Rachel McDonald on Twitter

A nice lady. Has family in Australia, from what I gather at her media grid.

pic.twitter.com/SdhuR0d8oo
— Rachel McDonald (@Rachel_Model1) July 7, 2013

Update on Boeing 777 Crash at SFO

Here's my earlier entry, "Boeing 777 Crashes at San Francisco Airport (SFO)."

And now at the San Francisco Chronicle, "40 hurt when plane crashes at SFO."

Also, "Airliner crashes at SFO – YouTube and Twitter updates."

291 passengers and 16 crew people total were on the plane. 2 are dead. 60+ are missing. 130 taken to 9 Bay Area hospitals.
— Will Kane (@WillKane) July 6, 2013

NEW PHOTOS: Thick, black smoke rises from Boeing 777 after it crashed while landing at #SFO: http://t.co/22qyHJI6hi #SFOcrash #Asiana214
— ABC7 News (@abc7newsBayArea) July 6, 2013

Updating:

#SFO crash: Plane seemed to tip, burst into flames. “Everyone was pushing, rushing out,” passenger says. http://t.co/hK0Zf078zL
— Andrew Blankstein (@anblanx) July 7, 2013

More: The Wall Street Journal has a huge write-up, "Plane Crashes on Landing in San Francisco: Two People Killed and Dozens Injured; NTSB to Send Investigators to Crash Site."

Mohamed ElBaradei Named Egyptian Prime Minister — UPDATED!

The Washington Post reports, "ElBaradei named Egyptian prime minister" (via Memeorandum).

UPDATE: Here's the headline now at the same WaPo piece, "ElBaradei’s appointment as Egyptian prime minister rolled back amid dispute."

He's not PM. That was soooo 3 hrs ago. RT ‏@Cirincione Appointment of @ElBaradei as interim PM is the best news out of Egypt in a long time.
— Nima Shirazi (@WideAsleepNima) July 6, 2013

The irony is that Egypt has just been named the world's Number 2 failed states basket case by none other than ElBaradei himself, at the new Foreign Policy, "'You Can't Eat Sharia'":

Two years after the revolution that toppled a dictator, Egypt is already a failed state. According to the Failed States Index, in the year before the uprising we ranked No. 45. After Hosni Mubarak fell, we worsened to 31st. I haven't checked recently -- I don't want to get more depressed. But the evidence is all around us.

Today you see an erosion of state authority in Egypt. The state is supposed to provide security and justice; that's the most basic form of statehood. But law and order is disintegrating. In 2012, murders were up 130 percent, robberies 350 percent, and kidnappings 145 percent, according to the Interior Ministry. You see people being lynched in public, while others take pictures of the scene. Mind you, this is the 21st century -- not the French Revolution!

The feeling right now is that there is no state authority to enforce law and order, and therefore everybody thinks that everything is permissible. And that, of course, creates a lot of fear and anxiety.

You can't expect Egypt to have a normal economic life under such circumstances. People are very worried. People who have money are not investing -- neither Egyptians nor foreigners. In a situation where law and order is spotty and you don't see institutions performing their duties, when you don't know what will happen tomorrow, obviously you hold back. As a result, Egypt's foreign reserves have been depleted, the budget deficit will be 12 percent this year, and the pound is being devalued. Roughly a quarter of our youth wake up in the morning and have no jobs to go to. In every area, the economic fundamentals are not there.

Egypt could risk a default on its foreign debt over the next few months, and the government is desperately trying to get a credit line from here and there -- but that's not how to get the economy back to work. You need foreign investment, you need sound economic policies, you need functioning institutions, and you need skilled labor.

So far, however, the Egyptian government has only offered a patchwork vision and ad hoc economic policies, with no steady hand at the helm of the state. The government adopted some austerity measures in December to satisfy certain IMF requirements, only to repeal them by morning. Meanwhile, prices are soaring and the situation is becoming untenable, particularly for the nearly half of Egyptians who live on less than $2 a day.

