'X-Men: First Class'

When we saw "Super 8" a couple of weekends back, the movie previews were wicked: "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," "Captain America," Green Lantern," "Zookeeper," "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2," and "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1."

I thought my youngest son would give me fist-bump during "Transformers," but it might have been a little scary, so he kept his fist to himself. But when "Captain America" previewed, he looked over and said, "You and me, you and me!", so I guess we're going to that one.

Anyway, on Father's Day my oldest boy said let's go to the movies, and we saw "X-Men: First Class," which as great. That said, mixed reviews at Los Angeles Times and New York Times:

Michele Bachmann: Obama 'Has Failed the African American Community'

Another reason why I just love Michele Bachmann.

This has been one of my biggest criticism of the administration, one I've been making for a long time. Obama's failed minority communities all around.

At Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Michele Bachmann: President Obama Has Failed African-Americans":

Also at London's Daily Mail, "Obama has failed blacks, says Bachmann as African-American unemployment hits 16%."

Conservative Blogger John Hugh Gilmore Arrested in Muslim Hijab Altercation

The background's at AmericaBlog, "GOP blogger arrested at Netroots Nation for allegedly harassing two female bloggers for wearing Muslim head scarves in public. Women don hijabs and hold flash mob at right-wing blog conference to protest."

The guy's name is John Hugh Gilmore, of the Minnesota Conservative blog. The arrest sheet is here. And here's the flash mob:

Robert Stacy McCain was at Right Online and he reports, "Disorderly Conduct at Right Online?":

I have never met Gilmore and, until I saw this story, had never heard of him or his blog. The “hijab flash mob” appears to have been a provocative stunt by the Left — at one point, these women came to Right Online trying to waylay Herman Cain — and I regret that any conservative would allow himself to be provoked, which served only the purposes of the provocateurs.

The left goes around looking for trouble, exploiting the very stereotypes they allegedly decry. It's pretty bad, pathetic even. But when you got noting but bankrupt collectivism, you gotta try to generate some sympathy one way or another.

Jon Stewart on 'Fox News Sunday'

This is an amazingly testy interview. Jon Stewart gets visibly angry, repeatedly. And kudos to Chris Wallace for keeping cool. I read over the weekend that Jon Stewart lashed out at Wallace, calling him "insane." And he did:

At Part 2 Stewart claims that Fox News has "the most consistently misinformed media viewers." And this has created a huge war over truth claims online. Steve Benen, at Washington Monthly, hopped on Stewart's claim faster than Anthony Weiner hitting the delete key: "The ‘most consistently misinformed media viewers’." I thought Benen's response typically opportunistic, but not serious, because political science shows a huge level of political non-sophistication among the American population. But lefties hate Fox News, so that was ammo for the battle. And then along came PolitiFact, which called out Stwart: "Jon Stewart says those who watch Fox News are the 'most consistently misinformed media viewers'." (At Memeorandum.)

Anyway, "Hammering" Jane Hamsher actually fact-checks PolitiFact, or she dictionary-checks, lamely claiming that Stewart didn't really say Fox viewers were misinformed when he said they were the most consistently misinformed, or something.

Anyway, see also Da Tech Guy, "Jon Stewart and Irony Overload," and Lonely Conservative, "Politifact: Jon Stewart’s Claim Fox News Viewers ‘Most Consistently Uninformed’ Is False."

Facebook Restores Roger Ebert Page After 'Jackass' Controversy

His Facebook page is here.

Lame though.

Turns out that Ebert was on both Facebook and Twitter, talkin' trash on Ryan Dunn, who died Monday in a car crash in West Goshen, Pennsylvania. CNN has a report. And Philidephia Inquirer and Wall Street Journal. Also at Gossip Cop, "Roger Ebert’s Facebook Page Taken Down Amid Ryan Dunn Controversy."

Ebert has a write up at his blog, "Friends don't let friends drink and drive." The dude loves the controversy.

Background on Ryan Dunn at The Other McCain, "‘It Appears He Was Drinking Heavily Before Climbing Behind the Wheel …’"

Lady Gaga Attracts Marxist Philosopher Slavoj Žižek (and Vice Versa)

I still like her, but she makes it hard. Sheesh.

