David Lauter has the answer, at the Los Angeles Times:
Why is #DonaldTrump still winning our poll? White men and uncertain voters. https://t.co/M8W3VfVx15— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 5, 2016
Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education - from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
Why is #DonaldTrump still winning our poll? White men and uncertain voters. https://t.co/M8W3VfVx15— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 5, 2016
Zombies are not just found in horror movies, sometimes they’re lying on your living room couch. These are undead adolescents whose psychological and social development have come to a screeching halt. Torn by their yearning for freedom and their fear of surviving the outside world, they have stalled in their maturity, motivation, and purpose in life, hijacked by a helplessness and fear of responsibility. Parents often feel ill-equipped to love, support, and guide them—especially when they may be facing a midlife crisis of their own and battling some of the same issues in their own lives. Is it really possible to escape this “undead” state of being?
In My Teenage Zombie board-certified psychiatrist and medical doctor David L. Henderson explains the parts of a teenage zombie (their brain, heart, and spirit), how they got into this undead state, and how to resurrect them back to life. Using real-life examples of families he has counseled, he describes both their physical and psychological characteristics and offers practical suggestions on how to deal with, and in many cases avoid, having an undead adolescent in your home.
The book is divided into three helpful sections:
· The Rise of the Undead: Understanding the Nature of a Teenage Zombie
· The Fear of the Undead: Facing the Anxiety of Confronting a Teenage Zombie
· Resurrecting the Undead: Restoring Your Teenage Zombie to a Life Worth Living
If you are the parent of an undead adolescent, there is hope for you and your child. Or maybe you have children who are not yet adolescents. It’s never too early to prepare for the challenges that await you. Either way, stay calm and start resurrecting zombies!
Back On the Chain Gang
Pretenders
6:58 AM
Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On
Jerry Lee Lewis
6:55 AM
Here I Go Again
Whitesnake
6:37 AM
Doctor My Eyes
Jackson Browne
6:34 AM
Hurts So Good
John Mellencamp
6:30 AM
White Room
Cream
6:24 AM
Your Song
Elton John
6:20 AM
Jamming
Bob Marley & The Wailers
6:06 AM
Your Love
The Outfield
6:02 AM
A new Syria is emerging. And with it, a new Middle East and world are presenting themselves. Our new world is not a peaceful or stable one. It is a harsh place.A great analysis.
The new Syria is being born in the rubble of Aleppo.
The eastern side of the city, which has been under the control of US-supported rebel groups since 2012, is being bombed into the Stone Age by Russian and Syrian aircraft. All avenues of escape have been blocked. A UN aid convoy was bombed in violation of a fantasy cease-fire. Medical facilities and personnel are being targeted by Russia and Syrian missiles and barrel bombs to make survival impossible.
It is hard to assess how long the siege of eastern Aleppo by Russia, its Iranian and Hezbollah partners and its Syrian regime puppet will last. But what is an all but foregone conclusion now is that eastern Aleppo will fall. And with its fall, the Russian-Iranian-Hezbollah-Assad axis will consolidate its control over all of western Syria.
For four years, the Iranians, Hezbollah and Bashar Assad played a cat and mouse game with the rebel militias. Fighting a guerrilla war with the help of the Sunni population, the anti-regime militias were able to fight from and hide from within the civilian population. Consequently, they were all but impossible to defeat.
When Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to join the fight, he and his generals soon recognized that this manner of fighting ensured perpetual war. So they changed tactics. The new strategy involves speeding up the depopulation and ethnic cleansing of rebel-held areas. The massive refugee flows from Syria over the past year are a testament to the success of the barbaric war plan. The idea is to defeat the rebel forces by to destroying the sheltering civilian populations.
Since the Syrian war began some five years ago, half of the pre-war population of 23 million has been displaced.
Sunnis, who before the war comprised 75% of the population, are being targeted for death and exile. More than 4 million predominantly Sunni Syrians are living in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. More than a million have entered Europe. Millions more have been internally displaced. Assad has made clear that they will never be coming home.
At the same time, the regime and its Iranian and Hezbollah masters have been importing Shi’ites from Iran, Iraq and beyond. The process actually began before the war started. In the lead-up to the war some half million Shi’ites reportedly relocated to Syria from surrounding countries.
This means that at least as far as western Syria is concerned, once Aleppo is destroyed, and the 250,000 civilians trapped in the eastern part of what was once Syria’s commercial capital are forced from their homes and property, the Russians, Iranians, Hezbollah and their Syrian fig leaf Assad will enjoy relative peace in their areas of control.
By adopting a strategy of total war, Putin has ensured that far from becoming the quagmire that President Barack Obama warned him Syria would become, the war in Syria has instead become a means to transform Russia into the dominant superpower in the Mediterranean, at the US’s expense.
In exchange for saving Assad’s neck and enabling Iran and Hezbollah to control Syria, Russia has received the capacity to successfully challenge US power. Last month Putin brought an agreement with Assad before the Duma for ratification. The agreement permits – indeed invites – Russia to set up a permanent air base in Khmeimim, outside the civilian airport in Latakia.
Russian politicians, media and security experts have boasted that the base will be able to check the power of the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet and challenge NATO’s southern flank in the Mediterranean basin for the first time. The Russians have also decided to turn their naval station at Tartus into something approaching a full-scale naval base.
With Russia’s recent rapprochement with Turkish President Recip Erdogan, NATO’s future ability to check Russian power through the Incirlik air base is in question.
Even Israel’s ability to permit the US access to its air bases is no longer assured. Russia has deployed air assets to Syria that have canceled Israel’s regional air superiority.
Under these circumstances, in a hypothetical Russian-US confrontation, Israel may be unwilling to risk Russian retaliation for a decision to permit the US to use its air bases against Russia.
America’s loss of control over the eastern Mediterranean is a self-induced disaster.
For four years, as Putin stood on the sidelines and hedged his bets, Obama did nothing. As Iran and Hezbollah devoted massive financial and military assets to maintaining their puppet Assad in power, the Obama administration squandered chance after chance to bring down the regime and stem Iran’s regional imperial advance.
For his refusal to take action when such action could have easily been taken, Obama shares the responsibility for what Syria has become. This state of affairs is all the more infuriating because the hard truth is that it wouldn’t have been hard for the US to defeat the Iranian- Hezbollah axis. The fact that even without US help the anti-regime forces managed to hold on for four years shows how weak the challenge posed by Iran and Hezbollah actually was.
Russia only went into Syria when Putin was absolutely convinced that Obama would do nothing to stop him from dislodging America as the premier global power in the region...
I'm no expert but wanting to "drone" Assange isn't exactly #LoveTrumpsHate @HillaryClinton Evil dictator much?💣 #MeanGirls pic.twitter.com/z7sKx7RQ6i
— Black Women 4 Trump (@TallahForTrump) October 3, 2016
Report: WikiLeaks founder won't make announcement because of "security concerns" https://t.co/kPOJ7XTxAH pic.twitter.com/b2qSMAGlt2
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) October 2, 2016
Since when has #WikiLeaks been worried about "security concerns"? Something's funny about this. https://t.co/FRBZTBuQlk
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 2, 2016
UPDATE: Julian Assange of Wikileaks To Appear by Video Tomorrow Due to Apparent Assassination Concerns https://t.co/6SFiUQQa77
— Deplorable Observer (@PrivateName11) October 4, 2016
Does Danney get to fly on private jets to climate conferences? #SonOfClinton #BillClintonLoveChildhttps://t.co/GwTJD74iT8@AceofSpadesHQ pic.twitter.com/J0zg8bG2m2
— Evi L. Bloggerlady (@MsEBL) October 3, 2016
He looks a lot like him. A lot.He does. Freakin' a. He does.
A lot of memories of @Dodgers games past, with #VinScully's voice helping me while away my summer days. #LADodgers #SFGiants— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 2, 2016
.@lamblock They sang "Take me out to the ball game" at #SFGiants AT&T Park, changing the words to "Let's root root root for the #Dodgers"!— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 2, 2016
Dear friends... pic.twitter.com/akgzIU1UdW
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) October 2, 2016
Trump "apparently got to avoid paying taxes for nearly two decades—while tens of millions of working families paid theirs." pic.twitter.com/g62jB9fKr5
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 2, 2016
Exclusive: NYT has obtained parts of Trump's 1995 tax records. He could have paid no federal income tax for 18 years https://t.co/lpSr9M6IwA— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 2, 2016
Here are the pages from Donald Trump’s 1995 income tax records that were obtained by The Times. https://t.co/SFSIzIiSXQ— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 2, 2016
This is obviously scandalous, as evidenced by the leftist reaction on Memorandum.Trump team puts out statement with no one's name on it, unusual since @JasonMillerinDC arrival from Cruz pic.twitter.com/1OiwUYCROs— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 2, 2016
Most people believe democracy is a uniquely just form of government. They believe people have the right to an equal share of political power. And they believe that political participation is good for us--it empowers us, helps us get what we want, and tends to make us smarter, more virtuous, and more caring for one another. These are some of our most cherished ideas about democracy. But, Jason Brennan says, they are all wrong.Brennan is supposedly some hip new libertarian dude, although I'm not familiar with him, and I'm not that big on libertarianism (since it ineluctably devolves to leftism and anti-Semitism, frankly, at least in its current manifestations amid the culture wars).
In this trenchant book, Brennan argues that democracy should be judged by its results--and the results are not good enough. Just as defendants have a right to a fair trial, citizens have a right to competent government. But democracy is the rule of the ignorant and the irrational, and it all too often falls short. Furthermore, no one has a fundamental right to any share of political power, and exercising political power does most of us little good. On the contrary, a wide range of social science research shows that political participation and democratic deliberation actually tend to make people worse--more irrational, biased, and mean. Given this grim picture, Brennan argues that a new system of government--epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable--may be better than democracy, and that it's time to experiment and find out.
A challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable, Against Democracy is essential reading for scholars and students of politics across the disciplines.
Three days after an El Cajon police officer fatally shot an unarmed black man, authorities released video of the incident his family and protesters have demanded to see.More.
A protest far more peaceful than Thursday night followed the release of the footage.
The two videos, lasting less than 90 seconds total, show the moments on Tuesday before and when an officer fired his gun and a second officer fired a Taser at Alfred Olango, 38.
On the video with sound, four gun shots are heard, followed by a woman’s screams.
The recordings last only a few seconds after the shooting. One recording was surveillance video from a nearby business, the other was taken on cellphone by a witness.
El Cajon Police Chief Jeff Davis, backed by Mayor Bill Wells, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and others, held a news conference on Friday to distribute copies of the video to reporters.
Davis identified Officer Richard Gonsalves as the officer who shot Olango and Officer Josh McDaniel as the officer who fired a Taser. Both have been on the department for 21 years.
The chief said he sat in on a conference call Friday morning with Wells, Dumanis, Sheriff Bill Gore, San Diego Police Chief Shelley Zimmerman and Escondido police Chief Craig Carter. All agreed to release of the video in the interest of public safety, he said.
He added that misinformation was spreading through the community “with the potential to create unrest” in the city.
“We didn’t want to waste time,” he said. “At the end of the day, it was important to put this out to the community.”
Davis said nights of “escalating aggression” and the effects of protests in the city, including closed stores and schools, led to the decision to allow the public to see the videos.
Dumanis said she agreed with the release of the footage, adding that the video is only one piece of evidence her office will review in deciding whether the shooting was legally justified.
She said the FBI has been involved in the investigation into the shooting.
Dr. Andre Branch, president of the NAACP San Diego, also at the conference, agreed that the video needed to be shown.
“I applaud and commend Chief Jeff Davis and the city of El Cajon for releasing the video of the police-involved shooting. NAACP believes this is the action that should follow any and all police shootings.”
Olango’s family were not present at the conference.
The videos were shown live over local news stations. About a dozen people collected outside police headquarters during the news conference watched the videos on their cellphones and reacted with anger as they heard the shots ring out...
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court, awaiting the outcome of a presidential election that will determine its future, returns to the bench this week to face a volatile docket studded with timely cases on race, religion and immigration.Well, that's a lot of stuff on race and criminal justice, but I can't wait to see the Court take up the transgender restroom issue, to say nothing of the homosexual wedding cakes. You gotta ask how far is the culture war going to succeed in rending our country into that which is totally unrecognizable.
The justices have been shorthanded since Justice Antonin Scalia died in February, and say they are determined to avoid deadlocks. That will require resolve and creativity.
“This term promises to be the most unpredictable one in many, many years,” said Neal K. Katyal, a former acting United States solicitor general in the Obama administration now with Hogan Lovells.
There is no case yet on the docket that rivals the blockbusters of recent terms addressing health care, abortion or same-sex marriage. But such cases are rare, whether there are eight justices or nine.
“This term’s cases are not snoozers,” said Elizabeth B. Wydra, the president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal group. “This term features important cases about racial bias in the criminal justice system, voting rights and redistricting, immigration and detention, and accountability for big banks that engaged in racially discriminatory mortgage lending practices.”
There are, moreover, major cases on the horizon, including ones on whether a transgender boy may use the boys’ restroom in a Virginia high school and on whether a Colorado baker may refuse to serve a same-sex couple.
“If either of these cases is taken, it will almost immediately become the highest profile case on the court’s docket,” said Steven Shapiro, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.
There is also the possibility that a dispute over the outcome of the presidential election could end up at the Supreme Court, as it did in 2000 in Bush v. Gore.
“That is the doomsday scenario in some respects of having an eight-member court,” said Carter G. Phillips, a lawyer with Sidley Austin. A deadlocked Supreme Court would leave in place the lower court ruling and oust the justices from their role as the final arbiters of federal law.
Race figures in many of the new term’s most important cases, including two to be heard in October, and that seems to be part of a new trend. “The court hasn’t had a lot of cases recently dealing with race in the criminal justice system,” said Jeffrey L. Fisher, a law professor at Stanford.
In June, a dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor brought a new perspective to the issue. Citing James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time” and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me,” she insisted that the brutal history and contemporary reality of racism in the United States must play a role in the court’s analysis.
That dissent may prove influential, said Justin Driver, a law professor at the University of Chicago. “One item to keep an eye on this term,” he said, “is the extent to which the Black Lives Matters movement makes its presence felt on the court’s docket.”
On Wednesday, the court will hear arguments in Buck v. Davis, No. 15-8049. It arose from an extraordinary assertion by an expert witness in the death penalty trial of Duane Buck, who was convicted of the 1995 murders of a former girlfriend and one of her friends while her young children watched. The expert, presented by the defense, said that black men are more likely to present a risk of future danger.
The justices will decide whether Mr. Buck, who is black, may challenge his death sentence based on the ineffectiveness of the trial lawyer who presented that testimony.
“The Buck case raises questions that could not be more relevant to ongoing conversations sparked by police shootings about implicit bias and stereotyping of African-American men as violent and dangerous,” Ms. Wydra said. “The Roberts court, and particularly the chief justice himself, has often been reluctant to acknowledge the reality of systemic racism in this country, but the egregious facts of the Buck case make it impossible to avoid.”
On Oct. 11, the court will consider another biased statement, this one ascribed to a juror during deliberations in a sexual assault trial. “I think he did it because he’s Mexican, and Mexican men take whatever they want,” the juror said of the defendant, according to a sworn statement from a second juror.
The question in the case, Peña Rodriguez v. Colorado, No. 15-606, is how to balance the interest in keeping jury deliberations secret against the importance of ridding the criminal justice system of racial and ethnic bias.
Race also figures in cases on redistricting, fair housing and malicious prosecution...
Hedge funds that have placed bets against Deutsche Bank AG are reaping the rewards.More.
Deutsche Bank shares are down nearly 50% since the start of the year on concerns about its capital position, leading to large profits for a number of hedge funds who have been running short positions on the German lender, betting its stock will fall further.
However, it has been a bumpy ride. Deutsche’s shares fell as much as 8% in morning trading Friday, reaching a record, following reports that clients, including several large hedge funds, have pulled billions of dollars from the bank. But they later recovered to close up 6.4% in afternoon trade in Frankfurt.
Greenwich, Conn.-based AQR Capital Management, which runs $159 billion in assets, revealed that it had a short position in Deutsche Bank on Wednesday, according to a filing made public by the German regulator on Thursday.
AQR was also among a number of funds that have recently taken steps to withdraw securities or cash from the bank, or dial back their trading activities, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Deutsche Chief Executive John Cryan said in a message to employees Friday that media speculation that a few hedge funds had reduced some activities with the bank was causing “unjustified concerns.”
He said the bank had “strong fundamentals” and pointed to the sale this week of British insurer Abbey Life for $1.2 billion and the bank’s plans to sell its stake in China’s Hua Xia Bank. “We fulfill all current capital requirements and our restructuring is well on track,” he said.
Other hedge funds to have bets against the bank include Marshall Wace LLP, Discovery Capital Management LLC and Highfields Capital Management LP, according to filings. Marshall Wace first declared a 0.5% short position in Deutsche Bank in February. By Tuesday, it had doubled its bet to 1.03%, although this was cut back Thursday to 0.9%.
Discovery first disclosed a position at the start of August and increased it late that month, while Highfields first disclosed a position in July, which it quickly increased.
Hedge funds’ bets against the troubled German lender have been cranked up in recent days, although they are still below levels hit earlier this summer...
WASHINGTON — The House and Senate voted Wednesday to reject President Obama's veto of legislation allowing lawsuits against foreign sponsors of terrorism — the first successful override of a presidential veto since Obama took office.More.
The president had vetoed the legislation Friday because he said the bill — known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA — would infringe on the president’s ability to conduct foreign policy. It was the 12th veto of his presidency.
But after an intense push by 9/11 survivors and families of victims who want to sue Saudi Arabia based on claims the country played a role in the 2001 terror attacks, even Obama’s Democratic allies on Capitol Hill voted to override his veto.
The House voted 348-77, well above the two-thirds majority needed. The final vote tally in the Senate was 97-1. Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., cast the lone dissenting vote.
"In our polarized politics of today, this is pretty much close to a miraculous occurrence," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said. Democrats and Republicans in both chambers agreed, he said, that the bill "gives the victims of the terrorist attack on our own soil an opportunity to seek the justice they deserve."
The top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said he shared some of Obama's concerns but said the victims' rights outweighed them.
"We cannot in good conscience close the courthouse door to those families who have suffered unimaginable losses," Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., said.
Obama told CNN on Wednesday that he thinks overriding his veto was a "mistake" and "basically a political vote." But he said he understood why Congress voted the way it did, despite what he suggested were private misgivings among some lawmakers.
“If you're perceived as voting against 9/11 families right before an election, not surprisingly, that's a hard vote for people to take," he said. "But it would have been the right thing to do."
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest decried the override as the "single most embarrassing thing the United States Senate has done possibly since 1983."
"Ultimately these senators are going to have to answer their own conscience and their constituents as they account for their actions today," he said, adding that Reid showed "courage" in opposing it.
The measure essentially creates an exception to sovereign immunity, the doctrine that holds one country can’t be sued in another country’s courts. It allows plaintiffs to sue other nations in U.S. federal courts for monetary damages in cases of injury, death or property damage caused by acts of international terrorism in the United States.
The White House has argued that the legislation will prompt other nations to retaliate, stripping the immunity the United States enjoys in other parts of the world. Obama said in a letter to Reid before Wednesday's vote that lawsuits already are allowed against countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism by the U.S. government.
The president warned the law could be "devastating" to the U.S. military, diplomatic and intelligence communities...
#ShimonPeres Dies at 93; Built Up #Israel’s Defense and Sought Peace. https://t.co/n8Rr8V2bYG
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) September 28, 2016
Jessica Melgoza is one of the lucky ones. A freshman at Banning High School’s new firefighter magnet, the 14-year-old has a prime seat in her English class — right in front of one of two fans.Modest?
All Los Angeles Unified School District classrooms are supposed to have working air conditioning. But as of Monday, when temperatures crept above 100 degrees by early afternoon, L.A. Unified schools had almost 700 unresolved complaints about problems with air conditioning.
Five, including two received Monday, came from Banning, located in Wilmington.
The current number of unresolved complaints is half of what the school system faced in mid-August, after school started, said Roger Finstad, L.A. Unified’s director of maintenance and operations. For the most part, the temperatures this school year have been more forgiving than last year, he said.
“For us, that’s a very modest backlog,” Finstad said. The district has about 30,000 classrooms...
Hillary Clinton is feeling the pressure in the race for the White House — even after a strong night in the first 2016 presidential debate.Well, no one should taking it easy at this point.
Clinton has a huge staff advantage over Donald Trump, which should help her turn out supporters this fall.
The Electoral College is tilted in her favor, and demographics are moving in the Democratic Party’s direction.
She’s running to succeed a popular president who is firmly on her side, and the economy is strengthening.
She’s also running against Trump, who has divided the Republican Party while alienating large groups of Americans.
Despite all those advantages, Clinton finds herself in an excruciatingly tight race.
As recently as Aug. 27, she had a more than 6-point lead over Trump in the RealClearPolitics national average of polls after a strong stretch following the Democratic National Convention.
On Tuesday, her lead was 2.4 percentage points in RealClearPolitics national advantage.
Polls have shown Trump ahead in the swing states of Florida and Ohio, and he has at least a fighting chance in all of the other battlegrounds, from purple states such as Nevada and Virginia to Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two states a Republican hasn’t won in decades.
Clinton’s team believes its candidate had a strong performance in Monday’s debate that will translate into a wider lead going into the second and third contests next month.
“The debate buoys her to the next big thing and the next debate,” said one Clinton surrogate.
They also argue that it is Trump who faces some pressure. The next presidential debate on Oct. 9 in St. Louis could be a must-win situation for the Republican.
All the same, Clinton and her supporters acknowledge they are in a dogfight over the next six weeks that could still go either way.
And they expect a fierce challenge from Trump...
In recent days, it has begun to dawn on a lot of people that Donald Trump really may win the election. (I, of course, have been predicting it all along…) This is causing near-hysteria in some quarters, and louder demands by Democrats for journalists in general, and the debate moderators in particular, to put their thumbs on the scale. As if they weren’t already doing so!More.
For the better part of a day, KrebsOnSecurity, arguably the world's most intrepid source of security news, has been silenced, presumably by a handful of individuals who didn't like a recent series of exposés reporter Brian Krebs wrote. The incident, and the record-breaking data assault that brought it on, open a troubling new chapter in the short history of the Internet.Pretty amazing.
The crippling distributed denial-of-service attacks started shortly after Krebs published stories stemming from the hack of a DDoS-for-hire service known as vDOS. The first article analyzed leaked data that identified some of the previously anonymous people closely tied to vDOS. It documented how they took in more than $600,000 in two years by knocking other sites offline. A few days later, Krebs ran a follow-up piece detailing the arrests of two men who allegedly ran the service. A third post in the series is here.
On Thursday morning, exactly two weeks after Krebs published his first post, he reported that a sustained attack was bombarding his site with as much as 620 gigabits per second of junk data. That staggering amount of data is among the biggest ever recorded. Krebs was able to stay online thanks to the generosity of Akamai, a network provider that supplied DDoS mitigation services to him for free. The attack showed no signs of waning as the day wore on. Some indications suggest it may have grown stronger. At 4 pm, Akamai gave Krebs two hours' notice that it would no longer assume the considerable cost of defending KrebsOnSecurity. Krebs opted to shut down the site to prevent collateral damage hitting his service provider and its customers.
"It's hard to imagine a stronger form of censorship than these DDoS attacks because if nobody wants to take you on then that's pretty effective censorship," Krebs told Ars on Friday. "I've had a couple of big companies offer and then think better of offering to help me. That's been frustrating."
Until recently, a DDoS attack in excess of 600Gb was nearly impossible for all but the most sophisticated and powerful actors to carry out. In 2013, attacks against anti-spam organization Spamhaus generated headlines because the 300Gb torrents were coming uncomfortably close to Internet-threatening size. The assault against KrebsOnSecurity represents a much greater threat for at least two reasons. First, it's twice the size. Second and more significant, unlike the Spamhaus attacks, the staggering volume of bandwidth doesn't rely on misconfigured domain name system servers which, in the big picture, can be remedied with relative ease...
Keith Lamont Scott was scum.
He had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon in two different states and convicted of assault in three states. He had been hit with “assault with intent to kill” charges in the 90s. His record of virtue included “assault on a child under 12” and “assault on a female.”
The media spin; “Family and neighbors call Scott a quiet ‘family man.’”
Nothing says “quiet” like “assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill” and nothing says “family man” like assaulting women and children.
Keith Lamont Scott, the latest martyr of Black Lives Matter and its media propaganda corps, was shot while waving a gun around. He had spent 7 years in jail for “aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.”
This vicious monster’s career of crime ended when he was shot by Brentley Vinson, an African-American police officer, protecting himself from the latest rampage by this “quiet family man.”
Brentley Vinson is everything that Scott isn’t. The son of a police officer, Brentley dreamed of following in his father’s footsteps. He used to organize his football team’s bible studies and mentored younger players. Former teammates describe him as a “great guy” with “good morals.” His former coach calls him a “natural leader” and says that, “We need more Brent Vinsons… in our communities.”
Except that Obama, Black Lives Matter, the media, the NAACP and everyone else going after this bright and decent African-American officer has decided that what we really need are more Keith Lamont Scotts. And the streets of Charlotte are full of “Scotts” throwing rocks at police, assaulting reporters and wrecking everything in sight in marches that are as “peaceful” as Scott was a “quiet family man.”
That’s what Hillary Clinton wanted when she tweeted that, “We have two names to add to a long list of African-Americans killed by police officers. It’s unbearable, and it needs to become intolerable.”
What exactly should be intolerable? An African-American police officer defending his life against a violent criminal who happened to be black? Should black criminals enjoy a special immunity? The greatest victims of black criminals are black communities.
Whom does Hillary Clinton imagine she’s helping here? Instead of standing with heroic African-American police officers like Vinson, she’s championing criminal scum like Scott.
Tim Kaine, Hillary’s No. 2, wants us to think about Scott’s family. We should do that. Scott’s brother announced on camera that all “white people” are “devils.” Timmy should check to see if he can get an exemption from white devildom. But if there are any white devils, it’s men like Kaine and women like Hillary who enable the worst behavior in a troubled community while punishing those who try to help.
Every time the lie about “peaceful” protests is repeated, another black community becomes unlivable.
Twenty police officers have been injured and National Guard troops have arrived to deal with all those “peaceful” protests. Protesters chanted, “Black Lives Matter” and “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” before throwing things at police and then peacefully shooting each other. Stores had their windows broken and decorated with Black Lives Matter graffiti. A Walmart was peacefully looted and trucks were torched.
A police officer was peacefully hit by a car. Another was peacefully hit in the face with a rock. Mobs besieged and attempted to break into hotels. Reporters were attacked and a photographer was nearly thrown into a fire. White people were targeted by the racist Black Lives Matter mob and assaulted.
But all these peaceful rioters are probably just quiet family men too.
The peaceful protests are as big a lie as the “bookish” Keith Lamont Scott reading a book in his car. Police had no trouble finding a gun. They couldn’t have found Scott anywhere near a book. The only thing he could have done with a book is try to beat someone to death with it. Maybe a child.
Scott wasn’t a quiet family man; he was a violent criminal with a horrifying vicious streak. He and the rest of the Black Lives Matter rioters remind us of the monsters that we need dedicated police officers to protect us from.
The spin on what happened between a deranged black criminal and a courageous black police officer fell apart as fast as the Freddie Gray case, where black police officers were targeted and a city terrorized over conspiracy theories relating to the accidental death of a drug dealer.
The claims of racism are absurd. Not only was Scott shot by an African-American police officer, but Charlotte Police Chief Kerr Putney, who has taken the lead in defending him, is also African-American.
Are we supposed to believe that an African-American police officer and an African-American police chief are racists or that these two black men took the lead in a genocidal conspiracy to kill black men?
That’s the laughable premise of the racist Black Lives Matter hatefest that alternates between “Stop killing us” street theater and violent assaults on police officers, reporters and anyone in the area.
But the truth doesn’t matter. Black Lives Matter rioters are still chanting, “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” long after the Michael Brown lie fell apart. They’re holding up signs reading, “It Was a Book.” The lie is backed by some of the biggest media corporations in the country, by $130 million from George Soros and the Ford Foundation, by Barack Hussein Obama and by Hillary Clinton.
These are the malign forces destroying Charlotte, as they trashed Baltimore. On the ground there are the vulture community organizers of Black Lives Matter, funded by the left, who parachute in to organize race riots, behind them are the reporters who sell the spin live on the air and the photographers who capture glamor shots of the racist rioters, and after them come the lawyers of the DOJ out to ruin, terrorize and intimidate whatever law enforcement survived the riots.
They did it in Ferguson and a dozen other places. Now they want to do it in Charlotte.
They want to do it because they hate white people and black people. They hate peace and decency. They hate the idea of people getting up in the morning and working for a living. They hate the idea of good officers, white and black men and women, like Brentley Vinson, who genuinely believe in doing the right thing. They want unearned power. They demand unearned wealth. And they thrive on destruction.
This is the real evil in Charlotte. And we need to stand up to it. From the ghetto to the manors of the liberal elite from burning cars to pricey restaurants in exclusive neighborhoods, it plots against us.
It is a lie repeated a million times. Sometimes the lie is simple. Other times it’s sophisticated. But the way to fight it is to begin with the truth.
The truth is that Keith Lamont Scott was a violent criminal who came to a bad end because of his own actions. Just like Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and too many other Black Lives Matter martyrs to count.
The truth is that everything Black Lives Matter does reminds us of why we need police officers.
The truth is that this is not about race, but about those who want to build and those who want to destroy. It’s about the difference between Brentley Vinson and Keith Lamont Scott.
It’s about what kind of country we want to be. Is it a country that celebrates a young black football player who chose to follow in his father’s footsteps, who organized bible study and helped others, who risked his life to keep other people safe. Or is it one that celebrates Keith Lamont Scott, who assaulted a woman, a child and anyone else he could get at, who terrorized three states and died as he lived.
Obama and the left want a nation of Keith Lamont Scotts. But now it’s our turn to choose.
It happened again. How could it happen again?Keep reading.
For all but the final two minutes Saturday night, UCLA did everything in its power to break an eight-game losing streak to a Stanford team that has long occupied its nightmares.
Then it happened again. Somehow, it happened again.
Stanford got tough. UCLA got tentative. Stanford found focus. UCLA lost control.
Stanford celebrated its history, while UCLA wallowed in its history, and everything changed as quickly as Josh Rosen fell into a heap while thousands stood stunned and frozen in the Rose Bowl stands rising around him.
The nightmare is back because, it turns out, the nightmare never left.
Stanford drove down the field in the final two minutes Saturday night to score the go-ahead touchdown on a leaping catch by J.J. Arcega-Whiteside from Ryan Burns with 24 seconds left, then added a fumble return for a touchdown on the final play for a 22-13 victory.
“Obviously that’s about as difficult as it gets,’’ said Bruin Coach Jim Mora...
WASHINGTON (AP) -- War crimes investigators collecting evidence of the Islamic State group's elaborate operation to kidnap thousands of women as sex slaves say they have a case to try IS leaders with crimes against humanity but cannot get the global backing to bring current detainees before an international tribunal.More. (Via Austin Bay at Instapundit.)
Two years after the IS onslaught in northern Iraq, the investigators, as well as U.S. diplomats, say the Obama administration has done little to pursue prosecution of the crimes that Secretary of State John Kerry has called genocide. Current and former State Department officials say that an attempt in late 2014 to have a legal finding of genocide was blocked by the Defense Department, setting back efforts to prosecute IS members suspected of committing war crimes...
Today is the day! Knock on doors and make calls with us on National Day of Action! #TrumpTrain #MAGAhttps://t.co/NQEgRxQN2m pic.twitter.com/4UFXDuj5vy
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2016
Leftists can use violent rhetoric and actual acts of violence against people with impunity, but a politically incorrect statement by a non-leftist MUST be punished, according to our self proclaimed moral superiors, so the “offended” will scream and howl until the target of their rage is utterly ruined.It's true. And all of that over a throwaway snarky tweet.
USA Today published an apology from Reynolds along with a statement from the paper that his column has been suspended for a month, but in the comments section, predictably, there is screeching that he should also lose his job at the university where he works.
The University of Tennessee is now investigating the good professor.
The PC mob will not be satisfied until they have utterly destroyed a good man’s reputation and ability to make a living.
.@Instapundit Considering anarchy in #Charlotte last night, to "run them down" would be purely defensive. Screw the leftist speech police.— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) September 22, 2016
(Longtime readers know that I've dealt with these lynch mobs myself and they're demonstrably evil. It's chilling too, but you can't back down. Fight these fuckers, even if you have to hire a lawyer. They'd murder you if they could get away with it, so watch your back. I do.)Glenn Reynolds, @instapundit, has been reinstated. Deets at https://t.co/AUY3qZQGJc pic.twitter.com/lQ3xgCZx2g— reason (@reason) September 22, 2016
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