'Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of the U.S. Army in the Pacific, wanted officers to wear their daily service clothes — khaki button-up shirts with open collars and no ties...'

A cool story, at the Los Angeles Times, "A look inside the WWII surrender ceremony: 'My job was to make sure we did not screw up'":

James L. Starnes, navigator of the battleship Missouri, was 24 years old when he learned he would play a key role in the ceremony to mark the end of World War II.

After the Japanese conceded defeat, President Truman announced that "Mighty Mo," the behemoth 58,000-ton flagship of the 3rd Fleet, would host the signatories of the instrument of surrender in Tokyo Bay.

"My job was to make sure we did not screw up," said Starnes, 94, who performed the role of officer of the deck the morning of Sept. 2, 1945.

A former lieutenant commander in the Navy who now lives in a retirement community in Stone Mountain, east of Atlanta, Starnes is one of the few remaining veterans who organized the ceremony on the Missouri 70 years ago.

Five years after joining the Navy Reserve's officer-training program as a student at Emory University in Atlanta in 1940, Starnes was responsible for working out the logistics of the ceremony to mark the formal end of the six-year war that had killed more than 60 million people.

At first he prepared for an elaborate, formal affair with ceremonial dress and gleaming sabers. "We thought, well, this has never happened before," he said. "We'll have a big celebration, put on the white uniforms and polish up our swords."

Before the ceremony, however, Starnes got word that Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of the U.S. Army in the Pacific, wanted officers to wear their daily service clothes — khaki button-up shirts with open collars and no ties. "We fought them in our khaki uniforms, and we'll accept their surrender in our khaki uniforms," MacArthur was reported to have said...

Keep reading.

Also from Ms. EBL, "Never Forget: 70th Anniversary of the surrender of Imperial Japan."

Disturbing Graffiti of Police Officer at Gunpoint Appears Around Houston

From Nice Deb, at Pajamas, "Needless to say, 'those in uniform say it's incredibly disturbing to see this just days after a deputy was killed while pumping gas'."

Neo-Communism

I took a break from my Civil War reading to wade back into David Horowitz's The Black Book of the American Left.

I particularly enjoy reading his essays on "neo-communism," available at FrontPage Magazine, "Neo-Communism" and "Taking on the Neo-Coms, Part II."

Also, "Are Communists (or Neo-Communists) Dangerous?"

Don't miss all of Horowitz's books at Amazon.

Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis is Sudden Symbol of Recalcitrant Resistance to Depraved Leftist Homosexual Agenda

I'm actually not backing this lady, since she's a government employee. The Supremes ruled in favor of a right to homosexual marriage. I don't like it, but that's the law. She should take her opposition campaign to the private realm. Folks expect to get the marriage licenses in the state, and rightly so.

At the Lexington Herald-Leader, "Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, once a local fixture, is suddenly a national symbol."

And at the Louisville Courier-Journal, "Kim Davis cites God, crowd jeers gay couple," and "Rowan clerk Kim Davis loses Supreme Court fight."

The No-Growth Campaign

At the Wall Street Journal, "Clinton and Trump are offering nothing to improve the economy":

Stocks took another tumble on Tuesday on a weak manufacturing report out of China, and investor shivers about Japan, the oil patch and the U.S. are increasing. The shaky markets and underlying economy seem relevant to the presidential debate—yet the front-runners of both parties have next to no pro-growth ideas to contribute.

Hillary Clinton favors higher taxation, heavier regulation, more political shackling of business, and centralizing more economic control inside the White House. So does Donald Trump—at least as far as we can tell.

Mrs. Clinton is promising Obamanomics Plus: continue the agenda of the last eight years, with bonus corrections toward the left as necessary. She’s proposed to nearly double the top tax rate on some capital gains to 43.4% from 23.8%, for example, up from 15% as recently as 2012.

On energy, one of the few U.S. growth areas of the Obama era, she is even further to the left. The green elites used to tolerate support for the U.S. oil and natural gas boom if gas could be levered as a transition fuel toward a post-carbon future. Now they favor massive subsidies for wind and solar today and no fossil-fuel drilling, and Mrs. Clinton is moving their way.

About the only growth component of Mrs. Clinton’s agenda is immigration, and there she beats Mr. Trump in a romp. A larger workforce adds to GDP, and economists of all political persuasions agree that increasing human capital drives prosperity and offsets an otherwise aging population.

Mr. Trump’s candidacy is more attitude than substance, and his quicksilver positions change day to day, even minute to minute in the same interview. But he has been consistent about rounding up illegal immigrants and deporting them to their home countries—if they have one, in the case of kids born on U.S. soil. He supports “a pause” in legal immigration too.

The real-estate tycoon is also running as the most antitrade candidate since Herbert Hoover. He has assailed the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico and the pending Pacific Rim pact as “disasters” that are “killing us.” Mr. Trump promises to reopen these agreements and do better, though without saying how, apart from his alpha-male negotiating skills. He’s proposing tariffs as high as 30% on imports, and he has already promised to punish Ford and Nabisco for expanding production south of the border.

On taxes, Mr. Trump promises to release a “comprehensive” reform plan soon. So far, though, his only specifics have been some kind of tax relief for the middle class coupled with class warfare. He said in a recent interview that “I would take carried interest out, and I would let people making hundreds of millions of dollars a year pay some tax, because right now they are paying very little tax and I think it’s outrageous.”

Carried interest is the accounting term for a share of profits from investments in general partnerships—private equity, hedge funds, (ahem) real-estate outfits. Congress taxes this at-risk capital at a lower rate than ordinary wages because it only pays out if a fund invests wisely, but this treatment should be reconsidered as part a larger tax reform.

Mr. Trump doesn’t engage these facts, much less anything else that might help the real economy. Carried interest is a sideshow. Much like Mrs. Clinton and President Obama, he’s trying to stoke resentment of the rich, or the merely affluent, or foreigners, people dumber than he is, whoever...

Well, it's telling that the editors speak of Donald Trump as if he's the GOP nominee. And should he win it, I'd trust his business background to restore the economy more than Hilllary's Alinskyite pedigree.

Still more.

"Communists are always deliberate liars, who believe that the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' justifies any deception necessary to advance their cause, and Communists kill without remorse, unrestrained by conscience..."

Heh, here's Robert Stacy McCain going off on an epic rant against the collectivist left.

See, "Godless Commies: The Critical Theory Cult and The Devil’s Pleasure Palace."

He reviews Michael Walsh's new book, The Devil's Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West.

Social Justice Warriors Always Lie

A Kindle book, from Vox Day, SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police.

Hat Tip: Instapundit.

Economic Progress is More Effective Than Protests

From Joel Kotkin, at the Daily Beast:

Ta-Nehisi Coates and the new wave of black nationalists are selling a line that is inimical to real racial progress in America.

The election of Barack Obama promised to inaugurate the dawn of a post-racial America. Instead we seem to be stepping ever deeper into a racial quagmire. The past two month saw the violent commemoration of the Ferguson protests, “the celebration” of the 50th anniversary of the Watts riots, new police shootings in places as distant as Cincinnati and Fort Worth, and renewed disorder, tied to a police-related shooting, in St. Louis last week.

When President Obama was elected, two-thirds of Americans thought race relations were good. Now six in 10 think they are bad, according to a New York Times poll, including some 68 percent of African Americans.

This extreme alienation creates a rich soil for resurgence of a cramped form of black nationalism, as revealed in such widely read books as Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me. Coates, like the black nationalists of the ’60s, is fawned over by today’s progressive gentry. New York Times film critic A.O. Scott gushed that Coates’s writing is “essential, like water or air.” Yet the new nationalists do not, like many previous iterations, look to Africa for salvation, and as a potential place of re-settlement. Instead they may look to Africa for inspiration, but seem content to stew in the American racial cauldron, always apart but also here.

Yet to this reader, it’s hard to regard Coates’s book as anything more than a narrow selfie that holds little hope for any future racial progress. To Coates, America itself seems irredeemable, its very essence tied to racial oppression and brutality. America is not about ideals not yet fulfilled, but a legacy of “pillaging,” the “destruction of families,” “the rape of mothers,” and countless other outrages. Today’s abusive police—and clearly some can be so described—are not outliers who should be punished but “are merely men enforcing the whims of our country, correctly interpreting its heritage and legacy.” His alienation from America is so great that he admits to little sympathy for the victims of 9/11.

Coates is literally a personal cauldron of hatred.

Still more.

And buy Kotkin's book, The New Class Conflict.

The Socialist Dream Will Never Die

From Steven Hayward, at Power Line:

At the end of the day, of course, the socialist impulse is not really rooted in reason or epistemology, but in envy and the desire for authoritarian control. That’s why we’ll never be rid of these people, no matter how many Venezeulas and Cubas you pile up.

Hayward references Friedrich Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society," published at the American Economic Review, in September 1945.

Plus, see "The Socialist Dream Will Never Die (2)." (Linked there is Leszek Kolakowski's, Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders - The Golden Age - The Breakdown.)

Kathryn Steinle Parents File Lawsuit Against San Francisco Sheriff Over 'Sanctuary Cities' (VIDEO)

At the San Jose Mercury News, "Kate Steinle killing: Parents file claim against San Francisco sheriff, feds":

SAN FRANCISCO -- Kate Steinle's mother has a phobia of speaking in front of crowds.

But when her family announced Tuesday that they were taking legal action against the local sheriff and two federal agencies for Steinle's death, Liz Sullivan stepped up on a small stool outside City Hall so she could be seen over the phalanx of TV microphones.

"I don't know what's come over me," Sullivan told dozens of reporters. "I feel as though it's Kate. She has somehow empowered me. I feel her strength, and I know she's proud of what we're doing."

In an emotional news conference Tuesday, Steinle's parents said they want to hold accountable not just the illegal immigrant charged with her killing but also the public officials who failed to keep him off the streets. On July 1, just moments after taking a selfie with her father on Pier 14, Steinle -- a world traveler and social justice activist who had just moved in with her boyfriend in San Francisco -- was shot in the back, allegedly at the hands of an illegal immigrant with a history of seven drug felonies and five deportations.

"It too late to fight for our daughter," Sullivan said, but she hopes their case will ensure the safety of future families and tourists to San Francisco. "This is for humanity, this is for the future, even though ours is gone."

Keep reading.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck Slams #BlackLivesMatter as a 'Hate Group' (VIDEO)

She nails it.

Via NYDN:

Europe's Migrant Crisis Reaches 'Biblical Proportions'

At the Telegraph UK, "EU faces migrant crisis of 'biblical proportions' as Germany registers 3,500 new refugees in just one day - live":

Migrants are arriving in Europe in ever-increasing numbers, with waves of people coming into the EU from Greece, Italy and Hungary. Latest updates here.

For those just joining us this evening as we wind down our live coverage, here is a summary of today's key events:

- Nigel Farage warned this morning that the EU had opened the door to an "exodus of biblical proportions."
- It later emerged that Germany has registered more than 3,500 refugees in the last day alone
- Meanwhile 350,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean since January, IOM figures revealed
- Yvette Cooper this afternoon called on "Britain to be Britain" by taking in 10,000 refugees
- Greece announced it has been forced to move 4,000 migrants onto the mainland as the Aegean islands are "overwhelmed"
- Bulgarian police this afternoon arrested one person in connection with case of an abadoned lorry containing 71 dead migrants
- This evening, Germans welcomed refugees arriving in Munich with food, water, nappies and teddy bears

We continue to cover the latest developments in the migrant crisis...

More.

Manhunt Continues After Police Officer Shot and Killed in Fox Lake, Illinois (VIDEO)

Watch, at CBS News 2 Chicago, "Manhunt in Fox Lake After Police Officer Shot and Killed."

And at the Chicago Tribune, "Slain Fox Lake police officer identified as veteran cop, father of four."

More at Twitchy, "Police officer shot and killed during traffic stop in #FoxLake; Manhunt underway; Update: 3 suspects at large."

Jackie Johnson's Got Your Midweek Forecast

It's been quite reasonable the last couple of days.

Demi Lovato on Jimmy Kimmel Live

At Egotastic!, "DEMI LOVATO CURVY IN TINY SHORTS FOR 'JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE'."

And at Jimmy Kimmel's YouTube page, "Demi Lovato Falls Down a Lot," and "Demi Lovato on Her Birthday and New Album Cover."

Also, "Demi Lovato Performs 'Neon Lights' on Jimmy Kimmel Live."

Missouri High School Protests as Transgender Student Demands to Use Girls Locker Room (VIDEO)

Yeah, the, um, transgender "girl" refused to use a private restroom, no doubt so "she" could scope out all the high school talent in the girls' locker room.

More leftist depravity for you.

Watch, at Progs Today, "High School Students Protest When Transgender Student Who Was BORN MALE Wants to Use GIRLS LOCKER ROOM (VIDEO)."

Ukraine Policeman Killed as Grenade Thrown During Protests Outside Kiev Parliament (VIDEO)

At the BBC, "Ukraine crisis: Deadly anti-autonomy protest outside parliament."

And at the New York Times, "2 More Officers Die in Violent Protest Over Autonomy for East Ukraine":

KIEV, Ukraine — The results of a fiercely contested parliamentary vote over autonomy for eastern Ukraine were counted on Monday, partly in blood: 265 in favor, three major parties opposed and one dead policeman.

About 130 other officers were wounded, the authorities said Tuesday, in an attack during a protest that intensified after Parliament approved a measure on constitutional changes that could grant autonomy to parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.

The authorities said a man later identified as a member of a nationalist party had thrown a grenade at the police lines, killing one police officer. On Tuesday, two more officers died of their injuries while hospitalized, and the Interior Ministry reported that 10 protesters had also been wounded.

The violence underscored the tensions over a vote that many here see as a concession to Russia in exchange for peace...

More at that top link.

Dick and Liz Cheney's New Book is Out Today!

I'm looking forward to diving in.

Get your copy, at Amazon, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

And ICYMI, "Restoring American Exceptionalism."

Iowa Poll: Sanders Within Striking Distance of Clinton in Iowa

I love this.

At Bloomberg, "The latest Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll shows concerns about Clinton, enthusiasm for Sanders, and the possibility of Biden roiling the Democratic field":

Hillary Clinton’s once-prohibitive advantage in Iowa has slipped enough to jeopardize her front-runner status and Bernie Sanders has moved to within striking distance, revealing a Democratic presidential field in unexpected flux as Vice President Joe Biden mulls whether to make a late entrance into the race.

The results of the latest Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll, released Saturday, show Clinton is now the first choice of 37 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers in the state where the first ballots of the presidential contest will be cast early in 2016. She's followed by Sanders at 30 percent and Biden at 14 percent. It’s the first time the poll has had Clinton's support under 50 percent.

In May, the Iowa Poll put Clinton, a former secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady, at 57 percent, Sanders at 16 percent, and Biden at 8 percent.

"It looks like what people call the era of inevitability is over," said J. Ann Selzer, president of West Des Moines, Iowa-based Selzer & Co., which conducted the poll. "She has lost a third of the support that she had in May, so any time you lose that much that quickly, it’s a wake-up call."

The decline in Clinton's rating in the poll comes despite her dominance of the local broadcast airwaves. During the past month, she was the only Democratic candidate or political action committee advertising on Iowa broadcast television stations. The heavy Clinton buy, which aired in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, focused on her biography and her record as a champion of American families. According to Kantar/CMAG data, the Clinton campaign was not only unopposed on the Democratic side, but had more than twice as many spots in the markets where it bought, than all Republican advertising combined.

Biden, who is expected to make a decision about whether to enter the race by the end of September, placed ahead of several declared candidates. If Biden is not in the race, the poll shows Clinton leading Sanders by 43 percent to 35 percent. The margin of error on the full sample of likely Democratic caucus-goers is plus or minus 4.9 percentage points

The biggest surprise is Sanders. Unlike his recent strong showing in New Hampshire polls, his performance here cannot be dismissed as a result of the Vermont lawmaker’s regional appeal...

Keep reading.

Plus, "Gaining Speed: On Sunday Shows, Bernie Sanders Reflects on Iowa Poll Momentum."

Professor William C. Bradford Resigns His Position at U.S. Military Academy at West Point

Bradford, at controversial law professor, published "Trahison des Professeurs: The Critical Law of Armed Conflict as an Islamist Fifth Column," at the National Security Law Journal, out of Georgetown University. The article is available in here in PDF.

The journal's editors repudiated the article, lamenting that they couldn't unpublish that which was already published, and apologed profusely for their errors, pledging never to let it happen again. The website was overloaded the other day when I tried to access the site, but I was able to read the apology at the cached version.

The law article is something like 100 pages long, and frankly I have no desire to wade through it.

That said, Jeremy Rabkin wrote a critical response (very critical), "A BETRAYAL OF RATIONAL ARGUMENT."

And Ilya Somin wrote about the controversy yesterday, at the Washington Post, "Student-edited “National Security Law Journal” repudiates article that advocates targeting legal scholars as “enemy combatants” in the War on Terror."

Plus, at the Chronicle of Higher Education, "Academics Who Criticize War on Terror Are ‘Lawful Targets,’ West Point Professor Says."

And now he's resigned, at the Guardian, via Memeoradum, "West Point law professor who called for attacks on ‘Islamic holy sites’ resigns."

So, wade in and you be the judge.

Personally, I agree these leftist law professors are traitors who deserve a nice healthy predator drone strike. But alas, freedom of speech protects us all, even treasonous progs, and Professor Bradford apparently crossed a line for too many on the PC left.

ICYMI, Marijuana Debunked

Here's my earlier post, "In the Mail: Ed Gogek, Marijuana Debunked: A Handbook for Parents, Pundits, and Politicians Who Want to Know the Case Against Legalization."

And the book link is here, Marijuana Debunked.

Satellite Images Show the Extent of Islamic State's Destruction of Palmyra

At the Independent UK, "Satellite images confirm that Isis have destroyed the ancient Temple of Bel in Palmyra":

A satellite image of the Syrian city of Palmyra confirms that the ancient Temple of Bel has been destroyed, according to the United Nations.

There have previously been unconfirmed reports that the Temple of Bel in Palmyra had been destroyed, but solid reports could not make it out of the Isis-controlled city.

Maamoun Abdulkarim, the head of the Syrian Department of Antiquities, said that although he believed there had been a large explosion at the temple, most of the site remained intact.

However, UN satellite analysts have now said that almost nothing remains of the 2,000-year-old temple...

More.

Bidding Wars Become the Norm as Orange County Rental Market Goes Off the Chain

Bidding wars for rentals?

No wonder my lease keeps going up.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "It is not uncommon in the rental frenzy for renters to offer a year's rent up front."

From May, 'In just a few short weeks, a newly-united rebel coalition has captured almost all of northwest Syria's Idlib province from government forces, overturning assumptions over the war's course, and threatening the regime's ability to defend its heartland...'

Following-up, "A New Kind of Bomb Is Being Used in Syria and It's a Humanitarian Nightmare."

Here's video from Vice, from earlier this year, "Jihadists vs. the Assad Regime: Syria's Rebel Advance."

Migrant Crackdown Sows Chaos in Europe

At WSJ, "European Efforts to Stem Migrant Tide Sow Chaos on Austrian-Hungarian Border":

German chancellor warns of need to share burden across EU; Austria steps up border, highway checks.

Austrian and Hungarian efforts to stem a growing tide of migrants sowed chaos along their frontier on Monday as Germany’s chancellor warned that Europe’s open-border policy was in danger unless it united in its response to the crisis.

In Austria, police toughened controls on the border, triggering miles of traffic jams as they checked cars and trucks for evidence of people smuggling. They said they were compelled to conduct the highway searches after discovering the decomposed bodies of 71 people, most of them believed to be Syrian refugees, in an abandoned truck last week.

Authorities also stopped and boarded several Germany-bound trains overcrowded with hundreds of migrants, refusing entry into Austria until some of them got off. Migrants had packed into the trains in Hungary earlier in the day after officials in Budapest abruptly lifted rules barring them from traveling further into the European Union without visas.

Such temporary checks remain in accord with the Schengen Agreement, which allows people to travel freely across the borders of 26 European countries that have signed onto the treaty. But in Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel cautioned that some countries could move to reintroduce systematic passport controls at their borders—unless EU governments agreed to more equally bear the burden of the bloc’s escalating crisis, “Europe must move,” she told reporters in Berlin. “Some will certainly put Schengen on the agenda if we don’t succeed in achieving a fair distribution of refugees within Europe.”

Ms. Merkel’s warning—aimed at governments in the bloc’s east that have resisted taking on a greater number of migrants—marked her most direct intervention in the fraught debate between those European countries, such as Germany, Italy and France, that have called for a fairer distribution of migrants across the bloc, and those that have opposed binding quotas.

The comments also came as a rebuttal to opposition politicians and some members of the chancellor’s ruling coalition who have accused her of being slow to address the crisis. Echoing comments she made last week in a German town shaken by three days of antimigrant riots, Ms. Merkel urged her compatriots to welcome those fleeing war or persecution while warning that economic migrants, namely those from Southeastern Europe, couldn’t expect to settle in Germany.

“If Europe fails on the question of refugees, then [Europe’s] close link with universal civil rights will be destroyed and it won’t be the Europe we wished for,” she said.

The warning from the Continent’s most powerful leader has weight: The chancellor has repeatedly described free movement in Europe as a core value of the bloc. Her comments underline the pressure that the record wave of migrants arriving on European soil is putting on the region’s most exposed member states—mainly countries at its periphery, such as Hungary, Italy and Greece, as well as Germany and Sweden, which have received the bulk of migrants since the crisis started early last year.

Schengen rules have been contested before amid rising migrant numbers. In 2011, France and Italy called on the EU to impose tighter border controls in an effort to stop the influx of migrants unleashed by North African unrest. But the EU failed to reach a concrete agreement over how Europe should handle the wave.

Germany, which was the destination for 40% of asylum seekers in Europe last year, has repeatedly said the bloc must agree on binding quotas for the redistribution of refugees across the EU. The number of arrivals has soared over the summer months, forcing the government to nearly double its forecast for migrants this year to 800,000 from 450,000—equal to almost 1% of Germany’s population.

“We face a huge national challenge that concerns all of us, it will be a central challenge not only for days or months but as far as we can tell for a longer period of time,” Ms. Merkel said.

Germany said last week that it would allow Syrian refugees to stay in the country regardless of where they first entered the EU—both for humanitarian reasons and in an attempt to speed up the review of asylum claims filed by Syrians.

Still, Ms. Merkel said the German government had been in touch with Hungary over what she called Budapest’s misunderstanding that all Syrians could travel to Germany without having to register in Hungary. The chancellor insisted Hungary should register migrants who arrive there and review their asylum applications.

Still more.

Arizona Woman Drowns 2-Year-Old Twin Boys in Bathtub (VIDEO)

It's just incomprehensible to me.

And she was going kill the twins' baby brother. Horrible.

At the Arizona Republic, "Avondale woman says she drowned twin boys, police say."

And at ABC News 15 Phoenix:



More at London's Daily Mail, "Mother charged with murder after drowning her two 2-year-old twin sons in the bath at their Arizona family home."

Hey, Thanks to the Reader Who Bought Carhartt Men's Canvas Work Dungarees

You know, I don't blog for money, but it's always nice to have readers purchase a few items through my Amazon links. I appreciate it, and frankly, I'm fascinated by the goods some folks have been picking up, like these pants, Carhartt Men's Canvas Work Dungaree.

Another reader bought a Philips Norelco PT724/46 Shaver 3100, which is also very cool.

Thanks again!

Donald Trump Will Change Denali's Name Back to Mt. McKinley

Following-up from yesterday, "Kenyan Marxist Interloper Renames Mount McKinley 'Denali', Outrage Ensues (VIDEO)."

