Woman Cliff Dives in Swiss Alps Wearing Nothing But a Parachute (VIDEO)

Well, this makes you wanna go cliff diving, lol.

At London's Daily Mail, "Adrenaline junkie throws herself off a cliff completely NAKED for her first ever base jump (good job she was wearing a parachute): Annelise Temple threw herself off the drop in Lauterbrunnen, in the Swiss Alps."

Road Rage in California (VIDEO)

At the Sacramento Bee, "Who caused the California road rage crash captured in viral video? CHP weighs in":

Apparent case of road rage triggers horrifying chain-reaction crash in California. At least one person was injured. https://t.co/ECVmH8RTIk pic.twitter.com/NwSYP35Buw

— ABC News (@ABC) June 23, 2017

California Highway Patrol officers on Monday were still searching for the motorcyclist involved in a shocking Southern California freeway crash that went viral on video last week.

The video, taken on a Santa Clarita freeway shows a motorcyclist at high speed kicking a car in the carpool lane, causing the car to swerve and smash into the center divider in flames, then careen into a truck, knocking the truck upside down, causing moderate injuries.

We talked with CHP Officer Eric Priessman about what the video shows and who might be at fault. Here are his answers, paraphrased...

Keep reading.

Heresy Speech

A very perceptive analysis from Jonah Goldberg, at the Commentary symposium, "Is Free Speech Under Threat in the United States?":

Contemporary social justice activism is a quasi religion and dissent is heresy | @JonahNRO https://t.co/iWSwWs1lD2 pic.twitter.com/UtdPBgxYlU

— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) June 23, 2017

In the past, threats to free speech have taken many forms—nationalist passion, Comstockery (both good and bad), political suppression, etc.—but the threat to free speech today is different. It is less top-down and more bottom-up. We are cultivating a generation of young people to reject free speech as an important value.

One could mark the beginning of the self-esteem movement with Nathaniel Branden’s 1969 paper, “The Psychology of Self-Esteem,” which claimed that “feelings of self-esteem were the key to success in life.” This understandable idea ran amok in our schools and in our culture. When I was a kid, Saturday-morning cartoons were punctuated with public-service announcements telling kids: “The most important person in the whole wide world is you, and you hardly even know you!”

The self-esteem craze was just part of the cocktail of educational fads. Other ingredients included multiculturalism, the anti-bullying crusade, and, of course, that broad phenomenon known as “political correctness.” Combined, they’ve produced a generation that rejects the old adage “sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never harm me” in favor of the notion that “words hurt.” What we call political correctness has been on college campuses for decades. But it lacked a critical mass of young people who were sufficiently receptive to it to make it a fully successful ideology. The campus commissars welcomed the new “snowflakes” with open arms; truly, these are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

“Words hurt” is a fashionable concept in psychology today. (See Psychology Today: “Why Words Can Hurt at Least as Much as Sticks and Stones.”) But it’s actually a much older idea than the “sticks and stones” aphorism. For most of human history, it was a crime to say insulting or “injurious” things about aristocrats, rulers, the Church, etc. That tendency didn’t evaporate with the Divine Right of Kings. Jonathan Haidt has written at book length about our natural capacity to create zones of sanctity, immune from reason.

And that is the threat free speech faces today. Those who inveigh against “hate speech” are in reality fighting “heresy speech”—ideas that do “violence” to sacred notions of self-esteem, racial or gender equality, climate change, and so on. Put whatever label you want on it, contemporary “social justice” progressivism acts as a religion, and it has no patience for blasphemy...

Far-Left Democrats Can't Count on Trump's 'Toxicity' in 2018

Put me on record for Republicans retaining congressional control next year. Things could change, and midterm elections are usually bad for the president's party, but I'm skeptical far-left Democrats can retake control, especially of the House.

I could be wrong, so I'm not betting money on it.

