Alexis Ren in Sports Illustrated Outtakes

At Celeb Jihad, "Alexis Ren in SI Outtakes."

And ICYMI: "Alexis Ren in Corsett on the Beach (VIDEO)."

Bella Hadid for Vogue Mexico.

At People Magazine, "Bella Hadid Poses in Just a Thong for Vogue Mexico Beach Photo Shoot."

And on Twitter:

pic.twitter.com/Sw0VQbUQPX

— Bella Hadid (@bellahadid) June 25, 2018

BONUS: At London's Daily Mail, "Bella Hadid dons giant sombrero while posing TOPLESS for Vogue shoot."

The Left's Ratcheting Up Violent Rhetoric and Actions

Following-up, "Congresswoman Maxine Waters Calls for Attacks on Trump Administration Officials (VIDEO)."

There's lots in the news on all of this, and on Twitter, of course.

For now, see Politico, "The left loses its cool: ‘When you’re violent and cursing and screaming and blocking me from walking into a movie, there’s something wrong,’ said one top GOP official":

Few disagree that Democrats are marching, protesting and confronting rank-and-file Republicans with more intensity during the midterm election than at any time in decades https://t.co/nXPyDoKjRW

— POLITICO (@politico) June 25, 2018

Two senior Trump administration officials were heckled at restaurants. A third was denied service. Florida GOP Attorney General Pam Bondi required a police escort away from a movie about Mister Rogers after activists yelled at her in Tampa — where two other Republican lawmakers say they were also politically harassed last week, one of them with her kids in tow.

In the Donald Trump era, the left is as aggressively confrontational as anyone can remember.

What it means for 2018 — whether it portends a blue wave of populist revolt for Democrats or a red wall of silent majority resistance from Republicans — largely depends on one’s political persuasion. But there’s a bipartisan sense that this election season marks another inflection point in the collapse of civil political discourse.

Few disagree that Democrats are marching, protesting and confronting Republican officials with more intensity during the midterm election than at any time in decades. The progressive fervor recalls conservative opposition to the last president in his first midterm, when Democratic members of Congress were left running from disruptive town halls and ended up being crushed at the polls in November.

"If you see anybody from that Cabinet — in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station — you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” implored California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters at a Saturday rally, prompting an immediate conservative backlash on social media...

More.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters Calls for Attacks on Trump Administration Officials (VIDEO)

It's from Ryan Saavedra, at the Daily Wire, "WATCH: Maxine Waters Calls for Attacks on Members of Trump Administration."

Click through at the link to watch.

Words and actions like Congresswoman Waters' are the reason I think far-left fascist authoritarianism is the greatest danger to the U.S., not so called populist-nationalist "authoritarianism." (I mentioned there here.)

Check out this Hamilton Nolan piece at Splinter News:

If you think being asked to leave a fucking restaurant is bad just wait https://t.co/b8OZBXjgLG

— Hamilton Nolan (@hamiltonnolan) June 25, 2018

I'll have more on this. Some say events of the last few days are triggering the onset of civil war. We'll see. It sure is heated.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Wins Reelection in Turkey

The idea of "reelection" in a country like Turkey is essential meaningless. The electoral process isn't "free and fair."

At the New York Times, "Turkey’s Erdogan Has Won the Sweeping Powers He Says He Needed. Now What?":

ANKARA, Turkey — With his victory in Sunday’s elections, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken his place among the world’s emerging class of strongman rulers, nailing down the sweeping powers he has insisted he needs to address Turkey’s numerous challenges, at home and abroad.

Now, all he needs to do is deliver.

“He won on a knife-edge,” said Ugur Gurses, a former banker who writes for the daily newspaper Hurriyet. “But now he has in his lap all the problems.”

Mr. Erdogan is contending with an array of economic troubles, an increasingly disgruntled populace and deteriorating relations with Turkey’s Western allies. Among the many problems Mr. Erdogan faces is one fundamental roadblock: His foreign policy is fighting with his economic needs.

His increasingly authoritarian, nationalist and anti-Western bent is alienating foreign investors, which is hurting the Turkish lira. As the currency plunges, domestic capital flees. And he is newly reliant on a nationalist party that enabled him to maintain his majority in Parliament but promises to reinforce all those tendencies, as well as his hard line against the Kurdish minority.

