Samantha Hoopes Whack-a-Mole (VIDEO)

Via Sports Illustrated:

Robert Paxton on the Question of Donald Trump and Fascism

An interview with Robert O. Paxton, at Slate, "Is Donald Trump a Fascist? Yes and no."

And here's Paxton's classic book, The Anatomy of Fascism.

Actually, I'd argue Trump represents an Americanized version of fascism, but it's like Paxton says, the term's so loaded with the weight of historical evil you don't want to use it loosely.

Saturday Morning Roundup

I'm going to post a lot of book links today. I've been slacking on my Amazon sales.

Meanwhile, from around the horn.

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Continental Breakfast."

And at the Other McCain, "In The Mailbox: 08.12.16."

Knuckledraggin', "Your Good Morning Girl."

Astute, "POLITICIANS AND PRESS IN TWIN FALLS, IDAHO DEFENDING JUVENILE MUSLIM RAPISTS."

Theo's, "Bike Week Daytona 2016 Bikini Babes..."

At Director Blue, "Larwyn's Linx: Hacker leaks phone numbers, email addresses of every House Democrat; Hillary’s protective wall around Chappaqua estate."

American Digest, "Season 3 of 'This Old Nag': Dragging Her Over the Finish Line."

Power Line, "NYTimes: Another Day, Another Hit Piece Against Donald Trump."

Maggie's Farm, "Maggie's Farm, "Durn Interestin' Roundup":

Roger here. Bird Dog has gone to the spa to take the waters. And by "spa," I mean tavern. And by "waters," I mean single malt. Anyway, he's left me to guard the chicken coop until he can finish his sabbatical, and make bail. I don't know what to talk about. That's because I'm not interesting, the way Bird Dog is...

BONUS: The Hostages, "Big Boob Friday."

Sebastian Gorka

He's great!

At Amazon, Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War.

Donald Trump Great Again

At Amazon, Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America.

David Horowitz, The End of Time

Did you read my post from the other day, "The Nature of the War Against Us"?

That was an excerpt from David Horowitz autobiographical, The End of Time.

What Teens Need Most from Their Parents

Well, they need a tremendous amount of attention and supervision.

I didn't realize how much until I wished I'd done more for my oldest son, who's having some early adulthood challenges now. (He'll be 21 in January.)

Yes, that's life, I know. But you always wish you'd done more to guide your kids, and provide a strong moral foundation.

It's weird when you think back on it, although my family's blessed that we're all together, doing well and healthy. You just think about it. Could you have done more? Have I been a good parent?

In any case, at WSJ:

The teenage years can be mystifying for parents. Sensible children turn scatter-brained or start having wild mood swings. Formerly level-headed adolescents ride in cars with dangerous drivers or take other foolish risks.

A flood of new research offers explanations for some of these mysteries. Brain imaging adds another kind of data that can help test hypotheses and corroborate teens’ own accounts of their behavior and emotions. Dozens of recent multiyear studies have traced adolescent development through time, rather than comparing sets of adolescents at a single point.

The new longitudinal research is changing scientists’ views on the role parents play in helping children navigate a volatile decade. Once seen as a time for parents to step back, adolescence is increasingly viewed as an opportunity to stay tuned in and emotionally connected. The research makes it possible to identify four important phases in the development of intellectual, social and emotional skills that most teens will experience at certain ages. Here is a guide to the latest findings...

Keep reading.

House GOP Task Force: Obama Administration Pressured Officials to Cook Intelligence on Islamic State (VIDEO)

There will be a reckoning one day.

This administration's making President Nixon and his plumbers look like pikers.

At Roll Call, "House GOP Report: Intelligence Officials Pressured to Alter Reports on ISIS; Analysis skewed to make U.S. campaign against ISIS look more successful, report says."

And watch, at Fox News:

Simone Manuel Becomes First Black American Woman to Win Gold in Individual Swimming

I'm so happy for her.

At the New York Times, "Rio Olympics: Simone Manuel Makes History in the Pool":

Tears of Victory for @simone_manuel​.https://t.co/BWGaUNiTHM https://t.co/6ISMPGyu0U

— NBC Olympics (@NBCOlympics) August 12, 2016

RIO DE JANEIRO — Katie Ledecky’s roommate at the Olympics is setting records now, too.

Simone Manuel, who is sharing a room with Ledecky in the athletes’ village here, became the first African-American woman to win an individual event in Olympic swimming on Thursday night. She and Penny Oleksiak of Canada tied for the fastest time, an Olympic record in the women’s 100-meter freestyle: 52.70 seconds.

“I definitely think it raises some awareness and will get them inspired,” Manuel, 20, said about the significance of her accomplishment. “I mean, the gold medal wasn’t just for me. It was for people that came before me and inspired me to stay in the sport. For people who believe that they can’t do it, I hope I’m an inspiration to others to get out there and try swimming. You might be pretty good at it.”

Manuel and Oleksiak shaved 0.01 seconds off the Olympic standard of 52.71, set earlier in the Rio Games meet by Australia’s Cate Campbell. Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom won the bronze in 52.99.

The last time an American won gold in the event was 1984, when Nancy Hogshead and Carrie Steinseifer also tied and shared the gold medal with a time of 55.92 seconds.

Several black swimmers have won Olympic medals for the United States. The first female of African-American descent to make an American Olympic team was Maritza Correia, a member of the 400-meter freestyle relay team that won silver at the 2004 Athens Games.

Lia Neal, a Brooklyn native, won a bronze in a relay at the 2012 London Games and a silver in a relay here at the Rio Games.

Anthony Ervin and Cullen Jones, who are black, have won Olympic gold medals...

More.

The Nature of the War Against Us

From David Horowitz, at FrontPage Magazine, "Understanding our enemies both secular and religious":

Love death. This is the improbable instruction that the founder of an Egyptian sect called the Muslim Brotherhood imparted to his followers in the 1920s. A disciple named Mohammed Atta copied this instruction into his journal just before leading the attack on the World Trade Center three days before my biopsy. Was it a coincidence that this dark creed took root in a country of monuments to the human quest for life beyond the grave? The sentence Mohammed Atta actually jotted down was this: “Prepare for holy war and be lovers of death.”

How can one love death? This is a question that is incomprehensible to us unless we are overwhelmed by personal defeats. But it is the enigma at the heart of human history, which is a narrative moved by war between men. For how can men go to war unless they love death, or a cause that is worth more than life itself?

*****

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928, but the summons to holy war was planted in Arab hearts more than a thousand years before. The prophet Mohammed created the Muslim faith and claimed he was fulfilling the gospel of Christ. But Mohammed was a warrior and Jesus a man of peace who instructed his followers to shun the path of history and separate the sacred from the profane. His kingdom was not of this world: Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s. Mohammed summoned his followers to make the world a place for God, which meant conquering Caesar himself.

Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian who was executed for treason in 1966, is recognized as the intellectual father of the Islamic jihad. His brother Mohammed was a teacher of its leader Osama Bin Laden and his texts are read by would-be martyrs in madrassas across the Muslim world. The hope that consumed Sayyid Qutb’s life was to establish the rule of Islam throughout the heathen nations and the Islamic umma, to make the world a holy place.

Sayyid Qutb regarded Christianity as a threat to this Islamic redemption. He condemned Christians for their separation of the sacred from the profane, God’s world from Ceasar’s. He called this division a “hideous schizophrenia,” which reflected the very corruption he set out to correct. Christians had created liberal societies, Qutb said, in which “God’s existence is not denied, but His domain is restricted to the heavens and His rule on earth is suspended.” Islam’s task was “to unite the world and the faith.” It was what Jewish mystics called “tikkun olam,” a mission to repair the world by bringing about the rule of God’s law on earth.

Qutb wrote this prescription in one of his most famous texts, which he called Social Justice In Islam. The mission of Islam, he explained, was “to unite heaven and earth in a single system.” To make the world one.

This is the totalitarian idea. When the wave of redemption is complete, nothing will remain untransformed, nothing unholy or unjust. Total transformation is the goal of all radical jihads, including the flight that burned the towers of evil in Manhattan. It is the cause that Mohammed Atta served. Like all revolutionary passions, the totalitarian hope of radical Islam is to redeem the world. It is the desire to put order into our lives and to heal the wound in creation.

But there is no earthly doctor who can cure us. The practical consequence of all radical dreams, therefore, is a permanent holy war.

Inevitably and invariably, the effort to make the world whole begins with its division into two opposing camps. In order to conduct the work of salvation, redeemers must separate the light from the darkness, the just from the unjust, the believers from the damned. For radical Muslims this division is the line separating the House of Islam from the House of War, the realm of the faithful from the world of heretics and infidels, who are impure of heart and who must be converted or destroyed.

*****

A thousand years before Mohammed Atta left on his fatal mission, a Shi’ite named Hassan al-Sabbah began a holy war to overthrow the Muslim state. In Hassan’s eyes, the Sunni caliphate that the Prophet Mohammed had established to govern Islam had already fallen into a state of corruption. It was no longer holy; it was no longer God’s. To cleanse Islam and restore the faith, Hassan created a martyr vanguard, whom others referred to as the “Assassins,” and whose deeds have bequeathed to us the word itself. The mission of the Assassins was to kill the apostate rulers of the false Islamic state, and purify the realm.

Because their mission was a service to God, it was considered a dishonor to return alive, and none did. The Koran assured the Assassins that the reward for the life they gave was paradise itself.  “So let them fight in the way of God who sell the present life for the world to come. Whosoever fights in the way of God and is slain, conquers. We shall bring him a mighty wage.” When the Assassins’ first victim, the vizier in Quhistan was slain, Hassan al-Sabbah said, “The killing of this devil is the beginning of bliss.” Revolutionaries love death because it is the gate of heaven and the beginning of bliss.

*****

Four years before 9/11, Mohammed Atta traveled to Afghanistan to join the International Islamic Front for the Holy War against Jews and Crusaders, whose leader was Osama bin Laden. Atta was a small, wiry man, the humorless son of a demanding father. After his team of modern Assassins turned the towers in Manhattan into a smoking ruin, his father told reporters, “My son is a very sensitive man.  He is soft and was extremely attached to his mother.”

Before the hour of his jihad, on the very page where he had copied the summons to love death, Mohammed Atta acknowledged that it was a call to perform acts unnatural to men. “Everybody hates death, fears death,” he wrote, but then explained why men should love it nonetheless. “Only the believers who know the life after death and the reward after death, will be the ones seeking death.” Mohammed Atta had found a cause that was greater than life itself.

But was Mohammed Atta right? Did his martyrs sign up for death to gain a greater return? This presumes that the only reason people would seek to end their lives in this world is the hope of reward in another. Do they not also run towards what they fear? When we have guilty secrets to hide do we not find ways to end the awful wait before judgment by leaving the clues that betray us? Especially if we are withholding secrets from those we fear and love. Are we not all guilty in the eyes of God, and did not Mohammed Atta fear and love Him?

What if martyrs hate life more than they love death? If we look at the scanty record of Mohammed Atta’s time on this earth, it suggests that escape was always on his mind. “Purify your heart and clean it of all earthly matters,” he wrote in his instructions to his martyr team. “The time of fun and waste has gone. The time of judgment has arrived.”

In his short life, Mohammed Atta does not seem to have had much room for pleasure. His father was a successful lawyer, who was ambitious and austere. The family had two residences but lived frugally and apart from others. “They didn’t visit and weren’t visited,” said a neighbor later. The father agreed, “We are people who keep to ourselves.” An adolescent friend of Mohammed’s described the Atta household: “It was a house of study. No playing, no entertainment. Just study.” Even as an adolescent, to avoid the contamination of the flesh Mohammed would leave the room when Egyptian television featured belly-dancing programs, as it frequently did.

According to those who knew him as a young adult, Mohammed Atta was insular, religiously strict and psychologically intense. The death of an insect made him emotional; the modern world repelled him. A fellow urban planning student remembered how the usually reserved Mohammed became enraged by a hotel construction near the ancient market of Aleppo, which he viewed as the desecration of Islam’s heritage. “Disney World,” he sneered, the Crusaders’ revenge. Mohammed continued to avoid sensual images whether from television screens or wall posters. He hated and feared the female gender, averting his eyes from women who so much as neglected to cover their arms.

Others testified that he could not take pleasure in so basic and social a human act as eating. A roommate recalled that he sustained himself by spooning lumps from a heap of cold potatoes he would mash and leave on a plate in the communal refrigerator for a week at a time. A German convert who hung out with members of the terrorist cell that Mohammed headed, thought it was his morbid seriousness that allowed him to lead others but dismissed him derisively as a “harmless, intelligent, nut.” The people he lived with longed for him to leave. A girlfriend of one of them said, “A good day was when Mohammed was not home.”

Five years before his appointment with death, Mohammed Atta drew up a will in which he admonished his mourners to die as good Muslims. “I don’t want a pregnant woman or a person who is not clean to come and say good-bye to me because I don’t approve it,” he stressed. “The people who will clean my body should be good Muslims… The person who will wash my body near my genitals must wear gloves on his hands so he won’t touch my genitals…. I don’t want any women to go to my grave at all during my funeral or on any occasion thereafter.”

 In life, Mohammed Atta despised women, but on his way to death, he promised his martyrs many, citing the Koranic verse: “Know that the gardens of paradise are waiting for you in all their beauty and the women of paradise are waiting, calling out, ‘Come hither, friend of God.’ They have dressed in their most beautiful clothing.”

Mohammed also wrote down these instructions for the mission ahead: “When the confrontation begins, strike like champions who do not want to go back to this world. Shout, ‘Allahu Akbar [God is great],’ because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers.” Whoever neglected his will or did not follow Islam, Mohammed warned, “that person will be held responsible in the end.”

Like Mohammed Atta we long for the judgment that will make right what is not. We want to see virtue rewarded and the wicked rebuked. We yearn for release from the frustrations and disappointments of an imperfect life. Consequently every God of love is also a God of justice, and therefore a God of punishment and death. If this were not so, if God did not care to sort out good from evil, what would His love be worth?

The emotions of fear and hope spring from the love of self, and therefore make our motives suspect. Are those who claim to be God’s warriors pure of heart and above doubt? Can men serve God if they are really serving themselves? Do martyrdoms like Mohammed Atta’s represent noble aspirations, or are they merely desperate remedies for personal defeats?

Mohammed Atta was a withdrawn and ineffectual man who died without achieving his worldly ambitions. He never realized his goal of becoming an architect or urban planner, never married or had a family. Apart from his jihad, Mohammed Atta never made a mark in life. But in death he was a god, bringing judgment to 3,000 innocent souls.

If Allah is the maker of life, as Mohammed Atta believed, could He desire the destruction of what he had created? What is suicide but rage at the living, and contempt for the life left behind? Mohammed Atta offered his deed of destruction as a gift to God. In his eyes, his martyrdom was unselfish and the strangers he killed were not innocent. His mission was to purge the world of wasteful pleasures, to vanquish the guilty and to implement God’s grace.

But if God wanted to cleanse His creation, why would He need Mohammed Atta to accomplish His will?

*****

These are the questions of an agnostic, who has no business saying what God desires or does not. Nonetheless, an agnostic can appreciate believers like Pascal, whose humility is transparent and who is attempting to make sense of the incomprehensible through faith. Why are we born? Why are we here? Why do we die? An agnostic can respect the faith of a skeptic who confronts our misery and refuses to concede defeat. He can admire a faith that provides consolation for the inconsolable, and in a heartless world finds reason to live a moral life.

But murder is not moral and the desire to redeem the world requires it. Because redemption requires the damnation of those who do not want to be saved.      

*****

My father was an atheist, and a progressive who embraced the secular belief of the social redeemers. Along with all who think they have practical answers to the absurd cruelties of our human lot, my father felt superior to those who do not, especially those who take solace in a religious faith. In this prejudice, my father had impressive company. The psychologist Sigmund Freud regarded religion as an illusion without a future. But, like all revolutionaries Freud could not live without his own reservoir of belief, which was science. Progress was his human faith.

Whether they are secularists like my father and Freud, or religious zealots like Mohammed Atta, those who believe we can become masters of our fates think they know more than Pascal. But in their search for truth where do they imagine they have gone that he did not go before them? What do they think they know that Pascal did not? Their bravado is only a mask for the inevitable defeat that is our common lot, an inverse mirror of their human need...

Keep reading.

Black Lives Matter – The Privileged and the Oppressed

Here's some research, from Anne Sorock at the Frontier Lab, via William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection, "Research Report: #BlackLivesMatter more about radical social upheaval than “Black Lives”":

Using Black Lives Matter movement to redefine the American experience into anti-Capitalist upheaval...

Read it all, at that link.

PREVIOUSLY: "#BlackLivesMatter Coalition Makes Demands, Wants Reparations for Slavery."

Lindsey Pelas Amazing Snapchat

At the Last Men on Earth.

And Maxim, "Lindsey Pelas on Snapchat is the gift that keeps on giving."

Also, at EnStars, "Lindsey Pelas: PHOTOS: Model Posts Exotic New Image In White Sports Bra [VIDEO]."

BONUS: On Twitter.

Weekend at Hillary's

Via Ben Garrison:

#HillaryClinton #My3WordStruggle "Call the Doctor!" #BenGarrison #cartoons at https://t.co/Oj98iIxEAZ pic.twitter.com/ky5G7X6nPX

— BenGarrison Cartoons (@GrrrGraphics) August 12, 2016

Lingering Email Controversy Haunts Hillary Clinton

This is on the front-page of tomorrow's Wall Street Journal.

Thank goodness.

See, "Email Questions Haunt Hillary Clinton":

The email controversy that Hillary Clinton hoped had died out when federal prosecutors closed their investigation last month now looks likely to shadow her campaign all the way through Election Day...

That's behind the paywall, but here's an earlier iteration, at the Washington Wire blog, "Hillary Clinton’s Email Controversy Haunts Campaign."

Anne R. Pierce, A Perilous Path [BUMPED]

It's been perilous, alright.

At Amazon, Anne R. Pierce, A Perilous Path: The Misguided Foreign Policy of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry.

And I'm enjoying Robert J. Lieber, Retreat and its Consequences: American Foreign Policy and the Problem of World Order.

And thanks for shopping through my amazon links!

At no extra cost to you, your purchases help fuel my reading splurges.

Thanks again!

State Department Spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau: 'Am I not speaking English?' (VIDEO)

At Twitchy, "‘Am I not speaking English?’ State Department dodges questions about pay-for-play scheme [video]."

Watch:

Nico Hines: Sleazy Daily Beast Grindr Piece Outs Homosexual Athletes in Rio

I'm not linking.

Check Memeorandum, "The Other Olympic Sport in Rio: Swiping."

I don't know what the purpose of this piece was, other than pure spite. And I certainly don't know how Daily Beast got off on publishing it.

More at Slate, via Memeorandum, "This Daily Beast Grindr Stunt Is Sleazy, Dangerous, and Wildly Unethical."

And at the Advocate:

"Daily Beast's #Grindr-Baiting Is the Worst Invasion of Privacy" https://t.co/AZGMQ5Wlk4 By @dnlreynolds #Rio2016 pic.twitter.com/0Tkh0qw6jQ

— The Advocate (@TheAdvocateMag) August 11, 2016

Laura Ingraham: The mainstream media, 'They don't really care, it turns out, whether America goes down the tubes...' (VIDEO)

Actually, the leftist media's working with the radical left to tear it all down.

Watch:

Top Democrats Warn Against Writing Off Trump

Actually, that's smart.

At Politico, "As the GOP nominee's poll numbers continue to sag, fear of complacency is suddenly a hot topic of discussion on the left."

And see Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "FLASHBACK: Gallup Had Dukakis Up by 17 at This Point in 1988."

Deal of the Day: Save Big on Select BLACK AND DECKER Drill Kits

At Amazon, BLACK+DECKER BDC120VA100 20-Volt MAX Lithium-Ion Drill Kit with 100 Accessories.

Also, Save Now on Select Products by BLACK+DECKER.

Plus, Dyson V6 Slim Cordless Vacuum (Certified Refurbished).

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

And, from Bill Gertz, The China Threat: How the People's Republic Targets America.

Thomas J. Christensen, The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power.

Still more, from Robert Ross, China in the Era of Xi Jinping: Domestic and Foreign Policy Challenges, and China's Ascent: Power, Security, and the Future of International Politics.

Dennis V. Hickey, Foreign Policy Making in Taiwan: From Principle to Pragmatism.

Kenneth G. Lieberthal, Managing the China Challenge: How to Achieve Corporate Success in the People's Republic.

BONUS: Ezra Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China.