Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
* The primary conflict structuring the two parties involves questions of national identity, race, and morality, while the traditional conflict over economics, though still important, is less divisive now than it used to be. This has the potential to reshape the party coalitions.
* By making questions of national identity more salient, Donald Trump succeeded in winning over “populists” (socially conservative, economically liberal voters) who had previously voted for Democrats.
* Among populists who voted for Obama, Clinton did terribly. She held onto only 6 in 10 of these voters (59 percent). Trump picked up 27 percent of these voters, and the remaining 14 percent didn’t vote for either major party candidate.
* To the extent that the Democratic Party is divided, these divisions are more about faith in the political system and general disaffection than they are about issue positions.
* By contrast, Republican voters are more clearly split. For the most part, Trump and Cruz supporters look fairly similar, though Cruz supporters are considerably more conservative on moral issues, and notably less concerned about inequality and the social safety net, and more pro- free trade. Kasich supporters are the true moderates, caught in between the two parties on almost every issue, both economic and social.
* In both parties, the donor class is both more conservative on economic issues and more liberal on social issues, as compared to the rest of the party.
* Democrats may be pressured to move further left on identity issues, given that both younger voters and the party’s donor class are quite far to the left on identity issues. If so, American politics would become further polarized along questions of culture and identity...
And can you blame the guy, considering? And that's not to justify it, but sheesh. Britain's been taken over. You're likely to have a race war any time now. Leftists can't be surprised.
Of course it matters, especially since virtually the entire mainstream media establishment is pitching fake news 24/7.
As noted, I stopped watching any television news last semester, and just have now starting inching back toward any kind of regular viewing. I simply do not trust reporters and traditional outlets to report fairly or accurately. It's just a given now, and of course it influences politics. We're living in two virtual countries with two virtual realities. And it takes a lot of power to shift those realities and make a new narrative strong enough to shift votes. That's why leftists hate President Trump. He beat the fake news industry and still does it everyday by getting his message out on Twitter and through his campaign-style rallies, God bless him.
As noted in the previous article, most people learn to adjust for fake news in a medium with which they are familiar. Otherwise, tabloids would hardly be shelved at the checkout counter, as they have been for decades. But many are now convinced that fake news put out on social media helped tip the US to Trump. Post-election, Hillary Clinton decried the epidemic of fake news, as did outgoing President Obama.
The air has been thick with statistics on both sides, with conservatives and the far right usually fingered as the culprits. Actually, fake news was purveyed on both sides. Ben Carson did not, for example, say that the ghosts of aborted babies haunt hospitals. Mainstream media sometimes publish fake news too. The Burlington Electric Company’s grid was not hacked by Russia, as the Washington Post recently claimed. Apparently, the Post staffers had not followed the conventional rule of phoning the facility to check before running the story. But did it make much difference anyway?
As it happens, claims for social media’s awesome power aren’t new to the 2016 election. Similarly dramatic claims were made after the 2008 election. Back then the outcome was welcomed by the proponents of the social media power, so we were unlikely to hear much about the perils of fake news.
Indeed, as “astroturf” investigator Sharyl Atkisson observes, before mid-September 2016, fake news was hardly mentioned. Concern arose among Clinton allies thereafter via progressive site Media Matters and caught on widely from there in traditional media.
Either something happened rather suddenly to social media or there are more conventional explanations for Clinton’s loss. Let’s look at some of the latter:
It wasn’t fake news that made the difference; it was missed news. First, Trump was not the Republican party’s choice of candidate. He was propelled by a base that felt ignored—and ridiculed—by both parties. Sociologist Charles Murray describes that base quite clearly in Coming Apart (2012): They are the working class communities ("Fishtown," in his narrative) quietly disintegrating amid global societal changes. Meanwhile, middle class communities ("Belmont," in his narrative) are thriving, indifferent or even censorious, a few kilometres away.*
The Democrats did not have a Trump. Their candidate was a party establishment figure with massive intelligentsia and media backing. Among those who felt that their concerns would never be heard in those venues, that was her handicap. It’s a good question why Trump was one of the few public figures to grasp the significance of the demographic shift and exploit it. But little will be learned about that from an intense examinations of fake news. Newly recruited Trump voters were motivated by actual bad news in their own communities.
