Former President Obama is waging war against the Trump administration through his generously funded agitation outfit, Organizing for Action, to defend his monumentally destructive record of failure and violent polarization.Still more.
It is a chilling reminder that the increasingly aggressive, in-your-face Left in this country is on the march.
Acclaimed author Paul Sperry writes in the New York Post:
Obama has an army of agitators — numbering more than 30,000 — who will fight his Republican successor at every turn of his historic presidency. And Obama will command them from a bunker less than two miles from the White House.What is Organizing for Action? It is a less violent version of Mussolini's black shirts and Hitler's brown shirts, or of the government-supported goon squads that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Castro brothers used to harass and intimidate their domestic opponents.
In what’s shaping up to be a highly unusual post-presidency, Obama isn’t just staying behind in Washington. He’s working behind the scenes to set up what will effectively be a shadow government to not only protect his threatened legacy, but to sabotage the incoming administration and its popular “America First” agenda.
OfA isn't, strictly speaking, a new group. After the 2008 election, the group, then known as Organizing for America, was a phony grassroots campaign run by the Democratic National Committee that sought to replicate the community organizing techniques Obama learned from the teachings of his fellow Chicagoan, Saul Alinsky. OfA was created in large part because the White House could not legally use the 13 million e-mail addresses that the Obama campaign compiled in 2008.
Former U.S. Rep. Bob Edgar (D-Penn.), sounded the alarm about OfA in 2013, suggesting the group was dangerous to democracy. "If President Obama is serious about his often-expressed desire to rein in big money in politics, he should shut down Organizing for Action and disavow any plan to schedule regular meetings with its major donors," he said as president of the left-wing group Common Cause. "Access to the President should never be for sale."
"With its reported promise of quarterly presidential meetings for donors and 'bundlers' who raise $500,000, Organizing For Action apparently intends to extend and deepen the pay-to-play Washington culture that Barack Obama came to prominence pledging to end," Edgar said. "The White House's suggestion this week that this group will somehow be independent is laughable."
But Edgar’s admonitions were ignored and since then Organizing for Action has thrived and grown rich, just like the Obamas.
As FrontPage previously reported, Obama has rented a $5.3 million, 8,200-square-foot, walled mansion in Washington’s Embassy Row that he is using to command his community organizing cadres. Michelle Obama will join the former president there as will the Obama Foundation. To stay on track, Obama wants his former labor secretary, Tom Perez, to win the chairmanship of the DNC in a party election later this month. “It’s time to organize and fight, said Perez who appears to be gaining on frontrunner and jihadist Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.). “We must stand up to protect President Obama’s accomplishments,” adding, “We’re going to build the strongest grassroots organizing force this country has ever seen.”
No ex-president has ever done this before, sticking around the nation’s capital to vex and undermine his successor. Of course, Obama is unlike any president the United States has ever had. Even failed, self-righteous presidents like Jimmy Carter, who has occasionally taken shots at his successors, didn’t stay behind in Washington to obstruct and disrupt the new administration.
Organizing for Action, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that doesn’t have to disclose its donors, is at the head of Obama’s network of left-wing nonprofit groups. OfA, Sperry warns, has “a growing war chest and more than 250 offices across the country.”
On its website, the group claims that there are “5 million Americans who’ve taken action” with OfA, and that those individuals “are part of a long line of people who stand up and take on the big fights for social justice, basic fairness, equal rights, and expanding opportunity.” Among its key issues are “turning up the heat on climate change deniers,” comprehensive immigration reform (which includes mass amnesty), “telling the stories of the millions who are seeing the life-saving benefits of Obamacare,” fighting for “a woman’s health care” which is “a basic right,” and redistributing wealth from those who earned it to those who didn’t.
OfA communications director Jesse Lehrich told Memphis-based WREG that the “grassroots energy that’s out there right now is palpable.” The group is “constantly hearing from volunteers who are excited to report about events they’re organizing around and all of the new people that want to get involved.”
Organizing for Action is drowning in money, by nonprofit standards.
By the end of 2014, OfA, which was formally incorporated only the year before, had taken in $40.4 million, $26 million of which was raised in 2014, according to the organization’s IRS filings. OfA’s big donors are members of the George Soros-founded Democracy Alliance, a donors’ consortium for left-wing billionaires devoted to radical political change. Among the DA members donating to OfA are: Ryan Smith ($476,260); Marcy Carsey ($250,000); Jon Stryker ($200,000); Paul Boskind ($105,000); Paul Egerman ($100,000); and Nick Hanauer ($50,000).
OfA also runs a project called the Community Organizing Institute (COI) which it says partners “with progressive groups and organizations to educate, engage, and collaborate.”
Organizing for Action describes COI in almost lyrical terms...
Sunday, February 19, 2017
Obama's Shadow Presidency
From Matthew Vadum, at FrontPage Magazine, "Well-funded Organizing for Action promises to crack conservative skulls to halt the Trump agenda":
Saturday, February 18, 2017
Scott Greer, No Campus for White Men
I love this.
Out March 14th, at Amazon, Scott Greer, No Campus for White Men: The Transformation of Higher Education into Hateful Indoctrination.
Out March 14th, at Amazon, Scott Greer, No Campus for White Men: The Transformation of Higher Education into Hateful Indoctrination.
Trump to Interview Candidates for National Security Advisor
Ambassador John Bolton's in the mix. I love that guy, especially the walrus mustache, heh.
Trump to interview four security adviser candidates on Sunday https://t.co/2DegUjExRG
— Capital Journal (@WSJPolitics) February 19, 2017
Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery
*BUMPED.*
I'm getting up to speed on all the recent hardcore leftist literature on Native Americans. As you can see with some of my other blogging (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, for example), radical research on indigenous people is a hugely popular and growing vein among the hate-America left.
In any case, at Amazon, Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America.
I'm getting up to speed on all the recent hardcore leftist literature on Native Americans. As you can see with some of my other blogging (Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, for example), radical research on indigenous people is a hugely popular and growing vein among the hate-America left.
In any case, at Amazon, Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America.
Social Justice vs. Heterosexuality
At the Other McCain, "Social Justice vs. Heterosexuality (and the Problem With ‘Male Feminists’)."
Worked in a little bit of Hayek here. https://t.co/VOYzS8yamU @FriedrichHayek
— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) February 19, 2017
BTW, if a WV-based writer wanted to rip into Huntington University, I could offer suggestions. @donsurber https://t.co/VOYzS8yamU pic.twitter.com/H6NTsLJgi6
— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) February 19, 2017
Campus Leftists Create New Generation of Conservatives
Don't know Charlie Peters, but he was tweeted by Matt Drudge:
PAPER: Culture of intolerance creating new generation of conservatives... https://t.co/z4nBNyVxSs— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) February 17, 2017
Nina Agdal is Maxim's Cover Girl for March 2017
Following-up from yesterday, "Nina Agdal Uncovered in Mexico (VIDEO)."
At Drunken Stepfather, "NINA AGDAL MAXIMIZES FOR MAXIM OF THE DAY."
At Drunken Stepfather, "NINA AGDAL MAXIMIZES FOR MAXIM OF THE DAY."
Supermodel @NinaAgdal is Maxim's March 2017 cover girl. https://t.co/ptPrS8GDu6 pic.twitter.com/hjayHZrjAo— Maxim (@MaximMag) February 14, 2017
Friday, February 17, 2017
The Leftist 'Deep State' Attacks and Undermines President Trump's Administration
It's much worse than it's portrayed at this NYT piece, although at least the Old Gray Lady broached the issue.
It's a bureaucratic revolt against the legitimately-elected government of Donald J. Trump.
It's a bureaucratic revolt against the legitimately-elected government of Donald J. Trump.
Leftist Traitors: As Leaks Multiply, Fears of a ‘Deep State’ in America. #MAGA https://t.co/6kPSgPnNyf— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 17, 2017
James M. McPherson, Tried by War
*BUMPED.*
It's President's Day Weekend coming up, a three-day holiday weekend --- which is cool.
I'll have some President's Day blogging to go with it, heh.
Thanks for your support!
At Amazon, James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief.
It's President's Day Weekend coming up, a three-day holiday weekend --- which is cool.
I'll have some President's Day blogging to go with it, heh.
Thanks for your support!
At Amazon, James M. McPherson, Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief.
Nina Agdal Uncovered in Mexico (VIDEO)
At Sports Illustrated:
Also, at London's Daily Mail, "Nina Agdal shows off her sensational curves in nude corset-style gown."
Also, at London's Daily Mail, "Nina Agdal shows off her sensational curves in nude corset-style gown."
