Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Escalating Social Media Threats Against Dominique Heaggan, Officer Who Shot and Killed Milwaukee Suspect Sylville Smith

Talk about the dark web.

Keep in mind these are leftists. They're Democrat Party leftists, Black Lives Matter allies, and partisans of the thugs and criminals who burned Milwaukee down last weekend.

It's the #TNACW.

At the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, "Social media threats intensify, focus on officer":
The unrest in Sherman Park after a fatal police shooting Saturday appears to have mostly abated, but the social media communication that helped fuel it has, if anything, intensified and focused on the officer.

The unrest in Sherman Park after a fatal police shooting Saturday appears to have mostly abated, but the social media communication that helped fuel it has, if anything, intensified and focused on the officer.

As of Tuesday, at least 3,000 people have shared a Facebook photo of the 24-year-old Milwaukee patrolman who fatally shot 23-year-old Sylville Smith – some of them adding furious and threatening comments.

“Now y'all see his face if he's seen anywhere in the city drop him,” read one post. Another called for a gun so the person could “shoot him right in his head.”

The posters gave the officer’s name, Dominique Heaggan, and some included his home address. The Journal Sentinel has independently confirmed his identity, which has not been released by the Police Department. He is also known as Dominique Heaggan-Brown.

The Journal Sentinel is naming the officer because his identity already is widely known and readily available.

Heaggan and Smith, both of whom are black, knew each other from the Sherman Park neighborhood, multiple relatives and friends have said.

Most people shared the same photo — Heaggan, in uniform and standing in front of a squad car — or shared stories of interacting with him on the streets.

Others urged restraint, saying to wait for all the facts before making up their minds, and asked people to not “destroy our own communities.”

Not only have social media posts been personally directed at Heaggan, some expressed broader anger at police and what they see as systemic problems — in law enforcement, in race relations, in the city of Milwaukee.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, one Facebook livestream showed a group of men confronting a line of police officers in daylight, for more than 20 minutes. One of them said: “We want blood like ya’ll want it … eye for an eye. No more peace.”

On Monday afternoon, the District 7 police station was briefly closed because of threats, including shots fired nearby, according to Police Chief Edward Flynn. Police were not sure whether the station was targeted, and it reopened by 8 p.m.

Milwaukee police are aware of threats on social media, against both the officer and police in general, Flynn said Sunday. The officer, Flynn said, was staying with relatives out of town.

The Milwaukee Police Department did not respond to specific questions Tuesday asking for more information about the threats, including whether any arrests have been made.

Instead, it issued this statement: “MPD has noted a disturbing national trend where users of social media have identified officers involved in uses of deadly force, threatened the officers and their families, and demonized them. Locally, we are aware of some general threats against our officers. MPD takes these threats seriously and is investigating.”
More police will be targeted, just like in Dallas.

Mark my words. More police are going to be targeted and killed. I don't want to be right, but there's no other conclusion. We're literally dealing with an urban insurgency. Leftists are looking to destroy legitimate political authority and bring about a bloodbath.

But keep reading, in any case.

Blue Cut Fire Closes I-15 Freeway at El Cajon Pass (VIDEO)

At the Riverside Press Enterprise, "9,000-acre Blue Cut fire puts 82,600 under evacuation orders in Cajon Pass."

And at the San Bernardino Sun, "Blue Cut fire burns 9,000 acres in Cajon Pass, more than 80,000 evacuated."

Still more, at LAT, "Buildings burn, residents flee as out-of-control brush fire burns 9,000 acres in Cajon Pass."

And watch, at CBS News 2 Los Angeles:



Poll: Zogby Analytics Has Hillary Clinton Up 2-Points Over Donald Trump, 38 to 36 Percent

I have no idea about the reliability of Zogby's polling.

Paul Bedard's making a big deal out of it, though. At the Washington Examiner, "Pow: It's just a 2-point race, Clinton 38%, Trump 36%" (via Memeorandum).

It's an online survey, which the Trump campaign prefers, apparently believing that anonymous polls are more reliable because respondents feel free to state their true feelings. I'm not sure how you measure that, although it's an interesting hypothesis. I guess the ultimate test will be on November 8th, when everyone votes.

In any case, go straight to Zogby, "Clinton and Trump in Statistical Tie; Trump Has Closed the Gap Among Older Millennials:
Trump has kept the race close by winning Independents. He is winning Independents 32% to 26% and has also closed the gap among older Millennials. Trump is tied with Clinton at 30% among 25-34 year old voters. Another interesting development is over the years we have tracked voting habits among NASCAR fans and Weekly WalMart shoppers. Ten years ago these groups tended to slant conservative and Republican. That trend has been reversed during the Obama Presidency, and these consumers tend to be more liberal and supporters of Democrats today. Trump has reversed this trend. Both NASCAR fans and WalMart shoppers favor Trump over Clinton. Donald Trump is winning NASCAR fans (44% to 36%) and weekly WalMart shoppers 41% to 36%.
Heh.

The crucial "Weekly Walmart" demographic lol.

This election's the best ever, no matter what happens.

I don't see head-to-head match-up numbers excluding the third party candidates at Zogby.

The Los Angeles Times "Daybreak" election poll now has Hillary up by roughly three of points, just about within the margin of error, 45.5 to 42.1.

Still, Hillary's still up by 6.7 percent in RCP presidential polling average. When that average comes back down to a couple of points or so, I'll give Zogby and the "Daybreak" poll a little more credibility.

'Hell or High Water' is Great

Following-up, "'Hell or High Water': Hollywood Makes a Pro-Gun Movie — Woot! (VIDEO)," and "Heading Out to 'Hell or High Water' in a Bit."

We saw it over at the Irvine 6 Theaters, next door to U.C. Irvine. That's an art house cinema now, but frankly, the movie should be playing massive multiplexes across the country. It's a classic, a much better movie that "No Country for Old Men," which won the best picture Oscar back in '08.

That's just my take, but "High Water" seemed so much more, well, real. It just seemed so genuine, like it was almost happening in real time right before your eyes. Plus, if you're a Jeff Bridges fan, don't miss it. He plays Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton, and his sidekick, Alberto, is Native American. Leftists will hate the movie for the over-stuffing of racist Indian jokes, but Bridges delivers these with so much heart that you know Hamiton's doing it out of love for his fellow Ranger. And besides, Alberto lets him have it mercilessly a few times as well, so you don't feel sorry for him. Their repartee is actually a bundle of laughs in an otherwise serious --- frankly macabre --- modern-day Western.

In any case, here's another review, at the Hollywood Reporter, "'Hell or High Water': Cannes Review."

I hope this film does well during awards season. It should definitely be up for best picture.

Bella Hadid for Vogue Paris

She's a "Generation Instagirl."

Here and here.

She's featured with Taylor Hill, whom I'm not familiar with. Well, I guess I am now.

Alice Goffman, On the Run

I'm reading Alice Goffman's, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City.

I like it, although I'm not unfamiliar with the controversy surrounding the book.

At the New York Times, "The Trials of Alice Goffman."

Heading Out to 'Hell or High Water' in a Bit

I need to see a movie. I don't want to sit around all afternoon.

