Jeremy Corbyn is Too Extreme to Be Prime Minister

From Sohrab Ahmari, at Commentary, "Never Corbyn."

Dear Britons: For the love of all that is good and just, please don't elect Jeremy Corbyn--the Hamas-hugging lunatic from the People's Republic of Islington--to No. 10 Downing Street. https://t.co/KRhvs7j2dT

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) August 14, 2018

Coliseum's Ongoing Renovation Means Different USC Game-Day Experience for Fans (VIDEO)

College football season's almost upon us.

And here's this, at LAT, "It will be a season of 'growing pains' for USC fans at the Coliseum":

The Coliseum has come together and is ready for the 2018 season. #FightOn pic.twitter.com/OMhiJDtJAt

— USC Trojans (@USC_Athletics) August 15, 2018

USC’s 95th football season in the Coliseum will be unlike any other. And that will have nothing to do with what happens on the field.

As the Coliseum undergoes its real-time renovation in preparation for a 2019 unveiling, more will be asked of the Trojans fans in particular. USC and Coliseum officials scheduled a news conference Wednesday morning to address the biggest challenges fans will face and what specifically they can do to make 2018’s temporary game-day experience palatable enough to get through it and onto next season, when the fun can really start.

“It will be a season of change for a lot of fans when they come into the Coliseum,” USC athletic director Lynn Swann said. “Everybody will be going through some kind of adjustment, in terms of where they used to sit and to where they’re going to sit this year and how it’s going to change in 2019. Growing pains, if you will."

USC fans and alumni who would have preferred that the athletic department not touch the venerable stadium have been heard, but that ship sailed long ago. Since the end of the Rams’ 2017 season in January, 12,514 cubic yards of concrete have been poured; 2,131 tons of structural steel have been used; and 46,000 cubic yards of dirt have been exported.

All of this comes in the name of progress — if you are willing to define progress as spending a lot of money now to make a lot more money over the coming decades thanks to new revenue streams created from building luxury boxes — and USC would prefer that the process doesn’t have to be that painful...

More.

California Looks to Block Further Offshore Drilling for Oil

Hey, I say, "Drill baby drill," lol.

But this is California, which has been taken over by far-left progressive nutjobs. It's hard out here, man.

At LAT, "First came the proclamations against Trump's offshore drilling plan. Now comes the legislation":

First came the proclamations against Trump's offshore drilling plan. Now comes the legislation https://t.co/KMoG4CuZd5 pic.twitter.com/IpuxNVTwYh

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) August 16, 2018

When the Trump administration proposed opening California waters to drilling on an unprecedented scale, state leaders said they would do whatever it takes to keep new oil operations at bay.

But promises only go so far.

So some in Sacramento now are trying to lock those pledges into law — safeguarding the coast from offshore drilling no matter the whims of future administrations.

Despite decades of lawsuits and regulations, the state’s ability to block offshore drilling hinges largely on who’s in power in the state Capitol. Even with staunch opposition by Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and pledges from both candidates vying to be the next governor, future leaders could still allow new drilling if they choose.

Two bills that could live or die Thursday would close that possibility by barring state land managers from allowing the construction of new pipelines, piers, wharves or other infrastructure necessary to transport the oil and gas from water to land.

In a state where polls show 69% of residents oppose more drilling off their coast, such legislation may seem like a shoo-in. “But unfortunately it’s not,” said Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance), acting chair of the Assembly’s Natural Resources Committee.

A similar Senate bill last year failed amid pressure from powerful oil and business interests that said stripping the state of this decision-making authority could do more harm than good.

Muratsuchi said he agreed to team up with state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) and seven coauthors this year to reintroduce the issue as nearly identical bills in the Assembly and the Senate, and overcome what he said were the key challenges: “Oily Democrats,” a more business-friendly Assembly than in years past, and powerful lobbying alliances in Sacramento.

