L.A. Supervisors Call to Ban Raves After Two Women OD at HARD Music Summer Festival in Pomona (VIDEO)

The HARD website is here.

And at KTLA News 5 Los Angeles, "Festival in Pomona Spark Debate Over Drug Use at Raves."

Also, at the Los Angeles Times, "Suspected overdose deaths at rave spark call for ban":

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors should consider a temporary ban on raves on county property after the suspected overdose deaths of two young women who collapsed at the Hard Summer music festival at the Los Angeles County fairgrounds, Supervisor Hilda Solis said Monday.

Solis said she will ask the board Tuesday to explore the prohibition until a full investigation into the raves can be done.

While there have been fewer raves in Los Angeles since a series of drug-related problems at events at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the events continue in arenas outside the city where they still draw big crowds.

Both women -- one 18, the other 19 -- were found unresponsive Saturday at the Fairplex in Pomona, which is managed by the nonprofit Los Angeles County Fair Assn. on land mostly owned by Los Angeles County government.

Los Angeles County Supervisors Michael D. Antonovich and Solis said Sunday that they will ask for a full probe to see if the event was properly managed to ensure the safety of patrons.

"I am very concerned about these details and will request a full investigation,” Solis, whose Eastside district includes Pomona, said through a spokeswoman.

The annual two-day Hard Summer musical festival has grown in recent years. Last year, attendance was 40,000 people per day; this year’s event expanded to 65,000 a day. It is considered the biggest music festival of its kind in Los Angeles County. Hard has another event at the Fairplex on Sept. 10.


Last year, 19-year-old Emily Tran of Anaheim was rushed to a South El Monte hospital from the Hard Summer music festival held at Whittier Narrows Recreation Area, a Los Angeles County-managed park. Tran died from acute intoxication of Ecstasy, according to coroner’s officials.

There has been much debate about whether public agencies should rent out space for raves, given the drug problems.

When raves were held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Sports Arena, drug overdoses spiked so much that local emergency rooms were overwhelmed with severely ill attendees, and emergency room doctors urged that such concerts end there. Los Angeles police warned that raves invite widespread Ecstasy use.

A Los Angeles Times investigation in 2013 found that at least 14 people who attended raves run by two major Los Angeles-based rave organizers, Insomniac Inc. and Go Ventures Inc., died from overdoses or in drug-related incidents since 2006.

Since then, five more have died in drug-related incidents, including a UC Irvine graduate, Nicholas Austin Tom, 24, of San Francisco, who collapsed at Insomniac’s Electric Daisy Carnival at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in June.

A sixth person, John Hoang Dinh Vo, 22, a UC Irvine biology senior, died in March after collapsing at Insomniac’s Beyond Wonderland rave at the San Manuel Amphitheater, a venue owned by the San Bernardino County government. The coroner has not yet released a cause of death for him.

Beverly Hills-based Live Nation Entertainment, one of the world’s largest concert and ticketing conglomerates, purchased Los Angeles-based Hard Events in 2012. It did not respond to inquiries about the deaths Sunday.

Fairplex officials said they had prepared for the rave but did not provide specifics....

Both women were stricken Saturday afternoon just minutes apart, just before 5 p.m., county fire inspector David Dantic said.

The 18-year-old was rushed to San Dimas Community Hospital and pronounced dead at 6:04 p.m., and the 19-year-old was sent to Pomona Valley Medical Center and declared dead at 8:40 p.m. Lt. Fred Corral, a coroner’s official, called the deaths “apparent drug overdoses” and said autopsies will be conducted in the next few days.

Officials were still working to notify the families of the women. Their names were not released Sunday.

During the first day of the rave, 32 people were arrested, the majority on suspicion of being drunk and disorderly, said Pomona Police Lt. Hector Rodriguez. On Sunday, by 6 p.m., an additional 13 had been arrested, he said.

The deaths stunned some ravegoers, though many said drugs are fairly common at the event.

Ecstasy, an illegal hallucinogen, enhances the effect of the beat-heavy music and pulsing lights of raves, and is tied to rave culture. The drug is commonly seen as harmless, but doctors say it is dangerous and can cause body temperatures to soar to 108 degrees, causing organ failure, coma and death.

“I am surprised. It is a little shocking when anyone dies. ... But people do drugs out here,” said Jackie Diaz, 19, of Irvine.

Well, people are going to die. That's the culture we have now. Permissiveness and licentiousness, and easy access to drugs. People will die, more people, and younger people.

Patrick Moore: Why I Left Greenpeace

Outstanding!

From Prager University:

States Should Shun the EPA’s New Power Mandate

From Hal Quinn and Peter Glaser, at WSJ:

On Monday President Obama is announcing the final version of his Clean Power Plan, the carbon-emission rules for power plants to secure his climate-change legacy. The plan is designed to hobble electricity generators much as the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2012 rule to reduce mercury and other emissions has harmed the coal industry.

Fortunately for consumers, on June 29 the Supreme Court slapped down the agency’s 2012 rule. In Michigan v. EPA, the court said the agency failed its legal obligation to compare the cost of its mercury standards with the benefits.

Reckless disregard for costs has also guided the agency’s Clean Power Plan. The White House promises Monday’s rule will offer more flexibility to meet emissions targets than an earlier draft, but the targets may be even more difficult to meet. That will force rate payers into steeper cost increases, and concessions the EPA makes to some states and industries will come at the expense of others.

If the EPA succeeds, Americans will be paying for decades. NERA Economic Consulting estimates that the Clean Power Plan will cost $366 billion and bring double-digit electricity-rate increases to 43 states. Regulators including the North American Electric Reliability Corporation warn that the plan could weaken the reliability of the national electric grid by forcing many power plants to close well before new ones can be built. Yet even the administration admits that the EPA plan will have only a trivial impact on the climate.

The Clean Power Plan gives each state an emissions budget and an ultimatum: Give us a plan to cut your carbon emissions using our assumptions about energy-efficiency improvements, green-energy construction, etc.—or we will impose a federal plan on your state. Never mind that most states have objected to the EPA plan.

Governors thus face a dilemma: Accept the EPA’s invitation by developing a state plan and open their states to lawsuits for any perceived breach, or decline to cooperate and take their chances with a federal plan...

Still more.

Baltimore Reports 45 Homicides for July, Deadliest Month of 2015, and August Kicks Off with More Violence (VIDEO)

And here I thought #BlackLivesMatter?

At CBS News Baltimore:

Mary Nichols, Chair of State Air Resources Board, Pushes to Eliminate Gasoline-Powered Cars in California

Another Marxist-collectivist left-wing nutjob working to destroy life as we know it in California.

I don't know how anyone can live in this state anymore. I might have to retire early and get the hell out of here, sheesh.

At Bloomberg, "California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It":

Sergio Marchionne had a funny thing to say about the $32,500 battery-powered Fiat 500e that his company markets in California as “eco-chic.” “I hope you don’t buy it,” he told his audience at a think tank in Washington in May 2014. He said he loses $14,000 on every 500e he sells and only produces the cars because state rules re­quire it. Marchionne, who took over the bailed-out Chrysler in 2009 to form Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, warned that if all he could sell were electric vehicles, he would be right back looking for another govern­ment rescue.

So who’s forcing Marchionne and all the other major automakers to sell mostly money-losing electric vehicles? More than any other person, it’s Mary Nichols. She’s run the California Air Resources Board since 2007, championing the state’s zero-emission-vehicle quotas and backing Pres­ident Barack Obama’s national mandate to double average fuel economy to 55 miles per gallon by 2025. She was chairman of the state air regulator once before, a generation ago, and cleaning up the famously smoggy Los Angeles skies is just one accomplish­ment in a four-decade career.

Nichols really does intend to force au­tomakers to eventually sell nothing but electrics. In an interview in June at her agency’s heavy-duty-truck laboratory in downtown Los Angeles, it becomes clear that Nichols, at age 70, is pushing regula­tions today that could by midcentury all but banish the internal combustion engine from California’s famous highways. “If we’re going to get our transportation system off petroleum,” she says, “we’ve got to get people used to a zero-emissions world, not just a little-bit-better version of the world they have now.”

In that speech in Washington, Mar­chionne was talking up the little-bit-better option. He touted the improved efficiency to be wrung from traditional engines and gasoline-electric hybrids. But Nichols isn’t scared of auto executives and has never ac­cepted their vision of what’s possible. (Gen­eral Motors said catalytic converters, an early advance in tailpipe pollution control that Nichols promoted in the 1970s, could kill the company. They’re commonplace today, and GM’s not dead yet.)

