T.G. Otte, July Crisis

At Amazon, T.G. Otte, July Crisis: The World's Descent into War, Summer 1914.

S.L.A. Marshall, World War I

*BUMPED.*

The classic introductory text, at Amazon, S.L.A. Marshall, World War I.

Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War

*BUMPED.*

My copy came today yesterday Thursday last week a while ago, via Amazon, Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War.

'Lust for Life'

It's Lana Del Rey, featuring The Weeknd.

My son just digs Ms. Lana. He's going to take me to one of her concerts, heh.

Country Superstars Faith Hill and Tim McGraw Private Island in the Bahamas (VIDEO)

Via Vogue Italia.

Must be nice, heh.

Who Paid for the 'Trump Dossier'?

This is what I was talking about in my previous entry, "Katrina vanden Heuvel: 'Realism on Russia'."

We should be investigating the Democrats.

Here's Kim Strassel, at WSJ, "Have we had the whole "collusion" story completely backward?":

It has been 10 days since Democrats received the glorious news that Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley would require Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort to explain their meeting with Russian operators at Trump Tower last year. The left was salivating at the prospect of watching two Trump insiders being grilled about Russian “collusion” under the klieg lights.

Yet Democrats now have meekly and noiselessly retreated, agreeing to let both men speak to the committee in private. Why would they so suddenly be willing to let go of this moment of political opportunity?

Fusion GPS. That’s the oppo-research outfit behind the infamous and discredited “Trump dossier,” ginned up by a former British spook. Fusion co-founder Glenn Simpson also was supposed to testify at the Grassley hearing, where he might have been asked in public to reveal who hired him to put together the hit job on Mr. Trump, which was based largely on anonymous Russian sources. Turns out Democrats are willing to give up just about anything—including their Manafort moment—to protect Mr. Simpson from having to answer that question.

What if, all this time, Washington and the media have had the Russia collusion story backward? What if it wasn’t the Trump campaign playing footsie with the Vladimir Putin regime, but Democrats? The more we learn about Fusion, the more this seems a possibility.

We know Fusion is a for-hire political outfit, paid to dig up dirt on targets. This column first outed Fusion in 2012, detailing its efforts to tar a Mitt Romney donor. At the time Fusion insisted that the donor was “a legitimate subject of public records research.”

Mr. Grassley’s call for testimony has uncovered more such stories. Thor Halvorssen, a prominent human-rights activist, has submitted sworn testimony outlining a Fusion attempt to undercut his investigation of Venezuelan corruption. Mr. Halvorssen claims Fusion “devised smear campaigns, prepared dossiers containing false information,” and “carefully placed slanderous news items” to malign him and his activity.

William Browder, a banker who has worked to expose Mr. Putin’s crimes, testified to the Grassley committee on Thursday that he was the target of a similar campaign, saying that Fusion “spread false information” about him and his efforts. Fusion has admitted it was hired by a law firm representing a Russian company called Prevezon.

Prevezon employed one of the Russian operators who were at Trump Tower last year. The other Russian who attended that meeting, Rinat Akhmetshin, is a former Soviet counterintelligence officer. He has acknowledged in court documents that he makes his career out of opposition research, the same work Fusion does. And that he’s often hired by Kremlin-connected Russians to smear opponents.

We know that at the exact time Fusion was working with the Russians, the firm had also hired a former British spy, Christopher Steele, to dig up dirt on Mr. Trump. Mr. Steele compiled his material, according to his memos, based on allegations from unnamed Kremlin insiders and other Russians. Many of the claims sound eerily similar to the sort of “oppo” Mr. Akhmetshin peddled.

We know that Mr. Simpson is tight with Democrats. His current attorney, Joshua Levy, used to work in Congress as counsel to no less than Chuck Schumer. We know from a Grassley letter that Fusion has in the past sheltered its clients’ true identities by filtering money through law firms or shell companies (Bean LLC and Kernel LLC).

Word is Mr. Simpson has made clear he will appear for a voluntary committee interview only if he is not specifically asked who hired him to dig dirt on Mr. Trump. Democrats are going to the mat for him over that demand. Those on the Judiciary Committee pointedly did not sign letters in which Mr. Grassley demanded that Fusion reveal who hired it.

