Honkin' Kelly Brook

She's a plus-size model now, dang.

Kelly Brook WOW! 🥰🥰😍😍 @buquet1000 @WCBeauty_ @viczokas @Wildcard095 @Stacey_poolefan @jameskwan007 @curvyonly @HottestHunnies @JamesGlamfan @duljc @exxxcitement @IrinnaMoris_Fan @nuffinbutgirls @ds_161_4 @65000silver @HotGirlsPicsNow @FernandoPH73 @Coach0302 @b0obs28 pic.twitter.com/5VJONuUiW6

— Lucky Dragon 🦖🦖🦖🦖🇬🇧 (@LuckyDragon99) June 25, 2019

Herman Wouk, The Winds of War

Following-up, "Herman Wouk's True Subject Was Moral Weakness."

At Amazon, Herman Wouk, The Winds of War.

E. Jean Carroll: Rape is 'Sexy' (VIDEO)

The Other McCain posted the other day, "The Worst #MeToo Smear Yet."

And at Althouse, "'Dean Baquet, [the NYT] executive editor, says 'we were overly cautious' in our handling of [E. Jean Carroll’s] allegations against the president'."

Plus, at the Washington Examiner, "Anderson Cooper cuts to commercial after Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll calls rape 'sexy'."

And the cringe-worthy interview on CNN:

“ I think most people think of rape as being sexy…” - E. Jean Carroll to Anderson Cooper

Cooper immediately cut to breakpic.twitter.com/OwN2QLFc6q

— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) June 25, 2019

Too Many Freakin' Democrats in the Race

It's up to 25 candidates, which is a laugh-riot lol.

At Hot Air, "Democrats Now Say They Have Too Many Democrats Running."

And at LAT, "What time is the Democratic presidential debate? Who gets to be on stage?"

And, "Democrats’ presidential hopefuls jockey to outdo one another with pre-debate promises":

Everyone has a plan for everything: 2020 Democratic candidates roll out policy proposals in advance of the presidential debates. w @evanhalper https://t.co/uvSboYV13N

— Janet Hook (@hookjan) June 24, 2019

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders burnished his socialist bona fides – and sought to one-up progressive rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — with a $1.6-trillion plan to pay off all the country’s college debt, an idea that could be more of a boon to the rich than the poor. Joe Biden, the former vice president and leader in current polls, rolled out an immigration plan.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee built out his framework for a future free of fossil fuels. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke set out a multipart plan to improve services, including healthcare, job training and mental health support, for veterans, financed with savings from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And several candidates took fresh aim at the criminal justice system.

The collective policy plans of the 2020 presidential hopefuls were already so voluminous, aggressive and, in many cases, expensive that it’s been tough for some candidates in this crowded field to muscle their vision into the spotlight.

But in these days leading up to the first Democratic debates in Miami, they’re trying extra hard.

They’re following the pattern set by Warren, who has distinguished herself with her policy prowess and has been rewarded in recent weeks by a notable rise in polls. Warren has so many detailed plans for so many issues that the logo emblazoned on her campaign merch is “Warren Has a Plan for That.” As those plans gained traction with voters, pundits stopped mocking her professorial obsession with policy details, and other candidates began trying to emulate it.

The media have been put on notice that Warren will unveil yet another new plan on Tuesday.

In some cases — forgiving college debt being the clearest example — the flurry of policy proposals has taken on the feel of an arms race.

Warren offered the race’s first detailed proposal on college debt, saying she would forgive as much as $50,000 for up to 42 million Americans. Sanders loyalists were eager to remind voters that it was the Vermonter who first carried college affordability from a fringe issue to a central focus of American politics, when he began promoting the topic as a presidential candidate in 2016.

On Monday, Sanders promised to go beyond Warren’s plan by canceling all $1.6 trillion in outstanding college debt held by Americans, regardless of income. He acknowledged the plan could benefit some people who do not need the help but said he and the lawmakers who co-sponsored the plan with him believed in “universality” — that higher education should be a guaranteed entitlement for all Americans, along with Social Security and Medicare.

“Our response to making sure this does not benefit the wealthy is in other areas,” Sanders said, “where we are going to demand the wealthy and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.”

The debt forgiveness would be bankrolled by a transaction tax on Wall Street, under his proposal. That tax aims to discourage speculation by traders, and Sanders notes it has been endorsed by scores of economists, although some of them have proposed using the money for other purposes.

Many liberal economists had already critiqued Warren’s version of debt forgiveness on the grounds that it would make income inequality worse. Sanders’ plan, which would give even more of a benefit to upper-income families, would rank even more poorly on that scale.

Families with incomes under $68,000 would receive only a third of the subsidy under the Warren plan — despite the plan’s provisions that exclude people with top incomes — according to an analysis by Brookings Institution economist Adam Looney.

The Sanders plan would benefit the economically better-off even more, as it has no income caps. A 2015 study by the progressive think tank Demos and the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University concluded such an approach would widen the racial wealth gap by 9% because so much of the gain would go to wealthy white Americans.

Sanders’ proposal nonetheless drew applause from many on the party’s left. And the criticism that moderates in the party have directed his way — on college debt and other issues — has been good fodder for firing up Sanders’ supporters.

Being called an “existential threat” to Democrats by the leaders of Third Way, the center-left think tank — which has no such harsh words for Warren — has proved a potent talking point for Sanders. And also a fundraising pitch...

Camila Cabello

At the Other McCain, "Rule 5 Monday: Camila Cabello."

And at Celebs Unmasked, "CAMILA CABELLO NUDE *LEAKED* PHOTOS":

Everyone’s dirty minds are on the Camila Cabello nude photos and for good reason. The Cuban-American singer departed from her girl group Fifth Harmony in December of 2016 and ever since then she has been in the spotlight. Yes, she’s got sexy vocals, but it’s her EVEN SEXIER body that has put this girl on the map.

“I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.” pic.twitter.com/tYkmO1yxwN

— camila (@Camila_Cabello) June 22, 2019

Project Veritas: Insider Blows Whistle on Google's Far-Left Political Bias (VIDEO) -- UPDATED!

At Memeorandum, "Insider Blows Whistle & Exec Reveals Google Plan to Prevent “Trump situation” in 2020 on Hidden Cam."



Google-owned YouTube took down the Project Veritas video. I tweeted:

Boy, nothing like proving political bias with blatantly biased political censorship. Who could’ve seen this coming? 🙄🤷‍♂️ #Google #ProjectVeritas https://t.co/rhmSGSY62q

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 25, 2019

Herman Wouk's True Subject Was Moral Weakness

An excellent essay, at the New York Times Book Review, "Herman Wouk Wrote Historical Novels But His True Subject Was Moral Weakness":

Wouk anatomized the psychological mechanisms and sociopolitical rationalizations that enabled intelligent, well-meaning people to justify or ignore what was right in front of them https://t.co/fXX7Y9HZz9

— New York Times Books (@nytimesbooks) June 23, 2019

At the beginning of Herman Wouk’s novel “The Winds of War” (1971), the book’s hero, Victor “Pug” Henry, is offered a post as the United States Navy’s attaché in Berlin. The year is 1939.

Pug discusses the job with a fellow naval officer, a man named Tollever who previously held the position. “Hitler’s a damned remarkable man,” Tollever says over drinks in Pug’s elegant Washington, D.C., living room. “The Germans do things in politics that we wouldn’t — like this stuff with the Jews — but that’s just a passing phase, and anyway, it’s not your business.”

