Michela Wrong, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Michela Wrong, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo.

Jason Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters

At Amazon, Jason Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa.

This Vanity Fair Lionization of the Press is Why Everyone Hates the Press

Mary Katharine Ham has been doing much better work since she's moved over to the Federalist from Hot Air.

And I mean much, much better.

She's a fabulous writer.

Here, "The press is constantly saying this president is losing credibility without recognizing it is in the exact same predicament."

Google Manifesto

I wondered what this was when tweeps were tweeting "Google manifesto." I'm like, "huh?"

At Gizmodo, "Exclusive: Here's The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google."

And at the Verge, "Not all Google employees disagree with anti-diversity polemic."

Maduro Regime Puts Down Attempted Military Uprising in Venezuela

At the Miami Herald, "Venezuela quells anti-government uprising on military base":

Venezuela squashed a small uprising on a military base Sunday, the first inkling of armed unrest in the beleaguered South American country after a new all-powerful legislative body condemned by the international community began targeting opposition foes.

Though the would-be rebellion, which left at least one man dead, appeared short-lived, it reignited spontaneous anti-government protests that had been absent for days after nearly four months of prolonged street tumult. Security forces once again repressed the demonstrations with tear gas and rubber pellets.

Further clashes loom. The opposition-held parliament intends to convene Monday at the legislative palace, which was taken over Saturday by the new constituent assembly. Its delegates, all ruling socialist party members elected last week in a vote widely seen as fraudulent, face potential sanctions from the U.S. and countries in Latin America and Europe.

The government of President Nicolás Maduro insisted Sunday’s incident was an outside attack staged by civilians hired by his political opponents. While security forces claimed the skirmish was quickly quelled, the defense minister acknowledged an ongoing search for an unknown number of stolen military weapons.

The extended confusion over what took place before dawn Sunday at the Paramacay military base in Valencia, a city in central Venezuela about two hours west of the capital, Caracas, fed opposition calls for dissenting troops to rebel.

They were fueled by the morning release online of a video — the kind used in failed coup attempts against previous Venezuelan governments — showing more than a dozen men dressed in military fatigues and holding assault rifles. They declared themselves in rebellion and urged like-minded security forces to stage a revolt against Maduro.

Without citing the video, socialist party deputy Diosdado Cabello asserted early on, via Twitter, that an irregular situation at the base was under control. But for hours, no government official took to the airwaves, communicating only in Twitter posts and written statements. State-run television replayed an episode of the late Hugo Chávez’s weekly TV show, “Aló Presidente.” The convening of a new “truth commission” was postponed.

When Maduro finally appeared on TV, at 3 p.m., he congratulated military leaders for their swift response but also admitted security forces were still hunting down a group of men from the morning assault who had gotten away.

“We’re going to capture them,” he said. “A week ago we defeated them with votes. Today, we were forced to defeat them with bullets.”

In an incongruous scene, Maduro spoke from a park, standing on a logo with colorful hearts — and surrounded by bodyguards. He admired a naturalist exhibit of animal skulls and skins, and cheered on a little girl standing in the middle of a circle of happy children, whacking a piñata.

According to Maduro, the scuffle at the base began at 3:50 a.m. when the instigators surprised overnight guards and went directly to weapons caches...

More.

Rhian Sugden Goes Brunette

She's been making a big deal out of it, on Twitter.

Stunner @RhianMarie looks VERY different as she shows off new brunette hairdo in Instagram snap https://t.co/KVVaTzGnOI

— The Sun North West (@TheSunNW) August 7, 2017

What's Worse: Trump's Agenda or Deep State Subversion?

From Glenn Greenwald, at the Intercept, "What’s Worse: Trump’s Campaign Agenda or Empowering Generals and CIA Operatives to Subvert it":

DURING HIS SUCCESSFUL 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump, for better and for worse, advocated a slew of policies that attacked the most sacred prongs of long-standing bipartisan Washington consensus. As a result, he was (and continues to be) viewed as uniquely repellent by the neoliberal and neoconservative guardians of that consensus, along with their sprawling network of agencies, think tanks, financial policy organs, and media outlets used to implement their agenda (CIA, NSA, the Brookings/AEI think tank axis, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, etc.).

Whatever else there is to say about Trump, it is simply a fact that the 2016 election saw elite circles in the U.S., with very few exceptions, lining up with remarkable fervor behind his Democratic opponent. Top CIA officials openly declared war on Trump in the nation’s op-ed pages and one of their operatives (now an MSNBC favorite) was tasked with stopping him in Utah, while Time Magazine reported, just a week before the election, that “the banking industry has supported Clinton with buckets of cash . . . . what bankers most like about Clinton is that she is not Donald Trump.”

Hank Paulson, former Goldman Sachs CEO and George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary, went to the pages of the Washington Post in mid-2016 to shower Clinton with praise and Trump with unbridled scorn, saying what he hated most about Trump was his refusal to consider cuts in entitlement spending (in contrast, presumably, to the Democrat he was endorsing). “It doesn’t surprise me when a socialist such as Bernie Sanders sees no need to fix our entitlement programs,” the former Goldman CEO wrote. “But I find it particularly appalling that Trump, a businessman, tells us he won’t touch Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.”

Some of Trump’s advocated assaults on D.C. orthodoxy aligned with long-standing views of at least some left-wing factions (e.g., his professed opposition to regime change war in Syria, Iraq/Libya-style interventions, global free trade deals, entitlement cuts, greater conflict with Russia, and self-destructive pro-Israel fanaticism), while other Trump positions were horrifying to anyone with a plausible claim to leftism, or basic decency (reaffirming torture, expanding GITMO, killing terrorists’ families, launching Islamophobic crusades, fixation on increasing hostility with Tehran, further unleashing federal and local police forces). Ironically, Trump’s principal policy deviation around which elites have now coalesced in opposition – a desire for better relations with Moscow – was the same one that Obama, to their great bipartisan dismay, also adopted (as evidenced by Obama’s refusal to more aggressively confront the Kremlin-backed Syrian government or arm anti-Russian factions in Ukraine).

It is true that Trump, being Trump, was wildly inconsistent in virtually all of these pronouncements, often contradicting or abandoning them weeks after he made them. And, as many of us pointed out at the time, it was foolish to assume that the campaign vows of any politician, let alone an adept con man like Trump, would be a reliable barometer for what he would do once in office. And, as expected, he has betrayed many of these promises within months of being inaugurated, while the very Wall Street interests he railed against have found a very welcoming embrace in the Oval Office.

Nonetheless, Trump, as a matter of rhetoric, repeatedly affirmed policy positions that were directly contrary to long-standing bipartisan orthodoxy, and his policy and personal instability only compounded elites’ fears that he could not be relied upon to safeguard their lucrative, power-vesting agenda. In so many ways – due to his campaign positions, his outsider status, his unstable personality, his witting and unwitting unmasking of the truth of U.S. hegemony, the embarrassment he causes in western capitals, his reckless unpredictability – Trump posed a threat to their power centers...

More.

Jennifer Delacruz's Coastal Clouds Forecast

A lot of moisture on the coast, but sunny and warmer inland. It's nice weather.

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

'An Inconvenient Ruse'

Liz Wheeler slams Al Gore's new movie, "An Inconvenient Sequel."

Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome

At Amazon, Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization.

Hiroshima Day: 72 Years Since U.S. Dropped Atomic Bomb on Japan

Here's Michael Beschloss below, on Twitter.

Also, at the New York Times (FWIW), "The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima - Daily 360 video: Through modeling and mapping technologies, witness from above the attack on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945."

Hiroshima, today 1945: #NARA pic.twitter.com/iEmTZ4TDuO

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) August 6, 2017

Ta-Nehisi Coates on 'Confederate'

I don't care one way or the other about HBO's possibly upcoming show, "Confederate." To be honest, I'd probably watch just like I've watched "True Detective" and "Westworld," to say nothing of "Game of Thrones." HBO's shows are the only ones I really like, except "Homeland" on Showtime. Other than that, I mostly watch sports. I quit watching cable news earlier this year, and I rarely watch "CBS This Morning" like I used to. Everything's political and I don't want my whole life to be one big attack on President Trump. I have to teach this stuff for a living.

So, if you've been reading news online this past week or so, you've probably heard about the controversy over "Confederate," which hasn't even been produced yet. But just the fact that David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, the creators of "Game of Thrones," are developing the project sent race-baiting leftist into fits.

In any case, here's "black body" boy, Ta-Nehisi Coates, at the Atlantic, "The Lost Cause Rides Again."

But see Kyle Smith, at National Review, "'Confederate' and the Dunces Who Assume It’s Pro-Slavery."

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions)

Here's my copy, below.

And also available at Amazon, Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions).

'Something Just Like This'

Hearing this on satellite radio yesterday, driving back from Studio City after visiting with my mom, who turned 82 last Thursday, and my sister's family.

A Slow-Rolling Coup D'état

From the great Derek Hunter, at Town Hall, "We’re Witnessing a Slow-Rolling Coup D'état":

From the moment Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election, a plan was hatched to blame Russia for her historically epic loss and use it to hamstring Donald Trump’s presidency.

Always a hive-mind, Democrats in and out of the media could be counted on to do their parts, and they’ve done just that. But what started out as a few near-riot protests to keep their base angry has morphed into a slow-rolling coup.

The book “Shattered” documented how the Clinton campaign was not interested in an autopsy, it had a plan:

That strategy had been set within twenty-four hours of her concession speech. Mook and Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.

From that, the idea that horrified Democrats during the campaign – that one of the participants would refuse to accept the election results – became an accepted, forgotten fact and the first salvo in what would become a sustained war against the duly-elected president.

Since that meeting, the media dutifully has gone over and above its duty to the cause. After eight years of slumber, print and cable news “journalists” became “woke” to the cause and blew past reporting to a level of propaganda activism that would make Leni Riefenstahl tell them to pump the brakes.

There has been enough embarrassment to go around, but none have beclowned themselves more than CNN’s Jim Acosta. He spent a month whining about not having the cameras on in the press briefing room to capture his antics and add to his sizzle reel so he could get his own show. Then, he showed himself to be the Forrest Gump of the press pool when he equated a poem written to raise money to build the base of the Statue of Liberty with actual law. He then proceeded to congratulate himself, repeatedly, for his performance.

But the media isn’t just a clown show of correspondents fumbling basic facts and shunning logic in its progressive pursuit of a new Nixon. It’s the PR wing of the Democratic Party’s “resistance.” No story is too absurd, no leak too damaging to the nation’s security not to publish. After years of repeating Obama administration spoon-fed talking points, they media now gleefully reports anything that might damage the Trump administration for that sake alone...

More.

Robert Graves, I, Claudius

*BUMPED.*

I'm currently reading this masterpiece. It's been sitting on my bookshelf for almost 30 years.

[Added: I'm almost halfway through this one, and I can say that once you wade through the first few chapters, the book gets fairly lively indeed. I'm enjoying it. And I love how historical dates are appended to the margins, to give accurate temporal context to events. Impressive book.]

At Amazon, Robert Graves, I, Claudius: From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius Born 10 B.C., Murdered and Deified A.D. 54 (Vintage International).

Robert Spencer, Confessions of an Islamophobe

Out November 28th, at Amazon, Robert Spencer, Confessions of an Islamophobe.

Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe

*BUMPED.*

Pre-order at Amazon, Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam.

Raheem Kassam, No Go Zones

This dude's been getting hassled and suspended on Twitter.

Come out with a "diverse" opinion and the left will target you for destruction.

At Amazon, Raheem Kassam, No Go Zones: How Sharia Law Is Coming to a Neighborhood Near You.

Angels Storm Back, Keep Playoff Hopes Alive

The Angels beat the Athletics last night, 8-6 at Anaheim Stadium. They were down 6-2 in the sixth inning, and I thought there for a minute the team would lose. It'd have been the first time they lost while I was in attendance for the last five years or so. Really, when I go to the park, they always win. And they did it again last night. I was pretty magical.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Angels mount comeback to beat A's, stretch winning streak to four and improve to .500":

The Angels are still not healthy, still receiving lackluster seasons from an array of hitters, still struggling to capture the public’s interest, still unlikely to actually qualify for the postseason.

But they are undeniably making this thing interesting. They secured their fourth straight victory and sixth in seven tries Friday, scoring six unanswered runs to come back to beat Oakland 8-6 at Angel Stadium. They are 55-55, and only two games separate them from playoff position.

“Better late than never,” said Ben Revere, who scored Friday’s winning run.

It has become the team’s refrain this summer, enjoyed because of its duality: “We’re still in it.”

Applicable to their 32 comeback victories and to their playoff odds, the Angels cite it in interviews and tell it to their pregame visitors during batting practice, a subtle reminder to one another that they can yet contend in 2017. With each passing week, the idea appears more plausible. They do not have to play particularly good games, especially while hosting Philadelphia, Oakland and Baltimore on this homestand. They can always come back, as they did Friday.

After Mike Trout hit an infield single to short in the first inning, Albert Pujols tapped into an inning-ending double play. It was the 351st double-play groundout of his career, which holds grand significance. It broke Pujols’ tie with Cal Ripken and staked him alone to the all-time record.

Making the first start of his career, the Angels’ Troy Scribner did not give up a hit until the second inning. It was a three-run home run to Matt Chapman — a walk and an error preceded it — that gave the Athletics an early lead. The Angels made it 3-2 with three singles, two errors, a sacrifice fly, and a hit by pitch in their half of the second. With the bases loaded and two out, Trout flied out to left field.

Over the next three innings, they mustered two baserunners — both on doubles, by Trout and Kole Calhoun. Neither man advanced...

More.

The rally monkey did the trick last night. I love that, heh.