Why Trump Won, and Why the Current Crop of Purported Leaders Must Be Swept Aside

Ace of Spades HQ, on a roll lately.

Here:

Trump won because when a Native American activist (posing as a journalist) declared that "Pocahantas" was "very offensive" as used in regard to Elizabeth Warren -- dishonestly, I might add, as everyone knows the term is used to deny she's an Indian, not to denigrate her as an Indian, and everyone knows this, and only a liar pretends otherwise -- Trump did not begin falling over himself to make apologies and keep the well-wishes of the increasingly unreasonable left-wing hegemony...

RTWT.

Ace is great.

Gorilla Shot Dead at Cincinnati Zoo After 4-Year-Old Climbs in Enclosure (VIDEO)

Most of the comments I've seen on this, especially yesterday on Twitter, wanted the parents shot dead. I mean seriously, there were strong opinions.

There's video at Channel 4 News UK, showing the gorilla becoming riled up, and dragging the boy quite aggressively, if not violently. No doubt this would have been a terrifying experience to watch, not least of all for the parents. Zoo officials must have been horrified not just at the scene, but at the prospect of killing that prized gorilla, a huge silver-back. See, "A gorilla has been shot dead after a boy fell into its zoo enclosure. The 4-year-old is set to make a full recovery."

More, at NYT, "Harambe, a 17-year-old gorilla, was killed by Cincinnati Zoo staff after a 4-year-old boy entered his enclosure."

And at the Cincinnati Enquirer, "Cincinnati Zoo's 17-year-old gorilla killed after 3-year-old falls into enclosure," and "Video shows gorilla react when child falls into Cincinnati Zoo enclosure."

Plus, "PETA primatologist says zoo enclosure should have been surrounded by a “secondary barrier”", and "Boy who fell into zoo gorilla exhibit is out of hospital and 'going to be OK'."

1/4 Yet again, captivity has taken an animal's life. The enclosure should have been surrounded by a secondary barrier to prevent this.

— PETA (@peta) May 29, 2016

2/4 Gorillas have shown that they can be protective of smaller living beings & react the same way any human would to a child in danger.

— PETA (@peta) May 29, 2016

3/4 Even under the "best" circumstances, captivity is never acceptable for gorillas or other primates & in cases like this it's even deadly.

— PETA (@peta) May 29, 2016

4/4 This tragedy is exactly why PETA urges families to stay away from any facility that displays animals as sideshows for humans to gawk at.

— PETA (@peta) May 29, 2016

Still more, at CNN, "Witness: Gorilla pulled the child's pants up; a woman who filmed video of an incident where a zoo gorilla dragged a child throughout an enclosure speaks to CNN."

Deal of the Day: iBobber Castable Bluetooth Smart Fishfinder

At Amazon, iBobber Wireless Bluetooth Smart Fish Finder for iOS and Android Devices.

Also, Cuisinart CGG-306 Professional Portable Two-Burner Gas Grill.

More, 50-70% Off Calvin Klein.

Plus, from Roger Simon, I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already.

And from Yuval Levin, The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism.

BONUS: David Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (Oxford History of the United States).

What Are Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Models Afraid of When Wearing Their Barely There Bikinis?

Heh.

Nipples lol.

Watch:

Kristen Keogh's Drizzle to Sunshine Memorial Day Forecast

Had some light drizzle along the coasts and inland today, but the sunshine is expected to break through for tomorrow, Memorial Day.

Via ABC News 10 San Diego:

Great Father's Day Gifts

At Amazon, Truck Parts & Accessories.

Also, Tools & Home Improvement.

More, Father's Day Gifts in Patio, Lawn & Garden.

Plus, Andrew Roberts, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War.

And, by A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of The Second World War.

Still more, from Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won.

BONUS: From John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, and Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II.