The Democrats' Immigration Problem
From Thomas Edsall, at the New York Times:
Read @Edsall: The Democrats’ Immigration Problem. https://t.co/NRlduSAdJf
— Byron York (@ByronYork) February 16, 2017
Why is immigration such a problem for the Democratic Party?More.
The issue splits traditional Democratic constituencies. It pits groups with competing material interests against each other, but it also brings those with vested psychological interests into conflict as Hispanics, African-Americans, labor and liberal advocacy groups clash over their conception of territoriality, political ownership and cultural identity.
In the fall of 2015, as the presidential campaign began to heat up, Hillary Clinton broke with the Obama administration over its ongoing deportation of undocumented immigrants.
During an appearance on Telemundo on Oct. 5, Clinton told María Celeste Arrarás that Obama’s policies were too punitive:
I think we have to go back to being a much less harsh and aggressive enforcer. We need to, of course, take care of felons and violent people. I mean, that goes without saying. But I have met too many people in our country who were upright, productive people who maybe had some, you know, minor offense. Like, you know, maybe they were — arrested for speeding or they had some kind of — you know, one incident of drunk driving, something like that 25 years ago.Clearly, Clinton’s attack on Obama’s relatively stringent deportation policy was devised to maximize Hispanic turnout in the 2016 election.
Did the strategy work? The evidence is mixed.
A comparison of national exit polls from 2008, 2012 and 2016 shows that Hispanic turnout grew slightly, from 9 percent of the total vote in 2008 to 10 percent in 2012 to 11 percent in 2016. But any gain that might have accrued to Clinton from the increase was eliminated by the fact that her margin of victory among Latinos, 66 percent, was 5 points below Obama’s haul in 2012.
In any analysis of the 2016 vote, it is difficult to separate the issues of immigration and free trade. In an October 2016 report, Pew found that Trump voters were decisively more hostile to both free trade agreements and immigration than the general public, and much more hostile than Clinton supporters.
A detailed analysis of exit polls in four key states that helped deliver the election to Donald Trump — Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — produced interesting findings not only about Hispanics, but also African-Americans — who are less supportive of liberal immigration policies than other core Democratic constituencies — and whites. In each of these states, opposition to immigration was higher than the national average.
Take Clinton’s performance in Florida. She should have benefited from the drop in the white share of the state’s electorate from 67 percent in 2012 to 62 percent in 2016. She did not, however, because her margin among whites, 32-64, fell significantly below that of Obama, 37-61. Black turnout grew modestly from 13 percent in 2012 to 14 percent in 2016, but Clinton’s margin among African Americans, 84-8, fell well below Obama’s, 99-1.
The same pattern held for Michigan, where the white share of the electorate fell from 77 percent in 2012 to 75 percent in 2016, but Clinton lost the white vote in Michigan by 21 points, 36-57, while Obama lost it by 11 points, 44-55.
The patterns are not the same in all the Trump states. In Pennsylvania, for example, the white vote, which went 56-40 for Trump over Clinton, increased from 78 percent in 2012 to 81 percent in 2016. This boosted Trump’s statewide totals so that he carried Pennsylvania by 68,236 votes out of 5.97 million cast. An additional factor in Clinton’s defeat there was a decline in black turnout from 13 percent of the electorate in 2012 to 10 percent in 2016.
Wisconsin stands out because there the racial and ethnic makeup of the electorate remained virtually the same from 2012 to 2016. The state shifted from blue to red for one reason: the swing among whites toward Trump. Trump won 53 percent of white Wisconsin voters to Clinton’s 42 percent, an 11-point margin, compared to the 3-point spread between Mitt Romney and Obama, 51-48...
Overall, public opinion on immigration — particularly the views of those opposed to immigration — played a crucial role in the outcome of the 2016 election. Among the 13 percent of voters who identified immigration as the most important issue, Trump won, 64-33.
This data demonstrates a key element in the politics of immigration...
Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., The Life of Thomas Jefferson
It's Presidents' Day Weekend. I said I'd be blogging some presidential book, so here goes.
See Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., at Amazon, In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson.
See Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., at Amazon, In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson.
Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton
The blurb for Sven Beckert, at Amazon, Empire of Cotton: A Global History.
The empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners. Sven Beckert makes clear how these forces ushered in the world of modern capitalism, including the vast wealth and disturbing inequalities that are with us today.
In a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful politicians recast the world’s most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to make and remake global capitalism. The result is a book as unsettling as it is enlightening: a book that brilliantly weaves together the story of cotton with how the present global world came to exist.
Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams
The blurb for Walter Johnson's book, at Amazon, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom.
When Jefferson acquired the Louisiana Territory, he envisioned an “empire for liberty” populated by self-sufficient white farmers. Cleared of Native Americans and the remnants of European empires by Andrew Jackson, the Mississippi Valley was transformed instead into a booming capitalist economy commanded by wealthy planters, powered by steam engines, and dependent on the coerced labor of slaves. River of Dark Dreams places the Cotton Kingdom at the center of worldwide webs of exchange and exploitation that extended across oceans and drove an insatiable hunger for new lands. This bold reaccounting dramatically alters our understanding of American slavery and its role in U.S. expansionism, global capitalism, and the upcoming Civil War.
Walter Johnson deftly traces the connections between the planters’ pro-slavery ideology, Atlantic commodity markets, and Southern schemes for global ascendency. Using slave narratives, popular literature, legal records, and personal correspondence, he recreates the harrowing details of daily life under cotton’s dark dominion. We meet the confidence men and gamblers who made the Valley shimmer with promise, the slave dealers, steamboat captains, and merchants who supplied the markets, the planters who wrung their civilization out of the minds and bodies of their human property, and the true believers who threatened the Union by trying to expand the Cotton Kingdom on a global scale.
But at the center of the story Johnson tells are the enslaved people who pulled down the forests, planted the fields, picked the cotton—who labored, suffered, and resisted on the dark underside of the American dream.
Donald Trump Press Conference: Making the President Great Again
From Michael Goodwin, at the New York Post, "Sorry media — this press conference played very different with Trump's supporters" (via Memeorandum):
Sorry media — Trump's press conference was a smash hit with his supporters https://t.co/2kVIVYxCfH via @nypost
— Michael Goodwin (@mgoodwin_nypost) February 17, 2017
Maybe it’s not a coincidence that Barnum & Bailey is folding its tents this year. After all, how could the circus possibly compete with Donald Trump?Still more.
The president proved once again that he is the greatest show on Earth. Lions and tigers and elephants are kid stuff next to his high wire act.
Next time, the White House ought to sell popcorn.
Amid feverish reports of chaos on his team and with Democrats fantasizing that Russia-gate is another Watergate, Trump took center stage to declare that reports of his demise are just more fake news.
Far from dead, he was positively exuberant. His performance at a marathon press conference Thursday was a must-see-TV spectacle as he mixed serious policy talk with standup comedy and took repeated pleasure in whacking his favorite piñata, the “dishonest media.”
“Russia is a ruse,” he insisted, before finally saying under questioning that he was not aware of anyone on his campaign having contact with Russian officials.
Trump’s detractors immediately panned the show as madness, but they missed the method behind it and proved they still don’t understand his appeal. Facing his first crisis in the Oval Office, he was unbowed in demonstrating his bare-knuckle intention to fight back.
He did it his way. Certainly no other president, and few politicians at any level in any time, would dare put on a show like that.
In front of cameras, and using the assembled press corps as props, he conducted a televised revival meeting to remind his supporters that he is still the man they elected. Ticking off a lengthy list of executive orders and other actions he has taken, he displayed serious fealty to his campaign promises...
Danes Should Not Become the Minority in Denmark
Well, those racist Danes!
At Breitbart London, "Parliament: Danes Should Not Become the Minority in Denmark":
At Breitbart London, "Parliament: Danes Should Not Become the Minority in Denmark":
In some communities Danes are already the minority https://t.co/kozQYW3ZcC— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 15, 2017
The Folketing, Denmark’s unicameral parliament, has passed a resolution stating that Danes should not become minorities in Danish communities, as figures show the migrant and migrant-descended population are now a majority in Brøndby Strand and Odense.PREVIOUSLY: "Rotten in Denmark: 'Growing domestic consensus that large-scale Muslim immigration is incompatible with European social democracy...'"
“Parliament notes with concern that today there are areas in Denmark where the number of immigrants from non-Western countries and their descendants is over 50 percent,” the resolution states.
“It is parliament’s opinion that Danes should not be a minority in residential areas in Denmark.”
Denmark, like many other European countries, saw a surge in sexual assaults and harassment by migrants after they began to arrive in large numbers.
