Francis Fukuyama, Identity

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Francis Fukuyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment.

Today's Deals

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More, Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes: A Memoir.

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BONUS: Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland.

Chloe Bechini and Friend

At Drunken Stepfather, "Chloe Bechini and Friend Naked for Some Dude of the Day."

Plus, some woman takes of like four layers of clothing before you finally see her honkin breasts, lol.

Jennifer Delacruz's Hot Weekend Forecast

Wow, summer weather is here!

Let's see how long it lasts. It's not like we haven't had enough rain the cold this season, sheesh.

Gavin Newsome Issues Death Penalty Moratorium for California's Death Row

I'm not pleased.

At the Los Angeles Times:

Gov. Gavin Newsom will sign an executive order to impose a moratorium on the death penalty in California, vowing that no prisoner in the state will be executed while he is in office. https://t.co/VfpVjGmv5I

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) March 13, 2019

Charles Manson, Rose Bird, Caryl Chessman and California’s wrenching death penalty debate https://t.co/3bNgt6s4j2

— maura dolan (@mauradolan) March 16, 2019

One of Elisabeth Semel’s earliest memories of the death penalty in California was the 1960 execution of Caryl Chessman. She remembers seeing her father upset.

She became a criminal defense lawyer and went on to defend inmates convicted of capital crimes, running a death penalty clinic at UC Berkeley.

Kent Scheidegger, a former commercial lawyer, was inspired to join the fight for the death penalty after voters ousted California Chief Justice Rose Bird and two colleagues in 1986 for overturning death sentences.

He said the courts were thwarting the people’s will and he joined a pro-death penalty group to persuade judges to uphold death sentences.

Advocates and others on both sides went on to endure decades of frustration in California’s wrenching wars over the death penalty.

This week, Gov. Gavin Newsom put his own imprint on the saga, declaring a moratorium on executions while he was in office. But the death penalty remains lawful in California, and neither side is ready yet to lay down arms.

The battle started with a 1972 California Supreme Court decision that declared the state’s death penalty unconstitutional. The decision spared the lives of Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan and more than 100 others.

Supporters of the death penalty gradually resurrected the law to pass constitutional muster, and California juries have condemned scores of people to die.

Bird and two other Democratic appointees to the Supreme Court were replaced with conservatives, and the newly formed court routinely upheld death sentences.

The state’s execution logjam broke with the 1992 lethal gassing of Robert Alton Harris, who had killed two teenage boys in San Diego. It was the state’s first execution in 25 years.

Another death row inmate, David Mason, was executed in the gas chamber the following year.

Then a federal court decision in 1996 forced the state to close the gas chamber and execute by lethal injection. Later that year, serial killer William Bonin died by the needle, four years after Harris. Executions continued sporadically.

By the time Republican appointee Ronald M. George was California’s chief justice, there was a massive backlog of death penalty appeals. The cost to the state of trying the cases and handling the appeals was crushing.

George, a former prosecutor who had previously defended California’s death penalty, declared the system “dysfunctional.” An inmate on death row was more likely to die from old age than execution, he said.

In all, 13 inmates have been executed in California since the restoration of the death penalty. More than 100 condemned inmates have died of natural causes or suicide during that time.

A state commission determined that the death penalty would work in California only if the state put in a massive infusion of money.

No one seemed inclined to provide that kind of money, but the death penalty remained on the books and death row began running out of room.

Actor Mike Farrell, a death penalty abolitionist, spent many execution nights outside San Quentin State Prison as peaceful protesters held candles and sang hymns.

He met with two California death row inmates before their executions, including Stanley Tookie Williams in 2005.

Williams, a former Los Angeles gang leader, was convicted of killing four people. In prison he wrote books for young people urging them to eschew gangs.

Farrell also met with then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, another actor, to plead for Williams’ life.

“I just don’t understand the point in killing this man,” Farrell recalled telling Schwarzenegger. “If you commit him to life in prison without parole, he can keep doing the work he is doing with kids.”

Schwarzenegger said Williams had to admit guilt and express remorse, Farrell said. Williams insisted he did not commit the murders and died by lethal injection...

Young Punk Cracks Egg on Head of Australia Senator Fraser Anning

This is all stupid, I'll tell you.

But, the kid deserves a beating. You don't assault someone without expecting to be taken down.

At Chicks on the Right, "VIDEO: Controversial Australian Senator Slaps Teen Across the Face After Stupid Prank Gone Wrong."

Actually, the prank didn't "go wrong." It went exactly as planned, which included the young punk using his smart for to capture the attack on video and perhaps later create a viral video.

Claire Lehman's supposed to some hip conservative intellectual of the dark web, or something. She's a pansy-assed bleeding heart, if her tweets over this incident are any clue.

Apparently this boy seen here being punched in the face by a sitting member of Parliament was then wrestled to the ground by Anning's thugs & lost consciousness. I have never felt more ashamed of being Australian. https://t.co/ZDo8mOmdgv

— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) March 16, 2019

I don't care if the kid egged him on the back of the head. He's a KID. It's an EGG.

FFS.

— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) March 16, 2019

Anyway defending Anning's response can fuck right off.

This is what they did to a CHILD.https://t.co/X9ky9YdvAH

— Claire Lehmann (@clairlemon) March 16, 2019

He shouldn’t assault other humans, regardless of political differences. They’ll hit you back. And he was looking for a Facebook post, the way he was recording it with his phone. So I’ve fucked myself right off apparently, sorry! You’d file charges for assault, be honest. Come on.

— AMERICAN POWER!! (@_Pax_Americana_) March 16, 2019

Arthur C. Brooks, Love Your Enemies

Well, certainly a badly needed message.

From Arthur C. Brooks, at Amazon, Arthur C. Brooks, Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt.

New Zealand Christchurch Mosque Massacre (VIDEO)

I'm numb to this stuff by now.

This massacre of course is the perfect example of our polarized times, and especially so since the perp is a white nationalist. (And it must be said, but there'd be no focus on exterminationist ideologies had this been another mass jihad terrorist attack; see Robert Spencer's entry this morning, for example.)

In any case, I fully endorse the condemnations and sympathy that have been flooding out following the massacre. I'm especially heartened by the genuine good will shown by conservatives, especially since it's gonna be people on the American right who'll be demonized as fundamentally guilty for the acts of this lone extremist.

More on this throughout the day, but see the New Zealand Herald, "Christchurch mosque massacre: 49 confirmed dead in shootings; four arrested - three men, one woman."

And at Memeorandum, via Bellingcat, "Shitposting, Inspirational Terrorism, and the Christchurch Mosque Massacre."

Here's the obligatory leftist take blaming the alleged "right-wing media" for enabling "right-wing terrorism," which is somehow the world's "number one terrorist threat" (not). At Sydney Morning Herald, "Broken white men and the racist media that fuels their terrorism."

And at CNN:

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads.

The Axis of Anti-Semitism

This is the most amazing essay, seriously.

I've never read a more concise analysis of the global jihad threat, and not just to the Jews, but to Western civilization.

From Benjamin Kerstein, at Algemeiner, "Ilhan Omar and the Axis of Antisemitism":

Read @benj_kerstein on the axis of anti-Semitism now gathering against diaspora Jews. From the right, the left and Islam. Important piece. https://t.co/VMaKZrL0EQ

— Eli Lake (@EliLake) March 11, 2019

American Jews are facing a perfect storm of antisemitism. On the one side are the antisemites of the right: the hate that coalesced in the “Jews will not replace us” conspiracy chant at Charlottesville and then the horrific massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue. From the left comes the pathological intersectional hatred of Israel that extends into the hatred of the 90 percent or more of world Jewry that embraces Zionism and ultimately to the Jews themselves as a people. And finally the vulgar, debased antisemitism of much of the Muslim world, part religious and part nationalist, that may well be the most violent and threatening of the three.

What we are seeing is, in other words, the emergence of an axis of antisemitism; one that threatens not only the Jews, but American democracy itself.

It is the latter two forms of antisemitism that have resulted in the recent scandals involving Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and the wretched failure of the Democratic leadership in Congress to appropriately condemn her by name and antisemitism as a specific phenomenon, preferring instead to defer to their far-left and pass a pathetically watered-down resolution that elides the issue by dilution, effectively handing antisemitism its first ever legislative victory in the United States. In other words, this antisemitism, intersectional in nature, brutal in rhetoric, violent in discourse, now wields not inconsiderable political power.

The most violent faction of this axis of antisemitism is, one regrets to say, born of Islam. This religion, a descendant of Judaism itself, has always contained elements of antisemitism. Muhammad himself massacred the Jews of the Hijaz. The history of Jews in Muslim lands had its golden ages, but it also had a multitude of expulsions, forced conversions, and massacres. And it ended, we should not forget, in the expulsion of a million Jews who found refuge in the new Jewish state...

RTWT.

Tommy Orange, There There

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Tommy Orange, There There: A Novel.

Stephen B. Oates, The Fires of Jubilee

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Stephen B. Oates, The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion.

Robert Zubrin, The Case for Space

It's out May 14th, at Amazon, Robert Zubrin, The Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility.

The Democrats and Anti-Semitism

So far, Noah Rothman's written the best piece on Ilhan Omar and the Democrats' turn to unbridled, unabashed anti-Jewish hatred, with special attention to the double standards of the House resolution condemning "all forms" of racism.

https://t.co/LMaOZ8aGfE

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) March 7, 2019

All bigotries matter. https://t.co/LMaOZ7T4R4 pic.twitter.com/n966ZO6W5X

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) March 7, 2019

We Can't Have Hot Bikini Baristas

Bummer:

'Bikini barista' coffee shop in #California has license revoked after city council deems outfits too revealing. 🙄 https://t.co/aMVw9i5dVb

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) March 9, 2019

Workers Suddenly Have More Power

At WaPo, the Trump economy is helping the working class proletariat lol.

Workers suddenly have more power to demand higher pay and better jobs as the unemployment rate for workers without high school diplomas fell to 5.3 % last month a record low since ⁦@USDOL⁩ began tracking this 27 years ago https://t.co/WQkc3ESW3i

— SalenaZito (@SalenaZito) March 9, 2019

Seen on Facebook

Here:

Lee Zeldin's Floor Speech Slamming Ilhan Omar and Democrats' Weaselly House Resolution Condemning 'All Forms' of Racism (VIDEO)

Seems there's a consensus that we've crossed a line in American politics, and the country's heading down a dark road. I've been reading one commentary after another on Ilhan Omar and the spineless Democrat House weasels, and I'm personally and deeply depressed. I thought I loathed the left, but seems there is no bottom to Democrat-leftist demonology.

The question for me today was whether it was possible to despise the #DemocratParty even more? Turns out, indeed it was. Yes indeed it was. 🤔 #IlhanOmar #Democrats #AntiSemitism #RadicalLeft

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) March 8, 2019

Here's Congressman Lee Zeldin:

H.Res.183 was spineless, watered down & filled w moral equivalency & double standards. Watch my floor speech explaining my NO vote to this resolution. Name names & remove Rep Omar from @HouseForeign. No double standards! pic.twitter.com/Rj17P6MHFI

— Lee Zeldin (@RepLeeZeldin) March 7, 2019

And at Fox News, "Rep. Zeldin Explains 'No' Vote on 'Watered Down,' 'Spineless' Anti-Hate Resolution."

Added, from Captain Ed:

Zeldin’s point about the resolution being “spineless” hits closest to the overall lesson from this episode, which is this: Nancy Pelosi’s power has entirely evaporated. Had Pelosi acted like a real caucus leader with authority, she would have immediately booted Omar from her seat on Foreign Relations and demanded a full apology, with a censuring resolution a consequence for lack of compliance. That is precisely what Kevin McCarthy did with Rep. Steve King after his white-supremacy comments despite having struggled to get his position as caucus leader just a few months ago.

Pelosi has had the reins of her caucus for two decades now, and yet couldn’t act. Pelosi just got faced down by a first-term backbencher and a small cadre of extremists in her caucus, mainly because she didn’t attempt to exercise any authority. She dithered and vacillated, perhaps mindful of the narrow circumstances that gave her the gavel in the first place in January. In that vacillation, the extremists took her measure and forced her to retreat. The result was Pelosi’s ridiculous “All Hate Matters” sham resolution for which Omar herself voted — while laughing at the absurdity.

Pelosi still holds the gavel, but it’s now purely symbolic. The lunatics and the anti-Semites are running the House Democratic asylum. Pelosi has no legs left on her leadership, and everyone knows it. That’s why Democrats want to talk about Republican dissenters to this grotesquerie rather than what really happened this week in the House. Zeldin’s just forcing everyone to confront reality.

Meghan McCain in Tears Over Ilhan Omar's Anti-Semitism, Gets Attacked With Leftist Vitriol and Anti-Semitic Memes

Oh boy, did this get people fired up, and not in a good way.

And keep in mind, I'm not fan of Ms. Meghan.

At the Daily Beast, "Meghan McCain Breaks Down in Tears Over Ilhan Omar’s ‘Scary’ Israel Comments."

Here's the clip, and this vile anti-Semitic cartoon below:

Don't care if it's "officially" anti-Semitic or not. But imagine reax to a cartoon mocking a white woman upset about anti-black racism that showed her in Afro wig & "Happy Kwanzaa" T-shirt, holding a slice of watermelon and a copy of "Roots," w/pile of black-themed books/DVDs pic.twitter.com/KUs9jqHM33

— Cathy Young (@CathyYoung63) March 9, 2019

Don't care if it's "officially" anti-Semitic or not. But imagine reax to a cartoon mocking a white woman upset about anti-black racism that showed her in Afro wig & "Happy Kwanzaa" T-shirt, holding a slice of watermelon and a copy of "Roots," w/pile of black-themed books/DVDs pic.twitter.com/KUs9jqHM33

— Cathy Young (@CathyYoung63) March 9, 2019

Do we really need a dialogue around why invoking the holocaust in this flip and dismissive fashion is hateful? A round table to uncover the anti-semitism in the penumbra of meaning here? Some moral clarity, please. This is point blank repulsive. @MeghanMcCain doesn’t deserve this https://t.co/M333YgsyjP

— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) March 8, 2019

More at Fox News, "Meghan McCain accuses Jewish artist of anti-Semitism after mocking her comments on Omar."

Glencairn Whisky Glass

I need to get a set of these. They come highly recommended by Helen Smith at Intapundit.

At Amazon, Glencairn Whisky Glass Set of 4.

And Ms. Helen's book, Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters.