Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming

Atkinson's a great historian.

Out this week, Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy).

'Semi-Charmed Life'

From yesterday morning's drive-time, at 93.1 Jack FM Los Angeles, Third Eye Blind:

Let's Dance
David Bowie
6:51am

Fat Bottomed Girls
Queen
6:47am

Semi-Charmed Life
Third Eye Blind
6:42am

You Shook Me All Night Long
AC/DC
6:39am

Tainted Love
Soft Cell
6:35am

Come Out And Play
Offspring
6:24am

Something Just Like This
Coldplay / The Chainsmokers
6:20am

Limelight
Rush
6:15am

99 Luftballoons
Nena
6:12am

What's My Age Again
Blink 182
6:09am

Everybody Wants To Rule The World
Tears For Fears
6:05am

American Girl
Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers
5:54am

Don DeLillo, White Noise

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Don DeLillo, White Noise (Penguin Orange Collection).

'Under the Bridge'

From yesterday morning's drive-time, at 93.1 Jack FM Los Angeles, the Red Hot Chili Peppers:


The Chain
Fleetwood Mac
8:50am

Been Caught Stealing
Jane's Addiction
8:47am

Don't You Forget About Me
Simple Minds
8:42am

Jump
Van Halen
8:38am

867-5309 Jenny
Tommy Tutone
8:35am

Hey Ya!
Outkast
8:24am

Eyes Without a Face
Billy Idol
8:19am

Walk This Way
AEROSMITH
8:15am

Under The Bridge
Red Hot Chili Peppers
8:11am

Whip It
Devo
8:08am

Salvatore Babones, The New Authoritarianism

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Salvatore Babones, The New Authoritarianism: Trump, Populism, and the Tyranny of Experts.

'What I Like About You'

From Thursday morning's drive-time, the Romantics, "What I Like About You," at 93.1 Jack FM Los Angeles:

Livin' On A Prayer
Bon Jovi
7:03am

She Blinded Me With Science
Thomas Dolby
6:52am

My Hero
Foo Fighters
6:48am

What I Like About You
Romantics
6:45am

Open Arms
JOURNEY
6:42am

Beat It
Michael Jackson
6:37am

Vaseline
Stone Temple Pilots
6:35am

Surrender
Cheap Trick
6:31am

Girls On Film
Duran Duran
6:21am

Better Man
Pearl Jam
6:17am

Go Your Own Way
Fleetwood Mac
6:13am

Pride
U2
6:09am

Why God is Masculine

From the awesome, incredible Dennis Prager. The dude's a freakin' rabbi!

At Prager University:

Douglas E. Schoen, Collapse

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Douglas E. Schoen, Collapse: A World in Crisis and the Urgency of American Leadership.

Danielle Gersh's Tuesday Forecast

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

'Drive'

From this morning's break-time, where I listen to the radio in my car in the parking lot and have a vape (which is prohibited on campus).

At 93.1 Jack FM Los Angeles, Incubus, "Drive":

Modern Love
David Bowie
9:10am

Buddy Holly
Weezer
9:07am

Another Brick In The Wall
Pink Floyd
9:04am

Beat It
Michael Jackson
8:53am

Drive
INCUBUS
8:49am

Drive
Incubus
8:49am

Should I Stay Or Should I Go?
Clash
8:46am

Barracuda
Heart
8:41am

Enjoy The Silence
Depeche Mode
8:37am

Hitler's in the Charts Again

That's the name of the Exploited's hit song, here.

And, apparently, at the L.A. Times, "Fascism is on the minds of book buyers — and publishers are taking notice":

Gang: I've been thinking about, reading around on, and working on this story for months -- runs in LA Times on Sunday https://t.co/zAvTC8Rxgp

— Scott Timberg (@TheMisreadCity) May 3, 2019

Remember “The End of History?” Elizabeth Drummond, who spent the 1990s studying at Georgetown University, recalls Francis Fukuyama’s groundbreaking essay well, which announced "an unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism.” The Soviet Union had just collapsed in a peaceful devolution, Germany was reunified as Champagne popped alongside the crumbling Berlin Wall and democracy seemed to be inevitably settling across the globe like a gentle rain. Politicians in the U.S. talked about a smooth and comfortable “third way” between Left and Right.

“There was a lot of optimism,” Drummond remembered. The topic of her studies — European Fascism of the 1920s and 1930s — seemed distant in both time and place.

But a quarter-century later, things look a bit different. Around the world, democracy appears to be losing ground to authoritarian populism in places like Hungary, Poland and the Philippines. Neo-Fascist, anti-immigrant movements brew in much of Europe and the United States. American politics is polarized in a way it’s not been in a century. And whatever’s going on in Venezuela, Turkey, Russia and North Korea, it’s hard to describe them as democracies.

Today, the subject of Drummond’s research no longer feels like a black-and-white film from decades ago.

“When I was a grad student, I didn’t think the link between past and present would be this strong,” says Drummond, now a professor at Loyola Marymount University. “One of the challenges of teaching history is to make it relevant. But I’m not sure modern European historians ever wanted to be this relevant.”

One of the challenges of teaching history is to make it relevant. But I’m not sure modern European historians ever wanted to be this relevant.

Drummond is not alone in seeing these connections. College students, book buyers and newspaper columnists are taking a renewed interest in the bad old days of interwar authoritarianism, as well as books about threats to the present. Several scholars have even started a crowd-sourced website called The New Fascism Syllabus.

The last few years have not been great for democracy around the world. But they have been, for people who write about or teach the subject, good for business. As a book review from the Washington Post put it, “Fascism is back in fashion.”

Despite parallels like attacks on the press, racial scapegoating, demonization of opposition parties, or the constant sense of alarm dictators rely on, no credible observer says that Hungary’s Viktor Orban, the leaders of Brexit or Vladimir Putin are replays of Hitler or Mussolini.

But some in the literary world are taking more direct looks at authoritarian regimes of the past and present, while trying to imagine the future.

In the immediate aftermath of the election of President Donald Trump, a number of novels about authoritarian states — George Orwell’s “1984,” Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 book “It Can’t Happen Here,” Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America,” in which the demagogue Charles Lindbergh defeats President Roosevelt – saw their profiles rise. Some even returned to the bestseller list. Readers continue to consume authoritarian fiction – British author John Lanchester has a new dystopian novel called “The Wall,” inspired by American insularity and the Brexit vote.

Other writers have been perceptive to the global political shifts. Recent books — Pankaj Mishra’s “Age of Anger,” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s “How Democracies Die” — have become steady sellers and regular references for political commentators.

We never fall twice into the same abyss. But we always fall the same way, in a mixture of ridicule and dread.

Charles Hauther, head buyer for Los Feliz’s Skylight Books, says globally focused books like these sell better than anti-Trump tomes, and some old texts about authoritarianism are returning. “‘Anatomy of Fascism’ is back in style,” Hauther says of the Robert Paxton title from 15 years ago.

Some books — like Madeleine Albright’s ”Fascism: A Warning” from 2018, informed by her family’s flight from Nazi-occupied Central Europe — have a personal angle. Some aim for a mass audience, like 2017’s “On Tyranny,” by Yale historian Timothy Snyder. Others — “Artists Under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany,” by Claremont McKenna College historian Jonathan Petropoulos, or this year’s “Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit and Authoritarian Populism,” by political scientists Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart — are scholarly but also readable for a general public.

Authors are also searching for root causes, like Jonathan Weiler, a political scientist and YouTube star interested in the “authoritarian personality” and co-author (with Marc Hetherington) of “Prius or Pickup?” Even more broadly, London economist William Davies writes in the new “Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason” that these shifts are caused by that fact that truth and rationality itself are now under assault.

Ziblatt cites income inequality, the lack of civics education and the disappearing of public spaces as potentially increasing the erosion of democratic norms. “The main way democracies die used to be military coups,” says Ziblatt. “Now it’s elections.”

Teachings on totalitarianism

Students have been intrigued by Nazis and Fascism for decades, but their interest has surged alongside global changes taking place from Beijing to Brazil. Ziblatt offered a Harvard class on the subject last autumn: 150 students applied for 12 spaces. When he originally offered the course, in the wake of George W. Bush’s wars in the Middle East, he called it, “Is Democracy Possible Everywhere?” Now, after the failure of democratic nation-building in the region and the widespread eruption of authoritarianism, he jokingly refers to it as, “Is Democracy Possible Anywhere?”

Students are not only enrolling, they are making connections between what they study and what they read in the news. It was exactly those parallels that drove Eva Baudler, an LMU junior whose grandparents were German resistance fighters, to take Drummond’s course on Nazi Germany. The first day involved watching a short film about the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va...

More.

Jennifer Delacruz's Fabulous Forecast

This was for yesterday, but look at this week's forecast.

Ms. Jennifer is da kine.

Democrat Enthusiasm Weakens Ahead of 2020

At NBC, "Democrats lose their enthusiasm advantage in latest NBC News/WSJ poll":

The D enthusiasm advantage was why the Ds did so well in the 2107/2018 special elections. It’s a big part of why they took the House in 2018. If the advantage is gone, it has huge implications for the 2020 race. https://t.co/HUdLQ4bysK

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) May 6, 2019

WASHINGTON — Democrats had two advantages that fueled their midterm victories in November 2018 — an edge in enthusiasm and success with independent voters.

Six months later, just one of those advantages remains.

In the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 75 percent of Republican registered voters say they have high interest in the 2020 presidential election — registering a “9” or “10” on a 10-point scale — versus 73 percent of Democratic voters who say the same thing.

That’s quite a change from the 2018 cycle, when Democrats held a double-digit lead on this question until the last two months before the election, when the GOP closed the gap but still trailed the Dems in enthusiasm.

It’s just one poll, but the numbers are a reminder that presidential elections are always different than midterm cycles.

And they should correct any Dem thinking that assumes — “Hey, we have Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the bag because we won there in 2018” — since GOP enthusiasm now is much higher.

Oh, one other thing: overall enthusiasm for 2020 is sky-high, with 69 percent of all voters expressing a high level of interest in the upcoming election.

That’s just 3 points shy of the 72 percent who said the same thing in October 2016.

And we are still more than 500 days away from the 2020 general election.

So, yeah, turnout in 2020 is going to be through the roof...

More.

OMG! No Way! We're Doomed! Civilization is Accelerating Extinction and Altering the Natural World at a Pace 'Unprecedented in Human History'

More doomsday hysteria from the climate cult.

At the New York Times, "Humans Are Speeding Extinction and Altering the Natural World at an ‘Unprecedented’ Pace":

WASHINGTON — Humans are transforming Earth’s natural landscapes so dramatically that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, posing a dire threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their survival, a sweeping new United Nations assessment has concluded.

The 1,500-page report, compiled by hundreds of international experts and based on thousands of scientific studies, is the most exhaustive look yet at the decline in biodiversity across the globe and the dangers that creates for human civilization. A summary of its findings, which was approved by representatives from the United States and 131 other countries, was released Monday in Paris. The full report is set to be published this year.

Its conclusions are stark. In most major land habitats, from the savannas of Africa to the rain forests of South America, the average abundance of native plant and animal life has fallen by 20 percent or more, mainly over the past century. With the human population passing 7 billion, activities like farming, logging, poaching, fishing and mining are altering the natural world at a rate “unprecedented in human history.”

At the same time, a new threat has emerged: Global warming has become a major driver of wildlife decline, the assessment found, by shifting or shrinking the local climates that many mammals, birds, insects, fish and plants evolved to survive in. When combined with the other ways humans are damaging the environment, climate change is now pushing a growing number of species, such as the Bengal tiger, closer to extinction.

As a result, biodiversity loss is projected to accelerate through 2050, particularly in the tropics, unless countries drastically step up their conservation efforts.

A previous report by the group had estimated that, in the Americas, nature provides some $24 trillion of non-monetized benefits to humans each year. The Amazon rain forest absorbs immense quantities of carbon dioxide and helps slow the pace of global warming. Wetlands purify drinking water. Coral reefs sustain tourism and fisheries in the Caribbean. Exotic tropical plants form the basis of a variety of medicines.

But as these natural landscapes wither and become less biologically rich, the services they can provide to humans have been dwindling.

Humans are producing more food than ever, but land degradation is already harming agricultural productivity on 23 percent of the planet’s land area, the new report said. The decline of wild bees and other insects that help pollinate fruits and vegetables is putting up to $577 billion in annual crop production at risk. The loss of mangrove forests and coral reefs along coasts could expose up to 300 million people to increased risk of flooding.

The authors note that the devastation of nature has become so severe that piecemeal efforts to protect individual species or to set up wildlife refuges will no longer be sufficient. Instead, they call for “transformative changes” that include curbing wasteful consumption, slimming down agriculture’s environmental footprint and cracking down on illegal logging and fishing...

We're all gonna die!

Allie Stuckey Interview (VIDEO)

She's with Candace Owens, and Ms. Stuckey is largely pregnant, and I mean large, especially up top.

Woman's Life Ruined by Large Breasts (VIDEO)

Impossible!

This woman has fabulously huge honkers!

Watch at the link.

Emma Roberts Cosmopolitan June 2019 Cover Story

At Taxi Driver, "Emma Roberts Topless in Cosmo."

And at Cosmo, "Emma Roberts Is Ready to Stand on Her Own, Be a Movie Star, and Wear Fewer Clothes."

Anti-Humanism

At Quillette, an excellent piece, "How Anti-Humanism Conquered the Left."

“Ehrlich and many others are still claiming that disaster is imminent, despite their previous predictions repeatedly failing to materialize. Just last year, Ehrlich compared human population growth to the spread of cancer.” https://t.co/gzwIto5So6

— Quillette (@Quillette) May 3, 2019

Today is International Workers’ Day, a holiday with socialist origins. Its name hearkens back to a time when the political Left was ostensibly devoted to the cause of human welfare. These days, however, some on the far Left care less about the wellbeing of people than they do about making sure that people are never born at all. How did these radicals come to support a massive reduction in human population, if not humanity’s demise? Whether it’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez questioning the morality of childbearing, a birth-strike movement that encourages people to forego parenthood despite the “grief that [they say they] feel as a result,” or political commentator Bill Maher blithely claiming, “I can’t think of a better gift to our planet than pumping out fewer humans to destroy it,” a misanthropic philosophy known as “anti-natalism” is going increasingly mainstream.

The logical conclusion of this anti-humanist ideology is, depressingly, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (Vhemt). According to its founder, activist Les Knight, Vhemt (pronounced “vehement”) is gaining steam. “In the last year,” Knight told the Daily Mail, “I’ve seen more and more articles about people choosing to remain child-free or to not add more to their existing family than ever. I’ve been collecting these stories and last year was just a groundswell of articles, and, in addition, there have been articles about human extinction.”

Over 2000 new people have “liked” the movement’s Facebook page since January and, more importantly, the number of people fulfilling the movement’s goals (regardless of any affiliation with the movement itself) is growing. The U.S. birth rate is at an all-time low. According to the latest figures from the Center for Disease Control, the total U.S. fertility rate for 2017 was at an all-time low of 1.77 babies per woman (i.e., below the replacement rate of 2.1 babies per woman needed to maintain the current population).

Recent examples of writings that are warming to the idea of human extinction include the New Yorker’s “The Case for Not Being Born,” NBC News’ “Science proves kids are bad for Earth. Morality suggests we stop having them,” and the New York Times’ “Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?” which muses that, “It may well be, then, that the extinction of humanity would make the world better off.” Last month, the progressive magazine FastCompany released a disturbing video entitled, “Why Having Kids Is the Worst Thing You Can Do for the Planet.”

Some anti-natalists are not content with promoting the voluntary reduction of birth rates, and would prefer to hurry the process along with government intervention. Various prominent environmentalists, from Johns Hopkins University bioethicist Travis Rieder to science popularizer and entertainer Bill Nye, support the introduction of special taxes or other state-imposed penalties for having “too many” children. In 2015, Bowdoin College’s Sarah Conly published a book advocating a “one-child” policy, like the one China abandoned following disastrous consequences including female infanticide and a destabilizing gender ratio of 120 boys per 100 girls, which left around 17 percent of China’s young men unable to find a Chinese wife. Even after that barbaric policy’s collapse, she maintains it was “a good thing.”

Modern-day anti-humanism emerged in the 1970s, midwifed by a doomy strain of environmental pessimism led by Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich (but with intellectual antecedents dating back to Thomas Malthus in the eighteenth century). Ehrlich published his widely read polemic The Population Bomb in 1968, which originally opened with the lines, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

Thanks to human ingenuity in the form of the Green Revolution, that didn’t happen...

Keep reading.

Great Mitch McConnell 'Medicare Scare' Video

I like Leader Mitch.

Democrats’ Medicare for None plan is another untested, far-left fantasy designed to destroy Medicare and take away private insurance from more than 180 million Americans. pic.twitter.com/1rDCdcfYGe

— Leader McConnell (@senatemajldr) May 2, 2019

Long Beach City College Gun Scare Lockdown (VIDEO)

My college's Pacific Coast Campus was on lockdown yesterday, although it turned out the weapon was a fake gun, I guess to be used in some kind of theater production.

Campus security sent out emergency notifications through email and text messaging around 11:00am or so. The college took this very seriously, which is good. I'd like more answers about why some theater production was having fake guns in use and there was no formal notification to the college beforehand?

My school's newspaper, the Viking, has the story. Turns out is was a theater professor himself who "stupidly" walked across campus carrying the fake weapon, without a bag or anything. You think people might freak out?

See, "Film professor carrying prop gun caused campus lockdown."

And at ABC 7 News Los Angeles:

Paul Joseph Watson Also Banned in Facebook Purge (VIDEO)

Following-up from yesterday, "Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, and Milo Yiannopoulos."

Big tech controls the new public square, and conservatives have to be ready to fight back, and yes, that includes President Trump leading the call to regulate leftist social media giants.

Watch:

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition 2019

Sports Illustrated moved the publication of the swimsuit edition to May, so it'll be out any day now. But now that the magazines going with Muslimas in burkinis, maybe the edition's going the way of the dodo. *Shrugs.*

Rhian Sugden in Lace Bodysuit

I don't think she's doing topless photos any longer, but her lingerie is killer, lol.

Lets all take a minute out of our Wednesday to appreciate @Rhianmarie in the Indulge Me Lace Bodysuit 😍 https://t.co/KcSnZjfJgf pic.twitter.com/1bKP0bE6t5

— Scantilly (@dearscantilly) May 1, 2019

Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones, Laura Loomer, and Milo Yiannopoulos

It's no surprise, although it raises the long-standing questions of whether the social media giants should be the speech police of American society. Obviously, the answer is no, but leftists control the industry.

What's the solution? More conservative media outlets, especially new outlets focused on building massive scale of participation and membership to rival the power of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

At the Washington Post, "Facebook bans far-right leaders including Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos for being “dangerous”":

The bans are a sign that Facebook is more aggressively enforcing its hate speech policies under pressure from civil rights groups https://t.co/xRY2Ggjyha

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 2, 2019

Facebook said on Thursday it has permanently banned several far-right figures and organizations including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Infowars host Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Laura Loomer, for being “dangerous,” a sign that the social network is more aggressively enforcing its hate speech policies under pressure from civil rights groups.

Facebook had removed the accounts, fan pages, and groups affiliated with these individuals after it reevaluated the content that they had posted previously, or had reexamined their activities outside of Facebook, the company said. The removal also pertains to at least one of the organizations run by these people, Jones’ Infowars.

“We’ve always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology. The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today,” Facebook said in a statement.

Jones, for example, recently hosted Gavin McInnes, the leader of the Proud Boys, which Facebook designated as a hate figure in December. Yiannopoulos, another alt-right social media star, publicly praised McInnes this year, and Loomer appeared with him at a rally. Jones has been temporarily banned before by Facebook as well as other social media platforms including Twitter.

But Facebook and its counterparts have largely resisted permanent bans, holding that objectionable speech is permissible, so long as it doesn’t bleed into hate. Facebook has also been wary of offending conservatives, who have become vocal about allegations that the company unfairly censors their speech.

The move is likely to be welcomed by civil rights activists, who have long argued that these individuals espouse violent and hateful views and that Silicon Valley companies should not allow their platforms to become a vehicle for spreading them...

More.

For one thing, Farrakhan isn't "far-right," and frankly, "far-right" is a slur to demonize conservatives anyway, especially highly effective ones.

That said, I brook no tolerance for any racism, so if some of these folks are dallying with genuine Nazis, that's a no go for me.

And finally, McInnes and Yiannopoulos are examples of canaries in the coalmine, and if they're going down, the big social media sites, with their diabolical "civil rights" safety commissars, will go after the next group of successful conservative activists.

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (Vintage International).

A Rising Tide of Anti-Semitism

A surprisingly good (and contrite) editorial on the paper's epic anti-Semitic cluster in its international edition last week.

At the New York Times:

From the Editorial Board: "Anti-Semitism can often still be dismissed as a disease gnawing only at the fringes of society. That is a dangerous mistake." https://t.co/ZPup2sFIrX

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) May 1, 2019

The cartoon can be found here.

Also, at Commentary, "An Editorial Culture of Complacency."

And see Bret Stephens, who's a former editor of the Jerusalem Post and a former contributing editor at the Wall Street Journal. Now at the New York Times, he hammers his own newspaper, "A Despicable Cartoon in The Times."

Lisa Halliday, Asymmetry

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, LIsa Haliday, Asymmetry: A Novel.

Joe Biden Dogged by His Handling of Anita Hill's Allegations When He Was Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee During the Clarence Thomas Confirmation Hearings (VIDEO)

Joe Biden launched his White House bid today, and as I'm just getting online, I can't quite tell how well it's going just yet. That said, it looks like the Anita Hill fiasco of 1991, when Biden chaired the hearings for Clarence Thomas, could doom his candidacy.

At the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "Joe Biden Expresses Regret to Anita Hill, but She Says 'I'm Sorry' Is Not Enough."

And at the Los Angeles Times, from last week, "Joe Biden’s handling of Anita Hill’s harassment allegations clouds his presidential prospects":

As he moves toward formally entering the Democratic presidential race, Joe Biden has repeatedly expressed regret for how he handled one of the most consequential challenges of his career in the Senate — the 1991 hearings into Anita Hill’s sexual harassment allegations against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

But he has not put the decades-old issue to rest.

Biden, who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time, has rankled rather than reassured many critics by portraying himself as powerless to have conducted the hearing differently.

“To this day I regret I couldn’t come up with a way to get her the kind of hearing she deserved, given the courage she showed by reaching out to us,” Biden said, speaking of Hill at a charity event in New York in late March. “I wish I could’ve done something.”

His critics call that excuse flimsy, saying Biden has downplayed his considerable authority as the committee chairman.

“He could have done more,” said Kimberlé Crenshaw, a UCLA law professor who assisted Hill’s legal team in 1991. “That’s not an apology. An apology starts with a full acknowledgement of the wrong you have committed. If he wants the women’s vote, he’s got to do something more than symbolic stuff.”

A review of the record of the hearings 28 years ago shows how much Biden was a creature of a Senate that was clubby and male-dominated for much of his early career. The Hill-Thomas hearing was so long ago that the committee received one of the most volatile political documents of the decade — Hill’s affidavit outlining her claims — over a fax machine.

Biden’s handling of the hearings go beyond being just a single data point in his 36-year Senate voting record. The incident became a test of leadership in a climactic political event as Hill’s allegations blew up what were already high-stakes confirmation hearings. Thomas, a young black conservative, had been picked by President George H.W. Bush to replace Thurgood Marshall, the legendary civil rights lawyer and the court’s first African American justice.

Hill, then a law professor at the University of Oklahoma, alleged that Thomas harassed her by talking in sordid detail about sex and pornography while she she was an employee of his at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Thomas flatly denied the allegations.

The Senate was singularly ill equipped to deal with the subject at the time. It had no black and only two female members. The Judiciary Committee had none of either.

The hearings turned a spotlight on that glaring lack of diversity. The image of a young black woman sitting alone behind a witness table, telling an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee a lurid tale was televised across the country and the world. Never before had sexual harassment been discussed so explicitly on Capitol Hill.

“There was a real and perceived problem the committee faced,” Biden said at the March charity event. “They were a bunch of white guys.”

Biden had never shown much appetite for pressing nominees on issues related to their personal lives. Another committee leader, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, had been involved earlier in the year in a drunken Florida beach scene with a nephew who was accused of rape.

For about two weeks before the nomination came to a vote, Biden and a few staff members knew of the allegations but kept them out of public view because Hill requested anonymity.

Biden did not deem the allegations important enough to postpone the committee’s scheduled vote on Thomas’s nomination. When he announced his opposition to Thomas in a floor speech he said, “My view on this matter has nothing to do with Judge Thomas’ character. For he is a man of character.”

News of the allegations and Hill’s identity leaked only after the committee voted. At that point, Biden came under enormous pressure to investigate. Several House Democratic women — including Rep. Patricia Schroeder of Colorado — marched to the Senate to demand the hearings be reopened.

Schroeder said in an interview that, when she complained to Biden that the process was being rushed, his response was a window to the ways of the Senate. Biden told her, she said, that he had given his word to Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.), Thomas’s sponsor, while they were in the Senate’s all-male gym that it would be a “quick hearing.”

“Is that where the deals are all cut? Really?” said Schroeder. “That stuck in my craw. It was a boys club and the boys were not really wanting to yield.” Danforth, asked about Schroeder’s account, said he did not remember such a conversation with Biden.

More at that top link.

John Lydon on Venice Beach (VIDEO)

I don't live in Venice, but Robin Abcarian does and she's not going with Johnny Rotten's analysis:

The Sex Pistols' Johnny Rotten laments on the condition of Venice Beach due to "tent cities and "heroin spikes." https://t.co/izPjaFD6FB Watch Johnny's full interview with Newsweek here: https://t.co/SDFHzKOcQK pic.twitter.com/6fgl9NK9nn

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) April 21, 2019

He’s completely out of his mind.

— Robin Abcarian (@AbcarianLAT) April 22, 2019

Margaret Leslie Davis, The Lost Gutenberg

This looks fascinating!

At Amazon, Margaret Leslie Davis, The Lost Gutenberg: The Astounding Story of One Book's Five-Hundred-Year Odyssey.

Playboy Model Kate Great

At Egotastic!, "Kate Great Lives Up to Her Name with an Exquisite Nude Body."

And at Playboy Plus, "International models, Kate Great and Zhenya Beyala enjoy the fresh, crisp air in their seductive Playboy Girlfriends feature, "Tender Moments."

How Trump Can Win Reelection

It's Larry Sabato, who got pretty much everything wrong in 2016, at least concerning the presidential race, so caveat emptor.

At the Washington Post, "It’s easy to see how Trump can win reelection":

It's Easy To See How Trump Could Win Reelection -- from @LarrySabato and me in @PostOpinions https://t.co/DCt6aCewAr

— Kyle Kondik (@kkondik) April 24, 2019

President Trump thrives on chaos, much of it his own creation. But it would be a mistake to assume that the reelection campaign of this most untraditional president will mirror the tumult of his 2016 effort. It’s too early to handicap 2020, but Trump may try to capitalize on some of the same factors that helped three modern Republican presidents, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, win reelection.

The reelections of all three men were not always certain. Around this time in the 1972 election cycle, Nixon held only a modest lead over the early Democratic front-runner, Edmund Muskie, who in 1968 had been the vice-presidential running mate of Hubert Humphrey. In late January 1983, pollster Lou Harris found former vice president Walter Mondale leading Reagan 53 percent to 44 percent. John Kerry’s challenge to Bush was nip-and-tuck throughout 2004. Fast-forward to 2019, and Trump often trails some Democrats in presidential trial heats, but with his large, solid base and a continuing good economy, it isn’t hard to see how Trump could win again.

That is not to suggest that Trump is destined to win, much less that he would rebound to a gigantic victory like Nixon’s and Reagan’s. For one thing, the landslides that one finds at regular intervals throughout much of the 20th century don’t even seem possible in this highly partisan, polarized era. America is in a stretch of eight consecutive presidential elections where neither side has won the popular vote by double digits, the longest such streak of close, competitive elections in U.S. history.

Another caveat: Trump’s approval rating has been upside down for essentially his entire presidency, and he has shown no inclination to broaden his base of support by changing his policies or softening his sharp rhetoric. From that perspective, even matching Bush’s 50.7 percent in 2004 seems like a major reach. Yet Trump could again win the presidency without winning the popular vote because of the strength of his coalition in the crucial Midwest battlegrounds.

Trump is in the process of jumping one major hurdle: He lacks a major primary challenger. (Bill Weld, the 2016 Libertarian vice-presidential candidate who recently declared a GOP primary challenge, does not count as “major.”) With approval ratings among Republicans usually exceeding 80 percent, and with his allies firmly in control of the party apparatus almost everywhere, Trump has thus far boxed out major intraparty opposition. The last three reelected GOP presidents all waltzed to renomination.

Trump is also going to be in a much better financial position than he was in 2016, when Hillary Clinton vastly outspent him. Trump already has $40 million in the bank for his reelection bid, and he should be able to raise hundreds of millions more now that his party is more completely behind him than in 2016. Money is not everything, as Trump himself showed in 2016, but any campaign would prefer having more, not less.

The Internet will be a campaign wild card again. Trump will probably reprise his 2016 digital advertising strategy to dissuade specific demographic groups, such as African Americans and young women, from voting for the Democratic candidate. His army of domestic online trolls no doubt will also turn out in force, and foreign actors, particularly Russians tied to the Kremlin, will almost certainly try to influence the election. Don’t expect the Trump administration to devote a lot of energy to frustrating those efforts.

The Democratic Party may inadvertently boost Trump if it gets carried away with an impeachment frenzy that prompts a voter backlash. Opposition to Trump will help unify the Democrats and fund the eventual nominee after a standard-bearer emerges from what is a giant and growing field of about 20 candidates. But one or more factions of the Democratic Party may emerge from the primary season disappointed and angry. Trump’s well-funded digital strategy will work to widen these fissures.

Ultimately, Trump may turn out to be at the mercy of conventional factors...

More.

Islamic Jihad is World's Greatest Threat

Spectacular piece, from David Harsanyi, at the Federalist.

Read it all at the click-through:

Islamic Terrorism Remains The World's Greatest Threat To Peace https://t.co/8FCz4pbPDM

— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) April 23, 2019

Miley Cyrus as a Lion

At Taxi Driver, "Miley Cyrus Topless as a Lion."

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Women Smoking for National Weed Appreciation Day

At Drunken Stepfather, "GIRLS SMOKING WEED FOR HEMPER CUZ IT’S 420 WEEKEND OF THE DAY."

Rebuilding Notre Dame (VIDEO)

At the Los Angeles Times, "Notre Dame may take decades to fix. The first concerns are water and soot":

Two holes gape where Notre Dame’s vaulted stone ceiling has collapsed. The cathedral’s 19th century timber spire is gone, as is most of its roof. Portions of the interior walls were blackened by the intense heat of Paris’ most consequential fire in centuries.

As the world absorbs the magnitude of devastation wrought by Notre Dame’s inferno, architects and engineers anticipate a decades-long restoration process replete with unprecedented challenges. Designers will need to navigate complicated structural issues and delicate preservation debates to satisfy an array of stakeholders.

They will all be asking the same question: How do you revive an 850-year-old icon?

"The whole world is watching, and everybody has something to say about it,” said Marc Walton, director of Center for Scientific Studies in the Arts at Northwestern University. “It has to be built for the next 1,000 years. It’s going to be a different structure as a result, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

The first order of business is to dry the cathedral out, said John Fidler, who served as conservation director of English Heritage, a government agency that maintains England’s national monuments.

“There are millions of gallons of water poured into the structure that will seep down to the crypt, the basement,” Fidler said. Pumping out that water could take months, and years may pass before the entire building is completely dry.

“It’s easy to make the surface dry because there are large pores on the surface, but deeper in the stone, the pores grow narrower and it’s more difficult to suck that water out,” he said. “When the walls remain damp, you get mildew and mold and fungus and salt crystallization, which can rupture the pores in stone and cause it to deteriorate on the surface.”

Soot is also a particular concern because it’s so oily, said Rosa Lowinger, a conservator of buildings and sculpture based in Los Angeles.

“People’s first instinct is they want to wash it, but that’s the last thing you should do,” she said. The building’s limestone is porous, so soap and water would drive the soot into its pores. Instead, soot must be removed while dry. “The earliest decisions here — the protocols taken — will define how successful a project like this is.”

While conservators tackle those problems, other teams will get started on the greatest engineering challenge of the entire project: the assessment of the cathedral’s structural condition.

Most analysis methods are tailored toward modern buildings, not stone structures, so engineers may struggle to determine the stability of the damaged cathedral, said Matthew DeJong, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley who has worked on historic buildings in Europe.

But Notre Dame is surely damaged, said Frank Escher, an architect and preservationist with Escher GuneWardena Architecture in Los Angeles.

“A fire of this nature can weaken a stone structure. It’s too early to say whether it’s safe or not,” said Escher, who is currently restoring the century-old Church of the Epiphany, the oldest Episcopal church in L.A...

More.

Delilah Belle Hamlin Out Walking

At Taxi Driver:

Delilah Belle Hamlin Braless Pokies While Out Walking - https://t.co/E3X058V2W7 - pic.twitter.com/YCZFzyO4Kf

— Taxi Driver (@TaxiDriverMovie) April 17, 2019

Plus, "Delilah Belle Hamlin Goes Topless in Purple Vinyl Gloves for Racy Instagram Post."

Alissa Quart, Squeezed

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Alissa Quart, Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America.

French Cuisine in the California Desert

I've been out to Yucca Valley over the past few weekends, as my mom took a turn for the worst and died last Thursday from lung cancer at the age of 82. It wasn't a surprise, but of course it's devastating to lose a parent. We're having an intimate service on April 26th and a celebration of my mom's life, with about a hundred people invited, sometime in June.

Meanwhile, my older sister mentioned this restaurant a couple of times when I've been out there visiting, and here's an interesting write-up at the New York Times, "An Oasis for Brunch Thrives in the California Desert":

YUCCA VALLEY, Calif. — The first time I drove east from Los Angeles to Flamingo Heights, I came to a stop behind a truck with a fairly blunt sticker on its sliding rear window: “Go Back to L.A.”

It was a reminder that this rural town, just north of Joshua Tree National Park, has an uneasy relationship with outsiders, who drop in by the hundreds to camp, or rent luxuriously renovated homes posted on Airbnb, take guided sound baths and hike with Nubian goats. After rainfall, when the pale desert dandelions and purple pincushions stagger into bloom, tourists come to geotag the flowers and take selfies in the shifting, mystifyingly beautiful desert light. And then? They’re gone.

Nikki Hill, a chef, and Claire Wadsworth, a musician, were married and living in Los Angeles in 2015 when they visited for the weekend and spotted a double rainbow. But instead of going back to the city, they bought an old diner on Highway 247 for about $30,000, turning it into an afternoon-only restaurant that adds a new dimension to the region’s culinary identity.

It’s a balancing act, but La Copine manages to serve the kind of seasonal, reassuringly confident food that appeals to both brunching families and retreat-seekers on a cleanse, in an inclusive dining room run with joy and exuberance. Though from a distance, the restaurant still looks like a diner on a dusty stretch of road — a little pit stop with a big lawless parking lot — the two women have turned it into a hub for the community and its flux of visitors.

There is no doubt when spring has come to the high desert. La Copine’s tables are piled with crisp haricots verts dressed in tahini, and creamy new potatoes tasting of rosemary and duck fat, dressed with aioli so that the softest parts of the potato become smushed and almost indistinguishable from the sauce.

All of the salads at La Copine, and there are usually two or three on the menu, are hunks — burly and satisfying, full of delicious secrets. You might find, under crisp, generously dressed leaves, a smattering of fried capers or a treasure of syrupy sherry-soaked dates.

The fried chicken thighs, dredged with potato flour, have a delicately crisp lace around the skin, which is sweet with hot honey. And the stack of layered eggplant, baked with a mellow tomato sauce until it’s meltingly soft and tender, doesn’t announce that it’s vegan. It is.

Though at first, Ms. Hill shopped at supermarkets and drove to the lower desert to find produce, she now gets her fruits and vegetables from farms in California, including ones in nearby Pipes Canyon, Bakersfield and Chino.

The menu is concise; even with the wine list and desserts, it fits on a single page. Seating is first-come, first-served, and regulars know to look for the scribbled list attached to a clipboard by the bar outside, so they can put their names down as they arrive.

Most dishes are composed with speed and efficiency, rather than prettiness in mind — no wasted movements in the kitchen, no superfluous components on the plate. Ms. Hill, who cooked at Scopa and Huckleberry in Los Angeles, takes a sincere, straightforward approach to cooking, building dishes that tend to underpromise and overdeliver.

Opening a restaurant in Los Angeles, or any major city, would have required bigger loans and a much larger investment, but after putting another $30,000 or so into furniture and repairs — fixing the leaky roof and replacing the walk-in compressor, repairing the appliances on the line and sanding the walls — the couple was ready for business...

Still more.

Far-Left 'Niche' Issues Define the Democrat 2020 Presidential Field

They're really not "niche" issues, but rather core issues designed to rig the system so Democrats win elections. Trump hatred has turned Democrats into the party of desperation and deceit. The front-page of the Los Angeles Times defined this as turn toward previously unmentioned specialty items for the party. Not anymore, sheesh.

From Mark Barabak, "It’s the electoral college, stupid. And the Supreme Court. And the filibuster ...":

How do you stand out in a crowd of nearly 20 Democratic presidential hopefuls? Talk about something different.https://t.co/ynCAtYsybh

— Mark Z. Barabak (@markzbarabak) April 15, 2019

In 1992, Bill Clinton won the White House focused on a message so elegantly simple the slogan became campaign legend: It’s the economy, stupid.

In this presidential race, it’s a lot of things.

Abolishing the electoral college. Ending the Senate filibuster. Refashioning the Supreme Court. Paying reparations for slavery.

A whole raft of issues that were little noted, if not wholly overlooked, in previous presidential campaigns have assumed a significant role in this early phase of the Democratic nominating contest, reflecting the party’s leftward shift, the power of social media and, perhaps above all, a field of contenders the size of a small platoon.

“The pressure on all the candidates to figure out how to differentiate themselves from the other candidates is intense,” said Anna Greenberg, a pollster working for former Colorado governor and presidential hopeful John Hickenlooper, one of more than 20 Democrats running or deciding whether to do so.

Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., launched his upstart campaign with a push to eliminate the electoral college and was one of the first to propose expanding the Supreme Court from nine to 15 justices. He suggests five members appointed by a Democratic president, five by a Republican president and the remainder coming from the appellate bench, subject to unanimous consent from the 10 other justices.

Other Democratic hopefuls, including Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, have said they are open to both ideas.

“Every vote matters, and the way we can make that happen is … get rid of the electoral college,” Warren said, amplifying the issue by pitching it during a recent CNN town hall.

Harris and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker have discussed the issue of reparations, which has largely been consigned to academic and theoretical debate, in the context of their broader proposals to help the poor. Several rival candidates, including Buttigieg, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, have said they too support ways of compensating victims of systemic racism.

“It doesn’t have to be a direct pay for each person, but what we can do is invest in those communities, acknowledge what’s happened,” Klobuchar said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

To a great extent, the Democratic candidates are moving in the direction of left-leaning voters and activists, who have the power on social media to organize around issues and elevate concerns, rather than what has typically been the other way around.

Healthcare, education and the economy are still matters of great interest and routinely come up wherever White House contestants appear. But underlying those issues is a broader frustration — particularly among those on the left — with the political system and its institutions, which, in their view, have thwarted the political will of most Americans.

The Democratic nominee has won the popular vote in all but one of the last seven presidential elections, yet twice in the last two decades it was a Republican — George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016 — who claimed the White House by receiving the most electoral college votes.

In the Senate, Republicans refused to even consider President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, waiting out the 2016 election in hopes of filling a vacant seat, and have wielded the filibuster in such a way it now requires a super-majority to pass any significant legislation.

The Supreme Court, meantime, has moved decidedly rightward under President Trump, who benefited from the Senate’s delaying tactics and filled two vacancies...

Emma Cline, The Girls

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Emma Cline, The Girls: A Novel.

'Beast of Burden'

From Tuesday morning's drive-time, at 93.1 Jack FM Los Angeles, the Rolling Stones, "Beast of Burden."

Dancing With Myself
Billy Idol
6:49am

Beast Of Burden
Rolling Stones
6:45am

By the way
Red Hot Chili Peppers
6:41am

Hungry Like The Wolf
Duran Duran
6:38am

Wanted Dead Or Alive
Bon Jovi
6:33am

What I Got
Sublime
6:23am

You Make Lovin' Fun
Fleetwood Mac
6:19am

It's The End of the World As We Know It
R.E.M.
6:15am

Feel Good Inc.
Gorillaz
6:12am

Crazy Train
Ozzy Osbourne
6:07am

Everybody Wants To Rule The World
Tears For Fears
6:03am

Better Man
Pearl Jam
5:53am

Anything Anything
Dramarama
5:50am

Somebody To Love
Queen
5:46am

Sara Jean Underwood Smoking Weed

That's a big blunt --- and that's not the only big thing there, dang!

See, "Sara Jean Underwood Topless and Smoking Weed."

Bernie Sanders Raised $18 Million in First 6 Weeks of His Campaign

At the Washington Examiner, at Memeorandum, "Let's face it: Bernie Sanders could be the next president."

I highly doubt it, but the dude is raising phenomenal amounts of cash.

At Politico, "Sanders raises $18 million in first quarter of presidential campaign":

The online fundraising powerhouse took in about 900,000 contributions from 525,000 individual donors, Sanders' campaign said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders has raised more than $18 million since launching his second bid for the White House, his campaign announced Tuesday.

The fundraising haul, which surpasses the other two 2020 presidential candidates who have announced their cash totals so far, demonstrates how Sanders' enormous online following will power his campaign, while some of his rivals jockey for support from large donors who can give several thousand dollars at a time.

Aides said the Vermont senator’s average donation in February and March was $20, and 88 percent of the money raised came from people who gave $200 or less. Sanders’ team said he received almost 900,000 individual contributions after setting a goal of 1 million in the first quarter of the year.

The campaign has $28 million cash on hand after beginning with $14 million in the bank from Sanders' other federal campaign accounts, it said — another big advantage over Sanders' rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sanders has put about 100 people on his campaign staff so far, fueled by the high fundraising totals.

On Monday, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said she raised $12 million in her first quarter. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., said he brought in more than $7 million. Buttigieg tweeted Monday that he raised 64 percent of his haul from people who gave less than $200, while Harris did not specify the share of her total that came from small-dollar donors, as Democrats hone in on grassroots fundraising as a key metric of support in the campaign.

No other presidential candidates have disclosed how much money they’ve amassed, including former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, who proved to be a small-dollar fundraising sensation in his unsuccessful 2018 bid for Senate in Texas. On the first day of his presidential campaign, O'Rourke said he raised $6.1 million — slightly more than the $5.9 million reaped by Sanders in his first 24 hours.

Campaigns must file reports with the Federal Election Commission by April 15. In 2016, Sanders raised about $15 million in the first fundraising quarter of his campaign, while eventual Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton raised $46 million in primary funds in her first quarter in the race.

Sanders' senior staffers argued that his skill for raising money through small-dollar donations — while not holding fundraising events — make him the best Democratic candidate to run against President Donald Trump.

Trump has "put the ultra-rich in charge of the government," said Faiz Shakir, Sanders' campaign manager. "How are you going to take that on? Are you going to say that we're 55 percent different than him? Are you going to say you're 100 percent different than him?"

Sanders' aides also said the money he raised will enable him to compete in all states in the primary.

"While we had to in 2016 make choices about where we could compete, I'm certain that in this race some of our opponents will also have to make similar difficult choices," said Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to Sanders. "This campaign will have the resources and the volunteer grassroots strength to compete in every single state in the primary."

The Sanders team revealed other statistics about their donors: They said a majority of his contributors are younger than 39 years old, and that 99.6 percent of the money collected in the first quarter was raised online...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a 'Moron' (VIDEO)

It's Tucker Carlson, who's a regular laugh riot, heh.

AOC does have a point about the economy and income inequality, he points out. The problem is the 29-year-old wants us to give her all the power.



BONUS: At AoSHQ, "Tucker Carlson: Soyboy Beta Bottom Chris Hayes Is What Every "Man" Would Be if Feminists Could Impose Their Weird Asexual Political Agenda on the World."

Questions of Violence Linger After Murder of Rapper Nipsey Hustle

They nabbed a suspect, but questions of violence and the star's dream linger.

At the Los Angeles Times:

Authorities arrest man matching description of suspect in Nipsey Hussle killing https://t.co/a1QKBKShAT

— Hailey Branson-Potts (@haileybranson) April 2, 2019

The mourning transcended family and friends and became a citywide conversation. https://t.co/UHyFRsn2ET

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) April 2, 2019

The killing was like many others in this city — a young man gunned down on a street in South Los Angeles.

The questions were familiar too. Was it gang related? A personal dispute?

But because the victim was renowned rapper Nipsey Hussle, the mourning transcended family and friends and became a citywide conversation.

Hussle's coming of age as a member of the Rollin' 60s Crips who made it big in the music industry was on Angelenos' minds. The conversation included broader narratives about the persistent violence in South L.A. and Hussle's efforts to help young people harness their creativity through avenues such as the tech industry that have not traditionally been rooted in black and brown neighborhoods.

Hussle's choice to put his money in the community he came from as the owner of many small businesses, including the clothing store where he was fatally shot Sunday, is part of what many see as his legacy. He viewed entrepreneurship as a way to find success beyond the long-shot occupations of sports and music.

But the choice to stay close to home also put him in the line of fire as a wealthy and influential person in a place where disputes among acquaintances and rivals are sometimes settled violently.

"Being quick to the gun — the resolving of problems with a gun is going to always end up bad," said Ben "Taco" Owens, who works to prevent gang violence in South L.A.

The dichotomy was on display late Monday when several people were injured at a vigil for Hussle that turned violent when the crowd stampeded after reports of gunfire. Police said no shots were fired, but paramedics transported more than a dozen people, including two in critical condition, to the hospital. Most of the injuries were related to people being trampled.

On Monday, as radio DJs devoted their programs to Hussle and online tributes continued to pour in, LAPD sources said they had identified the suspect as Eric Holder, 29, of Los Angeles, and said they are searching for him.

Holder was last seen in a white, four-door 2016 Chevy Cruze, with the California license plate number 7RJD742. The vehicle was driven by an unidentified woman, according to the LAPD.

Authorities had previously said the shooter was someone in Hussle's orbit and they believed the motive was likely personal, not a gang feud.

According to initial reports, a young man opened fire on Hussle at close range before scrambling to a getaway car. The L.A. County coroner said Monday that Hussle, 33, whose legal name was Ermias Joseph Asghedom, died of gunshot wounds to the head and torso. He was pronounced dead at a hospital at 3:55 p.m. Two others were wounded in the shooting.

The investigation encompasses witness interviews, social media posts and security camera footage of the strip mall that houses The Marathon Clothing, the rapper's store at the corner of Slauson Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard, a source said.

The LAPD scheduled a press conference for Tuesday morning to provide updates.

"The saddest part of the story is that he represented a new path that gang members can create for themselves as entrepreneurs," said Alex Alonso, a gang expert and adjunct professor at Cal State Long Beach.

RELATED: Nipsey Hussle's dreams were bigger than hip-hop »

LAPD Chief Michel Moore put Hussle's killing in the context of a recent uptick in violence, noting that there have been 26 shootings and 10 homicides in the city since the previous Sunday.

"That's 36 families left picking up the pieces," Moore tweeted. "We will work aggressively with our community to quell this senseless loss of life."

Hussle was set to meet with Moore and Police Commission President Steve Soboroff on Monday to talk about solutions to gang violence.

"Throughout the years, as he fostered success in his music career, he chose ... to reinvest and try to address the various underpinnings that fostered this environment. It's just terrible," Moore said Monday.

As his music career took shape over the last decade and a half, Hussle carefully considered how he would use his platform to influence the violent culture he came from.

He sang about gang life because that was what he knew, he said in a 2009 interview on Alonso's website, streetgangs.com. But he predicted that as his life changed, so would his themes...

More.

Romee Strijd on the Beach

At Drunken Stepfather, "ROMEE STRIJD NAKED OF THE DAY."

And at Taxi Driver, "Romee Strijd Naked on the Beach Photo Shoot."

Second Woman Comes Forward with Allegations of Improper Touching by 'Gropin' Joe' Biden

Man, feminists are working feverishly to torpedo "Gropin' Joe's" campaign --- and the creepy uncle hasn't even made it official yet, lol.

Previously, "'Gropin' Joe' Biden Gets Dragged for His Decades of Perverted Sexual Harassment."

At the Hartford Courant, "Connecticut woman says then-Vice President Joe Biden touched her inappropriately at a Greenwich fundraiser in 2009":

A Connecticut woman says Joe Biden touched her inappropriately and rubbed noses with her during a 2009 political fundraiser in Greenwich when he was vice president, drawing further scrutiny to the Democrat and his history of unwanted contact with women as he ponders a presidential run

"It wasn't sexual, but he did grab me by the head," Amy Lappos told The Courant Monday. "He put his hand around my neck and pulled me in to rub noses with me. When he was pulling me in, I thought he was going to kiss me on the mouth."

Lappos posted about the alleged incident on the Facebook page of Connecticut Women in Politics Sunday in response to a similar account by former Nevada legislator Lucy Flores, which comes as Biden is considering a 2020 run for president. Flores accused Biden of kissing her on the back of her head in 2014, when she was a candidate for lieutenant governor.

Lappos, 43, who is now a freelance worker with nonprofit agencies, said she felt extremely uncomfortable when Biden approached her at the 2009 fundraiser for U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4th, where she was volunteering. At the time, Lappos was a congressional aide to Himes, who she said was not in the room when the incident took place.

"I never filed a complaint, to be honest, because he was the vice president. I was a nobody," Lappos said. "There's absolutely a line of decency. There's a line of respect. Crossing that line is not grandfatherly. It's not cultural. It's not affection. It's sexism or misogyny."

A spokeswoman for Biden declined to respond to the allegations by Lappos and instead offered a statement that Biden issued Sunday about the Flores controversy...

More.

And at the front-page of the New York Times today, "Joe Biden Scrambles to Stem Crisis After Lucy Flores's Allegation."

And at Memeorandum, "Everyone Already Knows How They Feel About Joe Biden Touching Women."

DC McAllister Update

I don't even know this woman, and don't care about her one way or the other.

Mostly, it's just a thing on Twitter. She got fired. Okay. Life goes on.

Previously, "DC McAllister Fired."

And Bethany Mandel has been tweeting about this all day. Read the full thread:

Denise McAllister's public meltdown was indefensible and homophobic https://t.co/BtfvcsMrqx

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) April 1, 2019

A few thoughts on Denise and what happened this weekend: First of all, I am conservative and I was one of the many people who took issue with her original tweet (which did not applaud masculinity, but instead an incredibly subservience nobody should expect of a woman).

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) April 1, 2019

Her behavior in public and on the listserv for Federalist writers made it clear she was not mentally stable. She expressed some really not okay viewpoints that I was increasingly uncomfortable associating myself with. Her attack on my husband was a final straw.

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) April 1, 2019

Someone that unbalanced, that hateful, should not have a platform. To be clear, this is something everyone familiar with her work and her tweets have known for A LONG TIME. She attempted to doxx @beyondreasdoubt & her attacks on @BridgetPhetasy were the cruelest I have ever seen.

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) April 1, 2019

Just want to clarify myself a tiny bit: She should not have a platform among mainstream conservative websites. She can and should keep tweeting if that's what she wants. But nobody is entitled to publish whatever they want wherever they want. That's up to those sites and editors.

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) April 1, 2019

J.Lo Looks Phenomenal

Not sure about those tits (fake?), but those abs are da bomb, dang!

On Instagram, "I’m a hustler baby."

And at London's Daily Mail, "Jennifer Lopez, 49, looks phenomenal in a neon pink bikini on the set of her stripper film Hustlers... as her fiance Alex Rodriquez goes crazy for the snap."

Jennifer Lopez looks phenomenal in a neon pink bikini on the set of her stripper film Hustlers https://t.co/pAldQB41mb

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) March 31, 2019

Kendall Jenner See-Through

I haven't posted Ms. Kendall lately.

At Taxi Driver:

Kendall Jenner Braless in See-Through White T-Shirt - https://t.co/gkURcgyLPM - pic.twitter.com/txdUJbl1BC

— Taxi Driver (@TaxiDriverMovie) April 1, 2019

Alexis Ren Erotica

At Drunken Stepfather, "ALEXIS REN EROTICA OF THE DAY."

And on Twitter:

Sometimes I think I crave cities the way I crave the ocean and mountains. Each one has a different vibration, beating to its own drum. pic.twitter.com/uCdNvZBvvn

— Alexis Ren (@AlexisRenG) April 1, 2019

Battle Looms Over Gray Wolf Protection

This is interesting.

I don't support hunting wildlife simply for bragging rights and Instagram/ Twitter selfies. At one point there were millions of gray wolves covering every corner of the United States. Now, there's about 6,000. They're on the federal Endangered Species List. I don't have an opinion on whether federal protection is better or not, but it's worth considering. Conservatism is about conservation, and smart use of our natural resources is conservative.

In any case, at the Los Angles Times, "Plan to remove gray wolves from Endangered Species Act sparks battle":

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and environmentalists are at war over the agency’s latest plan to strip gray wolves of their federal protections and turn management of the often-reviled predators over to states and tribes. https://t.co/xgg8fQastb

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) March 28, 2019

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and environmentalists are at war over the agency’s latest plan to strip gray wolves of their federal protections and turn management of the often-reviled predators over to states and tribes.

“If the agency’s proposal gets finalized, we will see them in court,” Michael Robinson, a spokesman for the Center for Biological Diversity said on Wednesday. “Delisting is simply out of the question.”

Surprisingly, however, in the latest chapter of a long-running battle to keep an estimated 6,000 gray wolves safe from trophy hunters and trappers, the center and the Humane Society of the United States are suggesting a compromise.

“We are proposing an alternate path forward — downlisting the gray wolf from federally endangered to threatened status,” said Brett Hartl, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. That action, he said, “would maintain federal protections the animal needs to survive in certain areas, while allowing states to share management oversight.”

His organization doesn’t oppose state management of wolves, but it does oppose hunting wolves for sport, he said. “Free-for-all hunting of wolves is not management, it’s slaughter.”

Similarly, Nick Arrivo, an attorney with the Humane Society of the United States, said, “We don’t oppose the idea of state management. The problem is that certain states like Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan have shown that they are not inclined to maintain healthy populations of gray wolves.”

Federal wildlife authorities removed protections from gray wolves in the Great Lakes region in 2011, allowing thousands of gray wolves in those three states to be hunted or trapped. The protections were restored by federal court decisions in 2014.

The prospect of removing wolf protections aroused rage yet again earlier this month when the Fish and Wildlife Service touted the species' recovery as "one of the greatest comebacks for an animal in U.S. conservation history,” a characterization that some conservation groups called misguided and premature.

David Bernhardt, acting secretary of the Department of Interior, said the plan to delist the species “puts us one step closer to transitioning the extraordinary effort that we have invested in gray wolf recovery to other species who actually need the protections of the Endangered Species Act, leaving the states to carry on the legacy of wolf conservation.”

However, the Humane Society, in a statement, warned that the plan catered “to a narrow group of special interests: the trophy hunters and trappers who want to kill wolves for bragging rights, social media opportunities and to increase deer and elk populations.”

It pointed out, for instance, that in November, “Americans were heartbroken” by the killing of the famous Yellowstone black wolf, Spitfire, by a trophy hunter in Montana.

It also argued that gray wolves are worth millions of dollars to the economies of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, studies show, because of the visitors they attract to national parks in the northern Rocky Mountains...

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