Following-up from the other day, "'Hell or High Water': Hollywood Makes a Pro-Gun Movie — Woot! (VIDEO)."

At the Los Angeles Times, "Jeff Bridges, 'Hell or High Water' and refining the modern Western."

I love Westerns. My dad used to say "shoot 'em ups."

Even the leftist Daily Beast is pleased with this one, "‘Hell or High Water’ Is the Bullet-Riddled Antidote to this Godawful Movie Summer."

Rhian Sugden Bouncy Bikini on Turkish Holiday

Heh. She went to Turkey of all places, lol.

At WWTDD, "Rhian Sugden in a Bikini."

And at the U.K.'s Daily Express:


More on Twitter.

Rogers Ailes to Advise Donald Trump Ahead of Presidential Debates

Wow.

Is Roger Ailes Trump's magic man?

Heh. Someone needs to perform some magic, lol.

At NYT, via Memorandum:


Monday, August 15, 2016

Zika's Spread Helped Along by Brazil's Deep Poverty

I've been tweeting Olympics news with the #ThirdWorldGames hashtag, and you can see why after reading this piece at the Los Angeles Times.

Here, "Brazil defeated the mosquito that spreads Zika once before — few expect it to do so again."

Raw sewage runs through drainage canals, there's no running water in homes, and families don't have enough money to buy their own bug spray pesticides. It's a choice between fighting mosquitoes or putting food on the table.

Rita Ora Steps Out in Lace Slip Dress in New York

She's nice.

At London's Daily Mail, "Rita Ora steps out in a VERY revealing nude slip dress."

Previously, "Rita Ora for 'Lui' Magazine."

Green Party Candidate Jill Stein Attacks Hillary Clinton on Private Email Server (VIDEO)

If Bernie would have done this he might well have become the nominee.

At CNN:



Soak Up Summer Sales Event

At Amazon, Savings & Deals in Soak Up Summer.

Shop for books as well.

And check out the Back to School Event while you're at it.

Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, Trump Revealed

The Trump campaign initially refused to cooperate with the authors of the book, but somebody had a change of heart and Donald Trump participated in 20 hours of interviews (according to the Los Angeles Times).

Who knows?

Maybe it's worth a look.

Out August 23rd, at Amazon, Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power.

'Extreme Vetting' — Donald Trump's Terrorism Plan Calls for Limits on Immigration (VIDEO)

Following-up from earlier, "In New National Security Speech, Donald Trump to Call for Ideological Screening for Terrorists."

As I wrote there, "Of course, he'll be savaged by the Islamo-coddling left-wing media."

Yep, it turns out one Politico hack claims Trump's plan will make the U.S. less safe. I know, leftist logic is just impeccable, heh.

And there's all kinds of left-wing rejoinders at Memeorandum.

Frankly, this "extreme vetting" plan is the best thing yet!

At LAT, "Donald Trump calls for 'extreme vetting' and an ideological test for would-be immigrants":


Since Donald Trump called for temporarily banning Muslims from entering the U.S., he has tried to expand, narrow or otherwise redefine the polarizing proposal that helped win him the Republican primary but has posed a greater challenge in the general election campaign.

On Monday, he added a phrase to his policy lexicon: “extreme vetting.”

To Trump, that means ensuring anyone entering the country shares American values.

The newest addition to Trump’s immigration policy came during a major speech on national security in Youngstown, Ohio, that featured an unusually subdued Trump reading uneasily at times from a teleprompter and repeating several false claims, including his assertion that he was early to oppose the Iraq invasion and the unsubstantiated pronouncement that the San Bernardino shooters’ neighbor saw bombs in their apartment before the attacks.

It followed days of criticism over Trump’s insistence that President Obama and Hillary Clinton founded Islamic State. Those comments, and other unscripted and unforced controversies, have helped distract from Trump’s core economic and anti-terrorism messages, push down his standing in polls and lead Republicans to once again urge him to curtail his improvisational style of campaigning.

Trump did not explicitly back down from his December proposal, still on his campaign website, for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on.”

He did not mention it, instead calling on the departments of State and Homeland Security "to identify a list of regions where adequate screening cannot take place," which would then be referred to to temporarily halt visas.

Trump spent more of his speech defining what he said was a new ideological test for those entering the U.S., comparing his plan to Cold War-era screening.

"We should only admit into this country those who share our values and respect our people," he said. "In addition to screening out all members or sympathizers of terrorist groups, we must also screen out any who have hostile attitudes towards our country or its principles – or who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law. Those who do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted."
Keep reading.

You can see how leftist media reports are highly critical, but of course Trump's plan is exactly what we need.

It's a great start.

On this issue alone I'd vote for Trump in a heartbeat. It's the crucial issue facing the country. We're at the crossroads. It's existential.

Leftists are going to hate it, obviously. The left is simple incapable of protecting American national security. If Trump's not elected, these issues are not going away. No doubt other candidates will again raise the prospect of "extreme vetting" to save the country.

It's a breath of fresh air.

Timely as Ever: Heather Mac Donald's The War on Cops

Well, after Milwaukee, time to re-up Heather Mac Donald's The War on Cops.

At Amazon, The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe.

You're gonna love this book.

I guarantee it!

More Books on the U.S. and China's Rise [BUMPED]

I posted a lot of links to books on China and U.S.-Chinese relations the other day, at my Deal of the Day roundup here.

And since I'm reading and thinking about this stuff this afternoon, I thought I'd post some more.

See, Aaron L. Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia.

Also, Hugh White, The China Choice: Why We Should Share Power.

And, Yan Xuetong, Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power.

All of these works are reviewed by Professor Yuen Foong Khong, at International Security, "Primacy or World Order? The United States and China's Rise — A Review Essay."

BONUS: See Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, World Out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy.

NBC Battleground Map: Clinton Surges Past 270 Electoral Votes

Well, it's something to think about at least.

Here, "Clinton Surges Past 270 Electoral Votes in NBC News Battleground Map."

Interesting that Florida, Nevada, Iowa, and Ohio are all "toss-up" states.


Well, compare to Sabato's Crystal Ball, which doesn't list any toss-up states, thus giving Donald Trump 191 electors. Either way, Trump's got a lot of ground to make up.


Donald Trump Course Correction

A sober editorial, at the Wall Street Journal:


In New National Security Speech, Donald Trump to Call for Ideological Screening for Terrorists

Well good.

Of course, he'll be savaged by the Islamo-coddling left-wing media.

But this is great.

Via Jennifer Jacobs, at Bloomberg:


The Road Ahead for Populism

Some folks think Trump's powerful populism has already petered out. Many no longer support him, but they don't like Hillary either.

From Salena Zito, at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:


Young Voters Flee Donald Trump

Well, he doesn't need to win a majority of young people, but still. He's only getting 20 percent of their support.

At USA Today:


Public Opinion on Poverty, Social Welfare, and Personal Responsibility

Opinions have changed very little since 1985, the last time thus survey was conducted.

And social welfare programs have failed to lift millions out of poverty. The number of Americans living below the poverty line is about 15 percent, and it's been stuck there since about 1970, five years after the start of the Great Society.

How much have we spent? It's in the trillions. And leftists still think we aren't doing enough. And if you look at the headline at the piece, the Times used the results to take a jab a Donald Trump's white working-class supporters. It's too predictable.

See, "How do Americans view poverty? Many blue-collar whites, key to Trump, criticize poor people as lazy and content to stay on welfare."


The Meaning of the 2016 Election

From Francis Fukuyama, at Foreign Affairs, "American Political Decay or Renewal?":
Trump’s policy pronouncements are confused and contradictory, coming as they do from a narcissistic media manipulator with no clear underlying ideology. But the common theme that has made him attractive to so many Republican primary voters is one that he shares to some extent with Sanders: an economic nationalist agenda designed to protect and restore the jobs of American workers. This explains both his opposition to immigration—not just illegal immigration but also skilled workers coming in on H1B visas—and his condemnation of American companies that move plants abroad to save on labor costs. He has criticized not only China for its currency manipulation but also friendly countries such as Japan and South Korea for undermining the United States’ manufacturing base. And of course he is dead set against further trade liberalization, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership in Asia and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with Europe.

All of this sounds like total heresy to anyone who has taken a basic college-level course in trade theory, where models from the Ricardian one of comparative advantage to the Heckscher-Ohlin factor endow­ment theory tell you that free trade is a win-win for trading partners, increasing all countries’ aggregate incomes. And indeed, global output has exploded over the past two generations, as world trade and investment have been liberalized under the broad framework of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and then the World Trade Organization, increasing fourfold between 1970 and 2008. Globalization has been responsible for lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in countries such as China and India and has generated unfathomable amounts of wealth in the United States.

Yet this consensus on the benefits of economic liberalization, shared by elites in both political parties, is not immune from criticism. Built into all the existing trade models is the conclusion that trade liberalization, while boosting aggregate income, will have potentially adverse distributional consequences—it will, in other words, create winners and losers. One recent study estimated that import competition from China was responsible for the loss of between two million and 2.4 million U.S. jobs from 1999 to 2011.

The standard response from trade economists is to argue that the gains from trade are sufficient to more than adequately compensate the losers, ideally through job training that will equip them with new skills. And thus, every major piece of trade legislation has been accompanied by a host of worker-retraining measures, as well as a phasing in of new rules to allow workers time to adjust.

In practice, however, this adjustment has often failed to materialize. The U.S. government has run 47 uncoordinated federal job-retraining programs (since consolidated into about a dozen), in addition to countless state-level ones. These have collectively failed to move large numbers of workers into higher-skilled positions. This is partly a failure of implementation, but it is also a failure of concept: it is not clear what kind of training can transform a 55-year-old assembly-line worker into a computer programmer or a Web designer. Nor does standard trade theory take account of the political economy of investment. Capital has always had collective-action advantages over labor, because it is more concentrated and easier to coordinate. This was one of the early arguments in favor of trade unionism, which has been severely eroded in the United States since the 1980s. And capital’s advantages only increase with the high degree of capital mobility that has arisen in today’s globalized world. Labor has become more mobile as well, but it is far more constrained. The bargaining advantages of unions are quickly undermined by employers who can threaten to relocate not just to a right-to-work state but also to a completely different country.

Labor-cost differentials between the United States and many developing countries are so great that it is hard to imagine what sorts of policies could ultimately have protected the mass of low-skilled jobs. Perhaps not even Trump believes that shoes and shirts should still be made in America. Every industrialized nation in the world, including those that are much more committed to protecting their manufacturing bases, such as Germany and Japan, has seen a decline in the relative share of manufacturing over the past few decades. And even China itself is beginning to lose jobs to automation and to lower-cost producers in places such as Bangladesh and Vietnam.

And yet the experience of a country such as Germany suggests that the path followed by the United States was not inevitable. German business elites never sought to undermine the power of their trade unions; to this day, wages are set across the German economy through government-sponsored negotiations between employers and unions. As a result, German labor costs are about 25 percent higher than their American counterparts. And yet Germany remains the third-largest exporter in the world, and the share of manufacturing employment in Germany, although declining, has remained consistently higher than that in the United States. Unlike the French and the Italians, the Germans have not sought to protect existing jobs through a thicket of labor laws; under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s Agenda 2010 reforms, it became easier to lay off redundant workers. And yet the country has invested heavily in improving working-class skills through its apprenticeship program and other active labor-market interventions. The Germans also sought to protect more of the country’s supply chain from endless outsourcing, connecting its fabled Mittelstand, that is, its small and medium-size businesses, to its large employers.

In the United States, in contrast, economists and public intellectuals portrayed the shift from a manufacturing economy to a postindustrial service-based one as inevitable, even something to be welcomed and hastened. Like the buggy whip makers of old, supposedly, manufac­turing workers would retool themselves, becoming knowledge workers in a flexible, outsourced, part-time new economy, where their new skills would earn them higher wages. Despite occasional gestures, however, neither political party took the retooling agenda seriously, as the centerpiece of a necessary adjustment process, nor did they invest in social programs designed to cushion the working class as it tried to adjust. And so white workers, like African Americans in earlier decades, were on their own...
It's not just Trump who's agitating for a nationalist economic policy. The Democrats have been pushing protectionist proposals for some time, and Bernie Sanders was pretty much in sync with Donald Trump on the issues. Fukuyama broaches this, but he's a leftist, so won't give Trump any credit.

The winds of change are in the air, either way. The anti-globalist movement's just getting started, frankly.

But keep reading.

Sunday, August 14, 2016

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

Branco Cartoon photo H-N-Button-600-LI_zps6qt03ijv.jpg

Also at Theo's, "Cartoon Roundup..."

Cartoon Credit: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Electroshock Therapy."

This Charlie Sykes Quote Getting a Lot of Play on Twitter

I'm not at all familiar with Charlie Sykes, although he's getting kudos left and right for these comments, via Oliver Darcy:

It's interesting, although I don't think there'll be any kind of reckoning. Indeed, if Hillary wins things are just going to get worse. Conservatives are only just now catching up to the left in tweaking reality. Frankly, I don't like reality-tweaking, and I said so yesterday here, "First Woman to Medal in Six Olympics Ignored by Media Because She's Pro-Second Amendment — Except She Wasn't."

The god's honest truth is always going to come first for me. I'm not a big fan of talk radio, in any case, so I've got little at stake in this debate. Perhaps Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly are implicated here with their shows on Fox News, but even then I only tune in once in a while nowadays.

Things are going to hell in this country, and it's like Sarah Kendzior says: Even if Hillary wins the forces that have been unleashed during this campaign aren't going away. Where I differ with Kendzior is that I think this is a good thing. Let's break things up. We can start with blowing the current two-party system to smithereens. I just don't care anymore. If the GOP candidate is the only thing that's going to stop leftism, at least temporarily, than he'll have more support. But I don't consider myself Republican and most of the party leaders are establishment hacks who can FOAD as far as I'm concerned.

Thinking about it, this seems like a theme I'll be coming back to with some frequency as we move forward. Who knows what's going to happen in November, although I'd feel a lot better if Trump gained some traction against Hillary in the polls?

On that topic, we'll see...

Deal of the Day: Save Up to 45% on Osprey Backpacks [BUMPED]

At Amazon, Up to 45% Off on Osprey Backpacks.

More, Osprey Packs Celeste Daypack, and Osprey Comet Backpack.

Also, Save on Pogo Water Bottles.

Plus, Kindle Paperwhite E-reader - Black, 6" High-Resolution Display (300 ppi) with Built-in Light, Wi-Fi - Includes Special Offers.

Still more, Apple EarPods 827 In-Ear Stereo Headphones with Remote and Mic - White.

And, Shop Great Back to School Deals!

BONUS: From Jared Meyer, Uber-Positive: Why Americans Love the Sharing Economy.

Tessa Fowler [BUMPED]

ADDED: I might as well bump this to the top -- I forgot to link the Twitter photos previously.

Great photos on Twitter.

Last seen way back in January 2015, "Sunday Rule 5."

Another Sunday Rule 5

Again, these things take a long time to post, so Ima do a FMJRA (linking those who link back).

Chantell photo Ck4_KrdXAAA24Wh_zpsyp25ma2x.jpg
At the Rule 5 blogfather's, "Rule 5 Sunday: Gold Medal, Ahoy!"

And at Pirate's Cove, "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup," and "If All You See……is a world turned to desert because Other People won’t buy local, you might just be a Warmist."

More, at 90 Miles From Tyranny, "Morning Mistress (Loses Her Bikini Bottoms)."

From Ms. EBL, "Hedy Lamarr: The Heavenly Body."

Still more, at Woodsterman's, "Fun With GIFs ~OR~ Rule 5 Woodsterman Style."

And some extra related linkage, at Drunken Stepfather, "BOUNCING POKIES STEPLINKS OF THE DAY."

Egotastic, "Camille Rowe In Hot Lingerie and Other Fine Things to Ogle."

At WWTDD, "Emily Ratajkowski Takes Her Tits to the U.N. and Shit Around the Web."

And that's Chantell at the photo, seen on Twitter as well, and previously, "Well, Here's Your Saturday Afternoon Rule 5."

If I missed you, and you're linking, tweet me and I'll update.

Thanks!

"Can anyone doubt for a single moment that, were 'people' like this to gain ultimate power over us as they so fervently, insanely desire, they'd be trotting their political opposition off to gulags just as fast as they could get them constructed — just as their ideological twins in the Soviet Union, Vietnam, Cambodia, and who knows how many other places did? Just as they always have done upon their ascension to power, no matter where on Earth they might be?"

I posted Cold Fury to the sidebar, but the entry just reminded me of this video I put up here long ago, at "The Cuban Archipelago."

But read the whole thing, from our buddy Mike, "How the Left “Debates”."

No doubt.

You'd be lined up and shot, by folks just like Che and his henchman after Cuba's "national liberation."



Pat Condell: Europe's Leaders Are Importing War (VIDEO)

Angela Merkel especially, but all the poxy "leader" scabs are implicated, especially the scum of the European Union.

Once again, the inimitable Pat Condell:



Race, Gender, and the 'Carceral State' [BUMPED]

It's far-left scholarship and criticism, but nevertheless interesting.

See Gabriel Winant, at Dissent, "Black Women and the Carceral State."

And reviewed there, Talitha L. LeFlouria, Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South, and Sarah Haley, No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity.

Remember, this idea of the "mass incarceration" state is on the cutting edge of leftist thought, and it's obviously having a dramatic and dangerous impact on public policy (President Obama recently commuted the sentences of over 200 federal inmates, and not for just "non-violent" felonies either).

And see Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America.

Recall also that attacks on "mass incarceration" are central to Angela Davis's communist agenda. See, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement.

Know your enemies, people. You gotta know your enemies.

Review of Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth [BUMPED]

See William Nordhaus, at the New York Review of Books, "Why Growth Will Fall."

Gordon's book is on my birthday list, heh.

And at Amazon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War.

Nobel Peace Prize Update: Obama Bombing Another Country, and Nobody Even Noticed! (VIDEO)

It's the far-left Lori Harfenist, at the Putin-backed RT America.

But you know what? Who cares? She's nailing it here.

Watch:



Milwaukee Riots After Police Shoot and Kill Black Armed Suspect (VIDEO)

There's not a lot of news coverage of the rioting, actually.

I had on Fox News for about a half-hour, and not even a short blip of a report.

I suspect folks have gotten so used to blacks burning down cities that it's hardly news anymore. Besides, getting the news out there would destroy the left's "Black Lives Matter" narrative (and help Donald Trump).

Rioters screamed "Black Power!" as a fillin' station went up in flames.

Obama's America.

See the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, "Calm restored at scene of unrest as Clarke calls for National Guard," and "Man shot by Milwaukee police subject of witness intimidation case."

More at Twitchy, "Rioters make Milwaukee ‘like a war zone’ after police shooting of armed suspect [photos, video]."

And there's video here, at Ruptly, "USA: Angry protesters burn petrol station after police shoot and kill man in Milkwaukee."

Maggie Haberman: 'There's an Enormous Amount of Frustration' in Donald Trump's Campaign (VIDEO)

Following-up from last night, "Inside the Failing Mission to Save Donald Trump From Himself."

I know Trump attacked NYT for its pathetic left-wing bias, but honestly, d'you think there isn't "enormous frustration" in the campaign?

Maggie Haberman's a leftist, but she's also a consummate professional (IMHO), and I expect she's to not too far off the mark with what's going on.

Watch, from CNN this morning:



Saturday, August 13, 2016

Inside the Failing Mission to Save Donald Trump From Himself

According to Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman, Trump's allegedly "beyond coaching."

Tweeted by WaPo's Jenna Johnson.


And here's Trump's response.


It's worth a read, FWIW.

I think Maggie Haberman's pretty fair, for the most part.


'Men Going Their Own Way'

Heh.

Check out this very interesting post at the Other McCain, "Attention @MGTOW: Survey Question." And be sure to read the comments. I think R.S. McCain missed his calling as a psychologist:
Scapegoating the opposite sex for our romantic disappointments is a problem for both men and women. Learning to accept responsibility for your own problems means learning how to adjust your expectations to the reality of your situation, rather than blaming other people because your dreams haven't come true.
More.

BONUS: Helen Smith, Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters.

The Presidential Horse Race at the L.A. Times 'Daybreak' Tracking Poll

I'm not giving up hope yet, although I'm not unrealistic either.

The "daybreak" poll is just one poll.

Still, the race is basically tied:


First Woman to Medal in Six Olympics Ignored by Media Because She's Pro-Second Amendment — Except She Wasn't

I love the Gateway Pundit, but sometimes the posts over there don't match reality.

Here's the entry, "FIRST WOMAN to Medal in SIX Olympics Ignored by Media Because She is Pro-Second Amendment."

Actually, Rhode was featured very prominently at the front-page of this morning's Los Angeles Times, "L.A.'s most unsung Olympian continues to excel in her sixth Olympics."

And lots of Rhode coverage in the MSM on Twitter.

So, let's just stick to reality, okay.

There's plenty of media bias.

In the case of Kim Rhode, not so much.

ADDED: From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "OLYMPIC OIKOPHOBIA: ‘Little Known’ Olympic Shooters Snubbed by Sponsors While Media Play Dumb." That's a good point about the corporate sponsors bailing out on Olympics shooters, although again, there's lots of media coverage. It's just not as sensational as fencers in hijabs, or what have you.

'Hell or High Water': Hollywood Makes a Pro-Gun Movie — Woot! (VIDEO)

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "DID HOLLYWOOD MAKE A PRO-GUN MOVIE? Hell or High Water Features Armed Citizenry."



Samantha Hoopes Whack-a-Mole (VIDEO)

Via Sports Illustrated:



Robert Paxton on the Question of Donald Trump and Fascism

An interview with Robert O. Paxton, at Slate, "Is Donald Trump a Fascist? Yes and no."

And here's Paxton's classic book, The Anatomy of Fascism.

Actually, I'd argue Trump represents an Americanized version of fascism, but it's like Paxton says, the term's so loaded with the weight of historical evil you don't want to use it loosely.

Saturday Morning Roundup

I'm going to post a lot of book links today. I've been slacking on my Amazon sales.

Rule 5 photo CmMI0SiWkAAmJVo_zpsfnryknfb.jpg
Meanwhile, from around the horn.

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Continental Breakfast."

And at the Other McCain, "In The Mailbox: 08.12.16."

Knuckledraggin', "Your Good Morning Girl."

Astute, "POLITICIANS AND PRESS IN TWIN FALLS, IDAHO DEFENDING JUVENILE MUSLIM RAPISTS."

Theo's, "Bike Week Daytona 2016 Bikini Babes..."

At Director Blue, "Larwyn's Linx: Hacker leaks phone numbers, email addresses of every House Democrat; Hillary’s protective wall around Chappaqua estate."

American Digest, "Season 3 of 'This Old Nag': Dragging Her Over the Finish Line."

Power Line, "NYTimes: Another Day, Another Hit Piece Against Donald Trump."

Maggie's Farm, "Maggie's Farm, "Durn Interestin' Roundup":
Roger here. Bird Dog has gone to the spa to take the waters. And by "spa," I mean tavern. And by "waters," I mean single malt. Anyway, he's left me to guard the chicken coop until he can finish his sabbatical, and make bail. I don't know what to talk about. That's because I'm not interesting, the way Bird Dog is...
BONUS: The Hostages, "Big Boob Friday."

Sebastian Gorka

He's great!

At Amazon, Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War.

Donald Trump Great Again

At Amazon, Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America.

David Horowitz, The End of Time

Did you read my post from the other day, "The Nature of the War Against Us"?

That was an excerpt from David Horowitz autobiographical, The End of Time.

Friday, August 12, 2016

What Teens Need Most from Their Parents

Well, they need a tremendous amount of attention and supervision.

I didn't realize how much until I wished I'd done more for my oldest son, who's having some early adulthood challenges now. (He'll be 21 in January.)

Yes, that's life, I know. But you always wish you'd done more to guide your kids, and provide a strong moral foundation.

It's weird when you think back on it, although my family's blessed that we're all together, doing well and healthy. You just think about it. Could you have done more? Have I been a good parent?

In any case, at WSJ:
The teenage years can be mystifying for parents. Sensible children turn scatter-brained or start having wild mood swings. Formerly level-headed adolescents ride in cars with dangerous drivers or take other foolish risks.

A flood of new research offers explanations for some of these mysteries. Brain imaging adds another kind of data that can help test hypotheses and corroborate teens’ own accounts of their behavior and emotions. Dozens of recent multiyear studies have traced adolescent development through time, rather than comparing sets of adolescents at a single point.

The new longitudinal research is changing scientists’ views on the role parents play in helping children navigate a volatile decade. Once seen as a time for parents to step back, adolescence is increasingly viewed as an opportunity to stay tuned in and emotionally connected. The research makes it possible to identify four important phases in the development of intellectual, social and emotional skills that most teens will experience at certain ages. Here is a guide to the latest findings...
Keep reading.

House GOP Task Force: Obama Administration Pressured Officials to Cook Intelligence on Islamic State (VIDEO)

There will be a reckoning one day.

This administration's making President Nixon and his plumbers look like pikers.

At Roll Call, "House GOP Report: Intelligence Officials Pressured to Alter Reports on ISIS; Analysis skewed to make U.S. campaign against ISIS look more successful, report says."

And watch, at Fox News:



Simone Manuel Becomes First Black American Woman to Win Gold in Individual Swimming

I'm so happy for her.

At the New York Times, "Rio Olympics: Simone Manuel Makes History in the Pool":

RIO DE JANEIRO — Katie Ledecky’s roommate at the Olympics is setting records now, too.

Simone Manuel, who is sharing a room with Ledecky in the athletes’ village here, became the first African-American woman to win an individual event in Olympic swimming on Thursday night. She and Penny Oleksiak of Canada tied for the fastest time, an Olympic record in the women’s 100-meter freestyle: 52.70 seconds.

“I definitely think it raises some awareness and will get them inspired,” Manuel, 20, said about the significance of her accomplishment. “I mean, the gold medal wasn’t just for me. It was for people that came before me and inspired me to stay in the sport. For people who believe that they can’t do it, I hope I’m an inspiration to others to get out there and try swimming. You might be pretty good at it.”

Manuel and Oleksiak shaved 0.01 seconds off the Olympic standard of 52.71, set earlier in the Rio Games meet by Australia’s Cate Campbell. Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom won the bronze in 52.99.

The last time an American won gold in the event was 1984, when Nancy Hogshead and Carrie Steinseifer also tied and shared the gold medal with a time of 55.92 seconds.

Several black swimmers have won Olympic medals for the United States. The first female of African-American descent to make an American Olympic team was Maritza Correia, a member of the 400-meter freestyle relay team that won silver at the 2004 Athens Games.

Lia Neal, a Brooklyn native, won a bronze in a relay at the 2012 London Games and a silver in a relay here at the Rio Games.

Anthony Ervin and Cullen Jones, who are black, have won Olympic gold medals...
More.

The Nature of the War Against Us

From David Horowitz, at FrontPage Magazine, "Understanding our enemies both secular and religious":
Love death. This is the improbable instruction that the founder of an Egyptian sect called the Muslim Brotherhood imparted to his followers in the 1920s. A disciple named Mohammed Atta copied this instruction into his journal just before leading the attack on the World Trade Center three days before my biopsy. Was it a coincidence that this dark creed took root in a country of monuments to the human quest for life beyond the grave? The sentence Mohammed Atta actually jotted down was this: “Prepare for holy war and be lovers of death.”

How can one love death? This is a question that is incomprehensible to us unless we are overwhelmed by personal defeats. But it is the enigma at the heart of human history, which is a narrative moved by war between men. For how can men go to war unless they love death, or a cause that is worth more than life itself?

*****

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928, but the summons to holy war was planted in Arab hearts more than a thousand years before. The prophet Mohammed created the Muslim faith and claimed he was fulfilling the gospel of Christ. But Mohammed was a warrior and Jesus a man of peace who instructed his followers to shun the path of history and separate the sacred from the profane. His kingdom was not of this world: Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s. Mohammed summoned his followers to make the world a place for God, which meant conquering Caesar himself.

Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian who was executed for treason in 1966, is recognized as the intellectual father of the Islamic jihad. His brother Mohammed was a teacher of its leader Osama Bin Laden and his texts are read by would-be martyrs in madrassas across the Muslim world. The hope that consumed Sayyid Qutb’s life was to establish the rule of Islam throughout the heathen nations and the Islamic umma, to make the world a holy place.

Sayyid Qutb regarded Christianity as a threat to this Islamic redemption. He condemned Christians for their separation of the sacred from the profane, God’s world from Ceasar’s. He called this division a “hideous schizophrenia,” which reflected the very corruption he set out to correct. Christians had created liberal societies, Qutb said, in which “God’s existence is not denied, but His domain is restricted to the heavens and His rule on earth is suspended.” Islam’s task was “to unite the world and the faith.” It was what Jewish mystics called “tikkun olam,” a mission to repair the world by bringing about the rule of God’s law on earth.

Qutb wrote this prescription in one of his most famous texts, which he called Social Justice In Islam. The mission of Islam, he explained, was “to unite heaven and earth in a single system.” To make the world one.

This is the totalitarian idea. When the wave of redemption is complete, nothing will remain untransformed, nothing unholy or unjust. Total transformation is the goal of all radical jihads, including the flight that burned the towers of evil in Manhattan. It is the cause that Mohammed Atta served. Like all revolutionary passions, the totalitarian hope of radical Islam is to redeem the world. It is the desire to put order into our lives and to heal the wound in creation.

But there is no earthly doctor who can cure us. The practical consequence of all radical dreams, therefore, is a permanent holy war.

Inevitably and invariably, the effort to make the world whole begins with its division into two opposing camps. In order to conduct the work of salvation, redeemers must separate the light from the darkness, the just from the unjust, the believers from the damned. For radical Muslims this division is the line separating the House of Islam from the House of War, the realm of the faithful from the world of heretics and infidels, who are impure of heart and who must be converted or destroyed.

*****

A thousand years before Mohammed Atta left on his fatal mission, a Shi’ite named Hassan al-Sabbah began a holy war to overthrow the Muslim state. In Hassan’s eyes, the Sunni caliphate that the Prophet Mohammed had established to govern Islam had already fallen into a state of corruption. It was no longer holy; it was no longer God’s. To cleanse Islam and restore the faith, Hassan created a martyr vanguard, whom others referred to as the “Assassins,” and whose deeds have bequeathed to us the word itself. The mission of the Assassins was to kill the apostate rulers of the false Islamic state, and purify the realm.

Because their mission was a service to God, it was considered a dishonor to return alive, and none did. The Koran assured the Assassins that the reward for the life they gave was paradise itself.  “So let them fight in the way of God who sell the present life for the world to come. Whosoever fights in the way of God and is slain, conquers. We shall bring him a mighty wage.” When the Assassins’ first victim, the vizier in Quhistan was slain, Hassan al-Sabbah said, “The killing of this devil is the beginning of bliss.” Revolutionaries love death because it is the gate of heaven and the beginning of bliss.

*****

Four years before 9/11, Mohammed Atta traveled to Afghanistan to join the International Islamic Front for the Holy War against Jews and Crusaders, whose leader was Osama bin Laden. Atta was a small, wiry man, the humorless son of a demanding father. After his team of modern Assassins turned the towers in Manhattan into a smoking ruin, his father told reporters, “My son is a very sensitive man.  He is soft and was extremely attached to his mother.”

Before the hour of his jihad, on the very page where he had copied the summons to love death, Mohammed Atta acknowledged that it was a call to perform acts unnatural to men. “Everybody hates death, fears death,” he wrote, but then explained why men should love it nonetheless. “Only the believers who know the life after death and the reward after death, will be the ones seeking death.” Mohammed Atta had found a cause that was greater than life itself.

But was Mohammed Atta right? Did his martyrs sign up for death to gain a greater return? This presumes that the only reason people would seek to end their lives in this world is the hope of reward in another. Do they not also run towards what they fear? When we have guilty secrets to hide do we not find ways to end the awful wait before judgment by leaving the clues that betray us? Especially if we are withholding secrets from those we fear and love. Are we not all guilty in the eyes of God, and did not Mohammed Atta fear and love Him?

What if martyrs hate life more than they love death? If we look at the scanty record of Mohammed Atta’s time on this earth, it suggests that escape was always on his mind. “Purify your heart and clean it of all earthly matters,” he wrote in his instructions to his martyr team. “The time of fun and waste has gone. The time of judgment has arrived.”

In his short life, Mohammed Atta does not seem to have had much room for pleasure. His father was a successful lawyer, who was ambitious and austere. The family had two residences but lived frugally and apart from others. “They didn’t visit and weren’t visited,” said a neighbor later. The father agreed, “We are people who keep to ourselves.” An adolescent friend of Mohammed’s described the Atta household: “It was a house of study. No playing, no entertainment. Just study.” Even as an adolescent, to avoid the contamination of the flesh Mohammed would leave the room when Egyptian television featured belly-dancing programs, as it frequently did.

According to those who knew him as a young adult, Mohammed Atta was insular, religiously strict and psychologically intense. The death of an insect made him emotional; the modern world repelled him. A fellow urban planning student remembered how the usually reserved Mohammed became enraged by a hotel construction near the ancient market of Aleppo, which he viewed as the desecration of Islam’s heritage. “Disney World,” he sneered, the Crusaders’ revenge. Mohammed continued to avoid sensual images whether from television screens or wall posters. He hated and feared the female gender, averting his eyes from women who so much as neglected to cover their arms.

Others testified that he could not take pleasure in so basic and social a human act as eating. A roommate recalled that he sustained himself by spooning lumps from a heap of cold potatoes he would mash and leave on a plate in the communal refrigerator for a week at a time. A German convert who hung out with members of the terrorist cell that Mohammed headed, thought it was his morbid seriousness that allowed him to lead others but dismissed him derisively as a “harmless, intelligent, nut.” The people he lived with longed for him to leave. A girlfriend of one of them said, “A good day was when Mohammed was not home.”

Five years before his appointment with death, Mohammed Atta drew up a will in which he admonished his mourners to die as good Muslims. “I don’t want a pregnant woman or a person who is not clean to come and say good-bye to me because I don’t approve it,” he stressed. “The people who will clean my body should be good Muslims… The person who will wash my body near my genitals must wear gloves on his hands so he won’t touch my genitals…. I don’t want any women to go to my grave at all during my funeral or on any occasion thereafter.”

 In life, Mohammed Atta despised women, but on his way to death, he promised his martyrs many, citing the Koranic verse: “Know that the gardens of paradise are waiting for you in all their beauty and the women of paradise are waiting, calling out, ‘Come hither, friend of God.’ They have dressed in their most beautiful clothing.”

Mohammed also wrote down these instructions for the mission ahead: “When the confrontation begins, strike like champions who do not want to go back to this world. Shout, ‘Allahu Akbar [God is great],’ because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers.” Whoever neglected his will or did not follow Islam, Mohammed warned, “that person will be held responsible in the end.”

Like Mohammed Atta we long for the judgment that will make right what is not. We want to see virtue rewarded and the wicked rebuked. We yearn for release from the frustrations and disappointments of an imperfect life. Consequently every God of love is also a God of justice, and therefore a God of punishment and death. If this were not so, if God did not care to sort out good from evil, what would His love be worth?

The emotions of fear and hope spring from the love of self, and therefore make our motives suspect. Are those who claim to be God’s warriors pure of heart and above doubt? Can men serve God if they are really serving themselves? Do martyrdoms like Mohammed Atta’s represent noble aspirations, or are they merely desperate remedies for personal defeats?

Mohammed Atta was a withdrawn and ineffectual man who died without achieving his worldly ambitions. He never realized his goal of becoming an architect or urban planner, never married or had a family. Apart from his jihad, Mohammed Atta never made a mark in life. But in death he was a god, bringing judgment to 3,000 innocent souls.

If Allah is the maker of life, as Mohammed Atta believed, could He desire the destruction of what he had created? What is suicide but rage at the living, and contempt for the life left behind? Mohammed Atta offered his deed of destruction as a gift to God. In his eyes, his martyrdom was unselfish and the strangers he killed were not innocent. His mission was to purge the world of wasteful pleasures, to vanquish the guilty and to implement God’s grace.

But if God wanted to cleanse His creation, why would He need Mohammed Atta to accomplish His will?

*****

These are the questions of an agnostic, who has no business saying what God desires or does not. Nonetheless, an agnostic can appreciate believers like Pascal, whose humility is transparent and who is attempting to make sense of the incomprehensible through faith. Why are we born? Why are we here? Why do we die? An agnostic can respect the faith of a skeptic who confronts our misery and refuses to concede defeat. He can admire a faith that provides consolation for the inconsolable, and in a heartless world finds reason to live a moral life.

But murder is not moral and the desire to redeem the world requires it. Because redemption requires the damnation of those who do not want to be saved.      

*****

My father was an atheist, and a progressive who embraced the secular belief of the social redeemers. Along with all who think they have practical answers to the absurd cruelties of our human lot, my father felt superior to those who do not, especially those who take solace in a religious faith. In this prejudice, my father had impressive company. The psychologist Sigmund Freud regarded religion as an illusion without a future. But, like all revolutionaries Freud could not live without his own reservoir of belief, which was science. Progress was his human faith.

Whether they are secularists like my father and Freud, or religious zealots like Mohammed Atta, those who believe we can become masters of our fates think they know more than Pascal. But in their search for truth where do they imagine they have gone that he did not go before them? What do they think they know that Pascal did not? Their bravado is only a mask for the inevitable defeat that is our common lot, an inverse mirror of their human need...
Keep reading.

Black Lives Matter – The Privileged and the Oppressed

Here's some research, from Anne Sorock at the Frontier Lab, via William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection, "Research Report: #BlackLivesMatter more about radical social upheaval than “Black Lives”":
Using Black Lives Matter movement to redefine the American experience into anti-Capitalist upheaval...
Read it all, at that link.

PREVIOUSLY: "#BlackLivesMatter Coalition Makes Demands, Wants Reparations for Slavery."

Lindsey Pelas Amazing Snapchat

At the Last Men on Earth.

And Maxim, "Lindsey Pelas on Snapchat is the gift that keeps on giving."

Also, at EnStars, "Lindsey Pelas: PHOTOS: Model Posts Exotic New Image In White Sports Bra [VIDEO]."

BONUS: On Twitter.

Weekend at Hillary's

Via Ben Garrison:


Thursday, August 11, 2016

Lingering Email Controversy Haunts Hillary Clinton

This is on the front-page of tomorrow's Wall Street Journal.

Thank goodness.

See, "Email Questions Haunt Hillary Clinton":
The email controversy that Hillary Clinton hoped had died out when federal prosecutors closed their investigation last month now looks likely to shadow her campaign all the way through Election Day...
That's behind the paywall, but here's an earlier iteration, at the Washington Wire blog, "Hillary Clinton’s Email Controversy Haunts Campaign."

Anne R. Pierce, A Perilous Path [BUMPED]

It's been perilous, alright.

At Amazon, Anne R. Pierce, A Perilous Path: The Misguided Foreign Policy of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.

And I'm enjoying Robert J. Lieber, Retreat and its Consequences: American Foreign Policy and the Problem of World Order.

And thanks for shopping through my amazon links!

At no extra cost to you, your purchases help fuel my reading splurges.

Thanks again!

State Department Spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau: 'Am I not speaking English?' (VIDEO)

At Twitchy, "‘Am I not speaking English?’ State Department dodges questions about pay-for-play scheme [video]."

Watch:



Nico Hines: Sleazy Daily Beast Grindr Piece Outs Homosexual Athletes in Rio

I'm not linking.

Check Memeorandum, "The Other Olympic Sport in Rio: Swiping."

I don't know what the purpose of this piece was, other than pure spite. And I certainly don't know how Daily Beast got off on publishing it.

More at Slate, via Memeorandum, "This Daily Beast Grindr Stunt Is Sleazy, Dangerous, and Wildly Unethical."

And at the Advocate:


Laura Ingraham: The mainstream media, 'They don't really care, it turns out, whether America goes down the tubes...' (VIDEO)

Actually, the leftist media's working with the radical left to tear it all down.

Watch:



Top Democrats Warn Against Writing Off Trump

Actually, that's smart.

At Politico, "As the GOP nominee's poll numbers continue to sag, fear of complacency is suddenly a hot topic of discussion on the left."

And see Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "FLASHBACK: Gallup Had Dukakis Up by 17 at This Point in 1988."

Deal of the Day: Save Big on Select BLACK AND DECKER Drill Kits

At Amazon, BLACK+DECKER BDC120VA100 20-Volt MAX Lithium-Ion Drill Kit with 100 Accessories.

Also, Save Now on Select Products by BLACK+DECKER.

Plus, Dyson V6 Slim Cordless Vacuum (Certified Refurbished).

More, KIND Bars, Dark Chocolate Nuts & Sea Salt, Gluten Free, 1.4 Ounce Bars, 12 Count.

And, from Bill Gertz, The China Threat: How the People's Republic Targets America.

Thomas J. Christensen, The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power.

Still more, from Robert Ross, China in the Era of Xi Jinping: Domestic and Foreign Policy Challenges, and China's Ascent: Power, Security, and the Future of International Politics.

Dennis V. Hickey, Foreign Policy Making in Taiwan: From Principle to Pragmatism.

Kenneth G. Lieberthal, Managing the China Challenge: How to Achieve Corporate Success in the People's Republic.

BONUS: Ezra Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China.

South Carolina Law on Disrupting School Faces Legal Challenge

I read this entire piece and there wasn't a single word on whether using a cell phone is class is okay, or whether there should be consequences for students who not only disrupt class, but who defy their teachers.

That's why the police have to come take the students away. They've literally taken over the classroom and teachers are overwhelmed and can't teach.

Following-up from last year, "White Police Officer is Seen Flipping Black Female High School Student on Her Back (VIDEO)," and "South Carolina School Arrest Controversy Proves America's Classrooms Are Out of Control."

At NYT:


Majority of Canadians Think 'Universal Basic Income' Too Expensive, Makes People Lazy

They like the idea, actually.

It's just going to cost too much and create dependency.

But other than that!

At Toronto's National Post, "Canadians think guaranteed income good, but too expensive and it makes people lazy: survey":
Canadians may support a guaranteed minimum income in principle, but they don’t want to pay for it and they suspect it may turn people into shiftless louts, according to a new survey by the Angus Reid Institute.

As many as 67 per cent of respondents backed a guaranteed income set at $30,000, provided that the payment would “replace most or all other forms of government assistance.”

However, nearly as many (66 per cent) said they would not be willing to pay more taxes to support such a program, and 59 per cent said it would be too expensive to implement.

A further 63 per cent said it would “discourage people from working.” Among Conservative voters, this sentiment jumped to 74 per cent of respondents. But even in the NDP camp respondents were split 50-50.

“It’s not as though you see people on the left of the spectrum incredibly supportive of this,” said Shachi Kurl with the Angus Reid Institute.

At various times in the last 100 years, the concept of a guaranteed minimum income has been embraced by everyone from hardline conservatives to hardline progressives.

Conservatives, including U.S. president Richard Nixon, have touted it as a way to dismantle the welfare state by merely cutting the poor a cheque each month.

Progressives, meanwhile, counter that it’s a necessary way to support workers idled by outsourcing and automation.

Indeed, the Angus Reid survey even hinted that this issue could rise in prominence as more and more jobs are taken by robots...
Well, dismantling the welfare state would be good, but then if everyone's getting a basic income, you'd dismantle the workforce as well, heh.

But keep reading.

Compromised: Justice Dept. Refused FBI Probe of Clinton Foundation (VIDEO)

From Matthew Vadum, at FrontPage Magazine:

The highly politicized Department of Justice swatted down pesky FBI requests to investigate the Clinton Foundation earlier this year, CNN reported yesterday.

CNN buried the lede, as it frequently does on news stories that make Democrats look bad. The online version bears the innocuous-sounding headline, “Newly released Clinton emails shed light on relationship between State Dept. and Clinton Foundation.”

It is not until the 25th paragraph that the article states that an unidentified law enforcement official gave CNN a heads-up earlier this year. As the probe of Clinton’s private email servers was ramping up “several FBI field offices approached the Justice Department asking to open a case regarding the relationship between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.”

At that time, the article continues, the Justice Department “declined because it had looked into allegations surrounding the Clinton Foundation around a year earlier and found there wasn't sufficient evidence to open a case.”

Not even enough evidence to look into the foundation’s affairs?

Not more than a year after the publication of Peter Schweizer’s blockbuster book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, opened the floodgates for investigative reporters to dig into the matter.

As I’ve written before, various lawyers have told me there is already a strong legal case against Mrs. Clinton. The fact that she destroyed email evidence -- evidence subject to a congressional subpoena, no less -- is already evidence in itself that she obstructed justice through spoliation of evidence. Spoliation means you can take as evidence the fact that evidence has been destroyed. Courts are entitled to draw spoliation inferences and convict an accused person on that basis alone.

The only reason FBI Director James Comey didn’t recommend she be prosecuted is because, well, he lacks a spine and he’s corrupt. He said there was no evidence of Clinton’s “efforts to obstruct justice,” a requirement that does not actually appear in the Espionage Act.

Evidence of corruption at the Clinton Foundation is everywhere, yet CNN and much of the mainstream media are still doing everything they can to ignore, misrepresent, or downplay the questionable things Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton did through the foundation.

The congenitally corrupt Clintons created their private email system to frustrate Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) requesters, shield Hillary's correspondence from congressional oversight, and steer money to their corrupt foundation, which, amazingly enough, still enjoys tax-exempt status.

These illegal, insecure private email servers Clinton used while at the State Department are at the heart of the scandal over her mishandling of an Islamic terrorist attack in militant-infested Benghazi, Libya on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 that left four Americans, including U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens, dead. Even now, four years after the assault, the Obama administration has failed to provide an autopsy report about Stevens who was initially reported to have been ritualistically sodomized before being murdered by Muslim terrorists.

Every few days Judicial Watch has been releasing emails obtained under FoIA that may ultimately lead to evidence of political interference at the highest levels that provided cover for the anticipatory presidential bribe processing vehicle known as the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation...
More.

Dow, Nasdaq, S&P 500 Rally to Highs Not Seen Since 1999

Break out your Prince jokes.

At WSJ, "Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq Close at Records on Same Day for First Time Since 1999":
Major U.S. stock indexes set records again Thursday, the first time since Dec. 31, 1999, that the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite have hit those milestones on the same day.

The rally was sparked by higher oil prices and earnings reports from U.S. retailers that weren’t as weak as feared.

Consumer-discretionary and energy stocks led broad gains across the market. The Dow industrials rose 118 points, or 0.6%, to 18614, above its previous record close of 18595 hit July 20. The S&P 500 gained 0.5% and topped its Aug. 5 record. The Nasdaq Composite added 0.5%, surpassing its previous high set at Tuesday’s close.

Investors are “into stocks because there’s nowhere else to go,” said Tim Rudderow, president of Mount Lucas Management, which oversees $1.6 billion.

Shares of Macy’s rose 17% as the department-store operator reported better-than-expected sales and said it plans to close 100 stores. Kohl’s gained 16% after reporting a surprise increase in profit even as it cut its earnings forecast for the year.

The two retailers were the S&P 500’s best performers Thursday, but they were still among the worst over the past 12 months. Retail-store owners have been hit in part by the growth of Internet-based competitors, and even Macy’s well-received results included a sharp drop in quarterly profit and another period of declining sales...
Still more.

I sure hope my Roth IRA starts coming back. Man, that sucker's been languishing for a couple of years now, lol.

In the Mail: Robert J. Lieber, Retreat and its Consequences [BUMPED]

Just came today a couple of days ago.

At Amazon, Retreat and its Consequences: American Foreign Policy and the Problem of World Order.

ADDED: I'm enjoying this book.

Jessica Mendoza Endures Sexism as MLB's First Woman Color Commentator (VIDEO)

Personally, I don't see what the big deal is.

For one thing, if it wasn't for social media you wouldn't be hearing about "rampant" sexism against Ms. Mendoza. Women have been making their way into the top ranks of sports journalism for awhile, and mainstream media hacks are bending over backwards for more "diversity."

Yeah, the Twitter abuse is reprehensible, but then, that's the name of the game nowadays. You know what they say: "If you can't stand the heat..."

In any case, at the Atlantic, "Breaking Into Baseball’s Ultimate Boys’ Club":
Jessica Mendoza, a former athlete and MLB’s first female TV analyst, brings a player’s sensibility to her job. But she’s still subject to the routine abuse directed at women in sports journalism.