Nicholas Schmidle, Test Gods

At Amazon, 

Nicholas Schmidle, Test Gods: Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut.

Monday Hotties

Here's Addison Ray.

Bouncy honkers.

Patriotic:

Happy 4th of July! pic.twitter.com/KA9asZn43F

— Country Girls (@DownHomeGirls) July 4, 2021

Woman Duct-Taped to Her Seat After Attempting to Open Airplane Door (VIDEO)

As noted at the story, the woman had psychological issues. 

At the New York Post, "Video shows woman duct-taped to seat after trying to open airplane door: An apparently unhinged woman was duct-taped to an airplane seat last week after she allegedly attacked the flight crew and tried to open the door of the aircraft in mid-flight."

'Astonishing': Cuban Protesters Take to the Streets (VIDEO)

Freedom protests. 

Whenever protests break out like this --- anywhere in the world --- demonstrators always wave the American flag while calling for freedom. The U.S. remains the beacon of liberty for billions of people the world over, and radical, anti-American leftists can't stand that.

At the New York Times, "Cubans Denounce ‘Misery’ in Biggest Protests in Decades":

MIAMI — Shouting “Freedom” and other anti-government slogans, thousands of Cubans took to the streets in cities around the country on Sunday to protest food and medicine shortages, in a remarkable eruption of discontent not seen in nearly 30 years.

Thousands of people marched through San Antonio de los Baños, southwest of Havana, with videos streaming live on Facebook for nearly an hour before they suddenly disappeared. As the afternoon wore on, other videos appeared from demonstrations elsewhere, including Palma Soriano, in the country’s southeast. Hundreds of people also gathered in Havana, where a heavy police presence preceded their arrival.

“The people are dying of hunger!” one woman shouted during a protest filmed in the province of Artemisa, in the island’s west. “Our children are dying of hunger!”

One clip circulating on Twitter showed protesters overturning a police car in Cardenas, 90 miles east of Havana. Another video showed people looting from one of the much-detested government-run stores, which sell wildly overpriced items in currencies most Cubans do not possess.

In a country known for repressive crackdowns on dissent, the rallies were widely viewed as astonishing. Activists and analysts called it the first time that so many people had openly protested against the Communist government since the so-called Maleconazo uprising, which exploded in the summer of 1994 into a huge wave of Cubans leaving the country by sea.

Carolina Barrero, a Cuban activist, went even further. “It is the most massive popular demonstration to protest the government that we have experienced in Cuba since ’59,” she said by text message, referring to the year Fidel Castro took power. She called the public outpouring on Sunday “spontaneous, frontal and forceful.”

“What has happened is enormous,” she added.

The protests were set off by a dire economic crisis in Cuba, where the coronavirus pandemic has cut off crucial tourism dollars. People now spend hours in line each day to buy basic food items. Many have been unable to work because restaurants and other businesses have remained on lockdown for months.

The desperate conditions have triggered an uptick in migration by both land and sea.

Since the start of the fiscal year last October, the U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted more than 512 Cubans at sea, compared with 49 for the entire previous year. On Saturday, the Coast Guard suspended the search for nine Cuban migrants whose vessel overturned at sea off Key West, Fla.

The Cuban government attributes its longstanding economic problems to the American trade embargo, which cuts off its access to financing and imports. But the pandemic has worsened conditions, and in Matanzas, east of Havana, some patients and their families have resorted to posting videos on YouTube of furious people screaming about the lack of medicine and doctors.

The Cuban Ministry of Health website says the nation of 11 million now has about 32,000 active cases of Covid-19. It reported 6,923 daily cases and 47 deaths on Sunday, breaking its prior record, set just Friday. Only about 15 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, the government said.

The protest movement gained momentum after a number of celebrities started tweeting with the hashtag #SOSCuba...

Critical Race Theory Driving Teachers Out

 At CNBC, "Critical race theory battles are driving frustrated, exhausted educators out of their jobs":

Battles over diversity and equity initiatives in public schools have resulted in administrators and teachers being fired or resigning over discussions about race. 

[Connecticut high school principal Rydell Harrison] is one of a small but growing number of educators who have left their jobs after school districts became inundated in recent months by furious parents who’ve accused them of teaching critical race theory, an academic framework usually taught in graduate schools that posits racial discrimination is embedded within U.S. laws and policies. Administrators at virtually every district facing these conflicts — including Harrison’s — have insisted they don’t teach critical race theory, but conservative activists are using that label for a range of diversity and equity initiatives that they consider too progressive, prompting lawmakers in 22 states to propose limits on how schools can talk about racial issues. 

In education, we have responded to opposition with truth and facts and being able to say, ‘Yeah, I can see why that’d be a concern, but this is what is really happening.’ In most cases that works for us,” Harrison said. “But when facts are no longer part of the discussion, our tools to reframe the conversation and get people back on board are limited.” 

Against the backdrop of hostility to discussions of race in schools — and as five states have passed laws limiting how teachers can address “divisive concepts” with students — administrators and teachers across the country say they have been pushed out of their districts. Some have opted to leave public schools entirely, while others are fighting to save their career. The result in these districts is what educators and experts describe as a brain drain of those who are most committed to fighting racism in schools. 

In Southlake, Texas, at least four administrators who were instrumental in crafting or implementing a plan combat racial and cultural discrimination in the Carroll Independent School District left the district this spring following a community backlash to diversity and inclusion efforts. 

In Eureka, Missouri, the only Black woman in the Rockwood School District’s administration resigned from her position as diversity coordinator after threats of violence grew so severe that the district hired private security to patrol her house. 

“This is going to cause an exodus among an already scarce recruiting field in education,” said Kumar Rashad, a Louisville, Kentucky, math teacher and local teachers union leader. “People aren't entering the field as much as they were, and now we have this to chase them away.” 

In Sullivan County, Tennessee, Matthew Hawn, a white high school social studies teacher, is facing termination after assigning an essay on President Donald Trump by writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and showing a video of a poetry reading about white privilege that included curse words. The district accused Hawn, who is appealing to save his job, of not showing opposing viewpoints. Both Hawn and the district declined to comment.

In Florida, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran said “we made sure” that Amy Donofrio, a white English teacher in Jacksonville, was fired for displaying a Black Lives Matter banner in her classroom at Robert E. Lee High School. Donofrio, who was removed from teaching duties by school officials in March but has not yet been fired, has sued the district, claiming administrators violated her free speech rights and retaliated against her for advocating for Black students...

Richard Branson and Crew Go Weightless on Historic Virgin Galactic Space Flight (VIDEO)

So amazing --- absolutely breathtaking!

At LAT, "Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic crew go to the edge of space and back":

Richard Branson goes weightless in space and sends a message to future generations.

Read more about his voyage to the edge of space: https://t.co/hYsLFJ1sQa pic.twitter.com/i77ytElH2q

— Sky News (@SkyNews) July 11, 2021

In 2004, British billionaire Richard Branson proclaimed he would fly into space on his company’s spaceship in just three years to kick off what he hoped would become a routine travel experience, drinks and all.

Nearly 17 years after that proclamation, he finally did it.

Branson, along with five other Virgin Galactic employees — two pilots and three others who were testing parts of the in-cabin experience, including research opportunities — launched to suborbital space Sunday on the company’s first flight with a full crew aboard. The carrier aircraft with the spaceship attached to its belly took off around 7:40 a.m. Pacific time from a New Mexico spaceport near the city of Truth or Consequences.

