Holly Madison Goes For Saturday Morning Run in Sporty Pink Crop Top and Tiny Grey Athletic Shorts

Hey, she looks good too!

At London's Daily Mail, "Working off those pregnancy pounds in style! Holly Madison goes for a jog in cleavage-baring crop top and tiny shorts."

TPM's Josh Marshall Gets Hammered for 'Lining Up to Defend Obama Admin Surveillance...'

This just tickles the hell out of me.

Dear Leader's utter hypocrisy is causing crazy fits of apoplexy across the leftist fever swamps.

Instapundit posted this the other day, "HEY, RUBE! Americans Are Outraged Because in Voting for Obama, They Thought They Were Rejecting Bush." (Be sure to click through to the Daily Kos post at the link; the comments are gold!)

And now I see some interesting nuggets about Josh Marshall on Twitter:

Must say: pretty disappointed with former Lefty warriors against Bush Admin surveillance lining up to defend Obama Admin surveillance.
— Tom Belknap (@dragonflyeye) June 10, 2013

@dragonflyeye Who? I'm not seeing it on my end. But then again, maybe I stopped reading those people a while ago.
— Joseph A. Henderson (@josephenderson) June 10, 2013

@josephenderson In particular, Josh Marshall. Who I admit I'm ambivalent about as a commenter. Greenwald is now the enemy.
— Tom Belknap (@dragonflyeye) June 10, 2013

Yeah, I trolled through Marshall's Twitter feed. He's got two blog posts on Snowden, "Wow. Just Wow," and "What’s the Deal with Hong Kong?"

And he's getting called out by TPM regulars, "One of Many Dissenting Voices":

A threshold has been crossed while the public slept. Some light is finally being shined on the practices of our security apparatus. Maybe now, as the memory of Bin Laden fades, we are entering the first time since 9/11 when we can have a reasonable public conversation about the privacy interests of our people and what must be sacrificed in order to preserve the rights we cherish. It kills me to see people I respect, opinion leaders like yourself, collectively shrug at the revelations of these last several days.

Well, "shrugging" is how partisan hacks like Marshall protect "The One."

But read the whole thing. The perturbed reader hammers Marshall for questioning "Snowden as a messenger" rather than focusing on "the materials he has provided..."

Yeah, well, those materials aren't going over so well for President Transparency. But don't blame me. I voted for the other guy --- both times!

The Beach is Better in September

That's one thing I used to love about UCSB — classes didn't start until the end of September, which of course meant that school didn't cut into the prime beach time.

And right now, in June, it's more like this:

Bar Refaeli Stands Up for Transgender Pissing Rights!

She's an idiot.

I swear, some of the most beautiful people have absolutely no brains.

At the Times of Israel, "Give pee a chance: Refaeli stands up for gays … at a urinal."

Also at the Blaze, "THE ODD PHOTO SUPERMODEL BAR REFAELI SENT OUT TO SHOW SUPPORT FOR TRANSGENDER RIGHTS." Check the comments:

What about my right to privacy? I forgot, the gays and transsexuals have the power to DO WHATEVER THEY WANT. No need for privacy. Would you allow men into a bathroom with women? Why not? They would let a gay man – WHO IS sexually attracted to men – to stand beside a straight man at a urinal. Insane.

Hey, it's all the about teh gays.

PREVIOUSLY: "Government Redefinition of Marriage is Not Inevitable."

Government Redefinition of Marriage is Not Inevitable

Well, you wouldn't know it from the latest L.A. Times poll, "58% of California voters now favor gay marriage."

There's video at the link. Dan Schnur, Director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC, indicates that the shift in support of homosexual marriage is both "generational" and "attitudinal."

Perhaps, although a lot remains to be seen, not the least of which is this month's Supreme Court ruling on Prop. 8 and DOMA.

Some polling finds the public seeing homosexual marriage as "inevitable," at Pew Research last week, for example. But the Heritage Foundation throws water on that meme. See, "On Marriage, Inevitability Is a Choice We Can Reject":

Marriage is founded on the anthropological truth that men and women are different and complementary, the biological fact that the union of a man and woman also creates new life, and the social reality that children need a mom and a dad.

For decades, social science has shown that children tend to do best when reared by their married mother and father. Government recognizes marriage because it is an institution that benefits society in a way that no other relationship does.

Marriage is society’s least restrictive means to ensure the well-being of future citizens. It protects children by incentivizing adults to commit to each other and take responsibility for their children.

All the polls in the world cannot undo the truth about marriage. But they can obscure the truth and make it less likely that men and women commit to each other permanently and exclusively. This in turn reduces the odds that children will know the love and care of their married mothers and fathers.

Whatever pollsters and pundits may tell us about “inevitability,” the only way to guarantee a political loss is to sit idly by. We should frame our message, strengthen coalitions, devise strategies, and bear witness.

Yes, bear witness, like this:

I think the Gaystapo’s weakness is simple: start talking about them.

Do the job the media won’t do, and start taking an interest in the lies that are spread in gay magazines, newspapers, and via social media. Start pointing out the “Gaystapo” leaders in your community who take to stages to make hateful speeches that rev crowds up against Christians and conservatives. Here in Chicago, the key Gaystapo figure is a man named Art Johnston who owns Sidetrack the Video Bar…and he constantly is holding some event in the bar that degenerates into a two-minutes-hate against religious people and conservatives. It’s all deliberate and is what Johnston and others in the Gaystapo call “activism”. Really, it’s just spreading hate and creating colorful “enemies” for gays to lash out at…so that they will then donate to Johnston’s Equality Illinois organization, which is just another tool of the institutional Left that makes itself sound more appealing by calling itself “Equality Illinois”. A better name for the thing would be “We Spread Hate But Aren’t Called Out On It Because We Are Gay”. I guess “Equality Illinois” fit more easily on bumper stickers.

The Gaystapo hate sunlight and they shrink and wither when they’re actually talked about. The thing is, so many conservatives and Christians avoid talking about anything gay that these guys are then left to do whatever they please unchallenged. That’s such a mistake. Frankly, the only reason these guys have so much power is because it’s all been ceded to them by conservatives who just don’t want to be caught discussing the gay community at all (for fear of being called homophobes if they do).

I think the best way to bring the Gaystapo down is to start holding them to their own rules…which ironically enough is one of the Alinsky Methods that the Gaystapo uses on conservatives all the time. Equality Illinois, for instance, claims it is for equality in Illinois for everyone. So, why do almost all Equality Illinois events held in Sidetrack the Video Bar include speeches and other stunts that rev the crowds up to shout hateful things about Christians and conservatives? Why does any Equality Illinois event include screaming and yelling about “getting” the “enemies of the gay community”? Shouldn’t an organization with such a lovey-dovey sounding name avoid hating anyone or labeling anyone on Earth “an enemy”?

Hypocrisy, I guess, is ultimately the Gaystapo’s Achilles’ heel...

I think the “gay community” does the world a very bad service by not taking a zero tolerance approach to things like NAMBLA because there remains the Daddy/Son fetish amongst some gay guys, where older men want to be with very young guys. A lot of these guys were molested when they were young…and when they get older they want to inflict this onto little boys to continue the cycle of abuse. Muslim men are actually really big into this because Islam encourages the abuse of young boys…and when those boys grow up they expect to be able to abuse boys sexually, too, since that’s what they did when they were little. It’s just beyond sick.

The Gaystapo prevents anyone from calling people out for horrific behavior, though. When it comes to sex, anything is supposed to be permissible in gay culture. The Gaystapo certainly gives the impression that “anything goes”…especially in bars that have “secret” rooms or private “play party” nights where admission is charged and things aren’t open to the public. Most of the leather bars in Chicago have these sorts of events…and a lot of times you have to know someone who is a member of that fetish club to get into the event.

It’s all sick. And the people involved in this are seriously messed up. These are the crazy uncles in the attic of the gay community…but unfortunately a lot of them seem to be very rich and influential because the Gaystapo lets them do as they please. i don’t know if you watch the tee-vee show “True Blood” on HBO, but last season the plot revolved around “The Vampire Authority” that was trying to mainstream and present a more normalized face for vampires to the world…and they were opposed by the Sanguinista faction of vampires, which wanted to be deviant and feed openly on humans and generally do all the things that people were scared vampires really liked to do.

In the gay community, you mostly see the mainstreamers…but you must know that the true deviants like the NAMBLA crowd still exist and no effort at all is made to stamp these guys out. They’re just kept in the basement or in the shadows, and the Gaystapo runs interference or creates distractions so you don’t think about what’s going on. There are secret fetish and sex clubs in Chicago like “The Hell Fire Club” or “Windy City Watersports” or whatever where all sorts of bizarre things go on…and bars like Jackhammer, Touche, and Cell Block have those secret rooms where different “clubs” hold their private events and get up to all sorts of things that would probably make your eyes melt out of your face if you read about them.

That’s all part of the “dark side of the rainbow” that no one’s supposed to talk about during “pride month” in June.

Exactly.

Just keep bearing witness to the hatred and horrors of this movement. It's just not normal.

'Serendipity'

An Honor Society lyrics video, with the cameraman strolling down the boardwalk at Venice Beach.

A live clip is here.

Also at Venice Beach, from April, "The Sperminator."

Left-Winger Andrew Hacker Slams Common Core

Hacker, with Claudia Dreifus, says tea partiers have it right on Common Core. See, "Who’s Minding the Schools?":

By definition, America has never had a national education policy; this has indeed contributed to our country’s ambivalence on the subject. As it stands, the Common Core is currently getting hit mainly from the right. Tea Party-like groups have been gaining traction in opposition to the program, arguing that it is another intrusion into the lives of ordinary Americans by a faceless elite. While we don’t often agree with the Tea Party, we’ve concluded that there’s more than a grain of truth to their concerns.

The anxiety that drives this criticism comes from the fact that a radical curriculum — one that has the potential to affect more than 50 million children and their parents — was introduced with hardly any public discussion. Americans know more about the events in Benghazi than they do about the Common Core.

RTWT.

And maybe there is some bipartisan push back. See my earlier piece, "The So-Called 'Bipartisan Backlash' Against Common Core."

Nikki Finke Still Standing Despite Report of Her Firing

A wonderfully dishy piece from David Carr, at the New York Times, "Despite Report of Her Firing, Nikki Finke Is Still Standing."

#Snowden's High Stakes Gamble

It's going to be an interesting news day.

This Snowden cat is almost too perfect the anti-government foil. But we'll see.

At the Guardian UK, "Edward Snowden's choice of Hong Kong as haven is a high-stakes gamble."

Edward Snowden's choice of Hong Kong as a haven from where to leak intelligence documents and to unmask himself as a whistleblower rests on calculations on the territory's press freedom safeguards and its extradition treaty with the US. It is a high-stakes gamble.

Just before sovereignty over Hong Kong passed from Britain to China in 1997, the US signed a new extradition treaty with the semi-autonomous territory. Under that treaty, both parties agree to hand over fugitives from each other's criminal justice systems, but either side has the right of refusal in the case of political offences.

Beijing, which gave its consent for Hong Kong to sign the agreement, also has a right of veto if it believes the surrender of a fugitive would harm the "defence, foreign affairs or essential public interest or policy'' of the People's Republic of China. In short, the treaty makes Snowden's fate a matter of political expediency not just in Hong Kong but in Beijing.

Yeah, and the dude's in high demand stateside. See, "Edward Snowden: Republicans call for NSA whistleblower to be extradited."

Check all the links at Memeorandum as well.

More here throughout the day.

Death Toll Climbs in Santa Monica Shooting Massacre

At the Los Angeles Times, "Santa Monica shootings: Death toll rises as fifth victim dies."