And dang is Trump like hermetically tuned into the pulse of the people.

President Obama wants to change the name of Mt. McKinley to Denali after more than 100 years. Great insult to Ohio. I will change back!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 1, 2015

Donald Trump Is Setting the GOP Agenda

Well, fine by me.

Let the RINO establishment party hacks figure it out. Trump's throwing the political system up in the air.

At Politico, "Every Republican presidential contender is playing Trump’s game. And losing at it":

Remember way back to two weeks ago when the Donald Trump candidacy was the best thing to ever happen to Jeb Bush?

The billionaire business mogul would distract the other contenders for the nomination, the Bush team assured pundits all over Washington. Trump is “other people’s problem,” declared Mike Murphy, chief strategist of the pro-Bush Super PAC Right to Rise. The Donald would allow Jeb to just keep on chugging along. Bush would become the safe and responsible brand—the Honda Odyssey of 2016—to which panicked Republicans would eventually flock.

That didn’t last long. A week after boasting that it would ignore Trump, with its usual Clouseau-like finesse, JebWorld decided to hit Trump every day. Which means every GOP candidate is now playing Donald Trump’s game instead of their own—and doing about as well as you’d expect.

The decision to engage him has outsized consequences for the GOP “brand,” whatever that is these days. Not since Joan Collins sauntered onto the set of “Dynasty” or Gary Coleman uttered his first “Whatch talkin’ about, Willis,” has anyone so dominated a universe as Donald Trump has the GOP. Trump single-handedly has moved the GOP to the right on immigration, to the left on free trade and in circles on pretty much everything else. He has the other candidates so confused that they are stepping all over their own messages. After all, how else can one explain Bush’s latest effort to show he is not an establishment loser by going [sic] flaunting an endorsement from Eric Cantor, the most notorious establishment loser in history?

Keep reading.

Can Americans Still Take a Joke?

Well, Americans can take a joke, but the market nowadays contains a significant number of anti-American leftists. They can't take a joke, to the consternation of comedians.

Washington State Professors Will Punish Students Who Use the Wrong Words

At the Lonely Conservative.

And following the links, at Campus Reform, "Professors threaten bad grades for saying ‘illegal alien,’ ‘male,’ ‘female’."

Support for Hillary Erodes

Dick Brennan reports, for CBS News 2 New York:

The Off-Grid Administration

"The many ways Obama officials have ducked public accountability."

You think?

At the Wall Street Journal:

In a famous remark two years ago during a Google Plus Hangout, President Obama boasted that “this is the most transparent administration in history.” This is belied by Administration officials, from Hillary Clinton on down, who have run their communications off the government grid.

A bipartisan consensus has long held that a healthy democracy requires a significant measure of government transparency. That is why since 1950 Washington has operated under the Federal Records Act, which requires the government to preserve documents about its decisions.

Since the 1960s the government has been subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), giving citizens the right to view those records. In 2009 the National Archives issued rules requiring agencies to preserve employee work on nonofficial accounts in a government record-keeping system.

Then came the Obama Administration, whose modus operandi has been to hide from this legal regime. This year the world learned that Hillary Clinton conducted most of her correspondence as Secretary of State on a private, homemade email system that she failed to disclose and kept away from the federal government.

We have since learned that at least one of her aides, Huma Abedin, also had an account on that private system. When the press exposed the system, Mrs. Clinton deemed herself the arbiter of what she would allow the American people to see. Mrs. Abedin still hasn’t bothered to deliver her government records to State. In late July another Clinton aide, Philippe Reines, gave State 20 boxes of work-related emails, taken in part from his private email account.

In August the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed a motion in court to gain access to the private email account of White House science czar John Holdren, who may have used it for government work. Some years ago CEI helped bring to light that then-EPA Chief Lisa Jackson used a secret alias, “ Richard Windsor,” when emailing on the EPA system. This seemed designed to thwart FOIA requests for her conversations, since “Lisa Jackson” appeared nowhere on her emails.

In 2013 an Associated Press report revealed the practice was rampant among Administration officials, including the Secretaries of Agriculture, Labor, and Health & Human Services. All had secret government email accounts that neither Congress nor the public knew about.

Last Monday the IRS was forced to acknowledge to a federal court that it recently discovered that Lois Lerner (of political targeting fame) used a second, private email to conduct government work. The account was set up under the name “ Toby Miles,” and the IRS still can’t account for its contents.

It has been two years since Congress first subpoenaed Ms. Lerner’s emails. In 2013 when Mrs. Lerner was still directing the IRS’s Exempt Organizations unit, she cautioned colleagues to be careful what they said on email; then she inquired whether the agency’s instant-messaging system was archived. Told it wasn’t, she responded by email: “Perfect.”

Last week a federal court subpoenaed former EPA official Phillip North after a complaint by a mining concern called the Pebble Partnership. Mr. North worked from inside the EPA with outside activists to scuttle Pebble’s proposed Alaskan mining project, and he did so on private email.

The Lerner and North cases also highlight the Administration’s sloppy, or willfully obstructionist, approach to recordkeeping. Recall the crash of Ms. Lerner’s hard drive, and the IRS’s claim for months it had no backup of her work. Treasury’s Inspector General would later find some. Mr. North’s hard drive also crashed, and Pebble claims that key North emails and documents have gone missing from EPA’s official record.

In 2012 the Gawker website filed a FOIA request for documents involving Mr. Reines, the Clinton adviser. State said in 2013 it couldn’t find any such documents. In mid-August this year, the department declared in a court filing that it had suddenly found close to 18,000 after all. Watchdog groups report similar behavior across nearly every department and agency—processing delays, missing records, and a tendency to redact information that ought to be made public...

Still more.

Ferguson Effect: Murder Rates Rise Sharply in Urban Areas Across the U.S.

Well, events are proving Heather Mac Donald correct. Remember her piece on the "Ferguson Effect" at WSJ? See, "The New Nationwide Crime Wave." Radical leftists went batshit crazy.

Well, murders have surged across the U.S., no doubt coinciding with the retreat of law enforcement from the most dangerous urban areas.

See the New York Times, "Murder Rates Rising Sharply in Many U.S. Cities":

MILWAUKEE — Cities across the nation are seeing a startling rise in murders after years of declines, and few places have witnessed a shift as precipitous as this city. With the summer not yet over, 104 people have been killed this year — after 86 homicides in all of 2014.

More than 30 other cities have also reported increases in violence from a year ago. In New Orleans, 120 people had been killed by late August, compared with 98 during the same period a year earlier. In Baltimore, homicides had hit 215, up from 138 at the same point in 2014. In Washington, the toll was 105, compared with 73 people a year ago. And in St. Louis, 136 people had been killed this year, a 60 percent rise from the 85 murders the city had by the same time last year.

Law enforcement experts say disparate factors are at play in different cities, though no one is claiming to know for sure why murder rates are climbing. Some officials say intense national scrutiny of the use of force by the police has made officers less aggressive and emboldened criminals, though many experts dispute that theory.

Rivalries among organized street gangs, often over drug turf, and the availability of guns are cited as major factors in some cities, including Chicago. But more commonly, many top police officials say they are seeing a growing willingness among disenchanted young men in poor neighborhoods to use violence to settle ordinary disputes.

“Maintaining one’s status and credibility and honor, if you will, within that peer community is literally a matter of life and death,” Milwaukee’s police chief, Edward A. Flynn, said. “And that’s coupled with a very harsh reality, which is the mental calculation of those who live in that strata that it is more dangerous to get caught without their gun than to get caught with their gun.”

The results have often been devastating. Tamiko Holmes, a mother of five, has lost two of her nearly grown children in apparently unrelated shootings in the last eight months. In January, a daughter, 20, was shot to death during a robbery at a birthday party at a Days Inn. Six months later, the authorities called again: Her only son, 19, had been shot in the head in a car — a killing for which the police are still searching for a motive and a suspect.

Ms. Holmes said she recently persuaded her remaining teenage daughters to move away from Milwaukee with her, but not before one of them, 17, was wounded in a shooting while riding in a car.

