Norman Mailer, The Executioner's Song

While out yesterday I visited a used bookstore in Sherman Oaks and picked up a cheap paperback copy of Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings. Well, my niece started high school yesterday, and after my sister and I picked her up, the two of them had to run into Staples for some school supplies. I waited out in the car. Wouldn't you know it, they ran into another mom from the community, and they were shooting the bull inside the store for like a half-an-hour. I'm like wtf is taking so long? Meanwhile, I'm in the car reading this novel. I didn't think I was going to start in on another book so soon, but what can you do? And it turns out Mailer's an interesting writer.

So, I'll look for a cheap copy of this one as well, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize. At Amazon, Norman Mailer, The Executioner's Song.

Andrew Wheatcroft, The Enemy at the Gate

At Amazon, Andrew Wheatcroft, The Enemy at the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans, and the Battle for Europe.

#Antifa is the Resurgence of Anti-War Movement, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter

From Brandon Darby, at Breitbart.

That is it. That is exactly it.

Barcelona Truck Jihad Massacre: At Least 13 Slaughtered (VIDEO)

Wow!

Those white supremacists are spreading everywhere, and fast!

At Pamela, "Jihad Slaughter in Barcelona: AT LEAST 13 DEAD, dozens injured as van RAMS into crowd outside kosher restaurant."

Also, at Telegraph U.K., "Live: Barcelona terror attack: van crashes into crowd at La Rambla, killing 'at least 13'."

The suspect, who's in custody, posted (then Facebook removed) as "an anti-Semitic video alleging a global Jewish conspiracy." (Here and here.)

And at CNN, FWIW:

Danielle Gersh's Sunny and Warm Forecast

I spent the day with my younger sister in Studio City, hence blogging's been light. Of course, I'm not into political blogging that much right now, anyway, since everything's so stupid.

It was a nice visit, in any case. I need to spend more time up that way. There's more used book stores, for one thing, and I want to go to the Reagan Library. (I'd spend the night at my sister's and head up to Simi Valley early in the morning.) And that's not to mention all the art museums up there as well. Maybe next summer?

More later.

Meanwhile, here's the lovely Ms. Danielle with the local weather. It's been quite mild. Normally late August and September's the hottest time of the year.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Shop Deals

At Amazon, Today's Deals.

More, KIND Breakfast Bars, Peanut Butter, Gluten Free, 1.8 Ounce, 32 Count.

And, Mountain House Just In Case...Essential Bucket.

Still more, AmazonBasics Apple Certified Lightning to USB Cable - 6 Feet (1.8 Meters) - Black.

Plus, Blue Lizard Australian Sunscreen, Sensitive SPF 30+, 5-Ounce.

Also, Save on Craftsman Tools.

Here, Top Quality in Car Audio.

BONUS: Stephen Dando-Collins, Mark Antony's Heroes: How the Third Gallica Legion Saved an Apostle and Created an Emperor.

Adrian Goldsworthy, In the Name of Rome

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Adrian Goldsworthy, In the Name of Rome: The Men Who Won the Roman Empire.

The Real Race War

From David Horowitz, at FrontPage Magazine:

The tragedy in Charlottesville could have been an occasion to stop and consider how the tolerance for politically correct violence and politically correct hatred is leading the nation towards civil war. Instead the media and the political left have turned this incident into the biggest fake news story of the summer, transforming its real lessons into a morality play that justifies war against the political right, and against white people generally.

The organizers of the “Unite the Right” demonstration in Charlottesville were repellent racists. But they came to defend a historic monument honoring a complex man and cause, and not to attack it or presumably anyone else. They applied for a permit and were denied. They re-applied successfully in a petition supported by the local ACLU. If they had come to precipitate violence, why would they have gone to the tedious trouble of applying for a permit? Who knows what – if anything – would have happened if that had been the end of the story and no one had showed up to oppose them.

What “Unite the Right” actually demonstrated was that the assortment of neo-Nazis, pro-Confederates and assorted yahoos gathered under the banner of the “Alt-Right” is actually a negligible group. This was a national show of strength that actually attracted all of 500 people. Compare that to the tens of the thousands who can readily be marshalled by two violent groups of the left – Black Lives Matter and Antifa – and you get an idea of how marginal “white supremacists” are to America’s political and cultural life.

Yet “white supremacy” and its evils became the centerpiece of all the fake news reporting on the event, including all the ludicrous attacks on the president for not condemning enough a bogeyman the whole nation condemns, and that no one but a risible fringe supports. Talk about virtue signaling! Omitted from the media coverage were the other forces at work in precipitating the battle of Emancipation Park, specifically Black Lives Matter and Antifa, two violent leftwing groups with racial agendas who came to squelch the demonstration in defense of the monument.

Unlike the Unite the Right demonstrators, the leftist groups did not apply for permits, which would have been denied since there was another demonstration scheduled for that park on that day. But why should they have applied for a permit, since the havoc they had previously wreaked in Ferguson, Berkeley, Sacramento, Portland and other cities, was accomplished without permits, while their criminality was presented by the media as “protests,” and their rioting went completely unpunished.

In short, there were two demonstrations in Charlottesville - a legal protest by “Unite the Right” and an illegal protest by the vigilantes of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Who started the fight is really immaterial. Both sides were prepared for violence because these conflicts are already a pattern of our deteriorating civic life. Once the two sides had gathered in the same place, the violence was totally predictable. Two parties, two culpabilities; but except for the initial statement of President Trump, condemning both sides, only one party has been held accountable, and that happens to be the one that was in the park legally.

What is taking place in the media accounts and political commentaries on this event is an effort by the left to turn the mayhem in Charlottesville into a template for their war against a mythical enemy – “white supremacy” – which is really a war on white people generally. The ideology that drives the left and divides our country is “identity politics” – the idea that the world consists of two groups – “people of color” who are guiltless and oppressed, and white people who are guilty and oppressors. This is the real race war. Its noxious themes inform the mindless, hysterical hatred for President Trump, and the equally mindless support for racist mobs like Black Lives Matter and Antifa. It is a war from which no good can come. But it won’t be stopped unless enough people have the courage to stand up and name it for what it is.

Stephen Dando-Collins, Legions of Rome

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Stephen Dando-Collins, Legions of Rome: The Definitive History of Every Imperial Roman Legion.

Barry Strauss, The Spartacus War

*BUMPED.*

This one's apparently "the first popular history of the [Spartacus] revolt in English."

I'm enjoying Spartacus immensely, so this looks excellent.

At Amazon, Barry Strauss, The Spartacus War.

Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution.

Mary Beard, SPQR

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome.

Charles Krauthammer Slams President Trump's Tuesday Press Conference as 'Moral Disgrace' (VIDEO)

I actually saw the headline at Free Beacon first, "Krauthammer Spars With Ingraham on Trump’s Presser: It ‘Was a Moral Disgrace’."

But I had to watch it for myself, and Fox News posted the full exchange to YouTube. I get it. Trump's supposed to rise above. He's supposed to be "presidential" and non-equivocating. And I love Charles Krauthammer too. I really do. But on this one, Laura Ingraham's got a better pulse on the politics. She's especially correct that no matter what Trump said he was going to be pilloried by his opponents, people who hate him on both the right and left. It's pretty riveting.

From last night:



PREVIOUSLY: "President Trump Criticizes 'Alt-Left' Groups in #Charlottesville (VIDEO)."

Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire

I'm doing well with Colleen McCullough's The First Man in Rome. I'm almost 100 pages in and I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised. As I've mentioned at some point, with novels I know pretty quickly if I'm going to like the book. When the pages fly by, it's going to be a pleasure. When you're wading through, grinding it out and daydreaming of other things, it's work. And that's not going to work out. So, more about McCullough later. I've got all of her books in the "Masters of Rome" series (well, actually, the last two are being delivered shortly, The October Horse [2002] and Antony and Cleopatra [2007]). I do recommend them, for sure, so click heavily on the links if you're inclined.

That said, I've found a few other things of significant interest in my used bookstore puttering. Especially noteworthy, for a cheap paperback, is Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae.

Apparently this one's frequently copied but rarely matched. And the cover blurbs are effusive. It's going to be one or two more books in the future for me, but it'll be a quick read. Go ahead and get yours at Amazon.

More later.

'Dying together was their deepest wish...'

Maybe if it truly was "their deepest wish"? Maybe if there were young, legally-informed family members around to guard against malicious state "health" officials. Then maybe, just maybe, I could accept this. I'm still skeptical, though. I just am.

At Althouse, "'Nic and Trees Elderhorst, both 91, died [together, by euthanasia] in their hometown of Didam, in the Netherlands, after 65 years of marriage'."

It's the Netherlands. I'm not at all confident the Netherlands is all that different from Iceland when it comes to protecting life. Did you see this? "Monstrous: 'Iceland is on pace to virtually eliminate Down syndrome through abortion'."

I'm for life. I don't like the European, or Nordic or whatever, approach to "human compassion." It's evil.

President Trump Criticizes 'Alt-Left' Groups in #Charlottesville (VIDEO)

I've had a long day working on my materials for my classes. Plus, I did some puttering around again this afternoon at my used bookstores. I'm a little tired. But tuning in to the news makes me even more tired. I'm tired of all the identity politics all the time. Seriously, it's physically, emotionally, and intellectually draining. I'd prefer not to deal with it, because there's very little truth involved in what most people are saying.

Here's the headline at the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "A Combative Trump Criticizes ‘Alt-Left’ Groups in Charlottesville."

I obviously think both sides should be criticized. There's no defense of neo-Confederates and Nazis, clearly. There shouldn't be a defense of radical left "antifa" groups either, although all kinds of folks --- including major mass-media types --- are praising "alt-left" activists for "standing up" to racism.

I can't even any more. This is just too stupid. America has become too stupid as a country. The beltway and coastal elites, along with the fake news MSM, are leading the country down to the lowest common denominator. And we're talking really low. Handball against the curb low. And to think, I'm reading elevated history and philosophy (like Bertrand Russell!) and I have have a sense of near helplessness and futility in hoping to personally turn things around. But then, no worries. I'm a professor. Some students will take away some knowledge and wisdom from my classes this fall. The SJWs won't learn at thing, of course, and I can't help them. They're truly a lost cause.

In any case, here's some video for you. I'm going to blog more books tonight. That's what's keeping me sane. Books, and bikini babes, heh.



PREVIOUSLY: "Is America Headed for a New Kind of Civil War?"

Barry Strauss, The Death of Caesar

At Amazon, Barry Strauss, The Death of Caesar: The Story of History’s Most Famous Assassination.

It’s Not Just Google — All of Silicon Valley Has a Trust Problem Now

That's for sure.

At Instapundit, "MY USA TODAY COLUMN: It’s not just Google — all of Silicon Valley has a trust problem now. “When a gigantic corporation that controls our data and knows us intimately takes a controversial political stance, it ought to make us worry”."

Adrian Goldsworthy, Caesar

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Adrian Goldsworthy, Caesar: Life of a Colossus.

Haley Kalil, Miss Minnesota 2014, for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit (VIDEO)

Lovely.

Demi Rose Strips Down

At the Sun U.K., "PEACH ON THE BEACHDemi: Demi Rose strips off naked and shows off her incredible bum for sexy new photoshoot in Santorini - The stunning model stripped nude as she prepared to indulge in a spot of hot tub skinny dipping on the Greek island."

Also, at London's Daily Mail, "Sultry Demi Rose Mawby leaves little to the imagination in completely NAKED beach shoot."

And on Twitter.

Anne Hathaway Nude Photos Leaked (NSFW)

At Drunken Stepfather, "Anne Hathaway Alleged Nudes I Won’t Post Cuz of Lawsuits and Stuff."

Is America Headed for a New Kind of Civil War?

So far, it's a cold civil war, waged on the battlefields of politics and culture. But things are heating up, seriously.

Here's Robin Wright, at the New Yorker, "The recent unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia, after a white-supremacist rally has stoked some Americans’ fears of a new civil war":

A day after the brawling and racist brutality and deaths in Virginia, Governor Terry McAuliffe asked, “How did we get to this place?” The more relevant question after Charlottesville—and other deadly episodes in Ferguson, Charleston, Dallas, Saint Paul, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, and Alexandria—is where the United States is headed. How fragile is the union, our republic, and a country that has long been considered the world’s most stable democracy? The dangers are now bigger than the collective episodes of violence. “The radical right was more successful in entering the political mainstream last year than in half a century,” the Southern Poverty Law Center reported in February. The organization documents more than nine hundred active (and growing) hate groups in the United States.

America’s stability is increasingly an undercurrent in political discourse. Earlier this year, I began a conversation with Keith Mines about America’s turmoil. Mines has spent his career—in the U.S. Army Special Forces, the United Nations, and now the State Department—navigating civil wars in other countries, including Afghanistan, Colombia, El Salvador, Iraq, Somalia, and Sudan. He returned to Washington after sixteen years to find conditions that he had seen nurture conflict abroad now visible at home. It haunts him. In March, Mines was one of several national-security experts whom Foreign Policy asked to evaluate the risks of a second civil war—with percentages. Mines concluded that the United States faces a sixty-per-cent chance of civil war over the next ten to fifteen years. Other experts’ predictions ranged from five per cent to ninety-five per cent. The sobering consensus was thirty-five per cent. And that was five months before Charlottesville.

“We keep saying, ‘It can’t happen here,’ but then, holy smokes, it can,” Mines told me after we talked, on Sunday, about Charlottesville. The pattern of civil strife has evolved worldwide over the past sixty years. Today, few civil wars involve pitched battles from trenches along neat geographic front lines. Many are low-intensity conflicts with episodic violence in constantly moving locales. Mines’s definition of a civil war is large-scale violence that includes a rejection of traditional political authority and requires the National Guard to deal with it. On Saturday, McAuliffe put the National Guard on alert and declared a state of emergency.

Based on his experience in civil wars on three continents, Mines cited five conditions that support his prediction: entrenched national polarization, with no obvious meeting place for resolution; increasingly divisive press coverage and information flows; weakened institutions, notably Congress and the judiciary; a sellout or abandonment of responsibility by political leadership; and the legitimization of violence as the “in” way to either conduct discourse or solve disputes.

President Trump “modeled violence as a way to advance politically and validated bullying during and after the campaign,” Mines wrote in Foreign Policy. “Judging from recent events the left is now fully on board with this,” he continued, citing anarchists in anti-globalization riots as one of several flashpoints. “It is like 1859, everyone is mad about something and everyone has a gun.”
To test Mines’s conjecture, I reached out to five prominent Civil War historians this weekend. “When you look at the map of red and blue states and overlap on top of it the map of the Civil War—and who was allied with who in the Civil War—not much has changed,” Judith Giesberg, the editor of the Journal of the Civil War Era and a historian at Villanova University, told me. “We never agreed on the outcome of the Civil War and the direction the country should go in. The postwar amendments were highly contentious—especially the Fourteenth Amendment, which provides equal protection under the law—and they still are today. What does it mean to deliver voting rights to people of color? We still don’t know.”

She added, “Does that make us vulnerable to a repeat of the past? I don’t see a repeat of those specific circumstances. But that doesn’t mean we are not entering something similar in the way of a culture war. We are vulnerable to racism, tribalism, and conflicting visions of the way forward for our nation.”

Anxiety over deepening schisms and new conflict has an outlet in popular culture: in April, Amazon selected the dystopian novel “American War”—which centers on a second U.S. civil war—as one of its best books of the month. In a review in the Washington Post, Ron Charles wrote, “Across these scarred pages rages the clash that many of us are anxiously speculating about in the Trump era: a nation riven by irreconcilable ideologies, alienated by entrenched suspicions . . . both poignant and horrifying.” The Times book reviewer noted, “It’s a work of fiction. For the time being, anyway.” The book’s author, Omar El Akkad, was born in Egypt and covered the war in Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, and the Ferguson protest as a journalist for Canada’s Globe and Mail...

Folks can see why I was so fascinated with El Akkad's book. I highly recommend it. Here, Omar El Akkad, American War.

And keep reading Wright's piece, here.

Tom Holland, Rubicon

*BUMPED.*

This one comes highly recommended.

At Amazon, Tom Holland, Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic.

Ann Coulter, Demonic

I tweeted last night, "The left is just one big mob at this point. It's a collective descent into mob mentality, and from that comes mass murder. #Charlottesville."

And now I saw this one minutes ago, ".@AnnCoulter tried warning us. Liberalism is a demonic mentality that openly promotes violent mob uprisings to advance their agenda."

It's true.

And it's a great book, at Amazon, Ann Coulter, Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America.

The Left Exploits the #Charlottesville Tragedy

From Joseph Klein, at FrontPage Mag, "Hypocritical left excuses its own violence while taking aim at Trump."

John Gooch, Mussolini and his Generals

Well, it's not Ancient Rome, although Benito Mussolini did claim that he'd turn the Mediterranean into a "Roman lake." It didn't quite turn out that way, but still, the history's interesting.

At Amazon, John Gooch, Mussolini and his Generals: The Armed Forces and Fascist Foreign Policy, 1922-1940.

Danielle Gersh's Warmup Forecast

It's been quite mild this last few days.

I'm enjoying my last couple of weeks of vacation. My syllabi are done, although I have a handout I need to prepare before I send everything to the copy shop. Other than that, as noted, I've been puttering around at used bookstores throughout the O.C. I'm not watching any news on TV, and reading as little as I can right now, frankly, as it's mostly fake news by preening morally suspect progs.

In any case, there's always the weather. Here's the fabulous Ms. Danielle, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

The classic text.

I'm reviewing my copy to check out the impact of Ancient Rome on Western philosophy, since I'm immersing myself in this literature.

At Amazon, Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy.

The Poison of Identity Politics

Following-up, "President Trump Repudiates White Supremacists: 'Racism is Evil' (VIDEO)."

An excellent editorial, at WSJ, "The return of white nationalism is part of a deeper ailment":

As ever in this age of Donald Trump, politicians and journalists are reducing the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday to a debate over Mr. Trump’s words and intentions. That’s a mistake no matter what you think of the President, because the larger poison driving events like those in Virginia is identity politics and it won’t go away when Mr. Trump inevitably does.

The particular pathology on display in Virginia was the white nationalist movement led today by the likes of Richard Spencer, David Duke and Brad Griffin. They alone are to blame for the violence that occurred when one of their own drove a car into peaceful protesters, killing a young woman and injuring 19 others.

The Spencer crowd courts publicity and protests, and they chose the progressive university town of Charlottesville with malice aforethought. They used the unsubtle Ku Klux Klan symbolism of torches in a Friday night march, and they seek to appear as political martyrs as a way to recruit more alienated young white men.

Political conservatives even more than liberals need to renounce these racist impulses, and the good news is that this is happening. The driver has been charged with murder under Virginia law, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions opened a federal civil-rights investigation and issued a statement condemning the violence: “When such actions arise from racial bigotry and hatred, they betray our core values and cannot be tolerated.” Many prominent conservatives also denounced the white-nationalist movement.

Mr. Trump was widely criticized for his initial statement Saturday afternoon that condemned the hatred “on many sides” but failed to single out the white nationalists. Notably, David Duke and his allies read Mr. Trump’s statement as attacking them and criticized the President for doing so.

The White House nonetheless issued a statement Sunday saying Mr. Trump “includes white supremacists, KKK, Neo-Nazi and all extremist groups” in his condemnation. As so often with Mr. Trump, his original statement missed an opportunity to speak like a unifying political leader.

Yet the focus on Mr. Trump is also a cop-out because it lets everyone duck the deeper and growing problem of identity politics on the right and left. The politics of white supremacy was a poison on the right for many decades, but the civil-rights movement rose to overcome it, and it finally did so in the mid-1960s with Martin Luther King Jr. ’s language of equal opportunity and color-blind justice.

That principle has since been abandoned, however, in favor of a new identity politics that again seeks to divide Americans by race, ethnicity, gender and even religion. “Diversity” is now the all-purpose justification for these divisions, and the irony is that America is more diverse and tolerant than ever.

The problem is that the identity obsessives want to boil down everything in American life to these categories. In practice this means allocating political power, contracts, jobs and now even salaries in the private economy based on the politics of skin color or gender rather than merit or performance. Down this road lies crude political tribalism, and James Damore’s recent Google dissent is best understood as a cri de coeur that we should aspire to something better. Yet he lost his job merely for raising the issue.

A politics fixated on indelible differences will inevitably lead to resentments that extremists can exploit in ugly ways on the right and left. The extremists were on the right in Charlottesville, but there have been examples on the left in Berkeley, Oakland and numerous college campuses. When Democratic politicians can’t even say “all lives matter” without being denounced as bigots, American politics has a problem.

Mr. Trump didn’t create this identity obsession even if as a candidate he did try to exploit it. He is more symptom than cause, though as President he now has a particular obligation to renounce it. So do other politicians. Yet the only mission of nearly every Democrat we observed on the weekend was to use the “white supremacist” cudgel against Mr. Trump—as if that is the end of the story...

Still more.

Tom Holland, Persian Fire

At Amazon, Tom Holland, Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West.

President Trump Repudiates White Supremacists: 'Racism is Evil' (VIDEO)

No leftist will be satisfied. Trump gives a beautiful, heartfelt all-American statement, unequivocally rebuking far-right racist extremism.

But no leftist will be satisfied. I saw this morning progs on Twitter saying it didn't matter what Trump said, because they wouldn't believe him.

Whose hearts are filled with hatred again?

At Bloomberg, via Memeorandum, "Trump Denounces White Supremacists After Backlash."

Another thing: White supremacists are truly fringe. Whereas the violent, murderous communists of Black Lives Matter have been embraced by the entire left-wing establishment, which included at the time President Obama flying to Dallas to defend the genocidal racist organiztion.

There is no equivalence. Leftists have blood on their hands. They've mainstreamed groups like BLM, and now Antifa, with no concomitant backlash whatsoever.

This is why I'm not following politics closely right now. The mainstream media, the coastal progs, and the leftist Beltway establishment are evil hypocrisy incarnate.

Lidia Yuknavitch, The Book of Joan

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Lidia Yuknavitch, The Book of Joan: A Novel.

The planet has become radioactive. Humans — or, the creatures that were once humans — live on a shelf suspended above the soil, their skin nearly translucent and tattooed with the literal stories of their own existence. There is only one person who can save them from a brutal overlord — a child soldier, destined to become a martyr to the cause of existence. This is her story; this is The Book of Joan (source).

Matthew Sullivan, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore

*BUMPED.*

Here's something different. It looks wonderful.

At Amazon, Matthew Sullivan, Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore: A Novel.

Colleen McCullough, The Grass Crown

Following-up from Wednesday, "Colleen McCullough's 'Masters of Rome' Series."

I'm finishing-up Spartacus this afternoon. And I've already dipped into The First Man in Rome, which is the first book of McCollough's series.

Here's The Grass Crown.

Depending how much I buckle down and read, I'm normally going to finish a book like Spartacus in about three days. That's almost 100 pages a day. So, if I really clamp down on this, I could finish The First Man in Rome in about two weeks. But, as is my wont, I often have a couple of books going at the same time (to break up the monotony, I guess). I started Tom Holland's Rubicon yesterday, and it's great. Once the semester starts (on August 28th) I won't have as much time to dawdle with all these books. I read at night a bit during the semester, when there's nothing on TV I want to watch. I don't get through as many books. Summer's when I really get to range widely, so to speak. It's a lot of fun.

Thanks for your support!

The South's Hollywood Resurgence

Well, this isn't what you'd expect from the far-left Los Angeles Times: an amazingly sympathetic and refreshing piece on the comeback of the good old boys in Hollywood.

Check it out, "The high jinks and despair of the Southern man from 'Smokey and the Bandit' to the new 'Logan Lucky'":

Burt Reynolds on the cover of today's @LATimes Calendar Section (yes I still read it lol). #Hollywood pic.twitter.com/M2CT3p4LeB

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) August 13, 2017

The country was two years out of Vietnam and still bruised by Watergate when a wise guy in a Pontiac Trans Am roared through a movie that celebrated and poked fun at Southern culture with the affable charm of a moonshiner whispering tall tales in a roadhouse on a humid night.

“Smokey and the Bandit” is 40 years old, a raucous good ol’ boy tale that made Burt Reynolds a brand and left the screen crackling with country music, CB radios, car chases and the irascible and out-foxed Sheriff Buford T. Justice, played with gun-toting aplomb by Jackie Gleason. The movie is the South winking at itself, playing stereotypes for humor and laughing along at caricatures. It was a blockbuster.

It arrived as America was drifting from the turbulence of the ’60s and into the shaken aftermath of a misbegotten war in Southeast Asia and the disgrace of President Nixon’s resignation. “Smokey” was a salve, a lightweight rush of steel, beer and corny one-liners that epitomized an escapist (some would argue vacuous) pop culture as it raced through a land that flew the Rebel flag and strummed tunes of Dixie.

That folksy if simplistic notion drove other films and TV shows, including “The Dukes of Hazzard,” but Hollywood’s light-heartedness often belied the South’s deeper conflicts and scars over racism and civil rights in an often brutal history. That vexed legacy has been roused in the recent backlash over HBO’s “Confederate,” a proposed alternative history series that reimagines the South seceded from the North during the Civil War and continues to practice slavery today.

The cultural battleground the South has become also complicated portrayals of white working-class men who felt isolated and disenfranchised at a time of shifting demographics and technologically driven job markets. The country, many of them felt, was slipping beyond them, misunderstanding their pride and insecurities while turning them into punchlines and cautionary tales. Reynolds, who grew up in Florida, said he was long disturbed by films that mischaracterized the South.“Lots of movies ridiculed Southerners, and I resented them,” Reynolds, 81, wrote in his 2015 memoir “But Enough About Me.” “I wanted to play a Southern hero, a guy who was proud of being from the South. … Most of those folks are middle-of-the-road, not left or right. They believe in God, they work hard, and they love their country. They’re the people I grew up with, and I like them.”

He continued: “But Billy Bob Thornton had the last word. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘down South, we consider “Smokey and the Bandit” a documentary.’”

RTWT.

Is #Charlottesville What's Really Going on in America?

From Roger Simon, at Pajamas:

Being a Jewish fella, I don't hold much brief for white supremacists and neo-Nazis.  But until this Saturday, I hadn't seen a lot of them around lately.  And I've been going about the country quite a bit for the last couple of years, hitting roughly half the states, including some like Mississippi where the Klan was once riding high.

I'm happy to report that on my visit to the black-owned Two Sister's Kitchen in the capital of that state, Jackson, blacks and whites were both equally, and contentedly in my eyes, braving the criticism of their cardiologists for what is reputed to be the best fried chicken in town.  I recommend it wholeheartedly (no pun intended).

Nevertheless, the types who surfaced in Charlottesville on Saturday are certainly human beings of the most repellent and disgusting sort, murderous too -- pretty much violent, evil sociopaths.  I wouldn't mind if they were all rounded up, put in a space ship, and sent on a one-way trip to Alpha Centauri.

But how many of them are there really in this land of ours and is this an epidemic?

Well, it's hard to tell because statistics are scant and various organizations have their reasons for inflating or deflating the numbers.  But we could start with the History Channel (history.com), which informs us that the KKK, at its height in the 1920s, had four million members.  Since the population then was just over one hundred million, that's close to four percent of the country -- in other words, really bad.  There were a helluva lot of murderous racists around.

By the 1990s, however, the same source tells us the Klan was down to a paltry 6,000-10,000 people creeps nationwide.  Has it gone up since then?  Hard to say, but if so, not much.

Well, okay, the Klan, although it's the most famous and features the ever-popular David Duke, is not the only organization of wretched white supremacist nut cases.  There are a number of others.  So for the sake of argument, let's say there are as many as 100,000 white supremacists in America today. (This is undoubtedly a vast exaggeration, but let's use it, as I said, for the sake of argument.)

Meanwhile, since the 1920s, our population has more than tripled to some 325 million.  Using the figure of 100,000 white supremacists (not many of whom made it to Charlottesville fortunately), this puts the percentage of  white supremacists in the U.S. at a puny 0.03%. Terrible people, yes, but no epidemic by any stretch of the imagination.  By way of comparison, an estimated 3 billion pizzas are sold every year in the U.S.  There's an epidemic.

More to the point, are there more of these white supremacists than members of the equally violent and disgusting Antifa movement?  Again statistics are hard to come by. (Both sides like to wear masks.) But I tend to doubt it.  If anything, Antifa has been far more active, until Saturday.

Still more.

Philip Roth, American Pastoral

I've been collecting Philip Roth books. He's extremely prolific, sheesh.

This one's the first of a trilogy, so enjoy.

At Amazon, Philip Roth, American Pastoral (American Trilogy).

Faith Goldy and Stefan Molyneux #Charlottesville (VIDEO)

Faith Goldy was literally in the middle of all the violence yesterday. Talk about first-hand reporting.

Following-up, "State of Emergency Declared in Charlottesville, Virginia (VIDEO)."

Angie Harmon Bikini

She's so lovely.

ICYMI: "Going for the best bday nap EVER... & then I couldn't sleep. Afraid of FOMO! #blessed #grateful … https://t.co/IK1KUAHwCX

— Angie Harmon (@Angie_Harmon) August 13, 2017

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

You reap what you sow...https://t.co/Oj98iIxEAZ pic.twitter.com/LeDmkXhwaz

— BenGarrison Cartoons (@GrrrGraphics) August 12, 2017

Also at Theo's, "Cartoon Roundup..."

Michelle Vidal Golden Goddess Casting Call (VIDEO)

She's beautiful.

Angels Surge to Sole Possession of Second American League Wildcard Spot

There's video at MLB, "8/12/17: Pujols' late double propels Halos to 6-3 win."

And here's AP's report at LAT (the Times has no beat reporter covering the Angels right now), "Angels rally for 6-3 victory over the Mariners and to get back into a wild-card playoff spot."

Finally, check Jeff Fletcher, at the O.C. Register, "Angels move into 2nd wild card spot with 5th straight victory."

Let's see how long this lasts. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, considering the Angels' (inconsistent) experience this season. Sheesh:

SEATTLE — The Angels have reached a notable, although meaningless, moment.

They are currently sitting in the second wild card spot, after running their winning streak to five games with a come-from-behind, 6-3 victory over the Seattle Mariners on Saturday night.

“It gives us a little taste of what’s left to come,” Jesse Chavez said.

The Angels have taken the first three games of this series against the team that was leading the race for the second wild card when it began. The Mariners were since passed by the Minnesota Twins, who also lost on Saturday to allow the Angels to pass them both.
At 60-58, the Angels still have 44 games to play, which is why being in playoff position now means little.

Asked if there was any small significance to draw from the standings now, Manager Mike Scioscia said flatly: “No. Nope. We’ve got a game tomorrow.”

To JC Ramirez, the standings don’t mean as much as the way the Angels are currently playing. They have now won 11 of their last 15 games.

“You’ve seen the tough season we’ve been through and now we finally gained that spot,” Ramirez said. “People that weren’t hitting are now hitting. People who weren’t pitching very well are now doing good. This is the kind of team we are. This is the kind of team we were supposed to be since the beginning of the season.”

The characteristic that has been on display most lately is a penchant for late-inning heroics. They scored the decisive runs in the eighth and ninth innings in all three victories so far in Seattle. And in the past two games, they overcame seventh-inning deficits, of four runs on Friday and two on Saturday...

More.

Margaret Walker, Jubilee

At Amazon, Margaret Walker, Jubilee.

John Jakes, North and South

At Amazon, John Jakes, North and South (North and South Trilogy Part One).

ICYMI: MacKinlay Kantor, Andersonville

We're in a cold civil war, starting to turn hot, it seems.

I'll post come related book links today.

At Amazon, MacKinlay Kantor, Andersonville.

Thornton Wilder, The Ides of March

I'm trying to keep my reading around the late Republic (for now), so this one as well's on my list.

At Amazon, Thornton Wilder, The Ides of March: A Novel.

Mary M. Luke, A Crown for Elizabeth

At Amazon, Mary M. Luke, A Crown for Elizabeth.

State of Emergency Declared in Charlottesville, Virginia (VIDEO)

I was out this afternoon, puttering around for used books, as usual.

And after I got home and had a snack, I checked Twitter and saw Robert Stacy McCain's tweet, "People need to calm the fuck down."

So I'm like, "Why. What the fuck happened?"

Then scrolling through my feed I see tweets on the violence in Charlottesville. It's not good. I'd like to know who drove that Dodge Challenger into the crowd, however. Was it an antifa leftist? Who knows?

In any case, check Memeorandum, "March of white supremacists at University of Virginia ends in skirmishes."

Video here and here.

And at the Other McCain, "The #Charlottesville Madness."

And at the Rebel:

Tom Holland, The Forge of Christendom

At Amazon, Tom Holland, The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise of the West.

Shop Today

I'm going out for the afternoon. More blogging tonight.

Meanwhile, shop Goldbox Deals at Amazon.

See, especially, Dyson Ball Animal Complete Upright Vacuum with Bonus Tools, Fuchsia (Certified Refurbished).

Also, Xbox One Stereo Headset (Microsoft).

And, Haribo Gummi Candy, Original Gold-Bears, 5-Ounce Bags (Pack of 12).

More, Bright Eyed Medium Dark Roast Whole Bean Coffee from Nectar of Life - Full Body. Thick & Rich. Central & South American Coffee. Best Organic Coffee USDA Organic Coffee Fair.

Here, Mountain House Just In Case...Classic Assortment Bucket.

Still more, TOSKATOK Unisex Ultra stylish Aussie Outback Safari Bush Hat.

BONUS: Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian.

'La Grange'

From my drive-time this afternoon, while out buzzing around between used bookstores, at the Sound L.A.

Here's ZZ Top, "La Grange":

Gimme Shelter
The Rolling Stones
6:10 PM

Back On the Chain Gang
Pretenders
6:07 PM

All Along the Watchtower
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
5:57 PM

You Better You Bet
Who
5:51 PM

Help!
The Beatles
5:49 PM

Don't Stop Believin'
Journey
5:45 PM

Blitzkrieg Bop
Ramones
5:43 PM

Africa
Toto
5:38 PM

La Grange
ZZ Top
5:34 PM

Stuck In the Middle With You
Stealers Wheel
5:31 PM

People Are Strange
The Doors
5:24 PM

Werewolves of London
Warren Zevon
5:21 PM

Sister Golden Hair
America
5:18 PM

Iron Man
Black Sabbath
5:12 PM

Heartbreaker
Pat Benatar
5:08 PM

Misty Mountain Hop
Led Zeppelin
5:04 PM

Life In the Fast Lane
Eagles
4:59 PM

Dream On
Aerosmith
4:55 PM

Terry C. Johnston, Carry the Wind

After I get through a few of these books on Ancient Rome, I expect to get back to reading my wilderness novels, especially Allan Eckert's books.

But I might give Terry C. Johnston a go before that. I found this one today while out puttering around at used bookstores.

At Amazon, Carry the Wind.

ICYMI: Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome

Following-up, "Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire."

At Amazon, Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization.

Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire

I'm not this far into my Roman reading, but apparently this new historical research is top-flight.

Readers may find this helpful.

At Amazon, Peter Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians.

Salma Hayek Admits She Refuses to Bow to Size Pressures of Hollywood

Well, I don't think she has too much to worry about at this point, heh.

At London's Daily Mail, "'I am 50, why do I have to look good?' Salma Hayek admits she refuses to bow to size pressures of Hollywood... though jokes she wished some of her famous curves 'went in instead of out'."

salma hayek pic.twitter.com/yLA9GrljLU

— bella (@alejandra_xoo) July 25, 2017

😍 @salmahayek 😍 pic.twitter.com/m02kNacm4p

— Women Are Beautiful (@AgelesssBeauty) August 1, 2017

Trump's Dropping Bombs at Unprecedented Levels

Notice how leftists are just now getting worried about the expansion of executive power in national security? Never mind that Obama usurped literally dictatorial powers as Commander-in-Chief. Nope. Now it's all about how Trump's bombing our enemies at "unprecedented" levels, and even that Trump's nuclear brinkmanship is that of a "madman."

Yep, these leftist clowns are out of control.

At far-left Foreign Policy, "The candidate who once warned America about Hillary Clinton's hawkishness is turning into a war machine":

Throughout the 2016 campaign, many people opposed to Donald Trump’s candidacy were nonetheless reluctant to endorse Hillary Clinton, in part because of her relative hawkishness. Candidate Trump had a decades-long career in the public eye that demonstrated plenty of reason to worry he would be a disastrous president, but he lacked the long career in public service that fueled worries about Clinton’s approach to the use of force, and her alleged desire to expand executive war-making powers past what she inherited from her predecessor.

Six months into Trump’s presidency, we now have enough data to assess his own approach. The results are clear: Judging from Trump’s embrace of the use of air power — the signature tactic of U.S. military intervention — he is the most hawkish president in modern history. Under Trump, the United States has dropped about 20,650 bombs through July 31, or 80 percent the number dropped under Obama for the entirety of 2016. At this rate, Trump will exceed Obama’s last-year total by Labor Day.

In Iraq and Syria, data shows that the United States is dropping bombs at unprecedented levels. In July, the coalition to defeat the Islamic State (read: the United States) dropped 4,313 bombs, 77 percent more than it dropped last July. In June, the number was 4,848 — 1,600 more bombs than were dropped in any one month under President Barack Obama since the anti-ISIS campaign started three years ago.

In Afghanistan, the number of weapons released has also shot up since Trump took office. April saw more bombs dropped in the country since the height of Obama’s troop surge in 2012. That was also the month that the United States bombed Afghanistan’s Mamand Valley with the largest non-nuclear bomb ever dropped in combat.

Trump has also escalated U.S. military involvement in non-battlefield settings — namely Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. In the last 193 days of the Obama presidency, there were 21 lethal counterterrorism operations across these three countries. Trump has quintupled that number, conducting at least 92 such operations in Yemen, seven in Somalia, and four in Pakistan.

Hand in hand with Trump’s enthusiasm for air power comes a demonstrated tolerance for civilian casualties. Increased air power in Iraq and Syria has resulted in unprecedented levels of civilian deaths. Even by the military’s own count, civilian casualties have soared since Trump took office, though independent monitors tally the deaths as many as ten times higher. In Afghanistan, Trump’s tolerance for killing civilians has led to 67 percent more civilian casualties in his first six months than in the first half of 2016, according to the United Nations.

The expansion of air power and acceptance of civilian harm are together a problem, but they are made worse by the fact that they are occurring without any diplomatic strategy to wind down the wars...

More (FWIW).

American League Wild Card Race Tightens

The Angels won a dramatic 9th-inning victory last night in Seattle, after a terrible blown save by Bud Norris.

Here's the story, at LAT, "Mike Trout's three-run double in ninth inning gives Angels win after blowing three-run lead."

And with that, the AL wildcard race tightened even further. I wrote about it here, "The American League Wild Card Race is Getting Insane."

Earlier this week the Angels were catching up to Kansas City, but the Cards swept the Royals in St. Louis this week. (See, "Fowler makes more rally magic for suddenly 'dynamic' Cards.") Now both the Angels and Royals are one game behind Tampa Bay and Seattle (both tied at a .509 winning percentage, behind the Yankees for the first wildcard spot).

I love it!

Here's a piece debating the utility of MLB's wildcard playoff system, "Is Major League Baseball’s double-wild-card format working? MLB's six-year-old playoff set-up has its pros and cons." And a killer few paragraphs for me:

Matt Clapp: I still can’t decide how much I like the two Wild Cards. I’m a big believer in the better team being rewarded. Say the WC1 wins 96 games, and the WC2 wins 88 games. And then the WC2 beats the WC1 in the one-game playoff. That’s very unfair to the WC1, as they have absolutely been the better team over 162 games, and baseball should in no way be judged by one game.

Then again, 2015 was an example of the two Wild Cards being a good thing. The NL Central featured three teams with at least 97 wins; the Pirates were the WC1 with 98 wins and the Cubs were the WC2 with 97 wins. Those were the three best records in baseball! One of them being completely left out would’ve been quite lame. Of course, the Pirates would argue that it was even more lame that they won 98 games and had to face a historically red-hot pitcher in Jake Arrieta.

Again, one game deciding anything in baseball flat-out sucks. I’d prefer they find a way to make it a three-game play-in, but that’s of course difficult with scheduling. And because of the scheduling issues, Theo Epstein said in 2015 that he proposed the idea of a three-game playoff which included a doubleheader for two of the three games to make things easier. This would also be a very weird way to decide the Wild Card winner, but in my opinion it still beats just one game in deciding the more Division Series representative.

Whatever the case, what we think doesn’t matter. What matters is how it’s working out for MLB, and it’s working tremendously. Look at the AL Wild Card race right now. There are NINE teams (including the two currently leading the race) within four games for two spots. Several teams have a legitimate playoff shot because of the second Wild Card, and this means much more fan interest. Fans of the teams in the race will go out to the ballpark into deep September. Baseball fans that generally don’t even care about those teams will be following these games just because pennant races are compelling. Then the one-game playoff is fantastic drama, must-see TV for people that aren’t even big baseball fans. In general, it’s all more eyes on the game, more discussion on social media/TV/radio, and more money. This all makes it a success for MLB, regardless of whether or not we think it’s the best way to be handled...

Arielle Scarcella's Actually Pretty Hot

I remember years ago my older sister used to say how she hated homosexuals, because most of the ones she saw were hotties, and that was like depriving women of the smokin' dudes lol.

I'd say the same thing from the patriarchic angle regarding Arielle Scarcella. She's a fine woman. She could be hanging with some alpha dudes, heh.

It's happening @BufferFestival pic.twitter.com/STmt0nABzq

— Arielle Scarcella (@ArielleScarcell) August 11, 2017

#LGBTbabes pic.twitter.com/UxkL3nfqJ7

— Arielle Scarcella (@ArielleScarcell) August 4, 2017

Maybe she just likes the "activist" scene, and the cultural hipness that is lesbianism. It's not hip to me, but if you're a leftist, being lesbian's gotta be more cool than some dull, buttoned-down corporate floozy lol.

Robert L. O'Connell, The Ghosts of Cannae

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Robert L. O'Connell, The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic.

Google C.E.O. Sundar Pichai Should Resign

An excellent op-ed, from David Brooks, at NYT, "Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s C.E.O."

Unsettling Truth About Affirmative Action

From Professor Jeannie Suk, at the New Yorker, "The Uncomfortable Truth About Affirmative Action and Asian-Americans":

The application process for schools, fellowships, and jobs always came with a ritual: a person who had a role in choosing me—an admissions officer, an interviewer—would mention in his congratulations that I was “different” from the other Asians. When I won a scholarship that paid for part of my education, a selection panelist told me that I got it because I had moving qualities of heart and originality that Asian applicants generally lacked. Asian applicants were all so alike, and I stood out. In truth, I wasn’t much different from other Asians I knew. I was shy and reticent, played a musical instrument, spent summers drilling math, and had strict parents to whom I was dutiful. But I got the message: to be allowed through a narrow door, an Asian should cultivate not just a sense of individuality but also ways to project “Not like other Asians!”

In a federal lawsuit filed in Massachusetts in 2014, a group representing Asian-Americans is claiming that Harvard University’s undergraduate-admissions practices unlawfully discriminate against Asians. (Disclosure: Harvard is my employer, and I attended and teach at the university’s law school.) The suit poses questions about what a truly diverse college class might look like, spotlighting a group that is often perceived as lacking internal diversity. The court complaint quotes a college counsellor at the highly selective Hunter College High School (which I happened to attend), who was reporting a Harvard admissions officer’s feedback to the school: certain of its Asian students weren’t admitted, the officer said, because “so many” of them “looked just like” each other on paper.

The lawsuit alleges that Harvard effectively employs quotas on the number of Asians admitted and holds them to a higher standard than whites. At selective colleges, Asians are demographically overrepresented minorities, but they are underrepresented relative to the applicant pool. Since the nineteen-nineties, the share of Asians in Harvard’s freshman class has remained stable, at between sixteen and nineteen per cent, while the percentage of Asians in the U.S. population more than doubled. A 2009 Princeton study showed that Asians had to score a hundred and forty points higher on the S.A.T. than whites to have the same chance of admission to top universities. The discrimination suit survived Harvard’s motion to dismiss last month and is currently pending.

When the New York Times reported, last week, that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division was internally seeking lawyers to investigate or litigate “intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions,” many people immediately assumed that the Trump Administration was hoping to benefit whites by assailing affirmative action. The Department soon insisted that it specifically intends to revive a 2015 complaint against Harvard filed with the Education and Justice Departments by sixty-four Asian-American groups, making the same claim as the current court case: that Harvard intentionally discriminates against Asians in admissions, giving whites an advantage. (The complaint had previously been dismissed in light of the already-pending lawsuit.) The combination of the lawsuit and the potential federal civil-rights inquiry signals that the treatment of Asians will frame the next phase of the legal debate over race-conscious admissions programs...

More.

Devin Brugman Bikini Update

She's so nice.

😎 pic.twitter.com/SHMGx3zC8t

— Devin Brugman Daily (@DevBrugmanDaily) August 5, 2017

Wow 😍🤤 pic.twitter.com/kiz5jLioaz

— Devin Brugman Daily (@DevBrugmanDaily) August 5, 2017

😋 pic.twitter.com/SJpG3ktaS9

— Devin Brugman Daily (@DevBrugmanDaily) August 5, 2017

🌠 pic.twitter.com/JyjmmexiQe

— Devin Brugman Daily (@DevBrugmanDaily) August 5, 2017

😜 pic.twitter.com/nqlhkcjTXe

— Devin Brugman Daily (@DevBrugmanDaily) August 6, 2017

Izabel Goulart via Helicopter (VIDEO)

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

I've Finished I, Claudius

I took the book with me to Disneyland, and read good-sized chunks of it while waiting in line for some rides. Plus I chilled with some beer for a while as well, while waiting for my boys to hit the new Guardians of the Galaxy ride (which used to be Tower of Terror).

At Amazon, Robert Graves, I, Claudius: From the Autobiography of Tiberius Claudius Born 10 B.C., Murdered and Deified A.D. 54.

I'm zipping through Howard Fast today, also at Amazon, Spartacus.

The Rich Higgins 'Deep State' Memo

In case you've missed the alt-right backlash over H.R. McMaster, here's some background.

At the Atlantic, "An NSC Staffer Is Forced Out Over a Controversial Memo," and "The War Against H.R. McMaster."

And at Foreign Policy, "Here’s the Memo That Blew Up the NSC":

Fired White House staffer argued "deep state" attacked Trump administration because the president represents a threat to cultural Marxist memes, globalists, and bankers.

Jay Stephens Graduated College as an 'Off-My-Lawn Conservative' (VIDEO)

Another great video, from Prager U:

Alessandra Ambrosio in Malibu

She's still one of my faves, and rockin' a nice tan!

At London's Daily Mail:

Alessandra Ambrosio turns up the heat on the beach in Malibu 🔥 🔥 🔥 https://t.co/2QRlivIMFB

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) August 10, 2017

Jessica Simpson Stroll in New York City

Following-up from last week, "Jessica Simpson Shows Off Low-Cut Yellow Top."

At WWTDD, "Jessica Simpson Honey Boo Boo Chic."

Eleven Eleven coming soon... #staytuned pic.twitter.com/EULPA7RPCG

— Jessica Simpson (@JessicaSimpson) August 9, 2017

Gray Whale in Laguna Beach (VIDEO)

At the O.C. Register, "Juvenile gray whale is heading north after a day thrilling onlookers at Dana Point Harbor."

Trumpian Fury on North Korea

At WSJ, "China needs to know that the threat of military action is real":

When Donald Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury” Tuesday if it continues to menace the U.S. with nuclear weapons, he provoked almost as much backlash at home as in Pyongyang. The usual diplomatic suspects, including some American lawmakers, claimed his remarks hurt U.S. credibility and were irresponsible.

The President’s point was that the North’s escalating threats are intolerable; he didn’t set any red lines. True to form, Pyongyang responded by putting the U.S. island of Guam in its cross hairs. Mr. Trump may be guilty of hyperbole (quelle surprise), but that is far less damaging to U.S. credibility than Barack Obama’s failure to enforce his prohibition on the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons in Syria. The foreign-policy elite who claim to be shocked also don’t have much credibility after their policy across three Administrations led to the current North Korean danger.

While the President’s words were unusually colorful, the Communist-style language may have been part of the message: Kim Jong Un isn’t the only one who can raise the geopolitical temperature. The U.S. has military options to neutralize the regime’s nuclear threat if it continues to develop long-range missiles, and the U.S. is considering those options.

National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said as much in an interview Saturday, explaining that Pyongyang’s nuclear threat is “intolerable from the President’s perspective. So of course, we have to provide all options to do that. And that includes a military option.” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reinforced that message Wednesday, warning North Korea to stop acting in ways that could “lead to the end of its regime.”

Last week Senator Lindsey Graham told a morning television program, “There is a military option to destroy North Korea’s program and North Korea itself.” The South Carolina Republican revealed that Mr. Trump told him there will be war if the North continues to develop long-range missiles: “He has told me that. I believe him. If I were China, I would believe him, too, and do something about it.”

The China reference is a tip-off that the main audience for this rhetorical theater is in Beijing. Kim Jong Un won’t stop now that he’s so close to his goal of a nuclear deterrent. But China might restrict the flow of oil to the North, for example, if it believes that stronger action on its part could forestall a U.S. pre-emptive strike...

More.

Sharon Stone's 'Basic Instinct' Audition Tape

Well, I guess there's #WaybackWednesday heh.

Watch, at RealClearLife, "Sharon Stone Shares ‘Basic Instinct’ Audition Tape on Twitter."

She's pretty spectacular, for sure.

Thanks to Democrats, President Trump is Facing an Increasingly Dangerous Rogue North Korea (VIDEO)

Following-up here, "Technical Challenges to a Successful Nuclear Strike," and "Richard Smoke, National Security and the Nuclear Dilemma."

Here's Sean Hannity:

Arielle Scarcella's Dating Preferences (VIDEO)

I can't keep up with this crazy stuff. Seriously.

But see the Other McCain, "SJWs Attacking Lesbian @ArielleScarcell for . . . Well, Being a Lesbian, Really."

Richard Smoke, National Security and the Nuclear Dilemma

Following-up from my previous entry, "Technical Challenges to a Successful Nuclear Strike."

This is the must-have introductory textbook on the topic.

At Amazon, Richard Smoke, National Security and the Nuclear Dilemma: An Introduction to the American Experience.

Technical Challenges to a Successful Nuclear Strike

From longtime tech correspondent Ralph Vartabedian, at LAT, "North Korea has made a nuclear weapon small enough to fit on a missile. How worried should the world be?":

Before the age of compact cars, laptop computers and pocket telephones, there were miniature nuclear warheads.

For as long as there have been engineers, they have been working on making complicated things smaller and better. Weapons are no exception.

Now, North Korea apparently has figured out how to make a very big explosive small enough to sit atop one of its mobile-launched missiles, a development that could threaten much of the U.S., according to a U.S. intelligence report that surfaced this week.

North Korea is making progress, showing it can put together competent teams of scientists and solve technical problems, but it is far from proving that it is capable of launching a punishing nuclear strike on the U.S., according to U.S. weapons experts.

Making a miniature nuclear weapon that has a large explosive force involves a lot of scientific and engineering know-how.

The “Little Boy” bomb that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 9, 1945, weighed as much as two 2017 Cadillac Escalade SUVs, about 9,700 pounds. Three days later, the “Fat Man” bomb, slightly heavier at 10,300 pounds, was dropped on Nagasaki.

Since then, the weight of U.S. atomic bombs has shrunk considerably, as scientists have refined the physics of the devices and streamlined how they are armed.

With the last generation of nuclear weapons designed in the 1980s, engineers at Los Alamos National Laboratory produced the W88, weighing only 800 pounds despite having an explosive force equal to 475,000 tons of TNT — in other words, less than one-tenth the weight of the first atomic bomb, but 400 times more powerful.

What technical capability is necessary to build a missile-ready nuclear bomb?

The first step is understanding how to reduce the amount of conventional high explosives that surround a hollow pit of highly enriched uranium or plutonium. A nuclear detonation occurs when the high explosive implodes the hollow sphere of fissile material next to it to start an uncontrolled chain reaction.

After the war, work progressed on smaller bombs. One of the crucial design steps was to create a small, precisely uniform air gap between the conventional explosives and the sphere of nuclear fuel, amplifying the force of the conventional explosion and reducing the amount needed to trigger a nuclear chain reaction.

It’s unclear that Pyongyang has mastered that precise construction, said Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear weapons analyst with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif.

What Pyongyang has said so far is that its weapon is a “Korean-style mixed charge” device, indicating “they don’t have a lot of plutonium, so they are mixing it with uranium,” Lewis said.

It is possible the North Koreans are also injecting tritium gas into the hollow sphere to get some fusion energy out of the bomb, as well, he said...

More.

Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome

This looks fantastic!

At Amazon, Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000.

Glen Campbell, of 'Rhinestone Cowboy' Fame, Dead at 81

At LAT, "Glen Campbell dies at 81; country-pop singer battled Alzheimer's."

Also, "'A shining light in so many ways': Music world remembers country-pop great Glen Campbell":

As news of the death of Glen Campbell spread, celebrities of all kinds took to the Internet to express their grief over the loss of the country music legend, who died Tuesday at 81.

"Had Glen Campbell 'only' played guitar and never voiced a note, he would have spent a lifetime as one of America’s most consequential recording musicians," Kyle Young, CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, said in a statement.

"Had he never played guitar and 'only' sung, his voice would rank with American music’s most riveting, expressive, and enduring," Young added. "He left indelible marks as a musician, a singer, and an entertainer, and he bravely shared his incalculable talent with adoring audiences even as he fought a cruel and dread disease. To all of us who heard and loved his soulful music, he was a delight."

Others shared similar sentiments about the singer, songwriter, musician, television host and actor...

More.

Evelyn Taft's Sunny and Warm Forecast

It's not too bad. You'd have gotten a sunburn yesterday if you failed to lube up with liberally with sunscreen. Just about the same weather today. And with the exception of Lake Elsinore and Palm Springs, it's not quite triple-digit temperatures across the Southland.

I've been just chilling today, getting back into my lazy summer routine after some partying this weekend, through yesterday, for some birthday celebrations. About a couple of more weeks until the new semester starts, and then my summer will really be winding down.

In any case, here's the lovely Ms. Evelyn, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Colleen McCullough's 'Masters of Rome' Series

I found a brand new paperback copy of The Grass Crown for 25 cents at the Irvine Public Library. I thought what the heck? I'd procrastinated on picking up any of Colleen McCullough's books, but I'm starting an Ancient Rome jag, and I that one helped me launch it.

But I need to start at the beginning of the series, which is found in The First Man in Rome, so I'll start out with that (maybe today, heh).

The only problem with these books is their length. This one's about 930 pages, not counting a massive glossary!

Beer Beats Tylenol as Pain Reliever

News you can use.

At Instapundit, "THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: STUDY: BEER IS A BETTER PAIN RELIEVER THAN TYLENOL":

Probably no harder on your liver, either.