Hundreds of Thousands in Las Vegas for Labor Day Weekend (VIDEO)

Wow. America's playground?

Sure looks like a lot of fun. I wish I could've made it out there with my family this weekend, but then I've been chilling pretty nice.

Maybe later.

At ABC News 13 Las Vegas:

U.S. Builds Up Arctic Spy Network as Russia and China Increase Presence

That's what I'm talking about!

At LAT.

Why the U.S. is amassing an Arctic spy network http://t.co/PI89v54Y71 pic.twitter.com/c9aR9UxVLa

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) September 7, 2015

Worlds Collide! Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Paul Krugman Endorses Donald Trump's Economics!

Stranger things have happened, I suppose.

But this is hilarious!

Paul Krugman likes Donald Trump. He really likes him!

At the New York Times, "Trump Is Right on Economics" (via Memeorandum):

So Jeb Bush is finally going after Donald Trump. Over the past couple of weeks the man who was supposed to be the front-runner has made a series of attacks on the man who is. Strange to say, however, Mr. Bush hasn’t focused on what’s truly vicious and absurd — viciously absurd? — about Mr. Trump’s platform, his implicit racism and his insistence that he would somehow round up 11 million undocumented immigrants and remove them from our soil.

Instead, Mr. Bush has chosen to attack Mr. Trump as a false conservative, a proposition that is supposedly demonstrated by his deviations from current Republican economic orthodoxy: his willingness to raise taxes on the rich, his positive words about universal health care. And that tells you a lot about the dire state of the G.O.P. For the issues the Bush campaign is using to attack its unexpected nemesis are precisely the issues on which Mr. Trump happens to be right, and the Republican establishment has been proved utterly wrong.

To see what I mean, consider what was at stake in the last presidential election, and how things turned out after Mitt Romney lost.

More at the link.

Krugman slams Trump as racist and then endorses his policies in the next breath! "World's Are Colliding!"

PREVIOUSLY: "The Political Establishment's Terrified by Donald Trump's 'Tangible American Nationalism'."

Lissy Cunningham for Zoo Today (VIDEO)

Somehow I missed this from back in March.

Watch, at Zoo, "Lissy Cunningham: Page 3 babe strips off in her ZOO debut!"

Plus, "Lissy Cunningham's topless pictures and video from her hot ZOO debut!"

Also at Twitter.

Charlotte McKinney Finds Black Lingerie Sexy

Hmm... I'l bet.

At Sports Illustrated:

Hillary Misses Mark With Millennials

From Selena Zito, at RCP. You have to sign a loyalty pledge to attend, a lot of good that did:

Hillary Has Millennials sign commitment pledge in order to attend #cleveland event http://t.co/NJshGnYt4p pic.twitter.com/P8SUYJzP1L

— SalenaZito (@SalenaZitoTrib) September 7, 2015

From a distance, the visual of students lining up along Bellflower Road in this Rust Belt city's University Circle neighborhood was good B-roll for Hillary Clinton's campaign, seemingly showcasing her appeal to young people.

It also was an opportunity to claim she was building a firewall of supporters for Ohio's March primary, should Joe Biden step in or Bernie Sanders catch up in a meaningful way.

That initial impression was quickly dispelled.

What looked like a block-long line turned out to be a crowd that could barely fill one-fourth of a football field. And the students in attendance? Well, they weren't exactly there to support the former secretary of State.

“I am sort of a Bernie (Sanders) fan. I also had nothing else to do at 10 in the morning,” said Brian Miller, a chemical engineering student from Pittsburgh, waiting with more than a dozen friends for the event to start.

David Lituchy of Morgantown, W.Va., was there on the off-chance he'd see a different Clinton: “I am here for Bill. He would definitely liven things up here.”

He said he's leaning toward Sanders, too.

Such sentiment wasn't anecdotal; scores of students expressed it, and you didn't need to interview anyone to know that Clinton has political problems beyond her email controversy.

The event here wasn't just a failure to connect with millennials, but a fundamental inability to read her audience and adjust her speech — or perhaps laziness, or a sense of entitlement that she shouldn't have to work this hard for support.

Perhaps it was all of that...

At bad omen all around. She might not make to the nomination, or if she does, she's going to be an extremely weak candidate.

More at that top link.

Whoo Hoo! Michael Walsh's New Book Came Today, The Devil's Pleasure Palace

Wow!

I wasn't expecting a book delivery on Labor Day. This is great!