The crewed flight marks a shift years in the making, as companies edge into launching recreational trips to space — efforts they hope will eventually prove profitable. The flashy, Branson-flavored Virgin Galactic event — with a livestream hosted by late-night host Stephen Colbert and a concert by singer Khalid — aimed to increase potential customers’ confidence and interest in the flight experience, which costs hundreds of thousands of dollars for a seat.

The spaceship carrying Branson and the others detached from the carrier aircraft about 45 minutes after launch, once it reached an altitude of about 45,000 feet and a designated release point in the airspace. The ship then rocketed to suborbital space.

The craft reached a speed of Mach 3, or 2,300 mph, and a maximum altitude of 53.5 miles above the Earth. The U.S. military and NASA consider space to start at 50 miles above the Earth, though the world body governing aeronautic and astronautic records, as well as other organizations, define space as 62 miles above Earth’s surface, a designation known as the Karman line.

A livestream of the mission showed the crew floating in the cabin once the craft reached space. As the ship returned to Earth, Branson — wearing sunglasses — told viewers on the livestream that it was the “experience of a lifetime.”

The ship landed back at the spaceport around 8:40 a.m. Pacific time, about 15 minutes after it detached from the carrier aircraft. Video inside the cabin showed Branson clapping at touchdown. As he emerged from the spacecraft, he pumped both arms in the air and waved to the assembled crowd.

Branson told reporters after the flight that it was impossible to describe the experience of accelerating to Mach 3 in seven to eight seconds and that the views of the Earth were “breathtaking.”

He added that “99.9% was beyond my wildest dreams.”

“It’s so thrilling when a lifetime’s dream comes true,” said Branson, who carried to space photos of his children, a woman who died but always dreamed of going to space, and a tiny image of the head of Colbert.

The flight put Branson in space ahead of billionaire rival Jeff Bezos, who is due to launch to suborbital space July 20 in a capsule developed by his Blue Origin space company. Bezos congratulated Branson and the Virgin Galactic crew in an Instagram post Sunday, adding, “Can’t wait to join the club!”

Like Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin plans to sell tickets to tourists who want to experience a few minutes of weightlessness in suborbital space. Bezos’ company is also developing a larger rocket called New Glenn intended to launch satellites, and it had hoped to win a NASA contract with Lockheed Martin, Draper and Northrop Grumman to build a lunar lander that was instead awarded to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Sunday’s flight marks a milestone for the 17-year-old Virgin Galactic, which spent years developing its SpaceShipTwo craft and larger carrier aircraft.

The company has faced its share of setbacks...

Still more.

 

Save on Cooling Products

 At Amazon, Best Sellers in Cooling Products: Air Conditioners, Fans to Stay Cool.

Unholy Heat! Temperature Hits 130 Degrees in Death Valley! (VIDEO)

We've all been inside --- and running the air condition literally all day long.

At the New York Times, "Death Valley Hits 130 Degrees as Heat Wave Sweeps the West":

FURNACE CREEK, Calif. — For Gary Bryant, the tenth-of-a-mile walk from his modular home to the air-conditioned restaurant where he was working on Saturday was “quite enough” time outside.

Mr. Bryant, 64, knows the risks of summer temperatures in Death Valley. He once collapsed under a palm tree from heat exhaustion and had to crawl toward a hose spigot to douse himself with water.

Mr. Bryant has lived and worked in Death Valley for 30 years, happy to balance the brutal summer heat with the soaring mountain vistas, but even he admits that the high temperatures in recent years were testing his limits. The temperature soared to 130 degrees on Friday and approached that again on Saturday. It was forecast to hit 130 again on Sunday.

“The first 20 summers were a breeze,” he said. “The last 10 have been a little bit tougher.”

The blistering weekend heat, one of the highest temperatures ever recorded on Earth, matched a similar level from August 2020. Those readings could set records if verified, as an earlier record of 134 degrees in 1913 has been disputed by scientists.

Much of the West is facing further record-breaking temperatures over the coming days, with over 31 million people in areas under excessive heat warnings or heat advisories. It is the third heat wave to sweep the region this summer.

The extreme temperatures that scorched the Pacific Northwest in late June led to nearly 200 deaths in Oregon and Washington State as people struggled to keep cool in poorly air-conditioned homes, on the street and in fields and warehouses.

The same “heat dome” effect that enveloped the Northwest — in which hot, dry ground traps heat and accelerates rising temperatures — has descended on California and parts of the Southwest this weekend.

Sarah Rogowski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said that daytime highs between 100 and 120 degrees were hitting parts of California. Most dangerously, temperatures will remain high into the night, hovering 15 to 25 degrees above average.

“When you start getting those warm temperatures overnight combined with those high temperatures during the day, it really starts to build the effect,” Ms. Rogowski said. “People aren’t able to cool off; it’s a lot harder to get relief.”

 

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Richard Branson Blasts Into Space! (VIDEO)

Now this is something to be proud about. Civilian space travel is here. 

Branson, along with crew, successfully launched and landed Virgin Galactic's spaceship, the VMS Unity.  

At USA Today, "Virgin Galactic space plane carrying billionaire adventurer Richard Branson reaches edge of space, returns safely":

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, N.M. – Billionaire entrepreneur and adventurer Richard Branson's dream of space travel was realized and celestial tourism took a leap forward Sunday as Virgin Galactic's rocket ship reached the edge of space during a historic flight from Spaceport America.

Branson and his crew experienced about four minutes of weightlessness before their space plane smoothly glided to a runway landing. The entire trip, delayed 90 minutes because of bad weather the previous night, lasted about an hour. An ecstatic Branson hugged family and friends who greet him after landing.

"Thank you to every single person who has believed in Virgin Galactic and the team who has worked so hard to make this dream come true," Branson said after the flight. "It's 17 years of painstaking work, the occasional horrible down and large ups with it. And today was definitely the biggest up."

Branson, who turns 71 this week, and a crew of two pilots and three mission specialists were carried to an altitude of more than eight miles by the aircraft VMS Eve, named after Branson's mother. Live video then showed the space plane VSS Unity release from the mother ship's twin fuselages, using rocket power to fly to the boundary of space, more than 50 miles above the Earth.

Tributes – and criticism – rolled in on social media...

 

Sunday Hotties

 What a great day --- I'm sure you're enjoying the scorching July heat!

Anyway, I'm back for another entry in our "babe blogging" series.

This is great, "Britney Spears posts topless photo amid conservatorship battle."

And some country gals, here and below. That's a nice catch!

Chicago's Climate Crisis

On "climate change" the jury's still out for me, but hey, maybe the climate really is changing. My issue is always whether the crisis is "man-made" (that this is a made-up boondoggle pushed by radical leftists to foment their revolutionary takeover of industrial civilization in the West). 

Either way though, it's obvious that's something changed. 

This report at NYT is pretty astonishing, in fact. See, "The climate crisis haunts Chicago’s future. A Battle Between a Great City and a Great Lake."

Chicago is a city built for a different time. The time before climate change.https://t.co/VqxrZy0eAv

— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 8, 2021

Haitian Politics

More Haiti coverage, at NYT, "Haiti’s Power Vacuum Escalates Kingmakers’ Battle for Control":

The contest for power is taking place on two levels. One battle pits current politicians against one another; the other is among power brokers vying for control behind the scenes.

The assassination of Haiti’s president has thrown the nation into disarray, spawned shootouts on the streets and left terrified citizens cowering in their homes. But behind the scenes a bigger, high-stakes battle for control of the country is already accelerating.

The fault lines were drawn long before President Jovenel Moïse was killed. For more than a year before his death, the president had been attacking his political rivals, undermining the nation’s democratic institutions and angering church and gang leaders alike.

Then the president was gunned down in his home on Wednesday — and the power play burst into the open, with the interim prime minister claiming to run the country despite open challenges by other politicians.

But even as that battle over who inherits the reins of government plays out in public, analysts say a more complex, less visible battle for power is picking up speed. It is a fight waged by some of Haiti’s richest and most well-connected kingmakers, eager for the approval of the United States, which has exercised outsized control over the fate of the Caribbean nation in the past.

How it will all play out is unclear.

Elections were planned for September, but many civil society groups in Haiti worry that doing so would only sharpen the political crisis. They question whether it would even be feasible to hold legitimate elections given how weak the nation’s institutions have become, and some civil society leaders are expected to meet Saturday to try to devise a new path forward.

Many fear that Haitians themselves may not have much of a say in the matter.

“This whole system is founded on the idea that legitimacy is determined by outside factors,” said Jake Johnston, a senior research associate at the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. “So while politicians in Port-au-Prince fight for power, the rest of the country will continue to be ignored.”

The first to assert the right to lead the nation was the interim prime minister, Claude Joseph, who called a state of siege immediately after the attack and has spent the past several days trying to parlay general words of support for Haiti from the United States into the appearance, at least, of a mandate to govern. But his legitimacy has been directly challenged by the country’s last remaining elected officials, who are trying to form a new transitional government to replace him...

Still more.

 

'I'll Be There'

For some reason this song popped into my brain last night, and I've been singing it ever since.

The Jackson 5, with a very young Michael.

*****

You and I must make a pact

We must bring salvation back

Where there is love, I'll be there (I'll be there)

I'll reach out my hand to you

I'll have faith in all you do

Just call my name and I'll be there (I'll be there)

And oh, I'll be there to comfort you

Build my world of dreams around you

I'm so glad that I found you

I'll be there with a love that's strong

I'll be your strength

I'll keep holdin' on (holdin' on)

Yes I will, yes I will

Let me fill your heart with joy and laughter

Togetherness, girl, is all I'm after

Whenever you need me, I'll be there (I'll be there)

I'll be there to protect you (yeah baby)

With unselfish love that respects you

Just call my name and I'll be there (I'll be there)

And oh, I'll be there to comfort you

Build my world of dreams around you

I'm so glad that I found you

I'll be there with a love that's strong

I'll be your strength

I'll keep holdin' on

Ooh ooh ooh

Yes I will (holdin' on, holdin' on)

Yes I will

If you should ever find someone new

I know he better be good to you

'Cause if he doesn't

I'll be there (I'll be there)

Don't you know, baby, yeah, yeah

I'll be there, I'll be there

Just call my name, I'll be there (I'll be there)

Just look over your shoulders honey, ooh

I'll be there, I'll be there

Whenever you need me, I'll be there (I'll be there)

Don't you know, baby

I'll be there, I'll be there

Just call my name, I'll be there (I'll be there)

Oh, oh, oh, oh, I'll be there

David Blight, Frederick Douglass

At Amazon, David Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.

San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus Blames 'Conservative Media' For Misinterpreting Their Threat That They're 'Coming For Your Children;' But -- Is the 'Conservative Media' Covering This Story At All? (Spoiler: No)

A big and lengthy post at AoSHQ.

The Terrible, Awful, No Good Xavier Becerra (VIDEO)

At the Washington Examiner, "The wretched Xavier Becerra wants to control your life":

How to weigh the rights of the individual versus the authority of the government?

That question became trickier over the past 18 months. In an otherwise free country, governments forbade us from gathering to worship, instructed us not to congregate with our families, forced businesses to shut down, and even ordered us to wear masks while going about our business outdoors.

The contagion and lethality of the coronavirus stretched to its limits our notions of personal autonomy and duty to one’s neighbor.

Federal, state, and local governments took a central role in subsidizing the development, manufacture, and distribution of vaccines. Some governmental entities are even considering requiring the COVID-19 vaccine for certain purposes.

Again, there are tough questions involved here, questions that the public, the press, and our government officials need to debate and discuss in the coming weeks, months, and years.

Leave it to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to take a tough and nuanced debate and make it simplistic, political, and stupid.

Becerra is, of course, unqualified for his Cabinet job. We believe nearly everyone in the Biden administration understands this. He was appointed to serve as a cultural warrior — a lieutenant to the vice president and top culture cop, Kamala Harris. Becerra's record as a lawmaker and as California’s attorney general was similar to Harris’s: He saw his job as prosecuting the people with “bad” politics, notably pro-lifers and Catholic nuns.

So when Becerra took to the airwaves last week to defend President Joe Biden’s bad wording about “door-to-door” vaccine administration, it was no surprise that he presented the administration's position in the worst possible light.

“We need to go to community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood, oftentimes, door to door — literally knocking on doors to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus,” Biden said last week.

This may have been simply poor wording by the president. His administration now claims the “we” wasn’t federal officials but health authorities and community leaders. And the “door-knocking” it promised supposedly didn’t involve interrogation or coercion but more of an offer: Hey, we have a vaccine right here. Would you like it?

But that wasn’t Becerra’s line.

Asked on CNN whether it’s “the government's business knowing who has or hasn't been vaccinated,” the cultural warrior turned Biden proxy replied, “Perhaps we should point out that the federal government has spent trillions of dollars to keep Americans alive during this pandemic. So it is absolutely the government's business. It is taxpayers' business if we have to continue to spend money to try to keep people from contracting COVID and helping reopen the economy.”

The answer was both stupid and clarifying.

President Jovenel Moïse’s Assassins Seen Captured by Mob in 'Shocking' Video

I'm not easily shocked, but you be the judge here.

At Fox News, "Haiti President Jovenel Moïse’s ‘assassins’ seen captured by mob in shocking video."

COVID Rent 'Moratorium' Screws Queens Landlord --- and More

My wife has been been hammering these rent "moratoriums" since practically Day 1 of the corona-lockdown. I mean, tenants can't pay back thousands upon thousands in back rent, so who pays? We all will, taxpayers, of course. 

Now that's some sneaky-ass socialism. 

At NYT, "A Landlord Says Her Tenants Are Terrorizing Her. She Can’t Evict Them":

For more than a year, Vanie Mangal, a physician assistant at a Connecticut hospital, called relatives to tell them that their loved ones were dying of Covid-19, watched as patients gasped their final breaths and feared that she herself would get sick.

Ms. Mangal found no respite from stress when she went home. She is a landlord who rents the basement and first-floor apartments at her home in Queens, and for the past year, conflicts with her tenants have poisoned the atmosphere in her house.

The first-floor tenants have not paid rent in 15 months, bang on the ceiling below her bed at all hours for no apparent reason and yell, curse and spit at her, Ms. Mangal said. A tenant in the basement apartment also stopped paying rent, keyed Ms. Mangal’s car and dumped packages meant for her by the garbage. After Ms. Mangal got an order of protection and then a warrant for the tenant’s arrest, the woman and her daughter moved out.

All told, Ms. Mangal — who has captured many of her tenants’ actions on surveillance video — has not only lost sleep from the tensions inside her two-story home but also $36,600 in rental income. “It’s been really horrendous,” she said. “What am I supposed to do — live like this?”

In years past, Ms. Mangal, 31, could have taken her tenants to housing court and sought to evict them. But during the pandemic, the federal government and many states, including New York, imposed eviction moratoriums to protect renters who had lost their income. The moratoriums have been widely praised by housing advocates for preventing millions of people from becoming homeless.

At the same time, those broad protections have created tremendous financial — and emotional — strain for smaller landlords like Ms. Mangal, who often lack the deep pockets to survive without payments. And in New York City, there are a lot of those small landlords: An estimated 28 percent of the city’s roughly 2.3 million rental units are owned by landlords who have fewer than five properties, according to JustFix.nyc, a technology company that tracks property ownership.

Landlords can seek pandemic financial assistance, and the federal government has allocated $46.5 billion for emergency rental relief. But the aid has been slow to flow to property owners, and it comes with certain strings attached: It requires the landlord to allow a tenant to remain and not raise the rent for a year after the aid is received. Ms. Mangal has not applied for those reasons.

Further complicating matters, while the moratorium technically allows landlords to evict unruly tenants, a review of court records and interviews with landlords suggest that in practice, it is all but impossible to do so.

“Some people like to say these cases are outliers, but it is more common than people think,” said Joanna Wong, a Manhattan landlord and a member of the Small Property Owners of New York, a landlord group. “I agree with the spirit of the protections, but not how they were passed. It created this situation where there is a subset of people who were not intended to be protected who ended up being protected.”

The federally imposed tenant safeguards expire this month, but New York extended a separate statewide moratorium for an additional month, through August.

New York’s housing courts are preparing to reopen for in-person hearings soon after the state moratorium is lifted, but it could take many months, and most likely longer, for the backlog in cases to clear. Even before the pandemic, an eviction case could take up to a year to be adjudicated.

Before the outbreak, New York City landlords filed between 140,000 to 200,000 eviction cases every year against tenants, who often found themselves on their own in court, without legal counsel, fighting to stay in their homes.

While most cases were resolved without a court-ordered eviction — 9 percent of the cases in 2017 resulted in an eviction, the city said — tens of thousands of New York City residents still lost their homes every year, while the rest had their names added to “tenant blacklists” shared among landlords.

Across the country, more than seven million households are behind on rent because of unemployment and lost wages, including about 500,000 in New York State, according to the census. Renters nationwide owe $5,600 on average in unpaid rent, according to a Moody’s report...

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Clearing Venice Beach (VIDEO)

Kinda harsh evictions, actually. 

The police and city workers were rousting homeless folks at 2:00am, for supposedly as that time there were few other people around. That said, it seems to me evicting the homeless at that time of morning is a form of harassment and terrorism. 

It's gotta be done, of course, but a little more humanity for these folks, many of whom have psychiatric health issues. Sheesh.

At LAT, "Block by block, tent by tent, city crews remove homeless campers from Venice Beach."

Ursula was asleep on a beanbag under an umbrella on a patch of sand, just feet from the public bathrooms on Venice Beach when three LAPD officers shined flashlights on her and told her to move. It was just after 2 a.m. Thursday.

She told them she’d been given a hotel room the day before and had come back for the shopping carts teeming with possessions she left behind. But the effort left her too tired to return to the hotel.

“You’re going to have to get up and exit this area,” one officer said — as sanitation workers stood off to the side, ready to sort her belongings from trash.

“The park is closed.”

For more than three hours, a crew of about a dozen Los Angeles sanitation and recreation and parks workers accompanied by several officers from the Los Angeles Police Department went to work on Ocean Front Walk, sweeping up detritus from one portion of a homeless encampment that has set Venice on edge for months.

A tarp here, a blanket there. Bottles and cans and other consumer waste. But after all was said and done, after the eastern horizon had begun to glow with the impending dawn, they had moved only two people — Ursula and a man who had been reluctant to leave behind his paintings. The rest had left earlier in the week.

It was a case study in how difficult, and complicated, it can be to move unhoused people when the goal is to avoid the kind of blunt-force dispersal that the city carried out this spring at Echo Park Lake.

The crews had come back for a second consecutive morning, mopping up after last week’s deadline to clear the southern portion of the homeless camps from Windward to Park avenues, a stretch of about 650 yards. St. Joseph Center reported that it moved 72 people from the boardwalk to shelter or housing last week. City Councilman Mike Bonin, who represents Venice, said Thursday that about 90 people had been given shelter of some sort...

Still more at that top link.

 And I guess things didn't go so well. See, "L.A. delays the next phase of removing homeless people from Venice boardwalk."

Ronald Suny, Stalin

At Amazon, Ronald Suny, Stalin: Passage to Revolution.

Richard Evans, The Third Reich at War

The last volume of the trilogy. 

At Amazon, Richard Evans, The Third Reich at War.

Haitian President Assassinated (VIDEO)

While sad, of course, this is a pretty fascinating situation.

Two of the 17 assailants were American, and there's a Colombian connection of some sort too, with perhaps some of the assassins being mercenaries. 

Either way, this seems a significant development, though I haven't heard much yet from the Biden White House. Maybe we'll have some Haitian boat people trying to make in the U.S. in rafts soon. Cuba's 90 miles off the coast of Florida, and Hait's not that much further. God forbid these people perish tying to get to this country where a far-left White House couldn't give a shit. (And this assumes you even care about what happens to Haitians, in any case, and I do.)

At the Los Angeles Times, "Haiti's years of political struggle coincided with other calamities":

Haiti has demonstrated extraordinary resilience in the face of seemingly unstinting political turmoil and natural disaster. Now the Caribbean nation, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, is again in the international spotlight with the assassination early Wednesday of its president, Jovenel Moise.

Even before a series of modern-day calamities — the brutal father-son Duvalier dictatorships that ended in 1986, periodic destructive hurricanes, the devastating 2010 earthquake and a nearly decade-long outbreak of cholera that followed — Haiti was shadowed by a centuries-old legacy of colonialism, slavery and exploitation.

Less than 700 miles from Florida, the former French colony is deeply entangled with U.S. history. The slave revolt that culminated with Haitian independence from France in 1804 also brought about the Louisiana Purchase, the vast territorial sale by France that changed the face of a still-young United States.

Situated on the western third of the island of Hispaniola, which it shares with the Dominican Republic, Haiti is culturally vibrant despite grinding deprivation.

Its 11 million people reflect a mélange of influences — Afro-Caribbean, European and Latin American. Artists of Haitian birth, including acclaimed writer Edwidge Danticat and rapper-actor Wyclef Jean, have left a significant mark on U.S. culture.

Haiti’s hardships, except when they occur on a grand scale, often go little noticed by the outside world.

Moise’s assassination was preceded by months of growing violence by criminal gangs, which set off a vicious round of kidnappings, killings and displacement whose effects rippled across a broad sector of Haitian society. A United Nations report last month cited a “widespread sense of insecurity” and “dramatic consequences for the civilian population.”

At times, even well-intentioned international efforts have caused yet more suffering in Haiti. In a recent memoir, former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote that the world body should have done more to address a cholera epidemic, traced by several investigations to U.N. peacekeepers.

That outbreak killed thousands of Haitians after the 2010 earthquake, and was not brought under control for nine years — shortly before the pandemic began. Haiti has essentially no COVID-19 vaccination program in place.

Here is more background on past crises the country has weathered.

The Duvaliers

Francois Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude — known respectively as “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc” — ruled Haiti between 1957 and 1986, their successive reigns characterized by numerous harsh abuses. The elder Duvalier, a rural doctor who pledged to economically empower the country’s downtrodden Black masses, instead fell into autocratic ways and declared himself president for life, buttressed by a terrifying paramilitary group known as the Tontons Macoutes.

His son Jean-Claude Duvalier, at 19 the designated successor, took over following his father’s death in 1971. At first the younger Duvalier sought to cultivate an international softer image, but the Tontons Macoutes used brutal means to try to suppress nationwide protests over joblessness, poverty and political repression. In 1986, facing overthrow, "Baby Doc" fled to France. He returned in 2011 to Haiti, where he failed to regain power and was embroiled by embezzlement charges, but was allowed to remain free.

Jean-Claude Duvalier died three years later, and in the post-Duvalier era, Haiti has struggled to attain stable governance. A charismatic priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, became the country’s first democratically elected president, in 1990, but lasted less than a year before being deposed by a coup.

That pattern persisted; at the time of his killing, Moise was governing by decree. Opponents and many legal experts said his term should have ended in February.

The 2010 earthquake

The catastrophic magnitude-7.0 temblor ravaged the capital, Port-au-Prince, and heavily damaged several other cities. Haiti was no stranger to ruinous storms and smaller quakes, but this was its worst natural disaster. While figures remain disputed, deaths were put at about 200,000, with an additional 300,000 people hurt. At least 1.5 million Haitians were internally displaced.

Despite a massive infusion of international aid, recovery proved elusive...

Still more.

And at the New York Times, "The prospect of U.S. military intervention in Haiti carries haunting echoes." And live updates here.

White House Defends Hunter Biden's Art Selling Scheme (VIDEO)

Pfft.

Right. Hunter Biden is the next Claude Monet or Pierre-Auguste Renoir --- you gotta be kidding me!

I'm mean the crackhead's work is going on the market for as high as $500,000 for a piece. That's outrageous!

At the New York Times, "White House Sets Ethics Plan for Sales of Hunter Biden’s Art":

WASHINGTON — The White House has helped develop a system for Hunter Biden to sell pieces of his art without him, or anyone in the administration, knowing who bought them, the latest effort to respond to criticism over how President Biden’s son makes his money.

Under the arrangement, a New York City art dealer would sell the paintings, which the dealer has said he is pricing at between $75,000 and $500,000, while keeping secret all information about the sales, according to a person familiar with the plan.

The gallerist, Georges Bergès, has agreed to not share any information about the buyers or prices of Hunter Biden’s work with anyone. Mr. Bergès has also agreed to reject any offer that appears suspicious, such as one well beyond the asking price, the person familiar with the matter said.

Hunter Biden has been under scrutiny for years over business dealings around the world that often intersected with his father’s official duties. His work in Ukraine in particular became a political flash point, helping to lead indirectly to the first impeachment proceedings against President Donald J. Trump, and his business dealings in China became a campaign issue last year.

Hunter Biden is also under investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware over his taxes. He has said he is confident he will be cleared of any wrongdoing.

He has taken up painting in recent years, and his efforts to sell his works created a new ethics challenge for the White House, which came under pressure to ensure that buyers would not purchase them in an effort to curry favor with or gain access to the administration.

While some government ethics watchdogs defended the right of the president’s adult son to pursue a career, others raised concerns that the new arrangement lacked sufficient safeguards to prevent improper influence over the administration from potential purchasers.

Virginia Canter, the chief ethics council at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog, questioned what would stop purchasers of the artwork from subsequently making public they had bought a painting by Hunter Biden. “I think it’s creative,” Ms. Canter said. “I guess they want to manage the conflict but the problem will be enforcement. Unless you have the purchaser sign nondisclosure agreements, this information would come out.”

The administration should also specifically prohibit officers of foreign governments from purchasing the pieces of art, she said. The Treasury Department warned last year that the anonymity of high-value art transactions could make the market attractive to those engaging in illegal financial activities or people subject to U.S. sanctions.

Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the White House, said the arrangement, which was previously reported by The Washington Post, would ensure ethical dealings.

“The president has established the highest ethical standards of any administration in American history, and his family’s commitment to rigorous processes like this is a prime example,” Mr. Bates said in a statement...

 

Richard Evan, The Third Reich in Power

At Amazon, Richard Evan, The Third Reich in Power.

Tucker Slams Extreme Leftists on Mandatory Indoctrination in Our Schools (VIDEO)

A great, great opening segment.

Watch:

Biden Defends Afghanistan Withdrawal (VIDEO)

Should be an easy case, but at the video the president is stumbling and bumbling.

At NYT, "In Forceful Defense of Afghan Withdrawal, Biden Says U.S. Achieved Its Objectives":

WASHINGTON — President Biden vigorously defended his decision to end America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan on Thursday, asserting that the United States can no longer afford the human cost or strategic distraction of a conflict that he said had strayed far from its initial mission.

Speaking after the withdrawal of nearly all U.S. combat forces and as the Taliban surge across the country, Mr. Biden, often in blunt and defensive tones, spoke directly to critics of his order to bring an end to American participation in a conflict born from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He said the United States would formally end its military mission at the end of August.

“Let me ask those who want us to stay: How many more?” Mr. Biden said in remarks in the East Room of the White House. “How many thousands more American daughters and sons are you willing to risk? And how long would you have them stay?”

Mr. Biden said he was not declaring “mission accomplished,” but he made clear that the future of the country — including the fate of the current government and concerns about the rights of women and girls — was no longer in the hands of the American military.

Responding to questions from reporters about his decision to bring the war to a close, Mr. Biden grew testy as he rejected the likelihood that Americans would have to flee from Kabul as they did from Saigon in 1975. He insisted that the United States had done more than enough to empower the Afghan police and military to secure the future of their people.

But he conceded that their success would depend on whether they had the political will and the military might.

Pressed on whether the broader objectives of the two-decade effort had failed, Mr. Biden said, “The mission hasn’t failed — yet.”

The president also insisted that the United States had not abandoned the thousands of Afghans who served as translators or provided other assistance to the American military. Responding to critics who argue his administration is not moving quickly enough to protect them, Mr. Biden said evacuations were underway and promised those Afghans that there was “a home for you in the United States, if you so choose. We will stand with you, just as you stood with us.”

John F. Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said the military was looking at relocating Afghan interpreters and their families to U.S. territories, American military installations outside the United States, and in other countries outside of Afghanistan.

The war began two decades ago, the president argued, not to rebuild a distant nation but to prevent terror attacks like the one on Sept. 11, 2001, and to bring Osama bin Laden to justice. In essence, Mr. Biden said the longest war in United States history should have ended a decade ago, when Bin Laden was killed.

“We did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build,” he said. “And it’s the right and the responsibility of Afghan people alone to decide their future and how they want to run their country.”

Mr. Biden delivered his remarks even as the democratic government in Kabul teeters under a Taliban siege that has displaced tens of thousands of Afghan civilians and allowed the insurgent group to capture much of the country.

More at that top link.

 

Richard Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939

Currently reading. 

Boy is this one fat tome, lol. 

And a review, at the New York Times:

In "The Third Reich in Power, 1933-1939," the British historian Richard J. Evans picks up where he left off in "The Coming of the Third Reich," the first installment of a three-volume history that is shaping up to be a masterpiece. Fluidly narrated, tightly organized and comprehensive, "The Third Reich in Power" explains, in thematic chapters, how Hitler, after gaining control of the German government in 1933, immediately set about transforming the national economy, purging enemies, reversing the humiliating terms of the Versailles peace treaty and imposing a nationalist-racist ideology on a less than receptive population.

That's a tall order, and Evans, as he carefully constructs a portrait of life in Germany under the Nazis, makes it clear that the Nazi program, in virtually every arena, met with only spotty success. He challenges the notion that Germany was, by tradition and history, uniquely susceptible to Hitler's message and totalitarian rule. Under the kaiser, he argues, Germany was in many respects a modern state, with universal manhood suffrage, a flourishing Social Democratic Party and a dynamic economy. The Nazis, in 1933, ruled a nation in which the Communists and Social Democrats had received nearly a third of the vote in recent elections.

All the more impressive, then, that the Nazi Party, in a few short years, transformed Germany into a police state and dragged it into a European war that most Germans feared and assumed would end badly. It was able to do this, moreover, at a fraction of the cost, in human lives, incurred in Soviet Russia.

The Nazis benefited greatly from the inability of the Communists and Social Democrats to cooperate, and from the virtual carte blanche handed to them by the people, traumatized by the social disorder and economic dislocations of the Weimar period. Always, no matter what the excesses of the regime, the non-Nazi alternatives seemed worse. An overwhelming majority of Germans thrilled to the promise of a resurgent economy and a rearmed Germany that could command international respect.

The Nazis were at their most efficient in establishing a climate of fear and convincing average Germans that even chance criticisms would be picked up by the Gestapo's all-hearing ear. There was no such thing as a harmless joke. Schoolteachers, before grading essays, made sure to look over the main Nazi newspaper, fearful lest they criticize material that had been plagiarized from its articles.

Evans notes that the Gestapo, contrary to legend, was not made up of fanatical Nazis. Most of its members were career policemen who had joined the force during the Weimar period or even earlier. Of the 20,000 Gestapo officers serving in 1939, only about 3,000 belonged to the SS.

The Nazis tried to transform every aspect of German life, from music to sports to garden design. Brownshirts confronted women on the street wearing too much makeup - the new German woman was expected to rely on exercise to create a natural glow - and sometimes snatched cigarettes from their painted lips.

Evans manages to weave a wealth of statistical information into a smooth narrative enlivened by eyewitness commentary from diaries, Gestapo reports and observations by Social Democratic opponents of the regime reporting to their colleagues abroad. This method works particularly well in his chapters on Nazi persecution of the Jews, which vividly convey the slow smothering of Jewish life, punctuated by episodes of fantastic violence, and the inexplicable double-think of ordinary Germans who stood by silently. Evans, here and throughout, maintains a dispassionate tone. He lets the facts, and the voices of the times, speak for him.

In the countryside, where tradition ran deep, local loyalties often trumped Nazi policy. In the Hessian village of Körle, storm troopers tried to seize bicycles from a club with ties to the Communist Party, but the local innkeeper, a longtime Nazi, said that the club owed him money and that the bicycles therefore belonged to him. He stored the bicycles in his loft and returned them to their owners after the war. The Nazi machine, as Evans describes it, moved forward with a good deal of creaking and squeaking. The economy was no exception. On many fronts, the Nazis managed nothing more than to bring the economy back to the status quo that existed before the Depression.

Most Germans did not realize the dirty little secret to the German economic recovery, which, by the late 1930s, had reached its natural limits. The only way forward, in 1939, was war and foreign conquest...

Still more.

 

San Diego Sees Surge in Road Rage Incidents (VIDEO)

It's the COV-Rage surge, apparently.

At ABC 10 News San Diego:

Cameras in the Classroom

Tucker Carlson from tonight's show:

Shop Amazon for Survival!

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Here, Fixed Blade Knife with Wood Handle for Hunting and Fishing - Good for Camping and Travels - Dependable Knife for Survival.

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The Spike in Homocides

Following up, "

Los Angles Endures Spike in Homocides."

It's Dana Loesch, at Fox News":

Richard Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich

 At Amazon, Richard Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich.

'Summer Breeze'

This song just popped into my mind yesterday, for some reason. (*Shrugs.*)

Here's Seals and Crofts, "Summer Breeze":

Thursday Cartoon

Via Theo Spark.

The Full Story on How Rachel Nichols' Comments, Which She Thought Were in Private, Became Public

Following-up, "Rachel Nichols Will Not Work as Sideline Reporter for NBA Finals After Allegedly 'Racist' Comments."

A good read, at CNBC, "LeBron James PR advisor Mendelsohn said, ‘I’m exhausted. Between Me Too and Black Lives Matter,’ report shows."

Read the whole thing at the link.

Los Angles Endures Spike in Homocides

Murders are up since last year.

At LAT, "Los Angles Endures Spike in Homocides":

A bloody Fourth of July weekend that left a dozen people dead across Los Angeles accelerated an already troubling increase in homicides and shootings in 2021, with some of the city’s poorest communities suffering the heaviest toll.

Homicides are up 25% so far this year across Los Angeles, although the brunt of the increase has been felt in South Los Angeles, where killings have jumped 50% over the same time last year.

Shootings citywide, meanwhile, have spiked by half this year. Police and community activists are bracing for tough months ahead as the summer traditionally brings with it a rise in bloodshed.

Like with the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise in violence has not been spread evenly in Los Angeles. Watts, Westmont, downtown Los Angeles, Westlake and other largely poor neighborhoods have endured much of the upheaval, though there have been some exceptions. The Los Angeles Police Department’s Wilshire division had recorded no homicides this time last year. It now has at least 10.

“Black and Latino communities are suffering,” said Najee Ali, a community activist.

The worrisome trend is playing out in cities other than Los Angeles. After experiencing decades of historic declines in homicides, many big cities nationwide saw that crucial bellwether sharply reverse course in 2020 and have been helpless to stop the surge in killings in 2021. Last weekend, at least 189 people were killed in violent incidents across the U.S., according to gun violence archives that gather data from police and media reports.

Los Angeles police officials say guns are fueling the rise here.

The percentage of homicides that involved a firearm has climbed from 66% in 2019, to 70% last year and currently is running at about 75%, said Los Angeles Police Capt. Paul Vernon, who is soon to retire from his job tracking crime trends as head of the LAPD’s CompStat program.

“There are too many guns in too many hands,” said Capt. Stacy Spell, the department’s main spokesman who once oversaw its South Bureau Homicide Division.

Officers are finding guns at significantly higher rates as well. As of last month, the department had seized 661 ghost guns — unregistered weapons that cannot be traced to an owner — compared to 813 in all of 2020. “At that rate, we could collect 1,500 ghost guns in a year,” Spell said.

Spell echoed recent comments by LAPD Chief Michel Moore, who has argued the increased violence is inextricably linked to the pandemic. The lockdown restrictions imposed to slow the spread of the virus, Spell said, further eroded already fraying social safety nets and devastated families’ finances. Gang intervention workers, for example, were unable to break cycles of retaliation by visiting shooting victims or calming mourning family members in hospital emergency rooms.

A man was fatally shot and a woman was wounded in a car-to-car shooting that occurred as their vehicle was being followed through a Venice neighborhood, police said. The incident began about 2:30 a.m. near the intersection of Brooks and 6th avenues. CALIFORNIA

While gangs have undoubtedly played a role in the killings, police point as well to what they say is a newfound willingness to settle disputes with a gun that goes beyond any gang affiliation.

Police say it’s impossible to know where the numbers are going. If the current pace of killings continues, L.A. would end the year with about 433 homicides — a sharp increase over the 254 killings recorded in 2019. Vernon cautioned, however, that 2020 — with 349 killings — was a very unusual year for homicides with a small increase in killings in the first half of the year, followed by a dramatic rise in the second. The volatility makes it difficult to project what might happen in the remaining months of 2021, he said.

And while the ongoing rise is troubling, Spell noted the current numbers still pale in comparison to the early 1990s, when more than 1,000 killings in a year were common.

Police also took some solace and hope in the fact that the spike in homicides has not been matched by a rise in other types of crime. Overall, violent crime is down slightly from 2020 and property crime is up only by a small amount. Violent crime arrests are down by nearly 10% compared to 2019 levels for the same period, while homicide arrests are up for that time by 60%.

So far in 2021 the LAPD’s Southeast Division, which includes Watts, has seen the city’s largest increase in homicides —24 — compared with 10 during the same period last year.

Violence over the last week cut short lives across the city.

Afghanistan's Most Successful Flee Before Taliban Takeover

Well, this year the U.S. would've marked its 20th anniversary in Afghanistan, minus the troop withdrawal.

Of course, we can't stay there forever, but's not just a Taliban "advance" that has Afghani's fleeing. It's that in all likelihood the Taliban will topple the government in Kabul and take over the country. 

This is interesting. At WSJ, "A Generation of Afghan Professionals Flees Ahead of Taliban Advance":

KABUL—Afghanistan’s professional class of men and women, part of a generation that came of age under the shield of the U.S. military, are weighing the danger of rapidly advancing Taliban forces. Many are packing their bags.

Hasiba Ebrahimi is already gone. The 24-year-old actress, who embodied modern Afghanistan’s optimistic youth, was raised, like many Afghans, as a refugee in Pakistan and then in Iran. She returned to Kabul in 2014 and has since become a star in the country’s new film industry.

In a video released in November, Ms. Ebrahimi urged young Afghan women not to lose hope: “Everything is hard, but nothing is impossible.” She traveled to Australia soon after—for what she thought would be a short reunion with her New Zealand-based sister. She is still there.

“My mom is telling me, ‘I am begging you, I love you so much, but I can’t let you come back, I can’t let you put yourself in danger,’ ” Ms. Ebrahimi said from Sydney. “We have all had hope. We were thinking that we would do something out of that country, working harder and harder each day. It’s really sad to think that you don’t have any future in your own country.”

Long before President Biden announced the U.S. withdrawal in April, hundreds of thousands of Afghans had fled to Europe, Australia and the U.S. Now, many of the well-educated people who prospered in the new Afghanistan and hadn’t dreamed of leaving have also concluded that staying put is no longer an option.

Even though the U.S. has said for years it would withdraw its troops, Mr. Biden’s announcement caught many Afghans by surprise. So did the meltdown of Afghanistan’s U.S.-equipped and trained security forces. Afghan soldiers surrendered en masse in recent weeks, handing over their weapons and Humvees to the Taliban, who have conquered about a third of the country’s districts since April and now surround several major cities.

A recent U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that Kabul could fall to the Taliban as soon as six months after the U.S. military pullout is completed this summer.

Hamid Haidari was seven years old when he woke to see Taliban fighters fan into his western Kabul neighborhood in September 1996. The Afghan capital had fallen overnight, and militants soon were banging on doors and pulling men aside for execution. Mr. Haidari now heads the news operation for 1TV, a booming television network, one of the many new fields that have flourished in Afghanistan over the past two decades. With only a few hundred American troops remaining in the country, mostly to protect the U.S. Embassy, Mr. Haidari said he hears the same questions from his staff: What shall we do if we wake up to see the Taliban occupy Kabul again? Shall we leave? If so, where and how

Mr. Haidari went to India in January after warnings of an assassination attempt by insurgents. He returned three months later and intends to stay in Kabul for as long as he can.

Since meeting with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar—part of the stalled Afghan peace process—Mr. Haidari has concluded that a freewheeling TV network wouldn’t survive under the Islamist movement’s rule. The network has already pulled several journalists from Taliban-besieged cities to Kabul.

“No one knows what will happen,” Mr. Haidari said. “It’s Afghanistan. In the future, there will be bloodshed, there will be killings and maybe civil war. But if there won’t be any free media, if we shut down, no one will know what kinds of crimes will be happening in Afghanistan.”

The TV company’s owner, Fahim Hashimy, said he was looking at contingency plans, moving parts of the network to Turkey or Uzbekistan. “I am joking to my people, we need to turn into a portable TV channel, a movable TV channel, a mobile TV channel so we can keep moving around the world and keep broadcasting,” he said.

More affluent Afghans are paying thousands of dollars on the black market for visitor visas to Turkey, India, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan—the few destinations that remain relatively accessible.

“Even the friends who want to stay here are taking their families out because, when the war comes, children and women cannot fight and will be vulnerable,” said Omar Sadr, a political scientist at the American University of Afghanistan. His backup plan is moving to India, where he was educated...

Shop Amazon

Thanks for your support!

Here: New deals. Every day. Shop our Deal of the Day, Lightning Deals and more daily deals and limited-time sales.

More, American Furniture Classics 840 4 Gun Wall Rack, Medium Brown.

Here, Fixed Blade Knife with Wood Handle for Hunting and Fishing - Good for Camping and Travels - Dependable Knife for Survival.

And, Cold Steel Bushman Series Fixed Blade Survival Knife with Hollow Handle, Fire Starter and Sheath - Great as a Camping Knife and Throwing Knife.

Plus, Jinager Survival Gear Kits Outdoor Survival Gear Tool for Trip,with Fire Starter, Whistle, Wood Cutter, Tactical Pen for Camping, Hiking, Climbing for Wilderness/Trip/Cars/Hiking/Camping.

BONUS: Norman Ohler, Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich.

Beautiful Women

See Drunken Stepfather, "KATE HUDSON THONG OF THE DAY." 

And, at Celeb Jihad, "ARIEL WINTER FLAUNTS." 

ASU pic.twitter.com/gNPS7ng1i0

— Old Row Rad Chicks (@OldRowRadChicks) July 1, 2021

Prestige Boston Art Museums Will Not Return Objets d'Art Once-Owned by German Collector Curt Glaser

These Nazi art cases are always fascinating to me. 

The Nazis took control of Glaser's collection after persecuting the man for his Jewish faith. The dude must have emigrated to the U.S., as according to Wikipedia he died in 1943, at Lake Placid, New York. 

More than a dozen institutions and collectors have concluded that Curt Glaser sold his art collection in 1933 as a result of Nazi persecution. But the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have rejected his heirs’ claims.

More than a dozen institutions and collectors have concluded that Curt Glaser sold his art collection in 1933 as a result of Nazi persecution. But the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have rejected his heirs’ claims. https://t.co/lzC5gQT4TN

— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 6, 2021

July 6, 2021

The Nazi authorities removed Curt Glaser from his post as director of the Berlin State Art Library in April 1933 because he was Jewish. He was also evicted from his home and, the following month, sold most of his art collection at two auctions.

Since 2007, 13 private collectors or institutions — including the Dutch Restitutions Committee, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation in Berlin, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the city of Basel — have concluded that Glaser sold his collection in May 1933 as a result of Nazi persecution, and agreed to either return or pay some compensation to his heirs for art he sold that wound up in their collections.

But the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have repeatedly rejected the heirs’ claims for paintings that were sold at the same auctions. They argue there is not enough evidence that Glaser sold under duress.

The disparity in the decisions highlights how, 76 years after World War II ended, the criteria for determining whether a work of art that changed hands during the Nazi persecution of Jews should be returned still remains a matter of debate. Both the Met and the Museum of Fine Arts have a record of recognizing claims on art sold under duress. The Met has settled eight claims for art looted by the Nazis or sold under duress since 1998, when the United States endorsed the international Washington Principles, which called for “just and fair” solutions in handling claims for looted art. In 2009, the Terezin Declaration, also approved by the United States, specified that this requirement also applied to sales under duress. The Museum of Fine Arts has previously settled heirs’ claims for 13 objects sold under duress.

But in the cases of two works sold at a May 9, 1933 auction — Abraham Bloemaert’s 1596 painting “Moses Striking the Rock,” which is owned by the Met, and Joachim Anthoniesz Wtewael’s “Actaeon Watching Diana and Her Nymphs Bathing” from 1612, which is owned by the Museum of Fine Arts — the museums have taken a position at odds with other institutions who held Glaser works from that sale.

Rachel Nichols Will Not Work as Sideline Reporter for NBA Finals After Allegedly 'Racist' Comments

At NYT, "Rachel Nichols Out for N.B.A. Finals Coverage on ABC":

Comments made by Nichols that were caught on tape caused tremendous upheaval within ESPN over the past year. Nichols, who is white, suggested that a Black colleague, Maria Taylor, had been selected for a marquee job because of her race.

When a sideline reporter first appeared on ABC’s broadcast of the N.B.A. finals on Tuesday night, it was not Rachel Nichols, an abrupt change announced by ESPN earlier in the day. It was an attempt to stanch a yearlong scandal that has spilled into public view about the company’s handling of conflicts centered around race.

The decision to have Malika Andrews be the sideline reporter instead was made after The New York Times reported that Nichols, who is white, made disparaging comments about a Black colleague, Maria Taylor, last year. Among other things, Nichols said that Taylor was picked to host N.B.A. finals coverage last season because ESPN was “feeling pressure” about diversity.

Nichols’s comments came during a private phone conversation while she was quarantined in a Florida hotel last July before the N.B.A. resumed its season, which had been paused because of the coronavirus pandemic. She was seeking career guidance from Adam Mendelsohn, the adviser and political strategist who works closely with the Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James. The phone call was accidentally captured on camera and uploaded to a server at the company’s headquarters in Bristol, Conn., then quickly spread widely among ESPN employees.

“I wish Maria Taylor all the success in the world — she covers football, she covers basketball,” Nichols told Mendelsohn during the call. “If you need to give her more things to do because you are feeling pressure about your crappy longtime record on diversity — which, by the way, I know personally from the female side of it — like, go for it. Just find it somewhere else. You are not going to find it from me or taking my thing away.”

There have been wide-ranging discussions about the comments inside and outside of ESPN over the last two days, with former employees and even N.B.A. players weighing in. The Memphis Grizzlies point guard Ja Morant tweeted in support of Taylor, while some high-profile former ESPN employees — including Dan Le Batard and Jemele Hill — discussed the matter on Le Batard’s show Tuesday morning.

In a sign of the sprawling complexity of the scandal, commentators weighed in on numerous topics, including ESPN’s discipline and management as well as the friendship and professional relationship between Nichols and Mendelsohn. Some focused on the privacy issues at play with the recorded phone call. Others, in a discussion about white privilege and career advancement, raised that Nichols is related by marriage to the famed broadcast journalist Diane Sawyer and the Academy Award-winning director Mike Nichols.

Adam Silver, the commissioner of the N.B.A., addressed the situation at length during a news conference before tip-off of Game 1 between the Phoenix Suns and the Milwaukee Bucks.

“It’s disheartening,” Silver said. He said that both Nichols and Taylor are “terrific” at their jobs, and that it was “unfortunate that two women in the industry are pitted against each other.” He said he would have thought that through difficult conversations “ESPN would have found a way to be able to work through it. Obviously not.”

The Return of Great-Power Subversion

It's Jill Kastner and William C. Wohlforth, at Foreign Affairs, "A Measure Short of War: The Return of Great-Power Subversion":

In the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a foreign power managed to exert what seemed like unprecedented influence over the sacred rites of American democracy. On social media, a legion of paid Russian trolls sowed discord, spreading pernicious falsehoods about the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and seeking to boost turnout for the Republican candidate, Donald Trump. Powerful Russians close to the Kremlin sought out contact with Trump and his courtiers, dangling the promise of damaging information about Clinton. State-sponsored hackers stole and leaked her campaign aides’ private emails. They went on to target election systems in all 50 states and even managed to infiltrate voter databases.

The meddling set alarm bells ringing. “We have been attacked; we are at war,” the actor Morgan Freeman solemnly announced in a video in 2017 released by a group calling itself the Committee to Investigate Russia, which was backed by old U.S. intelligence hands such as James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, and Michael Morell, the former acting director of the CIA. A New York Times headline announced that “Russian cyberpower” had “invaded” the United States. Foreign policy experts predicted a coming wave of digital subversion, led by authoritarian states targeting their democratic rivals. “This digital ecosystem creates opportunities for manipulation that have exceeded the ability of democratic nations to respond, and sometimes even to grasp the extent of the challenge,” Alina Polyakova of the Brookings Institution testified before a congressional committee in 2019. “All democracies are current or potential future targets.”

U.S. policymakers scrambled to react. In its final months, the Obama administration expelled 35 Russian diplomats, seized Russian diplomatic property, and pledged that the United States would retaliate at a time and place of its choosing. In 2018, Congress created an entirely new agency—the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a division of the Department of Homeland Security—to prevent similar intrusions in the future.

The 2016 election may have been a rude wake-up call, but no one should have been surprised. Russia’s operation was just the latest instance of a pattern that stretches back in history as far as the eye can see. Subversion—domestic interference to undermine or manipulate a rival—has always been a part of great-power politics. What stands out as an anomaly is the brief period of extraordinary U.S. dominance, beginning after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the United States appeared immune to malicious meddling by peer competitors, in large part because there weren’t any. Now, that dominance is beginning to wane. Great-power competition has returned—and with it, so has great-power subversion...

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