Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room

At Amazon, Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room: A Novel.

Abby Geni, The Wildlands

At Amazon, Abby Geni, The Wildlands: Novel.

Sally D. Reed, NEA: Propaganda Front

*BUMPED.*

Sally D. Reed, NEA: Propaganda Front of the Radical Left.

An oldie but goodie! Click on the used copies for more.

Kate Upton, Alexis Ren, Bianca Balti, Georgia Gibbs, Sailor Brinkley Cook, and Myla Dalbesio Have Fun in Aruba (VIDEO)

Lovelies!

Australian Fashion Model Alicia Davis

At Drunken Stepfather, "ALICIA DAVIS RUGGED HIPSTER PHOTOSHOOT OF THE DAY."

A Stinging Defeat for President Trump

Actually, I'm glad the government reopened. I just wish it had been the Democrats who caved.

This feels like a real turning point in Trump's presidency, mostly it's really the one time I think he's seriously hurt politically. Democrats were gloating, as I would have been too, given both the stakes and polarization. But more importantly, Trump's capitulation, especially after the longest shutdown, hurt him with the base --- yes, even folks who've been die-hard Trump supporters were turned off by the long impasse.

If there's no deal on this supposed set of congressional conference negotiations, Trump will either deploy the Army Corps of Engineers or blow off any hopes of reelection.

We'll see.

At NYT, "For a President Consumed With Winning, a Stinging Defeat":

After the longest government shutdown in history, Trump surrendered with nothing concrete (or steel) to show for the battle, taking essentially the same deal that was on the table in December that he originally rejected, touching off a 35-day impasse. https://t.co/9LfBpXd1Pq

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) January 26, 2019

And now go live to Ann Coulter to get her remarks on Trump caving on the wall. Ann? pic.twitter.com/VhuxgyNwuK

— Dana Goldberg (@DGComedy) January 25, 2019

WASHINGTON — President Trump famously declared that in his administration the nation would become tired of all the winning. So on Friday he tried a little losing.

After the longest government shutdown in history, Mr. Trump surrendered with nothing concrete (or steel) to show for the battle, taking essentially the same deal that was on the table in December that he originally rejected, touching off a 35-day impasse.

With Senator Mitch McConnell on the telephone, rank-and-file Republicans in revolt and televisions in the White House showing air traffic slowing in the Northeast because of the shutdown, Mr. Trump bowed to the inevitable and agreed to reopen the government until Feb. 15 without the money for his border wall that he had demanded.

For a president who believes in zero-sum politics and considers compromise a sign of weakness, it was a bruising setback, a retreat that underscored the limits of his ability to bull his way through the opposition in this new era of divided government. As it turned out, the art of the deal at this stage of Mr. Trump’s presidency requires a different approach and the question is whether he can adjust.

“By any measure, it was an unequivocal loss,” said Patrick J. Griffin, who was the White House legislative director for President Bill Clinton during the government shutdowns of the 1990s. “No interpretation is needed. No wall and probably lost votes rather than gain or strengthen his base.”

The next three weeks will test whether Mr. Trump can rebound as he faces a new deadline to come up with an agreement. If he can find common ground with Democrats led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer while making progress on his wall, he may yet emerge from this searing ordeal claiming a political victory.

If not, however, he may discover his disgruntled fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill less willing to go along with a renewed government shutdown, forcing him to decide whether to provoke a constitutional clash by declaring a national emergency to bypass Congress altogether and build the wall without legislative approval.

White House officials argue that there are more moderate House Democrats who are willing to support a wall even though Ms. Pelosi has called the project “immoral” and opposed spending even a single dollar on it. In the days to come, they hope to either peel off those Democrats and force Ms. Pelosi to meet somewhere in the middle or to drive a wedge among Democrats highlighting their own divisions.

“Moving forward for the next three weeks, have the Democrats boxed themselves into a corner with zero for wall funding that makes them look weak on border security?” asked Marc Short, who was Mr. Trump’s White House legislative director earlier in his presidency. “Will the White House be able to work around Pelosi to gain enough Democrat support for some wall funding?”

After watching Ms. Pelosi this week disinvite Mr. Trump from delivering the State of the Union address while the government remained closed, Mr. McConnell concluded that she would never cave and decided to come off the sidelines to try to end the standoff. He scheduled votes for Thursday on two plans to end the stalemate, one on Mr. Trump’s terms and another Democratic version, mainly to demonstrate to the president that he did not have enough support to prevail.

