'So, Matt Yglesias is now doing pig-ignorant, Aren't-I-Daringly-Contrarian #HotTakes about events he just learned about, but which happened over 220 years ago...'

Yglesias never disappoints in the leftist-loser lulz department.

At AoSHQ, "Matt Yglesias, Intellectual."

Also, from Ms. EBL, "Sex with Robots will be 'the norm' in 50 years experts claim and some people have strange...compulsions (Matt Yglesias has issues)."

Carly Fiorina: 'I'm Not a Professional Politician...'

She's so articulate. I do hope her poll numbers improve before some of the upcoming GOP debates. She deserves to be on that stage.

At Politico, "Carly Fiorina on being left out of prime-time debate: It's a long race."

Listen to her interview with Joe Scarborough, "Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina joins Morning Joe to discuss not making the top 10 in the first GOP debate."

Underwater Search Ends for Free Diver Natalia Molchanova

She's dead.

At ABC News, "Underwater Search for Famous Russian Free Diver Natalia Molchanova Called Off."

PREVIOUSLY: "Freewater Diving Champion Natalia Molchanova Presumed Dead," and "How Far Down Can a Free Diver Go?"

AQAP's Khalid bin Umar Batarfi Issues New 'Lone Wolf' Threats Against American Cities (VIDEO)

From the SITE Intelligence Group, "AQAP Releases Video Calling for Lone Wolf Attacks, Praising Chattanooga Shooter."

And at the Chattanooga Time Free-Press, "Al-Qaida calls for more lone wolf attacks, praises Chattanooga shooter":

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula released a video calling for lone wolf attacks and praising attackers like Chattanooga shooter Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, according to SITE Intelligence Group, a jihadist monitoring organization.

The video was produced by AQAP's al-Malahem Media Foundation and released on August 4, 2015, the SITE Intelligence website stated. In the video, AQAP official Abu al-Miqdad al-Kindi (AKA Khalid bin Umar Batarfi), who was freed from a Yemeni prison in April of 2015, condemned "America France and other kufr [disbeliever] nations" that "assist and make legislations to protect those who abuse Islam and the Prophets." To that point, he stressed, "And as you put limits to freedom of expression and punish whomever goes against them, it is upon us to punish whoever transgresses out boundaries and sanctities."

In reference to Abdulazeez he said, "And the latest operation of Muhammad Abdulaziz, which occurred in the heart of American soil, is a clear evidence of that. He penetrated the base killing and injuring American marines in a blessed Jihadi operation. We ask Allah to accept him and raise his status among martyrs."

And here I thought we had al-Qaeda on the run. Hmm, I guess not.

ADDED: Flashback, "Al-Qaeda in Iraq Releases Shocking GoPro-Quality Propaganda Video."

David Horowitz: 'Obama is a Traitor. It's a No Brainer' (VIDEO)

Heh, Alan Colmes "debates" David Horowtiz. Like that's some kind of contest, or something.

Obama's worse than Hitler!

Watch: "Alan Colmes vs. David Horowitz: Is Obama a 'Jew-hater'?"

Women Get Just 30 Percent of Roles in Top U.S. Films

Obviously, we need more hot women in the movies.

But see Manohla Dargis, at the New York Times, "Report Finds Wide Diversity Gap Among 2014’s Top-Grossing Films."

RELATED: At Vanity Fair, "Amy Schumer Explains How Her Magical Jennifer Lawrence Vacation Came to Be."



Ah, yes, let's definitely have more Jennifer Lawrence in top roles, heh.

New Russian Fifth-Generation Stealth Fighter PAK T-50 at Aviadarts-2015 Air Show (VIDEO)

Here's the Russian Air Force's "Prospective Airborne Complex of Frontline Aviation" (PAK FA) at Aviadarts-2015, via Ruptly:



Nice jets.

Worrisome too.

See related, at London's Daily Mail, "The moment RAF intercept TEN Russian jets in a single mission over Baltic airspace as Putin’s sabre rattling increases."

Dana Loesch on Megyn Kelly's Show: Leftists Aren't Going to Criticize Their 'Gravy Train' Planned Parenthood (VIDEO)

Following-up from earlier, "David Daleiden: The 'Hardest Part' of Releasing Planned Parenthood Videos Was 'Reviewing the Footage of the Body Parts of the Unborn Children Themselves...'."

Plane Debris Confirmed as MH370

I can only hope this brings the beginning of some semblance of closure to the families of those lost.

It's been too long. Much too long waiting for word. Waiting for answers.

At Foreign Policy, "Malaysia Confirms Debris Comes from Missing Airliner."

At the Wall Street Journal, "MH370 Search: Plane Debris on Réunion Island Is From Vanished Malaysia Flight":

The plane debris that washed ashore on an island in the Indian Ocean last week was confirmed to be part of the Malaysia Airlines jet that went missing over a year ago, Malaysia’s prime minister said, making it the first concrete evidence of the plane that disappeared 17 months ago but leaving unanswered why it crashed.

“An international team of experts have conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on Réunion Island is indeed from MH370,” Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said in Kuala Lumpur.

French authorities, who took possession of the part because Réunion is a French territory, were more cautious about its origin. Experts examining it at a French military lab near Toulouse in southwest France have determined there is a “very strong presumption” that the part comes from the missing plane, Deputy Paris Prosecutor Serge Mackowiak said Wednesday.

Mr. Mackowiak also said that the analysis of a tattered bag found near the wing part on the beach of Réunion was also underway, but didn’t announce findings.

The Malaysian announcement offered few details about the Flight 370 probe. Without taking questions, the Prime Minister vowed to “do everything within our means to determine what happened” to the Boeing 777.

French, Malaysian, Australian, Chinese and U.S. officials were present for the analysis that began Wednesday at a high-tech military lab near Toulouse in the southwest of France.

Examination of the debris now moves into a new stage, according to safety experts, as the French military technical team tries to extract clues from the part about how the plane may have crashed...

Read more.

Tennessee Movie Theater Shooting

Makes you not want to go to the movies, all these copy-cat murders.

At the Tennessean, "Police: Suspect in Antioch theater shooting dead."

And at CNN, "Cops: Shots fired at Tennessee movie theater," and "Tennessee theater shooting witness: 'It was very scary..."

So far no reports of fatalities, thank goodness.

Dominique Jane is Playboy's Miss August 2015

A lovely lady, on Tumblr.

Matthew McConaughey Shares Photo of Wife Camila Alves Obtaining U.S. Citizenship

Actually, it's McConaughey and the whole beautiful family, on Twitter.

He's a great guy, a true patriot.

Ku Klux Klan Tatoo Guy Confronted While Wearing Fubu Shoes

You know, FUBU stands for "For us, by us." The company was founded by black entrepreneurs, including Daymond John, one of the members of the "Shark Tank" on ABC.

Maybe the KKK dude doesn't like that show.

At NYDN, "WATCH: Georgia Stars and Bars proponent wears FUBU shoes at Confederate flag rally (WARNING: Contains graphic language)."

And at YouTube, "KKK member at Confederate flag rally confronted for wearing FUBU shoes."

Well, at least Stogie's not wearing FUBUs, or at least not that I know of.

Shirtless Crazy Man Claiming He's 'Tarzan' Arrested Near Monkey Exhibit at Los Angeles Santa Ana Zoo (VIDEO)

No doubt Obama's jobless recovery put him over the edge.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "AUDIO: 911 call from zoo official reporting a man seen climbing trees, saying 'he's Tarzan'."

And, "Shirtless 'Tarzan' Arrested In Bizarre Incident Near Zoo Monkey Exhibit."

UPDATE: It's the Santa Ana Zoo, not the Los Angeles Zoo.

David Daleiden: The 'Hardest Part' of Releasing Planned Parenthood Videos Was 'Reviewing the Footage of the Body Parts of the Unborn Children Themselves...'

I confess: I'm to the point where I can't actually watch these Planned Parenthood sting videos.

They're simply too graphic. And they're self-evidently too evil. It's terrible. In fact, I'm stunned at this entire discussion.

I have tremendous respect for Dana Loesch, who's been doing more than anyone else to expose this evil on a daily basis.

See Dana on Twitter, "Man behind Planned Parenthood videos tells @DLoesch the “hardest part” of undercover investigation," and on YouTube, "5th Planned Parenthood Video Dropped Today: Interview with David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress [CONTENT WARNING]."

ADDED: At Life News, "5th Shocking Video Catches Planned Parenthood Official Selling “Fully Intact” Aborted Babies."

"Shocking." Oh boy, is it ever.

The Mystery of ISIS

An "anonymous" source goes inside Islamic State, at the New York Review of Books:

In ISIS: The State of Terror, Stern and Berger provide a fascinating analysis of the movement’s use of video and social media. They have tracked individual Twitter accounts, showing how users kept changing their Twitter handles, piggybacked on the World Cup by inserting images of beheadings into the soccer chat, and created new apps and automated bots to boost their numbers. Stern and Berger show that at least 45,000 pro-movement accounts were online in late 2014, and describe how their users attempted to circumvent Twitter administrators by changing their profile pictures from the movement’s flags to kittens. But this simply raises the more fundamental question of why the movement’s ideology and actions—however slickly produced and communicated—have had popular appeal in the first place.

Nor have there been any more satisfying explanations of what draws the 20,000 foreign fighters who have joined the movement. At first, the large number who came from Britain were blamed on the British government having made insufficient effort to assimilate immigrant communities; then France’s were blamed on the government pushing too hard for assimilation. But in truth, these new foreign fighters seemed to sprout from every conceivable political or economic system. They came from very poor countries (Yemen and Afghanistan) and from the wealthiest countries in the world (Norway and Qatar). Analysts who have argued that foreign fighters are created by social exclusion, poverty, or inequality should acknowledge that they emerge as much from the social democracies of Scandinavia as from monarchies (a thousand from Morocco), military states (Egypt), authoritarian democracies (Turkey), and liberal democracies (Canada). It didn’t seem to matter whether a government had freed thousands of Islamists (Iraq), or locked them up (Egypt), whether it refused to allow an Islamist party to win an election (Algeria) or allowed an Islamist party to be elected. Tunisia, which had the most successful transition from the Arab Spring to an elected Islamist government, nevertheless produced more foreign fighters than any other country.

Nor was the surge in foreign fighters driven by some recent change in domestic politics or in Islam. Nothing fundamental had shifted in the background of culture or religious belief between 2012, when there were almost none of these foreign fighters in Iraq, and 2014, when there were 20,000. The only change is that there was suddenly a territory available to attract and house them. If the movement had not seized Raqqa and Mosul, many of these men might well have simply continued to live out their lives with varying degrees of strain—as Normandy dairy farmers or council employees in Cardiff. We are left again with tautology—ISIS exists because it can exist—they are there because they’re there.

Finally, a year ago, it seemed plausible to attach much of the blame for the rise of the movement to former Iraqi prime minister al-Maliki’s disastrous administration of Iraq. No longer. Over the last year, a new, more constructive, moderate, and inclusive leader, Haider al-Abadi, has been appointed prime minister; the Iraqi army has been restructured under a new Sunni minister of defense; the old generals have been removed; and foreign governments have competed to provide equipment and training. Some three thousand US advisers and trainers have appeared in Iraq. Formidable air strikes and detailed surveillance have been provided by the United States, the United Kingdom, and others. The Iranian Quds force, the Gulf states, and the Kurdish Peshmerga have joined the fight on the ground.

For all these reasons the movement was expected to be driven back and lose Mosul in 2015. Instead, in May, it captured Palmyra in Syria and—almost simultaneously—Ramadi, three hundred miles away in Iraq. In Ramadi, three hundred ISIS fighters drove out thousands of trained and heavily equipped Iraqi soldiers. The US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter observed:

The Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force, and yet they failed to fight.

The movement now controls a “terrorist state” far more extensive and far more developed than anything that George W. Bush evoked at the height of the “Global War on Terror.” Then, the possibility of Sunni extremists taking over the Iraqi province of Anbar was used to justify a surge of 170,000 US troops and the expenditure of over $100 billion a year. Now, years after the surge, ISIS controls not only Anbar, but also Mosul and half of the territory of Syria. Its affiliates control large swaths of northern Nigeria and significant areas of Libya. Hundreds of thousands have now been killed and millions displaced; horrors unimaginable even to the Taliban—among them the reintroduction of forcible rape of minors and slavery—have been legitimized. And this catastrophe has not only dissolved the borders between Syria and Iraq, but provoked the forces that now fight the proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran in Yemen.

This is a great piece. Keep reading.

I only disagree on the question of our ignorance. It depends on whom you rely for information. Most mainstream analysts, at least those seen in outlets like the New York Times and CNN, are leftists. They're congenitally hindered by leftist cognitive dissonance. If you read people like Victor Davis Hanson, Ralph Peters, Dennis Prager, or Robert Spencer there's no confusion on the nature of the enemy. All one has to do is take a cold hard look at the problem. And one has to call up the moral resolve to confront evil face to face.

That's the problem we have with ISIS. It's no mystery.

We Got the Neutron Bomb

Obama just finished up his big national security speech on the nuclear agreement with Iran. I just hear: "Blah, blah, blah... blah, blah..."

Meanwhile, "We Got the Neutron Bomb," with the Weirdos:

We got the neutron bomb,
We got the neutron bomb
We got the neutron, gonna drop it all over the place
Yer gonna get it on yer face
Foreign aid from the land of the free
But don't blame me
We got the neutron bomb,
We got the neutron bomb
We got the neutron, don't understand you don't know what you mean
We don't want you we want your machines
United Nations and NATO won't do
It's just the red, white and blue
We got the neutron bomb,
We got the neutron bomb
We got the neutron, that's the way it's gotta be
Survival of the fittest is the way it's gonna be
We don't want it, we don't want it,
Don't blame me
We don't want it, we don't want it,
Don't blame me...

What's the Right Way to Teach Civics?

Just teach it, for crying out loud. But teach it a lot. Make it a central part of universal education, not just something that comes up in the 8th and 11th grades. And teach it well. I've had students change majors to political science after taking my class. It doesn't happen a lot, but if you connect and make history and politics come alive, it will happen.

In any case, see Vauhini Vara, at the New Yorker.

'Let Us Live' Peace Rally in South Los Angeles — #MyLifeMatters

I meant to post on this earlier. It's such a promising story.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "Spike In Shootings Prompts Peace Rally In South LA."

.@lamblock Anti-gang protest in Los Angeles: #MyLifeMatters pic.twitter.com/sLa3BIblGj

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) August 5, 2015

Also from Sandy Banks, at the Los Angeles Times, "#100days100nights fuels fear in South L.A."

More, "#100days100nights: Gang threats of violence on social media draw fear."

Mandy Moore and Minka Kelly in Bikinis

At Drunken Stepfather, "MANDY MOORE AND MINKA KELLY IN BIKINIS OF THE DAY."

How Far Down Can a Free Diver Go?

It's kind of freaky that I came across this story, at the New Yorker, from Alec Wilkinson, "The Deepest Dive."

Wilkinson mentions Natalia Molchanova, who as this post goes live is still missing in the Mediterranean. I blogged the story earlier, "Freewater Diving Champion Natalia Molchanova Presumed Dead."

And from his essay:

Modern free diving is a sport in which divers, on a single breath, descend hundreds of feet, into cold and darkness, and often pass out before they return. It is frequently described as the world’s second most dangerous sport, after jumping off skyscrapers with parachutes. There are eight disciplines, three of which are conducted in a pool; the rest are called deep disciplines. The pool disciplines are static apnea, which is holding one’s breath; dynamic with fins (swimming underwater as far as one can, sometimes with flippers or with a monofin, which looks like a mermaid’s tail); and dynamic without fins. The five main deep disciplines are free immersion, which involves pulling oneself up and down a rope in open water; constant weight, in which a diver wears fins and a small amount of weight; constant weight without fins; variable weight, in which a diver descends on a metal device called a sled and swims to the surface; and no limits, in which a diver rides a sled and is then pulled to the surface by an air bag. Competitions are not held in no limits or variable weight, because they are so dangerous; divers can only attempt records. No divers have died in free-diving competitions. (Death by free diving usually occurs when spear fishermen who dive alone stay down too long. A few years ago, one drowned when he speared a huge grouper that fled into a hole; the fisherman’s spear gun was tied to his wrist and he couldn’t get free.) Divers, however, have died trying to set records in no limits. The most famous case was that of a twenty-eight-year-old Frenchwoman named Audrey Mestre, who drowned in 2002, during a poorly supervised dive with her husband, when her air bag didn’t inflate, leaving her too deep to reach the surface.

The most prestigious discipline is constant weight—the diver must return to the surface with the weight that he or she wore to descend. The women’s record for constant weight is ninety-six metres, which took three minutes and thirty-four seconds. (The men’s record is a hundred and twenty-two metres.) For women, a hundred metres is a barrier something like the four-minute mile used to be, and the diver who is the first to accomplish the feat will have a prominent place in the annals of the sport. Only two women are thought to be capable of it. One is Sara Campbell, a British diver who lives in Egypt, and the other is Natalia Molchanova, a Russian who lives in Moscow. Campbell set the record of ninety-six metres in April, in the Bahamas, breaking Molchanova’s record of ninety-five, which had broken Campbell’s record of ninety. Five days after Campbell reached ninety-six metres, she dived to a hundred, returned to the surface, took two breaths, and passed out. (A safety diver caught her.) The rules governing record dives require that a diver remain conscious for sixty seconds after surfacing, so Campbell’s dive was nullified...

It's obviously a very dangerous sport.

More at the link.

Police Chiefs from Across the Nation Meet in D.C. to Discuss National Spike in Violence

A week or so back I saw the headline at the local Daily Pilot newspaper, "Serious crime surges 40% in Costa Mesa."

Orange County's economy is doing much better than statewide, and Costa Mesa is a generally affluent area in any case. So a 40 percent surge over the last year or so seemed pretty astounding. I'm convinced that California's Proposition 47 is playing a major role in the rise of crime, in Costa Mesa and elsewhere in the state. Nationwide, the Ferguson Effect is also causing a surge in crime, whereby police departments have backed off aggressive broken windows techniques amid the left's revolutionary assault on the nation's law enforcement. Frankly, things are out of control.

At CBS News Baltimore, "Police Chiefs Meet in D.C. to Discuss National Spike in Violence."

High-Tech Liquid Meals Called 'Soylent' Designed to 'Give You Everything Your Body Needs...'

Well, at least CBS This Morning mentions the origins of the name for this food drink, the 1973 science fiction film "Soylent Green."

I can't imagine a food product taking off with a name like that, but 1973's a long time ago, especially for our historically ignorant culture.

Watch: "Soylent liquid meals reimagine daily nutrition."

Plunder and Deceit is Out Today

I've got a lot of books on my plate, and I don't think I've got this Civil War bug out of my system quite yet. But I'm definitely picking up a copy of Mark Levin's new book.

Check it out, at Amazon, Plunder and Deceit.

Historian Robert Conquest Has Died

What a guy.

His books should be mandated reading for every freshman undergraduate in the United States.

He's that important a scholar.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Robert Conquest, Seminal Historian of Soviet Misrule, Dies at 98":

Robert Conquest, an Anglo-American historian whose works on the terror and privation under Joseph Stalin made him the pre-eminent Western chronicler of the horrors of Soviet rule, died Monday in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 98 years old.

Mr. Conquest’s master work, “The Great Terror,” was the first detailed account of the Stalinist purges from 1937 to 1939. He estimated that under Stalin, 20 million people perished from famines, Soviet labor camps and executions—a toll that eclipsed that of the Holocaust. Writing at the height of the Cold War in 1968, when sources about the Soviet Union were scarce, Mr. Conquest was vilified by leftists who said he exaggerated the number of victims. When the Cold War ended and archives in Moscow were thrown open, his estimates proved high but more accurate than those of his critics.

Mr. Conquest also was a much-decorated writer of light verse and a figure in the “Movement” poetry of 1950s England. He continued to publish into his 90s, applying an unyielding zest to poetry and prose alike.

Born in Malvern, Worcestershire, to a British mother and an American father, he served in World War II and then in Britain’s diplomatic corps before a series of stints at think tanks and universities, largely in the U.S. In recent decades he was affiliated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, moving to emeritus status in 2007.

While a spirited combatant in academic debate, Mr. Conquest wrote for a wider audience. “The Great Terror” reached millions of readers and won him a following among leaders including Ronald Reagan. Margaret Thatcher consulted Mr. Conquest on how to deal with the Soviet Union and her former advisers said she trusted him more than any other Soviet expert.

Throughout his career Mr. Conquest kept abreast of ivory-tower squabbles “but he eschewed what he saw as the arcane and parochial nature of some academic literature,” said Mark Kramer, a professor of Cold War history at Harvard.

Mr. Conquest gleefully attacked Western revisionist historians as dupes for Stalin. The 1937-1939 Stalinist show trials, in which Stalin’s political rivals all admitted to serious crimes and were shot, shocked many left-leaning intellectuals in the West. The lurid trials set off mass defections from Communist parties in Europe and the U.S. and helped inspire anti-Communist tracts such as George Orwell’s “1984” and Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon.”

But the wider slaughter of Soviet citizens had largely gone undocumented until Mr. Conquest’s narrative. Citing sources made public during the thaw under Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev as well as émigré accounts, the Soviet census and snippets of information in the Soviet press, Mr. Conquest portrayed the trials as a mere sideshow to the systematic murder carried out by the Kremlin, which routinely ordered regional quotas for thousands of arbitrary arrests and shootings at burial pits and execution cellars. The latest data show that during a 16-month stretch in 1937 and 1938, more than 800,000 people were shot by the Soviet secret police.

These executions came on top of millions of earlier deaths amid the forced famines and collectivization of Soviet agriculture, which Mr. Conquest detailed in a later book, “The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine.” Mr. Conquest wrote that Stalin summarily executed millions of people by cutting off food to entire regions, particularly Ukraine.

While the opening of Soviet-era archives sparked some attacks on Mr. Conquest, his overall narrative of the purges was confirmed. “The Great Terror” was serialized in Russian newspapers and the revelation of mass graves, such as 20,000 in the Moscow suburb of Butovo, confirmed a wholesale execution system. Since then the debate among historians has been mostly settled over the immensity of the human toll exacted under Stalin’s rule.

Though Mr. Conquest’s body count was on the high end of estimates, he remained unwavering at the publication of “The Great Terror: A Reassessment,” a 1990 revision of his masterwork. When Mr. Conquest was asked for a new title for the updated book, his friend, the writer Kingsley Amis, proposed, “I Told You So, You F—ing Fools.”

Still more.

Meir Ettinger, Grandson of Meir Kahane, is Held in Israel

Israel's religious extremists are extreme, and a serious problem.

At the New York Times, "Israeli Court Orders Meir Kahane’s Grandson Held in Crackdown on Jewish Extremists":

JERUSALEM — He has the pedigree: Meir Ettinger is the grandson and namesake of Meir Kahane, the slain American-Israeli rabbi considered the father of far-right Jewish militancy.

He has the record: For years, Mr. Ettinger has joined the radical group of Israeli settlers known as the hilltop youth in clashes with Palestinians and Israeli forces, leading to a ban on his entering Jerusalem or the occupied West Bank.

He also has the ideology: In a series of Bible-quoting blog posts that amount to a manifesto, Mr. Ettinger calls for the “dispossession of gentiles” who inhabit the Holy Land and the replacement of the modern Israeli state with a new “kingdom of Israel” ruled by the laws of the Torah.

“The key is not to seek to delay the explosion,” he wrote on July 22, “but to try to bring it on as soon as possible and on our own initiative.”

Amid politicians’ promises to crack down on Jewish terrorism suspects after the fatal firebombing of a Palestinian home on Friday, Mr. Ettinger on Tuesday became the name and face of what critics call a scourge on Israeli society. An Israeli court ordered him held for five days; the police said he was accused of conspiracy, membership in an illegal organization and “other things,” including “nationalist” crimes.

Shlomo Fischer, a sociologist at Hebrew University, said Mr. Ettinger was representative of a band of “violent activists” who “conceive of themselves as having a sort of charismatic, prophetic authority.” He likened it to the Jewish underground that plotted to blow up the Dome of the Rock in the 1980s.

“He doesn’t accept the validity of Israeli law, he doesn’t accept the validity of civic morality — all the restraining factors are weakened or gone,” Professor Fischer, who is also a fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, said in an interview. “When some religious, political ideal is violated, they believe that if they act as a spring to correct it or respond to it, then they have religious validity, they are duty-bound to act. Whatever it takes to correct the situation.”

It was unclear whether Mr. Ettinger was suspected of any connection to the masked men who witnesses said set fire to two homes in the West Bank village of Duma early Friday, killing 18-month-old Ali Saad Dawabsheh and leaving his parents and 4-year-old brother critically injured. That attack has been condemned worldwide and across the political spectrum in Israel, where the security cabinet on Sunday directed law enforcement agents to “take all necessary steps and to use all means at their disposal” to apprehend the arsonists and “prevent similar attacks.”

The cabinet specifically endorsed administrative detention — holding suspects for months without formal charges — a tactic used widely against Palestinians but rarely against Jews...

More.

The obvious comparison is to how Muslim society's round up their religious extremists who commit terrorist atrocities, or not.

Freewater Diving Champion Natalia Molchanova Presumed Dead

Oh, this is horrible.

At the Mirror UK, "Natalia Molchanova: Freewater diving champion missing presumed dead following practice session in Ibiza."

And at the Heavy, "Natalia Molchanova Missing: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know."

Dennis Prager on the Nuclear Agreement Between the United States and Iran

He's the best.

Watch, via Prager University, "The Iran Nuclear Deal."

Video Shows the Beginning of Saudi-Led Coalition's Ground War in Yemen

It's from Russia Today, via Foreign Policy.

Watch: "Yemen: Hundreds of Saudi tanks roll out of Aden to bolster Hadi loyalists."

University of New Hampshire's Idiotic Bias Free Language Guide

From Ezra Levant, at Rebel Media.

And see College Insurrection, "U. New Hampshire Language Guide Says the Word ‘American’ is Problematic," and "University of New Hampshire Drops Language Bias Guide."

New Emily Ratajkowski Photo Shoot by Mario Testino

At London's Daily Mail, "‘I was having a lot of fun as a sexual person’: Emily Ratajkowski displays her ample assets in racy GQ shoot as she talks men, nudity and THAT Blurred Lines video."

And at GQ UK, "Instagram's It-girl Emily Ratajkowski on the celebrity iCloud hack and Blurred Lines' similarities to Marvin Gaye."

Plus, watch the video, "Instagram's It-girl Emily Ratajkowski Shot by Mario Testino."

Vans Skateboarding Final Highlights at Huntington Beach U.S. Open of Surfing

This is way cool, although I don't know how these cats can skate without any safety equipment, man.

Outrage as City of Huntington Park Appoints Two Illegal Aliens to Civic Commissions (VIDEO)

The approving hard-copy headline at this Los Angeles Times report reads, "Huntington Park Charts Bold Path for Immigrants."

But actually, it's just one more example of how California has metastasized into one big sanctuary-state monstrosity.

At Twitchy, "Wait, wut? Illegal immigrants appointed to city council in Huntington Park, Calif."

And at CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "Tempers Flare When Huntington Park Appoints 2 Undocumented Immigrants to City Commissions."

Northern California Rocky Fire Continues to Grow, Threatens Homes

At the Sacramento Bee, "In blaze near Clear Lake, strategy calls for fighting fire with fire":

MIDDLETOWN - Using fire to fight fire, crews ignited controlled burns Monday to sear brush from the path of a ravenous blaze near Clearlake that has devoured more than 62,000 acres of woodlands and forced thousands of residents to flee.

The Rocky fire, spanning parts of Lake, Colusa and Yolo counties, is the largest and most challenging of 20 active wildfires in California. Many broke out amid a week of scorching temperatures and lightning storms that ignited more than 300 blazes in numerous counties.

On Monday, fire officials said the Rocky fire still threatened more than 5,000 houses. Its unpredictability has forced authorities to issue mandatory or advisory evacuation notices for more than 13,000 residents. Twenty-four houses and 26 outbuildings have been destroyed.

Residents of the Lake County community of Spring Valley were the latest to be evacuated, with officials knocking on doors late Sunday.

Pat and Barbara Jiron grabbed important documents, treasured belongings and their beloved Chihuahuas, Little Bear and Coko, and drove to Middletown High School, where the American Red Cross had opened a shelter.

On Monday, as Pat Jiron, 77, worked on a few crossword puzzles and Barbara Jiron, 67, held a book in her lap, they reflected on the adrenaline they felt in escaping the fire.

“We drove up to the top of a hill and could see flames shooting 20, 30, 40 feet high in several spots,” Pat Jiron said. “It was so black – like a thunderhead.”

Firefighting helicopters hovered overhead as he spoke a day later. He looked afar at a growing plume of gray smoke and said, “Oh, God, that doesn’t look good.”

The Rocky fire, which began Wednesday afternoon east of the Lake County town of Lower Lake, has forced the closure of a major intrastate connector, Highway 20 between Interstate 5 in Williams and Highway 53 in Lake County.

On Monday afternoon, several spot fires leaped Highway 20 near the Walker Ridge area of Colusa County as a vast deployment of firefighters and materiel responded. “We’re working feverishly to contain it to that area,” said Steve Swindle, a Ventura County fire official acting as a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

As Cal Fire officials said the blaze was only 12 percent contained Monday, spokesman Daniel Berlant said crews were creating dozens of backfires in the hopes of destroying fuel in the path of the blaze “so the punch of the fire is slowed down enough to allow our crews to get in there and for our air tankers to drop retardant and water.”

Keep reading at that top link.

Father of 9-Year-Old Bat Boy Kaiser Carlile Speaks to Media (VIDEO)

An unbelievably sad story, at the Wichita Eagle, "Chad Carlile spoke about his son Kaiser during a press conference on Monday."

Also, "Kaiser Carlile was the spark plug behind Liberal Bee Jays baseball."

And at Memeorandum, "NBC World Series suspends use of bat boys after death of Kaiser Carlile."

Plus, at KWCH 12 News Wichita, "Teammates remember bat boy killed in on-field accident: Players rallying around Carlile family."

At 26 Percent, Donald Trump Holds 2-to-1 Lead Over Jeb Bush in Latest Monmouth University Poll

Jeez, he's got a 2-to-1 margin over his closest rivals.

Some experts are conceding that Trump could win the nomination.

At Monmouth's page, "NATIONAL: TRUMP WIDENS LEAD: GOP voters prefer two split-field debates over a “Top Ten”":

West Long Branch, NJ – Donald Trump has widened his national lead in the latest Monmouth University Poll of Republican voters and now holds a more than 2-to-1 advantage over his nearest rivals, Jeb Bush and Scott Walker. The poll also found that few GOP voters like the idea of a “Top Ten” debate, with many preferring back-to-back debates with the field randomly split in half.

When Republicans and Republican-leaning voters are asked who they would support for the GOP nomination for president, Donald Trump leads the pack at 26%, with Jeb Bush (12%) and Scott Walker (11%) following behind. The remainder of the “top ten” includes Ted Cruz (6%), Mike Huckabee (6%), Ben Carson (5%), Chris Christie (4%), Rand Paul (4%), Marco Rubio (4%), and John Kasich (3%). Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry each earn 2% and Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, and Jim Gilmore each get 1% or less. Another 10% of GOP voters say they still are unsure who they will support for the party’s nomination.

Compared to the Monmouth University Poll released three weeks ago, Trump’s support has increased by 13 points. Walker’s support has increased by 4, while Bush and Cruz have decreased by 3 points. No other candidate’s support has changed by more than 2 percentage points, but the undecidedvote went down by 8 points...

More.

Also at Politico, "With debate looming, Trump has huge lead in new poll."

Deals on Girls and Boys Fashion

At Amazon, Shop Fashion - Girls' Clothing.

And Shop Fashion - Boys' Clothing.

Plus, I've finished Bruce Levine's, Fall of the House of Dixie, and as noted, I'm starting Robert O'Connell's, Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman.

And thanks again for shopping through my Amazon links.

Enjoy your summer reading!

Ronda Rousey's Fear of Fighting

Well, she sure didn't seem so afraid on Saturday night.

See the Independent UK, "Ronda Rousey used jibe about her father's suicide to defeat Bethe Correia."

And here's a knockout GIF, "FOR RODDY PIPER. ROWDY RONDA KO IN 34 SECONDS! #UFC190."

And watch, at Sports Illustrated:

Joe Biden Said to Be Taking New Look at Presidential Run

There's a lot of buzz on a potential Joe Biden bid for the Democrat nomination.

But we'll see. We'll see.

At Politico, "Hillary Clinton backers skeptical of Joe Biden run."

And at WaPo, "Sorry, folks: Joe Biden is not running for president."

Still more at the Atlantic, "The 2016 U.S. Presidential Race: A Cheat Sheet."

L.A. Supervisors Call to Ban Raves After Two Women OD at HARD Music Summer Festival in Pomona (VIDEO)

The HARD website is here.

And at KTLA News 5 Los Angeles, "Festival in Pomona Spark Debate Over Drug Use at Raves."

Also, at the Los Angeles Times, "Suspected overdose deaths at rave spark call for ban":

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors should consider a temporary ban on raves on county property after the suspected overdose deaths of two young women who collapsed at the Hard Summer music festival at the Los Angeles County fairgrounds, Supervisor Hilda Solis said Monday.

Solis said she will ask the board Tuesday to explore the prohibition until a full investigation into the raves can be done.

While there have been fewer raves in Los Angeles since a series of drug-related problems at events at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the events continue in arenas outside the city where they still draw big crowds.

Both women -- one 18, the other 19 -- were found unresponsive Saturday at the Fairplex in Pomona, which is managed by the nonprofit Los Angeles County Fair Assn. on land mostly owned by Los Angeles County government.

Los Angeles County Supervisors Michael D. Antonovich and Solis said Sunday that they will ask for a full probe to see if the event was properly managed to ensure the safety of patrons.

"I am very concerned about these details and will request a full investigation,” Solis, whose Eastside district includes Pomona, said through a spokeswoman.

The annual two-day Hard Summer musical festival has grown in recent years. Last year, attendance was 40,000 people per day; this year’s event expanded to 65,000 a day. It is considered the biggest music festival of its kind in Los Angeles County. Hard has another event at the Fairplex on Sept. 10.


Last year, 19-year-old Emily Tran of Anaheim was rushed to a South El Monte hospital from the Hard Summer music festival held at Whittier Narrows Recreation Area, a Los Angeles County-managed park. Tran died from acute intoxication of Ecstasy, according to coroner’s officials.

There has been much debate about whether public agencies should rent out space for raves, given the drug problems.

When raves were held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Sports Arena, drug overdoses spiked so much that local emergency rooms were overwhelmed with severely ill attendees, and emergency room doctors urged that such concerts end there. Los Angeles police warned that raves invite widespread Ecstasy use.

A Los Angeles Times investigation in 2013 found that at least 14 people who attended raves run by two major Los Angeles-based rave organizers, Insomniac Inc. and Go Ventures Inc., died from overdoses or in drug-related incidents since 2006.

Since then, five more have died in drug-related incidents, including a UC Irvine graduate, Nicholas Austin Tom, 24, of San Francisco, who collapsed at Insomniac’s Electric Daisy Carnival at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in June.

A sixth person, John Hoang Dinh Vo, 22, a UC Irvine biology senior, died in March after collapsing at Insomniac’s Beyond Wonderland rave at the San Manuel Amphitheater, a venue owned by the San Bernardino County government. The coroner has not yet released a cause of death for him.

Beverly Hills-based Live Nation Entertainment, one of the world’s largest concert and ticketing conglomerates, purchased Los Angeles-based Hard Events in 2012. It did not respond to inquiries about the deaths Sunday.

Fairplex officials said they had prepared for the rave but did not provide specifics....

Both women were stricken Saturday afternoon just minutes apart, just before 5 p.m., county fire inspector David Dantic said.

The 18-year-old was rushed to San Dimas Community Hospital and pronounced dead at 6:04 p.m., and the 19-year-old was sent to Pomona Valley Medical Center and declared dead at 8:40 p.m. Lt. Fred Corral, a coroner’s official, called the deaths “apparent drug overdoses” and said autopsies will be conducted in the next few days.

Officials were still working to notify the families of the women. Their names were not released Sunday.

During the first day of the rave, 32 people were arrested, the majority on suspicion of being drunk and disorderly, said Pomona Police Lt. Hector Rodriguez. On Sunday, by 6 p.m., an additional 13 had been arrested, he said.

The deaths stunned some ravegoers, though many said drugs are fairly common at the event.

Ecstasy, an illegal hallucinogen, enhances the effect of the beat-heavy music and pulsing lights of raves, and is tied to rave culture. The drug is commonly seen as harmless, but doctors say it is dangerous and can cause body temperatures to soar to 108 degrees, causing organ failure, coma and death.

“I am surprised. It is a little shocking when anyone dies. ... But people do drugs out here,” said Jackie Diaz, 19, of Irvine.

Well, people are going to die. That's the culture we have now. Permissiveness and licentiousness, and easy access to drugs. People will die, more people, and younger people.

Patrick Moore: Why I Left Greenpeace

Outstanding!

From Prager University:

States Should Shun the EPA’s New Power Mandate

From Hal Quinn and Peter Glaser, at WSJ:

On Monday President Obama is announcing the final version of his Clean Power Plan, the carbon-emission rules for power plants to secure his climate-change legacy. The plan is designed to hobble electricity generators much as the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2012 rule to reduce mercury and other emissions has harmed the coal industry.

Fortunately for consumers, on June 29 the Supreme Court slapped down the agency’s 2012 rule. In Michigan v. EPA, the court said the agency failed its legal obligation to compare the cost of its mercury standards with the benefits.

Reckless disregard for costs has also guided the agency’s Clean Power Plan. The White House promises Monday’s rule will offer more flexibility to meet emissions targets than an earlier draft, but the targets may be even more difficult to meet. That will force rate payers into steeper cost increases, and concessions the EPA makes to some states and industries will come at the expense of others.

If the EPA succeeds, Americans will be paying for decades. NERA Economic Consulting estimates that the Clean Power Plan will cost $366 billion and bring double-digit electricity-rate increases to 43 states. Regulators including the North American Electric Reliability Corporation warn that the plan could weaken the reliability of the national electric grid by forcing many power plants to close well before new ones can be built. Yet even the administration admits that the EPA plan will have only a trivial impact on the climate.

The Clean Power Plan gives each state an emissions budget and an ultimatum: Give us a plan to cut your carbon emissions using our assumptions about energy-efficiency improvements, green-energy construction, etc.—or we will impose a federal plan on your state. Never mind that most states have objected to the EPA plan.

Governors thus face a dilemma: Accept the EPA’s invitation by developing a state plan and open their states to lawsuits for any perceived breach, or decline to cooperate and take their chances with a federal plan...

Still more.

Baltimore Reports 45 Homicides for July, Deadliest Month of 2015, and August Kicks Off with More Violence (VIDEO)

And here I thought #BlackLivesMatter?

At CBS News Baltimore:

Mary Nichols, Chair of State Air Resources Board, Pushes to Eliminate Gasoline-Powered Cars in California

Another Marxist-collectivist left-wing nutjob working to destroy life as we know it in California.

I don't know how anyone can live in this state anymore. I might have to retire early and get the hell out of here, sheesh.

At Bloomberg, "California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It":

Sergio Marchionne had a funny thing to say about the $32,500 battery-powered Fiat 500e that his company markets in California as “eco-chic.” “I hope you don’t buy it,” he told his audience at a think tank in Washington in May 2014. He said he loses $14,000 on every 500e he sells and only produces the cars because state rules re­quire it. Marchionne, who took over the bailed-out Chrysler in 2009 to form Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, warned that if all he could sell were electric vehicles, he would be right back looking for another govern­ment rescue.

So who’s forcing Marchionne and all the other major automakers to sell mostly money-losing electric vehicles? More than any other person, it’s Mary Nichols. She’s run the California Air Resources Board since 2007, championing the state’s zero-emission-vehicle quotas and backing Pres­ident Barack Obama’s national mandate to double average fuel economy to 55 miles per gallon by 2025. She was chairman of the state air regulator once before, a generation ago, and cleaning up the famously smoggy Los Angeles skies is just one accomplish­ment in a four-decade career.

Nichols really does intend to force au­tomakers to eventually sell nothing but electrics. In an interview in June at her agency’s heavy-duty-truck laboratory in downtown Los Angeles, it becomes clear that Nichols, at age 70, is pushing regula­tions today that could by midcentury all but banish the internal combustion engine from California’s famous highways. “If we’re going to get our transportation system off petroleum,” she says, “we’ve got to get people used to a zero-emissions world, not just a little-bit-better version of the world they have now.”

In that speech in Washington, Mar­chionne was talking up the little-bit-better option. He touted the improved efficiency to be wrung from traditional engines and gasoline-electric hybrids. But Nichols isn’t scared of auto executives and has never ac­cepted their vision of what’s possible. (Gen­eral Motors said catalytic converters, an early advance in tailpipe pollution control that Nichols promoted in the 1970s, could kill the company. They’re commonplace today, and GM’s not dead yet.)

Even if most people outside California have never heard of Mary Nichols, she’s the world’s most influential automotive regu­lator, says Levi Tillemann, author of The Great Race, a book on the future of automo­bile technology. “Under her leadership, the Air Resources Board has been the driving force for electrification,” Tillemann says.

Nichols, who drives a tiny electric Honda Fit, acts as if she’s an unstoppable force. California’s goals for the adoption of elec­tric vehicle technology are the most strin­gent in the nation, but Nichols thinks they need to be even tougher. Regulations on the books in California, set in 2012, require that 2.7 percent of new cars sold in the state this year be, in the regulatory jargon, ZEVs. These are defined as battery-only or fuel-cell cars, and plug-in hybrids. The quota rises every year starting in 2018 and reaches 22 percent in 2025. Nichols wants 100 percent of the new vehicles sold to be zero- or almost-zero-emissions by 2030, in part through greater use of low-carbon fuels that she’s also promoting.

The 2030 target is what’s needed to meet Governor Jerry Brown’s goal, set in an ex­ecutive order, of an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the century, Nichols says. The conven­tional internal combustion engine needs to be off the road by 2050 and, since cars last many years, on its way out of new-car showrooms around 2030...

Still more.

Most Californians Link Climate Change, Drought; Split is Partisan

Leftists are drunk with climate change hysteria.

It's a psychotic break with reality.

At the San Francisco Chronicle:

SACRAMENTO — Nearly two-thirds of Californians say global warming is contributing to the state’s drought, but there’s a distinct partisan divide, according to a survey released Wednesday.

Seventy-eight percent of Democrats said global warming has contributed to the four-year drought, while 62 percent of Republicans said it has not, according to the poll by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.

Overall, 64 percent of respondents see a link between a changing world climate and a dried-up California, the survey said.

The blue-red divide doesn’t apply just to the drought, the poll found. Asked when the effects of global warming will become apparent, nearly a third of Republicans said never. Just 3 percent of Democrats and 7 percent of independents agreed.

“There has been a very strong partisan divide among several of the last surveys (on global warming), and that continues this year,” said Mark Baldassare, president of PPIC. “That is driven by the national discussion around climate change.”

The divide was also apparent among Californians who say it’s very important for the state to pass regulations and invest in efforts to combat the effects of global warming, such as flooding and wildfires. Statewide, 61 percent of those surveyed said it was very important, but only a minority of Republicans thought so. Among Democrats, the total was 77 percent.

When it comes to drought-fighting measures that hit closer to home, the survey found strong support: More than four-fifths of respondents said Gov. Jerry Brown’s order for a 25 percent cut in statewide water usage was just right or not tough enough.

On the other hand, people are a bit fuzzy on the details of what they’re supposed to do. The state’s order requires communities to cut their 2013 water usage by anywhere from 4 to 36 percent, but nearly two-thirds of respondents told pollsters they didn’t know how much their area was being asked to save.

“That struck me as a big number,” Baldassare said. “If you are asking people to be part of the solution, they need to know what you are asking of them. Many Californians don’t know.”

Manager Mike Scioscia Says Angels Can Turn Things Around After Losing 9 of Last 10 Games

They better turn things around.

It's looking like one of the worst post-All Star Game meltdowns in history.

At the O.C. Register, "Scioscia believes Angels can 'turn the page' on current streak."

And watch, from MLB, "8/2/15: Andre Ethier leads Dodgers to sweep Angels in walk-off win."

Green Marxist Nutjobs Push Radical California Gas Restriction Act of 2015 (VIDEO)

This is the logical result of politics in an extreme left-wing one-party state.

You won't be able to drive your own car in California pretty soon. You'll be forced onto a completely inadequate "public transportation" system, and you know these green nutjobs won't stop at a "50 percent reduction" in fossil fuel usage.

The once-Golden State is going down.

See the Contra-Costa Bee, "SB 350 — battle rages over proposed 50-percent fuel cuts in California":

Take notice if you drive to and from work each day in California. SB 350, known as the California Gas Restriction Act of 2015, (de León) requires a 50% reduction in petroleum, 50% increase in renewables for electricity generation, and a 50% increase in the energy efficiency of buildings by 2030. SB 350 will also grant the Air Resources Board significant authority to adopt regulations that will result in a 50% reduction in petroleum use in cars and trucks by 2030.

In short, unelected regulators will be able to limit how far you can drive, ration gas, increase costs, and penalize drivers for using too much gas.

Opposed by energy producers and allied groups, a full court effort has been launched by the California Drivers Alliance that is circulating a petition to pressure lawmakers to oppose SB 350 passage.

Radical environmental groups like California Climate Leadership Stemming from the notorious passage of AB 32 during the forgettable Schwarzenneger governorship, SB 350 joins a raft of AB 32 enabling legislation, including SB 375 (emissions reductions), climate adaption (SB 246, 379), plus overarching agricultural restrictions and transit fiats.

In its defense, SB 350 proponents say that SB 350 requires the California Air Resources Board, to be cost effective and technologically feasible (page 4, line 19; its actions be based on validated scientific and engineering data (page 5, line 12); and explicitly requires an economic analysis that takes into account impacts on fuel manufacturers, consumer acceptance, the state’s competitive position with other neighboring states, and the costs to consumers (page 5, lines 30-34)

The campaign on both sides has become nasty and misleading. For instance, an image of Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla appears on a California Drivers Alliance ad on Drudge touting its petition opposing SB 350. This does not mean Bonilla is an opponent of SB 350. Oh hell no. For Bonilla has authored and voted for numerous environmental and energy laws that dovetail with AB 32. Rather, the ad hopes to pound Bonilla with petition from signers within her district to bring pressure on her to — hope-against-hope — oppose SB 350 legislation when it reaches the Assembly floor.

Meanwhile, the Greenbelt Alliance is also asking its supporters to put pressure on Bonilla and other legislators to vote for SB 350.

In one of his first votes as State Senator, Glazer voted for SB 350. Glazer recently defeated Bonilla in a special election for the vacant 7th California Senate seat vacated by now Congressman Mark DeSaulnier.

According to proponents propaganda concerning “renewable targets,” it took nearly a decade for California so-called green fuel sales to grow from 12- to 25 percent of sales. So it is certain that Californians will be reliant on fossil fuels for decades to come, despite the specious claims and data manipulation of climate alarmists is used by politicians and an increasingly unfettered state to bypass voter preferences in favor of increasing central control over the lives of the polity.

In short, a mandated 50% reduction in petroleum will have a significant impact on transportation in California, but also on future jobs and valuable tax revenue. An analysis of the petroleum industry’s economic contributions to California shows SB 350 would devastate the California energy economy in that supports...

Still more.

New York's Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women Offers Course on the Fundamentals of Organizing and Protest

And you can bet these aren't tea party rallies for which they're prepping.

At the New Yorker, "Protest U."

This is a "preparatory academy" for budding Marxists, sadly.

Here's the website.

Suspect Tremaine Wilbourn Hunted Over Shooting of Memphis Police Officer Sean Bolton

Black suspect Tremaine Wilbourn. He's a black mofo.

At the Other McCain. "Memphis Manhunt for Cop Killer."

Also at CNN, "Police search for suspect in officer's shooting death," and "Officer killed during traffic stop."

ADDED: From the Mad Jewess Woman, "Black Male On Twitter: @Bonoboburner Wants to Murder Cops & Make Cops Lives as “Dangerous As Possible”."

Topsy-Turvy GOP Race Faces Busiest Week Yet

It's going to be a good week. Things are going to shake out.

At WSJ, "Republicans buffeted by surge of Donald Trump and pool of wealthy donors sometimes at odds with party brass":

DANA POINT, Calif. — The Republican Party enters its most competitive presidential contest in a generation buffeted by forces largely beyond the control of party leaders, from the unexpected surge of Donald Trump to the small pool of wealthy donors gathered here who are occasionally at odds with GOP brass.

The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found Mr. Trump ahead of the field, as the top pick of 19% of GOP primary voters, after generating weeks of news coverage for his incendiary remarks about Mexican immigrants, his rivals for the nomination and Arizona Sen. John McCain, the party’s 2008 nominee.

Mr. Trump’s unanticipated ascent coincided with the arrival of five other Republican presidential candidates at a luxury resort here over the weekend to audition for hundreds of wealthy donors convened by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch. It’s a gathering that exposes both the promise and the limits of a new campaign financing system for the GOP. More money is flowing into the race, but the party and the candidates have less control over how those dollars are spent. The contenders also risk appearing beholden to deep-pocketed backers.

“I wish good luck to all the Republican candidates that traveled to California to beg for money etc. from the Koch Brothers,” said Mr. Trump, who wasn’t invited to the Koch meeting, in a Sunday tweet. “Puppets?”

The biannual Koch conference set the stage for the busiest week yet in the nominating contest, with a candidate forum Monday in New Hampshire and the first candidates’ debate on Thursday in Cleveland.

The Koch conference is an unrivaled convergence of roughly 450 conservatives who have pledged at least $100,000 a year to various political and ideological endeavors. Many are also financing individual presidential candidates and the so-called super PACs that support them.

Outside donors are taking on roles once solely performed by candidates and the party, from television ads to voter outreach. The Koch network plans to spend about $900 million in the run-up to the 2016 election, with about a third of that total devoted to influencing elections outcomes. Yet, these donors don’t always see eye-to-eye with GOP leaders in Washington and could prove nettlesome for a Republican president.

The Koch network, for example, sparred with the Republican National Committee over who controls the vast repository of voter data that GOP candidates at every level of the ballot will need to turn out supporters next fall. The two sides recently reached a deal to share information, but the pact gives an entity backed by the Kochs a central role overseeing the party’s data-collection efforts for the foreseeable future. Candidates also rely increasingly on Koch-financed groups to organize their grassroots events.

This weekend, Charles Koch, the chief executive of Koch Industries who co-founded the network with his brother David, took aim at tax breaks and other government subsidies for private-sector corporations. He singled out the country’s biggest banks for accepting bailout money and cheap loans from the Federal Reserve in exchange for giving the government more influence over their business decisions. That stance is sure to ruffle business interests that represent the GOP’s traditional outside allies.

“It is not our goal to supplant the Republican Party, and, in fact, we need the party to be strong,” said Marc Short, president of Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the central conduit for collecting money that is then steered to other groups backed by the Kochs and their donor allies. But he also noted, “Our mission is about trying to advance a free society, not about trying to advance a party.”

Keep reading.

'Explosive' Rocky Fire in Northern California

At the San Francisco Chronicle, "Rocky Fire doubles and shifts, but remains a threat to more homes."

Also at the Los Angeles Times, "Northern California fire explodes; 24 homes lost, thousands threatened."

And watch, at ABC News, "Devastating Wildfires Destroy Homes in Northern California."

The Left Wants to Hide the Truth About #BlackLivesMatter's Marxist Revolutionary Agenda

From Lee Stranahan, at Big Government, "WHAT O’REILLY’S BLACK LIVES MATTER SEGMENT LEFT OUT."

Lee shows that #BlackLivesMatter takes its "List of Demands" straight from the revolutionary "The Ten-Point Program" of the Black Panther Party in 1966.



PREVIOUSLY: "Another Reminder That the #BlackLivesMatter Movement is Actually a Revolutionary Communist Program."

New WSJ/NBC Poll: Donald Trump Leads GOP Presidential Field

Here's the report, at the Wall Street Journal, "Donald Trump Leads Republican Presidential Pack, WSJ/NBC Poll Finds":

Donald Trump has jumped to the front of Republicans’ 2016 presidential candidate field nationally, holding that position even after a spate of incendiary comments by the real-estate magnate about Mexican migrants, other GOP candidates and party leaders, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has found.

The poll, the latest of several national surveys to register the Trump surge, found that 19% of Republican primary voters picked Mr. Trump as their first choice for president, followed by 15% for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and 14% for Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor who led the field in the last Journal/NBC survey, in June.

The new poll, whose full results will be released Monday, was based on a survey conducted July 26-30, after Mr. Trump made widely publicized controversial statements, such as when he disparaged former GOP presidential nominee John McCain.
The differences among the top-tier candidates are small enough that they are within the poll’s margin of sampling error. Still, the double-digit jump among Republicans picking Mr. Trump as their first choice—up from 1% in the June poll—was significant.

What’s more, Republicans who don’t see Mr. Trump as their first choice seem to be warming to him. The share of GOP voters who pick him as second choice rose to 11% in the new survey from 3% in June.

The poll could be a factor in determining which candidates appear in this Thursday’s prime-time candidate debate, the first of the GOP primary campaign. The event is being hosted by Fox News, which is limiting the 9 p.m. debate to 10 of the 17 declared GOP candidates, choosing those who rank highest in the five most recent national polls released by Tuesday.

Candidates who don’t make the cut will be relegated to a separate forum to be held before the main event on Thursday.

The new survey also underscores the unsettled nature of the GOP primary race as Republican voters survey a large field, including many lesser-known candidates. Mr. Trump, who announced his presidential campaign in mid-June, has the advantage of high name recognition, celebrity appeal and a populist message that taps into a powerful anti-Washington vein in the electorate.

The poll found that almost the entire GOP field seemed to suffer at least a temporary setback as a result of Mr. Trump’s abrupt rise. Most major candidates lost ground compared with last month’s poll. One exception was Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who was picked as a first choice by 9%, up from 4% last month. Mr. Cruz, like Mr. Trump, has been campaigning as an outsider with a blunt antiestablishment message.

Mr. Trump had a particularly strong showing among GOP poll respondents who said it is more important for their party’s nominee to be a strong leader than it is to share their views on issues. Mr. Trump does somewhat better among GOP women than do other candidates: 20% of female GOP primary voters name him as their first choice, followed by 16% who pick Mr. Bush.

In the race for a spot on this week’s main debate stage, the most uncertainty surrounds the fate of three candidates who are on the cusp of making the top-10 event—New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. In the new Journal/NBC poll, all three were picked as first choice by 3% of GOP voters...

More.

Plus, here's NBC's write-up, at Memeorandum, "Donald Trump Surges in New NBC News/WSJ Poll."

Why Mark Levin Says the GOP Needs a Facelift

From Diana Stancy, at the Daily Signal.

Click through for Mark Levin's Facebook rant against the GOP congressional leadership.

And buy Levin's book, Plunder and Deceit.

Ronda Rousey Makes Weight for #UFC190 Tonight!

Here's the background, at LAT, "Bethe Correia vows to take fight to Ronda Rousey in UFC title match."

Here's Rousey at the weigh-in, on Instagram, "Makin' weight #UFC190," and "Exactly on weight #likeapro - now for the fun part!"

Also at London's Daily Mail, "Ronda Rousey ready to defy her mum and humiliate Bethe Correia at UFC 190":Ronda Rousey claims Bethe":

Correia crossed the line when said she hoped the champion 'didn’t commit suicide' after losing.

The UFC women’s bantamweight champion plans to punish the unbeaten Brazilian inside the Octagon...

Another Illegal Alien Nightmare After Suspect Allegedly Murders Good Samaritan Couple in Montana

This is horrible!

At the Billings Gazette, "FBI: Suspect in Montana shooting says victim laughed at him."

And at Twitchy, "ICE explains why Jesus Deniz-Mendoza wasn’t deported before allegedly shooting Montana family."

And here's patriot Katie Pavlich debating the idiot loser Leslie Marshall on Fox:

Lenexa Police Department Explains Viral Arrest Video

At KSHB-TV News 41 Kansas City, via Memeorandum, "Video of Lenexa PD arrest goes viral, sparks concerns — LENEXA, Kan. - A video that shows two Lenexa police officers making an arrest has gone viral and sparked concerns on social media."

And more here, "Lenexa Police Department addresses the Viral arrest video."

Rutgers University's Deepa Kumar (@ProfessorKumar) Sparks Outrage, Calls U.S. 'Worse Than ISIS'

This one's picking up some RTs.

.@RSMcCain Rutgers University @ProfessorKumar says U.S. is MORE 'brutal' than #ISIS. http://t.co/DEeunyKFIE cc. @Instapundit

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) August 1, 2015

Victoria's Secret Star Elsa Hosk Too Skinny?

She's definitely petite. But you be the judge, on Instagram.

And at London's Daily Mail, "EXCLUSIVE - 'The world is embracing larger models!' Victoria's Secret stars Elsa Hosk and Jac Jagaciak on why they can't wait for the first plus-size Angel."

Also, "Victoria's Secret Angel Elsa Hosk shows off her perfect pins in daringly high-cut Daisy Dukes as she hits the shops."

More, at Egotastic!, "Blonde Beauty Elsa Hosk Barely Covered Goodness in GQ Mexico."

Not bad, although I don't mind those plus-sized models at all.

The Culture War Returns

Well, it's not just now returning, although no doubt he's onto something.

From Jacob Heilbrunn, at the National Interest":

1968 IS BACK. A growing chorus of voices on the right is arguing that the riots in Baltimore and Ferguson are ushering in a new round of the culture wars. On the website Breitbart, for example, Robert W. Patterson, a former George W. Bush administration official, wrote, “The Grand Old Party must decide: Go libertarian, and sympathize with the protesters and rioters? Or does it want to be conservative, and side with the police, the rule of law, and the forces of order? The lessons of the 1960s suggest the latter is the path to victory.” William Kristol, editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard, observed during the recent riots in Ferguson, “It does feel like a Nixon ’68 moment. Who will speak for the Silent Majority?”

It was a revealing question. In 1968, Richard Nixon tapped into white working-class antipathy toward student and black radicalism to defeat Hubert Humphrey. The Southern Strategy was born. Two years earlier, Ronald Reagan had won election as governor of California by denouncing the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley and promising to “throw the bums off welfare.” Reagan would go on to midwife what became a potent alliance between the emerging neoconservative movement and traditional conservatives. The neocons began to share the traditionalists’ belief that, as Burke put it, “Men of intemperate mind can never be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

The maiden neocons had themselves emerged from the intensely partisan milieu of the 1930s to become respected public intellectuals. They viewed the scaturient passions of the New Left that had suddenly emerged in the 1960s as a clear and present danger—what the literary critic Lionel Trilling deemed an “adversary culture.”

Irving Kristol, Gertrude Himmelfarb and a number of other neoconservatives were deeply influenced by Trilling’s criticism of liberalism from inside the movement. They were also influenced—Kristol and Himmelfarb in particular—by the political philosopher Leo Strauss, who had fled Nazi Germany. Strauss believed that the culprit for much of what had gone wrong in Western civilization could be traced back to Machiavelli, who had lowered man’s sights away from a transcendent good. The result was the rise of relativism, in which one view of how humans should behave is as good as another. Strauss, by contrast, promulgated a different message, one that resonated with the new generation of conservatives—a return, after centuries of neglect, to classical virtue.

Kristol assailed what he called a “new class” of managers, lawyers, bureaucrats and social workers who promoted new issues such as women’s rights, sexual liberation and minority rights. Himmelfarb’s numerous books lauded the idea of Victorian virtue, stressed self-help and charity, and argued that the public dole had profoundly corrosive moral effects, foremost among them creating a culture of dependency on government.

Though it has tended to be scanted in recent years, neoconservatives—“Liberals mugged by reality,” as Kristol once put it—were initially much less preoccupied with foreign than domestic issues. Domestic policy is where they made their bones. Kristol and Daniel Bell founded the Public Interest in 1965 (though Bell ended up resigning as coeditor in 1973). The National Interest didn’t appear until 1985, just as the Cold War was beginning to reach its terminal phase. Political scientist James Q. Wilson, a regular contributor to Commentary and the Public Interest, devised the “broken windows” theory, which holds that stopping petty crimes is a vital step toward preventing major ones from occurring. RIOTING IN the inner cities in 1968, the disintegration of New York City, the rise of black militants and the introduction of affirmative action hardened neocon attitudes. Nathan Glazer called affirmative action “affirmative discrimination.” In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued a report warning about the collapse of the black family. Two years later, he delivered a speech to the Americans for Democratic Action stating that “liberals must somehow overcome the curious condescension that takes the form of defending and explaining away everything, however outrageous, which Negroes, individually or collectively, might do.” Other neocons blamed a new antinomianism for America’s ills. The emphasis on individual needs and wants—feminism, multiculturalism and the like—meant that the idea of a common civic good was disappearing. In their view, it was being replaced by a society of disgruntled supplicants.

Neocon apprehensions about crime and the sexual revolution were also acutely reflected in literary form. In novels like Mr. Sammler’s Planet and The Dean’s December, Saul Bellow vividly evoked the racial tensions of the 1970s, prompting charges that he was himself a racist. The Dean’s December focuses on the murder of a white graduate student named Rick Lester by a black hoodlum and a female prostitute. The protagonist Alfred Corde, a dean at the University of Chicago, registers his sympathy with the underclass but suggests that the basic problem is insoluble:

We do not know how to approach this population. We haven’t even conceived that reaching it may be a problem. So there’s nothing but death before it. Maybe we’ve already made our decision. Those that can be advanced into the middle class, let them be advanced. The rest? Well, we do our best by them. We don’t have to do any more. They kill some of us. Mostly they kill themselves.

Sounds familiar.

But keep reading.

Exposed: America's Enemies Within

At iOWNTHEWORLD Report.

William Tecumseh Sherman: Fierce Patriot

Okay, I'm almost done with Bruce Levine's, The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South.

So I picked up a new book for my next read, by Robert O'Connell's, Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman.

Although I'm mostly keeping my Civil War reading focused on the South (and the question of slavery's foundations in the outbreak of war), in this case Sherman interests me particularly in "the march to the sea" that is synonymous with his legacy.

I hadn't heard of O'Connell before, but that's cool the Victor Davis Hanson's got a blurb in the opening pages.

How to Date Charlotte McKinney (VIDEO)

She's definitely getting a lot of exposure lately.

At Gentlemen's Quarterly:

Super Scooper

This is really cool, at CBS News Sacramento, "Super Scooper Helps U.S. Forest Service Get Handle on California Wildfires."

12-Year-Old Boy Asked Mailman for More 'Junk Mail' to Read, Gets Over 500 Book Donations

An awesome feel-good story.



Also, at ABC News, "Utah Boy Who Asked for 'Junk Mail' to Read Gets Over 500 Book Donations."

Deals on Back to School Supplies

Amazing how fast the summer's flying by. My youngest boy goes back to school in just over three weeks.

At Amazon, Shop - Back to School.

Also, ICYMI, Mark Levin's new book, Plunder and Deceit.

Confederate Symbols, Swastikas, and Student Sensibilities

Political correctness run amok, at the New York Times.

Check Out Mark Levin's New Book

It's Plunder and Deceit.

Levin is a hard-hitting analyst and rock-ribbed conservative. His books are always worth a look.

This one looks awesome. Skim around and read the sample matter at Amazon.

C-Span of the Streets

At the New York Times, FWIW, "Glare of Video Is Shifting Public’s View of Police."

This is a terrible report, mainly because it (deliberately) fails to put the police videos into context, even including the Mike Brown case, which was completely debunked by the federal grand jury.

Yes, more videos provide greater accountability, and they may help rein-in police misconduct. But the left doesn't want accountability, and the #BlackLivesMatter movement is essentially a revolutionary communist program to take down the "racist" "imperialist" police system altogether.

Woman Weeps as She's Incorrectly Told Her Child Died in Hot Car (VIDEO)

At ABC News 7 Los Angeles, "OWASSO, Okla. -- A police officer's body camera captured the dramatic moment a mother is confronted for leaving her child in a hot car -- and a bystander incorrectly tells her that the child has died."

Watch, at KJRH-TV News 2 Tulsa, "VIDEO: Talala woman reacts to news of child left in hot car."

David Ruhl, South Dakota Firefighter, Dies Battling Northern California Wildfire

The report doesn't explain what happened, although it's a devastating loss.

The man leaves a wife and child behind.

At LAT, "Firefighter dies battling Northern California wildfire."

The Unsettling, Anti-Science Certitude on Global Warming

A great piece, from John Steele Gordon, at the Wall Street Journal, "Climate-change ‘deniers’ are accused of heresy by true believers. That doesn’t sound like science to me."

Lifeguard Attacked Along Crowded Venice Pier in Confrontation That Was Caught on Video

Watch, at CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "Three people have been taken into custody in connection with an attack on a lifeguard at the Venice Pier, authorities said."

Blocked #PlannedParenthood Videos May Prove Babies Born Alive Before Organ Harvesting

Via Stacy Hyatt, on Twitter.