Wages Are Rising in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic

Well, you don't say?

At WSJ, "Labor Shortage Lifts Wages on Europe’s Eastern Flank":

Unlike in some Western economies, wages are rising fast as workers grow scarce in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic https://t.co/kX0itdZkNo

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) September 29, 2018

Unlike in some Western economies, wages are rising fast as workers grow scarce in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic.

BUDAPEST, Hungary—Akos Niklai says he has increased wages at his historic restaurant in downtown Budapest by around 20% in each of the past three years. He still struggles to retain staff.

The Hungarian businessman was recently forced to stop serving lunch on Sundays due to a worker shortage. Unemployment in this nation of 10 million people is at an all-time low of 3.6%, down from 10% five years ago.

“It is very hard to find labor in Budapest,” said Mr. Niklai. “Wages are still not high enough.”

In a half-dozen countries across Central and Eastern Europe, hourly labor costs are shooting up by 9% or more a year, defying a trend of weak wage growth that has bedeviled many advanced economies for years.

The increases seem to answer a question economists have been puzzling over for several years: Does low unemployment still cause wages to rise?

In many Western economies, that notion has been tested by slow wage growth despite falling jobless rates. But in places such as Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, supply and demand appear to be pushing up wages as labor becomes scarce.

“These fundamental economic mechanisms are still working,” said Nigel Pain, an economist in Paris with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. “If labor markets tighten we will see some pick up in price pressures.”

The wage increases are also putting pressure on Eastern European leaders—many of whom have called for stricter limits on immigration—to allow in more workers or risk lower future economic growth.

In Poland, for example, job vacancies are at a record high, and more than 40% of manufacturing firms say labor shortages are limiting production, according to a March OECD report. Poland’s ruling party has opposed immigration from Muslim countries, and the European Union has sued Poland and other countries for refusing to accept refugees under an EU-wide relocation plan.

“Wage pressure is rising,” said Andrzej Malinowski, the president of Employers of Poland, a business federation. Around 40% of large Polish companies employ workers from neighboring Ukraine, and 30% intend to hire Ukrainians in the near future, said Mr. Malinowski.

Migration patterns have been a major factor behind the wage boom. Labor is particularly scarce in the former communist states because workers have been migrating to Western Europe, where they can earn more. And limits on immigration from outside the EU add to the labor squeeze.

Low unemployment has also given workers more bargaining power. In the Czech Republic—where unemployment is 2.3%, the lowest in the EU—average wages grew by around 6% year-over-year in the three months through June, after adjusting for inflation, close to a 15-year high. Workers at Skoda Auto, the Czech unit of Volkswagen AG , recently got a pay raise of 12% and bigger bonuses.

Amazon.com Inc. announced in early August that it would sharply increase hourly wages for its workers across the region—by between 5% and 11% for staff in the Czech Republic, by up to 17% in Poland and by as much as 20% in Slovakia, a spokeswoman said.

“Eastern European countries are trying to persuade workers not to leave,” said Dan Bucsa, an economist with Italian bank UniCredit who focuses on the region...

Keep reading.

BBC's Africa Cameroon Investigation on Twitter

This is mind-boggling.

Click through and read the whole thing:

Wow. https://t.co/VaCVHAPUw0

— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) September 24, 2018

HOONIGAN Mazda Miata Long Jump (VIDEO)

I went down to the Hoonigan shop yesterday afternoon to pick up some t-shirts. I wear Hoonigan gear all the time nowadays. I first picked up a Hoonigan shirt at Tilly's sportswear last year. I didn't know what it was. The shirt was cool, though, and it indicated that Hoonigan's was located in Long Beach, so I checked 'em out and the rest is history.

Here's the homepage, and check this background briefing, "Understanding Hoonigan."


More later.

Nice Gals Enjoying the End of Summer

It's Rhian Sugden and friends.

Hairy Mary’s 💚 pic.twitter.com/cNixgow7js

— Rhian Sugden (@Rhianmarie) September 26, 2018

Have Democrats Any Decency?

No. They have none. Absolutely none.

And it didn't just take the diabolical anti-Kavanaugh smear campaign for people to take notice. The left's never had any decency. I just takes some occasionally earth-shattering political events to hit you upside the head and remind you. This last few weeks has been one of those events, but again, this stuff ain't new.

