Emily DiDonato in White Pant Suit

At Taxi Driver, "Emily DiDonato Areola Peek in White Pant Suit."

There's No Such Thing as a Moderate Democrat in 2018

From Mollie Hemingway, at the Federalist, "Tennessee Senate Race Shows There's No Such Thing as a Moderate Democrat in 2018":

In 2018, There Is No Such Thing As A Moderate Democrat - The Federalist https://t.co/STEYIgNPPS

— The Federalist (@FDRLST) October 12, 2018

While the national media encourage the radicalization of the Democratic Party and highlight how that radicalization excites its base in liberal states, the result is the crushing of moderate Democratic pols.

Donald Trump was elected president despite low popularity ratings in 2016. While both Hillary Clinton and Trump were viewed unfavorably by a majority of Americans polled, Trump set the record, with 61 percent viewing him in a negative light, according to Gallup.

For millions of Americans, disliking Trump was not a barrier to voting for him. In some cases people voted for him enthusiastically despite not particularly liking him.

Tennessee has a smaller version of the opposite issue. Volunteer State voters like the Democratic candidate Phil Bredesen. A popular former governor and mayor of Nashville, his entrance into the race made the open seat competitive despite the state’s Republican leanings. Cook Political report rates it as a toss-up. The Real Clear Politics average has Republican candidate Marsha Blackburn up by less than three points.

Bredesen is certainly a standard Democrat in his politics, but he’s downplaying that fact and is willing to buck his party. He opposed the manner in which Obamacare was implemented and occasionally criticizes his party for its extremism.His approach is persuasive to some, including the Washington Post opinion journalist Radley Balko.

He notes that Blackburn’s approach is more politically savvy. But it’s worth thinking about why. As the recent Kavanaugh debacle showed, at best the Senate has a grand total of one Democrat who can be labeled moderate: Joe Manchin. Even Democratic senators from all the other states that desired a Kavanaugh confirmation voted against him.

More important than the ultimate vote, though, were the Democratic leaders responsible for the debacle. Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) stage-managed the accusations against Kavanaugh for maximum political effect. After hearings were reopened, she read the outlandish Michael Avenatti gang rape cartel allegations into the record. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-New York) kept Democratic votes in line and told them to disregard the principle of presumed innocence.

Looked at this way, Blackburn’s focus isn’t just a cynical ploy but an understanding of how the current Senate’s party control has a far greater effect on the average voter than any individual senator does. Blackburn likely emphasized it because it’s a message that resonates with voters more than the one where a politician claims he or she will be one way when they frequently abandon their commitments when in Washington.

How many times have politicians claimed they wouldn’t vote for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) or Schumer only to do just that or otherwise fail to put other Democrats in power? Bredesen claimed he wouldn’t vote for Schumer for leader, but voters likely understand that his no vote would have no effect on Schumer’s success. It is perhaps worth noting that new undercover video from James O’Keefe casts Bredesen’s moderation pledges in a questionable new light.

A new National Republican Senatorial Committee ad dealing with the race understands this issue well...

There's still more, including all the linked tweets and embedded videos at the piece.

Asian-Americans and the Secrets of Getting Into Harvard

This is really interesting.

At WSJ, "The Secrets of Getting Into Harvard Were Once Closely Guarded. That’s About to Change" (and see this alternative link):

Harvard's secretive admissions practices are going on trial on Boston https://t.co/askp9RnnrR

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) October 11, 2018

This year, 42,749 students applied to Harvard College, and only 1,962 were admitted. How Harvard decides who makes the cut has long been a mystery.

That’s about to change. A trial beginning Monday in Boston federal court will examine how the elite institution uses race to shape its student body. It will force Harvard to spill details about its admissions practices.

The case has transfixed the world of higher education—both for the peek it provides into a process cloaked in secrecy, and the prospect that the court decision will upend the admissions practices of other colleges as well.

A lawsuit accuses Harvard University of illegally discriminating against Asian-American applicants by holding them to a higher standard than students of other races. Harvard denies the accusation, saying race is just one of a complex matrix of factors it considers before handing out its coveted acceptances.

Harvard uses what it calls a holistic approach to admissions, considering not only an applicant’s academic record and test scores but also activities, formative experiences and personal attributes. The model is widely used by other top colleges.

Elite colleges, 60% of which consider race in admissions, say the trial’s outcome could threaten their autonomy to craft undergraduate classes. If forced to exclude race from admissions considerations, many schools say, their student demographics would change significantly.

For years, Harvard has fought against the public release of documents showing the inner workings of its admissions office. Court filings in advance of the trial offer tantalizing details about how Harvard rates prospective students and how it considers race. The trial is expected to shed light on the magnitude of admission preferences for athletes, children of alumni and applicants with connections to major donors.

Among the more controversial aspects of the admissions process: Each applicant receives a “personal rating” reflecting, in part, an analysis of personality traits such as humor, courage and kindness.

The plaintiffs claim that Harvard’s own data show Asian-Americans received the highest academic and extracurricular ratings of any racial group, but the lowest personal ratings. In court filings, Harvard has attributed lower Asian-American personal scores to “unobservable factors” that come through in teacher recommendations, applicants’ essays and interviews, which are also factored into the rating.

The lawsuit seeks to ban Harvard from considering race in future admissions decisions. It was brought by a nonprofit group, led by a conservative legal strategist, whose members include Asian-Americans rejected by Harvard.

Over the past 40 years, the Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that universities can consider an applicant’s race to promote the educational benefits that flow from diverse campuses, including better preparing students for the workforce.

The presidents of Yale University, Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among others, have filed a brief in support of Harvard, arguing that prohibiting colleges from weighing race in admissions would represent an “extraordinary infringement on universities’ academic freedom.”

The Justice Department has weighed in on the other side, filing a “statement of interest” supporting the plaintiffs. It launched its own civil-rights investigation last year into whether Harvard discriminates against Asian-American applicants. The Education and Justice Departments also recently opened a similar investigation into Yale.

A senior Justice Department official said the investigations are a priority for its Civil Rights Division. Harvard’s lawyers have called the government’s actions a “thinly veiled attack” on Supreme Court precedent and “so outside ordinary practices.”

California banned its public universities from considering race in admissions two decades ago. Since then, University of California, Berkeley has grown by roughly 8,800 undergraduates but has about 275 fewer black students. At the private California Institute of Technology, which says academics are the most important admissions criterion, 43% of the undergraduate population last year was Asian-American.

Harvard said in a court filing that eliminating affirmative action would give the biggest boost to white students, increasing their share in a recent admitted class to 48%, from 40%. The share of Asian-Americans would rise to 27%, from 24%, while African-Americans would drop to 6%, from 14%, and Hispanics to 9%, from 14%.

The lawsuit was brought in 2014 by Students for Fair Admissions, a nonprofit run by Edward Blum. Mr. Blum has funded other challenges to affirmative action, including a Supreme Court case involving Abigail Fisher, a white applicant rejected from the University of Texas...

Wow, this is major.

RTWT.

I'm voting with the plaintiffs. Discrimination is wrong. The Asian students are being punished for being successful. Next to blacks and Native Americans, Asian-Americans have faced some of the worst racial discrimination in American history. It's reprehensible that they're being made to pay for the radical left's policies of diversity and "affirmative action," which benefit those who're less well prepared for the rigors of elite higher educaion.

Poor, Rural Communities Stuck in Hurricane Michael

This is really interesting.

At the New York Times, "‘I Got Stuck’: In Poor, Rural Communities, Fleeing Hurricane Michael Was Tough":

The town's called Panacea, but when Hurricane Michael hit, the name seemed overly optimistic. Gene Bearden, who's been trying to leave for 4 years, doesn't have much left now. https://t.co/gaNMx0f52O

— NYT National News (@NYTNational) October 11, 2018

PANACEA, Fla. — The orders came down to mobile home residents as the menace of Hurricane Michael approached in the Gulf of Mexico: Get out. Get out now.

The evacuation mandate reached Gene Bearden, 76, in this blink-and-you-miss-it town with an aspirational name south of Tallahassee and in an area where a storm surge of up to 13 feet had been forecast.

Mr. Bearden wanted to leave. He had been wanting to leave Panacea, in fact, for four years, but had not mustered the financial wherewithal to do it, and the arrival of a Category 4 hurricane did nothing to change that.

Versions of his story played out across the eastern edge of the Florida Panhandle, home to modest coastal communities where people already hard on their luck had little means to escape the storm’s wrath.

Mr. Bearden had not planned to stay in Panacea when he visited his aunt in 2014. But when he tried to renew his driver’s license, he ran into a problem with his birth certificate, which he couldn’t fix unless he went to Atlanta — he was born in Georgia. He couldn’t make it there. So he stayed, without a license, in an RV park here.

“I got stuck,” he said.

