Gaza Conflict May Help Netanyahu Keep Power (VIDEO)

I'm actually struggling to keep up with politics right now. I'm burnt out from teaching and I can't wait for the semester to end, first week of June. Then it's who knows what? I ain't got that big federal stimulus cash this summer, so my big Vegas vacations are definitely on hold. I might be chillin' in the O.C. till August, cruising the bookstores and libraries, and that's if they're gonna be open at all, sheesh.

Here's to hoping. I'll at least get to hit some local happy hours if Vegas ain't happening, so there's that. 

At the video, longtime hottie Holly Williams reports for CBS News, and at L.A.T., "Israel’s Netanyahu, master of political survival, tested by conflict with Gaza":

TEL AVIV — Few politicians have quite the knack for turning adversity to advantage as does Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Before fighting erupted May 10 between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, the country’s longest-serving prime minister looked set for a spectacular fall from grace. His political opponents were putting the finishing touches on a coalition agreement that would likely have seen him finally ejected from office after 12 years, and left him even more vulnerable to the criminal corruption charges he is currently battling in court.

But the 71-year-old prime minister, famed for his Houdini-like ability to wriggle out of tight spots, now looks positioned to possibly remain in power — even though his hardline base is angry that the government agreed to a cease-fire rather than pressing ahead with the military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

Before a cease-fire took hold early Friday, 11 days of intense cross-border aerial bombardment between Israel and Hamas left nearly 250 Palestinians dead, more than 60 of them children, and 12 deaths on the Israeli side.

“The fire always breaks out just when it’s most convenient for the prime minister,” Netanyahu’s exasperated chief rival, opposition leader Yair Lapid, wrote on Facebook last week.

Lapid had reason to be irate: The outbreak of conflict seemingly crippled his prospects for assembling a ruling majority in the Knesset, or parliament, perhaps the closest yet a rival has come to unseating Netanyahu.

The crumbling of Lapid’s envisioned coalition came in part because a political party in the grouping represents Palestinian citizens of Israel, and what would have been its historic participation in an Israeli government is less feasible after the worst bout of violence in decades between the country’s Arab nationals and its Jewish majority. Far-right politician Naftali Bennett, another key partner in the odd-bedfellows opposition coalition, also backed away from talks after the conflict started.

“The fire always breaks out just when it’s most convenient for the prime minister,” Netanyahu’s exasperated chief rival, opposition leader Yair Lapid, wrote on Facebook last week.

Lapid had reason to be irate: The outbreak of conflict seemingly crippled his prospects for assembling a ruling majority in the Knesset, or parliament, perhaps the closest yet a rival has come to unseating Netanyahu.

The crumbling of Lapid’s envisioned coalition came in part because a political party in the grouping represents Palestinian citizens of Israel, and what would have been its historic participation in an Israeli government is less feasible after the worst bout of violence in decades between the country’s Arab nationals and its Jewish majority. Far-right politician Naftali Bennett, another key partner in the odd-bedfellows opposition coalition, also backed away from talks after the conflict started.

As Israel moved to a war footing, Netanyahu, with his background as an elite army commander, found himself on favorable turf: projecting toughness in the face of an external threat. The hail of Hamas rocket fire on Israeli towns and cities made it critical to degrade Hamas’ military capabilities, the prime minister and his military chiefs declared.

“What helps Netanyahu is that it’s always good to be prime minister in time of war,” said veteran political analyst and former journalist Chemi Shalev. “The war rearranged the political map, and the woes hanging over his head have been removed. It opens up new opportunities for him.”

Netanyahu has always been most comfortable branding himself as a leader who will risk world opprobrium in order to defend Israel. The Gaza conflict, the worst fighting in seven years between Israel and Hamas, drew sharp international criticism that was fueled to some extent by Palestinians’ growing place in a worldwide racial-justice movement that grew out of last year’s Black Lives Matter protests.

Israel’s staunchest ally, the United States, made it clear to the prime minister last week that civilian carnage in Gaza due to bombardment — the Israeli military’s thunderous response to more than 4,000 rockets fired by Hamas since May 10 — had to stop, and the cease-fire took effect early Friday. But Netanyahu made certain to not acquiesce too quickly to President Biden’s truce call...

More.

 

'Both Sides Now'

I woke up singing this song. I don't know why. I also don't remember Mama Cass having her own show, but I was only 8-years-old in 1969, so I'ma cut myself some slack there, heh.

Joni Mitchell. What a beauty:

David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist

David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights.

All-American Girls

Very nice!

Some wonderful all-American amateur nude. 

More, "On/Off Flasher Friday."

And on Twitter:

PolitiFact Has Egg on Its Face

Here's a great piece, debunking the biggest fool in the debunking business. At the Washington Examiner, "PolitiFact retracts Wuhan lab theory ‘fact-check’" (via Memeorandum).

The War on Jews at Home (VIDEO)

I no longer go out to cover these so-called "protests" for the blog. It was getting too dangerous. The war against the Jews comes back home every time violence flares in the Middle East. It's bad enough what's happening in Israel. What's happening here is sickening. I almost can't comprehend it. Almost. At least I understand what's happening, though I still shake me head. 

At ABC News 7 Los Angeles:

Also, at CBS News 2 New York, "Tensions High as Protesters Clash Over Middle East Violence." 

Added: At Instapundit, "IN THE BIDEN/DE BLASIO ERA, ANTISEMITIC MOBS RUN WILD: Unlawful assembly declared in Manhattan, pro-Palestinian caravan throws firework at Jews."

Cease-Fire

At USA Today, "Cease-fire in Gaza: What we know about the Israel, Hamas agreement."

And a great piece at Free Beacon, "The Revolution Comes for Israel":

Israel has battled Hamas four times since the terror organization seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007. Each battle unfolds the same way: Hamas launches rockets at Israel’s civilian population, Israel bombs Hamas targets, and the fighting continues until terrorist infrastructure is sufficiently degraded so that the rocket fire stops for a few years. Israelis call it "mowing the lawn." The last major clash was in 2014. In its origins, order of battle, and strategy and tactics, Operation Guardian of the Walls, which began May 10, resembles these previous flareups.

So what’s different? Just about everything.

The region has changed. In 2014 the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, legitimizing the nuclear program of Israel’s archenemy Iran, was a gleam in John Kerry’s eye. Its adoption the following year, and America’s withdrawal from the agreement in 2018, realigned the Middle East along the axis of Iranian power. The result was an Arab-Israel détente formalized in the 2020 Abraham Accords. From a regional perspective, the Palestinian cause is less important than Iran’s ambitions.

Israel has changed. In 2014 Benjamin Netanyahu was at the outset of his third term and led from a position of strength. His indictment on corruption charges in 2019 initiated a political crisis that has led to four elections (and most likely a fifth) in the space of two years. On the eve of the latest violence, Israel’s bewildering politics became even more surprising when two of Netanyahu’s rivals enticed an Arab Islamist party to join a coalition government. That effort collapsed when the rockets blazed. The subsequent outbreak of intercommunal violence in cities with large Arab-Israeli populations is a reminder of Israel’s pressing domestic challenges. The security issue unites Israel. Just about everything else divides it.

America has changed. In the summer of 2014, Barack Obama was a lame duck, the Republicans controlled the House and were on the verge of winning the Senate, and Donald Trump was the host of Celebrity Apprentice. Obama’s dislike of Netanyahu and willingness to expose "daylight" between the United States and Israel was no secret. But anti-Israel invective was limited to the fringe. And anti-Israel media bias was nowhere near as bad as it is today.

Then came the Great Awokening. The dialectic of Black Lives Matter and Donald Trump drove the nation into its current obsession with race, culminating in the protests, riots, vandalism, cancellations, and iconoclasm that followed the murder of George Floyd one year ago. The Trump years brought a revolutionary fervor to American politics, radicalizing the left and burdening the rest of us with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her anti-Israel, socialist "Squad" of congressional Democrats...

Still more.

 

Charles Grodin, 1935-2021

Charles Grodin wasn't a favorite of mine. In fact, I can barely remember watching him on film. I don't know why. I think when he was on film I wasn't going to the movies that much. Besides, I like hardcore drama --- tearjerkers --- more than I do comedy, though I'm for a good laugh as much as the next guy. (And I like war movies, and Grodin didn't star in those, as far as I can tell.)

