War on Cops

Following-up, "Suspect in Miosotis Familia Execution Had Posted Anti-Cop Diatribes on Social Media — #BlackLivesMatter."

At timely as ever, Heather Mac Donald, at Amazon, The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe.

She's so awesome.

Suspect in Miosotis Familia Execution Had Posted Anti-Cop Diatribes on Social Media — #BlackLivesMatter

The main story's at the New York Times (FWIW), "Police Officer Is Fatally Ambushed at a Bronx Command Post."

Of course, with all the fake news dominating the leftist mass media, folks won't get to the real outrage of this story, which is that suspect hated the police. Where's all the "Black Lives Matter" protests against this abomination? Crickets from the left.

See the Blaze, "Man who allegedly killed NYPD officer Miosotis Familia publicly shared anti-police rant last year":

The man who allegedly killed an New York Police Department officer in an unprovoked attack early Wednesday has a history of negative views about police officers, according to a social media post he wrote last December.

Ex-convict 34-year-old Alexander Bonds posted a video on Facebook last September threatening to “do something” about police officers who he said were killing people.

“I’m not hesitating. It ain’t happening. I wasn’t a b**** in jail and I’m not going to be a b**** in these streets. They don’t f*** with me and I damn sure don’t f*** with them,” Bonds said in a Facebook video last September. “I’m not playing Mr. Officer. I don’t care about 100 police watching this s**t. You see this face or anything, then leave it alone, trust and believe. I got broken ribs for a reason, son. We gonna shake. We gonna do something.

“Don’t think every brother, cousin or uncle you got that get (unintelligible) in jail is because of a Blood or Crip,” Bonds said. “Police be killing and saying an inmate killed them.”

Police say Bonds fatally shot 48-year-old female NYPD officer Miosotis Familia in the head through the passenger window around 12:30 a.m. Wednesday as she sat in a mobile command unit writing in her notebook. The mother of three was a 12-year veteran of the force and was stationed in the area because of a triple shooting that happened in the area in March. Although NYPD patrol cars are equipped with bullet resistant windows, mobile command units do not have the same capabilities.

Authorities say they identified Bonds and caught up to him several blocks from the crime, fatally shooting him after he brandished a revolver at them. Bonds had reportedly had no prior contact with Familia...

And more at CBS News 2 New York:

Dana Loesch Slams 'Fake Feminists' Behind Anti-NRA Women's March (VIDEO)

From Tucker's show last night:

Amy B. Zegart, Spying Blind

At Amazon, Amy B. Zegart, Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11.

Pauline Maier, American Scripture

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence.

Los Angeles Once Teemed with Dozens of Adult Cinemas

Now there's only two porn theaters in town.

At the Los Angeles Times, "The last (porn) picture shows: Once dotted with dozens of adult cinemas, L.A. now has only two":

In 1979, there were an estimated 800 porn theaters across the United States. But video and streaming have rendered them obsolete. The website Cinema Treasures lists fewer than 35 places now operating as adult theaters in the U.S.

In the 1970s, Los Angeles teemed with dozens of porn theaters. Now only two remain: the Studs and the Tiki. They sit at opposite ends of Santa Monica Boulevard — the former in West Hollywood, the latter in East Hollywood, framing the city in an unseen porno-magnetic field. Both beckon with promises of titillation and, in the case of the Studs, a tag line that reads, “Come explore, relax, and take a load off.”

To investigate these last bastions of adult cinema, I enlisted the help of Los Angeles painter Zak Smith.

Smith is a Yale-educated artist who has appeared in more than half a dozen porn films under the name Zak Sabbath. He chronicled his experiences in the 2009 memoir “We Did Porn.” (Original drawings from that project are currently on view at Fabien Castanier Gallery in Culver City.)

He was curious to explore the L.A. theaters, neither of which he had visited.

