Trump Administration in Crisis

I normally wouldn't describe things as a "crisis," but one of the pieces I read yesterday noted that it wasn't just Michael Flynn. Democrats are out for blood. The leftist media is agitating and organizing to destroy the administration. It's a coup. Next on the chopping block is Kellyanne Conway. Then Reince Priebus. After that it's President Trump himself. Impeachment talk will escalate.

Of course, there's literally no evidence that U.S. security has been comprised. Leftists are just picking up where they left off during the transition. They're bringing back the "Russian card" to annihilate the newly sworn-in administration. They couldn't defeat the insurgent populist Trump in the election, so they'll use extra-electoral means. They're going to use extra-constitutional means, in fact, because the opposition to Trump is looking like an armed revolt. It's a rebellion. Street protests and anarchist violence are cheered by the progs in D.C. Campuses are the training grounds of the revolution. Far-left members of Congress demonize and delegitimize the elected government at every turn. Nancy Pelosi's Robespierre in a skirt.

Yesterday's Memeorandum thread was perhaps the longest series of articles on a single topic I've ever seen at the site. All alarmist too. Today's top headline is from the sensational yellow-journal rag, the New York Times, "Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence."

See Ed Morrissey, at Hot Air, for more, "NYT: FBI probing Russian intel contacts with several Trump campaign officials."

And at Free Beacon, via Stephen Green at Instapundit, "SHADOW ADMINISTRATION: Former Obama Officials, Loyalists Waged Secret Campaign to Oust Flynn."

Also, from Glenn Reynolds, "YEAH, THE FLYNN RESIGNATION’S AN EMBARRASSMENT, but Obama had his failed appointments, often tinged with scandal..."

More at CBS This Morning, "Report: Trump associates repeatedly contacted Russia before election," and "Trump had known "for weeks" Gen. Flynn had misled White House."

Molly Haskell, Steven Spielberg

I suppose Steven Spielberg's a flaming leftist. I don't really know for sure. I do know that I'm inclined to forever cut him some slack, since he directed perhaps the greatest war movie of modern times, "Saving Private Ryan." What is more, "Band of Brothers" is perhaps the most important television miniseries every aired. I feel that strongly about these productions. The grit and realism of war, in both fiction and non-fiction portrayals, will be preserved for future generations. It's a monumental gift to history and memory.

In any case, at Amazon, Molly Haskell, Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films.

Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo: Stunning Display of Dishonesty From the Left (VIDEO)

O'Reilly's really pissed off in this one, heh.

He hammers the radical left's enormous lies on the Trump administration's alleged "illegal immigration deportation regime."

Following up, "Hysteria and Sensationalism Falsely Spread 'Immigration Crackdown' Rumors."

The Case Against Contemporary Feminism

From Jia Tolentino, at the New Yorker.

And here's the subject Jessa Crispin, at Amazon, Why I Am Not A Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto.

Why I Am Not A Feminist is a radical, fearless call for revolution. It accuses the feminist movement of obliviousness, irrelevance, and cowardice—and demands nothing less than the total dismantling of a system of oppression.

Wrote about Jessa Crispin's WHY I AM NOT A FEMINIST, which I found wonderful, scathing & occasionally off its mark https://t.co/d2tabEwoZX

— Jia Tolentino (@jiatolentino) February 8, 2017

Identity Politics is Toxic, But it Works

From Noah Rothman, at Commentary, "The Triumph of Identity Politics":

The Triumph of Identity Politics - by @noahcrothman https://t.co/JWAZnzEAMp pic.twitter.com/LVt0ywlpqX

— Commentary Magazine (@Commentary) February 13, 2017

How the two parties approached their respective presidential election cycle losses in this decade is revealing. While the GOP conducted its 2012 “autopsy” in the open and as a result of internal and external pressures, the Democratic Party is conducting a postmortem out of the spotlight. A weekend retreat for Democratic House members and a Monday Priorities USA gathering of progressive groups suggest the party is aware it needs to adapt. Yet even the notion that the party which won the popular vote needs to reform meets with incredulity and bitter resistance from the grassroots faithful. Surely, the admonitions of a Trump-era Democrat like Jim Webb, who on Sunday chided his lifelong party for pushing all its chips in on identity politics, will be similarly discarded by the liberal activist class. Webb’s detractors would have a point. Democrats did not lose in 2016 because they embraced identity politics; they lost because they embraced the wrong sort of identity politics.

In a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” former Virginia Senator Webb scolded his party for adopting a message that has been “shaped toward identity politics,” thus alienating a core and classic Democratic constituency. “The people who believe that, regardless of any of these identity segments, you need to have a voice in quarters of power for those that have no voice,” Webb added. “And we’ve lost that for the Democratic Party.”

“When you’ve lost white working people, you’ve lost flyover land,” the senator continued. Unquestionably, the Democratic Party and the liberal activists who provide it with animating energy at the grassroots level have embraced an exclusionary and contradictory sort of identity politics. For the most part, the nation’s majority demographic has come out on the losing end.

The Democratic Party’s is a kind of identity politics that views transgendered bathroom access as a civil rights imperative but sees infringements on the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act in service to ObamaCare’s birth control mandate as a necessary element of a critical public health initiative. It’s a kind of identity politics that scoffs at those who offer prayers for the victims of violence, and which rewards those who insist that “Blue Lives Matter isn’t a thing.” It is a kind of identity politics that, when a special needs man is abducted and tortured for being white in the Trump era or a self-described practitioner of Islam perform an act of mass violence in his or her faith’s name, refuses to make note of these realities for fear of handing out coveted victimhood status to the undeserving. Yet it is also an identity politics that extrapolates from almost every incident of violence committed by a male of majority extraction that America is in the midst of an epidemic of racially-tinged violence.

Some of this is real and tangible, and some of it can be dismissed as a problem of perception. All of this is divisive, poisonous, and dangerous. Republicans under Trump didn’t abandon this brand of exclusionary identity politics; they embraced them.

The rise of white identity politics didn’t occur in a vacuum. It was a reaction to the sense of alienation and isolation. This sense was a direct result of the perception among white voters that they were disliked and that their interests were threatened by opinion makers on the coasts...

Keep reading.

Claire Lehmann: Why the Old Left Was Better (VIDEO)

She's a smart lady. I followed her on Twitter for a while, until she seemed to be too smart for her own good, heh.

Seriously, though, that's smart landing at the Rebel. Ezra Levant, the founder, is a Canadian national treasure.

Canadian Exceptionalism, American Envy

Sarah Kendzior's still raging her anti-Trump crusade, at Toronto's Globe and Mail:

When @JustinTrudeau met @realDonaldTrump: Canadian exceptionalism, American envy https://t.co/w9h84JIUmQ @GlobeDebate #cdnpoli

— The Globe and Mail (@globeandmail) February 14, 2017

Oroville Dam: Federal and State Officials Ignored Warnings 12 Years Ago

This just sticks in my craw.

At the San Jose Mercury News, and at KCRA News 3 Sacramento below:

Oroville Dam: Feds and state officials ignored warnings 12 years ago https://t.co/cY1pJzRr7c pic.twitter.com/3bhBYsnqhd

— Mercury News (@mercnews) February 13, 2017

Playboy Magazine to Bring Back Nude Women

Well, it turns out the politically correct Playboy didn't make the cut, and the editors decided to go with the tried and true: nude babes.

At Heat Street, "Playboy is Bringing Nudity Back Following Failed No-Nude Experiment."

And at PuffHo, "Playboy Takes Its Identity Back, Puts Nudity In New Issue."

I guess there's hope in the fight against the pathetic anti-nudity social justice feminist left.

Elizabeth Elam is the Playmate of the Month for March/April 2017

Our March/April 2017 cover #NakedIsNormal https://t.co/FhCkcmnV0S pic.twitter.com/WSxMElDa94

— Playboy (@Playboy) February 13, 2017

Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

I'm catching up on my Native American history, and I'll pick up a copy of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz on the 1st of the month.

Until then, at Amazon, Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West.

Deal of the Day: Dyson Ball Multifloor Upright Vacuum

Shop today, at Amazon, Dyson Ball Multifloor Upright Vacuum, Yellow (Certified Refurbished).

And shop all of Today's Deals.

BONUS: Robert Kelley, Battling the Inland Sea: Floods, Public Policy, and the Sacramento Valley.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America

*BUMPED.*

I just pulled out my old copy in the original hardback.

But it's still available in paper.

At Amazon, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (Revised and Enlarged Edition).

One of the added sections at the revised edition is "Schlesinger’s Syllabus," an essay on "the thirteen books you must read to understand America."

How awesome. If only more professors steeped their students in these classics.

Updates: #OrovilleSpillway Holds for Now (VIDEO)

Watch, at KCRA, "What a spillway failure would mean downstream," and "Aerial view shows emergency spillway at Lake Oroville."

Also, "Sacramento motels, hotels fill up with evacuees."

More, at the Sacramento Bee, and CBS This Morning below:

Oroville Lake level dropping as heavy releases run over damaged main spillway https://t.co/P6WsuJeRlW pic.twitter.com/lylWRPhesQ

— The Sacramento Bee (@sacbee_news) February 13, 2017

Must watch video: Drone flies over Lake Oroville Auxiliary Spillway https://t.co/8MfVuJWad6

— The Sacramento Bee (@sacbee_news) February 13, 2017

'Moonlight' Snubbed, So Leftists Accuse Baftas of 'Hate Crime'

I hate to say it, but I wish we could just round up leftists and be rid of them.

That won't work, though, so it's best to just to keep crushing them politically.

At Heat Street:

Some people are accusing the Baftas of a 'hate crime.' https://t.co/7RXFsmiIOy

— Heat Street (@heatstreet) February 13, 2017

Fresno State’s Red Wave Turns Into Gray Wave as Bulldogs Struggle to Attract Young Fans

That's weird. Young fans weren't in short supply when I attended Fresno State in the late 1980s.

Indeed, the Bulldogs were the only game in town, and very popular.

Maybe not so much these days.

At the Fresno Bee:

The empty seats at Bulldog Stadium and Save Mart Center for Fresno State football and basketball games are a troubling sign, but declining attendance is only part of a larger problem for an athletic department intending to get bigger and better.

The famed Red Wave, which helped build those venues and has served Fresno State athletic interests so well for so long, is going gray. And as is the case for most of the nation’s Division I schools, the athletic department is struggling to entice younger fans to games and build a sustainable base of season-ticket sales that account for a significant portion of its revenue.

Forty-nine percent of Fresno State football season ticket holders are 56 and older, according to a recent athletic department survey, with 9 percent 35 and younger. In basketball, 75 percent of season ticket holders are 56 and older and 4 percent 35 and younger.

“The math is not that complicated,” Athletic Director Jim Bartko said. “If we lose that revenue and it keeps going down, the budgets for all our sports will go down.”

Those numbers represent only those with season tickets who responded to the survey, and are not far out of line with national trends.

But Fresno State’s overall ticket sales have dropped sharply the past five seasons, a disturbing trend for a department that for years counted gate receipts as its second-largest source of revenue behind university support. In 2016-17, it is fourth behind university support, fundraising and a Mountain West Conference/NCAA distribution...

Still more.

National Security Advisor Michael Flynn: No Plans to Resign (VIDEO)

The Los Angeles Times reports there's an "ominous silence" around the National Security Adviser, a possible sign that he's about to be cut loose by the administration.

But the Hill reports that Flynn's made no plans to resign, and he's got no expectations he'll be fired.

President Trump should give Flynn's critics the finger. It's all politics. Fuck 'em.

More from Margaret Brennan, at CBS News This Morning:

Danielle Gersh's Sunny Skies Forecast

I got out for a brisk 90 minute walk this afternoon. The weather was perfect.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles, the lovely Ms. Danielle:

#OrovilleSpillway Emergency Evacuation

The Sacramento Bee's got great coverage, as well as KCRA News 3 Sacramento:

Water has stopped spilling over #OrovilleDam emergency spillway https://t.co/75LqV9i61n #OrovilleSpillway pic.twitter.com/nClnWlwfLN

— The Sacramento Bee (@sacbee_news) February 13, 2017

Don't Miss Out - Shop Today's Deals!

At Amazon, Today's Deals.

BONUS: Walter A. McDougall, The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How America’s Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest.

Meryl Streep Pledges to Stand Up to 'Brownshirts' in Latest Attack on President Trump

She was never my favorite actress, although I'll be sure to boycott her films now.

What a fucking idiot.

Meryl Streep criticized President Trump on Saturday night, pledging to stand up to "brownshirts" https://t.co/8uaY5iSbLZ pic.twitter.com/MbfmuH9neK

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 12, 2017

Meryl Streep, a vocal advocate for #LGBTQ equality, was presented with @HRC's National Ally for Equality Award at the @HRCGreaterNY event pic.twitter.com/UcQhPfBHXD

— HumanRightsCampaign (@HRC) February 12, 2017