Sunday, July 21, 2019

Trump Sets the Terms; Democrats Are Clueless

At NYT, FWIW, "Trump Sets the Terms on Racial Division. Do Democrats Know What to Do?":

GREENVILLE, N.C. — President Trump waited for 13 seconds, as the chants from the crowd of thousands grew louder.

“Send her home!” the North Carolina audience yelled, mimicking Mr. Trump’s recent tweet attacking a Somali-born Democratic congresswoman.

“Treason!” one man screamed.

“Traitor!” shouted another.

The moment Wednesday night, a microcosm of the angry tribalism that often emanates from Mr. Trump’s campaign rallies, immediately caused ripple effects for the president and his party. Some Republican members of Congress denounced the chant as racist and xenophobic. Mr. Trump tepidly disavowed his supporters’ words, only to praise them the following day. For Democrats, especially the candidates seeking to defeat Mr. Trump, the impact of the rally was clear: This will be a general election focused on race, identity and Mr. Trump’s brand of white grievance politics.

Until this past week, the 2020 field has generally tried to ignore the president’s incendiary language — talking about it, the thinking goes, only gives him more power. Instead, candidates have preferred to discuss policies, making the case for themselves by advocating changes in the criminal justice system or maternal health, or ways to eliminate the racial wealth gap.

Now some feel an urgency to take a different approach.

“This election will be a referendum, not on Donald Trump, but a referendum on who we are and who we must be to each other,” Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey said. “But this is going to get worse before it gets better.”

Senator Kamala Harris of California, the most viable woman of color to run for president, said that the scenes from Mr. Trump’s rally, while personally upsetting, were not surprising.

“When we’re on that stage together in the general, I know he’ll try to pull the same thing with me,” Ms. Harris said. “But I’m fully prepared for that. I’m up for it. Because he is small. He is wrong. He is a bully.”

And at a fund-raiser in Los Angeles on Friday, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. told supporters that Mr. Trump is “tearing at the social fabric of this country.”

“This is not hyperbole,” Mr. Biden said. “The fact of the matter is this president is more George Wallace than George Washington.”

But even as Democratic candidates universally denounced Mr. Trump’s comments, they did not agree on how the eventual presidential nominee should combat the racial division embedded in those words. Do you, on the campaign trail, talk directly about the president’s inflammatory language, racism and discrimination in this country? Or do you talk about jobs and the economy?

Democratic Party leaders, particularly establishment figures with ties to Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns, have largely followed a strategy of careful avoidance: responding to the president’s most inflammatory moments, while attempting to redirect the political debate to what is often described as “kitchen table” issues, such as health care and wages.

However, an increasingly vocal group of Democratic grass-roots organizers and pollsters believe that Mr. Trump’s words and legislative actions amount to a cohesive playbook of white identity politics, meant to court white voters of all economic tiers around the idea that their fates are linked, and are under threat by an increasingly diversifying America. They argue that racism and the public performance of it is a “kitchen table” issue for many voters — black and white — that must be dealt with head-on.

“Just as much time and resources as the nominee spends on targeting and messaging around health care and wages and climate change, they should spend an equal amount of resources around an alternative racial vision for the country,” said Cornell Belcher, a prominent pollster who worked with Mr. Obama. “This isn’t a goddamn distraction.”

Ana Maria Archila, the co-executive director of the progressive group Center for Popular Democracy, said Democrats must embrace this moment as an opportunity.

“You have to be able to speak powerfully about our willingness to belong together,” Ms. Archila said. “Don’t just condemn the racism and the language but use it as an opportunity to argue for a vision of the country in which we can all be included.”

To some progressives, the stakes are not just winning in 2020...
Still more.

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.

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Plus here, MTech USA Xtreme MX-8054 Series Fixed Blade Tactical Knife, Tanto Blade, G10 Handle, 11-Inch Overall.

BONUS: Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.

Jonathan Yaniv's Human Rights Case

Jonathan Yaniv is the tranny "Jessica" Yaniv, and he's the one who's been able to get feminists kicked off Twitter, Lindsey Shepherd most recently. Also Meghan Murphy, who covers the latest in the scandal at Feminist Current.

See, "Women warned you: Yaniv’s human rights case is the inevitable result of gender identity ideology: Women warned the media, politicians, activists, and the public about the repercussions of gender identity ideology and legislation, and now that those repercussions are being played out in real time, those warned remain silent."



Politico's Summer Reading

This is actually pretty good.

Some good suggestions.

See, "What the 2020 Candidates, James Comey and Other Politicos Are Reading This Summer."

And this looks interesting: Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.

Kendall Jenner Photo Shoot

At London's Daily Mail:


Brent Bozell, Unmasked

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Brent Bozell, Unmasked: Big Media's War Against Trump.




Jennifer Delacruz's Sunday Forecast

We went without air conditioning all day yesterday, it was so mild.

Fabulous weather.

Here's the fabulous Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:



Jason Stanley Fascism

Stanley's the author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them and How Propaganda Works.

I haven't read his book so I don't know if he's any good or not, but I've read Robert O. Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism, and yes, that was a fascist chant at the Trump rally.

The thing is, though, leftists want you to think we're back in the 1930s and the Nazi threat today is real. The only problem is it's not. Hitler dismantled the German democracy in 1933. Trump might lose reelection in 2020. All the leftist outrage is theater. The fact is we're in a populist nationalist moment. Sometimes the rhetoric sounds fascist. But leftists never look at their own side, with their own fascists and communists, who're doing by far the most damage, and are in fact responsible for the rise of the new politics of the age

Once people figure that out it's all a lot easier to digest.

At Newsweek, "Yes, 'Send Her Back' Is the Face of Evil — I Know Fascism When I See It."


Miley Cyrus' Madness

At Hollywood Tuna, "Miley Cyrus’ Underboob Madness."

And Celeb Jihad, "MILEY CYRUS WORKOUT."

Alexandra Stan

At Celeb Jihad, "ALEXANDRA STAN COMPILATION."

Erica Thomas Hate Hoax

She made the whole thing up.

At BuzzFeed, "This State Lawmaker Says She Was Told To Go Back To Where She Came From. The Man Who Yelled At Her Denies It."


Saturday, July 20, 2019

J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

*BUMPED*

At Amazon, J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye.



WATCH: Video Show Iran's Takeover of British Oil Tanker

At the Los Angeles Times, "Iran says it detained British tanker in Strait of Hormuz as a ‘reciprocal’ move."

And at Russia Today, with obligatory caveats:



Age of Amnesia

From Joel Kotkin, at Quillette:

RTWT.


Chevrolet Corvette C8 2020 (VIDEO)

Wow!

This is a spectacular car!

At Jalopnik, "Here's a Detailed Look at the 2020 Corvette C8's Impressive Engineering."

And Road and Track, "Mid-Engine Corvette: Everything We Know."

For all the change, it actually still looks like a 'Vette, especially from the front.



Women’s Sports Are Doomed

It's Ian Miles Cheong, at Human Events:



Apollo 11 Still Resonates

At LAT, "Column One: 50 years after Apollo 11, the moon’s allure still resonates."






Who Will Be the First Woman on the Moon?

Nothing against the ladies, but in this day and age, it just can't be another man that goes up and sets foot.

Nope, that'd be misogynist.

At the L.A. Times, "Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon. Who will be the first woman?"



Olivia Culpo Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2019 (VIDEO)

Nice:



David Horowitz, Mortality and Faith

At Amazon, David Horowitz, Mortality and Faith: Reflections on a Journey through Time.