Volunteers to Place 1000s of Miniature American Flags Alongside Graves in Memorial Day Tribute (VIDEO)

Via CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

The Battle Against 'Hate Speech' on College Campuses Gives Rise to a Generation That Hates Speech

A surprisingly great piece, from Nina Burleigh, at Newsweek:

How colleges fail students in the age of Donald Trump https://t.co/f6158klqoO pic.twitter.com/AlcQfZBLsL

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) May 26, 2016

During his 18 years as president of Lebanon Valley College during the middle of the past century, Clyde Lynch led the tiny Pennsylvania liberal arts institution through the tribulations of the Great Depression and World War II, then raised $550,000 to build a new gymnasium before he died in 1950. In gratitude, college trustees named that new building after him.

Neither Lynch nor those trustees could have predicted there would come a day when students would demand that his name be stripped from the Lynch Memorial Hall because the word lynch has “racial overtones.” But that day did come.

When playwright Eve Ensler wrote The Vagina Monologues, which premiered in 1996 and has been performed thousands of times by actors, celebrities and college students, she probably did not foresee a day when a performance of her feminist agitprop would be canceled because it was offensive to “women without vaginas.” And yet that day did come—at Mount Holyoke, one of the nation’s premier women’s colleges.Graduates of the Class of 2016 are leaving behind campuses that have become petri dishes of extreme political correctness and heading out into a world without trigger warnings, safe spaces and free speech zones, with no rules forbidding offensive verbal conduct or microaggressions, and where the names of cruel, rapacious capitalists are embossed in brass and granite on buildings across the land. Baby seals during the Canadian hunting season may have a better chance of survival.

Their degrees look the same as ever, but in recent years the programs of study behind them have been altered to reflect the new sensitivities. Books now come with trigger warnings—a concept that originated on the internet to warn people with post-traumatic stress disorder (veterans, child abuse survivors) of content that might “trigger” a past trauma. Columbia’s English majors were opting out of reading Ovid (trigger: sexual assault), and some of their counterparts at Rutgers declined an assignment to study Virginia Woolf (trigger: suicidal ideation).

Political science graduates from Modesto Junior College might have shied away from touching a copy of the U.S. Constitution in public, since a security guard stopped one of them from handing it out because he was not inside a 25-square-foot piece of concrete 30 yards away from the nearest walkway designated as the “free speech zone”—a space that needed to be booked 30 days in advance. Graduates of California public universities found it hard to discuss affirmative action policies, as administrators recently added such talk to a list of “microaggressions”—subtle but offensive comments or actions directed at a minority or other nondominant group that unintentionally reinforce a stereotype.

More than half of America’s colleges and universities now have restrictive speech codes. And, according to a censorship watchdog group, 217 American colleges and universities—including some of the most prestigious—have speech codes that “unambiguously impinge upon free speech.”Judges have interpreted the First Amendment broadly, giving Americans some of the most expansive rights of speech in the world. But over the past two decades, and especially the past few years, American college administrators and many students have sought to confine speech to special zones and agitated for restrictions on language in classrooms as well. To protect undergrads from the discomfort of having to hear disagreeable ideas and opinions, administrators and students—and the U.S. Department of Education—have been reframing speech as “verbal conduct” that potentially violates the civil rights of minorities and women.

American college campuses are starting to resemble George Orwell’s Oceania with its Thought Police, or East Germany under the Stasi. College newspapers have been muzzled and trashed, and students are disciplined or suspended for “hate speech,” while exponentially more are being shamed and silenced on social media by their peers. Professors quake at the possibility of accidentally offending any student and are rethinking syllabi and restricting class discussions to only the most anodyne topics. A Brandeis professor endured a secret administrative investigation for racial harassment after using the word wetback in class while explaining its use as a pejorative...

Wetback? I'd never use that word in class, not even to explain it. It's bad enough I've gotta say the "N-word," even though I'm biracial and have been called a "nigger" many times, especially when I was a kid.

It's a dangerous academic environment, brought to you not just by extremely powerful civil rights laws and regulations, but by the left's endless search to silence ideological enemies.

More at the link. And see Ed Driscoll:

And note that the author of this piece is Democrat operative with a byline Nina Burleigh, who famously said in 1998, “I would be happy to give him [Clinton] a blow job just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.”

This time around, the theocracy is entirely on your side of the aisle, Nina. But all revolutions eventually devour their own eventually.

Modesto Man Places 75 Crosses on His Lawn to Honor Those Who Made the Ultimate Sacrifice (VIDEO)

Via KCRA News 3 Sacramento:

Shameful Obama Panders to Antiwar Pacifism at Hiroshima, Says U.S. Bears 'Responsibility' to 'Curb Such Suffering Again...' (VIDEO)

Folks know how I feel about this. See, "Apology Tour: As Shadow of War Fades, Obama Visits Vietnam and Japan (VIDEO)."

And note that the Japanese government has no plans to reciprocate Obama's shameful kowtowing. At Politico, "Japanese PM Abe: No plans to go to Pearl Harbor."

More, at LAT, "In historic visit to Hiroshima, Obama calls on the world to morally evolve":

President Obama came face to face with the horror of nuclear war Friday in a somber visit to Hiroshima, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to tour the site of the atomic bombing 71 years ago that killed tens of thousands in an instant and ushered in the nuclear age.

In a sweeping address that reflected on the obligations of humankind, Obama wrestled with the inherent contradiction that centuries of technical advancement have both made it easier to bind people together and given them the capacity for the carnage seen in this city. And he confronted the cold reality that his own goal of a world without nuclear firepower remains frustratingly out of reach.

Speaking slowly and solemnly, a tempo that seemed intended to underline his reach for history, the president noted that as battlefield weapons and tactics evolve, accompanying norms about whether to use them advances only in fits and starts.

"Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us," Obama warned. "The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well. That is why we come to this place."

Obama did not apologize for the nuclear attacks here and in the city of Nagasaki, strikes he believes ended the perils of Japanese aggression and brought about the end of World War II.

But, as the leader of the only country ever to have deployed nuclear weapons, Obama said it is the duty of those who hold terrible power to accept the consequences of its use.

"We have a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again. Someday the voices of the hibakusha will no longer be with us to bear witness," he said, using the Japanese term for survivors of the nuclear blasts.

The Peace Memorial park he visited Friday afternoon marks the darkest days of Hiroshima, where about 350,000 Japanese civilians and military personnel were living on Aug. 6, 1945, the day the bomb fell...

More.

Shameful.

It makes me sad to be an American with this president in office. We're moral. Japan is not.

Hateful Anti-Israel Thugs Denounce Henry Kissinger, Michael Oren, and Shimon Peres in Toronto (VIDEO)

Via Ruptly:

Amber Heard Files Domestic Violence Restraining Order Against Johnny Depp (VIDEO)

Following-up, "Amber Heard Accuses Johnny Depp of Domestic Violence: Hollywood Turns Blind Eye to Abuse."

Sixty-Two Percent of U.S. Adults Get News on Social Media

At Pew Research, "News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016":

A majority of U.S. adults – 62% – get news on social media, and 18% do so often, according to a new survey by Pew Research Center, conducted in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In 2012, based on a slightly different question, 49% of U.S. adults reported seeing news on social media.1

But which social media sites have the largest portion of users getting news there? How many get news on multiple social media sites? And to what degree are these news consumers seeking online news out versus happening upon it while doing other things?

As part of an ongoing examination of social media and news, Pew Research Center analyzed the scope and characteristics of social media news consumers across nine social networking sites. This study is based on a survey conducted Jan. 12-Feb. 8, 2016, with 4,654 members of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel.

News plays a varying role across the social networking sites studied.2 Two-thirds of Facebook users (66%) get news on the site, nearly six-in-ten Twitter users (59%) get news on Twitter, and seven-in-ten Reddit users get news on that platform. On Tumblr, the figure sits at 31%, while for the other five social networking sites it is true of only about one-fifth or less of their user bases.

It is also useful to see how, when combined with the sites’ total reach, the proportion of users who gets news on each site translates to U.S. adults overall. Facebook is by far the largest social networking site, reaching 67% of U.S. adults. The two-thirds of Facebook users who get news there, then, amount to 44% of the general population. YouTube has the next greatest reach in terms of general usage, at 48% of U.S. adults. But only about a fifth of its users get news there, which amounts to 10% of the adult population. That puts it on par with Twitter, which has a smaller user base (16% of U.S. adults) but a larger portion getting news there...

Still more.

Amber Lee's Hovering Near Normal Forecast

We've got more "May Gray" this weekend, heh.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Leftist Animals! Punches Thrown During Protest at #DonaldTrump Rally in San Diego (VIDEO)

Via ABC News 10 San Diego:

Why the President Needs to Be White, Male, and Republican

From Glenn Reynolds, at USA Today, "Media watchdogs snoozed while Obama expanded executive power. They'll wake up and bite when it's Trump":

The press has done a lousy job of protecting American freedoms in recent years. But I have a modest proposal for improving press performance: Elect a white male Republican.

When Bill Clinton was inaugurated as president, actor Ron Silver, then a Democrat, was there. And when fighter jets flew over the Lincoln Memorial, he was reportedly at first upset at the military symbolism, but then reminded himself that since Democrat Clinton was being sworn in, ”those are our planes now.”

We’re seeing something of a reverse-version of this phenomenon as large swathes of the commentariat realize that we might wind up with a President Trump. Suddenly, sweeping executive power (fine with many under President Obama) is being portrayed as a possible threat to the republic. Which, to be fair, it is. But only now do they care.

At National Review, Charles C.W. Cooke poses this question to folks on the left: “Has Donald Trump’s remarkable rise done anything to change your mind as to the ideal strength of the state?”

A sensible view is that we might not want the government as a whole, and the president in particular, to possess more power in general than we would be willing to allow when our political enemies were in power. Because experience demonstrates that, just as for Ron Silver “their planes” became “our planes” when the White House changed hands, so too “our president” becomes “their president” when it changes in the other direction.

But while that view might be sensible, it doesn’t seem especially common. Though a few people are evenhanded on executive power — law professor John Yoo, for example, who supported sweeping antiterror policies under both President Bush and President Obama — most seem to regard stretched authority as necessary and proper when a president of their party does it, and as an imperial presidency when the other party does.

Here’s a hint: It’s the imperial presidency pretty much all the time.

But it’s nice to see the prospect of a Trump administration reminding folks on the left of this, particularly as the journalist and pundit classes are dominated by lefties. It’s terrible, we’re told, that Trump is issuing veiled threats to journalists — though Obama joked about auditing his enemies, seized journalist phone records and threatened a journalist who refused to reveal sources with imprisonment. Trump would be a warmonger, we’re told, although in fact Barack Obama has been at war longer than any other U.S. president, if without any particular success. Trump would arrogantly ride roughshod over any opposition, though Barack Obama famously used “I won” as an excuse to ignore opponents and bragged that he had a “pen (and) a phone” to bypass congressional disagreement. (And he’s used them a lot.)

Many of the journalists and pundits who see Trump as the next imperial president were silent over these Obama actions. Like Ron Silver with his fighter jets, they saw Obama’s envelope-pushing as fine because it was by their own president...

Keep reading.

A lot of my students this semester wrote their papers on President Obama's DAPA (Deferred Action on Parents of Americans) program, in which the White House issued executive orders granting work permits and preventing deportations for at least 4 million undocumented migrants. The case is before the Supreme Court, which is tied 4-4 and likely to uphold the lower court's ruling against the administration (striking down the unilateral executive amnesty). Students to the one supported DAPA and wanted the high court to sustain Obama's executive actions. None of them considered what might happen if the shoe was on the other foot, if a President Trump had the same unchecked executive power on U.S. immigration policy. In theory, a President Trump could use those same sweeping executive powers to reverse Obama's DAPA (and DACA, Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals) and begin rounding up illegal aliens for deportation. Students looked positively glum when I posed that possibility to them. But no one said they didn't want Obama to have those powers. American politics is completely tribalized, all the way down to the low-information (non-voting) students at community college.

Amber Heard Accuses Johnny Depp of Domestic Violence: Hollywood Turns Blind Eye to Abuse

Well, I thought it was just a regular falling out, perhaps too much shotgun to the wedding.

But it appears there's more to it, a lot more. Bruisingly more, in fact.

At People Magazine, via Memeorandum, "Amber Heard Accuses Johnny Depp of Domestic Violence with Graphic Photo of Bruise."

Amber Heard submitted this photo as evidence for her domestic violence restraining order https://t.co/sA3BZc3D6f pic.twitter.com/VjHxoobna6

— People Magazine (@people) May 27, 2016

And more, at the Daily Beast, "Amber Heard Says Johnny Depp Beat Her. It Will Ruin His Career. Just Kidding!":

When you Google the term “actors charged with domestic abuse”—as I did following the TMZ report that actress Amber Heard is seeking a restraining order against Johnny Depp, whom she filed for divorce from after one year of marriage this week—you are greeted with a slideshow of 80 celebrities who have been charged with the crime.

Eighty.

Ten times the number of people who attended my last birthday party.

Half the people who will attend my sister’s wedding.

Eighty.

The number of those celebrities for whom those charges negatively affected their careers? Roughly, zero.

This most casual jaunt of investigative reporting—literally just a Google search—was spawned by TMZ’s scandalous headline reporting that Heard arrived at court Friday for divorce proceedings alleging that Depp physically assaulted her during their short marriage. According to TMZ, she arrived with photographic evidence of bruises she says Depp inflicted. As the celebrity news site writes, “Three days after Depp’s mom died, Amber filed for divorce. And one week after his mom died, she’s claiming domestic violence.”

It’s important to note, I guess, that these are allegations. As we always do, we will wonder whether this is a victimizing cash-grab ploy by the woman. The celebrity couple did not have a prenup and Heard is seeking spousal report, which Depp is asking the judge to reject. Depp is reportedly worth $400 million.

It is also important to note how Hollywood reacts to male celebrities when there are allegations of domestic violence, which is not at all...

Keep reading.

And no prenuptial? What's up with that?

Perhaps Edward Scissorhands thought he was really in a storybook wedding?

Deal of the Day: Camp Chef OS-144 Indoor/Outdoor Movie Screen

This is pretty cool.

At Amazon, Camp Chef OS-144 Indoor/Outdoor Movie Screen.

Also, Sunbeam Renue Tension Relief Heating Pad, Brown.

BONUS: From John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II.

Bernie Sanders Names Hateful Leftist Cornel West on Democratic Platform Committee

Bernie Sanders named Cornel West to the DNC's Platform Committee, among many radical others.

Dr. West is particularly loathsome pick, though, considering his execrable leftist Jew-hating and Israel-bashing. UCLA Professor Judea Pearl excoriated Dr. West for becoming "a leading propagandist for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement."

Here's the background from Jonathan Chait, at the New Yorker, "Why Did Bernie Sanders Put an Obama-Hater on the Democratic Platform Committee?"

Plus, David Horowitz has a chapter outing Dr. West's radical left-wing hatred in his recent book, Radicals: Portraits of a Destructive Passion.

Good Riddance to Salon.com

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "THE FALL OF SALON.COM."

And from the Politico piece linked there:

The fall of https://t.co/HUHASLraeP https://t.co/vmt3BssmuA

— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) May 27, 2016

Over the last several months, POLITICO has interviewed more than two dozen current and former Salon employees and reviewed years of Salon’s SEC filings. On Monday, after POLITICO had made several unsuccessful attempts to interview Salon CEO Cindy Jeffers, the company dropped a bombshell: Jeffers was leaving the company effective immediately in what was described as an “abrupt departure.”

While the details of Salon’s enormous management and business challenges dominate the internal discussion at the magazine, in liberal intellectual and media circles it is widely believed that the site has lost its way.

“I remember during the Bush years reading them relatively religiously,” Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, told POLITICO. “Especially over the last year, they seem to have completely jumped the shark in so many ways. They’ve become — and I think this is sad — they’ve definitely become like a joke, which is terrible for people who care about these progressive institutions.”

So, what happened?

Well, they fully and unabashedly embraced their genuine inner leftism. The freakazoid Id of progressivism is what you see, and that's actually the true face of radical progressivism that's infected our politics. It's a pandemic disease and should be eradicated.

I mean when shrieking psycho-harpy Joan Walsh jumps ship for the Stalin-apologists at Katrina vanden Heuval's The Nation, you know Salon's really circling the drain.

But keep reading.