Ava Capra at the Dream Hotel in Hollywood

On Twitter, "Ava Capra, from 'America's Next Top Model' (22), at the Dream Hotel in Hollywood."

Also, at Taxi Driver, "Ava Capra Upskirt Entering the Limo."

ICYMI: Mark R. Levin, Rediscovering Americanism

At Amazon, Rediscovering Americanism: And the Tyranny of Progressivism.

Trump Attorney Jay Sekulow Interview with Chris Wallace on 'Fox News Sunday' (VIDEO)

Folks were tweeting this interview earlier this morning. It got kinda heated, lol.

Sekulow apparently appeared on all five Sunday news programs. He's really sharp.

Watch, "Sekulow defends Don Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russian lawyer."

Benjamin J. Cohen, The Future of Money

At Amazon, Benjamin J. Cohen, The Future of Money.

Howard W. French, Everything Under the Heavens

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Howard W. French, Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power.

Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future.

Andrew Klavan: What is Fake News? (VIDEO)

For Prager University:

Why Would President Trump Go to France for 'Bastille Day'? (VIDEO)

Here's Jessie Watters' Jersey Shore "Bastille Day Beach Quiz," for Fox News:

Bar Refaeli in Israel (VIDEO)

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."



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

Cartoon Credit: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – If he can make it in Hamburg."

RELATED: At the New York Post, via Weasel Zippers, "Mayor De Blasio is a 'Deutsche bag'."

Congressman Darrell Issa, One of the Most Vulnerable Republicans in 2018

I keep seeing folks mentioning "Orange County Republican Congressman Darrell Issa." And I'm all, huh? The guy's from San Diego?

Well, apparently parts of his district include San Clemente and Camp Pendleton, located in South Orange County. So I guess his new moniker is technically accurate, even if this L.A. Times piece notes that his main constituency is in San Diego County.

Either way, he's definitely vulnerable. California's way left-wing, and even South O.C.'s not immune to the degenerate influences of radical leftist ideology.

See, "Darrell Issa was Obama's toughest critic. Here's why he's suddenly sounding like a moderate" (safe link):

The hundreds of protesters who show up weekly to wave signs outside Rep. Darrell Issa’s office in a drab office park in Vista, Calif., have written a song for him to the tune of “Oh! Susanna.”

“Darrell Issa, you’ve got to oversee. You need to check-and-balance [Trump] before it’s World War III,” they sing toward the tinted windows of the building.

As chairman of the committee charged with overseeing the executive branch, Issa was once known as President Obama’s toughest critic. Now the richest man in Congress has found himself with protesters at his door, no committee to lead, and a tough race expected in 2018.

It has forced the nine-term congressman to walk a shaky line, reassuring his conservative base that he’s not moderating his positions while showing the growing number of independents and Democrats in his district that he’s not as partisan as people think.

For months, the 63-year-old Issa has sporadically ventured outside, all smiles, to talk with protesters at his office. He’s been the only vulnerable Southern California Republican to do so since President Trump’s election inspired regular demonstrations at their offices.

Though the crowd of about 300 at an April protest yelled and booed over him at times, Issa answered questions with a steady voice, pushing back when someone accused him of being more conservative than tea party supporters or demanded that he try to impeach the president.

“You can go online and look at conservative groups and what you’ll find is I’m not the most conservative Republican, I’m not the least conservative Republican, but I am a Republican,” he told them.

Prior to his tight 2016 win, Issa had gotten at least 58% of the vote in his eight previous campaigns. He wasn’t expecting the reliably Republican district to react so badly to Trump, or so well to Democrat Doug Applegate, a novice candidate on no one's radar.

His 0.6% victory margin, and the fact that the district narrowly went for Democrat Hillary Clinton, makes him one of the most vulnerable Republicans in Congress. For 2018, Issa has already raised $1.2 million, and has drawn a rematch from Applegate and challenges from Orange County environmental lawyer Mike Levin and San Diego real estate investor Paul Kerr as well as the attention of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has promised to make the 49th District a battleground again.

“He won by only about 1,600 votes. ... We smell blood," said protest organizer Ellen Montanari, 63, of Encinitas.

When Issa was first elected in 2000, more than half of registered voters in the district were Republicans, 27.2% were Democrats and 15.4% chose no party preference.

Now Republicans make up just 37.7% of registered voters in Issa’s district, which includes southern Orange County and northern San Diego County suburbs such as Oceanside, Carlsbad and Vista. Meanwhile, the share of voters registering as Democrats, 31%, and no party preference, 26%, has increased.

Though it is mostly white, the district has a growing Latino population. The influence of the military vote from Camp Pendleton still holds a lot of sway, but the area’s tech industry is growing, too.

“The district is changing,” said UC Irvine political scientist Graeme Boushey. “He is really walking on a razor’s edge now, especially given Trump’s unpopularity with voters.”

Those who first showed up at Issa’s office protests were hoping he’d moderate to match the district, Montanari said.

“I wanted to hear him, I wanted to talk to him, I wanted to be able to find out what he’s thinking and what he thought about Trump,” Montanari said. “I’ve never heard him sound more like a moderate than he did [during a telephone town hall]. The day he starts voting like that is the day I will say, ‘Thank you.’”

More.

Snowpack Still Melting in the Sierras in July

You know the story: Radical leftists stopped calling changing temperatures "global warming" a decade or so ago, because the temperatures weren't warming, and hence the weather wasn't sticking to the leftist narrative. Now the weather's all about "climate change," which is a more Gramscian term for leftists, deployed to claim any unusual weather event is evidence of "climate catastrophe."

It's a joke.

In any case, here's this morning's cover story at the Los Angles Times. Things aren't going well up in the Sierras. The ice isn't melting fast enough for campers to enjoy their vacations.

See, "Winter's snow is disrupting this Sierra Nevada summer":

Snowpack still melting up in the Sierras in #July! But muh global warming! pic.twitter.com/yjKPvJ673w

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) July 16, 2017

Even when snowbound and inaccessible to vehicles, the rustic Tioga Pass Resort on the crest of the Sierra Nevada range offered homemade pie, a wood-burning stove and plump sofas to relax on after a day of backcountry skiing.

But the winter of 2017 was more than the log cabin lodge, just two miles east of Yosemite National Park, could bear.

Trails, roads and campgrounds throughout the Sierra high country were hit hard by snow and runoff from one of the largest snowpacks in recorded history, leaving public agencies scrambling and summer visitors feeling lost. At Tioga Pass Lodge, established in 1914, loyalists’ hopes of kicking back on a sunny afternoon have taken a particularly tough wallop.

Entombed in 20 feet of hard pack known as “Sierra cement,” the lodge “suffered severe crunch injuries,” said Dave Levy, manager of the resort, which is owned by a consortium of investors.

A team led by Levy used shovels to dig down through the snow to reach the kitchen door. Sheared structural support beams appeared like ghostly shadows in the glare of a flashlight.

“Inside, the bad news was much worse,” he said. “Doors won’t open, windows are shattered, floors are warped, the roof sags. We may reopen sometime next year, but it won’t be easy fixing a place built like a jigsaw puzzle with antiquated construction techniques.”

A creek running through the property leased from the U.S. Forest Service is surging over its banks with snowmelt, undermining the foundations of the lodge and several cabins surrounding it.

Over the July 4 weekend, as thousands of summer vacationers streamed into the mountains with coolers, bicycles, fly rods and barbecues, the runoff in streams peaked.

But with many popular trails and campgrounds still closed because of safety and health concerns, rangers struggle to keep up with visitors arriving each day with the question: “Where can we find a place to camp?”

The hard recovery ahead

“Nearly every campground in the area has problems,” said Deb Schweizer, a spokeswoman for the Inyo National Forest. “There are broken water systems and sewer lines, gates that bent under the weight of so much snow, washed-out bridges and trails, damaged roads, fallen trees, downed power lines.

“It’s taken an incredible amount of cooperative efforts by multiple agencies to open as many campground facilities and roads as possible — and we’re opening more every day,” she said.

In the meantime, the Forest Service has been promoting its “dispersed camping” rules, which allow visitors to pitch a tent on certain undeveloped forest lands. This strategy has brought only despair to Dwayne Beaver, leader of the volunteer fire department in Lee Vining, about 10 miles west of the Tioga Pass.

“It’s costing our fire department money — and lots of lost sleep,” he said. “That’s because whenever someone needs a rescue, or inexperienced campers build an unauthorized fire in a ring of rocks, we have to scramble to deal with it.”

Signs of the snowpack-fueled deluge are visible in most of the watersheds draining the Sierra Nevada. Smallmouth bass and other fish, for example, were found floating belly-up in a stretch of the Lower Owens River near the town of Lone Pine — suffocated by mud and debris flows, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power reported.