But see Cathleen Decker, at LAT, "There's only one Trump — that's a key challenge for Democrats targeting GOP seats in 2018":

Today's analysis: Atop 2017 losses, a sobering challenge for Democrats aiming at Trump next year https://t.co/wmrSSrNh2V

— Cathleen Decker (@cathleendecker) June 25, 2017

Democrats have hoped that President Trump’s deep unpopularity would propel them to gains in next year’s midterm election as they fight to take control of the House and improve their position in the Senate.

But last year’s contests and this year’s special elections suggest a complication: Trump is so distinctive a politician that it’s hard to persuade voters that other Republican candidates are carbon copies of the president. Trump’s outsized persona makes even those Republicans who share his views seem more moderate, an important attribute to swing voters.

That presents a problem for the party out of power.

Midterm elections traditionally serve as referendums on the president, but voters’ complicated views of Trump may give Republicans more running room than his popularity figures suggest. The votes cast by individual Republican incumbents may be more important to their survival than any linkage with the president.

The first of those key votes is scheduled for this week, as senators confront the GOP healthcare measure, which closely resembles a House-passed bill that is widely unpopular.

In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Friday, only 16% of adults supported the House plan. Three times that percentage thought it was a bad idea. Yet it is far from clear how powerful the issue will be in 2018, given the fast pace of political events.

Warning signs emerged for both parties after the spring series of special elections. Four of the races picked successors to Republicans elevated to senior positions in Trump’s administration; Republicans won all four. A fifth race, to replace California Democrat Xavier Becerra, the state’s new attorney general, was won by Democrat Jimmy Gomez.

In each of the four races in GOP districts, Democratic candidates came far closer to the Republicans than their party has in the recent past — but they did not succeed.

Implicit in the contests was a Democratic effort to repudiate Trump. Yet in the races which attracted more attention and money, Democrats may have suffered from a backlash as the virulence of their opposition pushed more Republicans to the polls.

In the aftermath, Democrats have offered as a partial excuse the Republican voting strength in those districts. But winning next year will require succeeding in Senate races in states that voted for Trump and in House contests where Republicans have the power of incumbency, something they did not enjoy in the special elections this year.

Tuesday’s results in the 6th Congressional District in Georgia, the most expensive House race in history, demonstrated what candidates next year face. There, as elsewhere, Trump loomed over the race even though the candidates seldom talked about him directly.

Republican Karen Handel barely mentioned the president, although members of his administration served as reinforcements for her. Her campaign spent much of its time casting Democrat Jon Ossoff as in league with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and “San Francisco values.” Handel won by just under 4 percentage points.

Ossoff backed away from criticism of Trump in the latter part of the race, but began it by contending that his victory would “make Trump furious.”

Connecting the Republican president and Republican candidate did not work there, suggesting it may not work elsewhere, Republican and Democratic strategists said.

“Voters have very complex feelings about Donald Trump,” said California-based strategist Katie Merrill, citing polling from swing districts around the country. “He’s wildly unpopular, but they still want Congress to try to work with him — and Congress is more unpopular than he is.”

“Simply going into the district and trying to tie them to Trump is not going to be enough to defeat them,” said Merrill, who is working for a super PAC seeking to defeat seven Republican House incumbents in California districts won last year by Hillary Clinton...

Chaim Herzog, The Arab-Israeli Wars

*BUMPED.*

This is the updated edition, essential reading.

At Amazon, Chaim Herzog (updated by Shlomo Gazit), The Arab-Israeli Wars: War and Peace in the Middle East.

Adam Greenfield, Radical Technologies

Just out last week, at Amazon, Adam Greenfield, Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life.

Everywhere we turn, a startling new device promises to transfigure our lives. But at what cost? In this urgent and revelatory excavation of our Information Age, leading technology thinker Adam Greenfield forces us to reconsider our relationship with the networked objects, services and spaces that define us. It is time to re-evaluate the Silicon Valley consensus determining the future.