The hole created by the missed news was widened by the Democrats’ heavy reliance on millennial social media experts to connect with voters. Kay Hymowitz explains at City Journal:
In the past few years, their influence has only grown, as mass-market fashion magazines like Elle, Cosmopolitan, and Marie Claire have given them column space, effectively crowning them the new elite experts on women’s issues.
They weren’t. They had heads full of academic theory and millennial angst but little life experience with—and virtually no interest in—military wives from South Carolina or Walmart managers from Staten Island, who also happen to fall into the category “women.” Nor did the new luminaries or their bosses seem to notice that the latter group far outnumbered their own rarefied crowd.
The internet changes a great deal but it does not change the fundamental nature of reality. One small Atlanta-based pollster sensed that the military wife or the WalMart manager might not wish to risk humiliation, even in the abstract, by giving an honest opinion. So he asked his respondents who they thought their neighbors would vote for. He called the big contest right while major polling firms got it embarrassingly wrong.
The $50 million fight to fill Tom Price’s congressional set is now the most expensive House race in American history—and Republicans can blame Trump if Jon Ossoff wins on Tuesday.
SANDY SPRINGS, Georgia—Take the New Hampshire presidential primary, move it next to a Waffle House, douse it in cash and the sweltering June heat of Georgia, and you’ll get the special election runoff in the state’s 6th Congressional District.
In a race that was never expected to be close, the once sleepy collection of solidly Republican suburbs has suddenly become ground zero for the resistance to the presidency of Donald Trump.
“What’s happening? The president is happening,” said Barbara Carr, a 6th District voter who had volunteered to hold a Jon Ossoff sign, along with a dripping Popsicle, on a busy Atlanta street corner Saturday as the temperature climbed past 90 degrees. Trump “doesn’t represent my values.”
The hopes of local Democrats like Carr and others across the country are piled onto Ossoff, a 30-year-old former congressional staffer who was practically unknown—even to fellow Georgia Democrats—before 2017. But when civil rights icon (and a former boss of Ossoff’s) Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) endorsed him in January, a fire-hose of small-dollar donations from Democratic activists began to pour into Ossoff’s campaign coffers and never stopped.
The nonstop money bomb allowed Ossoff to raise a truly obscene amount of money, $23 million so far, and build a monster campaign big enough to challenge both the Republican machine in Georgia and the Republican on the ballot against him on Tuesday, former secretary of state Karen Handel. Keenly aware that a loss in Georgia would be spun as a loss for the president and his agenda, National Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, sent super-sized resources of their own to Georgia. The $50 million-plus contest has now become the most expensive House race in American history.
“They’re getting statewide saturation,” said Jeff DiSantis, a longtime Democratic operative in the state who ran Michelle Nunn’s 2014 Senate race. “Everybody knows everything there is to know. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it, even in a presidential [election].”
It is hard to describe the sheer scope of the campaign Ossoff has been able to build, first to win 48 percent of the vote in the April primary and now to be running even with Handel in a district that is widely considered “R +10,” meaning a GOP candidate starts out with a safe 10-point advantage over any Democrat they’ll face.
While most political candidates, including Handel, have to spend hours a day, and sometimes their entire day, calling wealthy donors for campaign contributions, the small-dollar activist machine fueled by Daily Kos and End Citizens United has largely freed Ossoff from the onus of call time. Instead of dialing for dollars, Ossoff can show up at nearly every meet-and-greet, neighborhood meeting, or canvass party he gets invited to.
He and his campaign can also knock on voters' doors. Lots of them. With two days left before Election Day, the Ossoff campaign has knocked on more than 500,000 voter doors, including 80,000 on Saturday alone. The campaign has six field offices, more than 100 full-time paid staffers, and more than 12,000 active volunteers. The Georgia Democratic Party has focused another 12 full-time staffers solely on minority voter engagement in the district.