See Molly Hemingway, "Media Sink to New Lows in Their Anti-Kavanaugh Smear Campaign."

“Have they no decency?” is the right question. https://t.co/LaxISWxuqK

— Brit Hume (@brithume) September 30, 2018

And also, see Michelle Malkin on Chris Britt of the Seattle Times:

I worked with Chris Britt at the Seattle Times in the mid-1990s. He was a genuinely nice guy.

I don't know what happened to him.

Damn. https://t.co/FnnINYw1pU

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) October 1, 2018

The F.B.I. Must Investigate Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's Credibility

A must-read post from Ace, "If The FBI Is Investigating These Allegations, They Absolutely Must Investigate Ford's Credibility":

3. Obviously, any time she claims she doesn't know and that only her lawyers would know, her lawyers must be asked under oath.

Her lawyers, by the way, cannot invoke lawyer-client privilege regarding notes they gave to a third party. Information given to a third party is not a confidential lawyer-client communication and not shielded by privilege.

There is no such thing as "Lawyer-Feinstein privilege," and Ford's political operators with legal licenses should not be permitted to invent one...

There's 10 questions altogether, so read the whole thing.

Yasmin Brunet Caught on a Beach

At Taxi Driver, "Yasmin Brunet Caught Topless on a Beach."

Brigitte Gabriel, Rise

At Amazon, Brigitte Gabriel, Rise: In Defense of Judeo-Christian Values and Freedom.

David Horowitz, The Politics of Bad Faith

Following-up from my previous entry, "Never Negotiate With Democrats."

I'm reminded of David Horowitz's book, The Politics of Bad Faith: The Radical Assault on America's Future.

Never Negotiate With Democrats

This is a must read essay, from the Other McCain, "Never Negotiate With Sociopaths: Liars, Democrats and the #Kavanaugh Smear":

There was a moment during Thursday’s hearing when Christine Blasey Ford was asked, “Was it communicated to you by your counsel or someone else, that the committee had asked to interview you and that — that they offered to come out to California to do so?”

At which point, her lawyer Michael Bromwich grabbed the microphone to interrupt: “We’re going to object, Mr. Chairman, to any call for privileged conversations between counsel and Dr. Ford.”

A poker player would call that a “tell.” Among the many things we learned from Thursday’s hearing was that the excuse given for delaying Professor Ford’s testimony was a lie. She wasn’t afraid of flying. She was a frequent flyer, traveling to vacations around the world and, in point of fact, at the time the Senate Judiciary Committee was offering to fly to California to interview her, Professor Ford was not in California. She was already in the D.C. area, having flown there to strategize with her lawyers, who were recommended to her by Sen. Dianne Feinstein. She had also flown to the D.C. area in August, when she took a polygraph test at the Hilton Hotel near Baltimore-Washington International Airport.

This was all a set-up, a carefully planned ambush by Democrats, calculated either to force Judge Kavanaugh to withdraw his name for the Supreme Court nomination, or else to delay the process past the midterm elections, turning the nomination into a campaign issue.

Once you understand this, the coordination between Senate Democrats and Professor Ford’s lawyers appears highly significant. Anyone could look at the calendar and see how long Feinstein, her Democrat colleagues and the media prepared this ambush. On June 27, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement and, within a few days, Professor Ford contacted the Washiington Post to share her 1982 tale about Judge Kavanaugh, who was widely reported to be on President Trump’s short list of candidates to replace Kennedy on the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh’s name was announced July 9, and days later, Profesor Ford met with her Democrat congresswoman, Rep. Anna Eshoo, who recommended that Professor Ford detail her accusations in a letter to Feinstein. That letter was hand-delivered to Feinstein on July 30. The next day, Aug. 1, in an interview on the Hugh Hewitt radio program, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said:

“If we could get this all done by October 1st when the Supreme Court starts its new fall session, [that] would be ideal. But I think we can get it done soon after that if we don’t get it done by October 1st.”

