Alice Goffman's TED Talk (VIDEO)

Last night I was rummaging through my stacks and stacks of books --- the overflow of books I own, of which I have no shelf space --- looking for Herbert Gutman's, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925. I actually did find the book, which somehow had found a spot on my bookcases downstairs (the stacks of books upstairs in my bedroom are piled high in the corners next to the bookshelves I have up there). 

While this was happening, I confused Herbert Gutman for Irving Goffman, the father of Alice Goffman, who is the author of the bombshell book, On the Run:On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. The book's controversial, actually. The New York Times had a huge write-up on her in the Sunday magazine: "The Trials of Alice Goffman: Her first book, ‘On the Run' — about the lives of young black men in West Philadelphia — has fueled a fight within sociology over who gets to speak for whom."

Anyway, that's how I ran across Ms. Alice's TED Talk, which is mentioned at her Wikipedia page. The video of her talk posted at the TED website has been viewed over 2 million times, and the YouTube video below almost 280,000 times. 

She's gets very emotional, with her voice cracking and her nearly coming to tears as she gets further and further along in her talk --- it's quite compelling. 

In any case, now you know the story of how I came across this video.

Watch:

She was denied tenure at the University of Wisconsin (obviously mostly as a result of the book controversy), and she's now a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pomona College, where "unnamed activists calling for her offer to be rescinded due to unsupported and unsubstantiated claims of racism in her work and research methods."

Naturally. *Sigh.*

In any case, enjoy the show!

Roger Moorhouse, Poland 1939

 At Amazon, Roger Moorhouse, Poland 1939.

'Jumpin' Jack Flash'

 The Rolling Stones, featuring Ronnie Wood, in 2015:

And the Stones, with the original lineup, featuring the late Brian Jones on rhythm guitar, in 1968:

When asked if he felt guilty about Jones's death, Mick Jagger told Rolling Stone in 1995: "No, I don't really. I do feel that I behaved in a very childish way, but we were very young, and in some ways we picked on him. But, unfortunately, he made himself a target for it; he was very, very jealous, very difficult, very manipulative, and if you do that in this kind of a group of people you get back as good as you give, to be honest. I wasn't understanding enough about his drug addiction. No one seemed to know much about drug addiction. Things like LSD were all new. No one knew the harm. People thought cocaine was good for you."

Long-time Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman said of Jones, "He formed the band. He chose the members. He named the band. He chose the music we played. He got us gigs. ... he was very influential, very important, and then slowly lost it – highly intelligent – and just kind of wasted it and blew it all away."

 

Koreatown Protests: Cops Fire Rubber Bullets at Violent Demonstrators (VIDEO)

At the Los Angeles Times, "LAPD makes arrests after protesters clash over transgender rights at Koreatown spa":

Dueling protests outside a Koreatown spa over transgender rights Saturday prompted a large police response and resulted in more than a dozen arrests.

LGBTQ activists gathered outside the Wi Spa on Saturday morning to counter a protest against transgender access to the spa’s facilities. The Los Angeles Police Department declared an unlawful assembly in front of the spa near Wilshire and Rampart boulevards around noon when the two groups of protesters began to clash, according to police and videos posted on Twitter.

LAPD Det. Meghan Aguilar said authorities declared the unlawful assembly after protesters began throwing projectiles, including at officers. Videos posted to social media show police in riot gear shooting bean bag rounds and 40-millimeter hard-foam projectiles at protesters.

It was not immediately clear how many protesters were in the area. Protesters demonstrating against the spa’s policy waved signs saying “Save our children” and “Stop defending pedos.”

“Most people did leave the area, but currently there are a number of arrests made for failure to disperse,” Aguilar said.

No injuries have been reported. A reporter from the Guardian US who was covering the protest wrote on Twitter that she was chased and “thrown to the ground by right-wing anti-pedophile protesters.”

The demonstrations, similar to those that occurred at the spa earlier this month, were apparently spurred by a viral video taken by an irate customer at the spa in late June.

The woman in the video, which was posted to Instagram, complains to staff at Wi Spa that a man had allegedly walked into the women’s section and showed his genitals to young girls. The customer the woman complained about reportedly identified as a woman. “He is a man,” the woman can be heard saying. “He is not a female. There are girls down there, other women who are highly offended by what they just saw and you did nothing. You sided with him.”

Wi Spa defended its policy in a statement to Los Angeles Magazine.

“Like many other metropolitan areas, Los Angeles contains a transgender population, some of whom enjoy visiting a spa,” the statement said. “Wi Spa strives to meet the needs of all its customers.”...

Keep reading.

And watch, at ABC News 7 Los Angeles, "Video shows LAPD officer shoot protester with rubber bullet at close range," and "Dozens arrested after LAPD sends alert warning of unlawful assembly during Koreatown spa protests."

Thousands Upon Thousands Protect Strict New Coronavirus Restrictions in France (VIDEO)

This should be happening here! Covid protests, hehe. 

It's da bomb, lol.

At the New York Times, "In France, angry protests, rising infections and record vaccinations":

More than 100,000 people took to the streets across France over the weekend to protest against President Emmanuel Macron’s tough new vaccination strategy, which will restrict access to restaurants, cafes, movie theaters, long-distance trains and more for the unvaccinated.

Demonstrators in Paris and elsewhere vented against what some called Mr. Macron’s “dictatorship” after he announced that a “health pass” — official proof of vaccination, a recent negative test, or recent Covid-19 recovery — would be required for many to attend or enter most public events and venues.

At the same time, however, his policy seemed to have the desired effect: Record numbers of people flocked to vaccination centers in advance of the new rules coming into effect next month.

It made for a striking split-screen image as millions lined up for vaccines — so desperately sought in much of the world suffering outbreaks but with little access to doses — as an increasingly strident group from both the far left and far right decried Mr. Macron’s policies as government overreach...

Keep reading.

Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory

This is the key introductory text. It's pitched, really, at the undergraduate level. 

At Amazon, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction.

(For the advanced graduate-level, nearly impenetrable text, see Kimbery Crenshaw, Critical Race Theory.)

Ben Carson Slams Critical Race Theory

This is excellent, except for Carson's claim that critical race theory is "Marxist." 

There's plenty of Marxism in the schools, especially in the humanities and social sciences, but this ain't it. 

It's not so, according one of the leading founders of critical race theory, Kimberly Crenshaw, in her foundational anthology, Critical Race Theory.

And Carson's at Fox News, "Dr. Ben Carson: Fighting critical race theory – this is how we stop this blatantly racist ideology: We cannot allow CRT to rob American children of that same hope that was instilled in me."

