Californians Can Now Buy Recreational Marijuana (VIDEO)

It was pretty much "recreational" before this anyway, but it least the change in the laws bring the "medical marijuana" fiction to an end.

At LAT, "A 'monumental moment' for fully legal marijuana in California":

Will Senn has been waiting his whole life for this. Californians can now go to the store and buy marijuana, and his shop is opening its doors at 7 a.m. on New Year's Day.

Senn's Urbn Leaf in San Diego was among the first to get a state-issued license to sell pot for medical and recreational uses. He hired 15 more workers to accommodate what he expects to be a crush of new customers to flood into his shop, which had previously specialized in cannabis for medicinal purposes.

"This is what a lot of activists in the industry have been working for since the 1990s when Dennis Peron opened his first marijuana shop for AIDS patients in San Francisco," said Senn, 32. "It's a monumental moment and we are ecstatic to be a part of it."

The KindPeoples Collective in Santa Cruz plans to give out T-shirts to the first 420 people who show up to buy weed Monday.

CEO Khalil Moutawakkil, 33, said the legalization of marijuana for recreational use is a major change that has been too long in coming. "This is essentially going to eliminate prohibition on the plant of the last 400 years and return the plant back to the people," he said.

Still, don't expect pot shops on every corner. In recent weeks, hundreds of businesses have applied for temporary licenses to engage in the marijuana business, but industry officials expect a slow rollout as most cities in California have not yet given their approval, a prerequisite to getting a state license. As of Friday, 49 retail licenses had been issued by the state for businesses to sell recreational pot.

Sales for recreational use are allowed in cities including Los Angeles, West Hollywood, San Francisco, San Diego, Oakland, Santa Cruz and San Jose, but many proposed pot shops in those cities will not have a state license by the start of the year.

The state has not yet issued a retail permit for a store in Los Angeles, which plans to issue local licenses in the coming weeks.
At least 300 other cities, including Riverside, Fresno, Bakersfield, Pasadena and Anaheim, don't allow pot sales for non-medical purposes, according to industry officials.

Voters paved the way for today in November 2016, with Proposition 64 earning 57% approval. The ballot measure made California one of eight states to approve the sale of cannabis for recreational use. Those 21 and older can purchase and possess up to an ounce of marijuana for recreational use and to grow up to six plants in their homes.

Even with greater access, there are still restrictions on when the drug can be used. State regulations prohibit smoking marijuana in many public places, including restaurants and theaters, where cigarettes are barred. And new laws make explicit you can't toke and drive.

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Congressional Republicans Face Tough Electoral Prospects for Midterms 2018

As much as I want to disagree with this analysis, I can't: The president's party normally loses seats in midterm election's, and this year we've got polarizing President Trump in the Oval Office. The GOP has a lot of favorable variables, the strong economy and partisan redistricting, for example, but the cultural environment and constant outrage and ideological hatred looks to be the key influence on voting. Trump's a totem for all that good or bad in politics, depending on your perspective.

Good thing we got tax reform. We need to finish up the MAGA agenda this year, especially on immigration,  because once the Dems take back one or both chambers of Congress in 2019, all bets are off.

At LAT, "As 2017 ends, Republicans struggle to counter a Democratic wave":

Two things equally true about the 2018 midterm outlook: Democrats start out ahead. Republicans still have lots of time to turn it around. https://t.co/HBv0iF6ZsU

— David Lauter (@DavidLauter) December 31, 2017

The clock is ticking on the Republican majority in Congress: The GOP has just over 10 months to avoid a rout in 2018.

Republicans could do it. They have time and several important factors on their side: a good economy, low crime rates, achievements of significance to the party's followers.

Nevertheless, as 2017 closes, almost all signs point toward big Democratic gains next year, largely driven by President Trump's widespread unpopularity. And some of the pugnacious instincts that helped the president win election a year ago may now be worsening his party's dilemma.

Midterm elections "are a referendum on the party in power," notes Sean Trende, political analyst for the Real Clear Politics website. During the Obama years, Trende correctly forecast that Democrats had underestimated the potential of a surge of conservative white Americans voting Republican. Now, he says, Republicans are making a mistake in assuming that turnout will once again favor them in an off-year election.

Trump has "terrible numbers," Democrats have a large advantage in polls, and "it all adds up to a really rough midterm" for the GOP, Trende says.

The trouble for Republicans comes despite some of the best economic conditions in years, which normally would boost the party in power. Unfortunately for Republican candidates, a majority of Americans continues to believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, despite the good economic news.

Much of that discontent appears to center on one person — the president.

Throughout the year, opposition to Trump has generated energy among Democrats. But something new has been added to the mix in recent months, said Joe Trippi, the veteran Democratic consultant who served as media strategist for Doug Jones' upset Senate election this month in Alabama.

