Ashley James

At Drunken Stepfather, "ASHLEY JAMES GOT THEM TITS OUT OF THE DAY."

Brent Bozell on the Left's 'Big Brother' Political Censorship (VIDEO)

Following-up, "Tucker Carlson Slams the Establishment Left's 'Tech Tyranny' (VIDEO)."

At Prager U:

Tucker Carlson Slams the Establishment Left's 'Tech Tyranny' (VIDEO)

Watch:

Joe Biden Vulnerable on His Support for the 1994 Crime Bill

The 1994 legislation imposed tough sentencing which has been attacked as "racist" in recent years, by the left's "racial reparations" and "restorative justice" crowd. *Eye roll here.*

At LAT, "As Democrats debate, Biden’s crime bill likely to provoke attacks":

As Democrats debate, one flashpoint will likely be the 1994 crime bill Joe Biden helped pass. At the time, the party was ecstatic. But times--and attitudes--have changed.https://t.co/8ZvcwXG8fS

— Mark Z. Barabak (@markzbarabak) June 26, 2019

Twenty-five years ago, after passing the most sweeping anti-crime bill in history, Democrats were ecstatic, convinced they’d not only addressed a top concern of voters but finally shed the party’s soft-on-crime label.

That was then.

A quarter century after Joe Biden helped shepherd it into law, the legislation has become a point of fierce contention among Democrats and emerged as a likely flash point in the series of presidential debates that begin Wednesday night in Miami.

Some consider the law too tough and many, including President Trump, blame it for a wave of mass incarceration that has filled prisons with a flood of black and brown inmates.

“It destroyed entire neighborhoods, destroyed entire communities and we’re still paying the price and suffering from it,” said Patrisse Cullors, a Los Angeles activist who co-founded the Black Lives Matter movement. “What people need to say is, we made a mistake. A very big one.”

Majority Whip James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, a veteran of the civil rights movement and the highest-ranking black member of Congress, is among the strongest defenders.

“The fact of the matter is we on the Democratic side did a yeoman’s job in putting in the kind of prevention programs, the preventive funding in the bill,” Clyburn, the No. 3 leader in the House, said on CNN.

The passions surrounding the bill and its legacy reflect a dramatic shift in the public mood — due in no small part to a significant drop in crime — as well as changes in a Democratic Party that has moved dramatically leftward as young people and minorities gain political strength.

It also underscores the generation gap between the 76-year-old Biden and younger rivals focused on the racial and social injustices that grew from the push for stiffer punishment.

“Awful,” New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker told the Huffington Post.

“A huge mistake,” said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Trump, eliding his history of racially inflammatory words and deeds, has echoed the attacks. “Anyone associated with the 1994 Crime Bill will not have a chance of being elected,” he taunted Biden on Twitter. “In particular, African Americans will not be able to vote for you.”

Biden, who led the Senate Judiciary Committee and has referred to the law as the “1994 Biden crime bill,” says there were parts he opposed in the all-or-nothing package, including mandatory sentencing under a “three strikes, you’re out” provision for repeat offenders.

(The Democratic front-runner will take the stage Thursday night, in the second of two debates)

Overall, Biden insists the good far outweighed the bad.

“It’s the one that had the assault weapons ban,” he told voters in New Hampshire. “It limited the number of bullets in a clip. It made sure that cop-killer bullets, Teflon bullets, weren’t available any longer. It opened up the whole effort to make sure there is background checks for the first time in American history.”

The legislative package also included the Violence Against Women Act, landmark legislation that capped years of efforts to toughen laws against rape, stalking and domestic abuse.

“Anyone who says it was a terrible bill doesn’t know what else was in the bill,” said former California Sen. Barbara Boxer, a liberal who joined all her fellow Democrats, save one, in support. (Seven Republican senators also backed the legislation, which passed 61-38.)

The legislation came at a time when crime, fueled by street gangs and the crack cocaine epidemic, was seen as spiraling out of control — including in Washington, D.C., under the very noses of congressional lawmakers.

Democrats were acutely sensitive to the issue. Bill Clinton ended the party’s exile from the White House by running in 1992 as a “different kind of Democrat,” with a tougher approach to law enforcement — the Arkansas governor even briefly dropped off the campaign trail to preside over the execution of a cop-killer with severely diminished mental capacity.