The stalling of the legislation last year marked an instance in which California, famous for leading the charge on environmental laws, left other states to pave the way. New Jersey and New York picked up and adopted similar legislation this year. Delaware and Maryland are also looking to pass laws that would bar new drilling in state waters.

But with mounting public pushback against the Trump administration’s efforts to upend California’s environmental protections, backers say the bills have a new urgency this year.

“We need to take control of what we can control — and what we can control is our state land and waters,” said Richard Charter, a senior fellow at the Ocean Foundation who has worked on oil issues for 40 years. “I have never seen this level of danger to California’s coastline.”

Bills AB 1775 and SB 834 would prohibit the State Lands Commission, which has jurisdiction over tidelands and waters extending roughly three miles offshore, from granting leases for new pipelines and infrastructure — the most economical way to transport oil and gas to land. The Senate version of the bill goes a step further, banning the commission from renewing an existing lease if that action will result in increased oil or natural gas production from federal waters.

Currently, the commission’s oil decisions are subject to the vote of two elected officials, the lieutenant governor and the state controller, and one appointee of the governor, the director of the state Department of Finance.

Both Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Democratic candidate for governor, and John Cox, the Republican candidate who has Trump’s backing, have declared that the commission’s current commitment to barring new leases would not change under their leadership...

More.

Graham Greene, The Human Factor

Mr. Greene's classic paperbacks go for prime dollars, lol.

The mass-market is available at Amazon, Graham Greene, The Human Factor (Mass-Market Paperback).

And see also, The Human Factor (Penguin Classics).

We Need More Masculinity

Here's a great Prager University video, featuring Allie Beth Stuckey, "Make Men Masculine Again":

Blanca Blanco in Bathing Suit

At Taxi Driver, "Blanca Blanco Pops Out of her Bathing Suit."

PREVIOUSLY: "Blanca Blanco in White T-Shirt."

Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We?

*BUMPED.*

Following-up, "Progressives Outraged at Laura Ingraham's Opening Segment Slamming Left's Program to Remake America (VIDEO)."

It's not like Ms. Laura was saying anything new. Conservatives have been sound the tocsin for decades. Here's Pat Buchanan's book from 2002, The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization.

And don't forget Jean Raspail's 1973 novel, The Camp of the Saints.

Also, Victor Davis Hanson, Mexifornia: A State of Becoming.

More recently, see Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam.

And my favorite, which was eye-opening at the time (2004), Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity.

Democrats Are Socialists, Duh

The polling is just now catching up to the reality on the ground. Go to any college campus and nearly everyone --- from administrators, faculty, and the students --- will tell they prefer socialism over the free market. I've been saying so for years. Obama ushered in an era where open embrace of radical leftism was cool. Bernie brought the last shy leftist out of the socialist closet. And with the lame brain leftist Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, far-left Democrats can run on an openly Marxist platform and win office.

This is a good development, people. It clarifies the lines of ideological contestation. I love it.

At Gallup, "Democrats More Positive About Socialism Than Capitalism":

Democrats have a more positive image of socialism than they do of capitalism... https://t.co/qSBZ6vkpk2 pic.twitter.com/4XnryzaD9J

— GallupNews (@GallupNews) August 13, 2018

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- For the first time in Gallup's measurement over the past decade, Democrats have a more positive image of socialism than they do of capitalism. Attitudes toward socialism among Democrats have not changed materially since 2010, with 57% today having a positive view. The major change among Democrats has been a less upbeat attitude toward capitalism, dropping to 47% positive this year -- lower than in any of the three previous measures. Republicans remain much more positive about capitalism than about socialism, with little sustained change in their views of either since 2010.

These results are from Gallup interviewing conducted July 30-Aug. 5. Views of socialism among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are particularly important in the current political environment because many observers have claimed the Democratic Party is turning in more of a socialist direction.

Socialist Bernie Sanders competitively challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, and more recently, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a candidate with similar policy views and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, won the Democratic nomination in New York's 14th Congressional District. Several candidates with socialist leanings lost their primary bids in Aug. 7 voting, however, raising doubts about the depth of Democrats' embrace of socialism.