After both bills failed to muster the 60 votes required for passage on Thursday, Mr. Trump was fed up and ready to get it over with, according to advisers. He was eager to get the dispute resolved at least temporarily so he could deliver his State of the Union address. He told Vice President Mike Pence and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, to give him options.

They came back with four ways to reopen the government: a three-week spending bill that included a prorated portion of money as a down payment on the border wall pending further negotiations; a “clean” short-term spending bill that included no such money; a clean short-term bill with a bipartisan House-Senate conference committee to negotiate border security; or a declaration of national emergency that Mr. Trump would use to move money on his own while resuming government operations for the rest of the fiscal year...

Still more.

Jean M. Twenge, iGen

At Amazon, Jean M. Twenge, iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy – and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood – and What That Means for the Rest of Us.

Jacob Silverman, Terms of Service

At Amazon, Jacob Silverman, Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection.

Russell James, Angels

At Amzon, Russell James, Angels.

'Angels' by Russell James is a stunning 400-plus page collection of nude beauties.https://t.co/Ve2XWSbr6X

— Maxim (@MaximMag) January 27, 2019

Fixing Facebook

I doubt it can be fixed, but this is interesting.

From Time's cover last week:

TIME’s new cover: 'I mentored Mark Zuckerberg. I loved Facebook. But I can't stay silent about what's happening,' writes @Moonalice Roger McNamee! Thank you for leading us into the future with @tristanharris. https://t.co/sBpjXhJzoo pic.twitter.com/8evLMe1fE2

— Marc Benioff (@Benioff) January 20, 2019

Aly Raisman's Inner Wonder Woman (VIDEO)

She's not flat, heh.

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

Traffic Camera on Stop Sign in La Jolla (VIDEO)

About 15 years ago I was pulled over by a highway patrolman after I picked my kid up from daycare. The daycare site was located in Fountain Valley, in a residential neighborhood, way out of the way of commuter traffic or what not. I rolled the stop sign nearby, making a right turn heading back towards Magnolia Street and the 405 freeway. As I reluctantly signed the ticket I asked the cop if he didn't have better things to do than ticket a generally law-abiding citizen picking up his preschooler from daycare? How about all the folks on the freeway nearby driving in excess of 80 mph? He said he was under a lot of pressure. (*Shrug.*)

Anyway, I stop more carefully at stop signs these days --- it's been 15 years since that ticket at least --- but I notice most other drivers do not. Cops maybe should station themselves at stop signs, like the one where I got busted, to better police these infractions. Sometimes drivers show no courtesy to pedestrians or oncoming traffic. It's actually pretty dangerous. I'm getting old though, even in my Dodge Challenger, heh.

At ABC News 10 San Diego:

Rachel Riley's Powerful Speech to the Holocaust Education Trust Reception (VIDEO)

From David Bernstein, at Instapundit, "WHO WOULD HAVE PREDICTED IN 1945 THAT THE UK’S LABOUR PARTY WOULD BE THE CLOSEST IDEOLOGICAL DESCENDANT OF THE NAZIS IN THE WEST? British t.v. presenter Rachel Riley describes the anti-Semitic abuse she’s encountered since publicly criticizing rampant Jew-hatred in Labour."

Video at the link above.

Also at the Jewish Chronicle, "I thought the horror of the Shoah would mean no more antisemitism. I was wrong: Read Rachel Riley's powerful speech to the Holocaust Education Trust reception in Westminster."

Michelle Malkin Blasts Leftist Media's Coverage of #CovingtonCatholic Students (VIDEO)

She'a always hard-hitting.

At Fox News:

Out in Paper: Stephen Kotkin, Stalin

I saw the paperback copy when I was out shopping around Christmas time, and this book is massive!

At Amazon, now in paperback, Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941.

Alessandra Ambrosio on Twitter

She hasn't posted much this year.

But see Drunken Stepfather, "Alessandra Ambrosio Nipple of the Day."

Blue serenity 🌅 #foreveronvacation pic.twitter.com/6IDldqxAqC

— Alessandra Ambrosio (@AngelAlessandra) December 20, 2018

Just breathe.. 🕊 pic.twitter.com/unTRsVxPso

— Alessandra Ambrosio (@AngelAlessandra) December 17, 2018

Ocean blues #foreveronvacation pic.twitter.com/XSHp4THqtw

— Alessandra Ambrosio (@AngelAlessandra) December 3, 2018

Megan McArdle Posts Truly Amazing Twitter Thread on the #CovingtonCatholic Controversy

I have not read her WaPo op-ed, but this Twitter thread is genuinely great.

