Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough Could Soon Go Public as a Couple

I don't watch the show. But I gotta admit, she's a stunning babe.

At Page Six, "Mika's hush-hush divorce fuels Joe romance chatter.

Via Memeorandum.

Fabulous Charlotte McKinney in New Guess Campaign

WWTDD cracks me up, "Charlotte McKinney Domination by Breast":

Buxom model Charlotte McKinney looks sensational in sultry photos for Guess https://t.co/BtdRUVXXOM pic.twitter.com/aoYS15UvRu

— Daily Express (@Daily_Express) June 28, 2016

What happens when the A for Effort chick from grade school grows up with a pretty face and enormous tits? Trick question. It's never happened before. Lotto winners who declare they're going back to their job packing holiday meat trays don't deserve the money

Kate Upton exited stage left to wash Verlander cum off her ear and hasn't ever returned. She's in grave danger of becoming a Trivial Pursuit answer alongside Wally Pip. Next tits up. Everybody is replaceable in this world. One reason to keep epic superlatives to a minimum.

Charlotte McKinney does not let an hour pass without reminding men why they'd kill their sensei for the chance to finish on her chest. Scrape Ellen's browser history and follow the money. This chick is starting to rake.

Also, at London's Daily Mail, "Charlotte McKinney flaunts her jaw-dropping curves in seductive Guess campaign."

PREVIOUSLY: "New Charlotte McKinney Photos."

The Never-Ending Sale

I don't worry too much about shopping on the Fourth of July, but it's a big weekend for retailers.

At WSJ, "How to Play the July 4th Sales":

With the July 4th holiday approaching, watch for emails landing in your inbox pitching big sales from retailers on this traditional summer sale day. They’ll start by offering deep discounts. Then on Monday, they’ll press the urgency—Final hours! If past experience is any guide, you may wake up July 5 to find the sale has been extended and is still going.

As they battle for attention, retailers are increasingly playing a hurry-up-and-wait game, which leaves consumers struggling to figure out when the sales are climaxing with maximum discounts.

Retailers over Memorial Day repeatedly warned shoppers they’d better move fast. “Only Hours Left!” Lands’ End announced in an email blast Monday afternoon. “Last Chance,” Pottery Barn intoned. But by Tuesday, their sales and others’ were still on. “Memorial Day might be over, but our sale is not,” said an email from menswear seller Knot Standard.

Deep discounts for some retailers including Neiman Marcus, which also extended its Memorial Day sale, have lasted virtually all month. Some Fourth of July sales started early. Pottery Barn was advertising 70% off for its Independence Day sale as early as June 23.

Retailers agonize over whether and when to offer discounts, and fashion brands hate sales. They risk teaching consumers to wait for a sale to buy and make it tougher for retailers to sell items at full price. Extending a sale with an email blast creates a potentially even more potent mix: It could make it tougher to convince consumers to buy discounted items because they wait for an even better offer. A shopper who rushes to buy after an urgent email says a sale will end may be annoyed to wake up the next morning to an email saying the sale continues.

“Basically, it’s always a sale now,” says Barry Schwartz, a Swarthmore College consumer psychologist, professor, and author of The Paradox of Choice a groundbreaking 2004 book that argued brands benefit from offering fewer choices. “The retailers are killing themselves.”

Still more.

NRA to Run $2 million Benghazi-Themed Advertising Campaign for Donald Trump (VIDEO)

This is awesome.

This ad's narrated by survivor Mark "Oz" Geist, a Marine Corps veteran who helped provide security services in Benghazi.

Via Theo Spark:

How the 'Bralette' Trend Upended Victoria's Secret (VIDEO)

At Heat Street:

Victoria’s Secret has a problem, and it’s not much of a secret: “Athleisure” is upending the bra business.

Growth is slowing in the retailer’s core bra business, which accounts for about 35% of sales at its parent company, L Brands Inc. as shoppers seek comfort instead of flash from their undergarments. In the first quarter, the retailer said bra sales rose less than 10%, down from growth rates in the midteens in prior quarters. Shares of L Brands have tumbled 29% so far this year.

Victoria’s Secret has been aggressively marketing its “bralettes” window displays and email messages that say “no padding is sexy.”

“It’s not a sick business, but it’s not growing at the rate we want,” the company’s finance chief, Stuart Burgdoerfer, said in May. The retailer has taken steps in recent months to fix the issue. It has brought in new leadership, pared its merchandise and responded to the athleisure trend...

Well, here's hoping they make it. They've got some of the hottest babes in the business modeling their stuff.

At 48, Tony Hawk Lands the 900, 17 Years After He First Pulled It Off (VIDEO)

I'm 54, so back in the day, when I was skating the SoCal skatepark circuit at around 17, Tony Hawk would have been 11-years-old. He was already great then. No one had any idea, however, that he'd one day become the world's most successful (and famous) skateboarder.

The bonus here is how utterly clueless are Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota. Such fake enthusiasm for something about which they know nothing and for which they literally couldn't care less.

Watch:

Istanbul Airport Attackers Came from Islamic State Stronghold of Raqqa in Syria (VIDEO)

At CNN, "ISIS leadership involved in Istanbul attack planning, Turkish source says":

Istanbul (CNN) - Turkish officials have strong evidence that the Istanbul airport attackers came to the country from the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa in Syria and that ISIS leadership was involved in the planning of the attack, a senior Turkish government source told CNN on Thursday.

Officials believe the men -- identified by another Turkish official and state media as being from Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan -- entered Turkey about a month ago from Raqqa, bringing along with them the suicide vests and bombs used in the attack, the source said.

They rented an apartment in the Fatih district of Istanbul, where one of the attackers left behind his passport, the Turkish government source told CNN.

The attack was "extremely well planned with ISIS leadership involved," the source said...

Keep reading.

Boy, those ignorant British racist rubes are looking more prescient all the time. Of course, the leftist elite will deny the attacks have anything to do with European Union policy, which is to welcome literally millions of "refugees" flooding into the continent.

Feminism's Attack on the Family

Here's the latest long-form essay, from Robert Stacy McCain, at the Other McCain, "Anti-Marriage and Anti-Motherhood: Feminism’s War Against the Family":

Feminism is a movement devoted to destroying the family. Feminist theory condemns marriage and motherhood as institutions of “male domination,” which is why taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood is sacred to feminists: The road to “equality” is paved with dead babies.

Misery loves company, and the leaders of this anti-male hate movement therefore encourage young women to pursue lifestyles that will lead them to the same attitude of embittered resentment that defines feminism. Crucial to this project is the promotion of abnormal sexual behavior.

“Sex is about reproductive biology,” as I have previously explained. “Human beings are mammals, and any eighth-grader can figure out what that means in terms of sex. Once you understand this scientific definition of sex, everything else is just details.” Rejecting this normal common-sense understanding of sex, feminists adopt intellectual theories that are directly hostile to the reproductive purposes of human sexuality. One obvious reason for this hostility is because so many leaders of the feminist movement are lesbians...

They're usually fat, ugly lesbians at that, heh.

But keep reading.

And buy the book, Sex Trouble: Essays on Radical Feminism and the War Against Human Nature.

Hallel Yaffa Ariel, 13-Years-Old, Stabbed to Death While Asleep at Home in Kryat Arba Settlement (VIDEO)

So horrible.

She was a Jewish settler, attacked by a "virtuous" Palestinian. Watch, leftist anti-Zionists will say the poor thing deserved it.

At the Telegraph UK, "13-year-old Israeli girl stabbed to death in her bedroom."



ADDED: According to Yair Rosenberg on Twitter, the girl was an American citizen.

Bernard Bailyn

After the spring semester finished, my department cleared out the office of Professor Julian Del Gaudio, who passed away suddenly last year. Stacks and stacks of books and academic journals sat outside in the hallway. Plus, my colleagues Greg and Charlotte Joseph both retired, and they set out dozens of books in the hall as well.

I grabbed a bunch of classic old tomes. It was better than going to a favorite used bookstore, heh!

Professor Greg Joseph is an historian of the Cold War and the early American republic. He gave me a copy of Bernard Bailyn's classic, Pulitzer Prize-winning, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.

I finished Roger Scruton last night, Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left.

Now I'm just sampling chapters from the various books I've got stacked up on the ottoman downstairs in the living room. I'm also shopping for a couple of more books online. Thanks to everyone who's been shopping through my Amazon links. The affiliate fees help me afford my book binges, heh.

Ideologue or Pragmatist?

It's Jonah Goldberg, from Prager University.

Goldberg's the author, most recently, of The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas.

The only problem with his video is that he insists on calling leftists "liberals." Decent, well-meaning people (and not just conservatives) aren't going to defeat radical postmodern leftism if they idiotically continue to treat these ghouls as "liberals." They're not. See Kim R. Holmes, The Closing of the Liberal Mind: How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left.

Samantha Hoopes Irresistibles (VIDEO)

Via Theo Spark:

Boris Johnson Withdraws from Leadership Contest, Upends Tories After Michael Gove Ambush (VIDEO)

At the Telegraph UK, "Conservative MPs in uproar as Boris Johnson 'rips party apart' by withdrawing from leadership contest after ambush by Michael Gove":

The battle for the Conservative leadership was dramatically transformed today after Boris Johnson ruled himself out of the race.

It followed the shock declaration from Michael Gove that he would throw his hat in the ring because he didn't believe his close friend was up to the job.

He said: "I have come, reluctantly, to the conclusion that Boris cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead. I have, therefore, decided to put my name forward for the leadership."

Conservative MPs who turned up for what they thought would be Boris Johnson’s decision to stand for the Tory leadership at the St Ermine hotel near Scotland Yard are absolutely furious.

The MPs who spoke to the Telegraph said they had no idea the Mr Johnson had planned to withdraw from the Tory leadership.

One MP who attended Mr Johnson’s launch said: “Any politician who trusts Michael Gove needs their head examined.

The chaos sent shock waves through the campaign as Home Secretary Theresa May announced her bid to succeed David Cameron this morning.

At midday Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee, announced that Theresa May, Michael Gove, Stephen Crabb, Liam Fox and Andrea Leadsom will fight it out to succeed David Cameron.

Mr Brady announced that the first set of voting will take place on Tuesday as the party's MPs winnow down the field of five candidates to two.

With the least successful contender eliminated at each round, further ballots will be held on Thursday, then successive Tuesdays and Thursdays until two front-runners emerge to be put forward to the party membership in the country for a final decision.

Mr Brady said the committee wants a winner to be chosen by September 9.

A handful of Tory MPs reacted with disbelief as news that Mr Johnson would not be seeking the leadership filtered through as they waited for Mr Brady's announcement...

Watch Johnson's full withdrawal speech here, "LIVE: Boris Johnson's shock announcement he will not run for Tory leadership."

Europe Is Dead: Long Live Europe?

At Der Spiegel, "Black Thursday for U.K. and Europe as Britain Votes to Leave E.U.":

Three weeks prior to the big bang, Michael Gove was standing on a rooftop terrace in London's East End talking about how much he likes Europe. German music, Italian food, French joie de vivre -- oh how much he loves this wonderful continent. Gove is a close friend of British Prime Minister David Cameron and the UK secretary of state for justice. He is also a leading proponent of the British campaign to leave the European Union, commonly called Brexit. "I got married in France and my in-laws live in Italy," he said. "Last year, we went to Bayreuth on vacation. Beautiful." He just couldn't stop gushing.

There is, though, one thing that he doesn't like about Europe -- the damned European Union. Gove describes the 28-country bloc as a "job-destroying, misery-inducing, unemployment-creating tragedy." He's been fighting for Britain to leave the EU for years and is convinced he's right. He is an ideologue. His strategic skill is one big reason why the anti-EU camp attracted more and more people in the weeks leading up to the vote.

In a room next door, Brexit activists are waiting with signs and "Vote Leave" T-shirts. It is Gove's job to motivate them for the campaign's final stretch. He straightens his tie and says that he spent a week sitting on a wooden bench listening to Wagner's operas at the Bayreuth Festival. It was complete dedication, he says, offering it as yet more proof of his love for the continent -- and then an advisor tells him it is time to take the stage.

Gove and his followers were ecstatic on Friday morning. They had achieved their goal. According to the final results, 52 percent of the British voted in favor of leaving the EU. It is an outcome that many in Europe didn't initially take seriously. Soon, however, they began to fear it and ultimately, they could do nothing to prevent it.

The Direst Worst-Case Scenario

At shortly after 4 a.m. London time, Nigel Farage, head of the euroskeptic UKIP party, was one of the first to step in front of the cameras. He said the Brexit vote was a "victory for real people, a victory for ordinary people, a victory for decent people." He also demanded Cameron's immediate resignation. At the time of his speech, only 237 of 382 local authorities had declared their results. Just a few minutes later, the pound plunged to its lowest level against the dollar since 1985.

Scotland, London and Northern Ireland all voted clearly in favor of remaining in the EU, but that wasn't enough. The results in the rest of the UK were clear, and the Brexit campaign's lead grew throughout the night. At 5:40 a.m., the BBC made its call: Brexit was reality.


The influential Labour parliamentarian Keith Vaz called the result "a catastrophe;" European Parliament President Martin Schulz said a short time later that it was "a real crisis;" BBC journalists, clearly stunned by the result, said they had never thought they would have to comment on such an outcome. The United Kingdom will become the first European country ever to leave the union.

June 23, 2016 will go down in European history as Black Thursday, a day when a country succumbed to nostalgia and a yearning for freedom instead of following reason. Against the recommendation of a majority of its parliamentarians, against the advice of economists, politicians, academics, friends and allies around the world. It is a decision marked by national egocentrism, stoked by fear and world weariness, but it is nonetheless a democratic decision...

Well, "nonetheless" democratic.

Thanks a lot, buddy!

Keep reading.

More, "The Refugee Question: Is Merkel To Blame for Brexit?"

EARLIER: "This Is a Real Headline on Britain's EU Referendum, You Ignorant Unwashed Racist Rubes."

William J. Murray, Utopian Road to Hell

I'm just about finished with Roger Scruton's, Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left.

It's extremely scholarly, and quite heavy reading, actually.

I've learned a lot though. The book's going to be a key reference as I plow through more and more of the radical left's postmodernist literature.

Relatedly, I just saw this book on Amazon, and it's worth a look. From William Murray, Utopian Road to Hell: Enslaving America and the World With Central Planning.

Definitely timely.

'Why not blow up the security line?'

Australia's Daily Telegraph cites Mark Steyn's tragic prediction from six years ago, at it's editorial on Istanbul, quoted at Steyn Online, "The Insecure Security Line":

As we observed yesterday, while Mark is traveling overseas researching a forthcoming book, we could easily run the "Steyn was right" series all summer. It would be too sad and bleak to do so, but today Australia's Daily Telegraph, in its editorial on the airport attack, takes note of another ancient insight from Mark:

SIX years ago, following the introduction of further airport security measures in the US, American-based columnist and author Mark Steyn made the following acute observation:

"The second thought that strikes you is that the ever- longer lines to get into the 'secure' area are now the least secure area in America. Why not blow up the security line? You could kill as many people as on an aeroplane, and inflict more long-term economic damage.

"But don't worry. The Transportation Security Administration has plans to expand the 'secure' area, so the insecure perimeter will be somewhere else, with even more vulnerable people standing around waiting to get into it."

Steyn's views from 2010 rang true following the terrorist attacks in March at Brussels airport, which targeted two security check-in areas, and they ring true again following yesterday's horrific terrorist attacks at Istanbul's Ataturk International, which also occurred at a security point.

An initial and understandable impulse may be that we need to rethink how airport security should operate — perhaps by expanding the secure areas. But as Steyn more recently pointed out, that would only shift potential targets:

"Clearly we need a secure zone outside the secure zone — maybe, say, outside the concourse. So everyone has to crowd on the sidewalk. And then when they blow that up we can move it back to the perimeter of the airport. And then ..."

And then ... where?

Indeed. We mourn the dead in Istanbul as in Brussels, but, as Mark remarked on another occasion, you get the feeling our rulers are hoping we're getting used to it.

Israel Matzav commented on just this yesterday, in the context of Israel security policies:

Only with Israeli style security In Israel they would have been stopped at the checkpoint a mile outside the airport https://t.co/L0YCv8vznM

— (((IsraelMatzav))) (@IsraelMatzav) June 29, 2016

WATCH: Airport Surveillance Video Shows Istanbul Airport Attacker Detonating Bomb

This video by now has been played thousands of times on all the combined major news networks.

It's pretty astonishing.

Via CNN:



Also, at London's Daily Mail, "Chilling moment ISIS suicide bomber casually walks into Istanbul Airport terminal next to a pilot: Jihadists are caught on CCTV before blowing themselves up and killing 41 in deadly massacre."

This Is a Real Headline on Britain's EU Referendum, You Ignorant Unwashed Racist Rubes

Remember, if you had to boil down Britain's vote to leave, it's actually quite simple: "#Brexit: A Referendum on Elites and Immigration."

Of course, that elite class includes all the leftist media's foreign policy intelligentsia, that part of the revolutionary cadre that does its agitation for the proletarian liberation from behind a desk.

I mean, seriously. I thought was was a joke when I first saw the headline, but it's not, which makes it even more hilarious.

From James Traub, at the über establishment Foreign Policy, "It's Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses":

The Brexit has laid bare the political schism of our time. It’s not about the left vs. the right; it’s about the sane vs. the mindlessly angry.

It’s time for the elites to rise up against the ignorant masses, argues @JamesTraub1 https://t.co/filBVmdF2N pic.twitter.com/YkAlzC5pPW

— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) June 28, 2016

The issue, at bottom, is globalization. Brexit, Trump, the National Front, and so on show that political elites have misjudged the depth of the anger at global forces and thus the demand that someone, somehow, restore the status quo ante. It may seem strange that the reaction has come today rather than immediately after the economic crisis of 2008, but the ebbing of the crisis has led to a new sense of stagnation. With prospects of flat growth in Europe and minimal income growth in the United States, voters are rebelling against their dismal long-term prospects. And globalization means culture as well as economics: Older people whose familiar world is vanishing beneath a welter of foreign tongues and multicultural celebrations are waving their fists at cosmopolitan elites. I was recently in Poland, where a far-right party appealing to nationalism and tradition has gained power despite years of undeniable prosperity under a centrist regime. Supporters use the same words again and again to explain their vote: “values and tradition.” They voted for Polishness against the modernity of Western Europe.

Perhaps politics will realign itself around the axis of globalization, with the fist-shakers on one side and the pragmatists on the other. The nationalists would win the loyalty of working-class and middle-class whites who see themselves as the defenders of sovereignty. The reformed center would include the beneficiaries of globalization and the poor and non-white and marginal citizens who recognize that the celebration of national identity excludes them.

The schism we see opening before us is not just about policies, but about reality. The Brexit forces won because cynical leaders were prepared to cater to voters’ paranoia, lying to them about the dangers of immigration and the costs of membership in the EU. Some of those leaders have already begun to admit that they were lying. Donald Trump has, of course, set a new standard for disingenuousness and catering to voters’ fears, whether over immigration or foreign trade or anything else he can think of. The Republican Party, already rife with science-deniers and economic reality-deniers, has thrown itself into the embrace of a man who fabricates realities that ignorant people like to inhabit.

Did I say “ignorant”? Yes, I did. It is necessary to say that people are deluded and that the task of leadership is to un-delude them. Is that “elitist”? Maybe it is; maybe we have become so inclined to celebrate the authenticity of all personal conviction that it is now elitist to believe in reason, expertise, and the lessons of history. If so, the party of accepting reality must be prepared to take on the party of denying reality, and its enablers among those who know better. If that is the coming realignment, we should embrace it.

Funny, but notice how Traub has reversed the "party of accepting reality" and the "party of denying reality." Clearly, the reality now is that everyday people --- you know, the actually citizens in popular democracies --- have woken up to the lies of the corrupt elites. It's not "pragmatic" to keep telling yourself that all is well when half the EU countries are drowning economically and the other half is hellbent of importing the developing world's wretched of the earth. Regular voters know cultural suicide when they see it, and they're having none of it.

Thank goodness.

Here's the relevant entry to further explain things, "#Brexit: Life-Orienting Belief System of Progressivism Shattered on the Rocks."

American Women Have the Biggest Breasts in the World

Hey, talk about American exceptionalism, lol.

At the Telegraph UK, "US women have the biggest breasts in the world – study reveals."

US women have the biggest breasts in the world – study reveals https://t.co/dfWRx3Z0ae

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) June 29, 2016

Well, my guess is that Charlotte McKinney's still something of an outlier, dang!

We're just gonna leave this here: @Char_mck for @GUESS 🔥🔥🔥 #LoveGUESS pic.twitter.com/1JC0v4k3c9

— GUESS (@GUESS) June 23, 2016

PREVIOUSLY: "New Charlotte McKinney Photos."

Czech Republic's Lucie Šafářová Dress 'Too Short for Wimbledon'

So since when are short dresses a controversy in professional tennis? Seems like you're always looking at women's undies.

At the Telegraph UK, "Why Wimbledon loves a controversial fashion moment on court":

After the week that is, what relief to be absorbed into the fastidious sartorial guidelines of South-west London’s finest purveyors of sporting dignity.

Or not, as the case may be… viewers (and questions of taste) have already been sent spinning by the erm, fluidity of Nike’s 'Premier Slam’ dress: a sort of sporty, baby doll, thigh-skirting pleated mini dress worn by Czech Republic first round winner Lucie Safarova on Monday, which floated up perilously throughout play...

Even the staid NYT's getting into the action on this one:

For some at Wimbledon, Nike's dress just doesn't do it https://t.co/bz8tQmG7jl pic.twitter.com/jiyZp67ud2

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 29, 2016