At New York Post, "Marxist Theorist Slavoj Žižek 'The World's Hippest Philosopher' Catches Lady Gaga's Attention."

Lady Gaga has struck up a strong friendship with mysterious Marxist Slavoj Zizek, dubbed "the world's hippest philosopher."

In the midst of her rift with long-term boyfriend Luc Carl, eyebrows were raised over Gaga's decision to spend a lot of time with the 62-year-old, bearded, postmodern theorist and pal of Julian Assange while she was touring the UK and US this spring.

Sources say Gaga and Slovenian-born Zizek -- who like Salman Rushdie seems to be intellectual catnip to beautiful women and who was once married to Argentine model Analia Hounie -- spent time together discussing feminism and collective human creativity. The pop star also agreed to support Zizek at a March rally in London when the lecturers' union UCU was on strike.

In a recent blog post titled "Communism Knows No Monster," Zizek called Gaga "my good friend" and said, "There is a certain performance of theory in her costumes, videos and even (some of) her music." He says her infamous meat dress is a reference to "the consistent linking in the oppressive imaginary of the patriarchy of the female body and meat, of animality and the feminine."

More at that link above, and check DSG, "ŽIŽEK/GAGA: Communism Knows No Monster." Too much drivel, but it's the nihilist, postmodern insight into Gaga and culture's that's key. Freaky.

RELATED: See Adam Kirsch, at TNR, "The Deadly Jester":

The curious thing about the Žižek phenomenon is that the louder he applauds violence and terror—especially the terror of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, whose "lost causes" Žižek takes up in another new book, In Defense of Lost Causes—the more indulgently he is received by the academic left, which has elevated him into a celebrity and the center of a cult. A glance at the blurbs on his books provides a vivid illustration of the power of repressive tolerance. In Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle, Žižek claims, "Better the worst Stalinist terror than the most liberal capitalist democracy"; but on the back cover of the book we are told that Žižek is "a stimulating writer" who "will entertain and offend, but never bore." In The Fragile Absolute, he writes that "the way to fight ethnic hatred effectively is not through its immediate counterpart, ethnic tolerance; on the contrary, what we need is even more hatred, but proper political hatred"; but this is an example of his "typical brio and boldness." And In Defense of Lost Causes, where Žižek remarks that "Heidegger is 'great' not in spite of, but because of his Nazi engagement," and that "crazy, tasteless even, as it may sound, the problem with Hitler was that he was not violent enough, that his violence was not 'essential' enough"; but this book, its publisher informs us, is "a witty, adrenalinfueled manifesto for universal values."

More Stalinist terror AND Hitler wasn't violent enough.

No wonder he's the bomb on the left. The is right up Robert Farley's alley!

(And folks gotta read that whole TNR essay. It's a real encapsulation of today's left:

That liberalism is evil and that communism is good is not his conclusion, it is his premise; and the contortions of his thought, especially in his most political books, result from the need to reconcile that premise with a reality that seems abundantly to indicate the opposite.

Hence the necessity of the Matrix, or something like it, for Žižek's worldview. And hence his approval of anything that unplugs us from the Matrix and returns us to the desert of the real—for instance, the horrors of September 11. One of the ambiguities of Žižek's recent work lies in his attitude toward the kind of Islamic fundamentalists who perpetrated the attacks. On the one hand, they are clearly reactionary in their religious dogmatism; on the other hand, they have been far more effective than the Zapatistas or the Porto Alegre movement in discomfiting American capitalism. As Žižek observes, "while they pursue what appear to us to be evil goals with evil means, the very form of their activity meets the highest standard of the good." Yes, the good: Mohammed Atta and his comrades exemplified "good as the spirit of and actual readiness for sacrifice in the name of some higher cause." Žižek's dialectic allows him to have it all: the jihadis are not really motivated by religion, as they say they are; they are actually casualties of global capitalism, and thus "objectively" on the left. "The only way to conceive of what happened on September 11," he writes, "is to locate it in the context of the antagonisms of global capitalism" ...

When it comes to the heart of the matter, what Žižek wants is not dialectic, but repetition: another Robespierre, another Lenin, another Mao. His "progressivism" is not linear, it is cyclical. And if objective conditions are different from what they were in 1789 or 1917, so much the worse for objective conditions. "True ideas are eternal, they are indestructible, they always return every time they are proclaimed dead," Žižek writes in his introduction. One of the sections in the book is titled "Give the dictatorship of the proletariat a chance!"