L.A.T. has his obituary, "Charles Grodin, activist, author and actor who made grouchiness cool, dead at 86."

The fact is, though, I probably wouldn't be blogging this if I had seen this at Althouse: "Perfection."

Grodin's hilarious, so I can see why he starred in comedies. 

Interesting, when you think about it, is that Althouse has disabled comments. She takes comments by email, which raises the question if that's better than taking them at the blog, moderating them. If people don't like you, they're going to attack you with hatred, so it's six-in-the-one-hand and half-a-dozen in the other. You'll be moderating either way. I don't pay attention to this stuff that much, but I think it's easier to block people in Gmail than it is at Blogger, so perhaps that's the payoff to the cost-benefit analysis. But that brings up another question? I thought Althouse's blog was all about the comments, or at least eliciting good comments, right? I mean, what's Althouse if you can't go in there a post your reactions? She's always prided herself on comments, to the point that she wouldn't (or couldn't) leave Blogger without them. Of course, that's not my problem, since I'm not a New York Times-profiled blogger. But blogs aren't as numerous as they used to be, so if you like reading 'em you might be bummed that Althouse has dropped the ball a bit on hers, or some folks might think. 

But as noted, this is a laugh-riot. Maybe I should stream some old Grodin movies. Either that, or go back and find more "Tonight Show" episodes for the lolz. 

Structural Antisemitism

You don't have to like Jonah Goldberg --- and I don't much, especially his NeverTrumpism --- but he's a good writer. Or at least I think so. And he's especially good when he's writing about Israel.

This piece is worth your time, at the Dispatch.

Kendall Jenner Bikini

This sweetie's looking better than ever!

Here, "Kendall Jenner Sweaty in a Bikini and Cowboy Boots."

Plus, "LILY JAMES NUDE SCENE FROM 'THE PURSUIT OF LOVE," and "LILY JAMES NUDE SCENE FROM 'THE DIG'."

Michael Anton, The Stakes

Michael Anton, The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return.

Nicole Saphier, Panic Attack

At Amazon, Nicole Saphier, Panic Attack: Playing Politics with Science in the Fight Against COVID-19. 

Dita Von Teese

At Celeb Jihad, "Dita Von Teese Ultimate Compilation."

And at the Fappening, "Dita Von Teese (7 Photos)."

Ashley Rindsberg, The Gray Lady Winked

The author claims that since the New York Post ran a story on him and his book, "*all* my Facebook ad accounts were banned. My Facebook profile was suspended. And Amazon has made the book impossible to order."

I can't confirm his allegations against Facebook (which I don't doubt), though his book's certainly available at Amazon, at least for now.

Here, Ashley Rindsberg, The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Times's Misreporting, Distortions & Fabrications Radically Alter History.

The Woke Left's Boycott Industry Eats Its Own

At great piece from Mark Hemingway, at Real Clear Investigations, "The High-Pressure Business of Selling Woke Corporate Armor."  

A Middle East Powder Keg

It's Caroline Glick, "A Powder Keg, Courtesy of Washington."

Library Girl Busty Bikini; Pop Star Dua Lipa Behind-the-Scenes; and Beautiful Down Home Gal Bustin' Out (PHOTOS)

A nice way to start your day!

See, "Dua Lipa Nude Behind-the-Scenes Photos."

This country gal is bustin' out all over!

And the infamous "library girl," Kendra Sunderland:

Antony Beevor, The Battle of Arnhem

Antony Beevor, The Battle of Arnhem: The Deadliest Airborne Operation of World War II.

Afghanistan Bomb Attack on Girls Highlights Threat to Women’s Education

Things are going badly in Afghanistan.

And at almost 20 years, I doubt the U.S. could do more to secure the country, besides sending in 500,000 troops and just take the whole place over. We're still in Germany, Japan, and South Korea, for darned sake, and as it is the U.S. would probably defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion, although who knows that "China Joe" Biden has up his sleeves? Both China and Russia are major threats, and it'd be nice to know exactly which country --- or countries --- hacked the East Coast power grid a few days ago. But it probably doesn't matter, because this kind of thing is going to happen more often, a lot more often, and the Dems probably do not care.

In any case, I'm not against the Afghan pullout, though I've also thought the most noble element of our intervention in that country has been our great earlier success at improving human rights, especially for women.

At WSJ, "Kabul residents on Sunday buried dozens of schoolgirls killed by explosions outside a school":

KABUL—Zainab Maqsudi, 13 years old, exited the library and walked toward the main gate of the Sayed Shuhada school to go home on Saturday when she was blown backward by an explosion. When she stood up, the air was thick with dust and smoke, and she was surrounded by shattered glass.

“Suicide attack!” everyone yelled, she said, reflecting how common such attacks have become in Afghanistan. She noticed she was bleeding from her arms. An older sister took her to hospital.

“I’m not sure if I will go back to school when I recover,” Zainab, who is in seventh grade, said from her hospital bed Sunday, with her parents by her side. “I don’t want to get hurt again. My body shakes when I think about what happened.”

Preventing girls like Zainab from going to school was the likely goal of the terrorists behind Saturday’s attack in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Kabul. Widening access to women’s education was one of the most tangible achievements of the 20-year U.S. presence in Afghanistan—progress that could be reversed once American forces leave the country later this year.

Afghan authorities on Sunday raised the official death toll from Saturday’s attack that targeted schoolgirls at Sayed Shuhada to 53. It was the latest assault on the area’s mostly Shiite Hazara minority, which in recent months has suffered horrific attacks by Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate, including on a maternity ward and an education center.

No group has claimed responsibility for Saturday’s attack. The Afghan president blamed the Taliban. The Taliban denied responsibility and condemned the bombings, accusing Islamic State of being behind them.

On Sunday, residents of the Afghan capital spent the day burying dozens of schoolgirls on a hillside on the outskirts of the capital. Hospitals across the city treated dozens of injured, including several who remained in intensive care.

The attack followed a rise in targeted assassinations of activists, politicians and female journalists. “We know if there is further violence, the groups who will be most vulnerable are women and girls,” said Shaharzad Akbar, chairperson of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. “The message this attack sends to children, especially to girls going to school, is a very bleak one, a very scary one.”

The Biden administration last month set Sept. 11 as the deadline for all U.S. forces to leave Afghanistan, but U.S. officials have suggested the drawdown could be completed as soon as July. The agreement follows a February 2020 deal between the Taliban and the Trump administration that committed the insurgents to enter peace talks with the Afghan government. However, American efforts to clinch a peace settlement before a full withdrawal have stalled, and bloodshed across the country continues.

The neighborhood of Dasht-e Barchi where Saturday’s bombings occurred is one of Kabul’s most disenfranchised areas. It is populated mostly by the Hazara minority, which historically has been marginalized and oppressed, especially during Taliban rule in the 1990s...

More at that top link.

 

Eric Adams for New York City Mayor! (VIDEO)

No need to block-quote the whole thing.

This dude's the real deal, and while I have no idea whether he'll take the top executive office in the Big Apple, it'd be a very good thing if he did.

Tucker featured him at his opening segment last week, and I was stunned at this mofo's creds. Wow, what a change this would be, and I don't even live in New York! 

At NYT, "Eric Adams Says He Has Something to Prove. Becoming Mayor Might Help: Mr. Adams is a top fund-raiser in the New York City mayoral race, with key endorsements and strong polling, but he still faces questions about his preparedness for the job."

Watch:

Busty Down Home Girl in Tight White Top; 19-Year-Old Tic Tok Star Loren Gray Total Nudes; Plus, Playboy Playmate Treat

At Celeb Jihad, "Tick Tok Star Loren Gray Nude Selfies Released."

A Playboy Plus nude babe.

And via Country Gals, sweet white honkers:

Niall Ferguson, Doom

At Amazon, Niall Ferguson, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.

Jesse Singal, The Quick Fix

Jesse Singal, The Quick Fix: The Quick Fix: Why Fad Psychology Can't Cure Our Social Ills.

