Gilles Kepel, Terror in France

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Gilles Kepel, Terror in France: The Rise of Jihad in the West.

Heidi Klum's New Photography Book

At London's Daily Mail, "EXCLUSIVE: 'I have no problem with nudity': Supermodel mum-of-four Heidi Klum, 44, goes completely NAKED in new photography book."

More here and here.

Jessica Chastain Enjoys Final Days in Cannes

At London's Daily Mail, "Jessica Chastain offers a glimpse of her hourglass curves and slender waist in plunging nude dress as she enjoys her final days in Cannes."

ADDED: "Jessica Chastain works business-chic as she arrives for board member duties at the Cannes Film Festival."

Lloyd Clark, Blitzkrieg

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Lloyd Clark, Blitzkrieg: Myth, Reality, and Hitler’s Lightning War: France 1940.

Jeremy Joseph Christian, Portland Murder Suspect, Attended March for Free Speech Rally at Montavilla City Park in April (VIDEO)

Following-up, "Suspect on Portland MAX Train Was Screaming 'Muslims Should Die' (VIDEO)."

No doubt Rachel Maddow's going to have a field day (week) covering this guy.

At the Williamette Week, "The Man Accused of MAX Double Murder Is a Portland White Supremacist Who Delivered Nazi Salutes and Racial Slurs at a 'Free Speech' Rally Last Month."

Apparently, the dude was supporting "Sanders/Stein 2017" on Facebook, and called Donald Trump the "anti-Christ."

But Maddow and others will still smear conservatives over this attack. That's why I hate politics.

Suspect on Portland MAX Train Was Screaming 'Muslims Should Die' (VIDEO)

This story is now headlining at both Britain's Guardian and Telegraph (and I'm sure more), as obviously some kind of evidence of the "backlash" against Muslims. These attacks are always played to the hilt, while at the same time, the same leftists moan about how we'll never know what caused the Manchester bombing, and about how this one "deluded" individual isn't a true representation of Islam.

I denounce this suspect in Portland and I pray for those murdered.

I just cringe at the politics of it all.

At the Oregonian, "Man saw teenagers, one with hijab, and launched into racial tirade":

Two teenage girls boarded a MAX train in downtown heading to Northeast Portland early Friday evening when a man got on at a later stop and immediately launched into a racial tirade as soon as they caught his eye.

"He was saying that Muslims should die," said Dyjuana Hudson, a mother of one of the girls. "That they've been killing Christians for years."

Hudson recounted what her daughter, Destinee, told her hours after police tracked down the man as he ran from the rush-hour train into the Hollywood neighborhood. Other passengers chased him from a distance and called 911.

The suspect left a gruesome scene on the Green Line train. He lashed out at three men who had tried to calm him down, fatally stabbing two of them and sending the other to the hospital with stab wounds, police said. The third man is expected to survive.

The rampage at the start of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, brought an immediate outcry from religious and civic leaders in Portland and across the country.

Destinee Hudson, 16, is black, and her friend, 17, who was wearing a hijab, is Muslim, the mother said.

The girls distanced themselves from the man after he got on the train at Lloyd Center, Hudson said. But he pressed on, approaching them as he kept screaming, she said...

More.

Douglas Murray on the Manchester Bombing (VIDEO)

Murray's one of the most thoughtful "neocons" out there.

Watch, "Douglas Murray on the Daily Politics with Andrew Neil discussing the Manchester Bombing."

Vans Pool Party 2017: Legends Highlights (VIDEO)

Some of my old skating buddies, still skating, heh.

This was just a couple of weeks ago, at the Vans Skatepark combi-pool, in Orange.

William J. Cooper, The Lost Founding Father

At Amazon, William J. Cooper, The Lost Founding Father: John Quincy Adams and the Transformation of American Politics.

Garth Kemp's Forecast

For CBS News 2 Los Angeles.

I'm looking forward to a relaxing long weekend.

David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.

Salman Abedi Used Taxpayer-Funded Student Loans and Benefits to Finance Manchester Arena Jihad Attack

British taxpayers literally financed the murder of their own children.

At the Telegraph U.K., "Exclusive: Manchester suicide bomber used student loan and benefits to fund terror plot."

Susan Sleeper-Smith, ed., Rethinking the Fur Trade

At Amazon, Susan Sleeper-Smith, ed., Rethinking the Fur Trade: Cultures of Exchange in an Atlantic World.

Yale Awards Student 'Truthtellers' Who Bullied Faculty

The cultural revolution in America.

We're in bad shape, and it's not just on campus.

Here's Jamie Kirchick, at the Tablet, "YALE CEMENTS ITS LINE IN THE ACADEMIC SAND BY AWARDING THE STUDENT ‘TRUTHTELLERS’ WHO BULLIED FACULTY."

Yale awards racial reconciliation prizes to 2 students who harassed professor over Halloween costumes @tabletmag https://t.co/tjNlfs4wFf

— Jamie Kirchick (@jkirchick) May 26, 2017

Greg Gianforte Wins Montana Special Election

I'd never even heard of the guy until Wednesday night, on Twitter, when I saw the live-tweeting of the alleged "body-slam" assault. Seems like that would have hurt his chances, but a large number of voters (60 percent, apparently) voted by absentee ballot. And besides, it's Montana. I don't see how progressives are going to do well in a conservative rural state in this environment. It's political war at the moment, and frankly. Leftists are trying to nationalize the election, tying it to "the bully" President Trump. It's not working obviously. Everything's about hate nowadays, and no one's more hateful that a radical leftist.

In any case, here's Sean Trende, at RCP, "Four Takeaways From Gianforte's Win in Montana":

Believe it or not, they are still counting votes in the special election held Thursday in Montana. Greg Gianforte, the Republican nominee to replace former congressman and current Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, has been declared the winner over Democrat Rob Quist. Speculation had abounded that the race could tighten -- or even flip to Democrats -- because of Gianforte’s alleged assault of Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs the day before the election. This didn’t pan out, as Gianforte seems headed for a win in the six-to-seven-point range.
Here are four thoughts on the outcome...

RTWT.

And see some of the outlandish left-wing headline at Mememeorandum, from Brian Beutler, "The Republicans Broke American Politics, and Media Elites Are Blind to It"; Karen Tumylty, "The GOP inherits what Trump has wrought"; and from Matt Yglesias, "Republicans' 7-point win in last night's Montana election is great news for Democrats."

That's all fake news.

It's a nightmare these days.

Jackie Johnson's May Gray Forecast

I missed last night's weather forecast post. I just petered out and hit the sack. Worked all day today, but now I have the long weekend off, including Tuesday, when I'm taking a personal day.

Looks like it's going to be overcast through most of the weekend. Meh. I guess it'll be cool and comfortable.

In any case, here's the lovely Ms. Jackie, for CBS News Los Angeles:

Found at the Scene in Manchester

I love the graphics at this piece, especially of the foyer at the Manchester Arena, where Salman Abedi detonated his IED.

Found at the Scene in #Manchester: Shrapnel, a Backpack and a Battery #Islam #Jihad #Muslims #Terror #Leftists https://t.co/tFE5nfoamn

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) May 25, 2017

ICYMI: Omar El Akkad, American War

*BUMPED.*

Following-up from my previous earlier entry, I'm reminded if this, at Amazon, Omar El Akkad, American War: A Novel.

From 9/11 to Manchester

From Daniel Henninger, at WSJ, "Donald Trump found out something about the presidency and the world on this trip":

From 9/11 to Manchester, by @DanHenninger https://t.co/KdnehMV8Ss via @WSJOpinion

— Daniel Henninger (@DanHenninger) May 25, 2017

Now we have Manchester and its 22 dead, many of them children. Somehow, we always end up back at 9/11, leaving flowers and candles again.

A political constant since 9/11 is that terrorism inevitably changes U.S. presidencies. I think the events this week—the president’s overseas trip and then Manchester—may have a similar effect on Donald Trump.

On Inauguration Day in January 2001, George W. Bush’s mind no doubt was filled with plans for his first term. Months later, his was a war presidency and would remain so.

Several things sit in my memory from the politics of that period. One is President Bush’s face as he addressed Congress on Sept. 20. He was a changed man. Also remembered is the solidarity of national purpose after the attack. The final memory is how quickly that unity dissipated into a standard partisan melee.

The Democratic point of attack became the Patriot Act’s surveillance provisions, a legal and legislative battle that ran the length of the Bush presidency. By the end of his second term, George Bush had become an object of partisan caricature and antipathy equal to anything President Trump endures now.

During Barack Obama’s presidency, four major terrorist attacks took place inside the U.S.: Fort Hood in 2009, the Boston Marathon in 2013, San Bernardino two years later and then Orlando in 2016. During these years, the locus of terror migrated from al Qaeda to Islamic State.

Volumes have been written about Barack Obama and terrorism, much of it about the president’s struggles with vocabulary terms such as war, Islam, extreme and radical. The killing of Osama bin Laden evinced a rare, passing moment of national unity.

With the opposition to the Trump presidency programmed for driverless resistance, there will be no national unity in the war on terrorism. The Democrats have become the Trump-Is-Russia Party, and that may be as good a way as any for them to spend their waking hours.

But even Hillary Clinton couldn’t duck the terrorism problem in the 2016 presidential campaign, and when Mr. Trump said he would “defeat ISIS,” his lack of nuance no doubt won him votes.

Which brings us to Manchester this week and memories of 9/11.

Note the political response to the Manchester murders. Again, total solidarity, such as this from European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker : “These cowardly attacks will only strengthen our commitment to work together to defeat the perpetrators of such vile acts.”

Post-9/11, naturally one expects such commitments to erode like sand castles. But this time, by coincidence, alleged Manchester bomber Salman Abedi murdered concertgoers in the same week Donald Trump was using his first overseas trip to build a coalition to defeat Islamic State.

This was not a routine presidential foreign trip for self-pomp and circumstance. Mr. Trump went to Saudi Arabia to initiate an anti-ISIS policy designed and midwifed by three Trump appointees and Middle East specialists—Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster.

The policy entails the U.S. sale over 10 years to Saudi Arabia of $450 billion of military equipment—tanks, ships, precision-guided bombs—in return for Saudi leadership of an Arab-state coalition, which is their idea, to fight Islamic terrorists in the region and thwart Iran’s territorial ambitions.

A New York Times online summary of the speech Mr. Trump delivered Sunday in Riyadh called it “a speech about Islam.” I thought it was about something larger than that.

For instance, the Times and Washington Post ran stories about how the Trump foreign policy has demoted human-rights issues. It has not. Implicit in the Trump-Tillerson formulation is that defining the abuse of human rights as oppression by governments, such as Saudi Arabia’s, is too narrow. Now, any discourse over human rights must include the right not to have one’s life ended by acts of organized terrorism.

Grasping at Trumpian straws is a fact of life, but I am going to hazard not much more than a thought, which is that the president who left for Saudi Arabia last Friday will not be the same president who returns here this weekend...

Still more.

James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, James F. Brooks, Captives and Cousins: Slavery, Kinship, and Community in the Southwest Borderlands.