When the bill finally passed, after several close calls, Democrats exulted...

Still more.

Daisy Ridley Photos

At Celeb Jihad, "DAISY RIDLEY SHOWS OFF HER NEW BIG BOOBS IN A NUDE PHOTO."

And, "DAISY RIDLEY NUDE ON HER WEBCAM."

NRATV Shuts Down

I don't follow the ins and outs of NRA's internal politics and organization, but things aren't going well, apparently.

At the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "N.R.A. Shuts Down Production of NRATV."

Leftists are cheering, at HuffPo, "Twitter Users Celebrate NRATV’s Demise With ‘Thoughts And Prayers’ For Dana Loesch."

It's all political warfare. Dana gets their goat and she can take the flak.

N.R.A. Shuts Down Production of NRATV: https://t.co/Od8PRrsr50

Oh and Dana Loesch is out too.

Sending my #ThoughtsAndPrayers

— igorvolsky (@igorvolsky) June 26, 2019

Danielle Gersh's Wednesday Weather Forecast

It was overcast all day yesterday, which was weird. Mild, but weird.

Here's the lovely Ms. Danielle, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Rhian Sugden in White Bikini

Well, at least she's not blimping up like Kelly Brook.

Look at those knockers!

Rhian Sugden Caught in a White Bikini in the River - https://t.co/0JFxKw1aDL - pic.twitter.com/jnO4SSTBKD

— Taxi Driver (@TaxiDriverMovie) June 24, 2019

New Britney Spears Bikini Photos

I thought she was in rehab? Well, wtf, she looks great either way.

At Drunken Stepfather, "BRITNEY SPEARS BIKINI OF THE DAY."

And at London's Daily Mail and People Magazine:

Britney Spears shows off her fit and toned physique in a bikini https://t.co/vhypxA01oT

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) June 24, 2019

Britney Spears Relaxes in Yellow Bikini on Caribbean Beach During Vacation with Mom Lynne https://t.co/yjVNjYPHTq

— People (@people) June 21, 2019

A 'Grim' Border Drowning is Perfect for Leftists Demonizing the President as Hitler

My first thought was, "Is that even a real photo"? Could have been some Pallywood-type fake news media manipulation to demonize conservatives who want border enforcement. Either way, though, it's no one's fault except the family themselves, and the terrible immigrant-sending nations who put migrants in harm's way.

Stop this madness, I say. Build the freakin' wall already.

At AP, "A grim border drowning underlines peril facing many migrants."

A searing photo of a man and his 23-month-old daughter who drowned in the Rio Grande underscores the perils of the migration crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border. https://t.co/y8GmQRth4L

— The Associated Press (@AP) June 25, 2019

And the reaction, at Twitchy:

Andy Ngo questions CNN's standards over photo of drowned father and daughter from El Salvador https://t.co/h0ms5nrRHm

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) June 26, 2019

Relatives say father and daughter in that heartbreaking photo were not fleeing from violence in El Salvador, via the NY Times https://t.co/7nSQUhFPvy

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) June 26, 2019

Media outlets aren’t holding back on publishing this photo of a drowned father and daughter https://t.co/41OBrA0QJQ

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) June 26, 2019

The Red Decade

At City Journal, "The Red Decade, Redux":

In The Red Decade, Eugene Lyons was documenting not just a historical moment but also a species of historical illiteracy as unchanging as it is poisonous, its utopianism able to flourish only at the expense of independent thought. https://t.co/dr0DOYcGgE

— City Journal (@CityJournal) June 25, 2019

It may be that the best book that will ever be written about today’s progressive mind-set was published in 1941. That in The Red Decade author Eugene Lyons was, in fact, describing the Communist-dominated American Left of the Depression-wracked 1930s and 1940s makes his observations even more meaningful, for it is sobering to be confronted with how little has been gained by hard experience. The celebration of feelings over reason? The certainty of moral virtue? The disdain for tradition and the revising of history for ideological ends? The embrace of the latest definition of correct thought? Lyons was one of the most gifted reporters of his time, and among the bravest, and his story of the spell cast by Stalinist-tinged social-justice activism over that day’s purported best and brightest—literary titans, Hollywood celebrities, leading academics, religious leaders, media heavies—would be jaw-dropping if it weren’t so eerily familiar... 

