Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo: Stunning Display of Dishonesty From the Left (VIDEO)

O'Reilly's really pissed off in this one, heh.

He hammers the radical left's enormous lies on the Trump administration's alleged "illegal immigration deportation regime."

Following up, "Hysteria and Sensationalism Falsely Spread 'Immigration Crackdown' Rumors."


The Case Against Contemporary Feminism

From Jia Tolentino, at the New Yorker.

And here's the subject Jessa Crispin, at Amazon, Why I Am Not A Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto.
Why I Am Not A Feminist is a radical, fearless call for revolution. It accuses the feminist movement of obliviousness, irrelevance, and cowardice—and demands nothing less than the total dismantling of a system of oppression.


Identity Politics is Toxic, But it Works

From Noah Rothman, at Commentary, "The Triumph of Identity Politics":

How the two parties approached their respective presidential election cycle losses in this decade is revealing. While the GOP conducted its 2012 “autopsy” in the open and as a result of internal and external pressures, the Democratic Party is conducting a postmortem out of the spotlight. A weekend retreat for Democratic House members and a Monday Priorities USA gathering of progressive groups suggest the party is aware it needs to adapt. Yet even the notion that the party which won the popular vote needs to reform meets with incredulity and bitter resistance from the grassroots faithful. Surely, the admonitions of a Trump-era Democrat like Jim Webb, who on Sunday chided his lifelong party for pushing all its chips in on identity politics, will be similarly discarded by the liberal activist class. Webb’s detractors would have a point. Democrats did not lose in 2016 because they embraced identity politics; they lost because they embraced the wrong sort of identity politics.

In a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” former Virginia Senator Webb scolded his party for adopting a message that has been “shaped toward identity politics,” thus alienating a core and classic Democratic constituency. “The people who believe that, regardless of any of these identity segments, you need to have a voice in quarters of power for those that have no voice,” Webb added. “And we’ve lost that for the Democratic Party.”

“When you’ve lost white working people, you’ve lost flyover land,” the senator continued. Unquestionably, the Democratic Party and the liberal activists who provide it with animating energy at the grassroots level have embraced an exclusionary and contradictory sort of identity politics. For the most part, the nation’s majority demographic has come out on the losing end.

The Democratic Party’s is a kind of identity politics that views transgendered bathroom access as a civil rights imperative but sees infringements on the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act in service to ObamaCare’s birth control mandate as a necessary element of a critical public health initiative. It’s a kind of identity politics that scoffs at those who offer prayers for the victims of violence, and which rewards those who insist that “Blue Lives Matter isn’t a thing.” It is a kind of identity politics that, when a special needs man is abducted and tortured for being white in the Trump era or a self-described practitioner of Islam perform an act of mass violence in his or her faith’s name, refuses to make note of these realities for fear of handing out coveted victimhood status to the undeserving. Yet it is also an identity politics that extrapolates from almost every incident of violence committed by a male of majority extraction that America is in the midst of an epidemic of racially-tinged violence.

Some of this is real and tangible, and some of it can be dismissed as a problem of perception. All of this is divisive, poisonous, and dangerous. Republicans under Trump didn’t abandon this brand of exclusionary identity politics; they embraced them.

The rise of white identity politics didn’t occur in a vacuum. It was a reaction to the sense of alienation and isolation. This sense was a direct result of the perception among white voters that they were disliked and that their interests were threatened by opinion makers on the coasts...
Keep reading.

Claire Lehmann: Why the Old Left Was Better (VIDEO)

She's a smart lady. I followed her on Twitter for a while, until she seemed to be too smart for her own good, heh.

Seriously, though, that's smart landing at the Rebel. Ezra Levant, the founder, is a Canadian national treasure.



Canadian Exceptionalism, American Envy

Sarah Kendzior's still raging her anti-Trump crusade, at Toronto's Globe and Mail:


Monday, February 13, 2017

Oroville Dam: Federal and State Officials Ignored Warnings 12 Years Ago

This just sticks in my craw.

At the San Jose Mercury News, and at KCRA News 3 Sacramento below:




Playboy Magazine to Bring Back Nude Women

Well, it turns out the politically correct Playboy didn't make the cut, and the editors decided to go with the tried and true: nude babes.

At Heat Street, "Playboy is Bringing Nudity Back Following Failed No-Nude Experiment."

And at PuffHo, "Playboy Takes Its Identity Back, Puts Nudity In New Issue."

I guess there's hope in the fight against the pathetic anti-nudity social justice feminist left.

Elizabeth Elam is the Playmate of the Month for March/April 2017


Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

I'm catching up on my Native American history, and I'll pick up a copy of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz on the 1st of the month.

Until then, at Amazon, Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West.

Deal of the Day: Dyson Ball Multifloor Upright Vacuum

Shop today, at Amazon, Dyson Ball Multifloor Upright Vacuum, Yellow (Certified Refurbished).

And shop all of Today's Deals.

BONUS: Robert Kelley, Battling the Inland Sea: Floods, Public Policy, and the Sacramento Valley.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America

*BUMPED.*

I just pulled out my old copy in the original hardback.

But it's still available in paper.

At Amazon, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (Revised and Enlarged Edition).

One of the added sections at the revised edition is "Schlesinger’s Syllabus," an essay on "the thirteen books you must read to understand America."

How awesome. If only more professors steeped their students in these classics.

Updates: #OrovilleSpillway Holds for Now (VIDEO)

Watch, at KCRA, "What a spillway failure would mean downstream," and "Aerial view shows emergency spillway at Lake Oroville."

Also, "Sacramento motels, hotels fill up with evacuees."

More, at the Sacramento Bee, and CBS This Morning below:




'Moonlight' Snubbed, So Leftists Accuse Baftas of 'Hate Crime'

I hate to say it, but I wish we could just round up leftists and be rid of them.

That won't work, though, so it's best to just to keep crushing them politically.

At Heat Street:


Fresno State’s Red Wave Turns Into Gray Wave as Bulldogs Struggle to Attract Young Fans

That's weird. Young fans weren't in short supply when I attended Fresno State in the late 1980s.

Indeed, the Bulldogs were the only game in town, and very popular.

Maybe not so much these days.

At the Fresno Bee:


Fresno State photo 3731_fresno_state_bulldogs-alternate-2006_zps2c5f3fd1.png
The empty seats at Bulldog Stadium and Save Mart Center for Fresno State football and basketball games are a troubling sign, but declining attendance is only part of a larger problem for an athletic department intending to get bigger and better.

The famed Red Wave, which helped build those venues and has served Fresno State athletic interests so well for so long, is going gray. And as is the case for most of the nation’s Division I schools, the athletic department is struggling to entice younger fans to games and build a sustainable base of season-ticket sales that account for a significant portion of its revenue.

Forty-nine percent of Fresno State football season ticket holders are 56 and older, according to a recent athletic department survey, with 9 percent 35 and younger. In basketball, 75 percent of season ticket holders are 56 and older and 4 percent 35 and younger.

“The math is not that complicated,” Athletic Director Jim Bartko said. “If we lose that revenue and it keeps going down, the budgets for all our sports will go down.”

Those numbers represent only those with season tickets who responded to the survey, and are not far out of line with national trends.

But Fresno State’s overall ticket sales have dropped sharply the past five seasons, a disturbing trend for a department that for years counted gate receipts as its second-largest source of revenue behind university support. In 2016-17, it is fourth behind university support, fundraising and a Mountain West Conference/NCAA distribution...
Still more.

National Security Advisor Michael Flynn: No Plans to Resign (VIDEO)

The Los Angeles Times reports there's an "ominous silence" around the National Security Adviser, a possible sign that he's about to be cut loose by the administration.

But the Hill reports that Flynn's made no plans to resign, and he's got no expectations he'll be fired.

President Trump should give Flynn's critics the finger. It's all politics. Fuck 'em.

More from Margaret Brennan, at CBS News This Morning:



Sunday, February 12, 2017

Danielle Gersh's Sunny Skies Forecast

I got out for a brisk 90 minute walk this afternoon. The weather was perfect.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles, the lovely Ms. Danielle:



#OrovilleSpillway Emergency Evacuation

The Sacramento Bee's got great coverage, as well as KCRA News 3 Sacramento:


Don't Miss Out - Shop Today's Deals!

At Amazon, Today's Deals.

BONUS: Walter A. McDougall, The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How America’s Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest.

Meryl Streep Pledges to Stand Up to 'Brownshirts' in Latest Attack on President Trump

She was never my favorite actress, although I'll be sure to boycott her films now.

What a fucking idiot.


Abraham Lincoln's Birthday

I love President Lincoln. He's my favorite president. I just wish I could transport back in time and meet him.

He was born 208 years ago today.

In any case, here's Scott Johnson, at Power Line, "REMEMBERING MR. LINCOLN," and "THINKIN’ ABOUT 'LINCOLN' AGAIN."


Far-Left California 'Could' Become a Sanctuary State

It's already a "sanctuary state." All the big cities, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Ana, and then some, refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The bill proposed by State Senate Leader Kevin de León would only formalize, at the state level, the reality on the ground.