameless political opportunism. I don't think he really cares about the folks who were killed. He cares more about heading out to hobnob at the high-dollar Los Angeles fundraisers. It's grotesque.

At the Los Angeles Times:

President Obama urges U.S. mayors to push for stricter gun control: "It is not good enough simply to show sympathy" http://t.co/Nn9humJWSk

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) June 20, 2015

Black Americans Killed at 12 Times the Rate of People in Other Developed Countries

This is kinda mind-boggling, especially the graphic on black homicide deaths per 100,000 of the population.

See Bearing Arms, "“Black America” Is a Bloody Mess."

Center-Right Opposition Ousts Social Democrat Helle Thorning-Schmidt in Denmark Elections

You know, the European left keeps getting hammered at the polls, especially on the issue of unchecked immigration. And in Denmark, that bastion of social democrat progressivism!

At Reuters, "Danish centre-right opposition wins election, PM quits party":

Danish voters ousted Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt in an election on Thursday and handed power to an opposition centre-right alliance including huge gains for a eurosceptic, anti-immigrant party.

Opposition leader Lars Lokke Rasmussen said he would try to form a government but is likely to have to make big concessions to ensure support from the right-wing Danish Peoples' Party (DF), which ended up with more votes than his Liberal Party.

With all of the votes counted on the mainland, the centre-right won 90 seats in parliament to 85 seats for the centre-left bloc of Thorning-Schmidt, who wrongly gambled that an economic upturn would win her re-election.

Denmark's first female prime minister, elected in 2011, Thorning-Schmidt conceded defeat and quit as party leader after the vote.

DF, the second-biggest party behind Thorning-Schmidt's Social Democrats, has supported the Liberals in government before and its backing gives the centre-right led by Rasmussen its overall majority.

"Tonight we have been given an opportunity, but only an opportunity, to take leadership in Denmark," Rasmussen told supporters in parliament.

"We take that upon ourselves and I take that upon myself ... What I offer today is to put myself at the head of a government," he said.

More.

Yeah, immigration's obviously a touchy issue with the voters, especially after the leftist government's Islamic appeasement policies: "Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt: 'This is not a war between Islam and the West...'"

And at Instapundit, "CHANGE: Obama’s Favorite Prime Minister Concedes to Center-Right Bloc."

In Aftermath of #Charleston Church Slayings, a Day of Forgiveness and Thought

At the Charleston Post and Courier:

These people are genuine Christians. It's humbling. https://t.co/hgGIlNqgXL

— Mark Krikorian (@MarkSKrikorian) June 19, 2015

Dylann Storm Roof stared at the camera in front of him and blinked occasionally.

He saw a judge on a video screen and heard crying. But he couldn’t see the rest of the courtroom on the other end of the video link. He couldn’t see the people who fought through tears and stood up in the crowded room.

He heard the words of Felicia Sanders as she rose and spoke. Roof had been accused of killing her son and eight others as Sanders watched two nights earlier at a downtown Charleston church.

“We welcomed you Wednesday night in our Bible study with open arms,” she said. “We enjoyed you, but may God have mercy on your soul.”

The bond hearing Friday afternoon served as the first opportunity for family members to talk to the 21-year-old Eastover man suspected of fatally shooting the nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. They spoke of hurt, grief and longing for a chance to say goodbye to the people they loved. They also offered forgiveness, despite the accusation that Roof, a white man, had carried out one of the worst American hate crimes of the generation at the historically black church.

Roof also could not see beyond the courtroom, where Charleston has been transformed by tragedy into a ground zero for the racial strife reignited in recent years by a call of “black lives matter.” He faces nine murder charges in the attack that some say exposed an underbelly of the Deep South that bubbled to the surface in a bloody way around 9 p.m. Wednesday at 110 Calhoun St.

The Confederate battle flag still flew above the Statehouse, despite calls from critics nationwide to take it down. And some pointed to the bond judge who faced Roof as another example of deep-rooted problems here. The judge, who has been reprimanded and suspended for using the N-word in the past, called Roof’s family members victims, too.

“Saying that semblances of that ugly underbelly does not exist would be a disservice to the lives that were lost,” said Antonio Tillis, a longtime African studies professor brought to the College of Charleston amid the school’s turmoil over the hiring of a Confederacy memorabilia aficionado as its president. “We need to question our national identity and Americanism. Who gets to claim it? To hear a young man say that black people have taken over the country, we have to question that.”

But that man also couldn’t see the wall of flowers being built on the sidewalk in front of the church, each bouquet with a message from people in Sheridan, Wyo.; Crawfordsville, Ind.; and Madison, Miss. Black and white visitors from other states knelt next to residents from Charleston and cried as they penned messages on a banner. Roof also couldn’t hear what they said.

“Where is our country going?” Donna Lea Needham, 83, of Sanford, Fla., said as she cried. “How many times is hatred going to cause this kind of sorrow? This has gone on for long enough.”

That call on Calhoun Street echoed from the courtroom with the victims’ families, to Charleston City Hall, to California, where President Barack Obama again spoke out against the violence.

“It is not good enough to simply show sympathy,” he said. “We as a people have got to change. That’s how we honor those families.”

Keep reading.

Leonna Mayor, World's Sexiest Jockey, Strips Down to Lingerie

For Zoo Today.

Nice: "Leonna Mayor, the world's sexiest jockey, strips to her lingerie for ZOO!"

And watch the video: "Leonna Mayor: the world's hottest horse rider!"

How Our Touchy-Feely Feminized Society Creates Young Male Mass Killers

From Milo Yiannopoulos, at Big Government, "TO STOP MASS KILLERS, WE HAVE TO STOP DRUGGING OUR YOUNG BOYS" (via Blazing Cat Fur):

As America comes to terms with a monstrous shooting in Charleston that has left nine churchgoers dead, bewildered members of the public are seeking rationality in apparently wanton and inscrutable crimes.

We may never know quite what drives some people to kill. But it seems that in young Dylann Storm Roof, we have further evidence of a trend that should worry us all. I’m talking about his dependence on prescription drugs: suboxone, to be precise.

Roof is just the latest in a long line of young men who have committed appalling crimes after a lifetime on psychotropic drugs. If you don’t believe me, consider some of the most notorious young male shooters in American history.

Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza? Lexapro and Celexa. Red-headed Aurora killer James Holmes? Clonazepam and sertraline. Virginia Tech mass murderer Seung-Hui Cho? Prozac. Charles Whitman, the “Texas Tower Sniper”? Dexedrine. Columbine executioners Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold? Zoloft and Luvox.

You get the idea. These young men were all on prescribed medication. Feminism helped to get them there. In particular, female teachers who either dislike men or are completely ignorant of healthy behaviour norms for boys are creating a generation of emotionally stunted, drugged up young men.

Millions of young American men are prescribed powerful drugs after being diagnosed with the phantom condition “ADHD,” better known as a mixture of natural boisterousness and poor parental discipline. The mere fact of being male has become pathologised.

When they get into their teens and early twenties, they graduate onto drugs like Zoloft and Prozac, drugs that can produce a powerfully dissociative effect in the mind, muddying the distinctions between reality and fantasy. All this, because boys are now treated as though they are defective girls.

I once clumsily wrote that video games helped to “shape the fantasies” of Isla Vista gunman Elliot Rodgers. I intended not to incriminate video games in his spiral into madness and murder but rather to point out that young men who lose grip on the real world often retreat into imaginary ones, which can then have a stylistic effect, if you like, on their crimes.

After a year of reading the research on what America is doing to its men, and interviewing hundreds of young men in preparation for my book on the GamerGate controversy, I have come to believe that in most cases it’s not games, or movies, or “misogyny,” or “racism” that drives young men to kill. It is the increasing sense of isolation and disorientation young boys feel in a world that now feels architected against them...

Well, I'm not sure that feminism and ADHD are causal factors here, but certainly there's something to this idea of the "isolation of disorientation young boys feel." It's a point I raised earlier today in my essay, "Crazy Emo-Prog Dylann Roof Doesn't Fit the Left's 'Right-Wing Racist White Supremacist' Narrative."

Crazy Emo-Prog Dylann Roof Doesn't Fit the Left's 'Right-Wing Racist White Supremacist' Narrative

My post yesterday got a lot of attention, "Dylann Roof, Southern Democrat Throwback, is Drug-Addled 'Wannabe Emo Anarchist' with Androgynous Haircut."

Notice the leftists disagreeing angrily in the comments, and of course go on Twitter and notice how the left's murderous lynch mobs have taken the debate hostage from reason.

Roof's thoughts are certainly racist, but the idea that the kid fits some common stereotype of the Southern red-neck Confederate flag-waving cracker --- who for leftists is essentially a racist mass murderer in waiting --- is a joke. The right-wing "racist mass murderer" premise is itself a joke. But then, leftism is a joke. Leftists are not rational people. They don't care for science. From abortion politics to global warming, leftists reject science and adopt faith-based arguments that cannot not be repudiated with empirical evidence. Anyone who attempts to do so is a heretic who must not only be shunned, but destroyed. Professor Mark Regnerus, the Texas sociology professor who published a rigorous study on the life chances of children of same-sex marriages, was attacked as a "hateful bigot," and the leftist outrage industry fomented an investigation of him for "academic misconduct" by the University of Texas. Deranged leftists wanted him fired. Similar cases have become legion more recently, most immediately on the issue of the so-called "rape culture." It's now so bad that outraged progs have started eating their own in a kind of Thermidorian Reaction that's just now getting going.

In any case, folks need to read Robert Stacy McCain's essay on the national reaction to the shooting, "Dylann Roof: A Ninth-Grade Dropout Who Was Playing Too Many Video Games." Robert's a journalist's journalist who uses evidence to reach to conclusions, rather than attempting to pigeonhole the facts into some  kind of preexisting narrative.

As I noted yesterday, Roof is not mentally fit. He's a drug abuser whose racist views have been formed quite recently, likely the result of an alienation process developing out an extremely dysfunctional home life. He shuttled around from school to school as his family broke apart due to marital separation. He dropped out of school and became increasingly aimless. He was arrested and charged twice with felonies. His dad had been haranguing him to stop playing so many videos games. Somewhere along the line he glommed onto some white supremacist websites and unconvincingly adorned the paraphernalia of a Southern Klansman.

This is not the basis for an ideological program. It's the basis for involuntary commitment.

But be sure to read Robert's piece:

Charles Manson was a hippie guru whose cult followers did a lot of drugs, listened to Beatles records and committed mass murder, but most hippies who did drugs and listened to Beatles records were neither cult members nor mass murderers. So what lessons could we, as a society, have derived from the notorious “Helter Skelter” killings? Most people at the time recognized the Tate-Labianca murders as conclusive proof that the whole 1960s peace-and-love tune-in-turn-on-drop-out mythology of hippie culture was a lie. Manson collected his followers from among the broken flotsam and jetsam of castoff kids and runaways who flooded into San Francisco during the late 1960s. It was the Law of Large Numbers, really. When millions of kids climbed aboard that kind of bandwagon — rejecting parental authority to pursue a lifestyle of drugs, sex and rock-and-roll — it was inevitable that very bad things would happen to some of them.

You see that the example of the Charles Manson cult is not one chosen at random in this case, because Manson’s “Helter Skelter” fantasy was to incite an apocalyptic race war in America, and Dylann Roof’s murders had the same motive. Also, Dylann Roof had a drug problem. For that matter, Dylann Roof even had a Beatle haircut. Whether or not he was listening to the White Album backwards, we don’t know.

Please excuse my habitual sarcasm, but if you’re following the liberal media coverage of the Charleston shootings, you keep seeing allegedly intelligent people making a few simple-minded connections that may not actually have much to do with Dylann Roof’s crimes. “It’s the guns! It’s the racism! This happened in South Carolina! OMG! They fly the Confederate flag there!” All of this is obviously true, but exactly how much of this is really relevant? There are about 3 million white people in South Carolina, many of whom are racists and gun owners, but they didn’t kill people in Charleston, nor do they condone hateful violence.

As always, the liberal biases of the media lead them into a hasty pell-mell rush to assign collective political blame for a high-profile crime, a bias that fosters false beliefs which in turn have the effect of psychologically disarming society. We cannot prevent crime if we don’t understand crime, and understanding crime requires us to focus on the individuals who commit crime. Yes, the hippie culture of the 1960s was dangerous. And yes, we may say that South Carolina is a particularly “racist” environment. However, most hippies were not mass murderers, nor are most South Carolinians, and the attempt to defame white people in South Carolina by assigning collective blame to them — which is what the liberal media are so obviously doing — is the exact opposite of what responsible journalism is about. Let’s focus on the criminal:

According to classmates, Roof is a frequent abuser of prescription drugs.

Court records from Lexington, [South] Carolina — where he has been living in a trailer park — reveal he was arrested twice this year on charges of trespassing and drug possession. . . .

Roof used to skateboard in a Lexington suburb in South Carolina when he was younger and had long hair then.

Childhood friend Joey Meek had seen him as recently as Tuesday, said Meek’s mother, Kimberly Konzny. . . .

‘I don’t know what was going through his head,’ Konzny said. ‘He was a really sweet kid. He was quiet. He only had a few friends.’Joey Meek alerted the FBI after he and his mother instantly recognized Roof in a surveillance camera image that was widely circulated after the shooting.

In the image, Roof had the same stained sweatshirt he wore while playing Xbox video games in their home recently, Konzny said. It was stained because he had worked at a landscaping and pest control business, she said.

