I first wrote about the uptick [of anti-Semitic attacks] in May. The reason the city’s liberal political class was ignoring it, I argued, is that the criminals don’t fit their picture of Evil Bigots. They aren’t, for the most part, MAGA-hat wearing white guys with tiki torches. In fact, many of the attackers are people of color, as investigative reporting by Tablet’s Armin Rosen and others has shown.
Imagine if they were white nationalists. How much faster would the mayor and other city leaders have taken action?
“A lot of folks were told it was unacceptable to be anti-Semitic,” de Blasio said in May. “It was unacceptable to be racist, and now they’re getting more permission.” The message was subtle but unmistakable: De Blasio was trying to pin the attacks in bright-blue New York on President Trump.
Hizzoner didn’t surrender the fantasy for some time. In June, he said: “I want to be very, very clear, the violent threat, the threat that is ideological, is very much from the right.”
He left unclear how the Big Apple had come to be populated by ideological far-right types beating up on Jews. His comments underscored his inability to truly counter the type of street-level anti-Semitism spreading through the city.
Will he face the facts now? Or will Jews need to actually die, not just be pummeled, for our leaders to grasp the threat?
“Anti-Semitism is an attack on the values of our city — and we will confront it head-on,”
De Blasio tweeted after this latest round of violence against Jews. He has to stop beating around the bush. These attacks aren’t an attack on “our values.” They’re attacks on visibly Jewish people.
De Blasio needs to stop trying to find a “them” to be the opposite of his “us.” His juvenile obsession with having the right adversaries allows anti-Semitism to flourish.
I used to write about Europeans and their apathetic attitudes toward the Jew-hatred around them. Synagogues torched, Jews beaten — just another day on the Continent.
But now the demon is here, in America. Worse, it’s stalking Jews with increasing regularity in New York City, my city, home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel. Hizzoner’s vague universalist rhetoric obscures this raw reality.
And it isn’t just his ideological blinders. The mayor has also helped create an anti-police atmosphere, in which the vigilant presence of officers is considered a bad thing. At an anti-police rally last month, there were signs calling for violence against the NYPD.
De Blasio’s response? He insinuated that the idea that there’s anti-police sentiment in our city is, yes, another right-wing plot.
In 2020 I don’t want to read another column like this one...
Sunday, December 29, 2019
Leftists Allowing — Encouraging — Anti-Semitism to Flourish
From Karol Markowicz, at the New York Post, "How liberals are allowing anti-Semitism to flourish" (via Memeorandum):
Saturday, December 28, 2019
White Voters See Doom Without Trump
People keep talking about "civil war" but I don't see that happening.
Conservatives will continue to flee the progressive urban enclaves and coastal states, and leftists will continue to cluster into "high-density" shithole municipalities (think San Francisco), drinking their Veuve Clicquot in million dollar townhomes, while moaning about "inequality."
That said, I love the "civil war" metaphor and, frankly, I won't mind if it becomes more than a metaphor (calling Kurt Schlichter).
At NYT, "‘Nothing Less Than a Civil War’: These White Voters on the Far Right See Doom Without Trump":
Conservatives will continue to flee the progressive urban enclaves and coastal states, and leftists will continue to cluster into "high-density" shithole municipalities (think San Francisco), drinking their Veuve Clicquot in million dollar townhomes, while moaning about "inequality."
That said, I love the "civil war" metaphor and, frankly, I won't mind if it becomes more than a metaphor (calling Kurt Schlichter).
At NYT, "‘Nothing Less Than a Civil War’: These White Voters on the Far Right See Doom Without Trump":
‘Nothing Less Than a Civil War’: These White Voters on the Far Right See Doom Without Trump— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) December 28, 2019
Deeply conservative, they organize online and outside the GOP apparatus, engaging in more explicit versions of the chest-beating seen at the president’s rallieshttps://t.co/zOPrfLm9Sf
GOLDEN VALLEY, Ariz. — Great American Pizza & Subs, on a highway about 100 miles southeast of Las Vegas, was busier and Trumpier than usual. On any given day it serves “M.A.G.A. Subs” and “Liberty Bell Lasagna.” The “Second Amendment” pizza comes “loaded” with pepperoni and sausage. The dining room is covered in regalia praising President Trump.More.
But this October morning was “Trumpstock,” a small festival celebrating the president. The speakers included the local Republican congressman, Paul Gosar, and lesser-known conservative personalities. There was a fringe 2020 Senate candidate in Arizona who ran a website that published sexually explicit photos of women without their consent; a pro-Trump rapper whose lyrics include a racist slur aimed at Barack Obama; and a North Carolina activist who once said of Muslims, “I will kill every one of them before they get to me.”
All were welcome, except liberals.
“They label us white nationalists, or white supremacists,” volunteered Guy Taiho Decker, who drove from California to attend the event. A right-wing protester, he has previously been arrested on charges of making terrorist threats.
“There’s no such thing as a white supremacist, just like there’s no such thing as a unicorn,” Mr. Decker said. “We’re patriots.”
As Mr. Trump’s bid for re-election shifts into higher gear, his campaign hopes to recapture voters who drifted away from the party in 2018 and 2019: independents who embraced moderate Democratic candidates, suburban women tired of Mr. Trump’s personal conduct and working-class voters who haven’t benefited from his economic policies.
But if any group remains singularly loyal to Mr. Trump, it is the small but impassioned number of white voters on the far right, often in rural communities like Golden Valley, who extol him as a cultural champion reclaiming the country from undeserving outsiders.
These voters don’t passively tolerate Mr. Trump’s “build a wall” message or his ban on travel from predominantly Muslim countries — they’re what motivates them. They see themselves in his fear-based identity politics, bolstered by conspiratorial rhetoric about caravans of immigrants and Democratic “coups.”
But events like it, as well as speaking engagements featuring far-right supporters of the president, have become part of the political landscape during the Trump era. Islamophobic taunts can be heard at his rallies. Hate speech and conspiracy theories are staples of some far-right websites. If Trumpstock was modest in size, it stood out as a sign of extremist public support for a sitting president.
And these supporters have electoral muscle in key areas: Mr. Trump outperformed Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, in rural parts of Arizona like Mohave County, where Golden Valley is located. Mr. Trump won 58,282 votes in the county, compared to 47,901 for Mr. Romney, though Mr. Romney carried the state by a much bigger vote margin.
Arizona will be a key battleground state in 2020: Democrats already flipped a Senate seat and a Tucson-based congressional district from red to blue in 2018. For Mr. Trump, big turnout from white voters in areas like Mohave County — and in rural parts of other battlegrounds like Florida, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia — could be a lifeline in a tight election.
“We like to call this the ‘Red Wall of Arizona,’” said Laurence Schiff, a psychiatrist and Republican campaign official in Mohave County who organizes in support of Mr. Trump’s campaign. “Winning the state starts here, with us.”
Grass-roots gatherings play a critical role in the modern culture of political organizing, firing up ardent supporters and cementing new ones. Small circles of Trump-supporting conservatives, often organized online and outside the traditional Republican Party apparatus, engage in more decentralized — and explicit — versions of the chest-beating that happens at Mr. Trump’s closely watched political rallies...
College Football's Best Semifinals Yet
I've been waiting for today.
With the exception of last night --- and USC's loss to the Iowa Hawkeyes --- I haven't watched any bowl games. Today and New Year's day will be great.
At NYT, "College Football Playoff Offers Its Strongest Semifinals Yet":
With the exception of last night --- and USC's loss to the Iowa Hawkeyes --- I haven't watched any bowl games. Today and New Year's day will be great.
At NYT, "College Football Playoff Offers Its Strongest Semifinals Yet":
Critics of the College Football Playoff system, now in its sixth year, often lament its made-for-TV artificiality, its subjective selection process and the role it has played in widening the gap between the sport’s haves and its have-nots.
In reply, proponents of the system need only point to this weekend.
The four best teams in college football will meet Saturday in the most appealing semifinals since the three-game playoff format debuted after the 2014 season. The only tough decisions the selection committee had to make this year were how to seed this a group that includes four of the nation’s top offenses, three undefeated teams, two previous playoff champions, and all four of the Heisman Trophy finalists.
How these particular teams got to this point is pretty easy to decode: They are led by four of the sport’s most talented quarterbacks. The best, undeniably, is Louisiana State’s Joe Burrow, who guided the Tigers to the top ranking and won the Heisman Trophy by a record-breaking margin. The other quarterbacks in the semifinals are Oklahoma’s Jalen Hurts, the Heisman runner-up; Ohio State’s dual-threat Justin Fields, who has thrown 40 touchdowns and only one interception this season; and Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence, who as a freshman led the Tigers to a win over Alabama in the national title game last season.
Here’s a closer look at the two matchups on Saturday...
You Don't Say? Rachel Maddow Rooted for the Steele Dossier to Be True
At the Other McCain, "The 2019 Media Credibility Bonfire."
BONUS: At AoSHQ, "Washington Post Columnist Rips Rachel Maddow for Promoting Steele Dossier Conspiracy Theories for Three Years."
More, at Legal Insurrection, "Again We Ask: Why Isn’t Rachel Maddow Treated Like Other Crazy Conspiracy Theorists?"
BONUS: At AoSHQ, "Washington Post Columnist Rips Rachel Maddow for Promoting Steele Dossier Conspiracy Theories for Three Years."
More, at Legal Insurrection, "Again We Ask: Why Isn’t Rachel Maddow Treated Like Other Crazy Conspiracy Theorists?"
New York Anti-Semitic Attacks (VIDEO)
At CBS News 2 New York, via Memeorandum, "NYPD Investigating 9th Anti-Semitic Attack Reported This Week."
And on Twitter, be sure to read the entire Seth Mandel thread:
And on Twitter, be sure to read the entire Seth Mandel thread:
That Jews cannot walk the streets of New York City without the fear of being attacked is outrageous.
— American Jewish Committee (@AJCGlobal) December 27, 2019
We need to wake the world up to rising antisemitism.
Please watch and share this video. pic.twitter.com/nYOVWvcJyr
I often relay stories of being stopped from eating off nonkosher menus in NYC by non-Jewish workers (say, in Dunkin Donuts, which has a kosher and nonkosher list of products). Being visibly Jewish in NYC meant something very special, very warm, very home.
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) December 27, 2019
Now it means fear.
Alex Biston's Cold Saturday Forecast
It's wet and cold out there, although the Grapevine is open again if you're traveling north up I-5.
Here's the lovely Ms. Alex, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:
BONUS: "Jennifer Delacruz's Weather Forecast."
Here's the lovely Ms. Alex, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:
BONUS: "Jennifer Delacruz's Weather Forecast."
At Least the Boat Captain Wasn't Texting
Rita Panahi posted this video, which I missed if it went viral at the time (a couple of years ago). But man is this wild.
Click on the tweet for the link to the earlier story. Apparently the boat pilot was not texting on his phone.
“Take up fishing” they said, “it’ll be relaxing” they said. pic.twitter.com/Q78rxfgnok— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) December 28, 2019
Click on the tweet for the link to the earlier story. Apparently the boat pilot was not texting on his phone.
Roundup: Emily Ratajkowski's Shots
At TMZ, "Emily Ratajkowski's Topless Shots."
Have you shopped our Baxter bra yet? Available now @inamoratawoman https://t.co/OSTEBd6gmm pic.twitter.com/czltzdzphf
— Emily Ratajkowski (@emrata) December 14, 2019
Thursday, December 26, 2019
Jennifer Delacruz's Winter Storm Forecast
Lots more weather coverage for you, this time from our fabulous forecaster, Ms. Jennifer, at ABC News 10 San Diego:
Nasty SoCal Weather
Bunch of highways closed over night, not least of all the I-5 over the Grapevine.
I'm glad I'm not traveling.
I'm glad I'm not traveling.
A fast-moving winter storm barreled into Southern California early today, bringing snow that closed the 5 Freeway in the Grapevine, Angeles Crest Highway and the 15 Freeway in the Cajon Pass and rain that flooded freeways across L.A. County. https://t.co/81bdle4bLh
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 26, 2019
Grapevine/Tehachapi: I-5 Grapevine remains CLOSED from 3 mi north of the Jct of SR 126 /at Parker Rd/ to 5 mi south of the Jct of SR 99 /at Grapevine Rd. State Route 58 remains CLOSED from 4.1 mi east of Edison at Towerline Rd to 1 mi west of Mojave. No estimated time of opening pic.twitter.com/RkdBS7NYSd
— Caltrans District 6 (@CaltransDist6) December 26, 2019
Can a Family of Four Enjoy a Major Sporting Event in Orange County/Los Angeles for $100 for Tickets, Food, and Parking?
My favorite games are Saturday nights at Anaheim Stadium, where Angels games are followed by fireworks. We sit up on the top deck usually, and tickets are about $50 bucks for the whole family, sometimes less. (Once in a while we'll get field level, but my wife likes sitting up top, as she's not craning her neck every which way for foul balls and what not.) I get hot dogs, peanuts, and beer --- then I hand my wallet over to the family for the rest of the night, lol.
In any case, a great piece, at the Los Angeles Times, "Good luck getting a family of four into a professional sport for $100 — not in good seats, but any seats":
In any case, a great piece, at the Los Angeles Times, "Good luck getting a family of four into a professional sport for $100 — not in good seats, but any seats":
The Games Are Too Damn Expensive: As ticket prices for pro sports rise, teams risk losing the next generation of fans. In an era when kids might prefer video games anyway, families are increasingly priced out of live sports. https://t.co/IGTOWUGXDQ
— Bill Shaikin (@BillShaikin) December 26, 2019
A lifetime of sports fandom often starts with that first vision of the towering stadium before you, that first peek at the vibrant green grass of a ballpark, that first chance to see star players up close on the court and even closer on a gigantic video screen, that first moment to stand and scream for your team.Keep reading.
“We do remember that first ballgame our parents, our friend, our Scout troop might have taken us to,” said Andy Dolich, who has run marketing operations for teams in all five major North American sports. “It’s one of those indelible memories for tens of millions of people.”
That experience has become all but unaffordable for the typical family in the Los Angeles area.
As teams focus on maximizing revenue from the current generation of fans, they risk losing a future generation of fans, particularly at a time when kids limited to experiencing games on a screen might well prefer Fortnite to ESPN.
The arms race to turn athletic venues into opulent cash machines — with gourmet dining, finely appointed luxury suites, VIP seats within sweating distance of the action, and video boards suited for Hollywood premieres — has all but left the common fan behind. Good luck getting a family of four into a game for $100 — not in good seats, mind you, but in any seats.
Dolich is a former chief operating officer of the San Francisco 49ers and Golden State Warriors and a former president of business operations for the Memphis Grizzlies. He now runs a sports consultant firm, and he is worried for an industry in which kids are increasingly priced out.
“You’re not yelling. You’re not screaming. You’re just not going,” Dolich said. “That, I think, is the most pernicious part of it.”
The median income for a family of four in Los Angeles County is $78,673, according to the USC Price Center for Social Innovation. After accounting for the costs of housing, child care, health care, food, transportation and taxes, that family would be left with $3,413 in discretionary income for the year, $284 per month.
Elly Schoen, data and project manager at the Price Center, said it would be “reasonable” to consider $100 as a price point for a family day at a sporting event.
“You’re thinking about going out to one or two games a year,” Schoen said, “and you’re thinking about spending about half your monthly discretionary income on that kind of family outing.”
The Times asked the 11 major professional teams that call Los Angeles and Orange County home whether a family of four could attend a weekend game for $100 — tickets, parking, and something to eat and drink. When prices exceeded that amount, The Times asked teams what the most affordable option for a family might be.
The Angels are the only team that guarantees any family can get to a weekend game for that amount. The team offers a $44 family pack that includes four field-level tickets, four hot dogs, and four soft drinks. Parking at Angel Stadium is $10.
The Sparks offer a $100 family pack that includes tickets, food and autograph vouchers, with parking for an additional $10. The Galaxy offer a family deal for $128, including a $10 concession credit and souvenirs but not food or parking.
The Ducks have a weekend family pack at $120, not including parking. The Kings have a family pack at $220, which includes family activities before Saturday games and a skating session at the team’s training facility.
LAFC offers 200 first-come, first-served tickets at $22 each, with discounted food and drinks in that section.
The Clippers sell $10 tickets at Staples Center on game day — first come, first served, with 50 to 200 tickets available for each game. They also provide the 120,000 participants in their Jr. Clippers youth basketball program with a free ticket to one game each season; parents pay for their game tickets.
The Lakers suggested the option of their minor league affiliate, the South Bay Lakers. The team plays at the Lakers’ team headquarters in El Segundo, where parking is free, and a $125 family pack includes $40 in food and beverage credit.
The Chargers and Rams both noted that training camp is free, often with interactive activities designed for families. The lowest single-game price this season is $35 for the Rams and $70 for the Chargers, although the Chargers anticipate a lower price when they move into the larger Sofi Stadium next season.
The Dodgers declined requests to participate in the survey. According to the initial 2020 single-game prices posted on the team website last month, the Dodgers are selling tickets for as low as $10 to the two midweek Freeway Series exhibition games. The Dodgers are selling $21 tickets for only one weekend game next season; the minimum price for all others is $30...
How Sam Mendes Made '1917'
I'd go see this one, but it's in limited release until January.
I love war films.
At NYT:
I love war films.
At NYT:
“We would laugh at him,” the director recalled, “until I asked my dad, ‘Why does Granddad Alfie wash his hands so much?’ And he said, ‘Oh, he remembers the mud of the trenches during the war, and the fact that he could never get clean.’” https://t.co/BC3VWPFnVc— NYT At War (@NYTimesAtWar) December 24, 2019
When the director Sam Mendes was a young boy, he and his father often traveled to the West Indies to visit his grandfather Alfred Mendes, a novelist. Sam, who had been brought up in North London, found his grandfather to be quite exotic: The small and wiry World War I veteran would sing opera in a booming Trinidadian accent, traipse around his creaky Colonial house in shorts and flip-flops and vigorously greet each morning with a pre-dawn plunge into the sea.
Alfred Mendes also had a tendency to obsessively wash his hands, always for several minutes at a time, to the point where Sam and his cousins noticed that above all his other quirks. “We would laugh at him,” the director recalled, “until I asked my dad, ‘Why does Granddad Alfie wash his hands so much?’ And he said, ‘Oh, he remembers the mud of the trenches during the war, and the fact that he could never get clean.’”
That’s when the boys stopped laughing at their grandfather. It’s also when they began asking what happened when, at age 19, Alfred Mendes enlisted and fought on behalf of Britain in what would become one of the world’s deadliest conflicts.
“We expected, I suppose, conventional stories of heroism and bravery,” Mendes said. “We certainly didn’t expect what he told us, which was unbelievably shocking and quite graphic tales of utter futility and chaos.”
There was the wounded soldier his grandfather carried back to the trench under enemy fire, only to discover once he arrived that the man was dead, his body having absorbed a bullet meant for Alfred. Another story involved a German soldier whose head was lost in an explosion, though his body somehow carried on running.
And then there was the mission that Alfred Mendes volunteered for on Oct. 12, 1917, after nearly a third of the men in his battalion had been killed in the Battle of Poelcappelle. The survivors were stranded across many miles, and Alfred, who had been trained as a signaler, was sent to rescue them and lead them back to his camp.
“That tiny man in the midst of that vast expanse of death, that was the thing I could never get out of my mind,” said Mendes.
It is the image that inspired the new film “1917,” directed and co-written by Mendes, about two British lance corporals who must make their way across miles of battleground to deliver an urgent message that could save 1,600 of their fellow soldiers from a massacre. Still, though the stories his grandfather told him had never been far from Mendes’s mind, that didn’t mean making a movie like this came easily...
Wednesday, December 25, 2019
Katie Bell's Christmas Wishes
On Twitter:
Merry Christmas! xoxo ❤️ pic.twitter.com/gVkFjGa5Aj
— Katie Bell🦋 (@katieeeeebell) December 25, 2019
Danielle Gersh's Christmas Forecast
I hope all my readers have a wonderful and warm Christmas.
Here's the spectacular Ms. Danielle, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:
Here's the spectacular Ms. Danielle, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:
The Main Issue of 2020 Will Be Trump, Not the Economy
It's old Bill Schnieder, who was CNN's top political analyst in the 1990s (when Judy Woodruff and Bernard Shaw used to anchor), at the Hill, "Impeached, with a solid base and no apologies — Trump becomes the only issue of 2020."
"Impeached, with a solid base and no apologies — Trump becomes the only issue of 2020" via @TheHillOpinion https://t.co/RNulfef9A7 pic.twitter.com/nC0wwkxk3C
— The Hill (@thehill) December 23, 2019
Very Merry
Not sure if this is a Christmas photo, but it's nice.
— Gym Motivation HQ Ⓜ️ Model Magazine (@LGHQmagazine) December 25, 2019
Black Rifle Coffee Lady
I meant to post this earlier.
Been busy, understandably.
At Amazon, Light Roast Silencer Smooth by Black Rifle Coffee Company - 12 oz Bag of Coffee Grounds - Premium Gourmet Coffee - Perfect Coffee Lovers Gift.
Been busy, understandably.
At Amazon, Light Roast Silencer Smooth by Black Rifle Coffee Company - 12 oz Bag of Coffee Grounds - Premium Gourmet Coffee - Perfect Coffee Lovers Gift.
Perfect 🙏 pic.twitter.com/MozzpG9kLo
— Country Girls (@DownHomeGirls) December 23, 2019
Tuesday, December 24, 2019
Jennifer Delacruz's Christmas Eve Forecast
It's going to be chilly tonight.
Snuggle up by the fire and sip some hot chocolate before you tuck the kids in for the night.
Here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:
Snuggle up by the fire and sip some hot chocolate before you tuck the kids in for the night.
Here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:
Evangelical Newspaper War
I saw this earlier, at the Daily Beast, via Memeorandum, "Editor Quits Amid Evangelical Newspaper Civil War Over Trump."
Here's the latest, at Christian Post, "Christianity Today and the problem with ‘Christian Elitism’."
And on Twitter, the background:
Here's the latest, at Christian Post, "Christianity Today and the problem with ‘Christian Elitism’."
And on Twitter, the background:
From Christianity Today’s editor in chief https://t.co/NVdQjg4odC
— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) December 19, 2019
Following CT's editorial on Trump, our president @TimDalrymple_ answers some questions about our ministry and why we see this discussion as so important.
— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) December 22, 2019
We are planting a flag and setting a table. Fellow evangelicals, we invite you to join us. https://t.co/2rvz2WDXzu
Gisele Bündchen Out for Fashion
Well, Tom Brady's getting a mouthful at night, I guess.
She looks fresh.
At Drunken Stepfather, "GISELE BUNDCHEN TITS OUT FOR FASHION OF THE DAY."
She looks fresh.
At Drunken Stepfather, "GISELE BUNDCHEN TITS OUT FOR FASHION OF THE DAY."
Emma Watson Fashionista
At Celeb Jihad, "EMMA WATSON’S NUDE TITTIES FOR FUTURISTIC FASHION."
"This is why they call me the bag lady..." Vegan deodorant, reusable make-up pads, Nutella and a copy of Toni Morrison's ‘Beloved’ are just some of the items that #BritishVogue cover star @EmmaWatson carries in her bag. Take a look inside here: https://t.co/wksSrFhPYF pic.twitter.com/8uZrgqMCAZ
— British Vogue (@BritishVogue) December 12, 2019
Monday, December 23, 2019
Olga's Rainy Weather Forecast
The lovely Olga Ospina, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles, a lot of rain in the Southland.
BONUS: At ABC News 10 San Diego, "Megan Parry's Monday Forecast."
BONUS: At ABC News 10 San Diego, "Megan Parry's Monday Forecast."
Christmas Gift Ideas
At Amazon, Top Gift Ideas.
Also, Today's Deals. New deals. Every day. Shop our Deal of the Day, Lightning Deals and more daily deals and limited-time sales.
Plus, TAHARI Deluxe Automatic Open Wood Handle & Shaft Umbrella (Black).
More, Premium Horny Goat Weed Extract with Maca & Tribulus, Enhanced Energy Complex for Men & Women, 1000mg Epimedium with Icariins, Veggie Capsules.
More here, MusclePharm Combat Protein Powder - Essential blend of Whey, Isolate, Casein and Egg Protein with BCAA's and Glutamine for Recovery, Chocolate Milk, 4 Pound.
Plus here, MTech USA Xtreme MX-8054 Series Fixed Blade Tactical Knife, Tanto Blade, G10 Handle, 11-Inch Overall.
BONUS: Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.
Also, Today's Deals. New deals. Every day. Shop our Deal of the Day, Lightning Deals and more daily deals and limited-time sales.
Plus, TAHARI Deluxe Automatic Open Wood Handle & Shaft Umbrella (Black).
More, Premium Horny Goat Weed Extract with Maca & Tribulus, Enhanced Energy Complex for Men & Women, 1000mg Epimedium with Icariins, Veggie Capsules.
More here, MusclePharm Combat Protein Powder - Essential blend of Whey, Isolate, Casein and Egg Protein with BCAA's and Glutamine for Recovery, Chocolate Milk, 4 Pound.
Plus here, MTech USA Xtreme MX-8054 Series Fixed Blade Tactical Knife, Tanto Blade, G10 Handle, 11-Inch Overall.
BONUS: Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.
Both Sides Dig In Over Senate Trial
Noah Feldman, who testified during the House impeachment hearings (before Nadler's Judiciary Committee), posted something of a bombshell piece at Bloomberg the other day, "If Trump's Impeached, Then Why Can't a Senate Start Now?"
The whole delay is totally predictable. The Dems are losing the debate over impeachment, which went down on straight party lines. Trump's approval ratings are at the highest points of his presidency. Some House Democrats were grumbling about how they only wanted to "censure" the president, not impeach. Blah, blah.
It's going to the Senate one way or another, mainly because the American people aren't going to stand for the left's shenanigans too much longer.
In any case, at LAT, "Trump impeachment trial: Squaring off in the Senate":
The whole delay is totally predictable. The Dems are losing the debate over impeachment, which went down on straight party lines. Trump's approval ratings are at the highest points of his presidency. Some House Democrats were grumbling about how they only wanted to "censure" the president, not impeach. Blah, blah.
It's going to the Senate one way or another, mainly because the American people aren't going to stand for the left's shenanigans too much longer.
In any case, at LAT, "Trump impeachment trial: Squaring off in the Senate":
Trump impeachment trial: Squaring off in the Senate https://t.co/Gsi93DcVku— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 23, 2019
WASHINGTON — A senior White House official and leading Senate Republicans predicted Sunday that congressional Democrats would fail in their bid to force the Senate to summon witnesses in President Trump’s impeachment trial.More at WaPo, via Memeorandum, "Impeachment live updates: McConnell, Pelosi dig in on impasse over Trump's Senate trial."
Democrats countered by asking why, if Trump were innocent, he would block the testimony of top aides with direct knowledge of his dealings with Ukraine — actions that led the House of Representatives to approve two articles of impeachment against the president last week.
Following Wednesday’s vote, only the third time in history that the House has impeached a president, Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not immediately forward the articles to the Senate for trial.
Democrats said that, in light of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s pledge to work in close concert with the White House, they were not satisfied the proceedings would be conducted fairly and impartially. Pelosi said she wanted clarity about what rules the Senate planned to follow before deciding which members of the House would act as the prosecutors, known as managers, of the case in the Senate.
Pelosi (D-San Francisco) is expected to send the articles to the Senate after the holiday recess. Senior White House aide Marc Short said he expected Republicans would make no concessions in return, even though Trump says he wants a quick trial in the GOP-controlled Senate.
“We’re confident this position is untenable, and she’s going to move it along,” Short, the chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence and a former White House legislative director, told “Fox News Sunday.”
“She will yield — there’s no way she can hold this position,” he said, referring to Pelosi.
The White House’s current opposition to witnesses in the Senate marks an about-face. Until recently, Trump was insisting he wanted extensive witnesses. He hoped to turn a trial into an opportunity for his lawyers to call prominent Democrats and force them to answer questions about his so-far-groundless allegations of misconduct among that party’s members. McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Senate Republicans opposed that idea and appeared to have convinced Trump to drop it.
Democratic lawmakers defended Pelosi’s delay.
“I think what she’s just trying to do is make sure the best possible case for a fair trial happens,” said Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Addressing Trump directly, Booker said: “If you’re innocent, have acting Chief of Staff [Mick] Mulvaney come before the Senate, swear to an oath — settle this whole thing.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said Pelosi was doing “exactly the right thing” in “focusing a spotlight on the need to have a fair trial in the United States Senate.”
Since an impeachment inquiry began nearly three months ago, Trump has refused any cooperation by the executive branch. The blanket rejection of subpoenas for documents and squelching of appearances by key figures such as Mulvaney and Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo formed the basis for one of the two articles of impeachment, alleging obstruction of Congress. The other accuses Trump of abuse of power.
More than a dozen diplomats and current or former administration officials defied Trump’s instructions and testified in the House proceedings. Those witnesses helped House Democrats make their case that the president withheld crucial military aid and a coveted White House meeting as a means of pressuring Ukraine’s newly elected leader to announce investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Trump, who has never consistently accepted U.S. intelligence findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 election on his behalf, also asked President Volodymyr Zelensky to look into a debunked theory that Ukraine interfered in that election on behalf of Hillary Clinton, Trump’s opponent.
Although new evidence continues to emerge, Democrats say it is impossible to establish key details of what transpired if Trump blocks testimony by senior aides...
President Trump's an Existential Threat to the Regime Party
From Roger Kimball, at American Greatness, "The ‘Impeachment’ of Donald Trump":
Many commentators, myself included, have warned that the House was playing a dangerous game by taking the box marked “impeachment” down from the shelf and beginning to bat those balls around when there were no plausible grounds—none—for playing the game to begin with. Impeachment—again, as many commentators, myself included, have pointed out—was intended by the Founders to be a remedy of last resort, an in-case-of-fire-break-glass option when every other recourse had failed.
As recently as this March, Nancy Pelosi had insisted that impeachment had to be a bipartisan decision, only employed to address the most serious crimes. In endorsing the House charade, she shelved that scruple along with all her other ones. The result, as Andy McCarthy and others have pointed out, will be to make impeachment much more common. The price of “trivializing” impeachment, as the House has just done, will likely be to make it the “new normal.”
Indeed, the legal scholar Jonathan Turley, a prominent critic of the president, but one who has not therefore tainted his reason, pointed out that by the standards employed against Donald Trump, every living president could have been impeached. Turley was particularly troubled by the charge that the president was guilty of obstructing Congress. Why? Because all the president did was go to court to challenge House demands for certain evidence. The House, Turley noted, “set an abbreviated period for investigation, arguably the shortest investigation of any presidential impeachment.”
And then they said if you don’t turn over the evidence during that period, you’re obstructing Congress. Well, President Trump went to court to challenge the necessity of handing over that material. Both Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon were allowed to go all the way to the Supreme Court—they ultimately lost, and Nixon resigned soon after. My concern is that this really does seem like you are making an appeal to the court into a high crime or a misdemeanor (my emphasis).I think there are two takeaways from this sad affair. One concerns the future place of impeachment in our system of government. I think that Andy McCarthy is right in suggesting that the ultimate sanction of impeachment has more and more been been routinely threatened because the usual checks and balances have been more or less neutered by the growing power of the so-called administrative state. “The problem,” McCarthy writes, is that
after a century of progressive governance . . . these checks do not work anymore. The federal government and its administrative state have grown monstrously big. Federal money is now as much tied to social welfare as to traditional government functions. Budgeting is slap-dash and dysfunctional. To threaten to deny funds or leave agencies leaderless is to be seen, not as reining in executive excess, but as heartlessly harming this or that interest group. Lawmakers would rather run up tens of trillions in debt than be portrayed that wayA lot more could be said about the growth of administrative power, which is essentially executive power, in the face of the paralysis or abdication of responsibility of Congress to fulfill its core responsibilities.
But in the context of our present Trump-centric drama, I suspect that the chief issue is a deeper, structural deformation. I mean the gradual transformation of our government from a vigorous two-party system into a one-and-a-half party system. I’ve written about this before. The idea is not mine but something I crib from conversations with the commentator James Piereson of the William E. Simon Foundation.
The bottom line is that, for many decades now, no matter which party has been in office, the real center of power has resided in the regime party, the party that government itself evolved into. Although plenty of Republicans have sat around this table, happy to engorge themselves on the attendant spoils, the regime party has always been the Democratic party. They encouraged an agenda of dependency that they could simultaneously cater to, exploit, and manage—an agenda that resulted not only in that bloated administrative apparatus that is staffed primarily by Democrats but also a sort of professional underclass of clients of this apparatus. Until the election of Donald Trump, the fealty of this underclass was reliably Democratic. Now there are cracks in the edifice, a terrifying prospect for their managers.
This is the thing to keep in mind. Donald Trump represents an existential threat to this status quo. Which is why he had to be stopped. On January 20, 2017, 19 minutes after Trump was inaugurated, the Washington Post announced in a headline “The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.” Indeed, there were calls for Trump’s impeachment even before he was sworn in. Al Green (D-Texas) put it with admirable clarity when he said, back in 2017 (reiterating the sentiment in 2018) that “I am concerned that if we do not impeach this president, then he will get reelected.”
Trump’s real crime, in other words, was having been elected in the first place.
The point is that Donald Trump had to be impeached not because of anything he had done or had failed to do but because of who he was, what he represented: an existential threat to string-pullers of our one-and-a-half-party system. That is why the Democrats can ride roughshod over the rule of law, to say nothing of precedent and tradition, ruining who knows how many lives, tying up the business of government with preposterous special counsel investigations, House hearings, and the like, while the Republicans mostly vibrate in impotent fury and they emerge from the turmoil scot-free.
Again, there are some signs of fissures in this decades-on Democratic dispensation. The pugilistic response of the president himself is one such sign (“Cet animal est très méchant: quand on l’attaque il se défend”—“This animal is very mean: it defends itself when attacked”). Another sign of change is the stalwartness of Mitch McConnell and the doggedness of U.S. Attorney John Durham and his boss, Attorney General William Barr. My own guess is that we’ll know real progress has been made when—or rather if—a raft of indictments are handed down in the business of the deep-state effort to take down the Trump campaign and then his presidency...
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood Gentrification (VIDEO)
I don't watch SNL anymore, but you gotta get a kick out of Eddie Murphy.
At LAT, "Eddie Murphy returns to ‘Saturday Night Live’ with Buckwheat, Mr. Robinson and Gumby in tow."
At LAT, "Eddie Murphy returns to ‘Saturday Night Live’ with Buckwheat, Mr. Robinson and Gumby in tow."
GPA vs. SAT: Which is Better Predictor of College Success
I never took the SAT, and I did fine in college. I had to take the GRE to get into graduate school, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with these standardized tests, and their drawbacks. That said, I certainly wouldn't eliminate them. This whole debate is stupid. Banning placement tests will only dumb down college further.
At LAT, "Grades vs. SAT scores: Which is a better predictor of college success?":
At LAT, "Grades vs. SAT scores: Which is a better predictor of college success?":
Grades vs. SAT scores: Which is a better predictor of college success? https://t.co/IG6zb7g5u7— L.A. Times: L.A. Now (@LANow) December 22, 2019
As a student at Kaiser High School in Fontana two years ago, Melissa Morfin-Acevedo bombed her SAT test, scoring in the bottom third percentile nationally.Keep reading.
The daughter of an immigrant single mother with a fifth-grade education, Morfin-Acevedo lived below the poverty line and couldn’t afford test prep tutors. She took the 8 a.m. test exhausted, having returned home from her theater job past midnight that day.
But her 4.1 GPA helped her win admission to UC Riverside — and today the second-year student in political science is thriving in the honors program, earning mostly A’s, and preparing for a career in law or public service.
“The SAT score does not reflect your future possible success in college,” she said. “If you want it, you can do it.”
Pressure is growing on the University of California and California State University to drop the SAT and ACT exams as admission requirements because of their perceived bias against disadvantaged students and underrepresented minorities. As part of the debate, policymakers are considering increasing the weight of high school grades in the admissions process.
Research has shown that grades are the best single predictor of college performance and aren’t as heavily influenced as the standardized exams by income, parent education levels and race.
But the ACT and College Board, which owns the SAT, argue that a combination of grades and test scores is the best overall guide to selecting students who are likely to succeed in college. Using grades without test scores could exacerbate inequities, test officials say, because grade inflation is worse in affluent schools, according to research they have reviewed.
The UC Academic Senate, which sets admissions standards, is expected to issue recommendations on the tests by February, with Cal State to follow. The issue, which has drawn international attention because of the size and prestige of the public university systems, raises several pressing questions. How do students with high grades but low SAT scores actually do in college? What support do they need — and get? Are there drawbacks to relying more heavily on grades?
UC Riverside is a living laboratory that offers some answers.
Among the University of California’s nine undergraduate campuses, UC Riverside has the second lowest SAT scores for entering freshmen — an average 1260, the 82nd percentile. But the Inland Empire campus has won accolades for helping disadvantaged students succeed, including a No. 1 ranking for graduating low-income students among national universities by US News & World Report this year. The majority of its 24,000 students are low-income and the first in their families to attend college; 4 in 10 are underrepresented minorities.
To flesh out the questions, the campus provided data on SAT scores, high school GPAs and student outcomes for 7,889 freshmen who enrolled in 2012 and 2013. The bottom line: The most successful students had both high GPAs and high test scores. But those with equally high grades and lower test scores weren’t far behind.
Among 1,807 UC Riverside students with GPAs of 3.75 or higher and SAT scores above 900 — the 32nd percentile — outcomes were not so different between those with higher- and lower-end SAT test scores:
*The six-year graduation rate for those with SAT scores between 900 and 1090 was 81% compared with 83% for those with SAT scores between 1100 and 1600, the highest score possible.If UC drops the SAT and ACT in favor of giving grades greater weight, systemwide graduation rates are likely to drop. But the benefits will be substantial to students who otherwise might not have qualified for UC admission because of low test scores, said Zachary Bleemer, a research associate at UC Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education.
*The rate of students returning for a second year was 91% for those with the lower scores and 94% for those with the highest scores.
*The first-year GPA was 2.78, a B-, for students with lower scores compared with 3.36, a B+, for those with the highest scores.
*Students with SAT scores below 900, however, did noticeably worse. Their graduation and second-year retention rates were 10 percentage points below the group with the highest SAT test scores. Still, 73% graduated within six years compared with 65% of peers with higher SAT scores but lower GPAs.
His analysis last year looked at the academic records of about 8,000 UC students who enrolled under a program that guaranteed admission to the top 4% of each high school’s graduating class between 2001 and 2011, but whose average SAT scores were nearly 300 points below their peers at the UC campuses they attended.
Their five-year graduation rate was 77% compared with an average 83% among UC peers. But it was substantially higher than it would have been if they had attended a Cal State or community college campus, his analysis found. The UC students also earned nearly $15,000 more annually six to eight years after enrolling.
The findings suggest that students with high grades but lower test scores can thrive at UC schools and counter the “mismatch hypothesis” that less competitive students are better off at less selective universities, Bleemer said.
For university officials who must weigh the complexities of the criteria in their admissions decisions, there are no easy answers.
Emily Engelschall, UC Riverside director of undergraduate admissions, says she sees the shortcomings of standardized testing but that the scores do help evaluate grades across vastly different high schools. She also worries that dropping the testing requirement could exacerbate grade inflation.
“If you don’t have some sort of standardized tests to balance out grade inflation,” she said, “then that does take one piece of the puzzle away from an admissions professional to help make a decision about a student.”
Jessica Howell, the College Board’s vice president of research, has said that a greater reliance on high school grades in the name of equity would be “misguided” because grade inflation is associated with wealth.
The College Board points to a 2018 study of North Carolina public school students in grades eight through 10 between 2005 and 2016. The study found that median GPAs rose across the board over time, but did so more in affluent schools than in low-income ones.
The study also raised questions about the reliability of grades in measuring mastery of content. It found that only 21% of students who received A’s in algebra I achieved the highest proficiency level in end-of-course exams and 57% of those who received Bs failed to score marks indicating college and career readiness.
“The latest research is resoundingly clear,” Howell said in a statement. “Grade inflation is a serious problem, particularly in high schools that serve more affluent communities.”
Yet the Riverside campus is filled with students from less privileged backgrounds whose hard work has helped them transcend low test scores and rise to UC’s academic rigor...
Playmate Iryna
Following-up, "Nice Playmate Lady."
Sugar daddy applications 🤣, jk - TEXT HERE https://t.co/M03maYOVmJ pic.twitter.com/0ZWx5sLZoq
— playmateiryna (@IrynaIvanova) December 21, 2019
Rita Ora in Metallic Halterneck Swimsuit
At London's Daily Mail:
BONUS: "Rita Ora in Red Bikini."
Rita Ora showcases plenty of side-boob in a metallic halterneck swimsuit as she continues to soak up the sun during festive family break to St. Barts https://t.co/GJKzB9ywj0
— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) December 22, 2019
BONUS: "Rita Ora in Red Bikini."
Rachel Cook Shaved Head
At Inquisitr, "Rachel Cook Goes Nude for Second Issue of ‘WTVR’ Magazine."
And Celeb Jihad, "RACHEL COOK SHAVED HEAD NUDE PHOTOS."
And Celeb Jihad, "RACHEL COOK SHAVED HEAD NUDE PHOTOS."
Saturday, December 21, 2019
Minka Kelly
At Celeb Jihad, "MINKA KELLY TOP-SLIP VIDEO."
Also at Phun.
Also at Phun.
https://t.co/V36GnWpZdW pic.twitter.com/2O6ozHWB9e
— Minka Kelly (@minkakelly) October 7, 2019
Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model Brooks Nader
Seen on Twitter:
Brooks Nader on the Red Carpet Braless in Nipple Pasties - https://t.co/uOTmD4hQBu - pic.twitter.com/tPdeTVLYTm
— Taxi Driver (@TaxiDriverMovie) December 11, 2019
Brooks Nader is a total GODDESS. https://t.co/E5rqWMWgtf pic.twitter.com/UII3cqYpYh
— Sports Illustrated Swimsuit (@SI_Swimsuit) December 19, 2019
How Russian Agents Hunt Down Kremlin Opponents
Very dramatic.
At Der Spiegel, "Putin's Killers in Europe":
At Der Spiegel, "Putin's Killers in Europe":
Putin's Killers in Europe: How Russian Agents Hunt Down Kremlin Opponents https://t.co/hERYQFCzUu pic.twitter.com/5PFZg8GTaH— SPIEGEL ONLINE English (@SPIEGEL_English) December 9, 2019
In the summer of 2013, a killer in Moscow rode a bicycle toward his victim. The Russian businessman Albert Nazranov saw him, and a short brawl ensued. The killer shot the man in the head and upper body at close range. Then he rode away. All of that can be seen in surveillance footage of the crime.More.
In the summer of 2019, a killer also rode a bicycle toward his victim, only this time in Berlin. He shot Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, of Georgia, in the head and upper body at close range, before riding away. That's how witnesses described the scene.
Reporting by DER SPIEGEL, Bellingcat, The Insider and The Dossier Center now reveals that not only were both murders very similar -- they were also likely carried out by the same person. A forensic comparison of both perpetrator photos reveals clear similarities. The man who carried a passport bearing the name Vadim Sokolov in Berlin was the Russian Vadim Krasikov, the killer who is thought to have also struck in Moscow.
German General Federal Prosecutor Peter Frank has now assumed responsibility for the investigation into the Berlin murder case at the federal level because, he says, they are of "special importance." Germany's chief prosecutor believes that Russian government authorities deliberately issued Krasikov's new identity, an assumption based on the fact that Moscow took the surprising step in 2015 of revoking an international search warrant for Krasikov and issuing a new identity card to him with the name "Vadim Sokolov" a short time later. It's not likely to have been a coincidence.
The Chief Federal Prosecutor's Office is accusing the Russian government or one of its henchmen of having murdered Khangoshvili in broad daylight at the end of August, a hitjob on German soil against a man who had come to the country as an asylum-seeker,
A similar crime committed in the United Kingdom last year sparked an international crisis when suspected agents with the Russian military intelligence agency GRU conducted an attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter using the Russian neurotoxin Novichok. Twenty-nine countries expelled 146 Russian diplomats in response to the crime. Berlin also forced four representatives of Russia to leave the country.
A Slow Political Response
Despite the similarities, officials in Berlin seemed to be struggling in coming up with a political response to the Khangoshvili murder. For some time, officials said evidence in the case was too unclear. They argued that a fake ID in Russia could also be obtained through bribery and that it couldn't automatically be assumed that the Russian government had been involved.
But last Wednesday, just as the German federal prosecutor took over the case, the government in Berlin also adopted a tougher line. They ordered the chargé d'affaires at the Russian Embassy to the Foreign Ministry, where officials informed him that two staffers in the defense affairs division of the embassy, both of whom are believed by German security authorities to be members GRU intelligence service, would be expelled from Germany.
The Foreign Ministry justified the decision by saying that the cooperation by the Russian authorities has been "insufficient." "We view the expulsions as a very strong message to the Russian side to provide us with immediate and comprehensive support in clarifying the identity and background of the alleged perpetrator," said Helge Braun, chief of staff at Angela Merkel's Chancellery. "Given that there has been a lack of support for months, I have absolutely no comprehension of how Russia could be outraged or even be thinking about countermeasures."
Addressing a question about the case at last week's NATO summit in London, Chancellor Merkel stated: "We took this action because we have not seen Russian support in helping us solve this murder." Merkel has left open whether she will take up the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Ukraine summit in Paris on Monday. But it's difficult to imagine that she wouldn't.
The government in Berlin wants to wait until the investigationsproceeds further before considering whether to take further punitive action against Moscow. Officials in the Chancellery are still wary about comparing the foreign policy fallout of the Khangoshvili killing with the Skripal case. But the circumstantial evidence is strong and there is much to suggest that Georgian national Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was killed for political reasons, even if Russia, as so often in the past, has denied all accusations...
The End of the World Trade Organization?
Who cares, really?
The conflict between economic regionalism and global economic openness, embodied in the post-WWII multilateral trade regime, has been a longtime topic in international relations theory.
The Trump administration is accelerating the shift to regionalism.
Not to mention Brexit, which should go through on January 31st, thanks to the Conservative triumph in the general election.
All is not lost, as bilateral trade agreements will take the place of wider multilateral pacts.
In any case, at the Los Angeles Times, "House passage of USMCA marks major shift away from free-trade policies":
The conflict between economic regionalism and global economic openness, embodied in the post-WWII multilateral trade regime, has been a longtime topic in international relations theory.
The Trump administration is accelerating the shift to regionalism.
Not to mention Brexit, which should go through on January 31st, thanks to the Conservative triumph in the general election.
All is not lost, as bilateral trade agreements will take the place of wider multilateral pacts.
In any case, at the Los Angeles Times, "House passage of USMCA marks major shift away from free-trade policies":
WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives on Thursday overwhelmingly passed the new North American trade deal, voting in unusually bipartisan fashion just a day after impeaching President Trump strictly on party lines.
Approval of the trade bill, which now goes to the Senate for almost certain ratification, did far more than help Trump notch a major achievement: It marked a significant change in U.S. economic strategy toward the rest of the world.More.
For much of the last 70 years, throughout the Cold War and down to more recent times, Washington used America’s vast wealth and economic power to build friendships and alliances that bolstered national security.
That strategy included a fundamental commitment to free trade — opening the large U.S. market to products from all over the world. For the most part, American companies and their workers had to compete against foreign businesses and labor with little or no protection from the federal government.
As Trump has long complained, that free-trade policy cost millions of American jobs. But leaders of both parties and economic experts considered it worth the price because it boosted American growth, generating many new jobs, and opened new opportunities for many U.S. companies to profit in a global economy. At the same time, it helped cement U.S. leadership in the world.
“In the post-World War II era, we were so much more powerful and so much richer than everybody else that we could improve the living standards at home and still give away the store on trade,” said Clyde Prestowitz, a former top trade negotiator in President Reagan’s administration.
“And we’re now culminated at a moment in which the cost of our old policy is really hard to bear, and so we’re de facto changing our policy,” he said.
The march toward free global markets with lower tariffs and other barriers always had exceptions. Beginning in the 1970s, U.S. companies began to complain about unfair competition: dumping of textiles and steel by foreign producers subsidized by their governments, for instance, or the sale of below-cost television sets, electronics and other consumer goods.
Reagan and his successors responded to these complaints with demands for import quotas and other measures. But overall, the United States remained committed to a broad strategy of free trade — relying on market forces and competition to determine outcomes.
While Republican business leaders complained about specific instances of what they saw as unfair tactics, such as currency manipulation and intellectual property theft, they largely remained committed to the overall free-trade strategy.
Democrats, responding to their union supporters, complained that American workers were paying a heavy price for a system that primarily benefited corporations and upper-income Americans.
The original North American Free Trade Agreement, which passed the House in 1993 by a margin of only 34 votes, highlighted the political unease about trade.
The agreement, however, fit squarely into that strategy of using trade in part for geopolitical reasons. It aimed to make Mexico more prosperous and hence make the United States more secure at a time when radical, leftist regimes seemed to be on the rise in Latin America. Economically, many saw it as a bulwark against rising competition from a unified Europe and Asian tiger economies.
NAFTA tore down tariffs and shaped North America into a powerful economic bloc — three-way trade in goods now reaches $1.3 trillion — but it was in many ways outdated in a global economy driven much more by technology and data.
Trump long attacked NAFTA, calling it one of the worst trade agreements ever and promising to renegotiate it. As president, he has attacked the whole system of free trade, undermining the World Trade Organization, which the U.S. helped create in the 1990s, and starting trade wars not only with China but with longtime U.S. allies such as Europe, Canada and Mexico.
He has enjoyed quiet but significant Democratic support on the issue. Witness the large bipartisan majority for the new version of NAFTA.
Renamed United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, the measure won approval by the Democratic-majority House 385-41, a remarkable show of unity at a time of deep partisan acrimony.
Not that there wasn’t the usual jostling and one-upmanship which have characterized relations between congressional Democrats and Trump.
“Of course we’ll take credit for it, because what he proposed did not fill the bill of what he described,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said shortly before the vote, referring to Democrats’ successful pressure on the administration to amend the trade deal to strengthen enforcement of labor and environmental protections.
Earlier Wednesday night, at a rally in Battle Creek, Mich., Trump insisted that Pelosi and other Democrats had no choice but to pass USMCA.
“She had a lot of pressure, especially from manufacturing areas, farm areas, a lot of pressure to sign it.... I had a lot of union labor vote for me, tremendous amount of labor,” he said...
Jennifer Delacruz's Weekend Forecast
Well, pre-Christmas football all day today, and wonderful SoCal weather!
Here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:
Here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:
Comparing Modern Dodge Muscle Cars to the Iconic Vehicles of the 1960s (VIDEO)
My buddy Greg Joseph is interviewed in this L.A. Times feature on the new Dodge Hellcat lineup.
See, "Do modern Dodge muscle cars capture the magic harnessed by Big Willie Robinson?":
See, "Do modern Dodge muscle cars capture the magic harnessed by Big Willie Robinson?":
The Daytona Big Willie drove — he dubbed it the King Daytona — was especially rare. It was one of only a few dozen 1969 Daytonas built with a Hemi motor, whose hemispherical combustion chambers aid performance. https://t.co/ddue5mx1cb
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 19, 2019
I couldn’t get any seat time in the late Robinson’s car — it was destroyed in 1971, and his wife’s matching car was wrecked a few years later. But I did track down a 1969 Hemi Daytona owned by car collector Greg Joseph.
Joseph actually knew Robinson; he met the leader of the Brotherhood of Street Racers in the 1990s via former Times Publisher Otis Chandler. At the time, Joseph was curating the muscle car collection of Chandler, whose holdings included a 1969 Hemi Daytona of his own.
Joseph said he was touched by the realization that he, Chandler and Robinson and his street racer wife each owned one of these unique rides.
“They truly were icons,” Joseph said. “It kind of brings back the nostalgia, the memories of the time when I went to all the drag races.”
Joseph, a retired history professor who long taught at Long Beach City College, said he sees the through line from the Daytona to the Redeye, in part because both harness what he called “state-of-the-art technology to go fast.”
“This is all-out high-performance,” said Joseph, gesturing at the Redeye. “Same with the Daytona.”
Still, the Redeye isn’t entirely state-of-the-art. It derives its power from a pushrod V-8 — that’s old-fashioned technology in an era of overhead cam motors with variable valve timing — but I get Joseph’s point. This is a car whose launch can be programmed via a special mode that holds the RPM at a desired spot in the power band for optimal acceleration.
And the Redeye carries over other technology from the 2018 Challenger Demon, an even higher-performance version of the car that put out 840 horsepower — and did zero to 60 in 2.3 seconds — but was sold for only one year. Among the goodies that have found their way from the Demon to the Redeye is an intercooler chiller system that keeps the motor at the ideal temperature.
Although the Redeye was the more extreme of the two cars I tested, the Charger Hellcat seemed to turn more heads during the week I drove it. As with the Challenger, this version of the Charger has been around for several years, but in Hellcat guise, the exterior modifications stand out. Perhaps that’s because they’re transforming a sedan with comparably more sedate looks.
At one stoplight, a man in a black minivan eyed the Charger Hellcat lustily from the neighboring lane. I edged the car forward, summoning a bark from the big V-8, and the other driver laughed appreciatively. Up the street, our lanes merged into one, and he happily ceded the road.
The minivan may have been no match for the Charger Hellcat, but the American muscle car rivalry is alive and well. And in many ways — even as manufacturers move toward increased electrification and hybridization — we are in the midst of a new golden age for these vehicles. A horsepower war touched off by the launch of the 2015 Challenger and Charger Hellcats shows no signs of slowing down. Chevrolet’s Camaro ZL1 offers 650 horsepower, and Ford is readying a top-end Mustang — the Shelby GT500 — packing 760 horsepower.
The Hellcat cars both deliver a quintessential muscle car ride. But it wasn’t easy for me to see a link to the Dodge drag strip heroes of yore, amid the many trappings of modernity.
Still, I was able to find a connection to the past in an unexpected place: some of the new cars’ shortcomings. Details like the Redeye’s subpar seats — yielding in all the wrong places — seemed to telegraph Dodge’s focus on speed, and little else. Thinking about the Hellcat cars this way, I grew to view many of their flaws as charming. And the ties to the 1960s were ultimately driven home via a mishap.
Before the Redeye was lent to The Times, it underwent some mechanical work that left the interior smelling of gasoline. Workers had attempted to mitigate it, but the bouquet of fuel stubbornly persisted.
But it didn’t bother me. It felt a little rough, a little raw. Like how old cars sometimes smell after they’ve been throttled hard.
Even if it was unintended, it made the Redeye feel a little bit closer to 1969.
A little bit closer to the Daytona. A little bit closer to Robinson.
Friday, December 20, 2019
Meghan L. O'Sullivan, Windfall
At Amazon, Meghan L. O'Sullivan, Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America's Power.
The Queen's Speech Introducing Boris Johnson's Conservative Government (VIDEO)
At the Guardian U.K., "Queen's speech: PM points to harder Brexit and 10-year rule."
And the Los Angeles Times, "Boris Johnson unveils ambitious agenda for Britain’s Brexit and government reforms":
And the Los Angeles Times, "Boris Johnson unveils ambitious agenda for Britain’s Brexit and government reforms":
LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson signaled an end to Britain’s era of Brexit deadlock Thursday, announcing a packed legislative program intended to take the U.K. out of the European Union on Jan. 31 and overhaul a range of government services, including the cash-starved National Health Service.
The commanding House of Commons majority won by Johnson’s Conservative Party in last week’s general election all but guarantees he will be able to turn those promises into law, although with Brexit casting a shadow over the British economy, there’s a question mark over how he will pay for it all.
In a speech delivered from a golden throne in Parliament by Queen Elizabeth II, Johnson opened the legislative floodgates after three years in which minority Conservative governments tried in vain to win legislators’ backing for their Brexit plans.
“This is the moment to repay the trust of those who sent us here by delivering on the people’s priorities,” Johnson told lawmakers after the speech. “They want to move politics on and move the country on.”
In less than 10 minutes, the monarch rattled through more than two dozen bills the government intends to pass in the coming year. The first will be the EU Withdrawal Agreement Bill, the law needed to make Brexit a reality, which is set to receive its first significant parliamentary vote Friday.
The bill commits Britain to leaving the EU on Jan. 31 and to concluding trade talks with the bloc by the end of 2020. Trade experts and EU officials say striking a free-trade deal within 11 months will be a struggle, but Johnson insists he won’t agree to any more delays. That vow has set off alarm bells among businesses, which fear that means the country will face a “no-deal” Brexit at the start of 2021.
The government also plans to pass several other Brexit-related measures, including a new “points-based” immigration system that will be introduced after Brexit, when EU citizens will lose the automatic right to live and work in the U.K.
There are also plans to overhaul agriculture, fishing, trade and financial services after Brexit in ways that will have a huge — though still largely unknown — effect on the British economy...
Thursday, December 19, 2019
Democrat Rashida Tlaib Celebrates Trump's Impeachment (VIDEO)
Actually, it's perfectly natural to celebrate something for which you've worked so hard.
The problem is that Democrats keep moaning about how solemn and sober are the proceedings.
At Pajamas, "Solemn Much? Rashida Tlaib Shares Giddy Video Celebrating Trump's Impeachment," and the Blaze, "VIDEO: Far-left US Rep. Rashida Tlaib can't hide her happiness as she walks to House to vote for President Trump's impeachment."
The problem is that Democrats keep moaning about how solemn and sober are the proceedings.
At Pajamas, "Solemn Much? Rashida Tlaib Shares Giddy Video Celebrating Trump's Impeachment," and the Blaze, "VIDEO: Far-left US Rep. Rashida Tlaib can't hide her happiness as she walks to House to vote for President Trump's impeachment."
So solemn. So somber. pic.twitter.com/H6J6sTBBo8
— The Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) December 19, 2019
Pelosi's Impeachment Disaster
At AoSHQ, "Granny Nasty McBotoxRictus: I'm So Proud of Our Fake Impeachment I'm Scolding the Press Not to Ask About It, and I'm Obstructing it from Going to Trial."
The glare Pelosi gave her caucus when some Dems started to clap after she announced the first article of impeachment passed pic.twitter.com/8vONZlEyZ3— Peter Stevenson (@PeterWStevenson) December 19, 2019
Robert Stacy McCain on Impeachment
The latest at the Other McCain, "Trump Unites Republicans":
Impeachment has united Republicans in support of Trump, and nowhere is this unity more solid than in the Senate, where Mitch McConnell seems determined that the Democrats’ bogus ginned-up charges against the president will get a fair (but brief) hearing before being dismissed with the contemptuous ridicule it so richly deserves. As might be expected, Nancy Pelosi is not happy about this.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 19, 2019
Jennifer Delacruz's Thursday Forecast
It's been really cold overnight, and clear.
Here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:
Here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:
Stunning Brie Larson
At Celeb Jihad, "BRIE LARSON’S TITS GUEST HOST “JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE!”."
Jimmy looks STUNNING tonight! 😻 @BrieLarson #GuestHost #Kimmel pic.twitter.com/uTtQSApdwP
— Jimmy Kimmel Live (@JimmyKimmelLive) December 19, 2019
Iggy Azalea Bikini
At Drunken Stepfather, "IGGY AZALEA BIKINI OF THE DAY."
They watch me so much I should prolly win an Emmy... really! 😩😂🙄 https://t.co/LkGCGjVnEB— IGGY AZALEA #LOLA🎭 (@IGGYAZALEA) December 18, 2019
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Even Clownshow Nonsense Network's Polls Show Trump Winning on Impeachment
At AoSHQ, "lol: Trump Ahead of All Democrats In Another National Poll."
BONUS: At the Other McCain, "Impeachment Day Arrives":
#NEW National General Election:— Political Polls (@PpollingNumbers) December 17, 2019
Trump 44 (+3)
Biden 41
Trump 44 (+5)
Sanders 39
Trump 45 (+8)
Warren 37
Trump 43 (+9)
Bloomberg 34
Trump 43 (+10)
Buttigieg 33
Suffolk University/USA Today Poll https://t.co/UMEwcYkoEu
BONUS: At the Other McCain, "Impeachment Day Arrives":
Today the Democrats will vote to impeach President Trump for . . .Keep reading.
Uh, whatever. Ever since Trump was elected, Democrats promised they would impeach him if Nancy Pelosi ever got the Speaker’s gavel, and today they will keep that promise. The pretext for this was a “whistleblower” — a Democrat holdover on the National Security Council staff — who went running to Adam Schiff with a wild tale about Trump’s July phone call to the newly elected president of Ukraine. All questions about that phone call were answered by Trump through the simple expedient of releasing the transcript. But having worked themselves into an impeachment frenzy over this, Democrats refused to acknowledge that Trump had beat them, and continued stumbling onward...
Payback: Rep. Doug Collins Warns Next Democratic President Could Be Impeached (VIDEO)
It's true.
Democrats never seem to think their machinations will come back to bite them.
At the Epoch Times, "‘Payback’: Republicans Warn Next Democratic President Could Be Impeached."
Democrats never seem to think their machinations will come back to bite them.
At the Epoch Times, "‘Payback’: Republicans Warn Next Democratic President Could Be Impeached."
Bella Thorne Busts Out
At the Sun U.K., "HELLS BELLS: Bella Thorne bursts out of her bikini top and boasts ‘yes I know my boobs are big’Danielle Cinone: BELLA Thorne boasted "yes I know my boobs are big" as she shared saucy snaps with her assets nearly bursting out of her bikini top..."
Bella Thorne bursts out of her bikini top and boasts ‘yes I know my boobs are big’ https://t.co/BLkNPYonn9
— The Sun (@TheSun) December 17, 2019
Kelly Brook
She's still going, bigger than ever, apparently.
At the Sun U.K., "BABE HAS A SWIM Kelly Brook hogs the limelight as she swims with a pig in a plunging red swimsuit to celebrate her birthday in Bahamas."
At the Sun U.K., "BABE HAS A SWIM Kelly Brook hogs the limelight as she swims with a pig in a plunging red swimsuit to celebrate her birthday in Bahamas."
Kelly Brook hogs the limelight with a plunging red swimsuit in the Bahamas https://t.co/vJbuZy9znG
— The Sun Showbiz (@TheSunShowbiz) November 27, 2019
After General Election, Britain's Social Democracy on the Way Out
Following-up, "Labour's Stunning Shellacking."
From Matt Seaton, at the New York Review, "The Strange Death of Social-Democratic England":
Butthurt, but interesting.
Keep reading.
From Matt Seaton, at the New York Review, "The Strange Death of Social-Democratic England":
Margaret Thatcher persuaded many Britons that there was “no such thing as society.” Her heirs in the Conservative Party cast the EU as the new nanny state. Matt Seaton on what’s left of British social democracy: https://t.co/EEmw0s0r2q
— The New York Review of Books (@nybooks) December 13, 2019
The immediate, clear consequence of the UK election of December 12, 2019, is that Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has succeeded where Theresa May’s failed in the last general election, in 2017—by winning an emphatic parliamentary majority that can pass the legislation necessary to facilitate Britain’s departure from the European Union. The faint irony of that two-year hiatus and the handover of party leadership from May to Johnson is that the latter’s deal is rather worse—from the Brexiteers’ point of view—than the one May repeatedly failed to get past Parliament. Nevertheless, the 2019 general election will go down as the moment British voters in effect voted a resounding “yes” in a de facto second referendum on Brexit and gave Boris Johnson a mandate to make his deal law and attempt to meet the latest Brexit deadline (January 31, 2020).Interesting.
Far-reaching though the effects of this punctuation mark in the Brexit story will be, the 2019 general election may change the landscape of British politics and the fabric of its society in even more profound and decisive ways.
Brexit’s compromise over the status of Northern Ireland, half-in and half-out of Europe, is an unstable constitutional non-settlement that risks the fragile peace that’s held there since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, while accelerating the hopes of some for a United Ireland. But the future of the Union faces a still more pressing challenge from renewed calls for a referendum on independence for Scotland, where a large majority of voters favor continued membership in Europe. The specter of “the breakup of Britain” that has long haunted the United Kingdom may materialize at last—just at the moment when English nationalists are celebrating their Brexit victory.
So much for the political landscape; what of the social fabric? A fourth successive defeat for the Labour Party, with its most ambitious anti-austerity program yet, and an outright win for a Conservative Party that has purged its moderates have sharpened dividing lines, squeezed the liberal center, and broken consensus into polarity. A minority of Britons—roughly a third, who will now see themselves as effectively disenfranchised—voted for a radical expansion of the public sector, a great leap forward toward a socialist Britain. But the plurality chose a party that, while promising more spending, has actually recomposed itself around a reanimated Thatcherite vision of exclusionary, anti-egalitarian, moralizing social Darwinism. Some part of the Tory electoral coalition might have more welfare-chauvinist reflexes, but the greater part of it distrusts the state, resents the taxation that pays for it, and would like to shrink both.
What is at stake after this election, then—in a Britain that might soon mean, to all intents and purposes, England & Wales—is the future of what has made it a reasonably civilized country since 1945: social democracy...
Butthurt, but interesting.
Keep reading.
Charlotte McKinney New Bikini Photos
At Taxi Driver, "Charlotte McKinney Fills Out her Black Bikini Perfectly."
Charlotte McKinney Fills Out her Black Bikini Perfectly - https://t.co/0nlQUI4AYM - pic.twitter.com/oZ5liz1vxx
— Taxi Driver (@TaxiDriverMovie) December 9, 2019
Letter from President Donald J. Trump to the Speaker of the House of Representatives
Leftists have freaked out after President Trump defended himself against Speaker Pelosi's impeachment circus.
For example, at New York Magazine, via Memeorandum, "Trump Writes Insane Letter to Pelosi Showing Why He's Unfit for Office," and "It is hard to capture how bizarre and frightening Trump's letter to Pelosi is."
Cut through the fog. Read it yourself.
Via Mollie:
For example, at New York Magazine, via Memeorandum, "Trump Writes Insane Letter to Pelosi Showing Why He's Unfit for Office," and "It is hard to capture how bizarre and frightening Trump's letter to Pelosi is."
Cut through the fog. Read it yourself.
Via Mollie:
Media coverage of @realDonaldTrump’s letter to Pelosi is unhinged. Really worth reading actual letter instead of mediated interpretation from emotional and frustrated journalists. https://t.co/LZ60A5Fs45
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 18, 2019
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