Here’s a thought: What if it was the Democratic National Committee or Hillary Clinton’s campaign? What if that money flowed from a political entity on the left, to a private law firm, to Fusion, to a British spook, and then to Russian sources? Moreover, what if those Kremlin-tied sources already knew about this dirt-digging, tipped off by Mr. Akhmetshin? What if they specifically made up claims to dupe Mr. Steele, to trick him into writing this dossier?

Fusion GPS, in an email, said that it “did not spread false information about William Browder.” The firm said it is cooperating with Congress and that “the president and his allies are desperately trying to smear Fusion GPS because it investigated Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.”

If the Russian intention was to sow chaos in the American political system, few things could have been more effective than that dossier, which ramped up an FBI investigation and sparked congressional probes and a special counsel, deeply wounding the president...

Katrina vanden Heuvel: 'Realism on Russia'

Well, we certainly need some realism, sheesh.

Here's Ms. Katrina, at the Nation:

We must investigate claims of Russian interference in the election, while also de-escalating a dangerous crisis.

The revelation that Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer promising derogatory information on Hillary Clinton reaffirms the need for a full accounting of how our democracy may have been subverted in the 2016 election. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the claims of Russian interference in the election, of collusion with the Trump campaign, and the possibility of criminal malfeasance by President Trump or his associates is essential, and it must be allowed to reach its own conclusions without interference from the White House. Beyond protecting this existing investigation, Democrats should seek an independent commission to lay out steps for protecting the integrity of future elections.

None of this should be controversial. At the same time, there is another set of facts that needs to be reckoned with in this precarious moment—facts concerning the abject failure of US policies toward Russia and the dangerous path down which our two countries are currently headed. These facts also concern real and present threats and cannot be ignored. Indeed, the crisis we are now facing makes clear that it’s time to fundamentally rethink how we approach our relationship with Russia.

As US-Russian relations have deteriorated, the risk of a nuclear catastrophe—including the danger posed by a nuclear-armed North Korea—has risen to its highest level since the end of the Cold War. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists now rates the danger higher than when the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear device, in 1949. The new Cold War is punctuated by perilous military face-offs in three arenas: in Syria, in the skies over the Baltic Sea; on Russia’s western border, with 300,000 NATO troops on high alert and both Russia and NATO ramping up deployments and exercises; and in Ukraine. Between them, the United States and Russia possess nearly 14,000 nuclear weapons—more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear arsenal—and keep almost 2,000 of them on hair-trigger alert. So the extreme danger of nuclear war can only be reduced through cooperation between our two countries.

At the same time, the era of cyberwarfare has arrived without any of the agreed-upon rules that govern traditional war or, for that matter, nuclear deterrence. There is now a rising threat of hackers breaching not only e-mails and elections but also power grids, strategic warning systems, and command-and-control centers. For years, there has been discussion of the need to establish clear rules of the road for cyberwarfare. Now, reports of escalating interference make it imperative that cyberweapons, like conventional, chemical, and nuclear arms, ought to be controlled by means of a binding, verifiable treaty. Again, however, this cannot happen without a more constructive US-Russia relationship.

Given these significant threats, the escalation of tensions with Russia serves neither the national interest nor our national security. Expanding sanctions will only drive a wedge between the United States and the European Union, spur Russia to take retaliatory measures, and make it more difficult to negotiate. This moment calls for diplomacy and dialogue, not moral posturing and triumphalism.

Needless to say, rebuilding a working détente with Russia won’t be easy...

Actually, I think Democrat Party collusion and election interference needs to be investigated, but otherwise, a good piece.

Keep reading.

Charlotte McKinney in Saint-Tropez (PHOTOS)

On Twitter, "St. Tropez."