And the truth is, ElBaradei's no moderate. He's an anti-American U.N. bureaucrat shilling for the Muslim Brotherhood.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. See FrontPage Magazine, "The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mask: Mohammed El-Baradei."

State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki Slammed as 'Unfettered Liar'

Well, by definition you have to be a pathological liar to be even considered for this administration.

At Twitchy, "Fail-boat story gives Drudge editor ‘unfettered’ insight into State Dept. spokeswoman’s ambitions."

Proof that the media's favorite teen Jen Psaki is priming to take over Carney's podium: She's working on her lying! http://t.co/ELUZZMkI56

— Joseph Curl (@josephcurl) July 6, 2013

Here she is last November, in the company of lying liars and anti-Semites. Classy.

unspoken factor in re-election dominance of redheads on team Obama pic.twitter.com/EynoNfFp

— Jen Psaki (@jrpsaki) November 7, 2012

Yeah, this sums it up:

@jrpsaki You all make us so sick , cheat lie and do anythng you could to win. Win you did but America loses big . Socialist President Obama

— Flagramah (@flagramah) November 7, 2012

Boeing 777 Crashes at San Francisco Airport (SFO)

Man, news is real time on Twitter:

Wow. “@Eunner: I just crash landed at SFO. Tail ripped off. Most everyone seems fine. I'm ok. Surreal... — https://t.co/n6FjU2X1bl”

— Dan Frommer (@fromedome) July 6, 2013

And now over at the Weekly Standard, "Plane Crash at San Francisco Airport."

Added, from BuzzFeed:

Photos of the 777 plane at SFO Airport pic.twitter.com/6bYXg2vhEY pic.twitter.com/LU9h9qyV1S (@Brosner85)

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) July 6, 2013

Emily Ratajkowski Rule 5

And she likes beer!

At Egotastic!, "Emily Ratajkowski Flashing Outrageous Hotness in Galore."

Turns out it was Ms. Emily who graced the front of a recent Rule 5 entry. I think I've found a new favorite hottie!

Sarah Silverman Wants to 'Anally Probe' Governor Scott Walker

Pat Dollard has it, "Sarah Silverman on New Wisconsin Abortion Law: ‘I’d Very Much Like to Anally Probe Governor Scott Walker’."

I'd very much like to anally probe @govwalker each time he needs to make an "informed decision" http://t.co/oAcUsGd3eb

— Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) July 5, 2013

Funny thing is, conservatives are illustrating all these Sarah Silverman posts with Silverman's titillating tits pic, but she's not very hot, actually, at least not at this Egotastic! piece, "Sarah Silverman and Michelle Williams Full Frontal Nekkid in ‘Take This Waltz’."

More at Twitchy, "Sarah Silverman would like to anally probe Gov. Scott Walker."

State Department Retracts Denial of John Kerry Yachting During Egypt Crisis

Twitchy was on this story for an entire weekend before MSM outlets got up to speed, and there's more here, "‘Ketchup in the Rye’: Kerry’s failboat folly leads to hilarious #JohnKerryYachtNames hashtag."

Plus, from Katie Pavlich, at Townhall, "Busted: Secretary of State John Kerry Was Boating While Egypt Fell Apart."

Obama: Still Wrong on Egypt, and the World

From Walter Russell Mead, "Still Wrong About Egypt — and Wrong About the World."

Commenting on the president's anodyne and vapid statement on Egypt, Mead writes:

Concludes President Obama:

No transition to democracy comes without difficulty, but in the end it must stay true to the will of the people. An honest, capable and representative government is what ordinary Egyptians seek and what they deserve. The longstanding partnership between the United States and Egypt is based on shared interests and values, and we will continue to work with the Egyptian people to ensure that Egypt’s transition to democracy succeeds.

One hopes the President understands what drivel this is. It is not at all clear that Egypt is in the midst of a transition to democracy. It is in the midst of a crisis of authority and has been wallowing for some time in a damaging crisis of governance, but is Egypt really in a transition to democracy? And is democracy really what “ordinary” Egyptians want?

