Expect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Be Among the Most Fanatical Israel-Bashers in Congress

This post assumes that Ocasio-Cortez wins her general election contest in November. New York's 14th congressional district is heavily progressive with minority-majority demographics. I haven't seen any serious commentary so far suggesting her Republican opponent, Anthony Pappas, is likely to win. As the New York Post reported, "Pappas’ bid is a long shot. Democrats outnumber Republicans in the district by roughly 6-1, voter registration records show."

Okay, should Ocasio-Cortez take her seat in Congress next year, it's also safe to assume she's be one of the most fervently anti-Israel Democrats in the House.

I haven't seen the major newspapers, such as the New York Times, for example, pick up on this aspect of the Ocasio-Cortez story, but it's a big one. It's not just that the Democrats are openly embracing a Marxist ideological program, but also that virulent anti-Israel ideology has bubbled up into the mainstream. This is of course not new to conservative bloggers and top Twitter personalities, but a focus on Ocasio-Cortez's public comments will put the Democrats' oft-hidden anti-Israel animus in the spotlight.

Here's a roundup of commentary from conservative blogs and pro-Jewish outlets.

First is the big story from the other day, at the Daily Caller, "Socialist Darling Caught Celebrating, Campaigning With Known Anti-Semite and Racist":

Socialist Darling Caught Celebrating, Campaigning With Known Anti-Semite And Racist https://t.co/nB3lS47qRS pic.twitter.com/KfR0BYShOV

— The Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 27, 2018

Democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stunned the political world and rank-in-file Democrats by defeating incumbent Joe Crowley in Tuesday’s New York primary. The Ocasio-Cortez win signaled the growing swing leftward for national Democrats, a party undergoing a power struggle and identity crisis after Trump’s election victory in 2016. The platform Ocasio-Cortez ran on was deeply progressive, calling on the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, nationalized health care, universal jobs guarantee and getting America to 100 percent green energy.

However, footage reveals that Ocasio-Cortez also has associates with regressive views.

One of Ocasio-Cortez’s most enthusiastic campaigners and a man who stood behind her at her victory party, Thomas Lopez-Pierre, is a known anti-Semite and racist. Lopez-Pierre has regularly used slurs against Jewish and black New Yorkers in public forums and while running for office himself.

While running for office in 2017, Lopez-Pierre specifically campaigned on “protecting tenants from greedy Jewish landlords.” Lopez-Pierre’s own campaign website shows his rantings agains “Greedy Jewish Landlords.” His campaign website applauds the arrest of “Greedy Jewish Landlords” and says that “Jewish Landlords” are “punishing” black and Hispanic families...

More.

(Ocasio-Perez issued a repudiation of Lopez-Pierre, claiming she has "No idea who this guy is...")

Okay, then, let's go to Joel Pollak, at Breitbart, "Pollak: New Democrat Heroine Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is an Anti-Israel Radical":

Again. As hysterical #NeverTrumper Jewish commentators attack the most pro-Israel president in history, their new party elects another Hamas supporter.
I dare you to attack this bigot and
her Jew hating voters on MSNBC. https://t.co/i1fveOl9GT

— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) June 27, 2018

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 28-year-old democratic socialist who became an instant Democratic Party heroine by unseating party caucus chair Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) in Tuesday’s New York primary, is an anti-Israel radical.

Her victory is a further sign of the Democratic Party’s slide toward the extreme left — and toward the anti-Israel left in particular.

During her primary election, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted passionately about an alleged Israeli “massacre” of Palestinian “protesters” at the Gaza border, citing an Al Jazeera article.

Click the link to see anti-Israel tweets from Ocasio Cortez. Pollak continues:

The Jewish radicals of J Street will, no doubt, be thrilled to have another member of Congress who supports Hamas over Israel, and will rush to her defense. But for the few Democrats who still support Israel, her victory is worrying.

Ocasio-Cortez’s anti-Israel views are of a piece with her radical policies in general — such as government health care for all, free college tuition, guaranteed federal jobs, and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). (At least she is consistent: she does not believe in a border fence with Gaza or a border wall with Mexico.) Her campaign even adopted the zombie-like “mic check” first seen at radical Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011.

Ocasio-Cortez’s anti-Israel views, like her other socialist policies, are ill-informed and would have devastating consequences if enacted. She is not stupid: far from it, the Boston University graduate is whip-smart. But like other far-left millennials, she has mastered the finer details of a fictional universe.

These are positions she will not easily walk back. Her victory has thrilled the Democratic base, but it spells trouble for the party, and for the country.

Now, check out Pamela Geller, "New York's New Socialist Candidate, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Tweets: Israel Guilty of 'Massacre' of 'Palestinians'":

New York’s New Socialist Candidate, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Tweets: Israel Guilty of ‘Massacre’ of ‘Palestinians’: New York's new socialist candidate for Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, just sent out a tweet that condemned Israel for its supposed… https://t.co/EfEAVUXNY4

— Pamela Geller (@PamelaGeller) June 29, 2018

And at the Forward, "What It Means For Israel If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Democrats’ Future":

What It Means For Israel If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Democrats’ Future https://t.co/JmVofz5NYm

— The Forward (@jdforward) June 27, 2018

Prominent progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders and activist Linda Sarsour are vying with each other to laud Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who notched a David-and-Goliath upset victory over 10-term Rep. Joe Crowley in Tuesday’s Democratic primary in New York.

Her victory — with 57% of the vote — raises larger questions about the party’s direction, including whether she won despite or because of her stinging comments about Israel on the campaign trail. Could her upset win be another sign that Democratic voters want the party to be more critical of the Jewish state?

“We’re seeing a pattern where the activist core of the Democratic Party is becoming highly critical of Israel almost as a default position,” Brooklyn College history professor KC Johnson, who has written about this shift, told the Forward on Wednesday.

Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign in a fast-changing Queens district was almost solely focused on domestic causes like “Medicare-for-All” and abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Her campaign website doesn’t mention anything about foreign affairs on its issues page.

But she did attract attention in May for calling the Israeli army’s killing of Palestinian protesters in Gaza a “massacre.”

More.

Also at the Times of Israel, "Progressive Democrat who upset NY incumbent accused Israel of ‘massacre’ in Gaza."

Progressive Democrat who upset NY incumbent accused Israel of ‘massacre’ in Gaza https://t.co/kCPrgpCk7t pic.twitter.com/2ye5WfDWYh

— The Times of Israel (@TimesofIsrael) June 27, 2018

And the Jerusalem Post, "WHAT DOES SURPRISE NYC PRIMARY RACE WINNER THINK ABOUT ISRAEL? 'This is a massacre', Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter of the IDF's killing of Palestinians at the Gaza border in May. 'Democrats can’t be silent about this anymore'."

Pro-Palestinian Bernie Sanders protege wins upset in NYC primary race https://t.co/VzImPGAk14 pic.twitter.com/0IN2R3oexW

— JPost Politics (@jpost_politics) June 27, 2018

And at Algemeiner, "Democratic Socialist Who Upset NY Rep. Joe Crowley Said Israel Committed a ‘Massacre’ in Gaza":

Democratic Socialist Who Upset NY Rep. Joe Crowley Said Israel Committed a ‘Massacre’ in Gaza https://t.co/3ySdgSq249 via @Algemeiner pic.twitter.com/CiVp3OzDxd

— Israel News Links (@IsraelNewsLinks) June 28, 2018

As noted, this radical anti-Israel sentiment isn't new. Back in 2012 I wrote about Democrat Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema, who's now the frontrunner to replace retiring Republican Senator Jeff Flake in the upper chamber.

See my entry from six years ago. The more thing change, the more they stay the same: "Kyrsten Sinema, Bisexual Israel-Hating Antiwar Radical, is Face of Today's Democrat Party."

More later..

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Michael Bloomberg?

Heh.

This is going to be a lot of fun, not just this year but in 2020.

From Daniella Greenbaum, at Business Insider, "Democrats need to choose: Are they the party of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or the party of Michael Bloomberg?":

The democratic party is a big tent. the powers that be need to decide who will be at the helm in 2020. For those of us who don't want a second trump term, lets hope its the centrists https://t.co/X70XB5CCPj

— Daniella Greenbaum (@DGreenbaum) June 27, 2018

The Republican Party had a big tent. Then, in 2016, its fringe elements elected Donald Trump, leaving moderates politically homeless and Democrats both politically and emotionally disturbed.

If Democrats put the right candidate forward, they can, in one political moment, reclaim the presidency and begin the process of healing the nation — and its parties. But for that to happen, Democrats needs to come to terms with the split that's happening in their own big tent.

The news this week highlighted two very different kind of Democrats. Earlier in the week came the familiar rumors and rumblings that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is planning to run for president in 2020. (Bloomberg is a political independent at the moment, but reports have suggested he would run this time as a Democrat.)

We've heard this before. But the question of whether the 76-year-old will actually run this time around is far less important than the question of what the Democrats would do if he — or someone like him — does.

The answer to that question, of course, is that there is no "the Democrats" right now. There is the party's left fringe, and then its more centrist counterpart. On Tuesday, 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dethroned Rep. Joseph Crowley, a powerful Democrat who had been a 10-term incumbent....

This election cycle will prove to be a season of choosing for the Democratic Party. There will be consequences either way. But when it comes to retaking the presidency, Democrats should focus on presenting a candidate who can appeal to people beyond the left-most fringe of their progressive wing...

Capitol Gazette's Selene San Felice Drops F-Bomb During Interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN (VIDEO)

At Variety, "CNN Airs Uncensored F-Word During Interview With Annapolis Shooting Survivors."

She's bleeped on the YouTube upload, and on Twitter:

I guess this is what people thought I meant when I said I want more than thoughts and prayers. Thanks! pic.twitter.com/G3LQesVkRo

— Selene News Network 💁🏽‍♀️ (@seleniepanini) June 29, 2018

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Victory Heralds a Hard-Left Shift in the Democrat Party? (VIDEO)

Actually, I don't think the woman's ideology was the biggest part of the story. The Democrats have been an openly socialist party for a long time now. The biggest thing is that the woman was a political newcomer and she knocked off not only the #4 top Democrat congressional leader, but that her opponent was a big wig old-line party boss in the Bronx-Queens political establishment. That's what's freaking people out. The new guard is coming after the old guard, and that includes Nancy Pelosi, who's jonesing on the speaker's gig again should the Dems take back the House in November.

The New York Times had a background piece on the woman, "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Emerges as a Political Star."


See the discussion at Fox Business at the video, and at the Los Angeles Times, "The surprise defeat of Rep. Joe Crowley may signal Democratic unease about Pelosi's leadership team":

The stunning primary defeat of New York Rep. Joseph Crowley, a 10-term incumbent once seen as a likely replacement for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, is forcing Democrats to again address their inner divisions, including questions about who will lead them if they regain control of the House in 2018.

Grumbling about whether Pelosi and other long-serving Democratic leaders should step aside has been getting louder in recent years, with a surprising number of new Democratic candidates saying this year that they would not back the San Francisco Democrat for speaker.

The surprise loss by Crowley, the fourth-ranked Democrat in the House, pushes that debate front and center.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old Latina activist running her first campaign, beat Crowley in Tuesday’s primary in New York's 14th Congressional District. She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and held strong appeal in a district made up mostly of ethnic minorities.

Election victories by a new generation of progressives like Ocasio-Cortez may increase the pressure on Pelosi and other Democratic leaders, especially if Democrats win control of the House by a small margin.

Among other things, these newcomers want Democratic leaders to more aggressively confront President Trump’s policies and openly embrace liberal priorities, like a single-payer healthcare system. And they are tired of being told to wait patiently — years or even decades --- for their turn at the leadership table.

“You’re going to have a lot of new members that are very independent, and I think they are going to be making good arguments for what kind of leadership they want to see,” Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) said.

Crowley’s defeat drew comparisons to the surprise 2014 primary loss of then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican targeted by tea party advocates as being part of the GOP establishment. Cantor’s ouster triggered deep soul-searching inside the Republican Party and was followed the next year by the toppling of House Speaker John A. Boehner.

“I wouldn’t take anything for granted if I were in leadership now,” Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) said. “I suspect there are going to be challenges to leadership, I don’t think there’s any question.”

Pelosi urged people not to read too much into the loss, saying Ocasio-Cortez was a good fit for a district that had become more progressive.

“Nobody’s district is representative of somebody else’s district," she said, adding that the outcome is “just a sign of [the] vitality of our party.”

Though Pelosi was easily elected as minority leader in 2016, she faced the largest number of defections in her career. It’s unlikely that members will outwardly jockey for position against the powerful leader, who has said she plans to become speaker again. But some would-be rivals are likely to begin lining up support behind the scenes to fill the leadership Crowley will vacate.

House Democratic Caucus Vice Chairwoman Linda T. Sanchez (D-Whittier), who is expected to make a bid to replace Crowley as caucus chair, made waves last fall when she said on C-SPAN that it’s time for new leadership in the party. It was a surprising statement from a member of leadership, especially one from California. Sanchez has been a less visible part of the leadership team since.

“I think that I would be a good caucus chair,” she said. “Having said that, I’m not making any announcements.”

Democrats are shocked and in disbelief about Crowley’s loss, Yarmuth said, and they aren’t quite ready to consider others for his role...

Still more.

Jarrod Warren Ramos

I was really busy with family errands yesterday, although between trips to the doctor and what not I was able to follow the story out of Annapolis, Maryland, on the horrific quintuple murders at the Capitol Gazette newspaper.

What always strike me a vicious and evil is the premature speculation on the shooter, and it's almost exclusively leftists who engage in it. The Daily Caller had a great early roundup:

A sickening amount of people rushed to blame Trump for the shooting at the Capital Gazette yesterday despite knowing nothing about the shooter or his motives. We now know the shooter had a personal dispute with this paper. https://t.co/tp38zt1hhY

— Amber Athey (@amber_athey) June 29, 2018

Featured there is Lauren Duca, a nasty wench:

The shooting today in the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland cannot reasonably be separated from the President's mission to villainize the press as "the enemy of the American people."

— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) June 28, 2018

It turns out the shooter was Jarrod Warren Ramos, who was the subject of a Capital Gazette profile in about 2011. It turns out the suspect had harassed a woman he knew from high school, and after the newspaper covered his harassment as a news story he sued for defamation and lost. He held a vendetta against the newspaper ever since.

See the Other McCain for the full story.

#JarrodRamos Identified as Shooter in Maryland Newspaper Mass Murder: https://t.co/axkX9CELPA … via @PatriarchTree #Annapolis #CapitalGazette #CapitalGazetteShooting 😢 pic.twitter.com/8hTtr5zvJA

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) June 29, 2018

Heather Mac Donald, The Diversity Delusion

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, available September 4th, Heather Mac Donald, The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture.

Today's Deals

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BONUS: Ann Coulter, Resistance is Futile!  How the Trump-Hating Left Lost Its Collective Mind.

Michelle Malkin: The #AbolishICE Fringe Has Become the Mainstream of Democrat Party (VIDEO)

Yep.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the very far-left Democrat who shocked the establishment last night with her victory in New York's 14th congressional district. Abolishing ICE is bad enough, but this woman is the worst of the worst on Israel and the radical socialist agenda overall More on this hateful Democrat later.

Here's Michelle:

Megan Parry's Wednesday Weather

It's still mild and beautiful. Great hiking weather if you and to get out and active.

Here's the lovely Ms. Megan, for ABC 10 News San Diego:

Made in Chelsea's Lucy Watson Bikini Shots

At London's Daily Mail, "Made in Chelsea's Lucy Watson flaunts her bronzed figure in a skimpy bikini as she joins sizzling sister Tiffany in Mykonos."

BONUS: "Made In Chelsea's Lucy Watson flaunts her gym-honed frame in a skimpy monochrome bikini as she soaks up the sun in Barcelona."

Danielle Gersh's Sunshine Tuesday Forecast

It's a great day all around. Awesome SCOTUS rulings and great weather.

Here's the lovely Ms. Danielle, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Supreme Court Upholds President Trump's Travel Ban

I'm positively giddy with today's decision out of SCOTUS.

I'm especially pleased because it's a huge defeat for the radical left.

At USA Today, "Supreme Court upholds President Trump's travel ban against majority-Muslim countries":

WASHINGTON — A deeply divided Supreme Court upheld President Trump's immigration travel ban against predominantly Muslim countries Tuesday as a legitimate exercise of executive branch authority.

The 5-4 ruling reverses a series of lower court decisions that had struck down the ban as Illegal or unconstitutional. It hands a major victory to Trump, who initiated the battle to ban travelers a week after assuming office last year. It was a defeat for Hawaii and other states that had challenged the action, as well as immigration rights groups.

Trump hailed the decision as vindicating his controversial immigration policies, after first tweeting seven simple words: "SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS TRUMP TRAVEL BAN. Wow!"

"In this era of worldwide terrorism and extremist movements bent on harming innocent civilians, we must properly vet those coming into our country," the president said. "This ruling is also a moment of profound vindication following months of hysterical commentary from the media and Democratic politicians who refuse to do what it takes to secure our border and our country."

The president had vowed to ban Muslims during the 2016 presidential campaign and continued his attacks on Twitter after his election. But the high court said those statements did not constitute evidence of religious discrimination.

Chief Justice John Roberts issued the opinion, supported by the court's other four conservatives — a majority that has held through a dozen 5-4 cases this term. He said the ban's restrictions are limited to countries previously designated by Congress or prior administrations as posing national security risks. And he noted that Trump's latest version followed a worldwide review process by several government agencies.

"The proclamation is squarely within the scope of presidential authority," the chief justice said. Claims of religious bias against Muslims do not hold up, he said, against "a sufficient national security justification."

However, Roberts said, "We express no view on the soundness of the policy." And Justice Anthony Kennedy, in a brief concurring opinion, referred obliquely to the potential relevance of Trump's statements about religion.

"There are numerous instances in which the statements and actions of government officials are not subject to judicial scrutiny or intervention," Kennedy wrote. "That does not mean those officials are free to disregard the Constitution and the rights it proclaims and protects."

The court's four liberal justices dissented, and Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor read excerpts from the bench, a rare occurrence. Breyer, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, found "evidence of anti-religious bias" that he said was worth a second go-round at the federal district court level.

Sotomayor's dissent was lengthier and more strident, and she spoke in court for some 20 minutes. Quoting extensively Trump's words during and after the 2016 campaign, she wrote: "A reasonable observer would conclude that the proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus." She was joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

"What began as a policy explicitly 'calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States' has since morphed into a 'proclamation' putatively based on national-security concerns," Sotomayor said. "But this new window dressing cannot conceal an unassailable fact: the words of the president and his advisers create the strong perception that the proclamation is contaminated by impermissible discriminatory animus against Islam and its followers."

Keep reading.

It turns out Sotomayor was absolutely furious, as were leftist outrage mobsters on Twitter:

Without audio of today’s announcement, there is no way to replicate Sotomayor’s fury in a 20-minute dissent from the bench re: today’s travel ban decision

— Nina Totenberg (@NinaTotenberg) June 26, 2018

Heartbroken over what is happening in our country. What are we becoming as a nation under Trump? We must all fight for our values, and for heavens sake, get everyone you know to the polls!

— Amy Siskind (@Amy_Siskind) June 26, 2018

Oh, were we having a little chat about civility? Because the Supreme Court upheld the Muslim ban with a seat that was unabashedly stolen by Republicans.

— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) June 26, 2018

Separating black and brown families is the policy of this administration. Whether it be stripping babies from their mothers at their border or implementing travel bans - it all hurts. It’s all despicable. #NoMuslimBanEver #StandWithMuslims #EndFamilySeparation

— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) June 26, 2018

WWE Star Charlotte Flair for ESPN's Body Issue

At the Sun U.K., "'I AM STRONG' WWE star Charlotte Flair strips totally naked for incredible ESPN Body Issue photoshoot."

Kate Bock Moves Her Body (VIDEO)

Via Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

WWE Star Mandy Rose Bikini

At Drunken Stepfather, "MANDY ROSE BIKINI OF THE DAY."

And on Twitter:

Corpus Christi ✌🏻👌🏻 #Smackdown #GodsGreatestCreation 🙋‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/w6YSwSga1r

— Mandy (@WWE_MandyRose) June 5, 2018

Democrats Divided on the Left's Violent Confrontations?

Actually, I don't think so. This is how it's going to be, and worse, right up to the midterm elections in November.

At NYT, "As Activists Confront Trump Officials, Democrats Confront Democrats":

WASHINGTON — For more than two years, Democrats have struggled with how aggressively to confront Donald J. Trump, a political opponent unlike any other: Should they attack him over his hard-line policies; his inflammatory, norm-breaking conduct; or some combination of both?

In recent days, as institutional Democrats wring their hands, those deliberations have started to give way to furious liberal activists and citizens who have taken matters into their own hands beyond the corridors of power.

Progressives have heckled the homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, and the White House aide Stephen Miller at Washington restaurants. They have ejected the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, from a Lexington, Va., eatery. And they have screamed at one of Mr. Trump’s leading cable news surrogates, Florida’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, at a Tampa movie theater.

“Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up,” Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, said Saturday at a rally in Los Angeles. “And if you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

The attempts at shaming have delighted many on the left, particularly following Mr. Trump’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents, and many progressives feel that the president’s incendiary messaging and actions must be met with something far stronger than another round of news releases from politicians.

But the social media-fueled confrontations have opened a rift in the party over whether stoking anti-Trump outrage is helping or undermining its prospects in the midterm elections. Many younger Democrats believe that conventional politics are insufficient to the threat posed by a would-be authoritarian — and that their millennial and nonwhite base must be assured that the party is doing all it can to halt Mr. Trump.

Older and more establishment-aligned party officials fear the attempts at public humiliation are a political gift to Republicans eager to portray the opposition as inflaming rather than cooling passions in the nation’s capital.