Rafi Ibrahim, a Syrian who has been settled in Denmark for many years, told reporters that the new arrivals find it difficult to control themselves around Western women.
“If they see a girl, they go nuts. They simply can’t handle it,” he said.
“In Syria and many other countries, it is not normal for a strange woman to smile at you. Those girls who are harassed aren’t necessarily scantily-dressed or drunk. Sometimes it is enough just to be a girl.”
Danish immigration minister Inger Støjberg confessed in late 2016 that “integration in Denmark has failed”, following a damning report on criminality and unemployment in thirty-one increasingly migrant-dominated ghettoes...
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Alan Taylor, William Cooper's Town
This is such an amazing book.
I really need to read it again. I read it back in grad school, shortly after it came out in 1996. A phenomenal work of history.
At Amazon, Alan Taylor, William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic.
I really need to read it again. I read it back in grad school, shortly after it came out in 1996. A phenomenal work of history.
At Amazon, Alan Taylor, William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic.
Sebastian Gorka Responds to Attacks on His Credibility (VIDEO)
Gorka's a freakin' patriot.
Leftists have no credibility. All they have is character assassination, 24/7/365.
It's downright pathetic.
At Hannity's last night, and buy his book, Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War.
Leftists have no credibility. All they have is character assassination, 24/7/365.
It's downright pathetic.
At Hannity's last night, and buy his book, Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War.
Anonymous Spies Ousted Flynn. That's Deeply Worrying
Following-up from yesterday, "Trump Administration in Crisis."
From Damon Linker, at the Week:
From Damon Linker, at the Week:
The United States is much better off without Michael Flynn serving as national security adviser. But no one should be cheering the way he was brought down.Keep reading.
The whole episode is evidence of the precipitous and ongoing collapse of America's democratic institutions — not a sign of their resiliency. Flynn's ouster was a soft coup (or political assassination) engineered by anonymous intelligence community bureaucrats. The results might be salutary, but this isn't the way a liberal democracy is supposed to function.
Unelected intelligence analysts work for the president, not the other way around. Far too many Trump critics appear not to care that these intelligence agents leaked highly sensitive information to the press — mostly because Trump critics are pleased with the result. "Finally," they say, "someone took a stand to expose collusion between the Russians and a senior aide to the president!" It is indeed important that someone took such a stand. But it matters greatly who that someone is and how they take their stand. Members of the unelected, unaccountable intelligence community are not the right someone, especially when they target a senior aide to the president by leaking anonymously to newspapers the content of classified phone intercepts, where the unverified, unsubstantiated information can inflict politically fatal damage almost instantaneously...
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Jackie Johnson's Storm Warning Forecast
Watch, at CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "Partly cloudy Thursday with clouds increasing and showers expected Friday. Jackie Johnson reports."
Kate Upton Makes Cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2017
Well, I guess those "diva demands" didn't cost her after all.
She's simply spectacular, and Sports Illustrated knows who's its money-maker:
She's simply spectacular, and Sports Illustrated knows who's its money-maker:
Kate Upton is 🔥 🔥 🔥 in #SISwim2017 https://t.co/wVRPR6wgPa pic.twitter.com/3BiiH3ecTa
— SI Swimsuit (@SI_Swimsuit) February 15, 2017
Welcome back, Kate! 👙 😍 https://t.co/t0MikbwyWn pic.twitter.com/Xgp1rGK1Lh
— SI Swimsuit (@SI_Swimsuit) February 15, 2017
Kate Upton tells all in her first interview as a three-time #SISwim cover model https://t.co/IhRtYe54SG pic.twitter.com/RpTMRuWZuF
— SI Swimsuit (@SI_Swimsuit) February 15, 2017
OH hello Kate Upton! https://t.co/RaVyY5IjJH pic.twitter.com/oqTo6e6uK5
— SI Swimsuit (@SI_Swimsuit) February 15, 2017
Caroline Glick, The Israeli Solution
President Trump is supposedly "backing off" the so-called "two-state solution" to the Middle East peace process.
We'll see, although this reminds me of Caroline Glick's book, The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.
We'll see, although this reminds me of Caroline Glick's book, The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.
Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution
I love this book.
I'm breaking out my copy today, in preparation for my lectures this week on the Revolution and the Constitutional Convention.
At Amazon, The Radicalism of the American Revolution.
More blogging tonight.
I'm breaking out my copy today, in preparation for my lectures this week on the Revolution and the Constitutional Convention.
At Amazon, The Radicalism of the American Revolution.
More blogging tonight.
New Guidelines Recommend Exercise, Over-the-Counter Medications for Back Pain
I'm picking up my walking regimen, hopefully to help with my own lower back pain, which is mostly from laying around in bed too much nights and weekends. I need to get out and walk, to work those muscles. It felt good on Sunday when I went for 90 minutes. I even got my heart rate up a little.
In any case, at USA Today, "Forget the drugs, the answer to back pain may be Tai chi, massage."
And here's Dr. Tara Narula, for CBS This Morning:
In any case, at USA Today, "Forget the drugs, the answer to back pain may be Tai chi, massage."
And here's Dr. Tara Narula, for CBS This Morning:
Trump Administration in Crisis
I normally wouldn't describe things as a "crisis," but one of the pieces I read yesterday noted that it wasn't just Michael Flynn. Democrats are out for blood. The leftist media is agitating and organizing to destroy the administration. It's a coup. Next on the chopping block is Kellyanne Conway. Then Reince Priebus. After that it's President Trump himself. Impeachment talk will escalate.
Of course, there's literally no evidence that U.S. security has been comprised. Leftists are just picking up where they left off during the transition. They're bringing back the "Russian card" to annihilate the newly sworn-in administration. They couldn't defeat the insurgent populist Trump in the election, so they'll use extra-electoral means. They're going to use extra-constitutional means, in fact, because the opposition to Trump is looking like an armed revolt. It's a rebellion. Street protests and anarchist violence are cheered by the progs in D.C. Campuses are the training grounds of the revolution. Far-left members of Congress demonize and delegitimize the elected government at every turn. Nancy Pelosi's Robespierre in a skirt.
Yesterday's Memeorandum thread was perhaps the longest series of articles on a single topic I've ever seen at the site. All alarmist too. Today's top headline is from the sensational yellow-journal rag, the New York Times, "Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence."
See Ed Morrissey, at Hot Air, for more, "NYT: FBI probing Russian intel contacts with several Trump campaign officials."
And at Free Beacon, via Stephen Green at Instapundit, "SHADOW ADMINISTRATION: Former Obama Officials, Loyalists Waged Secret Campaign to Oust Flynn."
Also, from Glenn Reynolds, "YEAH, THE FLYNN RESIGNATION’S AN EMBARRASSMENT, but Obama had his failed appointments, often tinged with scandal..."
More at CBS This Morning, "Report: Trump associates repeatedly contacted Russia before election," and "Trump had known "for weeks" Gen. Flynn had misled White House."
Of course, there's literally no evidence that U.S. security has been comprised. Leftists are just picking up where they left off during the transition. They're bringing back the "Russian card" to annihilate the newly sworn-in administration. They couldn't defeat the insurgent populist Trump in the election, so they'll use extra-electoral means. They're going to use extra-constitutional means, in fact, because the opposition to Trump is looking like an armed revolt. It's a rebellion. Street protests and anarchist violence are cheered by the progs in D.C. Campuses are the training grounds of the revolution. Far-left members of Congress demonize and delegitimize the elected government at every turn. Nancy Pelosi's Robespierre in a skirt.
Yesterday's Memeorandum thread was perhaps the longest series of articles on a single topic I've ever seen at the site. All alarmist too. Today's top headline is from the sensational yellow-journal rag, the New York Times, "Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence."
See Ed Morrissey, at Hot Air, for more, "NYT: FBI probing Russian intel contacts with several Trump campaign officials."
And at Free Beacon, via Stephen Green at Instapundit, "SHADOW ADMINISTRATION: Former Obama Officials, Loyalists Waged Secret Campaign to Oust Flynn."
Also, from Glenn Reynolds, "YEAH, THE FLYNN RESIGNATION’S AN EMBARRASSMENT, but Obama had his failed appointments, often tinged with scandal..."
More at CBS This Morning, "Report: Trump associates repeatedly contacted Russia before election," and "Trump had known "for weeks" Gen. Flynn had misled White House."
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Molly Haskell, Steven Spielberg
I suppose Steven Spielberg's a flaming leftist. I don't really know for sure. I do know that I'm inclined to forever cut him some slack, since he directed perhaps the greatest war movie of modern times, "Saving Private Ryan." What is more, "Band of Brothers" is perhaps the most important television miniseries every aired. I feel that strongly about these productions. The grit and realism of war, in both fiction and non-fiction portrayals, will be preserved for future generations. It's a monumental gift to history and memory.
In any case, at Amazon, Molly Haskell, Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films.
In any case, at Amazon, Molly Haskell, Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films.
Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo: Stunning Display of Dishonesty From the Left (VIDEO)
O'Reilly's really pissed off in this one, heh.
He hammers the radical left's enormous lies on the Trump administration's alleged "illegal immigration deportation regime."
Following up, "Hysteria and Sensationalism Falsely Spread 'Immigration Crackdown' Rumors."
He hammers the radical left's enormous lies on the Trump administration's alleged "illegal immigration deportation regime."
Following up, "Hysteria and Sensationalism Falsely Spread 'Immigration Crackdown' Rumors."
The Case Against Contemporary Feminism
From Jia Tolentino, at the New Yorker.
And here's the subject Jessa Crispin, at Amazon, Why I Am Not A Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto.
And here's the subject Jessa Crispin, at Amazon, Why I Am Not A Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto.
Why I Am Not A Feminist is a radical, fearless call for revolution. It accuses the feminist movement of obliviousness, irrelevance, and cowardice—and demands nothing less than the total dismantling of a system of oppression.
Wrote about Jessa Crispin's WHY I AM NOT A FEMINIST, which I found wonderful, scathing & occasionally off its mark https://t.co/d2tabEwoZX— Jia Tolentino (@jiatolentino) February 8, 2017
Identity Politics is Toxic, But it Works
From Noah Rothman, at Commentary, "The Triumph of Identity Politics":
The Triumph of Identity Politics - by @noahcrothman https://t.co/JWAZnzEAMp pic.twitter.com/LVt0ywlpqX— Commentary Magazine (@Commentary) February 13, 2017
How the two parties approached their respective presidential election cycle losses in this decade is revealing. While the GOP conducted its 2012 “autopsy” in the open and as a result of internal and external pressures, the Democratic Party is conducting a postmortem out of the spotlight. A weekend retreat for Democratic House members and a Monday Priorities USA gathering of progressive groups suggest the party is aware it needs to adapt. Yet even the notion that the party which won the popular vote needs to reform meets with incredulity and bitter resistance from the grassroots faithful. Surely, the admonitions of a Trump-era Democrat like Jim Webb, who on Sunday chided his lifelong party for pushing all its chips in on identity politics, will be similarly discarded by the liberal activist class. Webb’s detractors would have a point. Democrats did not lose in 2016 because they embraced identity politics; they lost because they embraced the wrong sort of identity politics.Keep reading.
In a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” former Virginia Senator Webb scolded his party for adopting a message that has been “shaped toward identity politics,” thus alienating a core and classic Democratic constituency. “The people who believe that, regardless of any of these identity segments, you need to have a voice in quarters of power for those that have no voice,” Webb added. “And we’ve lost that for the Democratic Party.”
“When you’ve lost white working people, you’ve lost flyover land,” the senator continued. Unquestionably, the Democratic Party and the liberal activists who provide it with animating energy at the grassroots level have embraced an exclusionary and contradictory sort of identity politics. For the most part, the nation’s majority demographic has come out on the losing end.
The Democratic Party’s is a kind of identity politics that views transgendered bathroom access as a civil rights imperative but sees infringements on the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act in service to ObamaCare’s birth control mandate as a necessary element of a critical public health initiative. It’s a kind of identity politics that scoffs at those who offer prayers for the victims of violence, and which rewards those who insist that “Blue Lives Matter isn’t a thing.” It is a kind of identity politics that, when a special needs man is abducted and tortured for being white in the Trump era or a self-described practitioner of Islam perform an act of mass violence in his or her faith’s name, refuses to make note of these realities for fear of handing out coveted victimhood status to the undeserving. Yet it is also an identity politics that extrapolates from almost every incident of violence committed by a male of majority extraction that America is in the midst of an epidemic of racially-tinged violence.
Some of this is real and tangible, and some of it can be dismissed as a problem of perception. All of this is divisive, poisonous, and dangerous. Republicans under Trump didn’t abandon this brand of exclusionary identity politics; they embraced them.
The rise of white identity politics didn’t occur in a vacuum. It was a reaction to the sense of alienation and isolation. This sense was a direct result of the perception among white voters that they were disliked and that their interests were threatened by opinion makers on the coasts...
Claire Lehmann: Why the Old Left Was Better (VIDEO)
She's a smart lady. I followed her on Twitter for a while, until she seemed to be too smart for her own good, heh.
Seriously, though, that's smart landing at the Rebel. Ezra Levant, the founder, is a Canadian national treasure.
Seriously, though, that's smart landing at the Rebel. Ezra Levant, the founder, is a Canadian national treasure.
Canadian Exceptionalism, American Envy
Sarah Kendzior's still raging her anti-Trump crusade, at Toronto's Globe and Mail:
When @JustinTrudeau met @realDonaldTrump: Canadian exceptionalism, American envy https://t.co/w9h84JIUmQ @GlobeDebate #cdnpoli
— The Globe and Mail (@globeandmail) February 14, 2017
Monday, February 13, 2017
Oroville Dam: Federal and State Officials Ignored Warnings 12 Years Ago
This just sticks in my craw.
At the San Jose Mercury News, and at KCRA News 3 Sacramento below:
At the San Jose Mercury News, and at KCRA News 3 Sacramento below:
Oroville Dam: Feds and state officials ignored warnings 12 years ago https://t.co/cY1pJzRr7c pic.twitter.com/3bhBYsnqhd— Mercury News (@mercnews) February 13, 2017
Playboy Magazine to Bring Back Nude Women
Well, it turns out the politically correct Playboy didn't make the cut, and the editors decided to go with the tried and true: nude babes.
At Heat Street, "Playboy is Bringing Nudity Back Following Failed No-Nude Experiment."
And at PuffHo, "Playboy Takes Its Identity Back, Puts Nudity In New Issue."
I guess there's hope in the fight against the pathetic anti-nudity social justice feminist left.
Elizabeth Elam is the Playmate of the Month for March/April 2017
At Heat Street, "Playboy is Bringing Nudity Back Following Failed No-Nude Experiment."
And at PuffHo, "Playboy Takes Its Identity Back, Puts Nudity In New Issue."
I guess there's hope in the fight against the pathetic anti-nudity social justice feminist left.
Elizabeth Elam is the Playmate of the Month for March/April 2017
— Playboy (@Playboy) February 13, 2017
Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
I'm catching up on my Native American history, and I'll pick up a copy of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz on the 1st of the month.
Until then, at Amazon, Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West.
Until then, at Amazon, Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West.
Deal of the Day: Dyson Ball Multifloor Upright Vacuum
Shop today, at Amazon, Dyson Ball Multifloor Upright Vacuum, Yellow (Certified Refurbished).
And shop all of Today's Deals.
BONUS: Robert Kelley, Battling the Inland Sea: Floods, Public Policy, and the Sacramento Valley.
And shop all of Today's Deals.
BONUS: Robert Kelley, Battling the Inland Sea: Floods, Public Policy, and the Sacramento Valley.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America
*BUMPED.*
I just pulled out my old copy in the original hardback.
But it's still available in paper.
At Amazon, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (Revised and Enlarged Edition).
One of the added sections at the revised edition is "Schlesinger’s Syllabus," an essay on "the thirteen books you must read to understand America."
How awesome. If only more professors steeped their students in these classics.
I just pulled out my old copy in the original hardback.
But it's still available in paper.
At Amazon, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (Revised and Enlarged Edition).
One of the added sections at the revised edition is "Schlesinger’s Syllabus," an essay on "the thirteen books you must read to understand America."
How awesome. If only more professors steeped their students in these classics.
Updates: #OrovilleSpillway Holds for Now (VIDEO)
Watch, at KCRA, "What a spillway failure would mean downstream," and "Aerial view shows emergency spillway at Lake Oroville."
Also, "Sacramento motels, hotels fill up with evacuees."
More, at the Sacramento Bee, and CBS This Morning below:
Also, "Sacramento motels, hotels fill up with evacuees."
More, at the Sacramento Bee, and CBS This Morning below:
Oroville Lake level dropping as heavy releases run over damaged main spillway https://t.co/P6WsuJeRlW pic.twitter.com/lylWRPhesQ— The Sacramento Bee (@sacbee_news) February 13, 2017
Must watch video: Drone flies over Lake Oroville Auxiliary Spillway https://t.co/8MfVuJWad6— The Sacramento Bee (@sacbee_news) February 13, 2017
'Moonlight' Snubbed, So Leftists Accuse Baftas of 'Hate Crime'
I hate to say it, but I wish we could just round up leftists and be rid of them.
