'Nothing Else Matters'

Metallica, from yesterday's drive-time, at 93.1 Jack FM.

By The Way
Red Hot Chili Peppers
8:36am

Just Like Heaven
The Cure
8:32am

Whatever It Takes
Imagine Dragons
8:21am

Bohemian Rhapsody
Queen
8:16am

Burning Down The House
Talking Heads
8:12am

You Oughta Know
Alanis Morissette
8:08am

Eye Of The Tiger
Survivor
8:04am

Little Red Corvette
Prince
7:51am

Nothing Else Matters
Metallica
7:46am

Don't Stop
Fleetwood Mac
7:43am

Come On Eileen
Dexys Midnight Runners
7:38am

Senate Majority Leader McConnell Promises Vote on Brett Kavanaugh Confirmation (VIDEO)

I'm really disgusted with all the Democrat maneuvering, especially last night's truly despicable hit piece at the New Yorker, at Memeorandum, "Senate Democrats Investigate a New Allegation of Sexual Misconduct, from Brett Kavanaugh's College Years."

Screw them. All of them. The disgusting liars and smear-merchants. I'm sick of this, gawd.

Here's McConnell's floor speech from earlier today, thank goodness:

Alexis Ren’s Killer Body Selfie

At Hollywood Tuna, "Alexis Ren is Influential."

And earlier, on Twitter:

pic.twitter.com/O0JHRJ1oqi

— Alexis Ren (@AlexisRenG) September 18, 2018

Lily Rose Depp of the Day

At Drunken Stepfather, "LILY ROSE DEPP HARD NIPPLES AND FAT ASS OF THE DAY."

Playboy Club New York Opens (VIDEO)

Something of a throwback, to say the least.

At the New York Post, "Playboy Club reopens in New York amid #MeToo movement," and at the Guardian U.K., "'Tone deaf' Playboy Club opens in New York, defying the #MeToo era."

Hannah Ferguson in Plastic

At Taxi Driver, "Hannah Ferguson in a Plastic Clear Bralette."

'The Middle'

From Tuesday morning's drive-time, at 93.1 JACK FM:

Times Like These
Foo Fighters
7:04am

Open Arms
Journey
7:00am

Love My Way
The Psychedelic Furs
6:50am

I Love Rock N' Roll
Joan Jett
6:47am

Hold The Line
Toto
6:40am

The Middle
Jimmy Eat World
6:37am

Stop Draggin' My Heart Around
Stevie Nicks
6:33am

Things Can Only Get Better
Howard Jones
6:21am

When You Were Young
The Killers
6:17am

Rocket Man
Elton John
6:13am

Shout
Tears For Fears
6:06am

BasketCase
Green Day
6:04am

Maneater
Hall & Oates
5:52am

Shopping Today

At Amazon, Today's Deals New deals. Every day. Shop our Deal of the Day, Lightning Deals and more daily deals and limited-time sales.

And especially, Nebula Mars Lite Portable Cinema, Home Theater with 150'' HD Picture, 300 ANSI Lumens, Two 10W Speakers, 3-Hour Playtime, 1-Second Autofocus, HDMI and USB Inputs, for Music and Movies (No Built-In OS).

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More, HP Colorwheel 15.6" Notebook, HD Touchscreen, Intel N3710 Quad-Core, 4GB DDR3, 1TB SATA, Intel HD Graphics, 802.11ac, Win10H - Natural Silver (Certified Refurbished).

Here, Dash Chef Series 64 oz Blender with Stainless Steel Blades + Digital Display for Coffee Drinks, Frozen Cocktails, Smoothies, Soup, Fondue & More - White.

Still more, MOSSY OAK 14-inch Bowie Knife Wood Handle with Leather Sheath.

Plus, Buck Knives 110 Famous Folding Hunter Knife with Genuine Leather Sheath - TOP SELLER.

More here, CLIF BAR - Energy Bar - Blueberry Crisp - (2.4 Ounce Protein Bar, 12 Count).

BONUS: Ann Coulter, Resistance is Futile!  How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind.

Cal State Long Beach Retires 'Prospector Pete' (VIDEO)

Now the California Gold Rush is racist and imperialist. Indigenous people were wiped out, or whatever.

Via CBS News 2 Los Angeles:



And at the school's Daily 49er newspaper, "President Conoley confirms retirement of Prospector Pete."

This is one of the least offensive "mascots" I've seen for any college in the country. Long Beach State's going psycho. (*Shrugs.*)

Mazie Hirono: Brett Kavanaugh Guilty Because of His 'Ideological Agenda' (VIDEO)

Everybody's tweeting about this, with disgust.

Inna Zaitseva Pictorial

At Editorials Fashions Trends, "Inna Zaitseva by Tanya Tanchoo (Erotic Editorials)."

Emily Ratajkowski in the Jungle (VIDEO)

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:



BONUS: "Emily Ratajkowski for Jonathan Leder's Limited Edition Photobook."

Shop Today

At Amazon, Today's Deals. New deals. Every day. Shop our Deal of the Day, Lightning Deals and more daily deals and limited-time sales.

And especially, 450ML Essential Oil Diffuser with 8 LED Color Changing Lamps, ZOOKKI Aromatherapy Diffuser for Essential Oils with 4 Timer Settings and Waterless Auto Shut-off Feature.

More, Biofinest 5-HTP 200mg - Griffonia Seed Extract - High Strength & Potency - Supplement for Weight Management, Mood Enhancement, Relax, Sleep Aid - Non-GMO.

Plus, Premium Horny Goat Weed Extract with Maca & Tribulus, Enhanced Energy Complex for Men & Women, 1000mg Epimedium with Icariins, Veggie Capsules.

And still more, MET-Rx High Protein Pancake Mix, Original Buttermilk, 4 lb, Instant Pancake Mix with Protein, Vitamins, and Minerals.

Here, REG-215 - Handmade Damascus Steel 14.00 Inches Bowie Knife - Exotic Wood Handle (Color/Case Vary).

Also, Pendleton Men's Long Sleeve Button Front Classic-Fit Trail Shirt.

And, Teton Sports Scout 3400 Internal Frame Backpack; High-Performance Backpack for Backpacking, Hiking, Camping; Sewn-in Rain Cover.

BONUS: Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.

Brutal Binaries of American Politics

Christina Hoff Sommers calls this a "dazzling analysis."

But I know. I know, it's Andrew Sullivan, our former practicing gynecologist from the 2008 presidential campaign.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day, they say.

So, let it be.

At New York Mag, "America, Land of Brutal Binaries":

The latest. https://t.co/qSCxQUzpNj

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) September 21, 2018

For homo sapiens, it is natural to see the world, as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks put it, as radically “divided into the unimpeachably good and the irredeemably bad.” It is much harder to see, as Solzhenitsyn did, even after he had been sent to the gulag by his ideological enemies, that good and evil run through every human heart.

And it’s this reflexive, reptilian sorting of in-group and out-group that has now been supercharged by social media, by Trump’s hideous identity politics, and by campus and corporate culture. There seem to be just two inalterable categories: the oppressors or the oppressed; elite globalists or decent “normal” people. You are in one camp or the other, and, as time passes, those of us who don’t fit into this rubric will become irrelevant to the discourse, if we haven’t already got there.

After a while, the crudest trigger points of tribalism — your race, your religion (or lack of it), your gender, your sexual orientation — dominate the public space. As Claire Lehmann, the founding editor of the refreshingly heterodox new website Quillette has put it, “the Woke Left has a moral hierarchy with white men at the bottom. The Alt-Right has a moral hierarchy that puts white men at the top.” The looming midterms will not be about health care or executive power or constitutional norms (although all these things will be at stake). They will primarily be about which tribe you are in, and these tribes are increasingly sorted racially and by gender. The parties are currently doing all they can to maximize these tribal conflicts as a way to seek power. This isn’t liberal democracy.

And in this fevered, fetid atmosphere, where the stakes are always sky-high, there are no constraints. Dox, harass, troll, lie, smear, mock, distort, harangue, and preferably ruin: those are the tools of the alt-right just as much as they are the tools of the woke left. In such a civil war, the idea that the Supreme Court could ever perform the role it was designed to — interpret the law in a non-tribal way — is laughable. Indeed, the notion of a filibuster becomes moot, because it requires some sort of common ground between senators, and this is regarded by both sides as complicity in evil. Even a private, confidential hearing for accuser and accused is now, according to Senator Gillibrand, equivalent to silencing the accuser. I lean toward believing Christine Blasey Ford, as I believed Anita Hill and Juanita Broaddrick and Paula Jones, but I cannot know about something that happened 36 years ago. So I favor an FBI investigation and see no reason to rush a confirmation vote. But offering someone a chance to provide testimony in a private session wherever she chooses is not “silencing” her. Senator Hirono has gone further and told half the citizenry to “shut up” solely because they are male...

Keep reading.

Catherine Rampell on 'Real Time with Bill Maher' (VIDEO)

Here's an interesting panel, from last night, but Ms. Catherine alone would be worth watching.

Believe Him

From Katie Pavich, at Town Hall:

Believe Him https://t.co/6512Qj3id5

— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) September 21, 2018

In the era of the #MeToo movement, we are expected to automatically believe claims made by women about sexual abuse. Anyone who dares to ask simple questions about the situation, like who, what, when, where, why and how, is automatically characterized as “doubting the story of a survivor.”

Sexual assault is one of the most sensitive areas of criminal misconduct in American society. Allegations of sexual assault are very serious for all parties involved and they should be treated as such. Women who are victimized should be taken seriously as they seek justice. Men who are accused of sexual misconduct have the right to face their accusers, in addition to being presumed innocent until proven guilty.

While the majority of women who make sexual abuse allegations tell the truth, ugly history of high profile cases show some don’t.

In March of 2006, Crystal Mangum accused white members of the Duke lacrosse team of gang raping her at a party. Before any evidence was provided to a court or to the public, the lives of the players were turned upside down. Their season was cancelled, the coach resigned, Duke faculty upheld the players as examples of racism in America and the New York Times smeared the players on a national level. The players were deemed guilty from the beginning.

When DNA evidence from all 46 eligible members of the team came back as negative, over zealous District Attorney Mike Nifong pressed on. Three young men, Collin Finnerty, David Evans, and Reade Seligmann, were arrested and charged.

“These allegations are lies. Fabricated and they will be proven wrong,” Evans, who served as team captain, said at the time.

Eventually the case fell apart and the charges were dropped. The players were declared innocent, just as they had argued and the evidence proved all along. Their reputations, however, were tarnished forever. Years later, Mangum was found guilty of murdering her boyfriend.

In 2014 Columbia University student Emma Sulkowitz claimed fellow student Paul Nungesser violently raped her...

Keep reading.

Kirsten Dunst Ginormous New Mom

Now this is something.

At Popoholic, "Kirsten Dunst Unveils Her Ginormous New Mom Cleavage… WOW!"

Bella Hadid Fashion

At Drunken Stepfather, "BELLA HADID NIPPLES OUT FOR FASHION OF THE DAY."

Megan Parry's Friday Forecast

At ABC News 10 San Diego:

Derek Hunter, Outrage, Inc.

At Amazon, Derek Hunter, Outrage, Inc.: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood.

Chanel West Coast Posing Against a Brick Wall

At Taxi Driver, "Chanel West Coast Pokies Posing Against a Wall."

Tallia Storm in Black Corset

At Taxi Driver, "Tallia Storm Nipples in See Through Black Corset.

How the U.S. Senate Became a Campus Kangaroo Court

Rich Lowry nails it. This is exactly what I was thinking when I saw the idiot Hawaiian Senator Maisie Hirono. Stupid gender theory has infected even supposedly august individuals representing America's highest governmental institutions. It's so juvenile and stupid.

At Politico:

Opinion: "Christine Blasey Ford deserves a hearing, although at the moment it’s not clear if she really wants one. What she doesn’t deserve is to be believed automatically just because she’s a woman making an accusation." https://t.co/aXEGGS6OGT

— POLITICO (@politico) September 21, 2018

Francis Fukuyama

From Francis Fukuyama, at Foreign Affairs, a great piece, "Against Identity Politics":

Leading up to the financial crises on both sides of the Atlantic, policies crafted by elites produced huge recessions, high unemployment, and falling incomes for millions of ordinary workers, damaging the reputation of liberal democracy as a whole.https://t.co/uEAJAx27N3

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) September 14, 2018

Beginning a few decades ago, world politics started to experience a dramatic transformation. From the early 1970s to the first decade of this century, the number of electoral democracies increased from about 35 to more than 110. Over the same period, the world’s output of goods and services quadrupled, and growth extended to virtually every region of the world. The proportion of people living in extreme poverty plummeted, dropping from 42 percent of the global population in 1993 to 18 percent in 2008.

But not everyone benefited from these changes. In many countries, and particularly in developed democracies, economic inequality increased dramatically, as the benefits of growth flowed primarily to the wealthy and well-educated. The increasing volume of goods, money, and people moving from one place to another brought disruptive changes. In developing countries, villagers who previously had no electricity suddenly found themselves living in large cities, watching TV, and connecting to the Internet on their mobile phones. Huge new middle classes arose in China and India—but the work they did replaced the work that had been done by older middle classes in the developed world. Manufacturing moved steadily from the United States and Europe to East Asia and other regions with low labor costs. At the same time, men were being displaced by women in a labor market increasingly dominated by service industries, and low-skilled workers found themselves replaced by smart machines.

Ultimately, these changes slowed the movement toward an increasingly open and liberal world order, which began to falter and soon reversed. The final blows were the global financial crisis of 2007–8 and the euro crisis that began in 2009. In both cases, policies crafted by elites produced huge recessions, high unemployment, and falling incomes for millions of ordinary workers. Since the United States and the EU were the leading exemplars of liberal democracy, these crises damaged the reputation of that system as a whole.

Indeed, in recent years, the number of democracies has fallen, and democracy has retreated in virtually all regions of the world. At the same time, many authoritarian countries, led by China and Russia, have become much more assertive. Some countries that had seemed to be successful liberal democracies during the 1990s—including Hungary, Poland, Thailand, and Turkey—have slid backward toward authoritarianism. The Arab revolts of 2010–11 disrupted dictatorships throughout the Middle East but yielded little in terms of democratization: in their wake, despotic regimes held on to power, and civil wars racked Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. More surprising and perhaps even more significant was the success of populist nationalism in elections held in 2016 by two of the world’s most durable liberal democracies: the United Kingdom, where voters chose to leave the EU, and the United States, where Donald Trump scored a shocking electoral upset in the race for president.

All these developments relate in some way to the economic and technological shifts of globalization. But they are also rooted in a different phenomenon: the rise of identity politics. For the most part, twentieth-century politics was defined by economic issues. On the left, politics centered on workers, trade unions, social welfare programs, and redistributive policies. The right, by contrast, was primarily interested in reducing the size of government and promoting the private sector. Politics today, however, is defined less by economic or ideological concerns than by questions of identity. Now, in many democracies, the left focuses less on creating broad economic equality and more on promoting the interests of a wide variety of marginalized groups, such as ethnic minorities, immigrants and refugees, women, and LGBT people. The right, meanwhile, has redefined its core mission as the patriotic protection of traditional national identity, which is often explicitly connected to race, ethnicity, or religion.

This shift overturns a long tradition, dating back at least as far as Karl Marx, of viewing political struggles as a reflection of economic conflicts. But important as material self-interest is, human beings are motivated by other things as well, forces that better explain the present day. All over the world, political leaders have mobilized followers around the idea that their dignity has been affronted and must be restored.

Of course, in authoritarian countries, such appeals are old hat. Russian President Vladimir Putin has talked about the “tragedy” of the Soviet Union’s collapse and has excoriated the United States and Europe for taking advantage of Russia’s weakness during the 1990s to expand NATO. Chinese President Xi Jinping alludes to his country’s “century of humiliation,” a period of foreign domination that began in 1839.

But resentment over indignities has become a powerful force in democratic countries, too. The Black Lives Matter movement sprang from a series of well-publicized police killings of African Americans and forced the rest of the world to pay attention to the victims of police brutality. On college campuses and in offices around the United States, women seethed over a seeming epidemic of sexual harassment and assault and concluded that their male peers simply did not see them as equals. The rights of transgender people, who had previously not been widely recognized as distinct targets of discrimination, became a cause célèbre. And many of those who voted for Trump yearned for a better time in the past, when they believed their place in their own society had been more secure.

Again and again, groups have come to believe that their identities—whether national, religious, ethnic, sexual, gender, or otherwise—are not receiving adequate recognition. Identity politics is no longer a minor phenomenon, playing out only in the rarified confines of university campuses or providing a backdrop to low-stakes skirmishes in “culture wars” promoted by the mass media. Instead, identity politics has become a master concept that explains much of what is going on in global affairs.

That leaves modern liberal democracies facing an important challenge. Globalization has brought rapid economic and social change and made these societies far more diverse, creating demands for recognition on the part of groups that were once invisible to mainstream society. These demands have led to a backlash among other groups, which are feeling a loss of status and a sense of displacement. Democratic societies are fracturing into segments based on ever-narrower identities, threatening the possibility of deliberation and collective action by society as a whole. This is a road that leads only to state breakdown and, ultimately, failure. Unless such liberal democracies can work their way back to more universal understandings of human dignity, they will doom themselves—and the world—to continuing conflict...

Still more.

And also, his new book, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment.

Danielle Gersh's Thursday Forecast

Here's the lovely Ms. Danielle, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles.

I'll have more blogging later, and through the weekend.

Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings

*BUMPED.*

This book is really cool.

At Amazon, Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings: A Novel.

Laura Ingraham: The Left's Rush to Judgment Against Brett Kavanaugh (VIDEO)

I've been extremely disgusted by this whole spectacle.

I'm literally furious. And it takes a lot to make me furious at the left, since leftist depravity is literally bottomless.

More later.

Meanwhile, here's an outstanding commentary from Laura Ingraham:

Tucker Carlson, Ship of Fools

*BUMPED.*

Available on October 2nd, at Amazon, Tucker Carlson, Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution.

And I got a kick out of the piece at CJR, "The Mystery of Tucker Carlson."

Ann Coulter, Resistance Is Futile!

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Ann Coulter, Resistance Is Futile! How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind.

Hat tip: Tucker Carlson, on Fox News, "Ann Coulter: Left hate deplorables, think Trump is 'icky' (VIDEO)."

'1979'

Smashing Pumpkins, from Thursday morning's drive-time, at 93.1 Jack FM Los Angeles.

Addicted To Love
Robert Palmer
6:49am

Pictures Of You
The Cure
6:44am

Livin' On A Prayer
Bon Jovi
6:40am

True Faith
New Order
6:36am

Highway To Hell
AC/DC
6:32am

It's My Life
No Doubt
6:21am

Free Fallin'
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
6:16am

She Blinded Me With Science
Thomas Dolby
6:13am

1979
The Smashing Pumpkins
6:09

Red Red Wine
UB40
6:05am

Dirty Laundry
Don Henley
5:59am

Adam Tooze, Crashed

*BUMPED.*

This is a really amazing book, totally recommendable.

At Amazon, Adam Tooze, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World.

The U.S. Financial Crisis, Leading to the Great Recession, Hit Ten Years Ago Today

Here's the story, at LAT, "The financial crisis hit 10 years ago. For some, it feels like yesterday."

And from Adam Tooze, at Foreign Affairs, "The Forgotten History of the Financial Crisis: What the World Should Have Learned in 2008":

The risk of simultaneous implosion on both sides of the Atlantic made 2008 the most dangerous financial crisis ever witnessed.https://t.co/corEXXxIbA

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) September 8, 2018

September and October of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression.” Ben Bernanke, then the chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, made this remarkable claim in November 2009, just one year after the meltdown. Looking back today, a decade after the crisis, there is every reason to agree with Bernanke’s assessment: 2008 should serve as a warning of the scale and speed with which global financial crises can unfold in the twenty-first century.

The basic story of the financial crisis is familiar enough. The trouble began in 2007 with a downturn in U.S. and European real estate markets; as housing prices plunged from California to Ireland, homeowners fell behind on their mortgage payments, and lenders soon began to feel the heat. Thanks to the deep integration of global banking, securities, and funding markets, the contagion quickly spread to major financial institutions around the world. By late 2008, banks in Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Spain, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States were all facing existential crises. Many had already collapsed, and many others would before long.

The Great Depression of the 1930s is remembered as the worst economic disaster in modern history—one that resulted in large part from inept policy responses—but it was far less synchronized than the crash in 2008. Although more banks failed during the Depression, these failures were scattered between 1929 and 1933 and involved far smaller balance sheets. In 2008, both the scale and the speed of the implosion were breathtaking. According to data from the Bank for International Settlements, gross capital flows around the world plunged by 90 percent between 2007 and 2008.

As capital flows dried up, the crisis soon morphed into a crushing recession in the real economy. The “great trade collapse” of 2008 was the most severe synchronized contraction in international trade ever recorded. Within nine months of their pre-crisis peak, in April 2008, global exports were down by 22 percent. (During the Great Depression, it took nearly two years for trade to slump by a similar amount.) In the United States between late 2008 and early 2009, 800,000 people were losing their jobs every month. By 2015, over nine million American families would lose their homes to foreclosure—the largest forced population movement in the United States since the Dust Bowl. In Europe, meanwhile, failing banks and fragile public finances created a crisis that nearly split the eurozone.

Ten years later, there is little consensus about the meaning of 2008 and its aftermath. Partial narratives have emerged to highlight this or that aspect of the crisis, even as crucial elements of the story have been forgotten. In the United States, memories have centered on the government recklessness and private criminality that led up to the crash; in Europe, leaders have been content to blame everything on the Americans.

In fact, bankers on both sides of the Atlantic created the system that imploded in 2008. The collapse could easily have devastated both the U.S. and the European economies had it not been for improvisation on the part of U.S. officials at the Federal Reserve, who leveraged trans-atlantic connections they had inherited from the twentieth century to stop the global bank run. That this reality has been obscured speaks both to the contentious politics of managing global finances and to the growing distance between the United States and Europe. More important, it forces a question about the future of financial globalization: How will a multipolar world that has moved beyond the transatlantic structures of the last century cope with the next crisis?

More.

Also, at Amazon, Adam Tooze, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World.

Julia Salazar Post-Truth

An excellent piece, from Bari Weiss, at NYT, "Julia Salazar, the Left’s Post-Truth Politician: The democratic socialist lied. And lied. And lied. Then she won handily in Brooklyn."

I wrote about Julia Salazar’s victory. https://t.co/1qlvmlNeFx

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) September 15, 2018

Emily Ratajkowski Hailing a Cab

At the Nip Slip, "Emily Ratajkowski in a See Through Top!"

Katie Holmes at an Event Looking Old

She may be getting older, but still fabulous, IMHO.

At Drunken, "Katie Holmes – Big Tits at an Event Looking Old."

And at Elle:

Chatting with Katie Holmes (on a boat! but not the Dawson's boat!) for @ELLEmagazine... https://t.co/uKWsIxvFcE

— Faran Krentcil (@FaranKrentcil) September 14, 2018

Addded: "Katie Holmes in a Gucci Sneakers Heads to a Business Meeting in NYC 09/14/2018."

A's Riding D-List Starting Rotation Right Into October

The Wild Card spot is nice, and the A's have the second American League spot nailed down, but it'd be a lot better if the Athletics could win the American League West division outright. I remember in the 2014 AL Wildcard, the A's played Kansas City in perhaps the best baseball game I've ever seen. Spectacular play, but heartbreaking for Oakland fans.

At least in the division championship series, it's not all on the line in one single game. Boy, that's rough.

In any case, I'm enjoying watching the A's as much as I can. The Angels are eliminated and are currently 19.5 game backs behind the Houston Astros. It's been one of those seasons.

The Astros lost last night to the Arizona Diamonbacks, and Oakland beat the Tampa Bay Rays. The A's are 2.5 game behind Houston, so it's still down to the wire.

More later.

But see ESPN:

“I've never, ever seen anything that comes close to this as far as the injuries to starting pitching," says Oakland manager Bob Melvin. Thanks to Edwin Jackson and a few friends, the #Athletics figured it out. https://t.co/BFKWFEdVnQ

— Jerry Crasnick (@jcrasnick) September 15, 2018

Samanta Lily on Twitter

She's a plus-sized glamour model, and I'm taking PLUS!

See, "Samanta Lily in Her Bra and Panties."

More here (NSFW).

The Left's Despicable 'Sexual-Misconduct Allegations' Against Brett Kavanaugh

Truly evil.

Desperate, despicable, and evil.

At the New Yorker, via Memorandum, "A Sexual-Misconduct Allegation Against the Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh Stirs Tension Among Democrats in Congress."

And on Twitter:

Have you ever seen anything so despicable?!

Sen. Feinstein claims she has a letter about Kavanaugh & a girl from high school.

Nasty leftists then post a pic of Kavanaugh & his daughter in her school uniform.

To make him look like a pedophile.

You. Leftists. Are. Gross. pic.twitter.com/7khNe8Qt7C

— Liz Wheeler (@Liz_Wheeler) September 13, 2018

Totally. But we’re dealing with the left, and leftists are evil. 😠

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) September 14, 2018

New Sophie Mudd Photos

At Drunken Stepfather, "SOPHIE MUDD MASSIVE OF THE DAY":

There are a few girls on social media – who have a bunch of followers on social media…mainly because they are showing off their tits on social media…but unlike every single other girl with her tits out…they have these massive disproportionate tits…that spill out of even the largest bathing suit top….all while living on a small frame…and it excites me…

More.

Previously: "Sophie Mudd: She's Spectacular."

Amber Rose in Lace Lingerie

At Taxi Driver, "Big Amber Rose in Lace Lingerie."

President Donald Trump's Address at 9/11 Memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania (VIDEO)

I love President Trump.

Watch:

Democrats to Prohibit the Sale of Gasoline-Powered Internal Combustion Vehicles by 2035

I'll move out of state.

At a time when America has gained not only energy independence, but global dominance of the energy industry, which is improving the lives of untold millions upon millions of people, making the cost of living less expensive and improving the quality of life for the nation's poorest and least well-off, California's Democrats are pushing in the exact opposite direction, pushing a fad technology that has not shown to reduce so-called climate emissions.

What a total disaster.

This is the problem with living in a one-party state. The majority becomes diabolically infected with the most ugly hubris, thinking their notions of "what's best" is the only way things should be done. For example, how's that bullet train working out, pfft?

And these freakin' electric vehicles leftists are promoting? People will die driving those human death traps. People will die!

In any case, I swear I'll move.

At LAT, "At Jerry Brown's climate summit, one deadline will overshadow all the others":

California plans to ban sales of internal combustion cars by 2035, outlaw them completely by 2050; assuming anyone will still be living there https://t.co/m0ERMMdZuP

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) September 12, 2018

from my cold dead hands, motherf***ers pic.twitter.com/rfbt7rk4ZS

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) September 12, 2018

The political leaders coming from around the world for Gov. Jerry Brown’s climate action summit this week will grapple with a lot of urgent deadlines to drive down emissions, but one date is especially exasperating.

It is 2035 — the year advocates aim to kill off production of gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles.

Keeping global warming to levels society can tolerate could hinge on meeting that target. But even clean-tech-nology capital California has no clear path for getting there.

The question of whether drivers should be gently persuaded or forced out of their internal combustion engine cars and trucks over the next 17 years will weigh heavily on the landmark summit, which runs from Wednesday through Friday in San Francisco.

States, cities and companies will try to chart a course to carry the country and the world toward meeting the goals in the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, which President Trump has disavowed.

Transportation is the most vexing problem the summit will confront. The sector sends more greenhouse gases into the air than any other, recently outpacing power plants, which are getting cleaner every year. Internal combustion engine cars need to be off the roads altogether by 2050 to meet the Paris goals. Dealers would need to stop selling new models 15 years earlier.

“Even during the Obama administration, when the country was pushing as hard and fast as it could onclimate policy, it still wasn’t enough” to meet the goals on auto emissions, said Kate Larsen, a director at Rhodium Group, a Bay Area research firm.

Rhodium’s modeling shows that just 8% of U.S. drivers will be in zero-emission cars, pickups or SUVs by 2025, a depressing projection for the climate movement.

The urgency is not lost on Brown. Last year, he directed the state’s chief air regulator, Mary Nichols, to look into stepping up the state’s timetable to phase out gas and diesel vehicles. It gnaws at him that other nations are already catapulting ahead.

Electric vehicles account for 5% of cars sold in California and 1% nationwide. In Norway, they make up 40%. Bans on the sales of new gasoline- and diesel-powered cars are scheduled to take effect there and in several other countries as soon as 2025. China has put automakers on notice that a ban is on the horizon.

But it is a much tougher sell in America, even in California. A state legislative proposal this year to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars and trucks by 2040 went nowhere.

“You want me to issue a press release saying, ‘No more combustion engines’?” Brown said in an interview Monday. “There are 32 million in California. It doesn’t work that way. We have to provide an alternative…. We have to get that in place.”

The shift toward electric vehicles in parts of Europe and Asia is bolstered by government subsidies and tax structures that few American politicians would consider. They include tough gas-guzzler penalties for those who drive high-horsepower, climate-unfriendly pickups and SUVs, and large cash grants and tax breaks for those who buy electric.

The U.S. approach is grounded in requiring automakers to meet steadily more ambitious mileage-per-gallon targets, a process that has gone a long way in cutting carbon emissions...

Still more, if you can stomach the idiocy.

Raw Tensions Over Race and Gender Shape Midterms

No one cares.

The folks at WaPo have no clue.

See, "Raw tensions over race and gender shape midterms, reflecting schism in Trump era":

Democrat Antonio Delgado is a Rhodes Scholar and attorney with a Harvard Law degree running in one of the country’s most hotly contested congressional races.

But Republicans want to instill a different image in the minds of voters in New York’s 19th Congressional District. Their latest ad, released Wednesday, features grainy clips of Delgado, who is African American and made a 2007 rap album. His censored explicit lyrics dominate the ad, along with the album cover, which shows a glaring Delgado in a hoodie.

Raw tensions over race, gender and personal identity are shaping battleground contests from Upstate New York to the Deep South, reflecting the marked schism in the country during the Trump era and the increasingly stark demographic divide between the two political parties.

With just one primary day left, on Thursday, Democrats have set or essentially matched records for the number of female, black and LGBT nominees, a Washington Post analysis shows. Republicans’ diversity statistics have either remained static or declined in each category, leading to a heavily white, male slate of nominees.

Republicans are aggressively trying to cast Democratic candidates as scary, threatening figures with unfamiliar values. A super PAC linked to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has aired an ad in Ohio tenuously connecting a candidate of Tibetan and Indian descent to Libyan interests and asking if he is “selling out Americans.” In Kentucky, a GOP incumbent released an ad showing his female Democratic opponent declaring that she is a feminist.

Democrats are increasingly calling out the GOP, saying these are sexist, racist attacks that remind them of the divisive tactics that Donald Trump used as a candidate and has reprised as president. Even some Republicans are troubled by the tone.

“The difference between the past and the present is that you have a political actor like the president who makes it okay, who gives license to it, said Michael Steele, who was the first black chairman of the Republican National Committee. “If you don’t speak to that and call it out, it will germinate, it will become an infection and will create the kind of disease in our politics, which I think to some degree, we are already seeing.”

Republicans behind the attacks are making no apologies. They argue that they are informing voters about their rivals...

Still more.

'The Church of Social Justice has more rules than a monastery during Lent and the list grows daily. But unlike traditional morality, there is no path to redemption...'

This is excellent, from Jon Gabriel, at Richochet, "Norm MacDonald, #MeToo, and the Fatal Flaw in the New Morality":

.@normmacdonald is right: the new #MeToo morality needs to offer a path to forgiveness. My latest at @ricochet. https://t.co/mR8oCEIcBs

— jon gabriel (@exjon) September 12, 2018

The ancient Hebrews confessed the community’s sin, placed it onto a scapegoat, and restored the flawed people. Early Christians confessed to their priest or bishop, perhaps did some acts of penance, and were redeemed in the eyes of the church. For especially egregious and public sins, the process could be quite involved. But the model held across time and faith: confess to wrongdoing, repent, and be forgiven.

The new secular church enforces the first and second steps with a vengeance but offers no mechanism for the third and most important step. Louis and Roseanne both confessed and repented. And then … nothing. Perhaps both could have done more. Donating millions to a well-regarded charity. Crawl on their knees to the Hollywood sign and sacrifice an Emmy.

Even if they did, forgiveness, redemption, and restoration were not possible. Instead, they were cast out into weeping and gnashing of teeth with no way to make things right.

This latest faux outrage will be soon forgotten as the Twitter mob lurches after another celebrity’s career tomorrow. As for me, I’ll watch “Norm MacDonald Has a Show” on Netflix and continue to chill. Life’s too short for outrage.

RTWT.

Democrats Still Don't Get It

From Allie Stuckey, at Town Hall, "What Democrats Still Don't Get":

What Democrats Still Don't Get https://t.co/py4yb6eSC9

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 11, 2018

Since the election, there has been ample speculation about how Trump “happened.” Last week, Obama offered his hypothesis: resentment and paranoia on the right. He lamented the destruction of the Republican Party and the ensuing demise of America because of the divisiveness and bigotry propagated by the president and those who support him.

It seems that most on the left agree with Obama’s view. Progressives purport that enthusiasm for Trump is bolstered by “white fragility”— an insecurity that white voices, once dominant, are now being drowned out by increasingly influential minority groups bolstered by demographic changes. Trump is their “white knight,” ushered in to defend their right to power and superiority.

While it may be easy for Trump’s opposition to dismiss him as the personification of white supremacy, it is also ignorant of the meaningful concerns of the Americans who voted for him. Real, significant changes in American culture and morality that have occurred over the past decade have varied the priorities of the populace, and it is unproductive to discount these in favor of blanket accusations of racism and resentment.

As America has moved quickly and drastically to the left, it has abandoned a portion of its citizenry who still hold to what are now considered “traditional” mores. So, while many who voted for Trump may have indeed done so out of insecurity and fear, these feelings were primarily instigated not by changes in demographics but by changes in values.

The progressive revolution has taken on many forms since the turn of the century, successfully shifting opinion on issues like sexuality, gender, race, immigration and welfare. Take gay marriage: In 2001, 31% of Americans favored same-sex unions. In 2009, the percentage had only increased to 37%. By 2017, that number had surged to 62%. In only eight years, public opinion changed by 25 percentage points—more than four times than it had during the previous eight years.

Regarding racism, in 2009, only 26% of Americans viewed it as a “big problem.” By 2017, that number had more than doubled to 58%. Along party lines, 32% of Democrats and 18% of Republicans saw racism as a major issue in 2009. During the eight years of Obama’s presidency, those numbers shot up to 76% for Democrats and 37% for Republicans.

A month after Trump’s election victory, Issie Lapowsky of Wired noted that, despite a Republican win, the country is indeed moving to the left:

“Over the eight years Barack Obama has served as president, public opinion in the United States has shifted decisively leftward. Think about it. When Obama came to office, he still hadn’t publicly supported same sex marriage. Last year, the White House was lit up in rainbow colors to celebrate the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage. Over the last year, bottom line-driven businesses have boycotted entire states over discriminatory policies against LGBT people. A law prohibiting transgender people from using the bathroom of their choice just cost North Carolina’s Pat McCrory the governorship. Undocumented immigrants have come out of hiding, banding together online to discuss their struggles. And in November, California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada all voted to make recreational marijuana legal.”

She’s right: the majority of Americans are becoming more progressive, particularly on social issues. This isn’t surprising. Evolving views on things like sexuality, race and immigration are to be expected after eight years of the most progressive presidency in history. Plus, millennials, soon-to-be the largest generation in existence, are extremely left-leaning, and, now in their 20s and 30s, have an influential voice in civic discourse. By nature, progressivism continually advances, conquering new moral, cultural, social and political territory with every step. In recent years, the movement has been extremely successful in gaining ground. Those left behind have barely had time to take it in.

Yes—there is real fear, and, to Obama’s point, perhaps some resentment amongst those who are not on board the progressive train. But, despite what many on the left claim, this has more to do with the changing moral, social landscape than it does racial identity and so-called bigotry. And it is not only the changes themselves that have caused anxiety, it is the attitude of those who promote these changes...

More.

Larry Schweikart's, A Patriot's History of the United States

It seems the anti-American leftists are the most outspoken in my classes this year, and they're literally approaching "deplatforming" territory, challenging every critical (or mildly critical) comment I make about the Democrat Party or leftist ideology. Some of these students have been marinated in Marxist social justice doctrines and they loathe anything dealing with Republicans, including Abraham Lincoln (imagine that *eye roll*).

In any case, perhaps this is a good time to again promote Larry Schweikart's, A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to America's Age of Entitlement.

Leftist students are very outspoken in class, so as to shut down any portions of the lectures that are critical of the radical left agenda. It's hard teaching these days. More often than not, conservative students don't speak up, for they're a minority on campus and I'm sure they don't want to be attacked as politically incorrect and racist.

It's really bad sometimes. It's worth nothing, though, that I'm being approached by more and more conservative students looking for club opportunities and so forth, so the word's getting out that they're not alone.

Racist Serena Williams Cartoon

I've haven't posted on the U.S. Open women's final, although I was watching. Serena Williams was out of control, IMHO. The thing for me is how many people have been defending her, all the more bizarre in that Williams tried to turn it into a gender equality issue. Fact is, she's got a long history of ugly on-court outbursts and disgusting unsportsmanlike behavior. She's basically a thug.

In any case, here's the new controversy over an alleged "racist" cartoon. Australia's Herald Sun, under fire, is not backing down.

See, "Australian newspaper is defending a cartoon of Serena Williams that has been widely condemned as a racist depiction."

Australian newspaper is defending a cartoon of Serena Williams that has been widely condemned as a racist depiction. https://t.co/Br6QP3XY8Y

— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) September 12, 2018

And, for the outrage take, see Guardian U.K., "'Repugnant, racist': News Corp cartoon on Serena Williams condemned."

Also, the latest at the National Post:

'Welcome to PC World': Australian newspaper doubles down, reprints controversial cartoon of Serena Williams https://t.co/QR03sgsgsl pic.twitter.com/Zk7Qcx7kHZ

— National Post (@nationalpost) September 12, 2018

Elsa Hosk of the Day

At Drunken Stepfather, "Elsa Hosk for a Clothing Brand of the Day."

Jamie Glazov, United in Hate

*BUMPED.

At Amazon, United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror.

College Students Have No Clue What Happened on September 11th (VIDEO)

From the Young Americans Foundation:

The Circus of Resistance

From VDH, at American Greatness:

The Circus of Resistance https://t.co/nQzNqcfkou pic.twitter.com/iIVABXq5Uo

— American Greatness (@theamgreatness) September 10, 2018

The resistance to Donald Trump was warring on all fronts last week.

Democratic senators vied with pop-up protestors in the U.S. Senate gallery to disrupt and, if possible, to derail the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) played Spartacus, but could not even get the script right as he claimed to be bravely releasing classified information that was already declassified. I cannot remember another example of a senator who wanted to break the law but could not figure out how to do it.

Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), former Harvard Law Professor who still insists she is of Native American heritage, called for the president to be removed by invoking the 25th Amendment. Apparently fabricating an ethnic identity is sane, and getting out of the Iran deal or the Paris Climate Accord is insanity and grounds for removal.

Barack Obama decided that ex-presidents should attack current presidents, and thereby reminded the country why Trump was elected. The author of the Russian “reset” and the hot-mic collusionary offer criticized Trump for being soft on Putin. The president who never achieved annualized 3 percent GDP growth (and is the first president since 1933 who can claim this “distinction”) also claimed Trump’s roaring economy was due to Obama-era policies (e.g., raising taxes, Obamacare, more regulations, and “you didn’t build that” commentaries). Fresh from trashing his successor in a funeral speech, the ever audacious Obama called for more decorum.

Bruce Ohr, once number four at the Department of Justice, and whose wife was working with Christopher Steele on the Fusion GPS file (a fact he has never disclosed willingly), now more or less has made a mockery of the FBI narrative of when, why, and how it began surveilling American citizens and infiltrating the Trump campaign. Ohr apparently has testified that well before the election, and well before the application of FISA warrants, he was working with the FBI, the already discredited Christopher Steele, and a Russian oligarch either to smear candidate Trump, or to facilitate the entry into the United States of a once barred and questionable Russian grandee, or both.

Nike hired NFL renegade Colin Kaepernick to peddle its sports products. For all its billion-dollar market research, it apparently did not know what Donald Trump’s animal cunning had almost immediately surmised: a majority of Americans do not appreciate the pampered multimillionaire Kaepernick sanctioning violence against the police by wearing “pig” socks, or mocking the National Anthem by taking a knee. Nike could just as well have hired Bowe Bergdahl to push its sneakers.

The Deep State Emerges

Then we come to an insurrectionary “resistance” op-ed in the New York Times, an insider scoop about a collective “undercover” effort to nullify the current presidency...

Keep reading.

From Jamie Glazov, at FrontPage Magazine, "Memories of Leftist Glee About 9/11":

I will never forget how, seventeen years ago on this day, many of the leftists around me in my neighborhood and community had very little trouble expressing their glee about Al Qaeda' strike on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

I had known some of these leftists for years, and after the fall of the Soviet empire in 1989–91 many of them bitterly lamented to me that the “alternative to capitalism” was now gone. A significant number of them retreated into a silent and sullen shell.

Then came 9/11.

Almost overnight, these individuals underwent a miraculous transformation. A bright sparkle could once again be detected in their eyes, as their revolutionary selves came out of a deep slumber. Never had I seen them so happy, so hopeful, and ready for another attempt at creating a glorious and revolutionary future. Without doubt, September 11 represented a personal -- and morbid -- vindication for them.

The images of the innocent people jumping to their deaths from the Twin Towers evoked no sympathy from these individuals. Instead, they saw only poetic justice in American commercial airplanes plunging into American buildings packed with people. For my leftist acquaintances, the jihadist terror war gave promise of succeeding in a project in which Communism had failed: to obliterate the capitalist system itself. “The U.S. brought this on itself,” they stated repeatedly -- and with scornful self-satisfaction.

These disturbing personal encounters I had were a microcosm of the Left’s behavior on the U.S. national scene. In the blink of an eye after the Twin Towers went down, leftists were beating their breasts with eerie repentance for their own government’s supposed crimes and characterizing the tragedy that their nation had just suffered to be some form of karmic justice.

Immediately following the 9/11 attack, leftist academics led with a drum roll. The very next day after the terrorist strike, the Left's intellectual guru, Noam Chomsky, exonerated the terrorists, stating that the Clinton administration’s bombing of the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan constituted a far more serious terrorist act and warning that 9/11 would be exploited by the United States as an excuse to destroy Afghanistan.

Leftist academics across the country regurgitated Chomsky’s themes, cheering the 9/11 terrorist acts, which they deemed a just retribution for America’s transgressions...

More.

Jennifer Love Hewitt Returns

At Too Fab, "Jennifer Love Hewitt Killed This Look FOX All-Star Party."

BONUS: "Ashley Tisdale Gets Too Much Sun in Tulum," and "Ashley Tisdale in a Red Bikini While on Vacation in Tulum."

Norah O'Donnell Statement on Leslie Moonves (VIDEO)

First, from Ronan Farrow (who else?), at the New Yorker, "Leslie Moonves Steps Down from CBS, After Six Women Raise New Sexual Harassment Claims."

And the flashback to last November, "Charlie Rose Fired by CBS, Dropped by PBS, After Sexual Harassment Allegations."

And here's Ms. Norah, from yesterday's CBS This Morning:

Republican Insiders Prepare for Electoral D-Day

I've been holding off on election projections, but as I always point out, the president's party normally loses seats in the midterms. Even with the strong economy, I don't expect this year to be all that different, especially in the House. I doubt the Democrats will take the Senate, though, since they're defending like 25 seats, and 10 are in states in which President Trump won (in some cases by double digits).

But we'll see.

We'll see.

At Vanity Fair, "“The House Is Already Lost”: G.O.P. Insiders Prepare for Electoral D-Day":

My latest for @VanityFair & @VFHIVE: https://t.co/LJgb3ucoCx

— David M. Drucker (@DavidMDrucker) September 10, 2018

At this stage of the game, losing the House is the most likely proposition. It’s just a matter of how bad it gets,” said a disconsolate Republican strategist with clients on the ballot, describing the final, desperate scramble to rescue the G.O.P.’s 23-seat majority from an impeachment-happy opposition. In Washington, a familiar sort of fatalism has taken hold. Just weeks until early voting kicks off, a spate of fresh public-opinion polls show Democrats on the precipice of a resounding victory. Time is short; resources are dwindling, and the singular figure with the power to make or break the party—Donald Trump—seems pathologically incapable of standing down and letting a booming job market do the talking. “You have people imploring the president not to put them in a position that will harm them—and therefore harm him,” a veteran G.O.P. operative said of Republican congressional leaders.

The pendulum of political power, which historically swings against the White House during the midterms, could be especially savage this year, given the sharp dissatisfaction with Trump in America’s usually Republican-leaning suburbs. Washington’s high-powered consulting class is betting on it. The lobby shops and advocacy organizations that play both sides and thrive on proximity to power are preparing for a changing of the gavel and moving to forge connections with Democratic committee chairmen in the House beginning in January of 2019, when the 116th Congress is seated. “Downtown, there is a sense that the House is already lost for Republicans,” a G.O.P. lobbyist and former senior House aide told me. “There is a hiring spree for plugged-in House Democrats who want to lobby. So, downtown is already planning on the Democratic takeover; the bets are on how big the flip will be.

Democratic operatives aren’t being snapped up by K Street at quite the same rate as two years ago. Lobbying shops were chastened by Trump’s victory in 2016 and are awaiting more evidence to confirm what appears to be a surging blue tide. But professional Washington is not unconvinced. They’re privy to much of the same data being poured over by dialed-in Republicans, and believe an end to one-party rule is on the horizon. Whatever bump the Republicans enjoyed earlier this year, during the brief period of normalcy after Trump signed the historic, $1.3 trillion tax overhaul into law, appears long gone. So is the goodwill House Republicans anticipated when they pictured a fall campaign with a national economy growing at an annual clip of 4 percent, and an unemployment rate that had plummeted below 4 percent. “I’m advising clients to start covering their bases with would-be chairs,” said another Republican lobbyist, referring to the Democrats who are likely to take over powerful House committees, such as Energy and Commerce or Ways and Means.

The political forces battering the G.O.P. aren’t hitting the two houses of Congress equally. As I reported for the Washington Examiner and discovered during a summer swing through the Midwest, 2018 is essentially a tale of two campaigns, reflective of the balkanization gripping our politics. As bad as the midterms look for House Republicans, with dozens of seats in danger, their Senate colleagues begin the fall chase better positioned. The party’s 51-49 Senate majority, propped up by a battleground that runs right through the heart of Trump country, could actually expand, if Republicans can navigate a few molehills, and if those molehills don’t grow into mountains. Rep. Beto O’Rourke might upset Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas, granted that has as much to do with the Republican’s own image problems as the Democratic Party’s Senate prospects.

Democrats are on the defensive in a handful of ruby red states a world away from restless, upscale suburbia...

 More.

Nice Lady

Seen on Twitter, dang!

Big sexy cleavage! #boobs #tits @Real_modela pic.twitter.com/4wOyCXs7px

— Big Breast Pics (@BigBreastPics) August 7, 2018

Camila Morrone Bikini Pics

At Hollywood Tuna, "Camila Morrone Is One Busty Insta-Model."

BONUS: At Drunken Stepfather, "MORNING HANGOVER DUMP OF THE DAY."

Jennifer Delacruz's Overcast Monday Forecast

It'll clear up by the afternoon, but that's a total fog layer along the coast.

Here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer, with her hair up in some kind of bob, at ABC 10 News San Diego:

Stephen Harrigan, The Gates of the Alamo

*BUMPED.*

I just finished Sylvia Plath's, The Bell Jar (which I picked up on a whim).

Now I'm starting Stephen Harrigan's, The Gates of the Alamo.

And thanks for shopping my Amazon links.

Rita Ora of the Day

At Drunken Stepfather, "RITA ORA NIPPLES OF THE DAY."

Also, "STEPLINKS OF THE DAY."

BONUS: "Rita Ora Relaxes in a Bikini by the Pool in France," and "Rita Ora in White Lace."

'Straight Outta Caracas'

Omg this is hilarious.

At Twitchy, "‘I Can’t Get No Socialism’: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s photo inspires HILARIOUS titles and songs for her new album":

'I Can't Get No Socialism': Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's photo inspires HILARIOUS titles and songs for her new album https://t.co/ecd3t4jaos

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) September 9, 2018

This photo of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez where she appears to be sitting on some seriously worn out stairs wearing fairly pricey threads (and check out those shoes!) reminded Matt’s Idea Shop of the type of photo a band or a pop diva would use for an album.

Is she dropping an album or something? pic.twitter.com/T5qdvHhpx7

— Matt’s Idea Shop (@MattsIdeaShop) September 8, 2018

pic.twitter.com/WtdtJ1KPaw

— Matt’s Idea Shop (@MattsIdeaShop) September 9, 2018

"Westchester Side, yo,
Just a socialist gangsta
Democrat stylin', buckwilin'
Frontin' in my Gucci handbag
Like my arugula
with thousand islands
Don't mess with my frappe
Take my milk with extra soy
Don't hate on my rap
Or your whole economy I'll destroy" pic.twitter.com/Ffepv9RzqY

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) September 9, 2018

Gavin Newsome, Former Mayor of America's Biggest Urban Dumphole, Rose to Power Backed by Bay Area's Big-Money Interests

If you haven't yet, make sure you read Joel Kotkin's The New Class Conflict, which details the political realignment of the last few decades whereby the Democrat Party has become the party of the elite coastal corporate rich.

These new Democrat leftists don't really care about the poor --- consider Mark Zuckerberg building a walled digital castle in San Francisco's "hipster central Dolores Park," using migrant laborers and pissing off the district's neighbors (who dare not say a word lest they face retaliation). No, they care about their corporate profits and the leftist virtue signaling. You never see far-left Democrat elites living a lifestyle of those they say they represent. Indeed, their actual policies, especially in California --- with its obsession on climate change regulation --- keep people poor, saddling them with higher taxes, unaffordable housing, and wasteful government bureaucracy.

California is the ultimate wealthy insider's country club of power and privilege, but only if you're a soi-disant progressive.

Meh.

Newsome's a loser and we'll be saddled with his terrible far-left San Francisco policies for nearly a decade.

At the Los Angeles Times, "How eight elite San Francisco families funded Gavin Newsom’s political ascent":

On today's Los Angeles Times front page: How eight elite San Francisco families funded Gavin Newsom's political ascent https://t.co/CPtotNCgrP by @LATSeema @ryanvmenezes @maloym Design by @priyakkumar @vnessamartinez Animation: @swetha_kan pic.twitter.com/hrF87eaf1v

— Allison Wisk (@allisonwisk) September 9, 2018

Gavin Newsom wasn’t born rich, but he was born connected — and those alliances have paid handsome dividends throughout his career.

A coterie of San Francisco’s wealthiest families has backed him at every step of his political rise, which in November could lead next to his election as governor of California.

San Francisco society’s “first families” — whose names grace museum galleries, charity ball invitations and hospital wards — settled on Newsom, 50, as their favored candidate two decades ago, said Willie Brown, former state Assembly speaker and former mayor of the city.

“He came from their world, and that’s why they embraced him without hesitancy and over and above everybody else,” said Brown, who is a mentor to Newsom. “They didn’t need to interview him. They knew what he stood for.”

A Times review of campaign finance records identified eight of San Francisco’s best-known families as being among Newsom’s most loyal and long-term contributors. Among those patrons are the Gettys, the Pritzkers and the Fishers, whose families made their respective fortunes in oil, hotels and fashion. They first backed him when he was a restaurateur and winery owner running for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1998, and have continued their support through the governor’s race.

They are not Newsom’s largest donors: The families in total have given about $2 million of the $61 million that donors have contributed to his campaigns and independent committees backing those bids. But they gave while he was a relative unknown, providing crucial support to a political newcomer in the years before his campaign accounts piled high with cash from labor unions, Hollywood honchos, tech billionaires and donors up and down the state.

Now the families appear poised to see their investments pay off.

These donors are mostly liberal, inspired by Newsom’s history as an early supporter of progressive causes, including same-sex marriage as San Francisco mayor in 2004. But some are Republicans, including President Trump’s new ambassador to Austria, who are drawn by Newsom’s background as a small businessman...

 More.

RELATED: At Instapundit, "WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN STATES SO CLASS-BOUND AND STAGNANT? Joel Kotkin: The Hollowing-Out of the California Dream. For minorities in the Golden State, opportunity and upward mobility are hard to come by."

Nike's Colin Kaepernick 'Just Do It' Campaign (VIDEO)

At Gateway Pundit, "Tucker Carlson on Nike Honoring Kaepernick: “When the Most Successful People Hate the Society You’ve Got a Problem” (VIDEO).

"On Tuesday Tucker Carlson weighed in on Nike’s decision to use Kaepernick as its public face.

Tucker Carlson: It’s factually ludicrous. You can’t give up everything and maintain a Nike contract. It’s the executives profiting on him and his attacks on the United States while simultaneously denying they are attacks on the United States… This is an attack on the country. So it would be very different if he were saying I’m protesting this politician or this policy or this specific person for doing this specific thing. But no, sitting during the National Anthem is a way of making a broad-based generalized and therefore impossible to rebut attack against the country that made him and Nike rich. Again there is something really decadent about that when the most successful people in your society hate the society you’ve got a real problem. It’s a metaphor for our entire ruling class...

And watch:

Alternative for Germany (AfD) Surges in Popularity

Hey, Merkel's almost single-handedly bringing the new "hard-right" to power in Germany.

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Germany: Anti-Immigration Party Surges in Popularity."

Heather Mac Donald Discusses The Diversity Delusion

Video at AEI, "Heather Mac Donald on how universities have become hatred machines poisoned by identity politics."

And at Amazon, Heather Mac Donald, The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.

Rose McGowan Posts Defiant Instagram Photo on Her Birthday

She's posting fully topless, which I don't think you're supposed to do on Instagram

At Hollywood Life, "Rose McGowan Shows Off Naked Breasts in Proud Instagram Post on Her Birthday."

And at Taxi Driver, "Rose McGown Goes Fully Topless on her Instagram."

BONUS: At Rolling Stone, "Rose McGowan Feels ‘Betrayed’ by Asia Argento," and at People, "Asia Argento Slams Rose McGowan for 'False Claims' Over Sexual Assault Allegation: She's 'Wrong'."

Kara Del Toro in Black Bikini

She's lovely.

At Hollywood Tuna, "Kara Del Toro Belongs in a Bikini."