I blogged about here: "Michael Walsh's New Book Is On the Way," and "'Communists are always deliberate liars, who believe that the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' justifies any deception necessary to advance their cause, and Communists kill without remorse, unrestrained by conscience...'"

Here's the Amazon link, The Devil's Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West.

So, what a great day of reading and watching baseball today!

More blogging in a little while too. I'm going to start reading the first couple of chapters right now!

New Poll Has Bernie Sanders Leading Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire

At WSJ, "Poll: Bernie Sanders Leads Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire."

The Democrats are actually a sad lot this year. Old and feeble, pushing an even more feeble collectivist ideology. Socialism, the ideology destroys.

Via Woodsterman.



PREVIOUSLY: "Poll: Democrats Shift to Extreme Far-Left of Political Spectrum — Bernie Sanders Leads the Way!"

The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS

Robert Spencer's got a new book out, and the title makes me giggle, The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS.

Daniel Greenfield has a write-up, at FrontPage Magazine, "Robert Spencer Looks Squarely at ISIS:

'The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS' reveals what the West is really up against.

Robert spoke in Mission Viego, in March, "Islamic State: Is It Islamic? And Why It Matters."

I got a signed copy of his earlier book, Arab Winter Comes to America: The Truth About the War We're In.

Robert's so good, so expert at this, that often times Muslim imams refuse to debate him. He's the authority on Islam and global jihad.

I look forward to picking up a copy of his new book on Islamic State.

White Racist Lesbian Leftist Loses Lawsuit After Being Impregnated with Black Man's Sperm (VIDEO)

I saw headlines earlier about this lawsuit, but I never clicked the links, because the story sounded so typically racist and backwards, and sadly we still have ugly dregs like that circling the bottom of America's social barrel.

But, ahem, it turns out that this woman's homosexual. She and her partner got pregnant with a sperm donor, and then sued after having a mixed-race child. Weasel Zippers links to this Washington Post article, where you can see that the woman's grievances are the kinds of racist statements you'd see back in pre-civil rights Jim Crow America.

As I always say, and regressives always prove, leftists are f-king biggest racists.

See, "White woman accidentally impregnated with black man’s sperm loses legal battle":

A white woman who sued after she was accidentally impregnated with the sperm of an African American man will be forced to refile the lawsuit after an Illinois judge tossed out her claim against the sperm bank.

Jennifer Cramblett filed suit against Midwest Sperm Bank in 2014 because she was artificially inseminated with sperm from the wrong donor and gave birth to a mixed-race daughter.

The sperm bank apologized and refunded part of the cost to Cramblett and her partner Amanda Zinkon. But Cramblett’s suit alleged that the mistake caused her and her family stress, pain, suffering and medical expenses. And, the suit said, in Cramblett’s predominantly white community, she feared that her daughter, Payton, now 3, would grow up feeling like an “outcast.”

But DuPage County judge Ronald Sutter threw out the lawsuit Thursday, agreeing with attorneys for the sperm bank who argued that it lacked legal merit, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Attorneys for the sperm bank had argued that “wrongful birth” suits typically apply to cases where the child is born with a birth defect that doctors should have warned parents about; in this case, the child was healthy. Cramblett had also sought damages for a “breach of warranty.” The judge rejected both claims but said that Cramblett could refile the suit as a “negligence claim,” the Tribune reported.

At the heart of the lawsuit was Cramblett’s claim that she was unprepared to raise an African American child and that her community and her “unconsciously insensitive” family members might not be accepting of a child of a different race.

“Getting a young daughter’s hair cut is not particularly stressful for most mothers, but to Jennifer it is not a routine matter, because Payton has hair typical of an African American girl,” the lawsuit said. “To get a decent cut, Jennifer must travel to a black neighborhood, far from where she lives, where she is obviously different in appearance, and not overtly welcome.”

According to the suit, the couple chose sperm from donor No. 380, a white man; instead, they were given sperm from donor No. 330, a black man. They blame a paper records system that allegedly caused an employee to misread the numbers.

Keep reading. It's pretty funny.

It turns out the family "moved to Uniontown from racially diverse Akron, because the schools were better and to be closer to family.” In other words, they moved from a minority neighborhood with minority schools to a predominantly white neighborhood where their daughter will attend an "all-white school."

All-white. That's not promoting racial healing and integration. That's white supremacist separatism.

And she was complaining about it so she could win a lawsuit!