That won't work, though, so it's best to just to keep crushing them politically.
At Heat Street:
That won't work, though, so it's best to just to keep crushing them politically.
At Heat Street:
Some people are accusing the Baftas of a 'hate crime.' https://t.co/7RXFsmiIOy
— Heat Street (@heatstreet) February 13, 2017
Fresno State’s Red Wave Turns Into Gray Wave as Bulldogs Struggle to Attract Young Fans
That's weird. Young fans weren't in short supply when I attended Fresno State in the late 1980s.
Indeed, the Bulldogs were the only game in town, and very popular.
Maybe not so much these days.
At the Fresno Bee:
Indeed, the Bulldogs were the only game in town, and very popular.
Maybe not so much these days.
At the Fresno Bee:
The empty seats at Bulldog Stadium and Save Mart Center for Fresno State football and basketball games are a troubling sign, but declining attendance is only part of a larger problem for an athletic department intending to get bigger and better.Still more.
The famed Red Wave, which helped build those venues and has served Fresno State athletic interests so well for so long, is going gray. And as is the case for most of the nation’s Division I schools, the athletic department is struggling to entice younger fans to games and build a sustainable base of season-ticket sales that account for a significant portion of its revenue.
Forty-nine percent of Fresno State football season ticket holders are 56 and older, according to a recent athletic department survey, with 9 percent 35 and younger. In basketball, 75 percent of season ticket holders are 56 and older and 4 percent 35 and younger.
“The math is not that complicated,” Athletic Director Jim Bartko said. “If we lose that revenue and it keeps going down, the budgets for all our sports will go down.”
Those numbers represent only those with season tickets who responded to the survey, and are not far out of line with national trends.
But Fresno State’s overall ticket sales have dropped sharply the past five seasons, a disturbing trend for a department that for years counted gate receipts as its second-largest source of revenue behind university support. In 2016-17, it is fourth behind university support, fundraising and a Mountain West Conference/NCAA distribution...
National Security Advisor Michael Flynn: No Plans to Resign (VIDEO)
The Los Angeles Times reports there's an "ominous silence" around the National Security Adviser, a possible sign that he's about to be cut loose by the administration.
But the Hill reports that Flynn's made no plans to resign, and he's got no expectations he'll be fired.
President Trump should give Flynn's critics the finger. It's all politics. Fuck 'em.
More from Margaret Brennan, at CBS News This Morning:
But the Hill reports that Flynn's made no plans to resign, and he's got no expectations he'll be fired.
President Trump should give Flynn's critics the finger. It's all politics. Fuck 'em.
More from Margaret Brennan, at CBS News This Morning:
Sunday, February 12, 2017
Danielle Gersh's Sunny Skies Forecast
I got out for a brisk 90 minute walk this afternoon. The weather was perfect.
At CBS News 2 Los Angeles, the lovely Ms. Danielle:
At CBS News 2 Los Angeles, the lovely Ms. Danielle:
#OrovilleSpillway Emergency Evacuation
The Sacramento Bee's got great coverage, as well as KCRA News 3 Sacramento:
Water has stopped spilling over #OrovilleDam emergency spillway https://t.co/75LqV9i61n #OrovilleSpillway pic.twitter.com/nClnWlwfLN— The Sacramento Bee (@sacbee_news) February 13, 2017
Don't Miss Out - Shop Today's Deals!
At Amazon, Today's Deals.
BONUS: Walter A. McDougall, The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How America’s Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest.
BONUS: Walter A. McDougall, The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How America’s Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest.
Meryl Streep Pledges to Stand Up to 'Brownshirts' in Latest Attack on President Trump
She was never my favorite actress, although I'll be sure to boycott her films now.
What a fucking idiot.
What a fucking idiot.
Meryl Streep criticized President Trump on Saturday night, pledging to stand up to "brownshirts" https://t.co/8uaY5iSbLZ pic.twitter.com/MbfmuH9neK— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 12, 2017
Meryl Streep, a vocal advocate for #LGBTQ equality, was presented with @HRC's National Ally for Equality Award at the @HRCGreaterNY event pic.twitter.com/UcQhPfBHXD— HumanRightsCampaign (@HRC) February 12, 2017
Abraham Lincoln's Birthday
I love President Lincoln. He's my favorite president. I just wish I could transport back in time and meet him.
He was born 208 years ago today.
In any case, here's Scott Johnson, at Power Line, "REMEMBERING MR. LINCOLN," and "THINKIN’ ABOUT 'LINCOLN' AGAIN."
He was born 208 years ago today.
In any case, here's Scott Johnson, at Power Line, "REMEMBERING MR. LINCOLN," and "THINKIN’ ABOUT 'LINCOLN' AGAIN."
While only 272 words, the #GettysburgAddress is still one of the most powerful speeches ever given. #PresidentLincoln #LoveLincoln pic.twitter.com/pGELhijcxW
— The National Mall (@TheNationalMall) February 11, 2017
Far-Left California 'Could' Become a Sanctuary State
It's already a "sanctuary state." All the big cities, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Ana, and then some, refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The bill proposed by State Senate Leader Kevin de León would only formalize, at the state level, the reality on the ground.
Far-left California may become a sanctuary state. What that means: https://t.co/IR3wiQj36A— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 11, 2017
Sunday Cartoons
At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."
Also at Theo's, "Cartoon Roundup..."
Cartoon Credit: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Hot Bench."
Also at Theo's, "Cartoon Roundup..."
Cartoon Credit: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Hot Bench."
What Comes After Hegemony?
A great piece, from Michael J. Mazarr, at Foreign Affairs, "The Once and Future Order":
What comes after American hegemony? https://t.co/DRA82dsfDF— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) February 7, 2017
The postwar liberal order has proved remarkably stable. But it has always incorporated two distinct and not necessarily reconcilable visions. One is a narrow, cautious view of the UN and the core international financial institutions as guardians of sovereign equality, territorial inviolability, and a limited degree of free trade. The other is a more ambitious agenda: protecting human rights, fostering democratic political systems, promoting free-market economic reforms, and encouraging good governance.Still more.
Until recently, the tension between these two visions did not pose a serious problem. For many decades, the Cold War allowed the United States and its allies to gloss over the gap in the name of upholding a unified front against the Soviets. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington fully embraced the more ambitious approach by expanding NATO up to Russia’s doorstep; intervening to protect human rights in places such as the Balkans and Libya; supporting uprisings, at least rhetorically, in the name of democracy in countries including Egypt, Georgia, and Myanmar; and applying increasingly sophisticated economic sanctions to illiberal governments. In the newly unipolar international system, Washington often behaved as if the narrower concept of order had been superseded by the more ambitious one.
At the same time, the United States often took advantage of its preeminence to sidestep the order’s rules and institutions when it found them inconvenient. The problem with this approach, of course, is that international orders gain much of their potency by defining the sources of prestige and status within the system, such as participation in and leadership of international institutions. Their stability depends on leading members abiding—and being seen to abide—by key norms of behavior. When the leader of an order consistently appears to others to interpret the rules as it sees fit, the legitimacy of the system is undermined and other countries come to believe that the order offends, rather than sustains, their dignity.
An extreme version of this occurred in the 1930s, when a series of perceived insults convinced Japan—once a strong supporter of the League of Nations—that the system was a racist, Anglo-American cabal designed to emasculate it. Partly as a result, Japan withdrew from the league and signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy before entering World War II. Today, a similar story is playing out as some countries see the United States as applying norms selectively and in its own favor, norms that are already tailored to U.S. interests. This is persuading them that the system’s main function is to validate the United States’ status and prestige at the expense of their own.
For years now, a number of countries, including Brazil, India, South Africa, and Turkey, have found various ways to express their frustration with the current rules. But China and Russia have become the two most important dissenters. These two countries view the order very differently and have divergent ambitions and strategies. Yet their broad complaints have much in common. Both countries feel disenfranchised by a U.S.-dominated system that imposes strict conditions on their participation and, they believe, menaces their regimes by promoting democracy. And both countries have called for fundamental reforms to make the order less imperial and more pluralistic.