Even if most people outside California have never heard of Mary Nichols, she’s the world’s most influential automotive regu­lator, says Levi Tillemann, author of The Great Race, a book on the future of automo­bile technology. “Under her leadership, the Air Resources Board has been the driving force for electrification,” Tillemann says.

Nichols, who drives a tiny electric Honda Fit, acts as if she’s an unstoppable force. California’s goals for the adoption of elec­tric vehicle technology are the most strin­gent in the nation, but Nichols thinks they need to be even tougher. Regulations on the books in California, set in 2012, require that 2.7 percent of new cars sold in the state this year be, in the regulatory jargon, ZEVs. These are defined as battery-only or fuel-cell cars, and plug-in hybrids. The quota rises every year starting in 2018 and reaches 22 percent in 2025. Nichols wants 100 percent of the new vehicles sold to be zero- or almost-zero-emissions by 2030, in part through greater use of low-carbon fuels that she’s also promoting.

The 2030 target is what’s needed to meet Governor Jerry Brown’s goal, set in an ex­ecutive order, of an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the century, Nichols says. The conven­tional internal combustion engine needs to be off the road by 2050 and, since cars last many years, on its way out of new-car showrooms around 2030...

Still more.

Most Californians Link Climate Change, Drought; Split is Partisan

Leftists are drunk with climate change hysteria.

It's a psychotic break with reality.

At the San Francisco Chronicle:

SACRAMENTO — Nearly two-thirds of Californians say global warming is contributing to the state’s drought, but there’s a distinct partisan divide, according to a survey released Wednesday.

Seventy-eight percent of Democrats said global warming has contributed to the four-year drought, while 62 percent of Republicans said it has not, according to the poll by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

Overall, 64 percent of respondents see a link between a changing world climate and a dried-up California, the survey said.

The blue-red divide doesn’t apply just to the drought, the poll found. Asked when the effects of global warming will become apparent, nearly a third of Republicans said never. Just 3 percent of Democrats and 7 percent of independents agreed.

“There has been a very strong partisan divide among several of the last surveys (on global warming), and that continues this year,” said Mark Baldassare, president of PPIC. “That is driven by the national discussion around climate change.”

The divide was also apparent among Californians who say it’s very important for the state to pass regulations and invest in efforts to combat the effects of global warming, such as flooding and wildfires. Statewide, 61 percent of those surveyed said it was very important, but only a minority of Republicans thought so. Among Democrats, the total was 77 percent.

When it comes to drought-fighting measures that hit closer to home, the survey found strong support: More than four-fifths of respondents said Gov. Jerry Brown’s order for a 25 percent cut in statewide water usage was just right or not tough enough.

On the other hand, people are a bit fuzzy on the details of what they’re supposed to do. The state’s order requires communities to cut their 2013 water usage by anywhere from 4 to 36 percent, but nearly two-thirds of respondents told pollsters they didn’t know how much their area was being asked to save.

“That struck me as a big number,” Baldassare said. “If you are asking people to be part of the solution, they need to know what you are asking of them. Many Californians don’t know.”

Manager Mike Scioscia Says Angels Can Turn Things Around After Losing 9 of Last 10 Games

They better turn things around.

It's looking like one of the worst post-All Star Game meltdowns in history.

At the O.C. Register, "Scioscia believes Angels can 'turn the page' on current streak."

And watch, from MLB, "8/2/15: Andre Ethier leads Dodgers to sweep Angels in walk-off win."

Green Marxist Nutjobs Push Radical California Gas Restriction Act of 2015 (VIDEO)

This is the logical result of politics in an extreme left-wing one-party state.

You won't be able to drive your own car in California pretty soon. You'll be forced onto a completely inadequate "public transportation" system, and you know these green nutjobs won't stop at a "50 percent reduction" in fossil fuel usage.

The once-Golden State is going down.

See the Contra-Costa Bee, "SB 350 — battle rages over proposed 50-percent fuel cuts in California":

Take notice if you drive to and from work each day in California. SB 350, known as the California Gas Restriction Act of 2015, (de León) requires a 50% reduction in petroleum, 50% increase in renewables for electricity generation, and a 50% increase in the energy efficiency of buildings by 2030. SB 350 will also grant the Air Resources Board significant authority to adopt regulations that will result in a 50% reduction in petroleum use in cars and trucks by 2030.

In short, unelected regulators will be able to limit how far you can drive, ration gas, increase costs, and penalize drivers for using too much gas.

Opposed by energy producers and allied groups, a full court effort has been launched by the California Drivers Alliance that is circulating a petition to pressure lawmakers to oppose SB 350 passage.

Radical environmental groups like California Climate Leadership Stemming from the notorious passage of AB 32 during the forgettable Schwarzenneger governorship, SB 350 joins a raft of AB 32 enabling legislation, including SB 375 (emissions reductions), climate adaption (SB 246, 379), plus overarching agricultural restrictions and transit fiats.

In its defense, SB 350 proponents say that SB 350 requires the California Air Resources Board, to be cost effective and technologically feasible (page 4, line 19; its actions be based on validated scientific and engineering data (page 5, line 12); and explicitly requires an economic analysis that takes into account impacts on fuel manufacturers, consumer acceptance, the state’s competitive position with other neighboring states, and the costs to consumers (page 5, lines 30-34)

The campaign on both sides has become nasty and misleading. For instance, an image of Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla appears on a California Drivers Alliance ad on Drudge touting its petition opposing SB 350. This does not mean Bonilla is an opponent of SB 350. Oh hell no. For Bonilla has authored and voted for numerous environmental and energy laws that dovetail with AB 32. Rather, the ad hopes to pound Bonilla with petition from signers within her district to bring pressure on her to — hope-against-hope — oppose SB 350 legislation when it reaches the Assembly floor.

Meanwhile, the Greenbelt Alliance is also asking its supporters to put pressure on Bonilla and other legislators to vote for SB 350.

In one of his first votes as State Senator, Glazer voted for SB 350. Glazer recently defeated Bonilla in a special election for the vacant 7th California Senate seat vacated by now Congressman Mark DeSaulnier.

According to proponents propaganda concerning “renewable targets,” it took nearly a decade for California so-called green fuel sales to grow from 12- to 25 percent of sales. So it is certain that Californians will be reliant on fossil fuels for decades to come, despite the specious claims and data manipulation of climate alarmists is used by politicians and an increasingly unfettered state to bypass voter preferences in favor of increasing central control over the lives of the polity.

In short, a mandated 50% reduction in petroleum will have a significant impact on transportation in California, but also on future jobs and valuable tax revenue. An analysis of the petroleum industry’s economic contributions to California shows SB 350 would devastate the California energy economy in that supports...

Still more.

New York's Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women Offers Course on the Fundamentals of Organizing and Protest

And you can bet these aren't tea party rallies for which they're prepping.

At the New Yorker, "Protest U."

This is a "preparatory academy" for budding Marxists, sadly.

Here's the website.

Suspect Tremaine Wilbourn Hunted Over Shooting of Memphis Police Officer Sean Bolton

Black suspect Tremaine Wilbourn. He's a black mofo.

At the Other McCain. "Memphis Manhunt for Cop Killer."

Also at CNN, "Police search for suspect in officer's shooting death," and "Officer killed during traffic stop."

ADDED: From the Mad Jewess Woman, "Black Male On Twitter: @Bonoboburner Wants to Murder Cops & Make Cops Lives as “Dangerous As Possible”."

Topsy-Turvy GOP Race Faces Busiest Week Yet

It's going to be a good week. Things are going to shake out.

At WSJ, "Republicans buffeted by surge of Donald Trump and pool of wealthy donors sometimes at odds with party brass":

DANA POINT, Calif. — The Republican Party enters its most competitive presidential contest in a generation buffeted by forces largely beyond the control of party leaders, from the unexpected surge of Donald Trump to the small pool of wealthy donors gathered here who are occasionally at odds with GOP brass.

The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found Mr. Trump ahead of the field, as the top pick of 19% of GOP primary voters, after generating weeks of news coverage for his incendiary remarks about Mexican immigrants, his rivals for the nomination and Arizona Sen. John McCain, the party’s 2008 nominee.