Honkin' Kelly Brook

She's a plus-size model now, dang.

Kelly Brook WOW! 🥰🥰😍😍 @buquet1000 @WCBeauty_ @viczokas @Wildcard095 @Stacey_poolefan @jameskwan007 @curvyonly @HottestHunnies @JamesGlamfan @duljc @exxxcitement @IrinnaMoris_Fan @nuffinbutgirls @ds_161_4 @65000silver @HotGirlsPicsNow @FernandoPH73 @Coach0302 @b0obs28 pic.twitter.com/5VJONuUiW6

— Lucky Dragon 🦖🦖🦖🦖🇬🇧 (@LuckyDragon99) June 25, 2019

Herman Wouk, The Winds of War

Following-up, "Herman Wouk's True Subject Was Moral Weakness."

At Amazon, Herman Wouk, The Winds of War.

E. Jean Carroll: Rape is 'Sexy' (VIDEO)

The Other McCain posted the other day, "The Worst #MeToo Smear Yet."

And at Althouse, "'Dean Baquet, [the NYT] executive editor, says 'we were overly cautious' in our handling of [E. Jean Carroll’s] allegations against the president'."

Plus, at the Washington Examiner, "Anderson Cooper cuts to commercial after Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll calls rape 'sexy'."

And the cringe-worthy interview on CNN:

“ I think most people think of rape as being sexy…” - E. Jean Carroll to Anderson Cooper

Cooper immediately cut to breakpic.twitter.com/OwN2QLFc6q

— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) June 25, 2019

Too Many Freakin' Democrats in the Race

It's up to 25 candidates, which is a laugh-riot lol.

At Hot Air, "Democrats Now Say They Have Too Many Democrats Running."

And at LAT, "What time is the Democratic presidential debate? Who gets to be on stage?"

And, "Democrats’ presidential hopefuls jockey to outdo one another with pre-debate promises":

Everyone has a plan for everything: 2020 Democratic candidates roll out policy proposals in advance of the presidential debates. w @evanhalper https://t.co/uvSboYV13N

— Janet Hook (@hookjan) June 24, 2019

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders burnished his socialist bona fides – and sought to one-up progressive rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — with a $1.6-trillion plan to pay off all the country’s college debt, an idea that could be more of a boon to the rich than the poor. Joe Biden, the former vice president and leader in current polls, rolled out an immigration plan.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee built out his framework for a future free of fossil fuels. Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke set out a multipart plan to improve services, including healthcare, job training and mental health support, for veterans, financed with savings from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And several candidates took fresh aim at the criminal justice system.

The collective policy plans of the 2020 presidential hopefuls were already so voluminous, aggressive and, in many cases, expensive that it’s been tough for some candidates in this crowded field to muscle their vision into the spotlight.

But in these days leading up to the first Democratic debates in Miami, they’re trying extra hard.

They’re following the pattern set by Warren, who has distinguished herself with her policy prowess and has been rewarded in recent weeks by a notable rise in polls. Warren has so many detailed plans for so many issues that the logo emblazoned on her campaign merch is “Warren Has a Plan for That.” As those plans gained traction with voters, pundits stopped mocking her professorial obsession with policy details, and other candidates began trying to emulate it.

The media have been put on notice that Warren will unveil yet another new plan on Tuesday.

In some cases — forgiving college debt being the clearest example — the flurry of policy proposals has taken on the feel of an arms race.

Warren offered the race’s first detailed proposal on college debt, saying she would forgive as much as $50,000 for up to 42 million Americans. Sanders loyalists were eager to remind voters that it was the Vermonter who first carried college affordability from a fringe issue to a central focus of American politics, when he began promoting the topic as a presidential candidate in 2016.

On Monday, Sanders promised to go beyond Warren’s plan by canceling all $1.6 trillion in outstanding college debt held by Americans, regardless of income. He acknowledged the plan could benefit some people who do not need the help but said he and the lawmakers who co-sponsored the plan with him believed in “universality” — that higher education should be a guaranteed entitlement for all Americans, along with Social Security and Medicare.

“Our response to making sure this does not benefit the wealthy is in other areas,” Sanders said, “where we are going to demand the wealthy and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.”

The debt forgiveness would be bankrolled by a transaction tax on Wall Street, under his proposal. That tax aims to discourage speculation by traders, and Sanders notes it has been endorsed by scores of economists, although some of them have proposed using the money for other purposes.

Many liberal economists had already critiqued Warren’s version of debt forgiveness on the grounds that it would make income inequality worse. Sanders’ plan, which would give even more of a benefit to upper-income families, would rank even more poorly on that scale.

Families with incomes under $68,000 would receive only a third of the subsidy under the Warren plan — despite the plan’s provisions that exclude people with top incomes — according to an analysis by Brookings Institution economist Adam Looney.

The Sanders plan would benefit the economically better-off even more, as it has no income caps. A 2015 study by the progressive think tank Demos and the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University concluded such an approach would widen the racial wealth gap by 9% because so much of the gain would go to wealthy white Americans.

Sanders’ proposal nonetheless drew applause from many on the party’s left. And the criticism that moderates in the party have directed his way — on college debt and other issues — has been good fodder for firing up Sanders’ supporters.

Being called an “existential threat” to Democrats by the leaders of Third Way, the center-left think tank — which has no such harsh words for Warren — has proved a potent talking point for Sanders. And also a fundraising pitch...

Camila Cabello

At the Other McCain, "Rule 5 Monday: Camila Cabello."

And at Celebs Unmasked, "CAMILA CABELLO NUDE *LEAKED* PHOTOS":

Everyone’s dirty minds are on the Camila Cabello nude photos and for good reason. The Cuban-American singer departed from her girl group Fifth Harmony in December of 2016 and ever since then she has been in the spotlight. Yes, she’s got sexy vocals, but it’s her EVEN SEXIER body that has put this girl on the map.

“I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.” pic.twitter.com/tYkmO1yxwN

— camila (@Camila_Cabello) June 22, 2019

Project Veritas: Insider Blows Whistle on Google's Far-Left Political Bias (VIDEO) -- UPDATED!

At Memeorandum, "Insider Blows Whistle & Exec Reveals Google Plan to Prevent “Trump situation” in 2020 on Hidden Cam."



Google-owned YouTube took down the Project Veritas video. I tweeted:

Boy, nothing like proving political bias with blatantly biased political censorship. Who could’ve seen this coming? 🙄🤷‍♂️ #Google #ProjectVeritas https://t.co/rhmSGSY62q

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 25, 2019

Herman Wouk's True Subject Was Moral Weakness

An excellent essay, at the New York Times Book Review, "Herman Wouk Wrote Historical Novels But His True Subject Was Moral Weakness":

Wouk anatomized the psychological mechanisms and sociopolitical rationalizations that enabled intelligent, well-meaning people to justify or ignore what was right in front of them https://t.co/fXX7Y9HZz9

— New York Times Books (@nytimesbooks) June 23, 2019

At the beginning of Herman Wouk’s novel “The Winds of War” (1971), the book’s hero, Victor “Pug” Henry, is offered a post as the United States Navy’s attaché in Berlin. The year is 1939.

Pug discusses the job with a fellow naval officer, a man named Tollever who previously held the position. “Hitler’s a damned remarkable man,” Tollever says over drinks in Pug’s elegant Washington, D.C., living room. “The Germans do things in politics that we wouldn’t — like this stuff with the Jews — but that’s just a passing phase, and anyway, it’s not your business.”

Tollever tells Pug that the worst of it was Kristallnacht, “when Nazi toughs had smashed department store windows and set fire to some synagogues.” But, he says, “even that the Jews had brought on themselves, by murdering a German embassy official in Paris.” Besides, the whole thing was exaggerated by the press; as far as Tollever knew, “not one” Jew “had really been physically harmed.” In sum, Tollever had enjoyed the post immensely: “I haven’t drunk a decent glass of Moselle since I left Berlin.”

When I read this, I wanted to throw the book at the wall.

That an American, a person of some authority, could be so cavalier about the Nazis in a story set after the Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of equal rights, not to mention after Hitler had imprisoned his political opposition and eliminated the free press — was both mind-boggling and infuriating.

Of course, this was the point. A canny novelist, Wouk — who died on Friday, just shy of his 104th birthday — had the good sense to let his characters hang themselves with their own words.

Wouk’s best books have aged surprisingly little. Among these are his impeccably researched World War II novels, “The Winds of War” and its sequel, “War and Remembrance” (1978). Even decades after they were published, these novels continue to have something to teach us.

Wouk is often grouped with middlebrow writers of popular historical fiction — James Michener and Leon Uris, say — but his novels are better understood as pointillistic character studies in historical settings. The World War II books follow the Henry family — Pug, his wife, Rhoda, and their three grown children — through the war years, providing a framework in which the era’s most prominent figures, from F.D.R. and Churchill to Stalin and Hitler, plausibly make cameos. Although sweeping, the novels aren’t melodramas. They are the kinds of books in which an attractive young woman in a doomed love affair comes down with a cold — and doesn’t die. She doesn’t even become seriously ill. She takes some aspirin and goes to bed early.

These are also novels in which you can’t immediately tell whether a character will turn out to be mostly admirable or mostly not. With Wouk, it takes hundreds of pages of seeing the character in action before you can decide — and even then, your verdict is liable to remain uncertain and subject to change. Even in literary fiction, this kind of authorial restraint and fidelity to human complexity is surprising.

But the main reason the novels still feel urgent has to do with the nature of Wouk’s ambition. He didn’t set out merely to write a family saga or to smuggle a history lesson into a story. Wouk wanted to know how so many people in Europe and America allowed the Holocaust to happen. He uses the tools of the novel to anatomize the various psychological mechanisms and sociopolitical rationalizations that enabled intelligent, generally well-meaning and well-informed individuals to justify or ignore what was right in front of them.

As a novelist, Wouk could do things a historian couldn’t: enter not only the living rooms but the minds of a diverse range of characters. Take Rhoda, for instance. She is a little frivolous, easily distracted, occupied more by her private life than by politics. In other words, she is a lot like many of us. When she and Pug arrive in Berlin, she at first refuses to walk in the Tiergarten: “It was far more clean, pretty and charming than any American public park, she admitted, but the signs on the benches, juden verboten, were nauseating.” But with time, her resistance wears down: “Day by day, she reacted less to such things, seeing how commonplace they were in Berlin, and how much taken for granted. … It seemed silly to protest … she insisted that anti-Semitism was a blot on an otherwise exciting, lovely land.” As such, her resistance primarily took the form of playfully chastising high-ranking Nazis at booze-filled dinner parties.

This feels sadly right to me, the way someone with good intentions, someone not consciously monstrous, becomes nonetheless inured to cruelty and injustice in a context in which these evils are normalized. This is also the way we tend to feed our self-esteem but accomplish nothing, by railing against an injustice from a position of personal safety...

Keep reading.

Mikayla Demaiter, World's Sexiest Hockey Goalie (PHOTOS)

She's nice.

Talented, ahem.

At the Sun U.K., "WHAT THE PUCK? Meet world’s sexiest hockey goalie Mikayla Demaiter who has sent pulses racing on the ice and stunned Instagram with skimpy selfies."

Meet the world's sexiest hockey goalie who has sent pulses racing on the ice and stunned Instagram with skimpy selfies https://t.co/UCRl9ED0GF

— Sun Sport (@SunSport) June 21, 2019

And at Drunken Stepfather, "MIKAYLA DEMAITER APPRECIATION OF THE DAY."

Feminist Extremist Sophie Lewis Defends Murdering Unborn Children (VIDEO)

Actually, while she appears extreme, she's just outwardly stating what any pro-abort Democrat believes and advocates: the wanton murder of the unborn.

At the Illinois Family Institute, "Torturing Language to Kill Humans."

Torturing Language to Kill Humans: https://t.co/2mX9WJDHBa #Abortion #Death #Killing

— IL Family Institute (@ProFamilyIFI) June 21, 2019

Also at Life Site, "Feminist author: Abortion ‘is a form of killing that we need to be able to defend’."