With the storm looming this week, sheriff’s deputies showed up on Wednesday to get residents out. Mr. Bearden explained why he could not just drive away. A kind deputy found a solution, Mr. Bearden said: He wrote him a letter authorizing him to drive, with no license and no current vehicle registration, to a place far enough north to be safe. Mr. Bearden packed up a white pickup and drove — but only to the next town, Medart, where he rode out the storm inside his parked truck.

“It wasn’t fun,” he said on Thursday, back at the RV camp, now almost entirely empty. “Everybody left. They had to.”

More at that top link.

'Jeremy'

From Tuesday morning's drive-time, at 93.1 Jack FM Los Angeles, Pearl Jam's, "Jeremy."

(A lyrics video is here.)

Lyin' Eyes
Eagles
6:53am

Rebel Yell
Billy Idol
6:48am

Semi-Charmed Life
Third Eye Blind
6:44am

Welcome To The Jungle
Guns N' Roses
6:39am

Our House
Madness
6:36am

In The Air Tonight
Phil Collins
6:23am

Feel It Still
Portugal. The Man
6:20am

Back In Black
AC/DC
6:16am

Our Lips Are Sealed
The Go-Go's
6:13am

Jeremy
Pearl Jam
6:08am

Democrats Continue Their Campaign of Chaos (VIDEO)

It's Ms. Laura Ingraham:

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BONUS: John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck, Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America.

Could Election Day Disaster Strike the Democrats Again?

Well, I sure hope so, lol.

At McClatchy, "Nervous Democrats ask: Could Election Day disaster strike again?":

Nervous Democrats ask: Could Election Day disaster strike again? My story on the gnawing concern some party operatives feel that recent history might repeat itself in November https://t.co/Vci8tRaTzA

— Alex Roarty (@Alex_Roarty) October 10, 2018

It was this week two years ago that Hillary Clinton’s victory looked assured, when the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape of Donald Trump bragging about sexual assault appeared all but certain to end his campaign.

Jesse Ferguson remembers it well. The deputy press secretary for Clinton’s campaign also remembers what happened a month later.

It’s why this veteran Democratic operative can’t shake the feeling that, as promising as the next election looks for his party, it might still all turn out wrong.

“Election Day will either prove to me I have PTSD or show I’ve been living déjà vu,” Ferguson said. “I just don’t know which yet.”

Ferguson is one of many Democrats who felt the string of unexpected defeat in 2016 and are now closely — and nervously — watching the current election near its end, wondering if history will repeat itself. This year, instead of trying to win the presidency, Democrats have placed an onus on trying to gain 23 House seats and win a majority.

The anxiety isn’t universal, with many party leaders professing confidently and repeatedly that this year really is different.

But even some of them acknowledge the similarities between the current and previous election: Trump is unpopular and beset by scandal, Democrats hold leads in the polls, and some Republicans are openly pessimistic.

FiveThirtyEight gives Democrats a 76.9 percent chance of winning the House one month before Election Day. Their odds for Clinton’s victory two years ago? 71.4 percent.

The abundance of optimism brings back queasy memories for Jesse Lehrich, who worked on the Clinton campaign and remembers watching the returns come in from the Javits Center in New York.

“I was getting texts after the result was clear – including even from some political reporters and operatives – texting me, you know, ‘Are you guys starting to get nervous?’ or ‘What’s her most likely path?’” he said. “I was like, ‘What do you mean, starting to get nervous? What path? They just called Wisconsin. We lost.’”

“People were so slow to process that reality because they just hadn’t considered the possibility that Donald Trump was going to be the next president,” he continued.

Lehrich said he sees similarities between 2016 and 2018. But he said he thought Democrats were cognizant of the parallels and determined not to let up a month before the election, as many voters might have two years ago.

Other Democratic leaders aren’t so sure. Asked if he thought his party was overconfident, Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton responded flatly, “Yes.”

Democrats could win a lot of House seats, he said, or could still fall short of capturing a majority.

“The point is that we’ve got to realize that this not just some unstoppable blue wave but rather a lot of tough races that will be hard-fought victories,” Moulton said.

If Democrats are universally nervous about anything after 2016, it’s polling. The polls weren’t actually as favorable to Clinton and the Democrats as some remember, something 538’s Nate Silver and some other journalists pointed out at the time.

But Clinton’s decision not to campaign in a state she’d lose, Wisconsin, and the failure of pollsters everywhere to miss a wave of Trump supporters in red areas are mistakes Democrats are still grappling with today.

“Clearly last cycle, polling was off,” Ben Ray Lujan, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told reporters last month. “There were a lot of predictions that were made last cycle that didn’t come to fruition.”

Lujan emphasized in particular how pollsters missed the rural vote, calling it a “devastating mistake.” He said the DCCC has taken deliberate steps since 2016 to get it right this time around, but underscored a congressional majority still required a tooth-and-nail fight.

“So I’m confident with the team that’s been assembled, but I’m definitely cognizant of the fact we need to understand these models and understand the data for what it is,” he said...

Democrats are down dramatically on the "generic ballot" for the midterms (compared to weeks ago), but I'm not relying on polls. I'm simply going to wait until election night. I'll be thrilled to be pleasantly surprised if Republicans keep majority control, especially in the House.

But I'm not banking on anything and not getting emotional. Things are frankly unpredictable in American politics these days.

More.

Julia Majewska Photos

At Drunken Stepfather, "JULIA MAJEWSKA EROTIC NUDE PHOTOSHOOT OF THE DAY."

Alexis Ren Has Some Tough Preparation (VIDEO)

I didn't know, but Ms. Alexis has been on "Dancing With the Stars." She's something else.

See also, "Who is Alexis on Dancing with the Stars? Model brought DWTS viewers to tears with emotional dance."

And at Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

Scott Greer, No Campus for White Men

Robert Stacy McCain posts on Professor Christine Fair, of Georgetown University.

See, "Anti-Male Georgetown Professor Uses Tumblr Blog to ‘Dox’ Her Critics."

And linked at the post is Scott Greer's appropriate book, No Campus for White Men.

Hillary Clinton Incites Violence Against Republicans (VIDEO)

I just wish this woman would go away and retire from public life. And I mean permanent retirement. Not even those twilight years interviews with Barbara Walters (or whoever's taken Ms. Barbara's place; Elizabeth Vargas? Who knows?)

In any case, she's detestable. I dislike her more every time she opens her yap.

At Twitchy, "‘AntiFa Gam Gam’? Nothing to see here, just Hillary Clinton inciting violence against Republicans [video]."

And watch:

Eugenia Cheng, The Art of Logic in an Illogical World

I started reading this, and it's good.

At Amazon, Eugenia Cheng, The Art of Logic in an Illogical World.

My Mom's Going to Be Okay

Here's some photos from the trip to Santa Rosa to visit my mom.

She's in pain from her broken sternum and she can't move around by herself. On Sunday, she was taken by ambulance over to an assisted nursery rehab facility, for about a week of physical therapy. After that, she should be back home in Yucca Valley. I'm praying for her. She was so happy that I made the trip up there to visit her.

And thanks for the support of my blog readers. I wish I could've posted updates while I was up there, but it wasn't convenient and I wanted to just enjoy being with my mom.

The top photo below is the view from the front drive at the hospital. The second photo down is the view of the nearby foothills from the fourth floor looking south. (It's really beautiful up there; I had no idea.) The third photo shows the roof of the emergency room trauma center helicopter landing pad, which is really cool. (I didn't see any copters land, but it's a wicked setup.) And at bottom is a selfie of yours truly. I don't post these to Twitter. I save them for the blog here, lol.

Thanks again for your support. It's much appreciated.

Happy Columbus Day

Here's the hilarious Steven Crowder, for Prager University:

It's Time to End Identity Politics

At the National Interest, "It Is Time to Debate — and End — Identity Politics":

It Is Time to Debate—and End—Identity Politics https://t.co/7cHwsBqMwr

— Mike Gonzalez (@Gundisalvus) October 8, 2018

America’s partition into mutually antagonistic identity groups has reached every nook and cranny of society, from sports to education , the corporate world and politics . It has never been openly debated or voted on by the American people, however.

Identity politics sparks emotional reactions both among its supporters and its detractors because it deals with the larger issues of our day. It is about what convinces people to band together in society and to agree to a common project.

Academics on both sides have spoken past each other, but Americans have never had a political debate on it. For that to happen, politicians on opposing sides would have to debate each other with specifics.

Yes, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton presented broad opposing views on identity politics in 2016—she for it, he against it—but there was no discussion of what it is, how it came about, whether it is a good or bad thing and, if the latter, how to end it.

It’s time to correct this oversight and have that political debate now. Identity politics is a new animal. It is very different from Martin Van Buren knowing how to secure the Dutch vote in the Hudson Valley, or Boss Tweed getting the Irish to vote Democrat.

It instead looks at America through a post–modernist lens of power struggles among groups based on race, ethnicity or sex, but where the individual loses agency. It resegregates America into subnational “protected” groupings whose members receive benefits simply as a consequence of group membership and in whose name self-appointed leaders demand unequal treatment. How this backdoor return to Plessy era distinctions has gone without argument is a major victory of the left that often goes unrecognized.

This is a view of America that diametrically opposes the “We Are All Created Equal” position. The two may be irreconcilable. It may very well be that, just as the country was not large enough in 1860 to encompass the master blueprints of slavery and abolition, America today cannot house these two opposing blueprints. One or the other must win in the (peaceful) marketplace of ideas.

John Locke and those he influenced —which includes the Founding Fathers of America and, two-and-a-half centuries later, the enemies of identity politics—are convinced to leave the state of nature and create a society by their mutual need to secure natural rights. One of the most basic of those rights is that we’re all “born free and equal,” in the words of the Massachusetts Bill of Rights.

Around these principles there emerged in the United States a creed and a culture which formed “One People.” Immigrants were expected to assimilate into such an overall national culture (which had geographic pockets to be sure), accept the creed and adapt to civic life.

To the supporters of identity politics, what causes Americans today to band into subnational clans is the need to tear down “structural racism” and the hegemony of white, male, able-bodied heterosexuals. And to advocates of identity politics, it was Lockean thought and the Founding Fathers’ creed and culture that produced white dominion.

As Courtney Jung, one of the leading thinkers of identity politics, once said, “One’s ability to get oneself heard in a democratic system crucially depends on whether one can claim membership in a group with a preexisting political weight, or forge a group identity with new political weight. In contemporary politics, race, gender and ethnicity have developed such a weight.”

Moreover, according to Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on equality, “There is a danger of (strict) equality leading to uniformity, rather than to a respect for pluralism and democracy. In the contemporary debate, this complaint has been mainly articulated in feminist and multiculturalist theory.” Citing various studies, the entry says, “‘Equality’ can often mean the assimilation to a pre-existing and problematic ‘male’ or ‘white’ or ‘middle class’ norm. In short, domination and a fortiori inequality often arises [sic] out of an inability to appreciate and nurture differences—not out of a failure to see everyone as the same.”

Some Americans believe that the current division of their country into ethnic, racial and sexual groups (Hispanics, Asians, gender) responds to a grassroots desire to seek dignity and that such a dispensation was arrived at after transparent and political debate.

They would be very wrong on both counts...

Still more.

Michelle Malkin Shreds Christine Blasey Ford (VIDEO)

I'm really shaken by the events of the last few weeks, to the point of disgust. Extreme disgust.

The only silver lining is, of course, Kavanaugh's ultimate confirmation. I'm so pleased. The winning is so much sweet schadenfreude.

In any case, this video's great, from the ineffable Michelle Malkin:

Brett Kavanaugh Will Bring Change to the Supreme Court

Here's Glenn Reynolds, at USA Today, in an excellent piece based on reason not emotion, thank goodness.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Brett Kavanaugh will bring change to the Supreme Court, but maybe not what you think https://t.co/Uyur75HASF via @usatoday

— Instapundit.com (@instapundit) October 8, 2018

Mitch McConnell: I Never Thought of Quitting (VIDEO)

I've gained a lot of respect for Mitch McConnell. I wish I was as unflappable, but I'm not. At all. I get too emotional, or "passionate," as some might say.

But McConnell just stays the course, makes minimalist statements, and stays classy.

At Fox News:

Crux of a Cold Civil War

This piece needed some good editing (there's terrible punctuation, for example), but it otherwise expresses exceptionally well the nature of the "cold" civil war we're in.

At American Greatness, "Kavanaugh and the Crux of a Cold Civil War":

Kavanaugh and the Crux of a Cold Civil War https://t.co/9eyII4P8YF pic.twitter.com/7rhgtA8F8l

— American Greatness (@theamgreatness) October 7, 2018

We are in the midst of a cold civil war. The crux? Realizing politics is part of life, one side believes America is fundamentally a good country requiring some prudent improvements upon which reasonable minds may differ. On the other side, the Left, thinking politics is life, believes America is a hopelessly unjust nation requiring “fundamental transformation” and this is a point on which no reasonable minds can differ.

The Kavanaugh confirmation evinces the political abyss between us; and the bathetic depths to which this divide drives the Left to “win.”

Keep reading.