WELL, THEY DON’T WANT TO ADMIT THEIR ACTUAL AGENDA: Democrats refuse to say what America should do about border crisis.

JOE SESTAK ENTERS THE RACE: “I want to be that President who serves the American people the way they deserve to be served.”

It’s a cookbook!

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: The Four Brexiteers.

OPEN THREAD: Sunday evening coming down.

ADVICE: Tip Your Hotel Maid. I generally do, and my tips are usually pretty generous. My theory is that they work hard and make your room nicer, and are underappreciated. Once I even tipped the maid who was cleaning the surgical waiting room at the hospital where my mom was having surgery — she said “you don’t have to do that” and I replied “no, but I want to do that, and what you do is important.” The appreciation seemed to please her almost as much as the money.

I’m not entirely unselfish, though: I usually tip on the first night I’m there, to ensure better service for the whole stay. But the Insta-Wife and I decided a while back that we’d put money directly in people’s hands in preference to charitable donations, so that it would go where we wanted it instead of buying a leather chair for somebody’s fancy office in a nonprofit headquarters somewhere.

WELL, IT’S EXACTLY THE WORD I WOULD USE:  “‘Hero is not a word I would use,’ says UPS driver who ran into a burning building.”

BLUE ON BLUE: Media Knives Come Out: ABC Hits Joe Biden and Son’s Suspect Dealings in Ukraine and China.

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TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Sexual Victimization by Women Is More Common Than Previously Known.

Flashback: A rape epidemic — by women? New CDC report reveals troubling equality when it comes to sexual assault rates.

Related: When Rape Matters and When It Doesn’t: In the eyes of the media, all rapes are equal. But some rapes are more equal than others.

Also: The Understudied Female Predator.

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THIS IS BIG: Erdogan Dealt Stunning Blow as Istanbul Elects Rival Candidate: Opposition gets more votes than Erdogan ever did in Istanbul. “Losing Istanbul is much more than ceding control of Turkey’s largest city and commercial powerhouse. The mayor’s job was the springboard for Erdogan’s own political career, and if Imamoglu, 49, performs well in the position, then the president may find himself with a future challenger. . . . Defeat in Istanbul, home to about a fifth of Turkey’s 82 million people, also strips Erdogan’s party of a major source of patronage and handouts. By some estimates, the city absorbs a quarter of all public investment and accounts for a third of the country’s $748 billion economy. Istanbul erupted in celebration over the first opposition victory since Erdogan came to power 16 years ago. Major thoroughfares were packed with cars honking their horns, passengers hanging out of windows and waving Turkish flags through sunroofs.”

AND AGAIN: Biden References Another Former Segregationist While Campaigning.

“I tell you, I do miss Fritz being here,” he added after finishing his remarks, according to Vice News.

Hollings, who passed away earlier this year, served in the U.S. Senate from 1966 to 2006. Prior to joining Congress, he was governor of South Carolina from 1959 to 1963, an office he originally sought on the basis of his opposition to the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which struck down segregation in public schools. Hollings kept that stance for the early portion of his term, but eventually changed course and supported integration. It has been noted, though, that full desegregation of South Carolina’s public schools did not occur until after he left the governorship.

In the Senate, Hollings cut a moderate to liberal profile by championing a national hunger policy and working to reign in the deficit. During his tenure, Hollings’ views on race appeared to grow and develop ,as exhibited by his endorsement of Jesse Jackson in the 1988 presidential race.

The issue, however, was still complicated at the time. In 1993, Hollings stirred controversy by saying African diplomats only attended international conferences to “get a good square meal” rather than “eating each other.”

Earlier: Joe and the Segs.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: 70 arrested in climate change protest outside New York Times building.

BANNING THE “WRONG” VIEW: IT’S ALL THE RAGE! Is it possible that YouTube and Twitter “set the table” for banning or demonetizing any viewpoint but the “approved” one? It appears that banning statements of support for President Trump is forbidden now…on a bulletin board about knitting. Say those with newly-found power:

“We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy. Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy.”

On the one hand, how people could drag politics into a knitting forum is just plain weird. But other forums are picking up the pace as well. RPG.Net, a forum for video gamers has also signaled their virtue thus:

“We are banning support of Donald Trump or his administration on the RPGnet forums. This is because his public comments, policies, and the makeup of his administration are so wholly incompatible with our values that formal political neutrality is not tenable. We can be welcoming to (for example) persons of every ethnicity who want to talk about games, or we can allow support for open white supremacy. Not both.”

[Insert joke about living in parents’ basement here].

Now, to be honest, there’s a part of me that says “yeah, I get it, I came here to participate in a [whatever hobby] forum.” But of course, it’s rather revealing because these moderators are almost certain to see everything in black-and-white. If you do not express utter contempt for the Administration at all times and in all ways, then You Are Evil.

You know, someone should write a book about this.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Ohio’s Bowling Green State University Strips Name of Lillian Gish (1893-1993) from Campus Theater.

The “First Lady of American Cinema” Lillian Gish has had her name removed from a university theater and it’s not sitting well with many movie buffs. More than 50 film industry leaders ranging from Martin Scorsese to Helen Mirren to James Earl Jones are protesting the decision of Ohio’s Bowling Green State University to remove the name of actress Lillian Gish from a campus theater because she appeared in the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation.

The letter accuses the university of making “a scapegoat in a broader political debate.” Lillian Gish is considered a pioneer of film acting. Her career spanned 75 years, beginning in 1912 in silent film shorts. The Whales of August in 1987 was her last film. She was called the First Lady of American Cinema, and for more than 40 years, the theater at Bowling Green has honored Ohio-born actresses Dorothy and Lillian Gish with its name.

According to the IMDB, Gish appeared in 120 movies and TV shows during her lengthy career, which spanned the first eight decades of the movie industry. But if we’re going to banish all the bad people of the past because of hurt feelings, when does early “Progressive” Woodrow Wilson face the memory hole, given that he was an enthusiastic proponent of Birth of a Nation, including screening it in the White House and proclaiming the film “is like writing history with lightning.”

As Jonah Goldberg wrote in the Christian Science Monitor in 2008 to promote Liberal Fascism (Wilson stars in several early chapters, not surprisingly), “You want a more ‘progressive’ America? Careful what you wish for. Voters should remember what happened under Woodrow Wilson.”

Of course, all of the memory holing of the recent years helps to greatly reduce the odds of that happening. For that reason alone, perhaps it’s a good thing his name remains at Princeton.

ANTI-AGING: The mitophagy activator urolithin A is safe and induces a molecular signature of improved mitochondrial and cellular health in humans.

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Do You Want Your Daughter To Read Teen Vogue?

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Power Line takes a deep dive into “the mixed-up files of Rep. Ilhan Omar.” The above link takes you to all of their recent posts on Omar, but you can drill down into a couple of the highlights by following the links included in the excerpts below:

Omar’s 2014 and 2015 tax returns reflect her wayward way with the truth, her penchant for shortcuts, and her treatment of the marriage to Elmi as a sham (which I believe it to have been). They also raise obvious questions that the Star Tribune appears so far to have failed to ask.

* * * * * * * * *

In their Ilhan Omar story today, Patrick Coolican and Stephen Montemayor refer repeatedly to Power Line as conservative. Let it be noted, however, that their story tacitly reveals the Star Tribune to be a pillar of Minnesota’s leftist/progressive establishment. Coolican and Montemayor note in passing (italics added): “Campaign e-mails disclosed by the campaign finance board also show a concerted effort to quash the Elmi story. An August 2016 internal e-mail written by campaign spokesman Ben Goldfarb, a veteran DFL operative, suggested reaching out to political newsletter writer Blois Olson ‘and shut it down with him as we do with the Strib.’” 

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and that last paragraph makes perfect sense.

KNITTERS AND CROCHETERS GET WOKE, BECOME FUTURE CRAZY CAT LADIES: Popular Craft Platform Ravelry Bans All Trump Support: ‘Undeniably Support for White Supremacy.’

I’ve said this before and I’ll continue to repeat it: Leftism is a religion— the LGBTQ agenda and abortion are their sacraments. Anyone who does not demonstrate proper fealty to the progressive articles of faith must be silenced and marginalized.  Not even knitting is safe from the atheist Neo-Puritans. Heretics must be shamed, their craftcrimes sent down the memory hole.

Ban the crimethinking knitters!

AYN RAND’S RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE: A WARNING FOR THE REST OF US, A HOW-TO GUIDE FOR THE LEFT. “Deodorants were created to solve a fake problem and thrived thanks to the patriarchy,” claims Slate.com. (Link safe, goes to Twitchy.)

At one of their few remaining Internet redoubts, the Graham family continues to show the acumen for great journalism that led to their selling Newsweek for a buck, and the Washington Post for Jeff Bezos’ tip money.

CHANGE: U.S. Marine Corps Adopts SIG Sauer M18 Handgun.

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GRUTTER v. BOLLINGER DECIDED ON THE DAY IN 2003: In it, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, held it should defer to the judgment of colleges and universities on whether race discrimination in admissions is justified.

It was a decision that has turned out to have a bigger downside than the five justices anticipated.

NO, AND IT WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE: Is BMI an Accurate Way to Measure Body Fat?