Tulsi Gabbard: 'Please let us stop the RACIALIZATION of everyone and everything — i.e., racialism (VIDEO)

One of the greatest American patriots alive today, and I say this after thinking she was bonkers for a while during her campaign, but she's been proved right more and more often, especially on U.S. government intelligence scandals, Russia overreach in U.S. foreign policy, the China threat, and now the existential danger (from within) of "woke" racialism --- "racism," racism," racism" --- "you're racist" all-hate Democrat, well, racism.

Watch:

Paige Spiranac Busts Out Steelers Pride for NFL Draft Day; On/Off Flashers Fridays; Alyssa Milano Nudes at 18-Years-Old, Plus More

Good morning! 

Here's a nice Saturday roundup for you. 

I don't care much for her, though she's pretty hot. See, "Alyssa Milano Nude Photo Shoot at 18-Years-Old Colorized and Enhanced."

Also, "Fridays Are for On/Off Flashers."

Plus, beautiful and tanned "down home country gal" in bikini bottoms and tight whitey with her catch, plus a hot young all-nude Playboy-Plus model flashing pussy.

And Ms. Paige Spirinac, who can't be beat, for NFL draft day: "Who’s your team? Both my parents are from Pittsburgh so I was born a Steelers fan. Can’t forget about my love for the Bills tho..."

Astonishing: Dodgers Blow 6-Run Lead, Lose to Padres, First Time in Fifty Years Team Trailing by Six or More Runs in Seventh Inning Wins (VIDEO)

And I was watching the game, which is also astonishing, since not only do I almost never get the chance to watch the Dodgers (as their Sports Net Sports Network isn't even available where I live), I also had more family issues at home that were preventing me from staying focused on the play action. 

Maybe you were watching, if you're a sports fan (and maybe a Padres fan, and thus laughing your ass off)?

Mike DiGiovanna tweeted: 

Final from LA: #Padres 8, #Dodgers 7 (11 innings). Entering tonight, in the last 50 years, teams trailing by six or more runs in the seventh inning or later were 100-13,547, a winning percentage of .007. They are now 101-13,547 after Padres comeback from 7-1 deficit entering 7th.

And ...!, it turns out the Padres cheated on Saturday, and Bill Plaschke, always being, well, Bill Plaschke, deliverers the smackdown, "Dodgers get cheated again, this time by sign-stealing Fernando Tatis Jr. of Padres."

More at the Los Angeles Times, "Dodgers fall in 11-inning thriller after Padres rally from six-run deficit":

A postseason game wasn’t played as the sun sparkled, set and vanished, making way for a chilly night at Dodger Stadium on Sunday. It just felt like baseball suited for October.

Game 7 of the 19-game season series between the Dodgers and San Diego Padres produced the energy, oddities and stomach-churning drama that captivated audiences in each of the first six matchups — aptly split evenly between the clubs.

Sunday’s bout included a blown six-run lead, 12 relievers, 422 pitches and two pitchers-turned-pinch-hitters over four hours and 59 minutes. There were hearty boos from the 15,316 in attendance, wasted opportunities and, after 11 innings, an 8-7 comeback win for the Padres in the rivals’ final meeting until June 21.

The Padres (13-11) scored the winning run on Eric Hosmer’s sacrifice fly off Garrett Cleavinger after San Diego executed a double steal to put runners in scoring position.

Cleavinger was the fifth reliever to emerge from the Dodgers’ taxed bullpen, which didn’t have Kenley Jansen, Blake Treinen or Scott Alexander available. David Price, the first reliever used, gave up two runs — one earned — in the seventh inning and didn’t reappear for the eighth because of a hamstring strain.

The shortage handcuffed the Dodgers (15-7) as they dropped the four-game set, three games to one, for their first series loss of the season after taking two of three from the Padres in San Diego last weekend. In all, the clubs have been separated by two or fewer runs in 61 1/2 innings across the seven games.

“I think the net is they outplayed us,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.

The Dodgers held a 7-1 lead Sunday upon Dustin May’s exit after six innings and entered the ninth leading 7-5. That margin vanished when Manny Machado, atop Dodger fans’ list of villains in brown and yellow, tied the score with an RBI single off Jimmy Nelson, who surrendered two runs on four singles.

Nelson next walked Hosmer to load the bases but managed to keep the game tied by getting the next two batters out. The right-hander then escaped the 10th inning with runners on second and third unscathed.

“My command overall wasn’t up to my standard,” Nelson said.

The Dodgers, starting with a runner at second base, loaded the bases in the bottom of the frame against Tim Hill after the Padres elected to intentionally walk Max Muncy and Chris Taylor to bring up the pitcher’s spot.

Roberts’ bench was empty so he chose Clayton Kershaw to pinch-hit, and he struck out. DJ Peters, called up to the majors for the first time Friday, then swung at a 3-2 fastball out of the strike zone to squash the chance...

Read the whole thing (and weep, if you're a Dodgers fan). 

Substack! Holy Crap!

This blows my mind. 

My tweets are set to private, but in response to Steven Perlberg's tweet, linking his Business Insider piece (which is behind a paywall, of course), I quote-tweeted: 

.@MelissaTweets Elizabeth Bruenig's a freakin' self-declared communist? Did she take the 100 percent boost in pay? Or did she decline on principle? Can't say, because the article's behind a paywall, hence, capitalism. I can't even. *Man facepalming.*

Now, while you probably can't read the article to which Perlberg is linking, it turns out Mediaite did read it, and they've written up a piece that reveals the mind-blowing information. See, "Substack Offered NYT Reporter Taylor Lorenz $300,000: Report." 

Now that's why I yelled holy crap! when I saw that headline. You may not recall, but Ms. Lorenz is a very bad terrible person, and Tucker Carlson called her out a few weeks back, and it was glorious. But I knew how bad and terrible a person she was long ago, because, for one reason, she's been an awful no-good person for a long time, and Robert Stacy McCain wrote about her years ago, after Ms. Lorenz doxxed Pamela "Atlas Shrugged" Geller's daughters. You can't make this stuff up. (And Ms. Lorenz has of late been accused of stalking teenagers for inside interviews without the kids' parents permission, she's that bad.)

But no! She's getting offered a $300,000 advance to quite the Old Gray Lady and start her own newsletter? Well, I guess you gotta love free-market competition, which is why the New York Times is so freaked and has basically declared all-out war on the newsletter hosting platform, and this Sulzberger fellow, the publisher (or at least he used to be), is putting up some big bucks to go after top talent (some at Substack!) and have his own "by-line" bigwig writers up their game to meet the challenges of the day. Hoo boy, this is interesting.

At NYT, "Why We’re Freaking Out About Substack":

Danny Lavery had just agreed to a two-year, $430,000 contract with the newsletter platform Substack when I met him for coffee last week in Brooklyn, and he was deciding what to do with the money.

“I think the thing that I’m the most looking forward to about this is to start a retirement account,” said Mr. Lavery, who founded the feminist humor blog The Toast and will be giving up an advice column in Slate.

Mr. Lavery already has about 1,800 paying subscribers to his Substack newsletter, The Shatner Chatner, whose most popular piece is written from the perspective of a goose. Annual subscriptions cost $50.

The contract is structured a bit like a book advance: Substack’s bet is that it will make back its money by taking most of Mr. Lavery’s subscription income for those two years. The deal now means Mr. Lavery’s household has two Substack incomes. His wife, Grace Lavery, an associate English professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who edits the Transgender Studies Quarterly, had already signed on for a $125,000 advance.

Along with the revenue the Laverys will bring in, the move is good media politics for the company. Substack has been facing a mutiny from a group of writers who objected to sharing the platform with people who they said were anti-transgender, including a writer who made fun of people’s appearances on a dating app. Signing up two high-profile transgender writers was a signal that Substack was trying to remain a platform for people who sometimes hate one another, and who sometimes, like Dr. Lavery, heatedly criticize the company.

Feuds among and about Substack writers were a major category of media drama during the pandemic winter — a lot of drama for a company that mostly just makes it easy to email large groups for free. For those who want to charge subscribers on their email list, Substack takes a 10 percent fee. “The mindshare Substack has in media right now is insane,” said Casey Newton, who left The Verge to start a newsletter on Substack called Platformer. Substack, he said, has become a target for “a lot of people to project their anxieties.”

