Saturday, December 31, 2016

Donald Trump Ditches Media Hacks to Play Golf on New Year's Eve

Good.

Let the leftist media hacks stew in their own hatred and stupidity.

At CNN, "Donald Trump ditches his press pool to play golf."

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 2:20 PM 0 comments
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Audrey Bouette Bikini Beauty in Miami (PHOTOS)

At Egotastic!, "French Model Audrey Bouette Purple Bikini Beauty in Miami."

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 1:45 PM 0 comments
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Alexis Renn LOVE Advent 2016 (VIDEO)

I've been lagging on the LOVE blogging.

No matter. Enjoy Alexis Renn:


Posted by AmPowerBlog at 1:25 PM 0 comments
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In Parting Shot at Obama, Putin Plays Nice Guy

Following-up, "Putin Won't Retaliate."

At LAT, "In a slap at Obama, Putin plays Mr. Nice Guy":
Vladimir Putin is betting that the smartest move is to do nothing.

The Russian president announced Friday that his government would not expel any U.S. diplomats in retaliation for U.S. punitive measures unveiled by the White House a day earlier in response to Russia’s alleged cyber-attacks.

Putin’s sidestep away from confrontation was widely read as a deliberate bow to President-elect Donald Trump -- and a final hard slap at President Obama in the waning weeks of the U.S. leader’s tenure.

“We will not create any problems for U.S. diplomats. We will not expel anyone,” Putin said in a statement posted on the Kremlin website that followed well-publicized calls from senior Russian officials for a sharp pushback against the U.S. administration over steps that included the expulsions of 35 Russian diplomats.

The Russian leader said the Kremlin would instead base future moves on “the policies of the Trump administration.” Trump quickly praised Putin for putting off any action, tweeting: “I always knew he was very smart!”


Keep reading.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 1:25 PM 0 comments
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Amanda Nunes Knocks Out Ronda Rousey in 48 Seconds at #UFC207

No need to subscribe to the match when you can watch it in virtual real-time on Twitter.

Just 48 seconds and Rousey was toast.


Posted by AmPowerBlog at 12:15 PM 0 comments
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TPM's Josh Marshall Tweets Lesbian Porn in Failed Attack on Donald Trump

Unreal.

Just wow.

At Heat Street and the Ralph Retort:


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Ben Garrison

Cartoons:


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Deadly Fentanyl

This is gnarly, at NYT:


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Donald Trump Tweets Happy New Year to 'My Enemies' Who 'Lost So Badly...'

Heh.

He's the best.


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The 'Arc of History' Won't Help Obama's Sorry Legacy

At Foreign Policy, "Obama never understood how history works."


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United Nations Bias Against Israel (VIDEO)

Following-up from yesterday, "Jew Hatred at the United Nations."

This is an old but outstanding video:



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Friday, December 30, 2016

Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom

*Bumped.*

At Amazon, Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 10:45 PM 1 comments
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Germany Reckons With Its Genocide of the Herero People in Namibia

At NYT, "Germany Grapples With Its African Genocide":


WATERBERG, Namibia — In this faraway corner of southern Africa, scores of German soldiers lie in a military cemetery, their names, dates and details engraved on separate polished tombstones.

Easily missed is a single small plaque on the cemetery wall that gives a nod in German to the African “warriors” who died in the fighting as well. Nameless, they are among the tens of thousands of Africans killed in what historians have long considered — and what the German government is now close to recognizing — as the 20th century’s first genocide.

A century after losing its colonial possessions in Africa, Germany and its former colony, Namibia, are now engaged in intense negotiations to put an end to one of the ugliest chapters of Europe’s past in Africa.

During German rule in Namibia, called South-West Africa back then, colonial officers studying eugenics developed ideas on racial purity, and their forces tried to exterminate two rebellious ethnic groups, the Herero and Nama, some of them in concentration camps.

“It will be described as genocide,” Ruprecht Polenz, Germany’s special envoy to the talks, said of a joint statement that the two governments are preparing. Negotiations, which began this year, are now also focusing on how Germany will compensate and apologize to Namibia.

The events in Namibia between 1904 and 1908 foreshadowed Nazi ideology and the Holocaust. Yet the genocide in this former colony remains little known in Germany, the rest of Africa and, to some extent, even in Namibia itself.

Throughout Namibia, monuments and cemeteries commemorating the German occupiers still outnumber those honoring the victims of genocide, a concrete reminder of the lasting imbalance of power.

“Some of us want to remove that cemetery so that we can put our own people there,” said Magic Urika, 26, who lives about an hour away from the cemetery here in Waterberg. “What they did was a terrible thing, killing our people, saying all the Herero should be eliminated.”

While Germany’s efforts to atone for crimes during World War II are well known, it took a century before the nation began taking steps to acknowledge that genocide happened in Namibia decades before the Holocaust...
More.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 10:20 PM 0 comments
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Putin Won't Retaliate

Putin is pretty canny, actually.

He knows Obama's blowing steam. He knows he's spewing his bile not so much against Moscow, but against Donald Trump's victory itself. Putin's shrewd that way. He's waiting until O's out of office, expecting Trump to rescind the order and allow Russian diplomats back in.

That's what's going to happen. I mean, who doesn't think so?

At NYT, "Vladimir Putin Won't Expel U.S. Diplomats as Russian Foreign Minister Urged":

MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia announced Friday that he would not retaliate against President Obama’s decision to expel Russian diplomats and impose new sanctions — only hours after his foreign minister recommended doing just that.

Mr. Putin, betting on improved relations with the next American president, said he would not eject 35 diplomats or close any diplomatic facilities, rejecting a tit-for-tat response to the actions taken on Thursday by the Obama administration.

The switch was remarkable, given that Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, had just recommended the retaliation in remarks broadcast live on national television. He called for punitive measures mirroring the ones imposed by the Obama administration, which accuses Russia of intimidating American diplomats and hacking institutions like the Democratic National Committee to influence the 2016 election.

The two countries have a long history of reciprocal expulsions, and Russian officials had been threatening to retaliate for days. Then Mr. Putin abruptly changed course.

“While we reserve the right to take reciprocal measures, we’re not going to downgrade ourselves to the level of irresponsible ‘kitchen’ diplomacy,” Mr. Putin said, using a common Russian idiom for quarrelsome and unseemly acts. “In our future steps on the way toward the restoration of Russia-United States relations, we will proceed from the policy pursued by the administration” of Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Putin has a flair for smart, unexpected tactics, and his announcement on Friday appeared to be in keeping with that. To some observers, the sudden shift seemed carefully stage-managed, a way of building up suspense before Mr. Putin’s surprise announcement, helping portray him as a wise leader above the fray.

Mr. Putin even said he did not want to close a wooded picnic area on a Moscow River island used by diplomats because he did not want to deprive their children. Then he went one step further, inviting all children of American diplomats accredited in Russia to celebrate the New Year and the Russian Orthodox Christmas with him at the Kremlin.

“Putin showed that he is above his own officials, that he doesn’t want to take the retaliatory action suggested by his foreign minister,” said Vladimir Frolov, an international relations analyst and columnist. “This is an attempt to show that he is a figure not just of worldly scale, but of planetary.”

Should Mr. Putin have chosen to retaliate harshly against the United States, he would most likely have deepened the rift between the two countries and left President-elect Trump with a nettlesome diplomatic standoff from the moment he arrived in the Oval Office.

But by choosing essentially to disregard Mr. Obama’s punitive measures, Mr. Putin can try to disarm his American critics, including members of Congress who consider him an aggressive foe of the United States. That could give Mr. Trump more room to pursue the closer cooperation with Russia that he has advocated.

Despite all of the statements from senior officials about the need to respect “reciprocity,” Mr. Putin essentially warned Washington that he was waiting for the Trump administration...
Shrewd, like I said. He's making Obama look like a petulant child.

Still more.

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Kate Bosworth Bikini Photos

At Drunken Stepfather, "KATE BOSWORTH IS EVERYTHING IN A BIKINI OF THE DAY."

BONUS: "JESSICA LEE BUCHANAN SOUTH AFRICAN FOR FASHION OF THE DAY," and "MORNING HANGOVER DUMP OF THE DAY."

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 3:35 PM 0 comments
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Finished Exodus

I finished Leon Uris's, Exodus.

As noted, I read it about 30 years ago and when I was visiting the Cactus Wren Bookstore in Yucca Valley, in September, I picked up a used copy.

What struck me so powerfully this time around is how unabashedly pro-Israel is Uris in the book. And I was also struck by so many of the historical and political themes that are essentially timeless, including the existential nature of Arab and Islamic hatred of the Jews, as well as the key political issues arising out of Israel's establishment as a nation-state, the wars of Israel's independence, especially the refugee crisis (and Uris's discussion of it as a completely manufactured crisis by corrupt Arab dictatorships to generate international condemnation of the Jewish state).

It is, in other words, a book to make leftist heads explode.

In any case, I thought I'd google around for some of the contemporary debate. It's interesting.

Start with Martin Kramer, "Exodus, myth and malpractice":
Exodus by Leon Uris must rank high on any list of the most influential books about the Middle East. The novel, published in 1958, popularized the story of Israel’s birth among millions of American readers. The 1960 film, based on the book and starring Paul Newman as Ari Ben Canaan, reached many more millions. Exodus is still of interest, not for what it says about the creation of Israel (the commander of the ship Exodus said Uris “wrote a very good novel, but it had nothing to do with reality. Exodus, shmexodus”), but for what it reveals about mid-twentieth-century America. So more inquiry into the American context of Exodus is welcome—provided you get the facts right.

Last fall, Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, offered his audiences an account of how Leon Uris came to write the book. In a speech at Brooklyn Law School, Khalidi made this claim:
This carefully crafted propaganda was the work of seasoned professionals. People like someone you probably never heard of, a man named Edward Gottlieb, for example. He’s one of the founders of the modern public relations industry. There are books about him as a great advertiser.

In order to sell the great Israeli state to the American public many, many decades ago, Gottlieb commissioned a successful, young novelist. A man who was a committed Zionist, a fellow with the name of Leon Uris. He funded him and sent him off to Israel to write a book. This book was "Exodus: A Novel of Israel." Gottlieb’s gambit succeeded brilliantly. Exodus sold as many copies as Gone With the Wind, which up to that point was the greatest best-seller in U.S. history. Exodus was as good a melodrama and sold just as many copies.
Khalidi made a similar assertion in another speech a few weeks later, this time at the Palestine Center in Washington...
Keep reading.

Kramer really tracked down the origins of this claim of a "modern public relations" "melodrama."

He goes on:
The purpose of myth

In sum, the Gottlieb “commission” never happened. Uris’s biographers dismiss it, Gottlieb’s most knowledgeable associate denies it, and no documents in Uris’s papers or Israeli archives testify to it. It originated as a boast by Gottlieb to another PR man, made almost thirty years after the (non-)fact. And given its origin, it’s precisely the sort of story a serious professional historian would never repeat as fact without first vetting it (as I did).

Yet it persists in the echo chamber of anti-Israel literature, where it has been copied over and over. In Kathleen Christison’s book, it finally appeared under the imprimatur of a university press (California). In Khalidi’s lectures last fall, it acquired a baroque elaboration, in which Edward Gottlieb emerges as “the father of the American iteration of Zionism” and architect of “one of the greatest advertising triumphs of the twentieth century.” What is the myth’s appeal? Why is the truth about the genesis of Exodus so difficult to grasp? Why should Khalidi think the Gottlieb story is, in his coy phrase, “worth noting”?

Because if you believe in Zionist mind-control, you must always assume the existence of a secret mover who (as Khalidi said) “you probably never heard of” and who must be a professional expert in deception. This “seasoned” salesman conceives of Exodus as a “gambit” (Khalidi) or a “scheme” (Christison). There is no studio or publisher’s advance, only a “commission,” which qualifies the book as “propaganda”—an “advertising triumph.” In Khalidi’s Brooklyn Law School talk, he added that “the process of selling Israel didn’t stop with Gottlieb…. It has continued unabated since then.” It is Khalidi’s purpose to cast Exodus, like the case for Israel itself, as a “carefully crafted” sales job by Madison Avenue mad men. Through their mediation, Israel has hoodwinked America...
Now, also check Haaretz, "The 'Exodus' Effect: The Monumentally Fictional Israel That Remade American Jewry":
The pantheon of Jewish-American novelists is as populous as it is distinguished. Among its titans are two Nobel laureates, Canadian-born Chicagoan Saul Bellow and Polish-born Isaac Bashevis Singer; a justly celebrated string of Pulitzer winners from Edna Ferber through Philip Roth to Michael Chabon; and the creators of such works as "The Catcher in the Rye" and "Catch 22."

Yet, a half-century ago, when a single book transformed American Jews as no other work has done, before or since, its author was none of these.

The book was "Exodus" - and like its creator, Leon Uris, it was savaged by critics and academics, and resoundingly ignored by literary prize committees. When the book appeared in 1958, however, it sold in the millions. It was said that it was nearly as common to find a copy of "Exodus" in American-Jewish households as to find the Bible - and, of the two, not a few Jewish households apparently had only "Exodus."

Tailoring, altering and radically sanitizing the history of the founding of the State of Israel to flatter the fantasies and prejudices of American Jews, Uris succeeded well beyond his own wildest dreams, essentially remaking his eager readers and himself as well. That is, he helped foment a significant change in his fellow Jews' perceptions of Israel and, indeed, of themselves.

"As a literary work it isn't much," sniffed David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding prime minister, still in power at the time "Exodus" was published. "But as a piece of propaganda, it's the best thing ever written about Israel."

Some 40 years after the novel's publication, the prominent Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said would ruefully remark of its demonized treatment of Arabs that "the main narrative model that dominates American thinking still seems to be Leon Uris' 1958 novel 'Exodus.'"
More.

Then see the very critical Alan Elsner, at the Jewish Journal, "Rereading Leon Uris’ ‘Exodus’: a disquieting experience."

I'm sure there's lots more commentary, but you get the idea. For good measure, here's one more, from Adam Kirsch, at the Tablet, "MACHO MAN: Exodus recast Israel’s founders as swaggering heroes and secured Leon Uris a place on the Jewish bookshelf even though, as a new biography shows, he was a mediocre writer and a troubled person."

As you can tell, leftists love to unload on Uris. But the book is awesome, and your view of it will shape your view of the man.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 2:35 PM 0 comments
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Jew Hatred at the United Nations

From Lorrie Goldstein, at the Toronto Sun, "Jew hatred at the U.N. no surprise" (via Blazing Cat Fur):
To put it simply, the United Nations contains a nest of Jew-hating vipers.

Jew hatred at the UN flies under the false flag of condemning Israel for human rights violations, while all but ignoring them everywhere else.

This effort is spearheaded by Mideast dictatorships, whose goal has always been to delegitimize the Jewish state, the same goal as the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign and Israeli Apartheid Weeks.

In the latest instalment, a now-passed UN Security Council resolution slammed Israel unfairly and selectively on the settlement issue in the Occupied Territories last week.

President Barack Obama has been criticized by Israel’s supporters over the US abstaining from voting on the resolution (rather than vetoing it), which allowed it to pass.

But this Security Council resolution is just the latest example of the UN’s war against the Jews masquerading as legitimate criticism of Israel...
More.
Posted by AmPowerBlog at 11:55 AM 0 comments
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Will X. Walters, Plaintiff in San Diego Gay Pride Nudity Case, Dead of an Apparent Suicide (VIDEO)

What a waste.

At the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Man who lost gay pride nudity case against SDPD dies of apparent suicide":

A man who unsuccessfully sued San Diego police over his public nudity arrest at a gay pride festival was found dead Wednesday night at his Hillcrest apartment in an apparent suicide, authorities said.

The death of Will X. Walters comes about two weeks after a federal jury delivered the verdict in favor of police.

Walters’ attorney, Chris Morris, said Walters was shocked by the Dec. 13 verdict and immediately left the downtown San Diego federal courthouse after it was announced.

Morris said he hadn’t heard from Walters since and had tried to reach him in the days that followed. Friends also tried checking on him, the lawyer said.

San Diego police were called to the apartment by a neighbor late Wednesday.

His time of death was not known. The county Medical Examiner’s Office said the death remained under investigation.

“Will Walters was a valiant warrior for his cause, and he will be missed by those who knew him and the community he fought for,” Morris said Thursday...
Maybe he should have just paid the fines, or whatever, and let it go.

This case isn't worth taking your life. But apparently, his identity as a homosexual man was everything and he wanted that fully validated, or else. I'll bet the guy was a pushy in-your-face advocate for same-sex marriage and all that. Homosexual activists are like that.

More (via Memeorandum).

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 11:45 AM 0 comments
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'The first time I ever smoked pot I also had sex...'

Well, I'm sure that was nice. Especially the sex, heh.

At Nerve, "Love in a Time of Cannabis" (via Instapundit):
I was in high school, she was older and asked if I was cool. I nodded. She showed me how to hit the bong then laid me down on the bed and showed me how to please her. Forever after, I’ve associated sex and weed. They go together like music and dancing. It’s the perfect substance for romance. Your body becomes hypersensitive and alert. Everything’s light, funny, wonderful and weird...
More.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 11:20 AM 0 comments
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Thursday, December 29, 2016

Obama Administration Sanctions Russia on Election Hacking

O doesn't look too pleased at that photo. If looks could be translated into policy, the U.S. would've been a lot tougher on Moscow these last few years. Alas, Obama's like a paper tiger. He looks tough while being a pushover in practice. Frankly, Russia's been eating our lunch, from Ukraine to Syria.

These sanctions are completely political, designed more to delegitimize the incoming Trump administration than to penalize Russia.

God, how much longer until this scum of an administration is shown the door?

At WSJ, "U.S. Punishes Russia Over Election Cyberattacks; Moscow Vows Retaliation":


President Barack Obama sanctioned Russian government intelligence agencies and expelled 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives from the U.S. in what he called a partial response to Russia’s alleged use of cyberattacks to interfere with the U.S. presidential election.

Russia threatened to retaliate, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying “the principle of reciprocity applies here.” He said Russian President Vladimir Putin would formulate a response that would create “considerable discomfort in the same areas” for the U.S., according to the Interfax news agency.

The sanctions designate Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as the Main Intelligence Directorate, or the GRU, for “tampering, altering or causing the misappropriation of information” with the purpose or effect of interfering with the election. The measures also designate Russia’s main security agency, the Federal Security Service, for assisting the GRU in those activities.

The administration also sanctioned three Russian companies it accused of providing material support for the GRU’s cyber operations and four top Russian officials who run the military intelligence agency.

At the same time, the State Department expelled 35 Russian intelligence operatives allegedly serving under diplomatic cover from the Russian embassy in Washington and the Russian consulate in San Francisco. The officials and their families were given 72 hours to leave the U.S. after the State Department said they “were acting in a manner inconsistent with their diplomatic status.” The deadline is noon on Sunday.

The State Department also notified Russia that as of Friday Moscow would be denied access to two Russian government-owned compounds in the U.S. One is a dacha, or summer retreat, for Russian embassy officials on the eastern shore of Maryland, and the other is a dacha compound for New York-based Russian diplomats on Long Island, a U.S. official said. The White House accused Russia of using the recreational compounds for “intelligence-related purposes.”

The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation also released a joint analysis report, titled “Grizzly Steppe,” giving additional technical details about the election hacking.

Mr. Obama said the steps were “in response to the Russian government’s aggressive harassment of U.S. officials and cyber operations aimed at the U.S. election” and followed repeated warnings to Moscow.

“These data theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government,” Mr. Obama said in a statement.

Russia has denied involvement in the election hacks.

Mr. Peskov said Thursday the new U.S. measures were a display of the Obama administration’s unpredictability and aggressive foreign policy. He said the White House wanted “to ruin once and for all Russian-American relations, which were already at rock-bottom, and apparently, strike a blow against the foreign-policy plans of the future administration,” according to Interfax.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on her Facebook page that the Russian Foreign Ministry would make an official announcement regarding countermeasures against the U.S. on Friday. She said “the American people have been humiliated by their own president.”

The administration’s announcement could reignite the debate between the White House and President-elect Donald Trump, who has challenged the accuracy of the U.S. intelligence assessment attributing the hacks to Russia and called it “ridiculous.” Mr. Obama called Mr. Trump on Wednesday ahead of the announcement...
More.

Posted by AmPowerBlog at 4:00 PM 0 comments
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