Thomas E. Ricks, Making the Corps

At Amazon, Thomas E. Ricks, Making the Corps: 10th Anniversary Edition with a New Afterword by the Author.

Porsche is Trying to Reinvent Itself in the Wake of Germany's Diesel-Emissions Scandal

I don't love electric cars, but if any company could change my mind, it's Porsche. (Tesla's don't do it for me at all.)

At Der Spiegel, "Electric Dreams: Porsche's Quest to Make Eco-Friendly Sports Cars":

Porsche is trying to reinvent itself in the wake of Germany's diesel-emissions scandal by turning itself into an environmentally friendly sports-car company. It's a billion-euro bet with enormous possibilities -- and enormous risk. https://t.co/nJDT1YyiIH

— SPIEGEL ONLINE English (@SPIEGEL_English) February 27, 2019

The Porsche of the future is still so secret that it's not allowed off the company's premises without an elaborate disguise. Two fake exhaust pipes stick out the rear, while a green pollution badge adorns the windshield. It's all an act to mislead competitors. Under the hood, there's neither a combustion engine nor an injection system. Instead, there are two electric motors and a heavy battery.

So far, it's just a test vehicle inconspicuously parked in front of Porsche's development center in Weissach, near Stuttgart. Porsche, however, is planning to unveil its first electric car at the end of 2019, and revamp its brand from the ground up.

Even for the engineers responsible for its roll-out, the new e-model is a culture shock. Ever since the first sports car hit the pavement 70 years ago, the name Porsche has stood for flashy combustion engines that roar when drivers hit the gas. Poor emission values and high fuel consumption were practically part of the brand's DNA. But the company's new model, the Taycan, is emissions-free -- and it's as quiet as a toy car.

For Porsche, this means it's no longer competing with the likes of Ferrari, Maserati, BMW or Mercedes. It's now in a direct contest with Tesla, the pioneering electric-car company from California. "Our goal is to be a technological trailblazer," says Porsche CEO Oliver Blume.

The End of an Era

Blume's plans are more ambitious than those of other German automobile manufacturers. By 2025, he wants at least half of the cars Porsche sells to be electric. Five years later, according to the company's own forecasts, Porsche will hardly have any vehicles on its assembly line with conventional combustion engines.

In late 2018, the company's supervisory board resolved to outfit Porsche's best-selling car with an electric motor within the next few years. The new version of the Macan, a compact off-road vehicle, will soon be fully electric. For the petrol-powered model, there will be only an update. After that, the era of the gas-guzzler will gradually come to an end.

It's a billion-euro bet with enormous possibilities -- and enormous risk. If Blume's plan works out, Porsche could become an ecologically oriented sports-car company, a role model for the entire German automobile industry. It would be proof that the industry has learned its lesson after the diesel scandal -- in which Porsche's parent-company, the Volkswagen Group, was found to have tricked emissions tests to make its vehicles seem more environmentally friendly than they really were -- and that it has not entirely slept through the transition to electric mobility.

The problem, however, is that Porsche's offensive comes at a time of great uncertainty. Nobody knows whether the company will be able to sell enough of its new e-cars. The brand has many loyal fans with a penchant for combustion engines. Even one of Porsche's brand ambassadors, Walter Röhrl, an ex-rally driver, has said e-mobility is the "wrong track."

Porsche's Dirty Past

Meanwhile, demand in the world's two largest automotive markets, the United States and China, is slowing, and disputes are further weighing on business. If U.S. President Donald Trump makes good on his threats to impose punitive import tariffs on foreign cars, Porsche would be more adversely affected than other German manufacturers. The sports-car maker sells nearly a quarter of its vehicles in America, yet has none of its production facilities there. The result would be a sharp drop in profits.

Then there's the fact that Porsche, in its quest toward a clean future, is regularly confronted with its dirty past.

At the end of January, the carmaker filed self-indictments with Germany's Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) and the U.S. environmental authorities. The reason: Porsche's iconic 911 sports car was emitting more CO2 than the company had previously disclosed. And it wasn't just older models: its 2016 and 2017 models were affected as well. The authorities are now investigating whether Porsche's failure to disclose was a mere oversight -- or possibly Germany's next exhaust scandal. The Public Prosecutor's Office in Stuttgart has initiated a so-called inspection process. Porsche has added that it's continuing its own internal investigations.

