Kamala's Rough Night (VIDEO)

Tulsi Gabbard destroyed Kamala Harris last night. It was devastating.

At the Washington Examiner:

NEW FROM ME: Tulsi Gabbard just humiliated Kamala Harris in front of 10 million peoplehttps://t.co/Che1czChA1

— Brad Polumbo (@brad_polumbo) August 1, 2019

Fossil Fuels Are Not an Existential Threat (VIDEO)

Here's Alex Epstein, the author of the The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, for Prager University:

Muscle Cars Top List of Most Stolen Vehicles (VIDEO)

I was visiting my mom out in Yucca Valley earlier this year, and I was wiping down my Challenger after the rain in the parking lot at Walmart. Some guy pulls up in a pickup, and admiring my car, blurts out, "That thing is going to get broken into!"

I'm like thanks a lot, buddy.

I haven't had a problem with breakins or attempted theft, but then my car is the six-cylinder SXT model, of which there are thousands and thousands on the road.

Now when I upgrade in a couple of years to the new Challenger widebody Scat Pack, with 485 horsepower and line-lock launch mode, I'll be a little more worried.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

John Ratcliffe Attacked

At AoSHQ, "Fusion GPS and Deep State Activated to Attack John Ratcliffe."

Click through for the deep state tweet attacks.

'Complete Chaos' at Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee

Not enough "diversity" at the DCCC.

At Politico, "DCCC in 'complete chaos' as uproar over diversity intensifies: Cheri Bustos, chairwoman of the campaign arm, is set to make a surprise return to D.C. on Monday in an attempt to calm protests," and "Top DCCC staffer out amid diversity uproar":

The executive director of House Democrats’ campaign arm is stepping down amid an outcry from Democratic lawmakers over the lack of diversity in the committee’s senior ranks.

Executive Director Allison Jaslow, a close confidante of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Cheri Bustos, announced her resignation at an all-staff meeting Monday, according to multiple sources. Jaslow said her resignation is effective immediately.

Jaslow’s sudden departure comes as Bustos tries to contain the fury from Democratic lawmakers and aides that she has done little to address the lack of diversity in the upper ranks of the campaign arm since winning the chairmanship late last year.

Two Hispanic lawmakers, Reps. Vicente González and Filemon Vela, called for Jaslow’s resignation in a statement to POLITICO on [S]unday."

2020 is going to be a hoot. Democrat circular firings squads all the way.

Via Memeorandum.

Charles Manson Murders 50 Years Later

Pretty fascinating reading.

At LAT, "Charles Manson’s murderous imprint on L.A. endures as other killers have come and gone":

We’re fascinated still, even as time passes and the landmarks disappear and the players die. My story with @ErikHW1 @latimes .... Charles Manson's murderous imprint on L.A. endures as other killers have come and gone https://t.co/ej6jtCDcmS

— Maria La Ganga (@marialaganga) July 28, 2019

Hearing the retired prosecutor recount the bloody crimes that scarred Los Angeles, it is easy to forget that the savage murders happened half a century ago.

Stephen Kay runs one hand slowly down his cheek, describing the mark a thick rope scraped along actress Sharon Tate’s face. The rope was tied around her neck and looped over a living room beam in her rented Benedict Canyon home. She was 8 ½ months pregnant. Clad in just a white bra and panties. Still alive, though not for long.

He recounts, as if it were yesterday, how Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were tied up and dragged into separate rooms in their Los Feliz home, where they too died at the hands of Charles Manson’s brutal “family.”

“When Rosemary heard Leno getting stabbed, she cried out,” Kay says. He leans forward, hands splayed on knees, his voice rising like a terrified woman’s. “ ‘Leno! Leno!’ ”

Kay is slender, avid and 76. His white hair fluffs out above his tanned face. He helped put Manson family members behind bars for the 1969 slayings of nine people and has since attended 60 parole hearings to make sure they stayed there. He still recalls every awful detail of the murders, at times closing his eyes as if to block the images.

The slaughter and its aftermath “left the biggest imprint on Los Angeles, [on] all of Southern California,” Kay says. And also, it seems, on the prosecutor himself. “It’s the case that just never goes away.”

The Tate-LaBianca murders rocked California, drew international attention and came to symbolize the city of Los Angeles. And they continue to fascinate to this day, as their 50th anniversary nears.

“Helter Skelter” tours that follow the family’s bloody footsteps regularly sell out. Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” — fiction wound around Manson family fact — opened Thursday night. Chief prosecutor Vincent T. Bugliosi’s 1974 book, “Helter Skelter,” has never gone out of print; it is joined on a regular basis by new entries into the Manson canon, at least two this summer alone.

Other killers have come and gone. Other crimes since have accounted for more deaths. People more famous than Tate, hairdresser-to-the-stars Jay Sebring and coffee heiress Abigail Folger have been slain. Still, the memory of Manson and the men and women he persuaded his followers to murder has not faded.

The question, which persists to this day, is why?

“It’s a story that still baffles,” says Linda Deutsch, who covered the Manson case for the Associated Press. “Manson had a streak of pure evil…. It persists now that he’s dead — finally. It’s as if the curse has not disappeared; it hangs over everyone who was ever involved with him.”

L.A. in the 1960s

Pamela Des Barres’ San Fernando Valley home is a shrine to the 1950s and ’60s — to rock ’n’ roll, spiritual quests and her life as a proud and prolific groupie. An oil painting of Walt Whitman (“my God,” she calls him) shares wall space with a portrait of Elvis. There’s a picture of James Dean, all leather jacket and motorcycle, on the hearth behind a bust of Jesus.

“Sixty-nine was my year,” says the author of “I’m With the Band” and member of the GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously). “That’s when the GTOs’ album came out. I was dating Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, Waylon Jennings.… It was like anything could happen, and it was all good.”

The “greatest music was being made” in Los Angeles, says the onetime flower child from Reseda, who sports blond braids and an off-the-shoulder peasant blouse that shows off her tattoos — Elvis’ signature snuggling up against Jesus’ face. She is 70. “Pre-Altamont and pre-Manson, it really felt like the most magical place to live.”

That was before the Tate-LaBianca murders began grabbing headlines that August. Before a member of the Hells Angels stabbed a man to death at a free concert headlined by the Rolling Stones at the Altamont Speedway in Northern California in December. Before everything changed.

Los Angeles in the late 1960s was a place where someone like Manson could share a table at the Whisky a Go Go with someone like record producer Terry Melcher, Doris Day’s son. Where members of the Beach Boys could hang with members of the “family,” who, in turn, rubbed shoulders with the Straight Satans biker gang. Where beautiful people could throw parties and have no idea who was taking LSD by the pool. Where everyone was looking for a guru, no background checks required.

Hollywood gossip queen Rona Barrett says the entertainment industry and those in its orbit operated under “a caste system” — until they didn’t. In the late ’60s, the change was swift and equalizing.

That’s when Manson showed up.

Designs on musical fame

Charles Milles Maddox, who would later take his stepfather’s last name, was born in 1934 to a desperately poor single mother in Ohio who cycled in and out of prison. She dragged her son around the Midwest and sent him off to reform school because he was out of control and her new husband didn’t like him. He was 12 years old and would go on to spend most of his life in one institution or another.

Prison was where Manson learned to play guitar. He was obsessed with the Beatles and their emerging fame, which prompted him to try songwriting so he too could become an international star. Prison was also where he learned the art of pimping and where he took a four-month Dale Carnegie course, with “How to Win Friends and Influence People” as required reading.

And it was where he met a fellow prisoner named Phil Kaufman, who had contacts in Hollywood. Kaufman told the aspiring musician that, when he was released from federal prison on Terminal Island, he should polish up some songs and go play for a guy he knew at Universal Studios.

That meeting, in late 1967, did not go well, but Manson was not deterred.

Soon he was seeking a musical sponsor to help him get a recording contract. The “girls” of Manson’s family were deputized to aid in the search, scouring the Sunset Strip and Topanga Canyon. They came through with Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, who picked a pair of them up while hitchhiking.

Wilson introduced Manson to his songwriting partner Gregg Jakobson and Melcher, who lived for a time with girlfriend Candice Bergen at 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon, a house that was later rented to a prominent movie director and his actress wife.

It helped that Manson had a certain strange charm and at least a little musical talent. Jakobson says he could strum his guitar and make up a song on the spot about the flies that happened to land on his arm. He could talk for hours about his odd philosophies. And he had drugs and girls to spare.

Manson saw Wilson, Jakobson and Melcher as his tickets to fame and fortune. He auditioned for Melcher. He made several demos. The Beach Boys recorded his song “Cease to Exist,” but they changed the title and the words and didn’t give him a writing credit. Melcher eventually told Manson, “I don’t know what to do with you in the studio.”

Manson did not respond well. He had told the family that a contract was imminent. His future and his pride were riding on it.

Morbid curiosity

The voices are spectral and chilling, broadcast from speakers inside the white van with the black funeral wreath on its grille. On a recent summer morning, Scott Michaels, founder of Hollywood-based Dearly Departed Tours, prepares his passengers as he heads toward Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon.

“This is the story of the Tate murders told by the killers.”

But it is still unsettling to hear the disembodied voices of Charles “Tex” Watson, Linda Kasabian, Patricia Krenwinkel and Susan Atkins describe that awful night 50 years ago — Aug. 9, 1969. They were Manson family stalwarts, 20 to 23 years old at the time. The recordings were taken from parole hearings and old media interviews.

Watson, with a slight twang, describing Manson’s instructions: “ ‘I want you all to go together and go up to Terry Melcher’s old house. And I want you to kill everyone in there.’ Terry Melcher was Doris Day’s son. And we had previously met him and had been in that house before.”

Kasabian: “I was told to get a change of clothing and a knife and my driver’s license.”

Atkins, sounding like a breathy little girl: “We drove to the house with instructions to kill everyone in the house, and not just that, but we were instructed to go all the way down, every house, hit every street and kill all the people.”

Keep reading.

President Trump's Newspaper Habits

He's a voracious newspaper reader, getting four papers delivered daily: The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post.

Donald Trump's staff adds newspaper clippings into his daily reading folder. Some aides have used the system to flatter, manipulate or influence him. https://t.co/xonluJXFZu

— POLITICO (@politico) July 29, 2019

Nice Surprise

At Entensity, "Didn't Expect Those (Big Honkers)."

Bernie Slides in New L.A. Times Poll

He's sliding downhill, that is.

Of the top candidates, Bernie's fortunes have been hurt the most this last few months.

At LAT, "Democratic 2020 race up for grabs: Half of voters have changed their minds since spring, poll shows":

Democratic 2020 race up for grabs: Half of voters have changed their minds since spring, poll shows https://t.co/gSqcytnysh

— L.A. Times Politics (@latimespolitics) July 29, 2019

WASHINGTON  —  As Democratic presidential hopefuls prepare for their second round of debates this week, a new poll finds that half of likely primary voters have changed their minds since the spring, highlighting how unsettled the contest remains.
Former Vice President Joe Biden continues to lead in the latest USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times nationwide poll, while three senators, Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, are essentially tied for second place. That marks an improvement for Harris and Warren and a decline for Sanders since April, when the poll last tested the Democratic race.

More notably, about half of the voters in the poll have changed their preferences since the April survey -- a reminder that at this point of the campaign, most voters don’t have firm commitments.

Voters at this stage of the campaign are “corks on the water floating around,” said Mike Murphy, the longtime Republican strategist who is co-director of USC Dornsife’s Center for the Political Future, one of the sponsors of the poll. That’s particularly true for voters nationwide, who have less exposure to the candidates than voters in states with early primaries.

The volatility has a limit, however. The vast majority of voters who switched since April moved among the top four candidates or between them and undecided status. The mass of candidates languishing at 1% or lower hasn’t benefited.

Biden continues to lead the poll, with 28%. Harris was at 10%, putting her in an effective tie with Warren, also at 10% and Sanders, at 11%. An additional 25% said they were undecided when presented with a list of 25 people who have declared they are running.

Beyond the top candidates, the poll found only Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas having more than 1% support. Buttigieg’s support has grown since April and now stands at 5%, while O’Rourke’s has shrunk to 3% -- all shifts within the poll’s margin of error.

“When your front-runner is at 28% and undecided is at 25%, it’s a pretty fluid race,” said Jill Darling, the poll director.

Unlike some other public opinion samples, the USC/L.A. Times poll surveys a panel of more than 7,000 members, tracking their views over time. Polls using the panel can look at how and when specific voters have changed their preferences.

In the primary contest so far, the first round of debates in June appears to have played a big role in changing minds. Harris, in particular, gained support among people who watched the debate, during which she forcefully challenged Biden over his nostalgia about working with segregationist senators early in his career. The exchange appears to have boosted Harris without doing long-term damage to Biden, who gained roughly as many supporters as he lost.

People who reported that they watched the debate -- about 3 in 10 of those who said they planned to vote in a Democratic primary -- were more likely to have switched than others. But even many voters who did not watch the debate changed their minds.

That churn has affected candidates in different ways. Biden and Sanders do best among voters who have backed the same candidate all along, while Harris and Warren, who each gained lots of new followers, do better among those who have changed their minds. About 7 in 10 of those backing Harris and 8 in 10 backing Warren were converts since April, the poll found.

Sanders sits at the opposite extreme -- about 8 in 10 of those backing him now also backed him in April. That’s both a strength for him and a weakness.

The Vermont senator has a solid core of supporters, many of whom grew attached to him in 2016 when he ran against Hillary Clinton. One indication of that: He did best among the roughly 1 in 4 voters who neither watched the June debate nor heard or read about it.

Outside of his core support, Sanders has been losing backers, and unlike other candidates, he has picked up relatively few new ones. Almost half the supporters he had in April have moved elsewhere.

About 1 in 10 former Sanders backers now say they’re undecided. Twice as many, however, now back Biden.

That’s a reminder of another important fact: Voters aren’t as ideological as analysts sometimes make them out to be.

Sanders has staked out the left-most position in the contest. Warren shares many of his policy views. Biden has defined himself as a centrist. But nearly three times as many former Sanders backers moved to Biden as moved to Warren.

Biden and Sanders both do better with non-college educated voters than with those who have graduated from college...

Shop Today

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Today's Deals. New deals. Every day. Shop our Deal of the Day, Lightning Deals and more daily deals and limited-time sales.

See, Toshiba 50-inch 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV with HDR - Fire TV Edition.

More, Rogue River Tactical: USMC Marine Tactical Folding Pocket Knife G10 Handle Sharp Tanto Blade Spring Assisted Military Knives EGA Elite Survival Semper Fi.

Here, Buck Knives 863 Selkirk Fixed Blade Knife with Fire Striker and Nylon Sheath.

More here, FLYTON Camping Cookware Outdoor Cooking Mess Kit Portable Lightweight Pots Pans Water Kettle Set for Backpacking Hiking Trekking Picnic Fishing Mountaineering.

Plus, Olive Drab Green Warm Wool Fire Retardent Blanket, 66 x 90 (80% Wool)-US Military.

And, Premium Horny Goat Weed Extract with Maca & Tribulus, Enhanced Energy Complex for Men & Women, 1000mg Epimedium with Icariins, Veggie Capsules.

Also, MusclePharm Combat Protein Powder - Essential blend of Whey, Isolate, Casein and Egg Protein with BCAA's and Glutamine for Recovery, Chocolate Milk, 4 Pound.

BONUS:  Ann Coulter, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism.

Ron Formisano, American Oligarchy

At Amazon, Ron Formisano, American Oligarchy: The Permanent Political Class.

Max Hastings, Armageddon

At Amazon, Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945.

Antony Beevor, The Second World War

At Amazon, Antony Beevor, The Second World War.

E.B. Sledge, With the Old Breed

I love those old Bantam book covers!

And available at Amazon, E.B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa.

Former Anchor Krystal Ball Slams MSNBC's Lurch to the Left (VIDEO)

Ms. Ball's at the Hill TV now, and she's not pleased with MSNBC, her former network, especially conspiracy theorist Rachel Maddow.

Watch:

Freeze Pipes

At Drunken Stepfather, "FREEZE PIPES FOR THE FUCKING WIN OF THE DAY."

India Reynolds on the Beach (PHOTOS)

At Taxi Driver, "India Reynolds Topless on the Beach Suntanning."

Mackenzie Maynard's Saturday Forecast

The fabulous Ms. Mackenzie, at ABC 10 News San Deigo:

Oildale Offer Life Beyond Califonia's Leftist Bubble

It's Robin Abcarian, at LAT, "Column: In tiny Oildale, the local barber, a Trump fan, has had it with California":

OILDALE, Calif.  —  Chris Vaughn was wiping shaving cream off the tops of an older man’s ears when I arrived at his Oildale barbershop on Wednesday morning.
On a big TV along the back wall of the shop, former special counsel Robert S. Mueller was stumbling through his testimony to the House Intelligence Committee.

Vaughn wore a red baseball cap that said “red hat Mafia” on the front and “MAGA” on the back. His customer, a plumbing shop owner in his early 80s, stood up and removed the barber cape, revealing suspenders with an American flag motif.

“Why don’t they spend time fixing our country?” Vaughn said. “This attempt to make people not like Trump is a waste. Mueller looks like he has Alzheimer’s.”

The freshly shaven man paid Vaughn. “Y’all enjoy this crap!” he said cheerfully, gesturing to the TV as he walked outside into the already blistering heat.

As Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of Tulare, Calif., welcomed viewers to “the last gasp of the Russia collusion conspiracy theory,” Vaughn and I ducked into a back room, away from the sound of the TV and blasts from the compressed air nozzles his barbers use to blow snippets of hair from customers’ necks.

I was tired of the liberal bubble. I know what people are going to say before they open their mouths. I wanted to spend time in a conservative one, and maybe be surprised.

Vaughn and I chatted about politics, and what it’s like to live in Oildale, an unincorporated community in Kern County just north of Bakersfield that is overwhelmingly white and pro-Trump in deep blue, increasingly diverse California.

Oildale, with a population of about 32,000, is famous for being the birthplace of Merle Haggard and for the massive oil patch that drew Dust Bowl migrants west. It is also known for its intractable poverty, drug problems and a legacy of racism against blacks. Its population is 86.7% white. (Bakersfield’s white population is 67.5%.)

“I have a very clear view of politics,” said Vaughn, who is a Republican. “Either you are moral or you are not.” He hesitated. “Moral — meaning what you do in office. Personally, I don’t care about Donald Trump’s personal life.”

Vaughn opened Norris Barbershop, named for the street it sits on, nine years ago. Before that, he’d spent eight years in the U.S. Coast Guard and had a good job selling ads for Yellowbook, the local directory, until the economy cratered in 2008 and he was let go.

“I ran right to the Bakersfield Barber College,” he said. He attended school from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., then went to work in a wrecking yard from 1 to 7 a.m.

Turns out, an interest in cosmetology runs in his family; a handful of relatives do nails or style hair. “I didn’t realize how artistic I was until I started cutting hair,” he told me. “I am good at fixing really bad haircuts.”

He began advertising his shop on a local right-wing talk radio station, a big expense for a small business that charges only $16 per haircut. But he feels it paid off. “Conservative radio built this business,” he said. Not only did his shop get a boost, but sometimes the hosts would put him on the air to talk politics.

“There are not that many conservative shops in Bakersfield anymore,” he said. “You won’t come in here and find people with sagging pants, smoking dope, drinking alcohol. You can send your wife in and I guarantee no one is going to bother her or make her feel uncomfortable. I’m a family shop.”

When I asked him if there was a racial undertone to that comment, he insisted there was not. “I am talking about culture, not race,” he said. “Culture is not skin tone. My generation is the Beastie Boys generation. That started the whole big clothing thing. I had enough respect not to show my underwear or my butt walking down the street.”

Like a lot of people, Vaughn uses his own lack of personal animus to ignore or deny the reality and effects of systemic racism. He welcomes all races to his shop, and recently hired a barber who also speaks Spanish. The Muslim man who runs the vape store next door is a friend.

But when I pointed out that research shows black and brown students can sometimes receive harsher punishment than white kids, he scoffed...

More.

Boris Johnson Becomes U.K. Prime Minister, Replacing Theresa May (VIDEO)

At LAT, "Boris Johnson takes over as U.K. prime minister, vows to push Brexit through ‘no ifs, ands or buts’," and "New U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s agenda hints at a snap election."