Louise Mensch's Donald Trump Russian Collusion Conspiracy Theories

Interestingly, I posted this one almost one year ago today: "Louise Mensch Implores Me to Come Back to the Light."

Well, who has lost touch with the light? I don't think it's me. But Louise is extremely self-sure of her "truths," to say the least.

She asked me to write for her during her short-lived editorship at Heat Street (a publication whose days are numbered, it turns out), but nowadays she never responds when I say hello on Twitter. She's ensconced herself in a cocoon.

In any case, the very sharp Charles C.W. Cooke has a new essay on Louise's "investigations," at National Review, "Louise Mensch’s Destructive Fantasies":

Mensch, a former British MP, is now the purveyor of fantastical conspiracy theories about Donald Trump and Russia.

A few years back, my father and I voluntarily submitted ourselves to an episode of Question Time, a long-running program on the BBC on which sundry British politicians try to sound as indignant as possible while expressing nothing whatsoever beyond the day’s conventional wisdom. On the panel that evening was one Louise Bagshawe, a Tory MP from London who had a gig on the side as a writer of teen-girl books.

“That woman,” my dad said to me about half-way through the show, “is one of the dullest people I’ve ever seen. Even for Question Time.” So much for plus ça change.

Today, Louise Bagshawe is Louise Mensch, a show-woman and a fantasist of world-class ability. No longer a member of Parliament, Mensch now lives in the United States, where she spends at least 18 hours a day filtering current affairs through the mind of Edward Lear. Over the last six months, Mensch has unleashed her unfiltered stream-of-consciousness on the denizens of her new country — both in short-form on Twitter, which she uses in much the same way as a woodpecker uses a wall, and in longer episodes on her Patribotics blog, which describes itself as “Pro-America, pro-democracy, pro-NATO, pro-Russia, anti-Putin,” but which seems most consistently to be pro-clicks. In both arenas, she has made sure to set herself at the thriving center of a hive of unfastened theorizing and molten-hot dudgeon. If a hot topic can be linked to Donald Trump or to Russia, Louise Mensch will manage it. And if it can’t, she’ll manage it too.

In theory, Mensch represents the fact-checker’s deepest-held fantasy — the moment for which all that training was contrived and intended. In practice, she is uncheckable and unaccountable in precisely the same manner as is a primal scream. Mensch reads like a woman who speaks civics as a third or fourth language that she lost touch with long ago. She has a pidgin grasp on the American settlement, and an ersatz, bastardized relationship with reality. One part novella-fantasy, one part hallway-hearsay, Mensch’s world is one in which an ethereal “they” are omnipresent and omnipotent. “They,” she tells us, are considering executing Steve Bannon, though he hasn’t been charged with so much as speeding in a school zone. “They” have already “sentenced” Rudy Giuliani — to what fate we will presumably find out when someone next mentions his name on television. “They” will soon overturn the election results, and are on the verge of making Orrin Hatch president. Donald Trump, in turn, is perennially but a few steps from the gallows. On the 13th of April, Mensch promised that the “first arrests may be as soon as next week.” Yesterday, she related that the president faced imminent “federal execution.” Presumably, “they” just needed some more time.

Usurpation abounds, at home and abroad, and seems never to be walled in by anything as prosaic as the law. Mensch’s Supreme Court has proactive police powers and a Bruce Willis–esque “marshal” who chases down helicopters and colludes heroically with the rogue justices. Her Congress acts primarily in camera, and may already have informed Trump that he is no longer permitted to use his legal powers. Her FISA courts issue indictments they have no authority to present. And the rules? They’re suggestions, really. The America of Mensch’s imagination is a place in which the entire Republican party is imminently going to jail — on RICO charges, no less — because Paul Ryan is a partisan. What the Da Vinci Code was to Christian theology, Louise Mensch is to James Madison’s handiwork. See how the symbols line up in the moonlight?

It is on the subject of Russia, however, that Mensch has really hit her stride...

Keep reading.

What Media Elites Care About Isn't the Same as What Regular Americans Care About

Jon Gabriel's gotten a lot of attention with his recent article at Ricochet, and especially the graphic he put together.

See, "What Americans Care About vs. What the Media Cares About":

Despite the American people caring far more about health care than any other issue, the media has swamped the airwaves with Trump/Russia conspiracies to the detriment of nearly everything else.

The difference between the people and the press was so jarring, I created a chart comparing the two studies [Bloomberg and MRC]. Granted, these studies were conducted by two different organizations using very different methods, but the juxtaposition was remarkable.

I totaled the time in [this] MRC study (469 min.) and calculated the percentage of time each issue was given. I then compared the percentage of media coverage on each issue to the percentages shown as Americans’ top issues:

Jon's been a little perplexed, if not pissed off, in how his graph's been swiped by major media outlets, including Fox and WSJ, without attribution.

Very well done.

PREVIOUSLY: "Why the Media's War on President Trump is Doomed to Fail."

Why the Media's War on President Trump is Doomed to Fail

From Thomas Frank, at the Guardian U.K., "The media's war on Trump is destined to fail. Why can't it see that?":

These are the worst of times for the American news media, but they are also the best. The newspaper industry as a whole has been dying slowly for years, as the pathetic tale of the once-mighty Chicago Tribune reminds us. But for the handful of well funded journalistic enterprises that survive, the Trump era is turning out to be a “golden age” – a time of high purpose and moral vindication.

The people of the respectable east coast press loathe the president with an amazing unanimity. They are obsessed with documenting his bad taste, with finding faults in his stupid tweets, with nailing him and his associates for this Russian scandal and that one. They outwit the simple-minded billionaire. They find the devastating scoops. The op-ed pages come to resemble Democratic fundraising pitches. The news sections are all Trump all the time. They have gone ballistic so many times the public now yawns when it sees their rockets lifting off.

A recent Alternet article I read was composed of nothing but mean quotes about Trump, some of them literary and high-flown, some of them low-down and cruel, most of them drawn from the mainstream media and all of them hilarious. As I write this, four of the five most-read stories on the Washington Post website are about Trump; indeed (if memory serves), he has dominated this particular metric for at least a year.

And why not? Trump certainly has it coming. He is obviously incompetent, innocent of the most basic knowledge about how government functions. His views are repugnant. His advisers are fools. He appears to be dallying with obviously dangerous forces. And thanks to the wipeout of the Democratic party, there is no really powerful institutional check on the president’s power, which means that the press must step up.

But there’s something wrong with it all.

The news media’s alarms about Trump have been shrieking at high C for more than a year. It was in January of 2016 that the Huffington Post began appending a denunciation of Trump as a “serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, birther and bully” to every single story about the man. It was last August that the New York Times published an essay approving of the profession’s collective understanding of Trump as a political mutation – an unacceptable deviation from the two-party norm – that journalists must cleanse from the political mainstream.

It hasn’t worked. They correct and denounce; they cluck and deride and Trump seems to bask in it. He reflects this incredible outpouring of disapprobation right back at the press itself. The old “liberal bias” critique, a minor deity in the pantheon of Republican paranoia since the days of Trump’s hero Richard Nixon, has been elevated to first place. Trump and company now use it to explain everything. And the news media’s reputation sinks lower and lower as they advance into their golden age.

What explains this dazzling disconnect? Yes, Trump is unpopular these days, but not nearly as unpopular as he deserves to be (among other amazing things, he is now reported to be more popular than Hillary Clinton). How can our opinion-leaders believe something so unanimously, so emphatically, and yet have so little success persuading their erstwhile opinion-followers to get in line?

One part of the explanation is the structural situation of the news media. As newspapers die off, their place in the American consciousness is taken by social networks of both the formal and informal variety. Thanks to Facebook and Twitter, these days we read only that which confirms our biases. Once upon a time, perhaps, the Washington Post could single-handedly bring down a president, but those days have passed.

But there’s also a second reason, one that is even more fundamental. The truth is that the unanimous anti-Trumpness of the respectable press is just one facet of a larger homogeneity. As it happens, the surviving press in this country is unanimous about all sorts of things....

This is the key to understanding many of their biases – and also for understanding why they are so utterly oblivious to how they appear to the rest of America.

What do I mean? Consider Politico’s famous email tip-sheet, Playbook, which is read religiously every morning by countless members of the DC press corps, including myself. About two-thirds of the publication consists of useful summaries of the day’s news stories.

The rest, however, is a sort of People magazine for the Washington journalist community, in which the reader is invited to celebrate leading journalists’ (and politicians’) birthdays, congratulate leading journalists (and politicians) for their witty phrase-making, learn which leading journalist (and politician) was seen at which party and anticipate which leading journalist (and politician) is going to be on which Sunday program.

Nor is Playbook the only entry in this genre. Before there was Politico there was ABC News and The Note, a similar email newsletter that also celebrated what it called the Gang of 500, the happy and hard-partying political and journalistic insiders who supposedly made Washington tick.

These things seem innocent and fun, of course. But there is an unwritten purpose to these daily honor rolls of journo/political friendship and that is to define the limits of what is acceptable.

Like the guestlist at Lally Weymouth’s party in the Hamptons, which was described so salaciously in Playbook a little while ago, a tiny handful of people and publications and ideas are in; everyone else is out.

It’s about legitimacy, of course, and what’s left of the respectable press is utterly captivated by the theme. It completely defines their war on Trump, for example. They know what a politician is supposed to look like and act like and sound like; they know that Trump does not conform to those rules; and they react to him as a kind of foreign object jammed rudely into their creamy world, a Rodney Dangerfield defiling the fancy country club.

I believe that the news media needs to win its war with Trump, and urgently so. But as long as they understand that war as a crusade to reestablish the old rules of legitimacy, they are going to continue to fail. Until the day they get it right, the world will burn while the in-crowd parties obliviously on.

Click on the link above to read the article and check the links therein, but here's this one, at Politco, "Out and about in the Hamptons at Lally Weymouth's annual party."

Claudia Galanti on the Balcony in Porto Cervo, Italy

At Taxi Driver, "Claudia Galanti on her Hotel Room Balcony."

And at Elite Girls Squad, "Claudia Galanti on the Balcony of a Hotel in Porto Cervo, Sardinia, Italy (07/19/17)."

Sean Spicer Resigns as White House Press Secretary

I was out for a doctor's appointment this morning, and my Twitter feed was lighting up like a pinball machine.

Seems mainstream press flacks were really enjoying this, more so than should be normal.

But that's the way things are right now. You go to war against the media you have, lol.

Two videos at CNN, with Dana Bash (FWIW), "Sean Spicer resigns: What does it mean?", and "Spicer talks to CNN about resignation."

More at Memeorandum.

And at Politico, "Spicer quits amid White House feud: The beleaguered press secretary resigns after Trump settles on Scaramucci for communications director, splitting aides":

White House press secretary Sean Spicer resigned on Friday following his disagreement with President Donald Trump’s decision to appoint Anthony Scaramucci, a Wall Street financier, as the new communications director, according to multiple White House officials.

It's a dramatic end for Spicer's White House tenure, which has been marked by combative exchanges with reporters in the briefing room and a rocky relationship with the president, who never warmed to the former Republican National Committee communications official.

It also marks a potential new direction for the White House communications shop, which has struggled to keep up with the flood of developments regarding the Russia investigations while trying to push Trump’s ambitious — yet stalled — legislative agenda. Spicer’s departure is the latest for an administration that already has seen its communications director, national security adviser, deputy chief of staff and vice president’s chief of staff leave or announce their imminent departures.

Trump thanked Spicer for his service in a statement delivered by deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders during a rare on-camera press briefing on Friday, and delivered a true-to-form compliment. "I am grateful for Sean's work on behalf of my administration and the American people. I wish him continued success as he moves on to pursue new opportunities. Just look at his great television ratings," Trump said of Spicer.

Sanders will take over as press secretary, and Spicer will stay on until August.

When Spicer found out about Trump's interest in bringing Scaramucci on board on Thursday night, he vented to confidants that he did not think Scaramucci could handle a major media campaign and didn't deserve the job, one of the confidants said. He also expressed concern about whether Scaramucci would technically be in a senior position to him, since in the Obama administration the communications director was senior to the press secretary, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

"He's never done communications in his life," said another person who spoke to Spicer about his thoughts on Scaramucci...

More.

'Dunkirk' – A 'Splendid Movie'

LAT's Kenneth Turan, an often harsh reviewer, hasn't a bad thing to say about "Dunkirk." He says it's "splendid."

See, "Christopher Nolan puts audiences in the middle of WWII in the intimate and epic 'Dunkirk'":

Very much like the pivotal historical event it celebrates, "Dunkirk" confounds expectations. Both intimate and epic, as emotional as it is tension-filled, it is being ballyhooed as a departure for bravura filmmaker Christopher Nolan, but in truth the reason it succeeds so masterfully is that it is anything but.

What happened at the French coastal town of Dunkirk between May 26 and June 4, 1940, was perhaps World War II's unlikeliest turnaround, as a complete military fiasco transmogrified into a stirring psychological victory capped by Winston Churchill's stirring "we shall fight on the beaches" speech.

This battle has fascinated writer-director Nolan for years — he once crossed the English Channel on a small boat specifically to get a sense of the setting — and he's brought a multifaceted examination of it to the screen in a way that's both structurally daring and evocative of old-school David Lean-style storytelling.

Using a cast that adroitly mixes young actors making their feature-film debuts (including former One Direction member Harry Styles) with canny veterans such as Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, Mark Rylance and Tom Hardy, "Dunkirk" resembles previous Nolan films like "The Dark Knight" trilogy and "Inception" in concrete as well as thematic ways.

Working with repeat collaborators including cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema, production designer Nathan Crowley, editor Lee Smith and composer Hans Zimmer, Nolan demonstrates his all-enveloping skill with the tools of narrative, a deep understanding of and commitment to craft as well as — witness his telling actor Styles that his boots were laced wrong — a willingness to care about the myriad details of filmmaking.

*****

If you don't see 'Dunkirk' on the biggest screen you can find, you'll be missing the heart of the experience...

More.

Previously, "'Dunkirk' – Christopher Nolan's Best Film So Far (VIDEO)."

ICYMI: Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies

I started reading this. It's a quick read and really interesting.

There's a ton of reviews already online, at Quillette, for example. I'll post a few thoughts of my own when I finish, as well as links to a few more reviews. I gotta say, though, it's a valuable treatment of current online political and ideological wars, for all the book's other faults (of which there are a few).

In any case, at Amazon, Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right.

Crazy Is a Pre-Existing Condition

From Robert Stacy McCain, at the Other McCain:

In January 2014, when I first wrote about the controversy between radical feminists and transgender activists, it seemed to me a bad joke. “The Competitive Victimhood Derby,” I called it — two rival tribes of left-wing nutjobs vying for the coveted Most Oppressed Award. Subsequent research, however, convinced me that the radical feminist nutjobs were actually right on the basic issue — being male or female is a fact of science, not subject to politically motivated revision — and transgender activists were wrongly seeking to hijack “gender identity” (and feminism, along with it) in a way that amounts to Female Erasure, to quote the title of a recent radical feminist anthology on the subject. “Facts are stubborn things,” as John Adams said, and there is something fundamentally dishonest about the ideology of the transgender cult.

Young people are becoming seriously confused by the transgender cult. Or perhaps the causation works the other way, and confused young people are magnetically attracted to the cult belief that, with the “treatment” of synthetic hormones and surgery, they can escape their adolescent woes by “transitioning” into the opposite sex. Feminists have identified the factor of social contagion in what they call “rapid-onset gender dysphoria.” Through the influence of peers, and also through online recruitment by transgender cultists, many teenagers are quite suddenly convinced that they were “born in the wrong body.” In a matter of months or even a few weeks, an otherwise healthy teenage will develop an obsession with “gender transition” and demand that parents not only accept their new transgender identity, but often threaten suicide unless parents support them in seeking hormone “treatment” immediately. This kind of emotional blackmail is part of the transgender cult’s ideology, as activists claim that anyone who opposes them is effectively sentencing teenagers to death by denying them acceptance and “health care.”

This brings us to the case of Aryn Maitland who, in April 2016, posted the following fundraising appeal on YouCaring.com...

Keep reading.

This young, er, *person* is a sympathetic figure, especially since she/he appears to be very attractive and intelligent. Then radical leftism destroyed her/his life. (Or is it "they/them's" life? I can't keep up with the inanities of gender identification.)

President Trump Has Asked His Attorneys About His Ability to Pardon Aides, Family Members — and Even Himself

This makes leftists really mad. Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe tweeted, "Memo to Trump: Anyone you pardon can be compelled to testify without any grant of immunity, and that testimony could undo you."

At WaPo, via Memeorandum, "Trump team seeks to control, block Mueller’s Russia investigation":

Some of President Trump’s lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, building a case against what they allege are his conflicts of interest and discussing the president’s authority to grant pardons, according to people familiar with the effort.

Trump has asked his advisers about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe, according to one of those people. A second person said Trump’s lawyers have been discussing the president’s pardoning powers among themselves.

One adviser said the president has simply expressed a curiosity in understanding the reach of his pardoning authority, as well as the limits of Mueller’s investigation.

“This is not in the context of, ‘I can’t wait to pardon myself,’ ” a close adviser said.

With the Russia investigation continuing to widen, Trump’s lawyers are working to corral the probe and question the propriety of the special counsel’s work. They are actively compiling a list of Mueller’s alleged potential conflicts of interest, which they say could serve as a way to stymie his work, according to several of Trump’s legal advisers.

A conflict of interest is one of the possible grounds that can be cited by an attorney general to remove a special counsel from office under Justice Department regulations that set rules for the job.

Responding to this story on Friday after it was published late Thursday, one of Trump’s attorneys, John Dowd, said it was “not true” and “nonsense.”

“The President’s lawyers are cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller on behalf of the President,” he said.

Other advisers said the president is also irritated by the notion that Mueller’s probe could reach into his and his family’s finances.

Trump has been fuming about the probe in recent weeks as he has been informed about the legal questions that he and his family could face. His primary frustration centers on why allegations that his campaign coordinated with Russia should spread into scrutinizing many years of Trump dealmaking. He has told aides he was especially disturbed after learning Mueller would be able to access several years of his tax returns...

Still more, via Twitter.

ICYMI: H.G. Adler, Theresienstadt, 1941-1945

At Amazon, H.G. Adler, Theresienstadt, 1941-1945: The Face of a Coerced Community.

Nikolaus Wachsmann, KL

At Amazon, Nikolaus Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps.

Jeff Sessions Won't Resign

I've been ignoring the "breaking" New York Times coverage on Trump's Russia ties, including the big story that went live last night and was trending this morning, "In Interview, Trump Expresses Anger at Sessions and Comey, and Warns Mueller." (Safe link.)

Still, the news had some impact.

Here's this, at Politico, "Sessions won't resign for now, but gets Trump's message":

The president's decision to criticize his attorney general to the New York Times was intended to communicate his lingering fury over Sessions' recusal from the Russia probes, said people close to the president.

President Donald Trump’s broadside against Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a New York Times interview this week was no careless accident or slip of the tongue.

Instead, the president was sending a message, said a Trump adviser who talked with him after the interview — making a deliberate effort to convey his lingering displeasure with his attorney general, who recused himself in March from the federal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

“He didn’t just do that randomly,” the adviser said of the president. “There was a certain thinking behind it.”

Precisely what Trump expected Sessions to do in response remains unclear. Sessions said Thursday that he intends to remain in his position for the time being. “I plan to continue to do so as long as that is appropriate,” Sessions said at a Department of Justice news conference. “We’re serving right now. What we’re doing today is the kind of work that we intend to continue.”

One person close to Sessions said he has no interest in resigning, although he previously offered to do so in late May, following several outbursts by Trump over his recusal.

While the resignation attempt was previously reported, this person told POLITICO that Trump had demanded that Sessions submit a resignation letter. By the time Sessions did so the following day, Trump had cooled down and rejected the offer.

A spokeswoman for the attorney general and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the episode.

In the interview Wednesday with the Times, Trump suggested he would have picked someone else to run the Justice Department had he known Sessions was going to remove himself from oversight of the Russia probe, which has expanded to include contacts between Kremlin-connected operatives and Trump aides and family members...

More.

Jackie Johnson's Very Warm Forecast

Except for a bagel run, I was inside all day today. I walked five miles yesterday, though. I might do that again tomorrow or Saturday.

In any case, here's the lovely, sparkling Ms. Jackie. She's so full of life's happiness, filling out a little with the baby weight from her pregnancy.

Beautiful.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Ian Kershaw, Hitler

Following up from earlier, "Allan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny."

Here's Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris, and Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis.

As noted a couple of times, I'm waiting for Volker Ullrich's new biography to be out in paperback. See, at Amazon, Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939.

Deals in Television, Audio, and Accessories

At Amazon, Save on TV, Video, Audio.

BONUS: James D. Hornfischer, Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal.

Annika Mombauer, The Origins of the First World War

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Annika Mombauer, The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus.

Antonia Okafor: How I Became Racist, Sexist, Mysogynist (VIDEO)

These Prager University videos are getting better all the time.

This one is fantastic!

I'm only vaguely familiar with Antonia Okafor, but she is a smokin' patriot!

Danica Patrick on Singer Island (VIDEO)

She's lovely.

At Sports Illustrated Swimwuit:

Shelley Baranowski, Nazi Empire

This looks interesting, especially going from Bismarck until the end of World War II.

At Amazon, Shelley Baranowski, Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler.

Victoria's Secret Model Martha Hunt

At London's Daily Mail, "White hot! Martha Hunt sizzles as she flaunts her fabulous figure in skimpy bikini on the beach as she poses for Victoria's Secret photo shoot," and "Fighting fit! Martha Hunt shows off her martial arts prowess with an impressive kick on stunning Victoria's Secret photoshoot at Coney Island."

Also, at Drunken Stepfather, "MARTHA HUNT’S ON SET PANTY FLASH OF THE DAY."

Andrew Hartman, War for the Soul of America

Following-up from my previous entry, "Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization."

I've been meaning to pick up a copy of this book for the longest time.

See Andrew Hartman, A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars.

When Patrick Buchanan took the stage at the Republican National Convention in 1992 and proclaimed, “There is a religious war going on for the soul of our country,” his audience knew what he was talking about: the culture wars, which had raged throughout the previous decade and would continue until the century’s end, pitting conservative and religious Americans against their liberal, secular fellow citizens. It was an era marked by polarization and posturing fueled by deep-rooted anger and insecurity.

Buchanan’s fiery speech marked a high point in the culture wars, but as Andrew Hartman shows in this richly analytical history, their roots lay farther back, in the tumult of the 1960s—and their significance is much greater than generally assumed. Far more than a mere sideshow or shouting match, the culture wars, Hartman argues, were the very public face of America’s struggle over the unprecedented social changes of the period, as the cluster of social norms that had long governed American life began to give way to a new openness to different ideas, identities, and articulations of what it meant to be an American. The hot-button issues like abortion, affirmative action, art, censorship, feminism, and homosexuality that dominated politics in the period were symptoms of the larger struggle, as conservative Americans slowly began to acknowledge—if initially through rejection—many fundamental transformations of American life.

As an ever-more partisan but also an ever-more diverse and accepting America continues to find its way in a changing world, A War for the Soul of America reminds us of how we got here, and what all the shouting has really been about.

Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West

Old Pat was decades ahead of his time, lol.

This book came out 15 years ago, but looks more prescient today than ever.

At Amazon, Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization.

Michelle Malkin, Who Built That

Following-up, "Manufacturing Hate for 'Made in America'."

Michelle knows whereof she speaks.

Check out her book, at Amazon, Michelle Malkin, Who Built That: Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs.

Manufacturing Hate for 'Made in America'

From Michelle Malkin:

It’s “Made In America” week in Washington, D.C. You’d think this would be cause for bipartisan celebration. Who could be against highlighting the ingenuity, self-reliance and success of our nation’s homegrown entrepreneurs and manufacturers?

Enter Bill Kristol.

The entrenched Beltway pundit ridiculed a festive kickoff event on Monday at the White House, where President Donald Trump hosted companies from all 50 states to showcased their American-made products.

“Maybe it’s just me,” killjoy Kristol tweeted, “but I find something off-putting about turning the White House into an exhibition hall for American tchotchkes.” (That’s the Yiddish word for useless trinkets).

“Tchotchkes”?