Substack has captivated an anxious industry because it embodies larger forces and contradictions. For one, the new media economy promises both to make some writers rich and to turn others into the content-creation equivalent of Uber drivers, even as journalists turn increasingly to labor unions to level out pay scales.

This new direct-to-consumer media also means that battles over the boundaries of acceptable views and the ensuing arguments about “cancel culture” — for instance, in New York Magazine’s firing of Andrew Sullivan — are no longer the kind of devastating career blows they once were. (Only Twitter retains that power.) Big media cancellation is often an offramp to a bigger income. Though Substack paid advances to a few dozen writers, most are simply making money from readers. That includes most of the top figures on the platform, who make seven-figure sums from more than 10,000 paying subscribers — among them Mr. Sullivan, the liberal historian Heather Cox Richardson, and the confrontational libertarian Glenn Greenwald.

This new ability of individuals to make a living directly from their audiences isn’t just transforming journalism. It’s also been the case for adult performers on OnlyFans, musicians on Patreon, B-list celebrities on Cameo. In Hollywood, too, power has migrated toward talent, whether it’s marquee showrunners or actors. This power shift is a major headache for big institutions, from The New York Times to record labels. And Silicon Valley investors, eager to disrupt and angry at their portrayal in big media, have been gleefully backing it. Substack embodies this cultural shift, but it’s riding the wave, not creating it.

And despite a handful of departures over politics, that wave is growing for Substack. The writers moving there full time in recent days include not just Mr. Lavery, but also the former Yahoo News White House correspondent Hunter Walker, the legal writer David Lat and the columnist Heather Havrilesky, who told me she will be taking Ask Polly from New York Magazine to “regain some of the indie spirit and sense of freedom that drew me to want to write online in the first place.”

(Speaking of that spirit: Bustle Digital Group confirmed to me that it’s reviving the legendary blog Gawker under a former Gawker writer, Leah Finnegan.)

And a New York Times opinion writer, Charlie Warzel, is departing to start a publication on Substack called Galaxy Brain. (Substack has courted a number of Times writers. I turned down an offer of an advance well above my Times salary, in part because of the editing and the platform The Times gives me, and in part because I didn’t think I’d make it back — media types often overvalue media writers.)

The Times wouldn’t comment on his move, but is among the media companies trying to develop its own answer to Substack and recently brought the columnist Paul Krugman’s free Substack newsletter to the Times platform. And newsrooms can offer all sorts of support that solo writers don’t get. Jessica Lessin, the founder and editor in chief of The Information, a newsletter-centric Silicon Valley subscription publication, said part of its edge was “sophisticated marketing around acquiring and retaining subscribers.”

Substack’s thesis is, in part, that media companies underpay their most prominent writers. So far, that seems to be bearing out. Mr. Warzel isn’t taking an advance, and many of the writers who took advances now regret doing so: They would have made more money by simply collecting subscription revenue, and paying Substack 10 percent, than making the more complex deals with money up front.

The former Vox writer Matthew Yglesias calculated that taking the advance wound up costing him nearly $400,000 in subscription revenue paid to Substack. The writer Roxane Gay told me she earned back her advance within two months of starting The Audacity ($60 a year) with an audience of 36,000, about 20 percent of them paying. She also wrestles with what she sees as Substack “trying to have it both ways” as a neutral platform and a publisher that supports writers she finds “odious,” she said, but has concluded that her dislike of someone’s work is “not enough for them to not be allowed on the platform.”

Isaac Saul, who told me his nonpartisan political newsletter Tangle brought in $190,000 in its first year, wrote recently that he came to Substack “specifically to avoid being associated with anyone else” after being frustrated by readers’ assumptions about his biases when he worked for HuffPost...

 

Alan Dershowitz, Case Against the New Censorship

Alan Dershowitz, Case Against the New Censorship: Protecting Free Speech from Big Tech, Progressives, and Universities. 

Tucker Carlson and Mark Steyn (VIDEO)

I'm going to be busy and tired today, as I'm swamped with grading. 

On most days, at least at this point in the semester, and given what's happening at home, I don't get to watch much news. I am watching "Outnumbered" right now, though, which is really the only other Fox News show that I can watch, or well at least for now, as the network's changed a lot of its programming, and I need to sample more of it, so I'll know more about that later. 

In any case, I did get to watch Tucker last night, but it took me until after 7:00pm pacific time to finish it, due to all the home stuff mentioned above (though I did take a nap in the mid-afternoon, and that's because I've been getting little sleep due to all the things mentioned here, and that's not good for my health, but no worries, because I have a good doctor, and I have anxiety meds I can take as needed; and I haven't needed them much, because I have a plan and schedule that I'm [pretty much] able to keep, so that keeps me busy and my mind off all the things that make me want to take my meds in the first place.)

Jonathan Turley's been on Tucker's this week already, but he was on some Fox show yesterday, and that video's here, "Evidence was overwhelming in Derek Chauvin case, jury got it right: Turley."

Here's Tucker and Steyn, the later of whom is even more hilarious than Tucker, and hopefully he gets his own show too, as he not only deserves, but we do, sheesh. *Eye-roll.*

Tucker's full opening segment from last night is here, "Tucker: Political leaders took advantage of George Floyd's death."

And here's some Amazon shopping links, "Best Selling Products" and more here.

Have a good day! 

New York Parent Andrew Guttman Pulls Daughter from Elite Brearley Private Academy, and His Scathing Letter Has Gone Viral (VIDEO)

Tucker Carlson read the guy's letter on last night's show (video below). 

It turns out parent Andrew Guttman published an open letter at Bari Weiss' page slamming pretty much everybody over at Brearley, an elite private school in Manhattan. His daughter's been attending the school for seven years, for good reason, as apparently the school's got creds, with such folks as Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, having attended there, and with media elites like Drew Barrymore and Tiny Fey sending their daughters to the school as well. 

I think all of those working on these issues --- or suffering through them --- feel as though the tide is turning, although I'm skeptical, as it's not just a few New York private schools we're talking about here, but virtually the entire U.S. educational establishment, public and private schools, colleges, and universities all, that's been infected by this evil --- honestly, diabolical --- ideological "teaching" agenda. 

And "suffer" might not be a strong enough word: Remember Ms. Jodi Shaw was fired from her position at Smith College, after months of uproar at the school over bogus claims of "racism," and then with Ms. Shaw's own travails in taking a principled position standing up to the powers that be there, who are still there, and not Ms. Shaw; and said powers, especially the president of that school, Kathleen McCartney, have never made amends to, much less apologized for anything (or not that I'm aware of), the staff at that campus who endured the abuse of whatever totally privileged black (international) woman student who made all the accusations that further inflamed an apparently already hostile climate up there in Northampton, Massachusetts.

And a brave and courageous teacher at Grace Church High School, also in Manhattan, was "relieved of his duties" this week, after he published an earlier piece at Ms. Weiss' Substack page, and the ghouls at Grace weren't pleased, but up until now, it looks like, have been not so thrilled about the "critical race theory" pedagogy then working its way over to that campus, after nearly burning down others similarly overrun campuses that have been destroyed by this wicked and evil "antiracist" shame of a "woke" teaching and learning curriculum.  

The New York Post has the story of Mr. Guttman and his daugher, and read the letter at Ms Weiss' page, "You Have to Read This Letter":

April 13, 2021

Dear Fellow Brearley Parents,

Our family recently made the decision not to reenroll our daughter at Brearley for the 2021-22 school year. She has been at Brearley for seven years, beginning in kindergarten. In short, we no longer believe that Brearley’s administration and Board of Trustees have any of our children’s best interests at heart. Moreover, we no longer have confidence that our daughter will receive the quality of education necessary to further her development into a critically thinking, responsible, enlightened, and civic minded adult. I write to you, as a fellow parent, to share our reasons for leaving the Brearley community but also to urge you to act before the damage to the school, to its community, and to your own child's education is irreparable.

It cannot be stated strongly enough that Brearley’s obsession with race must stop. It should be abundantly clear to any thinking parent that Brearley has completely lost its way. The administration and the Board of Trustees have displayed a cowardly and appalling lack of leadership by appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob, and then allowing the school to be captured by that same mob. What follows are my own personal views on Brearley's antiracism initiatives, but these are just a handful of the criticisms that I know other parents have expressed.

I object to the view that I should be judged by the color of my skin. I cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin, but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs. By viewing every element of education, every aspect of history, and every facet of society through the lens of skin color and race, we are desecrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and utterly violating the movement for which such civil rights leaders believed, fought, and died.

I object to the charge of systemic racism in this country, and at our school. Systemic racism, properly understood, is segregated schools and separate lunch counters. It is the interning of Japanese and the exterminating of Jews. Systemic racism is unequivocally not a small number of isolated incidences over a period of decades. Ask any girl, of any race, if they have ever experienced insults from friends, have ever felt slighted by teachers or have ever suffered the occasional injustice from a school at which they have spent up to 13 years of their life, and you are bound to hear grievances, some petty, some not. We have not had systemic racism against Blacks in this country since the civil rights reforms of the 1960s, a period of more than 50 years. To state otherwise is a flat-out misrepresentation of our country's history and adds no understanding to any of today's societal issues. If anything, longstanding and widespread policies such as affirmative action, point in precisely the opposite direction.

I object to a definition of systemic racism, apparently supported by Brearley, that any educational, professional, or societal outcome where Blacks are underrepresented is prima facie evidence of the aforementioned systemic racism, or of white supremacy and oppression. Facile and unsupported beliefs such as these are the polar opposite to the intellectual and scientific truth for which Brearley claims to stand. Furthermore, I call bullshit on Brearley's oft-stated assertion that the school welcomes and encourages the truly difficult and uncomfortable conversations regarding race and the roots of racial discrepancies.

I object to the idea that Blacks are unable to succeed in this country without aid from government or from whites. Brearley, by adopting critical race theory, is advocating the abhorrent viewpoint that Blacks should forever be regarded as helpless victims, and are incapable of success regardless of their skills, talents, or hard work. What Brearley is teaching our children is precisely the true and correct definition of racism.

I object to mandatory anti-racism training for parents, especially when presented by the rent-seeking charlatans of Pollyanna. These sessions, in both their content and delivery, are so sophomoric and simplistic, so unsophisticated and inane, that I would be embarrassed if they were taught to Brearley kindergarteners. They are an insult to parents and unbecoming of any educational institution, let alone one of Brearley's caliber.

I object to Brearley’s vacuous, inappropriate, and fanatical use of words such as “equity,” “diversity” and “inclusiveness.” If Brearley’s administration was truly concerned about so-called “equity,” it would be discussing the cessation of admissions preferences for legacies, siblings, and those families with especially deep pockets. If the administration was genuinely serious about “diversity,” it would not insist on the indoctrination of its students, and their families, to a single mindset, most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Instead, the school would foster an environment of intellectual openness and freedom of thought. And if Brearley really cared about “inclusiveness,” the school would return to the concepts encapsulated in the motto “One Brearley,” instead of teaching the extraordinarily divisive idea that there are only, and always, two groups in this country: victims and oppressors.

l object to Brearley’s advocacy for groups and movements such as Black Lives Matter, a Marxist, anti family, heterophobic, anti-Asian and anti-Semitic organization that neither speaks for the majority of the Black community in this country, nor in any way, shape or form, represents their best interests.

I object to, as we have been told time and time again over the past year, that the school’s first priority is the safety of our children. For goodness sake, Brearley is a school, not a hospital! The number one priority of a school has always been, and always will be, education. Brearley’s misguided priorities exemplify both the safety culture and “cover-your-ass” culture that together have proved so toxic to our society and have so damaged the mental health and resiliency of two generations of children, and counting.

I object to the gutting of the history, civics, and classical literature curriculums. I object to the censorship of books that have been taught for generations because they contain dated language potentially offensive to the thin-skinned and hypersensitive (something that has already happened in my daughter's 4th grade class). I object to the lowering of standards for the admission of students and for the hiring of teachers. I object to the erosion of rigor in classwork and the escalation of grade inflation. Any parent with eyes open can foresee these inevitabilities should antiracism initiatives be allowed to persist.

We have today in our country, from both political parties, and at all levels of government, the most unwise and unvirtuous leaders in our nation’s history. Schools like Brearley are supposed to be the training grounds for those leaders. Our nation will not survive a generation of leadership even more poorly educated than we have now, nor will we survive a generation of students taught to hate its own country and despise its history.

Lastly, I object, with as strong a sentiment as possible, that Brearley has begun to teach what to think, instead of how to think...

Hot damn! No wonder this thing's gone viral! 

Still more at the link, and a response at the letters to the editor at the New York Post.

Been Busy *Shrugs*

Sorry for the lack of posting of late, dear readers. I don't mean to let anybody down, heh.

The fact is I've been swamped with work and a lot of stuff at home --- home issues especially dealing with my two sons (which, come to think of it, isn't "My Three Sons," and I'm glad, sheesh). 

I did score an Instalanche over the weekend, for this post, "New Capitol 'Attack' Investigative Report Released: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Indeed Called for Capitol Police to 'Stand Down', and the Feds 'Botched' Everything With Clueless Mixed-Messages and Incompetence (VIDEO)," which was nice. 

And of course, as many of you know, I'm a blogger at Theo Spark's, and often my babe-blogging hits posted there generate a little traffic back this way, as this one did last week, "Twins?"

So, to that end, here's a couple of more hotties, at Babe Gallery, and this lovely lady below from the University of North Carolina, via Rad Chicks:

In Bottom of the 9th, Phillies Score at Atlanta, as Braves Lose in 'Blown' Call at M.L.B.'s Replay Booth in New York (VIDEO)

AoSHQ has a post on the fall of the N.B.L, "Poll: MLB Falls To Lower Approval Ratings Than Football."

I was going to just do some grading for a bit, but I miss reading around the blogroll, and I miss reading Ace (near) everyday anyway, so here you go: 

It turns out I was watching Sunday night's game, on Sunday Night Baseball, and I honestly couldn't believe what happened, and no doubt I'm not alone. See USC's Annenberg Review, "Spitballing: MLB’s replay review system is flaming garbage. The solution: Fight fire with fire." 

In a Sunday night fiasco that was a perfect combination of thrilling baseball and inexplicable umpiring, two parties emerged primarily victorious: ESPN and the Philadelphia Phillies.

The Phillies, for obvious reasons. Alec Bohm’s “run” in the top of the ninth inning against the Atlanta Braves at Truist Park — you know, the one he scored without touching the white pentagon in between the batter’s boxes — was the Phillies’ seventh of the game. The Braves scored six. That sounds like a victorious happening to me.

And for its part, the ESPN crew, led by USC Annenberg alum Matt Vasgersian and Minnesota Timberwolves soon-to-be-co-owner Alex Rodriguez, got to head the broadcast of a thrilling ballgame that caught the entire baseball world’s attention in a matter of minutes.

Here’s the rundown. A whirlwind of home runs by Ozzie Albies, Rhys Hoskins, Didi Gregorius, Freddie Freeman, Ronald Acuña Jr. and the underrated Bryce Harper helped the Phillies and Braves enter the ninth inning tied at six. Gregorius stepped to the plate with one out and Bohm on third and lifted a fly ball to Atlanta outfielder Marcell Ozuna in shallow left. Bohm tagged, was surprisingly sent and, well, see for yourself...

And, yes, watch the video yourself below. These are my thoughts:

If you watched the Phillies at Braves game yourself, on ESPN, you might still be in daze (or not, if you don't care) at how those freakin' desk-jockey replay "umpires" at M.L.B. studios on New York City could possible botch an obvious "out" at home plate call, so as just give the stupid game to Philadelphia? My theory is that M.L.B. doesn't like the "tomahawk chop" music playing on the loudspeaker, and they obviously don't like the fans "chopping" along like a bunch of "racist" crackers; and somebody at M.L.B., way up there in the top ranks, has let it be known that the Braves ain't getting any breaks this year, which is, like duh, as those hacks already moved the All-Star game to a literally all-white city in Colorado, leaving Atlanta short of about $100 million in revenues, that could have, you know, maybe helped the majority black folks there, I mean, those folks still recovering from this messed up lockdown, and who've no doubt been put through enough trauma already; well, let's just say M.L.B. hasn't got the "brightest minds" working up there; either that, or most of those folks literally have "no balls," because all of this is not going play well with "middle America," which sooner or later will even abandon "America's pastime" if "cooler" [and more intelligent] heads don't prevail in the executive office of the league.

