Friday, August 24, 2018
Can Democrats Reclaim Patriotism?
No. Next question?
But see the New York Times, FWIW, "Reclaiming Patriotism for the Left":
As long as Democrats (who are not "centrist") champion and glamorize their most ardent radical factions and agendas, rejection of civil nationalism will remain at the center of their program.
It's a program of self-hatred.
But keep reading.
But see the New York Times, FWIW, "Reclaiming Patriotism for the Left":
When the American left abandons any vision of social patriotism because of the racist ugliness it has come to symbolize, it concedes the American story to the voices of exclusion and avarice https://t.co/5woMt6u0t4
— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) August 21, 2018
"I sometimes get pushback on my flag display and I tire of pointing out that the rightwing does not own the flag - it belongs to all of us - and we should not surrender it to them," comments JMartin on the Op-Ed, "Reclaiming Patriotism for the Left." https://t.co/FYv2VDUEd6 pic.twitter.com/nFUVJKuxWW
— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) August 22, 2018
The resurgence of blood-and-soil nationalism around the world seems to prove that appeals to nationhood are too racist, too tribal and too dangerous to be of value. Yet surrendering patriotism to champions of the ethno-state abdicates the fight for the soul and meaning of the American project.This "project" will fail.
The American left, from the center of the Democratic Party to its insurgent challengers, needs a dose of national vision. One of the core lessons of Trumpian politics is that Americans are starved for a meaningful politics of what it means to be American. Getting rid of the vainglorious Trump administration is only a partial solution. The causes of his rise remain.
Call what is needed a reinvigoration of “civic nationalism” or “civic republicanism” (a reference to the ancient political ideal, not the party). This is a revival of the “bond of common faith,” the “bond of common goal,” as Robert Kennedy once put it, which needs constructive outlets if what is left of American democracy is to survive.
In recent decades, progressive forces in the United States have split between two positions, both of which surrender a robust and hopeful sense of national citizenship. On one track can be found a cosmopolitan economic elite that embrace a multicultural world order shaped largely by the politics of corporate globalization. On the other track are radical critics of the racism and imperialism of the American state who often support local community and transnational solidarity but maintain a deep cynicism, even despair, about the American project. Both groups have abdicated the national story to their shared political enemies. What remains is a fervent hybrid of nationalism and anti-statism, an echo of the rebel yell.
The American past, according to the historian Gary Gerstle in his book “American Crucible,” can be understood as a struggle between “two powerful and contradictory ideals” — a civic and racialized national vision. Yet the dissolution of a progressive civic dimension has left us with an unchallenged ethno-racial nationalism.
Globalization has further complicated the problem. In a dizzying world of oppressive economic and political inequality, global trade, immigration and technological disruption, voters seek grounding not in technocratic detail but in place, in time, in tradition and, above all, in the shared fate, history and meaning of the nation...
As long as Democrats (who are not "centrist") champion and glamorize their most ardent radical factions and agendas, rejection of civil nationalism will remain at the center of their program.
It's a program of self-hatred.
But keep reading.
California's 50th District Now Competitive After Duncan Hunter Indictment?
I don't know?
You'd have to have a pretty mainstream Democrat running, and Democrats aren't mainstream, so there's that.
But see LAT, "Rep. Duncan Hunter's indictment opens door for Democrats in Trump country":
You'd have to have a pretty mainstream Democrat running, and Democrats aren't mainstream, so there's that.
But see LAT, "Rep. Duncan Hunter's indictment opens door for Democrats in Trump country":
Rep. Duncan Hunter's indictment opens door for Democrats in Trump country https://t.co/wZjS6l3XZB pic.twitter.com/z1zhaIg90Z— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) August 23, 2018
Republican Dale Weidenthaler shook his head in disgust Wednesday when the conversation turned to Rep. Duncan Hunter.More.
The retired police officer has long distrusted the GOP congressman but voted for him anyway. Now that Hunter has been indicted on campaign corruption charges, Weidenthaler, 61, expects to skip the House race rather than vote for his Democratic rival.
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and there’s just too much smoke,” said Weidenthaler, who was sipping a Red Bull on a morning visit to a Temecula grocery store.
The Alpine congressman’s indictment Tuesday has suddenly turned this safe Republican House seat into a competitive race in a midterm election that was already looking grim for the GOP.
It threatens to depress Republican turnout in this largely rural district in San Diego and Riverside counties. The party now has to spend resources on a contest that GOP leaders would have normally ignored.
With Democrats across the nation already portraying President Trump’s Republican Party as a swamp of corruption, the charges against Hunter came the same day that Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felonies and his onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted of bank fraud and other crimes...
