Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

I've got a couple more books to finish on World War I to finish, as well as one on 19th century European imperialism in Africa, then I'm looking to go on a Roman empire jag. I've got a couple of novels lined up already, but I've had Edward Gibbon's classic tome on my shelf for almost 30 years. I need to wade through that thing and blow it out. I picked it up back at the time when Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers was the rage.

Once summer's over I'll switch gears a little. As noted, I'm teaching comparative politics this fall, and the German case plays large in my approach. It's going to be a blast.

In any case, at Amazon, Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Danielle Gersh's Beach Weather Forecast

What do you know? It's almost August already!

I start back at the college August 28th, so I'll be really enjoying these last few weeks of lollygagging around, lol.

Seriously, though, I'm going into the office early next week to work on my syllabi. In addition to U.S. politics, I'm teaching Introduction to Comparative Politics this semester, for the first time in years. It's going to be great!

In any case, here's the lovely Ms. Danielle with the forecast, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Thomas E. Ricks, Churchill and Orwell

At Amazon, Thomas E. Ricks, Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif Toppled

At LAT, "Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif resigns after Supreme Court orders his dismissal in corruption case":

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif resigned Friday after the country's Supreme Court disqualified him from office due to corruption charges he and his family have been battling.

"Following the verdict, Nawaz Sharif has resigned from his responsibilities as prime minister," a spokesman for Sharif's office said in a statement.

The unanimous, five-judge ruling — delivered to a packed courtroom in the nation’s capital — came after an investigation into the family’s finances following the Panama Papers leak in 2015. Documents uncovered during the international media investigation linked Sharif’s children to offshore companies that had not been revealed in financial disclosures.

After the ensuing investigations, Judge Ejaz Afzal Khan said Sharif was no longer "eligible to be an honest member of the parliament.” The court had already recommended anti-corruption cases against Sharif, his daughter Maryam Nawaz, her husband Safdar, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and others...

Also at NYT, "Pakistan, Ousting Leader, Dashes Hopes for Fuller Democracy."

Huntington Beach: U.S. Open of Surfing (VIDEO)

I used to live in Huntington Beach. This event is excellent.

And there's supposed to be big surf this weekend.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles

New White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci Cancels Politicon Appearance

I think he's got enough on his plate, rather than fly out to Pasadena for this cattle call.

You can always go see Ann Coulter's shtick, heh.

At LAT, "Anthony Scaramucci cancels weekend appearances at Politicon convention in Pasadena."

Leftists Freak Out on Twitter Over Trump's 'Police Brutality' Joke

At Blazing Cat Fur.

Watch, here's the comments, "President Trump: Don't be too nice."

Also, "Remarks by President Trump to Law Enforcement Officials on MS-13."

Los Angeles Times Links Priebus' Ouster to #GOP's Failure to Repeal #ObamaCare.

Disingenuous.

See how the placement of these articles implies a close link. Actually, Priebus' ouster and the failure of the health bill aren't closely related, but you'd think it was all of one piece by looking at the cover of this morning's paper.

Here's the article at the top, "Trump ousts Reince Priebus as chief of staff in latest White House shake-up."

And at left, "GOP confronts an inconvenient truth: Americans want a healthcare safety net."

Page placement tells you a lot about the thinking and agenda of the editors at the Times.

Top Brands in Tools and Home Improvement

At Amazon, Shop Wallpaper, Power Tools, Ceiling Fans, Lighting and Everything in Between.

Also, DEWALT DCK590L2 20-Volt MAX Li-Ion 3.0 Ah 5-Tool Combo Kit.

BONUS: Dominic Lieven, The End of Tsarist Russia: The March to World War I and Revolution.

Jeff Grosso’s Favorite Skate Pic (VIDEO)

This is interesting, but pay attention to the second photo he talks about toward the end of the video. That's Steve Alba at the Upland Skatepark "combi-pool" circa 1981. Unbelievable.

Venezuela's Useful Idiots Have Gone Silent

This is great.

At CapX, "Venezuela's Useful Idiots Have Gone Quiet. I Wonder Why":

Socialists like to claim that “real” socialism has never been tried. There is a very simple reason for that: whenever a socialist experiment fails (as they invariably do), socialists, including those who have once endorsed the experiment in question, retroactively declare it “unreal”.

RTWT.

Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction

At Amazon, Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany.

Jennifer Delacruz's Humid Coastal Clouds Forecast

It's warm inland, with chances of thundershowers.

But otherwise, kinda cool weather for late July.

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

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.