Russian officials are particularly disillusioned. They believe that they made an honest effort to join Western-led institutions after the fall of the Soviet Union but were spurned by the West, which subjected them to a long series of insults: NATO’s attacks on Serbia in the Balkan wars of the 1990s; NATO enlargement into eastern Europe; and Western support for “color revolutions” in the early years of the new century, which threatened or in some cases actually overthrew Russian-backed leaders in several eastern European countries. In a June 2016 speech to Russian diplomats, Russian President Vladimir Putin complained that certain Western states “continue stubborn attempts to retain their monopoly on geopolitical domination,” arguing that this was leading to a “confrontation between different visions of how to build the global governance mechanisms in the 21st century.” And Putin hasn’t just limited himself to complaining. In recent years, Russia has taken a number of dramatic, sometimes violent steps—especially in Europe—to weaken the U.S.-led order.
China also feels disrespected. The financial crisis at the end of the last decade convinced many Chinese that the West had entered a period of rapid decline and that China deserved a more powerful voice in the international system. Since then, Beijing has increased its influence in several institutions, including the IMF and the World Bank. But the changes have not gone far enough for many Chinese leaders. They still chafe at Western domination of these bodies, perceive U.S. democracy promotion as a threat, and resent the regional network of U.S. alliances that surrounds China. Beijing has thus undertaken a range of economic initiatives to gain more influence within the current order, including increasing its development aid and founding the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which it clearly intends to compete with the IMF and the World Bank. China has also pursued its interests in defiance of global norms by building islands in contested international waters and harassing U.S. aircraft in the South China Sea.
Worrisome as these developments are, it is important not to exaggerate the threats they represent. Neither China nor Russia has declared itself an enemy of the postwar order (although Russia is certainly moving in that direction). Both continue to praise the core UN system and participate actively in a host of institutions, treaties, and diplomatic processes. Indeed, China has worked hard to embed itself ever more firmly in the current order. In a 2015 speech in Seattle, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that “China has been a participant, builder, and contributor” in, of, and to the system and that it stood “firmly for the international order” based on the purposes and principles outlined in the UN Charter. China and Russia both rely on cross-border trade, international energy markets, and global information networks—all of which depend heavily on international rules and institutions. And at least for the time being, neither country seems anxious to challenge the order militarily.
Many major countries, including China and Russia, are groping toward roles appropriate to their growing power in a rapidly evolving international system. If that system is going to persevere, their grievances and ambitions must be accommodated. This will require a more flexible, pluralistic approach to institutions, rules, and norms...
Saturday, February 11, 2017
Hysteria and Sensationalism Falsely Spread 'Immigration Crackdown' Rumors
Authorities have indicated that the arrest of Guadalupe Garcia was an example of routine enforcement, not a lightning blow spearheading the alleged mass roundups sparked by the Trump administration.
Frankly, I hope we get some mass roundups, some workplace raids, and heightened routine enforcement and arrests. It's just that degenerate leftists have seized on each and every news story to blow everything out of proportion. Think of people SCREAMING AT YOU IN ALL CAPS! IT'S HITLER ROUNDING UP THE JEWS ALL OVER AGAIN!!
Actually, it's not.
At the Dallas Morning News, "Immigration activists dispel panic ignited by Trump orders but warn Dallas residents to be prepared":
Frankly, I hope we get some mass roundups, some workplace raids, and heightened routine enforcement and arrests. It's just that degenerate leftists have seized on each and every news story to blow everything out of proportion. Think of people SCREAMING AT YOU IN ALL CAPS! IT'S HITLER ROUNDING UP THE JEWS ALL OVER AGAIN!!
Actually, it's not.
At the Dallas Morning News, "Immigration activists dispel panic ignited by Trump orders but warn Dallas residents to be prepared":
Immigration activists dispel panic ignited by Trump orders but warn Dallas residents to be prepared - Dallas News… https://t.co/3SbFoqctnT— Dallas News daily (@DallasNewsdaily) February 12, 2017
First, they said a new law allowed Carrollton police to ask drivers about their immigration status.Still more.
Then, there was a report of an ICE checkpoint in Vickery Meadow, an immigrant-filled neighborhood of Dallas.
Later came a sighting in Irving of federal immigration officials sweeping through a store catering to South Asians.
By the time officials and immigration attorneys could dispel the rumors pinging through group texts and Facebook posts, panic and confusion had gripped Dallas' immigrant communities.
At the root of the rumors was a trio of executive orders on immigration by President Donald Trump.
They greatly expand who can be picked up and include those who "committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense," regardless of the crime's severity and whether or not they've actually been charged.
Immigration lawyer Noaman Azhar said his office was inundated with calls.
"People's concern with the hysteria is not just the executive orders but what's going to come next," Azhar said. "Are there going to be more executive orders on immigration? Are the executive orders going to be even more extreme? Are they going to add more countries to the ban list?"
Perpetuating the panic are Facebook posts and mass texts with misleading information and a call to "copy, paste and spread the word."
But Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said on Friday that he knew of no beefed-up operations or deportations as a result of Trump's executive orders. He warned that media reports created panic.
"There are always things going on on a daily basis," the ICE spokesman said. "People don't sit on their hands here. That is nothing new."
Other "target-rich" communities in Texas and elsewhere across the country reported rising detainment and deportations...
'A Sense of Dread' for Civil Servants Shaken by Trump Transition
This is getting to be a thing by now. A stupid thing, though. Extremely stupid.
As I've said before, if you're not happy, quit. Bureaucrats are non-partisan actors. They administer the government regardless of who's in office. Regardless of political party. If leftist bureaucrats don't like the new regime, they should quit. Good riddance. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
At Blazing Cat Fur, "Boo-Hoo: 'Civil Servants' Upset by Arrival of Trump":
As I've said before, if you're not happy, quit. Bureaucrats are non-partisan actors. They administer the government regardless of who's in office. Regardless of political party. If leftist bureaucrats don't like the new regime, they should quit. Good riddance. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
At Blazing Cat Fur, "Boo-Hoo: 'Civil Servants' Upset by Arrival of Trump":
The feel-good story of the year so far:Also at Twitchy, "‘Mutiny against democracy’? Trump-induced triggering at EPA escalates."
Across the vast federal bureaucracy, Donald J. Trump’s arrival in the White House has spread anxiety, frustration, fear and resistance among many of the two million nonpolitical civil servants who say they work for the public, not a particular president.
At the Environmental Protection Agency, a group of scientists strategized this past week about how to slow-walk President Trump’s environmental orders without being fired. At the Treasury Department, civil servants are quietly gathering information about whistle-blower protections as they polish their résumés.
At the United States Digital Service — the youthful cadre of employees who left jobs at Google, Facebook or Microsoft to join the Obama administration — workers are debating how to stop Mr. Trump should he want to use the databases they made more efficient to target specific immigrant groups.
Civil servants at EPA threaten to "slow-walk" or even ignore orders if Pruitt "abandon[s] EPA's role in the world" https://t.co/kMMgAs2LqO pic.twitter.com/Cm4Ym85jhe— Josh Blackman (@JoshMBlackman) February 11, 2017
President Trump's Weekly Address (VIDEO)
He's talked more about creating jobs --- good jobs, well-paying jobs --- than Barack Hussein did in eight years of office.
I love Trump. He's so awesome. I love especially how he drives leftists nuts.
I love Trump. He's so awesome. I love especially how he drives leftists nuts.
Endless Stupidity From the Left
More excellent cartoon work from Ben Garrison.
Behold the Endless stupidity from the left.. #throwback #BenGarrison #cartoon more cartoons at https://t.co/Oj98iIxEAZ pic.twitter.com/MimxUVJ5WX
— BenGarrison Cartoons (@GrrrGraphics) February 11, 2017
Dead-End Democrat Resistance
Ed Morrissey covers Aaron Blake's article at the Washington Post, "WaPo: Obstructionism might play into the hands of the GOP."
This cracks me up.
This cracks me up.
Republicans opposed most everything Obama did, and they won.
— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) February 11, 2017
For Democrats, it may not be so simple.https://t.co/8XG5m4nZtG
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's the author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, which I've got on my reading list.
She's got an interesting interview, at ISR, "A Sense of Hope & the Possibility of Solidarity." She's a full-blown, unabashed revolutionary Marxist. Remember, my motto is "know your enemies." I'm constantly surrounded by people just like this at my college, and lots of students suck this stuff up like so many ganja fat ones:
She's got an interesting interview, at ISR, "A Sense of Hope & the Possibility of Solidarity." She's a full-blown, unabashed revolutionary Marxist. Remember, my motto is "know your enemies." I'm constantly surrounded by people just like this at my college, and lots of students suck this stuff up like so many ganja fat ones:
The struggles of Indigenous people have a rich history, and really came together in the struggles of the 1960s and 1970s with other movements for liberation. In your books, it’s clear you are making the connection between land dispossession, labor, and class—basically Marx’s approach of historical materialism. You even quoted Marx from Capital in the beginning of chapter two, entitled “Culture of Conquest.” Why is this approach important to struggles for liberation?
I think Marxism is a hard sell in the Native movement and for African Americans but less so for Mexican Americans because of their political genealogies. Today it’s even difficult for Chicanos, as well as Native Americans, because Marxism is deemed just Western epistemology or a Western worldview. There is of course a lot of Eurocentrism in Marx’s early writings. There is the idea of progress, but people don’t look at his later work enough, when he was getting into ethnology.4 He didn’t know much about non-European peoples, yet making generalities about the whole world can seem imperialist. However, I found out when I was doing my dissertation, that using Marxism to look at the history of land tenure in New Mexico at different stages from Spanish colonization through US conquest and colonization was essential. Marx describes the initial looting of the Americas as reckless abandon, as well as the enslavement of Africans, and the genocide of Native Americans, and this describes the initial Spanish invasion and occupation of New Mexico, which led to the All Indian Pueblo Revolt driving the Spanish colonists out for more than a decade.5 The second period of eighteenth-century Spanish colonialism was far more of a negotiated relationship. It was still colonialism but it wasn’t the most vicious kind, and the Spanish army was there to defend that zone from French and British expansion.6
Through the history of Mexico becoming independent and then New Mexico being taken by the US, I tried to look at capitalist development and to link this with imperialism. I read all kinds of things from Marx and participated in Marxist study groups. At the time I hadn’t done a real study of Capital. I started reading about Oriental despotism, and Marx’s analysis of how the pyramids were built. These grand public works were built by forced labor, and I connected that to what I was seeing in precolonial Indigenous New Mexico—they had elaborate irrigation systems, which were also throughout Mexico and Central America. You have almost a dictatorship to control water, but the way Indigenous peoples organized it was with serial dictatorships. The ditch boss would be elected for one year and had total control of the water in each pueblo. These ninety-eight city-states along the Rio Grande and its tributaries also went to war with each other periodically over water, so it could be very serious. They could starve as a result of being in the desert. With the water supply, they had an absolute autocratic ditch boss and everyone had to contribute labor. There wasn’t a class of laborers, and after a year the ditch boss could never again be in that position. It had to change every year so that they didn’t get used to the power.
This history shows how people can organize themselves in different ways; capitalism and exploitative labor were not inevitable in human history. Just because capitalism came to dominate the world through European and United States imperialism, forcing the world to live under capitalism does not mean it was inevitable. We need to build upon Marx’s brilliant comprehension of how capitalism arose in Europe and how it works. But the social and political systems that produced ancient irrigation systems and widespread agricultural production in the Americas were not despotic.7 It has been said the beginning of the class system started in ancient Egypt, but I found things that didn’t fit that mold. I tried to apply the basic tenets of Marxism and especially what is known as “primitive accumulation”.
I want to mention here that there are a lot of words Marx used that should be retranslated. For instance regarding primitive accumulation, it’s just easy to say “primary” or “higher” but Marxists don’t know what you’re talking about unless you say primitive. In other languages, primitive means primary.8 It doesn’t necessarily have the baggage that the word “primitive” does for Indigenous peoples subjected to European ethnography. It became clear to me while working on my thesis that the first big onslaught of the primitive accumulationprocess that set off capitalist development happens over and over again, even today. This has entered into a part of Native studies with Glen Coulthard’s book, Red Skin, White Masks, in which he makes that argument.9 Coulthard identifies with the anarchist tendency, but he takes on Ward Churchill’s piece in Marxism and Native Americans.10 Coulthard says it’s ridiculous to not use such an important tool as Marx’s work.
In all my work, I try to apply historical materialism. However, I don’t think any of the original Marxists and following generations of European Marxists dealt with colonialism as the avatar of capitalism. Lenin theorized imperialism, but he dealt with it in the most technical way of financial capital, which is really important. And he did deal with national liberation. But I don’t think Marx or Lenin even began to understand the role the US was playing throughout the nineteenth century as the vortex of capitalism, and what I try to show is that from the very beginning the United States was based on colonial conquest, and on overseas imperialism following their independence from the British Empire.
*****
We’ve been trying to use Marxism as the framework to talk about Indigenous issues. If you merely say Marxism is European, you miss the point of the theory. People forget that Marx actually talked about who was expropriated, how people were actually dispossessed, and how that created the material basis ultimately for colonization, and how the vast majority of settlers and migrants who came to the US ended up in factories as low-wage workers.
I worked hard on the first chapter of my book about the precolonial era in the Americas, where there were prosperous and urban civilizations without capitalism, and that is so hopeful. Most radical forms of anarchism now are anticivilization, and they often look to Native people as the inspiration. They use Indigenous peoples, especially Native people in the Americas, pulling out what they want to justify their ideology. They are creating fantasies as evidence and even calling it science. Anarchists, especially the primitivists, view agriculture as the basis of all evil, because they are looking at agribusiness, and they don’t want to know at all that 90 percent of Native people in the Western hemisphere were agriculturalists—they don’t want to know that fact. So they romanticize Native people as “hunter-gatherers.”
This viewpoint distorts the reality in the Western hemisphere. The civilizations of central Mexico and the Andes were still developing before the Europeans intervened. The civilizations of the Americas were going in a different direction than Europe or Asia. I think had Marx really been able to study or know what was hardly even knowable at that time, he would have said that capitalism in the Americas was not inevitable. I always say that 500 years ago with the invasion of the Americas, a wrong path was taken for humanity. So let’s say that capitalism is wrong and destructive, not that it was inevitable. For example, with the ancestral Puebloans, it was clearly a choice. They had a large civilization up on Mesa Verde [in present day Colorado]; they had irrigation ditches for miles and were overusing the wood, because everything was built of wood. They were probably becoming less democratic, and they made the choice to migrate to the Rio Grande area of northern New Mexico and break down into smaller villages. They continued to function like city-states, but they were smaller than the one large civilization up at Mesa Verde. And why not say that was a choice and just maybe that the Americas were going in a different direction, rather than interpreting this or the Maya devolvement as “collapse?” This is something to learn from: civilization without capitalism and how can it work. This is tied with the concept of humans being a part of nature; for example, conventional Marxist thinking argues that private property began with the domestication of animals in Africa. However, in America the ancestral peoples did not domesticate animals for food or as beasts of burden. In the civilizations of Central America, parrots and dogs were domesticated but were considered sacred. The Spanish invaders noted that the Aztec dogs did not bark, but they learned to bark from the Spanish war dogs.
Can you talk more about the relationship between settler colonialism and capitalism? What do you define as settler colonialism? What is the difference between settler colonialism and outpost colonialism?
Yes, it is really important. I am not sure I entirely succeed in the book on this because the tendency of European-based Marxism is to separate the two, and of course in the United States they are like two separate worlds. Because of Lenin, we have a good connection between capitalism and imperialism, and most people assume the connection. But with colonialism, bourgeois history tends to call things colonialism that weren’t colonialism, such as the Roman Empire. Yes, they had colonies, but it wasn’t capitalist-based. It was a different era; so people like to say “people have been colonizing each other forever,” but colonialism is just a different system under capitalism. In settler colonialism, Europeans export people with the promise of land, and private property, so that land itself becomes the chief commodity in the primitive accumulation of capital, and in North America, colonists also enslaved Africans as both market commodities and unpaid and unfree labor. This is a distinct form of colonialism, which obviously proved to be the most effective in building the most powerful capitalist state, the United States. The main form of European colonialism was to exploit resources—precious metals, African bodies, spices—in which Native labor was organized with European overseers and bureaucrats, as well as Native middlemen. This form of colonialism, of course, produced great wealth for the European monarchies and later European states and created the structures of unequal global markets that persist today.
I want to make clear that there is not one “settler colonial” or “colonial” experience. Each has to be analyzed on its own terms, depending on many factors, such as which colonial state and which period of time is being considered. The European fetish for gold that developed during the Middle Ages drove nearly all of the early colonial ventures, but rare spices were also worth their weight in gold. And most importantly, the study of any colonial situation requires understanding the level and nature of resistance to these invasions. In making general conclusions regarding the Anglo and Anglo-American colonization of North America, it is essential to keep in mind that each of the hundreds of Native nations had a unique experience of colonialism, always destructive, but varying in details and survivability.
It’s inaccurate to speak, for instance, of “the California Indians.” The eighteenth-century Spanish colonization of the coastal region from San Diego to San Francisco was carried out by Franciscan missionaries with the use of the Spanish army in seizing people in the whole region to be incarcerated in the missions, and to work for the missionaries in their commercial pursuits. So these weren’t typical settlers, but it was settler colonialism. On the other hand, the nearly half of California north of San Francisco was not colonized until the United States confiscated the northern part of what had become Mexico, and the rush of settlers arrived as gold seekers with the 1850s gold rush. These were not typical settlers either, combining extraction with genocide.
Colonialism in general is disruptive, destructive, damaging, sometimes depopulating entire areas, such as the Natchez villagers of the Mississippi Delta, and the Nahuatl-speaking villagers of western Nicaragua and western Honduras who were seized by Spanish slave traders in the sixteenth century, then transported to work in the mines of Peru. European settlers didn’t arrive to those nearly depopulated areas until later. This was similar to the way villagers of West Africa were captured, enslaved, and sold in the Americas, losing their existence as particular nations and peoples.
I would say that settler colonialism was an exceptional mode of colonialism. English settler colonialism in the North American colonies took its specific form from the mid-seventeenth-century English conquest of Ireland, in which English forces under Oliver Cromwell drove subsistent Irish farmers off their land and gave land grants to English and Scottish settlers. The developing English capitalism based in the wool industry required surplus labor to work in the factories, as well as large swaths of grazing land for commercial sheep production. The process of fencing the commons and driving English farmers off the land created that surplus labor force, but also a pool of settlers who were promised free land in America. The Protestant Anglos and Scots, who settled Northern Ireland, made up the majority of frontier settlers in the British North American colonies.
The Portuguese and the Spanish were specifically seeking gold and silver. Their hoarding of gold and silver actually limited their ability to develop capitalism. They didn’t really have a basis for that in the Iberian Peninsula after they deported all the farmers, craftsmen, architects, and other producers who were Muslims and Jews. Only in the eighteenth century did Spain begin establishing settler-colonies in the southern cone of South America, employing the same genocidal methods of eliminating or driving out the Indigenous peoples, which continued when Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay became independent.
However, only the United States developed effective capitalism outside of Britain. By 1840, it was already the largest economic power in the world on the basis of the global cotton trade and textile factories, also providing cotton to the British textile industry. Until recently, economic historians have dated the development of US capitalism to post–Civil War industrialization in the North. Several recent books have convincingly made the case for the cotton kingdom in the Mississippi Valley being the site of the birth of full-blown capitalism prior to the Civil War, based on slave labor and the capital generated by the value of the slaves’ bodies.13 This development included the parallel expulsion of the five large Native agricultural nations from the Southeast during the 1830s and 1840s, generating huge amounts of capital in land sales.
Emily DiDonato Intimates Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2017 (VIDEO)
She's one of the rookies for this year's magazine.
Democrats Are Losing Their War With Trump
Well, actually, they're winning a couple of battles, but they're losing the war.
It's going to be a long four years. A hilarious long four years, as we watch radical leftist Democrats flail helplessly, spewing hatred and rage 24/7 (365).
At IBD:
It's going to be a long four years. A hilarious long four years, as we watch radical leftist Democrats flail helplessly, spewing hatred and rage 24/7 (365).
At IBD:
— IBDeditorials (@IBDeditorials) February 9, 2017
Lena Dunham Declares White Women Need 'Enlightening' by Feminists
At the Other McCain:
Other than the fact that Lena Dunham is the daughter of rich parents who leveraged her connections to land a contract for a low-rated feminist “comedy” on HBO, why would anyone care about her opinions? What has Lena Dunham ever done that would make anyone think that American women are in need of her “enlightening” through feminism? Does her “rhetoric of self-empowerment” include fingering her baby sister and lying about being raped by a Republican?I don't care much about Lena Dunham. Seriously, I watched "Girls" exactly one time, and my main impression was that she's a slut who liberally fucks people on cable TV. That's it. She took her clothes off and got fucked. That was her "talent."
If you are a Christian, Lena Dunham hates you. If you are a Republican voter, Lena Dunham hates you. Lena Dunham hates babies. Lena Dunham wants the government to use your tax money to kill babies. Lena Dunham says she is “interested in engaging in a conversation,” but what she really wants is to silence anyone who tells the truth in America...
David Horowitz's New Book Offers Battle Plan
Horowitz's new book is in bookstores now.
And at Amazon, Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America.
Also, at FrongPage Magazine, "BIG AGENDA MATTERS: Horowitz’s new book delivers a battle plan for Trump - and a gut check for Republicans":
And at Amazon, Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America.
Also, at FrongPage Magazine, "BIG AGENDA MATTERS: Horowitz’s new book delivers a battle plan for Trump - and a gut check for Republicans":
“Conservatives were justifiably worried that America’s decline was reaching a point of no return,” writes David Horowitz. After the recent election, many breathed a sign of relief, but as the author of Big Agenda sees it, “one battle is over, but there are many more to come.” To prevail, the combatants must want to win, but as the author notes that has not always been the case with Republicans.Keep reading.
In 2012, for example, Mitt Romney possessed strategic intelligence on his opponent yet failed to deploy it and duly lost the election. In 2016, Romney blasted fellow Republican Donald Trump as “a phony, a fraud,” a charge the openly fraudulent Clinton gleefully used in her attack ads. Veterans of the Bush White House announced that they would vote for Clinton, and somebody named Evan McMullin launched a presidential run in Utah, as Big Agenda notes, “in the hopes of blocking a Trump majority in the Electoral College.”
In the six years they controlled both houses of Congress, the Republicans failed to conduct an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. They threatened to defund the Obama agenda then wound up funding it. Likewise, they failed to investigate Huma Abedin, a Muslim Brotherhood acolyte joined at the hip to Hillary Clinton.
These and other examples of the Republicans’ ineptitude, “failure of nerve” and “cowardice” prompt Horowitz to wonder what they failed to understand about the perils of the nation, and “the destructive agendas of the left that threaten its future.” Here the author draws on his vast experience.
The progressive movement operates on “almost religious convictions,” which is why members move in lockstep, and demonize anyone outside their ranks. The movement divides society into “oppressor” groups such as whites, males, Christians and heterosexuals and victim or “oppressed” groups such as “people of color” and the LGBT squads. For Horowitz this is “the old Marxist wine in new bottles,” with similar results of division and dissention.
“Progressives dream of a world of political correctness and politically enforced equality, where everybody is taken care of by taxing the rich until there are no more rich,
universities and schools admit no ideas that are hurtful or offending, environments have no pollution, countries have no borders, and nations have no armies. Progressives are so enthralled by their dreams of a heaven on earth that they see those who oppose their dreams as evil, which is why they hate them.” But as the author shows, progressives amount to more than utopianism and demonology.
With Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals as their bible, they have built a vast power base in government bureaucracies, government employee unions, and educational institutions in particular. Horowitz cites Janet Napolitano, the former Arizona governor and Department of Homeland Security boss under Obama. As president of the University of California Napolitano deems unacceptable “microagressions” statements such as “America is the land of opportunity” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.” At the same time, as the author observes, UC Berkeley hosts a Center for Race and Gender that includes “Islamophobia Studies,” all funded by California taxpayers.
This movement commands almost total control over the Democratic Party and is too powerful for leaders to deviate from the path. For their part, Republicans are afraid of being called “obstructionists” and stigmatized as heartless, racist, or xenophobic. That fear leaves them ill-equipped for conflict with the interlocking directorate of progressive power. But as the author shows, it is possible to take it on and win.
Horowitz charts government union threats and thuggery against Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. Yet Walker “demonstrated the will to stand up to them” and prevailed.
In similar style, Hillary Clinton charged that supporters of Donald Trump were “irredeemable,” a veritable “basket of deplorables.” Trump supporters were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic— you name it.”
Trump fired back that “Hillary has tremendous hatred in her heart,” and as Horowitz notes, “never had any Republican dared to characterize a Democratic opponent in such damning moral terms to a national audience.” Trump continued to defy political correctness in brawling style, and he won. It will take that kind of defiance to “save America,” as the Big Agenda subtitle says.
“The strategy is to expose their hypocrisy and turn their firepower against them,” Horowitz explains, “to focus on the races, genders, ethnicities, and classes who suffer because of their policies and under their rule. The strategy is to go for the jugular.”
To turn around the battles conservatives have been losing for so long, “they must begin every confrontation by punching progressives in the mouth.” The attack must take away progressives’ “moral superiority and smugness.” Let this reviewer volunteer an example of how that could be done.
In the Sessions hearings, Senator Richard Blumenthal, (D-CT) charged that David Horowitz, who wasn’t there, made “apparently racist” statements, which he did not. When dealing with Blumenthal, conservatives should always point out that he is a liar who said he served in Vietnam but did not. But it’s not just about rhetoric...
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