An Atlanta-Journal Constitution poll showed that 51 percent of likely voters had been reached directly by the Ossoff campaign, while 32 percent of voters said they’d heard from Handel or her team.
But that same poll also revealed the greatest hurdle Handel faces on Tuesday, and it isn’t Jon Ossoff or his operation. Instead, it is the broad anti-Trump sentiment in the district, including that 35 percent approval rating...
Temperatures reached 116 degrees in Palm Springs yesterday, and the forecast is 120 today. These are record-breaking temps. Interestingly, the coastal areas saw barely cooler weather yesterday, which is from the low-pressure moisture that's clinging along the beaches. That's the place to cool off.
So, I'll be sitting pretty in Irvine today, but if you're inland, take a load off your feet, pump the air conditioning, and stay hydrated.
Here's the fantastic Ms. Danielle, for CBS News 2 from yesterday:
Her videos haven't been available before I hit the sack.
Danielle Gersh is hot though, so I'm not letting my readers down when it comes to the tasty weather reports, heh.
In any case, the big news continues to be this massive heat wave we're having in the Southwest. It's supposed to be hotter today than yesterday, and hotter still on Monday and Tuesday.
Here's the fabulous Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:
It may very well be that this week was the week that Israel and the US put to rest former president Barack Obama’s policies and positions on Israel and the Palestinians.
If so, the move was made despite the best efforts of Obama’s team to convince the Trump administration to maintain them.
The details of Obama’s policies and positions have been revealed in recent weeks in a series of articles published in Haaretz regarding Obama’s secretary of state John Kerry’s failed peacemaking efforts, which ended in 2014.
The articles reported segments of two drafts of a US framework for a final peace treaty between the PLO and Israel. The drafts were created in February and March 2014.
The article series is predicated on the assumption that Kerry and his team were on the precipice of a historic breakthrough between PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. But a close reading of the documents shows that the opposite was the case.
There are two reasons that Kerry had no prospects for reaching a deal.
First, he, Obama and their advisers were too hostile to Israel and its citizens to ever convince Netanyahu that Israel’s interests would be secured.
A February 2014 draft framework agreement, which was based on conversations Kerry and his team held with Netanyahu and his advisers, makes this clear. The draft includes Netanyahu’s demand that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria not annexed to Israel would remain “in place” after the implementation of a peace deal, and presumably, become towns in the future Palestinian state.
In other words, Netanyahu demanded that the Israelis in Judea and Samaria whose towns would be located in the territory of “Palestine” would enjoy the same rights and protections as Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy.
Kerry and his team would have none of it. The February draft agreement notes, “[US] negotiators need to check with PM [Netanyahu] on whether he wants to [maintain this position]… They believe that if so, he will push strongly for ‘in place.’ ‘In place’ is inconsistent with US policy and therefore unacceptable to us as well as the Palestinians.”
In other words, the position of the Obama administration was that all Israelis living in areas that would become part of the Palestinian state must be forcibly removed from their homes and communities.
Haaretz reporters Barak Ravid and Amir Tibon recalled that in previous rounds of negotiations, the Palestinians – unlike the Obama administration – had not rejected this Israeli position out of hand. That is, in demanding the mass expulsion of Israeli Jews from their homes, the administration adopted a policy more extreme than the PLO.
She even more dangerous because of her out attractiveness. She's like a snake deceiving you in the name of the devil, she comes to you like a dove, only to bite you to deliver the hand of death.
Linda Sarsour is a progressive-media darling. One of Essence magazine’s “Woke 100 Women,” Sarsour was named a leader of the Women’s March that followed President Donald Trump’s inauguration, despite declaring that “nothing is creepier than Zionism”—though her wish to “take away” the “vagina” of clitoridectomy victim and human-rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, praise for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, upholding Saudi Arabia as a bastion of women’s lib, embrace of the terrorist murderer Rasmea Odeh, and claim that “Shariah law is reasonable” because “suddenly all your loans & credits cards become interest-free,” are all—at least in my humble estimation—definitely creepier.
