Britt Bergmeister Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Casting Call 2017 (VIDEO)

She's fabulous:

Struggles of North Carolina Rural Voters (VIDEO)

This is interesting, even riveting in some respects.

Rural life is so different, and yet so beautiful. I love North Carolina. I love the mountain feel, the Appalachian feel.

Watch this clip, featuring white folks in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, from the PBS News Hour:

Donna Brazile Claims She's Being 'Persecuted' After Megyn Kelly Asks Her How She Obtained the Exact Same Question as Hillary Clinton at the March 13th Debate (VIDEO)

Truly despicable.

Talk about a rigged election. That's not up for debate.

The whole video's good, but go to 5:55 minutes at the clip:

'We will drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.'

Good.

There's a lot of draining to be done.

Here's Donald Trump at Gettysburg, "Trump makes 'closing argument,' again attacks accusers."

Trump: “We will drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.” https://t.co/tByfpF7dN5 https://t.co/FyVLPrVZyj

— CNN (@CNN) October 22, 2016

Reuters Calls the Election for Hillary

Crooked Hillary's been ahead in the Electoral College for almost the entire campaign, but Reuters is making a bid deal of her current lead. See, "Clinton far ahead in Electoral College race: Reuters/ipsos poll" (at Memeor
andum):

Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton maintained her commanding lead in the race to win the Electoral College and claim the U.S. presidency, according to the latest States of the Nation project results released on Saturday.

In the last week, there has been little movement. Clinton leads Donald Trump in most of the states that Trump would need should he have a chance to win the minimum 270 votes needed to win. According to the project, she has a better than 95 percent chance of winning, if the election was held this week. The mostly likely outcome would be 326 votes for Clinton to 212 for Trump.

Trump came off his best debate performance of the campaign Wednesday evening but the polling consensus still showed Clinton winning the third and final face-off on prime-time TV. Trump disputes those findings.

And some national polls had the race tightening a wee bit this week though others had Clinton maintaining her solid lead. But the project illustrates that the broader picture remains bleak for Trump with 17 days to go until the Nov. 8 election.

Trump did gain ground in South Carolina where his slim lead last week expanded to seven points, moving it into his column from a toss-up. Unfortunately for him, he lost ground in Arizona, which is now too close to call.

Additionally, he is facing a challenge for Utah’s six Electoral College votes from former CIA operative and Utah native Evan McMullin. The independent candidate is siphoning votes away from Trump in a state that is Republican as any in the nation. In some polls, McMullin is even leading. (The States of the Nation is not polling on McMullin.)

Utah, like almost all of the states, is a winner-take-all contest.

Keep reading.

Facebook Employees Pushed to Remove Trump's Posts as Hate Speech

Facebook employees threatened to quit over Trump, angry that Mark Zuckerberg allowed Trump's posts to stay up, even though, according to employees, his comments violated the social network's terms of service.

At WSJ.

Good on Zuck. But what you're seeing is the axis of ideological conflict going forward, starting very soon, in fact. And leftists are going to win, more and more. Conservative speech will be shut down as "hate speech." First it'll be on private services like Facebook, but if Hillary gets a couple of Supreme Court nominees confirmed, Court rulings may well chip away at longstanding protections for speech. Look for cases arising from the hotbeds of political correctness, America's college campuses.

The Movement for Prison Reform on the Right

From Megan McArdle, at Bloomberg, "How the Right Changed Its Mind on Prison":

One of the heartening developments of the last few years has been the emergence of a serious movement for prison reform on the right. These people are not simply coming over to the left-wing side; they have their own ideas about de-escalating mass incarceration, and an increasingly serious commitment to doing so.

Political scientist Steven Teles has just released a new book on the phenomenon: “Prison Break: Why Conservatives Turned Against Mass Incarceration.” I sat down with him on Thursday to ask him about the book and talk about what it might mean for the future of both criminal-justice reform and the Republican Party.

Keep reading.

Cornel West Lecture at Long Beach City College

The man is a real, live prophetic firebrand. I was amazed, practically shocked, at the power and intensity of his speaking.

And believe me, I'm generally not coming from his point of view. Still, pretty amazing talk.