"The sense of chaos, the constant fight, fight, fight and alarm bells going off all the time" has deeply troubled voters, including many who backed Trump last year, Trippi said. "There's this sense of being on edge," which Alabamians talked about frequently, Trippi said. "That's what they don't want anymore."

Alabama's election had unique aspects, notably the flaws of the Republican candidate, Roy Moore. But that same voter anxiety has come up repeatedly in focus groups around the country.

If a year of Trump has put voters in the mood for less confrontation, that poses a big challenge for Republicans.

"I don't know how you stop Donald Trump from putting people on edge," Trippi said. "That's what he does."

Indeed, even if conflict weren't so deeply ingrained in Trump's personality, political calculation might lead him to continue seeking out battles at every turn. Voters as a whole may not like it, but to Trump's most fervent supporters, his willingness to fight forms a major part of his draw. His former strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, threatens to add to the political tension by backing challengers to several Republican incumbents.

Trump's hard-core supporters remain loyal and probably always will. But for all the attention they get from the White House — and often from the news media — Trump's fervent backers make up only about one-fifth of the public and are outnumbered about 2 to 1 by fervent opponents.

Indeed, the gap between the share of Americans who say they "strongly disapprove" of Trump and those who "strongly approve" has grown significantly this year. In polls by SurveyMonkey, for example, the margin now stands at 26 percentage points, up from 16 points at the start of the year.

Those numbers form just one of several indicators of problems for Republicans. The most basic comes from the so-called generic ballot — a question polls have used for decades that asks which party's candidate a person plans to vote for in the next election. It has long proven among the most reliable forecasting tools in American politics.

For most of the fall, Democrats showed a healthy lead on that question — enough to suggest the midterms would be competitive. This month, the forecast took an abrupt jump in one nonpartisan survey after another — to 13 points in a poll from Marist College, 15 in Quinnipiac University's poll, 15 from a Monmouth University survey and 18 points, a previously unheard-of level, in a poll for CNN.

Exactly why the numbers for the GOP worsened is unknown, although the timing suggests the unpopularity of the Republican tax bill played a role. What is knowable is that even discounting the biggest numbers, the Democrats' lead on the generic ballot surpasses that of any party out of power in decades.

The average size of the Democratic advantage forecasts that if the election were held now, they would gain in the neighborhood of 40 seats in the House — considerably more than the 24 they would need for a majority.

For those who don't trust polls, actual election results point the same way. Some of the contests have gotten wide attention, including the Alabama Senate race and the Virginia election in November, in which Democrats won the governorship and all but wiped out a huge Republican majority in the lower house of the Legislature.

Other, less heralded contests have shown the same pattern of high Democratic turnout, depressed Republican voting and double-digit shifts in partisan outcomes, particularly in suburban areas where Trump fares worse than a typical Republican.

Ben Shapiro on Hollywood's Propaganda Program (VIDEO)

Ben Shapiro's got a new book, at Amazon, Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV.

As you know, I quit watching cable news, and I wasn't much for television sit-coms and talk show as it is. I like movies, but then, I can sort through the leftist clap-trap.

Sadly, most Americans don't really appreciate how powerfully they're being programmed toward leftist issues. And the ones that do, a lot of them Trump voters, are demonized as racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, or what have you.

The culture war is real.

At Prager University:

Hannah Ferguson by LOVE Magazine (VIDEO)

Nice.

Jennifer Delacruz's Friday Forecast

This is a woman who could make you happy, heh.

So sweet.

At ABC News 10 San Deigo. It's going to be a nice day:

So, Totalitarian Leftists Want the Vanity Fair 'Hillary Knitting' Writers Fired?

I hate politics more and more, especially since you can't say anything anymore without risking your entire livelihood, if not your very life.

Elizabeth Bruenig's a radical leftist who's blocked me on Twitter, but I agree with her here.

At WaPo, "No, the Vanity Fair staffers behind the Clinton video shouldn’t be fired."

"The next time you get upset online, keep this in mind: You’re gonna be okay." - @ebruenig with the radical argument that people ought to consider the potential real world consequences of their online rage https://t.co/8olkMQBbe0

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) December 29, 2017

Kate Upton Behind the Scenes for Shape Magazine (VIDEO)

She's still got it!

Humongous Jemma Lucy Pops Out of Her Bikini

Wow!

At Taxi Driver, "Jemma Lucy's Boob Pops Out of Her Bikini Top."

More at London's Daily Mail, "Jemma Lucy flashes her eye-popping assets in Spain."

ICYMI: Omar El Akkad, American War

I didn't rank books in 2017, but American War is one of my top five, for sure.