I think it's the longest sustained political thread I've ever read, and she never loses the flow or rhythm. This is a cool thing about Twitter, and that's saying a lot.

Okay guys, new year, new tweet storms. It's time to talk Covington Catholic. https://t.co/mQEDwEFkPT

Pull up a chair. I think we're going to be here a while.

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) January 23, 2019

The Dude Revives!

Well, I was hoping for a sequel, lol.

It might be a Super Bowl commercial, but still, this could be a real salve for a society's dysfunction.

The Dude abides! ‘The Big Lebowski's' Jeff Bridges teases his return as The Dude in a new video https://t.co/l0XNYiHb5q pic.twitter.com/oaQ4hWBNFk

— NME (@NME) January 24, 2019

Can’t be living in the past, man. Stay tuned. pic.twitter.com/zL2CLYhGAM

— Jeff Bridges (@TheJeffBridges) January 24, 2019

What Conservatives Get Wrong About Labor Markets

I've blogged Oren Cass's new book, The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America.

I haven't read it yet, so I can't say if it's good or bad, but James K. Galbraith's got a review up at Foreign Affairs.

Caveat Emptor.

See, "The Trouble With the “Working Hypothesis”":

“In calling attention to the centrality and troubles of working people, Cass has a point. Where he goes wrong is in diagnosis, and therefore cure.”https://t.co/cSWUMGL8rs

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) January 20, 2019

Oren Cass, domestic issues director for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and a writer for National Review and other journals, has produced a conservative's treatise on the social and economic ills of America, and what might be done to repair them. The Once and Future Worker, published in November, holds that a social philosophy based on consumption, equality, the welfare state and quality of life achieved through regulation—the essential vision of a liberal century from the Roosevelts through Richard Nixon—should be scrapped for more solid values: work, family, country, one might say. Above all, Cass believes in a society and culture rooted in the pride and pleasures of productive labor. “[The] argument at its most basic," he writes, "is that work matters. More specifically, [the book] offers what I will call the Working Hypothesis: that a labor market in which workers can support strong families and communities is the central determinant of long term prosperity.”

Thus the labor market, in Cass’s view, is the proper medium for delivering a work-friendly world. And the trouble comes when politicians, especially Democrats, “trample” on the market. The Democrats’ “actual agenda,” according to Cass,

centers on the interests advanced by its coalition of labor unions, environmentalists and identity groups. Its policies rely on an expectation that government mandates and programs will deliver what the market does not. This agenda inserts countless regulatory wedges that aim to improve the conditions of employment but in the process raise its cost, driving apart the players that the market is attempting to connect. Better market outcomes require better market conditions. Government cannot command that workers be more valuable or employment relationships be more attractive, but by trying, it can bring about the reverse. The economic landscape is pocked with the resulting craters.

ABANDONING THE WORKER

The vision of a labor market offered by Cass is Deist; it is the idea of the clockmaker, of intelligent design. Its Western roots lie in pre-revolutionary France, which borrowed the theme from classical China and Confucius. In the English language, it owes much to that great figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, Adam Smith. Supply and demand work like Yin and Yang: natural law and celestial harmony prevail in the equilibrium between two fixed and immutable, separate yet inseparable social forces—in this case the employer and the employed, the capitalist and the worker. The latter seeks a job; the former offers one. A bargain is struck at a given wage, when the employer decides that the worker is worth his keep, and the worker decides the wage is worth the leisure foregone. Work and production follow. The “abandonment of the worker” lamented by Cass began when the government intruded in the labor market by, among other things, creating social insurance, supporting unions, and introducing regulations to protect the environment.

Thus Cass criticizes environmental laws, going all the way back to the Clean Air Act of 1970, for killing jobs. He attacks “adversarial” unions and proposes that they be transformed into non-confrontational “co-ops” concerned with how to “optimize workplace conditions.” He finds fault with the U.S. educational system for promising an equal chance for all, and suggests that it should embrace tracking and begin funneling students deemed less able into vocational training at an early age. He supports the exclusion, to a degree, of foreign workers and products. He promotes the big idea of a wage subsidy to persuade employers to take on low-productivity workers whom they might otherwise shun. And he favors decentralizing welfare policies to the states in order to promote experiments, diversity, and local measures appropriate to local needs.

THE NEW JIM CROW

Each of these proposals builds on the mental model of a labor market, in which it is the interaction of supply and demand that set wages and determine levels of employment. Clean air and water (and workplace and product safety) regulations raise costs to business, forcing them to move offshore or close down. Therefore, to cite two examples offered by Cass, standards for particulates or mercury should be rolled back. Unions have already achieved what their members reasonably need, and now only serve to prevent the labor market from reaching its natural balance. The result is wages that are too high and jobs that are too few. And employers should be subsidized to create jobs on the principle that if labor is cheaper, they will hire more of it rather than invest in capital improvements.

These measures would supposedly increase employment. But even if one accepts that premise, one might first ask, “Does America really need more work?” Americans have the highest labor-force participation in the industrial West. They work the longest hours and enjoy the shortest vacations. The United States is, notoriously, a working country. And it has a pretty good record on unemployment too, with by far the fastest recovery to near-full employment from the Great Financial Crisis of any major economy.

Keep reading.

President Trump Recognizes Venezuelan Oppostion Leader

The scale of the protests is absolutely stunning.

Even veteran die-hard Trump-haters are praising him for backing the opposition leader in Venezuela, including former Mexican President Vicente Fox.

At the Los Angeles Times, "As protesters fill streets of Venezuela, Trump recognizes opposition leader as rightful president":

.@AOC look at brave Venezuelans rising up against socialism!! AMERICAN Freedom lovers will RISE up against YOU & your bad ideas too! Your mentor @SenSanders SAID American Dream could be found in Venezuela, not USA. Redistribution & socialism never works. #FreeEnterprise #BeLIBRE pic.twitter.com/spEO9YYDe7

— Rachel Campos-Duffy (@RCamposDuffy) January 23, 2019

As masses of Venezuelans turned out to protest their government, the Trump administration took the unusual and provocative step Wednesday of recognizing the leader of Venezuela’s political opposition as the country's legitimate president.

In Caracas, the leader, a young and charismatic engineer named Juan Guaido, declared he was assuming the mantle of acting president — and braced for reaction from President Nicolas Maduro and his security forces.

And react he did: Maduro announced he was breaking diplomatic ties, already strained, with Washington and giving U.S. personnel 72 hours to abandon the country. But Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo said late Wednesday that the U.S had no plans to withdraw personnel.

“Anyone can declare himself president, but it’s the Venezuelan people who elect him, not the gringo government,” Maduro declared to his supporters rallying outside the presidential palace. He swiftly branded Guaido a “puppet” of U.S. “imperialism.”

The dramatic escalation came as the Trump administration seeks ways to ramp up pressure on Maduro’s socialist government, which it accuses of widespread human rights abuse, drug trafficking and a host of other crimes. Already, Washington has blacklisted 70 senior Venezuelan officials and entities and put sanctions on some of its export industries.

Venezuela has teetered on the verge of collapse for some time, mired in social and economic chaos that has depleted supplies of food and medicine and sent millions of Venezuelans fleeing as refugees. Roughly 80% of the people here now live in poverty.

In a statement, President Trump said he was recognizing Guaido as the interim president of Venezuela because he is the head of “the only legitimate branch of government duly elected by the Venezuelan people,” a reference to the country’s National Assembly, Venezuela's legislative body that Maduro has sidelined and replaced with his own legislature stacked with his supporters.

The sequence of events represented a rare and potentially dangerous dive into international diplomacy unusual for this administration. It delivered a diplomatic blow to Maduro, but a much-needed boost to the long-suffering, largely ineffective opposition movement.

The movement was in need of new energy after Maduro’s violent suppression in 2017 of nationwide marches that left protesters dispirited and leaderless. An estimated 165 people died, 15,000 were injured and at least 4,800 arrested.

Wednesday’s march, which occurred on the anniversary of the 1958 overthrow of dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez, was seen as a test of Guaido’s strength of leadership and ability to summon the masses to the street, a test he seems to have passed.

“Today, on Jan. 23, in my status as National Assembly president before all powerful God, and my colleagues, I swear to formally assume the duties of national executive to achieve the end of usurpation, [form] a transitional government and [hold] free elections,” Guaido told tens of thousands of Venezuelans who crowded Caracas’ downtown streets.

“I am not afraid, [rather] I fear for the people who are [living in] bad times,” Guaido proclaimed...

More.