Grassley explained in that interview that the hearing would likely be delayed until after Labor Day, because August was already booked up with the Senate committee scheduled to consider a series of votes on President Trump’s lower-court appointees. The clock was ticking, however, and Professor Ford’s lawyers wasted no time getting to work. By Aug. 7, Professor Ford was being polygraphed — and Feinstein didn’t say a word about this accusation to her Republican colleagues on the committee. That’s a crucial fact to keep in mind, now that the vote on Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation has been delayed because Jeff Flake got harassed in an elevator by Soros-funded protesters.

The confirmation hearings for Judge Kavanaugh began Sept. 4. Feinstein had been in possession of Professor Ford’s letter for 36 days, and the accuser had been a client of the lawyers recommended by Feinstein for five weeks. Yet while Judge Kavanaugh sat for more than 30 hours of hearings in the Judiciary Committee, where Feinstein was the ranking Democrat member, she never asked a single question about this accusation and, most importantly, nobody on the Republican side of the aisle had any clue that Christine Blasey Ford existed, and was working with a team of lawyers hand-picked for her by Feinstein.

Judge Kavanaugh’s testimony ended Friday, Sept. 7, and the Judiciary Committee vote was already scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 20, allowing another week for the full Senate to debate the nomination and vote, thus to have the new appointed confirmed by the time the Supreme Court convened on Oct. 1. Feinstein, who had been holding onto Professor Ford’s letter since late July, waited until Thursday, Sept. 13, to go public with it, pretending that this delay was about protecting the accuser’s anonymity...

Still more.

David M. O'Brien, Storm Center

At Amazon, David M. O'Brien, Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics.

Senate Judiciary Committee Testimonies Personified the Nation's Bitter Political Divisions

This is good, at LAT, "Emotionally wrenching testimony leaves the Senate, and the nation, bitterly divided":

The two parties could not have come up with witnesses who more perfectly embodied the nation’s bitter partisan divide — or could more effectively widen them— than Ford & Kavanaugh. https://t.co/NUEneVGja1

— David Lauter (@DavidLauter) September 28, 2018

If each side had set out to design witnesses who more perfectly embodied the nation’s bitter partisan divide — or could more effectively widen it — they scarcely could have done better than the two who faced off Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Frequently fighting back tears, Christine Blasey Ford described the sexual assault she says she suffered during the summer of 1982, when she was 15, at the hands of a man now nominated to the nation’s highest court. Her anguished testimony made her an Everywoman stand-in for victims of sexual violence. And as a white, female university professor from California, she virtually personified the Democrats’ resistance to President Trump.

In the afternoon, the man she has accused, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, channeled the president who nominated him, delivering a blistering, angry denial in which he repeatedly declared his innocence and portrayed himself as a victim of “a frenzy on the left” born of “pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election” and “revenge on behalf of the Clintons.”

At the risk of torching any image of judicial temperament, Kavanaugh interrupted Democratic senators and glared at them, once sitting mutely rather than answer a question. He cast the fight mostly not as one of credibility — his word against Ford’s — but as raw partisan battle. He portrayed himself as the victim of “a calculated and orchestrated political hit” and “grotesque and coordinated character assassination.”

His tight-lipped fury marked a dramatic shift from a genteel performance at his earlier confirmation hearing. But it drew deeply from the well of grievance toward Washington and liberal politicians that has cemented conservative loyalty behind Trump through repeated crises in the three years since he opened his presidential campaign.

Underscoring the implicit demand for tribal unity — and its intended audience — Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of Kavanaugh’s strongest supporters on the committee, nearly shouted at the Senate’s remaining undecided Republicans when his turn came to speak.

“To my Republican colleagues, if you vote no, you’re legitimizing the most despicable thing I have seen in my time in politics,” Graham declared.

Whether the hearing changed any senator’s vote is yet unknown. The committee’s 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats are expected to vote Friday, and the full Senate could begin preliminary votes Saturday.

Only a handful of votes remain uncertain — perhaps three Republicans and a couple of Democrats. But much like the confrontation between professor Anita Hill and Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas before the same committee 27 years ago, the day’s drama seemed all but certain to become a national touchstone.

“This kind of mass national exposure is really unusual,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

“Think of the very few moments in which a large part of the nation pauses to consume something in common,” she said. “People assume if you were alive and above 15 when the Anita Hill hearing happened, you will remember it, and there is no need to explain what it is. This will also be one of those moments.”

Ford’s testimony revealed her as a naif in the world of politics. From her opening declaration about how terrified she felt at the witness table to her description of trying to interview prospective lawyers from her car parked outside a Walgreen’s drugstore, she appeared as an innocent suddenly parachuted, against her better judgment, into a Washington maelstrom.

“She came across as exactly the kind of witness one would hope she would be,” said Deborah Tuerkheimer, a professor at the Northwestern University School of Law and a former sex-crimes prosecutor. “Helpful, interested in providing the truth, willing to qualify the testimony where she needed to and very much a person doing her duty rather than grinding any ax.

“For survivors of any kind of assault or misconduct there was catharsis in this,” she added. “As difficult and excruciating as it was to see her relive the trauma, she held up incredibly well.”

Indeed, Ford’s soft-stated testimony elicited praise even from many Republican senators.

“I found no reason to find her not credible,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the Senate’s second-ranking Republican.

Kavanaugh, by contrast, made no effort to portray himself as outside the political realm, and he drew a polarized response. Democrats, as well as some nonpartisan observers, took note of the partisan framing of his anger and predicted his comments could leave permanent doubt about his impartiality if he does win confirmation.

“I think he has really raised serious questions about his temperament,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. “He has raised threats of conspiracy and shown himself to be hot-headed in a way which really makes it questionable that he can be a fair judge.”

But Kavanaugh’s testimony drew support where it counted most — from the inveterate television watcher in the Oval Office, who cleared much of his calendar to watch the nearly nine-hour proceedings, a day after he seemed to hint that he might be wavering on the nomination.

“Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him. His testimony was powerful, honest, and riveting,” Trump declared in a tweet shortly after Kavanaugh finished.

Conservative defenders of Kavanaugh’s were equally cheered by his partisan fire.

“Kavanaugh is not being withdrawn after this. The Republicans are going to have to confirm him or watch Trump and the GOP voters burn down the remains of the party, deservedly so,” declared Erick Erickson, the conservative commentator.

Before Thursday, many had predicted the hearing would replay the bitter 1991 clash between Hill and Thomas after she had accused him of sexual harassment...

More.

Brett Kavanaugh's Opening Statement at His Confirmation Sexual Assault Hearing Before the Senate Judiciary Committee (VIDEO)

I taught today, and only saw snippets of today's hearing while checking Twitter periodically. Even in those few minutes in which I caught snippets I became extremely sad. I saw and retweeted tweeps' comments. In the afternoon I saw Sen. Lindsey Graham's blistering condemnation of reprehensible Democrat Party behavior, circus antics, and demonic machinations. And I saw some awful, horrible, even diabolical comments leftists have made today, including top Democrats. I'm disgusted by all of it, all the left's evil deeds.

Democrats make me sick.

I just watched this 45 minute opening statement right now and I'm flabbergasted. I'm a nothing of a man compared to Brett Kavanaugh --- and I'm a very successful man. He's a fundamentally good person. He's even a genuinely great human being. I can't think of someone who's more qualified to be on the Supreme Court and I'll be heartbroken if he's not confirmed in the upcoming Senate roll call vote. '

This moment in public life is a turning point.

I've felt lately that I wished I wasn't a professor of political science any more. But I don't know what else I'd do --- I trained for over a decade in political science and it's been the passion of my professional life. But that was then. I don't think American politics has ever been so hateful. No, we're not about to have another Civil War, but we're living at a time when politics defines who we are, our very identities, and people are sized up and placed into pigeonholes of good and evil. Others define us as on their side or not and treat us accordingly. People have tried to destroy my life with false allegations (Scott Eric Kaufman and Carl Salonen, if long-time readers will recall).

At my college I'm surrounded by radical leftists. Unless you've been in a similar situation you can't know what it's like. You're literally behind enemy lines. And reinforcements aren't coming. You're on you're own, and those who want to help you are too scared to come out, lest they be targeted for destruction. Targeted with lies and scurrilous allegations. I know how Brett Kavanaugh must feel, but only a little bit. I've not been in the national media spotlight. Talk about having a target on your back.