Thursday, August 23, 2018
Adam Housley, Los Angeles-Based Reporter for Fox News, Quits Network Amid Objections to 'Talking-Head Panels' Focusing More and More on President Trump
I still love Fox News. I just don't watch it that much any more, for these very reasons.
At Politico, "Second Fox News reporter leaves amid objections to network: In the Trump era, hard reporting is being crowded out by opinionated panels, current and former staffers say":
At Politico, "Second Fox News reporter leaves amid objections to network: In the Trump era, hard reporting is being crowded out by opinionated panels, current and former staffers say":
"objections to the Trump-era Fox News are widely shared within the network’s reporting corps, according to current and former employees of the network.” https://t.co/WHFgXzFD0i— Jon Passantino (@passantino) August 24, 2018
Another on-air reporter is leaving Fox News over frustrations with the direction and tone of the network, the second in the last three weeks to defect for those reasons.Still more.
Adam Housley, a Los Angeles-based reporter who joined Fox in 2001, felt there was diminished opportunity at the network for reporters and disapproved of tenor of its on-air discussion, according to two former Fox News employees with knowledge of his situation.
Housley believed that as the network’s focus on Trump has grown — and the number of talking-head panels during news shows proliferated — it had become difficult to get hard reporting on air, according to one of those former employees.
“He’s not doing the type of journalism he wants to be doing,” the former employee said. “And he is unhappy with the tone of the conversation of the channel.”
Housley’s objections to the Trump-era Fox News are widely shared within the network’s reporting corps, according to current and former employees of the network...
Kate Upton's Struggles (VIDEO)
Yes, we should all struggle like Kate Upton, lol.
At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:
At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:
American Peter Beinart Detained for Questioning at Ben-Gurion Airport Upon Entering Israel
This was a news story a few weeks back.
But Carolyn Glick's putting the kibosh on this self-serving anti-Israel promotion.
See, "Peter Beinart’s latest publicity stunt":
BONUS: Watch, at i24NEWS, "Peter Beinart on His Detainment at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport: Left-wing Jewish American writer Peter Beinart discusses his interrogation by the Shin Bet security services, the latest in a series of such incidents involving leftist personalities, with i24NEWS' Tracy Alexander."
But Carolyn Glick's putting the kibosh on this self-serving anti-Israel promotion.
See, "Peter Beinart’s latest publicity stunt":
There has been a lot of hand-wringing in official Israel over the brief questioning of anti-Israel author Peter Beinart at Ben-Gurion Airport this week. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement on the episode calling it “an administrative mistake.”Keep reading.
Netanyahu added, “Israel is an open society which welcomes all – critics and supporters alike.”
Deputy Minister for Public Diplomacy Michael Oren said Beinart’s questioning is grounds “for an immediate examination of all policy towards the entry of political activists.”
Speaking to Israel National News, Oren said, “Detaining American Jewish reporter Peter Beinart is an example of how acting unwisely causes both strategic and PR damage.
“Beinart is a top-rate American media person. Most of his opinions about Israel disgust me, but he does not support BDS, and in fact defines himself as a Zionist.”
Oren’s position is problematic first and foremost because it is factually wrong.
Beinart is a major supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Indeed, he is a central figure in the movement. This mere fact renders Beinart’s protestations of Zionism disingenuous, to put it mildly.
In 2012, Beinart published an oped in The New York Times calling for the boycott, divestment and sanction of all Israeli goods produced by Israeli Jews in Judea and Samaria.
His crass insensitivity towards Israeli Jews in Judea and Samaria was striking: “If moderate settlers resent being lumped in with their more ideologically driven counterparts deep in occupied territory, they should agitate for a two-state solution that would make possible their incorporation into democratic Israel. Or they should move.”
Beinart described the boycott as part of an overall political warfare strategy that American Jews should undertake against Israel and its American supporters.
“We should lobby to exclude settler-produced goods from America’s free-trade deal with Israel,” Beinart said. “We should push to end Internal Revenue Service policies that allow Americans to make tax-deductible gifts to settler charities. Every time an American newspaper calls Israel a democracy, we should urge it to include the caveat: only within the green line.”
Even Beinart’s most fervent admirers viewed his call for BDS against Jewish products in Judea and Samaria as a transparent means to facilitate BDS against Israel as a whole.
Jane Eisner, editor of the far-left The Forward newspaper wrote, the “optics of Beinart’s proposal” are “dangerous,” because they provide “implicit support for the broader BDS movement.”
But as has since become clear, that was his goal.
Beinart devotes great energy to mainstreaming anti-Israel activists who reject Israel’s right to exist...
BONUS: Watch, at i24NEWS, "Peter Beinart on His Detainment at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport: Left-wing Jewish American writer Peter Beinart discusses his interrogation by the Shin Bet security services, the latest in a series of such incidents involving leftist personalities, with i24NEWS' Tracy Alexander."
