Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Dazed and Confused

Previously, "Mueller Tesimony: Dueling Circus Realities."

And at VodkaPundit, "Drunkblogging the Mueller Hearing."


Boxer Maxim Dadashev Dies

Actually, you could say he was killed. "Dies" sounds so passive.

They didn't stop the fight until the 11th round.

Brutal.

I looked for more footage, but so far this is it.

At ESPN, "Boxer Dadashev dies from Friday fight injuries":

Dadashev (13-1, 11 KOs), from Saint Petersburg, Russia, and based in Oxnard, California, needed help leaving the ring. He collapsed before making it to the dressing room and began vomiting. He was taken from the arena on a stretcher and was transported by ambulance to the hospital, where he underwent emergency brain surgery for two hours for a subdural hematoma (bleeding on the brain). Doctors hoped to relieve pressure on the right side of his brain, where most of the damage was, with the surgery and placed him in a medically induced coma to allow time for brain swelling to subside.

Mueller Tesimony: Dueling Circus Realities

The Mueller testimony is live right now, and I'm unimpressed.

Here's Politico, "Mueller refutes Trump’s ‘no collusion, no obstruction’ line."

Actually, this whole thing's a dud. Mueller claims he hadn't heard of Fusion GPS.

I just tuned in, though I'll post highlights this afternoon.

Meanwhile, at this morning's LAT, a pre-analysis, "Democrats and Republicans prepare for Mueller testimony, but with competing goals":

WASHINGTON —  As a senior Justice Department official and then FBI director for 12 years, Robert S. Mueller III carefully guarded his reputation as a straight shooter in the midst of political upheaval and partisan warfare.
His square-jawed, just-the-facts approach will be put to the ultimate test Wednesday when the former special counsel testifies for five hours in nationally televised House hearings about the Russia investigation, which examined Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election and President Trump’s attempts to shield himself from the probe.

Democrats and Republicans are plotting ways to transform his testimony — first to the House Judiciary Committee and then to the House Intelligence committee — into a series of politically charged sound bites they can use to attack or defend the president.

Democrats plan to steer Mueller toward the most damning parts of his final report, particularly incidents where Trump directed underlings to fire Mueller — none did so — or discourage witnesses from cooperating with the special counsel’s office.

The key question is whether Democrats can get Mueller to say point blank that Trump would have faced criminal charges if he weren’t the president, a declaration that would further blunt Trump’s false claims of full exoneration.

Republicans are expected to pursue a two-pronged approach. They’ll try to undermine Mueller’s credibility by suggesting his team was politically biased against Trump. They also want to highlight conclusions in the report that benefit the president, such as Mueller’s determination that he could not establish a criminal conspiracy between his campaign and Moscow.

Both Democrats and Republicans have at least one thing in common: They expect to face a reluctant witness with a history of terse, dry answers to overheated congressional questioning.

“I think he will be equally parsimonious with both sides,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

Mueller did not want to testify, telling reporters on May 29 that he would not go beyond the details contained in the 448-page report released six weeks earlier. But he agreed to appear on Capitol Hill after Democrats issued him a subpoena.

Jim Popkin, a spokesman for Mueller, said he’s preparing for the hearing with a small group of former officials from the special counsel’s office.

“This is someone who has prided himself over the years for very careful preparation. He will be extremely well prepared come Wednesday,” Popkin said Monday.

Mueller will make an opening statement and submit a redacted copy of his report for the record.

“I think it’s safe to say that on Wednesday he will stick to the four walls of the Mueller report as much as he can,” Popkin said.

In a Monday letter, the Justice Department told Mueller that his testimony “must remain within the boundaries of your public report” to avoid infringing upon executive privilege and other confidentiality requirements. The letter said Mueller had requested guidance from the department earlier this month, a suggestion that he may rely on it to avoid answering questions he wants to avoid.

Democrats have made no secret of their goals — they worry that Trump paid little price for pushing legal and political boundaries, and they’re concerned that voters struggled to digest the lengthy report.

“Not everybody will read the book, but people will watch the movie,” said a Democratic staff member on the Judiciary Committee, who requested anonymity to discuss preparations for the hearing...

Bad-ass Buffalo Chucks Tourist Kid Like 20 Feet Lol

Well, that's a vacation she'll never forget.


Bella Thorne in Business Suit

At Taxi Driver:



Megan Parry's Midweek Forecast

It's high summer heat this week.

Gotta keep cool with some air-conditioning and a wonderful cold draft beer.

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



Sunday, July 21, 2019

Trump Sets the Terms; Democrats Are Clueless

At NYT, FWIW, "Trump Sets the Terms on Racial Division. Do Democrats Know What to Do?":

GREENVILLE, N.C. — President Trump waited for 13 seconds, as the chants from the crowd of thousands grew louder.

“Send her home!” the North Carolina audience yelled, mimicking Mr. Trump’s recent tweet attacking a Somali-born Democratic congresswoman.

“Treason!” one man screamed.

“Traitor!” shouted another.

The moment Wednesday night, a microcosm of the angry tribalism that often emanates from Mr. Trump’s campaign rallies, immediately caused ripple effects for the president and his party. Some Republican members of Congress denounced the chant as racist and xenophobic. Mr. Trump tepidly disavowed his supporters’ words, only to praise them the following day. For Democrats, especially the candidates seeking to defeat Mr. Trump, the impact of the rally was clear: This will be a general election focused on race, identity and Mr. Trump’s brand of white grievance politics.

Until this past week, the 2020 field has generally tried to ignore the president’s incendiary language — talking about it, the thinking goes, only gives him more power. Instead, candidates have preferred to discuss policies, making the case for themselves by advocating changes in the criminal justice system or maternal health, or ways to eliminate the racial wealth gap.

Now some feel an urgency to take a different approach.

“This election will be a referendum, not on Donald Trump, but a referendum on who we are and who we must be to each other,” Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey said. “But this is going to get worse before it gets better.”

Senator Kamala Harris of California, the most viable woman of color to run for president, said that the scenes from Mr. Trump’s rally, while personally upsetting, were not surprising.

“When we’re on that stage together in the general, I know he’ll try to pull the same thing with me,” Ms. Harris said. “But I’m fully prepared for that. I’m up for it. Because he is small. He is wrong. He is a bully.”

And at a fund-raiser in Los Angeles on Friday, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. told supporters that Mr. Trump is “tearing at the social fabric of this country.”

“This is not hyperbole,” Mr. Biden said. “The fact of the matter is this president is more George Wallace than George Washington.”

But even as Democratic candidates universally denounced Mr. Trump’s comments, they did not agree on how the eventual presidential nominee should combat the racial division embedded in those words. Do you, on the campaign trail, talk directly about the president’s inflammatory language, racism and discrimination in this country? Or do you talk about jobs and the economy?

Democratic Party leaders, particularly establishment figures with ties to Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns, have largely followed a strategy of careful avoidance: responding to the president’s most inflammatory moments, while attempting to redirect the political debate to what is often described as “kitchen table” issues, such as health care and wages.

However, an increasingly vocal group of Democratic grass-roots organizers and pollsters believe that Mr. Trump’s words and legislative actions amount to a cohesive playbook of white identity politics, meant to court white voters of all economic tiers around the idea that their fates are linked, and are under threat by an increasingly diversifying America. They argue that racism and the public performance of it is a “kitchen table” issue for many voters — black and white — that must be dealt with head-on.

“Just as much time and resources as the nominee spends on targeting and messaging around health care and wages and climate change, they should spend an equal amount of resources around an alternative racial vision for the country,” said Cornell Belcher, a prominent pollster who worked with Mr. Obama. “This isn’t a goddamn distraction.”

Ana Maria Archila, the co-executive director of the progressive group Center for Popular Democracy, said Democrats must embrace this moment as an opportunity.

“You have to be able to speak powerfully about our willingness to belong together,” Ms. Archila said. “Don’t just condemn the racism and the language but use it as an opportunity to argue for a vision of the country in which we can all be included.”

To some progressives, the stakes are not just winning in 2020...
Still more.

Today's Shopping

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BONUS: Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.

Jonathan Yaniv's Human Rights Case

Jonathan Yaniv is the tranny "Jessica" Yaniv, and he's the one who's been able to get feminists kicked off Twitter, Lindsey Shepherd most recently. Also Meghan Murphy, who covers the latest in the scandal at Feminist Current.

See, "Women warned you: Yaniv’s human rights case is the inevitable result of gender identity ideology: Women warned the media, politicians, activists, and the public about the repercussions of gender identity ideology and legislation, and now that those repercussions are being played out in real time, those warned remain silent."



Politico's Summer Reading

This is actually pretty good.

Some good suggestions.

See, "What the 2020 Candidates, James Comey and Other Politicos Are Reading This Summer."

And this looks interesting: Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.

Kendall Jenner Photo Shoot

At London's Daily Mail:


Brent Bozell, Unmasked

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Brent Bozell, Unmasked: Big Media's War Against Trump.




Jennifer Delacruz's Sunday Forecast

We went without air conditioning all day yesterday, it was so mild.

Fabulous weather.

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



Jason Stanley Fascism

Stanley's the author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them and How Propaganda Works.

I haven't read his book so I don't know if he's any good or not, but I've read Robert O. Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism, and yes, that was a fascist chant at the Trump rally.

The thing is, though, leftists want you to think we're back in the 1930s and the Nazi threat today is real. The only problem is it's not. Hitler dismantled the German democracy in 1933. Trump might lose reelection in 2020. All the leftist outrage is theater. The fact is we're in a populist nationalist moment. Sometimes the rhetoric sounds fascist. But leftists never look at their own side, with their own fascists and communists, who're doing by far the most damage, and are in fact responsible for the rise of the new politics of the age

Once people figure that out it's all a lot easier to digest.

At Newsweek, "Yes, 'Send Her Back' Is the Face of Evil — I Know Fascism When I See It."


Miley Cyrus' Madness

At Hollywood Tuna, "Miley Cyrus’ Underboob Madness."

And Celeb Jihad, "MILEY CYRUS WORKOUT."

Alexandra Stan

At Celeb Jihad, "ALEXANDRA STAN COMPILATION."

Erica Thomas Hate Hoax

She made the whole thing up.

At BuzzFeed, "This State Lawmaker Says She Was Told To Go Back To Where She Came From. The Man Who Yelled At Her Denies It."


Saturday, July 20, 2019

J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

*BUMPED*

At Amazon, J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye.



WATCH: Video Show Iran's Takeover of British Oil Tanker

At the Los Angeles Times, "Iran says it detained British tanker in Strait of Hormuz as a ‘reciprocal’ move."

And at Russia Today, with obligatory caveats:



Age of Amnesia

From Joel Kotkin, at Quillette:

RTWT.