'Stay With Me'

Following-up, "The Faces, Featuring Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, Reportedly Recording New Music."

"Stay With Me."

In the morning

Don't say you love me

'Cause I'll only kick you out of the door

I know your name is Rita

'Cause your perfume smelling sweeter

Since when I saw you down on the floor, guitar

You won't need to much persuading

I don't mean to sound degrading

But with a face like that

You got nothing to laugh about

Red lips hair and fingernails

I hear your a mean old Jezebel

Let's go up stairs and read my tarot cards, c'mon

Stay with me

Stay with me

For tonight you better stay with me, oh yeah

Stay with me

Stay with me

For tonight you better stay with me, oh rock on

So in the morning

Please don't say you love me

'Cause you know I'll only kick you out the door

Yea I'll pay your cab fare home

You can even use my best cologne

Just don't be here in the morning when I wake up, c'mon honey

Stay with me

Stay with me

'Cause tonight you gonna stay with me

Sit down, get up, get down

Stay with me

Stay with me

'Cause tonight your going stay with me

Hey, what's your name again

Oh no, get down, whoo, hey, oh no, woo, get yourself home, slow down bab

The Faces, Featuring Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, Reportedly Recording New Music

Following-up from the other day, "'Reason to Believe'."

At New Musical Express, "Faces are recording their first new music in four decades."

Ronnie Wood says he, Rod Stewart and Kenney Jones have returned to the studiohttps://t.co/eiykbKEjGo

— NME (@NME) July 19, 2021

James Holland, Normandy '44

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

What is Critical Race Theory?

Professor William Jacobson's interview with Chris Berg, host of Point of View with Chris Berg on KX4 and West Dakota Fox (North Dakota), "'The likelihood that you’re going to have a book in kindergarten or third grade called ‘Critical Race Theory’ is extremely remote. That is not what happens'."

Abigail Shrier's Irreversible Damage Now Out in Paper

At Amazon, Abigail Shrier, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (Paperback).

BONUS: Ms. Abigail's got an essay up at Bari Weiss's Substack, "The Books Are Already Burning."

Chicago Weekend Violence

At the Other McCain, "Mindless Carnage Continues in Chicago."

How the Media Ignore Jew-Haters

From Christine Rosen, at Commentary:

If you Google the term “anti-Semitism,” the search engine returns a straightforward definition: “Hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people.” By this definition, it is beyond doubt that the statement “Jews have an insatiable appetite for war and killing” is anti-Semitic; replace “Jews” with any other race or ethnic group and there would be no argument about it.

But while Google offers a clear definition online of anti-Semitism, it is much more confused about the matter among its employees. How else to explain, as Alana Goodman of the Free Beacon first reported, that Kamau Bobb, Google’s head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, continues to be employed at the company after saying in a 2007 blog post that Jews have an “insatiable appetite for war” and an “insensitivity to the suffering [of] others.”...

RTWT.

 

America Gone Mad

It's Victor David Hanson, at the American Mind, "The American Descent into Madness: America went from the freest country in the world in December 2019 to a repressive and frightening place by July 2021. How did that happen?":

Nations have often gone mad in a matter of months. The French abandoned their supposedly idealistic revolutionary project and turned it into a monstrous hell for a year between July 1793 and 1794. After the election of November 1860, in a matter of weeks, Americans went from thinking secession was taboo to visions of killing the greatest number of their fellow citizens on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. Mao’s China went from a failed communist state to the ninth circle of Dante’s Inferno, when he unleashed the Cultural Revolution in 1966.

In the last six months, we have seen absurdities never quite witnessed in modern America. Madness, not politics, defines it. There are three characteristics of all these upheavals. One, the events are unsustainable. They will either cease or they will destroy the nation, at least as we know it. Two, the law has largely been rendered meaningless. Three, left-wing political agendas justify any means necessary to achieve them.

Citizenship as Mere Residency

Two million people are anticipated to cross the southern border, en masse and illegally, over a 12-month period. If that absurdity were to continue, we would be adding the equivalent of a major U.S. city every year. The new arrivals have three things in common: Their first act was to break U.S. law by entering the country. Their second was to break the law by residing here illegally. And their third will be to find false identification or other illegal means to continue breaking the law. One does not arrive as a guest in a foreign country and immediately violate the laws of his host—unless one holds those laws in contempt.

Arrivals now cross a border that had been virtually closed to illegal immigration by January 2021. In the cynical and immoral logic of illegal immigration (that cares little for the concerns either of would-be legal immigrants or U.S. citizens), arrivals will be dependent upon the state and thus become constituents of progressives who engineered their arrival.

Yet the issue is not illegal immigration per se. If protests were to continue in Cuba, and 1 million Cubans boated to Miami, the Biden Administration would stop the influx, in terror that so many anti-Communists might tip Florida red forever.

How strange that the U.S. government is considering going door-to-door to bully the unvaccinated, even as it ignores the daily influx of thousands from Mexico and Latin America, without worrying whether they are carrying or vaccinated for COVID-19. Meanwhile, the progressive media shrilly warns that the new Delta Variant of the virus is exploding south of the border. Note how the administration applies standards to its own citizens that it does not apply to foreign nationals illegally entering the country.

Crime as Construct

Crime is another current absurdity. There exists a mini-industry of internet videos depicting young people, disproportionately African American males, stealing luxury goods from Nieman-Marcus in San Francisco, clearing a shelf from a Walgreens with impunity, or assaulting Asian Americans. These iconic moments may be unrepresentative of reality, but given the mass transfers and retirements of police, and the frightening statistics of large increases in violent crime in certain cities, the popular conception is now entrenched that it is dangerous to walk in our major metropolises, either by day or at night. Chicago has turned into Tombstone or Dodge City in the popular imagination.

Scarier still is the realization that if one is robbed, assaulted, or finds one’s car vandalized, it is near certain the miscreant will never be held to account. Either the police have pulled back and find arrests of criminals a lose-lose situation, or radical big-city district attorneys see the law as a critical legal theory construct, and thus will not enforce it. Or the criminal will be arrested and released within hours.

So a subculture has developed among Americans, of passing information about where in the country it is safe, where it is not, and where one can go, where one cannot. This is clearly not America, but something bizarre out of Sao Paulo, Durban, or Caracas.