He's murderous. That sounds like REPSAC = CASPER. Perfectly. Evil)

'What Third World Women Want'

"According to First World Feminists," by Charlotte Allen, at Weekly Standard.

It's about an academic conference, "Driving Change, Shaping Lives: Gender in the Developing World." I love this part, especially the "Battle of the Filipina Hostesses":

The first speaker was Valerie M. Hudson, a political science professor at Brigham Young University, leading off a panel titled “Shifting Populations.” Hudson delivered a genuine population-shift shocker: In China and India, which between them account for about 40 percent of the world’s 7 billion people, women, who in the West slightly outnumber men because they tend to live longer, are outnumbered by the male sex to the tune of 33 million in China and 28 million in India. The reason? As Hudson explained, it was the female-lethal combination of sex-selection abortion following the advent of fetal ultrasound during the 1980s and China’s longtime one-child policy, which has resulted in widespread female infanticide along with many forced abortions. As she rattled off disturbing statistics​—​120 boy babies for every 100 girl babies in China in 2005, and 121 for every 100 in India​—​Hudson pointed out that sex-selection abortion and female infanticide are illegal in both countries, but the laws on the books have failed to dent the cultural phenomenon of “son preference” in Asia, in which sons are valued because they’re expected to support elderly parents, whereas daughters often cost dowry money. “That’s 90 million missing women,” Hudson said.

In 2004 she and Andrea den Boer, a lecturer in politics and international affairs at the University of Kent, had published a book, Bare Branches, about the negative repercussions for a society, such as in China, that produces large numbers of surplus young men who cannot find wives and form families. “Those who don’t marry tend to have no skills and no education,” Hudson explained. “They are already at risk for violent behavior, since young men without stable social bonds tend to commit most violent crimes. They tend to be targets for military recruitment, and societies with surplus males tend to be marked by an aggressive foreign policy and ethnic groups pitted against each other.”

Maybe it was because abortion makes women’s studies people skittish, but Hudson’s ominous statistics​—​and indeed her entire presentation​—​were promptly forgotten, submerged in what might be called the Battle of the Filipina Hostesses. The combatants were Hudson’s two fellow panelists, Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California and self-described former Filipina hostess, and Amy O’Neill Richard, a senior adviser in the State Department’s Office of Trafficking in Persons, a priority project of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. During the 1980s and 1990s tens of thousands of young women were imported into Japan by labor contractors from the chronically impoverished Philippines to sing, dance, flirt with, and coax drink purchases from stressed-out salarymen in bars and nightclubs​—​until a 2005 crackdown by the Japanese government reduced the hostesses’ numbers by 90 percent, from 80,000 in 2004 to 8,000 in 2006. Few of the Filipinas, it seemed, had any training as the professional entertainers that their visas said they were. The Japanese government maintained that most of them were actually prostitutes or near-prostitutes, pushed into long hours of dubious servitude by the contractors and the clubs, many of which had ties to yakuza mobsters. A spate of brutal murders of hostesses​—​along with some murders committed by hostesses of their pimps​—​fueled the drive to clamp down on the hostess business and send most of the women back to the Philippines.

Taking the podium after Hudson, Parreñas went on the warpath. She announced that she had no intention of abiding by the 10-minute presentation limit for panelists and then proceeded to read a fiery 20-minute paper that she titled “Migration as Indentured Mobility: The Moral Regulation of Migrant Women.” The paper blasted the hostess crackdown as part of “a U.S.-backed war” against “sex work” fueled by “moral imperialism and conservative values” (the U.S. government funds anti-trafficking programs in about 70 countries). In the crackdown the hostesses were “stripped of their livelihood,” Parreñas lamented. “They go to Japan of their own volition​—​they’re not drugged or forced to go. They find it empowering to be a hostess.” Parreñas’s theory was that “there are multiple moralities in society,” and that some Filipinas’ moral codes happened to permit “paid sex with the men they call their boyfriends.” The problem, as Parreñas saw it, was that many Japanese clubs tended to have a different “moral culture” from that of the hostesses who worked there, but the hostesses couldn’t quit until their indentures were up. Nonetheless, Parreñas insisted, “most of them resent the United States, and they resent being rescued” from the hostess life by being kicked out of Japan. Her solution to the hostess problem: open immigration in the West for developing-world sex workers so they could get jobs in, say, the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal.