And at Drunken Stepfather, "CHARLOTTE MCKINNEY SLUTTY OF THE DAY":

Charlotte McKinney is on her knees half naked in Europe for the Leonardo DiCaprio sugar baby convention for the environment, where he brings out all the connected enough sluts for him to use as his next girlfriend if they jump through hoops proper….he brings out dozens of women to compete for his attention amongst themselves…it feeds his ego…and it’s pretty funny that all these sugar baby whores run to to the chance to be with Leo…because ultimately, all women are groupie whores attracted to the celebrity life…

BONUS: At Daily Mail, "Simply stunning! Charlotte McKinney rocks dark blue strapless mini dress with thigh slit at Miami brunch," and "Welcome to Miami! Charlotte McKinney showcases her flawless physique as she rocks Daisy Dukes for a beach holiday."

Indians Sweep Angels

The Angels' wildcard hopes took a real thwacking this week in Cleveland. It was brutal.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Angels on the brink after unraveling against Indians":

Last August in Cleveland, the Angels fell further below .500 than they had been in 17 seasons with Mike Scioscia presiding. The Indians swept them in four heavily delayed games, each muggy day threatened by rain, making for a miserable weekend and cross-country flight home.

The Angels’ record entering this series is improved and Northeast Ohio’s midsummer weather much more temperate, but the results have been no better.

After their seven-run comeback was negated in Tuesday’s 11th inning, the Angels unraveled during a tied seventh inning and lost 10-4 Wednesday.

They sank five games behind an American League wild-card spot. Only four games remain until Monday’s trade deadline, their decision day for whether to buy, sell or stand. Their season is on the brink.

“Usually, in the second half of the season, you start looking at the standings,” Mike Trout said. “But we can’t. We gotta go out there and play our game. Once we start looking at the standings, that’s when we’re gonna get in trouble, try to do too much.”

Trying not to do too much is Trout’s mantra. He says it after he homers, says it after he fails. The Angels as a team, though, do not have Trout’s talent. On top of ongoing offensive flaws, they are undermanned in the starting rotation, a group that Scioscia said Wednesday has been “patchwork” since the season’s start...

More.

Behind the Scenes, Kate Moss and Kesewa Aboah, for #LOVE18 (VIDEO)

Kate Moss is still going strong, for LOVE.

Bo Krsmanovic and Hailey Clauson Chase Sasquatch (VIDEO)

Crazy.

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed

At Amazon, Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.

Let the Democrats Be the Trans Party: Trump Will Win Again

From George Neumayer, at the American Spectator, "Let the Dems Be the Transgender Party":

The other day, Bill Kristol, sounding like a spokesman for the ACLU, decried the theism of Donald Trump. “In America the president doesn’t tell us who or what or whether to worship,” he harrumphed on Twitter after Trump merely said that Americans worship God above government.

It is humorous to hear Edmund Burke-quoting “conservatives” peddling such pitiful liberal prattle, all while informing us that Trump isn’t a “real conservative.” Are they? As far as I can tell, most of them support the gay agenda, hold wishy-washy views on most contested cultural matters, support open borders, and second the propaganda about Islam as a religion of peace. And now they are even championing the bogus rights of cross-dressers in the military. These hawks are shocked that the commander-in-chief would command his generals to choose military strength over political correctness! How dare he.

Unlike these phonies, Trump doesn’t clear his throat with classical tags. He doesn’t make nerdy, self-conscious references to the “conservative movement.” But who cares as long as he is restoring common sense to the government? Without common sense, without respect for the natural order of things, “conservatism” is useless. It is just destructive liberalism at a slightly slower speed.

The classicists whom the Wills and the Kristols so pretentiously quote would have recognized the perennial conservatism in Trump’s common sense. They wouldn’t have recognized it in the me-too liberalism of the Never Trumpers.

Trump’s uncomplicated defense of common sense is nothing if not conservative. He doesn’t need “commissions” to tell him whether or not enlisting men who pretend to be women and women who pretend to be men hurts military readiness. Anyone with five senses and a functioning intellect can see that it does. It is only under the vast experiment against common sense that is liberalism could such obvious truths fall into disfavor.

Of course, the stupid party is joining the evil party in this experiment against common sense. And so a host of Republicans, along with pundits like Kristol, threw a wet blanket over the ban. According to this confederacy of dunces, Trump is making a grave political mistake. The Dems naturally agree and have announced to the press that they “welcome this culture war.”

Even West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, in a measure of how extreme the party has become, participated in this PC posturing. The Dems are forevermore the party of compulsory transgender bathrooms and taxpayer-financed mutilations...

More.

'Like Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator, McCain then makes a thumbs-down gesture, killing the bill. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell watches on grimly with his arms folded, as other GOP senators hang their heads in disappointment...'

This is something else.

At BuzzFeed, "Watch The Shocking Moment John McCain Killed The Republican Health Care Bill: There is so much going on in this clip. I can't stop watching." (Safe link.)

And watch here, "I can't stop watching this: the moment McCain votes no with a 👎🏻. Watch Bernie notice what's happening. Then Look at McConnel's grim reax..."

The Essential #MichikoKakutani Reader

Michiko Kakutani, who I follow on Twitter, took a buyout after 38 years. That's a long career.

A sample of her reviews, at NYT, "38 Years on #Books: The Essential #MichikoKakutani Reader."

Beautiful Charlie Gard Has Died

This story makes me almost cry.

Following-up from the other day, "Our Son Charlie Gard Had a Real Chance of Getting Better."

See Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "BUT SARAH PALIN WAS THE CRAZY ONE FOR BELIEVING THAT SOCIALIZED MEDICINE INVARIABLY LEADS TO DEATH PANELS: Parents of baby Charlie Gard say he has passed away."

And at the Telegraph U.K., "Charlie Gard dies: Baby's life-support withdrawn in hospice as parents 'denied final wish'."

Senate Rejects #ObamaCare 'Skinny Repeal', 51-49, in Dramatic Light-Night Vote

I actually really liked "skinny repeal." It would have removed ObamaCare's individual and employer mandates, and it would have rescinded the medical device tax. I've said all along that protections for pre-existing conditions should remain. Plus, since I have a 21-year-old kid, I can see how allowing young people to remain on their parents insurance can be helpful (even though I still shake my head sometimes to think that 26-year-old Americans should be dependent on their parents, but wtf?).

In any case, even the skinny repeal got rejected, owing a lot to Sen. John McCain, who's generated some enormous animosity since last night.

In any case, at the New York Times (FWIW), "Senate Rejects Slimmed-Down Obamacare Repeal as McCain Votes No":

WASHINGTON — The Senate in the early hours of Friday morning rejected a new, scaled-down Republican plan to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act, derailing the Republicans’ seven-year campaign to dismantle President Barack Obama’s signature health care law and dealing a huge political setback to President Trump.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, who just this week returned to the Senate after receiving a diagnosis of brain cancer, cast the decisive vote to defeat the proposal, joining two other Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, in opposing it.

The 49-to-51 vote was also a humiliating setback for the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who has nurtured his reputation as a master tactician and spent the last three months trying to devise a repeal bill that could win support from members of his caucus.

As the clock ticked toward the final vote, which took place around 1:30 a.m., suspense built on the Senate floor. Mr. McCain was engaged in a lengthy, animated conversation with Vice President Mike Pence, who had come to the Capitol expecting to cast the tiebreaking vote for the bill. A few minutes later, when Mr. McCain ambled over to the Democratic side of the chamber, he was embraced by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California. A little later Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, put her arm around Mr. McCain.

The roll had yet to be called, but the body language suggested that the Trump administration had failed in its effort to flip the Arizona senator whom President Trump hailed on Tuesday as an “American hero.’’

Many senators announced their votes in booming voices. Mr. McCain quietly signaled his vote with a thumbs-down gesture. He later offered an explanation on Twitter:

Skinny repeal fell short because it fell short of our promise to repeal & replace Obamacare w/ meaningful reform...

After the tally was final, Mr. Trump tweeted:

3 Republicans and 48 Democrats let the American people down. As I said from the beginning, let ObamaCare implode, then deal. Watch!

The truncated Republican plan that ultimately fell was far less than what Republicans once envisioned. Republican leaders, unable to overcome complaints from both moderate and conservative members of their caucus, said the skeletal plan was just a vehicle to permit negotiations with the House, which passed a much more ambitious repeal bill in early May.

The “skinny repeal” bill, as it became known at the Capitol this week, would still have had broad effects on health care. The bill would have increased the number of people who are uninsured by 15 million next year compared with current law, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Premiums for people buying insurance on their own would have increased roughly 20 percent, the budget office said...

More.

Also, at Politico, via Memeorandum, "How McCain tanked Obamacare repeal." And at the Los Angeles Times, "McCain's surprise vote doomed GOP healthcare bill, but did it open the door for Senate bipartisanship?" (No.)

Post-Hillary Democrats

This is good.

From Daniel Henninger, at WSJ, "The Post-Hillary Democrats: How in God’s name, the Democrats wonder, did we ever lose the 2016 election to HIM?":

On climate change, Democrats believe they know to the 10th decimal place that Earth is on the brink of an apocalypse. But by their own admission this week, they don’t have a clue about which way the wind is blowing with the American voter.

On Monday the Democrats released something called “A Better Deal,” a set of policy ideas to win back voters. Think of it as the party laying down the first quarter-mile of blacktop on its road back to power.

The short version of “A Better Deal” is that they would bust up corporate trusts (Teddy Roosevelt, circa 1902), ramp up public-works spending ( FDR, circa the Great Depression) and enact various tax credits (Washington, circa eternity).

The more interesting question here lies in the document’s unspoken subtext: How in God’s name did we lose a presidential election to . . . him?

In a recent Washington Post interview, one of Hillary Clinton’s closest advisers, Jake Sullivan, admits, “I am still losing sleep. I’m still thinking about what I could have done differently.” Who wouldn’t? What happened Nov. 8 was like losing five Super Bowls in one day.

Hillary Clinton has taken to citing one fact: “Remember, I did win more than three million [more] votes than my opponent.” True, notwithstanding the pesky two-centuries-old Electoral College vote, which she lost.

Here’s another fact that still poses a maddening question for many: Donald J. Trump got more than 62 million votes. It wasn’t long before Election Day that many political sophisticates wondered how Donald Trump would get 620 votes, much less 62 million—after the McCain slander, the “Access Hollywood” tape, the generalized ignorance.

A conventional explanation for the loss—and we know this because Chuck Schumer conventionalized it last weekend—is to blame her. “When you lose to somebody who has 40% popularity,” said Sen. Schumer, “you don’t blame other things—Comey, Russia—you blame yourself.”

This is rich. It’s almost oxymoronic. The reason Democrats lost to him is that they had an unelectable candidate. But if both parties were running “unelectable” candidates, then a lot of that day’s 138 million voters based their decisions on something more concrete than the personalities of two celebrities.

Hillary Clinton was running as the extension of Barack Obama’s two-term presidency. If the Democrats are now throwing her under the bus, Mr. Obama is down there with her.

The Obama presidency was a watershed for the Democratic Party for reasons having little to do with his historic candidacy. Mr. Obama moved his party significantly to the left, arguably as Ronald Reagan had moved his to the right. But those two buzzwords—left and right—have substantive meaning. In practice, the Obama years constituted an abrupt enhancement of state power. ObamaCare was the tip of the iceberg.

Barack Obama was as smooth as Bill Clinton was slick, and he used his eloquence to soften the hard edges of the many policy coercions by his Justice, Labor and Education departments and the omnipresent EPA.

In 2016, the Clintons, especially the ex-president, recognized the risks of running on this leftward legacy in a general election. Thus Hillary’s efforts to essentially talk and fog her way past that reality.

Still more.

Anthony Scaramucci Unloads on Reince Priebus in Profanity-Laced Interview at the New Yorker

So, a little while ago, I go to turn on the Diamondbacks at Cardinals on the MLB channel, and I get an error message saying the broadcast isn't available in my area (which is weird, since I live nowhere near St. Louis and the game wouldn't normally be blacked out). Okay, fine. It's happened before. I then go to click out of the channel and CNN pops up. My wife must have been watching it earlier, because I haven't watched CNN in months. It's four-o'clock and Erin Burnett's coming on with breaking news about Anthony Scaramucci. So I watched for a while. Then I click around the dial a little more and come back a few minutes later and she's got neocon never-Trumper Bill Kristol on. He's ranting about how unprecedented is this White House power struggle, even going so far as to suggest that Scaramucci's mentally unstable and should be denied an FBI security clearance. Then I flip over to Fox News. Martha MacCallum's got Dana Perino on. She argues that this kind of White House battle can only be decided by the president ultimately. Martha goes to a commercial and I flipped the off button.

At issue is this interview with Ryan Lizza, at the New Yorker, "Anthony Scaramucci Called Me to Unload About White House Leakers, Reince Priebus, and Steve Bannon" (via Memeorandum):

On Wednesday night, I received a phone call from Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director. He wasn’t happy. Earlier in the night, I’d tweeted, citing a “senior White House official,” that Scaramucci was having dinner at the White House with President Trump, the First Lady, Sean Hannity, and the former Fox News executive Bill Shine. It was an interesting group, and raised some questions. Was Trump getting strategic advice from Hannity? Was he considering hiring Shine? But Scaramucci had his own question—for me.

“Who leaked that to you?” he asked. I said I couldn’t give him that information. He responded by threatening to fire the entire White House communications staff. “What I’m going to do is, I will eliminate everyone in the comms team and we’ll start over,” he said. I laughed, not sure if he really believed that such a threat would convince a journalist to reveal a source. He continued to press me and complain about the staff he’s inherited in his new job. “I ask these guys not to leak anything and they can’t help themselves,” he said. “You’re an American citizen, this is a major catastrophe for the American country. So I’m asking you as an American patriot to give me a sense of who leaked it.”

In Scaramucci’s view, the fact that word of the dinner had reached a reporter was evidence that his rivals in the West Wing, particularly Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, were plotting against him. While they have publicly maintained that there is no bad blood between them, Scaramucci and Priebus have been feuding for months. After the election, Trump asked Scaramucci to join his Administration, and Scaramucci sold his company, SkyBridge Capital, in anticipation of taking on a senior role. But Priebus didn’t want him in the White House, and successfully blocked him for being appointed to a job until last week, when Trump offered him the communications job over Priebus’s vehement objections. In response to Scaramucci’s appointment, Sean Spicer, an ally of Priebus’s, resigned his position as press secretary. And in an additional slight to Priebus, the White House’s official announcement of Scaramucci’s hiring noted that he would report directly to the President, rather than to the chief of staff.

Scaramucci’s first public appearance as communications director was a slick and conciliatory performance at the lectern in the White House briefing room last Friday. He suggested it was time for the White House to turn a page. But since then, he has become obsessed with leaks and threatened to fire staffers if he discovers that they have given unauthorized information to reporters. Michael Short, a White House press aide considered close to Priebus, resigned on Tuesday after Scaramucci publicly spoke about firing him. Meanwhile, several damaging stories about Scaramucci have appeared in the press, and he blamed Priebus for most of them. Now, he wanted to know whom I had been talking to about his dinner with the President. Scaramucci, who initiated the call, did not ask for the conversation to be off the record or on background...

More.

At one point Scaramucci calls Priebus a "fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac..." And of course, this has all the chattering-leftist mouths agape across the establishment. Keep in mind that leftists will play up any Oval Office flame-war to the hilt. If this is seen as weakening the effectiveness of the administration, all the better. And they're going to play it all the more, because Scaramucci's been kicking ass. He's been taking down the fake news memes on the cable broadcasts and forwarding an extremely on-point and effective message for the president. Leftist will exploit any angle to take him down, and by extension take down his boss, President Trump.

More at Memeorandum.

Everything is high drama. Scarmucci's high drama, but he's pissed at how the president's been getting reamed and he's serious about cleaning house. He's serious about take the battle to the fake news outlets. That's what leftists hate. Let's see how this goes over the next few days, because if Scaramucci starts winning some victories, leftists'll be even more freaked out. Knives are sharpening at this minute as it is.

Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual

At Amazon, Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition).