Suspect Plows Down Muslims Outside London's Finsbury Park Mosque (VIDEO)

Here's the headline at the Telegraph U.K., "FINSBURY PARK ATTACK: Live - 'I want to kill all Muslims': Extra police to protect Muslims during Ramadan after one person dies and 10 injured when terrorist ploughs van into crowd."

I'll bet. Sheesh.

And can you blame the guy, considering? And that's not to justify it, but sheesh. Britain's been taken over. You're likely to have a race war any time now. Leftists can't be surprised.

More, at the Guardian U.K., "London mosque attack: Man, 48, arrested on suspicion of attempted murder - One dead and eight injured after van ploughs into Muslims near Finsbury Park mosque," and "Finsbury Park terror attack: Theresa May heckled at mosque – latest updates - Prime minister praises members of public who detained attacker after van strikes pedestrians, killing one, in Seven Sisters Road."

But see Truth Revolt, "Retaliation? At Least One Killed as Crowd Leaving London Mosque Hit by Van: 'It appears from eyewitness accounts that the perpetrator was motivated by Islamophobia'."

Leftists Grow More Like #ISIS Every Day (VIDEO)

It's Ezra Levant, at the Rebel Media, "How the American Left is 'Normalizing Violence'."

Does Fake News Make a Difference in Politics?

Of course it matters, especially since virtually the entire mainstream media establishment is pitching fake news 24/7.

As noted, I stopped watching any television news last semester, and just have now starting inching back toward any kind of regular viewing. I simply do not trust reporters and traditional outlets to report fairly or accurately. It's just a given now, and of course it influences politics. We're living in two virtual countries with two virtual realities. And it takes a lot of power to shift those realities and make a new narrative strong enough to shift votes. That's why leftists hate President Trump. He beat the fake news industry and still does it everyday by getting his message out on Twitter and through his campaign-style rallies, God bless him.

But see MercatorNet, "Does fake news make a difference in politics? Or is the term just sour grapes from journalists and politicians who misread the electorate?":

As noted in the previous article, most people learn to adjust for fake news in a medium with which they are familiar. Otherwise, tabloids would hardly be shelved at the checkout counter, as they have been for decades. But many are now convinced that fake news put out on social media helped tip the US to Trump. Post-election, Hillary Clinton decried the epidemic of fake news, as did outgoing President Obama.

The air has been thick with statistics on both sides, with conservatives and the far right usually fingered as the culprits. Actually, fake news was purveyed on both sides. Ben Carson did not, for example, say that the ghosts of aborted babies haunt hospitals. Mainstream media sometimes publish fake news too. The Burlington Electric Company’s grid was not hacked by Russia, as the Washington Post recently claimed. Apparently, the Post staffers had not followed the conventional rule of phoning the facility to check before running the story. But did it make much difference anyway?

As it happens, claims for social media’s awesome power aren’t new to the 2016 election. Similarly dramatic claims were made after the 2008 election. Back then the outcome was welcomed by the proponents of the social media power, so we were unlikely to hear much about the perils of fake news.

Indeed, as “astroturf” investigator Sharyl Atkisson observes,  before mid-September 2016, fake news was hardly mentioned. Concern arose among Clinton allies thereafter via progressive site Media Matters and caught on widely from there in traditional media.

Either something happened rather suddenly to social media or there are more conventional explanations for Clinton’s loss. Let’s look at some of the latter:

It wasn’t fake news that made the difference; it was missed news. First, Trump was not the Republican party’s choice of candidate. He was propelled by a base that felt ignored—and ridiculed—by both parties. Sociologist Charles Murray describes that base quite clearly in Coming Apart (2012): They are the working class communities ("Fishtown," in his narrative) quietly disintegrating amid global societal changes. Meanwhile, middle class communities ("Belmont," in his narrative) are thriving, indifferent or even censorious, a few kilometres away.*

The Democrats did not have a Trump. Their candidate was a party establishment figure with massive intelligentsia and media backing. Among those who felt that their concerns would never be heard in those venues, that was her handicap. It’s a good question why Trump was one of the few public figures to grasp the significance of the demographic shift and exploit it. But little will be learned about that from an intense examinations of fake news. Newly recruited Trump voters were motivated by actual bad news in their own communities.

The hole created by the missed news  was widened by the Democrats’ heavy reliance on millennial social media experts to connect with voters. Kay Hymowitz explains at City Journal:

In the past few years, their influence has only grown, as mass-market fashion magazines like Elle, Cosmopolitan, and Marie Claire have given them column space, effectively crowning them the new elite experts on women’s issues.

They weren’t. They had heads full of academic theory and millennial angst but little life experience with—and virtually no interest in—military wives from South Carolina or Walmart managers from Staten Island, who also happen to fall into the category “women.” Nor did the new luminaries or their bosses seem to notice that the latter group far outnumbered their own rarefied crowd.

The internet changes a great deal but it does not change the fundamental nature of reality. One small Atlanta-based pollster sensed that the military wife or the WalMart manager might not wish to risk humiliation, even in the abstract, by giving an honest opinion. So he asked his respondents who they thought their neighbors would vote for. He called the big contest right while major polling firms got it embarrassingly wrong.

Both sides in the election were out of touch...

Keep reading.

Hat Tip: Blazing Cat Fur, "New York Times Sent Three Reporters to the Rebel Media’s Live 2017 Celebration."

Democrat Hopes Sky High in Georgia's 6th Congressional District

From Patricia Murphy, at the Daily Beast, "MONSTER CAMPAIGN: Democratic Hopes Are Sky High in Trump-Testing Georgia Special Election Runoff":

500,000 doors, 100+ staff, 12,000 volunteers: The monster Dem campaign to win a single seat. https://t.co/QO3WoClhyh via @thedailybeast

— Patricia Murphy (@1PatriciaMurphy) June 19, 2017

The $50 million fight to fill Tom Price’s congressional set is now the most expensive House race in American history—and Republicans can blame Trump if Jon Ossoff wins on Tuesday.

SANDY SPRINGS, Georgia—Take the New Hampshire presidential primary, move it next to a Waffle House, douse it in cash and the sweltering June heat of Georgia, and you’ll get the special election runoff in the state’s 6th Congressional District.
In a race that was never expected to be close, the once sleepy collection of solidly Republican suburbs has suddenly become ground zero for the resistance to the presidency of Donald Trump.

“What’s happening? The president is happening,” said Barbara Carr, a 6th District voter who had volunteered to hold a Jon Ossoff sign, along with a dripping Popsicle, on a busy Atlanta street corner Saturday as the temperature climbed past 90 degrees. Trump “doesn’t represent my values.”

The hopes of local Democrats like Carr and others across the country are piled onto Ossoff, a 30-year-old former congressional staffer who was practically unknown—even to fellow Georgia Democrats—before 2017. But when civil rights icon (and a former boss of Ossoff’s) Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) endorsed him in January, a fire-hose of small-dollar donations from Democratic activists began to pour into Ossoff’s campaign coffers and never stopped.

The nonstop money bomb allowed Ossoff to raise a truly obscene amount of money, $23 million so far, and build a monster campaign big enough to challenge both the Republican machine in Georgia and the Republican on the ballot against him on Tuesday, former secretary of state Karen Handel. Keenly aware that a loss in Georgia would be spun as a loss for the president and his agenda, National Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, sent super-sized resources of their own to Georgia. The $50 million-plus contest has now become the most expensive House race in American history.

“They’re getting statewide saturation,” said Jeff DiSantis, a longtime Democratic operative in the state who ran Michelle Nunn’s 2014 Senate race. “Everybody knows everything there is to know. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it, even in a presidential [election].”

It is hard to describe the sheer scope of the campaign Ossoff has been able to build, first to win 48 percent of the vote in the April primary and now to be running even with Handel in a district that is widely considered “R +10,” meaning a GOP candidate starts out with a safe 10-point advantage over any Democrat they’ll face.

While most political candidates, including Handel, have to spend hours a day, and sometimes their entire day, calling wealthy donors for campaign contributions, the small-dollar activist machine fueled by Daily Kos and End Citizens United has largely freed Ossoff from the onus of call time. Instead of dialing for dollars, Ossoff can show up at nearly every meet-and-greet, neighborhood meeting, or canvass party he gets invited to.

He and his campaign can also knock on voters' doors. Lots of them. With two days left before Election Day, the Ossoff campaign has knocked on more than 500,000 voter doors, including 80,000 on Saturday alone. The campaign has six field offices, more than 100 full-time paid staffers, and more than 12,000 active volunteers. The Georgia Democratic Party has focused another 12 full-time staffers solely on minority voter engagement in the district.

An Atlanta-Journal Constitution poll showed that 51 percent of likely voters had been reached directly by the Ossoff campaign, while 32 percent of voters said they’d heard from Handel or her team.

But that same poll also revealed the greatest hurdle Handel faces on Tuesday, and it isn’t Jon Ossoff or his operation. Instead, it is the broad anti-Trump sentiment in the district, including that 35 percent approval rating...

Still more.

Danielle Gersh's Excessive Heat Forecast

Following-up from last night, "Jennifer Delacruz's Heat Advisory Forecast."

Temperatures reached 116 degrees in Palm Springs yesterday, and the forecast is 120 today. These are record-breaking temps. Interestingly, the coastal areas saw barely cooler weather yesterday, which is from the low-pressure moisture that's clinging along the beaches. That's the place to cool off.

So, I'll be sitting pretty in Irvine today, but if you're inland, take a load off your feet, pump the air conditioning, and stay hydrated.

Here's the fantastic Ms. Danielle, for CBS News 2 from yesterday:

U.S. Shoots Down Syrian Fighter Jet

This is interesting.

At the Washington Post:

The U.S. military shot down a Syrian aircraft today for the first time since the start of the civil war https://t.co/hRY6j7SRvm

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 19, 2017

While a lot of attention is focused elsewhere…https://t.co/SJSERH891J pic.twitter.com/ec7v0nf8e1

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) June 19, 2017

Ergonomic Adjustable Standing Desk

At Amazon, Mount-It! Electric Stand Up Desk, Frame Only, Dual Motor Height Adjustable Standing Desk, Ergonomic, Memory and Timer Function, White (MI-7930).

BONUS: Michael Wallis, David Crockett: The Lion of the West.

Jennifer Delacruz's Heat Advisory Forecast

More heat tomorrow, and as posted earlier, it's going to stay hot through Wednesday.

Frankly, it hasn't been too bad in Irvine. We've had worse, for sure. It'll be interesting to see if we get into the 90s in the area by Wednesday.

I guess I should be thankful. It was a blessed Father's Day. I hope you had a good one as well!

Here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:

Joy Ann Reid Attacks Steve Scalise

The guy's literally recovering on his (near) death bed, and MSNBC hack Joy Reid's attacking him, claiming he had it coming.

Debra Burlingame tweeted Pajamas Media:

MSNBC Host Labels Rep. Scalise an 'Extremist' While He Lies in Hospital Bed https://t.co/OzRXeRxSRI #Trending via @pjmedia_com

— Debra Burlingame (@DebraBurlingame) June 19, 2017

Scorching Heat to Last Through Wednesday

At the Riverside Press-Enterprise, and the Weather Channel below:

Heat wave to last through Wednesday, Weather Service says https://t.co/6Ms6TCLonQ pic.twitter.com/UrRfRGF7N3

— The Press-Enterprise (@PEcom_news) June 18, 2017

Las Vegas and Phoenix may threaten all-time record-high temperatures early this week: https://t.co/Y2PrgNxG8S pic.twitter.com/hPbBo64hn0

— The Weather Channel (@weatherchannel) June 19, 2017

Demi Rose Shows Off Curves in Velvet Bikini in Ibiza

She's amazing.

At London's Daily Mail, "PICTURE EXCLUSIVE: Bikini-clad Demi Rose Mawby shows off her curves in velvet swimwear as she soaks up the sun at the beach in Ibiza."

BONUS: At the Sun U.K., "Demi Rose puts her stunning curves on display in a plunging bikini as she soaks up the sun in Ibiz," and "Demi Rose goes TOPLESS in Ibiza as she takes a dip in the sea."

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."



Also at Theo's, "Cartoon Roundup..."

Cartoon Credit: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Enough is Enough."

Tyler Cowen, The Complacent Class

At Amazon, Tyler Cowen, The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream.

Sunny Air Magnetic Rower Machine

Shop Today's Deals, at Amazon.

And see especially, Sunny Health & Fitness SF-RW5623 Air Magnetic Rowing Machine Rower w/ LCD Monitor.

BONUS: Andrew Breitbart, Righteous Indignation [Right Nation]: Excuse Me While I Save the World!