Mr. Trump’s unanticipated ascent coincided with the arrival of five other Republican presidential candidates at a luxury resort here over the weekend to audition for hundreds of wealthy donors convened by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch. It’s a gathering that exposes both the promise and the limits of a new campaign financing system for the GOP. More money is flowing into the race, but the party and the candidates have less control over how those dollars are spent. The contenders also risk appearing beholden to deep-pocketed backers.

“I wish good luck to all the Republican candidates that traveled to California to beg for money etc. from the Koch Brothers,” said Mr. Trump, who wasn’t invited to the Koch meeting, in a Sunday tweet. “Puppets?”

The biannual Koch conference set the stage for the busiest week yet in the nominating contest, with a candidate forum Monday in New Hampshire and the first candidates’ debate on Thursday in Cleveland.

The Koch conference is an unrivaled convergence of roughly 450 conservatives who have pledged at least $100,000 a year to various political and ideological endeavors. Many are also financing individual presidential candidates and the so-called super PACs that support them.

Outside donors are taking on roles once solely performed by candidates and the party, from television ads to voter outreach. The Koch network plans to spend about $900 million in the run-up to the 2016 election, with about a third of that total devoted to influencing elections outcomes. Yet, these donors don’t always see eye-to-eye with GOP leaders in Washington and could prove nettlesome for a Republican president.

The Koch network, for example, sparred with the Republican National Committee over who controls the vast repository of voter data that GOP candidates at every level of the ballot will need to turn out supporters next fall. The two sides recently reached a deal to share information, but the pact gives an entity backed by the Kochs a central role overseeing the party’s data-collection efforts for the foreseeable future. Candidates also rely increasingly on Koch-financed groups to organize their grassroots events.

This weekend, Charles Koch, the chief executive of Koch Industries who co-founded the network with his brother David, took aim at tax breaks and other government subsidies for private-sector corporations. He singled out the country’s biggest banks for accepting bailout money and cheap loans from the Federal Reserve in exchange for giving the government more influence over their business decisions. That stance is sure to ruffle business interests that represent the GOP’s traditional outside allies.

“It is not our goal to supplant the Republican Party, and, in fact, we need the party to be strong,” said Marc Short, president of Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the central conduit for collecting money that is then steered to other groups backed by the Kochs and their donor allies. But he also noted, “Our mission is about trying to advance a free society, not about trying to advance a party.”

Keep reading.

'Explosive' Rocky Fire in Northern California

At the San Francisco Chronicle, "Rocky Fire doubles and shifts, but remains a threat to more homes."

Also at the Los Angeles Times, "Northern California fire explodes; 24 homes lost, thousands threatened."

And watch, at ABC News, "Devastating Wildfires Destroy Homes in Northern California."

The Left Wants to Hide the Truth About #BlackLivesMatter's Marxist Revolutionary Agenda

From Lee Stranahan, at Big Government, "WHAT O’REILLY’S BLACK LIVES MATTER SEGMENT LEFT OUT."

Lee shows that #BlackLivesMatter takes its "List of Demands" straight from the revolutionary "The Ten-Point Program" of the Black Panther Party in 1966.



PREVIOUSLY: "Another Reminder That the #BlackLivesMatter Movement is Actually a Revolutionary Communist Program."

New WSJ/NBC Poll: Donald Trump Leads GOP Presidential Field

Here's the report, at the Wall Street Journal, "Donald Trump Leads Republican Presidential Pack, WSJ/NBC Poll Finds":

Donald Trump has jumped to the front of Republicans’ 2016 presidential candidate field nationally, holding that position even after a spate of incendiary comments by the real-estate magnate about Mexican migrants, other GOP candidates and party leaders, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found.

The poll, the latest of several national surveys to register the Trump surge, found that 19% of Republican primary voters picked Mr. Trump as their first choice for president, followed by 15% for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and 14% for Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor who led the field in the last Journal/NBC survey, in June.

The new poll, whose full results will be released Monday, was based on a survey conducted July 26-30, after Mr. Trump made widely publicized controversial statements, such as when he disparaged former GOP presidential nominee John McCain.
The differences among the top-tier candidates are small enough that they are within the poll’s margin of sampling error. Still, the double-digit jump among Republicans picking Mr. Trump as their first choice—up from 1% in the June poll—was significant.

What’s more, Republicans who don’t see Mr. Trump as their first choice seem to be warming to him. The share of GOP voters who pick him as second choice rose to 11% in the new survey from 3% in June.

The poll could be a factor in determining which candidates appear in this Thursday’s prime-time candidate debate, the first of the GOP primary campaign. The event is being hosted by Fox News, which is limiting the 9 p.m. debate to 10 of the 17 declared GOP candidates, choosing those who rank highest in the five most recent national polls released by Tuesday.

Candidates who don’t make the cut will be relegated to a separate forum to be held before the main event on Thursday.

The new survey also underscores the unsettled nature of the GOP primary race as Republican voters survey a large field, including many lesser-known candidates. Mr. Trump, who announced his presidential campaign in mid-June, has the advantage of high name recognition, celebrity appeal and a populist message that taps into a powerful anti-Washington vein in the electorate.

The poll found that almost the entire GOP field seemed to suffer at least a temporary setback as a result of Mr. Trump’s abrupt rise. Most major candidates lost ground compared with last month’s poll. One exception was Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who was picked as a first choice by 9%, up from 4% last month. Mr. Cruz, like Mr. Trump, has been campaigning as an outsider with a blunt antiestablishment message.

Mr. Trump had a particularly strong showing among GOP poll respondents who said it is more important for their party’s nominee to be a strong leader than it is to share their views on issues. Mr. Trump does somewhat better among GOP women than do other candidates: 20% of female GOP primary voters name him as their first choice, followed by 16% who pick Mr. Bush.

In the race for a spot on this week’s main debate stage, the most uncertainty surrounds the fate of three candidates who are on the cusp of making the top-10 event—New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. In the new Journal/NBC poll, all three were picked as first choice by 3% of GOP voters...

More.

Plus, here's NBC's write-up, at Memeorandum, "Donald Trump Surges in New NBC News/WSJ Poll."

Why Mark Levin Says the GOP Needs a Facelift

From Diana Stancy, at the Daily Signal.

Click through for Mark Levin's Facebook rant against the GOP congressional leadership.

And buy Levin's book, Plunder and Deceit.

Ronda Rousey Makes Weight for #UFC190 Tonight!

Here's the background, at LAT, "Bethe Correia vows to take fight to Ronda Rousey in UFC title match."

Here's Rousey at the weigh-in, on Instagram, "Makin' weight #UFC190," and "Exactly on weight #likeapro - now for the fun part!"

Also at London's Daily Mail, "Ronda Rousey ready to defy her mum and humiliate Bethe Correia at UFC 190":Ronda Rousey claims Bethe":

Correia crossed the line when said she hoped the champion 'didn’t commit suicide' after losing.

The UFC women’s bantamweight champion plans to punish the unbeaten Brazilian inside the Octagon...

Another Illegal Alien Nightmare After Suspect Allegedly Murders Good Samaritan Couple in Montana

This is horrible!

At the Billings Gazette, "FBI: Suspect in Montana shooting says victim laughed at him."

And at Twitchy, "ICE explains why Jesus Deniz-Mendoza wasn’t deported before allegedly shooting Montana family."

And here's patriot Katie Pavlich debating the idiot loser Leslie Marshall on Fox:

Lenexa Police Department Explains Viral Arrest Video

At KSHB-TV News 41 Kansas City, via Memeorandum, "Video of Lenexa PD arrest goes viral, sparks concerns — LENEXA, Kan. - A video that shows two Lenexa police officers making an arrest has gone viral and sparked concerns on social media."

And more here, "Lenexa Police Department addresses the Viral arrest video."

Rutgers University's Deepa Kumar (@ProfessorKumar) Sparks Outrage, Calls U.S. 'Worse Than ISIS'

This one's picking up some RTs.

.@RSMcCain Rutgers University @ProfessorKumar says U.S. is MORE 'brutal' than #ISIS. http://t.co/DEeunyKFIE cc. @Instapundit

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) August 1, 2015

Victoria's Secret Star Elsa Hosk Too Skinny?

She's definitely petite. But you be the judge, on Instagram.

And at London's Daily Mail, "EXCLUSIVE - 'The world is embracing larger models!' Victoria's Secret stars Elsa Hosk and Jac Jagaciak on why they can't wait for the first plus-size Angel."

Also, "Victoria's Secret Angel Elsa Hosk shows off her perfect pins in daringly high-cut Daisy Dukes as she hits the shops."