Porsche is also still under pressure for its role in Germany's "Dieselgate" scandal. Three company employees are under investigation on suspicion of fraud and false advertising. And the case against them is getting stronger, sources familiar with the investigations say. The defendants have yet to be granted access to the evidence against them, but it is conceivable that charges will be filed against them in 2019, the sources add.

To this day, Porsche rejects any blame for the German diesel scandal. The company has remained firm on its assertion that it didn't build the motors in question itself, but rather bought them from its sister brand Audi. Porsche has even considered pursuing financial compensation from Audi to the tune of 200 million euros ($227 million)...

Combustion engines are the best, and it'd be sad if this environmental push destroyed the brand.

But what the hell? It's the culture we have now. Better for American car-makers, I guess. (*Shrugs.*)

Still more.

Kim Strassel Interview with Harmeet Dillon at CPAC (VIDEO)

This is extremely fascinating.

Ms. Dillon is someone you'd definitely want on your side. She mentions Meghan Murphy's case at the interview, for example, as well as a bunch of other inside baseball on Silicon Valley ideological intolerance.

Good stuff:

Adam Makos, Spearhead

At Amazon, Adam Makos, Spearhead: An American Tank Gunner, His Enemy, and a Collision of Lives in World War II.

Hailey Clauson Brings the Heat (VIDEO)

She's a lovely tart, isn't she?

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee

At Amazon, David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present.

Greg Grandin, The End of the Myth

Out today, at Amazon, Greg Grandin, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America.

The Slow Creep of Socialism (VIDEO)

Here's Dennis Prager, on Judge Jeanine's, from over the weekend when Prager was in D.C. for CPAC.

At Fox:

Don Winslow, The Border

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Don Winslow, The Border: A Novel.

Belgian Carnival Float Features Puppets of Grinning Jews and Money Bags

Following-up, "Labour Party MP Chris Williamson Warns of 'Dark Forces' Undermining Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn; Theresa May Calls for His Suspension (VIDEO)."

I shouldn't be so optimistic that citizens of democracies will rebuke the hate, if Belgium is any example.

At JTA:

Half a lifetime ago, I lived in Belgium. I have never seen something more shocking and yet, been totally unsurprised. https://t.co/E97MONGaiF

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) March 4, 2019

Labour Party MP Chris Williamson Warns of 'Dark Forces' Undermining Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn; Theresa May Calls for His Suspension (VIDEO)

Background here, "Chris Williamson warned of 'dark forces' undermining Corbyn, as councillor joked about 'Jew process': Exclusive: Shocking recording reveals Cllr Jo Bird joked that 'due process' should be dubbed 'Jew process'."

And at the BBC, Williamson was indeed suspended, "Labour activists backlash over anti-Semitism row."

It's bizarre to me that hatred of Jews has become so mainstream and central to leftist politics, but it is what it is, and the bright side is that such hatred should keep them out of power. It should, that is, as long as the general electorate in democratic societies rebukes exterminationist ideological anti-Semitism.

BREAKING: Prime Minister @theresa_may calls for @DerbyChrisW to be suspended from @UKLabour to show that @jeremycorbyn "actually wants to take action against racism".

She also praised the work of @CST_UK, in response to a question from @JamesCleverly.#LabourAntisemitism #PMQs pic.twitter.com/nNTM6QeX8M

— Jewish Telegraph (@JewishTelegraph) February 27, 2019

Lily Mo Sheen Simulating on Instagram

At Drunken Stepfather, "LILY MO SHEEN SIMULATING OF THE DAY."

And at WWTDD, "Who’d You Rather: Kate Beckinsale or Her [Sexed-Up] Daughter Lily Mo Sheen."

Her mom is Kate Beckinsale, who's apparently in a romantic relationship with Pete Davidson of SNL fame. Now that's one way to break out of psychiatric depression! (At London's Daily Mail, "Kate Beckinsale, 45, and Pete Davidson, 25, CONFIRM romance by passionately kissing in the stands at hockey game.")

Irving Howe, World of Our Fathers

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made.

Also, inexpensive copies of the original 1990 paperback here.

Robin Holzken in the Bahamas (VIDEO)

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

Denounce the Left's Idea That Free Speech is 'Violence'

From Jonathan Zimmerman, at the San Francisco Chronicle, "We must denounce the idea of speech as violence":

When the actor Jussie Smollett charged that two men shouting this is “MAGA country” had attacked him, also yelling racist and homophobic taunts, my fellow liberals were quick to blame the rise in such incidents on President Trump and his supporters who want to “Make American Great Again.”

Smollett was indicted by an Illinois grand jury on Feb. 20 for apparently faking the whole episode, but the larger trend is real: Hate crimes have spiked during the Trump era. And surely the president’s own bigoted rhetoric — Mexicans are rapists, Africans live in s—hole countries and so on — has something to do with that.

So why aren’t we also denouncing the culture of intolerance on America’s university campuses, where dissenting voices have faced physical attacks? And doesn’t our silence on that score make us partially responsible for the violence, just as Trump is complicit in hate crimes?

Consider the assault on a conservative activist last month at UC Berkeley, where he was displaying posters declaring “This is MAGA country” — which is what Smollett said his attackers shouted — and “Hate crime hoaxes hurt real victims.”

Two men accosted the conservative activist with expletives. One denounced him for “encouraging violence.” As if on cue, the second man then punched the activist in the face.

Noting that the incident took place on Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza, epicenter of the university’s Free Speech Movement in 1964, school officials were quick to denounce it. “We strongly condemn violence and harassment of any sort, for any reason,” they said in a statement. “Our commitment to freedom of expression and belief is unwavering.” Friday, they announced an arrest...

More.

And at CBS News 5 San Francisco, "Man Arrested In Attack On Conservative Activist at UC Berkeley."

California's High-Speed Rail Disaster Is a 'Shot Across the Bow for the Green New Deal' (VIDEO)

It really is.

What a total nightmare boondoggle. And now the news is that even the Bakersfield to Merced leg will run out of money before completion. Thanks Democrats!

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "If high-speed rail can’t make it in there, can it make it anywhere in America?"

Los Angeles Students Are Surrounded by Violence — and Trauma

This is really a catastrophe, and it should be a national calamity, but Democrats won't talk about.

Why are Democrat cities such bastions of murder and mayhem?

And honestly, kudos to the Times for publishing this exposé.

At the Los Angeles Times, a must-read, "What it’s like to go to school when dozens have been killed nearby":

Someone has been killed within walking distance of 89% of L.A. County's high schools. In neighborhoods with high rates of homicide near public high schools, the impact can be devastating and costly for students, schools and communities. https://t.co/amxucXOyDJ

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) March 3, 2019

Jaleyah Collier had just said goodbye to Kevin Cleveland outside a doughnut shop a few blocks from Hawkins High School on a spring afternoon in 2017. Get home safe, she told him before walking away.

Minutes later someone drove into an alley nearby, got out of the car and asked Kevin, 17, and two others about their gang affiliation. The gunman then sprayed them with at least 10 rounds, killing Kevin and injuring the others.

Jaleyah, then a high school sophomore, barely had time to grieve when a month later, her best friend, Alex Lomeli, 18, was shot and killed when someone tried to rob a market about a mile from the same high school, located at 60th and Hoover streets.

In the early hours of Mother’s Day 2018, two other teens Jaleyah was close to, Monyae Jackson and La’marrion Upchurch, were walking home with friends, when they were fatally shot near Dymally High School.

Each of Jaleyah’s friends was killed within walking distance of public high schools in Los Angeles.

“You don’t know when it’s going to be a person’s last day,” said Jaleyah, a senior at the Community Health Advocates School, one of three small schools on the Hawkins campus. “[Kevin] woke up not knowing.”

The impact of that violence can be devastating and costly. Campuses have begun incorporating the inevitability of trauma into their curricula, addressing stress reduction and how to settle differences without resorting to violence. Students suffer symptoms resembling post-traumatic stress disorder and psychiatric social workers are now a staple at many campuses. Because there is too little mental health funding to meet the need, teachers and staff are often on the front lines in identifying the warning signs of emotionally needy students.

One concern is practical: getting safely to and from school, avoiding not just bullets but gang flashpoints, street harassment, hit-and-runs and muggings. With limited district busing, some students opt for public transportation or other ride-sharing options. On their journeys, they sometimes pass candle- and flower-filled memorials to fallen friends.

Sixteen-year-old Carl Hull, a sophomore at Dymally High School, starts his walk to school each morning by turning into an alley to avoid gang members who live on his street. Once, when he was wearing a gray sweatshirt with the blue L.A. Dodgers logo, they stopped him and asked about his affiliation — he’s not involved in gangs, he told them. Another morning, a few days after hearing gunfire near his house, he found a 9-millimeter bullet shell. Each day, he said, is “like a guessing game.”