The Campus Con 

The universities over the past 40 years were intolerant, hard Left, and increasingly anti-constitutional. But they also fostered a golden-goose confidence scheme that administrators dared not injure, given the precious eggs of federally guaranteed student loans that ensured zero academic accountability and sent tuition costs into the stratosphere. There was an unquestioned supposition that a degree of any sort, of any major, was the ticket to American success. In cynical fashion, we shrugged that most prestigious institutions were little more than cattle branders that stamped graduates with imprints that gave them unearned privilege for life.

Yet universities now have both hands around their golden goose’s neck and are determined to strangle it. The public is becoming repulsed at the woke McCarthyite culture on campus, and will be more turned off when campuses open in the fall in 2019-style. At the Ivy League or major state university campuses, admissions are no longer based on proportional representation in the context of affirmative action, but are defined increasingly by a reparatory character.

Grades, test scores, and “activities” of the white and Asian male college applicants are growing less relevant. Only “privileged” white males with sports skills, connections, or families who give lots of money are exempt from the new racial reparation quotas. The new woke admission policy ironically is targeting the liberal suburban professional family, the Left’s constituency, whose lives are so fixated on whether children graduate from Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, or like campuses.

Given the radical change in incoming student profiles, the faculty increasingly will have to choose between accusations of racism, or grading regardless of actual performance, given thousands of new enrollees do not meet the entrance standards of just two or three years ago. Remember that since wokeism was always a top-down elite industry, minority progressives still will fight it out with white leftists in intramural scraps over titles, salaries, and managerial posts.

The public has had enough. For the first time, people will ask why are we subsidizing student loans, why are multibillion-dollar endowments not taxed, and why do we think a B.A. in sociology or psychology or gender studies is an “investment” that prepares anyone for anything? ...

A great piece. 

Keep reading.

 

Patriotic Kendra

Here's her holiday bikini from earlier this month (below).

And she's beach flashing here. 

Plus, new Kendall Jenner bikini shots.

Alex Marlow, Breaking the News

At Amazon, Alex Marlow, Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media's Hidden Deals and Secret Corruption.

Two More Texas Democrats Come Down with Covid

Here's a video report of the whole scam from local station WFAA out of Dallas. 

And at Fox News, "Two more Texas Democrats test positive for COVID after fleeing election vote: Five Texas Democrats have now tested positive on their Washington visit."

Really foolhardy and stupid. 

More at Politico, "Postponed Weddings, Stockpiled Insulin and Covid: The Bizarre Life of Texas Democrats in Exile: What the Democratic state legislators from Texas are really doing in Washington—and how they got here."

Paige Spirinac and More

She's so lovely on Twitter.

Plus, Rachel Weisz.

And, at Drunken Stepfather, "STEPLINKS OF THE DAY."

Floods in Germany (VIDEO)

At the Guardian U.K., "‘Like a bomb went off’: survivors of Germany’s worst floods in 200 years relive their agony":

It looks like a bomb went off. Everything’s destroyed. There’s nothing left of the city centre,” said Michaela Wolff, a winemaker from one of the German towns worst hit by last week’s catastrophic flooding.

Her family vineyard and guesthouse, the Weingut Sonnenberg, would normally be filled with tourists descending the red wine trail. This weekend it was filled with desperate refugees from homes destroyed when the Ahr burst its banks on Wednesday after days of heavy rain.

“We have water and we have electricity. The gas has been shut off, but we have more than most,” she said. “It’s chaotic, absolutely chaotic.”

Floods across western Germany and Belgium have killed at least 160 people, and the worst-hit area is the Ahrweiler district, which includes Wolf’s town of Bad Neuenahr.

Ninety-eight deaths have so far been confirmed there, among them 12 in a home for disabled people. Many more people are missing and the toll is expected to rise.

Thousands have also been made homeless, and the economic fallout from lost homes and businesses and the cost of repairing infrastructure is likely to run to billions.

Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler is a historic spa town surrounded by picturesque vineyards and populated by many small-scale vintners. Days of unrelenting rain earlier this week sent a wave of water several feet high down the Ahr, which divides the town in two.

The roads were left buried in water and mud, cars were tossed on to their sides in the square, and parts of buildings were swept away. One house was left gaping open to the street as if a bomb had blown away its front wall.

Wolff’s wine cellar was the only one in town to survive the wall of water, and it was a narrow escape: “The water stopped just centimetres from our doorstep. We had incredible luck.” Since the flood began receding, she has been working around the clock with her family to help with local clean-up and rescue efforts.

Beyond the terrible human toll, the damage to infrastructure, including roads, bridges and railways, is likely to take months to repair. The fallout is already prompting a political reckoning about the costs of climate change, with the Netherlands prime minister Mark Rutte on Friday directly blaming changing weather patterns for the intensity of flooding...

It's always global warming, right? 

Still more.

And ICYMI: "What They Haven't Told You about Climate Change."

U.S. Diplomats in Afghanistan Try to Cope with Little Military Backup

Like an episode straight outta "Homeland."

At WaPo, "U.S. diplomats in Afghanistan face daunting, dangerous mission with little military backup":

The conclusion of the Pentagon’s two-decade effort in Afghanistan lays bare the challenges facing U.S. diplomats and aid workers who remain behind, as a modest civilian force attempts to propel warring Afghans toward peace and protect advances for women without the support and reach provided by the military mission.

Current and former officials described an array of obstacles that a shrinking cadre of civilians in the bunkered U.S. Embassy in Kabul must navigate, with the coronavirus pandemic and the specter of a possible diplomatic evacuation compounding the significant difficulties inherent to working in Afghanistan.

“In the absence of a military complement in Kabul, the task of the U.S. Embassy is made infinitely more complex, dangerous and difficult,” said Hugo Llorens, who served as the top U.S. diplomat in Afghanistan under presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

The diplomatic challenges have come into focus after President Biden’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces by the end of August, a move that has emboldened the Taliban, which has intensified its campaign to retake lost ground, and deepened fears that the Kabul government could collapse.

Already a growing list of countries, including France and China, have evacuated their citizens from Afghanistan. Peace talks between the Taliban and Afghan government show few signs of progress.

Biden this month defended his decision, saying Afghans must now defend their nation. He also vowed that the United States would not abandon Afghanistan, making the diplomatic and aid mission — in particular, U.S. support for local security forces and the plight of women and girls — a central test of the president’s strategy.

“The complexity of the operations in Afghanistan are orders of magnitude greater than virtually anywhere else,” said a former senior official with knowledge of the mission in Afghanistan, where insecurity, the country’s landlocked position in central Asia, its geography, intense poverty, and tribal and ethnic division all contribute to the cost and difficulty of the newly solitary civilian mission. Like others interviewed for this report, this person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing policymaking.

In the 20 years since the United States launched its first airstrikes in Afghanistan, the work of the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other civilian agencies has been largely overshadowed by the military mission, massively larger in scale, manpower and funding.

At the height of the “civilian surge” that accompanied Obama’s troop increase in 2010, aid workers and diplomats were arrayed at consulates and outposts across the country in an effort to lay the conditions for lasting security gains.

Even after that high-water mark, diplomats in Kabul benefited from the network of military bases and the presence of military aircraft, both enabling more frequent visits to far-flung outposts to review conditions on the ground and providing an additional channel of information from troops in the field.

The U.S. nation-building effort, which once included ambitious plans to modernize infrastructure and transform the country’s economy, is littered with examples of failure...

Keep reading.

 

Saul Friedlander, The Years of Extermination

At Amazon, Saul Friedlander, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945.

Saturday Cartoon

This is nasty, anti-Semitic.

At the Jerusalem Post, "Republicans want to brand Mark Zuckerberg as ‘Zuckerbucks.’ ADL says stop. This month, the term made it into Congress: Rep. Claudia Tenney, a New York Republican, proposed the End Zuckerbucks Act, which would ban nonprofits classified as tax exempt and nonpartisan."

South Africa Violence (VIDEO)

At least 100 dead and 25,000 troops deployed.

Needless to say, it's not going too well down there.

At the Guardian U.K., "South Africa’s leaders fear fresh wave of violence by Zuma loyalists: Attacks by supporters of jailed former president ‘are bid for pardon or to unseat government’":

Triple Crown Winner Victor Espinoza Racing at Del Mar (VIDEO)

The dude's definitely elite.

At ABC 10 New San Diego:

Charles Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom

At Amazon, Charles M. Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle.

The Climate Emergency

Following-up, "The Climate Apocalypse is Near!"

Here's the best video ever, featuring Patrick Moore, for Prager University:

'Reason to Believe'

This song was actually Stewart's first single off his first studio album.

I think I had this 45 when I was a kid.

The Climate Apocalypse is Near!

Look, the climate certainly is changing --- for example, with the record-setting temperatures in California's Death Valley a few days ago. But I always ask people: How do you know it's carbon emissions or some other factor or phenomenon that's causing changes in climate, etc? It's simple science: One has to definitively rule out other possible causal factors for the changes. The Earth's axis wobbles a bit as it travel its orbit around the sun, or the sun itself has extreme periods fire-blast flareups off its surface, sending down more radiation than it normally would. Fact is, the Earth's climate is always --- and has been --- changing, for eons.

And we know much of the climate phenomena happening in this era has happened before, especially fires and floods on a biblical scales. And never forget that we had a warming pause for about 20-25 years starting around 1990, a period when more carbon emissions were spewed into the atmosphere ever in history. No one can explain why temperature remained flat during that time, when there should have been --- according the climate "experts" --- a significant increase of heat on the surface of the Earth. I didn't happen. 

So, always remain skeptical of stories that cite anthropological climate change. 

In any case, at the New York Times, "‘No One Is Safe’: Extreme Weather Batters the Wealthy World":

Some of Europe’s richest countries lay in disarray this weekend, as raging rivers burst through their banks in Germany and Belgium, submerging towns, slamming parked cars against trees and leaving Europeans shellshocked at the intensity of the destruction.

Only days before in the Northwestern United States, a region famed for its cool, foggy weather, hundreds had died of heat. In Canada, wildfire had burned a village off the map. Moscow reeled from record temperatures. And this weekend the northern Rocky Mountains were bracing for yet another heat wave, as wildfires spread across 12 states in the American West.

The extreme weather disasters across Europe and North America have driven home two essential facts of science and history: The world as a whole is neither prepared to slow down climate change, nor live with it. The week’s events have now ravaged some of the world’s wealthiest nations, whose affluence has been enabled by more than a century of burning coal, oil and gas — activities that pumped the greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that are warming the world.

“I say this as a German: The idea that you could possibly die from weather is completely alien,” said Friederike Otto, a physicist at Oxford University who studies the links between extreme weather and climate change. “There’s not even a realization that adaptation is something we have to do right now. We have to save peoples lives.”

The floods in Europe have killed at least 165 people, most of them in Germany, Europe’s most powerful economy. Across Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, hundreds have been reported as missing, which suggests the death toll could rise. Questions are now being raised about whether the authorities adequately warned the public about risks.

The bigger question is whether the mounting disasters in the developed world will have a bearing on what the world’s most influential countries and companies will do to reduce their own emissions of planet-warming gases. They come a few months ahead of United Nations-led climate negotiations in Glasgow in November, effectively a moment of reckoning for whether the nations of the world will be able to agree on ways to rein in emissions enough to avert the worst effects of climate change...

Reining in global warming emissions, blah, blah, blah...

Developing countries will not forego the use of fossil fuels to power their development. Even China, which is an economic powerhouse these days --- is in many respects still a developing country, and its leaders won't sign on to a global pact to cut the use carbons, lest they halt their upward economic trajectory, and consign hundreds of millions of their people to perpetual poverty. 

These are truth claim, not scientific hokus pocus. *Shrugs.*

Still more here.

Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well

From one of the premier legal theorists of critical race theory, at Amazon, Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism.

Charles Murray, Two Truths about Race in America

At Amazon, Charles Murray, Charles Murray, Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America.

CNN is Going Down!

I don't know if the whole network's going down, but their much-vaunted flagship morning program, "New Day," is down for the count.

At Fox News, "CNN boss Jeff Zucker, former king of morning shows, can’t fix ‘New Day’ disaster: 'Ratings for ‘New Day’ are shockingly low, almost at the point where they are merely collecting viewers who are randomly cruising through a channel lineup,' Jeffrey McCall said."

White House 'Flagging' Posts for Facebook to Censor for Promoting 'Disinformation' (VIDEO)

Glenn Greenwald posted an awesome thread on this yesterday: "The White House is admitting that they're compiling lists of people who they claim are posting content they regard as "problematic" and that constitute "misinformation" and are demanding Facebook remove them. This is authoritarianism."

And from yesterday's All-Star Panel with Bret Baier, at Fox News. An excellent segment, especially Ben Dominech and Kim Strassel:

Many Jobs Lost During Pandemic Are Gone for Good

No surprise here.

At WSJ, "Many Jobs Lost During the Coronavirus Pandemic Just Aren’t Coming Back":

Job openings are at a record high, leaving the impression that employers are hiring like never before. But many businesses that laid off workers during the pandemic are already predicting they will need fewer employees in the future.

As with past economic shocks, the pandemic-induced recession was a catalyst for employers to invest in automation and implement other changes designed to curb hiring. In industries ranging from hotels to aerospace to restaurants, businesses have reviewed their operations and discovered ways to save on labor costs for the long term.

Economic data show that companies have learned to do more with less over the last 16 months or so. Output nearly recovered to pre-pandemic levels in the first quarter of 2021—down just 0.5% from the end of 2019—even though U.S. workers put in 4.3% fewer hours than they did before the health crisis.

“When demand falls, it’s a natural time to retool or invest because you won’t lose customers or sales while you tinker and shut things down,” said Brad Hershbein, senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. “You don’t want to interrupt business when it’s at its peak.”

The changes will require many workers to adapt. Though the job market is strong right now for highly paid professionals and low-wage service workers alike, not everyone can find a match for their skills, experience or location, creating a paradox of relatively high unemployment combined with record job openings. Economists said it can be a prolonged process for some laid-off workers to find jobs or acquire the skills needed for new careers...

Still more.

And at WaPo, "Millions of jobs probably aren’t coming back, even after the pandemic ends":

Millions of jobs that have been shortchanged or wiped out entirely by the coronavirus pandemic are unlikely to come back, economists warn, setting up a massive need for career changes and retraining in the United States.

The coronavirus pandemic has triggered permanent shifts in how and where people work. Businesses are planning for a future where more people are working from home, traveling less for business, or replacing workers with robots. All of these modifications mean many workers will not be able to do the same job they did before the pandemic, even after much of the U.S. population gets vaccinated against the deadly virus.

Microsoft founder-turned-philanthropist Bill Gates raised eyebrows in November when he predicted that half of business travel and 30 percent of “days in the office” would go away forever. That forecast no longer seems far-fetched. In a report coming out later this week that was previewed to The Washington Post, the McKinsey Global Institute says that 20 percent of business travel won’t come back and about 20 percent of workers could end up working from home indefinitely. These shifts mean fewer jobs at hotels, restaurants and downtown shops, in addition to ongoing automation of office support roles and some factory jobs.

“We’re recovering, but to a different economy,” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell said in November.

The nation’s unemployed are starting to react to these big shifts. Two-thirds of the jobless say they have seriously considered changing their occupation or field of work, according to the Pew Research Center. That is a significant increase from the Great Recession era, when 52 percent said they were considering such a change.

“We think that there is a very real scenario in which a lot of the large employment, low-wage jobs in retail and in food service just go away in the coming years,” said Susan Lund, head of the McKinsey Global Institute. “It means that we’re going to need a lot more short-term training and credentialing programs.”

One problem for many unemployed people is they lack the money to retrain. This crisis has put many out of work for nearly a year, and the financial support from unemployment and food stamps is often not sufficient to pay their bills. The stimulus legislation being debated in Congress does not include any money for retraining.

“Trying to figure out what to do six months from now is hard when you are trying to make ends meet and you don’t have enough food,” said Brad Hershbein, who helps design and study retraining programs as a senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research...

As the say, capitalism is creative destruction.

More here.

 

John McWhorter, Woke Racism

At Amazon, John McWhorter, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America.

Senator Marco Rubio on Cuba and Human Rights (VIDEO)

The senator, perhaps the sole remaining neoconservative in the G.O.P., discusses Cuba, human rights, and Black Lives Matter. 

At Fox News:

Plus, more at the New York Post, "BLM under fire for defending Cuban regime, blaming protests on US."

Megan Parry's Friday Forecast

I guess the real heat's gonna hit the Southland in August and September, because temps this summer have so far been consistently below average.

Here's the lovely Ms. Megan:

Lame: Los Angeles County Re-Ups the Mask Mandate

I personally hope this doesn't last too long. It's so stupid, and I work in Long Beach, which is, wouldn't you know, in L.A. County. *Eye-roll.*

At the L.A. Times, "L.A. County will require masks indoors amid alarming rise in coronavirus cases."

Of course, L.A."s the only county (or city) in the state reimposing the mandate. It's all so lame. 

The state of California says it will not follow L.A. County with a new indoor mask mandate, so, once again, L.A. County is flying solo & going further than state & CDC guidelines, just like when they were initially the only county that decided to ban outdoor dining last fall.

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) July 16, 2021

Fabulous Sammy Braddy

 Wow!

Sammy Braddy looks spectacular (at the photo).

Plus, a peekaboo hottie takes it off, and the beautiful Megan Fox.

Africa's Covid Crisis

Well, maybe they're waiting for Bill Gates or Bono to come to the rescue? *Shrug.*

At the New York Times, "Africa’s Covid Crisis Deepens, but Vaccines Are Still Far Off."

The Delta variant is sweeping across Africa, but only about 1 percent of Africans have been fully vaccinated.

Rich nations have bought up vaccine doses and hundreds of millions of shots from a global vaccine-sharing effort have failed to materialize. https://t.co/0svi9wnYnG

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) July 16, 2021

Kasie Hunt Leaving MSNBC After Eight Yeas

She signed off her show yesterday with the announcement she was baling out for greener pastures. 

What she didn't announce, according to Variety, is that she's apparently heading to CNN after a $1 million to $1.5 million enticement from CNN, which is launching a major effort in live news streaming.

I like her --- she was the only one at MSMBC I could take seriously. In fact, she seemed more a traditional journalist --- mainstream even --- than all the other clowns on that network.

See, "CNN Snares Kasie Hunt From NBC in Big Bet on Streaming (EXCLUSIVE)."

Some personal news, as they say — thank you to all of the viewers, reporters, lawmakers and everyone else who’s gotten up extra early to help make ⁦@WayTooEarly⁩ better. I loved doing this show. More soon! #WayTooEarly pic.twitter.com/k3ULeqRZJI

— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) July 16, 2021

Christina Hoff Sommers Who Stole Feminism

At Amazon, Christina Hoff Sommers Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women.

The Professionals — 'Little Boys Like You, They Got a Job to Do...'

The Professionals — "Little Boys."

Live version is here.

And the lyrics are here (scroll down a bit past all the Google ads).

Andrew Biggio, The Rifle

At Amazon, Andrew Biggio, The Rifle: Combat Stories from America's Last WWII Veterans, Told Through an M1 Garand.

Ford's New 2021 Mustang Mach 1 (VIDEO)

The car gets a fabulous review from this Edmunds guy:

Teen Gender Transition (VIDEO)

It's Abigail Shrier, at Reason, "Abigail Shrier Worries Teenage Gender Transitions Lead to 'Irreversible Damage'": The controversial author on her acclaimed and condemned book, being deplatformed, and the future of free expression in an increasingly polarized marketplace of ideas."

Abigail Shrier, Irreversible Damage

At Amazon, Abigail Shrier, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.

Random Cartoon

Via Theo Spark.

Home Portable Counter-Top Ice Machine -- Great for Mixed Drinks and Holiday Parties

At Amazon, Prime Home Portable Ice Machine for Countertop - Ice Maker Great for Mixed Drinks & Parties - Electric Ice Making Machine with Ice Scoop and Basket.

BONUS: Victor Davis Hanson, Mexifornia: A State of Becoming. 

Looting and Rioting Break Out in South Africa (VIDEO)

At the Los Angeles Times, "Death toll rises to 72 in South Africa rioting after jailing of ex-president":

More than half of South Africa’s 60 million people live in poverty, with an unemployment rate of 32%, according to official statistics. The COVID-19 pandemic, with layoffs and an economic downturn, has increased the hunger and desperation that helped propel the protests triggered by Zuma’s arrest into wider rioting.

And watch: "Looting and rioting break out across South Africa in wake of former President Zuma’s imprisonment."

Biden Lobbies for Democrats' Infrastructure Scam (VIDEO)

 Passage of the bill really depends on one person: Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

At the New York Times, "Democrats Roll Out $3.5 Trillion Budget to Fulfill Biden’s Broad Agenda."

Olga Ospina's Forecast

She's a sweetie.

For KCBS Los Angeles:

Turn! Turn! Turn!

The Byrds, from 1965.

It's Biblical: "The lyrics – except for the title, which is repeated throughout the song, and the final two lines – consist of the first eight verses of the third chapter of the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes."

George Floyd Mural Struck by Lightning (VIDEO)

 In Toledo, Ohio, an act of God.

A WTOL, Toledo, "George Floyd mural in north Toledo reduced to rubble after being struck by lightning; mayor and artist say it will be replaced: The piece was created by Toledo artist David Ross. The building was said to be stable and secure prior to the lightning strike, however, the facade was not."

And watch: "George Floyd mural ... struck by lightning."

Leader McConnell May Back Biden's Infrastructure Boondoggle

Apparently this is the one piece of the Dems' legislative agenda that McConnell will support --- probably because the bill is larded with billions in bipartisan pork-barrel spending.

At Politico, "Pigs fly: McConnell weighs giving Biden a bipartisan win":

Something strange is happening in Washington: Mitch McConnell might go along with a central piece of Joe Biden’s agenda.

The self-appointed “Grim Reaper” of the Senate, a minority leader who said just two months ago that “100% of my focus is on standing up to this administration,” has been remarkably circumspect about the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure deal. He’s privately telling his members to separate that effort from Democrats’ party-line $3.5 trillion spending plan and publicly observed there’s a “decent” chance for its success.

Other than questioning its financing, McConnell has aired little criticism of the bipartisan agreement to fund roads, bridges and other physical infrastructure, even as he panned Democrats’ separate spending plans on Wednesday as “wildly out of proportion” given the nation's inflation rate.

His cautious approach to a top Biden priority reflects the divide among Senate Republicans over whether to collaborate with Democrats on part of the president’s spending plans while fighting tooth and nail on the rest. Many Democrats predict McConnell will kill the agreement after stringing talks out for weeks, but the current infrastructure talks are particularly sensitive for the GOP leader because one of his close allies, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, is the senior Republican negotiator.

McConnell is aware of the conventional wisdom that he will ultimately knife the deal and is taking pains not to become the face of its opposition...

RTWT. 

 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey

At Amazon, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights. 

The C.R.T. Scam

 From Jason Riley, at WSJ, "Critical Race Theory Is a Hustle":

Ultimately, Critical Race Theory is about blaming your problems on other people—based on their race—which might be the last thing we should be teaching our children, writes @jasonrileywsj https://t.co/RGzagC1qOv

— WSJ Editorial Page (@WSJopinion) July 14, 2021

A majority of American fourth- and eighth-graders can’t read or do math at grade level, according to the Education Department. And that assessment is from 2019, before the learning losses from pandemic school closures. Whenever someone asks me about critical race theory, that statistic comes to mind. What’s the priority, teaching math and reading, or turning elementary schools into social-justice boot camps?

Given that black and Hispanic students are more likely to be lagging academically, it’s a question that anyone professing to care deeply about social inequality might consider. Learning gaps manifest themselves in all kinds of ways later in life, from unemployment rates and income levels to the likelihood of teenage pregnancy, substance abuse and involvement with the criminal-justice system. Our jails and prisons already have too many woke illiterates.

Wealthier parents will make sure their kids receive a decent education, even if it means using private schools or hiring tutors. But the majority of children are relegated to the traditional public-school system, where progressives now want to prioritize the teaching of critical race theory. In addition to being a horrible idea, the timing couldn’t be worse. As the country rapidly diversifies—for more than a decade, U.S. population growth has been driven primarily by Asians and Hispanics—liberals want to teach children to obsess over racial and ethnic differences. What could go wrong?

Recently, the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, announced that they had jumped on the bandwagon. At its annual meeting earlier this month, the NEA adopted a proposal stating that it is “reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frameworks for understanding and interpreting the impact of the past on current society, including critical race theory.” More, the organization pledged to “fight back against anti-CRT rhetoric” and issue a study that “critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society.” There was no proposal vowing to improve math and reading test scores, alas.

Meanwhile, the NEA’s sister outfit, the American Federation of Teachers, has joined forces with Ibram X. Kendi, an activist-scholar who openly embraces racial discrimination against whites. “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” Mr. Kendi asserted in “How to Be an Anti-Racist.” Sadly, that sort of circular drivel is what passes for deep thinking on race today. Mr. Kendi spoke at an AFT conference last week, and the union announced that it will donate copies of his writings to schools, AFT members, educators and youth mentors.

Critical-race ideology is also entering the classroom via the New York Times “1619 Project,” which claims that the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery and earned its creator, Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize. In a forthcoming book, “Woke Racism,” the humanities professor John McWhorter argues that proponents like Mr. Kendi and Ms. Hannah-Jones have mostly been given a pass because they’re racial minorities, they’re on the left, and criticizing them is politically incorrect.

“On the issue of the Revolutionary War, Hannah-Jones’s claim is simply false, but our current cultural etiquette requires pretending that isn’t true—because she’s black,” Mr. McWhorter writes. “Someone has received a Pulitzer Prize for a mistaken interpretation of historical documents about which legions of actual scholars are expert. Meanwhile, the claim is being broadcast, unquestioned, in educational materials being distributed across the nation.”

Mr. McWhorter is right to point out the racial double standards at work in elevating shoddy pseudoscholarship...

A lot could go wrong, apparently.

Still more. 

The Sackler Family's Opioid Settlement and Billionaire Justice

 On the opiod crisis, at the New York Times, "This Is What Billionaire Justice Looks Like":

In 2016, a small-time drug dealer in Leesburg, Va., named Darnell Washington sold a customer a batch of what he thought was heroin. It turned out to be fentanyl. The customer shared it with a friend, and the friend died from an overdose.

To combat the opioid crisis, prosecutors have begun treating overdose deaths not as accidents but as crimes, using tough statutes to charge the dealers who sold the drugs. Washington had never met the person who overdosed. But, facing a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 20 years for “distribution resulting in death,” he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of distribution and is now serving a 15-year sentence in federal prison.

I thought about this the other day when it became clear that members of the billionaire Sackler family will most likely soon receive a sweeping grant of immunity from all litigation relating to their role in helping to precipitate the opioid crisis. Through their control of Purdue Pharma, the families of Raymond and Mortimer Sackler made a vast fortune selling OxyContin, a powerful prescription opioid painkiller that, like fentanyl, is a chemical cousin of heroin.

Though they are widely reviled for profiting from a public health crisis that has resulted in the death of half a million Americans, they have used their money and influence to play our system like a harp. It is hardly news that our society treats people like Darnell Washington with sledgehammer vengeance, and people like the Sacklers with velvet gloves.

But it’s worth asking: How did they pull this off?

For a long time, the families of Raymond and Mortimer Sackler simply evaded scrutiny, pruning their public image so that people knew about the philanthropic contributions like the Sackler Library at Oxford, but not about the source of their wealth. After the press started writing stories, in 2001, about how OxyContin had given rise to a wave of addiction, high-price spin doctors labored to keep the Sackler name out of the controversy.

As the death toll associated with OxyContin grew, Purdue continued to argue in its marketing campaign that the drug was rarely addictive. When journalists raised tough questions, the company sent its lawyers to intervene with their editors.

This “can I see your manager” approach works even with law enforcement. In 2006, federal prosecutors in Virginia were preparing to charge Purdue with felonies. They focused on three senior lieutenants who worked for the company, expecting them to flip on the Sacklers — the ultimate target, according to the lead prosecutor — when faced with potential prison time. But Purdue had enlisted two former U.S. attorneys, Rudy Giuliani and Mary Jo White. Ms. White telephoned Paul McNulty, who was then the deputy attorney general: “It’s Mary Jo White,” Mr. McNulty recalled recently. “It’s somebody who thought of herself as having access.”

The Justice Department informed the federal prosecutors in Virginia that they could not charge the executives with felonies, robbing them of their most significant point of leverage: the threat of jail. The executives did not cooperate with efforts to implicate the Sacklers; instead, they pleaded guilty to misdemeanors while maintaining that they had done nothing wrong. The company pleaded guilty to felony “misbranding” and paid a $600 million fine.

You would not be alone in detecting a whiff of La Cosa Nostra...

Still more at that top link.

Today's Shopping

At Amazon, Today's Deals. New deals. Every day. Shop our Deal of the Day, Lightning Deals and more daily deals and limited-time sales.

And also, KIND Bars, Dark Chocolate Nuts & Sea Salt, Gluten Free, 1.4 Ounce Bars, 12 Count.

More, Buck Knives 284 Bantam One-Hand Opening Folding Knife, and Buck Knives 110 Famous Folding Hunter Knife with Genuine Leather Sheath.

Here, Mountain House Classic Bucket - Freeze Dried Backpacking and Camping Food - 24 Servings.

Plus, Koffee Kult Dark Roast Coffee Beans - Highest Quality Gourmet - Whole Bean Coffee - Fresh Roasted Coffee Beans, 32oz.

BONUS: Peter Cozzens, The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West.

Shohei Ohtani Bats and Pitches in All-Star Game (VIDEO)

At the video, Ohtani gets three outs in the bottom of the first (so he was the American League's lead pitcher for this year's game). 

Apparently, he was the biggest star at this year's game as well.

At LAT, "Shohei Ohtani solidifies role as baseball’s biggest attraction in All-Star debut":

DENVER — They cheered their own, hometown ovations for Colorado Rockies manager Bud Black and shortstop Trevor Story, and a raucous welcome back to former Rockies star Nolan Arenado.

They booed players from the Yankees and Dodgers, jeering even Chris Taylor for his place on an evil big-market team.

For almost every other player introduced at the start of Tuesday’s MLB All-Star game, however, the crowd reception was routine.

For only one other player did the 49,184 inside Coors Field make an exception, roaring to life at the announcement of one more specific name.

“Leading off,” Fox broadcaster Joe Buck announced over the stadium public-address system, “the designated hitter, and starting pitcher: Shohei Ohtani!”

Suddenly, as the Angels’ two-way star flashed across the video board, warming up in the bullpen in preparation for his first All-Star game appearance, a jam-packed ballpark went nuts.

If ever there was a doubt about Ohtani’s place, popularity and impact within the sport, this week’s festivities had delivered one more moment putting them to rest.

Over the first half of this season, Ohtani has become one of the biggest attractions in baseball. And this week, he looked like a natural in the role, calmly and confidently saying and doing all the right things.

He participated in Monday’s home run derby, exhausting himself in an epic first-round defeat to Juan Soto. He walked the “Purple Carpet” before Tuesday’s game and made TV appearance after TV appearance leading up to first pitch.

The first player in MLB history to be selected to an All-Star game as a pitcher and hitter, he did both in the midsummer classic too, grounding out twice as the American League’s starting designated hitter and pitching a perfect first inning as the team’s starting pitcher, hitting 100 mph in a game for the first time in three months.

He called it the “most memorable” moment of his MLB career so far — “obviously I’ve never played in the playoffs yet, or World Series,” he noted, adding “once I do that, that’s probably going to surpass it” — and said he even got nervous being around so many other greats in the sport...

Nervous? Nah. The guy was out there with a big smile on his face, soaking up the adulation and having the time of his life.

A real pro.

Still more.

  

My Black Generation Is Fighting Like Hell to Stop the Whitelash

Pfft. 

This guy, Elie Mystal, is a freakin' dork.

At the Nation, "My Black Generation Is Fighting Like Hell to Stop the Whitelash":

The thought that:
A: The white people who don't know what's been happening.
B: Are going to be the white people to rise up
C: Against fellow whites
D: IS FUCKING STOOPID

— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) July 13, 2021

It now appears likely that I will be part of the first generation of Black people to do worse than my parents and leave a crueler world for my children than the one I inherited.

When I say “worse,” I don’t mean by a metric of homes owned or acres plowed or yachts docked or whatever measure white people mean when they bemoan doing worse than their parents. In fact, I’m doing better than my parents economically, as are a visible minority of Black people my age (I’m 43). Instead, I mean that I inherited a legacy of civil rights, a stone of freedom each Black generation since emancipation has pushed relentlessly through peaks and valleys towards the summit of equality, but mine will be the first generation to lose more ground than we’ve gained. We will leave our kids further from the promised land than our parents left us.

White Americans my age are one step removed from their “Greatest Generation.” It was their grandparents who went to Europe to fight the Nazis and then returned and settled right back into the apartheid system that was well-established here. The Black civil rights generation, our greatest generation, fought those forces of fascism and white supremacy here, on the home front, several years later, and in so doing forced America to live up to its empty promises of freedom and equality for all.

Thanks to their efforts, my generation was born into more opportunity than any generation of Black folks in the history of the New World. We haven’t squandered it. My Black generation has enjoyed unprecedented social and cultural influence. Some of us have achieved wild economic success. We even got to see the very first Black president. If you start the clock in April 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the color line in Major League Baseball, you’ll see that Black Americans have accomplished one of the most successful nonviolent political and social revolutions in human history.

But my generation has not been the cause of those victories, merely the beneficiaries of our parents’ and grandparents’ successes. Even Barack Obama understood that. When he met Ruby Bridges, the woman who, at the age of 6, integrated the first elementary school in Louisiana, Obama said, “I think it’s fair to say that if it wasn’t for you guys, I wouldn’t be here today.”

Maybe that’s why white people are trying to ban Bridges’s story today. A new Tennessee law bars the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public schools. While there is, obviously, no such teaching going on in Tennessee public schools—Critical Race Theory is, for the 1,000th time, an academic legal discipline—the white parents pushing this know what they’re after. They highlighted four books they wanted taken out of the Tennessee curriculum; Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story, by Ruby Bridges, was one of them.

Bridges’s generation made Obama possible. My generation has lived to see white people try to erase those gains...

Still more.

RELATED: I don't actually believe this story, at Truthout, "Right-Wingers Are Taking Over Library Boards to Remove Books on Racism."

Pfft.

Megan Parry's Mild Weather Forecast

My buddy up in Fresno emailed and mentioned it was up to 111 degrees up there, and of course we had the record-setting temperatures in Death Valley a few days back (130 degrees, yikes!). 

But here in the Southland it's been a truly mild summer, with temps actually below average for this time of years.

Here's the lovely Ms. Megan, who is expecting:

Iranian Intelligence Operatives Arrested in Plot to Kidnap U.S.-Based Activist

Wow! A little international intrigue, and featuring the Iranians too, heh.

At the Justice Department, "Iranian Intelligence Officials Indicted on Kidnapping Conspiracy Charges."

And at the New York Times, "Iranian Operatives Planned to Kidnap a Brooklyn Author, Prosecutors Say":

An Iranian American journalist living in Brooklyn who has been a sharp critic of the Iranian government was the target of an international kidnapping plot orchestrated by an intelligence network in Iran, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

In an indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan, four Iranians were charged with conspiring to kidnap the journalist and author, Masih Alinejad.

Ms. Alinejad was not identified by prosecutors, but confirmed in an interview that she was the intended target of the plot. Last year, Ms. Alinejad wrote in a newspaper article that Iranian government officials had unleashed a social media campaign calling for her abduction.

The four defendants all live in Iran and remain at large, the prosecutors said, identifying one of them, Alireza Shavaroghi Farahani, 50, as an Iranian intelligence official and the three others as “Iranian intelligence assets.” A fifth defendant, accused of supporting the plot but not participating in the kidnapping conspiracy, was arrested in California.

The indictment describes a plot that included attempts to lure Ms. Alinejad, an American citizen, to a third country to capture her and forcibly render her to Iran. The intelligence official, Mr. Farahani, and his network used private investigators to surveil, photograph and video record Ms. Alinejad and members of her household in Brooklyn, the government said.

The extensive surveillance that Mr. Farahani’s network procured included the use of a live, high-definition video feed depicting Ms. Alinejad’s home, prosecutors said.

“This is not some far-fetched movie plot,” William F. Sweeney Jr., the head of the F.B.I.’s New York office, said in a statement.

Audrey Strauss, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said, “A U.S. citizen living in the United States must be able to advocate for human rights without being targeted by foreign intelligence operatives.”

President Biden late last month ordered airstrikes against Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Iraq, telling Congress that he acted to defend American military personnel and deter Iranian attacks. At the same time, the two countries are working toward a resurrection of a 2015 deal to limit Iran’s nuclear power.

Ms. Alinejad, who hosts a program called “Tablet” on Voice of America Persian, a U.S. government-owned broadcaster, has been harshly critical of the nuclear deal.

In a brief phone interview on Tuesday evening, Ms. Alinejad said that learning details of the plot was shocking to her but that she had told her husband and son not to panic.

“That shows that they’re not scared of America — they’re scared of me,” she said, adding, “Otherwise, they would not send anyone here to kidnap me.”

In a 2018 essay in The New York Times, Ms. Alinejad described her decision to leave Iran a decade earlier.

“As a journalist in Iran, I often got into trouble exposing the regime’s mismanagement and corruption until, eventually, my press pass was revoked,” she wrote. “I was often threatened with arrest or worse for writing articles critical of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ultimately, I was forced to flee my homeland in 2009.”

According to the indictment, in 2018, the Iranian government tried to pay relatives of Ms. Alinejad who live in Iran to invite her to travel to a third country, apparently for the purpose of having her arrested or detained and taken to Iran to be imprisoned. Her relatives did not accept the offer, the indictment said...

 

Eiza Gonzalez and More

Here, "Eiza Gonzalez Braless Nipple Pokies in Silk Blouse."

And here.

Bonus: From Arizona State University:

ASU pic.twitter.com/vvigNjIJI1

— Old Row Rad Chicks (@OldRowRadChicks) July 12, 2021