Parreñas proved to be a tough act to follow. Richard, the human-trafficking expert from the State Department, seemed dumbfounded. “I think America is a wonderful country,” she said. She rattled off some information about the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 2000, along with some alarming-sounding numbers: 70 percent of the estimated 12 to 27 million human-trafficking victims in the world these days are women and girls, most of whom end up in bondage, often sexual bondage, in East Asia and the Middle East. Parreñas was having none of that. “It’s quite tricky to lump all trafficked people together,” she sniffed. “Most migrant workers are domestic workers, and many countries, including the United States, don’t even count domestic work as an occupation.” Nor did Parreñas have any positive words for Hudson and her bare-branches research. “Did you interview any of those single men you describe as psychopathic and poor?” Parreñas demanded of Hudson. “Did they see themselves as unmarriageable?”

Republican Party Splitting Over U.S. Role in Libya

I don't think Obama's Libyan war violates the War Powers Act, but unlike my fellow neocons, I'm more reserved in my support for the NATO campaign against Gaddafi. Recall Victor Davis Hanson's essay at the start of the war, "A Middle East Policy in Shambles." Completely ad hoc, and spineless too, it's hard to get excited about this, especially since Afghanistan (and Pakistan) remains the central danger point in U.S. international affairs.

Anyway, I think my concerns are not unfamiliar among the wider conservative establishment. Michele Bachmann, in particular, seemed to impart the sense that America's a bit overextended at the moment. See, LAT, "GOP splitting over U.S. role in Libya and Afghanistan":

Republicans are facing a widening fissure over the U.S. role on the world stage as party leaders decide whether to confront President Obama this week over his policy toward Libya.

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and other congressional Republican leaders have said that U.S. involvement in NATO's bombing campaign, which hit the 90-day mark Sunday, violates the War Powers Act. The House could seek to cut off money for the war as it takes up the annual Pentagon spending bill this week.

Several of the party's potential presidential candidates have called for the U.S. to quit the fight in Libya and questioned the depth of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

Other Republicans have begun pushing back, criticizing what they see as a growing isolationist agenda within the party. The result is that Republicans, once relatively unified on foreign policy issues, now have a division that parallels the long-standing split in Democratic ranks.

The debate was on public display Sunday as two of the GOP's leading figures on defense and foreign policy, Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, criticized Republican presidential hopefuls and congressional leaders who question the country's military intervention around the world.

"There has always been an isolationist strain in the Republican Party," McCain said on ABC's "This Week," "but now it seems to have moved more center stage.... That is not the Republican Party that has been willing to stand up for freedom for people all over the world."

Graham said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that any debate over cutting funding for the Libya war would encourage resistance by Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi. "Congress should sort of shut up," he said.

McCain and Graham also criticized former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who's leading in the polls for the party's presidential nomination, for referring to the fighting in Afghanistan as a "war for independence" that the U.S. should leave to others.

"I wish that candidate Romney and all the others would sit down" with U.S. commanders "and understand how this counter-insurgency is working and succeeding," McCain said.

Romney was one of several presidential hopefuls who, in last week's Republican candidate debate, focused criticism on U.S. military operations in Libya and Afghanistan. None took the sort of hawkish positions that McCain advocated during his presidential run in 2008.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), for example, questioned what U.S. interest is at stake in Libya. "We were not attacked," Bachmann said. "We were not threatened with attack. There was no vital national interest."

U2 Live at Angel Stadium Anaheim

At LAT, "Live Review: U2 at Angel Stadium":

U2, formed in Dublin, Ireland, in 1976, returned to the Southland to make up for two concerts they were forced to cancel when singer Bono, 51, injured his back during rehearsals last spring.

During that forced intermission, other real-life hurdles challenged the notion that the band was indestructible. U2’s two principal songwriters, Bono and guitarist The Edge, teamed up with director Julie Taymor for a Broadway adaptation of Spider-Man called “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” that has become the butt of jokes, the scene of injuries and the target of scathing reviews for nearly two years.