Don't miss it.

At Amazon, Omar El Akkad, American War.

Post-Christian America?

Look, I think American War is practically non-fiction, so Ima say no.

But check at NRO:

Can America Survive as a Post-Christian Nation? https://t.co/nJ68MPcyZg via @DavidAFrench pic.twitter.com/UY63qr9Qud

— National Review (@NRO) December 28, 2017

Lena Nersesian

This is the lady who let her best friend bonk her boyfriend, in an "off-Twitter" threesome.

She's sex positive, to say the least.

Jennifer Delacruz Thursday Forecast

Ms. Jennifer is back!

China’s Cover-Up

From Orville Schell, at Foreign Affairs, "When Communists Rewrite History":

Even experts on Chinese history find it difficult to keep track of all the lethal “mass movements” that shaped Mao’s revolution. https://t.co/0JqaEyXvY7

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) December 26, 2017

The Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong’s “permanent revolution” destroyed tens of millions of lives. From the communist victory in 1949 in the Chinese Civil War, through the upheaval, famine, and bloodletting of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, until Mao’s death in 1976, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) set segments of Chinese society against one another in successive spasms of violent class warfare. As wave after wave of savagery swept China, millions were killed and millions more sent off to “reform through labor” and ruination.

Mao had expected this level of brutality. As he once declared: “A revolution is neither a dinner party, nor writing an essay, painting a picture, or doing embroidery. It cannot be so refined, so leisurely, gentle, temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”

Today, even experts on Chinese history find it difficult to keep track of all the lethal “mass movements” that shaped Mao’s revolution and which the party invariably extolled with various slogans. Mao launched campaigns to “exterminate landlords” after the Communists came to power in 1949; to “suppress counterrevolutionaries” in the early 1950s; to purge “rightists” in the late 1950s; to overthrow “capitalist roaders” during the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s; and to “rectify” young people’s thinking by shipping them off to China’s poorest rural areas during the Down to the Countryside Movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The ideological rhetoric obscured the extremism of these official actions, through which the party permitted the persecution and even the liquidation of myriad varieties of “counterrevolutionary elements.” One of Mao’s most notable sayings was “the party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the party.” Long after his death, his successors carried on in that tradition, most visibly during the Tiananmen Square massacre and the ensuing crackdown that the CCP carried out in response to peaceful protests in 1989, which led to untold numbers of dead and wounded.

Today, China is enjoying a period of relative stability. The party promotes a vision of a “harmonious society” instead of class struggle and extols comfortable prosperity over cathartic violence. Someone unfamiliar with the country might be forgiven for assuming that it had reckoned with its recent past and found a way to heal its wounds and move on.

Far from it. In fact, a visitor wandering the streets of any Chinese city today will find no plaques consecrating the sites of mass arrests, no statues dedicated to the victims of persecution, no monuments erected to honor those who perished after being designated “class enemies.” Despite all the anguish and death the CCP has caused, it has never issued any official admission of guilt, much less allowed any memorialization of its victims. And because any mea culpa would risk undermining the party’s legitimacy and its right to rule unilaterally, nothing of the sort is likely to occur so long as the CCP remains in power...

More.

Elsa Hosk by LOVE Magazine (VIDEO)

Advent's almost up but these babes are forever, dang.

Emily DiDonato Takes it Off (VIDEO)

Via Theo Spark:

Josh Meyer Gets an Echo Chamber Beat-Down

This is really good:

Twitter mob attacks by a name-calling scrum of mid-level bureaucrats, “security correspondents” for instant news outfits like Buzzfeed, interns at various NGOs and their self-credentialed “expert” bosses, partisan bot herders, and their Lord of the Flies puppet-masters are part of the price of doing journalism these days. Write something negative, and you’ll get dirtied up—and maybe some of the dirt will stick, who knows. These attacks are intended to be punitive. Brave or foolhardy reporters who deviate from the party line—the party in question being the Democrats, of course, since the representation of conservatives in newsrooms is generally reported to be somewhere in the single digits—and especially their colleagues watching from the sidelines, are meant to absorb a simple but all-important lesson: Get on the team, or else shut up. Watching even seasoned pros succumb to this kind of adolescent pressure game and publicly suck up to bullying flacks while throwing shade on members of their own profession is a depressingly normal occurrence, which shows that the two once-separate professions—partisan flackery, and reporting the news—have merged into a single, mindless borg.

Obama derailed secret fight against Hezbollah for Iran Deal... https://t.co/XZglS6kSNx

— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) December 18, 2017

That's the thing @Tvietor08 your echo chamber keeps saying my @politico piece is wrong but offer zero specifics. I'm gonna take the high road and not respond further until you do. Meantime, happy holidays y'all. Btw, don't you supporters of Iran Deal also have "an obvious POV"? https://t.co/suI1dxnr2G

— Josh Meyer (@JoshMeyerDC) December 21, 2017

Why journalists joined a Twittermob of former mid-level Obama bureaucrats and intel officers to attack a journalist for doing journalism @tabletmag https://t.co/sYKeovN7fF

— Lee Smith (@LeeSmithDC) December 27, 2017

More Alexis Ren (VIDEO)

She's got over 11 million followers on Instagram. *Eye-roll.*

Nice babe though.

Nina Agdal Jumps for Joy

At London's Daily Mail:

Bikini-clad Nina Agdal jumps for joy as she shows off her toned body during leisurely day on sun-soaked beach https://t.co/Lu6lQz9QDZ

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) December 28, 2017

BONUS: At WWTDD, "Nina Agdal Topless."

Joseph Heller, Catch-22

I'm reading this. It's an amazing book. Kinda like a manifesto for wise guys, heh.

At Amazon, Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (50th Anniversary Edition).

President Trump's Political Base Unshaken

Well, it's been almost a year in office. We have the midterms in about 11 months and then we're off to the 2020 races. For the life of me I don't know how President Trump's going to pull off reelection. I thought this immediately upon his election in 2016, with the entire political establishment against him: Democrats, establishment Republicans, the corrupt media, Hollywood, and just about every other cultural institution you can think of. I love what he's doing --- and I believe he's changing this country for the better --- but the odds of beating back all the forces of leftist hatred seem insurmountable.

It'll be a miracle. We need it, though, badly, so I'll pray.

In any case, here's the Associated Press, "In the heart of Trump Country, his base’s faith is unshaken":

.@AP spent the year traveling to communities that flipped from blue to red and helped propel Donald Trump to the White House. How do they think he's doing? Read today’s story: https://t.co/xki14Uxi8F
Find the Trump Country series here: https://t.co/c4f0f1jatD

— The Associated Press (@AP) December 28, 2017

SANDY HOOK, Ky. — The regulars amble in before dawn and claim their usual table, the one next to an old box television playing the news on mute.

Steven Whitt fires up the coffee pot and flips on the fluorescent sign in the window of the Frosty Freeze, his diner that looks and sounds and smells about the same as it did when it opened a half-century ago. Coffee is 50 cents a cup, refills 25 cents. The pot sits on the counter, and payment is based on the honor system.

People like it that way, he thinks. It reminds them of a time before the world seemed to stray away from them, when coal was king and the values of the nation seemed the same as the values here, in God’s Country, in this small county isolated in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

Everyone in town comes to his diner for nostalgia and homestyle cooking. And, recently, news reporters come from all over the world to puzzle over politics — because Elliott County, a blue-collar union stronghold, voted for the Democrat in each and every presidential election for its 147-year existence.

Until Donald Trump came along and promised to wind back the clock.

“He was the hope we were all waiting on, the guy riding up on the white horse. There was a new energy about everybody here,” says Whitt.

“I still see it.”

Despite the president’s dismal approval ratings and lethargic legislative achievements, he remains profoundly popular here in these mountains, a region so badly battered by the collapse of the coal industry it became the symbolic heart of Trump’s white working-class base.

The frenetic churn of the national news, the ceaseless Twitter taunts, the daily declarations of outrage scroll soundlessly across the bottom of the diner’s television screen, rarely registering. When they do, Trump doesn’t shoulder the blame — because the allegiance of those here is as emotional as it is economic.

It means God, guns, patriotism, saying “Merry Christmas” and not Happy Holidays. It means validation of their indignation about a changing nation: gay marriage and immigration and factories moving overseas. It means tearing down the political system that neglected them again and again in favor of the big cities that feel a world away.

On those counts, they believe Trump has delivered, even if his promised blue-collar renaissance has not yet materialized. He’s punching at all the people who let them down for so long — the presidential embodiment of their own discontent.

“He’s already done enough to get my vote again, without a doubt, no question,” Wes Lewis, a retired pipefitter and one of Whitt’s regulars, declares as he deals the day’s first hand of cards.

He thinks the mines and the factories will soon roar back to life, and if they don’t, he believes they would have if Democrats and Republicans and the media — all “crooked as a barrel of fishhooks” — had gotten out of the way. What Lewis has now that he didn’t have before Trump is a belief that his president is pulling for people like him.

“One thing I hear in here a lot is that nobody’s gonna push him into a corner,” says Whitt, 35. “He’s a fighter. I think they like the bluntness of it.”

He plops down at an empty table next to the card game, drops a stack of mail onto his lap and begins flipping through the envelopes...

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