In any case, I'll watch Dr. Ford's testimony tomorrow and I'll have more comments. For now just know I'm sick to my stomach and I'm heartbroken at our brokenness as a society. And this brokenness is the result of radical leftist ideology and the breakdown of decency all around.

Democrats Poised for Major Gains in Midterm Elections?

As I've noted, the president's party usually loses seats in Congress in midterm elections, and I don't expect this year to be much different.

Most of the polls you'll be seeing in the weeks ahead with be those measuring the "generic ballot," where respondents are asked their party preference for Congress, basically. Congressional elections aren't normally nationalized, however. It was the case in 1994 that Newt Gingrich, with his "Contract for America," turned the midterms on a referendum against the Democrats, with a mandate for ambitious policy-driven G.O.P government.

The Democrats don't have anything like that going this year, except anti-Trump hysteria.

My guess is the Dems will flip the House, probably by 20 seats or more. I'm skeptical they'll take the Senate, though, and I think Senate races will better reflect national trends, especially things like the politics of the Supreme Court (and the stupid allegations against Brett Kavanaugh).

In any case, at the Los Angeles Times, "With growing support from women, Democrats poised for major gains in midterm, new poll shows":

Latest USC-LATimes Poll shows Ds with a 14 point lead on congressional ballot. Widening support from women has driven D margin, especially suburban women, white married women & white, non-college women. https://t.co/CCQHLgWBKj

— David Lauter (@DavidLauter) September 26, 2018

Boosted by growing support among suburban women and widespread antipathy toward President Trump, Democrats approach the midterm election poised to make major gains nationwide, a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll shows.

Democrats had a 14-point margin, 55% to 41%, when likely voters were asked which party’s candidate they would cast a ballot for if the election were held now. If that advantage holds up until election day, just less than six weeks away, it would almost surely be large enough to sweep a Democratic majority into the House.

Voters also oppose Republicans on a number of major issues. But overriding all of them is the president, whose outsized personality has dominated the nation’s news since he declared his candidacy more than three years ago.

Roughly 3 out of 4 likely voters said they saw their vote this fall as an opportunity to express a view of Trump. For many, that view is negative: Those saying they planned to register opposition outnumbered Trump supporters, 45% to 29%.

Likely voters disapprove of Trump’s overall performance in office by 57% to 39%, the poll found. Almost half of likely voters, 49%, said they “strongly” disapprove, while just under one-quarter, 24%, strongly approve.

Especially notable are the views of women, whose preferences have expanded the Democratic edge since a USC Dornsife poll surveyed most of the same voters this summer.

In the summer, men were closely divided between the two parties; they remain so now. But women, who already leaned significantly toward the Democrats, have shifted further in their direction, widening a large gender gap. The poll found women now favor the Democrats by 28 percentage points, 62% to 34%, among likely voters.

Three overlapping groups of female voters who have long been important for Republicans have moved away from the party: suburban residents, married white women and white women without college degrees.

Democrats enjoy a 61%-35% edge among suburban women, the poll found — a margin that has grown by 9 points since the summer. Democrats have narrowed the gap with Republicans among married white women, long a mainstay of the GOP, who now favor Republicans by a narrow 51% to 46%.

Those numbers help explain why suburban congressional districts long held by Republicans — from Orange County and Santa Clarita to the suburbs of Dallas and Houston and east to suburban Philadelphia — have become key targets in Democrats’ effort to retake control of the House.

A similar pattern holds among white women who did not graduate from college. Blue-collar white women gave Trump a crucial margin of support in 2016. A majority continues to support Republicans — by 56% to 39% — but since the summer, Democrats have cut their deficit with that group by a third.

The poll was largely completed before accusations of sexual misconduct against Judge Brent Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, began dominating the news. Many political professionals in both parties think that controversy could further alienate women from the GOP...

Oh, the allegations against Kavanaugh are going to have an effect, I think, although it remains to be seen in which directions. Some "Never Trump" types on Twitter are apparently revolted by this radical leftist anti-Kavanaugh circus, and if that's true, normal antipathy to Trump among moderates might be outweighed by disgust with the evil Democrats.

We'll see, in any case.

Still more at the link.

'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

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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.

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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: