Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders Dominate First Democrat Debate (VIDEO)

Hardcore progressives, especially measured by social media interaction and Google searches, put Bernie Sanders way out in front. See Politico, "Sanders dominates social media during the debate," and Independent Journal, "Bernie Sanders Just Introduced Himself to America and America is Curious. Hot Damn, That Google Trend on the Right."

The consensus on the collective Obama-media was that Hillary Clinton dominated, which, with the above trends among partisan progs, is the story of this campaign. See the Week, "The most talked about candidate of the debate was Bernie Sanders — by a long shot."

Sanders' discussion of democratic socialism, seen below, really causes social media to explode.

More at the Wall Street Journal, "Hillary Clinton Confronts Critics at First Democratic Debate":

LAS VEGAS—Hillary Clinton on Tuesday went on offense in the first Democratic presidential debate on issues such as gun control, foreign policy and the Republican probe of her email server, while also punching back against a quartet of primary rivals seeking to knock her out of front-runner status.

The Democrats’ first matchup proved to nearly be as rough-and-tumble as the previous Republican debates, though the candidates also found several areas of agreement. Mrs. Clinton even got an assist from her main challenger, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who said he wasn’t interested in discussing her private email server, which has bedeviled her campaign for months.

After spending months virtually ignoring her Democratic rivals, Mrs. Clinton aggressively tangled with her opponents, focusing on policy differences and highlighting her depth of experience.

She said Mr. Sanders wasn’t tough enough on guns, noting that he repeatedly opposed the Brady bill, which mandated background checks, and voted to give gun manufacturers immunity from lawsuits. She dismissed his explanation that the immunity bill was “large and complicated.”

“It wasn’t that complicated to me,” said Mrs. Clinton, who was also in the Senate at the time.

While Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders were center stage, the other three candidates—former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, and Lincoln Chafee, a former governor and senator from Rhode Island—also asserted themselves.

Mr. Chafee used his opening statement to note that he hasn’t suffered a “scandal,” a direct shot at Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who faced a series of probes during his administration.

Mrs. Clinton faced fire from all sides as her opponents questioned her judgment and her record in the U.S. Senate and the State Department. The other candidates also took aim at Mrs. Clinton’s vote to go to war in Iraq, the same issue that was a key factor in her loss in the 2008 Democratic primary race.

Mr. Sanders punched first, characterizing the Iraq war as the “worst foreign policy blunder in the history of this country.” Mr. Chafee chimed in, questioning Mrs. Clinton’s “poor judgment calls.”

“If you’re going to make those poor judgment calls at a critical time in our history…that’s an indication of how someone will perform in the future,” Mr. Chafee said.

Mrs. Clinton, who has spent months answering questions about the private email server she used as secretary of state, offered a familiar defense, saying she had made a mistake but did nothing wrong, and quickly pivoted to saying the entire matter was driven by Republicans.

“It is a partisan vehicle, as admitted by the House majority leader…to drive down my poll numbers, big surprise,” she said, referring to a congressional committee investigating the matter. “I am still standing.”

She then got backup from Mr. Sanders, who said he agreed with her and said Americans want to hear about critical issues that affect their lives.

“The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails,” he said, to Mrs. Clinton’s delight. “Enough of the emails! Let’s talk about the real issues facing America.”

Equal Pay in Hollywood's Movie Industry (VIDEO)

At LAT, "With new equal-pay act, will Jennifer Lawrence get paid like Bradley Cooper?":

Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence was paid 7% of the profit on the 2013 ensemble film "American Hustle," a big payday for the A-list actress. But Bradley Cooper and two other male co-stars each earned 9%.

That's the kind of inequity potentially targeted by California's Fair Pay Act, which is aimed at leveling the compensation field between men and women. The bill, signed by Gov. Jerry Brown this week, applies to businesses statewide but has particular resonance in Hollywood, where women have become increasingly vocal critics of the pay gap.

Indeed, the entertainment industry played a key role in pushing the bill forward. Patricia Arquette raised the issue of pay inequality while accepting the best supporting actress Oscar during this year's Academy Awards — a moment that the Fair Pay Act's author, state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara), said gave the measure momentum.

Arquette said in an interview with The Times on Wednesday that the lower profit participation paid to Lawrence, which was disclosed in the leak of stolen emails from Sony Pictures Entertainment last year, exposed how women are routinely paid less than men in Hollywood...

Plus, watch at CBS News This Morning, "Oprah: Hollywood gender pay gap conversation has hit critical moment."