Just a tad bit short on social and political awareness? Or, perhaps that's just this racist woman's white privilege breaking through

Either way, racism today is primarily a phenomenon on the left. Remember, Dylann Roof was a leftist emo-prog loser who murdered nine black Americans. Indeed, the Democrats are and have always been the party of racist white supremacy and murderous racial eliminationism.

More video, "Woman Impregnated With Black Man's Sperm Has Legal Case Dismissed."

'Hillary is a doddering old addlebrain who cannot accomplish the simplest task on her own behalf but instead depends on a 24-7 staff of Wellness Workers to maintain her...'

Heh.

That's from the hilarious Ace at AoSHQ, "Hillary Clinton: Invalid."

Following the links takes us to Stephen Miller, at National Review, "Hillary’s E-mails Reveal a Startling Amount of Dependency."

Journalist Shaming in China

Show trials.

Chinese Communist Party show trials.

At the New York Times, "Caijing Journalist’s Shaming Signals China’s Growing Control Over News Media":

HONG KONG — When the Chinese Ministry of Public Security arrested nearly 200 people at the end of August for “spreading rumors,” one of the most prominent targets was Wang Xiaolu, a reporter for the respected business magazine Caijing.

Mr. Wang was compelled to confess on television before going to trial. Dressed in a green polo shirt and looking downcast, he told viewers of China Central Television, the main state network, that he had gathered information using private sources “through abnormal channels,” then added to this his “own subjective views.” The article in question, Mr. Wang said, was a “sensational” and “irresponsible” report on the stock market.

That the state would take aim at a publication like Caijing came as a surprise to many. The magazine has a strong reputation for hard-hitting investigations and pushing the boundaries of what the government might deem permissible. Yet it has steered clear of prohibited topics like the Falun Gong movement.

“I know how to measure the boundary lines,” Caijing’s founder, Hu Shuli, told The New York Times in 2005. “We go up to the line — and we might even push it. But we never cross it.”

So the public shaming of one of its journalists has raised fears about prospects for journalistic freedom within China — and the direction of Caijing itself.

The publication was set up in 1998 by Ms. Hu, a former propaganda writer for the Communist Party publication Workers’ Daily, and it took an aggressive journalistic approach from the beginning. The cover of the first issue focused on a property company with a rocketing share price that had been suspended from trading after overstating its profits. A few insiders were tipped off beforehand and managed to unload their shares.

In an editorial on the future of journalism in China, Ms. Hu wrote, “By simply reporting the story and pointing out places where the system failed to protect small investors, we incited a stir. Government watchdogs immediately criticized Caijing.”

Caijing, a biweekly magazine with a circulation of 225,000, has continued chasing the same types of stories. Exposés by Caijing — which means finance and economics in Chinese — have covered such topics as illegal securities trading, stock price manipulation and falsified profits. Some of the reports have prompted regulatory investigations.

But for a business-focused publication, it has also ventured further into less traditional territory.

In 2003, Caijing was one of the few Chinese media outlets to report critically on the SARS crisis. The government tried to control the story, said David Bandurski, an editor at the China Media Project based at the University of Hong Kong.

“Some media, Caijing and Southern Metropolis Daily, decided they were going to report,” Mr. Bandurski said. “Hu Shuli was going into West China with her hazmat suit. Around the time of SARS, April 2003, was the beginning of what they think of as the media spring. Official guidance totally fell apart.”

In 2008, Caijing reported on how construction standards had been ignored and public money was wasted in Sichuan, leading to the collapse of many schools during an earthquake. Other publications were punished for covering the collapsed schools, but Caijing was not.

Mr. Bandurski said the importance of economic reform to the government meant elites wanted strong financial reporting. Caijing seized the opportunity.

But it also occasionally crossed the line, from Beijing’s point of view. Wang Boming, who helped obtain financing for the publication when it started, told The New York Times in 2005 that people from the magazine had been called to perform “self-criticism.”

Mr. Wang, who is president of the Stock Exchange Executive Council, or S.E.E.C., and helped establish the stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen, is now editor in chief at the magazine. Caijing is owned by S.E.E.C. Media, a company listed in Hong Kong, which sells advertising.

Ms. Hu resigned as editor in November 2009 after a dispute with the publishers. Caijing had come under growing pressure from government censors, and Ms. Hu and others at the magazine had complained that S.E.E.C. Media was too stingy with the budget.

Ms. Hu left along with most of the editorial team. She went on to form Caixin Media, a news group focused on finance.

Caijing, observers say, has stayed at the forefront of financial reporting and has performed better than many expected. But the confession of Wang Xiaolu has some questioning whether free rein for Caijing, Caixin and publications like them is coming to an end, either because of government pressure or because journalists are trying to protect themselves.

“I think it is a crackdown on media and a step-up of censorship,” said Mr. Cheng, a stock market investor in his 40s who wanted to be referred to only by his surname because of safety concerns. “I can see that because of what happened to Caijing magazine, many media don’t want to be the first one to report important news. Like the day before yesterday, China Securities Regulatory Commission started another action to further restrict loans for stock trading, but I can see that no media wanted to be the first one to report this.”

Luo Changping, a former deputy managing editor at Caijing, said people he knew who work at Caijing or have worked there are upset. And although anyone going into journalism in China knows the constraints they will work under, standards are changing, he added.

“Maybe a few years ago, the line was higher,” he said. “But now it’s dropping lower on everyone. Many journalists are saying that nowadays, there is no media that is safe. Everyone lives in a comparatively dangerous situation.”

He said even Mr. Wang’s confession was vague on exactly what he had done wrong.

“Everything he did was just his usual reporting work,” said Mr. Luo. “And we are all saying that a big part of journalists’ job is ‘privately gathering information.’ ”

Still more.

The Timothy Hunt Witch Hunt

A great piece, from Jonathan Foreman, at Commentary:

In 1983, the British biochemist Timothy Hunt discovered cyclins, a family of proteins that help regulate the life of cells. Eighteen years later, in 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Between June 8 and June 10 of this year, the 72-year-old Hunt went from being a universally respected and even beloved figure at the top of the scientific establishment to an instant pariah, condemned everywhere for antiquated opinions about women’s role in science that he does not, in fact, hold.

In only 48 hours, he found himself compelled to resign his positions at University College London and at the august Royal Society (where Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke once fought petty battles) after being told that failure to do so would lead to his outright firing.

The Timothy Hunt affair represents more than the gratuitous eye-blink ruination of a great man’s reputation and career. It demonstrates the danger of the extraordinary, almost worshipful deference that academia, government institutions, and above all the mainstream media now accord to social media. It is yet more evidence of the way moral panic and (virtual) mob rule can be accelerated and intensified by the minimalism of Twitter, with its 140-character posts and its apparently inherent tendency to encourage snap judgments, prejudice, and cruelty.

Fortunately, the story did not end on June 10. In the weeks following the initial assault, some of Hunt’s most ardent persecutors have been exposed as liars or blinkered ideologues, abetted by cynical hacks and academic rivals on a quest to bring him down or use him as grist to a political mill. Hunt’s partial rehabilitation has largely come about thanks to the dogged investigations of Louise Mensch, the British novelist and former conservative member of parliament who lives in New York City and is herself a powerful presence on Twitter. Mensch was alarmed by what she calls ‘the ugly combination of bullying and sanctimony” in the reaction to remarks made by “an evidently sweet and kind” older man.

She did some checking on Twitter and soon found that the two main witnesses for the prosecution contradicted each other. Then she began a more thorough investigation of Hunt’s offending comments and the lack of due process involved in his punishment by various academic and media institutions. The results of her exhaustive research, published on her blog, Unfashionista.com, encouraged an existing groundswell of support for Hunt from scientists around the world but most important from Hunt’s own female colleagues and former students.

As a result, the false picture of Hunt as a misogynist opposed to the equal participation of women in science has mostly been dispelled. Hunt, who is married to a distinguished immunologist named Mary Collins, has ceased being the science academy’s equivalent of George Orwell’s Emmanuel Goldstein—the object of the Two Minutes Hate in 1984—on Twitter. Indeed, one of the Britain’s most respected female scientists, Dame Athene Donald, master of Churchill College, Cambridge, has publicly lamented the wrecking of Hunt’s reputation by “sloppy journalism fueled by self-righteous fervor.”

Nevertheless various senior figures continue to insist that whether or not Hunt’s remarks were jokes or correctly reported, he is deservedly a symbol of the sexism that allegedly pervades science. At the time of this writing, moreover, he has not been restored to the positions from which he was expelled or forced to resign...

More.

And at Louise Mensch's blog, "The Tim Hunt Reporting Was False. Royal Society, Please Give Him Due Process."

Orwell's two-minute hate is here. "Death! Traitor! Death! Traitor!"