More, at Egotastic!, "Blonde Beauty Elsa Hosk Barely Covered Goodness in GQ Mexico."

Not bad, although I don't mind those plus-sized models at all.

The Culture War Returns

Well, it's not just now returning, although no doubt he's onto something.

From Jacob Heilbrunn, at the National Interest":

1968 IS BACK. A growing chorus of voices on the right is arguing that the riots in Baltimore and Ferguson are ushering in a new round of the culture wars. On the website Breitbart, for example, Robert W. Patterson, a former George W. Bush administration official, wrote, “The Grand Old Party must decide: Go libertarian, and sympathize with the protesters and rioters? Or does it want to be conservative, and side with the police, the rule of law, and the forces of order? The lessons of the 1960s suggest the latter is the path to victory.” William Kristol, editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard, observed during the recent riots in Ferguson, “It does feel like a Nixon ’68 moment. Who will speak for the Silent Majority?”

It was a revealing question. In 1968, Richard Nixon tapped into white working-class antipathy toward student and black radicalism to defeat Hubert Humphrey. The Southern Strategy was born. Two years earlier, Ronald Reagan had won election as governor of California by denouncing the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley and promising to “throw the bums off welfare.” Reagan would go on to midwife what became a potent alliance between the emerging neoconservative movement and traditional conservatives. The neocons began to share the traditionalists’ belief that, as Burke put it, “Men of intemperate mind can never be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

The maiden neocons had themselves emerged from the intensely partisan milieu of the 1930s to become respected public intellectuals. They viewed the scaturient passions of the New Left that had suddenly emerged in the 1960s as a clear and present danger—what the literary critic Lionel Trilling deemed an “adversary culture.”

Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb and a number of other neoconservatives were deeply influenced by Trilling’s criticism of liberalism from inside the movement. They were also influenced—Kristol and Himmelfarb in particular—by the political philosopher Leo Strauss, who had fled Nazi Germany. Strauss believed that the culprit for much of what had gone wrong in Western civilization could be traced back to Machiavelli, who had lowered man’s sights away from a transcendent good. The result was the rise of relativism, in which one view of how humans should behave is as good as another. Strauss, by contrast, promulgated a different message, one that resonated with the new generation of conservatives—a return, after centuries of neglect, to classical virtue.

Kristol assailed what he called a “new class” of managers, lawyers, bureaucrats and social workers who promoted new issues such as women’s rights, sexual liberation and minority rights. Himmelfarb’s numerous books lauded the idea of Victorian virtue, stressed self-help and charity, and argued that the public dole had profoundly corrosive moral effects, foremost among them creating a culture of dependency on government.

Though it has tended to be scanted in recent years, neoconservatives—“Liberals mugged by reality,” as Kristol once put it—were initially much less preoccupied with foreign than domestic issues. Domestic policy is where they made their bones. Kristol and Daniel Bell founded the Public Interest in 1965 (though Bell ended up resigning as coeditor in 1973). The National Interest didn’t appear until 1985, just as the Cold War was beginning to reach its terminal phase. Political scientist James Q. Wilson, a regular contributor to Commentary and the Public Interest, devised the “broken windows” theory, which holds that stopping petty crimes is a vital step toward preventing major ones from occurring. RIOTING IN the inner cities in 1968, the disintegration of New York City, the rise of black militants and the introduction of affirmative action hardened neocon attitudes. Nathan Glazer called affirmative action “affirmative discrimination.” In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued a report warning about the collapse of the black family. Two years later, he delivered a speech to the Americans for Democratic Action stating that “liberals must somehow overcome the curious condescension that takes the form of defending and explaining away everything, however outrageous, which Negroes, individually or collectively, might do.” Other neocons blamed a new antinomianism for America’s ills. The emphasis on individual needs and wants—feminism, multiculturalism and the like—meant that the idea of a common civic good was disappearing. In their view, it was being replaced by a society of disgruntled supplicants.

Neocon apprehensions about crime and the sexual revolution were also acutely reflected in literary form. In novels like Mr. Sammler’s Planet and The Dean’s December, Saul Bellow vividly evoked the racial tensions of the 1970s, prompting charges that he was himself a racist. The Dean’s December focuses on the murder of a white graduate student named Rick Lester by a black hoodlum and a female prostitute. The protagonist Alfred Corde, a dean at the University of Chicago, registers his sympathy with the underclass but suggests that the basic problem is insoluble:

We do not know how to approach this population. We haven’t even conceived that reaching it may be a problem. So there’s nothing but death before it. Maybe we’ve already made our decision. Those that can be advanced into the middle class, let them be advanced. The rest? Well, we do our best by them. We don’t have to do any more. They kill some of us. Mostly they kill themselves.

Sounds familiar.

But keep reading.

Exposed: America's Enemies Within

At iOWNTHEWORLD Report.

William Tecumseh Sherman: Fierce Patriot

Okay, I'm almost done with Bruce Levine's, The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South.

So I picked up a new book for my next read, by Robert O'Connell's, Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman.

Although I'm mostly keeping my Civil War reading focused on the South (and the question of slavery's foundations in the outbreak of war), in this case Sherman interests me particularly in "the march to the sea" that is synonymous with his legacy.

I hadn't heard of O'Connell before, but that's cool the Victor Davis Hanson's got a blurb in the opening pages.

How to Date Charlotte McKinney (VIDEO)

She's definitely getting a lot of exposure lately.

At Gentlemen's Quarterly:

Super Scooper

This is really cool, at CBS News Sacramento, "Super Scooper Helps U.S. Forest Service Get Handle on California Wildfires."

12-Year-Old Boy Asked Mailman for More 'Junk Mail' to Read, Gets Over 500 Book Donations

An awesome feel-good story.



Also, at ABC News, "Utah Boy Who Asked for 'Junk Mail' to Read Gets Over 500 Book Donations."

Deals on Back to School Supplies

Amazing how fast the summer's flying by. My youngest boy goes back to school in just over three weeks.

At Amazon, Shop - Back to School.

Also, ICYMI, Mark Levin's new book, Plunder and Deceit.

Confederate Symbols, Swastikas, and Student Sensibilities

Political correctness run amok, at the New York Times.

Check Out Mark Levin's New Book

It's Plunder and Deceit.

Levin is a hard-hitting analyst and rock-ribbed conservative. His books are always worth a look.

This one looks awesome. Skim around and read the sample matter at Amazon.

C-Span of the Streets

At the New York Times, FWIW, "Glare of Video Is Shifting Public’s View of Police."

This is a terrible report, mainly because it (deliberately) fails to put the police videos into context, even including the Mike Brown case, which was completely debunked by the federal grand jury.

Yes, more videos provide greater accountability, and they may help rein-in police misconduct. But the left doesn't want accountability, and the #BlackLivesMatter movement is essentially a revolutionary communist program to take down the "racist" "imperialist" police system altogether.

Woman Weeps as She's Incorrectly Told Her Child Died in Hot Car (VIDEO)

At ABC News 7 Los Angeles, "OWASSO, Okla. -- A police officer's body camera captured the dramatic moment a mother is confronted for leaving her child in a hot car -- and a bystander incorrectly tells her that the child has died."

Watch, at KJRH-TV News 2 Tulsa, "VIDEO: Talala woman reacts to news of child left in hot car."

David Ruhl, South Dakota Firefighter, Dies Battling Northern California Wildfire

The report doesn't explain what happened, although it's a devastating loss.

The man leaves a wife and child behind.

At LAT, "Firefighter dies battling Northern California wildfire."

The Unsettling, Anti-Science Certitude on Global Warming

A great piece, from John Steele Gordon, at the Wall Street Journal, "Climate-change ‘deniers’ are accused of heresy by true believers. That doesn’t sound like science to me."

Lifeguard Attacked Along Crowded Venice Pier in Confrontation That Was Caught on Video

Watch, at CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "Three people have been taken into custody in connection with an attack on a lifeguard at the Venice Pier, authorities said."

Blocked #PlannedParenthood Videos May Prove Babies Born Alive Before Organ Harvesting

Via Stacy Hyatt, on Twitter.

Baltimore Police to Beef Up Manpower to Fight Spike in Criminal Violence (VIDEO)

At CBS News 13 Baltimore, "Police Announce Increase In Manpower to Fight Violence Spike."

BONUS: At Progs Today, "Homicides in Baltimore Now Highest Since 1972."

Desperate Migrants Rush Channel Tunnel to England

This has been going on for days now.

At London's Daily Mail, "Calais' thin blue line: Helpless French police are over-run as hundreds more migrants storm Channel Tunnel declaring 'it's England or death' - so when will Cameron finally take action?" And, "Now it's batons and tear gas in the battle of Calais: French police finally take action to try to stem the flow as migrants storm the Channel Tunnel for a FOURTH night."

Also, "TWO-THOUSAND migrants storm the Channel Tunnel in one night as riot police battle for six hours in a desperate attempt to keep them out."

Still more, "Your summer holidays have gone up in smoke: New blow to British families caught up in Calais migrant chaos as striking ferry workers block roads with burning tyres."

Plus, watch at the Telegraph UK, "Migrants break through police line in Calais."

They're like animals.

Still more at Reuters, "Calais migrants prepared to risk lives to reach Britain's shores."

And see the New York Times, "Migrants in Calais Desperately Rush the Channel Tunnel to England, Night After Night":

CALAIS, France — The sun had barely set when a 23-year-old Eritrean woman who gave her name as Akbrat fell into step with dozens of other men and women and started scaling the fence surrounding the entrance to the French side of the Channel Tunnel.

The barbed wire cut her hands, but she did not feel the pain. The police seemed to be everywhere. She thought of her 5-year-old son back in Africa and ran, zigzag through the falling shadows, once almost colliding with an officer in a helmet.

Then she was alone. She slipped under the freight train and waited, clambering out just as it began moving.

But before she could hurl herself onto the train bed transporting trucks filled with Britain-bound produce, a French officer caught up with her, she recalled in an interview on Thursday. Blinded by tear gas, she stumbled and bruised her right ankle. After being ejected from the complex around the tunnel, it took her five hours to limp the nine miles back to the refugee camp of makeshift shelters that its 3,000 inhabitants call the “jungle.”

“You’re lucky you weren’t killed,” someone told her.

“I’m not lucky,” she responded. “I’ll be lucky when I’m in England.”

The desperate scene playing out each night and day in Calais, with migrants trying to vault fences or cut their way through them and climb onto trains or into trucks going across the Channel to England, is just one chapter in a painful drama playing out across Europe.

For many of the migrants who have been coming to the Continent from Africa, the Middle East and beyond, Calais, a mere 21 miles from the white cliffs of Dover, is their last stop. If they make it across to Britain, many believe they will have reached safety and a better life. Some are attracted to Britain because they speak some English, others because they see better job prospects there than on the Continent. A few even cite a strong pound.

Those who make it as far as this port city often express striking and implacable certainty about their right to go the rest of the way, having come so far.

Nursing her sprained ankle outside the tent she shares with a dozen of other men and women, Akbrat lamented the fact that she would have to rest for a few days before making another attempt. “I’ve crossed the sea and walked for many months,” she said. “I am not giving up now.”

Like others here, she declined to give her full name or have her photograph taken for fear of jeopardizing her chances of slipping across the border undetected.

Akbrat arrived in Calais five days ago. But she has spent much of her life as a refugee. When she was 13, her father was killed, a political assassination in Eritrea, she said. Her mother fled with her and her two sisters to Sudan. When her mother died seven months ago, Akbrat left her son with her aunt and began her own journey to Turkey and then across the Mediterranean to Greece. She hopes to bring her boy to Britain once she has papers and has found work, she said.

“I thought I would die on that boat,” she said. “Until I die, I will try to go to England.”

Still more.

And at the BBC, "Calais migrants crisis: Inside 'The Jungle' migrant camp."

New GDP Revisions Show the Worst Recovery in 70 Years Was Even Weaker

This should be the number one issue of the 2016 campaign. Republicans should bludgeon the Democrats to death with it.

At the Wall Street Journal, "The Six-Year Slough":

One measure of America’s lowered expectations is that so many economists cheered Thursday’s second quarter growth estimate of 2.3%. It’s a rebound from the first quarter slump! The consumer is resilient, net exports are up, the plow-horse marches on! All true, but those silver linings obscure the larger reality that six long years after the recession ended in June 2009 the American economy has become a slow-growth machine.

That’s the story underscored by the annual government revisions in historical GDP that accompanied the second-quarter report. The news, which most Americans have long felt in slow-growing wages, is that the worst expansion in 70 years has been even weaker than we thought.

The gnomes at the Bureau of Economic Analysis ran the numbers based on new data and analytical methods and downgraded the recovery since 2011 nearly across the board. From 2011 through 2014, the economy grew at a paltry annual rate of 2%, down from the previous estimate of 2.3%. This means the overall U.S. economy is smaller—with GDP slashed by $105 billion in 2013 and $71 billion in 2014 to $17.35 trillion.

Those numbers are abstractions, but another way to put it is that national income, corporate profits and personal income were all revised down. From 2011 through 2014, the average annual growth of real disposable personal income was slashed to 1.5% from 1.8%. That’s a giant cut in the standard of living.

Since the recession ended in June 2009, the economy has grown at an annual rate of about 2.1%. That’s 0.6-percentage points worse than even during the much-maligned George W. Bush expansion. Growth averaged more than 3% from 2003-2006, but the best growth during the Obama years has been 2.5% in 2010, and in both 2011 and 2013 it nearly slipped back into recession.

The nearby chart compares this expansion to the growth periods in the 1980s and 1990s, showing what might have been. Real GDP growth averaged 4.6% in the first six years of the Reagan expansion, and more than 3.6% a year in the first six years of the George H.W. Bush-Bill Clinton expansion (gaining speed after that). Had the current expansion been as robust as the average expansion since 1960, GDP would be some $1.89 trillion larger today, according to Congress’s Joint Economic Committee.

The slow-growth Obama era has given way to multiple explanations and excuses from the President’s economic advocates. They blame the hangover from the financial crisis (even six years later), foreign economic problems, the failure of government to spend and tax more, an aging population—anything but the policy differences between those previous eras and this one.

Leading lights on the left have even thrown up their hands to suggest we no longer really know what produces faster growth. Larry Summers calls it “secular stagnation,” as if it’s an illness we somehow caught. Others claim 2%-2.5% growth is about as good as we can now do, so get used to it—and keep interest rates at near-zero for as far as the eye can see.

This is a false counsel of despair, much as we heard similar advice in the malaise years of the 1970s. There’s no great mystery about why growth has been so slow. The natural dynamism of the U.S. economy has been swamped by waves of bad policies.

Unprecedented new regulation has hamstrung finance, health care, the coal and power industries, for-profit education, and so much more. Two of the biggest growth exceptions—tech and oil and gas—escaped this maw because drilling is regulated by the states and the FCC only got around to ensnaring the Internet in new rules this year.

Higher taxes—their anticipation and then the reality in 2013—slowed risk-taking and investment. Profits fell in the first quarter of 2013 thanks to the tax cliff, and growth for 2013 was a mere 1.5% after the latest revisions.

The Federal Reserve has tried to overcome all this with near-zero interest rates and bond-buying, and it has succeeded in raising asset prices that have further enriched those lucky enough to hold assets. But it hasn’t succeeded in lifting the economy out of its slow-growth trend, and the Fed’s own growth predictions have been revised down year after year...

Keep reading, and pay special attention to the comparative graphic on relative post-recession economic expansions. It's mind-boggling, the growth-killing collectivism of the current administration.

Charlotte McKinney's Day-to-Day Struggles

At London's Daily Mail, "'My buttons always break!' Model Charlotte McKinney bemoans the daily struggles of having big breasts - and admits her ample assets attract a lot of unwanted attention."

And watch, "Charlotte McKinney Explains 6 Things Women with Big Breasts Think are Bullshit."

GOP Support Grows for Hardline Planned Parenthood Strategy

Good.

At Politico:

Republicans are rallying behind a bare-knuckle strategy to strip Planned Parenthood’s government support via a must-pass fall spending bill, a momentum shift that dramatically increases the chances of a government shutdown fight this fall.

What started out as a push from socially conservative firebrands like Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and 18 House members on Wednesday, is spreading to include more centrist members of the Senate GOP. On Thursday, Arizona Republican John McCain, who often tacks to the middle in the Senate, not only backed a plan to link Planned Parenthood defunding with spending legislation, he suggested the move was inevitable.

“It could invite a fight, but I think most Americans do not believe that their tax dollars should be used to fund the kind of grotesque procedures we’ve seen authenticated,” said McCain, who is trying to box out any primary challenge. “I would vote for a spending bill that defunded it, and that’s the way it’s going to be … it’s pretty obvious.”

Asked about eliminating the organization’s $528 million in government funding in a spending bill, Orrin Hatch of Utah, the chamber’s most senior senator replied: “It’s the right way to go.” Meanwhile, Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) said dozens of House Republicans will back his threat — delivered in a letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) — to shoot down any legislation that funds Planned Parenthood this fall.

“We have to find a way to fund the government without giving any more money to this” organization, Mulvaney said Wednesday evening.

The growing momentum comes as the anti-abortion Center for Medical Progress on Thursday released its fourth undercover video going after the women’s health organization, this time with recordings of a doctor discussing how to avoid the perception of “selling fetal parts across states.” The group says the video proves that Planned Parenthood is trafficking human fetal organs — and both parties expect more videos to come this summer. Planned Parenthood denies that it did anything illegal.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has scheduled a standalone vote on defunding the organization for next week, but it will fail amid Democratic resistance and may only temporarily satisfy the party’s right flank...

Still more. (Via Memeorandum.)

Emily Ratajkowski Deep Cleavage

At London's Daily Mail, "Braless Emily Ratajkowski showcases her ample cleavage in plunging red top and skinny jeans for raunchy Instagram snap."

CEO Who Gave Employees $70,000 Minimum Wage Faces Massive Backlash and Financial Ruin

Well, he's already being sued by his brother. At the Seattle Times, "Gravity Payments CEO, who set $70K minimum pay, sued by brother."

And now the dude's business is collapsing amid the onslaught of media fame and customer revolt.

It's practically a far-left workshop on how to kill a successful business.

At the New York Times, "A Company Copes With Backlash Against the Raise That Roared":

There are times when Dan Price feels as if he stumbled into the middle of the street with a flag and found himself at the head of a parade.

Three months ago, Mr. Price, 31, announced he was setting a new minimum salary of $70,000 at his Seattle credit card processing firm, Gravity Payments, and slashing his own million-dollar pay package to do it. He wasn’t thinking about the current political clamor over low wages or the growing gap between rich and poor, he said. He was just thinking of the 120 people who worked for him and, let’s be honest, a bit of free publicity. The idea struck him when a friend shared her worries about paying both her rent and student loans on a $40,000 salary. He realized a lot of his own employees earned that or less.

Yet almost overnight, a decision by one small-business man in the northwestern corner of the country became a swashbuckling blow against income inequality.

The move drew attention from around the world — including from some outspoken skeptics and conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, who smelled a socialist agenda — but most were enthusiastic. Talk show hosts lined up to interview Mr. Price. Job seekers by the thousands sent in résumés. He was called a “thought leader.” Harvard business professors flew out to conduct a case study. Third graders wrote him thank-you notes. Single women wanted to date him.

What few outsiders realized, however, was how much turmoil all the hoopla was causing at the company itself. To begin with, Gravity was simply unprepared for the onslaught of emails, Facebook posts and phone calls. The attention was thrilling, but it was also exhausting and distracting. And with so many eyes focused on the firm, some hoping to witness failure, the pressure has been intense.

More troubling, a few customers, dismayed by what they viewed as a political statement, withdrew their business. Others, anticipating a fee increase — despite repeated assurances to the contrary — also left. While dozens of new clients, inspired by Mr. Price’s announcement, were signing up, those accounts will not start paying off for at least another year. To handle the flood, he has already had to hire a dozen additional employees — now at a significantly higher cost — and is struggling to figure out whether more are needed without knowing for certain how long the bonanza will last.

Two of Mr. Price’s most valued employees quit, spurred in part by their view it was unfair to double the pay of some new hires while the longest-serving staff members got small or no raises. Some friends and associates in Seattle’s close-knit entrepreneurial network were also piqued that Mr. Price’s action made them look stingy in front of their own employees.

Then potentially the worst blow of all: Less than two weeks after the announcement, Mr. Price’s older brother and Gravity co-founder, Lucas Price, citing longstanding differences, filed a lawsuit that potentially threatened the company’s very existence. With legal bills quickly mounting and most of his own paycheck and last year’s $2.2 million in profits plowed into the salary increases, Dan Price said, “We don’t have a margin of error to pay those legal fees.”

As Mr. Price spoke in the Gravity conference room, he could see a handful of employees setting up beach chairs in the parking lot for an impromptu meeting. The office is in Ballard, a fast-gentrifying neighborhood of Seattle that reflects the wealth gap that Mr. Price says he wants to address. Downstairs is a yoga studio, and across the street is a coffee bar where customers can sip velvet soy lattes on Adirondack-style chairs. But around the corner, beneath the elevated roadway, a homeless woman silently appeals to drivers stopped at the red light with a cardboard sign: “Plz Help.”

In his own way, Mr. Price is trying to respond to that request.

“Income inequality has been racing in the wrong direction,” he said. “I want to fight for the idea that if someone is intelligent, hard-working and does a good job, then they are entitled to live a middle-class lifestyle.”

The reaction to his salary pledge has led him to think that if his business continues to prosper, his actions could have far-reaching consequences. “The cause has expanded,” he said. “Whether I like it or not, the stakes are higher.”

Corporate socialism doesn't work, obviously, to say nothing of state socialism.

Let this be a lesson to the collectivist left: More of these minimum wage disasters are coming down the pike. It's only a matter of time.

Still more.

ADDED: Now a Memeorandum thread.

Israel Braces for Violence, Hamas Rockets, After Palestinian Baby Killed in Firebombing

Background at Russia Today, "Palestinian toddler burns to death in suspected Jewish ‘price tag’ attack," and France 24, "West Bank Arson: Palestinian child dies in suspected jewish extremist attack."

And at the Times of Israel:

Ali Dawabsha buried, doctors try to save rest of family; Israel condemns alleged Jewish terrorists who set fire to home; Abbas blames Israeli support for settlers; world slams attack; IDF sends extra troops to West Bank.

And from the IDF, "We condemn all acts of terrorism. Our thoughts are with the families of the victims. We wish all a peaceful Shabbat."

And, "Terror Attack in the Duma Village."

Watch: "IDF Forces Airlift Palestinian Victim to Israeli Hospital."

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Won't Explain Difference Between Democrat Party and Radical Socialists

At Twitchy, "DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz can’t explain how she’s any different from a socialist."

It's not that she "can't explain" the difference. She won't explain the difference. She won't even try. She'd not only look like an idiot trying, she'd alienate the party's rank-and-file. The Democrats are a socialist party. Bernie Sanders is bringing out massive grassroots protests and rallies, and Hillary Clinton --- already way over on the left --- is being forced to the radical end of the spectrum.

It's the radical socialist Democrat Party against mainstream America these days. It's not Democrat vs. Republican, although Wasserman-Schultz desperately wants people to think so.

Watch: "Debbie Wasserman Schultz Doesn't Know What a Socialist Is."

Police Boats Ram Kayaks, Knocking Greenpeace Protesters Into the Water (VIDEO)

You have to listen through some of this Amy Goodman interview with Greenpeace Executive Director Annie Leonard, at the clip, "Police Remove Greenpeace Activists from Portland Bridge After They Forced Shell Ship Back to Port."

Scroll foward to about 2:00 minutes in. It's pretty funny, though. I thought the cops were gonna kill that kayaking Greenpeace mofo for a second, heh.

Plus, flashback to Greenpeace's 1970s-era communist foundations, at Free Republic, "Greenpeace Wages Redwar."

And ICYMI, "Shell Icebreaker Breaks Through Greenpeace Protesters Hanging from St. John's Bridge in Portland (VIDEO)."

Shell Icebreaker Breaks Through Greenpeace Protesters Hanging from St. John's Bridge in Portland (VIDEO)

At the Oregonian, "Shell Oil's MSV Fennica icebreaker passes through protestors and under St. Johns Bridge."



PREVIOUSLY: "Greenpeace Enviro-Radicals Block Shell Icebreaker in Portland, Oregon (VIDEO)."

Man Shoots Down $1,800 Drone Hovering Over His Sunbathing Daughter

Drones seem so cool, but then not so much.

At WDRB News 41 Louisville, "Hillview man arrested for shooting down drone; cites right to privacy" (via Memeorandum and Reason).

Thanks to Readers Who Bought Bruce Levine's, Fall of the House of Dixie — BUMPED!

Thanks to those who purchased Levine's excellent Civil War history through my Amazon links.

I don't blog for the money, as folks well know. But it's nice to see a few sales here and there through Amazon, and it's a lot of fun for me posting the links, because I love books so much.

Thanks again.

Here's the link: The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South.

And thanks to all my readers at American Power. I've still got about a month off until school starts up again, so I'll have some robust daily blogging until then for sure.

Remains of Colony Leaders Found at Jamestown, Virginia

What a trip.

At CBS Evening News, "Archaeologists find human remains in Jamestown, Va."

CBS Evening News Covers Release of Fourth Planned Parenthood Investigative Video

Hey, good for CBS!

Even if it's just a little coverage, millions of people tune in for the evening newscasts, even in this day and age of digital and cable news.



PREVIOUSLY: "Coast-to-Coast Protests Against Ghoulish Fetal Parts Harvester Planned Parenthood (VIDEO)."

Confederate Flags Placed at Ebenezer Baptist Church and Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site

It's MLK's former church, now a national historic monument.

Because the Confederate flag stands for racial reconciliation, or something.

At the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Cops: Video shows 2 men placing Confederate flags at Ebenezer":

Atlanta police said surveillance footage shows two men placing Confederate battle flags at two of Atlanta’s most notable landmarks early Thursday: Ebenezer Baptist Church and Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site.

As investigators worked to identify the men and their motive, church and civic leaders decried the act as terrorism, vowing not to be threatened.

Police later Thursday released several black and white videos from Ebenezer’s surveillance cameras showing images of two men walking and placing flags at various spots...

The National Park Service also received a "threatening message" just days ago that mention the historic site, although authorities are not yet linking it to events overnight.

Also at CNN, "Confederate flags found at MLK's church," and AP, "Confederate Flags Placed Near MLK's Ga. Church."

And at Fox 5 News Atlanta, "Rev. Warnock on Confederate flags found at church."

I'm going to check over at Saberpoint to see if Stogie's renounced this act of "terrorism," to use the word of condemnation of church leaders.

Greenpeace Enviro-Radicals Block Shell Icebreaker in Portland, Oregon (VIDEO)

At Oregonian, "Greenpeace protest: Officials circle kayakers; St. Johns Bridge closed again (live updates)."

And at the now supposedly straight-news MSNBC, "Dangling Greenpeace Protesters Block Shell Icebreaker."

Related at Politico, "MSNBC cancels three shows amid transition."

Abby Huntsman and Krystal Ball will be leaving the network. Good while it lasted, I guess.

Andrea Tantaros Bikini Pic!

She's actually the smartest woman on Fox News, with perhaps the exception of Megyn Kelly.

I love Ms. Tantaros for her mind, although I'm not going to begrudge her a bikini or two.

At Twitchy, "‘Hot Diggity!’ Summer heat: Andrea Tantaros sparks sweat with this ‘smoking’ Instagram photo."

Hey Conservatives, What's Worth Conserving If It Ain't White?

So, that's what the whole "#Cuckservative" thing is all about?

And here Robert Stacy McCain was saying it was a leftist meme. I guess not.

At American Renaissance, "An Open Letter to Cuckservatives":

You aren’t just betraying your principles.

Dear Cuckservative,

You are not alone. Like you, Erick Erickson at RedState.com, Matt Lewis at the Daily Caller, Taylor Millard at Hot Air, the blogger Ace of Spades, and Jim Harper with the Cato Institute are all squirming under the lash of this new coinage. They are squirming because a single word–cuckservative–lays bare the rot at the heart of your movement: American conservatism can conserve nothing if it cannot conserve the nation’s founding stock. I’ll put it bluntly: Nothing you love will survive without white people.

Do you stand for limited government and a balanced budget? Count your black and Hispanic allies. Do you admire Thomas Jefferson? He was a slave-holder who will end up on the dung heap with the Confederate flag. Do you care about stable families and the rights of the unborn? Look up illegitimacy, divorce, and abortion rates for blacks and Hispanics. Do you cherish the stillness at dawn in Bryce Canyon? When the park service manages to get blacks and Hispanics to go camping they play boom-boxes until 1:00 a.m. Was Ronald Reagan your hero? He would not win a majority of today’s electorate.

Do you love Tchaikovsky? Count the non-whites in the concert hall. Do you yearn for neighborhoods where you can leave the keys in your car? There still are some; just don’t expect them to be “diverse.” Are hunting and firearms part of your heritage? Explain that to Barack Obama or Sonia Sotomayor. Are you a devout Christian? Muslim immigrants despise you and your faith. Do you support Israel? Mexicans, Haitians, Chinese, and Guatemalans don’t.

Your great festival – CPAC – is as white as a meeting of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. That’s because blacks and Hispanics and even Asians don’t share your dreams. You’ve heard the old joke: “What do you call the only black person at a conservative meeting? The keynote speaker.” Outreach doesn’t work. You can’t talk someone into loving what you love. Faith, patriotism, duty, and honor come from deeply cultural, religious, and ancestral sources you can’t reach.

Why do you evoke Martin Luther King when you call for a “colorblind” America? You know he wanted quotas for blacks. You evoke King because you think he’ll help you silence blacks and liberals. But it doesn’t work, does it? That’s because only whites–and Asians, when it suits them–even think in terms of “colorblindness.” Blacks and Hispanics will squeeze every unfair advantage out of you they can. At what point will they ever abandon their aggressive racial agenda? When they’re the majority just think how hard they’ll squeeze your grandchildren...

What a load of crap, and there's still more.

And this is the kind of conservatism Stogie at Saberpoint is all about? I don't know, but count me out brother, in any case. CPAC ain't all white, you cracker idiots. And true conservatism knows no color.

I really hate this moment of ideological purity we're having, but as folks can see I've taken my stand and it's not with the dolts of the racist Deutschephysik battalions.

Clinton Foundation Raked $600 Thousand from Swiss Offshore Banking Firm UBS — After Hillary Intervened in Criminal Case as Secretary of State

Hey, pay to play, the Clinton way.

At the Wall Street Journal, "UBS Deal Shows Clinton’s Complicated Ties":

Donations to family foundation increased after secretary of state’s involvement in tax case.

A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts.

If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court.

Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS, an outcome that drew criticism from some lawmakers who wanted a more extensive crackdown.

From that point on, UBS’s engagement with the Clinton family’s charitable organization increased. Total donations by UBS to the Clinton Foundation grew from less than $60,000 through 2008 to a cumulative total of about $600,000 by the end of 2014, according to the foundation and the bank.

The bank also joined the Clinton Foundation to launch entrepreneurship and inner-city loan programs, through which it lent $32 million. And it paid former president Bill Clinton $1.5 million to participate in a series of question-and-answer sessions with UBS Wealth Management Chief Executive Bob McCann, making UBS his biggest single corporate source of speech income disclosed since he left the White House.

There is no evidence of any link between Mrs. Clinton’s involvement in the case and the bank’s donations to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, or its hiring of Mr. Clinton. But her involvement with UBS is a prime example of how the Clintons’ private and political activities overlap.

UBS is just one of a series of companies that engaged with both the Clinton family’s charitable organization and the State Department under Mrs. Clinton. And it is an unusual one: Unlike cases in which Mrs. Clinton went to bat for American companies seeking business abroad, such as General Electric Co. and Boeing Co., the UBS matter involved her helping solve a problem for a foreign bank—not a popular constituency among Democrats—and stepping into an area where government prosecutors had been taking the lead.

The flood of donations and speech income that followed exemplifies why the charity and its fundraising have been a running problem for the presidential campaign of Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic front-runner. Republicans as well as some Democrats have raised questions about potential conflicts of interest.

“They’ve engaged in behavior to make people wonder: What was this about?” says Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, who is a Democrat. “Was there something other than deciding the merits of these cases?”

Critics also have hit the charity for accepting donations from foreign governments, which they say could pose problems for her if she is elected, potentially opening her to criticism that she is obligated to foreign donors.

The Clintons have said accepting donations posed no conflicts of interest and broke no rule or law. To address the criticism, the Clinton Foundation decided to release donation information more frequently, and the foundation said earlier this year that the first disclosure is expected by the end of July.

UBS officials deny any connection between the legal case and the foundation donations. “Any insinuation that any of our philanthropic or business initiatives stems from support received from any current or former government official is ludicrous and without merit,” a bank spokeswoman said. UBS said the speeches by Mr. Clinton and the donations were part of a program to respond to the 2008 economic downturn.

A Clinton campaign spokesman said Mrs. Clinton is proud of the foundation’s work and her record as secretary of state. “Any suggestion that she was driven by anything but what’s in America’s best interest would be false. Period,” he said. He referred questions about the UBS matter to the State Department.

A State Department spokesman said that “UBS was a topic of serious discussion, among other issues, in our bilateral relations at that time” with the Swiss government. A spokeswoman in the Swiss embassy in Washington said the government had no comment.

In a CNN interview last month, Bill Clinton was asked if any foundation donors ever sought anything from the State Department. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I know of no example. But I—you never know what people’s motives are.”

Classic Clinton Cash.

Keep reading.

Murder Suspect Adrian Jerry Gonzalez Appears in Court

At the Sacramento Bee, "Teen charged in killing of 8-year-old girl appears in court."

And at the Santa Cruz Sentinel, "Santa Cruz teen makes initial appearance in court in 8-year-old’s rape, homicide."

I'm still shocked by this murder. So callous. So casual. So evil. So leftist.

VIDEO: Walter Palmer Protesters in Bloomington, Minnesota

Raw video, from Ruptly:



PREVIOUSLY: "Dentist Walter Palmer Goes Into Hiding Amid Fanatical Outrage Over Cecil the Lion (VIDEO)."

Marxist Political Cartoonist Ted Rall Fired by Los Angeles Times

Folks throw around "Marxist" in political debate pretty often, as an epithet deployed to delegitimize radical leftists. But with Ted Rall, it's not just throwing it around. The dude's really a hardcore Marxist revolutionary.

See, "Cartoonist Ted Rall Calls for Communist Revolution: 'I Would Like to See a Completely Leftist Proletariat Dictatorship'." And see his book, The Anti-American Manifesto.

Well, no surprise, but it turns out Rall's a documented liar as well, evidenced by his blog post at the Los Angeles Times that was debunked by the LAPD. See, "Editor's Note A note to readers."

More at L.A. Observed, "Ted Rall dropped by LA Times over blog post about LAPD."

And the freak communist Rall is interviewed at the CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "Cartoonist Ousted By Los Angeles Times Speaks Out."

BONUS: The dude's going batshit on Twitter, mewling and ranting about how he's going to get revenge against the Times. Man, not going out gracefully, that's for sure.

Coast-to-Coast Protests Against Ghoulish Fetal Parts Harvester Planned Parenthood (VIDEO)

At KEYT News 3 Santa Barbara, "Planned Parenthood Protests Follow Secretly Recorded Videos."

Plus, at Life News, "4th Video Catches Planned Parenthood VP Discussing How to Break the Law to Sell Aborted Babies."

Chrissy Teigen Strips Down for Women's Health UK

At London's Daily Mail, "Chrissy Teigen strips completely naked for new shoot as she admits she only works out in order to eat more and would love to get pregnant so she has an excuse to put on weight."

And at Egotastic!, "Chrissy leads parade of barely covered vixens for Women's Health U.K. magazine including Lucy Mecklenburgh, Kristy Gallacher and Chloe Madeley."

Dana Loesch on #TheKellyFile on Cecil the Lion

Watch: "Outrage Over Death of Cecil the Lion - Dana Loesch."

Dentist Walter Palmer Goes Into Hiding Amid Fanatical Outrage Over Cecil the Lion (VIDEO)

Hey, it's good folks are upset about Cecil the Lion, although I agree that leftists care more about African wildlife than they do about American unborn children. And that's sickening.

At CBS This Morning, "Lion-killing dentist closes practice as anger grows."

A glimpse at the fanatical outrage, at BuzzFeed, "People Are Flooding This Dentist’s Facebook After He Was Named As the Hunter Who Killed Cecil the Lion."

And check reporter Paul Blume, KMSP-TV FOX 9 Minneapolis, for more.

PREVIOUSLY: "Jimmy Kimmel on Cecil the Lion."

ADDED: At the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "Killer of Cecil the Lion Finds Out That He Is a Target Now, of Internet Vigilantism."

F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter

Fearful.

At ABC 10 San Diego:

Germany Registers Sharp Increase in Attacks on Asylum Seekers

It's always ominous when ethnic minorities are singled out in Germany, for obvious reasons.

At Der Spiegel, "Is the Ugly German Back? Flames of Hate Haunt a Nation":

During the first six months of this year, right-wing extremists in Germany committed attacks against places housing asylum-seekers on an almost daily basis. Many refugees living in the country fear for their lives.

It's a Monday night in July and Samuel Osei is frightened to death. Two neo-Nazis have entered the concrete bloc apartment building where Osei is staying, on the edge of Greifswald, a city in eastern Germany. The two men are drunk and swearing. Osei, an asylum-seeker from Ghana, steps out on his balcony and tries to placate them. "I'm sorry," he calls out. But the right-wing extremists only grow more aggressive. They begin shouting. One of the two takes off his shirt and Osei recognizes a swastika on his chest.

The men storm into the building and begin pounding on the door to Osei's apartment. They then go down to the basement and remove the fuses, cutting off the power. Osei cowers in his room in the dark. He calls a friend who in turn alerts the police. The attackers have already left by the time officers...

Osei chokes up when he talks about that evening a week and a half ago. Traces of the attack are still visible -- the door is dented and its peephole shattered. "These guys wanted to put an end to something," he says.

Osei, who is 29, has been living in Germany for eight months. He's taking German lessons and earns his money by helping other refugees move. Osei likes Greifswald, which is located on the Baltic coast -- he especially likes the sea and the Old Town. He says most people in the city are friendly and helpful. At the same time, he's struggling with the animosity he has experienced at the hands of racists.

One of the men involved in the attack had already cursed at him on the street. His mailbox at the apartment was also vandalized several times. The Ghanaian also has photos of the two attackers and has given a statement to the police. The state Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which is responsible for monitoring extremists, including neo-Nazis, in Germany, has also opened an investigation. "It was mental torture," Osei says.

Germany these days is a nation split in two. On the one side is a populace that is showing greater solidarity with refugees than ever seen before. Initiatives have been created across the country to assist asylum-seekers in their everyday lives.

The other half of the country is extremely difficult to tolerate in some places. Racist violence is on the rise. The German Interior Ministry registered 173 instances of criminal right-wing offenses against accommodations for asylum-seekers during the first six months of this year, almost three times as many as during the same period the previous year...

Keep in mind that the swastika is banned in Germany, so I'm always skeptical of these reports on the rise of so-called "right-wing extremists" there. Frankly, Islamic anti-Semitism is a far larger threat. Not only that, no ideological group has the market cornered on anti-immigrant nativism. It's a nationwide (and continent-wide) problem, as folks in Southern Europe are now witnessing with the massive refugee crisis.

More.

Jimmy Kimmel on Cecil the Lion

Everyone was talking about this yesterday, among other things.

Watch: "Jimmy Kimmel on the Killing of Cecil the Lion."

New Britney Spears Bikini Pics!

She's keeping in shape too.

At London's Daily Mail, "PICTURE EXCLUSIVE: Yoga's paying off! Britney Spears does the splits while showing off her flexibility on beach vacation in Hawaii."

Clumps, Lies, and Videotape

From Mark Steyn:

On Monday night I joined Sean Hannity at Fox News to discuss Planned Parenthood and Donald Trump.

Judging from Twitter commentary, many Americans are prepared to defend the harvesting of baby body parts by Cecile Richards and her staff. If so, shame on you. I wrote last week that no other country in the civilized world has a "Planned Parenthood": a billion-dollar abortion conglomerate. One Tweeter said so what? Abortion is only "three per cent" of what Planned Parenthood does. In fact, as I pointed out on the air, they perform a third of a million abortions a year, which is as many as France, Germany and Canada combined.

And, putting aside whether one is "pro-life" or "pro-choice", the nature of the abortions in those other countries is different: again, as I told Sean, in France abortion is legal up to 12 weeks; Italy, 13 weeks; Norway, 18 weeks, but it requires the approval of a government commission. Nowhere else in the western world takes 39-week-old "fetuses", delivers them sufficiently to preserve the commercially valuable parts and then crushes the non-sellable parts in order to preserve a technical denial of infanticide. That is a uniquely American evil, and Americans should be utterly ashamed of it. American liberals ought to understand that in far more left-wing societies (Scandinavia, the Netherlands, France) they do not do this - because it's not a left/right thing, it's a good/bad thing, and Planned Parenthood's abortion-industrial complex is on the wrong side of that divide...

It's a very bad thing, but then, leftists are very bad, particularly American leftists.

Keep reading.