The Kaleidoscope Society

From Ronald Brownstein, at National Journal, "America’s hurtling change is inverting our oldest national motto":

The Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, President Obama's wrenching eulogy in Charleston, and a Census Bureau report that kids of color for the first time now make up a majority of America's under-5 population all arrived within one indelible 24-hour period late last week.

Each event sent the same unmistakable message: The demographic and cultural change recasting America is only accelerating. Against that backdrop, the most timely question this July 4 may be whether Americans believe we are still capable of achieving the soaring standard of unity celebrated in the nation's founding motto: e pluribus unum—out of many, one.

It was undoubtedly easier to embrace that vision when the many were more alike than not. For most of our history, most Americans have been white Protestants who ended their formal education before obtaining a college degree, and then married as adults. Under that broad umbrella many differences persisted. But even into the late 20th century, it would not have been unreasonable to say those characteristics identified a "typical American."

Like a river cutting through rock, currents of cultural, demographic, and social change have eroded those pillars of American identity over the past generation. On every front, America is moving from a single common experience to a panorama of alternative experiences.

Consider religion. As recently as the early 1990s, about 60 percent of Americans, a solid majority, identified as Protestants. But surveys by Gallup and the Pew Research Center indicate that sometime around 2007, Protestants (who themselves divide between mainline and evangelical denominations) fell below a majority. No religion now claims loyalty from half of Americans. The fastest growing segment is those who claim no religious affiliation; they have soared from only about one-in-20 Americans in the early 1970s to nearly one-in-four now.

On race, America is following a similar trajectory. In 1980, non-Hispanic whites represented about four-fifths of the population. The Census reported last week they had fallen to around 62 percent. The change has advanced even faster among young people. The school year that just concluded marked the first time kids of color made up a majority of K-12 public school students nationwide. The Census findings on the diversifying under-5 population point towards the larger transformation looming after 2040: a society with no racial majority.

America's educational mix is diversifying too. In 1967, only one-in-10 adults had completed college. Now, nearly one-in-three have done so. Family life is also reorganizing around new combinations as heterosexual marriage rates slip, single parenthood increases, and more same-sex couples form.

These changes have left the nation without any single dominant group. One way to measure that is to consider Americans eligible to vote. In 1980, one group alone represented nearly half of all eligible voters: whites who were married but lacked a college degree. Today that group represents fewer than one-in-four eligible voters, according to Census data analyzed by the nonpartisan States of Change project. And no other single group is larger.

In all these ways, America is inverting the e pluribus formula. A national motto that more accurately describes our modern disaggregation would read: "out of one, many." Attitudes toward this hurtling change, I believe, represent the central division in our polarized politics. Democrats rely on a "Coalition of Transformation," built around minorities, millennials and socially-liberal, college-educated whites (especially women) largely comfortable with this social and racial transformation; Republicans mobilize a competing "Coalition of Restoration" that revolves around the older, blue-collar, rural, and religiously-devout whites most uneasy with some or all of these changes.

The distance between these perspectives was captured by the impassioned language in last week's Supreme Court decision establishing the nationwide right to same-sex marriage. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy grounded the right to marriage in the Transformation Coalition's core conviction that change refreshes America's founding principles: "Changed understandings of marriage are characteristic of a Nation where new dimensions of freedom become apparent to new generations." Writing for the minority, Chief Justice John Roberts crystallized the Restoration Coalition's core fear that unconstrained change is tearing the nation from its moorings: "The Court today not only overlooks our country's entire history and tradition but actively repudiates it, preferring to live only in the heady days of the here and now."

From Charleston to the Supreme Court steps, so many of America's conflicts raise the same question: What binds a nation now woven with so many distinct threads?

A great piece.

Lots of conservatives, especially the kinds you see on Facebook posting all kinds of apocalyptic rants, have given up on the America they once knew. I do think we've reached a turning point, but politics changes too. And the old Democrat Party big government model is ill-suited to the post e pluribus polity that's emerging. The voters realize this, especially younger Americans who aren't going to be tied down to leftist statism and stagnation. Sure, young leftists are socially progressive, but they're also libertarian and entrepreneurial, exactly what the Democrat Party collectivists are not.

There's still a huge opportunity for conservatives. All the better if Hillary Clinton is nominated. It's going to be a real culture clash, largely between old and busted Democrats and the young, mobile, and diverse demographic. These folks are up for grabs, especially if a Republican candidate makes connecting and appealing to these voters a priority.

Still more from Brownstein at the link.

The Counternarrative on Donald Trump

From Kevin Williamson, at National Review, "Republican Base and Donald Trump — WHINOS Are Frustrated and Choosing Foolishly":

That’s generally misunderstood on the Left is that the tea-party movement did not arise as an alternative to the Obama-Reid-Pelosi Democrats but as an alternative to the Bush-McConnell-Hastert Republicans, who were judged to have spent too much, warred too recklessly, and — most significant — to have been too ready to make themselves complicit in the bailouts.

What began as a bracing revolt quickly congealed into pasty dogma.

I’ve spent the past few days at FreedomFest in Las Vegas, Mark Skousen’s annual gathering of liberty-minded activists — think of it as CPAC for people who like weed and gold coins and who are maybe interested in hearing a pitch about taking up domicile in Belize. Far from a doctrinaire libertarian (or even Libertarian) affair, it draws a large number of self-described constitutional conservatives and limited-government types of all persuasions, including Republican activists and candidates.

It is also WHINO central.

You know the RINO — Republican In Name Only — but you may be less familiar with the WHINO. The WHINO is a captive of the populist Right’s master narrative, which is the tragic tale of the holy, holy base, the victory of which would be entirely assured if not for the machinations of the perfidious Establishment. Never mind the Democrats, economic realities, Putin, ISIS, the geographical facts of the U.S.-Mexico border — all would be well and all manner of things would be well if not for the behind-the-scenes plotting of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and their enablers, who apparently can be bribed with small numbers of cocktail weenies. The WHINO is a Republican conspiracy theorist, in whose fervid imaginings all the players — victims, villains — are Republicans.

Barack Obama? Pshaw. The real enemy is Jeb Bush.

That this is a deeply stupid view of the world should go without saying, but if you need evidence, consider that the WHINO vote has settled for the moment upon Donald Trump, a Hillary Rodham Clinton donor who supports Canadian-style single-payer health care and amnesty for as many illegal immigrants as he imagines to exist, who has 0.00 percent chance of winning a general election and who is, as if more were needed, a ridiculous buffoon.

Ask the WHINO to explain that and you will get the characteristic WHINO whine: “But what about the baaaaaaaaase!?!”

Which is to say, the WHINO loves Trump not because Trump confounds the Democrats or because he constitutes a serious threat to a Democratic victory in 2016, but because he confounds the Republicans and constitutes a serious threat to a Republican victory in 2016. The worst part of the WHINO approach is the campaign strategery. At FreedomFest, I did an interview with Matthew Boyle of Breitbart Radio, a nice enough guy but a pretty good example of the WHINO style in American politics. What about Romney? Boyle demanded. Romney, he said with absolute assurance, lost to Barack Obama because millions of conservatives stayed home, finding him insufficiently committed to their cause.

The first aspect of what is wrong with this analysis is obvious: It assumes that a “real conservative” who couldn’t beat Mitt Romney in a Republican primary dominated by “real conservatives” would have defeated Barack Obama in a national election not dominated by conservatives at all, i.e. that Romney was the weakest candidate except for all the guys who couldn’t beat him.

But the defects in this analysis do not stop there. I am not sure that the psephology actually says what the WHINOs think it does, but even if it were so, the further problem with this line of thinking is obvious: If you are a conservative, and if you believe that the way to reform American public policy is to elect conservatives, and you arrived at Election Day believing that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were, from the conservative point of view, interchangeable commodities, then you are either a fanatic or extraordinarily ill-informed. In either case, you owe it to yourself and to your country to be a better citizen, and maybe read a book. There are all sorts of good reasons to abstain from voting, but the preposterous notion that there isn’t much difference between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney isn’t one of them.

Republicans would probably be more inclined to give an ear to campaign advice from people who had — stay with me here — a good record for winning elections. The anti-McConnell gang took its run with Matt Bevin in the primary and got beat like a pack of circus monkeys. Louis Gohmert made his run against John Boehner for the speakership, and there he sits. These were both fine projects — primary challenges and leadership challenges are positive developments that should generally be welcomed — but they were losers. On the other hand, the campaigns to elevate Ted Cruz over David Dewhurst and Marco Rubio over Charlie Crist — insurgencies that were supported by a lot of the same Establishment leaders and institutions abominated by the WHINOS — were successful. They were so successful, in fact, that Rubio and Cruz immediately became faces of the Establishment that we are informed is so despicable...

Still more.

For some reason Williamson thinks conservative attacks on the establishment are overwrought, and hence support for Donald Trump is totally fringe. This misses the key point: Trump is talking about things the GOP establishment will not. Or at least, Trump focuses on those elements in the debate that the GOP would rather avoid. Specifically, by hammering illegal immigration from the perspective illegal alien crime, Trump risks alienating Latinos. The GOP establishment doesn't want to talk about anything that's going to alienate Latinos, hence they don't want to talk about illegal immigrant crime. Conservatives, and likely independents too, aren't pleased with the establishment because they won't deal with issues on their terms. Republicans are going to deal with the issues on Democrat terms, and the Democrats will always win when you play ball constantly on defense.

It's like Rick Moran pointed out yesterday: Donald Trump would be foolish to stop talking about illegal immigration, simply because that's what's igniting his prairie fire. Unfortunately for establishment Republicans, the longer they ignore the visceral concerns of the "base" on illegal immigration, the more they'll be working to help the Democrats in 2016.

Greece Crisis: Cracks Appear In Franco-German Axis as European Leaders Remain Divided Over Country's Fate

Oh boy.

And here I thought they had a breakthrough at the end of last week.

Looks like Merkel's standing firm against no easy Greek bailout.

Guten Tag!

At the Telegraph UK, "French president Francois Hollande dismisses idea of temporary Greek exit as Slovakia and Finland say little chance of a deal today after EU leaders summit is cancelled."



Also at Euronews, "Eurozone leaders are telling Greece it has to restore trust by enacting key reforms before talks can open on a new financial rescue package to keep it in the single currency."

Margaret Brennan Status Report on Iran Nuclear Talks

At CBS News:



And see the New York Times, "Iran Nuclear Talks Are Nearing a Deal, Diplomats Say."

All New Kindle Paperwhite at Amazon

For your summer reading, Shop Amazon - ALL-New Kindle Paperwhite - For Reading, Tablets Can't Compete.

You can read Harper Lee on Kindle, Go Set a Watchman: A Novel.

Trump Would Be a Fool to Stop Talking About Illegal Immigration

From Rick Moran, at Pajamas:

Donald Trump has shot into a tie for the lead with Jeb Bush in the GOP presidential nomination sweepstakes almost exclusively because he has deliberately raised the temperature on one issue: illegal immigration.

What’s more, he is forcing other candidates from both parties to address the issue. He may be using bombastic language and questionable statistics, but there is no denying he has drawn a clear, unequivocal line between Republicans and Democrats on the issue.

So why do some Republicans want Trump to stop talking about illegal immigration?

Americans mostly support the Republican view of illegal immigration — with some important distinctions. A majority support a pathway to legal status for illegals but a larger majority support stepped-up border security. And those who support a pathway to legal status do not support a pathway to citizenship.

Of course, there are some Republicans wringing their hands over Trump’s exaggerations and even outright falsehoods. Why bother? It’s ridiculous to assume that the Republican candidate for president in 2016 will get more than 25-30% of the Hispanic vote. But drawing a stark distinction between the two parties on what could be a decisive issue in the presidential election could bring more conservatives to the polls and attract a few more independents...

Keep reading.

Trump's taking it to the establishment, both left and right. But I particularly like how he's exposing leftist support for illegal immigration sanctuaries. He's exposing the Democrats as the party of death.

It's who they are. It's what they do.

Atticus Finch Defends Jim Crow in 'Go Set a Watchman'

Well, with all these newspaper blurbs for Harper Lee's new novel, it's not like the plot's going to be a surprise.

I've been seeing tweets all week saying that Atticus defends the racist Jim Crow system, or some such thing.

So here's the review at the New York Times, "Review: Harper Lee’s ‘Go Set a Watchman’ Gives Atticus Finch a Dark Side":

We remember Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s 1960 classic, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” as that novel’s moral conscience: kind, wise, honorable, an avatar of integrity who used his gifts as a lawyer to defend a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman in a small Alabama town filled with prejudice and hatred in the 1930s. As indelibly played by Gregory Peck in the 1962 movie, he was the perfect man — the ideal father and a principled idealist, an enlightened, almost saintly believer in justice and fairness. In real life, people named their children after Atticus. People went to law school and became lawyers because of Atticus.

Shockingly, in Ms. Lee’s long-awaited novel, “Go Set a Watchman” (due out Tuesday), Atticus is a racist who once attended a Klan meeting, who says things like “The Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people.” Or asks his daughter: “Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?”

In “Mockingbird,” a book once described by Oprah Winfrey as “our national novel,” Atticus praised American courts as “the great levelers,” dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal.” In “Watchman,” set in the 1950s in the era of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, he denounces the Supreme Court, says he wants his home state “to be left alone to keep house without advice from the N.A.A.C.P.” and describes N.A.A.C.P.-paid lawyers as “standing around like buzzards.”

In “Mockingbird,” Atticus was a role model for his children, Scout and Jem — their North Star, their hero, the most potent moral force in their lives. In “Watchman,” he becomes the source of grievous pain and disillusionment for the 26-year-old Scout (or Jean Louise, as she’s now known).

While written in the third person, “Watchman” reflects a grown-up Scout’s point of view: The novel is the story of how she returns home to Maycomb, Ala., for a visit — from New York City, where she has been living — and tries to grapple with her dismaying realization that Atticus and her longtime boyfriend, Henry Clinton, both have abhorrent views on race and segregation.

Though “Watchman” is being published for the first time now, it was essentially an early version of “Mockingbird.” According to news accounts, “Watchman” was submitted to publishers in the summer of 1957; after her editor asked for a rewrite focusing on Scout’s girlhood two decades earlier, Ms. Lee spent some two years reworking the story, which became “Mockingbird.”

Some plot points that have become touchstones in “Mockingbird” are evident in the earlier “Watchman.” Scout’s older brother, Jem, vividly alive as a boy in “Mockingbird,” is dead in “Watchman”; the trial of a black man accused of raping a young white woman, while a main story line in “Mockingbird,” is only a passing aside in “Watchman.” (Interestingly, the trial results in a guilty verdict for the accused man, Tom Robinson, in “Mockingbird,” but leads to an acquittal in “Watchman.”)

Students of writing will find “Watchman” fascinating for these reasons: How did a lumpy tale about a young woman’s grief over her discovery of her father’s bigoted views evolve into a classic coming-of-age story about two children and their devoted widower father? How did a distressing narrative filled with characters spouting hate speech (from the casually patronizing to the disgustingly grotesque — and presumably meant to capture the extreme prejudice that could exist in small towns in the Deep South in the 1950s) mutate into a redemptive novel associated with the civil rights movement, hailed, in the words of the former civil rights activist and congressman Andrew Young, for giving us “a sense of emerging humanism and decency”?

How did a story about the discovery of evil views in a revered parent turn into a universal parable about the loss of innocence — both the inevitable loss of innocence that children experience in becoming aware of the complexities of grown-up life and a cruel world’s destruction of innocence (symbolized by the mockingbird and represented by Tom Robinson and the reclusive outsider Boo Radley)?

The depiction of Atticus in “Watchman” makes for disturbing reading, and for “Mockingbird” fans, it’s especially disorienting...

Still more at the link.

And buy the novel, at Amazon, Go Set a Watchman: A Novel.

I'm just going to read it for myself.

Fever-Swamp Leftist at Salon: 'Let's make the Confederate flag a hate crime...'

The flag is a symbol, and no matter how odious it is to many, it can't be a "hate crime."

But hey, leftists are on a roll with this, so no surprise.

See Nick Bromell, at the mock-worthy Salon, "Let's make the Confederate flag a hate crime: It is the American swastika and we should recoil it from it in horror" (link goes to Memeorandum's referral):

The heritage these flags stand for was a bloody war initiated by the South. Those Southerners who fired the first shots to attack U.S. troops at Fort Sumter – just a mile or two from the church where Roof gunned down nine black worshippers – aimed not only to “defend” slavery, but to promote slavery’s spread across the nation, especially in the West. The defeat of the South was the defeat of the slavery system.

That defeat is still mourned by many sympathizers with the Confederate cause across the nation, who have somehow forgotten that the Lost Cause was the cause of slavery. To them, the Confederate flag is an innocent symbol, a symbol that honors the Confederate dead and preserves the memory of their gallantry and fighting spirit.

To black Americans, meanwhile, these flags send a clear, painful, and frightening message: You don’t belong here. By being here, you are in danger. This nation is not for you. It was no coincidence that those who opposed the civil rights movement for desegregation and integration across America began to resurrect the use of the flag in the 1950s and 1960s...

Well, of course "those who opposed the civil rights movement for desegregation and integration" were Democrats, although I'll bet that's not who this idiot has in mind.

As I always say, it's the Democrats who held slaves. It's the Democrats who launched the KKK and Jim Crow. It's the Democrats who filibustered civil rights legislation in the 1950s. And it's the Democrats who not only opposed civil rights legislation in the 1960s but also raised the Confederate flag over the South Carolina statehouse.

Funny, but leftists never mention these facts. The Democrats are the party of racism and hatred. It's who they are. It's what they do.

When you make the flag a "hate crime," you're making the Democrat Party a hate crime, which it is.

Donald Trump Tied with Jeb Bush in Latest Reuters/Ipsos Poll

At Reuters, "White House contenders Trump, Bush in virtual dead heat: Reuters/Ipsos poll":

Donald Trump, who became the center of attention in the race for the 2016 Republican U.S. presidential nomination with his denunciation of illegal immigrants from Mexico, has vaulted into a virtual dead heat with Jeb Bush atop the field, a Reuters-Ipsos poll released on Saturday showed.

Trump, a billionaire real estate developer, had the support of 15.8 percent of respondents in the online poll of self-identified Republicans compared to 16.1 percent for Bush, a former Florida governor.

They were followed by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie at 9.5 percent, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul at 8.1 percent, surgeon and author Ben Carson at 7.2 percent and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at 5.8 percent.

However, given a choice of three candidates - Bush, Trump or Florida Senator Marco Rubio - Bush had a comfortable lead at 42 percent among the respondents in the Reuters-Ipsos Republican poll, compared to 28.4 percent for Trump and 20 percent for Rubio....

The controversy over Trump's immigration comments has dominated news coverage of the Republican campaign in recent weeks, and he has climbed in the Reuters-Ipsos poll to draw essentially even with Bush. On June 30, the poll had Bush at 16.9 percent and Trump at 12.8 percent.

A hard line against illegal immigration may find a receptive audience in Republican primary voters, with U.S. conservatives often accusing President Barack Obama of doing too little to secure America's border with Mexico.

Trump also has accused Bush of being weak on illegal immigration, bringing Bush's Mexican-born wife into the debate. "If my wife were from Mexico, I think I would have a soft spot for people from Mexico. I can understand that," Trump said in a CNN interview.

Trump has increasingly come under fire from some of his rivals for the Republican nomination including Bush.

"Everybody has a belief that we should control our borders," Bush said last week. "But to make these extraordinarily kind of ugly comments is not reflective of the Republican Party. Trump is wrong on this."

This is a small sample of 400 respondents, with a margin of error of 5.7 percentage points. Frankly, I like that YouGov poll better, despite it being a non-probability sample. Trump was at 15 percent to Bush's 11 percent in that survey. It sounds more accurate, considering all the huge enthusiasm Trump's generating on immigration.

Via Memeorandum.

'The Silent Majority Is Back!': Donald Trump Rallies Thousands of Supporters in Phoenix (VIDEO)

At the Blaze, "‘The Silent Majority Is Back!’: Donald Trump Criticizes Border Policy in Fiery Speech."

Watch, "Full Speech: Donald Trump Brings Down the House in Phoenix, Arizona (7-11-15)."

And at the Arizona Republic, "Donald Trump visits Phoenix, talks immigration":

Final official headcount was 4,200 in the crowd. https://t.co/qVcYeSVUUu

— Dan Nowicki (@dannowicki) July 12, 2015

.@realdonaldtrump #phxtrump "The silent majority is back and we're going to take the country back!" CHEERS

— YvonneWingettSanchez (@yvonnewingett) July 11, 2015

.@realdonaldtrump #phxtrump: "The press are liars. They're terrible people." He adds not all are, though.

— YvonneWingettSanchez (@yvonnewingett) July 11, 2015

Obama is "weak and he's ineffective," @realDonaldTrump says. He rips Obama on deal to free Bowe Bergdahl, "a no-good traitor." #PhxTrump

— Dan Nowicki (@dannowicki) July 11, 2015

"ISIS will be in such trouble" if he becomes president, Trump says. #PhxTrump

— Dan Nowicki (@dannowicki) July 11, 2015

.@realdonaldtrump #phxtrump: If you people go with Bush, you're going to lose.

— YvonneWingettSanchez (@yvonnewingett) July 11, 2015

.@realdonaldtrump: We have to get rid of Obamacare. We have to build up our military. (hoots and hollers on that one) #phxtrump

— YvonneWingettSanchez (@yvonnewingett) July 11, 2015

.@realDonaldTrump #phxtrump: I don't need anybody's money. People are setting up PACs all over the place. ...I'll take it.

— YvonneWingettSanchez (@yvonnewingett) July 11, 2015

Trump now attacking @HillaryClinton, saying she was "the worst" secretary of state and would be "terrible" as president. #PhxTrump

— Dan Nowicki (@dannowicki) July 11, 2015

It's bedlam in the ballroom as @realDonaldTrump takes the microphone. #PhxTrump pic.twitter.com/ZbXmwPrwEG

— Dan Nowicki (@dannowicki) July 11, 2015

Jamiel Shaw, Sr. — 'I Trust Donald Trump' (VIDEO) #StandWithTrumpAZ

Donald Trump is still taking questions as this post goes live. Here's the feed at My Fox 10 Phoenix, "LIVE: Donald Trump's #StandWithTrumpAZ Phoenix Event on Illegal Immigration."

I'll update with more information and video as it becomes available.

Meanwhile, here's CNN's clip of Jamiel Shaw, Sr., whose son was killed by an an illegal alien:

Obama's Enduring Legacy of Appeasment, Staggering Debt, and Enormous Racial Animosity

From Victor Davis Hanson, at National Review, "What Obama Has Taught Us":

President Obama last week spiked the ball on the Supreme Court’s decisions to legalize gay marriage and to ratify the Affordable Care Act.

Yet it is difficult to see quite how Obama had much to do with these decisions — or, to the degree he did, that they are earth-shattering. He twice ran for president expressing opposition to gay marriage while emphasizing the religious element of holy matrimony, which, he argued, precluded same-sex marriages. Is he delighted that the Court ignored his prior views?

On the Obamacare front, all the Supreme Court did was to clean up the Affordable Care Act, in a postmodern ruling that the administration’s poorly worded law actually meant something other than what the text as written actually said. The Court’s intervention was an act of partisan salvation, not disinterested legal reasoning.

Obama’s trade pact passed only with Republican votes. Apparently free-traders in Congress wanted the deal more than they worried about the president’s taking credit for their eleventh-hour rescue of what otherwise would have been a strong rebuke from his own party.

Nonetheless, Obama still talks of his “change” legacy, as if altering something necessarily meant improving it. Pulling all U.S. peacekeepers out of Iraq certainly changed the dynamics there, as ISIS can testify. The current talks with Iran will change Iranian ideas about how best to get the bomb. Normalizing relations with Stalinist Cuba also changes — as in increases — that regime’s viability.

Nonetheless, Obama still talks of his “change” legacy, as if altering something necessarily meant improving it. Pulling all U.S. peacekeepers out of Iraq certainly changed the dynamics there, as ISIS can testify. The current talks with Iran will change Iranian ideas about how best to get the bomb. Normalizing relations with Stalinist Cuba also changes — as in increases — that regime’s viability.

Jimmy Carter was asked to evaluate President Obama’s foreign-policy record. He concluded that it was hard to identify any improvement in our relations with any nation since Obama took office, defining change as change for the worse. Carter for once is probably right. Some of our outright enemies — Vladimir Putin, for example — have changed by showing even more contempt for us than they did in 2008, apparently on the Munich pattern that appeasement wins, not praise for magnanimity, but rather contempt for obsequiousness. Hitler, remember, vowed to stomp on his benefactor, Neville Chamberlain, after the latter gave him what he wanted in 1938. “Worms,” the Führer scoffed of his appeasers.

Iran so far has repaid Obama’s indulgence by blowing up a mock U.S. aircraft carrier in military drills, de facto running affairs in three other Middle Eastern states — Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen — and brazenly renouncing almost all the basic elements of prior nonproliferation understandings, from on-site inspections to cessation of enrichment to kickback sanctions in the event of noncompliance. Iran embraces change, and looks forward to a nuclear future.

Apparently, the theocracy sees Barack Obama and John Kerry as hell-bent changers, willing to achieve their own legacies at the expense of the interests of their country and its allies — and thus as bewildering and worthy of contempt in a world where leaders are expected to promote their own people’s interests. Expect the geriatric Castros to share the same contempt for American outreach, and to double down on their anti-Americanism and their ruthless suppression of freedom to add spite to the embarrassment of U.S. appeasement. They see U.S. recognition as a big change that will further empower their police state. What allies we have left in the Middle East seem either tired of the U.S. change or baffled by it.

What allies we have left in the Middle East seem either tired of the U.S. change or baffled by it — especially Israel, Jordan, the Gulf monarchies, and Egypt. All that can be said for a changing U.S. foreign policy is that our friends see the Iran deal as a framework for changing ideas about their own nuclear acquisition — on the logic that the institutionalization of American nonproliferation models makes it fairly easy for anyone to get a bomb. Not since Israel got the bomb has any other ally or friend of the United States gone nuclear. (China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea were hostile to the U.S. at the time of their nuclear acquisitions.) Obama may well change that trend too, as we see all sorts of former allies and friends. both in the Middle East and in the Pacific region. creeping toward becoming nuclear powers — fearing either that they are no longer protected by the U.S. or that, on Obama’s watch, too many crazy neighbors may go nuclear.

Our friends have come to resent American change, especially the Obama administration’s sense of self-righteousness that judges partners on impossible standards that it does not apply to enemies or neutrals, such as Iran, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority. Obama’s smugness turns old allies off — as by defining ISIS as a jayvee organization, or psychoanalyzing Putin as a class cut-up bent on a macho shtick when he gobbles up neighboring countries, or lecturing Israel on Obama’s rare insight on what is really in the Jewish state’s self-interest.

If one wants an exemplar of change-failure, then look to Iraq or Libya. The abrupt pullout of all U.S. peacekeepers changed postwar Iraq, just as, if we had left Kosovo in 2001 or South Korea in 1955, the result would have been utter chaos. The logical outcome of bombing Libya without worry about what would follow on the ground was ISIS’s beheadings and “what difference does it make?” lies about Benghazi. Libya and Iraq are the faces of change.

The Europeans are flummoxed...

Keep reading, if you want. VDH just speaks too much truth about this cluster of a faux-president.

Lesbian Margie Winters Fired from Waldron Mercy Academy for Homosexual Marriage

At the video, "presumably there are parents who are in favor of the school's decision." Yes, presumably. Would have been nice had this idiot reporter tracked a few of them down, rather than rely on this far-left radical Nancy Houston to speak for "the community." (Houston's also interviewed at MyFox 29 Philadelphia.)

What a joke. You can't even be Catholic in this country any more. Sad.

At the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Lesbian educator dismissed by Catholic school":

A RELIGIOUS-EDUCATION director at a Montgomery County Catholic school has been dismissed because, parents say, she is lesbian wedded to a woman.

Many parents have voiced support for the educator, Margie Winters, director of religious education and outreach, calling her "inspirational" and "dedicated." Now they're directing their ire not at the school and its sponsor, the Sisters of Mercy, but at the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and Archbishop Charles Chaput.

"It's time to get the attention of the Archdiocese and the Catholic hierarchy and let them know this is illegal," said Katie Culver, who has three children at the school.

Parents and alumni will meet tonight to discuss the matter and "to unify in support of Margie," Culver said.

Waldron Mercy's principal, Nell Stetser, addressed Winters' dismissal in a letter Friday to parents.

"[O]ur school recognizes the authority of the Archbishop of Philadelphia, especially in the teaching of religion, because we call ourselves Catholic," she wrote.

Despite her "amazing contributions" to the school in Merion Station, the school opted not to renew Winters' contract, Stetser wrote.

"Margie certainly has enriched the lives of everyone in the WMA family . . . however, my duty is to protect our school's future," Stetser wrote.

"In the Mercy spirit, many of us accept life choices that contradict current Church teachings, but to continue as a Catholic school Waldron Mercy must comply with those teachings," she wrote.

Some parents are not buying it.

"It's not for any other reason but the fact that she is a homosexual," said Anthony Archievala, whose two daughters attend Waldron Mercy. "We were shocked because she'd been there for so many years."

A parent wrote to school officials and the Archdiocese suggesting that Winters use the "Theology of the Body," a series of addresses by Pope John Paul II, in the school curriculum, and Winters said no, Culver said.

Efforts yesterday to reach the parent were unsuccessful.

Archdiocese spokesman Ken Gavin released a statement denying that the church was involved in Winters' ouster.

"Waldron is a private Catholic school and it is not in any way under the administrative purview of the Archdiocese," he said. "As such, personnel decisions at that school are made locally without oversight from the Archdiocese."

Winters began to work for the school in August 2007, according to her LinkedIn page. She did not respond to requests for comment.

Winters' old job is already listed under employment opportunities on Waldron Mercy's website...

Also at Truth Revolt, "Philly Catholic School Facing Severe Legal Punishment After Firing Lesbian Teacher."

PREVIOUSLY: "The Coming Era of Civil Disobedience."

The Coming Era of Civil Disobedience

From Patrick Buchanan, at WND:

The Oklahoma Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, has ordered a monument of the Ten Commandments removed from the state Capitol.

Calling the Commandments “religious in nature and an integral part of the Jewish and Christian faiths,” the court said the monument must go.

Gov. Mary Fallin has refused. And Oklahoma lawmakers instead have filed legislation to let voters cut out of their constitution the specific article the justices invoked. Some legislators want the justices impeached.

Fallin’s action seems a harbinger of what is to come in America – an era of civil disobedience like the 1960s, where court orders are defied and laws ignored in the name of conscience and a higher law.

Only this time, the rebellion is likely to arise from the right.

Certainly, Americans are no strangers to lawbreaking. What else was our revolution but a rebellion to overthrow the centuries-old rule and law of king and parliament, and establish our own?

U.S. Supreme Court decisions have been defied and those who defied them lionized by modernity. Thomas Jefferson freed all imprisoned under the sedition act, including those convicted in court trials presided over by Supreme Court justices. Jefferson then declared the law dead.

Some Americans want to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman, who, defying the Dred Scott decision and fugitive slave acts, led slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

New England abolitionists backed the anti-slavery fanatic John Brown, who conducted the raid on Harpers Ferry that got him hanged but helped to precipitate a Civil War. That war was fought over whether 11 Southern states had the same right to break free of Mr. Lincoln’s Union as the 13 colonies did to break free of George III’s England.

Millions of Americans, with untroubled consciences, defied the Volstead Act, imbibed alcohol and brought an end to Prohibition.

In the civil rights era, defying laws mandating segregation and ignoring court orders banning demonstrations became badges of honor....

Rosa Parks is celebrated. But the pizza lady who said her Christian beliefs would not permit her to cater a same-sex wedding was declared a bigot. And the LGBT crowd, crowing over its Supreme Court triumph, is writing legislation to make it a violation of federal civil rights law for that lady to refuse to cater that wedding.

But are people who celebrate the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village as the Mount Sinai moment of their movement really standing on solid ground to demand that we all respect the Obergefell decision as holy writ?

And if cities, states or Congress enact laws that make it a crime not to rent to homosexuals, or to refuse services at celebrations of their unions, would not dissenting Christians stand on the same moral ground as Dr. King if they disobeyed those laws?

Already, some businesses have refused to comply with the Obamacare mandate to provide contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs to their employees. Priests and pastors are going to refuse to perform same-sex marriages. Churches and chapels will refuse to host them. Christian colleges and universities will deny married-couple facilities to homosexuals.

Laws will be passed to outlaw such practices as discrimination, and those laws, which the Christians believe violate eternal law and natural law, will, as Dr. King instructed, be disobeyed.

And the removal of tax exemptions will then be on the table.

If a family disagreed as broadly as we Americans do on issues so fundamental as right and wrong, good and evil, the family would fall apart, the couple would divorce, and the children would go their separate ways.

Something like that is happening in the country.

A secession of the heart has already taken place in America, and a secession, not of states, but of people from one another, caused by divisions on social, moral, cultural and political views and values, is taking place.

America is disuniting, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote 25 years ago.

And for those who, when young, rejected the views, values and laws of Eisenhower’s America, what makes them think that dissenting Americans in this post-Christian and anti-Christian era will accept their laws, beliefs, values?

Why should they?

Actually, Buchanan's getting over into crackpot radical libertarian territory with that stuff on the South and states' rights in the Civil war, but still. He's got a point about civil disobedience. Leftists have the loaded gun to your head on their radical homosexual demands. If you don't kowtow you'll be ruined, if not dead.

Leftist Elites Are the Wellspring of Anti-Semitism in Germany Today

Well, they're the wellspring of anti-semitism in America today, but you knew that.

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "GERMAN TEXTBOOKS AND ANTI-ISRAEL LIBERAL ELITES: At Commentary, Evelyn Gordon writes “a German study showing that educated elites, rather than the far-right fringes, are the wellspring of anti-Semitism in that country..."

Kristen Keogh's Got Your Weekend Forecast

Here's the lovely Kristen, for KGTV ABC-10 San Diego.

The weather's been real reasonable these last few days. Haven't had to hardly run the air conditioner at all.

It's the "7/11" forecast, heh.

Open-Borders Leftists Push to Oust Donald Trump from Phoenix Convention Center

At the video is far left-wing nut job Steve Gallardo, a member of the Board of Supervisors for Maricopa County. He's pretty angry about this, a fever swamp leftist troll, in fact.

And see the Arizona Republic, "Phoenix council members slam Trump visit":

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton and several City Council members are denouncing Donald Trump's Arizona campaign visit, with some members arguing the event shouldn't be held at the Phoenix Convention Center.

Stanton and Councilmembers Michael Nowakowski, Daniel Valenzuela and Kate Gallego, all Democrats, were the first to speak publicly on Trump's planned speech.

They said they don't agree with the Republican presidential candidate's views and think his remarks on illegal immigrants have been "ignorant," "racially inflammatory" and "disgusting."

But Stanton said the city will not interfere with plans for the Trump event to be held at the taxpayer-funded Phoenix Convention Center.

Trump, who has been criticized for calling some undocumented immigrants rapists and criminals, is set to speak on immigration at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Convention Center's North Ballroom. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio also is slated to speak.

The event was originally scheduled for the Arizona Biltmore, but the location shifted to the downtown Phoenix venue to accommodate the thousands who are expected to attend, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said.

In a statement released this week, Valenzuela said the event should be held elsewhere.

"Mr. Trump certainly has a First Amendment right to bluster as much as he wants, and even to pander to our worst instincts in a sad attempt to win votes at the expense of hard-working, honorable, law-abiding Latinos," Valenzuela said.

"However, we should draw the line at allowing him to use the Phoenix Convention Center — a public building funded by all of our taxpayers' dollars — to stage his hate-filled circus."

Gallego also disapproved of Trump's visit, suggesting unhappy residents protest the event.

"It is my hope and prayer that Phoenicians join me in exercising our First Amendment rights to let Mr. Trump know that the residents of Phoenix find his views repugnant," she said in a statement Thursday. "Just because the lawyers say we can't turn him away doesn't mean he's welcome."

Stanton, also in a released statement, said, "Mr. Trump has a right under the First Amendment to make absurd and embarrassing statements, and the city of Phoenix will not attempt to censor political speech based on content.

"The Convention Center is a public facility and open to everyone willing to pay for it — including Mr. Trump."

Councilman Bill Gates, a Republican, said Trump's views "do not reflect the majority of Arizonans and the majority of Arizona Republicans." He agreed with Stanton, saying the city does not prohibit any use of the center because of political ideology.

Added Nowakowski in a separate statement: "I support our First Amendment right to free speech and as a city, we cannot discriminate based on content or person ... Phoenix will not be tarnished by this event."

Councilwoman Thelda Williams agreed that Phoenix can't block Trump from speaking at the convention center.

"I think all the presidential candidates are welcome to come say their piece so people have an opportunity to hear what they have to say and make up their own minds," she said.

Another case where anti-speech leftists just can't stand the First Amendment, and funny how there's nothing they can do about it. The f-king losers.

PREVIOUSLY: "Donald Trump Speaks in Beverly Hills: Blasts Illegal Alien Criminals, Supports Victims' Families (VIDEO)."

Arthur Brooks, The Conservative Heart

In the mail yesterday, The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America.

I expect I'll be reading the first couple of chapters today and will update. Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute and he's written a number of books on the loving culture of conservatism. See especially, Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism.

The Right Way to Remember the Confederacy

From historian William Davis, at the Wall Street Journal:

The shibboleth that “state rights” caused secession is a suit of clothes desperately lacking an emperor. Only slavery (and its surrounding economic and political issues) had the power to propel white Southerners to disunion and, ultimately, war. Ironically, by taking a course that led to a war that they lost, the Confederates themselves launched the juggernaut that led to emancipation. To understand how freedom and justice came, why it was delayed for a century after the Civil War and why today so much mistrust and misunderstanding persists between black and white Americans, the vital starting point remains the Confederacy.

Should African-Americans even care about the individual “heroes” of the Confederacy? It might help to know that some of them were black too, including men like the enslaved Charleston steamer pilot Robert Smalls, who boldly stole a Confederate steamboat on May 13, 1862, and took his family and the families of his crew past the cannons ringing Charleston’s harbor to reach freedom with the blockading Union fleet. More interesting might be those brave Southern black men and women who carried on a clandestine opposition during the war to help the Union. And many might be surprised to learn of the tens of thousands of white Southerners who opposed both slavery and the Confederacy. After the war, a few leaders even accepted the new U.S. order and espoused full citizenship for freedmen. Without preserving the Confederate story, we risk losing the memories of all those other genuine heroes.

In the end, Americans cannot afford to forget the Confederacy. It is a good thing that the Confederacy failed—not least because a permanently divided America would have had neither the strength nor the worldliness to confront the next century’s totalitarian menaces. But the Confederate experience also teaches lessons about Americans themselves—about how they have reacted in crisis, about matters beyond just bravery and sacrifice that constitute the bedrock of our national being.

The Confederacy was almost as deeply riven with dissent as the U.S. is today, and yet it stopped short of draconian restrictions on free speech (at least for the whites it considered full citizens). By their own lights, its leaders overwhelmingly remained committed to constitutional authority and elected civil government—even in the last year of the war, when the military situation grew so desperate that some prominent leaders called for the unconstitutional overthrow of President Davis and the installation of Lee as military dictator.

To the end, the Confederates’ leaders believed in democracy as they conceived it. In the last months of the war, some of their civil and military leaders, briefly including Lee himself, worked to bring about a negotiated peace with the North that would have ended slavery and the Confederacy in return for guarantees of continued government in the Southern states by the consent of the white population. The Confederates were seen at the time as traitors by the North, and they are seen as racists down to the present day, but in the main, they sincerely believed that they were holding true to the guiding principles of democracy.

To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, America has ever been a laboratory for that democracy. The Confederacy is its most notable failed experiment. The debate over the relation of the states to the federal government had been present since independence. The idea that secession was an alternative if conflicts over sovereignty couldn’t be resolved arose often enough that it was likely to be tried eventually, and so the Confederates tried. They failed. But good scientists don’t erase their laboratory failures; they learn from them...

Stogie's not going to like this essay, obviously, because Davis doesn't adopt the "evil" North, "virtuous" South ideological template. There are good reasons for preserving the Confederate flag while recognizing that it's a divisive symbol for millions of Americans. Demonizing those Americans, which is what Stogie does, is not going to bring about the preservation of that heritage.

But RTWT at that top link.

Donald Trump Speaks in Beverly Hills: Blasts Illegal Alien Criminals, Supports Victims' Families (VIDEO)

At ABC 7 Eyewitness News Los Angeles, "DONALD TRUMP: 'I WILL WIN THE HISPANIC VOTE'":

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Donald Trump isn't backing down from his comments about Mexican immigrants bringing crime with them when they enter into the United States illegally.

The Republican presidential hopeful addressed critics at a Friday news conference in Beverly Hills, saying U.S. leaders are not doing enough and letting in illegal immigrants who shoot and kill U.S. citizens.

"We're housing people from all over the world that other countries don't want. They're sending criminals to us and we're putting those criminals in jails, often times after they've hurt somebody or killed somebody," Trump said

He noted that he respects the country of Mexico and pointed to his "great relationships" with Mexican people, including his employees.

"I will win the Hispanic vote. I'm going to get people jobs. Nobody else is going to," Trump said.

Families who lost loved ones at the hands of undocumented immigrants joined Trump at the news conference.

Jamiel Shaw, Sr., whose son was shot to death in 2008 by an undocumented immigrant who had been released from a Los Angeles County jail hours before the murder, agreed with Trump's assessment.

"To me, he (Trump) was being nice, because I would say they're murderers. So what he said was going easy," Shaw, Sr. said.

Meanwhile, about 60 protesters marched outside of Luxe Sunset Boulevard Hotel, where Trump is expected to appear at an event.

Protesters carried signs reading, "Dump Trump," and held Trump look-alike pinatas.

"He better stop talking bad about my people, my brothers and sisters, the working community, because we're not criminals," Hawthorne resident Martha Munoz said.

Trump is headed to Arizona over the weekend.

Great White Shark Photobombed by Another Shark Near Seal Island in Mossel Bay, South Africa

You gotta love it.

Via ABC 7 News Los Angeles, "GREAT WHITE SHARK LEAPS OUT OF THE WATER TO PHOTOBOMB ANOTHER SHARK."

Watch, "GREAT WHITE SHARKS BREACHING in MOSSEL BAY, July 6 2015."

Sports Illustrated's Summer of Swim Heats Up with 2015 Cover Model Hannah Davis

Beautiful.

Watch, at Sports Illustrated's YouTube page, "Hannah Davis - Summer of Swim | Sports Illustrated Swimsuit."

Megyn Kelly: Why is Obama Ignoring Murder of Kathryn Steinle?

Watch, at RCP, "FOX News' Megyn Kelly opened Thursday night's broadcast of her show with a monologue asking why President Obama and the White House won't give Katie Steinle, the woman killed by an illegal immigrant in San Francisco, the same attention it gave to cases involving Freddie Brown, Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin."

Jennifer Lopez Just Keeps Getting Better With Age!

At TMZ, "We got photos of Jennifer Lopez in the Hamptons after a workout in some tight leopard pants that show off her booty but it was her abs that got our attention this time!"

Top Republicans Shun Donald Trump Ahead of Phoenix Anti-Immigration Event with Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Heh, establishment Republicans are freakin' out, while Trump just keeps surging in the polls.

At the Arizona Republic, "Trump shunned by Arizona's GOP establishment ahead of Phoenix visit":

Arizona's top Republicans are snubbing Donald Trump as he prepares to bring his surging GOP presidential campaign and brash talk on immigration to Phoenix.

U.S. Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake and Gov. Doug Ducey will not attend the Saturday event — now set for the Phoenix Convention Center — hosted by the Republican Party of Maricopa County and featuring Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Flake on Thursday blasted Trump, the celebrity real-estate mogul who has drawn fire for saying Mexican immigrants bring crime and drugs to the United States, and contacted the Maricopa County GOP to register his disapproval.

"Donald Trump's views are coarse, ill-informed and inaccurate, and they are not representative of the Republican Party," said Flake, who with McCain was one of the authors of a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform that passed the U.S. Senate in 2013. "As an elected Republican official, I'm disappointed the county party would host a speaker that so damages the party's image."

McCain won't attend Trump's speech, his spokesman Brian Rogers said. The senator is staying in Washington, D.C., this weekend.

Ducey, meanwhile, will be in town but won't be shaking hands or chatting privately with Trump.

McCain already had distanced himself from Trump's comments about Mexican immigrants, but elaborated Thursday when he was asked during an MSNBC interview about Trump's "rhetoric" and upcoming Arizona visit.

McCain praised the Hispanic influence on Arizona's culture and economy.

"I just think that it is offensive to not only Hispanic citizenry, but other citizenry, but he's entitled to say what he wants to say," McCain said. "But I guarantee you the overwhelming majority (in Arizona) ... do not agree with his attitude, that he has displayed, toward our Hispanic citizens. We love them."

Nationally, there also are signs Trump's constant fire-breathing on immigration is making GOP leaders uncomfortable. The Washington Post reported Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, on Wednesday had a private, 45-minute telephone call with Trump in which he reportedly urged the candidate to "tone it down." Trump described the conversation to CNN as "congratulatory," although he was told to "tone it down a little bit."

Also, "Donald Trump event moves to Phoenix Convention Center."

California's Latino Plurality Points Toward Change to Come

Latinos have overtaken whites in California's population demographics, although I don't think it's as breathtaking as folks might think. Parts of California have been most Mexican for decades, and it's not good. It's just now that official statistics are catching up.

At the Los Angeles Times, "As Latino population surges, gaps in income and education may shrink":

Yolanda Garcia's grandparents migrated from Mexico and worked multiple jobs — in farm fields and school cafeterias — to save money to send all six children to college.

Garcia's father attended Brown University and had five children. In turn, she graduated from UC Santa Cruz, worked as a teacher and now runs a gallery and boutique store in Whittier selling Latin American folklore art and other items.

Along the way, the family moved up the ladder, from South Los Angeles to the upscale Friendly Hills neighborhood of Whittier. They were the first Latinos in their immediate area. Now, there are four other Latino families there.

The Garcias' story represents a common California immigrant dream. But it's far from the reality for all Latinos, who the U.S. Census Bureau now says have surpassed non-Latino whites to become California's largest ethnic group.

The milestone is a reminder of the huge strides Latinos have made, but also of the challenges they still face.

Overall, Latinos have lower incomes, education and job skills than the average white Californian.

The Latino plurality is just a preview of the demographic shifts ahead. Latinos make up half of all Californians younger than 18, numbering 4.7 million compared with 2.4 million whites, according to census data.

This younger generation has a chance to close many of these gaps, with many achieving more than their parents.

A study published last year found that second-generation Mexican Americans in California and Texas had achieved more education, higher earnings, less poverty, more white-collar jobs and greater rates of home ownership than their immigrant parents. Only about 21% of Mexican parents had completed high school, for instance, compared with 80% of their children by 2005.

"It's extraordinary the progress that Latino youth have made relative to their parents, but they are still lagging behind," said USC professor Dowell Myers, one of the report's authors. "We need to recognize how important these people are and how urgent their success is for the well-being of everyone."

Marilyn Padilla represents the hope in this next generation.

She is the child of a Honduran immigrant mother who worked as a cocktail waitress and never attended school. Her father was deported before she was born. But Padilla stayed out of trouble growing up in Boyle Heights and is now studying linguistics at UC Santa Cruz, with ambitions to become a Spanish teacher.

"We have come a long way," she said. "We are starting to put down the stereotypes about us. Now we are becoming equals, we are doing that for ourselves."

The Latino population surge is leading the way in what demographers call a "grand experiment" in making California the most dynamically diverse state in the nation's history...

Keep reading.

Ellen Pao Fired as CEO of Reddit!

Chairman Pao faces the ax!

At Instapundit, "ANOTHER CONSUMER REVOLT DRAWS BLOOD: Ellen Pao Out as Reddit CEO; Co-Founder Huffman Takes Over."

The lady just can't win.

She's a poster woman-child for the left's SJWs.

Governor Jan Brewer: Everybody Knows Donald Trump is Right

Of course he's right. The left is complicit in the murder of Kathryn Steinle.

Watch, at CNN: "Former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer: Everybody knows Trump is right."

Pope Francis Apologizes for 'Grave Sins' of the Catholic Church

He's a freakin' communist.

At the New York Times, "In Bolivia, Pope Francis Apologizes for Church’s ‘Grave Sins’":

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia — Pope Francis offered a direct apology on Thursday for the complicity of the Roman Catholic Church in the oppression of Latin America during the colonial era, even as he called for a global social movement to shatter a “new colonialism” that has fostered inequality, materialism and the exploitation of the poor.

Speaking to a hall filled with social activists, farmers, garbage workers and Bolivian indigenous people, Francis offered the most ambitious, and biting, address of his South American tour.

He repeated familiar themes in sharply critiquing the global economic order and warning of environmental catastrophe — but also added a twist with his apology.

“Some may rightly say, ‘When the pope speaks of colonialism, he overlooks certain actions of the church,’ ” Francis said. “I say this to you with regret: Many grave sins were committed against the native people of America in the name of God.”

He added: “I humbly ask forgiveness, not only for the offense of the church herself, but also for crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America.”

Francis, an Argentine, is the first Latin American pope, and his apology comes as he is trying to position the church as a refuge and advocate for the poor and dispossessed of his native continent.

During his visit to Ecuador, and now Bolivia, Francis has made broad calls for Latin American unity — on Thursday mentioning “Patria Grande,” the historic ambition to make the continent a unified world force — even as he has sidestepped some local controversies.

Bolivia suffered stark exploitation during Spanish rule, as silver deposits helped finance the Spanish empire, bankroll European colonialism elsewhere and also fill the treasury of the Vatican. Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, is a longtime leftist critic of the church, yet on Thursday he spoke before the pope and praised him.

Francis’ criticism of multinational corporations and global capitalism has already brought him criticism and suspicions among some who question the leftist tint of his ideas.

Mr. Morales, a fierce critic of American corporate influence, wore a white shirt and a dark jacket bearing a picture of the Communist revolutionary Che Guevara on the left breast.

“For the first time, I feel like I have a pope: Pope Francis,” Mr. Morales said.

Francis has filled four consecutive days with appearances, but other than an environmental critique offered in Ecuador, the pope had hewed mostly to theological topics or broad themes like family, service and mission.

His appearance on Thursday night was at the Second World Meeting of Popular Movements, a congress of global activists working to mobilize and help the poor. Some people wore Che Guevara T-shirts while some indigenous women wore traditional black bowlers.

Francis drew cheers when he called on the activists and others to change the social order: “I would even say that the future of humanity is in great measure in your own hands, through your ability to organize and carry out creative alternatives, through your daily efforts to ensure the three Ls — labor, lodging, land.”

Francis repeated his condemnation of an economic system rooted in pursuit of money and profits, but in an aside he criticized “certain free-trade treaties” and “austerity, which always tightens the belt of workers and the poor” — a likely reference to Greece.

“Human beings and nature must not be at the service of money,” he said. “Let us say no to an economy of exclusion and inequality, where money rules, rather than service. That economy kills. That economy excludes. That economy destroys Mother Earth.”

But if Francis again called for change, he also offered no detailed prescription...

Day Before Hack Announced, OPM Released ‘Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination’ Guide

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "FOCUSING ON THE IMPORTANT ISSUES."

PREVIOUSLY: "OPM Director Katherine Archuleta Resigns After Massive, Devastating Data Breaches."

Madison Guthrie, Miss Alabama USA 2015, Bikini Pic

She's awesome.

Here: "My official #MissUSA photo, shot by the fabulous @fadilberisha3!"

U.S. Women's Soccer Team Honored with Ticker-Tape in New York City

At CBS News New York, "A first for NYC ticker tape parades."

And at NYT, "USA Women's World Cup Parade – Highlights."

Prince Philip Drops the F-Bomb

Lol.

Screw all the royal protocol and go with the old-fashioned f-bomb.

OPM Director Katherine Archuleta Resigns After Massive, Devastating Data Breaches

This should be an even bigger story. She resisted resignation up to the last minute.

At the New York Times, "Katherine Archuleta, Director of Office of Personnel Management, Resigns" (at Memeorandum):

WASHINGTON — Katherine Archuleta, the director of the Office of Personnel Management, resigned Friday, one day after it was revealed that sweeping cyberintrusions at the agency resulted in the theft of the personal information of more than 22 million people.

Ms. Archuleta went to the White House on Friday morning to personally inform Mr. Obama of her decision, saying that she felt new leadership was needed at the federal personnel agency to enable it to “move beyond the current challenges,” a White House official said. The president accepted her resignation.

Beth Cobert, the deputy director of management at the Office of Management and Budget, will step in to temporarily replace Ms. Archuleta while a permanent replacement is found.

Ms. Archuleta, who assumed her post in November 2013, had been under pressure to resign since last month, when she announced the first of two separate but related computer intrusions that compromised the personal information of 4.2 million current and former federal workers, including Social Security numbers, addresses, health and financial histories and other private details.

On Thursday, she divulged the breach had also led to the theft of personal data of 21.5 million people who had applied for government background checks, likely affecting anyone subjected to such an investigation since 2000.

On a conference call detailing the scope of the intrusion late Thursday afternoon, Ms. Archuleta, the first Latina director of the agency, insisted she would not step down despite calls from members of Congress in both parties that she do so.

More.

Also from Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "BREAKING: OPM HEAD KATHERINE ARCHULETA RESIGNS."

State Representative Jenny Horne Denounces Confederate Flag as 'Symbol of Hate'

Yesterday, at the statehouse vote to take down the flag.

She's a Republican too. Remember, my whole debate over the flag began with Stogie defending the racist Democrat Party, the party of slavery and segregation.

Watch:



Also at the Charleston Post and Courier, "Gov. Nikki Haley signs bill, Confederate flag to come down."

Donald Trump Leads National Republican Field in Latest YouGov Poll

YouGov's polls are based on non-probability sampling. They use online panels. I don't think they have a particularly great record, especially in the British parliamentary elections in March (where YouGov had Labour up by four points just days before the election).

Be that as it may, I don't doubt Donald Trump is surging.

Here, "The GOP frontrunner: Donald Trump?":

The Republican horserace continues to be a contest of multiple candidates – with frontrunners sometimes ahead by only a few points, and no one dominating the race. In this week’s Economist/YouGov Poll, businessman Donald Trump leads among Republicans, ahead of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

Trump looks even better as a candidate this week when Republicans are asked for their second choice. When they are, Trump extends his lead. One in four Republicans who are registered to vote say he is their first or second choice.

But who are these Republicans? Trump’s statements on immigration may be striking a chord. Two-thirds of those who choose Trump first or second support the goals of the Tea Party, higher than the overall percentage of Republicans who do. They are much less likely to have a college education than are other Republicans, and they are more likely than other Republicans to say they are “very” conservative.

Trump supporters may be making more of a statement than voting for someone they consider a contender. Just one in five of Trump’s supporters think Trump will win the nomination.  Only 7% of Republicans think Trump will capture the nomination: more give the edge to Bush, Paul, Rubio and Walker...

Well, let's see how it goes. Perhaps Trump will crash and burn in the presidential debates, coming off as a crass blowhard.

That said, the DNC's already running web ads bashing Trump as the face of the GOP? Well, that's telling. See, "Retrumplican Party."

Via Memeorandum.

Santa Barabara County Bans Skateboarding on Steep Downhill Roads

This is wicked!

At KEYT-3 Santa Barbara:



And see the Santa Barbara Independent, "Skateboarding Banned on Old San Marcos, Painted Cave, Gibraltar."

Skateboarding is not a crime!

Screen Addiction Takes Toll on Children

Well, I imagine it could be worse, at least in my household.

My wife and I have raised pretty normal kids, despite the odds. It's definitely a battle fighting screen addiction. My oldest son's 19 now and I can't get him to read books. He says he's just "not interested." Oh well, at least he knows it's important, even if he's not into it. He's talking about wanting to move out with his best friend soon as well. Maybe when that happens some of the more "adult" life lessons we've been trying to impart will kick in, especially those about the importance of education and intellectual pursuits. I'm fighting the culture with him, that's for sure. As I've mentioned here many times my son's a real hipster with popular music and all. He goes to a lot of concerts, even seeing big stars like Taylor Swift multiple times. It's hard to top that with pleas for him to read some history books. I was a young hipster once, so what can you do?

As for my youngest boy, who'll be turning 14 next month? Well, he's an entirely different case. As I've mentioned before, he's got attention deficit issues, so too much screen time can be especially dangerous for his development. He plays outside a lot in the summer, which is good. But he's not reading enough when he's back inside. That said, he's not getting shortchanged for personal interaction, as he's surrounded by family all the time, and we have regular sit-down family dinners and so forth. Plus, he's still kind of a cuddly bear of a kid, and he likes to hang out with his dad a lot. We spend a lot of quality tine together. Indeed, that's one of the main reasons I don't like teaching in the summer.

I think he's going to be alright.

In any case, that's my family's travails. I consider it a continuing project.

But see the New York Times, "Screen Addiction Is Taking a Toll on Children":

Before age 2, children should not be exposed to any electronic media, the pediatrics academy maintains, because “a child’s brain develops rapidly during these first years, and young children learn best by interacting with people, not screens.” Older children and teenagers should spend no more than one or two hours a day with entertainment media, preferably with high-quality content, and spend more free time playing outdoors, reading, doing hobbies and “using their imaginations in free play,” the academy recommends.

Heavy use of electronic media can have significant negative effects on children’s behavior, health and school performance. Those who watch a lot of simulated violence, common in many popular video games, can become immune to it, more inclined to act violently themselves and less likely to behave empathetically, said Dimitri A. Christakis of the Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

In preparing an honors thesis at the University of Rhode Island, Kristina E. Hatch asked children about their favorite video games. A fourth-grader cited “Call of Duty: Black Ops,” because “there’s zombies in it, and you get to kill them with guns and there’s violence … I like blood and violence.”

Teenagers who spend a lot of time playing violent video games or watching violent shows on television have been found to be more aggressive and more likely to fight with their peers and argue with their teachers, according to a study in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence.

Schoolwork can suffer when media time infringes on reading and studying. And the sedentary nature of most electronic involvement — along with televised ads for high-calorie fare — can foster the unhealthy weights already epidemic among the nation’s youth.

RTWT at that top link.

Girls of Summer

At Rad Ass, "Hot Girls of Summer - Bikinis - 46 Photos."

Lessons of China's Crash

At WSJ, "Attempts to put a floor under prices are adding to the market panic":

Beijing is learning the hard way that intervention can make a stock panic worse. In the past two weeks the Chinese government has rolled out measures to support share prices, even forcing state-run entities to buy. Yet the indexes have continued to fall, and each failure is making it more difficult for the market to find its natural bottom.

The Shanghai Composite Index fell a further 5.9% on Wednesday, 32% below its June 12 peak. Almost one-half of listed companies have suspended trading in their shares, and the Shanghai and Shenzhen markets are in danger of freezing due to too few buyers. On Wednesday the lack of confidence spread to Chinese bonds and the yuan as investors began to worry about the overall economy.

That’s some reckoning from even a few weeks ago. Many investors believed they couldn’t lose money in Chinese stocks because government officials cheered on the bull run. When the People’s Daily, the Party’s mouthpiece, encouraged citizens to buy stocks, many investors piled into the market because they know Beijing still controls the commanding heights of the economy.

Small investors are now questioning their faith in the Communist Party’s ability to manipulate the markets, which is the beginning of wisdom. More troubling is that the debacle has damaged the credibility of the government’s economic policy makers. It is a useful reminder that the Party’s authoritarian control is incompatible with free markets and continues to restrain China’s development.

The irony is that the Politburo under Xi Jinping pursued a new strategy to boost the stock market last year as a way to increase the role of market forces. State-owned enterprises were supposed to become more responsive and consolidate industries with overcapacity. Small entrepreneurs would be able to offer shares to the public, a privilege that was previously restricted.

The strategy started out well enough. By the end of last year, the initial rally had provided some momentum for reforms. And with stock prices depressed since the collapse of the last stock-buying mania in 2007, they were arguably still good value.

But Chinese officials confused a rising market with a healthy one. Promotion of the market’s role quickly became promotion of an ever-rising market. This reflects a Communist Party culture that tries to tightly manage outcomes because they reflect on those who push the policy.

This is the underlying reason that irrational exuberance took hold this year. The bull market sucked in tens of thousands of small investors who had never bought stocks. Margin lending expanded five-fold to $323 billion last month. Having mounted a tiger, government officials found they had no safe way to get off as it ran faster and faster.

So far the Xi administration remains in a state of denial and officials are doubling down on failed policies that are compounding the political and economic damage...

Still more.

Plus, "China Stock Gains Gather Pace."

BONUS: At Instapundit, "DANIEL DREZNER ON CHINA’S STOCK MARKET COLLAPSE."

What Explains Donald Trump's Appeal?

It's not hard to explain.

Still, this was a front-page story at yesterday's USA Today.

See, "What explains Donald Trump's appeal?":

If economic inequality is a problem, erosion of traditional values is a fear, and the Hispanic vote is pivotal, what explains the political rise of a twice-divorced, thrice-married, gold-plated New York real estate buccaneer whose previous best-known utterance — "You're fired!" — is rivaled now by inflammatory comments about Mexicans and immigrants?

Donald Trump was second behind Jeb Bush in a CNN/ORC national poll of Republican presidential candidates released last week, and No. 2 in polls in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire. "Not unimpressive,'' says Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac Polling Institute, "for someone new to electoral politics.''

Brown and other pollsters are quick with caveats: Trump got a bounce, probably ephemeral, from his highly publicized presidential announcement; his share in a crowded GOP field has not topped 12%; and the things that got Trump this far probably ensure he won't get much further.

"Will Trump fizzle?'' asks pollster John Zogby. "I'd bet the Iowa farm on it.''

But Trump has tapped into what the writer Richard Rovere once called "dark places of the American mind'' — fear of, or frustration over, threats abroad and unfairness at home.

With his wealth (he claims to be worth precisely $8,737,540,000), fame (14 seasons on NBC's reality show The Apprentice), and chutzpah ("The American dream is dead … but I will bring it back'') there's no one like Trump in U.S. politics, says historian John Baick — "not now, or ever.''

Analysts and fans say these perceived traits help explain Trump's political appeal...

Click through for all the factors explaining Trump's appeal, including candor, leadership and independence and incorruptibility.

Interestingly, this piece came out before PPP put Trump in first place in North Carolina, getting 16 percent of the support in the GOP field.

O'Reilly Factor: Jesse Watters Shames San Francisco Supervisors Over Kathryn Steinle Murder (VIDEO)

This was epic.

At Fox Nation, "Jesse Watters Confronts San Francisco Politicians, Holds Up Picture Of Murdered Woman: 'Look Into Her Eyes!'"

Circular Firing Squad in San Francisco as City Officials Get Hammered for Illegal Alien Sanctuary Policy

At the San Francisco Chronicle, "Lee slams Mirkarimi for not talking to immigration officials":

Why did feds return pier shooting suspect to S.F.? Sheriff's Department asked them to: http://t.co/Sf9GIQULOr pic.twitter.com/yNgDcLeW06

— SFGate (@SFGate) July 9, 2015

San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi has deflected blame in the release of a Mexican national now facing murder charges in the Pier 14 slaying by demanding to know why federal authorities returned him to San Francisco to face a 20-year-old marijuana charge in the first place.
The answer, it turns out, is that the Sheriff’s Department asked federal officials to do so.

Mirkarimi’s agency requested custody of Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez as he was completing a 46-month stint in federal prison in March in San Bernardino County, according to a Sheriff’s Department letter obtained by The Chronicle. Lopez-Sanchez had been deported five times to Mexico and had been imprisoned for illegally re-entering the U.S.

The federal Bureau of Prisons alerted the Sheriff’s Department in March that Lopez-Sanchez was going to be released. Mirkarimi’s agency, realizing that Lopez-Sanchez was wanted on a $5,000 bench warrant related to a 1995 marijuana possession-for-sale case, asked prison officials March 23 to hold him and to notify San Francisco authorities “when the subject is ready for our pick-up.”
“Also, please notify us if the hold cannot be placed or the named subject is released to another jurisdiction prior to our receipt,” said the letter, signed by Vic Gaerlan of the sheriff’s warrant bureau.

Lopez-Sanchez arrived in San Francisco on March 26, and the marijuana case against him was discharged the following day. He was returned to jail, however.

Prisoner in legal limbo

For the next three weeks, sources with knowledge of the matter told The Chronicle, sheriff’s deputies sought clarification from the department’s legal division on whether to hold Lopez-Sanchez so Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials could pick him up for possible deportation. ICE had requested that the city detain Lopez-Sanchez.

In the end, the legal division told deputies they had no basis to hold Lopez-Sanchez, and he was released April 15. He was arrested last week in the July 1 shooting death of 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle on San Francisco’s waterfront, and has pleaded not guilty to murder charges.

Mirkarimi’s office did not immediately comment on the letter. It initially scheduled a news conference for Thursday to “set the record straight” on Lopez-Sanchez’s release but called it off late Wednesday “out of respect for Kate Steinle’s funeral services.”
In an interview Tuesday on KQED radio, the sheriff questioned why Lopez-Sanchez had been sent to the city.

“We’re trying to understand why ICE returned Sanchez to San Francisco on a 20-year-old marijuana possession charge in a city that really doesn’t even prosecute marijuana possession … and knowing that he had been deported and illegally entered the country,” the sheriff said.

Freya Horne, legal counsel for the Sheriff’s Department, told The Chronicle on Tuesday that her office had dispatched a private transportation outfit to pick up Lopez-Sanchez.

“It seems kind of amazing that after all that time, he was brought back here for that purpose,” Horne said.

Joseph Russoniello, former U.S. attorney in San Francisco, said the city’s request to take custody of such an offender was “very unusual.” He said sheriff’s officials could have checked with local prosecutors about the case and opted not to intervene.

“They had the capability to examine the status of the file and determine whether or not to pursue the matter or move to cancel or withdraw the warrant,” he said.

The Sheriff’s Department letter came to light on the same day that San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee attacked Mirkarimi, saying his decision to cut off even basic communication with federal immigration officials led to Lopez-Sanchez’s release.

Mirkarimi has said a 2013 city law designed to protect people without immigration status — a law signed by Lee — mandated the April release after the local charges against him were dropped.

But the mayor said the sheriff’s office could have satisfied both city and state law by simply picking up the phone and asking immigration agents to come over and pick up Lopez-Sanchez before the “serious, repeat” felon was set loose.

“I’ve sent that message over to the Sheriff’s Department regarding communications with the federal authorities,” Lee said at a news conference. “Do we need to educate somebody on how to pick up the phone?”

Lee said Mirkarimi “needs to read the entire ordinance” the mayor signed in 2013. The law prohibits most inmates suspected of being in the country illegally from being held for ICE after their scheduled jail release. The 48-hour holds are known as detainers.

Jeez, who's on first?

Still more.

Page 3 Girl Sabine Jemeljanova

She was yesterday's Page 3 girl, seen on Twitter.

Praying That America Stays Different

Here's Aussie Nick Adams, for Prager University.

How Many Illegal Alien Murderers Will Obama Let In???

At the Beaufort Observer, "How many Illegal Alien Murdeerers will Obama let in???":

If Barack Obama obeyed the law and stopped these illegal aliens from re-entering the country time after time, these two innocent women would still be alive. Fact.

This is getting pathetic. This President's policies are literally killing innocent people. You must do something about this!

Tell Congress to STOP Obama from releasing illegal alien felons and force the administration to restart deportations!