Moving the Goalposts: What Feminist 'Rape Culture' Discourse Is About

An epic post, from Robert Stacy McCain, at the Other McCain.

Cited there is Susan Shaw and Janet Lee, eds., Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings.

I have a copy of the third edition, and I tweeted a photo of it to Robert. He asked if I'd just gotten my copy, and I said, "No, the radical lesbian feminist professor two offices down from mine left an old copy out in the hall, in a stack of free books."

And that's not a joke. Professor Rachel Hollenberg, from the Department of Philosophy, is two doors down from me. She's really hardcore, as you can tell, by a quick look at this conference program where she participated, in 2005, at Claremont Graduate School, "Queering the Discourse Conference."

(And notice how she marked up the contents page at the textbook, seen below. Boy, you really gotta highlight all the entries on oppression, lol.)

In any case, buy Robert's book, Sex Trouble: Essays on Radical Feminism and the War Against Human Nature.

I'll have more blogging tonight

Jenifer Van Vleck, Empire of the Air

She's Assistant Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University.

And here's her book, Empire of the Air: Aviation and the American Ascendancy.

Van Vleck’s first book, Empire of the Air: Aviation and the American Ascendancy, was published by Harvard University Press in 2013. It examines how aviation facilitated the United States’ rise as a global power—and transformed American visions of the world—from the Wright brothers through the jet age. Empire of the Air received the Gaddis Smith International Book Prize from Yale’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, and it was the runner-up for the Stuart Bernath Prize and the Myra Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

CNN Debate Ushers in New Phase of Democrat Party Campaign

The debate's tonight.

And at the Los Angeles Times, "Clinton and Sanders prepare for debate, and a new phase in the Democratic race":

Hillary Rodham Clinton was never going to waltz to the Democratic presidential nomination. The American political system doesn't work that way.

No one, however, expected a 74-year-old senator from tiny Vermont to emerge at this point as her strongest challenger. Not the party's wise men and women, not Clinton strategists. Not even the self-described Democratic socialist himself.

But Bernie Sanders' stunning fundraising success — his $26-million haul nearly matched Clinton's money machine over the summer — and his continuing capacity to draw huge crowds, including 13,000 Friday night in Tucson, seem to ensure he will stick around for months to come and, even if he falls short of the nomination, push Clinton and fellow Democrats in his leftward direction.

In recent weeks, Clinton has staked a number of positions that narrowed the gap between the two: opposing the Keystone XL pipeline, proposing tougher regulation of Wall Street, rejecting a trade deal she helped negotiate with Asian countries and calling for the repeal of a federal tax on high-end healthcare plans.

Clinton may have come to those positions of her own volition, but her timing ahead of Tuesday's first Democratic debate appears to be no accident, just as her increased willingness to take on Sanders, albeit obliquely, hardly seems coincidental.

"Everything that I am proposing, I have a way to pay for it," she said while campaigning last week in Iowa, no doubt mindful that Sanders' platform, which includes a call for universal healthcare coverage and free college tuition, carries a hefty price tag.

"You've got a proposal," Clinton challenged him, "tell us how you're going to pay for it."

Sanders' response has been to welcome Clinton alongside. Professing delight at Clinton's newfound opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, Sanders allowed that "it would have been more helpful to have her aboard a few months ago" when he was one of the loudest and loneliest voices in opposition.

Clinton, 67, remains a solid favorite to win the Democratic nomination, in large part because of her strong support among women, Latinos and African Americans, who make up much of the party base. For all the talk of discontent, 3 in 4 likely Democratic primary voters view Clinton positively, and the same number say they could see voting for her regardless of who they now support, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll.

But Sanders' rise and Clinton's struggle with controversies over her family's philanthropic foundation and the use of a private email server as secretary of State have seeded deep doubts about the front-runner and raised questions about both her political durability and personal veracity.

That has encouraged Vice President Joe Biden to seriously weigh a lightning entry into the race, a move that would instantly transform the contest from a race to catch Clinton — pitting Sanders against former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and the also-rans Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb — into a brawl between the party's two top heavyweights.

Many Democrats, perhaps envious of the boisterous GOP contest, are hankering for a fight...

Well, it's going to be interesting, in any case.

Still more.

Playboy Magazine to Stop Publishing Nude Photos of Women in 2016

Wow.

Talk about a changing media landscape.

At the New York Times, "Nudes Are Old News at Playboy":

Last month, Cory Jones, a top editor at Playboy, went to see its founder Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion.

In a wood-paneled dining room, with Picasso and de Kooning prints on the walls, Mr. Jones nervously presented a radical suggestion: the magazine, a leader of the revolution that helped take sex in America from furtive to ubiquitous, should stop publishing images of naked women.

Mr. Hefner, now 89, but still listed as editor in chief, agreed. As part of a redesign that will be unveiled next March, the print edition of Playboy will still feature women in provocative poses. But they will no longer be fully nude.

Its executives admit that Playboy has been overtaken by the changes it pioneered. “That battle has been fought and won,” said Scott Flanders, the company’s chief executive. “You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture.”

For a generation of American men, reading Playboy was a cultural rite, an illicit thrill consumed by flashlight. Now every teenage boy has an Internet-connected phone instead. Pornographic magazines, even those as storied as Playboy, have lost their shock value, their commercial value and their cultural relevance.

Playboy’s circulation has dropped from 5.6 million in 1975 to about 800,000 now, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. Many of the magazines that followed it have disappeared. Though detailed figures are not kept for adult magazines, many of those that remain exist in severely diminished form, available mostly in specialist stores. Penthouse, perhaps the most famous Playboy competitor, responded to the threat from digital pornography by turning even more explicit. It never recovered.

Previous efforts to revamp Playboy, as recently as three years ago, have never quite stuck. And those who have accused it of exploiting women are unlikely to be assuaged by a modest cover-up. But, according to its own research, Playboy’s logo is one of the most recognizable in the world, along with those of Apple and Nike. This time, as the magazine seeks to compete with younger outlets like Vice, Mr. Flanders said, it sought to answer a key question: “if you take nudity out, what’s left?”

It is difficult, in a media market that has been so fragmented by the web, to imagine the scope of Playboy’s influence at its peak...

Pretty amazing development.

Still more at the link.

Smuggling Refugees Into Europe: The Untold Story

From Hugh Eakin, at the New York Review, "The Terrible Flight from the Killing":

The movement to Europe should not have come as a surprise. According to the UN, in 2014 a record 14 million people were newly forced from their homes in armed conflicts worldwide, and much of the staggering increase was owing to the wars in Syria and Iraq. In Syria, more than half of the total pre-war population of 22 million was now uprooted. With the ravages of barrel-bombing by the Assad regime, the terror of the Islamic State, and the growing inability of the international community to deliver aid inside the country, more Syrians than ever before sought refuge abroad.

In the first four months of 2015 alone, another 700,000 fled, many to nearby countries, the highest rate of any time during the war. Meanwhile, Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, already overwhelmed with millions of Syrians, have been restricting entry, while the underfunded World Food Program has been drastically reducing food aid.

Other recent developments, though less noticed, had far-reaching effects of their own. Several countries in Africa, including Libya, and also many parts of Afghanistan, traditionally the world’s number one producer of refugees, have become increasingly unstable and violent in the months since international forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 2014. At the same time, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey, which had together absorbed more than five million Afghans in recent years, had begun taking aggressive steps to send them home or prevent them from staying; by this summer, tens of thousands of Afghans were joining the Syrians trying to enter Europe.

For the refugees themselves, the journey to Europe—requiring a series of up-front payments to smugglers of human beings, often amounting to several thousand dollars—is enormously costly and fraught with danger. More than 2,800 people have drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2015 alone. Others have fallen sick or died in encampments in Greece or in the backs of trucks in Central Europe.

On August 27, Austrian police found an abandoned Volvo refrigeration truck packed with the bodies of seventy-one refugees who had paid smugglers to drive them from Hungary to Austria but had suffocated en route; a day later, Austrian police stopped another smuggler’s truck containing twenty-six refugees, including three children who had to be hospitalized for severe dehydration. And yet, every day, thousands more have set out from Turkey for the Greek islands, including the young Syrian boy Aylan, whose lifeless body washed up on shore in Turkey after a failed crossing on September 2, shocking the world.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused Europe of turning the Mediterranean into a giant cemetery; Andreas Kamm, the longtime director of the Danish Refugee Council, said that, without major changes, Europe’s incoherent response was headed toward “Armageddon.” For her part, Chancellor Merkel said that, unless other member states were prepared to step up and share the burden, the very basis of the EU and its Schengen system of open internal borders would be at risk of collapse...

An excellent review of the issues I've been blogging about for months.

Keep reading.

And ICYMI, "'The Invasion of Europe'."

So, Looting is Legitimate Political Protest

From Matthew Vadum, at FrontPage Magazine, "Looting: Legitimate Political Protest?":

#BlackLivesMatter "Professor" Deray Mckesson maintains looting serves social and racial justice.

Looting is a great way to advance the increasingly violent, racist Black Lives Matter movement, an agitator is teaching students after being rewarded by the Left with a teaching gig at prestigious Yale University.

The words of Twitter star Deray Mckesson expose for the umpteenth time the lie that Black Lives Matter, whose members idolize unrepentant cop killers Mumia abu Jamal and Assata Shakur, is a law-abiding, peaceful movement and that those who loot and riot in its name are a fringe or unrelated element. Lawless violence and bloody insurrection are how Mckesson and his followers pursue their vision of so-called social justice.

Mckesson led a class that was discussing, "In Defense of Looting," an essay by Willie Osterweil whose bio at the New Inquiry website describes him as "a writer, editor, and member of the punk band Vulture Shit."

Johnetta Elzie (who calls herself ShordeeDooWhop on Twitter and uses the handle @Nettaaaaaaaa), who with Mckesson helped foment unrest in Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo., and other racial hotspots, live-tweeted the Oct. 3 lecture. The tweets suggest the talk was a mixture of black liberation theology, critical race theory, Marxism, and anarchism...

Keep reading.

Martin Luther King, Jr., they're not.

New Palestinian Intifada 'is drenched in the fever of martyrdom and faith-based hate...' (VIDEO)

From Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary, "Clueless About a Religious War":

While the narrative about this latest outbreak of violence from critics of Israel is that it is all about the sins of the “occupation” and Israel denying hope to the Palestinians, what we hearing from them is a very different story. Read any of the accounts of the motivations of the people going into the streets to stab random Jews they encounter or the mobs in the West Bank who are seeking to set off confrontations with Israeli troops, and you don’t hear much about frustration about the peace process. The same applies to clips from Palestinian television that Palestine Media Watch provides. What you do see are accounts of Muslim religious fervor that is drenched in the fever of martyrdom and faith-based hate...

More.

And see, "Why Are Palestinians Doing It?"

Drunk UConn Student Student Who Demanded Mac and Cheese Has Apologized

Heh, what a story.

At USA Today, "UConn student apologizes for mac and cheese tirade."

Dramatic Rescue of Young Girl at Port Hueneme Pier (VIDEO)

Watch, at CBS News 2 Los Angles, "Girl 11, Critical Following Water Rescue at Hueneme Pier."

Jackie Johnson's Got Your Record-Heat Forecast

Well, they say tomorrow's going to be a little cooler, which would be fabulous. It's been hotter than hell this last few days, and today the humidity surged.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles, the fabulous Jackie Johnson:

'Indigenous Peoples Day'

Stupid, spoiled, and entitled leftists.

They should try living the way "indigenous peoples" would be living had not Europeans settled North America.

At Truth Revolt, "Push to Change Columbus Day to 'Indigenous Peoples Day' Continues."

ADDED: At Twitchy, "Christopher Columbus bust in Detroit takes a hatchet to the head; Philly statue hit with profanity."

Leftism is an ideology of hate. Rabid hatred.

USC Fires Steve Sarkisian

Well, it's not like I was expecting him back anytime soon.

But the decision's final now, at the Los Angeles Times, "Steve Sarkisian fired as USC's football coach."

Companies Like BuzzFeed, Vice Media, and Huffington Post Shift Attention to TV

At the Wall Street Journal, "New-Media Companies Shift Attention to TV":

Companies like BuzzFeed, Vice Media and Huffington Post are known as “new-media” specialists—makers of lists, articles and videos designed to go viral online and lure young audiences.

Now, they’re venturing aggressively into a decidedly old-media stronghold: television.

There are a variety of potential models, most of which involve some sort of tie-up with traditional media companies: BuzzFeed says it may create TV shows with Comcast Corp.’s Universal Studios. Vice Media is in talks to take control of a cable channel from A+E Networks.

Complex, a network of websites focused on fashion, music and pop culture, says it may funnel video content into Hearst Corp.’s television properties after receiving an investment from the company. And the Daily Mail is working to develop a syndicated program with daytime TV king Dr. Phil that is set to air next fall.

On one level, it’s a jarring and seemingly illogical shift for companies that have prided themselves on being the opposite of traditional. The TV business is in turmoil, as networks fret over young audiences lost to cord-cutting and the fragmentation of viewing from having so much original content on so many cable channels.

The new-media outlets appear to have been a beneficiary of this: many young viewers have fled in their direction, industry executives say. Why, then, would they want to launch into the TV business?

For one thing, TV offers new—and more predictable—revenue streams for digital-media upstarts that until now have been largely dependent on advertising. The owner of a TV show gets the right to license it in many ways, to TV networks, mobile-phone companies and international media players.

“Even having a little exposure to those platforms can be pretty lucrative for us,” said Jonah Peretti, founder and chief executive of New York-based BuzzFeed, which has a staff of 230 in Los Angeles creating around 75 video segments a week and is working on developing content for television. “The economics of traditional platforms are still so much richer,” he said.

Trying to break into television has become the next logical step for many sites that have watched valuations climb to eye-popping levels in their investment rounds and now have to deliver on those expectations.

Despite its problems, TV is still a bigger business than online advertising: TV ad spending is forecast to be $70 billion this year, compared with $7.8 billion for online video, according to eMarketer, a research firm...

Pretty interesting.

Keep reading.

Donald Trump Drilled on Women's Issues at 'No Labels' Convention (VIDEO)

I'm just now hearing about this "no labels" convention, but then I'm in California, not New Hampshire.

At Politico, "Donald Trump strikes sour note at No Labels."

And I don't see what's so sour about it, at CNN, "Trump pressed on women's health, pay equality."

Looks like some participants are playing "gotcha" with Trump, although I believe him when he says he's given women more opportunity in the construction trades than anyone else in the industry.

'The eight year experiment with the Obama administration will be a cautionary tale on multiple levels concerning America’s socialist elite and their palace guard stenographers...'

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "SO, THAT DIDN’T WORK OUT WELL..."

Meaning, the Obama-media's nearly 8-year fetish with collectivist leftism hasn't turned out too well. Sadly, it's going to take at least a decade of mainstream, if not conservative, government to unwind the catastrophic damage.

Katelyn Pascavis in Alexandre Abela Photoshoot

She's on Instagram.

And at Egotastic!, "KATELYN PASCAVIS TOPLESS OCEAN DIP."

A very nice babe.

Expectation of Payback Ratchets Up Mets-Dodgers Tension

Well, sensational New York Times stories also "ratchet up" tensions.

Here.

And ICYMI, "Chase Utley's Borderline Legal Slide Might Save Dodgers' Season (VIDEO)."

Focusing on Economic Growth Should Be at Top of Policy Agenda for U.S. Leaders

From David Petraeus and Michael O'Hanlon, at USA Today, "Recipe for American success":

As world leaders gathered and debated each other at the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York, most of the attention seemed to be on hot spots.  Ukraine, Syria and Iraq, conflict zones in Africa and East Asia, and the latest news from Afghanistan got lots of discussion. In many respects, this was inevitable, and necessary. Indeed, our own careers have been largely shaped and dominated by such pressing issues.

In another respect, however, we need to remember that in a world of troubling headlines, less dramatic and more structural developments could determine the future of the global order even more than the latest crises. Many of these concern technology and economics.

While military might was a necessary ingredient in the West's victory in the Cold War, it was more like a moat than a battering ram — it provided time and protection for the inherent strengths of the Western democratic and economic systems to prevail. This is likely to be just as true in the future.

A few basic realities about the modern world need to be remembered. The post-World War II international order set up by U.S. and other key world leaders 70 years ago produced more economic growth in more places on earth, benefiting a far higher percentage of the human race, than had any previous global order in any period in history for which we have data.

As policymakers and leaders establish priorities for 2016 and beyond, attention to economic fundamentals should play as big a role in their thinking as crisis management and domestic political maneuvering.

Indeed, economics can even shape crisis management, if often with a lag effect. Economic sanctions established by Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and many others brought Iran to the table over its nuclear weapons program (an accurate observation whether one likes the actual deal). Sanctions, together with the fall in global oil prices, might not have yet limited assertive (and illegal) Russian interventions, but they could well constrain President Vladimir Putin in the years ahead. China's policies in the East China Sea and South China Sea, even if sometimes more assertive than we would like, have exhibited at least some restraint that might reflect an awareness in Beijing that we could introduce sanctions against China if things got out of hand.

Meanwhile, the North American shale revolution and the North American economic revolution more generally have improved U.S. growth prospects and the fundamental strength of the U.S. economic foundation. They have also helped Mexico provide more jobs to its own workers, reducing demographic pressures and actually making the immigration problem easier to address (even if we have not yet managed to address it appropriately and comprehensively). 

More.