Some Random Woman on Reddit
At Phun, "Reddit User Lucie Fair":
BONUS: "JEWEL’S GOT THEM TITTIES ON OF THE DAY."
Not much to say here...she's an amateur that posts hot pictures of herself on Reddit. Here are some of her shots!Hat Tip: Drunken Stepfather, "MORNING HANGOVER DUMP OF THE DAY."
BONUS: "JEWEL’S GOT THEM TITTIES ON OF THE DAY."
Trump's Supporters Don't Care About Cohen and Manafort Convictions
From Salena Zito, at the New York Post:
Right now the value of Trump to the Trump voter is he is all that stands between them and handing the keys to Washington back over to the people inside Washington. That’s it. He’s their only option. You’ve got to pick the insiders or him. https://t.co/uTuDi7HXcp
— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) August 23, 2018
Laura Ingraham, Billionaire at the Barricades
*BUMPED.*
At Amazon, Laura Ingraham, Billionaire at the Barricades: The Populist Revolution from Reagan to Trump.
At Amazon, Laura Ingraham, Billionaire at the Barricades: The Populist Revolution from Reagan to Trump.
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
There are dozens and dozens of different published editions of Herman Melville's Moby Dick.
Someone's selling this Signet version I have for $45.69.
Don't buy that one, unless you're a hard-up collector, lol.
Buy this one, the recent Signet version, for just under $6.00.
And thanks for your support! As you know, I've been having a blast with book blogging (and book reading, of course) over this last year or two. It's what keeps me sane, heh.
Shop at this Amazon link for more. And thanks again!
Someone's selling this Signet version I have for $45.69.
Don't buy that one, unless you're a hard-up collector, lol.
Buy this one, the recent Signet version, for just under $6.00.
And thanks for your support! As you know, I've been having a blast with book blogging (and book reading, of course) over this last year or two. It's what keeps me sane, heh.
Shop at this Amazon link for more. And thanks again!
Megan Parry's Fabulous Thursday Forecast
I was down at the beach yesterday and it was all-star weather. Just perfect. People travel around the world to such beautiful locations. Laguna Beach? It's paradise.
In any case, here's the lovely Ms. Megan, for ABC 10 News San Diego:
In any case, here's the lovely Ms. Megan, for ABC 10 News San Diego:
Madison Beer Selfies
At Popoholic, "Madison Beer Selfies Her Ginormous Braless Cleavage Like Never Before!"
And at Taxi Driver, "Madison Beer Cleavage & Cameltoe."
And at Taxi Driver, "Madison Beer Cleavage & Cameltoe."
Commentator Paris Dennard 'Suspended' All of a Sudden (After Vigorously Defending President Trump) as Leftist CNN Hacks Dredge Up Old Sexual Assault Allegations (VIDEO)
I don't know Paris Dennard. I don't watch much cable television anymore, but it sure seems a convenient coincident that he's being suspended from CNN after making hack Philip Mudd literally lose his mind on live TV in a profanity-laced meltdown.
At the Hollywood Reporter, "CNN Suspends Contributor Paris Dennard Following Sexual Misconduct Report."
And watch the meltdown, which received wide coverage. (For example, at the Washington Examiner, "Trump says ex-CIA, FBI official Philip Mudd 'is in no mental condition' to have security clearance.")
At the Hollywood Reporter, "CNN Suspends Contributor Paris Dennard Following Sexual Misconduct Report."
And watch the meltdown, which received wide coverage. (For example, at the Washington Examiner, "Trump says ex-CIA, FBI official Philip Mudd 'is in no mental condition' to have security clearance.")
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
Today's Shopping
At Amazon, Today's Deals. New deals. Every day. Shop our Deal of the Day, Lightning Deals and more daily deals and limited-time sales.
And especially, Leather Messenger Laptop Briefcase Cross-body Bag by Aaron Leather.
Here, Logitech MK735 Wireless Keyboard and Mouse Combo - MK710 Keyboard and Wireless Mouse M510.
Also, Buck Knives 110 Famous Folding Hunter Knife with Genuine Leather Sheath - TOP SELLER.
More here, Military Outdoor Clothing Never Issued U.S. Military Canteen.
Also, CLIF Fruit Smoothie Filled - Organic Energy Bar - 3-Flavor Variety Pack - 1.76 Ounce Protein Snack Bar, 12 Count.
Plus, Nestlé Pure Life Bottled Purified Water, 16.9 oz. Bottles, 24/Case.
Still more, Koffee Kult Dark Roast Coffee Beans - Highest Quality Gourmet - Whole Bean Coffee - Fresh Roasted Coffee Beans, 32oz.
BONUS: John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces.
And especially, Leather Messenger Laptop Briefcase Cross-body Bag by Aaron Leather.
Here, Logitech MK735 Wireless Keyboard and Mouse Combo - MK710 Keyboard and Wireless Mouse M510.
Also, Buck Knives 110 Famous Folding Hunter Knife with Genuine Leather Sheath - TOP SELLER.
More here, Military Outdoor Clothing Never Issued U.S. Military Canteen.
Also, CLIF Fruit Smoothie Filled - Organic Energy Bar - 3-Flavor Variety Pack - 1.76 Ounce Protein Snack Bar, 12 Count.
Plus, Nestlé Pure Life Bottled Purified Water, 16.9 oz. Bottles, 24/Case.
Still more, Koffee Kult Dark Roast Coffee Beans - Highest Quality Gourmet - Whole Bean Coffee - Fresh Roasted Coffee Beans, 32oz.
BONUS: John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces.
WaPo Bemoans 'Day Like Any Other' at Right-Wing News Outlets After Cohen and Manafort Convictions (VIDEO)
Hey, it's a good thing we have Fox News to put things in perspective. The Mollie Tibbetts murder, by an illegal alien who's been in the country for years, is a much bigger story, in my opinion. That one should implicate the Democrats in impeachable crimes. But here's the headline at WaPo, via Memeorandum, "In Trump's right-wing media universe, it was a day like any other."
And yes, let's listen to Sean Hannity's monologue. You know he's right:
And yes, let's listen to Sean Hannity's monologue. You know he's right:
Megan Parry's Wednesday Weather Forecast
Hey, it's been nice weather --- a little marine layer in the morning, blowing off by early afternoon, with temps in the mid-80s.
What's not to like?
Here's the lovely Ms. Megan:
What's not to like?
Here's the lovely Ms. Megan:
Manafort Verdict Says Nothing
Check Memeorandum for all the scandal-related news about the Trump administration.
It's over the top. Calls for impeachment are already ramping up, but this morning's headlines are as significant as folks may think.
See Byron York, at the Washington Examiner, "Manafort split verdict says nothing on Trump, Russia, and the 2016 election":
It's over the top. Calls for impeachment are already ramping up, but this morning's headlines are as significant as folks may think.
See Byron York, at the Washington Examiner, "Manafort split verdict says nothing on Trump, Russia, and the 2016 election":
Mueller did not allege any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign, and none were revealed at the trial.RTWT.
That's not to say the public did not learn anything from the Manafort trial. Indeed, if nothing else, outsiders got a glimpse into what Washington influence peddlers have gotten away with for decades. Manafort was convicted of shady dealing going back a long way. His behavior had been examined by the Obama Justice Department, which took no action against him. It was only because Manafort hooked up with Trump, and Trump then won the White House, and Democrats then pushed a Trump-Russia narrative to hobble the new president, and Trump then fired the director of the FBI -- only through all of those circumstances -- that Manafort got caught and his foreign money schemes exposed.
The importance of the financial crimes case against Manafort was never the financial crimes themselves. It was the prosecutors' hope that, by charging the hell out of the offenses alleged, by playing hardball with the defendant with a guns-drawn-at-dawn search-warrant raid, by jailing him over a debatable obstruction of justice charge that Manafort could be pressured into spilling what prosecutors apparently thought were a lot of beans about the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election.
The big question about that strategy, of course, was whether the beans really existed. Was there a deep, dark secret about Russia collusion, evidence to proved that it occurred, and did Manafort, and only Manafort, know it? If so, then Manafort could be the key to the case. If not, then Mueller could succeed in nailing Manafort's hide to the wall -- and sending a warning to Washington operators who accept huge foreign payments -- but not accomplish the actual goal of the Trump-Russia investigation...
Asia Argento and 17-Year-Old Boy in Bed in Sexual Encounter
She claimed Anthony Bourdain paid off the kid to make problems go away. There was no sexual relationship, according to her statement:
But TMZ's got the photos to prove that sex did happen. This Asia woman is hypocrite scum. Now I really feel bad for Anthony Bourdain. She broke his heart and then he killed himself. I don't think she was worth it, damn.
I just received this statement from @AsiaArgento in response to the NYT story published late Sunday evening. pic.twitter.com/jAOo7TAULX— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) August 21, 2018
But TMZ's got the photos to prove that sex did happen. This Asia woman is hypocrite scum. Now I really feel bad for Anthony Bourdain. She broke his heart and then he killed himself. I don't think she was worth it, damn.
Asia Argento and 17-Year-Old Boy in Bed in Sexual Encounter https://t.co/y6EeKOdPT7
— TMZ (@TMZ) August 22, 2018
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