Tell that to the engineers at Hytrol, the Arkansas-based conveyor manufacturer that brought a mechanical display of its technology to the State Dining Room. Hytrol’s late founder, Tom Loberg, started out as a gopher at an electronics parts factory during the Great Depression, worked his way up to designing Navy turbines, hydraulic pumps and cylinders, and entered the conveyor belt business after perfecting bag-transporting machinery for seed, grain and tobacco farmers.

Hytrol’s state-of-the-art products are now used by companies ranging from Amazon.com to Office Depot to leading pharmaceutical, retail, food and publishing conglomerates around the world. A pioneer in the materials handling industry, Hytrol employs 1,300 high-skilled workers and will rake in revenues of more than $200 million this year alone.

“Tchotchkes”?

Tell that to the employees of Wisconsin’s Pierce Manufacturing, which displayed one of its 30,000 custom-built fire trucks on the White House front lawn. Pierce started out as an auto body shop operating out of a converted church and now boasts a 2,000-person workforce. The company produces the iconic aerial tillers, pumpers, tankers and rescue trucks driven by first responders across the country every day.

“Tchotchkes”?

Tell that to Iowa-based RMA Armament’s founder Blake Waldrop, a former Marine and police officer, who was inspired to manufacture stronger body armor after losing a comrade in Iraq to an IED attack. His ceramic plates, also featured at the “Made in America” event on Monday, have been purchased by police departments in Baltimore, Los Angeles and Waterloo, Iowa. Waldrop is working on partnerships to bring his products to the U.S. military and overseas.

“I always tell people I didn’t invent armor any more than Steve Jobs invented the computer,” Waldrop told the Des Moines Register earlier this year. “I just found a better way to do it, just like he did.”

“Tchotchkes”?

Delaware’s ILC Dover participated in President Trump’s “Made in America” exhibition, too. Its trademark trifling bauble? The space suit worn by every U.S. astronaut since Project Apollo. Prolific inventor-turned-industrialist Abram Spanel, a Russian-born son of Jewish garment workers, spun off the company from his giant latex conglomerate that manufactured everything from girdles and swimwear to canteens and lifeboats.

ILC Dover produced high-pressure suits and helmets for the Air Force before winning a contract to design suits for NASA. In addition to displaying spacesuits used on the Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs, the company brought to the White House its DoverPac Flexible Isolator System used by pharmaceutical companies in their manufacturing processes; its Sentinel respirator used in the health care industry; and its SCape escape respirator used to protect U.S. government officials around the world from carbon monoxide, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear contaminants.

It’s a crying shame D.C. is infested with effete talking heads whose only successfully manufactured product is condescending hostility toward the real movers and shakers in America. Patriotism is gauche and “off-putting” to incurable Trump-bashers like Bill Kristol, who supported Hillary Clinton and her foreign-subsidized pay-to-play cash machine over Donald Trump’s unapologetic nationalism.

Could Trump and his family’s own companies do better in hiring American and manufacturing in America? Sure.

Could the White House be doing more to freeze foreign worker visas at both ends of the wage scale and truly put A
merican workers first? Undeniably.

But to nastily deride the makers and job creators proudly showing off their wares in the nation’s capital at the invitation of our commander in chief takes a special level of anti-Trump lunacy and arrogance...

Allan Bullock, Hitler

I found this while out shopping.

I love the little pocket paperback books, especially of the classics. They're so easy to carry around and light in your hands.

Also at Amazon, Allan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny.

ICYMI: MacKinlay Kantor, Andersonville

At Amazon, MacKinlay Kantor, Andersonville.

Literally Unhinged Mother in Paterson, New Jersey, Arrested After Smashing Car Windows with Children Inside (VIDEO)

I'm watching the video, on Twitter, thinking wtf?!! I would've been out of that car in a second smashing that crazy woman with anything I could get my hands on!

She's literally about to kill someone, dang.

Turns out it was a domestic dispute, and the children's father, who was inside as well, called the police.

At the Bergen County Record, "Paterson mom charged with taking hammer to car with kids inside."

'Dunkirk' – Christopher Nolan's Best Film So Far (VIDEO)

The "Dunkirk" world premiere was July 13th, at Odeon Leicester Square in London. The film opens to general release in both Britain and the U.S. on Friday. I've been eagerly waiting for this flick since I first saw snippets over a year ago. As readers know, these big historical World War II epics are my favorite. And apparently, this one does not disappoint.

There'll be more movie reviews out over the next few days, but I saw this very impressive one at the Guardian (of all places) a couple of nights ago.

See, "Dunkirk review – Christopher Nolan's apocalyptic war epic is his best film so far":

Britain’s great pyrrhic defeat or inverse victory of 1940 has been brought to the screen as a terrifying, shattering spectacle by Christopher Nolan. He plunges you into the chaotic evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from northern France after the catastrophic battle of Dunkirk – helped by the now legendary flotilla of small civilian craft. It is part disaster movie, part compressed war epic, and all horribly appropriate for these Brexit times.

Nolan’s Dunkirk has that kind of blazing big-screen certainty that I last saw in James Cameron’s Titanic or Paul Greengrass’s United 93. It is very different to his previous feature, the bafflingly overhyped sci-fi convolution Interstellar. This is a powerful, superbly crafted film with a story to tell, avoiding war porn in favour of something desolate and apocalyptic, a beachscape of shame, littered with soldiers zombified with defeat, a grimly male world with hardly any women on screen.

It is Nolan’s best film so far. It also has Hans Zimmer’s best musical score: an eerie, keening, groaning accompaniment to a nightmare, switching finally to quasi-Elgar variations for the deliverance itself. Zimmer creates a continuous pantonal lament, which imitates the dive bomber scream and queasy turning of the tides, and it works in counterpoint to the deafening artillery and machine-gun fire that pretty much took the fillings out of my teeth and sent them in a shrapnel fusillade all over the cinema auditorium...

Keep reading.

Elite Model Fashion Model Ronja Furrer

She's on Instagram.

And at Drunken Stepfather, "RONJA FURRER IS SOME MODEL OF THE DAY."

More here, "Ronja Furrer is a Beach Bombshell for Harper’s Bazaar Czech":

Ronja Furrer turns up the heat in the August 2017 issue of Harper’s Bazaar Czech. Photographed by Andreas Ortner, the brunette poses in sexy swimsuit looks for the fashion editorial. Stylist Hannah Goddes chooses one-piece styles and bikinis for Ronja to wear at Germany’s Sylt beach. The model wears designs from the likes of Triangl, La Perla and Calvin Klein.

Arrived Yesterday: Omar El Akkad, American War

Okay, I started reading this yesterday and it's good.

At Amazon, Omar El Akkad, American War.

I'm not making any big recommendations yet. Let me finish the whole thing and put it in context. I will note that I bought a used copy through Amazon (even less expensive), and the previous owner was a member of the Book of the Month Club, heh. Seems weird the club's still going. The L.A. Times wrote about it last year, "It's not your grandma's Book of the Month Club."

In any case, thanks for shopping through my Amazon links. I'm going to try to read for a while before I get sucked back into the time maw of blogging and social media, lol.

Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies

*BUMPED.*

Here's something new and interesting.

At Amazon, Angela Nagle, Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right.

Richard Overy, The Twilight Years

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Richard Overy, The Twilight Years: The Paradox of Britain Between the Wars.

Book Review: Sharyl Attkisson, The Smear

At Black Five, "Sharyl Attkisson, The Smear."

And at Amazon, The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote.

The 'Intersectionality' Trap

From Noah Rothman, at Commentary Magazine (via RCP):

Happy birthday to the revolutionary #AssataShakur! Today's #SignOfResistance, in Assata's honor, is by @Meloniousfunk. pic.twitter.com/V66au1dRnl

— Women's March (@womensmarch) July 16, 2017

Republicans didn’t always scoff dismissively at the self-destructive, reactionary, fractious collection of malcontents who call themselves The Resistance. The hundreds of thousands who marched in the streets following Donald Trump’s election once honestly unnerved the GOP. This grassroots energy culminated in January’s Women’s March, a multi-day event in which nearly two million people mobilized peacefully and, most importantly, sympathetically in opposition to the president. It was the perfect antidote to the violent anti-Trump demonstrations that typified Inauguration Day, and it might have formed the nucleus of a politically potent movement. The fall of the Women’s March exposes the blight weakening the left and crippling the Democratic Party.

The fever sapping Trump’s opposition was evident in microcosm on Monday in the meltdown of the Women’s March’s social-media presence on Twitter. “Happy birthday to the revolutionary #AssataShakur,” the organization wrote, dedicating the day’s resistance-related activities in her “honor.” Shakur is perhaps better known as Joanne Chesimard, the name that appeared on the court documents in connection with her being tried and convicted of eight felonies, including the execution-style murder of a New Jersey State Trooper. She currently resides in communist Cuba, a fugitive from American justice.

The outrage that followed the Women’s March’s endorsement of a cop-killer, exile, and unrepentant black nationalist was such that the organization was compelled to explain itself. “[T]his is not to say that #AssataShakur has never committed a crime, and not to endorse all of her actions,” the group flailed. “We say this to demonstrate the ongoing history of government [and] right-wing attempts to criminalize and discredit political activists.” This fanatical display of befuddlement perfectly encapsulates the logic of “intersectionality.” It demonstrates why this vogue ideology shackles its devotees to doomed causes and sinking ships.

“Intersectionality,” the beast born in liberal hothouses on college campuses, slouches now toward the halls of power. It is a Marxist notion that all discrimination is linked because it is rooted in the unjust power structures that facilitate inequality. Therefore, there are no distinct struggles against prejudice. Class, race, gender, sexual identity; these and other signifiers are bound together by the fact that oppression is institutional and systemic. The problem with this ideology is it compels its adherents to abandon discretion. To sacrifice anyone with a claim to oppression is to forsake every victim of prejudice. So, sure, Assata Shakur robbed, assaulted, incited violence, and killed a cop. But she also hates capitalism and white supremacy. Therefore, she’s one of us.

It is this logic that has rendered the “Sister Souljah moment” a relic of the past, and The Resistance is drowning in Sister Souljahs.

One of the March organizers, Linda Sarsour, has enjoyed newfound popularity and legitimacy in the age of Trump...

Keep reading.

Also at Twitchy, "Some big names in politics, media wondering who’ll condemn Women’s March’s praise of Assata Shakur; Updated."

Comic Book Retailers Sour on Comic-Con

I've never been.

This is interesting, though.

At LAT, "At Comic-Con, a major comics seller defects while new Hollywood stars arrive to dazzle fans":

Wielding sharpies, foam swords and protective tubes to guard the exclusive treasures they hope to find, more than a hundred thousand pop culture and comics aficionados are about to descend on the city of San Diego for Comic-Con International, the annual gathering for all things geek.

But for some longtime fans and retailers, a tipping point has been reached in the profitable but uneasy alliance between the comic-book world and Hollywood.

For the first time in 44 years, retailer Mile High Comics will be skipping the convention. Considered the country’s largest comic-book dealer, Mile High regularly brought 100,000 comics to sell on the convention hall floor.

“San Diego has grown far beyond its original premise,” wrote Chuck Rozanski, founder and president of the Colorado-based Mile High Comics, on the retailer’s website, “morphing from what was originally a wonderful annual gathering of the comics world, into a world-renowned pop culture and media festival.”

It’s no secret that Comic-Con went Hollywood years ago, but with each new convention it’s harder for independent comics retailers to make an impression, especially when they not only have to compete with major studio presentations in the famed Hall H and displays from DC and Marvel that dominate the convention floor, but with a growing number of attractions outside Comic-Con, available to anyone who happens to be in the area.

Offering tributes of buttons, T-shirts and manicures, the entire Gaslamp Quarter will transform into a geek metropolis. NBC’s new series “Midnight, Texas” will offer free food and tarot card readings at a local restaurant, coffee drinks will be renamed “White Walker Mochas” and the Syfy channel will legally marry superfans in a makeshift chapel with the help of officiant Orlando Jones from “American Gods.”

“As a businessman, I can tell you that the fact that the city of San Diego is allowing dozens of [attractions] around the venue is contributing to a decline in traffic in that main hall,” Rozanski told The Times. “The off-site traffic is good for fans because it enhances the experience. But when you have HBO putting their ‘Game of Thrones’ experience across from the convention center, that acts as a real magnet. As an exhibitor, when you’re paying $18,000 [for a spot on the convention floor] you don’t want to see your customers leave for across the street.”

The hard truth is that many of those potential customers would rather see their favorite stars than shop for comic books. As the masses sweep in, so do the winds of change for the annual convention...

I guess it really used to be about comic books. Now it's about Hollywood movies about comic books.

But keep reading.

Beautiful Tessa Fowler

Seen on Twitter.

Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig, Decisions for War

At Amazon, Richard F. Hamilton and Holger H. Herwig, Decisions for War, 1914-1917.

Terence Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Terence Zuber, Inventing the Schlieffen Plan: German War Planning, 1871-1914.

Once Started, Government Programs Are Hard to Kill

That's why you've got to crush these things before they become law.

Once you get a benefit, some constituencies will oppose reform, or elimination. ObamaCare is a disastrous law, but it helped some people while hurting a majority. Those who it helped are barking loudly, and could prove a key vote bloc in some states. Hence, a number of GOP senators are resisting repeal and replace.

It's a nightmare.

A good piece, at NYT, via Memeorandum, "Old Truth Trips Up G.O.P. on Health Law: A Benefit Is Hard to Retract."

Boyle Heights Coffee Shop Targeted by 'Anti-Gentrification' Activists

It's a small minority in the community, and they're going to hurt the neighborhood if successful.

This is really bad.

At the Los Angeles Times, "A community in flux: Will Boyle Heights be ruined by one coffee shop?":

As dusk settled over a mostly industrial landscape of warehouses covered with graffiti murals, Fernando Ramirez stood in front of the lone art gallery late Saturday afternoon and urged fashionably dressed visitors not to go inside.

“Don’t contribute to the displacement of the people in the community right here in Boyle Heights. Our rents are going up because of the art galleries,” he said. “Please do not cross the picket line!”

Ramirez, 38, had come to this desolate stretch of Boyle Heights with other protesters to once again declare war against a growing number of neighborhood art galleries and what he and other activists fear they foreshadow: a wave of gentrification.

On Sunday, a few miles east, a smaller group of protesters gathered outside a white storefront on Cesar Chavez Avenue with the word “COFFEE” painted in black.

Months after the activists won an apparent victory by pressuring an art gallery to close down amid what the owners called “constant attacks,” the protests against the galleries — and now Weird Wave Coffee — have illustrated both the demonstrators’ knack for annoying their targets as well as the limits of their tactics.

Along the gray desolation of Anderson Street, they have contended with sometimes well-financed galleries that can largely weather the disruptions. And on the busy stretch of Boyle Heights that houses Weird Wave Coffee, they have confronted residents who don’t take kindly to being told what to do or buy.

Anti-gentrification forces spent weeks trolling the coffee house on Instagram before and after it opened June 15. They held protest rallies outside the business, holding posters, including one that read “… White Coffee” and included an expletive, and another that said “AmeriKKKano to go.” They passed out fliers with a parody logo that read “White Wave.”

Some Latino residents who defended Weird Wave Coffee said they were called “coconuts” by activists. Brown on the outside, white on the inside.

“It makes us look bad,” Koda Torres said of the confrontational tactics used against the cafe. “The way they handle the situation of gentrification wasn’t appropriate. They were almost vandalizing their windows, harassing the customers, calling people sellouts and racists.”

But for the protesters, the stakes are too high for niceties. As they see it, if Boyle Heights is taken over by the forces of gentrification, then no other neighborhood is safe.

“It’s a threat to local businesses and it’s one more sign of gentrification that we need to defeat,” Leonardo Vilchis, director of Union de Vecinos, said of Weird Wave Coffee. “Otherwise this neighborhood is going to end up just like Highland Park.”

Early on in the battle against the galleries, protesters stormed into shows and threw detergent on patrons as well as the food they were being served, according to witnesses and news reports. The Los Angeles Police Department investigated the graffiti of one gallery that included an expletive and said “… White Art.”

The Eastside has long been a center of Los Angeles’ protest movements, whether it was residents marching against the Vietnam War in the 1970s or more recently demonstrating for immigrant rights.

But the activists who have fought against gentrification have so far failed to rally a large number of residents to their cause.

Some longtime residents like the rising property values and increased retail choices. Others are concerned about people being pushed out of the neighborhood. They also struggle to connect the dots, like the activists, between widespread gentrification and a cafe or art galleries in an isolated part of Boyle Heights.

“I don’t know the word ‘gentrification,’” said Nancy Garcia, 31, a Boyle Heights resident. “I know the word ‘displacement.’”

About 100 people, including Garcia, showed up at a separate rally activists organized last month at Mariachi Plaza to support mariachis and other tenants facing eviction from homes that will be converted into luxury apartments. The atmosphere was spirited but peaceful, with musicians playing in the background...

More.

I guess one consolation is that these protests pit leftists against leftists, heh.

(Overall, though, I just see "anti-gentrification" as anti-progress. You've got bad people who want to bring down everybody else, rather than lift everyone up. Resist them).

Eloy Ortiz Oakley, California Community College Chancellor, Calls for End to Algebra Requirement for Non-STEM Majors

I know Eloy Oakley. Rather well, in fact. He was my college president for about a decade, then took the state chancellor's job last year.

Algebra is a huge hurdle. I suspect it's only a matter of time before the requirement's eliminated. Indeed, it's only a matter of time until GE math education is eliminated. That's the way it's going nowadays. Fewer and fewer difficult requirements (like being able to read and write at college level), and thus more assembly-line degrees delivered. Students literally can't pass basic critical thinking essay exams in my classes, but my teaching's an outlier. I don't care about getting great student evaluations. I'm not worried about being popular. My job's not on the line. I don't check "Rate My Professors." I just teach a rigorous curriculum and maintain high standards. Is that too much to ask? Apparently so, nowadays. You wouldn't believe how much push-back I get from all the "progressive" administrators, who will turn any issue or conflict into a civil rights case, almost always to the benefit of the student.

No wonder new teachers quit the profession after two years. It's so much hassle these days.

In any case, at the L.A. Times, "Drop algebra requirement for non-STEM majors, California community colleges chief says":

The chancellor of the California Community Colleges system says intermediate algebra should no longer be required to earn an associate degree — unless students are in the fields of science, technology, engineering or math.

Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley, who heads the nation’s largest community college system of 114 campuses, told The Times that intermediate algebra is seen as a major barrier for students of color, preventing too many from completing degrees. About three-fourths of those who transfer to four-year universities are non-STEM majors, he said, who should be able to demonstrate quantitative reasoning skills by taking statistics or other math courses more applicable to their fields.

“College-level algebra is probably the greatest barrier for students — particularly first-generation students, students of color — obtaining a credential,” he said. “If we know we're disadvantaging large swaths of students who we need in the workforce, we have to question why. And is algebra really the only means we have to determine whether a student is going to be successful in their life?

“I think there's a growing body of evidence and advocates that say 'no' — that there are more relevant, just as rigorous, math pathways that we feel students should have the ability to take,” he said.

Debate over algebra requirements has escalated in recent years. Failure to complete intermediate algebra has kept tens of thousands of California community college students in limbo each year, sparking contentious criticism of the one-size-fits-all math requirement in the state and much of the nation.

California State University administrators have been open to exploring alternative math pathways; they are consulting with faculty to determine which disciplines need to continue requiring intermediate algebra and which could be more flexible.

Oakley made the comments in an interview about a report released Monday that sets ambitious goals to improve student success.

The report by the Foundation for California Community Colleges noted that the state will need 1.1 million more workers with bachelor’s degrees by 2030 — but that only 48% of the system’s students earned a certificate or associate degree or transferred to a four-year university within six years.

“This anemic completion rate is a troubling sign for the overall health of California’s higher education and workforce development system,” the report said...

More.

Technological Change and the Future of Nuclear Deterrence

Here's a change of pace for you, some strategic deterrence theory.

From Keir A. Lieber, and Daryl G. Press, at International Security, "The New Era of Counterforce: Technological Change and the Future of Nuclear Deterrence" (also in PDF):

Nuclear deterrence is based on the threat of retaliation. A nuclear arsenal designed for deterrence must, therefore, be able to survive an enemy first strike and still inflict unacceptable damage on the attacker. For most of the nuclear age, the survivability of retaliatory forces seemed straightforward; “counterforce” attacks—those aimed at disarming the enemy's nuclear forces—appeared impossible because the superpower arsenals were large and dispersed, and were considered easy to hide and protect. Today, analysts tend to worry more about the dangers of nuclear terrorism or accidents than the survivability of retaliatory arsenals. Nuclear deterrence appears robust.

Changes in technology, however, are eroding the foundation of nuclear deterrence. Rooted in the computer revolution, these advances are making nuclear forces around the world far more vulnerable than before. In fact, one of the principal strategies that countries employ to protect their arsenals from destruction, hardening, has already been largely negated by leaps in the accuracy of nuclear delivery systems. A second pillar of survivability, concealment, is being eroded by the revolution in remote sensing. The consequences of pinpoint accuracy and new sensing technologies are numerous, synergistic, and in some cases nonintuitive. Taken together, these developments are making the task of securing nuclear arsenals against attack much more challenging.

To be clear, nuclear arsenals around the world are not becoming equally vulnerable to attack. Countries that have considerable resources can buck these trends and keep their forces survivable, albeit with considerable cost and effort. Other countries, however—especially those facing wealthy, technologically advanced adversaries—will find it increasingly difficult to secure their arsenals, as guidance systems, sensors, data processing, communication, artificial intelligence, and a host of other products of the computer revolution continue to improve.

The growing vulnerability of nuclear forces sheds light on an enduring theoretical puzzle of the nuclear age. According to one of the leading theories of geopolitics in the nuclear era, the “theory of the nuclear revolution,” nuclear weapons are the ultimate instruments of deterrence, protecting those who possess them from invasion or other major attacks. Yet, if the theory is correct—that is, if nuclear weapons solve countries' most fundamental security problems—why do nuclear-armed countries continue to perceive serious threats from abroad and engage in intense security competition? Why have the great powers of the nuclear era behaved in many ways like their predecessors from previous centuries: by building alliances, engaging in arms races, competing for relative gains, and seeking to control strategic territory—none of which should matter much if nuclear weapons guarantee one's security? Although proponents of the theory of the nuclear revolution acknowledge this anomalous behavior, they attribute it to misguided leaders, bureaucratic pathologies, or dysfunctional domestic politics, not flaws in the theory itself.

Our analysis offers a simpler explanation for the disjuncture between the theory of the nuclear revolution's predictions and the foreign policy behavior of states: geopolitical rivalry remains logical in the nuclear age because stalemate is reversible. For nuclear weapons to revolutionize international politics—that is, to render countries fundamentally secure—the condition of stalemate must be enduring. Arsenals that are survivable today, however, can become vulnerable in the future. Nuclear-armed states thus have good reason to engage in intense competition, even if their own arsenals are currently secure. Stated differently, nuclear weapons are the best tools of deterrence ever created, but the possibility of acquiring disarming strike capabilities—and the fear that an opponent might do the same—explains why nuclear weapons have not transformed international politics.

The increasing vulnerability of nuclear forces also has several implications for nuclear policy. First, if nuclear forces are becoming easier to attack, then all else being equal, nuclear-armed states need to deploy more capable retaliatory arsenals to counter the growing risks. Whether one believes that a deterrent force must present potential attackers with “near-certain retaliation,” “likely retaliation,” or some other level of risk, improvements in counterforce systems require that retaliatory forces adapt—through better capabilities, increased numbers, or both—to maintain the same level of deterrent threat. Furthermore, the rapid rate of change in counterforce technologies increases uncertainty about adversaries' future capabilities, suggesting that countries will need to retain diverse retaliatory forces as a hedge against adversary breakthroughs.

Second, the increasing vulnerability of nuclear arsenals raises questions about the wisdom of future nuclear arms reductions. For decades, engineers have toiled to improve weapons accuracy and remote sensing capabilities. Meanwhile, arms negotiators have devised agreements to reduce nuclear arsenals, with the consequence of reducing the number of targets an attacker must destroy in a disarming strike. Either endeavor—improving weapons or cutting stockpiles—can be defended as a policy for promoting strategic stability, but taken together they are creating underrecognized vulnerabilities. The danger of nuclear arms cuts is exacerbated by improvements in nonnuclear means of attacking nuclear forces: for example, through precision conventional strike, missile defense, anti-submarine warfare (ASW), and cyber operations.

Third, the emergence of a new era of counterforce raises the question of whether it is wise, for the United States in particular, to continue improving nuclear and nonnuclear counterforce capabilities. On the one hand, improved counterforce capabilities could be invaluable in a range of plausible scenarios. Improved offensive capabilities could help the United States deter weak countries from initiating conventional conflicts or from escalating in the midst of war. Enhanced counterforce capabilities could also help protect U.S. forces, allies, and the U.S. homeland from nuclear attack if a conventional war did escalate. On the other hand, better counterforce could be a source of danger: not only might improved disarming strike capabilities—in any country's hands— increase the temptation to attack, but also potential victims of disarming strikes will seek to escape their vulnerability, thereby possibly triggering arms racing and incentives to strike preemptively.

Both views may be correct. The net benefit of decisions to enhance counterforce capabilities will therefore depend on the particular case. For countries that perceive a highly malign threat environment, face aggressive nuclear-armed adversaries, or have ambitious foreign policy goals, the benefits of developing advanced counterforce capabilities may outweigh the costs. For those countries that face a benign environment and have more modest goals, however, the secondary costs of enhancing counterforce may be too great. In any case, these contentious issues have not received sufficient attention; analysts and policymakers have largely overlooked the ways that rapidly changing technologies are eroding the foundation of deterrence.

The remainder of this article is organized as follows. We first discuss the key role that arsenal survivability plays in nuclear deterrence theory. Second, we describe the main strategies that planners employ to ensure arsenal survivability in practice. Next, we explore one of the major technological trends eroding survivability, the great leap in weapons accuracy, and illustrate how improved accuracy creates new possibilities for counterforce strikes. We then focus on the second major trend, dramatic improvements in remote sensing, and how the resulting increase in transparency threatens concealed and mobile nuclear forces. We conclude with a summary of our findings and their implications for international politics and U.S. national security.

Nuclear Survivability in Theory

At its core, nuclear deterrence theory rests on two simple propositions. First, countries will not attack their adversaries if they expect the costs to exceed the benefits. Second, nuclear weapons allow countries, even relatively weak ones, to inflict unprecedented levels of damage on those who attack them. Taken together, these propositions suggest that nuclear weapons are the ultimate instruments of deterrence: no conceivable benefit of attacking a nuclear-armed state could be worth the cost of getting hit with nuclear weapons in retaliation. As long as nuclear arsenals are survivable, that is, able to withstand an enemy's first strike and retaliate, nuclear weapons are a tremendous force for peace.

The theory of the nuclear revolution builds on the logic of deterrence theory and extends its implications. Because nuclear weapons make countries fundamentally secure, countries can escape the most pernicious consequences of anarchy. According to the theory of the nuclear revolution, once countries deploy survivable arsenals they no longer need to fear conquest. As a result, they can stop worrying about the relative balance of power; engaging in arms races; or competing for alliance partners and strategic territory.

Proponents of the theory of the nuclear revolution have always recognized the discrepancy between their theory's predictions and the actual behavior of countries in the nuclear era. The Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, in particular, is filled with empirical anomalies: extensive arms racing, intense concerns about relative power gains and losses, and competition for allies and control of strategic territory—all occurring at a time when the main adversaries appeared to be invulnerable to disarming strikes. World War III was averted, as nuclear deterrence theory would predict, but the transformation of international politics that advocates of the theory of the nuclear revolution anticipated never materialized. Today, nuclear powers still eye each other's economic power and military capabilities warily; strive for superiority over their adversaries in conventional and nuclear armaments; aim to control strategically relevant areas of land, air, sea, and space; seek to build and maintain alliances; and prepare for war.

The discrepancy between the theory of the nuclear revolution and the behavior of states stems from the theory's misplaced confidence in the survivability of nuclear arsenals.18 Proponents of the theory believe that nuclear weapons deployed in even moderate numbers are inherently survivable. Moreover, according to the argument, survivability is a one-way street: once a country deploys a survivable arsenal, it will remain that way. Yet, what if survivability is reversible?

If arsenal survivability depends on the uncertain course of technological change and the efforts of adversaries to develop new technologies, states will feel compelled to arms race to ensure that their deterrent forces remain survivable in the face of adversary advances. They will worry about relative gains, because a rich and powerful adversary will have more resources to invest in technology and military forces. They will value allies, which help contribute resources and valuable territory. Moreover, states may be enticed to develop their own counterforce capabilities in order to disarm their adversaries or limit the damage those adversaries can inflict in case of war. In short, if nuclear stalemate can be broken, one should expect countries to act as they always have when faced with military threats: by trying to exploit new technologies and strategies for destroying adversary capabilities. If arsenals have been more vulnerable than theorists assume, or if survivability and stalemate are reversible, then the central puzzle of the nuclear era—continued geopolitical competition—is no longer a puzzle.

We argue not only that stalemate is reversible in principal, but also that changes in technology occurring today are making all countries' arsenals less survivable than they were in the past. The fear of suffering devastating retaliation will still do much to deter counterforce attacks, but countries will increasingly worry that their adversaries are trying to escape stalemate, and they will feel pressure to do the same. Deterrence will weaken as arsenals become more vulnerable. In extreme circumstances—for example, if an adversary threatens escalation (or begins to escalate) during a conventional war—the temptation to launch a disarming strike may be powerful. In short, in stark contrast to the expectations of the theory of the nuclear revolution, security competition has not only endured, but also will intensify as enhanced counterforce capabilities proliferate...

More.

Emily Ratajkowski for Allure U.S. (August 2017)

At Editorials Fashion Trends, "EMILY RATAJKOWSKI."

She doesn't seem to be having career problems, actually, despite her complaints.

Allure star @emrata bares it all for our August issue! Read her revealing interview on sexuality & politics here: https://t.co/82t2XSPyN3 pic.twitter.com/bMdatuIBtN

— Allure (@Allure_magazine) July 18, 2017

Eniko Mihalik for Liu Magazine

Beautiful.

At Editorials Fashion Trends, "ENIKO MIHALIK BY DAVID BELLEMERE FOR LUI OCTOBER 2016."

She's also on Instagram, of course.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It's not Fyodor Dostoyevsky's birthday today. He was born November 11, 1821 (in Moscow), just four years after Jane Austen.

I have Crime and Punishment on the shelf next to my bed as well, but I've not read this one yet either. (I'm bad!)

Maybe soon.

Omar El Akkad's American War should arrive today (it was delayed in transit). I'm going to start that one right away, and then work on it simultaneously with Fritz Fischer's, Germany's Aims in the First World War, which is about half finished.

In past summers, I found myself staying up late, watching Jimmy Kimmel and perhaps "Nightline," and then binge watching "House of Cards" (last summer for that one).

But this summer I'm reading more, which I suspect is better. I don't think I've had as much a chance to do sustained reading since graduate school, and even then it was assigned reading, rather than where your whimsies take you.

I'm having fun. And that's what counts. YOLO!

Jane Austen's Birthday

I confess never reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, despite having a paperback copy on the shelf next to my bed. I had the best intentions years ago. As you know, I love classic books, and I make the effort to read highbrow literature. I've just never gotten around to this one, or any of her other books. Maybe soon.

In any case, shop this Amazon portal to her works. It's her birthday today. She would have turned 200, lol.

Hailey Clauson Wears Positively 'Smallest Bathing Suit' (VIDEO)

She's crazy hot, lol

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

The Age of Detesting Trump

A surprisingly good piece, from David Bromwich, at the London Review of Books:

President Trump, monster and scapegoat, is too rash in his overall demeanour, too uncalibrated in his words and gestures, too ill-adapted to the routines of politics to carry credit even when he is speaking common sense. The Democrats tossed his idea that better relations with Russia ‘would not be a bad thing’ into the general stew of his repulsive ideas on taxes and immigration, and Republicans ignored it as an indigestible ingredient. For now, as Senator Dianne Feinstein of the Senate Intelligence Committee has acknowledged, there is no evidence to support the view that his attitude to Russia is part of a conspiracy that implicates him in Russian hacking of the 2016 election. That there are links between Trump and his real-estate friends and the Russian oligarchs is extremely likely: oligarchs of all nations, but Russia in particular, are the movers in that market, and Trump’s credit on Wall Street ran out long ago. Russian money is probably behind some of his precarious loans; and the Russian government keeps track of Russian money. But the US media, and a great many Democrats with them, have been running far ahead of the game and treating the connection as a certainty which ought to assure the collapse of the Trump administration in the near future.

*****

The compulsion to convict Trump of something definite, something dire, even if not yet a criminal offence, reached a sort of climax on 25 June when an entire back page of the Times Sunday Week in Review was transformed into an enormous zero-shaped pattern entitled ‘Trump’s Lies’, under the byline of two reporters, David Leonhardt and Stuart A. Thompson. The dates of more than a hundred ‘lies’ were printed in boldface, the text of the lie in quotation marks and the correction in parenthesis. Most of the lies, however, were what anyone would call opportunistic half-truths, scattershot promises, changes of tack with a denial that any change had taken place and, above all, hyperbolic exaggerations. Trump uses words like ‘tremendous’ and numbers like ‘hundreds’ or ‘thousands’ in a way that evacuates them of all meaning, but this belongs to the category of rhetorical twisting and pulling in which all politicians indulge. His daft attempt to inflate the size of the crowd at his inaugural seemed an example of reality denial, but it becomes a lie, fairly so-called, when measured against his slander of those who conveyed the verifiable truth. Again, his statement that ‘we’re the highest-taxed nation’ was part of a spew, false and meant as a hyperbolic version of ‘our taxes are too high,’ a sort of statement that exacerbates (and panders to) the usual indifference to details among his followers: a bad thing in a president. But the Times article laid much stress on doubtful instances such as Trump saying that Obama had wiretapped him or that ‘the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election.’ He is mostly right, there, even if the word ‘fabricated’ is wrong; there had been no official notice about collusion until Comey’s announcement before the intelligence committee on 20 March; before that, it was a widespread rationalisation of defeat by the Democrats. And though the circumstantial links between Trump associates and Russia show that the story was not fabricated out of thin air, convincing evidence, to repeat, has not yet been made public.

‘Putin derangement syndrome’, as the Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi called it, has entered the culture with the irresistibility of a fast-spreading rash. The Late Show host Stephen Colbert went on a rehearsed rant directed at Trump, in which the element of self-parody vanished at a point somewhere before this sentence: ‘The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s cock holster.’ The stand-up comedian Kathy Griffin posed with a bloody severed head in the likeness of Trump. Until 18 June the Public Theater in New York was performing a version of Julius Caesar in which Caesar was made to look and gesticulate like Trump. Of course it trashed the play, since you render the hesitation of Brutus unintelligible if Caesar becomes the odious Trump-monster instead of the dim, weak, vain and vaguely blustering man a little past his prime that the text portrays. Obsession with Trump has become an excuse for almost any vulgarity. Also for testing the third rail of fame in the cause of experimental valour and affected rebellion: Johnny Depp, introducing his film The Libertine at Glastonbury Festival, asked the audience: ‘When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?’ We are already used to seeing these provocations followed a day or two later by an apology as insincere as it is ineffectual.

The best recourse of sanity to those who would rather defeat Trump than disgust his supporters may be simply to recall that he has at his back the massed weight and momentum of the Republican Party. It doesn’t much matter who is making use of whom: they are not about to part company, while the Democrats have to defend the shrinking redoubt of just 18 of 50 statehouses and a respectable but thoroughly confused minority in Congress. It is Republicans today who see themselves as makers of a revolution. The recent Democratic presidents, at some cost to the character of the party, espoused an ethic of moderation and trimming compromise. Doubtless the same predisposition played a large part in Obama’s decision to suppress what he knew of Russian interference before the 2016 election. Presumptive stability was a good thing in itself: why roil people’s temper with one more irritation? They need to believe that the system works – that was how he scored it. The assumption anyway was that Hillary would win; and fear of a rigged election was Trump’s issue.

Nothing now would better serve the maturity and the invigoration of the Democrats than to give up any hope of sound advice or renewal from Bill or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. They were pleasant to think about, but their politics have turned out wrong, and there’s nothing they can do for us now. Democrats have lost all four special elections since November; if Trump ran again tomorrow, there is a strong probability he would win. Michael Moore tweeted on 21 June, after the loss by Jon Ossoff, the latest Democratic hope, to a Republican opponent in Georgia: ‘DNC & DCCC [Democratic National Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] has NO idea how 2 win cause they have no message, no plan, no leaders.’ An exclusive concern with the Russia connection may suggest that Trump is faltering now and shaken, but on 26 June the Supreme Court temporarily upheld his revised ‘Muslim ban’, a 90-day suspension of travel from six Arab countries, along with a 120-day ban on all refugees, except in cases where the applicant has a bona fide relationship to someone in the US. The anti-Trump left and centre may hope for vindication when the court hears the case argued in autumn, but this in truth is a tactical victory for Trump: by the time it comes up again, the designated time of suspension may have passed; and the ban was only meant to stay in force while the government carries out a reappraisal of its vetting process. You may curse Putin and Comey and misogyny and Wisconsin, but Trump is marching through the departments and agencies with budget cuts and policy changes that will be felt for years to come. Trump is the name of a cause and not just a person, and you can only fight him with another cause...

Remembering JournoList and the Leftist Media's Bag of Tricks

From John Sexton, at Hot Air, "Remembering JournoList and Progressive Media’s Bag of Tricks":

A couple weeks ago I came across an old article about Journolist which I found striking. In particular, I was struck by the ways in which some of the debates taking place among left-leaning journalists back in 2008 still seem to encompass the ways the left-wing media operates today.

For those who don’t remember it, Journolist was just a listserv created by Ezra Klein. The list was invitation only and was mostly made up of progressive journalists. In theory, the list was a kind of digital water cooler where like-minded people could talk to others in the field. That may have been all it was much of the time, but when candidate Obama got in trouble in 2008, it also became a place for partisans to discuss a coordinated media strategy.

Author Jonathan Strong wrote this particular piece about the Journolist response to a crisis in the 2008 campaign. Rev. Jeremiah Wright, as you probably remember, was the pastor of the church Obama attended. He was the pastor who married Barack and Michelle and the person who inspired the title of Obama’s book: The Audacity of Hope. Wright was also a far-left crank who regularly denounced America. From ABC News, March 2008:

[VIDEO]

Obama would eventually denounce Wright and quit the church in June, but in the interim, it seemed possible the issue could seriously damage his campaign. Journolist members discussed various ways to respond to the Rev. Wright story. Michael Tomasky (now at the Daily Beast) wanted members of the list to “kill ABC” and thereby kill the story:

Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian, also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”

“Richard Kim got this right above: ‘a horrible glimpse of general election press strategy.’ He’s dead on,” Tomasky continued. “We need to throw chairs now, try as hard as we can to get the call next time. Otherwise the questions in October will be exactly like this. This is just a disease.”

Chris Hayes, then at the Nation and now an MSNBC host, gave an impassioned plea (which sounded a bit like Rev. Wright) suggesting people in the mainstream media simply refuse to cover the story at all...

Keep reading.

Heh. Good times, good times.

Santa Barbara Whittier Fire

It's up by Lake Cachuma. Been burning for well over a week now.

At the Santa Barbara Independent, "Whittier Fire Quiets Down Overnight: Crews Working to Contain Bear Creek Edge, State of Emergency Declared."

And at KEYT News 3 Santa Barbara, "State of Emergency and Local Emergency declared in Santa Barbara County," and "Whittier Fire burns 18,311 acres. Continued updates16 homes and 30 other structures destroyed."

Also, "AirTankers work to stop the spread of the Whittier Fire."

Video here, "LIVE CAM : Whittier Fire July 15, 2017."

The air-tankers used to fly overhead --- and I mean literally over the top of my head --- just about every summer when I was living up in Goleta, attending UCSB. Those dry mountains had wildfires every year, some catastrophic. There was always the threat that the fires would burn down the ocean-facing mountainside and wipe out the local foothill communities.