Decades of research suggest that the effects of exposure to violence on teenagers are wide-ranging, and can result in anxiety, depression, anger, absences and an inability to concentrate in class.

Even if students didn’t know the victims, they see reminders on social media, memorial posts and the T-shirts friends and family wear in trying to raise funds for a funeral.

Jaleyah woke up on Mother’s Day to find her Instagram feed filled with posts about the shooting of Monyae and La’marrion, she said.

Children in high-crime areas are “losing more people in their youth than most of us have lost when we get to 30 or 40,” said Ferroll Robins, executive director of the nonprofit organization Loved Ones Victims Services, which provides counseling for victims of violence and their families.

“I do worry about what is going to happen to them emotionally, mentally, how bad are they really being scarred?” Robins said. “And how much of those scars are going to play into their life later?”

Jaleyah, a bubbly and energetic 17-year-old, prides herself on her resilience but resents that this constant drumbeat of loss is her reality. In the days after a friend dies, she is unable to concentrate in class, she said. She goes to the funerals, some during the school week. She’s nervous walking to school, afraid a man with a hoodie pulled over his head might be hiding a gun, afraid to walk in alleys or on side streets. She feels a jolt whenever she sees her slain friends’ photos or someone mentions them, reminded each time that their lives had ended too early.

Jason Powell knows he can’t begin teaching his English and music classes at Dymally, at 88th and San Pedro streets, until the kids can address the latest violence in their lives. Over the last five years, 105 people have been killed within a mile of the campus, the highest number surrounding any public high school in the county. Ten of the victims were 18 or younger.

Last year alone, 20 people were killed within a mile — about one every 2½ weeks. Sometimes they are current or former students, including Monyae.

After the deaths of La’marrion and Monyae, Powell gathered his ninth-graders in circles during class and asked them how they deal with pain. The students were used to sharing because they have these circles often on subjects both mundane and serious.

The exercise was intended to develop positive coping and conflict resolution skills. One by one, the students took turns sharing stories of loss. Similar scenes played out at several area schools where students had known the boys who were killed.

When a friend dies, “they come in welled up with emotion, they’re crying and there’s no way they can concentrate on the lesson at hand, so whatever’s on the board as far as the lesson plan, that means nothing,” Powell said. “They need more immediate help.”

Jaleyah said that seeing the therapist on campus didn’t help her, but that participating in similar community circles at Hawkins taught her how to voice her anger and channel it into action. “They give us a chance to speak and feel free [in] what we have to say, without being afraid,” Jaleyah said.

Sometimes the loss is unrelenting. As Dymally was preparing for graduation just weeks after former student Monyae’s death, there was more tragic news: Campus aide James Lamont Taylor was killed at 8:30 a.m., walking on the street about a mile from the school.

The journey their children take just getting to school is a source of stress also for parents.

Carl’s mom worries about him getting robbed or shot on the way to Dymally, or hit by a car while crossing the street. Her older son, Brian Hull, was killed in 2016 crossing the street near her home. She and Carl have grown used to hearing gunshots from their apartment in Broadway-Manchester, less than a mile from the high school. She’s afraid that when he walks down the alley behind their home to get to school, he’ll get hurt.

“I have real bad, heavy anxiety,” Latanya Hull said. One afternoon in September, she began to worry when Carl didn’t get home at the usual time. His phone was broken, so she couldn’t reach him. She called the school. Carl was there, they said, in after-school tutoring...

Lots more. (The interactive graphics interfere with the scrolling function. Be sure to scroll using the right side-bar.)

Kelly Brook is Back in Lingerie

She's still fabulous!

Kelly Brook's Mark Hayman Photoshoot - https://t.co/YqSKlmjfr0 - pic.twitter.com/tv30UPNxka

— Taxi Driver (@TaxiDriverMovie) March 1, 2019

Grab a Copy Today @Fabulousmag pic.twitter.com/q6bYjnYDTa

— Kelly Brook (@IAMKELLYBROOK) February 24, 2019

Democrat Voters Conflicted on Who Can Beat President Trump

The California primary is one year from today, and the L.A. Times kicked off a year of campaign coverage with a special section today.

And from Janet Hook's piece, "Democrats, facing a big candidate field, ask: Who can beat Trump?":

Like the headline says: One year and counting. Check out a great package of stories about the Democratic race by @markzbarabak @hookjan @melmason @finneganLAT pic.twitter.com/aC980KV8Fa

— David Lauter (@DavidLauter) March 3, 2019

Biden and Beto, if they get into the 2020 race, embody totally different concepts of electability, of what it will take to beat Donald Trump https://t.co/Y8YWUzG7fO

— Janet Hook (@hookjan) March 1, 2019

Marcus Scott is looking for a Democratic presidential candidate who will be rude to Donald Trump. Kara LaMarche wants an upbeat, positive approach. Ben Dion wants a nominee with experience and gravitas. Linds Jakows has had it with older white men in power.

Those voters, like fellow Democrats across the country, seek very different things in the big and growing presidential candidate field. But they share one top priority: Picking a nominee who will beat President Trump in 2020.

A year from now, on March 3, 2020, candidates will be competing for primary votes in California and eight other states in the first day of multistate voting. By then, the candidates will have been tested in the four early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, where Democrats already have a curbside seat for the parade of candidates campaigning there.

Between now and then, much of the debate seems certain to focus on the elusive quality labeled “electability.”

Parties always want to win, of course, but Democratic loathing of Trump has pushed finding a winner way up the priority scale this year, recent polls show. Democratic voters say they’d prefer a candidate who can beat Trump to one who agrees with their position on any particular issue.

Voters, however, have widely varying views about what electable means in 2020. To some, it is code for a safe, cautious choice — a centrist white male who presumably can speak to swing voters. To other Democrats, that’s a recipe for killing off excitement within the party’s young, diverse, progressive base, which needs to be mobilized to win in 2020.

The contrasting ideas about electability will come sharply into focus in the coming weeks if two late entrants to the 2020 race come off the sidelines. If former Rep. Beto O’Rourke jumps in, the 46-year-old Texan will represent a bid for generational change that could mobilize new voters in a way supporters compare to Barack Obama.

If Vice President Joe Biden runs, he will likely lean heavily on the case that his long experience makes the 76-year-old the party’s safest bet to win the White House.

“I believe he is the only person who could take on Trump and beat him,” said Dick Harpootlian, a South Carolina state senator and longtime Biden backer. “We’re going to need someone who can motivate the middle-of-the-road voter.”

Other Democrats believe the party must put up a candidate better equipped than the former vice president to speak to and harness the energy of the younger generation of voters that helped deliver victory to the party in the 2018 midterm elections.

“I truly believe this great nation is ready for change,” said Robyn Joppy, a business consultant who heard Biden speak at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event in Washington, D.C. “I love him. But I think his time has come and gone.”

How many candidates will be in the field by the time actual voting starts is anybody’s guess. For now, 13 have joined the field or formed an exploratory committee. Half are senators — Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Kamala Harris of California, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

More candidates may soon get in the race, including former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, as well as Biden and O’Rourke.

The candidates are now pouring most of their effort into the four earliest-voting states. They face a daunting challenge when attention turns to California, because its large size gives a leg up to candidates who can afford television advertising.

Harris, Sanders and Biden, if he runs, could have an edge because they are already well known in the state. But because Democratic Party rules require all states to distribute their delegates proportionately, no candidate is likely to walk away with a lion’s share of California’s more than 400 convention delegates, the largest group from any state.

Most Democrats are highly confident of their ability to beat Trump in 2020, because of his low approval ratings and the high level of energy in their own ranks.

But a recent poll by Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican firm, provides a warning against overconfidence on the part of Democrats. Nationally the poll found just 45% of respondents approved of the job Trump was doing. But he fared better — 50% approved of him — in 12 swing states important to his reelection (Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin).

Some Democrats are skeptical about assessing candidates’ electability.

Gigi Hadid Sheer Camisole Top

At Drunken Stepfather, "GIGI HADID NIPPLE OF THE DAY":

Gigi Hadid isn’t hot, despite all the media attention she gets, but at least she doesn’t look like this sharp edged dude that her sister looks like…

All these girls are a lot of fucking hype wit very little substance…they don’t offer the world shit and when I see them with their face injections all these years after they started…still probably under 25 years old…representing a dark time in modeling and spokesmodeling…I can’t help but wonder why they look like they are in their mid 40s…

Heh.