But Southern California Edison and the DWP, which operate extensive networks of dams, diversions and hydroelectric plants across the Sierra range, say that things are not as bad as they could have been.

With snowpack levels at 241% of normal, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti in March issued an emergency declaration allowing the DWP to take immediate steps to “armor” its vulnerable Los Angeles Aqueduct in Owens Valley and $1-billion dust-control project on dry Owens Lake, which L.A. tapped to slake its thirst in the last century.

Preparing for the worst, engineers and heavy-equipment operators worked furiously to empty reservoirs and clean out ditches and pipelines to keep them from being overwhelmed by flooding...

More.

Jennifer Delacruz's Hot and Humid Forecast

I was out shopping today and it was hot. I think it was only about 11:00am and I already wanted to get back inside with the air conditioning, heh.

As usual, just reading my books today, blogging, and watching baseball. The Angels keep losing. They've lost two straight to the Rays, at Angel Stadium, falling four games back in the Wild Card race. (There's no chance they'll catch the Astros, who along with the Dodgers have the best record in baseball.)

So, here's your forecast for tomorrow, from the fabulous Ms. Jennifer, at ABC News 10 San Diego:

Gordon A. Craig, Germany: 1866-1945

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Gordon A. Craig, Germany: 1866-1945.

Venus Williams is Gracious in Defeat at #Wimbledon

I was up at 6:30am.

Then just after, I got a pot of coffee brewing and sat down to watch. Venus had a set point game going. But she botched it, and then just ran out of gas, completely. Garbiñe Muguruza was dominating. Really dominating.

Venus was totally gracious in defeat, though. And I thought Muguruza was a little arrogant and cocky, not humble at all, although I'm sure that was just me.

In any case, at USA Today, "Defiant Venus Williams 'doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing' at 37."

Margaret MacMillan, The War That Ended Peace

At Amazon, Margaret MacMillan, The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914.

Sally Marks, The Illusion of Peace

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Sally Marks, The Illusion of Peace: International Relations in Europe, 1918-1933.

Barry Rubin, Silent Revolution

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Barry Rubin, Silent Revolution: How the Left Rose to Political Power and Cultural Dominance.

President Trump Was Good-Humored with Reporters on Air Force One for an Hour, in Stark Contrast to How He Treats the News Media in Public

Following-up from Thursday, where I mentioned, "President Trump is killing it in Paris!"

When he gets away from the leftist siege of D.C., he loosens up. Has a good time. And then you find him as a raconteur with the media correspondents. They're not used to it, so it becomes a story.

President Trump is a nice guy. You'd definitively like to have a Big Mac with him, lol.

See the New York Times, at Memeorandum, "Dropping the Bluster, Trump Revives Banter With Reporters":

WASHINGTON — The Donald J. Trump who turned up in the press cabin of Air Force One on Wednesday evening, as his plane crossed the Atlantic Ocean on the way to Paris, was starkly different from the one who publicly pillories the news media but surprisingly familiar to reporters who know him well.

The president had taken off his tie but kept on his jacket — a wardrobe change that for him qualifies as casual Friday — and he was in a happy-hour frame of mind. Expansive, engaging, even at times ebullient, Mr. Trump held forth for an hour, addressing reporters by name and alighting on topics as different as Chinese history and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

It was a loose, good-humored side of Mr. Trump that the public rarely sees amid the fusillade of angry speeches and venomous tweets that have characterized the president’s first six months in the White House. And it came to light only because he retroactively put the session on the record, asking a reporter the next morning why she had not quoted his remarks.

White House aides say they see more of this side in the Oval Office, where the president has debated advisers about issues like sending more troops to Afghanistan. Diplomats say their bosses see more of it in meetings, where Mr. Trump has engaged even those who are deeply skeptical of his views, like Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.

But this is hardly the view most people have of a president who built his populist appeal on contempt for the mainstream media; who thundered on Inauguration Day, “This American carnage stops right here”; and who told supporters on his 100th day in office, “If the media’s job is to be honest and tell the truth, the media deserves a very, very big fat failing grade.”

In some ways, Mr. Trump has reversed the usual dichotomy between the public and private president.

“One of the great differences between Trump and more successful politicians, like J.F.K. and F.D.R., is that they would vent their spleen in private, but in public, they would project a more humorous and civilized face,” said Robert Dallek, a presidential historian.

John F. Kennedy, he said, canceled the White House’s subscriptions to The New York Herald Tribune out of pique at its coverage, even as he wooed and won over reporters. Mr. Trump has publicly tarred reporters, like Jim Acosta of CNN, while continuing to watch their networks.

The White House’s antagonism toward the news media is born of genuine grievance and a calculated strategy that it plays well with Mr. Trump’s political base. But his hunger for press — which he nourished over 40 years of cultivating reporters, taking their calls on virtually any subject and calling them out of the blue to chat — remains undiminished.

When Mr. Trump came to the back of Air Force One, his deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, stipulated that the conversation would be off the record. Despite suffering one of the worst weeks of his political career, he was in a buoyant mood. He fended off Ms. Sanders when she interrupted him to suggest he should return to his cabin so the reporters could get some sleep (they assured him they were not tired)...

More.

Also at Althouse, "'Expansive, engaging, even at times ebullient...a loose, good-humored side of Mr. Trump" — described in the NYT today."

And still more at JustOneMinute, "Now Who Wants to Be Liked?"

City of Anaheim Removes Bus Benches Near Disneyland, So the Homeless Have One Less Place to Sleep

I have no recommended solution here.

After reading about homelessness, you find there are some people who don't want to be institutionalized. They don't want all the fancy rehab treatments and shelters. They want to be free, even with psychiatric problems. So, at some level you'll always have street-people. What to do? Well, for the City of Anaheim, remove more and more of the bus benches near Disneyland, lest you give the homeless too comfortable a shelter for the night.

I guess this is just one of those shake your head stories. I don't know.

At the Los Angeles Times, "While homelessness surges in Disneyland's shadow, Anaheim removes bus benches":

Sweat rolled down Ron Jackson’s face as he pondered, as he does every day just steps from “the Happiest Place on Earth,” where he would sleep.

The homeless man’s hangout in Anaheim had until recently been a grimy bus bench across the street from Disneyland.

Then, one day, the benches around the amusement park — including his regular spot outside of a 7-Eleven at Harbor Boulevard and Katella Avenue — disappeared.

Soon, people were competing for pavement.

“No more sleeping spot. Just concrete,” Jackson, 47, said on a sweltering day. “There were already people claiming the space.”

The vanishing benches were Anaheim’s response to complaints about the homeless population around Disneyland. Public work crews removed 20 benches from bus shelters after callers alerted City Hall to reports of vagrants drinking, defecating or smoking pot in the neighborhood near the amusement park’s entrance, officials said.

The situation is part of a larger struggle by Orange County to deal with a rising homeless population. A survey last year placed the number of those without shelter at 15,300 people, compared with 12,700 two years earlier.

Desperation amid Orange County’s riches

In a wealthy county known for suburban living and sun-dotted beaches, the signs of the homeless crisis are getting harder to ignore.

At the county’s civic center in Santa Ana, homeless encampments — complete with tents and furniture and flooring made from cardboard boxes — block walkways and unnerve some visitors. Along the Santa Ana River near Angel Stadium, whole communities marked by blue tarp have sprung up. In Laguna Beach, a shelter this summer is testing an outreach program in which volunteers walk the streets offering support and housing assistance to homeless people.

Cities across California — notably Los Angeles and San Francisco — are dealing with swelling ranks of the homeless. But officials in Orange County said most suburban communities simply don’t have the resources and experience to keep up.

Susan Price, Orange County's director of care coordination, said officials are trying to build a coordinated approach involving all of the more than 30 disparate cities that takes into account the different causes of homelessness, including economic woes, a lack of healthcare and recent reforms in the criminal justice system.

Most cities "don't have capacity to respond to all the issues of homelessness effectively. That's why we need a regional strategy,” Price said. "Every city has been grappling with this issue and not all cities are full-service so that means we need to find out what each other is doing and figure out how to combine resources.”

The homeless problem often stands in stark contrast to the perceptions many have about Orange County...

Come to think of it, though, sounds like some of the people, just drinking and smoking pot, maybe need to just get cleaned up and find a job. You can't just be bumming for handouts all the time, panhandling and causing "broken windows" style crimes. If that's so, perhaps a city crackdown is indeed a remedy.

But it's like I said, I'm not sure what to do about this. Seems like homelessness took off in the O.C. after the Great Recession hit, and it hasn't subsided much with the so-called economic recovery.

Blame the Democrats, I guess.

Still more at the link.