“Trump’s daily lack of civility has provoked responses that are predictable but unacceptable,” Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, said Monday, rebuking Ms. Waters, a veteran flamethrower who is enjoying something of a renaissance in the Trump era...

More.

Previously: "The Left's Ratcheting Up Violent Rhetoric and Actions."

Alexis Ren in Sports Illustrated Outtakes

At Celeb Jihad, "Alexis Ren in SI Outtakes."

And ICYMI: "Alexis Ren in Corsett on the Beach (VIDEO)."

Bella Hadid for Vogue Mexico.

At People Magazine, "Bella Hadid Poses in Just a Thong for Vogue Mexico Beach Photo Shoot."

And on Twitter:

pic.twitter.com/Sw0VQbUQPX

— Bella Hadid (@bellahadid) June 25, 2018

BONUS: At London's Daily Mail, "Bella Hadid dons giant sombrero while posing TOPLESS for Vogue shoot."

The Left's Ratcheting Up Violent Rhetoric and Actions

Following-up, "Congresswoman Maxine Waters Calls for Attacks on Trump Administration Officials (VIDEO)."

There's lots in the news on all of this, and on Twitter, of course.

For now, see Politico, "The left loses its cool: ‘When you’re violent and cursing and screaming and blocking me from walking into a movie, there’s something wrong,’ said one top GOP official":

Few disagree that Democrats are marching, protesting and confronting rank-and-file Republicans with more intensity during the midterm election than at any time in decades https://t.co/nXPyDoKjRW

— POLITICO (@politico) June 25, 2018

Two senior Trump administration officials were heckled at restaurants. A third was denied service. Florida GOP Attorney General Pam Bondi required a police escort away from a movie about Mister Rogers after activists yelled at her in Tampa — where two other Republican lawmakers say they were also politically harassed last week, one of them with her kids in tow.

In the Donald Trump era, the left is as aggressively confrontational as anyone can remember.

What it means for 2018 — whether it portends a blue wave of populist revolt for Democrats or a red wall of silent majority resistance from Republicans — largely depends on one’s political persuasion. But there’s a bipartisan sense that this election season marks another inflection point in the collapse of civil political discourse.

Few disagree that Democrats are marching, protesting and confronting Republican officials with more intensity during the midterm election than at any time in decades. The progressive fervor recalls conservative opposition to the last president in his first midterm, when Democratic members of Congress were left running from disruptive town halls and ended up being crushed at the polls in November.

"If you see anybody from that Cabinet — in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station — you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” implored California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters at a Saturday rally, prompting an immediate conservative backlash on social media...

More.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters Calls for Attacks on Trump Administration Officials (VIDEO)

It's from Ryan Saavedra, at the Daily Wire, "WATCH: Maxine Waters Calls for Attacks on Members of Trump Administration."

Click through at the link to watch.

Words and actions like Congresswoman Waters' are the reason I think far-left fascist authoritarianism is the greatest danger to the U.S., not so called populist-nationalist "authoritarianism." (I mentioned there here.)

Check out this Hamilton Nolan piece at Splinter News:

If you think being asked to leave a fucking restaurant is bad just wait https://t.co/b8OZBXjgLG

— Hamilton Nolan (@hamiltonnolan) June 25, 2018

I'll have more on this. Some say events of the last few days are triggering the onset of civil war. We'll see. It sure is heated.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Wins Reelection in Turkey

The idea of "reelection" in a country like Turkey is essential meaningless. The electoral process isn't "free and fair."

At the New York Times, "Turkey’s Erdogan Has Won the Sweeping Powers He Says He Needed. Now What?":

ANKARA, Turkey — With his victory in Sunday’s elections, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken his place among the world’s emerging class of strongman rulers, nailing down the sweeping powers he has insisted he needs to address Turkey’s numerous challenges, at home and abroad.

Now, all he needs to do is deliver.

“He won on a knife-edge,” said Ugur Gurses, a former banker who writes for the daily newspaper Hurriyet. “But now he has in his lap all the problems.”

Mr. Erdogan is contending with an array of economic troubles, an increasingly disgruntled populace and deteriorating relations with Turkey’s Western allies. Among the many problems Mr. Erdogan faces is one fundamental roadblock: His foreign policy is fighting with his economic needs.

His increasingly authoritarian, nationalist and anti-Western bent is alienating foreign investors, which is hurting the Turkish lira. As the currency plunges, domestic capital flees. And he is newly reliant on a nationalist party that enabled him to maintain his majority in Parliament but promises to reinforce all those tendencies, as well as his hard line against the Kurdish minority.

The lira briefly rose with the news of Mr. Erdogan’s re-election, and his most senior economic adviser posted a message on Twitter on Sunday night: “This sets the stage for speeding up #reforms.”

The economy is Mr. Erdogan’s most pressing problem, but analysts express doubt that he will be able to perform the necessary surgery and introduce needed austerity measures with municipal elections looming in March 2019.

“Now the first challenge is the deterioration of the economy, and he has no means, no perspective to change the course of events,” said Kadri Gursel, a columnist for the newspaper Cumhuriyet, who was imprisoned by Mr. Erdogan for 11 months...

Keep reading.

On Twitter, Claire Berlinski --- who's a very smart cookie --- argues Turkey's a precursor to U.S. authoritarianism. Trump's out of office in 2025, if he wins reelection. So, you'd have to see Trumpism continue as an alleged political model of authoritarianism if Berlinski's predictions are to come true. I'm not so sure, because Turkey's basically a developing country, without a democratic (i.e., "liberal" political culture), and bereft of the kind of institutional republican safeguards inherent to the American constitutional regime. If authoritarianism comes, it's going to be through far-left fascism, IMHO.

More on that later, since everyone's talking about the so-called coming civil war. See this tweet, for example.

Jennifer Delacruz's Monday Forecast

It's been fabulously mild weather in the O.C.

I can dig it.

Now if the Angels could just win a game I'd be in Seventh Heaven (*eye roll*).

At ABC 10 News San Diego:

San Francisco's 'Hellscape' of Rats, Drugs, and Feces Tests Residents' Progressive Values

I've got a little tweet-storm on this right here, "They're so progressive they won't call the police if the homeless drug-addled perps are black." Just keep clicking at the quoted posts.

And go to the San Francisco Chronicle, "Poop. Needles. Rats. Homeless camp pushes SF neighborhood to the edge: One awful experience on one unremarkable city block represent the hellscape that has infuriated many San Francisco residents":

San Francisco Homeless Project: One awful experience on one unremarkable city block represents the hellscape that has infuriated many San Francisco residents. via @HKnightSFhttps://t.co/TqePGmJ8KN

— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) June 24, 2018

Some of the city’s biggest names — from San Francisco Travel to the Chamber of Commerce to the Hotel Council — have loudly protested the disastrous conditions on San Francisco’s sidewalks in recent months, and regularly get meetings with City Hall politicians, but the voices of everyday residents aren’t always heard.

The ones just trying to raise kids, work and, well, live. The ones with so little power, they can’t get their supervisors to respond to their requests for help. The ones with the misery literally on their front doorsteps.

Those are the people who live on Isis Street, which should be everything that’s good about San Francisco. Funky flats. A group of progressive neighbors, many of whom are artists, writers and other creative types. A walkable neighborhood where you can get to Rainbow Grocery and a host of bars and restaurants in a flash. There are about 30 units of housing on the block, and six kids younger than 5 are growing up there...

RTWT.

Patrick J. Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower

At Amazon, Patrick J. Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?

John Steinbeck, Cannery Row

Monterey is the most literary city I can ever recall visiting. There were literally five used bookstores within a mile from each other downtown, and a coffee house bookstore over in Pacific Grove (about a mile from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Here's Steinbeck, Cannery Row, at Amazon.

I'm reading the old mass market paperback below.

Maria Menounos Bikini Photos

At Drunken Stepfather, "MARIA MENOUNOS BIKINI OF THE DAY."

She's really flashing there, man.

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

And A.F. Branco:

pic.twitter.com/kvzqGsO3kO

— MARK SIMONE (@MarkSimoneNY) June 23, 2018

Jennifer Delacruz Overcast Sunday Forecast

It's cool in SoCal, quite a contrast from NorCal, where it was 104 in East Bay yesterday (not to mention in Fresno, where I was last week for a couple of days).

It's been quite pleasant in Irvine, and I can dig it!

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

Amid Fake News Assault, Trump's Supporters Dig In Deeper

Why this should surprise anyone is beyond me, but leftists and Democrats aren't too bright.

At NYT, "As Critics Assail Trump, His Supporters Dig In Deeper":

NY Times finds “overblown” media attacks on Trump driving Republicans closer to him —> As Critics Assail Trump, His Supporters Dig In Deeper, via @nytimes https://t.co/aawSaItsms

— Brit Hume (@brithume) June 24, 2018

LEESBURG, Va. — Gina Anders knows the feeling well by now. President Trump says or does something that triggers a spasm of outrage. She doesn’t necessarily agree with how he handled the situation. She gets why people are upset.

But Ms. Anders, 46, a Republican from suburban Loudoun County, Va., with a law degree, a business career, and not a stitch of “Make America Great Again” gear in her wardrobe, is moved to defend him anyway.

“All nuance and all complexity — and these are complex issues — are completely lost,” she said, describing “overblown” reactions from the president’s critics, some of whom equated the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children and parents to history’s greatest atrocities.

“It makes me angry at them, which causes me to want to defend him to them more,” Ms. Anders said.

In interviews across the country over the last few days, dozens of Trump voters, as well as pollsters and strategists, described something like a bonding experience with the president that happens each time Republicans have to answer a now-familiar question: “How can you possibly still support this man?” Their resilience suggests a level of unity among Republicans that could help mitigate Mr. Trump’s low overall approval ratings and aid his party’s chances of keeping control of the House of Representatives in November...

Keep reading.

John Yoo: Asian Americans Should Bail on the Democrats

I met John Yoo in 2011, at the David Horowitz Freedom Center's West Coast Retreat.

And here he is, at LAT, "Asian Americans need to wise up and end our blind loyalty to the Democratic Party":

For all their smarts, Asian Americans can be pretty dumb.

They support Democrats in droves, and Democrats support race-based affirmative action. Last week, a lawsuit revealed just how discriminatory that kind of decision-making can be. At Harvard, racial balancing — in the guise of a personality score for applicants — appears to be systematically reducing the admission of Asian American students to the university.

The Harvard scandal contains a lot of takeaways, but here’s the one I hope sticks with my fellow Asian Americans: It’s time for us to end our blind loyalty to the Democratic Party and support instead politicians who will promote our interests.

Asian Americans are the most dynamic minority group in the U.S. Between the 2000 and 2010 censuses, the Asian population in the U.S. grew by nearly 50%. According to social science surveys and the census, they are the wealthiest and best-educated Americans. They are more likely to run a small business than any other racial group. They are deeply religious, with strong family values and a low divorce rate. Asian families push their children hard to score at the top of standardized tests and to achieve sterling grade-point averages.

In recent presidential elections, Asian Americans have consistently voted Democratic. In 2012, exit polling shows that 73% of Asian voters turned out for Barack Obama, second only, among racial/ethnic groups, to African Americans. In 2016, two-thirds of Asian voters supported Hillary Clinton, again second to black Americans and this time tied with Latinos. Asian Americans last voted for a Republican for president way back in 1996, when they went for Bob Dole (about the only voters who did, it seems).

The Democratic Party has rewarded this unwavering support with an unyielding defense of race-based school admissions and government programs such as the one that’s been working against Asian Americans at Harvard.

Every Supreme Court justice appointed by a Democratic president has upheld race-based school admissions programs in the name of diversity. Democratic administrations have aggressively supported these same programs in court. In California, Democrats have sought repeatedly to overturn Proposition 209, the law that prevents UC Berkeley and UCLA from rescurrecting the use of race as a factor in their admission process. In New York City today, Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio proposes to end the standardized single-test admission system used by magnet schools — because too many Asians do too well on the tests.

Harvard, and the Democratic Party, favor “holistic” admissions policies that yield what is considered to be the “right” balance of racial and ethnic groups on campus. Under pressure of a lawsuit filed by Students for Fair Admission, the university disclosed that Asians would make up 43% of the student body if academic scores alone dictated admissions. But Harvard ranks applicants on their strengths in five categories. Even though Asians score highest on academics and extracurricular activities, Harvard gave them the lowest possible score on personal traits such as humor, sensitivity, creativity, grit and leadership.

The personal rating kept Asians to 26% of admissions in 2013. Harvard then made “demographic” adjustments that further reduced the class to 19% Asian, which magically appears to be the same percentage of Asians that’s been admitted to Harvard for years.

RTWT.

BONUS: See Glenn Reynolds, at USA Today, "Why is Harvard discriminating against Asian Americans? 'Diversity' is no excuse for racial bias."

Godwin's Law Update

So, even Mike Godwin's going Godwin. What can you do?

 At LAT, "Do we need to update Godwin's Law about the probability of comparison to Nazis?":

Does Godwin’s Law need to be updated? Suspended? Repealed? I get asked this question from time to time because I’m the guy who came up with it more than a quarter century ago.

In its original simple form, Godwin’s Law goes like this: “As an online discussion continues, the probability of a comparison to Hitler or to Nazis approaches one.” It’s deliberately pseudo-scientific — meant to evoke the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the inevitable decay of physical systems over time. My goal was to hint that those who escalate a debate into Adolf Hitler or Nazi comparisons may be thinking lazily, not adding clarity or wisdom, and contributing to the decay of an argument over time.

Godwin’s Law doesn’t belong to me, and nobody elected me to be in charge of it. Although I’m sometimes thought to be referee for its use, I’m not. That said, I do have thoughts about how it is being invoked nowadays.

Since it was released into the wilds of the internet in 1991, Godwin’s Law (which I nowadays abbreviate to “GL”) has been frequently reduced to a blurrier notion: that whenever someone compares anything current to Nazis or Hitler it means the discussion is over, or that that person lost the argument. It’s also sometimes used (reflexively, lazily) to suggest that anyone who invokes a comparison to Nazis or Hitler has somehow “broken” the Law, and thus demonstrated their failure to grasp what made the Holocaust uniquely horrific.

Most recently GL has been invoked in response to the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” border policy that resulted in the traumatic separation of would-be immigrants from their children, many of whom are now warehoused in tent cities or the occasional repurposed Walmart. For example, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden — no squishy bleeding heart — posted a couple of tweets on June 16 that likened that policy to the Nazis’ treatment of children in Germany’s concentration camps. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (a Democrat but also a security hawk) has made the comparison as well.

The response has been predictable: Debate for some people has been derailed by the trivial objection that, even if it is terrible to separate children from their parents (and sometimes lose track of them, or make it impossible for their parents contact them, or even deprive them of the comfort of human touch), it’s not as awful as what the Nazis did. Or as bad as the slave trade. Or as bad as what the expansion of the United States westward did to Native Americans.

My name gets cited in a lot of these discussions. And of course my ears are burning. It hasn’t mattered that I’ve explained GL countless times. Some critics on the left have blamed me for (supposedly) having shut down valid comparisons to the Holocaust or previous atrocities. Some on the right have insisted that I’m “PC” for having tweeted (a bit profanely) that it’s just fine to compare the white nationalists who plagued Charlottesville, Va., last year to Nazis. (I think they were mostly aspirational Nazi cos players.)

I don’t take either strain of criticism too seriously. But I do want to stress that the question of evil, understood historically, is bigger than party politics. GL is about remembering history well enough to draw parallels — sometimes with Hitler or with Nazis, sure — that are deeply considered. That matter. Sometimes those comparisons are going to be appropriate, and on those occasions GL should function less as a conversation ender and more as a conversation starter.

So let me start another conversation here. Take the argument that our treatment of those seeking asylum at our border, including children, is not as monstrous as institutionalized genocide. That may be true, but it’s not what you’d call a compelling defense. Similarly, saying (disingenuously) that the administration is just doing what immigration law demands sounds suspiciously like “we were just following orders.” That argument isn’t a good look on anyone.

The seeds of future horrors are sometimes visible in the first steps a government takes toward institutionalizing cruelty...

More.

Whatever you thing about "GL," this "debate" is completely stupid, mainly because it's only being raised now, when Trump is in office. We could've had this debate in 2014, when Obama was locking up families --- and separating them --- on the border.

GL or no GL, politics is stupid. And yes, if you've got to resort to calling your opponents Nazis, you've lost the debate.

This Is How You Got Trump

This is beyond Trump derangement. Leftists are out and out advocating the slaughter of Trump supporters, and I'm seeing this multiple times a day, and not just on social media.

Sarah Sanders. Pam Bondi. Melania Trump. All of these women have been targeted and threatened by leftist mobs and Hollywood idiots over the last few days.

MSNBC's Donny Deutsch smeared Trump supporters as Nazis, "If you vote for Trump, you're the bad guy."

It feels like we're heading toward open warfare sometimes. That's one of the reasons I went offline during the vacation, and even then I was still on Twitter, so I never really get away from it. It's all leftist hatred all the time, and it's sickening.

Make this idiot famous. pic.twitter.com/SzXLbwv8zx

— R. Wolfe (@WhoWolfe) June 10, 2018

Trump Exposes Democrats' Hypocrisy and Lies, Outsmarts Them Again

From Rush Limbaugh:

RUSH: This today, ladies and gentlemen, may be one of the biggest See, I Told You So opportunity days I have had in years, maybe ever. And that’s really saying something, because I’ve had a lot of these over a stellar broadcast career. So forgive me if I point out your host — your beloved host, I, El Rushbo — predicted every single reaction that we are seeing from the news media and the rest of the Democrat Party. I have been chomping at the bit all night to get here.

It started shortly after the program ended yesterday, and I know all of you were watching the news and keeping track. I know you all noticed it. I know you’re out there saying, “It’s exactly what Rush said was gonna happen,” and it has happened. I don’t know if Donald Trump is a strategic genius, but I can tell you that he is an instinctive one. I don’t know how much Trump sits around and strategizes and tries to play, for example, a long game and say, “Okay. If I do this and do this, I know they’re gonna do this and this. So, after that happens, I’m going to do this.”

I don’t know if he’s that many steps down the board or not. But I know that his instincts are practically infallible here. He has turned these people inside out, upside down. He has forced them, made them, caused them — his enemies — to expose their hypocrisy, to expose their lies, and to expose the fact that they’re dishonest when reporting so-called news. For starters, ladies and gentlemen, I predicted the press would say that Trump caved, that they would begin to take credit for it, that they indeed had put so much pressure on Trump that finally they had made him cave.

Dana Bash at CNN was the first to start shouting with great happiness that they had made Trump cave. It was their first reaction. There were lots of articles with headlines claiming that Trump caved. There were other stories talking about Trump’s base supporters being tragically saddened and disappointed by this, that Trump didn’t have the guts to stick to his policy, that Trump is even less committed to this than Obama was. There was all kinds of stuff. But then — and you remember this — they began to realize, as I also predicted they would. (laughing)

In fact, the first guy to get up was a little bald head guy yesterday afternoon on CNN. (laughing) It was so fun to watch. We had the sound bite from the guy, Zac something or other. He’s the guy that the Fox infobabes love having this guy on. You can just tell that they are as amused as hell. He’s like a pet! You know, he’s like a talking pet. They’re just amused as hell when this guy gets wound up and gets going. He stands up out of his chair, starts gesticulating wildly, and they look at each other with the suppressed smiles. (laughing) They don’t even try to stop him!

Anyway, he was the first to figure it out. (laughing) They realized that this only meant one thing, that Trump was gonna keep families detained, if we’re gonna keep ’em together, they’re gonna stay detained, quote-unquote, “behind bars.” What the left has been looking for here all along is catch-and-release. That’s what they want to return to. They thought Trump caving meant that his executive order was gonna be, “We no longer detain children,” and since we can’t separate families, if we’re gonna detain the children, we can’t deign the adults.

Therefore nobody’s detained, thereby everybody is free to roam America and get lost. (laughing) Well, that’s not what the executive order says. And then I predicted that there would be a court challenge to this before the next day — today — arrived. And I predicted that the court challenge would be on the fact that Trump had usurped his executive authority, that he cannot trump (no pun intended) existing law as written by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals regarding the Flores decision, which the media never talked about during any of this.

When they’re clamoring for Trump to end his supposedly policy of separation, the no tolerance. It isn’t his. It never was, which you know. But they’re demanding that he end it. And all during those days where they’re demanding that he end it, they never once said that there was an opinion from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals called the Flores decision that prevents him from ending it. Then when he signs his executive order, then all of a sudden they discover Flores to say that his executive order may not be valid. (laughing)

They fell right into this at every step!

More at that top link.

Lindsey Pelas Greetings

She's so sweet.

HI ✨✨✨✨ pic.twitter.com/gmLCp0Dyyb

— Lindsey Pelas (@LindseyPelas) June 21, 2018

I’d rather be in Mexico today 🔥 how about you? pic.twitter.com/yDeH9NkRkc

— Lindsey Pelas (@LindseyPelas) June 23, 2018

Alexis Ren on the Beach (VIDEO)

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

Jamie Leigh Thornton

At Maxim:

"Don't start a DM with 'Dannnnng girl you got a nice rack.'" https://t.co/bUyrPWurZQ

— Maxim (@MaximMag) June 17, 2018

Jennifer Delacruz's Saturday Forecast

It's really overcast in Irvine today. And come to think of it, that's weird, considering that Monterey Bay was clearing up before Noon.

Be that as it may, here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:

Time Magazine Stands by #FakeCover Story Featuring Crying Migrant Child Who Was Not Separated from Her Mother

I think this is probably the fakest of fake news stories I've ever seen.

I don't have all that much to add to the commentary. I was on Twitter all this last week while on vacation and I tweeted a lot of commentary. My main take: This is a fake crisis, perpetuated by fake journalists exploiting fake migrants, to foist a fake political controversy ahead of the November elections.

The Washington Post has a huge rundown, "The crying Honduran girl on the cover of Time was not separated from her mother."

And at AoSHQ, "#FakeNews: TIME's Open Borders Propaganda Cover Story Is Fake In Every Way An Article Can Be Fake."

Plus, here's Shannon Bream, at Fox News:

Delilah Hamlin Bikini Model

At Drunken Stepfather, "Delilah Hamlin Bikini Model of the Day."

BONUS: "Kaili Thorne [Bella's sister] is Topless of the Day."

Lily-Rose Depp for Vogue Russia

At People Magazine, "Lily-Rose Depp Smiles While Posing Topless on the Beach in Vogue Russia Shoot."

ADDED: "Lily-Rose Depp by Boo George for Vogue Russia July 2018."

And at the French magazine Gala, "PHOTO – Lily-Rose Depp topless, la fille de Vanessa Paradis se lâche."

Far-Left Cynthia Nixon Smears ICE as a 'Terrorist Organization,' Wants It Abolished (VIDEO)

She's really, really far left.

Her daughter is now her transgender son. See People, "Cynthia Nixon Reveals Her Oldest Child Is Transgender as They Mark Trans Day of Action."

And she attacked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as a "terrorist organization."

She's exactly the goofy leftist far-left New Yorkers deserve.

Here's her appearance on the View from a few days ago:

Who's Really to Blame at the Border?

From Heather Mac Donald, at City Journal:

Who’s really to blame at the border? https://t.co/WV6B0i4XEj pic.twitter.com/LArcwLXgdg

— City Journal (@CityJournal) June 23, 2018

So it was a ruse. The hysteria over the separation of illegal-alien asylum-seekers from their children (or their purported children) was in large part pretextual. The real target of rage was the Trump administration’s policy of prosecuting all illegal border-crossers for the federal misdemeanor of illegal entry.

In April, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a “zero-tolerance” policy for illegal entry. Henceforth, virtually all aliens caught entering the country illegally would be held for prosecution, rather than being released on their own recognizance for a later noncriminal deportation proceeding, to which few ever showed up. (This new enforcement policy would have come as a surprise to anyone who had fallen for the advocates’ decades-long lie that illegal entry is not a crime.) Under the new policy, even if the adult had brought a child with him across the border—the usual accoutrement of an asylum-seeker, for reasons explained below—the adult would still be prosecuted. The adult would be held in a U.S. marshal’s facility pending trial, while the child would be placed in a dormitory run by the U.S. Health and Human Services department, since children cannot be held in criminal lockups.

Images of child border-crossers, separated from their adult companion and crying or looking upset—and the experience would undoubtedly be traumatic for most young children—triggered nonstop coverage of Trump administration cruelty. MSNBC and CNN set up border encampments from which reporters and pundits pontificated on the child-separation crisis. Nazi and Holocaust analogies flew around the Internet; faculty petitions invoked the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Mexico and four other Latin American countries filed a human rights complaint against the U.S. Politicians and religious leaders lined up to denounce White House racism and anti-immigrant hatred.

On Wednesday, Trump called their bluff. He signed an executive order that would house illegal-alien adults with minors in Department of Homeland Security or other government facilities.  The zero-tolerance policy, however, would continue. Democratic politicians and illegal alien advocates immediately cried foul. “Make no mistake: the President is doubling down on his ‘zero tolerance’ policy,” Democratic U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, said in a statement Wednesday. “His new Executive Order criminalizes asylum-seekers . . . . Locking up whole families is no solution at all—the Trump Administration must reverse its policy of prosecuting vulnerable people fleeing three of the most dangerous countries on earth.”

The Harvard Kennedy School’s Juliette Kayyem told CNN’s Don Lemon on Wednesday night: “The real problem is Sessions’ decision to prosecute [illegal border crossers] 100 percent.” A CNN anchor on Thursday morning asked U.S. Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, if his position was: don’t criminally charge each person who illegally crosses the border. Schiff responded: “We don’t have to criminalize everyone that’s coming here seeking asylum.” NPR interviewed the director of Migrant Rights and Justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission, Michelle Brané. “Families will be just as traumatized, children will be just as traumatized” under the executive order, she said on Thursday morning. “Exchanging one form of trauma for another is not the solution”; getting rid of the prosecutorial mandate is. 

And the open-borders lobby possesses a powerful weapon for doing just that. The extraordinarily complex thicket of interpolated rules and rights that govern U.S. immigration policy (the result of decades of nonstop litigation by the immigration bar) contains a series of judicial mandates that defeated even the Obama administration’s tepid efforts to bring some semblance of lawfulness to the border. A long-running class-action lawsuit in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, originally styled Flores v. Reno, has held that alien minors cannot be confined by the government for longer than 20 days. This 20-day cap contributed to the flood of Central American child-toting asylum seekers that picked up steam during President Obama’s second term. Asylum petitions typically take months, if not years, to adjudicate, given the long backlog of such cases in the immigration courts. If an adult crosses the border alone and utters the magic asylum words—a fear of persecution in his home country—he could in theory be held in detention until his asylum claim was adjudicated. If, however, he brings a child with him and makes an asylum pitch, he puts the government to a choice: detain the adult separately until his claim is heard and release the child after 20 days, or release both adult and child together.

The Obama administration usually chose the second option...

Naturally.

But keep reading.

Shop Today

 Thanks everybody.

I've been on vacation and offline, but I'm back for summer blogging and I appreciate everything you do to support my work through the Amazon links.

Don't give up. I really like my readers!

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BONUS: Peter Stark, Astoria: A Tale of Ambition and Survival on the Early American Frontier, Astoria Astor and Jefferson's Lost Pacific Empire.

Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Charged with Wire Fraud

This woman should be behind bars. If Martin Shkreli was sent to prison for securities fraud, this woman should as well. White collar criminals get away with murder, and this Holmes woman is way worse than Shkreli, IMHO.

Here's Ryan Barber, "Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes INDICTED on charges she defrauded investors. Two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, nine counts of wire fraud."

And at CNBC, "BREAKING: Justice Dept. announces that a federal grand jury has indicted Elizabeth A. Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani in alleged wire fraud schemes."

More at Business Week, via Memeorandum, "Theranos Says Elizabeth Holmes Has Stepped Down as CEO."

(Photo by Max Morse for TechCrunch, via Wikipedia.)

Ireland Baldwin in Skimpy Bikini

At London's Daily Mail, "Ireland Baldwin PICTURE EXCLUSIVE: Blonde bombshell flashes the flesh in skimpy bikini for racy beach photo shoot."

Ireland Baldwin flashes the flesh in skimpy bikini for racy beach photo shoot https://t.co/M1vkQ6dAGu

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) June 15, 2018

Also at Drunken Stepfather, "Ireland Baldwin Bikini of the Day."

Here's Yet Another Piece Bemoaning the Rise of 'Illiberal' Populist Nationalism

I think it's interesting, since at the moment all those complaining about the collapse of so-called democratic norms and the rise of "illiberal" populist nationalist regimes are the ones losing elections and being sidelined from decision-making. I love that.

At Der Spiegel, "Rise of the Autocrats: Liberal Democracy Is Under Attack":

Our new @DerSPIEGEL cover story now in English: “Rise of the Autocrats: Liberal Democracy Is Under Attack” https://t.co/HxjatzEeTi via @SPIEGELONLINE pic.twitter.com/u7A2mVPAwt

— Mathieu von Rohr (@mathieuvonrohr) June 13, 2018

Autocratic leaders and wannabes, from Putin to Trump, are making political inroads around the world. In recent years, Western liberal democracy has failed to live up to some of its core promises, helping to fuel the current wave of illiberalism.

Russian President Vladimir Putin isn't actually all that interested in football. He's more of a martial arts guy, and he loves ice hockey. But when the World Cup football championship gets started on Thursday in Moscow, Putin will strive to be the perfect host. The tournament logo is a football with stars trailing behind it, evoking Sputnik, and a billion people will be tuning in as Putin presents Russia as a strong and modern country.

During the dress rehearsal, last summer's Confed Cup, Putin held an opening address in which he spoke of "uncompromising, fair and honest play ... until the very last moments of the match." Now, it's time for the main event, the World Cup, giving Putin an opportunity to showcase his country to the world.

The World Cup, though, will be merely the apex of the great autocrat festival of 2018. On June 24, Turkish voters will head to the polls for the first time since approving President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's constitutional reforms last year. The result of the vote will in all likelihood cement his claim to virtually absolute power until 2023 or even beyond. Should he miss out on an absolute majority in the first round of voting -- which is certainly possible given rising inflation in the country -- then he'll get it in the second round. The result will likely be a Turkey -- a country with around 170 journalists behind bars and where more than 70,000 people have been arrested since the coup attempt two years ago, sometimes with no grounds for suspicion - that is even more authoritarian than it is today.

And then there is Donald Trump who, after turning the G-7 summit in Canada into a farce, headed to Singapore for a Tuesday meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. And many pundits have argued this week that the greatest beneficiary of that summit was actually Chinese President Xi Jinping, the man who poses a greater challenge to Western democracy than all the rest.

At home, Trump is continuing his assault on the widely accepted norms regarding how a president should behave. He has the "absolute right" to pardon himself in the Russian affair, he recently claimed -- and then he went off the rails in Canada, picking fights with his allies and revoking his support for the summit's closing statement by sending out a tweet from Air Force One as he left. Trump, to be sure, is an elected president, but he is one who dreams of wielding absolute power and sees himself as being both above the law and above internationally accepted norms of behavior.

The Backward Slide

The upshot is that global politics are currently dominated by a handful of men -- and only men -- who have nothing but contempt for liberal democracy and who aspire to absolute control of politics, of the economy, of the judiciary and of the media. They are the predominant figures of the present -- and the decisions they make will go a long way toward shaping the future ahead. The globalized, high-tech, constantly informed and enlightened world of the 21st century finds itself in the middle of a slide back into the age of authoritarianism.

And this is not merely the lament of Western cultural pessimists, it is a statement rooted in statistics. A recent study by the German foundation Bertelsmann Stiftung found that 3.3 billion people live under autocratic regimes, while the UK-based Economist Intelligence Unit found that just 4.5 percent of the global population, around 350 million people, live in a "full democracy." In its most recent annual report, issued in January of this year, the nongovernmental organization Freedom House wrote that in 2017, "democracy faced its most serious crisis in decades." It went on to note that "the right to choose leaders in free and fair elections, freedom of the press and the rule of law are under assault and in retreat globally."

How can this global trend be explained? Are autocrats really so strong, or are democrats too weak? Is liberal democracy only able to function well in relatively homogeneous societies where prosperity is growing? Why do so many people doubt democracy's ability to solve the problems of the 21st century, challenges such as climate change, the tech revolution, shifting demographics and the distribution of wealth?

The optimistic Western premises -- that greater prosperity leads to more freedom, increased communication leads to greater pluralism, and more free trade leads to increased economic integration -- have unraveled. Following the end of the Cold War, the American political scientists Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan said in 1996 that Western democracy was "the only game in town." Now, though, it would seem to have lost its attraction. The expectation that democracy's triumphant march would be impossible to stop has proven illusory. China is currently showing the world that economic success and societal prosperity are also possible in an authoritarian system.

The fact that established dictatorships in the world, such as those in Belarus, Zimbabwe or Vietnam, aren't showing any signs of change is only part of the problem. Rather, everywhere in the world, authoritarian phases are following on the heels of brief -- or more extended -- experiments with democracy, a development seen in places like Egypt, Thailand, Venezuela and Nicaragua, for example. At the same time, liberal democracy is eroding in many countries in the West.

Perhaps the greatest danger, though, is the increasing attraction of autocratic thinking in Europe. Some elements of such systems are sneaking into Western democracies, such as the growing contempt for established political parties, the media and minorities.

In Italy, a new government was just sworn in under the leadership of Matteo Salvini, an avowed Putin fan. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán just won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections held, according to OSCE election observers, in an atmosphere of "intimidating and xenophobic rhetoric." Polish voters are set to go to the polls next year, and there too, the right-wing nationalist PiS stands a good chance of emerging victorious.

Across the Atlantic, the U.S. under the leadership of Donald Trump has thus far resisted sliding into autocracy, but only because the institutional hurdles in the form of the judicial and legislative branches of government have managed to hold their ground. Nevertheless, liberal democracy is under attack in precisely the country where it first emerged.

Anxiety is likewise growing in other Western democracies. "Until recently, liberal democracy reigned triumphant. For all its shortcomings, most citizens seemed deeply committed to their form of government. The economy was growing. Radical parties were insignificant," writes the Harvard-based German-American political scientist Yascha Mounk in his book "The People vs. Democracy." But then the situation began changing rapid: Brexit, Trump's election and the success of other right-wing populist movements in Europe. The question, Mounk writes, is "whether this populist moment will turn into a populist age -- and cast the very survival of liberal democracy in doubt."

The Western political system, Mounk writes, is "decomposing into its component parts, giving rise to illiberal democracy on the one side and undemocratic liberalism on the other." The one, he argues, is dominated by manipulated majority opinion while the other is controlled by institutions such as central banks, constitutional courts and supranational bureaucracies like the European Commission that can operate independent of direct, democratic debate.

"Take back control" was the slogan used by the Brexiteers during their successful campaign. Indeed, the feeling of living in an era in which they have lost control is likely a common denominator among all European populists. Taking back that control is something they all promise.

It is combined with the desire to shake off the corset that allegedly makes life in the West anything but free. All the laws, rules, decrees and contracts that dictate to people, companies and entire countries how to behave. What they are allowed to say and what not. What they can buy and what is off limits. How things may or may not be produced. This desire to apply a new set of self-made, simpler rules to the world is feeding the popularity of the autocratically minded.

These days, it is rare that democracies collapse under attack from armed, uniformed adversaries. Such images belong to the past; the coup d'état has become a rarity. On the contrary, many autocrats have come to power by way of the ballot box, govern in the name of the people and regularly hold referenda to solidify their power.

But once in power -- in Turkey, Venezuela or Russia -- they bring the institutions of democracy under their control. They tend not to be committed ideologues. Rather, they are strategists of power who used ideologies without necessarily believing in them themselves. Furthermore, they don't generally wield violence indiscriminately, another difference to the murderous regimes of the past. Sometimes, a journalist loses their life, or an oligarch ends up in jail. But otherwise, the new autocrats are much subtler than their totalitarian predecessors. Generally, a timely threat issued to insubordinate citizens suffices. And they are particularly adept at the dark art of propaganda. They know that many people have become insecure and are afraid of the future and foreigners. They have learned how to augment those fears, so they can then pose as guarantors of stability...

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