Backlash After San Jose Protest Could Help Donald Trump

Following-up from the other day, "Vile Leftists Attack Donald Trump Supporters in San Jose (VIDEO)."

Here's far-leftist Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast, "How Anti-Trump Violence Could Elect Him":

How anti-Trump violence could elect him: https://t.co/K3Ihy84Ey7 pic.twitter.com/bKG8oTs0ng

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) June 3, 2016

Americans admire protest movements and civil disobedience, but they draw the line at violence, so harassing and beating up Trump supporters could do him a lot of good.

And, amazingly, today's front-page story at the leftist Los Angeles Times, "Anti-Trump violence is widely condemned. Will backlash help his candidacy?":

Anti-Trump violence is widely condemned. Will backlash help his candidacy? https://t.co/HIHWXfLslP #Clippers #NBA pic.twitter.com/iMRqxDHBdp

— LA Clippers News (@BBClippers_News) June 3, 2016

The violent assault on Donald Trump supporters in San Jose led to bipartisan condemnation Friday and widespread agreement that protesters crossed a line, possibly provoking a backlash that could boost the presidential hopeful.

“I know the depths of emotions that have come out,” said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who has campaigned across the country for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner. “But somebody who thinks they’re being helpful by throwing an egg – I would say that’s a tactical mistake.”

Hector Barajas, a Republican strategist who had expressed consternation about the presumptive GOP nominee and his inflammatory statements about Mexican immigrants, said he would vote for Trump in Tuesday’s primary and predicted others less than enamored with the Manhattan businessman would do so as well.

It is one thing to oppose Trump and “quite another to start throwing eggs, to start throwing punches and act in a thuggish way,” Barajas said. “I think you get a lot of folks who are going to look at this.... and they might not have been supportive of Trump or on the fence, but now say, ‘I’m going to vote for him; it’s needed to put an end to this ugliness.’”

Dozens of fights broke out Thursday night at the conclusion of Trump’s Silicon Valley appearance.

Demonstrators jumped on cars, stole the candidate’s trademark “Make America great again” ball cap from Trump supporters and set them on fire, and clashed with police in riot gear. Some protesters waved Mexican flags as rallygoers in Trump regalia shouted, “Go back to Mexico!”

One Trump fan was hit with an egg and others were chased and harassed, scenes that blazed across television newscasts and social media.

At least four people were arrested and a police officer was slightly injured after being hit with a metal object...

The interesting thing is that the Costa Mesa rioting was even more intense, but the images from San Jose are really personal, especially the woman getting egged surrounded by illegal immigrants with Mexican flags. It proves Trump right all along, and that's got to piss off radical progressives.

Still more.

The Great American Road Trip

Summertime and the livin' is easy, heh.

At the New York Times, "America Is Hitting the Road Again":

ON ROUTE 66 IN NEW MEXICO — Bob Pack forgot to bring his James Taylor CDs. Still, he and his brother and sister were having a blast, rolling among the sandstone mesas, ghost towns and kitschy tourist attractions.

They reminisced about family trips as children back in the 1950s, Mr. Pack and his sister, Joann, said, and not even their brother’s “annoying” habits of chewing tobacco and telling dirty jokes could ruin the drive. “I wanted to see West Texas one more time,” he said over breakfast at the Route 66 Casino Hotel.

Over in Arizona, Kay McNellen, a 23-year-old actress from San Diego, said she took to the highway almost every weekend these days, just to see how far she could drive. She has motored across the Mojave Desert, admired Sequoia National Forest and Instagrammed the Grand Canyon. “This is a better view than Netflix will give you,” she said.

The great American road trip is back.

It’s partly that gasoline this driving season is cheaper than it has been in 11 years, according to the AAA motor club, and that the reviving economy is making people more willing to part with their money. But there is more than that at play here. This may be a cultural shift, as Americans experiment with the notion that maybe money can, in fact, buy happiness, at least in the form of adventures and memories.

It is a change that appears to have taken root in the years since the 2008 financial crisis. “Postrecession, people are focused on memories that cannot be taken away from them, as opposed to tangible goods that expire and wear out,” said Sarah Quinlan, a marketing executive at MasterCard Advisors. “There’s a sense that you can take away my job, you can take away my home, but you can’t take away my memory.”

Whatever their motivation, Americans last year drove a record 3.15 trillion miles, according to the Department of Transportation, beating the previous mark, set in 2007. So far this year, both travel and gasoline consumption are up again.

The desire to get behind the wheel still comes as something of a surprise. The conventional wisdom was that driving mileage had probably peaked in 2007. The demographic bulge represented by the baby boomers is aging out of the driving years; people typically drive less as they hit retirement.

At the same time, millennials were not sharing the passion for the open road that previous generations of young adults had. Many, in fact, preferred to live in the nation’s downtowns, eschewing personal cars in favor of shared Ubers, or walking to their work and play.

But it turns out that both generations are driving more than anyone expected. “A lot of millennial behavior was really deferred assimilation,” said Steven E. Polzin, a transportation researcher at the University of South Florida. In other words, just like Mom and Dad, they were destined for a more traditional lifestyle — the marriage, the home, the garage — they just took a little longer to get there.

One such millennial is Jenna Bivone, a 29-year-old website and app designer, who two years ago left downtown Atlanta to live on the outskirts of the city with her boyfriend. “We used to walk everywhere, but the rents were too high and we wanted some land for my dog,” she said. “In a more suburban area we found good schools, stuff like that for future plans.”

Now she has a daily commute of at least a half-hour each way, and on weekends she and her boyfriend drive around Georgia and neighboring states looking for the best hiking. Over the last three years they have taken road trips in Wyoming and Colorado to hike in the national parks.

“When we travel we want to go to places we might never see again,” she said. “We’re not going to be young forever.”

Michael McNulty, a 67-year-old biotech executive from San Francisco, might not agree with the last part of her statement. Last year he bought a used Ford Airstream B-190 motor home on Craigslist for $13,000 as an experiment. He and his wife are enjoying the road trips, he said, and they are gradually extending their radius.

“The kids’ colleges are paid for, and they are out of the house,” he said. “We have been all over the world, and now we are seeing the U.S.A.”

Mr. McNulty did all the driving to the Grand Canyon for an extended weekend in April, and he prepared to drive all the way back home, 14 hours, in one day. The reason was simple, he said. “We’re going to go for it on Tuesday,” he said, smiling, “because I have to get back to work on Wednesday.”

The phenomenon is being further amplified by, of all things, a desire in some families for cross-generational adventures that harks back to a halcyon age of bundling everyone into the station wagon, counting license tags from faraway states, and mediating back-seat fights over who started the fight. Baby boomers, it seems, want to bond with their grandchildren on the road. Rental-car companies are reporting increased demand for bigger vehicles to accommodate the generations...

Still more at that top link.

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Vile Leftists Attack Donald Trump Supporters in San Jose (VIDEO)

The radical leftist protests against Donald Trump are getting more intense, more vile, and more hateful at each campaign stop, especially in California.

Even people, left and right, that don't like Trump are sympathetic if not supportive of the candidate in the face of literally violent attacks and rioting such as this. And when you have the Mayor of San Jose blaming the unrest on Trump himself, with the city's police department standing on the sidelines while innocents and peaceful participants are being brutally harassed, egged, and even beaten, then something is seriously out of whack.

At the San Jose Mercury News, "San Jose Police chief defends handling of protest":

San Jose Police Chief Eddie Garcia released a statement about the violence after the Donald Trump rally Thursday night in downtown and his department's handling of the 400 protesters:

"The violent behavior exhibited by some protestors last night was reprehensible, completely unacceptable and unrepresentative of our democracy and this City. We saw demonstrators behaving poorly and our officers clearing the streets as safely and expeditiously as possible. Officer safety and crowd control techniques are critical and cannot be abandoned when protestors scatter from area to area faster than the police lines can move.

"Furthermore, de-escalation techniques are important -- not just when someone has a weapon. We are not an "occupying force" and cannot reflect the chaotic tactics of the protestors. Instead, we achieved our goal of clearing the streets and making arrests in an appropriate manner. Our officers should be commended for both their effectiveness and their restraint.

"Let me be clear: the violence that occurred last night was not unchecked. Four arrests have already been made, and I have immediately assembled a task force, headed by the Bureau of Investigations Chief Shawny Williams, and in coordination with the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office, to review all video evidence and investigate all reported assaults or other crimes from last night's incident. I'm calling on the public as well as media outlets to submit all video evidence to our Police Department so we can root out those whose intentions were to disrupt our civil democratic process and put the safety and welfare of the public and my officers at risk. We will work tirelessly to hold them accountable and bring them to justice."

That doesn't sound quite accurate, actually.

Folks on Twitter last night reported the police did not declare an unlawful protest until well after the rally let out, and innocents were being assaulting by the anti-Trump demons. CNN's Sara Murray has an excellent timeline of events.

More, at Memeorandum, "Ugly, bloody scenes in San Jose as protesters attack Trump supporters outside rally."

Ireri Carrasco, Open-Borders Activist, Sues Obama Administration Over Deferred Deportation (VIDEO)

I hate the entitlement. Folks like this should be the first deported under the Donald Trump administration.

At Democracy Now!:

Triple-Digit Temperatures in the Inland Empire Today (VIDEO)

Not near that hot in the L.A.-Orange County metro areas.

It was rather lovely, in fact.

Amber Lee reports, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Didn't Feel Well Yesterday

I had a wonderful long Memorial Day weekend, but yesterday was a strange day at work.

Mostly, I was upset at the news of the UCLA shooting, which starting breaking around 10:30am. My office hours were busy, and then the campus fire alarm went off and faculty, staff, and students had to exit the buildings for about 20 minutes or so until the all clear was given. News trickled in, and by the time I went to teach my first class reports indicated that the shooting was a murder-suicide.

My classes were fine --- I have one section of American government and one section of international relations on Mondays and Wednesdays. (I felt a little out of it in my IR class, though, since my usual preparation was thrown off by the strange morning. Sometimes it takes a little more to get back in the swing of things, in any case. Oh well, I'll hit it out of the park during Monday's class.)

Plus, Milo Yiannopoulos ended up cancelling the talk he was going to give on campus, as he was apparently personally affected by the shooting and didn't think it was appropriate to hold a debate. (Trolls were blaming him for the shooting on Twitter, unsurprisingly.)

Gustavo Arellano, the editor of the O.C. Weekly, who was scheduled to debate Milo, did speak solo it turns out, talking about corruption in Orange County. He's an interesting guy, not the least his public profanity. He gave a shout out to this feature piece at the magazine, "Who Wants to Free a Southern California Serial Killer? Orange County DA Tony Rackauckas." I don't care for local politics that much, so it was educational for me.

(I also had a nasty bout of acid reflux late yesterday afternoon, which didn't come under control until later in the evening. So there's that.)

I'll have more blogging tonight, and then over the weekend. Next week's finals week and then I'm out for the summer. I'm looking forward to some time off from teaching.

And thanks to everyone who's been shopping at my Amazon links. As noted, I've been plowing the proceeds back into my own reading habit, so thanks again.

Have a great day.

Professor William S. Klug Killed in UCLA Murder-Suicide (VIDEO)

Watch the report, at CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "Victim In UCLA Murder-Suicide Was Engineering School Professor, Father and Husband."

And at the Los Angeles Times, "Professor killed in UCLA murder-suicide was brilliant, kind and caring, colleagues say."

No word yet on the identity of the shooter. He was a student of Professor Klug's, apparently. There was some chatter on Twitter that he was disgruntled, but there's been no reporting on this outside of posts on social media. See Claudia Peschiutta, at KNX, for example, "#UCLAshooting: Student apparently despondent about his grades shot professor & then killed himself, according to law enf source. @KNX1070."

More, from Robert Stacy McCain, "Gosh, the media sure is taking its sweet time publishing the NAME of the student who killed that UCLA professor."

And Kurt Schlichter, "From the seeming lack of media interest in the UCLA shooter's identity I assume he's someone from a politically unuseful demographic."

Donald Trump's 'Hostility' Toward the Media (VIDEO)

Well, if he's "hostile," it's a good kind of hostile. His supporters are going to be eating it up.

Watch, at CBS This Morning, "What Trump's hostility toward press could mean for possible presidency."

Deal of the Day: ASUS 128GB ZenFone 2 Special Edition

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And, from Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America.

Also, Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.

Still more, from Elizabeth Hinton, From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America.

BONUS: Jason Riley, Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed.

How Swimmer Survived Newport Beach Shark Attack (VIDEO)

Well, previous attack victims have survived by punching back twice as hard.

That's always good advice, in the water and in real life.

At the O.C. Register, "Shark attack survivor: Woman suffered one big bite across her body, a punctured lung and broken ribs":

She had wounds in a half circle across her torso, teeth marks from her upper right shoulder in the back to her pelvis in front and to the other side of her buttocks in the back.

Several ribs were fractured. A lung was punctured. She lost no less than a liter of blood. Doctors looked for teeth that might’ve still been in her body.

Maria Korcsmaros, a 52-year-old triathlete and mother of three, survived a shark attack Sunday in Corona del Mar.

She lived only because of her own quick thinking, strong work from a pair of Newport Beach lifeguards who luckily were close at hand, and medical experts who responded well to a trauma none had seen first-hand.

“It was life before limb,” said Dr. Philip Rotter, director of orthopedic trauma and chairman of orthopedics at Orange County Global Medical Center in Santa Ana.

Details of the attack emerged Tuesday as Rotter and other experts offered an inside look at what the swimmer endured Sunday and how she was treated.

They talked about how lifeguards pulled her from the water and treated her appropriately, and how emergency physicians and others later had to spring into action to treat a woman who had a tourniquet wrapped around her arm to slow the flow of blood spilling from her body.

Based on the description of the wound, local shark expert Chris Lowe, who runs The Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach, thinks the shark was an adult, likely more than 10 feet long.

“I can tell you that’s probably not a pup.”

As medical experts discussed the events that saved Korcsmaros, Newport Beach lifeguards on Tuesday re-opened beaches between Balboa Pier and the Wedge, a stretch of water closed to swimmers since the attack. Swimmers returned to the water around noon, after lifeguards had looked into the ocean from boats and from overhead, in a helicopter, to see if any sharks remain in the area.

Corona del Mar, where the attack occurred, was opened back up Wednesday morning.

Lifeguards also described what happened during the human-vs. shark rescue...

Keep reading.

Kendall and Kylie Strip Down to Model Their New Bikini Line

I just love Kendall.

At London's Daily Mail, "Sizzling hot! Kendall and Kylie Jenner strip down to model their new bikini range."

Kendall and Kylie Jenner 🔥 🔥 🔥 https://t.co/3SLte134iT pic.twitter.com/lio7glWHZA

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) June 1, 2016

Giant Alligator on Golf Course in Florida (VIDEO)

Wild.

Via CNN:



RELATED: At USA Today, "2 alligators found eating dead body in Florida."

The Graying of America's Homeless

It's not an easy problem to solve. Lots of homeless people have psychiatric issues and refuse services.

It's sad.

And that's downtown Los Angeles at the background photo at the link.

See, the New York Times, "Old and on the Street: The Graying of America's Homeless" (at Memeorandum):

LOS ANGELES — They lean unsteadily on canes and walkers, or roll along the sidewalks of Skid Row here in beat-up wheelchairs, past soiled sleeping bags, swaying tents and piles of garbage. They wander the streets in tattered winter coats, even in the warmth of spring. They worry about the illnesses of age and how they will approach death without the help of children who long ago drifted from their lives.

“It’s hard when you get older,” said Ken Sylvas, 65, who has struggled with alcoholism and has not worked since he was fired in 2001 from a meatpacking job. “I’m in this wheelchair. I had a seizure and was in a convalescent home for two months. I just ride the bus back and forth all night.”

The homeless in America are getting old.

There were 306,000 people over 50 living on the streets in 2014, the most recent data available, a 20 percent jump since 2007, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. They now make up 31 percent of the nation’s homeless population.

The demographic shift is mirrored by a noticeable but not as sharp increase among homeless people ages 18 to 30, many who entered the job market during the Great Recession. They make up 24 percent of the homeless population. Like the baby boomers, these young people came of age during an economic downturn, confronting a tight housing and job market. Many of them are former foster children or runaways, or were victims of abuse at home.

But it is the emergence of an older homeless population that is creating daunting challenges for social service agencies and governments already struggling with this crisis of poverty. “Baby boomers have health and vulnerability issues that are hard to tend to while living in the streets,” said Alice Callaghan, an Episcopal priest who has spent 35 years working with the homeless in Los Angeles.

Many older homeless people have been on the streets for almost a generation, analysts say, a legacy of the recessions of the late 1970s and early 1980s, federal housing cutbacks and an epidemic of crack cocaine. They bring with them a complicated history that may include a journey from prison to mental health clinic to rehabilitation center and back to the sidewalks.

Some are more recent arrivals and have been forced — at a time of life when some people their age are debating whether to retire to Arizona or to Florida — to learn the ways of homelessness after losing jobs in the latest economic downturn. And there are some on a fixed income who cannot afford the rent in places like Los Angeles, which has a vacancy rate of less than 3 percent.

Horace Allong, 60, said he could not afford a one-room apartment and lives in a tent on Crocker Street. Mr. Allong, who divorced his wife and left New Orleans for Los Angeles two years ago, said he lost his wallet and all of his identification two weeks after he arrived and has not been able to find a job.

“It’s the first time I’ve been on the streets, so I’m learning,” he said. “There’s nothing like Skid Row. Skid Row is another world.”

The problems with homelessness are hardly uniform across the country. The national homeless population declined by 2 percent between 2014 and 2015, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Some communities — including Phoenix and Las Vegas — have declared outright victory in eliminating homelessness among veterans, a top goal of the White House.

But homelessness is rising in big cities where gentrification is on the march and housing costs are rising, like Los Angeles, New York, Honolulu and San Francisco. Los Angeles reported a 5.7 percent increase in its homeless population last year, the second year in a row it had recorded a jump. More than 20 percent of the nation’s homeless lived in California last year, according to the housing agency.

Across Southern California, the homeless live in tent encampments clustered on corners from Venice to the San Fernando Valley, and in communities sprouting under highway overpasses or in the dry bed of the Los Angeles River. Their sleeping bags and piles of belongings line sidewalks on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Along with these visible signs of homelessness come complaints about aggressive panhandling, public urination and disorderly conduct, as well as a rise in drug dealing and petty crimes...

Keep reading.

Previous homelessness blogging here.

It's sad.

Carolina Jaramillo Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Casting Call 2017 (VIDEO)

Lovely.

Iraqi Forces Engage in Largest Battle Yet Against Islamic State (VIDEO)

Following-up from yesterday, "Iraqi Special Forces Launch Ground Assault on Fallujah (VIDEO)."

Here's the update, from last night's CBS Evening News:

Why the Next President Will Inherit a Divided Country

From Ronald Brownstein, at great piece, at the Atlantic:

These three charts explain how each party's coalition has evolved-and diverged-since 1984. https://t.co/HbAZBvrI11

— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) May 31, 2016

Racial chasm: In '16 non-white voters could provide nearly 1/2 of all Democratic votes-but only 1/10 of GOP votes https://t.co/HbAZBvrI11

— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) May 31, 2016

Why "this election will widen the distance between the class and racial composition of each party’s core of support" https://t.co/HbAZBvrI11

— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) May 31, 2016

Global Financial Institutions Are in Retreat

At WSJ, "When Bigger Isn’t Better: Banks Retreat From Global Ambitions":

Eighteen years ago, Sanford Weill declared the dawn of a new era in banking.

Mr. Weill, then chief executive of Travelers Group Inc., had agreed to merge with John Reed’s Citicorp, forging what would become the first financial supermarket to the world.

“Our company will be so diversified and in so many different areas that we will be able to withstand” the inevitable downturns to come, Mr. Weill said in April 1998.

Citigroup Inc., as it was christened, is still intact. But confidence in the model Messrs. Weill and Reed espoused is in decline.

After nearly two decades of breakneck expansion into ever more countries and ever more businesses, global banks are in retreat. For most of them, it is no longer a viable strategy to try to be all things to all customers around the world.

A McKinsey & Co. review of 10 global banks, conducted for The Wall Street Journal, found that those lenders were present on average in 65 countries in 2008. By last year, the average footprint had shrunk to 55 countries. And the McKinsey research doesn’t include Citigroup, which has unveiled plans in recent years to exit retail-banking businesses in at least 20 nations.

The pace has quickened this year. Barclays PLC said it would sell much of its business in Africa, while HSBC Holdings PLC is pulling out of Brazil, one of about 83 businesses around the world it has shed since 2011.

Mr. Weill, who retired as CEO in 2003, still sees value in being global.

“The economy is a global village, and we need global financial institutions that bring it together,” he said in an interview. “What would happen if we had a telecommunications system that was locally based, and couldn’t connect? It wouldn’t be very good.”

That view is now out of favor. Analysts have called for J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup to break up, and the issue of whether banks are too big is a recurring topic on the presidential campaign trail.

Pressured by stricter regulations, banks including Citi aren't just shrinking their geographic footprint but also getting out of a range of businesses that require too much capital or make too little money, further eroding the model Mr. Weill helped create.

In Europe, new CEOs at Barclays, Credit Suisse Group AG and Deutsche Bank AG are putting in place restructuring plans that have already been criticized by some investors for not going far enough to slim down the banks.

The expansion of global banks was initially urged on by investors, tempted by the promise of rich returns. Banks built disparate franchises on the basis they could save money by offering a wide number of services. By diversifying, the model offered additional security and the impression that size alone would produce safety.

“The financial crisis laid waste to that theory,” said Fred Cannon, director of research and Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, a boutique investment bank focused on financial companies.

Investors now complain that they can’t get their heads around huge opaque balance sheets. Large cross-border lenders have also been deemed “globally systemic” by regulators and forced to set aside billions of dollars more in capital.

Average precrisis return on equity of 14% has given way to the new normal of about 7% for big global banks.

Investors also worry chief executives can’t control franchises that stretch across multiple countries and business lines.

George Mathewson, who leading up to the crisis helped build Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC into the world’s biggest bank by assets, is among those who now believes the global diversified bank should become extinct...

More.

Twitter and Facebook Vow to Eliminate 'Hate Speech'

It'll be conservative "hate speech."

From Robert Spencer, at FrontPage Magazine, "Henceforth only far-Left and pro-jihad views will be allowed."

Suspect Charged in Horrific Murder in West Hollywood

I can't even...

At ABC 7 News Los Angeles:

Man allegedly tortured, mutilated GF & drained her blood in WeHo murder investigation https://t.co/cD6sr5EJnN pic.twitter.com/bUf86yBlrI

— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) June 1, 2016