In an early critique of a preview "Spider-Man" performance, Times critic Charles McNulty called the music created by the two “a cacophonous brew.” The refurbished show officially opened last week, and the new reviews aren’t much better. Add to that Thursday's news that the California Coastal Commission had rejected The Edge's development proposal, decried by many conservationists, to build five mansions on an undeveloped site above Malibu, and, well, this hasn’t been a great year for U2.
So the question pre-concert became: How deep were these wounds? Could the power of music help redeem a band that throughout its career has declared over and over again its desire and ability to do just that? Basically, could U2 still bring it?

At the beginning of the concert, not really. Starting with “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” the band sounded muddled, the engine of the music not yet warm, the stadium not yet tuned, the fans experiencing the initial adrenaline rush but not yet buried inside the rhythms. And “I Will Follow,” the first cut on the band’s first album, "Boy” (1980), hasn’t aged well, even if it pulls at the nostalgia strings for many; the rhyme scheme is young and clumsy, the guitar line relatively simple and undynamic.

And when, during “Get on Your Boots,” two rolling bridges that connect different parts of the circular stage first rolled into place and The Edge and bassist Adam Clayton played in the middle above the crowd, the maneuver felt very 2009; too staged, too postured, and a touch clumsy -- even though the song is one of the danciest, most propulsive songs in the band’s catalog.

But something magical happened about 20 minutes in, during “Elevation.” Maybe it was the overjoyed crowd bellowing the song’s “Woooo-oooo” chorus in unison, or the way the lights reflected off the masses. Whatever it was, it rushed across Angel Stadium like a cold front, leaving in its wake the sacred sensation that all music lovers seek. The sound and vision clicked, the world started sparkling, the audience moving and singing as one. The moment swirled as Bono went carnal on us: “Higher than the sun, you shoot me from a gun,” he declared to his lover, and the thousands did it too. “I need you to elevate me here/At the corner of your lips/As the orbit of your hips’/Eclipse.

Internationalism After America

I really enjoyed this piece, from G. John Ikenberry, at Foreign Affairs, "The Future of the Liberal World Order":

The recent global economic downturn was the first great postwar economic upheaval that emerged from the United States, raising doubts about an American-led world economy and Washington's particular brand of economics. The doctrines of neoliberalism and market fundamentalism have been discredited, particularly among the emerging economies. But liberal internationalism is not the same as neoliberalism or market fundamentalism. The liberal internationalism that the United States articulated in the 1940s entailed a more holistic set of ideas about markets, openness, and social stability. It was an attempt to construct an open world economy and reconcile it with social welfare and employment stability. Sustained domestic support for openness, postwar leaders knew, would be possible only if countries also established social protections and regulations that safeguarded economic stability.

Indeed, the notions of national security and economic security emerged together in the 1940s, reflecting New Deal and World War II thinking about how liberal democracies would be rendered safe and stable. The Atlantic Charter, announced by Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in 1941, and the Bretton Woods agreements of 1944 were early efforts to articulate a vision of economic openness and social stability. The United States would do well to try to reach back and rearticulate this view. The world is not rejecting openness and markets; it is asking for a more expansive notion of stability and economic security.

*****

Pronouncements of American decline miss the real transformation under way today. What is occurring is not American decline but a dynamic process in which other states are catching up and growing more connected. In an open and rule-based international order, this is what happens. If the architects of the postwar liberal order were alive to see today's system, they would think that their vision had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Markets and democracy have spread. Societies outside the West are trading and growing. The United States has more alliance partners today than it did during the Cold War. Rival hegemonic states with revisionist and illiberal agendas have been pushed off the global stage. It is difficult to read these world-historical developments as a story of American decline and liberal unraveling.

In a way, however, the liberal international order has sown the seeds of its own discontent, since, paradoxically, the challenges facing it now -- the rise of non-Western states and new transnational threats -- are artifacts of its success. But the solutions to these problems -- integrating rising powers and tackling problems cooperatively -- will lead the order's old guardians and new stakeholders to an agenda of renewal. The coming divide in world politics will not be between the United States (and the West) and the non-Western rising states. Rather, the struggle will be between those who want to renew and expand today's system of multilateral governance arrangements and those who want to move to a less cooperative order built on spheres of influence. These fault lines do not map onto geography, nor do they split the West and the non-West. There are passionate champions of the UN, the WTO, and a rule-based international order in Asia, and there are isolationist, protectionist, and anti-internationalist factions in the West.