College President Eloy Oakley tweeted:

Proud to intro @CornelWest to @LBCityCollege students & staff. Commitment to truth & action #equity #socialjustice pic.twitter.com/Fn8vMsroKq

— Eloy Ortiz Oakley (@EloyOakley) October 21, 2016

TY Dr. @CornelWest for speaking truth to @LBCityCollege students & staff. We were all blessed to hear your words. pic.twitter.com/6bC2UPJ7OO

— Eloy Ortiz Oakley (@EloyOakley) October 21, 2016

Also, check out West's latest book, Black Prophetic Fire.

Like I always say, it's better to know your enemies, so I read everything I can get my hands on, left and right. It makes me a better teacher frankly, and damn if Cornel West doesn't make some good points regardless of ideology.

See also, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism.

Deal of the Day: New Lady Gaga Album: $3.99 [BUMPED]

Hurry.

Offer ends in a little more than 14 hours.

At Amazon, Joanne [Explicit].

BONUS: Robert S. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War. (I'm loving this book.)

A Frightening Preview of Hillary's America

From Daniel Greenfield, at FrontPage Magazine, "Dark and Unaccountable":

Hillary Clinton, of all people, summed up this debate and this election best.

“What kind of country are we going to be?”

The Evita of Arkansas is a compulsive liar who has never told the truth in her life. But this time around she was right. This election does not come down to the personalities. It comes down to the kind of country we are going to have. And in the third debate, the one that took a break from the petty haranguing of media lackeys like Lester Holt and Martha Raddatz, the issues took center stage.

The core issue came into focus with the very first question asked by Chris Wallace. Wallace asked Hillary and Trump if their vision for the Supreme Court was based on the Constitution or not. Hillary launched into a spiel about a Supreme Court that would stand for class warfare and gay rights. The only time she mentioned the Constitution was when she insisted that the Senate was constitutionally obligated to confirm Obama’s nominee. That is her vision of the Constitution; a document that grants her power to reshape the country without regard to the Founders or any previously existing rights or freedoms.

It fell to Trump to speak of justices who would “interpret the Constitution the way the founders wanted it interpreted”. And that is the core issue. Personalities and politicians come and go. Today’s trending topic has been forgotten a day later. Outrages explode like fireworks and then fizzle out.

The weapons of mass distraction have been deployed and detonated. They keep going off in blasts of media gunpowder to divert our attention from whether we will live under the Constitution or under the Hillary. Will we have the rights and freedom bound into the Constitution or corruption justified with cant about the need to defend the oppressed by giving unlimited power to the oppressors.

The final debate finally focused on the issues. Instead of leading with the scandals, it asked about gun control, amnesty and open borders. It asked what kind of country are we going to be?

And, are we going to be a country at all or an open border weeping undocumented migrants destroying what’s left of the middle class as the masterminds rob the country blind while preaching piously to us about all the poor Syrians, Mexicans and LGBT youth they want to protect?

Americans have had a preview of the country that Hillary Clinton would create under Obama. They received yet another preview of it at a final debate in which Hillary echoed Obama’s Orwellian language in which endless spending was dubbed “investing” and in which government would save the middle class by regulating and taxing it out of existence for the greater good of the officially oppressed.

Hillary Clinton promised free college and cradle to grave education that would be debt free. Americans would be the ones plummeting deeper and deeper into debt to pay for degrees in gender studies. She promised viewers pie in the sky to be paid for by higher taxes on the rich. But as Trump pointed out, that’s the class that her donors come from. Did Warren Buffett and George Soros invest all that money into her victory just to pay higher taxes? Did they do it right after they bought the Brooklyn Bridge?

Or will Americans buy the bridge believing Hillary’s promise that she “will not add a penny to the debt”?

The only way Hillary can hope to do that is to appoint Bernie Madoff to be her Treasury Secretary.

When Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump wrangled over tax hikes or tax cuts, the debate is whether crooks like the Clintons should have a massive pot of taxpayer money to “invest” into their donors.

But beneath it is the same big question; do we live under the Constitution or under the Hillary?

In Hillary Country, just like in Obama Country, there are always more “investments” to make and you had better pay your “fair share”. There are always special identity group interests that need money. There are always more regulations, taxes, fines and fees. And it’s all for the children.

The ones that Hillary will grimace at when the cameras are on her and nudge away with the point of her shoe when the little red light turns off.

But there is no lie that Hillary Clinton will not tell and no lie that her pet media fact checkers will not back her up on....

Still more.

East Coast Hacking Vendetta

I blogged this morning and logged onto Twitter no problem, but then not too long later no dice.

I couldn't access the site, and I saw the news of the massive DDoS attack.

And now, at Bloomnberg, "The Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown" (via Memeorandum):

Millions of internet users lost access to some of the world’s most popular websites Friday, as hackers hammered servers along the U.S. East Coast with phony traffic until they crashed, then moved westward.
A global attack on one provider of Domain Name System services, Dyn Inc., took down sites including Twitter, Spotify, Reddit, CNN, Etsy and The New York Times for long stretches of time -- from New York to Los Angeles.

Kyle York, chief strategy officer of Dyn, said the hackers launched a so-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack using “tens of millions” of malware-infected devices connected to the internet. Speaking during a conference call Friday afternoon, York said Dyn was “actively” dealing with a “third wave” of the attack.

By Friday evening, Dyn said it had stopped the hacks. "As you can imagine it has been a crazy day," Dyn spokesman Adam Coughlin wrote in an e-mail. "At this moment (knock on wood) service has been restored."

Security professionals have been anticipating a rise in attacks coming from malware that targets the "Internet of Things," a new breed of small gadgets that are connected to the internet. That was after a hacker released software code that powers such malware, called Mirai, several weeks ago.

Gillian M. Christensen, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said the agency and the FBI are aware of the incidents and “investigating all potential causes.”

Keep reading.

Lady Gaga at the Bitter End Nightclub (VIDEO)

Following-up, "Deal of the Day: New Lady Gaga Album: $3.99."

At CBS News 2 New York:

Update on the K-12 Implosion

From Glenn Reynolds, at Instapundit, "K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: What Politicians Mean When They Ask for More Education Spending."

And see Reynolds' book, The K-12 Implosion.

BONUS: The Education Apocalypse: How It Happened and How to Survive It.

Wonder Woman's Visceral Impact (VIDEO)

The U.N. has named Wonder Woman the Honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls.

This fills Lynda Carter with pride. And she makes a point that she first did this role 40 years ago. She looks great --- she looks like she could still do the role, va va voom!

At CBS This Morning:

More on Hitler and Nazi Germany [BUMPED]

I mentioned I was surprised by the publication of a major new Hitler biography, Volker Ullrich's, Hitler: Ascent, 1889-1939.

Mainly that's because there's been so much first rate research on the Nazi leader that I'm surprised historians came up with anything new.

When I was finishing grad school, Ian Kershaw published a two-volume biography that reviewers at the time said was unlikely to be surpassed. See, Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris, and Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis. (I don't think I need to read too much more beyond Kershaw's work, but that's me.)

Then there's the famous biography from Joachim Fest, Hitler.

And also John Toland's bestseller, Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography.

Not to mention, Alan Bullock's Hitler: A Study in Tyranny.

I also linked Michael Burleigh the other day. See his masterful work, The Third Reich: A New History.

I'm interested in reading Richard Evans' work on the Nazi regime, in three volumes, The Coming of the Third Reich; The Third Reich in Power; and The Third Reich at War.

I was interested as well in Timothy Snyder's recent book, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, but he argues the Holocaust is analogous to the threat of global climate change, which even reviewers thought wacky. He's lost me on that. I think I'll pass.

Great Robert Costa Piece on the Crumbling of the Republican Party

This is a much better report than the one from the New York Times I posted earlier here, "Republican Party on the Verge of Extinction?"

Robert Costa used to be at NRO, and he's an outstanding reporter with excellent inside sources and a real feel for movement politics.

At WaPo:

#DonaldTrump-driven divide will consume #GOPe long after the election: https://t.co/Zee2HtbS7a #TRUMP #TRUMPTRAIN #MAGA #Rigged

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 20, 2016

How Russia Pulled Off the Biggest Election Hack in U.S. History

This is pretty intense, although for all the claims of Russia cyber-spying and hacking, I've yet to see what I consider rock-hard evidence. It's all technical and circumstantial. It's weird, frankly.

See Esquire, "Russia Hackers to Blame for Wikileaks Emails - Proof Vladmir Putin Was Behind the Clinton Email Hack."

Just read it at the link:

How Russia Pulled Off the Biggest Election Hack in U.S. Historyhttps://t.co/lsZlUq46EQ pic.twitter.com/WZ74Gs2eTL

— Tyler Coates (@tylercoates) October 20, 2016

Candidates Struggle to Remain Civil at the Al Smith Charity Dinner (VIDEO)

Actually, sounds like a pretty hilarious roast.

At New York Magazine, "A Night of Laughter, Charity, and Boos: The Candidates Struggle to Remain Civil at the Al Smith Charity Dinner."

'Johnny B. Goode'

Tuesday was Chuck Berry's 90th birthday, and the dude's still rockin'.

From Tuesday morning's drive-time, "Johnny B. Goode," at the Sound L.A., "Chuck Berry Is Still Rockin'":

Chuck Berry, who turns 90 today, has announced a surprising treat for his fans.

The rock and roll pioneer will release a new album in 2017. Titled Chuck, it's a collection of mostly new, self-written material featuring the band that backed him on over 200 shows at the Blueberry Hill Club in St. Louis -- including his children Charles Berry Junior (on guitar) and Ingrid Berry (harmonica) along with Jimmy Marsala (Berry's bassist of 40 years), Robert Lohr (piano), and Keith Robinson (drums).

Berry says in a statement that he's dedicated the project to his wife of 68 years, Themetta Berry. "My darlin' I'm growing old! I've worked on this record for a long time. Now I can hang up my shoes!"

Charles Berry Junior adds, "These songs cover the spectrum from hard driving rockers to soulful thought provoking time capsules of a life's work."

 And flashback to 2008, "Never Ever Learned to Read or Write So Well..."

Book Review: Nancy Isenberg's, White Trash

This is a great book review, from Professor Jefferson Cowie, at Foreign Affairs, "The Great White Nope: Poor, Working Class, and Left Behind in America."

Here's the book, at Amazon, Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America.

And an excerpt from Professor Cowie's review:

Most Americans are optimistic about their futures—but poor and working-class whites are not. According to a recent analysis published by the Brookings Institution, poor Hispanics are almost a third more likely than their white counterparts to imagine a better future. And poor African Americans—who face far higher rates of incarceration and unemployment and who fall victim far more frequently to both violent crime and police brutality—are nearly three times as optimistic as poor whites. Carol Graham, the economist who oversaw the analysis, concluded that poor whites suffer less from direct material deprivation than from the intangible but profound problems of “unhappiness, stress, and lack of hope.” That might explain why the slogan of the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump—“Make America Great Again!”—sounds so good to so many of them.

A stunning U-turn in the fortunes of poor and working-class whites began in the 1970s, as deindustrialization, automation, globalization, and the growth of the high-technology and service sectors transformed the U.S. economy. In the decades since, many blue-collar jobs have vanished, wages have stagnated for less educated Americans, wealth has accumulated at the top of the economic food chain, and social mobility has become vastly harder to achieve. Technological and financial innovations have fostered economic and social vitality in urban centers on the coasts. But those changes have brought far fewer benefits to the formerly industrial South and Midwest. As economic decline has hollowed out civic life and the national political conversation has focused on other issues, many people in “flyover country” have sought solace in opioids and methamphetamine; some have lashed out by embracing white nationalist rage. As whites come closer to becoming a plurality in the United States (or a “white minority,” in more paranoid terms), many have become receptive to nativist or bigoted appeals and thinly veiled promises to protect their endangered racial privilege: think of Trump’s promise to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and his invocation of an unspecified bygone era when the United States was “great,” which many white Trump supporters seem to understand as a reference to a time when they felt themselves to be more firmly at the center of civic and economic life.

Trump also loves to tell his audiences that they are victims of a “rigged” political system that empowers elites at their expense. On that count, the evidence supports him. Consider, for example, the findings of a widely cited 2014 study by the political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, who researched public opinion on approximately 1,800 policy proposals (as captured by surveys taken between 1981 and 2002) and found that only those ideas endorsed by the wealthiest ten percent of Americans became law. This domination of politics by economic elites has produced the de facto disenfranchisement of everyone else—a burden experienced by the entire remaining 90 percent, of course, but perhaps felt most acutely by those who have fallen the furthest.

For poor and working-class white Americans, the profound shifts of the past few decades have proved literally lethal: beginning around 1999, life expectancy—which had been increasing dramatically for all Americans during the twentieth century—began to decrease for less educated middle-aged whites. Angus Deaton, the Nobel Prize–winning economist who discovered this trend along with his wife and collaborator, the economist Anne Case, speculated that this demographic group is “susceptible to despair” because they have “lost the narrative of their lives.”

Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash aims to uncover the historical roots of this social calamity and explain its political effects. It’s an ambitious book that doesn’t quite succeed but that is nonetheless frequently revelatory...

Keep reading.