Right now one suspects that most Egyptians fear that the country could be in a transition to anarchy, and that what ordinary Egyptians (who are extremely poor by US standards and earn their bread by the sweat of their brow with very little cushion against illness or a bad day at the market) want most of all right now is security. They aren’t fretting so much about when they will have a government more like Norway’s as they are terrified that their country is sliding in the direction of Libya, Syria or Iraq.

As is often the case, Washington policymakers seem to be paying too much attention to the glibbest of political scientists and the vaporings of the Davoisie. Egypt has none of the signs that would lead historians to think democracy is just around the corner. Mubarak was not Franco, and Egypt is not Spain. What’s happening in Egypt isn’t the robust flowering of a civil society so dynamic and so democratic that it can no longer be held back by dictatorial power.

Virtually every policeman and government official in the country takes bribes. Most journalists have lied for pay or worked comfortably within the confines of a heavily censored press all their careers. The Interior Ministry has files, often stuffed with incriminating or humiliating information about most of the political class. The legal system bowed like a reed before the wind of the Mubarak government’s will, and nothing about the character of its members has changed. The business class serves the political powers; the Copts by and large will bow to the will of any authority willing to protect them.

And Americans should not deceive themselves. While some of Morsi’s failure was the result of overreaching and dumb choices on his part, he faced a capital strike and an intense campaign of passive resistance by a government and business establishment backed by an army in bed with both groups. Their strategy was to bring Morsi down by sabotaging the economy, frustrating his policies and isolating his appointees. Although Egypt’s liberals supported the effort out of fear of the Islamists, the strategy had nothing to do with a transition to democracy, and it worked.

This is not to say that Morsi or his movement had a viable alternative policy or governance model for Egypt. They didn’t. The Muslim Brotherhood had no clue how Egypt could be governed, and a combination of incompetence, corruption, factionalism and religious dogmatism began to wreck Morsi’s government from Day One.

If American policy toward Egypt is based on the assumption that Egypt is having a “messy transition” to democracy and that we must shepherd the poor dears to the broad sunny uplands, encouraging when they do well, chiding when they misstep, Washington will keep looking foolish and our influence will continue to fade. If that is the approach our foolishness compels us to take, look for more cases in which American good intentions just make us more hated—not because we are wicked, but because we are clueless.

Islamists Learn: Governing Is Hard

A good piece, at the New York Times, "For Islamists, Dire Lessons on Politics and Power":

CAIRO — Sheik Mohamed Abu Sidra had watched in exasperation for months as President Mohamed Morsi and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood bounced from one debilitating political battle to another.

“The Brotherhood went too fast, they tried to take too much,” Sheik Abu Sidra, an influential ultraconservative Islamist in Benghazi, Libya, said Thursday, a day after the Egyptian military deposed and detained Mr. Morsi and began arresting his Brotherhood allies.

But at the same time, Sheik Abu Sidra said, Mr. Morsi’s overthrow had made it far more difficult for him to persuade Benghazi’s Islamist militias to put down their weapons and trust in democracy.

“Do you think I can sell that to the people anymore?” he asked. “I have been saying all along, ‘If you want to build Shariah law, come to elections.’ Now they will just say, ‘Look at Egypt,’ and you don’t need to say anything else.”

From Benghazi to Abu Dhabi, Islamists are drawing lessons from Mr. Morsi’s ouster that could shape political Islam for a generation. For some, it demonstrated the futility of democracy in a world dominated by Western powers and their client states. But others, acknowledging that the takeover accompanied a broad popular backlash, also faulted the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood for reaching too fast for so many levers of power.

The Brotherhood’s fall is the greatest in an array of setbacks that have halted the once seemingly unstoppable march of political Islam. As they have moved from opposition to establishment, Islamist parties in Turkey, Tunisia and now Egypt have all been caught up in crises over the secular practicalities of governing like power sharing, urban planning, public security or even keeping the lights on.

Brotherhood leaders — the few who have not been arrested or dropped out of sight — have little doubt about the source of their problems. They say that the Egyptian security forces and bureaucracy conspired to sabotage their rule, and that the generals seized on the chance to topple the Morsi government under the cover of popular anger at the dysfunction of the state.

Their account strikes a chord with fellow Islamists around the region who are all too familiar with the historic turning points when, they say, military crackdowns stole their imminent democratic victories: Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1954; Algeria in 1991; and the Palestinian territories in 2006.

“The message will resonate throughout the Muslim world loud and clear: democracy is not for Muslims,” Essam el-Haddad, Mr. Morsi’s foreign policy adviser, warned on his official Web site shortly before the military detained him and cut off all his communication. The overthrow of an elected Islamist government in Egypt, the symbolic heart of the Arab world, Mr. Haddad wrote, would fuel more violent terrorism than the Western wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And he took aim at Western critics of the Islamists. “The silence of all of those voices with an impending military coup is hypocritical,” Mr. Haddad wrote, “and that hypocrisy will not be lost on a large swath of Egyptians, Arabs and Muslims.”

Well, nobody's coming out roses so far. If folks aren't careful we'll be seeing Damascus on the Nile before too long.

See also, Ashraf Khalil, at Foreign Affairs, "The Irony of Tahrir Square."

Prosecution Rests in George Zimmerman Trial

At the Wall Street Journal, "Prosecution Rests Its Case in Zimmerman Murder Trial":

SANFORD, Fla.—Prosecutors in the George Zimmerman murder trial rested their case Friday, after spending two weeks depicting the defendant as an aggressive vigilante who pursued 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and provoked their deadly altercation.

Among the final witnesses called by the prosecution was Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Mr. Martin, whom Mr. Zimmerman shot and killed in a gated community here last year. Dressed in a dark suit and looking stoic, she identified the screams heard in the background of a 911 call as her son's.

When a defense lawyer questioned whether she could be sure during cross-examination, she replied firmly, "I heard my son screaming."

Drawing on the testimony of 39 witnesses over nine days, attorneys for the state argued that on the night of their encounter, Mr. Zimmerman profiled Mr. Martin as a criminal, then pursued and riled him.

Mr. Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder and told police he was attacked by Mr. Martin and fired at him in self-defense.

Some testimony bolstered the prosecutors' case. One of their key witnesses—a friend of Mr. Martin's who was on the phone with him moments before he was killed—consistently maintained that Mr. Martin was being pursued by Mr. Zimmerman, despite enduring a long, withering cross-examination.

A medical examiner testified that Mr. Zimmerman's injuries—including a bloody nose and lacerations—were "very insignificant," undercutting the defendant's contention that Mr. Martin repeatedly bashed Mr. Zimmerman's head against a concrete walkway. Meanwhile, a different medical examiner who conducted the autopsy on Mr. Martin's body said the teen had no wounds on his hands other than minor abrasions on two fingers.

And a police investigator said Mr. Zimmerman's comments in a phone call to police the night of the incident—including the phrase "f— punks," referring to alleged troublemakers in the neighborhood—showed ill will, a necessary element to prove second-degree murder.

Yet in numerous instances, witnesses for the state offered testimony that could end up benefiting the defense, leaving some legal analysts to question whether the state had met its burden for proving his guilt. One neighbor who had one of the clearest views of the confrontation said Mr. Martin was straddling Mr. Zimmerman on the ground and appeared to be pummeling him.

More at that top link.

And at Legal Insurrection, "Zimmerman Trial Day 9 — Families Feud Over Scream Identification."

Trayon Martin, Rachel Jeantel, and Critical Race Theory

From Colin Flaherty:

Twitter was alive with hundreds of people talking about how more White People should learn Critical Race Theory to understand Jeantel. And their own racism.

Derrick Bell may have invented Critical Race Theory. But Glenn Singleton is the Pied Piper spreading it through schools. What we call achievement, he calls White Privilege.

What we call dim witted and angry — as we saw on the witness stand from Jeantel — Singleton would say is a nothing more than the different learning and communication style of black people: “Non-verbal. Personal. Emotional. Process Oriented.”

This is opposed to “White Talk: Verbal. Impersonal. Intellectual. Task-oriented.”

Glenn Singleton is not just an obscure academic theoretician casting pearls before undergrad sociology students. He trains teachers at hundreds of school districts around the country in how to bring Critical Race Theory into the classroom so they can “overcome the deeply embedded institutional racism” that is the only reason for the achievement gap between black and white students.

Critical Race explains it all: More blacks in prison? Racist cops. Black unemployment? Racist employers. Black drug use? Racist cops ignore white drug users. Black health, black crime, black poverty? Racism. Racism. Racism.

More at that top link.

Via Alan Caruba.

RELATED: At London's Daily Mail, "Police in town where Trayvon Martin was killed prepare for possible riots- in Florida and across the COUNTRY- if George Zimmerman is acquitted."

Shoot, cities around the country should prepare for riots. It's gonna be like the Rodney King trial.

Fourth of July Accident: Investigation Under Way in Simi Valley Fireworks Explosion

Check the link for the video.

FIREWORKS UPDATE: 36 people were injured in Simi Valley Fourth of July accident http://t.co/73P02R7uVA

— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) July 5, 2013

And at the Los Angeles Times, "Police probe fireworks accident; 36 treated at hospitals."

#Snowden Offered Asylum by Venezuela and Nicaragua

At Telegraph UK, "Venezuela and Nicaragua offer Edward Snowden asylum."

And at the Los Angeles Times:

Venezuela, Nicaragua open their doors to NSA leaker Snowden http://t.co/goIgSInvOs

— L.A. Times World (@latimesworld) July 6, 2013

And on Twitter, folks giving Snowden advice: take lots of toilet paper.

Morsi's Ouster Fuels Debate About U.S. Middle East Policy

Actually, we've been having a debate on Middle East policy since this presidential amateur took office.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Morsi's ouster fuels debate on U.S. policy on the Mideast":

Egyptians smarter than Americans Re OBAMA pic.twitter.com/pqOIyjrxfQ

— LeahR (@LeahR77) July 2, 2013

WASHINGTON — The military overthrow of the democratically elected government in Egypt, for decades America's most important Arab ally, has rekindled a fierce debate about whether the Obama administration's Mideast policy has been too passive and ineffective.

President Obama declared that U.S. allegiance was to "democratic principles" after Egypt's military ousted President Mohamed Morsi on Wednesday, but critics charge that the White House made only halfhearted attempts to steer Morsi's increasingly authoritarian government toward democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights.

"They've been late, and slow, and not taken these problems seriously," Michele Dunne, a former State Department official and administration advisor on Egypt who now heads the nonpartisan Atlantic Council's Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, said Friday.

Obama repeatedly failed "to use leverage to ensure that Egyptian authorities adhere to democratic principles," the Project on Middle East Democracy, an advocacy group in Washington, said in a statement.

The critics, who include Democratic foreign policy stalwarts as well as Republicans, say the upheaval in Egypt, on top of the administration's inability to stem the civil war in Syria or persuade Iran to curb its nuclear program, adds a blot to Obama's foreign policy record.

They blame, in part, Obama's desire to reduce America's overseas commitments after a decade of war, along with his apparent effort to pull back from a leadership position in favor of a more supporting role in the Middle East.

Administration officials say in their defense that Washington has limited influence in Egypt's domestic affairs and that visible efforts to apply U.S. pressure can backfire. They say they have dealt with key political players but have often kept their diplomacy quiet to avoid inflaming Egypt's polarized political environment.

After President Hosni Mubarak was toppled in an "Arab Spring" uprising in February 2011, the White House tried to encourage a transition to democracy. In national elections in June 2012, Morsi won 52% of the presidential vote and his party — the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood — won 48% in parliamentary elections.

Morsi cooperated with Obama in working out a cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in November, and White House aides hoped for a relationship with Cairo that could be a model for other Islamist-dominated countries. The chief focus was security cooperation, including joint counter-terrorism operations and support for Egypt's peace treaty with Israel.

Critics now say the U.S. focus on security meant the White House was unwilling to push back when Egypt's military abused human rights, including ordering military trials for 10,000 civilians accused in connection with the 2011 protests, and when the Morsi government began trying to monopolize power.

More at the link.

Italian Model Claudia Romani Sports Patriotic Bikini for Independence Day

The pull of America's soft power.

At London's Daily Mail, "Flying the flag! Italian model Claudia Romani strips to a star-spangled bikini to soak up the sun on Independence Day."

She's on Twitter as well.

Troops Open Fire on Morsi Supporters

At the Los Angeles Times, "Egypt unrest: Troops open fire on ex-President Morsi's supporters." And from the photo caption there, "The body of a supporter of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi lies on the ground after he was shot dead during clashes in Cairo."

And at the New York Times, "Video Shows Shooting of Protester in Egypt."

Photo here.

That dude is f-ked up.

More, "Egypt Protests Turn Increasingly Violent."

Earlier, "Egypt Launches Post-Coup Crackdown."

Added: ColorMeRed on Twitter warns to be cautious about MSM accounts of the violence, and posts this video to show that Muslim Brotherhood cadres may be killing anti-Morsi protesters.

Also at Pat Dollard's, FWIW, "WATCH: Muslim Brotherhood Shoots at Civilians So Cops Will Be Blamed."

And see the Heritage Foundation, "Q&A on Egypt: James Carafano."

3:50pm PST: At London's Daily Mail, "Egypt in chaos: 10 dead as protesters marching on barracks where ousted president Morsi is held are met by tanks on 'Friday of rage'."

4:08pm PST: At the New York Times, "Social Media Updates on Clashes in Cairo."

And from revolutionary socialist Tarek Shalaby:

Chants for Sisi at Hilton Ramses hotel - the frontline of the clashes. This is a sorry sight. #Tahrir

— Tarek Shalaby (@tarekshalaby) July 5, 2013

Left #Tahrir. MB have substantial bird shots on them, but there are weapons on both sides and no presence of army or police to stop. #June30

— Tarek Shalaby (@tarekshalaby) July 5, 2013

And from CNN's Ben Wedeman:

Must watch Video: Morsi supporters threatening terrorism, Christians, Sisi, etc., etc., etc. http://t.co/20nco1GvM6 #Egypt #30June #June30

— benwedeman (@bencnn) July 5, 2013

'We're All Afraid of the Truth...'

The inimitable Pat Condell calls out British cowardice and the far-left fascists crushing speech in the U.K. The EDL are not the problem.

Via Atlas Shrugs and Blazing Cat Fur.

More on #Angels' Walk-Off Win Over Cardinals

Here's last night's report, "#Angels Beat #Cardinals in Spectacular 6-5 Walk-Off Win on 4th of July."

After the game my wife was saying, "We need to make this a family 4th of July tradition." Everybody had a blast. My wife was so fired up when Josh Hamilton tied the game with his monstrous 9th-inning home run. And Erick Aybar's walk off single was spectacular. My oldest son said he was going to be bummed if the Angels lost, so he was ecstatic, "That was a memorable game. I just wanted them to win."

I was having fun win or lose, but I'll tell you, that was a fabulous conclusion to a great night. We got there right at 6:00pm and missed the Star Spangled Banner. Turns out they do the full field-sized American flag. And there was a Condor Squadron flyover as well, which we happened to see while standing in line out in front of the Big A.

More at USA Today, "Angels heat up in ninth to overcome Cardinals."

And watch it here, "Aybar's walk-off single." And, "Hamilton's game-tying homer."

Pridefest: Seattle Gay Rights Thugs Attack Christian Street Preacher

Because progs are all about tolerance, or something.

Via Dana Loesch, "Video Reportedly Shows NOH8 Attack At Seattle Pridefest."

And at Twitchy, "Christian street preachers assaulted at gay pride festival in Seattle [video]."

Vicious mofos.