We already depend on the smartphone to navigate every aspect of our existence. We’re told that innovations—from augmented-reality interfaces and virtual assistants to autonomous delivery drones and self-driving cars—will make life easier, more convenient and more productive. 3D printing promises unprecedented control over the form and distribution of matter, while the blockchain stands to revolutionize everything from the recording and exchange of value to the way we organize the mundane realities of the day to day. And, all the while, fiendishly complex algorithms are operating quietly in the background, reshaping the economy, transforming the fundamental terms of our politics and even redefining what it means to be human.

Having successfully colonized everyday life, these radical technologies are now conditioning the choices available to us in the years to come. How do they work? What challenges do they present to us, as individuals and societies? Who benefits from their adoption? In answering these questions, Greenfield’s timely guide clarifies the scale and nature of the crisis we now confront —and offers ways to reclaim our stake in the future.

New Gillian Anderson Perky Photos

Following-up from last week, "Gillian Anderson Bikini Photos."

Now, at London's Daily Mail, "It's Gil-lean Anderson! Braless X-Files actress, 48, shows off her perky chest and enviably taut stomach as she peers over her balcony in Portofino."

And at Taxi Driver, "Gillian Anderson Boobs in See-Through Top."

Deal of the Day

At Amazon, Samsung 4245243 U28E590D 28-Inch 4K LED-Lit Monitor, Black/Silver, (Refurbished).

Plus, New Deals. All Day.

And, Panasonic RF-2400 AM / FM Radio, Silver.

Here, Women's Swimsuits.

More, Deals in Laptops.

Plus, Shop Gourmet Food.

Still more, Large Beach Towel, Pool Towel, in Cabana Stripe - (Variety, 4 pack, 30x60 inches) - Cotton - by Utopia Towel.

Again, Koffee Kult DARK ROAST COFFEE BEANS (Whole Bean 5 Lbs) - Highest Quality Delicious Organically Sourced Fair Trade - Whole Bean Coffee - Fresh Gourmet Aromatic.

BONUS: Tyler Cowen, Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation.

Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station

Following-up from last night, "The New York Times Shills for Communism — Again."

At Amazon, Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station: A Study in the Acting and Writing of History.

Project Veritas: #CNN Producer John Bonifield Confesses: Russia Conspiracy is 'Bullshit' (VIDEO)

At Breitbart, "Project Veritas Undercover Investigation: CNN Producer Admits Network Hyping 'Mostly Bullsh*t." (Via Memeorandum.):

James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has struck again: This time, a senior CNN producer was caught on camera by one of O’Keefe’s investigators admitting that the network’s relentless bashing of President Donald Trump with the Russia scandal lacks proof.

“Could be bullshit. I mean, it’s mostly bullshit right now,” the CNN producer, John Bonifield, said in a video O’Keefe’s Project Veritas released on Tuesday, when asked about his thoughts on the Russia investigation. “Like, we don’t have any giant proof. Then they say, well there’s still an investigation going on. And you’re like, yeah, I don’t know. If they were finding something we would know about it. The way these leaks happen, they would leak it. They’d leak. If it was something really good, it would leak…. The leaks keep leaking and there’s so many great leaks, and it’s amazing. I just refuse to believe that if they had something really good like that that wouldn’t leak because we’ve been getting all these other leaks. So, I just feel like they don’t really have it but they want to keep digging. And so I think the president is probably right to say, like, look you are witch hunting me. You have no smoking gun. You have no real proof.”

More.

Also at Gateway Pundit, "O’Keefe Undercover Bombshell: CNN Producer Admits Trump-Russia Story is “Bullsh*t” (Video)."

It's pretty good, but my first question is did they buy this guy off, John Bonifield? How did Project Veritas gain access to the CNN studios?

More at the Heavy, "John Bonifield: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know":

You can watch the video that James O’Keefe posted on YouTube above. Be aware, though, that it’s not clear whether more raw footage exists or whether the video has been selectively edited. The video is titled, “American Pravda.”

In it, O’Keefe identifies the man captured by the hidden video as John Bonifield, a CNN producer. It’s not clear whom the other man was (he’s identified as a “PV journalist”) or why Bonifield would have spoken with him so openly. The man says, “Then why is CNN constantly like, Russia this, Russia that?”

In the video posted by O’Keefe, the man he identifies as Bonifield responds, “Because it’s ratings.”

“Because it’s ratings?” the man, identified as a “PV journalist,” queries further. “Our ratings are incredible right now,” says the man O’Keefe identifies as Bonifield.

At another point in the video, the “PV journalist” says, “But honestly, you think the whole Russia sh*t is just like bullsh*t?” The man said to be Bonifield responds, “Could be bullsh*t. I mean, it’s mostly bullsh*t right now. Like, we don’t have any big giant proof.”

He also says, “I just feel like they don’t really have it but they want to keep digging” and “And so I think the President is probably right to say like, look, you are witch hunting me.”

Project Veritas also claims that Bonifield brought up CNN head Jeff Zucker, saying, “Just to give you some context, President Trump pulled out of the climate accords and for a day and a half we covered the climate accords. And the CEO of CNN (Jeff Zucker) said in our internal meeting, he said good job everybody covering the climate accords, but we’re done with that, let’s get back to Russia.”

It’s been a bad week for CNN. The O’Keefe video comes on the heels of the resignations of three CNN journalists after the network retracted and deleted a story on Russia...

More at Memeorandum and Twitchy.

Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Destructive Generation

At Amazon, Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties.

BONUS: David Horowitz, Radical Son: A Journey Through Our Times from Left to Right.

Seattle's Lesson on the the $15 Minimum Wage - #FightFor15

From Megan McArdle, at Bloomberg, "Seattle's Painful Lesson on the Road to a $15 Minimum Wage: The experiment has hurt low-wage workers, cutting their earnings by $125 a month."

Leftist economists were naturally shooting down the new report, which says low-income workers are harmed by the minimum wage hikes.

ADDED: At Legal Insurrection, "Seattle Minimum Wage Hike Backfires Hurting Low Income Workers."

#FakeNews Meltdown at Cable News Network: #ThisIsCnn

This is after the Anthony Scaramucci story blew up.

From Yesterday:

NEW - 3 CNN staff resign over Scaramucci/Russia story pic.twitter.com/L35Le6ML5p

— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) June 26, 2017

Thomas Frank, Eric Lichtblau and Lex Harris all resigned from CNN over Russia/Scaramucci story. These are big names. https://t.co/5efVCUZl8P

— Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) June 26, 2017

And today, at LifeZette, via Memeorandum, "Fake News Meltdown at CNN: Retractions, Resignations and Outbursts."

An editor's note from CNN https://t.co/5bHxUVnHHt pic.twitter.com/W3IjT5FPN8

— CNN (@CNN) June 24, 2017

.@CNN did the right thing. Classy move. Apology accepted. Everyone makes mistakes. Moving on. https://t.co/lyVajCKNHx

— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) June 24, 2017

"The President did nothing wrong" @Scaramucci and @ChrisCuomo tussle over whether Russia probe is a "hoax" https://t.co/tVGOthQApj

— New Day (@NewDay) June 20, 2017

Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective

At Amazon, Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective.

Massive Cyberattack Hits Europe

Like I said the other day, "These really are acts of war and it's increasingly apparent that Western states are losing."

Yep.

See the Telegraph U.K., "Live - Petya cyber attack: Ransomware spreads across Europe with firms in Ukraine, Britain and Spain shut down."

Also at Bloomberg, "New Cyberattack Spreads Across Europe, Hits Rosneft, Maersk":

A new cyberattack similar to WannaCry is spreading across Europe, hitting major companies from Rosneft PJSC in Moscow to A.P. Moller-Maersk in Copenhagen while disrupting government systems in Kiev.

More than 80 companies in Russia and Ukraine were affected by the Petya virus that disabled computers Tuesday and told users to pay $300 in cryptocurrency to unlock them, according to the Moscow-based cybersecurity company Group-IB. Telecommunications operators and retailers were also affected and the virus is spreading in a similar way to the WannaCry attack in May, it said.

The intrusion is “the biggest in Ukraine’s history,” Anton Gerashchenko, an aide to the Interior Ministry, wrote on Facebook. The goal was “the destabilization of the economic situation and in the civic consciousness of Ukraine,” though it was “disguised as an extortion attempt,” he said.

More.

The New York Times Shills for Communism — Again

Can't get enough Walter Duranty over there, lol.

And they never tire of rehabilitating the failed theories of Marxism.

See Bhaskar Sunkara (Editor of the Jacobin), at the Old Gray Lady, "Socialism’s Future May Be Its Past":

Why, 100 years on, the road to socialism runs back through Finland Station in Russia. By @sunraysunray https://t.co/QH0N0Zp6k6

— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) June 26, 2017

Stripped down to its essence, and returned to its roots, socialism is an ideology of radical democracy. In an era when liberties are under attack, it seeks to empower civil society to allow participation in the decisions that affect our lives. A huge state bureaucracy, of course, can be just as alienating and undemocratic as corporate boardrooms, so we need to think hard about the new forms that social ownership could take.

Some broad outlines should already be clear: Worker-owned cooperatives, still competing in a regulated market; government services coordinated with the aid of citizen planning; and the provision of the basics necessary to live a good life (education, housing and health care) guaranteed as social rights. In other words, a world where people have the freedom to reach their potentials, whatever the circumstances of their birth.

We can get to this Finland Station only with the support of a majority; that’s one reason that socialists are such energetic advocates of democracy and pluralism. But we can’t ignore socialism’s loss of innocence over the past century. We may reject the version of Lenin and the Bolsheviks as crazed demons and choose to see them as well-intentioned people trying to build a better world out of a crisis, but we must work out how to avoid their failures...

Try as they might, it's still the old Communism, but with fluffed-up dressing.

These are terrible people. Resist them to the last.

"Workers' democracy" will be dismantled as soon as the "majority" vote in the party elites. It's the same old, same old.

Angels Beat Dodgers in 4-0 Shutout Behind Ricky Nolasco Gem

The Angels went two games above .500 tonight with a sparking win over the Dodgers at Chavez Ravine, the opening night of a four-game freeway series.

The Dodgers have the second best record in baseball, just a game or two behind than Houston. And Los Angeles had a 10-game winning streak heading into tonight's game.

#HaloRecap: #Angels blank Dodgers, @RNolasco47 picks up the win!https://t.co/EyQj2dtDum pic.twitter.com/JAmcpjDkLo

— Angels (@Angels) June 27, 2017

So what's up with the Angels?

The joke recently is that they've been stuck one game within .500 ball, up or down, with no end in sight. Well, with tonight's game Anaheim's got a two-game winning streak, so that's encouraging.

The Angels now move into second place in the American League West, still 12.5 games behind the first place Astros. But if they keep performing like this, things will be looking very good going into the All-Star break, especially since injured Mike Trout's expected to return to the lineup any times thereabouts.

Here's more from Mike DiGiovanna, at LAT, "Break up the Angels? They broke, but haven't wavered":

Last rites were administered to the Angels on May 29, the day they learned that star center fielder Mike Trout would need surgery to repair a torn ligament in his left thumb and miss six to eight weeks.

The rotation was already in tatters, having lost ace Garrett Richards to a right biceps strain after one start, Tyler Skaggs to a rib-cage strain in late April and Andrew Heaney and Nick Tropeano to season-ending elbow surgeries.

General manager Billy Eppler was running out of spackle to patch a bullpen that lost its best reliever, Cam Bedrosian, to a groin strain for two months, erstwhile closer Huston Street to a back strain for 2½ months and late-inning man Andrew Bailey to a shoulder injury for 2½ months.

Third baseman Yunel Escobar was on the disabled list, and left fielder Cameron Maybin was about to join him. First baseman Luis Valbuena was hitting .167, and second baseman Danny Espinosa (.141) and right fielder Kole Calhoun (.209) were in deep slumps.

The Angels were already buried in the American League West, a division the powerful Houston Astros led by 11½ games entering Saturday.

Surely, they could not withstand the loss of baseball’s best all-around player, a two-time most valuable player who was batting .337 with 16 homers, 36 runs batted in and a league-leading 1.203 on-base-plus-slugging percentage when he injured his thumb on a head-first slide into second.

Yet, as the Angels enter their fifth week without Trout, they were 2 games out of the second AL wild-card spot heading into Sunday, alive and kicking, their ability to tread water in a pool of mediocrity putting them in position for a possible second-half playoff push.

“It’s miraculous, the job the Angels and [manager] Mike Scioscia have done,” John Smoltz, a Hall of Fame pitcher and Fox television analyst, said on a conference call last week. “Their pitching has just been decimated, and then they lose Trout.

“If they can get some pitching back, then they’re a threat for a wild card. I didn’t think with that many injuries they’d even be hanging around.”

That the Angels are 13-12 without Trout — and 39-39 overall — through Saturday seems as improbable as their 12-0 record on Tuesdays. Even with Trout’s dominant two months, they were 14th in the AL in OPS (.709) and ninth in runs (335) through Friday.

But they’re averaging 5.0 runs a game in Trout’s absence because Maybin and Calhoun heated up, Albert Pujols continued to drive in runs and Andrelton Simmons and Escobar continued to hit. They’re pressuring teams with a league-leading 67 stolen bases, and Eric Young Jr., has filled some of Trout’s void.

Young, signed to a minor league deal last winter, was called up from triple-A when Trout went on the DL. He was batting .288 with an .826 OPS, three homers, 10 RBIs, 15 runs and six stolen bases in 23 games through Friday.

Calhoun followed an eight-for-65 skid by hitting .341 (28 for 82) with five homers and 20 RBIs in 22 games through Friday. Since moving to the leadoff spot on May 16, Maybin is hitting .374 with a .466 on-base percentage, five homers, 10 doubles and 30 runs in 25 games. Pujols is fifth in the AL with 51 RBIs.

Bud Norris, Blake Parker, Yusmeiro Petit, David Hernandez and Keynan Middleton solidified a no-name bullpen that ranks fifth in the AL with a 3.62 ERA and has stranded 91 of 117 inherited runners, an AL-best 22.2% scoring percentage.

Norris, a former starter who signed as a minor league free agent, had a 2.43 ERA and converted 11 of 13 save opportunities before going on the DL because of an inflamed right knee last Tuesday.

Parker, a winter waiver claim who made the club because of Street’s injury, was 3-2 with a 2.16 ERA, 49 strikeouts and nine walks in 33 1/3 innings through Friday. Petit, a minor league free agent, has a 2.42 ERA, 51 strikeouts and 11 walks in 44 2/3 innings of 28 games.

Hernandez, who was pitching for Atlanta’s triple-A team when the Angels acquired him for cash or a player to be named on April 24, has a 2.28 ERA, 27 strikeouts and four walks in 23 2/3 innings of 26 games.

And Middleton, with his 100-mph fastball, has risen toward a high-leverage role with a 2-0 record and 3.43 ERA in 24 games since being called up...

Still more.

Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains

The hot new book among radical leftists, apparently --- #1 New Release at Amazon.

See, Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America.

There's no such thing as the "radical" right, of course. It just sounds super spooky, heh.

Tori Praver See-Through Swimsuit (VIDEO)

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, "Tori Praver Shows Off While Wearing a See-Through Swimsuit (VIDEO)."

Alexandra Daddario for GQ Spain

At Egotastic!, "Alexandra Daddario Showing Off Her Heavenly Racktastic for GQ."

And at GotCeleb, "Alexandra Daddario – GQ Spain Magazine (July/August 2017)."