“They’re vestigial,” he says. “Like with everything else, the old platforms for porn are being phased out. Software adapts fast, hardware adapts slower — and a theater is the ultimate hardware.”

Plus, Smith sees them as symbols of the ways in which sprawling Los Angeles can unwittingly harbor forgotten pockets of history.

“L.A.,” he explains, “is one of those places that always manages to have at least one of something that shouldn’t exist.”

More.

Charles Krauthammer: President Trump's Warsaw Speech Was His Best (VIDEO)

Following-up, "The End of Alliance."

Watch Dr. K's analysis, at Fox News, "Krauthammer: Trump's Warsaw speech was his best, Reaganesque."

Brooklyn Decker in Arizona (VIDEO)

Via Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

Robert Kagan, The Return of History

At Amazon, Robert Kagan, The Return of History and the End of Dreams.

See also Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order.

The End of Alliance

President Trump's in Europe and he gave a major address on American foreign relations in Poland today.

See LAT, "Trump frames anti-terrorism fight as a clash of civilizations, defending Western culture against enemies."

There's lots more at Memeorandum, for example, at VOX (safe link), "Trump's speech in Poland sounded like an alt-right manifesto."

And at Free Beacon, "President Trump's Remarkable Warsaw Speech."

More on all of that later.

Meanwhile, of related interest, see Michael Lind, at the National Interest, "Blocpolitik":

THE TRANSACTIONAL nationalism of Donald Trump horrifies the bipartisan foreign-policy establishment, because it suggests the president does not realize that bloc maintenance is not merely one of several goals, but the overriding objective, of U.S. strategy. From the elite perspective, asking whether Americans are getting their money’s worth by protecting Japan, South Korea and rich NATO allies is tantamount to asking for a cost-benefit analysis of federal-government protection of the American South or West Coast. Most members of the foreign-policy elite can no more conceive of South Korea or Poland outside of the U.S. military bloc than they can conceive of Virginia or California outside of the United States of America. Their alarm may be premature, because Trump appears more interested in pressuring American allies to contribute more to U.S.-led alliances than in dissolving them.

Like their American counterparts, the foreign-policy establishments in European nations are not dominated by Bismarckian realists, coldly calculating on a day-to-day basis whether the costs of membership in NATO and EU outweigh the benefits, from the point of view of national interests, narrowly defined. In the campaign that culminated in the vote for Brexit last summer, it was the outsider populists who made arguments in favor of the British (or English) national interests. The British elite was almost entirely opposed. Sometimes they argued on pragmatic grounds that the cost of Brexit would be disastrously high. But it was clear that being part of the European Union, like being part of a trans-Atlantic Euro-American system, was a major part of their personal and professional identities. For most elite Britons, a British departure from the EU could only be thought of as a joke or a nightmare.

The mystery that puzzled Rip Van Winkle in our fable is solved, then. The Soviet threat may have been the original stimulus to the formation of NATO and, indirectly, of an integrated Europe. But the trans-Atlantic Euro-American bloc is so integrated, so held together by ties of military cooperation, economic interdependence and shared values, and so fundamental to the personal identity of elites on both sides of the Atlantic that it endures even in the absence of a credible Russian superpower threat, to which Putin’s limited revisionism cannot be compared.

In other regions, like East, Central and South Asia and the Persian Gulf, there is less deep transnational integration and more traditional arm’s-length alliances. And there is nothing like the common, crusading ideology of Marxism-Leninism in the former Communist bloc or the dominant, if not universal, left-liberal variant of democracy in the contemporary European Union. It is in Asia, rather than in the North Atlantic, that something like the traditional realist account of transactional national diplomacy based on calculations of discrete state interests can still be found.

But even there, in the heartland of twenty-first-century realpolitik, conventional American realists are likely to be refuted. The reason is that the offshore-balancing strategy favored by many realists, with the United States as the “holder of the balance” among multiple great powers, is likely to be rendered irrelevant by the long-term growth of Chinese wealth and power and its consequent regional hegemony.

One alternative to shifting balances of power is provided by more or less fixed geographic spheres of influence. Spheres of influence are disliked by both realists and idealists, including neoconservatives and hawkish neoliberals. But this is a relatively recent development in American history. Before the world wars, the United States channeled the Monroe Doctrine and identified its own sphere of influence. The Open Door doctrine promoted by the United States and Britain more than a century ago was compatible with European and Japanese spheres of influence within the territory of a then powerless and divided China. Although Franklin Roosevelt seems to have envisioned his “Four Policemen”—the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and China—policing their regions after World War II, the Cold War quickly became a contest among rival liberal and Communist visions for the loyalties of postcolonial nations and the “captive nations” of Soviet-controlled Europe. In practice, of course, the United States and USSR defended their spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and Central America. But the idea that the weak neighbors of a regional great power or superpower should defer to the local hegemon fell out of favor. Indeed, in November 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry declared, “The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over.”

One interpretation of this would be that the historic Monroe Doctrine had lost its relevance in the post–Cold War period, in which the United States asserted its exclusive sphere of influence as the world’s only superpower, not only in the Americas but also in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and every other region. Today, however, America’s project of converting hegemony within its Cold War bloc into universal hegemony—turning the entire planet into a single sphere of influence, as it were—has collapsed thanks to Chinese and Russian resistance and the war-weariness of the American public. But the U.S. foreign-policy establishment refuses to acknowledge the failure of America’s recent bid for global hegemony, pretending instead that the so-called “liberal world order” is under unjustified assault by China, Russia and perhaps Iran. Because China and Russia are engaged in moderate pushback against the American bloc in Asia and Europe, they are supposed to be threats to liberalism, the rule of law and global democracy. Meanwhile, America’s illiberal and antidemocratic allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, responsible for promoting Salafist jihadist proxies in Syria and elsewhere, are supposed to be understood as states that uphold the liberal world order. This is just propaganda, of a particularly Orwellian kind. What the bipartisan U.S. foreign-policy elite and its allies abroad call the liberal world order is nothing more than the contemporary American bloc, like the “Free World” of the Cold War...

Still lots more, at the link.

Émile Zola, Germinal

I just finished this surprisingly good novel.

At Amazon, Émile Zola, Germinal.

I say "surprisingly good" since the book caught me off guard. It was snappy and felt contemporary, despite being published in 1885.

The main thing is that I was hooked after the first chapter. I can go for a hundred pages or so even if I'm not hooked, but then a novel feels like work. If you're sucked in right off the bat, then it's pure pleasure reading. You don't want to put it down. I love that.

And then, of course, it's a fascinating novel of class struggle (French miners fighting labor exploitation by the "bourgeois" ruling class in the Nord). Indeed, I just picked it up at a used book store by chance, although you'd think leftists would be shouting this one to the moon. (Leftists aren't all that bright, especially the social media trolls, heh).

In any case, it's good summer reading if you're so inclined. And you can check off one of those "classic novels" you've been meaning to read, which is important in my case (since I like to think of myself as a cultured, literate person, heh).

Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776.

#NationalBikiniDay: Jessica Gomes Goes Down Under in Sydney (VIDEO)

Following-up, "National Bikini Day."

Via Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

How is CNN Not Embarrassed?

From Melissa Mackenzie, at the American Spectator:

A random person created the silly gif of Trump body-slamming CNN, which President Trump then tweeted. It’s important to remember that this was the precipitating event that lead CNN to use its myriad resources to seek out the random person and threaten exposure and shame …for creating a stupid gif.

CNN’s editorial bias and noxious behavior predates the stupid gif. Chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta got in a shouting match with President Trump. Trump, in turn, called CNN Fake News. Of course, “Fake News” is now, itself, a meme.

There is tension.

But this infantile jostling between press and president is one thing. It’s another to use resources to target those who create the memes, gifs, and parodies, and threaten those people with exposure if they don’t apologize.

Good people are defending the reporters doing the legwork to find the poor Reddit slob who created the gif. Ridiculous! The reporter may be a nice person, but he’s lost his mind.

That’s what’s happening right now. Decent people are losing their minds and doing profoundly destructive, self-harming, and outlandish things in the defense of what?

Pride?

At what cost is the nonsense proceeding? Do the anti-Trump media and mouth-breathers on the left cheering them on (they’re one and the same, but for the sake of argument), know what they’re doing?

Every day that the media continues to act like rage-monster toddlers, they lose credibility and value. No one will believe their reporting, that’s assured. What’s worse, no one will believe anything at all.

This is a terrible crisis of a whole institution. Last week it was the childish Joe and Mika cutting short a vacation to tangle with the President. This week it’s CNN...

More.

#CNNBlackmail: What Fake News Network's Doxing Threat Says About Journalism

From David Harsanyi, at the Federalist, "What CNN’s Threat to Dox a Redditor Tells Us About the State of Journalism."

PREVIOUSLY: "Backlash Against CNN!"

National Bikini Day

At USA Today, "A brief look at the Bikini: National Bikini Day is July 5th."

BONUS: Flashback, "Smokin' Bikini Model Shendelle Schokman at Cardiff State Beach in Encinitas," and "Shendelle Schokman Bikini Beach Stroll."

North Korea Missile Provokes U.S.

Pfft.

NoKo would be destroyed in seconds of it tried to fight a nuclear war with the U.S.

No, the regime should not get nukes, but let's keep things in perspective.

At USA Today, "Analysis: North Korea missile launch raises the stakes in a big way. What now?":

North Korea’s successful launch of a missile that for the first time could reach the U.S. mainland ratchets up the pressure on President Trump and other world leaders to resolve a growing nuclear crisis with no easy solution.

The test launch came on the Fourth of July, and just three days before a Group of 20 summit convenes in Hamburg, Germany. The timing is almost certainly not coincidental. North Korea uses such occasions to call attention to its provocative acts — and its test elevates the urgency with which Trump and U.S. allies may feel compelled to respond. Hours after the North Korean launch, the Eighth U.S. Army and South Korean military fired surface-to-surface missiles into South Korean waters in a demonstration of capability, the U.S. Army said in a statement.

Trump has repeatedly called on China to rein in its neighbor and close ally. China on Tuesday suggested a compromise: North Korea would stop missile tests if the United States and South Korea scaled back military exercises in the region.

Tuesday evening, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson confirmed the intercontinental ballistic missile launch and called it a “new escalation” of the threat. He vowed to bring additional international pressure on the regime.

“The United States seeks only the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the end of threatening actions by North Korea. As we, along with others, have made clear, we will never accept a nuclear-armed North Korea,” Tillerson said in a statement. “Global action is required to stop a global threat. Any country that hosts North Korean guest workers, provides any economic or military benefits, or fails to fully implement UN Security Council resolutions is aiding and abetting a dangerous regime. All nations should publicly demonstrate to North Korea that there are consequences to their pursuit of nuclear weapons.”

Trump has said he would be willing to try the diplomatic route, and even agreed to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un face-to-face. Prior diplomatic overtures by two U.S. presidents, Bill Clinton and George W.  Bush, proved failures when the North reneged on the agreements.

North Korea appears intent on developing a nuclear-tipped missile that could hit the United States, saying it needs such a deterrent to prevent a U.S. attack aimed at overthrowing the regime...

More.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying

Lawrence Meyers cited her in my previous entry.

At Amazon, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy and Their Own Families.

Why the Left Hates Trump So Much

From Lawrence Meyers, at Town Hall.

On Twitter yesterday, once again I noticed how deeply infected leftists are with Trump Derangement Syndrome.

It's war out there.

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail

At Amazon, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty.