Actually, I can't believe she still leads the government.
The Leader of the House of Commons, Andrea Leadsom, resigned from the cabinet in a harsh blow to the prime minister.
Frankly, May's leadership's been a disaster. I'll be glad when she's ousted.
At the Guardian U.K., "Andrea Leadsom quits over Theresa May's Brexit bill: Leader of house known to be unhappy with some of 10 concessions set out by PM."
And a live blog, "May 'could announce departure date on Friday' – politics live: Prime minister replies after Leadsom quits as leader of the House of Commons."
Also, at the BBC, "Brexit: Theresa May resists calls from MPs to resign."
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
Haley Kalil Intimates at the 2019 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue (VIDEO)
The new collection is up.
Actually, I'm not down with the chick in the burkini, but as long as they keep posting the big-breasted babes, it's all good, lol.
Actually, I'm not down with the chick in the burkini, but as long as they keep posting the big-breasted babes, it's all good, lol.
Big Sexy Woman
Seen on Twitter:
Big sexy curves! #boobs #tits @ChetsAnAsshole pic.twitter.com/RuSy3Cqjku
— Big Breast Pics (@BigBreastPics) May 22, 2019
Jocko Willink Extreme Ownership (VIDEO)
This dude is rad!
At Amazon, Jocko Willink, Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win (New Edition).
And at Prager University:
At Amazon, Jocko Willink, Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win (New Edition).
And at Prager University:
Demi Lovato in Leopard Swimsuit
At Taxi Driver:
Demi Lovato in Leopard Bikini Round 2 - https://t.co/NBLj7XkQZu pic.twitter.com/wvGPs2MGrj
— Taxi Driver (@TaxiDriverMovie) May 14, 2019
President Trump Walks Out on Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer (VIDEO)
We can't spare this man --- he fights!
At the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "Trump Walks Out on Pelosi and Schumer After 3 Minutes."
Also at WaPo, "Trump abruptly ends infrastructure meeting with Democrats after Pelosi says he is ‘engaged in a coverup’."
At the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "Trump Walks Out on Pelosi and Schumer After 3 Minutes."
Also at WaPo, "Trump abruptly ends infrastructure meeting with Democrats after Pelosi says he is ‘engaged in a coverup’."
Louis Hyman, Temp
This book is great!
At Amazon, Louis Hyman, Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary.
At Amazon, Louis Hyman, Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary.
Sunday, May 19, 2019
India's Untouchables
I studied the "untouchables" in college. They're now call "Dalits," but not much has changed, apparently, and voters are fed-up with campaign promises.
At LAT, "India’s lower-caste Dalits, who helped elect Modi, now threaten to oust him":
At LAT, "India’s lower-caste Dalits, who helped elect Modi, now threaten to oust him":
Dalit voters say Modi has failed to keep his economic pledges, while others point to growing caste-based violence and a perception that Modi’s government has diluted some legal protections for Dalits. https://t.co/zRBwn7AKzi— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) May 17, 2019
In 2014, Mukesh Kumar, like much of India’s underclass, had pinned his hopes on Narendra Modi, who became prime minister after his party won elections in a landslide.Still more.
Today, Kumar regrets voting for him.
“In five years there should have been so much progress, but nothing has changed,” said Kumar, 26, a municipal sanitation worker who earns about $200 per month sweeping the streets of Varanasi, one of the holiest cities in Hinduism.
“Modi is only building roads,” he said. “What about those of us who are cleaning those roads? We are right where we were, dying in the heat of the sun, burning on the streets.”
Kumar belongs to the Dalit community, formerly known as the “untouchables,” the lowest level of India’s ancient caste hierarchy — and in the last election an important part of the historic victory by Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
Though the party, known by its initials BJP, was traditionally seen as catering to upper-caste Hindus and the business elite, it won 40 of the 84 parliamentary seats reserved for Dalits, primarily on Modi’s promises of economic development for all.
Now as Modi seeks a second five-year term in multi-stage national elections whose results are expected Thursday, Dalits are once again expected to play a crucial role.
But here in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, many Dalit voters say Modi has failed to keep his economic pledges, while others point to growing caste-based violence and a perception that Modi’s government has diluted some legal protections for Dalits.
“In 2014 and through the early part of Modi’s tenure, the BJP was trying to use more inclusive language, saying that Modi cuts across all castes and communities,” said Neelanjan Sircar, a senior visiting fellow at the Center for Policy Research, a New Delhi think tank. “That has significantly shifted, and in the last couple of years there has been noticeable caste polarization.”
India’s constitution in 1950 outlawed caste-based discrimination and enshrined affirmative action for Dalits. But the country’s 200 million Dalits are still often denied access to basic rights such as public water sources and in some areas are still banned from marrying into higher castes or even sharing food with them.
Many are confined to the most menial jobs, such as cleaning sewers by hand, a practice euphemistically called manual scavenging.
In cities and villages, Dalits are often shunted into separate enclaves like the 1,000-person shantytown where Kumar lives, in the Ravindrapuri neighborhood of Varanasi, which runs alongside a newly paved road with recently installed LED street lamps.
The residents of the shanties say Varanasi’s progress has not made it to their doorsteps. They complain of a paucity of jobs, stagnant income, rising prices and a lack of water.
One day recently, just outside the labyrinth of tightly packed, one-room brick homes, five hogs feasted on rotting garbage that had spilled onto the side of the road. A statue of Babasaheb Ambedkar, the Dalit author of India’s constitution, stood a few hundred feet away just outside Ravindrapuri.
In 2014, Modi ran for Parliament from Varanasi, a nod to his Hindu values, and won by a large margin. Soon afterward, he established an office down the road in Ravindrapuri and embarked on ambitious plans to clean the city and the banks of the Ganges River, boost tourism and build new roads.
A partnership with the Japanese government was meant to transform Varanasi into a high-tech “smart city” in the image of Kyoto. Little of that has materialized.
Though Modi is still expected to win comfortably in Varanasi — which votes on Sunday, the last stage of the election — some analysts see his party losing ground in Uttar Pradesh. The state holds 80 of the 543 seats in India’s Parliament, 71 of which the party won in 2014.
Dalits account for roughly one-fifth of the voters in the state, and surveys by the independent Center for the Study of Developing Societies showed Dalit support for the BJP falling from 31% in January 2018 to 22% in May 2018, the most recent month for which figures were available.
The suicides of two Dalit university students in 2016 and 2017 made national headlines...
Saturday, May 18, 2019
Rebecca's Traister's Fury
She's got a new book out called Good and Mad, and she's sure personifying it.
Not a nice woman. On Twitter:
Not a nice woman. On Twitter:
Once again, I was mad on television. I am also available for weddings and bat mitzvahs. I’m really the life of the party, I think you’ll find https://t.co/2hD24kcH10
— Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) May 16, 2019
Many people do WANT to get an abortion, for personal, emotional, health & economic reasons. Many are prevented from doing so. Abortion is not always tragic or hard & for some is a relief, salvation of body, family. Also: none of this matters. It should simply be free & on demand. https://t.co/0zkzXhblzM
— Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) May 16, 2019
I wrote about abortion and rage. https://t.co/Al4VQ0Rz8o
— Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) May 17, 2019
“Some say Democrats are angry...well I don’t believe it.” This man is gonna be the end of me. I’m curious how he thinks any reform of the founding inequalities he so dutifully mentions in the first excerpt was achieved...rainbows, smiles, & affable affection for the oppressors? https://t.co/PyPbOBep9r
— Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) May 18, 2019
Who IS this guy, suggesting that anger many feel at injustice & inequity & the suffering they cause is same as Trump’s punitive fury on behalf of himself & white patriarchal power? Anger at injustice has catalyzed transformative change; “unity” has not. Joe is deeply wrong.
— Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) May 18, 2019
I wrote a book about this. It’s good, easy reading & it doesn’t bite; I wish Biden would read it. Along with @ProfessorCrunk & @schemaly & all the historians who have told the story of how angry people have spent their lives working to remake this nation. https://t.co/eYpS2YQ592
— Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) May 18, 2019
One more: he’s a politician. A purported expert IN POLITICS. Who does he think elected a Democratic house, historic numbers of first time candidates—many of them openly raging—LAST YEAR in the biggest wave since 1974? People in search of cheery unity with the Republican Party?
— Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) May 18, 2019
Okay that’s it. I’m going to take my clenched fist, hard heart and spewing hate and use them to bake 48 chocolate cupcakes for my father in law’s 90th birthday.
— Rebecca Traister (@rtraister) May 18, 2019
Clown Show: Bill de Blasio Officially Launches 2020 Presidential Bid
There's now 23 Democrats in the presidential primary field. Running for president is a grift at this point.
At the N.Y. Post, "Bill de Blasio officially launches 2020 presidential campaign."
At the N.Y. Post, "Bill de Blasio officially launches 2020 presidential campaign."
Today's cover: Bill de Blasio officially launches 2020 presidential campaign pic.twitter.com/g973kWfGJ3
— New York Post (@nypost) May 16, 2019
The Case for Israel Has to Be Made Over and Over (Because of the Left's Incessant Demonization)
From Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, for Prager University:
Black Woman Facing Murder Charge for Pushing Elderly Man Off Las Vegas Bus (VIDEO)
The old guy asked her to be more respectful, and the black bitch murdered him, pushed him right off the bus. Damn!
At ABC News:
At ABC News:
A 74-year-old man who was pushed off a Las Vegas bus -- allegedly by a woman he had told to "be nicer" -- has died from injuries he suffered when he hit the sidewalk, and the 25-year-old suspect has been charged with his murder. https://t.co/2K8HTD5fnx pic.twitter.com/gN0y9qMtVx
— ABC News (@ABC) May 16, 2019
Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down
The movie's been at Showtime on rotation this month, plus I watched it on Netflix as well.
So I decided to finally pick up and read the copy I bought back in 2002 after seeing the movie in theaters. It's gripping. I haven't put it down this week.
At Amazon, Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War.
So I decided to finally pick up and read the copy I bought back in 2002 after seeing the movie in theaters. It's gripping. I haven't put it down this week.
At Amazon, Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War.
Battleground Pennsylvania
At the Los Angeles Times, "Trump and Biden, potential 2020 rivals, both head to Pennsylvania, a key battleground":
President Trump and @JoeBiden have twin obsessions: with each other and with the state of Pennsylvania. w @elistokols https://t.co/5rEpeD26am— Janet Hook (@hookjan) May 17, 2019
President Trump and Joe Biden have twin obsessions: with each other and with the state of Pennsylvania.Still more.
Like iron filings to a magnet, both will be drawn in the coming days to Pennsylvania, which was key to Trump’s victory in 2016 and would be central to almost any scenario for a Democratic victory in the 2020 presidential campaign.
Their trips — Biden on Saturday, Trump on Monday — elevate an emerging rivalry that has them locked in a wrestler’s grip long before Democrats even choose a nominee.
Trump, fearing Biden poses the most serious threat in industrial states like Pennsylvania, is trying to diminish him with a barrage of tweets and derisive comments. Biden welcomes the attention and sees it as validating his central argument to Democratic voters: that he’s the candidate best equipped to beat Trump.
Together they are paying little attention to the 22 other Democrats running for the party’s presidential nomination, acting as if the starting gun has already been fired on the general election.
Their Pennsylvania itineraries are emblematic of their competing political strategies. Trump, aiming to energize the white working-class voters who brought him to victory, plans to hold a rally in rural Lycoming County in the central part of the state, which went for Trump by nearly 45 percentage points in 2016.
Biden, hoping to make up for his party’s 2016 shortfall among black and working-class voters, will hold his first large-scale 2020 campaign rally in Philadelphia, a bastion of black Democratic strength. Biden’s first campaign event was a union-heavy affair in Pittsburgh three weeks ago, when he threw down the glove before the president.
“If I’m going to be able to beat Donald Trump in 2020, it’s going to happen here,” he said.
Trump’s visit, during which he is slated to campaign for a GOP candidate in a special election who looks to be a shoo-in, comes at a perilous time politically. Public surveys show Biden leading the president in this crucial battleground. The latest Quinnipiac University poll in Pennsylvania found Biden out-polls Trump 53% to 42%, with especially wide margins among independent voters and women.
The Trump team’s own polling shows him trailing in the state.
That’s a far cry from his stunning 2016 victory in Pennsylvania, which, along with narrow wins in Wisconsin and Michigan, demolished Democrats’ “blue wall” of support across the industrial heartland. Not since 1988 had a Republican presidential nominee carried Pennsylvania or Michigan. Wisconsin hadn’t voted for a Republican nominee since 1984.
But Trump’s margin of victory in Pennsylvania was only about 44,000 votes out of about 6 million cast.
Ever since that upset, warning signs for the GOP have been flashing in Pennsylvania. In special elections in 2017, Democrats flipped some long-held GOP local offices, and Democrat Conor Lamb, a centrist, won a House seat in the heart of Trump country. The 2018 midterm election was a statewide blowout as Democrats won the U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races by double-digit margins.
Moving to get a grip on the situation, the Trump political team a few weeks ago traveled to Harrisburg, Pa., for a meeting with Republican National Committee and state GOP officials to address concerns over party infrastructure, organizational readiness and their string of losses, according to two officials with knowledge of the meeting.
The Trump campaign officials — including David Urban, who oversaw Trump’s 2016 operation in Pennsylvania, and Trump 2020 political directors Bill Stepien and Chris Carr — “came to make it clear that they’ll be running the show,” one attendee said.
Trump’s hope for holding on to the state depends heavily on galvanizing Trump voters who may not have turned out in 2018...
Thursday, May 16, 2019
Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming
Atkinson's a great historian.
Out this week, Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy).
Out this week, Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy).
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