I think Ikenberry overstates the "after America" thesis, and then comes back to nullify it somewhat at the conclusion here. A great review on the origins of the multilateral system after World War II, however. Something I might be able to use in my World Politics class in the fall.

Mavi Marmara Timeline

From the Israeli Defense Forces:

Colleges Cut Summer

Actually, I never liked summer school, but it plays a vital role for colleges and college students. But this summer sucks.

At LAT, "Amid budget cutbacks, California colleges reduce or eliminate summer school."

And from yesterday's Letters to the Editor:

Gov.'s budget stand

Re "Brown veto dismays Democrats," June 17

I want to publicly thank Gov. Jerry Brown for vetoing the sham budget adopted by the Democratic majority in the state Legislature. I also want to acknowledge the minority party's complicity in the budget stalemate.

California has been living in a financial house of cards for decades. We need to build a new house on a firm and sustainable foundation.

The state's budget crisis can be solved with both spending cuts and revenue increases. The choice is not one or the other. I call on our elected representatives, of every political persuasion, to work toward achieving a sustainable financial future.

Nancy I. Day

Los Angeles

Actually, we don't have a revenue problem, but at least she admits the need for spending cuts. And get union give-backs in there, and that'd be the makings of a deal.

How a Naked Female Scientist Tries to Tame Belugas in the Freezing Arctic

Awesome report at London's Daily Mail, via Instapudit, who notes:

Photos tasteful, but possibly NSFW given the Taliban-like sensibilities of many corporate HR departments ...

"Taliban-like sensibilities." Sounds like Scott Eric Kaufman. He's a liar too.

Hillary Clinton's Intern

That's all I can mention. I'm loathe to indicate more lest Taliban Scott Eric Kaufman react with extreme malice in some way. Just check Robert Stacy McCain for the details and also Memeorandum and TMZ.

Courtney Alexis Stodden, 16, Marries 'Green Mile' Actor Doug Anthony Hutchison, 51

It's weird.

She's a worldly 16, that's for sure.

At New York Post, "'Lost' actor Doug Hutchison, 51, marries 16-year-old in Vegas." Stodden's parents would have had to okay the marriage, since Nevada law requires an 18 year-old minimum age. And so, hey, if everybody's cool with it. To each his own. Otherwise we'd end up like Taliban Scott Eric Kaufman, butting into everyone's personal lives and destroying families.

See also London's Daily Mail, "Green Mile actor Doug Anthony Hutchison, 51, marries aspiring country music singer, 16, in Las Vegas."

Americans Join Flotilla to Break Gaza Blockade

At Sacramento Bee.

And at Jerusalem Post, "US flotilla ship: We intend to break Gaza blockade":

NEW YORK – Passengers on a US-flagged vessel, The Audacity of Hope, spoke at a press conference on Monday to discuss their plans and reasons for joining the “International Freedom Flotilla II – Stay Human,” a flotilla intended to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

It is estimated that people from more than 20 countries will participate in the eight to 10-ship flotilla, which will set sail in the last week of June, in part from Greece. One quarter of the participants on the US vessel, which will have 36 passengers, are to be American Jews.

According to a letter that The Audacity of Hope group sent to President Barack Obama, in addition to the 36 passengers, 4 crew members, and 10 members of the press, the ship “will carry thousands of letters of support and friendship from people throughout the US to the women, children and men of Gaza. There will be no weapons of any sort on board.

“We will carry no goods of any kind for delivery in Gaza,” the group’s letter read. “Our mission is from American civil society to the civil society of Gaza. We do not serve the agenda of any political leadership, government or group. We are engaged solely in nonviolent action in support of the Palestinian people and their human rights.”

Passenger Ann Wright said: “Citizen activists are coming to the Mediterranean from all over the world to confront the illegal Israeli blockade of Gaza and US government protection of Israeli criminal acts.

It's not about human rights for Gaza. It's about the delegitimation and destruction of Israel. And I don't believe all of these people are peaceful.

Jerry Brown's Budget Soap Opera

At Wall Street Journal, "As Sacramento Turns":

'All My Children" may be off the air, but the soap opera is still running in Sacramento. In the latest installment, Governor Jerry Brown divorced his fellow Democrats by vetoing their budget. Democrats and unions are furious and plotting revenge, while both sides blame the evil Republicans for refusing to sanction a referendum that would give voters a chance to endorse a tax increase.

Where's Susan Lucci when you need her?

Mr. Brown deserves credit for vetoing the Democratic budget that reverted to Sacramento form to close a $9.6 billion deficit, deferring several billion dollars of bills into the future, borrowing from special funds, and raising the state's sales tax and vehicle registration fee without the constitutionally required supermajority vote. Even the Democratic treasurer warned that the state couldn't finance its short-term debt with such a risky plan, and Mr. Brown cashiered it.

Democrats are now blasting him for suggesting that an "all cuts" budget is the only alternative if Republicans won't agree to allow a vote on a five-year extension of what was supposed to be a temporary income tax surcharge, among other tax hikes. Democrats are frustrated because they expected Republicans to cave months ago. But Republicans have shown laudable discipline, and they know that their relevance in state politics hinges on extracting concessions from employee unions that will reduce the future cost of government.

Mr. Brown needs at least two GOP votes in each chamber to put the tax increases on the ballot. And Republican lawmakers have said for months that they're willing to do so in return for modest pension and regulatory reforms and a hard spending cap.

More at the link.

Unions are basically killing any deal, even one that includes GOP concessions to Jerry Brown tax increases.

RELATED: At Instapundit, "SHOCKER: Companies Leaving California In Record Numbers."

Alleged Denial of Service Attack Against Turn Right USA PAC

Sounds about right. Because, you know, this is just what progressives do.

See "Do Hahn’s Homeboyz include Hackers?"

And at The Rhetorican, "Leftie Hacker Gets Fingered By Conservative PAC?":

Sounds like another instance of ‘Freedom of Speech for me but not for thee’, all too common among the oh-so-tolerant Left.

Exactly.

Wouldn't be surprised if RACIST REPSAC was involved, and his progressive anti-free speech thugs? They're known to engage in similarly aggressive campaigns of intimidation.

Also, at Film Ladd, "Did The Hahn Campaign Hire A Hacker?"

'Why is David Epstein Still a Columbia University Professor After Incest Plea?'

Good question.

A Columbia Professor of POLITICAL SCIENCE?

See The Other McCain for the reply.

Epstein's homepage is here.

Professor Charli Carpenter Quits Lawyers, Guns and Money! — UPDATE!! Repsac = Racist = ASFL = Lying Asshat!!!

And I'm claiming credit for forcing her to abandon that demonic progressive stinkhole.

I noticed that Charli's name had been removed from the blog's masthead, and then new LGM blogger Erik Loomis introduced himself a few weeks ago, noting, "... how intimidating it is to be replacing someone as superb as Charli Carpenter. Those are some big shoes to fill. I know I’ll miss reading her posts."

Charli quit immediately following the publication of my essay, "Dr. Charli Carpenter and the Laws of War." I had long suggested to her that blogging at LGM was harmful to her academic reputation, and of course Charli's ambitious within the field of political science. She dismissed my advice and admonished me not to involve her in flame wars. But I offered legitimate criticism at "Dr. Charli Carpenter and the Laws of War," and she nevertheless ignored the post and then fled the scene of battle. Maybe it was the Serr8d Photoshop of Charli in a bikini, sporting what looks like to be a terrorist's bombing set-up. Feminists hate that stuff. (The bikinis, that is. The pro-Palestinian terrorism? Not so much.) And note how plugging "Charli Carpenter and International Law" or "Dr. Charli Carpenter" into Google pulls up my post at the #1 and #2 ranking. That's gotta hurt.

And that tells you something. Charli was listing Lawyers, Guns and Money at her biographical information on her Foreign Affairs articles, and she's still blogging at The Duck of Minerva, more than ever it seems. Charli likes blogging and wouldn't have quit LGM on a whim.

Frankly, it must have been damaging to be associated with a hate dump like Robert Farley's Lawyers, Guns and Money. And especially so now that LGM has emerged as a big outlet for progressive anti-Semitism in recent months, led by the idiot juvenile Scott Lemieux and his ill-considered blogging on Israel-bashing playwright Tony Kushner.

It's telling all around. Not only had blogging at LGM become a liability for Charli, but it goes to show that when challenged, progressives are cowardly when forced outside of their demonic cocoons.

I'm going to have lots more on the bloggers at Lawyers, Guns and Money. They've been attacking me and this blog for years, and recently those attacks took a very personal turn, which required me to retain an attorney. I'm still holding off on reporting on that, but it's going to be blockbuster when it comes out. One of the bloggers over there is going to be outed as evil once and for all. He'll be even more discredited than he already is, and while this has been costly, it's nothing that I initiated. Cheap kicks while it lasted it, but not anymore. Basically, don't fuck with me, assholes. You reap what you sow and it's very ugly. And you deserve the ignominy that's coming your way.

Stay tuned.

*****

UPDATE (2:25pm PST): I've been out taking my kid skateboarding, so a little late getting back to the blog. Not only that, I'm trying desperately to pull myself up after ROTFLMFAO, because REPSAC = RACIST = ASFL has responded to this post, and writes hilariously that Charli Carpenter is "paying little if any attention to Donald Douglas." Perhaps not, but stalker REPSAC = RACIST = ASFL sure the hell is!!

See: "Professor Donald Douglas is Envious of Professor Charli Carpenter."

And more lulz. Note how Charli Carpenter quit blogging precisely while coming under withering fire at this blog. Yep, perfect timing. The so-called "Grad Director" gig is a convenient out for pulling her name off the masthead at LGM, and totally transparent. God, that's pathetic, but expected, since she no doubt found she could no longer blog at a premier progressive anti-Semitic hate dump. It's pretty self-explanatory. And she's meanwhile blogging up a storm at Duck of Minerva. Yep, that "Grad Director" gig sure is taking up a lot of time, yuk yuk!!

And wrong, not envious in the least, RACIST REPSAC3 ASFL. I'm a tenured professor at a college without a grad program, so "Grad Director" is not something I'd be doing. And I have no need to publish, since community colleges are teaching institutions. But WE KNOW progressives like you hate teaching and denigrate those who do, cuz ur a typical asshat. And I'm raising two kids myself, not to be demonic left-wing terrorist wannabes, of course. Unlike you, freaking stalker.

Plus, I'm not "outing" anyone's identity, you idiot. I plan to report and document the moral degeneracy and evil of one of the bloggers at Lawyers, Guns and Murder. Still waiting for the go-ahead from the attorney, but you've got skills in this area, so it'll be interesting to demonstrate a past pattern of collaboration on your part. See: "DEFAMATION - DONALD STYLE --- Another year, another UPDATE: 2/17/2011." At the update, that's where hate sponsor RACIST = REPSAC = ASFL denies that he had anything to do with the campaign of workplace intimidation directed against me at my college, which of course is a lie, because RACIST = REPSAC = ASFL personally administers the blog and he personally recruited the progressives who published all of my workplace contact information, with the exhortation:

We know these behaviors all too well, and why some of you bother with this pinhead is beyond me. The Coward is not welcome at The Swash Zone; we delete his comments immediately. More disturbing are the comments and e-mails left by his followers: Profane, racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic … worthy of report to the FBI. What to do?

If the Coward or any of his followers harass you online you, contact President **** ****** at (562) ***-**** or Executive VP of Academic Affairs ****** **** at (562) ***-**** and describe the harassment. For serious online abuse or defamation, there is always this option (case file in progress).

This was published at REPSAC = RACIST = ASFL's blog, American Nihilist, Feb 12, 2009. (See here.) And REPSAC = RACIST = ASFL is fully implicated in this initial campaign of workplace intimidation, and he's now even doubled-down about how he thinks I should be fired for practicing my First Amendment rights to freedom of the expression, the right to be free in my private personal affairs. It's pretty bad, but this is what progressives do. And when I'm able to report fully on recent legal developments with my blog, REPSAC = RACIST = ASFL may well be implicated in the moral deviance, evil, and libelous activities that have been recently launched to destroy the moral clarity of myself and American Power.