Roof attended ninth grade at White Knoll High during the 2008-09 school year and went there for the first half of the following academic year, district spokeswoman Mary Beth Hill said. The school system gave no reason for Roof’s departure and said it had no record of him attending any other schools in the district.

According to CBS News, school records show that between fourth and ninth grade, Roof attended six different schools, and repeated the ninth grade.

He dropped out of school after ninth grade. His parents were divorced, and his father and stepmother also reportedly had divorced. According to the Wall Street Journal, Dylann’s father had been pressuring him to stop playing video games constantly, and to find steady employment. His grandfather is reportedly a lawyer. His father is a contractor. There are some very interesting clues in this Mother Jones story:

Ken Mathews, an attorney who has been representing Roof in an ongoing drug-possession case, was, he says, “very shocked” to hear about what Roof had allegedly done. He tells Mother Jones, “The dealings I had with him, he was just a normal kid.”

Mathews, a Columbia, South Carolina, attorney, notes that so far in the drug case he has had “very limited dealings” with Roof. He says he saw “nothing that would indicate that [Roof] would take this type of action.” . . .

Mathews has known the Roof family for years, dating back to a custody dispute between Dylann’s father Ben and mother Amy over visitation rights concerning Dylann. . . .

So his family life was disrupted, he was shuttled from one school to another from the time he was nine or 10 years old, he dropped out of school as a teenager, became a drug-addicted loser living in a trailer park, constantly playing video games and, also, Dylann Roof was a racist who sewed Rhodesian flag patches on his jacket and had a Confederate flag tag on his car...

Continue reading.

And check Ace of Spade HQ's Twitter feed for regular dose of sanity amid the left's hysteria:

It is the left, not the right, who views "terrorism" as merely a propaganda term to describe "political violence we *don't* support."

— TheUltraYachtLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 19, 2015

I don't support any political violence, so I call it what it is. It's the left that distinguishes between terrorism and "resisistance."

— TheUltraYachtLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 19, 2015

If I were a left-winger, I'd call Roof an Understandable case for sympathy, who was betrayed and let down by the Society he lived in.

— TheUltraYachtLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 19, 2015

But I'm not a left-winger, and I don't have to thus make excuses for wretched murderers. And thus I call him a racial terrorist.

— TheUltraYachtLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 19, 2015

Remember when it was white Boston society that was ultimately the cause for Djokhar Tsarnaev's understandable rage?

— TheUltraYachtLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 19, 2015

btw, look at this skinny, runt-of-the-litter, UGLY, 9th-grade-dropout idiot and mental patient--and tell me he wan't "marginalized" by life

— TheUltraYachtLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 19, 2015

I make no excuses for his nihilistic demonic murders based on his "marginalization." Will the left join me in that principle? OF COURSE NOT

— TheUltraYachtLife (@AceofSpadesHQ) June 19, 2015

Goodnight, California, a once great state

A fascinating piece, as always, from Victor Davis Hanson.

Leftist Lynch Mob Terrorizes Miami Herald's A.J. Delgado on Twitter

Well, false memes and leftist terror campaigns. What else is new these days?

Here's A.J. Delgado explaining why she left Twitter yesterday, "a clarification":

Just caught up on the latest Twitter witch hunt. Hang in there @AJDelgado13 - This too shall pass.

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) June 18, 2015

While I tried to correct this false narrative, I was forced to privatize my Twitter account due to a barrage of misogynistic and (ironically) racist messages sent to me, including detailed threats.

"Detailed threats."

Yay progs. Way to win friends and clinch the winning arguments.

CNN's Don Lemon Heckled as 'Uncle Tom' on Live TV — ‘White people are TERRORISTS!' (VIDEO)

Oh man!

Things are crazy out there yo!

At Twitchy, "Don Lemon heckled as ‘Uncle Tom’ on live CNN report; President Obama, too."

‘White people are TERRORISTS!!’ – Black lady SCREAMS at CNN’s Don Lemon while he’s on air!! http://t.co/lax6YYcqVt pic.twitter.com/5khCpfukH2

— Right Scoop (@trscoop) June 18, 2015

Also at Truth Revolt, "Don Lemon Heckled On Air By a Black Woman: 'Uncle Tom, Hello!'"

False Dylann Roof Memes Started on Twitter

That would be false leftist memes on Twitter, naturally.

At AceofSpadesHQ, "Racist Terrorist Makes Us All Focus on the Really Important Things, Like Getting Stupidly False Memes Started on Twitter":

Of course, the real big news is that runt-of-the-litter angry loser's roommate says that Roof had been planning this attack, to spark off a racial civil war, for six months, and just got around to telling us about this, um, today, so, Thanks for the heads up, buddy!