The current survey is the fourth time Gallup has measured Americans' overall views of capitalism and socialism in this format. The question wording does not define "socialism" or "capitalism" but simply asks respondents whether their opinion of each is positive or negative...

Yeah, don't ask any of these idiot leftists to define terms, as you'll get a nonsense regurgitation which is the calling card of Ocasio Cortez (*eye roll*).

But keep reading.

The Realist World of International Politics

From Professor Stephen Kotkin, at Foreign Affairs, "Realist World: The Players Change, but the Game Remains":

Just caught up wth this excellent essay in @ForeignAffairs by Stephen Kotkin: https://t.co/XxAqadRwvh

— Niall Ferguson (@nfergus) August 12, 2018

Geopolitics didn’t return; it never went away. The arc of history bends toward delusion. Every hegemon thinks it is the last; all ages believe they will endure forever. In reality, of course, states rise, fall, and compete with one another along the way. And how they do so determines the world’s fate.

Now as ever, great-power politics will drive events, and international rivalries will be decided by the relative capacities of the competitors—their material and human capital and their ability to govern themselves and their foreign affairs effectively. That means the course of the coming century will largely be determined by how China and the United States manage their power resources and their relationship.

Just as the free-trading United Kingdom allowed its rival, imperial Germany, to grow strong, so the free-trading United States has done the same with China. It was not dangerous for the liberal hegemon to let authoritarian competitors gain ground, the logic ran, because challengers would necessarily face a stark choice: remain authoritarian and stagnate or liberalize to continue to grow. Either way, the hegemon would be fine. It didn’t end well the first time and is looking questionable this time, too.

China will soon have an economy substantially larger than that of the United States. It has not democratized yet, nor will it anytime soon, because communism’s institutional setup does not allow for successful democratization. But authoritarianism has not meant stagnation, because Chinese institutions have managed to mix meritocracy and corruption, competence and incompetence, and they have somehow kept the country moving onward and upward. It might slow down soon, and even implode from its myriad contradictions. But analysts have been predicting exactly that for decades, and they’ve been consistently wrong so far.

Meanwhile, as China has been powering forward largely against expectations, the United States and other advanced democracies have fallen into domestic dysfunction, calling their future power into question. Their elites steered generations of globalization successfully enough to enable vast social mobility and human progress around the world, and they did quite well along the way. But as they gorged themselves at the trough, they overlooked the negative economic and social effects of all of this on citizens in their internal peripheries. That created an opening for demagogues to exploit, which they have done with a vengeance.

The Great Depression ended an earlier age of globalization, one that began in the late nineteenth century. Some thought the global financial crisis of 2008 might do the same for the current wave. The system survived, but the emergency measures implemented to save it—including bailouts for banks, but not for ordinary people—revealed and heightened its internal contradictions. And in the decade following, antiestablishment movements have grown like Topsy.

Today’s competition between China and the United States is a new twist on an old story. Until the onset of the nineteenth century, China was by far the world’s largest economy and most powerful country, with an estimated 40 percent share of global GDP. Then it entered a long decline, ravaged from without and within—around the same time the United States was born and began its long ascent to global dominance. The United States’ rise could not have occurred without China’s weakness, given how important U.S. dominance of Asia has been to American primacy. But nor could China’s revival have occurred without the United States’ provision of security and open markets.

So both countries have dominated the world, each has its own strengths and weaknesses, and for the first time, each confronts the other as a peer. It is too soon to tell how the innings ahead will play out. But we can be confident that the game will continue.

BEWARE OF WHAT YOU WISH FOR

To understand the world of tomorrow, look back to yesterday. In the 1970s, the United States and its allies were rich but disordered and stagnant; the Soviet Union had achieved military parity and was continuing to arm; China was convulsed by internal turmoil and poverty; India was poorer than China; Brazil, ruled by a military junta, had an economy barely larger than India’s; and South Africa was divided into homelands under a regime of institutionalized racism.

Four decades later, the Soviet Union has dissolved, and its successor states have embraced capitalism and private property. China, still politically communist, chose markets over planning and has grown to have the world’s second-largest economy. Once-destitute India now has the sixth-largest economy. Brazil became a democracy, experienced an economic takeoff, and now has the eighth-largest economy. South Africa overturned apartheid and became a multiracial democracy.

The direction of these changes was no accident. After World War II, the United States and its allies worked hard to create an open world with ever-freer trade and ever-greater global integration. Policymakers bet that if they built it, people would come. And they were right. Taken together, the results have been extraordinary. But those same policymakers and their descendants weren’t prepared for success when it happened.

Globalization creates wealth by enticing dynamic urban centers in richer countries to invest abroad rather than in hinterlands at home. This increases economic efficiency and absolute returns, more or less as conventional economic theory suggests. And it has reduced inequality at the global level, by enabling hundreds of millions of people to rise out of grinding poverty.

But at the same time, such redirected economic activity increases domestic inequality of opportunity and feelings of political betrayal inside rich countries. And for some of the losers, the injury is compounded by what feels like cultural insult, as their societies become less familiar...

Keep reading.

New Focus on Denaturalization

Well, this is new ---- and great!

At LAT, "Under Trump, the rare act of denaturalizing U.S. citizens on the rise":

Working a Saturday shift in the stuffy Immigration and Naturalization Service office in downtown Los Angeles in the 1970s, Carl Shusterman came across a rap sheet.

A man recently sworn in as a United States citizen had failed to disclose on his naturalization application that he had been arrested, but not convicted, in California on rape and theft charges.

Shusterman, then a naturalization attorney, embarked on a months-long effort to do something that rarely happened: strip someone of their American citizenship.

“We had to look it up to find out how to do this,” he said. “We’d never even heard of it.”

Forty years later, denaturalization — a complex process once primarily reserved for Nazi war criminals and human rights violators — is on the rise under the Trump administration.

A United States Citizenship and Immigration Services team in Los Angeles has been reviewing more than 2,500 naturalization files for possible denaturalization, focusing on identity fraud and willful misrepresentation. More than 100 cases have been referred to the Department of Justice for possible action.

“We’re receiving cases where [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] believes there is fraud, where our systems have identified that individuals used more than one identity, sometimes more than two or three identities,” said Dan Renaud, the associate director for field operations at the citizenship agency. “Those are the cases we’re pursuing.”

The move comes at a time when Trump and top advisors have made it clear that they want to dramatically reduce immigration, both illegal and legal.

The administration granted fewer visas and accepted fewer refugees in 2017 than in previous years.

Recently, the federal government moved to block victims of gang violence and domestic abuse from claiming asylum. White House senior advisor Stephen Miller — an immigration hawk — is pushing a policy that could make it more difficult for those who have received public benefits, including Obamacare, to become citizens or green card holders, according to multiple news outlets.

Shusterman, now a private immigration attorney in L.A., said he’s concerned denaturalization could be used as another tool to achieve the president’s goals.

“I think they’ll … find people with very minor transgressions,” he said, “and they’ll take away their citizenship.”

Dozens of U.S. mayors, including L.A.’s Eric Garcetti, signed a letter sent to the citizenship agency’s director in late July, criticizing a backlog in naturalization applications and the agency’s commitment of resources to “stripping citizenship from naturalized Americans.”

“The new measure to investigate thousands of cases from almost 30 years ago, under the pretext of the incredibly minimal problem of fraud in citizenship applications, instead of managing resources in a manner that processes the backlogs before them, suggests that the agency is more interested in following an aggressive political agenda rather than its own mission,” the letter stated.

But Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports tighter controls, said “denaturalization, like deportation, is an essential tool to use against those who break the rules.”

“It’s for people who are fraudsters, liars,” he said. “We’ve been lax about this for a long time, and this unit that’s been developed is really just a question of taking the law seriously.”

From 2009 to 2016, an average of 16 civil denaturalization cases were filed each year, Department of Justice data show. Last year, more than 25 cases were filed. Through mid-July of this year, the Justice Department has filed 20 more.

Separately, ICE has a pending budget request for $207.6 million to hire 300 agents to help root out citizenship fraud, as well as to “complement work site enforcement, visa overstay investigations, forensic document examination, outreach programs and other activities,” according to the agency...

More.

At Waverley Station

Here's something nice to start out today, as the regular news is so awful.

Seen on Twitter:

This just now at Waverley Station. pic.twitter.com/qyc9xxo5yC

— Richard Coles (@RevRichardColes) August 13, 2018

Progressives Outraged at Laura Ingraham's Opening Segment Slamming Left's Program to Remake America (VIDEO)

Leftists are currently escalating their war on America, right now with a heightened attack on conservative media, everything from the reprehensible Alex Jones to the mainstream conservative views at Fox News. Laura Ingraham really hit a nerve with her opening monologue Wednesday night on the left's malevolent efforts to remake America in the communist image.

And they're pulling out the big guns. Memeorandum has been covered with outrageous headlines attacking Ms. Laura for her alleged "racism." See, "Laura Ingraham's Anti-Immigrant Rant Was So Racist It Was Endorsed by Ex-KKK Leader David Duke" (the Daily Beast), "White anxiety finds a home at Fox News" (CNN), "Ingraham: 'America We Know and Love Doesn't Exist Anymore' in Some Places Because of ‘Massive Demographic Changes’" (Mediaite), and "Laura Ingraham Doesn't Love Her Country Anymore" (the Atlantic).

She responded with a follow up to her Wednesday opening last night, reiterating her main points and smacking down the idiot race-mongering progs. See, "My commentary was about keeping America safe."

And here's the full video from Wednesday:

Samantha Hoopes' New Sexy Poses (VIDEO)

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

Iggy Azalea Twerking

This is cray.

At Billboard, "Iggy Azalea Twerks the Night Away at Miami Yacht Party: Watch."

And Drunken Stepfather, "IGGY AZALEA SLUTTY ASS SHAKE IN THONG FOR INSTAGRAM."

Spending time in miami is always fun & nostalgic.

— IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) August 7, 2018

BONUS: "Iggy Azalea flaunts her enviable hourglass physique in clinging green maxi dress."

Ana Braga

At Taxi Driver, "Ana Braga on the Street."

The New Corporate Censorship

Alex Jones got the boot from four major platforms on Monday. Here's Laura Ingraham's take:

Britain's Labour Party Pushing for Second Brexit

If a second referendum becomes reality it'll signify the death of meaningful democracy in Britain. I mean, the people voted. Normally, in democracies, the losers don't get a do-over, but we're talking about the radical left, and look how well the Democrats have handled 2016 for a reminder.

At Bloomberg:

Pressure is building on Britain's Labour Party to back a second Brexit referendum https://t.co/kQdmbrCHX3 pic.twitter.com/wYyI0hj5dK

— Bloomberg (@business) August 8, 2018

The G.O.P.'s Bad Night

I'm not doing much election analysis these days, so check in with "the man," Sean Trende, at RCP:

My take on last night's elections: bad, bad, bad for the GOP.https://t.co/vg6MmICF5f

— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) August 8, 2018

Peter Høeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow

At Amazon, Peter Høeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow.

Kate Upton in New Campaign for Yamamay Swimwear

At London's Daily Mail, "Kate Upton looks sensational in new bikini photoshoot for Yamamay swimwear campaign."

Kate Upton looks sensational in new bikini photoshoot for Yamamay swimwear campaign https://t.co/YyeRRkOxQs

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) April 20, 2018