That's the left for you.

Romee Strijd on Becoming a Victoria's Secret Angel

Watch, at the Victoria's Secret YouTube page, "Dutch supermodel Romee Strijd talks about how she was discovered, being cast for the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show and her journey to becoming an Angel."

Dangerous Rip Currents at SoCal Beaches

Careful if you're heading out for a swim down at the beach.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Labor Day bummer: Rip currents, swells close an L.A. County beach."

Also at CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "Dangerous Rip Currents Have Lifeguards on High Alert."

Up Close and Personal with Gang Members of El Salvador: Inside the Prison That's So Dangerous Even the Guards Won't Go In

These are Obama's homies.

They're welcome right here in the U.S. of A.

Remember those "unaccompanied minors"?

Here they are, at London's Daily Mail, "Inside Penas Ciudad Barrios prison that is so dangerous even guards will not go in."

How Social Media Is Ruining Politics

Ouch.

What a harsh attack on social media, heh.

At Politico, "It is turning out to be more encompassing and controlling, more totalizing, than earlier media ever was":

Twice before in the last hundred years a new medium has transformed elections. In the 1920s, radio disembodied candidates, reducing them to voices. It also made national campaigns far more intimate. Politicians, used to bellowing at fairgrounds and train depots, found themselves talking to families in their homes. The blustery rhetoric that stirred big, partisan crowds came off as shrill and off-putting when piped into a living room or a kitchen. Gathered around their wireless sets, the public wanted an avuncular statesman, not a firebrand. With Franklin Roosevelt, master of the soothing fireside chat, the new medium found its ideal messenger.

In the 1960s, television gave candidates their bodies back, at least in two dimensions. With its jumpy cuts and pitiless close-ups, TV placed a stress on sound bites, good teeth and an easy manner. Image became everything, as the line between politician and celebrity blurred. John Kennedy was the first successful candidate of the TV era, but it was Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton who perfected the form. Born actors, they could project a down-home demeanor while also seeming bigger than life.

Today, with the public looking to smartphones for news and entertainment, we seem to be at the start of the third big technological makeover of modern electioneering. The presidential campaign is becoming just another social-media stream, its swift and shallow current intertwining with all the other streams that flow through people’s devices. This shift is changing the way politicians communicate with voters, altering the tone and content of political speech. But it’s doing more than that. It’s changing what the country wants and expects from its would-be leaders.

What’s important now is not so much image as personality. But, as the Trump phenomenon reveals, it’s only a particular kind of personality that works—one that’s big enough to grab the attention of the perpetually distracted but small enough to fit neatly into a thousand tiny media containers. It might best be described as a Snapchat personality. It bursts into focus at regular intervals without ever demanding steady concentration...

That's pretty good. RTWT.

Sarah Palin Floats Nomination as Energy Secretary in Potential Trump Administration (VIDEO)

I suppose that's better than nomination as treasury secretary, heh.

Watch, at CNN yesterday, "Sarah Palin Recommends Herself for Energy Secretary."

And here's the full interview, "Sarah Palin on State of the Union: Full Interview."

Interesting too that the public debate has Donald Trump not only as the hypothetical GOP nominee, but as winning the White House altogether. Folks are looking ahead realistically, and it's big.

Las Vegas Police Officer Attacked in 'Ambush-Style' Shooting

A report, at Fox News 5 Las Vegas, "Officer wounded in east Vegas Valley ambush shooting."

Also at Breitbart Texas, "Another Cop Shot in Ambush-Style Attack."

And watch, at ABC News 13 Las Vegas:

Edward Rothstein Reviews Timothy Snyder's Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning

This is pretty fascinating, especially the conclusion at Rothstein's review, at the Wall Street Journal, "The Frying Pan and the Fire."

And here's Snyder's book, at Amazon, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning.

I'm not familiar with Snyder's work, oddly enough. He's got another important work on the Holocaust, with a comparative focus, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.

If I read both, I expect I'd start with the most recent volume first and work backwards. And I would do so with the requisite circumspection. Apparently, as Rothstein points out, the trend in recent historiography is to posit the Holocaust as just one more case of genocide, something not that particularly unique, but instead the starting point for a genre, a genre of promoting "tolerance" at that. And when you push tolerance as a stand-alone ideology, you're more likely to end up in an altogether different place. More like the gulags than modern enlightened democracy.

But then, that's up for the reader to decide. So, go for it. Click through at the links and have at it.