Atlanta's manager, Brian Snitker, and his reaction, is hilarious, and I appreciate how he kept his cool while arguing with the umps, and was not thrown out, even though, it was practically the end of the game.

Also interesting is Pedro Sandoval, who came in to hit late in the game, and as you may know, he had a couple of phenomenal years with the Giants, and then took his skills to the Red Sox, but seemed to hit a pretty long-lasting slump, and never returned to his most outstanding level of play he displayed in San Francisco?

You gotta love baseball, right? Well, maybe not, as Ace discusses above, as "woke" politics is now infecting the league like the other major national sports, especially football and basketball, and America will indeed lose its "national pastime" if someone, anyone, jeez, doesn't step in to save the sport. 

New Capitol 'Attack' Investigative Report Released: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Indeed Called for Capitol Police to 'Stand Down', and the Feds 'Botched' Everything With Clueless Mixed-Messages and Incompetence (VIDEO)

Now, as you know by now, I do check out CBS This Morning when I can, and as noted previously, it's the only national morning show I can watch, because the others previously mentioned are so far to the loony left that, well, it's just impossible for me to even contemplate taking these goons seriously. 

And very interestingly here, CBS's investigative reporter is none other than former Fox News correspondent Catherine Herridge, who is freakin' good, and I'll bet she got a hefty pay raise to take the job at CBS; and, from what I've heard, Fox News already pays its reporters handsomely, so good for her for making bank AND still being able to report honestly on this blockbuster cluster of a situation (and CBS should be lauded for that). 

My long headline above pretty much includes all the relevant points I might expand on in the post here, but I just have to note that if anyone looks bad --- and all the relevant official parties in D.C. and in the federal government look bad, except for former President Trump, who indeed requested a full deployment to the Capitol building, as a "preemptive" measure to guarantee security there, so I can't see how anyone in the leftist media can still blame him (but they will) --- it's Mayor Bowser; but of course all of the "M.S.M." ghouls will certainly find a way to praise her, so just f*ck 'em, as they're the biggest asshole lying media hacks anywhere, even worse than those in the official state media of Communist China or the evil propagandists for Vladmir Putin's extremely repressive regime in Moscow, now basically murdering dissident Alex Navalny by imprisoning him and denying him healthcare, after he came down with some mysterious new and suspicious COVID-like symptoms; but don't worry, the Biden administration will indeed find a way to beat out these two murderously un-democratic monster regimes, and that really is really something, when you think about it. 

Watch: 

CBS This Morning had another literally bombshell report, with some interesting twists involving the correspondent in question, but as I hate to post from the same sources back-to-back all the time, I'll try to add some variety of posts later today, if I have the chance. Until then, thanks always for reading my humble blog.

Once a Backer of Military Force, Biden Nominee Now Embraces Soft Power

Well, this is the New York Times again, so feel free to click over to the next blog on your own personal blogroll if you'd prefer not to read this below (and I wouldn't blame you, frankly).

But, I do feel it's of interest, and perhaps of great importance (not good importance, sadly), so here you go:

At NYT, "If confirmed to oversee the U.S. Agency for International Development, Samantha Power will confront adversaries by bolstering democracy and human rights. China is an early focus."

I know, she's a "very bad woman!", though the quote's not mine, as I'm one-quarter-quoting from the Twilight Zone's old episode, "You're a Bad Man!"

And here's the obligatorily video of our former Ambassador the the United Nations, and who is the former Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, at Harvard University (or she still may in fact be a current professor there, because evil dolts like this lady don't give a crap about ethics nor morals, or all those "bourgeois" things that us "backward rubes" in "flyover country" might think are important, as those "old-fashioned" kind of things are what're actually "keeping the republic," and dang, that's a miracle at this point, sheesh):  

Ms. Hostetter

I mentioned how once in a while the New York Times does "get it right," or nearabouts, which, as noted, is why I still read the paper (along with the L.A. Times) on most days. 

Now, I'm not saying this article is perfect, but it's pretty good --- and darned interesting --- as it's a story that literally "hits close to home," in the O.C. where I live, and where, actually, there are indeed a lot of crazy nut cases (and while I don't know if Ms. Hostetter is crazy, her husband sounds questionable, which adds to the intrigue here, so, well, that's it). 

At NYT, "A Teacher Marched to the Capitol. When She Got Home, the Fight Began":

Kristine Hostetter was a beloved fourth-grade teacher. Then came the pandemic, the election and the Jan. 6 riot in Washington.

SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. — Word got around when Kristine Hostetter was spotted at a public mask-burning at the San Clemente pier, and when she appeared in a video sitting onstage as her husband spoke at a QAnon convention. People talked when she angrily accosted a family wearing masks near a local surfing spot, her granddaughter in tow.

Even in San Clemente, a well-heeled redoubt of Southern California conservatism, Ms. Hostetter stood out for her vehement embrace of both the rebellion against Covid-19 restrictions and the stolen-election lies pushed by former President Donald J. Trump. This was, after all, a teacher so beloved that each summer parents jockeyed to get their children into her fourth-grade class.

But it was not until Ms. Hostetter’s husband posted a video of her marching down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol on Jan. 6 that her politics collided with an opposite force gaining momentum in San Clemente: a growing number of left-leaning parents and students who, in the wake of the civil-rights protests set off by the police killing of George Floyd, decided they would no longer countenance the right-wing tilt of their neighbors and the racism they said was commonplace.

That there was no evidence that Ms. Hostetter had displayed any overt racism was beside the point — to them, her pro-Trump views seemed self-evidently laced with white supremacy. So she became their cause.

First, a student group organized a petition demanding the school district investigate whether Ms. Hostetter, 54, had taken part in the attack on the Capitol, and whether her politics had crept into her teaching. Then, when the district complied and suspended her, a group of parents put up a counter petition.

“If the district starts disciplinary action based on people’s beliefs/politics, what’s next? Religious discrimination?” it warned.

Each petition attracted thousands of signatures, and San Clemente has spent the months since embroiled in the divisive politics of post-Trump America, wrestling with uncomfortable questions about the limits of free speech and whether Ms. Hostetter and those who share her views should be written off as conspiracy theorists and racists who have no place in public life, not to mention shaping young minds in a classroom.

It has not been a polite debate. Neighbors have taken to monitoring one another’s social media posts; some have infiltrated private Facebook groups to figure out who is with them and who is not — and they have the screenshots to prove it.

Even the local yoga community, where Ms. Hostetter’s husband was a fixture, has found itself divided.

“It goes deeper than just her. A lot of conversations between parents, between friends, have already been fractured by Trump, by the election, by Black Lives Matter,” said Cady Anderson, whose two children attend Ms. Hostetter’s school.

Ms. Hostetter, she added, “just brought it all home to us.”

Complicating matters is Ms. Hostetter’s relative silence. Apart from appearing at protests and the incident at the beach, she has said little publicly over the past year, and did not respond to repeated interview requests for this article. People have filled in the blanks.

To Ms. Hostetter’s backers, the entire affair is being overblown by an intolerant mob of woke liberals who have no respect for the privacy of someone’s personal politics. Yet Ms. Hostetter’s politics, while personal, are hardly private, and to those who have lined up against her, she is inextricably linked to her husband, Alan, who last year emerged as a rising star in Southern California’s resurgent far right.

An Army veteran and former police chief of La Habra, Calif., Mr. Hostetter was known around San Clemente as a yoga guru — his specialty is “sound healing” with gongs, Tibetan bowls and Aboriginal didgeridoos — until the pandemic turned him into a self-declared “patriotic warrior.” He gave up yoga and founded the American Phoenix Project, which says it arose as a result of “the fear-based tyranny of 2020 caused by manipulative officials at the highest levels of our government.”

Throughout the spring, summer and fall, the American Phoenix Project organized protests against Covid-related restrictions up and down Orange County, and Mr. Hostetter’s list of enemies grew: Black Lives Matter protesters. The election thieves. Cabals and conspiracies drawn from QAnon, the movement that claims Mr. Trump was secretly battling devil-worshiping Democrats and international financiers who abuse children.

By Jan. 5, Mr. Hostetter, 56, had graduated to the national stage, appearing with the former Trump adviser Roger Stone at a rally outside the Supreme Court.

His appearance there and the next day at the Capitol prompted some of San Clemente’s more liberal residents to make bumper stickers that read: “Alan Hostraitor.” It also led the F.B.I. to raid his apartment in early February, though he was not arrested or charged with any crime. (He, too, did not respond to interview requests.)

Ms. Hostetter was there every step of the way, raising money and filming her husband as he rallied supporters at protests. When the American Phoenix Project filed incorporation papers in December, she was identified as its chief financial officer.

The Teacher

Ms. Hostetter grew up in Orange County back when locals still joked about the “Orange Curtain” separating its conservative and overwhelmingly white towns from liberal and diverse Los Angeles to the north. In the late 1960s, Richard M. Nixon turned an oceanside villa in San Clemente into his presidential getaway, christening it La Casa Pacifica. John Wayne kept his prized yacht, Wild Goose, docked up the coast in Newport Beach.

“Orange County,” Ronald Reagan once declared, “is where the good Republicans go before they die.”

It also was where surfers and spiritual seekers met cold warriors and conspiracy theorists, where some of the conservative movement’s most virulently racist, anti-Semitic and paranoid offshoots went. In the 1960s, Orange County saw a surge in the popularity of the John Birch Society, an anti-communist organization that in many ways presaged the rise of QAnon. In the 1980s, its surf spots became a magnet for neo-Nazis and skinheads. And in 2020, the onset of the pandemic produced a new generation of Orange County extremists.

If Ms. Hostetter had any strong political leanings before last year, she did not let on, said her niece, Emma Hall. She only picked up the first hint of her aunt’s rightward drift at small party to celebrate the Hostetters’ wedding in 2016.

“There were about six people, friends of theirs, that did not let up asking me if I was going to vote for Trump,” recalled Ms. Hall’s husband, Ryan.

Neither of the Halls gave it much thought. Ms. Hostetter seemed happy, and her new husband exuded the laid-back charm that typifies a certain kind of Southern California man in the American imagination...

More later.

 

Britain's Prince Philip, 'His Royal Highness', Queen Elizabeth's 'Beloved' Husband, Dead at 99 (VIDEO)

I first actually read the news of the passing of "His Royal Highness" at the New York Times, on the app on my iPhone.

And it did still include this headline, which has now been changed by the disgusting "Old Gray Lady, embedded at left, though I tried to "center it," but it messed up all the formatting of the rest...

...And you know, it's no surprise at all, as the New York Times, as much as I do enjoy reading the country's "newspaper of record" (as I do learn a lot there, and sometimes the editors "hit the mark" with real, good, and actual journalistic reporting), it's truly a trash site most of the times these days, with literally no "balance" of views, unless you consider columnists Ross Douthat and David Brooks actual "conservatives"; and don't get me going about the hack, hit piece "journalism" routinely published at that rag (here's looking at you, Taylor Lorenz); and I actually feel bad for longtime N.Y.T. science reporter, Donald McNeil, who was fired by the newspaper, after profusely apologizing, more than once, for simply having a discussion of the "N-Word," which he uttered himself during said discussion with a young person he was responsible for during a field trip to Peru a few years back. 

Here's the piece, with the changed title, though I'm not going to read it all again to see if the editors "fixed" their asinine and stupid editorializing about this truly great and candid Duke of Edinburgh: "Prince Philip, Husband of Queen Elizabeth II, Is Dead at 99."

The Los Angeles Times has a much, much better obituary, which I read in hard-copy yesterday morning, by Kim Murphy, a veteran foreign affairs correspondent, who started her career at the paper, and returned to it recently. And Ms. Murphy, who discusses Prince Philip's notable public and "gaffe-tastic" quips and rejoinders, puts up an overall balanced and well-meaning commemoration to the man, who, one might argue, literally save the British monarchy.    

See, "Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II’s husband and closest confidant and advisor, dies at 99":

It was an enduring alliance that outlasted the Cold War, 15 prime ministers, war and peace in Northern Ireland and Britain’s union with Europe — followed by the country’s shattering decision, 43 years later, to leave.

Side by side for as long as most Britons could possibly remember, Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth II stood as a reassuring constant even during the most trying or turbulent times, an epic love story that seemed unshakable.

But the longest marriage of a reigning monarch in British history came to an end Friday when the prince — two months shy of his 100th birthday — died at Windsor Castle in England. The flag above Buckingham Palace was immediately lowered to half-staff, and the official announcement of Philip Mountbatten’s death was posted on the palace gates.

“It is with deep sorrow that Her Majesty The Queen has announced the death of her beloved husband, His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement Friday, just after noon in Britain. “His Royal Highness passed away peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle.”

Standing outside No. 10 Downing St., Prime Minister Boris Johnson praised Philip for a life of service and endurance.

“Like the expert carriage driver that he was, he helped to steer the royal family and the monarchy so that it remains an institution indisputably vital to the balance and happiness of our national life,” Johnson said.

“Over the course of his 99-year life, he saw our world change dramatically and repeatedly,” President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden said in a statement. “From his service during World War II, to his 73 years alongside the Queen, and his entire life in the public eye — Prince Philip gladly dedicated himself to the people of the U.K., the Commonwealth, and to his family.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Philip and the queen had been staying at Windsor Castle, west of London. Though he enjoyed robust health for most of his life, he was hospitalized for a month this year, from Feb. 16 to March 16, during which he underwent a heart procedure.

He was treated for chest pains in 2011, was hospitalized for two days in 2017 and was hospitalized again for 10 days in 2018 for a hip replacement. He was forced to give up driving in 2019 — at the age of 97 — after smashing into another car while driving his Land Rover.

Prince Philip never held the official title of prince consort, as did Queen Victoria’s Prince Albert, but he nonetheless was Queen Elizabeth II’s closest confidant, most reliable political advisor and the undisputed master of the royal household for more than seven decades.

Philip was known equally as a curmudgeon and a charmer who could quickly put nervous guests at ease with an easy (and sometimes outrageous) one-liner. Courtiers, his own children and the queen herself backed down under the quick flash of his temper, and guests at Buckingham Palace were expected to stay up to speed with his lively intellect and encyclopedic command of facts or were hastily dismissed as being not worthy of the duke’s time.

While Elizabeth presided over affairs of state, Philip championed dozens of charities, including the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, which has promoted self-reliance, physical development and other personal accomplishments for more than 6 million youths around the world.

[EMBEDDED TWEET HERE.]

He also set down the ground rules for rearing of the royal children, wrote books about horses and equestrian sports, oversaw the palaces and handled hundreds of official engagements every year until he retired from his official public schedule in August 2017. (“Unveil your own damn plaque,” read a cartoon drawn specially for the occasion, to Philip’s delight.) He was nearly always at the queen’s side during more than 73 years of marriage.

“Prince Philip is simply my rock. He is my foundation stone,” the monarch said at a lunch in 1997 honoring their 50th wedding anniversary. “He is someone who doesn’t take easily to compliments, but he has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years, and I and his whole family … owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim or we shall ever know.”

Philip, for his part, seldom talked about his contributions to the royal enterprise, though he was known on rare occasions to reflect on what he had given up to be the man who walks two paces behind the queen, the husband of one monarch and the father of presumably the next, with no historic role of his own.

“It was not my ambition to be president of the Mint Advisory Committee,” he told the Independent on Sunday newspaper in 1992. “I didn’t want to be president of [the World Wide Fund for Nature]. I was asked to do it. I’d much rather have stayed in the navy, frankly.”

His chief contribution in the end was simply to have been there for the queen: a man of keen rationality and wide reading who in some ways intimidated her, who was not legally answerable to anyone and who was available as a voice of reason and dissent when all around had a habit of agreeing with her.

He had a slight reputation for pushiness and being opinionated … and he is as right-wing as ever, but there’s never been the slightest suggestion that he influenced the queen in that way,” said Robert Lacey, the British historian best known for his work on the award-winning drama “The Crown.”

“We can now see he was free to state his own opinions because he had no constitutional responsibilities,” he said. “So that made him a particularly strong and useful pillar for the queen.”

A former government secretary told the Daily Telegraph in 2001 how the Duke of Edinburgh had once quizzed him about a policy issue in his department.

“‘What’s the object of the exercise?’ he asked me. I stumbled through the answer and tried to explain that the aim was a bit of A and a bit of B. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but which is it — A or B?’ I replied, probably rather incoherently, that it really was a mixture of both. ‘I’d always thought that what was wrong with this country was that all the best brains went into the civil service,’ said Prince Philip, ‘but that was before I met you!’ — and walked away.”

He also had a knack for the painfully politically incorrect remark. Amid the recession of 1981, as more Britons sought public assistance, he observed: “Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed.” When the royal couple were introduced in 2002 to a teenage army cadet who had been blinded in an Irish Republican Army bombing, the queen asked the 15-year-old boy how much sight he had left. “Not a lot, judging by the tie he’s wearing,” Philip quipped, as the crowd fell silent.

But Philip was also the ultimate salt-of-the-earth English country gentleman. Royal hunting weekends would not be complete without the sight of Philip, his head wreathed in smoke, barbecuing the day’s take of pheasants. He was an enthusiastic sailor, polo player and carriage driver who went bolting with his horses around the royal estates until well into old age, when Elizabeth begged him to give it up. (The Daily Mail carried photos of the prince once again at the reins of his carriage in November 2017, prodding his horses around Windsor Castle at the age of 96.)

There's still more at the link.

And Fox News' report from Friday:

I'll try to put up some more entries tonight or tomorrow.

Thanks for reading. (I'm watching Sunday Night Baseball, and I'm looking forward to a "normal" season, hopefully, and I plan to take my family to as many Angels games as possible, as that's, really, the best kind of "family therapy" I can think of.)

You Don't Say? Black Lives Matter Co-Founder, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Has Purchased $1.4 Million Home in Secluded -- All White! -- Topanga Canyon

Woo boy, this story's a doozy, but entirely predictable, sadly. 

From Jonathan Turley, "Twitter Censors Criticism of BLM Founder Buying $1.4 Million Home In Predominantly White Neighborhood":

We have been discussing the expanding censorship on Twitter and social media. The latest example involves the story of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors, 37, and her purchase of a $1.4 million home in a secluded area of Los Angeles whose population is reputedly less than 2% black. The professed Marxist received considerable criticism for the purchase, including from Jason Whitlock, an African-America sports critic who has also been a critic of BLM. When Whitlock called out Khan-Cullors, Twitter promptly censored the tweet — leaving a notice that it was “no longer available.”

Last week, various cites like dirt.com reported, “A secluded mini-compound tucked into L.A.’s rustic and semi-remote Topanga Canyon was recently sold for a tad more than $1.4 million to a corporate entity that public records show is controlled by Patrisse Khan-Cullors, 37-year-old social justice visionary and co-founder of the galvanizing and, for some, controversial Black Lives Matter movement.”

It produced a firestorm of critics who noted that Cullors has long insisted that she and her BLM co-founder “are trained Marxists. We are super versed on, sort of, ideological theories.” Critics like Nick Arama of RedState pointed out: “[I]t’s interesting to note that the demographics of the area are only about 1.4% black people there. So not exactly living up to her creed there.”

Jason Whitlock posted a link to a story but was promptly censored by Twitter:

[SCREENSHOT HERE]

The controversy is illustrative of the age of Internet censors. Tweets, and in some cases Twitter accounts, vanish without explanation. Twitter is notorious for not responding to media inquiries over such censorship and even less forthcoming on the decision-making process behind such decisions.

If Whitlock was expressing his contempt for the purchase, it is core political speech.

Even the head of New York City’s Black Lives Matter chapter is calling for an independent investigation into the organization’s finances in the wake of the controversy. This controversy follows an Atlanta-based figure being criminally charged with fraud. According to the Justice Department, Sir Maejor Page, or Tyree Conyers-Page is accused of using a Facebook page called “Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta.”

The New York Post and other publications have reported that Cullors is eyeing expensive properties in other locations, including the Bahamas. However, it is not clear if this money came from BLM which has reportedly raised almost $100 million in donations from corporations and other sources. Indeed, Cullors seems to have ample sources of funds. She is married to Janaya Khan, a leader of BLM in Toronto, and published a best selling memoir of her life and then a follow up book. She also signed a lucrative deal with Warner Bros to develop and produce original programming across all platforms, including broadcast, cable and streaming. She has also been featured in various magazines like her recent collaboration with Jane Fonda.

The issue for me is not the house or claimed hypocrisy. It is the censorship of Twitter of such criticism. Cullors is a public figure who is subject to public scrutiny and commentary. Twitter is rife with a such criticism over the lifestyle choices of figures on the right ranging from Donald Trump Jr. to Rand Paul. That is an unfortunate aspect of being in a high visibility position. I would be equally concerned if criticism of Trump Jr.’s big game hunting exploits or Giuliani’s lavish tastes were censored...

Still more.

And at London's Daily Mail, "BLM founder is branded a 'FRAUD' after buying a $1.4 million home in an upscale mostly white enclave in L.A." 

Personally, I don't care much that this woman bought a ritzy house in "exclusive" Topanga Canyon (good for her!); and the Twitter censorship is par for the course, in any case; and is, perhaps, less interesting to me than it is to Mr. Turley.

It's the hypocrisy and --- the literally satanic --- double-standards. Not only can I not stand "Black Lives Matter," as their movement is, obviously, a sham that's virtually 100 percent responsible for the "B.L.M." riots last summer than burned down darned near every Democrat-run city in the entire country, but this woman, as noted above by Mr. Turley, is a self-declared "Marxist"; that is, she's a real, dyed-in-the-wool communist, and for her to be out there scooping up million dollar properties, not just in L.A., but perhaps in the Caribbean as well, that's a bit rich for me, and I find it absolutely disgusting. (As, for one thing, the wealth-creation derived from such purchases is literally the same anathema that these ideological and partisan ghouls are always yapping about, and, frankly, I often sympathize with these very same "concerns" that they have about "capitalist racist oppression" or "structural racism," or, well, on and on and on, blah blah). 

What is more, as political science professor, at a genuinely "minority-majority" college, a place really filled with the kind of "marginalized" kids that these "B.L.M." hacks and liars constantly say they're "all about," I can't even say how much this pissed me right the f*ck off. But that's life, and honestly, lately I mostly just "get with the program" at my school, because radical leftists already tried to get me fired ("cancelled") 10 years ago, and I have no interest in dealing with any such sort of related campus-based ideological conflicts again, despite the fact that I'm tenured. It's just too much. You become a pariah, and it's even worse, because you become a pariah to a lot of people with whom you'd had perfectly fine and collegial relationships prior to such libelous, illegal, and FUBAR attacks. 

I mean, if you've heard folks online, or in commentary pieces, etc., argue that "it's hard" for conservative faculty members on America's college and university campuses these days, well, you have no idea. And take it from me, because I'm a pretty hardy soul, but also pretty mellow and totally friendly to those with whom I work, but no matter: All that good cheer and outstanding professionalism (and professional relationships) goes out the window should you wind up in the cross-hairs of these truly satanic ideological and partisan monsters. 

While I would never say this to a student of mine, I really don't recommend anyone WHO IS NOT a freakin' Marxist to go into college or university teaching, and that's to say nothing of just recommending graduate training in the humanities or social sciences (or even English literature, etc.) to my students, because as bad as it all is, I'm not one to crush a young person's dreams, and I'll only speak frankly on the cancerous toxicity of "academe" if the student brings it up herself (or himself, or "themselves," or whatever). 

Twins?

This is so freaky, right? 

They've gotta be twins, but it also looks like a "mirror image," as one woman would be right-handed and her sister left. This is "vewy, vewy" interesting, to borrow from Elmer Fudd. (At least their shoes give it away, dang!)

At Country Girls.

Also, Anne Hathaway and Demi Rose.