Tollever tells Pug that the worst of it was Kristallnacht, “when Nazi toughs had smashed department store windows and set fire to some synagogues.” But, he says, “even that the Jews had brought on themselves, by murdering a German embassy official in Paris.” Besides, the whole thing was exaggerated by the press; as far as Tollever knew, “not one” Jew “had really been physically harmed.” In sum, Tollever had enjoyed the post immensely: “I haven’t drunk a decent glass of Moselle since I left Berlin.”

When I read this, I wanted to throw the book at the wall.

That an American, a person of some authority, could be so cavalier about the Nazis in a story set after the Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of equal rights, not to mention after Hitler had imprisoned his political opposition and eliminated the free press — was both mind-boggling and infuriating.

Of course, this was the point. A canny novelist, Wouk — who died on Friday, just shy of his 104th birthday — had the good sense to let his characters hang themselves with their own words.

Wouk’s best books have aged surprisingly little. Among these are his impeccably researched World War II novels, “The Winds of War” and its sequel, “War and Remembrance” (1978). Even decades after they were published, these novels continue to have something to teach us.

Wouk is often grouped with middlebrow writers of popular historical fiction — James Michener and Leon Uris, say — but his novels are better understood as pointillistic character studies in historical settings. The World War II books follow the Henry family — Pug, his wife, Rhoda, and their three grown children — through the war years, providing a framework in which the era’s most prominent figures, from F.D.R. and Churchill to Stalin and Hitler, plausibly make cameos. Although sweeping, the novels aren’t melodramas. They are the kinds of books in which an attractive young woman in a doomed love affair comes down with a cold — and doesn’t die. She doesn’t even become seriously ill. She takes some aspirin and goes to bed early.

These are also novels in which you can’t immediately tell whether a character will turn out to be mostly admirable or mostly not. With Wouk, it takes hundreds of pages of seeing the character in action before you can decide — and even then, your verdict is liable to remain uncertain and subject to change. Even in literary fiction, this kind of authorial restraint and fidelity to human complexity is surprising.

But the main reason the novels still feel urgent has to do with the nature of Wouk’s ambition. He didn’t set out merely to write a family saga or to smuggle a history lesson into a story. Wouk wanted to know how so many people in Europe and America allowed the Holocaust to happen. He uses the tools of the novel to anatomize the various psychological mechanisms and sociopolitical rationalizations that enabled intelligent, generally well-meaning and well-informed individuals to justify or ignore what was right in front of them.

As a novelist, Wouk could do things a historian couldn’t: enter not only the living rooms but the minds of a diverse range of characters. Take Rhoda, for instance. She is a little frivolous, easily distracted, occupied more by her private life than by politics. In other words, she is a lot like many of us. When she and Pug arrive in Berlin, she at first refuses to walk in the Tiergarten: “It was far more clean, pretty and charming than any American public park, she admitted, but the signs on the benches, juden verboten, were nauseating.” But with time, her resistance wears down: “Day by day, she reacted less to such things, seeing how commonplace they were in Berlin, and how much taken for granted. … It seemed silly to protest … she insisted that anti-Semitism was a blot on an otherwise exciting, lovely land.” As such, her resistance primarily took the form of playfully chastising high-ranking Nazis at booze-filled dinner parties.

This feels sadly right to me, the way someone with good intentions, someone not consciously monstrous, becomes nonetheless inured to cruelty and injustice in a context in which these evils are normalized. This is also the way we tend to feed our self-esteem but accomplish nothing, by railing against an injustice from a position of personal safety...

Keep reading.

Mikayla Demaiter, World's Sexiest Hockey Goalie (PHOTOS)

She's nice.

Talented, ahem.

At the Sun U.K., "WHAT THE PUCK? Meet world’s sexiest hockey goalie Mikayla Demaiter who has sent pulses racing on the ice and stunned Instagram with skimpy selfies."

Meet the world's sexiest hockey goalie who has sent pulses racing on the ice and stunned Instagram with skimpy selfies https://t.co/UCRl9ED0GF

— Sun Sport (@SunSport) June 21, 2019

And at Drunken Stepfather, "MIKAYLA DEMAITER APPRECIATION OF THE DAY."

Feminist Extremist Sophie Lewis Defends Murdering Unborn Children (VIDEO)

Actually, while she appears extreme, she's just outwardly stating what any pro-abort Democrat believes and advocates: the wanton murder of the unborn.

At the Illinois Family Institute, "Torturing Language to Kill Humans."

Torturing Language to Kill Humans: https://t.co/2mX9WJDHBa #Abortion #Death #Killing

— IL Family Institute (@ProFamilyIFI) June 21, 2019

Also at Life Site, "Feminist author: Abortion ‘is a form of killing that we need to be able to defend’."

Nice Lady

Portrait of a Trumped Deranged Leftist Democrat, via Nick Searcy:

This is some Democrat’s Memaw. pic.twitter.com/Vlpa2gnUXr

— Nick Searcy, EXTREMELY STABLE FILM & TV GENIUS (@yesnicksearcy) June 23, 2019

Jennifer Delacruz's Monday Forecast

It's still overcast, but quite pleasant.

The fabulous Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:

Statement: United States Holocaust Museum Rejects AOC's 'Concentration Camps' Analogy

There's little that makes me loathe leftists more than their constant attacks on political opponents as Nazis. Any rational, knowledgeable person knows that what's going on at the Southern border bears little resemblance to the Hitler's exterminationist programs against the Jews. But leftists aren't rational; they're ideological, and attacking your opponents as genocidal murderers, apparently, is the main way hateful progs can fire up the base and maintain political support.

It's all despicable.

At the U.S. Holocaust Museum's page, "Statement Regarding the Museum's Position on Holocaust Analogies" (via Memeorandum).

And linked at the center's page, "Why Holocaust Analogies Are Dangerous."

Video here, "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Calls Out U.S. ‘Concentration Camps’."

And her pathetic defense after coming under vociferous criticism:

Emma Watson Selfies

At Celeb Jihad, "Emma Watson Takes Naked Selfies Again."

Democrat Debates Shaping Up as Epic Clown Show

It's not really a debate --- it's a far-left cattle-call.

At the Los Angeles Times, "The stakes are high as Democratic presidential hopefuls prepare to debate":

Read to the bottom to find out what mindfulness tells you about debate prep. https://t.co/RqGuG5VeWE

— Janet Hook (@hookjan) June 21, 2019

With so many candidates onstage, the Democratic presidential debates risk becoming a stilted, parallel-play affair, with candidates trying to squeeze scripted messages into tiny scraps of airtime.

But the prospects of an unruly political feeding frenzy, particularly on the second night of the two-day extravaganza, have soared as former Vice President Joe Biden has thrown chum in the water: His provocative comments about race will tempt candidates to abandon restraint and go on the attack.

The back-to-back debates on Wednesday and Thursday nights could be a pivot point in the Democrats’ primary campaign, which for months has seen candidates refraining from criticizing one another — or doing so only in veiled terms.

It will be a high-stakes test for the biggest primary campaign field ever, which includes three black candidates, one Latino, six women, two Asian Americans and an openly gay man.

The lineup includes Oprah Winfrey’s spiritual advisor and a congressman who meditates; the mayor of the nation’s largest city and the mayor of South Bend, Ind. The oldest candidate was born before Pearl Harbor; the youngest when Ronald Reagan was president.

Some are well-known figures; more are obscure and thirsty for national attention.

They will all come together for the first time in a scramble to make an impression, avoid gaffes, draw contrasts and send a message. All in seven minutes or less, the estimated amount of airtime each candidate will get in the two-hour sessions. The debates will be televised on NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo starting at 6 p.m. PDT each night.

Only half the field will have a direct shot at Biden: With so many running for the nomination, the Democratic National Committee capped debate participants at 20 — three others didn’t meet the fundraising and polling criteria to make the stage — and split them between the two nights, with 10 for each session.

As the clear front-runner in early polls, Biden already had a target on his back. That bull’s-eye got bigger on Tuesday after he spoke nostalgically of his “civil” relationships with segregationists in the 1970s Senate and made a joke about not being called “boy” by one of them.

So far, Biden has pursued a strategy of trying to stay above the fray, looking past his primary rivals to focus on President Trump. The Thursday night debate, in which he’ll be at center stage, flanked by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, will test that approach.

Sanders, who is running second in many polls behind Biden but has appeared to lose some support in recent weeks, is preparing to draw a strong contrast between his democratic socialist vision and what he calls Biden’s “middle ground” approach on issues like healthcare and trade.

“Biden wants to skate on the suggestion that we are all shades of the same gray,” said Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager. “Bernie wants to make clear that you have fundamentally different choices to make between governing vision, philosophy and how we are going to shape the agenda. That choice has to be drawn out.”

Biden backers think blunt attacks on him will backfire.

“The front-runner position always puts you as a target,” said Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.). “People don’t want the personal attacks. We’ve seen enough with our current president.”

When almost all the candidates appeared at South Carolina Democratic party events last weekend, none of them brought up the segregationists controversy.

Sanders has also been studying up on other rivals, where they stand on key issues like Medicare for all, and what they have said about him. He will be sharing a stage with former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, for example, who has criticized Sanders’ brand of democratic socialism...

More.

Blacks Unload on Mayor Pete Buttigieg (VIDEO)

Well, there goes that presidential campaign magic. The dude's not doing too well with the black folks back home.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Black residents of South Bend unload on Mayor Pete Buttigieg":

A town hall featuring Mayor Pete Buttigieg broke into near chaos Sunday afternoon as the Democratic presidential candidate tried to respond to community anger over a white police officer’s killing of a black man.

Buttigieg was solemn, somber and circumspect as he tried to explain how officials will investigate the shooting. He said he would ask the Justice Department to review the case and for an independent prosecutor to decide whether to prosecute.

“We’ve taken a lot of steps, but they clearly haven’t been enough,” said Buttigieg, who is in his second term as mayor of South Bend, Ind.

The largely black audience of hundreds was having little of it, frequently interrupting and shouting over the mayor. “We don’t trust you!” a woman hollered at Buttigieg.

The tragedy unfolded in Buttigieg’s hometown on June 16, and it would be difficult to imagine a domestic crisis more nightmarish for a mayor and a presidential candidate who has enjoyed a largely carefree rise to the top tier of Democratic contestants.

Buttigieg’s lack of popularity among black voters nationally — a crucial demographic for winning the Democratic primary – was already one of his biggest weaknesses in a contest in which racial injustice is a key issue. Buttigieg had recently been laying the groundwork to win over some of those skeptical voters in states such as South Carolina.

But now the shooting has highlighted the racial tension right on Buttigieg’s home turf, revealing for a national audience the pain and resentment that have long festered among South Bend’s black residents.

Buttigieg’s introduction drew a mix of applause and vigorous boos. Michael Patton, NAACP South Bend Chapter president, was onstage with Buttigieg and lobbed gentle questions at the mayor, which drew loud complaints from the crowd. But audience members sometimes scolded one another for being disrespectful to Buttigieg and the other speakers.

When a pastor representing Al Sharpton Jr. was the first from the audience to take the mic during the town hall’s question-and-answer portion Sunday, the crowd jeered at the outsider. John Winston Jr., a community activist, walked up to the front of the stage to confront the pastor as Buttigieg watched, taking the microphone to air his own grievances about the city’s relationship with its black residents.

“They keep begging us to reach out and bridge this gap and whatever else,” Winston, who is biracial, told the audience, recounting the time he tried to host a cookout for police officers a few years ago. “And we reached out, and they said no.”

Then, with a defiant flourish, Winston dropped the mic onto the floor...

Why President Trump Will Be Reelected

Excellent analysis, from Nick Gillespie, at Reason:

This one new poll of Democrats explains why @realDonaldTrump will be reelected. My latest for @reason https://t.co/KCCRSNCfhb @joebiden @SenSanders @SenWarren @CoryBooker @PeteButtigieg @KamalaHarris @SenGillibrand @NYCMayor @AndrewYang

— Nick Gillespie (@nickgillespie) June 21, 2019

The New Class Warfare

Another outstanding op-ed from Glenn Reynolds, at USA Today:

#KeepAmericaGreat #KAG #Populism 🇺🇸😎👍 https://t.co/1gfZn6zVP4

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 22, 2019

Today's Shopping

At Amazon, Today's Deals Save on our top deals every day.

And especially, Briggs & Stratton 020685 3100 PSI 2.5GPM Pressure Washer, Red/Gray/Titanium.

Also, Pro Bike Tool 1/4 Inch Drive Click Torque Wrench Set – 2 to 20 Nm – Bicycle Maintenance Kit for Road & Mountain Bikes, Motorcycle Multitool - Includes Allen & Torx Sockets, Extension Bar & Storage Box.

Plus, Carhartt Men's Quilted Flannel Lined Duck Active Jacket.

And, Buck Knives The 55 Folding Pocket Knife.

More, Outdoor Products Mountain Duffle Bag.

Still more, CLIF BAR - Energy Bar - Chocolate Chip - (2.4 Ounce Protein Bar, 12 Count).

Here, Samsung 75NU7100 75" NU7100 Smart 4K UHD TV 2018 with Wall Mount + Cleaning Kit (UN75NU7100).

BONUS: Herman Wouk, The Winds of War.

The Golden Age of Muscle

I love it!

At Instapundit, "WE LIVE IN A GOLDEN AGE OF MUSCLE, BUT THIS IS STILL RIDICULOUS: Hellcat-Powered Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 6×6 Pickup Exists Because It Can."

Elizabeth Masucci

At Celeb Jihad, "Elizabeth Masucci Nude Scene from 'Virgin Alexander'."

Jennifer Delacruz's Sunday Forecast

Here she is with the marine layer forecast.

Lovely.

President Trump to Delay ICE Deportation Operations

I think this is a mistake, and so do a lot of conservatives.

At the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "Trump Says He'll Delay Deportation Operation Aimed at Undocumented Families."

This is infuriating. They have deportation orders. They should go. The asshole Democrats will never do anything to fix this. Why delay so they can posture and preen for 2 weeks, and in the end do nothing? #SecureTheBorder #BuildTheWallNow https://t.co/jzjjqucpG0

— Dianny 🇺🇸 (@DiannyRants) June 22, 2019

Jem Wolfie

See, "JEM WOLFIE ULTIMATE NUDE PHOTOS COLLECTION."

And on Twitter:

I stay hungry pic.twitter.com/6yDo9RNJaN

— Jem Wolfie (@IamJemWolfie) April 21, 2019

Hi Wolfgang how are you? Can we please talk about health for a minute? Even though I take extremely good care of my body some things are out of my control. That’s why I choose to make decisions over the things I can control. I do not drink alcohol, I have never done drugs, pic.twitter.com/Tqt9rRaB6G

— Jem Wolfie (@IamJemWolfie) April 26, 2019

Decriminalizing Magic Mushrooms

California is the acid-trip state.

At the Los Angeles Times, "How a trip on magic mushrooms helped decriminalize psychedelic plants in a California city."

How a former City Hall staffer’s trip on magic mushrooms last fall helped Oakland become the first city in California to decriminalize psychedelic drugs, including peyote and ayahuasca. https://t.co/1wX6sdVcQ8

— Hailey Branson-Potts (@haileybranson) June 22, 2019

Sydney Sweeney

At Celeb Jihad, "SYDNEY SWEENEY NUDE SELFIE PHOTOS."

Nice knockers.

Frederick Forsyth, Dogs of War

*BUMPED.*

A great, great novel.

At Amazon, Frederick Forsyth, Dogs of War: A Spy Thriller.

After Fighting Islamic State, Civilian Life Takes Toll

At the Los Angeles Times, "Two buddies survived fighting Islamic State, but for one civilian life was too much":

Please read this story. I’m hoping it makes you think about those at risk who we can all help. I’ve never covered a story like this. https://t.co/wLfCX26ovj

— Molly Hennessy-Fiske (@mollyhf) June 20, 2019

He was dashing up the mountain into darkness, chasing a friend armed with a shotgun.

Taylor Hudson yelled for his friend to wait, to stop.

They had rushed together toward danger so many times before on the battlefields of Syria. They had protected each other, made it home safe.

Cactus pierced Hudson’s sides as he scrambled up to save his buddy.

Then he heard the gunshots.

Hudson had met Kevin Howard three years earlier in eastern Syria, where they discovered they both had volunteered for the French Foreign Legion.

Hudson, 35, was an idealist raised in Pasadena, a lanky college dropout and ironworker kept out of the Marines because of a wrist tattoo he unsuccessfully tried to burn off with battery acid.

Howard, 27, was his opposite: short, with a blond crew cut and tattoos up to his eyebrows. Adopted at birth, he’d been rejected by his new parents at 12, then raised in a San Francisco orphanage. He left at 17 to join the Marines, trained at Camp Pendleton and served from 2006 to 2010, deploying twice to Iraq as an anti-tank missileman.

The men had both joined the French Foreign Legion for adventure, Howard training as a sniper, Hudson as a medic. They adopted noms de guerre: Howard chose Kane Harlly; Hudson became Paul “Doc” Hetfield. Howard had the title of the legion’s anthem tattooed above his right eyebrow: “Rien n’empeche.” Unstoppable.

But they became disillusioned as superiors confined them to southeastern France and enviously followed news of the war raging in Syria. In 2016, each joined U.S.-allied militias to fight Islamic State.

“The war was like a sanctuary, as crazy as that sounds,” Hudson said as he sat in his spare Tucson ranch house. “It was black and white, good and evil, the most pure fight in modern times. That feels so good to be with people in a righteous cause. When that’s over, what has meaning in civilian life?”

A month after Hudson arrived in eastern Syria, he met Howard. Howard served with a poorly outfitted group of Kurdish fighters, who had stopped to visit Hudson’s unit bivouacked in the cow shed of an abandoned cheese factory. Hudson noticed Howard’s camouflage legionnaire pants and struck up a conversation.

The pair soon began working as a team: Howard as a sniper; Hudson, his lookout.

“I knew we were always going to stick together,” Hudson said.

They shifted to an allied Christian militia, the Syriac Military Council. Before an important battle, their commander left and the unit voted unanimously for Howard to replace him. Hudson became chief medical officer. They were reluctant leaders, Hudson said, but “sometimes you find yourself in situations where you know you have a responsibility.”

In summer 2017, the unit moved to the outskirts of Raqqah, capital of Islamic State’s caliphate, for the start of a siege. They remained holed up in abandoned, bombed-out buildings for months.

That July, during an interview in a crumbling house they had converted into a sniper’s roost, Howard and Hudson appeared weary but committed. They pointed out Islamic State strongholds a few yards away and warned that drones sometimes buzzed nearby, dropping bombs.

They never felt safe. Their fellow fighters had scant training and could be careless with guns. The pair looked out for each other, sleeping in shifts.

Howard recalled his time as a Marine, battling Muslim extremists in Kurdish northern Iraq. He had tried returning to civilian life, but “it just didn’t work out.” Staying home as a war raged felt wrong, he said.

He divided western volunteers in Syria into four groups: politically motivated anarchists and socialists; “starry-eyed” dreamers; those fleeing their past; and the “legitimately crazy.”

Hudson noted that his friend hadn't classified himself, and Howard laughed.

Hudson took breaks from the front lines, staying with a Christian Syrian couple. He fell in love with their daughter, got engaged and started planning a future.

Howard had two words tattooed on his knuckles: “love” and “lost.” He stayed in Raqqah and embraced the Assyrian Christian cause, including a new nom de guerre: Hawro, or “Brother,” Christian.

“They are arguably the most oppressed people in the world right now,” Howard said. “I believe in staying and helping them fight because it’s what I’m good at.”

In time, both men soured on the militia.

Hudson, wounded by shrapnel and a drone bombing, left the front line to get treatment. His fiancee broke off their engagement. Commanders refused to allow him to return to battle, he said, even as they pushed Howard south toward the worsening battle in Dair Alzour.

Each of the men heard the other had been killed. When they were reunited weeks later, they decided it was time to leave the militia — and Syria.

Eventually, Howard and Hudson returned home after harrowing months detained by their own militia. Howard was also held by authorities after crossing the border into Iraq, released only after U.S. officials intervened.

Years would pass before they reunited.

*****

Howard floundered in the U.S., stripped of his gun, his unit and his cause.

He visited friends in California and Idaho; reconnected with his birth mother in Grants Pass, Ore.; worked oilfield jobs in North Dakota and west Texas. For a time, he ran with the Hells Angels in Oakland.

Last year, he became homeless in the Dakotas, unable to claim veteran’s disability benefits because he couldn’t find the necessary paperwork until he asked friends to help.

Hudson had built an extra room in his house for Howard, and urged him to visit. Howard initially demurred. Then one day he texted Hudson a photo of pill bottles, threatening suicide. Hudson wired him plane fare. Howard flew to Arizona the next day.

There Hudson helped him rent a nearby house, a life goal Howard had written on a list he carried in his pocket.

Howard went to doctor’s appointments at the Department of Veterans Affairs for post-traumatic stress disorder and got a caseworker. He adopted a cat. He met a woman. Three months ago, at an iconic mountain west of downtown known as Sentinel Peak, he proposed. She said yes.

Hudson thought his friend was healing.

But after Howard’s girlfriend moved in, the couple fought. He suspected her of cheating. His caseworker knew he had been drinking too much and tried to get him into rehab.

Howard told friends he missed Syria.

Hudson understood how Howard felt: “That was where we belonged. That was our place and our time in history. We were motivated and focused and knew what we had to do. That’s what’s missing when you get home, that mission-oriented way of thinking.”

Half of their former unit was fighting alongside rebels in Ukraine. But Howard didn’t want to join them.

“It wasn’t really his fight,” Hudson said. “He did love the lifestyle — the camaraderie, the guys. But he wasn’t willing to join a cause he didn’t believe in.”

Howard considered going back to Syria, or joining rebels in Myanmar. Hudson found that odd.

“He didn’t even know what side he was going to fight on,” Hudson said. “It made him seem suicidal, like, ‘I’m just going to roll the dice.’”

Howard admitted he still contemplated suicide. So the two friends made a pact: If one decided to kill himself, he would call the other first...

Excellent piece.

Keep reading.

Penélope Cruz for Tatler

Seen on Twitter:

Penélope Cruz, in the midst of the dizzying heat of Cannes, is Tatler's August issue cover star https://t.co/nwz0kg2XJu pic.twitter.com/xjkZH5VzDe

— Tatler (@Tatlermagazine) June 21, 2019

Penélope Cruz sets pulses racing in a VERY sultry photoshoot https://t.co/Vaf6jLGgIl

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) June 22, 2019

Donna D'Errico at 51

At Taxi Driver, "Donna D'Errico at 51 Killing It in Tight Dress on the Red Carpet."

And at London's Daily Mail:

Baywatch vet Donna D'Errico, 51, flaunts her figure in a plunging blue dress as she shares 'find the positive in every situation' https://t.co/RyZOVzwQmn

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) June 1, 2019

Petra Nemcova in London

At Taxi Driver:

Petra Nemcova Pantie Upskirt in London - https://t.co/BuDGo46eaq - pic.twitter.com/a1758bL72p

— Taxi Driver (@TaxiDriverMovie) June 21, 2019

She's Gone

Hall & Oates, heard yesterday while out with my wife, in my wife's car, on satellite radio's "70s on 7."

She's Gone:

Paulina Porizkova Rockin' Bikinis After All These Years

She was my first Sports Illustrated crush.

Back in 1984, I think.

Our love for Paulina Porizkova will last forever! ❤️ https://t.co/ZI9afTN3K1 pic.twitter.com/NLSBFEhWyo

— Sports Illustrated Swimsuit (@SI_Swimsuit) June 17, 2019

Olivia Culpo Tops Maxim's Top 100

She's worth it.

Olivia Culpo gets top spot in Maxim’s Hot 100 ranking for 2019 https://t.co/lDWLM6mAaF pic.twitter.com/pL943FsHTl

— Page Six (@PageSix) June 11, 2019

See EVERY beauty who made the list. https://t.co/u5Ed6tSFOp

— Maxim (@MaximMag) June 16, 2019

President Trump Approved Strikes on Iran, Then Pulled Back From the Brink (VIDEO)

At the New York Times, "Strikes on Iran Approved by Trump, Then Abruptly Pulled Back."



And at Free Beacon, "U.S. Expected to Strike Back for Iran’s Downing of Drone":

The United States is likely to take military action against Iran in the coming days for Tehran's downing a U.S. drone in international airspace on Wednesday near the Strait of Hormuz.

The Central Command said an RQ-4 Global Hawk drone aircraft was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile system while operating in international airspace around 7:35 p.m. on Wednesday.

President Trump suggested retaliation for the attack is coming. "Iran made a very big mistake," the president tweeted.

Later during an Oval Office meeting with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, Trump was asked about a military strike against Iran and repeated that Iran "made a very big mistake" because the drone was flying over international waters.

"Iran made a big mistake. This drone was in international waters, clearly," he said. "We have it all documented scientifically, not just words. And they made a very bad mistake."

Trump suggested that the drone was mistakenly shot down and noted that "I have a big, big feeling" an Iranian air defense operator erred in attacking the drone, someone "loose and stupid who did it."

Asked what will come next, the president said "You'll find out."

Air Force Lt. Gen. Joseph Guastella, commander of Central Command air forces, said the RQ-4 drone was conducting surveillance over the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz in international airspace near recent IRGC attacks on two tankers. The drone was struck by an IRGC surface-to-air missile fired from a base near Goruk, Iran, he said.

"This was an unprovoked attack on a U.S. surveillance asset that had not violated Iranian airspace at any time during its mission," Guastella said in a statement. "This attack is an attempt to disrupt our ability to monitor the area following recent threats to international shipping and free flow of commerce."

The three-star general also said that Iran falsely claimed the aircraft was shot down over Iran. "The aircraft was over the Strait of Hormuz and fell into international waters."

"At the time of the intercept, the RQ-4 was operating at high-altitude approximately 34 kilometers from the nearest point of land on the Iranian coast," he said. "This dangerous and escalatory attack was irresponsible and occurred in the vicinity of established air corridors between Dubai, UAE, and Muscat Oman, possibly endangering innocent civilians."

"Iranian reports that the aircraft was over Iran are false," said CENTCOM spokesman Capt. Bill Urban. "This was an unprovoked attack on a U.S. surveillance asset in international airspace."

Tensions have increased with Iran since last week when the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Tehran's shock troops, were caught removing a limpet mine from the hull of a Japanese tanker that had been hit by other mines the United States has concluded came from Iran.

Another tanker also was attacked with the magnetic mines last week.

Several earlier Iran-linked attacks were carried out, including mines on the ships, an attack on a Saudi pipeline, a rocket firing near a U.S. embassy, and an attack on a NATO convoy in Afghanistan.

White House National Security Adviser John Bolton said in an interview last week the United States is set to retaliate for Iranian military provocations.

"The National Security Strategy lists Iran as one of the four top threats and we just need to be sure we've got the capability to deter them from these kinds of activities, threatening American lives and facilities, threatening the international oil market," Bolton said when asked about the Pentagon's plan to dispatch around 1,000 additional troops to the region.

"They would be making a big mistake if they doubted the president's resolve on this," Bolton added, echoing the president's tweet.

The latest confrontation sent crude oil prices higher over concerns of a new Middle East war. Oil prices increased more than $3 to $63 a barrel, Reuters reports.

U.S. national security officials have been debating how to respond to the recent Iranian military attacks carried out through proxies in a bid to avoid a head-on conflict with the United States.

Options are expected to range from covert action against Iranian military targets using special forces commandos to airstrikes against Iranian bases.

The administration is weighing what it regards as proportional responses to recent Iranian actions...

David Horowitz, Uncivil Wars

At Amazon, David Horowitz, Uncivil Wars: The Controversy over Reparations for Slavery by David Horowitz.

Andrew Sullivan on George Will (REVIEW)

Andrew Sullivan is pretty much psycho, but he's a dang good writer.

This review, at NYT, is worth your time.

Will's book is at Amazon, The Conservative Sensibility.

In a 600-page book on conservatism George Will does not mention Donald Trump, which tells you something about what he thinks of recent political developments https://t.co/fLRKNRvthz

— New York Times Books (@nytimesbooks) June 20, 2019

Rhian Sugden for Today's Page 3 and the Sun U.K.

This is great!

See, "RHIAN LOOKS SUITE! Rhian Sugden poses naked on an armchair for saucy National Selfie Day snap: RHIAN Sugden strips off on National Selfie Day — and must have taken this one remotely.

Back on @Page3 of @TheSun today! 🙋🏼‍♀️ https://t.co/Kzo3AxKKAv @jamesrudland pic.twitter.com/0myE79a0sS

— Rhian Sugden (@Rhianmarie) June 21, 2019

President Trump's Orlando Campaign Launch Crowd Video

From Michael Moore, of all people.

He's right to be worried.

Beautiful! #KeepAmericaGreat #KAG #ThankYouTrump 🇺🇸 https://t.co/qLf99UfF8B

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 21, 2019

Bella Thorne Responds to Whoopi Goldberg's Comments About Topless Photos

This woman loves the exposure. It's her brand, frankly.

Fuck u and the power u think you have over me. I’m gonna write about this in my next book😡😡😡 pic.twitter.com/0Ep0iXgW51

— BITCHIMBELLATHORNE (@bellathorne) June 15, 2019

Everything going on in the Bella-verse right now, including her upcoming book, her taking the initiative against hackers, & her response to Whoopi, are things to add to this list of why we adore @bellathorne

"Edgy Facts About Bella Thorne": https://t.co/PR0gIXFSA0#BellaThorne

— Ranker (@Ranker) June 19, 2019

Santa Anita Workers Fear for Future (VIDEO)

At the Los Angeles Times, "For Santa Anita’s low-paid workers, horse deaths bring pain and fears about the future":

“God, we give thanks for our jobs and the love we feel for our horses. Please don’t let something bad happen to our track.” For Santa Anita’s low-paid workers, horse deaths bring pain and fears about the future. https://t.co/RIo0p3qLdo with @r_valejandra

— Hailey Branson-Potts (@haileybranson) June 21, 2019

Dagoberto Lopez begins each workday at Santa Anita Park at 4:30 a.m., checking on the five horses under his care: War Beast, Of Good Report, Carnivorous, Kissable U and Juggles.

He checks their temperature. He makes sure they’ve had enough to eat. He gives them sponge baths. On race days, he braids their hair and talks to them, hoping they’re not nervous.

“They’re like another child for us,” said Lopez, a 63-year-old groom from Cudahy who has worked at the racetrack for 35 years. “They’re like humans. They just don’t talk.”

A steady beat of horse deaths at Santa Anita — 29 since the start of the race season Dec. 26 — has animal rights activists and politicians calling for the suspension of racing at the track. Gov. Gavin Newsom said last week that he was troubled by the fatalities and “enough is enough.”

But many of the roughly 1,500 humble backstretch workers like Lopez who labor behind the scenes — grooms, trainers, exercise riders and stable cleaners — say powerful people and the media are talking over them, unconcerned about their fate.

Among the employees, mostly low-wage Latinos, there is a growing sense of being an invisible underclass in the sport of kings.

On Thursday, with a June gloom haze hugging the San Gabriel Mountains behind them, dozens of backstretch workers and their families held a news conference at Clockers’ Corner, a dining patio beside the track, in an attempt to make their voices heard.

They held handmade signs behind a podium:

“We love our horses. We love our jobs,” one read.

“Soy madre soltera. Necesito mi trabajo,” read another. I am a single mother. I need my job.

From the podium, Arnie Lopez, a deacon who hosts Bible studies at Santa Anita and helps employees apply for U.S. citizenship, sprinkled holy water on the workers and said a quick prayer: “God, we give thanks for our jobs and the love we feel for our horses. Please don’t let something bad happen to our track.”

On Thursday, backstretch workers said they feel like the track has been vilified by journalists, politicians and animal welfare groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. But few people, they said, talk to them.

Their biggest fear is that the track will be shut down permanently amid the controversy. Two other major California racetracks have been shuttered in recent years to make way for new development. Hollywood Park in Inglewood closed in 2013 after operating for 75 years, and Bay Meadows in San Mateo closed in 2008 after 74 seasons...

Iran Shoots Down U.S. Military Drone Over Strait of Hormuz (VIDEO)

Following-up, "Assessing the Iranian Threat to the Strait of Hormuz."

At the Washington Post, "Iran shoots down US surveillance drone, heightening tensions." And "Iran shoots down U.S. naval drone in Persian Gulf region amid tensions between countries."

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s Revolutionary Guard shot down a U.S. surveillance drone Thursday in the Strait of Hormuz, marking the first time the Islamic Republic directly attacked the American military amid tensions over Tehran’s unraveling nuclear deal with world powers.

The two countries disputed the circumstances leading up to an Iranian surface-to-air missile bringing down the U.S. Navy RQ-4A Global Hawk, an unmanned aircraft with a wingspan larger than a Boeing 737 jetliner and costing over $100 million.

Iran said the drone “violated” its territorial airspace, while the U.S. called the missile fire “an unprovoked attack” in international airspace over the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf and President Donald Trump tweeted that “Iran made a very big mistake!”

Trump later appeared to play down the incident, telling reporters in the Oval Office that he had a feeling that “a general or somebody” being “loose and stupid” made a mistake in shooting down the drone.

RTWT.

Also at ABC News, via Memeorandum, "Trump says Iranian shootdown of US military drone may have been a ‘mistake’."

Assessing the Iranian Threat to the Strait of Hormuz

This piece, from Professor Caitlin Talmadge at International Security from 11 years ago, remains timely.

See, "Closing Time: Assessing the Iranian Threat to the Strait of Hormuz":

How might Iran retaliate in the aftermath of a limited Israeli or U.S. strike? The most economically devastating of Iran’s potential responses would be closure of the Strait of Hormuz. According to open-source order of battle data, as well as relevant analogies from military history and GIS maps, Iran does possess significant littoral warfare capabilities, including mines, antiship cruise missiles, and land-based air defense. If Iran were able to properly link these capabilities, it could halt or impede traffic in the Strait of Hormuz for a month or more. U.S. attempts to reopen the waterway likely would escalate rapidly into sustained, large-scale air and naval operations during which Iran could impose significant economic and military costs on the United States—even if Iranian operations were not successful in truly closing the strait. The aftermath of limited strikes on Iran would be complicated and costly, suggesting needed changes in U.S. force posture and energy policy.

The full article is available in pdf format here.

Tim Bouverie, Appeasement

One of the earliest books I can remember on the appeasement policies of the Western allies before World War II is from Telford Taylor, who was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials after the war.

See, Munich: The Price of Peace.

It seems there could be little that's new of this history, but nevertheless British journalist Tim Bouverie is out with a new account. See, at Amazon, Tim Bouverie, Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War.

Every young person should know this history, so even if Bouverie doesn't break much new ground, it's vital for new generations to learn the lessons, so good on him for writing this book.

Coleman Hughes Testimony Before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties (VIDEO)

Gawd, this is fantastic!

Leftists were outraged. I mean, just look at the faces of the black Democrats behind Mr. Hughes. They don't want to get off the leftist-Democrat Party plantation!

Watch:



And at Twitchy, "Blue-check comedian OK’s racial slur against black columnist who testified against reparations."

And from the now-deleted tweet, by Rae Sanni:

It’s okay, just for today, to call Coleman Hughes a coon. He’s arguing against reparations on Juneteenth. He’s Cooneman Hughes til midnight Pacific Standard time

— Rae Sanni (@raesanni) June 19, 2019

Erotic Babes

Seen on Twitter:

pic.twitter.com/5yKViaDLxS

— Donna (@goodenough_fu) June 17, 2019

Cori Coffin

She's at WTTG FOX 5 Washington, D.C.

And she's a sweetie!

HAPPY FRIDAY EVE!!! #GoodDayDC on in T-Minus 10 minutes....

Who’s going to Germantown tomorrow for the #Fox5ZipTrip?! Supposed to be a gorgeous day ☀️ Weekend plans?? pic.twitter.com/U4XOLNGi0f

— Cori Coffin (@CoriC_FOX5DC) June 20, 2019

Dr. Tara Narula (VIDEO)

This woman's got huge honkers, lol.

Watch:

#sleep #SummerSolstice @CBSThisMorning @CBSNews https://t.co/QSQMiKdvqr pic.twitter.com/t4X3Jh5qGK

— Tara Narula M.D. (@drtaranarula) June 20, 2019

Joe Biden's Racist, Segregationist Nostalgia

Biden's not going to apologize for working with --- indeed, praising --- the classic Democrat Party racist old guard.

He praised Strom Thurmond as late as 1997!

Full story at the Los Angeles Times, "Joe Biden’s nostalgic remark about segregationist senators draws criticism":

Here's a portion of the speech Biden gave about Strom Thurmond, in May 1997https://t.co/b8B2Gei7FE pic.twitter.com/UY79DJ7jvn

— Steadman™ (@AsteadWesley) June 20, 2019

Biden’s seeming nostalgia for his past relationships with segregationist senators draws sharp rebukes from @KamalaHarris @CoryBooker and others. https://t.co/rafyzY3IBS

— David Lauter (@DavidLauter) June 19, 2019

With a tone-deaf bit of nostalgia Tuesday night, former Vice President Joe Biden ignited a fire around his presidential campaign, speaking wistfully of a time in Washington when he could work civilly with conservatives, including arch-segregationist Sens. James O. Eastland of Mississippi and Herman Talmadge of Georgia.

“He never called me boy, he always called me son,” Biden, speaking at a fundraiser in New York said, referring to Eastland.

And while Talmadge was “mean,” he said, “Well guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today, you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don't talk to each other anymore.”

The response from many Democrats was quick and angry, with Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, a black rival for Democrats’ 2020 presidential nomination, and others accusing Biden of racial insensitivity. By Wednesday afternoon, the fight had become one of the most heated intra-party disputes of the 2020 Democratic primary campaign.

The controversy goes beyond Biden’s well-known penchant for verbal gaffes because it directly involves one of the central tenets of his campaign — his call for a return to the bipartisan style of governing that prevailed in the Senate in the past.

The timing increases the likelihood that Biden’s embrace of that approach to governing will become a focal point of next week’s first presidential primary debate.

That theme has appeal for voters who long for an end to Washington’s gridlock, but for many Democrats, especially on the party’s left, it underscores Biden’s image as a figure of the past, out of touch with today’s hyper-partisan realities and unwilling to challenge entrenched interests to achieve the party’s objectives.

“Vice President Biden’s relationships with proud segregationists are not the model for how we make America a safer and more inclusive place for black people, and for everyone,” said Booker. “I’m disappointed that he hasn’t issued an immediate apology for the pain his words are dredging up for many Americans. He should.”

Biden, bridling at the suggestion that he sympathized with racists, responded to the controversy late Wednesday by describing his record of pushing for civil rights and voting rights legislation.

“I could not have disagreed with Jim Eastland more,” he said, speaking to reporters outside a fundraiser in the Washington suburbs.

Asked whether he would apologize for his comments, as Booker was requesting, Biden said, “Why should I? Cory should apologize. He knows better. There’s not a racist bone in my body. I’ve been involved in civil rights my whole career.”

Others who criticized Biden included Sen. Kamala Harris of California, the other black candidate in the 2020 field, who told reporters on a Senate elevator Wednesday that Biden's remark about segregationists “concerns me deeply.”

“If those men had their way, I wouldn’t be in the United States Senate and on this elevator right now,” she said.

Some critics even suggested the remark should disqualify Biden for the party’s nomination.

Yeah, let's nominate Cory Booker or Kamala Harris. That'll show those cracker old guard troglodyte Democrats!

Keep reading.

Kalyna Astrinos's Overcast Weather Forecast

Ms. Kalyna is new at ABC 10 News San Diego. She's a sweetie.

Inside the Secret Meeting That Changed China

This is really good.

At Foreign Affairs, "The New Tiananmen Papers":

China's government has wiped the events of June 4, 1989, from the memories of most of its people, but they are still living in the aftermath. Andrew J. Nathan discusses newly leaked documents that reveal how the lessons of 1989 shape China’s leaders today:https://t.co/zcHWXc8mvl

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) June 12, 2019

On April 15, 1989, the popular Chinese leader Hu Yaobang died of a heart attack in Beijing. Two years earlier, Hu had been cashiered from his post as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party for being too liberal. Now, in the days after his death, thousands of students from Beijing campuses gathered in Tiananmen Square, in central Beijing, to demand that the party give him a proper sendoff. By honoring Hu, the students expressed their dissatisfaction with the corruption and inflation that had developed during the ten years of “reform and opening” under the country’s senior leader, Deng Xiaoping, and their disappointment with the absence of political liberalization. Over the next seven weeks, the party leaders debated among themselves how to respond to the protests, and they issued mixed signals to the public. In the meantime, the number of demonstrators increased to perhaps as many as a million, including citizens from many walks of life. The students occupying the square declared a hunger strike, their demands grew more radical, and demonstrations spread to hundreds of other cities around the country. Deng decided to declare martial law, to take effect on May 20.

But the demonstrators dug in, and Deng ordered the use of force to commence on the night of June 3. Over the next 24 hours, hundreds were killed, if not more; the precise death toll is still unknown. The violence provoked widespread revulsion throughout Chinese society and led to international condemnation, as the G-7 democracies imposed economic sanctions on China. Zhao Ziyang, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, had advocated a conciliatory approach and had refused to accept the decision to use force. Deng ousted him from his position, and Zhao was placed under house arrest—an imprisonment that ended only when he died, in 2005.

A little over two weeks later, on June 19–21, the party’s top decision-making body, the Politburo, convened what it termed an “enlarged” meeting, one that included the regime’s most influential retired elders. The purpose of the gathering was to unify the divided party elite around Deng’s decisions to use force and to remove Zhao from office. The party’s response to the 1989 crisis has shaped the course of Chinese history for three decades, and the Politburo’s enlarged meeting shaped that response. But what was said during the meeting has never been revealed—until now.

On the 30th anniversary of the violent June 4 crackdown, New Century Press, a Hong Kong–based publisher, will publish Zuihou de mimi: Zhonggong shisanjie sizhong quanhui “liusi” jielun wengao (The Last Secret: The Final Documents From the June Fourth Crackdown), a group of speeches that top officials delivered at the gathering. New Century obtained the transcripts (and two sets of written remarks) from a party official who managed to make copies at the time. In 2001, this magazine published excerpts from The Tiananmen Papers, a series of official reports and meeting minutes that had been secretly spirited out of China and that documented the fierce debates and contentious decision-making that unfolded as the party reacted to the protests in the spring of 1989. Now, these newly leaked speeches shed light on what happened after the crackdown, making clear the lessons party leaders drew from the Tiananmen crisis: first, that the Chinese Communist Party is under permanent siege from enemies at home colluding with enemies abroad; second, that economic reform must take a back seat to ideological discipline and social control; and third, that the party will fall to its enemies if it allows itself to be internally divided.

The speeches offer a remarkable behind-the-scenes look at authoritarian political culture in action—and a sign of what was to come in China as, in later decades, the party resorted to ever more sophisticated and intrusive forms of control to combat the forces of liberalization. Reading the transcripts, one can see serving officials closing ranks with the elderly retired officials who still held great sway in the early post-Mao period. Those who had long feared that Deng’s reforms were too liberal welcomed the crackdown, and those who had long favored liberal reforms fell into line.

The speeches also make clear how the lessons taken from Tiananmen continue to guide Chinese leadership today: one can draw a direct line connecting the ideas and sentiments expressed at the June 1989 Politburo meeting to the hard-line approach to reform and dissent that President Xi Jinping is following today. The rest of the world may be marking the 30-year anniversary of the Tiananmen crisis as a crucial episode in China’s recent past. For the Chinese government, however, Tiananmen remains a frightening portent. Even though the regime has wiped the events of June 4 from the memories of most of China’s people, they are still living in the aftermath.

THE PARTY LINE
Participants in the enlarged Politburo meeting were not convened to debate the wisdom of Deng’s decisions. Rather, they were summoned to perform a loyalty ritual, in which each speaker affirmed his support by endorsing two documents: a speech that Deng gave on June 9 to express gratitude to the troops who had carried out the crackdown and a report prepared by Zhao’s hard-line rival, Premier Li Peng, detailing Zhao’s errors in handling the crisis. (Those two documents have long been publicly available.)

It is not clear who, exactly, attended the Politburo meeting. But at least 17 people spoke, and each began his remarks with the words “I completely agree with” or “I completely support,” referring to Deng’s speech and Li’s report. All agreed that the student demonstrations had started as a “disturbance” (often translated as “turmoil”). They agreed that only when the demonstrators resisted the entry of troops into Beijing on June 2 did the situation turn into a “counterrevolutionary riot” that had to be put down by force. Each speech added personal insights, which served to demonstrate the sincerity of the speaker’s support for Deng’s line. Through this ceremony of affirmation, a divided party sought to turn the page and reassert control over a sullen society.

In analyzing why a “disturbance” had occurred in the first place, and why it evolved into a riot, the speakers revealed a profound paranoia about domestic and foreign enemies. Xu Xiangqian, a retired marshal in the People’s Liberation Army, stated:

The facts prove that the turmoil of the past month and more, which finally developed into a counterrevolutionary riot, was the result of the linkup of domestic and foreign counterrevolutionary forces, the result of the long-term flourishing of bourgeois liberalization. . . . Their goal was a wild plan to overturn the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, to topple the socialist People’s Republic of China, and to establish a bourgeois republic that would be anticommunist, antisocialist, and in complete vassalage to the Western powers.

Peng Zhen, the former chair of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, echoed those sentiments:

For some time, an extremely small group of people who stubbornly promoted bourgeois liberalization cooperated with foreign hostile forces to call for revising our constitution, schemed to destroy [Deng’s] Four Cardinal Principles [for upholding socialism and Communist Party rule] and to tear down the cornerstones of our country; they schemed to change . . . our country’s basic political system and to promote in its place an American-style separation of three powers; they schemed to change our People’s Republic of democratic centralism led by the working class and based on the worker-peasant alliance into a totally westernized state of capitalist dictatorship.

Others put an even finer point on this theme, evoking the early days of the Cold War to warn of American subversion. “Forty years ago, [U.S. Secretary of State John Foster] Dulles said that the hope for the restoration [of capitalism] in China rested on the third or fourth [postcommunist] generation,” railed Song Renqiong, the vice chair of the party’s Central Advisory Commission. “Now, the state of political ideology among a portion of the youth is worrisome. We must not let Dulles’ prediction come true.”

Keep reading.

James Holland, Normandy '44

At Amazon, James Holland, Normandy '44: D-Day and the Epic 77-Day Battle for France.

Brace for a Voter-Turnout Tsunami

From Ronald Brownstein, at the Atlantic, "Even with a surge in overall participation, white working-class voters could still remain decisive in the 2020 election":

Signs are growing that voter turnout in 2020 could reach the highest levels in decades—if not the highest in the past century—with a surge of new voters potentially producing the most diverse electorate in American history.

But paradoxically, that surge may not dislodge the central role of the predominantly white and heavily working-class voters who tipped the three Rust Belt states that decided 2016: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Even amid a tide of new participation, those same voters could remain the tipping point of the 2020 election.

With Donald Trump’s tumultuous presidency stirring such strong emotions among both supporters and opponents, strategists in both parties and academic experts are now bracing for what Michael McDonald, a University of Florida political scientist who specializes in voting behavior, recently called “a voter turnout storm of a century in 2020.”

In a recent paper, the Democratic voter-targeting firm Catalist projected that about 156 million people could vote in 2020, an enormous increase from the 139 million who cast ballots in 2016. Likewise, Public Opinion Strategies, a leading Republican polling firm, recently forecast that the 2020 contest could produce a massive turnout that is also unprecedentedly diverse.

“I think we are heading for a record presidential turnout at least in the modern era, and by that I mean since the franchise went to 18-year-olds,” in 1972, says Glen Bolger, a partner at Public Opinion Strategies. “And I mean not only in total numbers [but also] in terms of the percentage of eligible voters [who turn out]. The emotion behind politics … is sky-high, and I don’t think it’s just on one side. I think it’s on both sides.”

McDonald thinks the turnout surge in 2020 could shatter even older records, estimating that as many as two-thirds of eligible voters may vote next year. If that happens, it would represent the highest presidential-year turnout since 1908, when 65.7 percent of eligible Americans cast a ballot, according to McDonald’s figures. Since 18-year-olds were granted the vote, the highest showing was the 61.6 percent of eligible voters who showed up in 2008, leading to Barack Obama’s victory. And since World War II, the highest turnout level came in 1960, with John F. Kennedy’s win, when 63.8 percent of voters participated.

Experts on both sides point to an array of indicators that signal turnout may reach new heights next year. Signs of political interest, from the number of small-donor contributions made to presidential candidates to the viewership for cable news, are all spiking. In polls, very high shares of Americans already say they are paying a lot of attention to the 2020 presidential race.

But the clearest sign that high turnout may be approaching in 2020 is that it already arrived in 2018. In last year’s midterm, nearly 120 million people voted, about 35 million more than in the previous midterm, in 2014, with 51 percent of eligible voters participating—a huge increase over the previous three midterms. The 2018 level represented the largest share of eligible voters to turn out in a midterm year since 1914, according to McDonald’s figures. Catalist estimated that about 14 million new voters who had not participated in 2016 turned out two years later, and they preferred Democrats by a roughly 20-percentage-point margin.

Yet one of the key questions for 2020 is whether Democrats will benefit as much from the likely expansion of the electorate...

Keep reading.

It's gonna be great.

As long as the economy holds up into late next year, Trump is going to be a very formidable incumbent, and difficult to beat.

A lot depends on who the Democrats nominate, and I'm hoping they nominate one of their far-left wing avatars, Bernie, Elizabeth, or Kamala. I'm positive Trump will make short work of them. Biden would be a tricky opponent. And I do think he could cut into some of Trump's working class support. But we'll see. We'll. see.

Rita Ora in Red Bikini

She's a hot chick.

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

And at London's Daily Mail:

Rita Ora sends temperatures soaring in skimpy red bikini on post-tour getaway https://t.co/FK0ofILm2c

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) June 8, 2019

And bonus topless on Twitter.

Megan Parry's Wednesday Weather

She's a sweetie.

At ABC 10 News San Diego: