In the Mail: Naomi Schaefer Riley, The New Trail of Tears

This just came today.

From the wonderful Naomi Schaefer Riley, The New Trail of Tears: How Washington Is Destroying American Indians.

The book hits the shelves July 26th, but pre-order today!

Deal of the Day: Poulan Pro 40V Electric Start Dual Blade Mower

At Amazon, Poulan Pro 967044401 40V Electric Start Dual Blade Mower, 20".

Also, Summer Event: OUTDOOR POWER TOOLS.

And, Sports & Outdoors : Save on Coleman's Top Summer Products.

Plus, KIND Bars, Dark Chocolate Nuts & Sea Salt, Gluten Free, 1.4 Ounce Bars, 12 Count.

More, Motorola Moto E Android Prepaid Phone with Triple Minutes.

Still more, Mervyn King, The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy.

Martin Wolf, The Shifts and the Shocks: What We've Learned - and Have Still to Learn - from the Financial Crisis.

BONUS: Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy.

'The Purge: Election Year'

I'll be heading out to this a little later.

At LAT, "Review: Pulp gets political, and messy, in 'The Purge: Election Year'":

The end is nigh in “The Purge: Election Year.” Not the end of the world as we know it (another apocalypse? Ho-hum), but possibly the end of the Purge itself — that cruel annual rite that, for one night only, allows all Americans to vent their bloodlust in the name of continued national health and prosperity. Pitting a heroic female presidential hopeful against a shadowy cabal of gun-toting one-percenters, this is a crudely opportunistic, engrossingly pulpy extension of a franchise that, as ludicrous as its setup has always been, seems increasingly in step with the violent absurdity of the times. That much is clear from the new movie’s cutthroat political rhetoric, as well as a ghastly scene of a church being peppered with bullets.

An image like that can’t help but give you pause, as it was clearly designed to do. Even more than in the series’ first two films, the writer-director James DeMonaco wields his satirical ideas and topical reference points with a recklessness that similarly informs his murkily shot scenes of knife-to-knife combat and sniper fire. At times the experience of watching “Election Year” is a bit like scanning a few years’ worth of alarming headlines while someone sets off firecrackers under your desk. Black Lives Matter, drone warfare, local protests, home-grown militias, predatory capitalism, the Florida electorate, pop pop, bang bang.

In this frenzied B-thriller context, where thinking too much could easily get you killed, a hit-or-miss approach works better than you might expect. What once seemed like design weaknesses in DeMonaco’s speculative fiction — the willful incoherence of his allegory and the scattershot quality of his satire — now feel like a natural extension of his schlock-and-awe sensibility. He isn’t concocting an alternate reality so much as sending out crazy dispatches from our own, and he knows that a jab doesn’t have to be subtle in order to land...

Keep reading.

The Changing Lines Between Left and Right on Both Sides of the Atlantic

From Ron Brownstein, at the Atlantic, "Culture Is Replacing Class as the Key Political Divide":

Democrats now rely on an urbanized coalition of Millennials, minorities, and socially liberal college-educated and single whites (especially women). Republicans thrive among older, non-college educated and religiously devout whites, especially outside of major cities. In 2012, President Obama carried less than one-fourth of America’s counties; he won fewer counties than any presidential winner since at least 1920. But because Obama so dominated the nation’s population centers, he triumphed by 5 million votes.

Not only was the distribution of the British vote familiar, so was the motivation. [the British pollster] Ashcroft’s poll found that leave voters were characterized by pessimism about the next generation’s economic prospects, and deep hostility to immigration, multiculturalism, and the changing role of women. Fully 80 percent of leave voters said immigration negatively affected the U.K. That exactly equaled the percentage of Trump supporters who called immigration more of a burden than benefit in a major new US national poll. Stanley B. Greenberg, a long-time pollster both for U.S. Democrats and the U.K. Labor Party, says a post-referendum survey he conducted for the British Trades Union Congress found that among those who voted to leave, “the biggest rationale, and the strongest arguments, were opposition to immigration.”

In these ways, the British vote showed the power of the Trump-like anti-immigration, anti-globalization argument for white, older, non-urban and non-college-educated voters who feel marginalized by economic and cultural change. The key difference is those voters represent much less of the U.S. electorate. In particular, while whites comprised about 90 percent of British voters, they will likely cast only around 70 percent of American ballots. In the U.K., Ashcroft found 53 percent of whites voted to leave; because Trump faces so much opposition from minorities, if he wins the same percentage of whites, he will lose in a landslide. He will likely need well over 60 percent of whites to win.

If anything, the resistance to the leave campaign’s nativism from college-educated and urban U.K. whites underscores the headwinds Trump will face reaching that number. Since 2000, every Democratic presidential candidate has run better among college-educated than non-college-educated whites. But even so, in modern polling tracing back to 1952, no Democratic presidential candidate has ever carried most of those college-educated whites. Yet the last five national surveys have shown Clinton leading Trump with them. Greenberg predicts that as the GOP is tugged more toward the resistance to immigration (and diversity more broadly) of its culturally conservative blue-collar wing, more college-educated voters will defect, perhaps lastingly. “They drove their college-educated voters out by the nature of this primary,” he said.

Revolving around these cultural differences, the Trump-Clinton contest seems certain to accelerate the two parties’ long-term re-sorting into a cosmopolitan, urban-centered Democratic coalition comfortable with demographic and cultural changes and a primarily non-urban traditionalist Republican coalition mostly resistant to them. That ongoing shift’s most immediate 2016 effect may be to reorder the states at the tipping point of U.S. elections...

Still more.

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