Yet Sarsour’s ride on the media wonder-wheel continues—thanks in part to Jewish individuals and organizations who embrace the idea that haters like Sarsour can’t actually hate them. Recently, the “homegirl in a hijab,” as a fawning New York Times profile described her, delivered the commencement address at the City University of New York’s School of Public Health. It was a strange choice on the part of CUNY, not least because Sarsour has zero professional experience in the field. Prior to the event, critics, many of them Jewish, called upon CUNY to rescind its invitation in light of Sarsour’s rhetoric and associations. A group of progressive Jews released an open letter in defense of Sarsour. “In this time, when so many marginalized communities in our country are targeted on the streets and from the highest offices of government” the letter solemnly declared, “we are committed to bridging communal boundaries and standing in solidarity with one another.”
Also coming to Sarsour’s defense was the Anti-Defamation League, which presumably stands against the defamation of women, Jews, and the Jewish state. “Despite our deep opposition to Sarsour’s views on Israel,” its head Jonathan Greenblatt said, before offering the following non sequitur, “we believe that she has a First Amendment right to offer those views.”
No one, of course, disputes Sarsour’s legal right to spout whatever vicious nonsense she wants. But there is nothing in the First Amendment that says Sarsour has a “right” to speak at CUNY, or appear on CNN, or publish an op-ed in the New York Times. As an organization ostensibly committed to fighting anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice, the ADL was under no obligation to defend a Jew-baiting, demagogic, foul-mouthed, sectarian bully—someone who, in fact, asserted that anti-Semitism is “different than anti-black racism or Islamophobia because it’s not systemic.” Not systemic? Tell that to the survivors of the most systematized effort at extermination in human history. If there is a more utterly mendacious claim that perverts the truth about humanity’s oldest, deadliest and very much “systemic” hatred, I’m not sure what it could be.
Still, Greenblatt—whose organization was once devoted to combating anti-Semitism—decided that it was better to side with his fellow progressives in public than risk his position on the team. Why?
This is an important question for Jewish Democrats, since the weird combination of communal masochism and personal arrogance that characterizes Sarsour’s self-appointed “Jewish allies” also makes for a particularly ineffective form of coalition politics—at least for the Jewish side of the equation...
Why? Democrats have been poisoned by the seeds of self-hatred, and thus they'll let people like Sarsour do the work of Satan to destroy them. It's not difficult.
The technology revolution has transformed one industry after another, from retail to manufacturing to transportation. Its most far-reaching effects, however, may be playing out in the unlikeliest of places: the traditional industries of oil, gas, and electricity.
Over the past decade, innovation has upended the energy industry. First came the shale revolution. Starting around 2005, companies began to unlock massive new supplies of natural gas, and then oil, from shale basins, thanks to two new technologies: horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (or fracking). Engineers worked out how to drill shafts vertically and then turn their drills sideways to travel along a shale seam; they then blasted the shale with high-pressure water, sand, and chemicals to pry open the rock and allow the hydrocarbons to flow. These technologies have helped drive oil prices down from an all-time high of $145 per barrel in July 2008 to less than a third of that today, and supply has become much more responsive to market conditions, undercutting the ability of OPEC, a group of the world’s major oil-exporting nations, to influence global oil prices.
That was just the beginning. Today, smarter management of complex systems, data analytics, and automation are remaking the industry once again, boosting the productivity and flexibility of energy companies. These changes have begun to transform not only the industries that produce commodities such as oil and gas but also the ways in which companies generate and deliver electric power. A new electricity industry is emerging—one that is more decentralized and consumer-friendly, and able to integrate many different sources of power into highly reliable power grids. In the coming years, these trends are likely to keep energy cheap and plentiful, responsive to market conditions, and more efficient than ever.
But this transition will not be straightforward. It could destabilize countries whose economies depend on revenue from traditional energy sources, such as Russia, the big producers of the Persian Gulf, and Venezuela. It could hurt lower-skilled workers, whose jobs are vulnerable to automation. And cheap fossil fuels will make it harder to achieve the deep cuts in emissions needed to halt global warming...
It won't be too bad along the coasts and in the L.A. and Orange County metro areas. But when you get inland, especially to the deserts, you're looking are very hot temperatures, and into the triple digits early in the week.
Just dish up a scoop of ice cream for your old man, and have a Happy Father's Day!
Here's the lovely Ms. Danielle, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:
I've added this comment at Legal Insurrection, in reply to Ms. EBL (who links this Instapundit post, which links AoSHQ):
Actually, Ace isn’t arguing we should use violence. He’s talking about boycotts and blacklisting. Yeah, let’s do that. He doesn’t say to violently shut down left-wing public performances like a bunch of special snowflakes. So-called conservatives have lost their minds. The vote here is running almost 75 percent in favor of shutting down speech — SPEECH — you don’t like. You want to parrot the left, conservatives? Are you going to start hitting antifa leftists over the head with bike-locks, like anarchist Eric Clanton up in Berkeley? No. Are you going to start throwing bricks through the windows of businesses, like the riots on Telegraph Avenue, simply because people like Milo are scheduled to speak? No. Or at least, I’m not. That way lies much more polarization and violence, which purportedly conservatives don’t want. So what’s it going to be?
We won't have debates in this country if conservatives want to fight violent leftists with more violence. That's not what Ace was arguing.
I quit watching ABC News years ago, when Democrat George Stephanopoulos became one of the most important personalities at the network. And same thing for NBC, after the Brian Williams fiasco. Yeah, I know, Pelley's a leftist as well. But I've been watching CBS Evening News exclusively for this last few years, and it's fairly balanced --- or, as balanced as you're likely to get from the elite networks in any case.
Scott Pelley is out at “CBS Evening News,” Page Six has exclusively learned.
Sources tell us that “Poison Pelley’s” office was being cleared out Tuesday while the anchor was away on an assignment for the network’s news magazine “60 Minutes.”
We’re told he’s being shifted permanently to “60 Minutes.”
Insiders tell us that CBS News president David Rhodes “is making [Pelley] move to ‘60 Minutes,’ ” and that the pair “don’t get on.”
Another TV insider said that while Pelley’s ratings have been down, “There’s also been friction between him and [Rhodes].”
Added a source, “[Pelley] was pushed out of the ‘Evening News.’ It’s been coming for a long time. This could have been handled better — [Pelley] is away on a story, and they’re cleaning out his office. It’s not the correct way to treat the face of CBS News.”
And by the way, I stopped watching any television news for about six weeks this semester, especially as the Russia conspiracy became too much to handle.
I expect that's going to be more of the norm going forward. I prefer to filter what news I get through blogs and Twitter. It's that, or frankly no news at all, and that's hard for me, as a political science professor.
"My son loved this state. He had one tattoo on his body, and it was of the Twin Cities," Valerie Castile said. "My son loved this city, and this city killed my son."
Valerie Castile also addressed the crowd directly after leaving the courthouse, expressing her disappointment.
"The system continues to fail black people, and it will continue to fail you all. Like I said, because this happened with Philando, when they get done with us, they coming for you, for you, for you and all your interracial children," Valerie Castile said. "Y'all are next, and you will be standing up here fighting for justice just as well as I am."
Look, all these so-called conservative Trump supporters are applauding Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec, after the two tried to shut down the Caesar production of Shakespeare in the Park last night.
While I definitely think the right should practice more of the left's Alinsky politics, I don't agree in this case. It's about speech. You can't complain about leftists shutting down conservatives speakers if your response is just to ape them with the exact same bullying and violence. I'm not tweeting a whole lot about this, since I'd prefer not to lose a bunch of followers. But frankly, folks on the right are being stupid and über-tribal. I rarely agree with Ben Shapiro, but I agree with him here:
Met Police says first #GrenfellTower victim has been identified; 58 people are missing and are assumed to be dead - the number may increase pic.twitter.com/gjyi28sJHM
I don't see video of Jennifer Delacruz posted tonight, which is strange, since she tweeted she'd be doing the weather through the rest of the week.