Happy Father's Day!

I don't know where this photo was taken, or when exactly. But my dad would have been in his 40s, it looks like (or maybe early-50s).

Have a wonderful Father's Day everybody!

#HappyFathersDay. Miss you, Dad. pic.twitter.com/3ySnXwitQf

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 18, 2017

Here's Jennifer Delacruz from Last Night

Her videos haven't been available before I hit the sack.

Danielle Gersh is hot though, so I'm not letting my readers down when it comes to the tasty weather reports, heh.

In any case, the big news continues to be this massive heat wave we're having in the Southwest. It's supposed to be hotter today than yesterday, and hotter still on Monday and Tuesday.

Here's the fabulous Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:

Burying Barack Obama's Legacy

From Caroline Glick, "Burying Obama’s legacy":

It may very well be that this week was the week that Israel and the US put to rest former president Barack Obama’s policies and positions on Israel and the Palestinians.

If so, the move was made despite the best efforts of Obama’s team to convince the Trump administration to maintain them.

The details of Obama’s policies and positions have been revealed in recent weeks in a series of articles published in Haaretz regarding Obama’s secretary of state John Kerry’s failed peacemaking efforts, which ended in 2014.

The articles reported segments of two drafts of a US framework for a final peace treaty between the PLO and Israel. The drafts were created in February and March 2014.

The article series is predicated on the assumption that Kerry and his team were on the precipice of a historic breakthrough between PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. But a close reading of the documents shows that the opposite was the case.

There are two reasons that Kerry had no prospects for reaching a deal.

First, he, Obama and their advisers were too hostile to Israel and its citizens to ever convince Netanyahu that Israel’s interests would be secured.

A February 2014 draft framework agreement, which was based on conversations Kerry and his team held with Netanyahu and his advisers, makes this clear. The draft includes Netanyahu’s demand that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria not annexed to Israel would remain “in place” after the implementation of a peace deal, and presumably, become towns in the future Palestinian state.

In other words, Netanyahu demanded that the Israelis in Judea and Samaria whose towns would be located in the territory of “Palestine” would enjoy the same rights and protections as Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy.

Kerry and his team would have none of it. The February draft agreement notes, “[US] negotiators need to check with PM [Netanyahu] on whether he wants to [maintain this position]… They believe that if so, he will push strongly for ‘in place.’ ‘In place’ is inconsistent with US policy and therefore unacceptable to us as well as the Palestinians.”

In other words, the position of the Obama administration was that all Israelis living in areas that would become part of the Palestinian state must be forcibly removed from their homes and communities.

Haaretz reporters Barak Ravid and Amir Tibon recalled that in previous rounds of negotiations, the Palestinians – unlike the Obama administration – had not rejected this Israeli position out of hand. That is, in demanding the mass expulsion of Israeli Jews from their homes, the administration adopted a policy more extreme than the PLO.

Then there is the problem with the PLO...

RTWT.

On Linda Sarsour’s Politics of Hate

She even more dangerous because of her out attractiveness. She's like a snake deceiving you in the name of the devil, she comes to you like a dove, only to bite you to deliver the hand of death.

At the Tablet, "On Linda Sarsour’s Politics of Hate and the Pathos of Her Jewish Enablers":

On Linda Sarsour’s Politics of Hate and the Pathos of Her Jewish Enablers https://t.co/NR5PDHabJT via @tabletmag

— Joel B. Pollak (@joelpollak) June 18, 2017

Linda Sarsour is a progressive-media darling. One of Essence magazine’s “Woke 100 Women,” Sarsour was named a leader of the Women’s March that followed President Donald Trump’s inauguration, despite declaring that “nothing is creepier than Zionism”—though her wish to “take away” the “vagina” of clitoridectomy victim and human-rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, praise for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, upholding Saudi Arabia as a bastion of women’s lib, embrace of the terrorist murderer Rasmea Odeh, and claim that “Shariah law is reasonable” because “suddenly all your loans & credits cards become interest-free,” are all—at least in my humble estimation—definitely creepier.

Yet Sarsour’s ride on the media wonder-wheel continues—thanks in part to Jewish individuals and organizations who embrace the idea that haters like Sarsour can’t actually hate them. Recently, the “homegirl in a hijab,” as a fawning New York Times profile described her, delivered the commencement address at the City University of New York’s School of Public Health. It was a strange choice on the part of CUNY, not least because Sarsour has zero professional experience in the field. Prior to the event, critics, many of them Jewish, called upon CUNY to rescind its invitation in light of Sarsour’s rhetoric and associations. A group of progressive Jews released an open letter in defense of Sarsour. “In this time, when so many marginalized communities in our country are targeted on the streets and from the highest offices of government” the letter solemnly declared, “we are committed to bridging communal boundaries and standing in solidarity with one another.”

Also coming to Sarsour’s defense was the Anti-Defamation League, which presumably stands against the defamation of women, Jews, and the Jewish state. “Despite our deep opposition to Sarsour’s views on Israel,” its head Jonathan Greenblatt said, before offering the following non sequitur, “we believe that she has a First Amendment right to offer those views.”

No one, of course, disputes Sarsour’s legal right to spout whatever vicious nonsense she wants. But there is nothing in the First Amendment that says Sarsour has a “right” to speak at CUNY, or appear on CNN, or publish an op-ed in the New York Times. As an organization ostensibly committed to fighting anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice, the ADL was under no obligation to defend a Jew-baiting, demagogic, foul-mouthed, sectarian bully—someone who, in fact, asserted that anti-Semitism is “different than anti-black racism or Islamophobia because it’s not systemic.” Not systemic? Tell that to the survivors of the most systematized effort at extermination in human history. If there is a more utterly mendacious claim that perverts the truth about humanity’s oldest, deadliest and very much “systemic” hatred, I’m not sure what it could be.

Still, Greenblatt—whose organization was once devoted to combating anti-Semitism—decided that it was better to side with his fellow progressives in public than risk his position on the team. Why?

This is an important question for Jewish Democrats, since the weird combination of communal masochism and personal arrogance that characterizes Sarsour’s self-appointed “Jewish allies” also makes for a particularly ineffective form of coalition politics—at least for the Jewish side of the equation...

Why? Democrats have been poisoned by the seeds of self-hatred, and thus they'll let people like Sarsour do the work of Satan to destroy them. It's not difficult.

But keep reading.

Andrew Essex, The End of Advertising

*BUMPED.*

Out today yesterday last week, at Amazon, Andrew Essex, The End of Advertising: Why It Had to Die, and the Creative Resurrection to Come.

The Next Energy Revolution

A great piece, from David G. Victor and Kassia Yanosek, at Foreign Affairs, "The Promise and Peril of High-Tech Innovation":

Three trends are driving the new energy revolution: management, data analytics, and automation. https://t.co/ft3nbboy1O

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) June 18, 2017

The technology revolution has transformed one industry after another, from retail to manufacturing to transportation. Its most far-reaching effects, however, may be playing out in the unlikeliest of places: the traditional industries of oil, gas, and electricity.

Over the past decade, innovation has upended the energy industry. First came the shale revolution. Starting around 2005, companies began to unlock massive new supplies of natural gas, and then oil, from shale basins, thanks to two new technologies: horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (or fracking). Engineers worked out how to drill shafts vertically and then turn their drills sideways to travel along a shale seam; they then blasted the shale with high-pressure water, sand, and chemicals to pry open the rock and allow the hydrocarbons to flow. These technologies have helped drive oil prices down from an all-time high of $145 per barrel in July 2008 to less than a third of that today, and supply has become much more responsive to market conditions, undercutting the ability of OPEC, a group of the world’s major oil-exporting nations, to influence global oil prices.

That was just the beginning. Today, smarter management of complex systems, data analytics, and automation are remaking the industry once again, boosting the productivity and flexibility of energy companies. These changes have begun to transform not only the industries that produce commodities such as oil and gas but also the ways in which companies generate and deliver electric power. A new electricity industry is emerging—one that is more decentralized and consumer-friendly, and able to integrate many different sources of power into highly reliable power grids. In the coming years, these trends are likely to keep energy cheap and plentiful, responsive to market conditions, and more efficient than ever.

But this transition will not be straightforward. It could destabilize countries whose economies depend on revenue from traditional energy sources, such as Russia, the big producers of the Persian Gulf, and Venezuela. It could hurt lower-skilled workers, whose jobs are vulnerable to automation. And cheap fossil fuels will make it harder to achieve the deep cuts in emissions needed to halt global warming...

More.