“The violence was nothing like this before,” said Ms. Holmes, 38, who grew up in Milwaukee. “What’s changed is the streets and the laws and the parents. It’s become a mess and a struggle.”

Urban bloodshed — as well as the overall violent crime rate — remains far below the peaks of the late 1980s and early ’90s, and criminologists say it is too early to draw broad conclusions from the recent numbers. In some cities, including Cincinnati, Los Angeles and Newark, homicides remain at a relatively steady rate this year.

Yet with at least 35 of the nation’s cities reporting increases in murders, violent crimes or both, according to a recent survey, the spikes are raising alarm among urban police chiefs. The uptick prompted an urgent summit meeting in August of more than 70 officials from some of the nation’s largest cities. A Justice Department initiative is scheduled to address the rising homicide rates as part of a conference in September...

The Justice Department? What a joke.

No one's going to address the problem, which is the glorification of black thug life and the evil of political correctness that prohibits leftist elites from even discussing it.

It's going to get worse before it gets better, and it won't get better until we elect law-and-order Republicans to office in the country's inner cities.

Still more at the link.

A New Kind of Bomb Is Being Used in Syria and It's a Humanitarian Nightmare

At Vice:

Syrian government jets struck a market in Douma, a suburb northeast of Damascus, on August 16, killing almost 100 people. Some reports attribute the lethal strike to a volumetric weapon, also known as a vacuum bomb.

In his condemnation of the attack, Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy for Syria, alluded to the possibility that the Syrian air force used a vacuum bomb, saying that "[a]ttacks on civilian areas with aerial indiscriminate bombs, such as vacuum bombs, are prohibited under international law."

However, researchers and human rights advocates, observing from a distance, are unable to confirm or properly investigate whether this is the case.

"We suspect they may have been used," Mary Wareham, the advocacy director of Human Rights Watch's Arms Division, told VICE News.

In conflicts like Syria, investigators and human rights groups face an uphill battle in making determinations about the particulars of such an attack. Lacking solid video evidence and unable to access the blast site, investigators have little to go on. These obstructions to research and investigative capability leave clear information on the use of volumetric weapons in Syria out of reach.

Related: Syrian Regime Bombs Kill Dozens in Damascus Suburb for Second Week in a Row

Volumetric weapons are a family of munitions that includes such better-known subtypes as thermobaric and fuel-air explosive (FAE) weapons, and are variously referred to as vacuum bombs or enhanced blast weapons. The differences between thermobaric weapons and fuel-air explosives are fairly arcane, but the fundamental effects on the people injured and killed by these weapons are pretty much the same.

"If you're a civilian on the ground in a marketplace and the bomb goes off, the effects are going to be very similar," Robert Perkins, a weapons researcher at Action on Armed Violence, told VICE News. "It's going to achieve an incredibly destructive shockwave, which is the thing that unites these weapons."

Volumetric weapons work by dispersing an explosive element or fuel, which creates an aerosolized cloud on impact. The weapon's explosive then ignites the aerosolized cloud, producing a powerful shockwave and high temperatures.

The shockwave produced by volumetric weapons lasts longer than the blast of conventional high explosives; a little like the difference between a bellowing explosion and a sharp bang. Conventional high explosives typically explode and create most of their effect by propelling shrapnel out in a cloud of deadly high-speed projectiles, or from the short, sharp blast. By contrast, volumetric weapons generate effects through heat and extreme pressure over relatively long periods of time, and are very effective against certain kinds of soft targets, such as minefields and aircraft parked in the open.

Related: 'This Instrument Can Kill': Tasers Are Not as Harmless as Previously Thought

Alternately, volumetric weapons work well against certain kinds of concealed targets, such as those hiding in caves or bunkers; the twists and turns of the tunnel or building would normally protect people from flying shrapnel, but the cloud of explosive can penetrate some distance before detonating, while the walls themselves channel and focus the blast.

A Human Rights Watch background report on volumetric weapons used by Russia in 2000 describes the weaponry as "prone to indiscriminate use" and likely to cause high rates of civilian casualty when deployed in urban environments.

"The fuel-air explosive is just another way of killing people in ways that leave bodies that are horrifying to look at," Dr. Theodore Postol, MIT physicist and missile expert, told VICE News. "So it increases the terror in regard to these attacks on innocent civilians."

Like barrel bombs or sarin gas, the point of using vacuum bombs goes beyond the destruction of city blocks and the unfortunate civilian inhabitants. The ultimate purpose of such weaponry is to terrify, to sow fear amid chaos...

Yeah, well, that's not going to set off any red lines, or anything.

But keep reading.

Jessica Mendoza Debuts on ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball

Hey, this is great, "Jessica Mendoza draws rave reviews in historic Sunday Night Baseball debut."

But should Ms. Mendoza replace Curt Schilling permanently, after the former Red Sox pitcher tweeted some politically incorrect comments? See the Boston Globe, "ESPN removes Curt Schilling from ‘Sunday Night Baseball’ broadcast."

Plus, at USA Today, "ESPN's John Kruk speaks out on Curt Schilling during broadcast," and Awful Announcing, "SHOULD ESPN PERMANENTLY REPLACE CURT SCHILLING WITH JESSICA MENDOZA ON SUNDAY NIGHT BASEBALL?"

Classic SuperBreak Backpack by JanSport

Great for back to school!

At Amazon, Classic SuperBreak Backpack: Ultra-functional school backpack/daypack with 600-denier construction.

Plus, from by Ken Robinson, Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education.

Kenyan Marxist Interloper Renames Mount McKinley 'Denali', Outrage Ensues (VIDEO)

Frankly, it's just a mountain. If Obama wants to rename it let him rename it. It's not like this is telling us anything new about this fucking Kenyan collectivist interloper. We just need to get him out of there then name it back to McKinley, the way it should be. I mean, it's named after a former president. Screw the Aleutian natives the White House is pandering to, or whoever came up with that idiot name "Denali." Sheesh.

Here's the background, at the Anchorage Daily News, "McKinley no more: North America's tallest peak to be renamed Denali."

And at Politico, "GOP blasts Obama's Denali name change: Republicans are criticizing the president's decision to rename America's tallest mountain." (Via Memeorandum.)

Also, at the Hill, via Memeorandum, "Ohioans fuming over Mt. McKinley name change."

Get Out of My Class and Leave America

"Feel free to use this material if you already have tenure..."

Heh.

From Mike Adams, at Town Hall:

Welcome back to class, students! I am Mike Adams your criminology professor here at UNC-Wilmington. Before we get started with the course I need to address an issue that is causing problems here at UNCW and in higher education all across the country. I am talking about the growing minority of students who believe they have a right to be free from being offended. If we don’t reverse this dangerous trend in our society there will soon be a majority of young people who will need to walk around in plastic bubble suits to protect them in the event that they come into contact with a dissenting viewpoint. That mentality is unworthy of an American. It’s hardly worthy of a Frenchman.

Let’s get something straight right now. You have no right to be unoffended. You have a right to be offended with regularity. It is the price you pay for living in a free society. If you don’t understand that you are confused and dangerously so. In part, I blame your high school teachers for failing to teach you basic civics before you got your diploma. Most of you went to the public high schools, which are a disaster. Don’t tell me that offended you. I went to a public high school.

Of course, your high school might not be the problem. It is entirely possible that the main reason why so many of you are confused about free speech is that piece of paper hanging on the wall right over there. Please turn your attention to that ridiculous document that is framed and hanging by the door. In fact, take a few minutes to read it before you leave class today. It is our campus speech code. It specifically says that there is a requirement that everyone must only engage in discourse that is “respectful.” That assertion is as ludicrous as it is illegal. I plan to have that thing ripped down from every classroom on campus before I retire...

That's great!

Keep reading!

South Coast Cinemas in Laguna Beach Closing Its Doors

End of an era.

At the O.C. Register, "Landmark theater closes in Laguna Beach":

...the theater opened as the Lynn Theatre in 1923 at a cost of $12,000. It was erected three years before the Coast Highway and was dedicated by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. It still has a stage and an orchestra pit.

Sad to see it go, but amazing that it stayed open so long.

Dick and Liz Cheney on CBS 'This Morning'

The Cheneys' new book's out tomorrow, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America.

Miley Cyrus Flashed Bare Nipple to the Camera Before Appearing on Stage at MTV Video Music Awards

Hey, this is the culture nowadays.

At Truth Revolt, "Miley Cyrus Flashes Camera at MTV Video Awards."

Also at PuffHo, "Miley Cyrus Comes Out as Pansexual."

Robert Stacy McCain Blogs 'Tinder Is the Night'

Following-up, "The Tinder Hookup Culture and the End of Dating."

At the Other McCain, "‘Hit-It-and-Quit-It on Tinder’."

'Hit-It-and-Quit-It on Tinder' http://t.co/yiQDHnPIe0 h/t @AmPowerBlog #tcot pic.twitter.com/l7QjocEUDg

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

Good Morning!

This photo popped up in the links from my eXTReMe Tracker.

Jordan Carver? She's nice.

More at Pirate's Cove, "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup."

The Mystery of Islamic State

And essay from "Anonymous," at the New York Review, "The Mystery of ISIS."

It's an interesting piece.

Reviewed there are Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan, ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, and Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger, ISIS: The State of Terror.

The Tinder Hookup Culture and the End of Dating

"Tinder is the night."

Heh.

At Vanity Fair, "Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”":

Mobile dating went mainstream about five years ago; by 2012 it was overtaking online dating. In February, one study reported there were nearly 100 million people—perhaps 50 million on Tinder alone—using their phones as a sort of all-day, every-day, handheld singles club, where they might find a sex partner as easily as they’d find a cheap flight to Florida. “It’s like ordering Seamless,” says Dan, the investment banker, referring to the online food-delivery service. “But you’re ordering a person.”

The comparison to online shopping seems an apt one. Dating apps are the free-market economy come to sex. The innovation of Tinder was the swipe—the flick of a finger on a picture, no more elaborate profiles necessary and no more fear of rejection; users only know whether they’ve been approved, never when they’ve been discarded. OkCupid soon adopted the function. Hinge, which allows for more information about a match’s circle of friends through Facebook, and Happn, which enables G.P.S. tracking to show whether matches have recently “crossed paths,” use it too. It’s telling that swiping has been jocularly incorporated into advertisements for various products, a nod to the notion that, online, the act of choosing consumer brands and sex partners has become interchangeable.

“It’s instant gratification,” says Jason, 26, a Brooklyn photographer, “and a validation of your own attractiveness by just, like, swiping your thumb on an app. You see some pretty girl and you swipe and it’s, like, oh, she thinks you’re attractive too, so it’s really addicting, and you just find yourself mindlessly doing it.” “Sex has become so easy,” says John, 26, a marketing executive in New York. “I can go on my phone right now and no doubt I can find someone I can have sex with this evening, probably before midnight.”

And is this “good for women”? Since the emergence of flappers and “moderns” in the 1920s, the debate about what is lost and gained for women in casual sex has been raging, and is raging still—particularly among women. Some, like Atlantic writer Hanna Rosin, see hookup culture as a boon: “The hookup culture is … bound up with everything that’s fabulous about being a young woman in 2012—the freedom, the confidence.” But others lament the way the extreme casualness of sex in the age of Tinder leaves many women feeling de-valued. “It’s rare for a woman of our generation to meet a man who treats her like a priority instead of an option,” wrote Erica Gordon on the Gen Y Web site Elite Daily, in 2014.

It is the very abundance of options provided by online dating which may be making men less inclined to treat any particular woman as a “priority,” according to David Buss, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in the evolution of human sexuality. “Apps like Tinder and OkCupid give people the impression that there are thousands or millions of potential mates out there,” Buss says. “One dimension of this is the impact it has on men’s psychology. When there is a surplus of women, or a perceived surplus of women, the whole mating system tends to shift towards short-term dating. Marriages become unstable. Divorces increase. Men don’t have to commit, so they pursue a short-term mating strategy. Men are making that shift, and women are forced to go along with it in order to mate at all.”

Now hold on there a minute. “Short-term mating strategies” seem to work for plenty of women too; some don’t want to be in committed relationships, either, particularly those in their 20s who are focusing on their education and launching careers. Alex the Wall Streeter is overly optimistic when he assumes that every woman he sleeps with would “turn the tables” and date him seriously if she could. And yet, his assumption may be a sign of the more “sinister” thing he references, the big fish swimming underneath the ice: “For young women the problem in navigating sexuality and relationships is still gender inequality,” says Elizabeth Armstrong, a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan who specializes in sexuality and gender. “Young women complain that young men still have the power to decide when something is going to be serious and when something is not—they can go, ‘She’s girlfriend material, she’s hookup material.’ … There is still a pervasive double standard. We need to puzzle out why women have made more strides in the public arena than in the private arena.”

Sorry. Not buying it.

Attractive women have tremendous power. And frankly, if this story's any clue, looks like you're getting a lot of skanky people of both sexes on Tinder. Perhaps there's a few classy babes using the apps (or some real together dudes), but if you're hot and single, it's not like the chances for hooking up were all that bad before all these dating gizmos. Maybe the quantity has gone up, but not the quality. And for some people, that's not going to be an improvement. (But then, what do I know? I'm a fifty-something happily married man in the process of losing a few pounds, heh. I'm not on any dating market, which is kind of a relief.)

But keep reading. It's a kind of juicy piece, heh.

The Circuitous Routes Foreigners Take to Syria and Iraq

At the Wall Street Journal, "Jihadi Trails."

Via Julia Ioffe, "This WSJ project showing the paths of 10 foreign #ISIS recruits is just wow."

Black 'Activist' Podcast Calling for Killing of Cops Gets Pulled After Publicity

Update from the left's race war.

At Weasel Zippers.

New York Post Reporter Goes Undercover as Topless Street Performer

And Instapundit quips, "Under cover? More like uncovered."

More at the Mirror UK, "New York mayor Bill de Blasio to ban 'near naked' ladies from Times Square."

Leftists Blame the Gun, Not the Homo

Heh.

From Anna Maria Perez, on Twitter:

Liberals blame the gun, not the evil, homo, black #racist. Read!👉http://t.co/FiM1Qtphxe #BlackLivesMatter #LGBT #tcot pic.twitter.com/dBbnhdQ4HR

— Anna Maria Perez⭐ (@A_M_Perez) August 29, 2015

Taylor Swift and Scott Eastwood in 'Wildest Dreams' Music Video

The video just dropped, to coincide with tonight's VMAs.

And I noted, "Scott Eastwood is a dead ringer for his dad, damn."

Watch: "Taylor Swift - Wildest Dreams."

And at Us Magazine, "Taylor Swift, Scott Eastwood Gush About 'Wildest Dreams' Music Video."

My oldest boy's at the show, so he'll be telling me all about it later, heh.

Dear Feminists: You Think Too Much

At the Other McCain, "Third-wave feminism requires that males be 'vestigial,' because women must be so 'empowered' that men are either peripheral characters — clowns and tagalongs — or else sinister villains representing the Oppressive Patriarchy..."

Sarah Palin Interviews Donald Trump for One America News Network (VIDEO)

This is why the network's website crashed the other day.

Watch, at One America News Network, "'On Point' with Gov. Sarah Palin and Donald Trump."

BONUS: At Telegraph UK, "Could Sarah Palin join the Donald Trump ticket?"

Plus, more at Memeorandum.

Blonde Bombshell Rachel Mortenson on Horseback

Hmm... This is delightfully unusual.

At Egotastic!, "RACHEL MORTENSON SPILLING CLEAVAGE ON A HORSE."

Mission Beach Bikini Girl

Here's a nice summer video for you.

At SoCal Beaches Magazine, "Swimsuit Model Summer in Mission Beach 'Mission Beach Girl'."

Shooting at Venice Beach Boardwalk Leaves One Dead, One Injured (VIDEO)

The suspect's described as an "Hispanic male," and is apparently still at large. A 20-year-old black man by the name of "Shakespeare" has died.

At LAist, "One Man Killed In Early Morning Shooting On Venice Beach."

And watch, at CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "Man In His 20s Killed In Shooting on Venice Beach Boardwalk, 2nd Man Wounded."

The #BlackLivesMatter Revolution Will Be Televised

From Matthew Vadum at FrontPage Magazine, "Reporters' lives don't matter to a double-minority shooter trying to foment racial violence":

Hoping to start a bloody "race war," a black, gay, in-your-face Obama-supporting former TV reporter horrified Southwest Virginia TV viewers yesterday when he stalked and coolly murdered two white former TV station colleagues and wounded a white interview subject during a live broadcast.

The shooter, Vester Lee Flanagan II, 41, apparently a registered Democrat and former prostitute, said he attacked the three white people during the "standup" report about local tourism from the marina at Smith Mountain Lake as racial payback for white-supremacist Dylann Storm Roof's June 17 attack in Charleston, S.C. that left nine black churchgoers dead. Roof, who reportedly confessed, also said he wanted to start a race war by committing acts of violence.

Flanagan, who used the name Bryce Williams professionally, left behind a lengthy, rambling, written rant explaining his explicitly race-based motive for the murders. Although the full document was sent to ABC News, it has not yet found its way online. Media outlets have provided highlights. ABC News reports that "A man claiming to be Bryce Williams called ABC News over the last few weeks, saying he wanted to pitch a story and wanted to fax information. He never told ABC News what the story was."

Well, now we know.

Using online accounts created only recently, Flanagan promoted the political murders he committed as well as any team of seasoned, high-priced publicists could have. In the process he demonstrated his diabolical mastery of social media for the world to see. He shot his victims early in the morning and made the morning news. He sent out a horrifying video of the cold-blooded killings and caught the noonday news. He died in the afternoon in time to make the evening news. All the saturation coverage on cable TV news and news-on-dead-tree exposure is a bonus, a sort of contribution-in-kind that media outlets are providing to his cause.

Emulating the cost-conscious Muslim terrorists who flew airplanes into buildings on 9/11, Flanagan got perhaps tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in free media worldwide for his evil cause on what must have been a shoestring budget. Perhaps radical leftist public relations outfits Fenton Communications or SKDKnickerbocker of Anita Dunn fame will teach Flanagan's techniques to incoming employees.

In the empowering age of the Internet, fomenting civil unrest and violent revolution is becoming more affordable. Not that the George Soros-funded Black Lives Matter movement needs the money.

The black-nationalist mobs and leftover Occupy Wall Street goons wreaking havoc in Baltimore and other big cities with the encouragement of the Obama administration believe now is the time for decisive action against the country they hate. The desire to concoct a massive racial conflagration in America has been on the Left's laundry list for decades.

Starting a race war in which blacks violently rise up against whites has long been the goal of unrepentant terrorist and Obama pal Bill Ayers and was the reason mass-murderer Charles Manson and his followers went on a homicidal rampage in 1969. Leaders of the racist and increasingly violent Black Lives Matter movement nowadays are also calling for "war." President Obama hasn't called for race-based hostilities specifically but he has helped to craft the Left's false narrative that racist whites kill innocent blacks all the time. Obama, a Marxist community organizer by profession, wants racial groups and everyone else to be at each other's throats because, as the familiar leftist adage goes, "you never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

Flanagan can be seen in his own homemade video he later posted online holding a handgun in front of him as he walked unnoticed towards reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, and interviewee Vicki Gardner, executive director of the Smith Mountain Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Ward's video camera recorded the 6:45 a.m. attack and captured the shooter's image after Ward dropped the still-functioning machine and the live feed from it made it to the airwaves. The perpetrator's hand can be seen in his own video as he takes his time aiming at Parker and then opening fire. Parker, who can be heard screaming in both videos, and Ward succumbed to their wounds at the site of the shooting. Ward was engaged to be married and yesterday was to be his final day at Roanoke-based WDBJ-7 before he started a new job in Charlotte, N.C. Parker had recently moved in with her boyfriend, an anchor at the station. Gardner was in stable condition in hospital at press time.

Flanagan fled the scene and shortly before 8:30 a.m. reportedly faxed a hateful 23-page manifesto to ABC News. He reportedly told ABC that the police are “after me” and “all over the place,” before hurriedly ending the telephone call. Tweeting as Bryce Williams, Flanagan complained "Adam went to hr [human resources] on me after working with me one time!!!" and "Alison made racist comments[.]" He also boasted "I filmed the shooting see Facebook[.]"

His rental vehicle was later spotted by Virginia State Police who gave chase. Flanagan's car ran off the road on Interstate 66 in Fauquier County and he shot himself at 11:30 a.m. He died in hospital about two hours later.

NBC-4 in the national's capital reports that employees of WDBJ-7 were cautioned about Flanagan two years ago when his employment was terminated. Management was so concerned about his behavior that employees were reportedly made to clear the room as he cleaned out his desk. After he left workers were instructed to "call 911 immediately" if they spotted the former employee on company property.

Flanagan, Parker, and Ward had worked together at the CBS affiliate "[b]ut when Flanagan was fired in February 2013, a 911 call summoned police to remove him from the premises." The report continues...

Keep reading.

Europe's Migration Crisis: Hungary Builds Barbed-Wire Fence as Immigrant Siege Continues (VIDEO)

This is becoming one of the more fascinating spectacles of European politics that I can remember, even more amazing than the recent financial crises.

Watch, via Telegraph UK:



And see Elizabeth Price Foley, at Instapundit, "EUROPE’S BORDER CRISIS: Hundreds of thousands of “refugees” from the Middle East and Africa are crossing the Mediterranean, seeking a better life in Europe."

BONUS: From last week at the New York Times, "Migrants Race North as Hungary Builds a Border Fence," and "Europe's Halting Response to Migrant Crisis Draws Criticism as Toll Mounts."

Socialist Bernie Sanders Slams Iraq War as 'One of the Worst Foreign Policy Blunders' in History' (VIDEO)

Well, at least he voted against it.

Hillary voted for it, so if he's going to ramp up attacks on the Iraq war as basically getting us into the mess we're in now in the Middle East, he's going to have to take it to the former senator for New York, who voted along with the rest of her Democrat Party colleagues to approve the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002.

At ABC News, via Memeorandum, "‘This Week’ Transcript: Sen. Bernie Sanders and Gov. Bobby Jindal."

And Martha Raddatz has Sanders on the hot seat a bit here. It doesn't look like the dude has a clear personal criteria for the use of force. Watch:

Black Leftists Cheer 'Execution-Style' Murder of Harris County Deputy Sheriff Darren Goforth

Following-up, "Black Suspect Shannon J. Miles Facing Capital Murder Charges in Texas Deputy's 'Execution-Style' Killing (VIDEO)."

And at Fire Andrea Mitchell, "Black leftists celebrate assassination of Sheriff Goforth."

And from Stellahassa, on Twitter, "This kind of RAGE is taking this country to a full-blown #RaceWar These people are mindlessly EVIL."

Black Suspect Shannon J. Miles Facing Capital Murder Charges in Texas Deputy's 'Execution-Style' Killing (VIDEO)

Update from the front lines of the left's race war.

Here's video from CNN, "Shannon J Miles Charged in Gas Station Murder of Texas Sheriff's Deputy."

And here, "Police arrest suspect in Texas deputy killing."

@AmPowerBlog I just cannot grasp the ambush, execution-style murder. It's absolutely mind-numbing..the abject HATRED. #ALLLIVESMATTER

— Stellasasha® (@Stellasasha1) August 29, 2015

Shannon Miles is currently in our custody. At this time, we have no motive--appears this was an unprovoked incident. #DarrenGoforth

— HCSOTexas (@HCSOTexas) August 29, 2015

Routine research led our deputies to arresting this suspect, bringing justice and peace to our deputies & community. #HouNews #DarrenGoforth

— HCSOTexas (@HCSOTexas) August 29, 2015

PREVIOUSLY: "Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman Slams #BlackLivesMatter's 'Dangerous Rhetoric' in Deputy's Execution-Style Murder."

Michael Walsh's New Book Is On the Way

I ordered some books, including Walsh's The Devil's Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West.

I'm excited to sink my teeth into it.

Meanwhile, see Roger Kimball, "Thoughts on ‘The Devil’s Pleasure Palace’":

Subversion is Michael Walsh’s primary focus and the battle he describes is nothing less than a battle between good and evil.

And see Micah Mattix, at Free Beacon, "The Real ‘Great Satan’: Review: Michael Walsh, ‘The Devil’s Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West’."

In the Mail: Ed Gogek, Marijuana Debunked: A Handbook for Parents, Pundits, and Politicians Who Want to Know the Case Against Legalization

Leftists and potheads won't be pleased.

Here's the book, out from Chiron Publications, Marijuana Debunked.

Marijuana subtly damages the teenage brain, causing lifelong problems. Yet four million teens in Canada and the United States use the drug, a half million of them daily. For those who have heard only the pro-legalization side, this book presents the case against marijuana on an equal footing. In it, you will learn:

- The scientific research refuting all the pro-marijuana talking points
- Why marijuana is not safe for adolescents, especially those behind the wheel
- How the news media helped to create an epidemic of teenage use
- Why the promise of tax revenue is a mirage
- Why legalization would be an economic burden on society
- The misleading language used by pro-legalization partisans
- Why marijuana laws that prohibit use are good for the public health

Ed Gogek, MD, an addiction psychiatrist for 30 years, has treated more than 10,000 addicts and alcoholics in jails, prisons, homeless clinics, mental health centers and substance abuse treatment programs. His opinion pieces on addiction and mental health have appeared in the New York Times and over a dozen major U.S. newspapers. He received his medical training in Canada and the United States.

I skimmed over the book and some of the promotional materials. I'm excited to have this in my library, and I expect I'll be reading and making reference to it on a regular basis.

More substantive comments later, but meanwhile, here's the author's op-ed at the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Medical marijuana laws dangerous and unnecessary."

Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman Slams #BlackLivesMatter's 'Dangerous Rhetoric' in Deputy's Execution-Style Murder

Here's video, "Sheriff Rails Against ‘Dangerous’ Rhetoric After Deputy Killed: ‘Cop Lives Matter Too’."

And at USA Today, "Sheriff links 'national rhetoric' to killing of deputy in Houston":

"This rhetoric is out of control. I know #BlackLivesMatter, so do our lives. Let's drop this and say '#AllLivesMatter'" @SheriffHickman

— HCSOTexas (@HCSOTexas) August 29, 2015

Sheriff blasts "dangerous national rhetoric" as out of control.

— John Donnelly FOX 26 (@JohnDonnFOX26) August 29, 2015

Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman described the early morning killing of a deputy sheriff at a gas station   "cold-blooded assassination" and angrily condemned the "very dangerous national rhetoric" about police officers that he said was out of control.

Deputy Darren Goforth, 47, was fatally shot while filling his patrol car in northwest Harris County late Friday.

The suspect, whose image was caught on surveillance video, approached Goforth from behind and shot him several times in the back and continued to fire even after the officer had fallen to the ground.

The suspect is depicted in photos as a dark-skinned male wearing a white T-shirt and red shorst and apparently driving a red or maroon-colored Ford pickup.

Rickman said an intense manhunt was underway and that officers were speaking to several people in connecton with the shooting, but that no arrest had yet been made.

Hickman said the killing was unprovoked and that Goforth was apparently singled out only because he was wearing the uniform of a law enforcement officer.

The sheriff made it clear that he felt the shooting was tied to a national backlash over several recent killings of unarmed blacks by police officers.

"When rhetoric ramps up to the point where cold-blooded assassination has happened, this rhetoric has gotten out of control," he said. "We heard 'black lives matter.' All lives matter. Cops' lives matter too, so why don't we drop the qualifier and say all lives matter and take that to the bank."

"Black Lives Matter" is the phrase of a national activist group aimed at addressing shootings by police officers.

Sheriff's office spokesman Deputy Thomas Gilliland said earlier that officials were speaking with a person of interest in connection with the shooting and have obtained a search warrant for the home where the person lives. No arrests have been made, he said.

Sgt. William Kennard of the Texas Department of Public Safety, meanwhile,  tells CNN that the person in police custody is "believed to be the alleged gunman."

Keep reading.

And note that contrary to earlier reports, authorities do not have a suspect in custody. See KHOU News 11 Houston, "Manhunt underway for suspect who fatally shot deputy":

HARRIS COUNTY – Harris County Sheriff’s Deputy Darren Goforth was brutally gunned down while at a northwest Harris County gas station Friday evening, Sheriff Ron Hickman said.

Hickman said in a press conference Saturday that the investigation into the killing of Goforth is ongoing, and a suspect is not in custody. A man was brought in for questioning about the incident earlier Saturday morning, but he was not arrested or charged.

Hickman said there are multiple witnesses in the incident, and he is asking them -- as well as anyone else with information -- to come forward.

"We are reaching out to the community for assistance (in) capturing the violent individual for the senseless death of Deputy Goforth," Hickman said.

More.

PREVIOUSLY: "Race War! Black Male Suspect Arrested in Execution-Style Murder of Texas Sheriff's Deputy Darren Goforth (VIDEO)."

Tia Blanco for Playboy

This is so cool!

At Surfer Magazine, "Tia Blanco Did a Video for Playboy":

Tia Blanco isn’t the next big thing — she’s the next massive thing, or the next huge thing, or the next gargantuan thing. She is the next female surfing sweetheart whose name comes to mind every single time the mainstream feels like bringing a female surfing sweetheart to mind. She’s the name that those guys you knew in college (the ones who wore backwards hats with polo shirts) will reference over Bud Lites at Buffalo Wild Wings. She’s the next star.

And watch, at Playboy, "Tia Blanco Surfs Into Her Playboy Becoming Attractions Shoot."

Donald Trumps Makes His Case to Conservatives at Nashville NFRA 2015 Conference and Straw Poll (VIDEO)

Trump's making the case for the presidential straw poll at the National Federation of Republican Assemblies conference.

At WKRN News 2 Nashville, "Presidential hopeful Donald Trump speaks at Nashville event":

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) – Presidential hopeful Donald Trump will be in Nashville Saturday to speak at the National Federation of Republican Assemblies conference.

The National Federation of Republican Assemblies is a grassroots organization who are meeting in Nashville to endorse a presidential candidate.

The event will be held at Rocketown, a Christian-based entertainment facility, which is located at 601 4th Ave. South.

Louie Gohmert and Dr. Ming Wang  are also scheduled to speak at the event.

Immigrant rights activists are planning to protest Trump’s visit by holding a rally outside the venue.

The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition and Workers’ Dignity, two local advocacy organizations, plan to march 200 to 500 immigrant community members, led by a mariachi band, from the Music City Walk of Fame Park to Rocketown beginning at 10:30 a.m.

Prior to the event, a prominent message for Donald Trump was displayed on a sign for a south Nashville immigration lawyer, which reads “Donald Trump, make Nashville great again. Please leave soon.”

Elliott Ozment called the sign a “collaborative effort” with some close friends to come up with the message after learning that Trump was scheduled to speak this weekend in downtown Nashville...

Also at CNN, "Donald Trump courts tea party at Nashville straw poll":

(CNN)Donald Trump took his colorful campaign to Nashville on Saturday, where he courted a constituency that some say he is tailor-made for: the tea party.

He is competing in a presidential straw poll and addressed the National Federation of Republican Assemblies, a group that boasts it was "the tea party before there was a tea party."

Trump's appearance was highly anticipated at the conservative gathering: As a candidate, he's hitting the same notes -- anger at conventional politics, contempt for Washington and distrust of special interests and lobbyists -- that propelled the tea party movement in 2010.

"You have not been treated fairly," Trump told the gathering Saturday. "You know, people talk about the tea party, and you talk about marginalized? At least I have a microphone where I can fight back. You people don't. The tea party people are incredible people. These are people who work hard and love the country and they get beat up all the time by the media."

Keep reading.