No matter, here's the lovely Ms. Amber for CBS News 2 Los Angeles. It's heating up, people. Wasn't too bad today. I hung around the apartment most of the day, but Father's Day's going to be scorching. Keep your daddy cool and hydrated.
It's not the biggest blockbuster you'll ever see, but I really like Kate Mara, so I made it a point to see this one. Plus, I rarely miss a war movie. I went to the early-bird budget matinee, so the theater was almost empty. I don't see the opening weekend numbers online, although at least the movie's not straight to DVD. It's heavy on the personal relationships, especially Corporal Leavey's relationship to her dog, Rex. It's a tear-jerker as well, but a true story.
It's worth a look, either way. Most refreshingly, the director eschewed any inclinations towards leftist antiwar anti-Americanism. Indeed, the conclusion's hella patriotic, but I'll leave it at that not to spoil things.
It’s also a movie that doesn’t wear its issues on its stripes. Without feeling the need to brand itself either a woman-in-the-military movie or animal-activism yarn, [director Gabriela] Cowperthwaite quietly goes about humanizing everything so that both of these elements, which might get treated as hot-button topics elsewhere, gain a kind of understated momentum all their own. Sure, that gives it the slight tinge of a chummy, politics-free, armed-services recruitment video — especially when Common’s around to play the supportive sergeant always this-close from breaking into a smile. But the battle scenes are direct and tense, if not exactly original, and even when the screenplay tosses in a burgeoning flirtation with a fellow K-9er (the charming Ramon Rodriguez), “Megan Leavey” makes it feel like an extra color in a soldier’s story, not a predictable story beat for a heroine...
We're sending more troops to Afghanistan, and President Trump has given Defense Secretary James Mattis authority to set troop levels for that entire deployment.
So, I suppose this is a good time to re-up J. Kael Weston's recent book on the conflict, now out in paperback.
What we are living through in America is not only a division but a great estrangement. It is between those who support Donald Trump and those who despise him, between left and right, between the two parties, and even to some degree between the bases of those parties and their leaders in Washington. It is between the religious and those who laugh at Your Make Believe Friend, between cultural progressives and those who wish not to have progressive ways imposed upon them. It is between the coasts and the center, between those in flyover country and those who decide what flyover will watch on television next season. It is between “I accept the court’s decision” and “Bake my cake.” We look down on each other, fear each other, increasingly hate each other.
Oh, to have a unifying figure, program or party.
But we don’t, nor is there any immediate prospect. So, as Ben Franklin said, we’ll have to hang together or we’ll surely hang separately. To hang together—to continue as a country—at the very least we have to lower the political temperature. It’s on all of us more than ever to assume good faith, put our views forward with respect, even charity, and refuse to incite.
We’ve been failing. Here is a reason the failure is so dangerous.
In the early 1990s Roger Ailes had a talk show on the America’s Talking network and invited me to talk about a concern I’d been writing about, which was old-fashioned even then: violence on TV and in the movies. Grim and graphic images, repeated depictions of murder and beatings, are bad for our kids and our culture, I argued. Depictions of violence unknowingly encourage it.
But look, Roger said, there’s comedy all over TV and I don’t see people running through the streets breaking into laughter. True, I said, but the problem is that, for a confluence of reasons, our country is increasingly populated by the not fully stable. They aren’t excited by wit, they’re excited by violence—especially unstable young men. They don’t have the built-in barriers and prohibitions that those more firmly planted in the world do. That’s what makes violent images dangerous and destructive. Art is art and censorship is an admission of defeat. Good judgment and a sense of responsibility are the answer.
That’s what we’re doing now, exciting the unstable—not only with images but with words, and on every platform. It’s all too hot and revved up. This week we had a tragedy. If we don’t cool things down, we’ll have more.
And was anyone surprised? Tuesday I talked with an old friend, a figure in journalism who’s a pretty cool character, about the political anger all around us. He spoke of “horrible polarization.” He said there’s “too much hate in D.C.” He mentioned “the beheading, the play in the park” and described them as “dog whistles to any nut who wants to take action.”
“Someone is going to get killed,” he said.
That was 20 hours before the shootings in Alexandria, Va.