The lira briefly rose with the news of Mr. Erdogan’s re-election, and his most senior economic adviser posted a message on Twitter on Sunday night: “This sets the stage for speeding up #reforms.”

The economy is Mr. Erdogan’s most pressing problem, but analysts express doubt that he will be able to perform the necessary surgery and introduce needed austerity measures with municipal elections looming in March 2019.

“Now the first challenge is the deterioration of the economy, and he has no means, no perspective to change the course of events,” said Kadri Gursel, a columnist for the newspaper Cumhuriyet, who was imprisoned by Mr. Erdogan for 11 months...

Keep reading.

On Twitter, Claire Berlinski --- who's a very smart cookie --- argues Turkey's a precursor to U.S. authoritarianism. Trump's out of office in 2025, if he wins reelection. So, you'd have to see Trumpism continue as an alleged political model of authoritarianism if Berlinski's predictions are to come true. I'm not so sure, because Turkey's basically a developing country, without a democratic (i.e., "liberal" political culture), and bereft of the kind of institutional republican safeguards inherent to the American constitutional regime. If authoritarianism comes, it's going to be through far-left fascism, IMHO.

More on that later, since everyone's talking about the so-called coming civil war. See this tweet, for example.

Jennifer Delacruz's Monday Forecast

It's been fabulously mild weather in the O.C.

I can dig it.

Now if the Angels could just win a game I'd be in Seventh Heaven (*eye roll*).

At ABC 10 News San Diego:

San Francisco's 'Hellscape' of Rats, Drugs, and Feces Tests Residents' Progressive Values

I've got a little tweet-storm on this right here, "They're so progressive they won't call the police if the homeless drug-addled perps are black." Just keep clicking at the quoted posts.

And go to the San Francisco Chronicle, "Poop. Needles. Rats. Homeless camp pushes SF neighborhood to the edge: One awful experience on one unremarkable city block represent the hellscape that has infuriated many San Francisco residents":

San Francisco Homeless Project: One awful experience on one unremarkable city block represents the hellscape that has infuriated many San Francisco residents. via @HKnightSFhttps://t.co/TqePGmJ8KN

— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) June 24, 2018

Some of the city’s biggest names — from San Francisco Travel to the Chamber of Commerce to the Hotel Council — have loudly protested the disastrous conditions on San Francisco’s sidewalks in recent months, and regularly get meetings with City Hall politicians, but the voices of everyday residents aren’t always heard.

The ones just trying to raise kids, work and, well, live. The ones with so little power, they can’t get their supervisors to respond to their requests for help. The ones with the misery literally on their front doorsteps.

Those are the people who live on Isis Street, which should be everything that’s good about San Francisco. Funky flats. A group of progressive neighbors, many of whom are artists, writers and other creative types. A walkable neighborhood where you can get to Rainbow Grocery and a host of bars and restaurants in a flash. There are about 30 units of housing on the block, and six kids younger than 5 are growing up there...

RTWT.

Patrick J. Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower

At Amazon, Patrick J. Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?

John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

Monterey is the most literary city I can ever recall visiting. There were literally five used bookstores within a mile from each other downtown, and a coffee house bookstore over in Pacific Grove (about a mile from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Here's Steinbeck, Cannery Row, at Amazon.

I'm reading the old mass market paperback below.

Maria Menounos Bikini Photos

At Drunken Stepfather, "MARIA MENOUNOS BIKINI OF THE DAY."

She's really flashing there, man.

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

And A.F. Branco:

pic.twitter.com/kvzqGsO3kO

— MARK SIMONE (@MarkSimoneNY) June 23, 2018

Jennifer Delacruz Overcast Sunday Forecast

It's cool in SoCal, quite a contrast from NorCal, where it was 104 in East Bay yesterday (not to mention in Fresno, where I was last week for a couple of days).

It's been quite pleasant in Irvine, and I can dig it!

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

Amid Fake News Assault, Trump's Supporters Dig In Deeper

Why this should surprise anyone is beyond me, but leftists and Democrats aren't too bright.

At NYT, "As Critics Assail Trump, His Supporters Dig In Deeper":

NY Times finds “overblown” media attacks on Trump driving Republicans closer to him —> As Critics Assail Trump, His Supporters Dig In Deeper, via @nytimes https://t.co/aawSaItsms

— Brit Hume (@brithume) June 24, 2018

LEESBURG, Va. — Gina Anders knows the feeling well by now. President Trump says or does something that triggers a spasm of outrage. She doesn’t necessarily agree with how he handled the situation. She gets why people are upset.

But Ms. Anders, 46, a Republican from suburban Loudoun County, Va., with a law degree, a business career, and not a stitch of “Make America Great Again” gear in her wardrobe, is moved to defend him anyway.

“All nuance and all complexity — and these are complex issues — are completely lost,” she said, describing “overblown” reactions from the president’s critics, some of whom equated the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children and parents to history’s greatest atrocities.

“It makes me angry at them, which causes me to want to defend him to them more,” Ms. Anders said.

In interviews across the country over the last few days, dozens of Trump voters, as well as pollsters and strategists, described something like a bonding experience with the president that happens each time Republicans have to answer a now-familiar question: “How can you possibly still support this man?” Their resilience suggests a level of unity among Republicans that could help mitigate Mr. Trump’s low overall approval ratings and aid his party’s chances of keeping control of the House of Representatives in November...

Keep reading.

John Yoo: Asian Americans Should Bail on the Democrats

I met John Yoo in 2011, at the David Horowitz Freedom Center's West Coast Retreat.

And here he is, at LAT, "Asian Americans need to wise up and end our blind loyalty to the Democratic Party":

For all their smarts, Asian Americans can be pretty dumb.

They support Democrats in droves, and Democrats support race-based affirmative action. Last week, a lawsuit revealed just how discriminatory that kind of decision-making can be. At Harvard, racial balancing — in the guise of a personality score for applicants — appears to be systematically reducing the admission of Asian American students to the university.

The Harvard scandal contains a lot of takeaways, but here’s the one I hope sticks with my fellow Asian Americans: It’s time for us to end our blind loyalty to the Democratic Party and support instead politicians who will promote our interests.

Asian Americans are the most dynamic minority group in the U.S. Between the 2000 and 2010 censuses, the Asian population in the U.S. grew by nearly 50%. According to social science surveys and the census, they are the wealthiest and best-educated Americans. They are more likely to run a small business than any other racial group. They are deeply religious, with strong family values and a low divorce rate. Asian families push their children hard to score at the top of standardized tests and to achieve sterling grade-point averages.

In recent presidential elections, Asian Americans have consistently voted Democratic. In 2012, exit polling shows that 73% of Asian voters turned out for Barack Obama, second only, among racial/ethnic groups, to African Americans. In 2016, two-thirds of Asian voters supported Hillary Clinton, again second to black Americans and this time tied with Latinos. Asian Americans last voted for a Republican for president way back in 1996, when they went for Bob Dole (about the only voters who did, it seems).

The Democratic Party has rewarded this unwavering support with an unyielding defense of race-based school admissions and government programs such as the one that’s been working against Asian Americans at Harvard.

Every Supreme Court justice appointed by a Democratic president has upheld race-based school admissions programs in the name of diversity. Democratic administrations have aggressively supported these same programs in court. In California, Democrats have sought repeatedly to overturn Proposition 209, the law that prevents UC Berkeley and UCLA from rescurrecting the use of race as a factor in their admission process. In New York City today, Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio proposes to end the standardized single-test admission system used by magnet schools — because too many Asians do too well on the tests.

Harvard, and the Democratic Party, favor “holistic” admissions policies that yield what is considered to be the “right” balance of racial and ethnic groups on campus. Under pressure of a lawsuit filed by Students for Fair Admission, the university disclosed that Asians would make up 43% of the student body if academic scores alone dictated admissions. But Harvard ranks applicants on their strengths in five categories. Even though Asians score highest on academics and extracurricular activities, Harvard gave them the lowest possible score on personal traits such as humor, sensitivity, creativity, grit and leadership.

The personal rating kept Asians to 26% of admissions in 2013. Harvard then made “demographic” adjustments that further reduced the class to 19% Asian, which magically appears to be the same percentage of Asians that’s been admitted to Harvard for years.

RTWT.

BONUS: See Glenn Reynolds, at USA Today, "Why is Harvard discriminating against Asian Americans? 'Diversity' is no excuse for racial bias."

Godwin's Law Update

So, even Mike Godwin's going Godwin. What can you do?

 At LAT, "Do we need to update Godwin's Law about the probability of comparison to Nazis?":

Does Godwin’s Law need to be updated? Suspended? Repealed? I get asked this question from time to time because I’m the guy who came up with it more than a quarter century ago.

In its original simple form, Godwin’s Law goes like this: “As an online discussion continues, the probability of a comparison to Hitler or to Nazis approaches one.” It’s deliberately pseudo-scientific — meant to evoke the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the inevitable decay of physical systems over time. My goal was to hint that those who escalate a debate into Adolf Hitler or Nazi comparisons may be thinking lazily, not adding clarity or wisdom, and contributing to the decay of an argument over time.

Godwin’s Law doesn’t belong to me, and nobody elected me to be in charge of it. Although I’m sometimes thought to be referee for its use, I’m not. That said, I do have thoughts about how it is being invoked nowadays.

Since it was released into the wilds of the internet in 1991, Godwin’s Law (which I nowadays abbreviate to “GL”) has been frequently reduced to a blurrier notion: that whenever someone compares anything current to Nazis or Hitler it means the discussion is over, or that that person lost the argument. It’s also sometimes used (reflexively, lazily) to suggest that anyone who invokes a comparison to Nazis or Hitler has somehow “broken” the Law, and thus demonstrated their failure to grasp what made the Holocaust uniquely horrific.

Most recently GL has been invoked in response to the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” border policy that resulted in the traumatic separation of would-be immigrants from their children, many of whom are now warehoused in tent cities or the occasional repurposed Walmart. For example, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden — no squishy bleeding heart — posted a couple of tweets on June 16 that likened that policy to the Nazis’ treatment of children in Germany’s concentration camps. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (a Democrat but also a security hawk) has made the comparison as well.

The response has been predictable: Debate for some people has been derailed by the trivial objection that, even if it is terrible to separate children from their parents (and sometimes lose track of them, or make it impossible for their parents contact them, or even deprive them of the comfort of human touch), it’s not as awful as what the Nazis did. Or as bad as the slave trade. Or as bad as what the expansion of the United States westward did to Native Americans.

My name gets cited in a lot of these discussions. And of course my ears are burning. It hasn’t mattered that I’ve explained GL countless times. Some critics on the left have blamed me for (supposedly) having shut down valid comparisons to the Holocaust or previous atrocities. Some on the right have insisted that I’m “PC” for having tweeted (a bit profanely) that it’s just fine to compare the white nationalists who plagued Charlottesville, Va., last year to Nazis. (I think they were mostly aspirational Nazi cos players.)

I don’t take either strain of criticism too seriously. But I do want to stress that the question of evil, understood historically, is bigger than party politics. GL is about remembering history well enough to draw parallels — sometimes with Hitler or with Nazis, sure — that are deeply considered. That matter. Sometimes those comparisons are going to be appropriate, and on those occasions GL should function less as a conversation ender and more as a conversation starter.

So let me start another conversation here. Take the argument that our treatment of those seeking asylum at our border, including children, is not as monstrous as institutionalized genocide. That may be true, but it’s not what you’d call a compelling defense. Similarly, saying (disingenuously) that the administration is just doing what immigration law demands sounds suspiciously like “we were just following orders.” That argument isn’t a good look on anyone.

The seeds of future horrors are sometimes visible in the first steps a government takes toward institutionalizing cruelty...

More.

Whatever you thing about "GL," this "debate" is completely stupid, mainly because it's only being raised now, when Trump is in office. We could've had this debate in 2014, when Obama was locking up families --- and separating them --- on the border.

GL or no GL, politics is stupid. And yes, if you've got to resort to calling your opponents Nazis, you've lost the debate.

This Is How You Got Trump

This is beyond Trump derangement. Leftists are out and out advocating the slaughter of Trump supporters, and I'm seeing this multiple times a day, and not just on social media.

Sarah Sanders. Pam Bondi. Melania Trump. All of these women have been targeted and threatened by leftist mobs and Hollywood idiots over the last few days.

MSNBC's Donny Deutsch smeared Trump supporters as Nazis, "If you vote for Trump, you're the bad guy."

It feels like we're heading toward open warfare sometimes. That's one of the reasons I went offline during the vacation, and even then I was still on Twitter, so I never really get away from it. It's all leftist hatred all the time, and it's sickening.

Make this idiot famous. pic.twitter.com/SzXLbwv8zx

— R. Wolfe (@WhoWolfe) June 10, 2018

Trump Exposes Democrats' Hypocrisy and Lies, Outsmarts Them Again

From Rush Limbaugh:

RUSH: This today, ladies and gentlemen, may be one of the biggest See, I Told You So opportunity days I have had in years, maybe ever. And that’s really saying something, because I’ve had a lot of these over a stellar broadcast career. So forgive me if I point out your host — your beloved host, I, El Rushbo — predicted every single reaction that we are seeing from the news media and the rest of the Democrat Party. I have been chomping at the bit all night to get here.

It started shortly after the program ended yesterday, and I know all of you were watching the news and keeping track. I know you all noticed it. I know you’re out there saying, “It’s exactly what Rush said was gonna happen,” and it has happened. I don’t know if Donald Trump is a strategic genius, but I can tell you that he is an instinctive one. I don’t know how much Trump sits around and strategizes and tries to play, for example, a long game and say, “Okay. If I do this and do this, I know they’re gonna do this and this. So, after that happens, I’m going to do this.”

I don’t know if he’s that many steps down the board or not. But I know that his instincts are practically infallible here. He has turned these people inside out, upside down. He has forced them, made them, caused them — his enemies — to expose their hypocrisy, to expose their lies, and to expose the fact that they’re dishonest when reporting so-called news. For starters, ladies and gentlemen, I predicted the press would say that Trump caved, that they would begin to take credit for it, that they indeed had put so much pressure on Trump that finally they had made him cave.

Dana Bash at CNN was the first to start shouting with great happiness that they had made Trump cave. It was their first reaction. There were lots of articles with headlines claiming that Trump caved. There were other stories talking about Trump’s base supporters being tragically saddened and disappointed by this, that Trump didn’t have the guts to stick to his policy, that Trump is even less committed to this than Obama was. There was all kinds of stuff. But then — and you remember this — they began to realize, as I also predicted they would. (laughing)

In fact, the first guy to get up was a little bald head guy yesterday afternoon on CNN. (laughing) It was so fun to watch. We had the sound bite from the guy, Zac something or other. He’s the guy that the Fox infobabes love having this guy on. You can just tell that they are as amused as hell. He’s like a pet! You know, he’s like a talking pet. They’re just amused as hell when this guy gets wound up and gets going. He stands up out of his chair, starts gesticulating wildly, and they look at each other with the suppressed smiles. (laughing) They don’t even try to stop him!

Anyway, he was the first to figure it out. (laughing) They realized that this only meant one thing, that Trump was gonna keep families detained, if we’re gonna keep ’em together, they’re gonna stay detained, quote-unquote, “behind bars.” What the left has been looking for here all along is catch-and-release. That’s what they want to return to. They thought Trump caving meant that his executive order was gonna be, “We no longer detain children,” and since we can’t separate families, if we’re gonna detain the children, we can’t deign the adults.

Therefore nobody’s detained, thereby everybody is free to roam America and get lost. (laughing) Well, that’s not what the executive order says. And then I predicted that there would be a court challenge to this before the next day — today — arrived. And I predicted that the court challenge would be on the fact that Trump had usurped his executive authority, that he cannot trump (no pun intended) existing law as written by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals regarding the Flores decision, which the media never talked about during any of this.

When they’re clamoring for Trump to end his supposedly policy of separation, the no tolerance. It isn’t his. It never was, which you know. But they’re demanding that he end it. And all during those days where they’re demanding that he end it, they never once said that there was an opinion from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals called the Flores decision that prevents him from ending it. Then when he signs his executive order, then all of a sudden they discover Flores to say that his executive order may not be valid. (laughing)

They fell right into this at every step!

More at that top link.

Lindsey Pelas Greetings

She's so sweet.

HI ✨✨✨✨ pic.twitter.com/gmLCp0Dyyb

— Lindsey Pelas (@LindseyPelas) June 21, 2018

I’d rather be in Mexico today 🔥 how about you? pic.twitter.com/yDeH9NkRkc

— Lindsey Pelas (@LindseyPelas) June 23, 2018

Alexis Ren on the Beach (VIDEO)

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

Jamie Leigh Thornton

At Maxim:

"Don't start a DM with 'Dannnnng girl you got a nice rack.'" https://t.co/bUyrPWurZQ

— Maxim (@MaximMag) June 17, 2018