Also, "Santa Monica shooting: Police still trying to reach gunman's kin," and "Santa Monica shootings: Students and staff struggle to cope."

Here's ABC News with the suspect's photo:

#SMC UPDATE: Santa Monica PD have released a photo of the suspected gunman, 23-year-old John Zawahri twitter.com/ABC7/status/34…

— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) June 9, 2013

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

Also at Paco's Enterprises, "Sunday Funnies." And Reaganite, "Power Couple of the Year Wow Paparazzi~."

More at Theo's, "Day by Day."

CARTOON CREDIT: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Cruz Control."

Here's Some Alice Goodwin Rule 5 to Take Your Mind Off #NSA Surveillance

At Zoo Magazine, "Alice Goodwin new & naughty shoot and Rihanna's Rude Archive!"

And at Egotastic!, "Alice Goodwin in Lingerie for a Boobtastic Shoot."

More at Pirate's Cove, "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup," and "If All You See……is unsustainable fishing because slight increases of CO2 means that life won’t reproduce, you might just be a Warmist."

Also at Proof Positive, "Best of the Web* Linkaround," and "Friday Night Babe: Lauren Holly!"

More at Bob Belvedere's, "Lindsey Anne Strutt." And "Rule 5 News."

Plus at 90Ninety Miles From Tyranny, "Late Night Ladies."

And Randy's Roundtable, "Thursday Nite Tart (on Friday)...Chloe Pridham."

Check Guns and Bikinis as well, "Anne Vyalitsyna and Exotic Model."

See Odie's too, "Being Blonde ~OR~ Rule 5 Woodsterman Style."

From Wirecutter, "Your Good Morning Girl."

Still more at the Last Tradition, "Rule 5 Sunday – The Return of Diana Dors, British Blonde Bombshell of 1950 and 1960s."

And from Conservative Hideout, "Girls and Guns, and did I Mention Links? June 5, 2013."

Plus, from Dana Pico, "Rule 5 Blogging: Glamour Girls."

Now at Daley Gator, "DaleyGator DaleyBabe Ming Na."

Don't forget Evil Blogger Lady, "Bocce Ball Rule 5."

And Theo Spark, "Bedtime Totty..."

Leaking Secrets Empowers Terrorists

From former attorney general Michael Mukasey, at WSJ, "The NSA's surveillance program doesn't do damage. Revealing it does":

Once again, the tanks-have-rolled left and the black-helicopters right have joined together in howls of protest. They were set off by last week's revelations that the U.S. government has been collecting data that disclose the fact, but not the content, of electronic communications within the country, as well as some content data outside the U.S. that does not focus on American citizens. Once again, the outrage of the left-right coalition is misdirected.

Libertarian Republicans and liberal—progressive, if you prefer—Democrats see the specter of George Orwell's "1984" in what they claim is pervasive and unlawful government spying. These same groups summoned "1984" in 2001 after passage of the Patriot Act, in 2008 after renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, and many times in between and since.

Regrettably, those best positioned to defend such surveillance programs are least likely to do so out of obvious security concerns. Without getting into detail here, intelligence agencies, with court authorization, have been collecting data in an effort that is neither pervasive nor unlawful. As to the data culled within the U.S., the purpose is to permit analysts to map relationships between and among Islamist fanatics.

For example, it would be helpful to know who communicated with the Tsarnaev brothers, who those people were in touch with, and whether there are overlapping circles that would reveal others bent on killing and maiming Americans—sort of a terrorist Venn diagram. Once these relationships are disclosed, information can be developed that would allow a court to give permission to monitor the content of communications.

As to monitoring content abroad, the utility is obvious. At least one conspiracy—headed by Najibullah Zazi and intended to maim and kill New York City subway riders—was disclosed through such monitoring and headed off. Zazi, arrested in 2009, pleaded guilty and awaits sentencing.

Because intelligence does not arrive in orderly chronological ranks, and getting useful data is an incremental process that often requires matching information gathered in the past with more current data, storing the information is essential. But, say the critics, information in the hands of "the government" can be misused—just look at the IRS. The IRS, as it happens, has a history of misusing information for political purposes. To be sure, there have been transgressions within intelligence agencies, but these have involved the pursuit of an intelligence mission, not a political objective.

Consider also that in a post-9/11 world all of those agencies live in dread of a similar attack. That ghastly prospect itself provides incentive for analysts to focus on the intelligence task at hand and not on political or recreational use of information. And the number of analysts with access to the information is not terribly large. The total number of analysts in the intelligence community, though certainly classified, appears to be a few thousand, with those focusing on terrorism likely a limited subset.

Given the nature of the data being collected and the relatively small number and awful responsibility of those who do the collecting, the claims of pervasive spying, even if sincere, appear not merely exaggerated, but downright irrational. Indeed, psychiatry has a term for the misplaced belief that the patient is the focus of the attention of others: delusions of reference.

Some wallow in the idea that they are being watched, their civil liberties endangered, simply because a handful of electrons they generated were among the vast billions being reviewed in a high-stakes antiterrorism effort. Of course, many are motivated politically or ideologically to oppose robust intelligence-gathering aimed at fending off Islamist terrorism. Criticism from that quarter can be left to lie where it fell.

More at the link.

And sure. All well and good. Just don't hold back on calling out President Dronekiller at the biggest f-king hypocrite. See: "Obama Administration Surveillance Regime: Most Breathtaking Violations of Civil Liberties in U.S. History."

Glenn Greenwald on 'This Week with George Stephanopoulos'

I've been finishing up my semester grading today, but following news developments on Twitter.

The Guardian broke the story of the NSA leaker, as readers are no doubt aware, "Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations." (At Memeorandum.)

At the clip below, the interview was apparently taped before the Snowden story went live, or thereabouts, because Greenwald doesn't discuss the leaker, and in fact implies that there are others.

I'll have more on this. There's a big split between the hardline civil libertarians and the national security hawks. And the ideological lines are blurring in a lot of interesting ways. I lean more toward the Wall Street Journal position I cited the other day, although it's the piling on of Obama administration scandals, along with the hypocrisy, that's my issue with all of this. And frankly, I just can't stand this president and enjoy watching him squirm. Screw 'em.

"If a background singer had not contributed her ferocious “rape, murder — it’s just a shot away” to “Gimme Shelter,” would it have even become a hit?..."

At the New York Times, "The Voice Behind Mick (and Others)":

SAN FRANCISCO — Imagine if there was no “sock it to me” at the end of “Respect.” Think about “Like a Prayer” without the choir or “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ ” without its big “ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa” finish.

If a background singer had not contributed her ferocious “rape, murder — it’s just a shot away” to “Gimme Shelter,” would it have even become a hit?

“When you start listening for us, honey, we’re everywhere,” said Lisa Fischer, a vocalist who, at 54, is the music industry’s reigning backup queen. “Ev-ery-where!” she warbled jubilantly before detonating a smile and breaking into the giggles.

Ms. Fischer, who lives in New York when she is not on the road, was grabbing a bite at the Four Seasons here after a performance with the Rolling Stones. She has been singing with the band since 1989, and her “Gimme Shelter” duets with Mick Jagger are now a highlight for many fans. Her other gigs have been just as impressive. In concerts or recording studios, she has backed up Tina Turner, Luther Vandross, Chaka Khan, Sting, Dolly Parton, Beyoncé, Alicia Keys and Aretha Franklin, just to name a few.

But Ms. Fischer, alluringly plump with short black hair and a nose piercing, does not fit the background-singer stereotype. If you’re singing backup, you’re supposed to hunger nonstop for one thing: the move center stage. Performing lead is the prized position. A backup singer? Just another belter in a black dress.

Ms. Fischer had a hit of her own. She won a Grammy in 1992 for her first single, “How Can I Ease the Pain,” beating out none other than Ms. Franklin. But she never completed a second record, in large part because she decided that the heat of the spotlight wasn’t for her. Backup singing was her calling.

“I reject the notion that the job you excel at is somehow not enough to aspire to, that there has to be something more,” Ms. Fischer explained, speaking with her eyes closed, as she tends to do. “I love supporting other artists.”

She continued: “I guess it came down to not letting other people decide what was right for me. Everyone’s needs are unique. My happy is different from your happy.”

More at the link.

Norway Tests Naval Strike Missile

At London's Daily Mail, "Caught on camera: The explosive moment Norwegian navy blew up its OWN ship to test new long-range missile."

"The 'consent' that is truly at stake here is the consent of the governed, for which Americans once fought a revolution..."

Wow!

Robert Stacy McCain's posted an epic update on the left's monstrous Kaitlyn Hunt statutory rape controversy.

See, "She Blinded Me With Pseudo-Science."

Great work.

Don't miss a word of it, at the link.

Judge Jeanine: 'Our Founding Fathers Wouldn't Even Recognize the America of Today...'

She's become perhaps the most incisive voice in the country, warning week after week against the grave threats to our liberties --- and to our very democracy.

More at Nice Deb, "Jeanine Pirro: ‘America Truly Is Unrecognizable’ (Video)."

'Beyond Orwellian'

Image via the Rhetorican.

And at Jammie Wearing Fools, "ACLU on Obama’s NSA Snooping on Verizon Customers: ‘It Is Beyond Orwellian’."

PRISM and Boundless Informant

At Atlas Shrugs:

Former Department of Justice senior lawyer J. Christian Adams says: "Prism more catastrophic than #Benghazi #AP #IRS #FastandFurious #Blackpanthers combined. Not supposed to happen in USA." "Nothing federal government has EVER done is more destructive of 4th amendment constitutional liberty than was #Prism." This is incendiary.

And more from Glenn Greenwald (who else?), at the Guardian UK, "Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data" (via Memeorandum):

The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for recording and analysing where its intelligence comes from, raising questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications.

The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.

The focus of the internal NSA tool is on counting and categorizing the records of communications, known as metadata, rather than the content of an email or instant message.

The Boundless Informant documents show the agency collecting almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March 2013. One document says it is designed to give NSA officials answers to questions like, "What type of coverage do we have on country X" in "near real-time by asking the SIGINT [signals intelligence] infrastructure."

An NSA factsheet about the program, acquired by the Guardian, says: "The tool allows users to select a country on a map and view the metadata volume and select details about the collections against that country."

Under the heading "Sample use cases", the factsheet also states the tool shows information including: "How many records (and what type) are collected against a particular country."

A snapshot of the Boundless Informant data, contained in a top secret NSA "global heat map" seen by the Guardian, shows that in March 2013 the agency collected 97bn pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide.


Iran was the country where the largest amount of intelligence was gathered, with more than 14bn reports in that period, followed by 13.5bn from Pakistan. Jordan, one of America's closest Arab allies, came third with 12.7bn, Egypt fourth with 7.6bn and India fifth with 6.3bn.

The heatmap gives each nation a color code based on how extensively it is subjected to NSA surveillance. The color scheme ranges from green (least subjected to surveillance) through yellow and orange to red (most surveillance).

The disclosure of the internal Boundless Informant system comes amid a struggle between the NSA and its overseers in the Senate over whether it can track the intelligence it collects on American communications. The NSA's position is that it is not technologically feasible to do so.

At a hearing of the Senate intelligence committee In March this year, Democratic senator Ron Wyden asked James Clapper, the director of national intelligence: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"

"No sir," replied Clapper.

Judith Emmel, an NSA spokeswoman, told the Guardian in a response to the latest disclosures: "NSA has consistently reported – including to Congress – that we do not have the ability to determine with certainty the identity or location of all communicants within a given communication. That remains the case."

Plus, from Ed Morrissey, "Guardian: PRISM “collection directly from the servers”." (At Memeorandum).