The gunman did the crime, he is responsible, it’s fatuous to put the blame on anyone or anything else.
But we all operate within a climate and a culture. The media climate now, in both news and entertainment, is too often of a goading, insinuating resentment, a grinding, agitating anipathy. You don’t need another recitation of the events of just the past month or so. A comic posed with a gruesome bloody facsimile of President Trump’s head. New York’s rightly revered Shakespeare in the Park put on a “Julius Caesar” in which the assassinated leader is made to look like the president. A CNN host—amazingly, of a show on religion—sent out a tweet calling the president a “piece of s—” who is “a stain on the presidency.” An MSNBC anchor wondered, on the air, whether the president wishes to “provoke” a terrorist attack for political gain. Earlier Stephen Colbert, well known as a good man, a gentleman, said of the president, in a rant: “The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c— holster.” Those are but five dots in a larger, darker pointillist painting. You can think of more.
Too many in the mainstream media—not all, but too many—don’t even bother to fake fairness and lack of bias anymore, which is bad: Even faked balance is better than none.
I had a student last semester claim that John Lennon was one of our "political leaders," or at least "past leader," along with Martin Luther King, Jr., etc., if I remember correctly. That's how deeply the popular leftist culture has burrowed into and infected the youth demographic. They don't know anything. They don't know history going back even to last year, much less the 1960s and '70s. It's out of control.
It was hot today in the O.C., but not sure if it was record-breaking (I'll check later, lol).
But parts of San Diego County were just a couple of degrees over the record for this day, and there's some real record heat coming over the next week, especially in the desert areas.
Here's the beautiful Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:
LAURA INGRAHAM: It's a level of viciousness and vitriol that we see on social media but usually that's an anonymous thing. But now people are emboldened and they are saying it in person. They're doing chalk drawings of people and their families on their driveways so they wake up in the morning and they see a chalk drawing.
I think Charles is right. This apocalyptic language we hear on other cable networks, where these are supposedly very respected hosts who get up every morning and say, 'Will be republic survive Donald Trump?' In other words, the resistance is a physical resistance. If you believe your survival is at risk, you have the moral duty to physically resist that. And I think this freak yesterday took it to heart.
But if you were on Twitter last night you would have seen the outrage. NYT's editors blamed the Gabby Giffords shooting on the bogus and debunked meme of the "GOP climate of hate" and the "cross-hairs map" that allegedly put then-Representative Giffords' life in danger.
(1/2) @nytopinion - commonsense suggestion by a journalist, am talking to attorneys this AM and exploring options. BTW, wonder.. pic.twitter.com/jACvxwUBZH
Congressman Steve Scalise sustained a single rifle shot to the left hip. The bullet travelled across his pelvis, fracturing bones, injuring internal organs, and causing severe bleeding. He was transported in shock to MedStar Washington Hospital Center, a Level I Trauma Center. He underwent immediate surgery, and an additional procedure to stop bleeding. He has received multiple units of blood transfusion. His condition is critical, and he will require additional operations. We will provide periodic updates.
And just now, at People Magazine:
‘He’s in Some Trouble:’ Donald Trump Says House Whip Steve Scalise’s Condition Is Worse Than People Think https://t.co/cVj41oPjKv
“If you go back to the days of the Civil War, one can find cases in American political history where there was far more rancor and violence,” said Shanto Iyengar, a Stanford political scientist. “But in the modern era, there are no ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ — partisan animus is at an all-time high.”
Mr. Iyengar doesn’t mean that the typical Democratic or Republican voter has adopted more extreme ideological views (although it is the case that elected officials in Congress have moved further apart). Rather, Democrats and Republicans truly think worse of each other, a trend that isn’t really about policy preferences. Members of the two parties are more likely today to describe each other unfavorably, as selfish, as threats to the nation, even as unsuitable marriage material...
A huge high pressure pocket is hanging out over the Pacific, and it's moving onshore over the remainder of the week into next. It's going to be really hot.
Here's the beautiful Ms. Jackie, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:
Frankly, besides updates on Rep. Scalise, there hasn't a lot of news on the status of the other victims. But according to CNN, the others are recovering from their injuries.
Washington (CNN): Rep. Steve Scalise, a congressional staffer and members of the Capitol police force were shot Wednesday in Alexandria, Virginia, during Republicans' early-morning practice ahead of a charity baseball game.
President Donald Trump said the alleged gunman had been killed. Federal law enforcement officials identified the alleged shooter as James Hodgkinson, 66, of Belleville, Illinois.
At least six people including Scalise, the third ranking member of House Republican leadership as the majority whip, were hospitalized.
Scalise was in critical condition after surgery, according to So Young Pak, spokeswoman for MedStar Washington Hospital Center. Scalise is out of his first surgery, according to a Scalise aide. It is not clear if he will have a second surgery. His wife Jennifer and their two young children are traveling up from New Orleans to Washington now to be with him.
A congressional staffer, Zach Barth, was also shot in the leg and has since been released from the hospital. Matt Mika, a lobbyist for Tyson Foods and former staffer, was also identified as one of the victims. He was out of surgery and in critical condition as of Wednesday afternoon, according to a statement from his family.
House Speaker Paul Ryan also identified two members of the Capitol Police who were injured, Crystal Griner and David Bailey. In a statement, Capitol Police said Griner was in "good condition in the hospital having been shot in the ankle," and that Bailey "was treated and released having sustained a minor injury during the incident."
Rep. Roger Williams, a Texas Republican, was also hospitalized and released with an injury to his ankle.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Mika was in surgery and in critical condition, according to a statement from his family...
Impeachment and removal from office are only the first steps; for America to be redeemed, Donald Trump must be prosecuted for treason and — if convicted in a court of law — executed.
The accused shooter who was killed during gunfire at practice for a congressional baseball game Wednesday morning was from Belleville.
The shooter was James T. Hodgkinson of Belleville, who belonged to a number of anti-Republican groups, including one called “Terminate the Republican Party.”
President Donald Trump said Hodgkinson died during gunfire exchanged with congressional security workers.
Hodgkinson, 66, owned a home-inspection business. Hodgkinson was a licensed home inspector from 1994 to 1997, when his license expired, according to records from the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. He also held a license from 2003 to 2016, but it was not renewed.
Two days ago, Hodgkinson posted an angry tweet about President Donald Trump on Facebook.
“I Want to Say Mr. President, for being an ass hole you are Truly the Biggest Ass Hole We Have Ever Had in the Oval Office,” he wrote on Facebook.
Hodgkinson is a member of a number of anti-Republican groups on Facebook, including one called “Terminate the Republican Party.”
▪ “The Road to Hell is Paved with Republicans”
▪ “Donald Trump is not my President”
▪ “President Bernie Sanders”
▪ “Illinois Berners United to Resist Trump”
▪ “Boycott the Republican Party”
▪ “Expose Republican Fraud”
▪ “Terminate the Republican Party”
The FBI was investigating Hodgkinson’s postings on social media. Agents from the FBI and other federal investigators arrived Wednesday morning at Hodgkinson’s two-story home on the outskirts of Belleville. Spokesman Dillon McConnell of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said the agency is “conducting emergency traces for a handgun and a rifle,” but declined to identify the weapons types.
Hodgkinson took a Democratic ballot in the primary election in 2016.
In 2012, Hodgkinson took part in a protest outside the downtown Belleville post office. He said he was part of a “99%” team drawing attention to the amount of money and political power the top 1 percent of Americans acquired.
Aaron Meurer is a neighbor of the Hodgkinsons and said he noticed in the last two months James had been gone. The alleged shooter’s wife Suzanne told him her husband was travelling.
“She said that he went on a trip. She wasn’t real specific,” said Meurer, unclear whether the couple had split up recently.”He’s been gone for the last two months, so I haven’t seen him around too often.”
Meurer said he occasionally cut his neighbor’s grass to help out. He didn’t know the neighbors well, just socialized from the lawn, and said his neighbor would fire guns on his rural property, commonplace in the open area outside of Belleville...
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