Professor Shannon Gibney Reprimanded for Singling Out White Students During 'Structural Racism' Lecture

This story broke earlier this week, and what a doozy.

You have to watch the video interview with Professor Gibney get the full frontal-force of the left's obscene cult of racial victimization. See Joanne Jacobs, "Racism talk leads to reprimand." I watched. A little long, but you'll be shaking your head, if not outright ROTFLYFAO.

And it turns out that Professor Gigney's been doing a whole shakedown racket on campus to force "diversity" on the institution, including the school's student newspaper, where she attacked the white student journalists "for not doing enough to eliminate bias from the organization." The student newspaper! See Campus Reform, "College accuses black professor of racial harassment against white students."

Pat Dollard has more, "White Students Fed Up With Black Professor’s Racist Bullshit Rants":

The politics of faux victimization are spiraling out of control at a community college in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where several white students, their black professor and irritated administrators have one-upped each other with complaints, reprimands and now a lawsuit.

The trouble began in English professor Shannon Gibney’s Introduction to Mass Communications class at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Though the class ostensibly has little to do with race, Gibney considers herself an activist on racial issues, and frequently invokes white privilege and oppression during class time, according to her students. (She has previously taught classes on race and gender.)

Recently, several white students announced that they had had enough with Gibney’s incessant racial screed. They interrupted her during a lecture, and said, “Why do we have to talk about this in every class? Why do we have to talk about this?” according to Gibney’s account of the incident, which was recorded by the City College News.

This lady's extreme, but she's hardly a lone example at community colleges, to say nothing of the elite universities.

Tyrannical Obama: The Founders' Greatest Nightmare

A great editorial, at IBD, "President Obama is the Danger Constitution Was Designed to Avoid."

And see TPNN, "LIBERAL PROFESSOR TESTIFIES BEFORE CONGRESS: OBAMA’S KILL LIST ‘FLAGRANTLY AND DANGEROUSLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL’."

Poor Black and Hispanic Homosexuals: The Face of AIDS — And the Left

There's blood on the hands of Democrat Party progressivism. I reported previously on the AIDS resurgence among gay men resulting from the careless death-wish ideology of sexually licentious progressivism. See, "Defiant Promiscuous Homosexuality: Surge in Barebacking Threatens Resurgence of AIDS Epidemic."

And now the New York Times provides an even more immediate report on the crisis, "Poor Black and Hispanic Men Are the Face of H.I.V.":

The AIDS epidemic in America is rapidly becoming concentrated among poor, young black and Hispanic men who have sex with men.

Despite years of progress in preventing and treating H.I.V. in the middle class, the number of new infections nationwide remains stubbornly stuck at 50,000 a year — more and more of them in these men, who make up less than 1 percent of the population.

Giselle, a homeless 23-year-old transgender woman with cafe-au-lait skin, could be called the new face of the epidemic.

“I tested positive about a year ago,” said Giselle, who was born male but now has a girlish hair spout, wears a T-shirt tight across a feminine chest and identifies herself as a woman. “I don’t know how, exactly. I was homeless. I was escorting. I’ve been raped.”

“Yes, I use condoms,” she added. “But I’m not going to lie. I slip sometimes. Trust me — everyone here who says, ‘I always use condoms’? They don’t always.”

Besides transgender people like Giselle, the affected group includes men who are openly gay, secretly gay or bisexual, and those who consider themselves heterosexual but have had sex with men, willingly or unwillingly, in shelters or prison or for money. (Most of those interviewed for this article spoke on the condition that only their first names be used.)

Nationally, 25 percent of new infections are in black and Hispanic men, and in New York City it is 45 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the city’s health department.

Nationally, when only men under 25 infected through gay sex are counted, 80 percent are black or Hispanic — even though they engage in less high-risk behavior than their white peers.

The prospects for change look grim. Critics say little is being done to save this group, and none of it with any great urgency.

“There wasn’t even an ad campaign aimed at young black men until last year — what’s that about?” said Krishna Stone, a spokeswoman for GMHC, which was founded in the 1980s as the Gay Men’s Health Crisis.

Phill Wilson, president of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles, said there were “no models out there right now for reaching these men.”

Federal and state health officials agreed that it had taken years to shift prevention messages away from targets chosen 30 years ago: men who frequent gay bars, many of whom are white and middle-class, and heterosexual teenagers, who are at relatively low risk. Funding for health agencies has been flat, and there has been little political pressure to focus on young gay blacks and Hispanics.

Reaching those men “is the Holy Grail, and we’re working on it,” said Dr. Jonathan Mermin, director of H.I.V. prevention at the C.D.C. His agency created its Testing Makes Us Stronger campaign — the one Ms. Stone referred to — and has granted millions of dollars to local health departments and community groups to pay for testing.

But he could not name a city or state with proven success in lowering infection rates in young gay minority men.

“With more resources, we could make bigger strides,” he said.

Continue reading.

This is precisely the demographic the left purports to champion --- yet poor minorities are wallowing in a deathly downward spiral of AIDS-related hopelessness:

Among the poor, untreated or inadequately treated H.I.V. is the norm, not the exception, said Perry N. Halkitis, a professor of psychology and public health at New York University. According to the C.D.C., 79 percent of H.I.V.-infected black men who have sex with men and 74 percent of Hispanics are not “virally suppressed,” meaning they can transmit the infection, either because they are not yet on antiretroviral drugs or are not taking them daily.

It's the freakin' norm!

And progressives don't even care. Obama-style "gay rights" activists are all about homosexual marriage and LGBT activism, and yet here we are with this disgusting crisis of sick homosexual metastasis at the core of a vulnerable generation.

And it will get worse, because disease and sickness can only get worse as the Democrats continue to chip away at the decency and health of society. This is what happens when defiant promiscuity and progressive politics combine. More people die. And the so-called compassionate political party doesn't do jack.

Can Democrats Recover From the #ObamaCare Catastrophe?

From Charlie Cook, at National Journal:

Most graphs of polling data show shifts that are very gradual. (Tracking real-time changes in poll results often is about as exciting as watching paint dry.) Recently, however, the HuffPost Pollster website produced a graph of national polling on Congress that showed one of the most dramatic shifts I've ever seen in 40 years of involvement in politics. It charts responses to the question of whether voters would like Republicans or Democrats to control the House.

The year began with Democrats 8 points ahead of Republicans on the generic congressional ballot test, 46 percent to 38 percent. The GOP had come out of the 2012 elections licking its wounds, having lost a presidential election that, just a year earlier, appeared highly winnable. As the year progressed, the Democratic advantage gradually but consistently declined, paralleling a similar erosion of President Obama's job-approval rating since his reelection. The drop in Democrats' numbers leveled off in June, to a statistically insignificant 1 percentage point lead over Republicans. It is important to remember that there is a historic tendency for this poll question to skew by a couple of points in favor of Democrats, making that meager edge almost certainly an illusion.

Then, in August, statements started coming from some of the more exotic Republicans in the House and Senate that perhaps it was a good idea to shut down the government over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Notwithstanding warnings from House and Senate Republican leaders and experienced (and wiser) members that such an effort would be a disaster for the party, the Republicans in the "kamikaze caucus" barreled ahead, over the cliff, shutting down the government.

Sure enough, the Democratic numbers in the generic ballot began to pull dramatically ahead, resembling a steep ascent up the side of a mountain, ending about 7 points ahead of Republicans, 45 percent to 38 percent—an advantage that, were it to last until the election, would give Democrats a chance to recapture the House.

Then, in mid-October, the focus shifted from the government-shutdown fiasco to a different debacle, this time a Democratic disaster: the botched launch of the Obamacarewebsite and subsequent implementation problems of the health care law, including termination notices going out to many people who had insurance coverage. The Democratic numbers from the generic-ballot test dropped from 45 percent to 37 percent, and Republicans moved up to 40 percent. This 10-point net shift from a Democratic advantage of 7 points to a GOP edge of 3 points in just over a month is breathtaking, perhaps an unprecedented swing in such a short period. Occurring around Election Day, such a shift would probably amount to the difference between Democrats picking up at least 10 House seats, possibly even the 17 needed for a majority, and instead losing a half-dozen or so seats.

Click back over to National Journal for the graph, and at Legal Insurrection.

Eleven months is a long time, although no one's expecting the ObamaCare clusterf-k to be exiting the news cycle anytime soon. It's an endless nightmare for the Democrats, and I'm glad.

Nelson Mandela 'Kept Portraits of Lenin and Stalin Above His Desk at Home...'

Black supremacist Ta-Nehisi Coates is leading the chorus of attacks on "racist" Cold War conservatives who questioned the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s. See, "Apartheid's Useful Idiots."

You have to read the whole thing, but literally the bottom line is that to raise any questions about Mandela's legacy, regardless of the historical context, and most importantly, regardless of Mandela's terrorism and Communism, and you're a racist. Coates argues that "the overall failure of American conservatives to forthrightly deal with South Africa's white-supremacist regime, coming so soon after their failure to deal with the white-supremacist regime in their own country, is part of their heritage, and thus part of our heritage." He then links to this Wall Street editorial as racist data-point for the right, "Nelson Mandela (at Google)":

The bulk of his adult life, Nelson Mandela was a failed Marxist revolutionary and leftist icon, the Che Guevara of Africa. Then in his seventies he had the chance to govern. He chose national reconciliation over reprisal, and he thus made himself an historic and all too rare example of a wise revolutionary leader.

Mandela, who died Thursday at age 95, had a patrician upbringing and a Methodist education. But his coming of age coincided with the rise of apartheid. Winning whites-only elections in 1948, the National Party lavished its Afrikaner base of European descendants with state jobs and privileges. Black, mixed-race and Indian South Africans were disfranchised.

Trained as a lawyer, Mandela was drawn to the African National Congress, which was founded by professional, educated blacks in 1912. He was not a born communist, but as he rose in its ranks the ANC moved toward Marxism and an alliance with the Soviets. Mandela kept portraits of Lenin and Stalin above his desk at home. Frustrated with the ANC's ineffective peaceful resistance, he embraced armed struggle in the early 1960s and trained to become a guerrilla leader. He was arrested for plotting sabotage.

His 1964 trial gave Mandela a platform. In his famous closing argument, he said: "I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

This speech was the last the world saw of him for 26 years. He started his life sentence at Robben Island prison near Cape Town a would-be Lenin. He walked out of jail on February 11, 1990—at age 71—an African Havel.

Age mellowed him. Times changed. The apartheid leadership had opened secret talks with the ANC in the mid-1980s. While still in prison, Mandela became "president in training" under F.W. de Klerk, the last apartheid leader. In early 1990, Mr. de Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC.

Mandela ditched the ANC's Marxism and reached out to business. Somehow—another miracle—the illiberal ANC and the illiberal National Party together negotiated a liberal new constitution with strong protections for minorities and an independent judiciary. "You do not compromise with a friend," Mandela often said, "you compromise with an enemy."

He won the country's first free presidential elections in 1994 and worked to unite a scarred and anxious nation. He opened up the economy to the world, and a black middle class came to life. After a single term, he voluntarily left power at the height of his popularity. Most African rulers didn't do that, but Mandela said, "I don't want a country like ours to be led by an octogenarian. I must step down while there are one or two people who admire me."

Look, these are just facts, but for the morally-stunted left, facts are "racist."

There's going to be lots more leftist hissy-fits over the weekend. Rightfully call Mandela a Communist and you'll be branded a reactionary and racist.

More at the Other McCain, "1987: Thatcher Responds to ‘Further Intensification of the Armed Struggle’."

And see Saberpoint, "Nelson Mandela: Some Sour Notes Amid The Chorus of Praise."

PREVIOUSLY: "Nelson Mandela: Terrorist and Communist."

Nelson Mandela: Terrorist and Communist

I was teaching yesterday, in the early afternoon, and at the end of the class a student came up and asked if I'd seen the news that Nelson Mandela had died. I had not, but of course immediately realized the significance of the news, and I mentioned to the student that Mandela leaves a "tremendous legacy."

I shortly went on the web and clicked on the New York Times' obituary, "Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s Liberator as Prisoner and President, Dies at 95." And it's pretty much what you'd expect. Mandela was an outsized historical figure, blah blah. How could he emerge from 27 years in prison without bitterness and anger, blah blah?

No doubt he was one of the most important historical figures of the 20th century --- and interestingly, folks online yesterday placed his legacy as somewhere between Vladimir Lenin and Vaclav Havel. That sounds about right, although the main priority here is for people to look beyond the whitewash, to understand Mandela as a deeply flawed individual who was hardly the saint that the leftist culture has so effectively manufactured.

Here's the tweet yesterday from the Communist Party of the United Kingdom:

Nelson Mandela has died. A hero against all the odds. True friend of ordinary ppl & progressive politics, we miss u pic.twitter.com/7pOZbH227Y

— Communist Party (@communist_party) December 5, 2013

We know that Mandela, in his membership with the African National Congress, was a terrorist and Communist, even though his ties to the Moscow-led revolutionary world program were disguised at the time. Here's Telegraph UK from last year, "Nelson Mandela 'proven' to be a member of the Communist Party after decades of denial." (And see the fascinating contemporary piece from Thomas Karis, at Foreign Affairs, "South African Liberation: The Communist Factor." Also, here's a communique from South African Communist Party Leader Joe Slovo from 1989, "Message by Joe Slovo, General Secretary of the South African Communist Party, to the Soweto rally for the released ANC leaders.")

In any case, it's no surprise that we're seeing overwhelming acclaim for Mandela's legacy from the left and the right, although it's pretty pathetic that even so-called conservatives are attempting to tamp down the meme that Mandela was a Communist.

@rsmccain There is more to the story of his life than that picture and #Mandela was not a communist even if Slovo (at right) certainly was.

— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) December 5, 2013

And for more on that, read Robert Stacy McCain, "‘Unspeakable Atrocities’."

Plus, don't miss Kathy Shaidle's piece from earlier this year, "Raining on the Nelson Mandela Parade."

Obama to Paint the Golden State Red?

Well, it'd be a feat of Biblical proportions.

California's the deepest of blue states, but then again, they say he's a "light worker."

From George Skelton, at LAT, "California Democrats are facing risk of voter turnoff":

President Obama's popularity is falling even in California, a deep-blue state he has won twice by landslides. It means Democratic politicians should worry about suffering fatal falls in the polling booths next November.

That's not necessarily because voters turned off by the president will take it out on Democratic congressional and legislative candidates, although some of that could happen. More important, Democratic voters may be so disenchanted with Washington and politics generally that they don't turn out to cast ballots at all.

And there's little on the horizon in California to excite them about voting. A gubernatorial race between Gov. Jerry Brown and some obscure Republican won't be a draw.

A USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll last month found widespread ambivalence about the Democratic governor. More than half of those surveyed approved of his job performance, but less than a third said they were inclined to reelect him.
Of course, Republicans are staring at their own turnout dilemma. There's no sign of a strong gubernatorial candidate at the top of the ticket to attract GOP voters to the polls.

But small-turnout elections tend to benefit Republicans, whose voters habitually cast ballots more consistently. Just look at some recent special elections to fill legislative vacancies, where turnouts have been dismal and Republicans have fared better than expected. They picked up one state Senate seat in the southern San Joaquin Valley.

"How enthusiastic will the voters who supported the president in 2012 be about voting in 2014?" asks Mark Baldassare, president and pollster of the Public Policy Institute of California. "From a Democratic perspective, it raises some concerns....

In a poll released Wednesday, the policy institute found that Obama's approval rating had dropped 10 points since July and now is at 51% among California adults, with disapproval at 45%. That matches a record low from 2011. Among likely voters, slightly more disapprove of his performance than approve.

But Congress? A scant 10% of likely voters approve of how it's working.

The Field Poll released a similar survey Tuesday, showing 51% approval and 43% disapproval of Obama's job performance among a third group, registered voters — an eight-point increase in negativity since July. It's his worst showing in two years.

Blame the embarrassing rollout and broken promises of the president's signature program, Obamacare. But the pollsters also cite two other things that have upset Obama's Democratic base: His failure to achieve immigration reform. And his National Security Agency's spying on American citizens and foreign leaders.

Obama's rollout of the Affordable Care Act website was "seen as inept," says Field Poll Director Mark DiCamillo.

And although California developed its own website that has been relatively successful, the national media spotlight has been focused on the federal fiasco. "It creates a lot of anxiety" among Californians, Baldassare says. "People think 'somehow it's going to affect me. What else isn't going to go well?' It's a lack of confidence more than anything."

This is all very interesting, but Obama won California last year with nearly 60 percent of the vote. We're deep blue, and marinated in disgusting left-wing collectivism and moral depravity.

But hey, things aren't getting better, and Californians are pragmatic people. Perhaps folks will rip the wool off their eyes and say, "WTF!"

I'll be following up on this, in any case. Obama could possible force a realignment in the strongest of Democrat strongholds.

Obama Attacks 'Proudoundly Unequal' Economy in Push for Minimum Wage Hike

At the Hill, "Obama: 'Profoundly unequal' economy a 'fundamental threat'," and LAT, "Obama on income inequality: 'I take this personally'."

But see Pamela Villarreal, at IBD, "Big Hike In Minimum Wage Will Be Self-Defeating For Workers":

This week, another fast-food walkout will take place in 100 cities.

Evidently, this one claims to be much larger than previous protests.

And no doubt the Service Employees International Union and other organized labor groups play a major role in supporting the walkout and also make up the lion's share of the protestors.

The goal? To push for an increase in the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

But as the old adage goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The arguments made by advocates of a living wage are flawed on so many levels, and will end up hurting the people they purport to help.

One need look no further than the evolution of large retailers. Thirty years ago, there was no such thing as a self-checkout lane.

I used to walk in to my local big-box retailer, and there was very little that was high-tech about checkout lanes. Scanners were just starting to be used to price and sell merchandise, but the clerks had to scan each item personally, with a hand wand. In spite of the burgeoning computer technology, a warm body was still needed.

But much of the retail transformation can be attributed to increasing labor costs and decreasing technology costs. How does this relate to this week's walkout? It is simple. If higher wages are forced on the fast-food industry, capital eventually will replace labor in that industry as well.

Sadly, this is all under the guise of helping people, but the result will be that teenagers and low-skilled workers get the shaft.

The unemployment rate among teenagers is the highest of all age groups.

In some areas, such as Washington, D.C., it is above 50%. Teenagers there would be happy to work for $8.25 an hour.

Recently, Washington's council almost passed an ordinance that would require the area's newly established Wal-Mart stores and other large big-box retailers to pay a "living wage" of $12.50 an hour.

Given that 23,000 applications were submitted for the 600 jobs that were available when Wal-Mart opened its first stores in the D.C. area, it is evident that many job-seekers are willing to work for less than $15 an hour.

The fast-food industry will also seek out those people.

But once those who are willing to work are employed, any excess demand for labor will be supplied in the form of whatever is most efficient, either by enticing more workers with a higher wage or using technology instead of human capital.

It does not matter what is mandated by a city or the federal government, or what is demanded by protesters. Businesses seek to maximize profits, and if they must replace or supplement human capital with automation they will do it.

Continue reading.

The full speech is here, "President Obama Speaks on Economic Mobility."

RELATED: At Heritage, "Obamacare and a Minimum Wage Hike Pricing Many Unskilled Workers Out of Their Jobs."

EXTRA: At the Wall Street Journal, "The War of the Wages."

How to Improve the Economy!

I'm having a hard time believing this, but it's real, apparently:

Here's how to improve our economy and create hundreds of thousands of jobs: #RaiseTheWage. http://t.co/NLM2t9NyhS pic.twitter.com/UDTcTSaqZJ

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) December 4, 2013

And Twitchy has the response, "Phase 3: Profit! @BarackObama reveals sure-fire plan for jump-starting the economy."

.@BarackObama I see somebody missed a whole semester of Columbia economics smoking choom.

— Sam Valley (@SamValley) December 4, 2013

I have more on the minimum wage scheduled for overnight.

Millennial Generation Abandons Obama

This is amazing, although not surprising.

From Ron Fournier, at National Journal, "Millennials Abandon Obama and Obamacare."

It's worth spending some time with both the article, and the complete survey, "IOP Releases New Fall Poll, 5 Key Findings and Trends in Millennial Viewpoints."

A commenter at the Harvard page captures my thoughts exactly: "52% of Young Americans want Obama recalled. Wow. That's a stunning indictment of his failures."

We've got finals at my college next week and I'm into the wrap up mode in my American government classes. I discussed the survey in classes today. I've got a large number of die-hard Obama supporters among my students, especially minority students, but overall I'm seeing a lot of the same disenchantment with Obama on campus that we see at the poll. Young people especially hate the insurance mandate, because it's harming their interests directly. A number of other Obama disasters are more remote, and they're unable to make the connections. But as this White House has transformed the workplace into a part-time economy, more and more young people will be waking up to how disastrous this president's been for the country.

And by the way, the numbers on student debt at the poll are also devastating. America's youth are taking it up the ass for the left's ideological program of unicorns are rainbows. William Jacobson's got more, "Harvard Survey: Obama and Obamacare push Millennials support off cliff." (Via Memeorandum.)

Kate Moss Featured on Cover of Playboy's 60th Anniversary Issue

She looks great.

At London's Daily Mail, "Fifty Shades of Playboy: Kate Moss wears bunny ears AND a mask as she poses topless for magazine's 60th anniversary cover."

And at Independent UK, "Kate Moss’ Playboy cover revealed."

The Exploited Laborers of the Leftist Media

This is great.

From Charles Davies, at Vice (who piece is headlined with the inaccurate term, "the liberal media").

More at Yid With Lid, "Mother Jones HYPOCRISY – They Trash Walmart for Low Wages But Pay Interns Less Than $6/Hour."

Cyber Monday Clicking with More Shoppers

The Los Angeles Times reports.

Also at Reuters, "Cyber Monday Grows As More Shoppers Turn to Mobile," and "'Cyber Monday' sales set to hit record: analysts."

#USC Hires Former Washington Head Coach Steve Sarkisian

I sure thought Ed Orgeron deserved the pick, but not Pat Haden, it turns out.

At LAT, "USC hires Steve Sarkisian as football coach."

And from Chris Dufresne, "USC's hiring of Sarkisian isn't sexy, but it feels right":

This USC coaching hire is reminiscent of the Bowl Championship Series standings in November — what a difference a play, and a day, makes.

Like Auburn beating Georgia two weeks ago on a last-second Hail Mary, the sport's volatility never ceases to amaze.

USC probably would have stripped Ed Orgeron's interim tag and introduced him as head coach had the Trojans defeated UCLA on Saturday.

But UCLA won.

USC probably would not have hired Steve Sarkisian as head coach had Washington lost another Apple Cup to Washington State on Friday. That would have locked up just another so-so, seven-win Sarkisian season.

But Washington won.

You shouldn't call Pat Haden's hiring of Sarkisian a Hail Mary, though. It was more like a Stanford handoff up the middle.

The hire wasn't dramatic or sexy, and nationally it was met with a tepid response.
However, unless I missed the next Bear Bryant on the list of candidates, USC's choice was understandable.

The headline above an Oct. 3 column I wrote on the subject was: "USC's coaching search should end at Steve Sarkisian's doorstep."

Continue reading.

Movie Star Maria Bello 'Comes Out' as Lesbian

I've placed "comes out" in quotation marks because she's not really lesbian in the "born this way" sense that used to be the rage during the so-called homosexual "rights" movement. Funny, but apparently the movement's degenerated by now into something quite different from the innate rights legal agenda of which homosexual are argued to have inalienable guarantees against arbitrary, disparate treatment.

See Robert Stacy McCain on that, "But If They’re ‘Born That Way’...":

... why are there more lesbians than ever?

Why? Well, it turns out same-sex "sapphic" relationships are increasingly indicative of liberated lifestyle choices, or in more Zeitgeist-ian phraseology, "gender-fluid sexual expression," especially among women.

Check Robert's entry for the full discussion. And interestingly, the news today presents us with a rather high-profile example of some fairly acute gender-fluid sexual expression in the case of actress Mario Bello, who's published a lengthy op-ed at the New York Times demonstrating how her fluid lifestyle choices --- and her same-sex romantic relationship --- are emblematic of the left's culture of anything-goes sexual licentiousness. In "Coming Out as a Modern Family," Bello writes of explaining to her son her romantic relationship with another woman:

“So are you romantic with anyone right now?” he asked.

I took a deep breath, knowing that my answer, and his response, would have an impact on our lives for a very long time.

He was right; I was with someone romantically and I hadn’t told him. I had become involved with a woman who was my best friend, and, as it happens, a person who is like a godmother to my son.

How and when should I tell him? When I explained the situation to a therapist, she smiled and said, “Your son may say a lot of things about you when he’s older, but he will never say his mother was boring.”

Her advice was to wait until he asked. And now here he was, asking.

About a year before this conversation, I had been sitting in my garden in California, looking through photos and old journals I have kept since childhood. From a green tattered notebook with ink hearts drawn on it to the one I started in Haiti while helping after the earthquake there in January 2010, the journals told stories that seemed woven together by a similar theme.

I read about the handful of men and the one woman I had been in romantic relationships with, passages rife with pain and angst. It seemed when I was physically attracted to someone, I would put them in the box of being my “soul mate” and then be crushed when things didn’t turn out as I had hoped.

I read about the two men I fell for while working on films. I was sure each was my soul mate, a belief fueled by sexual attraction that made me certain I was in love, only to find that when the filming ended, so did the relationship. And I read about the man who asked me to marry him four years ago over the phone, before we had even kissed. Three months later we were in his kitchen throwing steaks at each other’s heads in anger.

As I continued to look through photos, I came across a black-and-white one of my best friend and me taken on New Year’s Eve. We looked so happy, I couldn’t help but smile. I remembered how we had met two years before; she was sitting in a bar wearing a fedora and speaking in her Zimbabwean accent.

We had an immediate connection but didn’t think of it as romantic or sexual. She was one of the most beautiful, charming, brilliant and funny people I had ever met, but it didn’t occur to me, until that soul-searching moment in my garden, that we could perhaps choose to love each other romantically.

What had I been waiting for all of these years? She is the person I like being with the most, the one with whom I am most myself.

The next time I saw her, in New York, I shared my confusing feelings, and we began the long, painful, wonderful process of trying to figure out what our relationship was supposed to be.

There's lots more at the link (via Memeorandum).

Bello goes on about how she's uncomfortable with how the term "partner" is used to denote one's sexual relationship to a long-term significant other. Why can't "partner" just mean someone with whom she shares some kind of key connection, like the father of her son, to whom she's not married, but nevertheless considers her "partner"?

Jack’s father, Dan, will always be my partner because we share Jack.

But Bello also says that her ex-boyfriend Bryn is also her "partner." I guess her dry cleaner could be her partner since they share an emotional bond through frequent touching of the same articles of clothing. Who knows? If it feels good do it? If the description fits denote it?

But the "progressive" clincher here is how Bello appropriates the notion of the "modern family" to authenticate and validate a set of lifestyle choices that have left her bereft of the kind of stable, long-lasting family structure that through the millennia has functioned as the fulcrum of social stability, regeneration of decency, and the wisdom of our predecessors:

Whomever I love, however I love them, whether they sleep in my bed or not, or whether I do homework with them or share a child with them, “love is love.” And I love our modern family.

Maybe, in the end, a modern family is just a more honest family.

Love is a good thing, but there a lots of different kinds of love, and societies need standards of right and wrong on what "love" is both morally acceptable and socially reproductive. Middle-aged men might say that they "love" tween girls in their neighborhoods, but society has said that claims of such love are not a suitable basis for the family unit.

Maria Bello is fortunate to have the fame, fortune, and choices that allow her to experiment with lifestyles that bring her the most fulfillment. She's also fortunate to have family and friends who share her morally loose framework of alternative traditions. The problem is that what Bello does --- and what shows like "Modern Family" do --- is foster a false consciousness in the public mind positing open sexuality, fluid non-commital relationships, and openly opportunistic homosexuality as perfectly reasonable arrangements of modern life. But they are not. And most families, and especially children, need something quite a bit more permanent. The destruction of the American family unit has advanced a long way since the 60s-generation declared war on the patriarchy. Society will only continue its descent to barbarism unless enough people stand up and say no, that's not the way we do it around here. Stop obliterating decency and values. We've had enough of your "progressive" war on the tried-and-true family structure in this country.

Vile New York Times Israel Nipple Tattoo Front-Page: 'Jews = Cancer'

It really helps to have good Jewish friends. Your friends have an understanding of mainstream moral bankruptcy the subtleties of which generally escape us gentile folk.

At Atlas Shrugs, "THE CANCEROUS NEW YORK TIMES":

Front page. It's really vile -- disgusting. A tattooed (tattoos are a violation of Jewish law) Jewish star above a nipple as the image for the "Jews' genetic predisposition to cancer." Jews = cancer. They must be taking their talking points from Iran.

I would love to see the NY Times dare to run a front page article on cancerous Muslims, illustrated with a half-naked Muslima's nipple on Ramadan. Yeah, right. They like their building too much.

More, "PAMELA GELLER, WND COLUMN: THE CANCEROUS NEW YORK TIMES."



More from William Jacobson, "The New York Times, the nipple, and the Jewish star tattoo":

There’s been a lot of flak about the photo’s inclusion of the nipple—or to be more accurate, the half-aureole. But that’s hardly the only issue. Anyone who knows history knows that the tattoo is reminiscent of two things: the yellow Jewish stars the Jews were required to wear in many Nazi countries, and the more permanent marks—the tattoos—that inmates of many concentration camps were forced to endure.

That’s the limit of most of the buzz in the media about objections to the photo, which has been considerable: the sexual aspects and the Holocaust references.

But in addition to those two obvious controversies there’s a more subtle one. Because the image the woman is wearing is both a Jewish star and a tattoo, it would most likely be doubly offensive to strictly religious Jews who observe the Jewish laws about tattooing...

More at the link.

Essex County College Outlines 5-year Road Map: School Ranked Lowest 2-Year Campus in New Jersey

Well, it's rough all over, ain't it?

See, "Essex County College president outlines 5-year road map, aims to improve lowest in state rank":

“We recognize that our students are not coming to us prepared. I’m not here to resolve Newark Public Schools’ issues. That’s not my job,” [Essex County College President Gale] Gibson said. “This is a college, it’s not the 13th grade, it’s not the 14th grade.”

Hat Tip: Chris Wysocki, "Essex County College graduates a whopping 5% of their 100% taxpayer-subsidized students."

Ukraine Protests Turn Violent

At the Belfast Telegraph, "In Pictures: Tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators march in Kiev."

Also at the BBC, "Ukraine unrest: Protesters in stand-off over EU deal," and the New York Times, "Thousands Demand Resignation of Ukraine Leader."



More video, "Ukraine: Violence flares at pro-Europe protest."

More Controversy Over Football Injuries

High-impact and high-profile.

It's a rough sport. Players can't underestimate the risks. That said, much more regulation will ruin the NFL. Like I said, it's a tough sport. It should stay that way.

In any case, Bill Dwyer's got his two-cents at the Los Angeles Times, "A new Thanksgiving Day tradition: football's concussion circle":

The game of football has evolved over the years with different formations. We've had the single-wing, the split-T, the wildcat.

Now, we have a new one. The concussion circle.

The only player involved in this formation is the poor guy on the ground in the middle. The others are medical personnel, who are asking questions, checking eyeballs and taking the helmet away.

There were three NFL games on Thanksgiving Day. We expected the usual amount of violent head-smacking. We weren't disappointed.

The Packers' Ryan Taylor catches a pass and gets sandwiched. There is a jolting helmet hit from the Lions' DeAndre Levy. To Levy's credit, he seems decently concerned. Often in these situations, the hitter does a celebration dance while the hittee is being asked to remember his phone number.

Taylor, looking as if he has just received a George Foreman punch combination, is escorted off by the concussion circle. He returns later. No word on his phone number recollection.

In the Raiders-Cowboys game, Oakland's Rashad Jennings is having a huge game until he is kneed in the head. For a while, he doesn't even twitch. Eventually, the concussion circle points Jennings in the direction of the sideline and escorts him on a walk he'll never remember.

This one is officially diagnosed: concussion. See you playing next week. (Let's hope not.)

Then there is Le'Veon Bell's short dash to the goal line for the Steelers in the closing moments of their loss to the Ravens. As he flies toward the end zone, he is hammered, helmet to helmet, by Jimmy Smith. Bell's now-helmet-less head slams to the turf in the sub-freezing Ravens stadium. He stays down. So does Smith.

It is ruled that, even though Bell carried the ball into the end zone, it is not a touchdown because, as replays showed, his helmet came off before the ball crossed the goal line. And the NFL rule now — one of those nice window-dressing changes meant to assure the public that everything possible is being done for the safety of the players — says the ball is dead the second the helmet comes off.

The Steelers eventually score the touchdown, but lose on a failed two-point conversion. Somebody will have to show Bell the film. When the concussion circle escorts him off, he appears uncertain what planet he is on, much less what team.

Head injuries in football, on all levels, are not new. But with all the attention they are getting these days, thanks in part to increased media coverage of the arrogance of the longtime NFL coverup, they are now foremost in the public's frontal lobe.

Continue reading.

Maybe we should transition to professional flag football. That'll make the pantywaists happy.

Ted Rall is RAAAAACIST!!

Heh.

It couldn't happen to a more repulsive cartoonist.

At NewsBusters, "Lefties Fight: Daily Kos Infuriates Ted Rall by Accusing Him of Racist Depiction of Obama."

Gotta admit, though. That's a nasty depiction of "The One." The hair, especially, looks kinda nubbish, lol.

How to Baste a Turkey

Well, Thanksgiving's over now, but December's also a big Turkey month, although I'm not sure if this Playboy Magazine video is what home poultry chefs had in mind.

Mexican Teen Assassin Now Free in the U.S.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Mexican teenage assassin to soon live freely in Texas":

Now 17, Edgar Jimenez Lugo, a drug cartel killer known as 'El Ponchis,' is released from Mexican detention after serving three years. A U.S. citizen, he will soon be living in San Antonio.

Did You Know Guinness Draught in a Bottle is 11.2 Ounces?

I picked up some Guinness last night, and pouring a bottle into my pint glass I noticed that the fill came a ways from the top:

Some #beer to go with my turkey sandwich. @lamblock pic.twitter.com/Lt6NcuSygD

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 1, 2013

Compare that to my Black Butte from a couple of weeks ago (a beer I'm just loving, by the way):

.@lamblock This is excellent, Black Butte Porter. #Beer #WorldSeries pic.twitter.com/E0JD7Iw87B

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 31, 2013

Guinness is excellent. I'm just tripping on this smaller portion deal when you buy the brand in bottles. Smaller portions suck. The beer's the same price. It's not like Oreos or anything, where food companies have been shrinking portions (but not retail prices) for decades.

In any case, with a six-pace of Guinness you're almost down half a beer compared to brands that bottle 12 ounces. That's a big enough difference for me to skip Guinness next time I hit the liquor store.

Declaring Victory? Here's What #ObamaCare Website 'Fix' Looks Like

Hey, victory's breaking out all over, depending on your perspective.

Here's the Washington Post, "HealthCare.gov meets deadline for fixes, Obama administration says."

And here's the screenshot of the highly touted website yesterday, via Democracy2014 on Twitter:



Yeah, that ought-a do it.

See Ed Morrissey, at Hot Air, "New plan on Healthcare.gov: Declare victory … and fix it later."

Hat Tip: Doug Ross, "THE AWESOME EFFICIENCY OF GOVERNMENT: White House Considered Scrapping $500MM Healthcare.gov Site."

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."



Also at Randy's Roundtable, "Friday Nite Funnies," and "Reaganite's SUNDAY FUNNIES."

CARTOON CREDIT: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Misgivings Day."

Jessika Jinx on Sunday

Previously, "Jessika Jinx Rule 5." And on Twitter here.

Ima forgo the big roundup for today, but head over to the Other McCain for a filler, "Rule 5 Sunday: Quiet Splendor."

Also at Pirate's Cove, "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup," and "If All You See……is an evil fossil fueled vehicle framed against a perfect place to put a wind-farm, you might just be a Warmist

And Proof Positive, "Friday Night Babe: Katie Vernola!", and "SF 49er's Vs. St.Louis Cardinals."

More at Goodstuff's, "BLACK FRIDAYs Convergence with Thanksgiving and Hanukkah."

ADDED: More at Blackmailer's Don't Shoot, "Thanksgiving Rule 5 and Massive Linkfest."

George Stephanopoulos: White House Considered Scrapping #ObamaCare Website and 'Starting All Over Again…'

Folks are talking about Obama advisor David Plouffe's psycho statement that the ObamaCare website will be working well in 2017. Jeez, right after Obama leaves office. Talk about leaving a steaming pile behind for your successor. Twitchy has that, "‘In denial at this point’: David Plouffe says Obamacare will work ‘really well’ by 2017."

And here's the report from ABC News on Twitter, "David Plouffe: Obamacare Will ‘Work Really Well’ By 2017."

.@davidplouffe: #Obamacare Will 'Work Really Well' By 2017. http://t.co/un5r2faUgM #ThisWeek
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) December 1, 2013

Watch it below. But pay attention to the opening segment, where Stepanopoulos reports that, "at one point the White House considered scrapping the site and starting all over again." This is the big story of the day, and it's being underreported amid the David Plouffe clown show and the state-media Orwellianism on the other Sunday shows (Emanuel Ezekiel and Ezra Klein provided the WTF analysis team on "Meet the Press"). That the White House seriously considered shutting down Healthcare.gov is the monumental concession of Democrat incompetence and Republican clairvoyance. It's the equivalent of folding your cards, of packing up and going home. A complete and utter defeat for the administration's marquee policy initiative, foreign or domestic. ObamaCare is the president's brand, and it's a loss leader.

The New York Times has it buried deep down in this report:

WASHINGTON — As a small coterie of grim-faced advisers shuffled into the Oval Office on the evening of Oct. 15, President Obama’s chief domestic accomplishment was falling apart 24 miles away, at a bustling high-tech data center in suburban Virginia.

HealthCare.gov, the $630 million online insurance marketplace, was a disaster after it went live on Oct. 1, with a roster of engineering repairs that would eventually swell to more than 600 items. The private contractors who built it were pointing fingers at one another. And inside the White House, after initially saying too much traffic was to blame, Mr. Obama’s closest confidants had few good answers....

Publicly, Mr. Obama had said “interest way exceeded expectations, and that’s the good news.” But in a meeting in Mr. McDonough’s office that first weekend after the start, someone asked the question on everyone’s mind: Should we just take the website down altogether for a time so it can be fixed?

Panic is the key word here. Read the full report at the Times. And note how much fun Althouse has with the story, "'Inside the West Wing, where junior researchers monitor Twitter and other social media, officials knew the political controversy had moved beyond the broken website'."

While the website is the centerpiece of ObamaCare (because its "back end" operations form the lynchpin of this Democrat-socialist health rationing system), it's just the tip of the iceberg for political recriminations, both current and forthcoming. Millions have lost their coverage on the individual health insurance market --- prompting utter fear and desperation among Congressional Democrats facing reelection next year --- but as we get deeper into the rollout next year, when insurance companies start notifying business of policy cancellations, and when employers start dumping tens of millions of workers onto the crappy cookie-cutter ClusterCare programs, all hell is indeed going to break loose, as George Will so accurately predicts.

Cyber Monday Deals Week

Hey, thanks to a number of readers who bought through my Amazon links, one of whom picked up a Kindle Paperwhite, 6" High Resolution Display with Next-Gen Built-in Light, Wi-Fi, and another a Philips Norelco PT730 Powertouch Electric Razor.

Click the widget for the savings. Thanks!

George Will on #ObamaCare Fix: 'All Hell is Going to Break Loose...'

At National Review, "Will’s Take: ‘All Hell is Going to Break Loose’ When Employers Dump Plans Due to Obamacare":

“Watch the employers, because if they start dumping people into Medicare and into Medicaid, and the doctors then say, ‘The burdens are too high, and the reimbursement is too low, we’re not seeing Medicaid patients,’ then all hell is going to break loose,” he said on Fox News Sunday.

Watch it here.

VIDEO: #Auburn Beats #Alabama with Spectacular Final-Seconds 100-Yard TD Return

At the Los Angeles Times, "No. 4 Auburn stuns No. 1 Alabama, 34-28, with a last-play touchdown."

And at Sports Illustrated, "Auburn delivers indelible BCS moment in stunning Alabama":

AUBURN, Ala. -- They didn't want to leave. That's what happens when the craziest finish in the history of college football unfolds on the sleepy Alabama plains. It kicks off a party that's a graduation celebration, wedding reception and sorority formal all rolled into one primal scream. Photos flashed straight to Instagram. Elderly couples hobbled on the field and pecked lips. Families posed for Christmas card pictures. In one mad dash down the left sideline, Auburn's Chris Davis sprinted straight into college football lore. His 109-yard return of Adam Griffith's 57-yard field goal attempt gave No. 4 Auburn a 34-28 victory over No. 1 Alabama as time expired.

As Davis waltzed into the end zone escorted by two teammates, he delivered the BCS generation its indelible Doug Flutie moment. (One that even trumped Ricardo Louis' unlikely 73-yard touchdown catch to cap Auburn's 43-38 victory over Georgia two weeks ago.) Only this one had a more improbable finish, and impossibly higher stakes.

Davis' dash capped a furious comeback that saw Auburn score 13 points in the final 32 seconds. The only thing that matched the veracity of celebration was the magnitude of the situation. In one stunning twist, Auburn ended Alabama's chance to win its third consecutive national championship, clinched a spot in the SEC title game and launched the Tigers into the BCS title conversation. "God is good," Davis said after the game, with divine intervention seemingly the only possible explanation.

Auburn linebacker Kris Frost cried tears of joy as he wandered the field in disbelief. Davis needed four Auburn officials to surround him for his postgame ESPN interview. Offensive lineman Tunde Fariyike shook his head and gazed to the sky: "That's all God," he said.

Who knew it would take the man upstairs to finally end the numbing efficiency of Alabama coach Nick Saban's process? Saban has emerged the as the collegiate version of Bill Belichick, a sideline genius whose teams win with crushing monotony. Yet in the sport's biggest rivalry, with everything at stake, Saban's in-game coaching backfired at the worst possible time.

Keep reading.

And then check out the Other McCain, "INCREDIBLE DISASTER! CATASTROPHE! APOCALYPSE!"

Seriously, though. How could that dude score from 100-yards out like that, in the final seconds, with the game on the line? Simply amazing.

White House: We've 'Met the Goal' of Making Healthcare Inaccessible to Millions of Americans!

Doug Powers has the story, at Michelle's, "Victory! HealthCare.gov team has ‘met the goal’."

Also at the Hill, "HealthCare.gov team claims victory: ‘We have met the goal’" via (Memeorandum).

The Contradictions of Socialism in the United States

At the People's Cube, "Old Soviet jokes become the new American reality":

The six contradictions of socialism in the United States of America:

-- America is capitalist and greedy - yet half of the population is subsidized.
-- Half of the population is subsidized - yet they think they are victims.
-- They think they are victims - yet their representatives run the government.
-- Their representatives run the government - yet the poor keep getting poorer.
-- The poor keep getting poorer - yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.
-- They have things that people in other countries only dream about - yet they want America to be more like those other countries.

RTWT at the link.

Bronx Train Derailment Leaves at Least 4 Dead, More Than 60 Injured

Man, a harsh way to wind down the long holiday weekend.

At NYT, "4 Dead in Metro-North Train Derailment in the Bronx":

At least four people were killed after a Metro-North Railroad train derailed Sunday morning in the Bronx along the Hudson River, officials said.

A total of 67 people were injured — 11 critically — a New York Fire Department spokesman, Jim Long, said.

The derailment occurred when several cars of a train headed south from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., left the tracks about 7:20 a.m. near the Spuyten Duyvil station under the Henry Hudson Bridge on the Hudson Line, according to a Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman, Aaron Donovan.

Councilman G. Oliver Koppell, who represents the area and was at the scene, said the accident was “certainly the worst one on this line.”

Rescue workers from the Police and Fire Departments converged on the scene and lowered stretchers into the train cars, which were lying nearly on their sides; one car was just above the water.

The train was the 5:54 a.m. out of Poughkeepsie, and was due at Grand Central Terminal at 7:43 a.m., Mr. Donovan said.

“We are just not sure” what caused the derailment, he said. “That will be the subject of a detailed investigation.”

More at Memeorandum.

Erin Gloria Ryan, Jezebel News Editor, Wishes Death on Scott Walker After 'Faster and Furious' Actor Dies

Saw this just now on Twitter:

Wtf. RT "@moderncomments: The disintegration of political discourse, right here. Stay classy, @morninggloria pic.twitter.com/sfsIutloew"
— Krystle (@TarheelKrystle) December 1, 2013

And at Fire Andrea Mitchell, "Paul Walker of Fast and Furious dies – leftists wish it was Scott Walker."

Also at Twitchy, "Jezebel editor on Paul Walker’s death: Why couldn’t it have been Scott Walker? Update: Tweets deleted."

EARLIER: "Paul Walker, 1973-2013."

Paul Walker, 1973-2013

Just 40 years-young. What a shame.

At the Los Angeles Times, "'Fast and Furious' actor Paul Walker dies in fiery Valencia car crash":

Actor Paul Walker, who gained fame as an undercover detective in the hugely successful “The Fast and the Furious” franchise, was killed Saturday in a car accident in Valencia, his representatives confirmed.

The single vehicle collision occurred about 3:30 p.m. in the 28300 block of Rye Canyon Loop. Deputies from the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station and the Los Angeles County Fire Department arrived to find a vehicle engulfed in flames. Two people in the vehicle were pronounced dead at the scene.

The cause of the collision is under investigation, said Sheriff’s Deputy Kim Manatt. According to a statement on his Twitter account, Walker, 40, was attending a charity event to aid Filipino victims of Typhoon Haiyan for his organization Reach Out Worldwide, formed in 2010 as a quick response first-aid organization.

“It is with a truly heavy heart that we must confirm that Paul Walker passed away today in a tragic car accident while attending a charity event for his organization Reach Out Worldwide,” the statement read. “He was a passenger in a friend's car, in which both lost their lives. We appreciate your patience as we too are stunned and saddened beyond belief by this news.”

More at that top link.

Also at Gateway Pundit, "'Fast and Furious' Actor Paul Walker Dies in Car Crash" (via Memeorandum).

'Silicon Beach' — Crush of Tech Start-Ups and Web Giants Fuels Housing Grab in L.A.'s Westside

At LAT, "Silicon Beach housing prices surge as techies move in":

In Venice, 25-year-old Snapchat co-founder Bobby Murphy has bought a new two-bedroom house for $2.1 million, or nearly double the median price of homes in the neighborhood.

A few blocks away, a three-bedroom town house with a rooftop sun deck was just rented for $7,000 a month — a year ago, an identical unit was renting for $5,900. "Totally Silicon Beach living," the ad on Craigslist proclaimed.

And farther south in Marina del Rey, hundreds of apartments were recently completed and aimed at drawing the tech crowd, with high-speed Internet in every unit, free Wi-Fi in common areas and an online application process.

The Westside has long been a desirable place to live, attracting entertainment executives, sports stars and financial gurus. But there's a new guard moving in.

The burgeoning tech community known as Silicon Beach is fueling a Westside housing grab that has enabled landlords to push sky-high rents even higher and helped send home prices above their pre-recession highs. Real estate agents say that within these neighborhoods, techies have made a brutal real estate market for buyers and renters even tougher.

"Everyone wants to buy here because this is the hot, cool space," said Brian Maser, a real estate agent who specializes in selling condos in the area.

Amid last decade's housing bubble, the median home price in Silicon Beach — the area west of the 405 Freeway from Santa Monica south to Marina del Rey — peaked at $925,000 in the second quarter of 2007 before plummeting 25% to $694,000 in the first three months of 2010, according to research firm DataQuick.

But Silicon Beach prices have risen sharply this year. The median price in that area reached $952,500 last quarter, 19.2% higher than in the same period last year.

Overall housing prices in Southern California, meanwhile, are still far below their peak during the bubble.

Tami Pardee, principal of Pardee Properties in Venice, said tech workers from Silicon Beach have descended upon the Venice market, and her agents have been busy showing homes to employees of Google and Facebook. She estimated that 30% of her buyers work in the industry.

"They have the money to buy," she said. "We're excited but cautious." As more techies move into the Westside, there are fears that the area — and especially the eclectic, funky vibe in Venice — could go from charmingly quirky to overly techie.

In a recent report, commercial real estate brokerage Marcus & Millichap found signs that renters "are beginning to balk at the area's high rents," which may be forcing some people to other regions.

"We want Venice to remain Venice," longtime Westside resident Briana Chalais, 35, said. "We don't want to be overtaken by all tech people."

Continue reading.

And who's moving in? Well, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have all opened corporate campuses, and start-up entrepreneurs are streaming into this hot location. As the accompanying photo indicates at LAT, rent at the nicer Venice townhouses is upward of $7,000-a-month.

And the Snapchat dude Bobby Murphy's the one who turned down that $3 billion buy-out offer from Facebook. He must've thought Zuckerberg was low-balling him, heh.

And it's interesting to note how L.A.'s Silicon Beach feeds the growing class divide in the American economy, discussed by Charlotte Allen, at the Weekly Standard, "Silicon Chasm: The Class Divide on America's Cutting Edge":

Atherton, Calif.

"If you live here, you’ve made it,” David Berkey said to me as I rode shotgun in his car two months ago through the Silicon Valley’s wealth belt. The massive house toward which he was pointing belongs to Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google. With a net worth of $24 billion, Brin is Silicon Valley’s third-richest denizen and the fourteenth-richest man in America, according to Forbes. Berkey was chauffeuring me down Atherton Avenue, a wide, straight, completely tree-lined boulevard nicely bifurcating the city of Atherton (population 7,200), located 29 miles south of San Francisco, boasting no commercial real estate, and with a zip code (94027) that was recently listed by Forbes as America’s most expensive.

You couldn’t really see Brin’s house from the car, though—just a swatch of rooftop, maybe a chimney—because the point of the trees lining Atherton Avenue and nearly every other street in Atherton is to hide the dwellings behind them. Where the screens of trees happen to thin, property owners have constructed high hedges, high wooden fences, and high brick walls, so that when you look down Atherton Avenue from the Santa Cruz Mountains to the west toward the commuter railroad station to the east, you see only the allée of trees—pine, palms, eucalyptus, sycamore, and juniper—shades of gray-green and brown-green shimmering placidly in the early autumn sun. “This is the Champs-Élysées of Atherton,” Berkey explained. The other thing we didn’t see from Berkey’s car is people, except for the occasional driver on the road.

Turning corners, we drove past other fancy and half-hidden real estate owned by other Silicon Valley grandees; Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, and her husband David Goldberg, the CEO of SurveyMonkey, have a 7,200-square-foot house somewhere in the hedge maze. Before there was such a thing as Silicon Valley—that is to say, 40 years ago—Atherton was an affluent bedroom town for white-shoe law-firm partners and Old Economy executives who liked to ride the Southern Pacific Peninsula to their jobs in San Francisco, imitating their East Coast counterparts who rolled on the Hartford-New Haven line from the Southern Connecticut Gold Coast into Manhattan. That was before today’s hiding-the-house custom, and the executives’ front lawns surged out like green carpets to Atherton Avenue and its side streets. Now, Atherton is mostly teardowns and brand new mega-mansions—or at least as mega as their owners can get away with, given Atherton’s highly restrictive zoning laws that mandate enormous lot-to-footprint ratios. To increase their overall square footage, Atherton’s new breed of homeowners typically tunnel out vast underground extra space—wine cellars and home theaters—beneath their dwellings. The dominant style these days is a fanciful mix of Palladian Neoclassic, Loire Valley château, and Mediterranean villa, spreading out manor-house-style to cover as much ground as the zoning laws allow.

“This was a vacant lot five years ago,” said Berkey as we cruised by one of the spanking new stone-faced Atherton domiciles with its multiple dormers, chimneys, tile-roofed turrets, and columned porticos. “Now it’s worth $5 or $6 million. And this house here—it recently sold for $7 million, $4.4 million more than the asking price.” We passed the Menlo School, tuition $38,000 a year, where the parents pick up their kids in Range Rovers and fly them in private jets to exotic foreign locations for birthday parties. Down the road lay the Sacred Heart School, the Menlo School’s Catholic opposite number, where the tuition is only $34,000 a year. Their feeder is Atherton’s Las Lomitas School, rated among the top elementary schools in the state of California.

Las Lomitas is technically a public school, although its main support comes from a lavish parent-funded foundation that last year alone raised $2.8 million. “It’s going for $3 million this year,” Berkey said. “For the parents, it’s an attractive tax write-off. We can do good and feel good at the same time, because it benefits our own children.” Also not to be missed was the Menlo Circus Club (initiation fee: $250,000), featuring daily tennis, Friday polo matches, and state-of-the-art stables for horse people who can’t afford or don’t want to be bothered with the ranch-size spreads of owners who stable their own horses, farther up into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Berkey himself doesn’t live in Atherton. He can’t afford to. He’s a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and his wife, Eleanor Lacey, is general counsel at SurveyMonkey, which occupies Facebook’s old startup quarters in downtown Palo Alto. That makes them part of what is known as the “middle class” of Silicon Valley: two-career couples with family incomes in the low-to-mid six-figure-range. They and their two daughters live in neighboring Menlo Park, in what is essentially a modest 1950s tract house, the kind of flat-roofed, three-bedroom, two-bath, sliding-glass-patio-door, under-2,000-square-foot residences, pleasant but not pretentious, that were built en masse well into the 1970s as cheap starter homes, because back then it was conceivable that there could be such a thing as a cheap starter home in the valley. Berkey says his own house is currently valued at $1.2 million.

That’s par for the course. Open on any random day the Daily Post, the throwaway newspaper serving the mid-peninsula, and there will be a full-page ad for a “charming updated contemporary home” in Menlo Park or Palo Alto or Mountain View or Sunnyvale, with its single story, its gravel-topped roof, its living-room picture window, its teensy garden strip running alongside the jutting two-car garage that plugs into the kitchen, its pocket-size but grassy front lawn reminiscent of The Wonder Years—and its 1,216 square feet of living space—all “offered at $949,000.” That’s a bargain for the valley.

Berkey drove us out of Atherton, across El Camino Real, the peninsula’s main commercial highway, and across the railroad tracks past the tiny Atherton station, now part of California’s state-run Caltrain system and a commuter stop only on weekends. We were now in the featureless, nearly treeless, semi-industrial flatlands of Menlo Park stretching eastward to the bay. The demographic change was instant: ¡No se habla inglés! There were suddenly plenty of people on the sidewalks—and nearly every single one of them was Latino. There were suddenly plenty of commercial establishments—ramshackle, brightly painted, graffiti-adorned storefronts with hand-painted business signs mostly in Spanish: “Comida Nicaraguense,” “Restaurante Guatemalteco,” “Carnicería” (pork chops and steaks crudely painted on the walls), “Pescadería” (fish and crustaceans crudely painted on the walls), “Panadería,” “Check Cashing,” “Gonzalez Auto Sales,” “Sanchez Jewelry,” “Check Cashing,” “Arturo’s Shoe Repair,” “99¢ and Over,” “Check Cashing.”

Menlo Park is actually only about 20 percent Hispanic and is unabashedly affluent in its own right, but its Hispanic population concentrated next door to the hedgy scrim of Atherton makes for a startling study in contrasts. No one pretends that the gravel-roofed, shack-size houses in this particular neighborhood are “charming” midcentury modern gems. That would be hard to do, what with the weeds, the peeling paint, the chain-link fences, the chained-up guard dogs, and the front lawns paved over to accommodate multiple vehicles for multiple dwellers. The phrase “the other side of the tracks” has vivid meaning. “Look at the newspaper police blotters, and you’ll see that in Atherton the main reported crime is identity theft,” said Berkey. “Here, it’s break-ins.”

You can laud this underbelly barrio as vibrant immigrant culture or you can decry it as an instant-slum product of untrammeled illegal border-crossing, but it represents an important fact on the ground: These are the people who earn their livings tending to the needs of the high-tech “creative class” that has made Silicon Valley famous. I could see them on Atherton Avenue, the amanuensis class heading up from Menlo Park in their wee panel trucks and Dodge minivans and their Ford flatbeds fitted out with racks for garden tools among the Bentleys, BMWs, Audis, and Lexuses that are the standard Atherton vehicles. They tend the meticulously clipped lawns, flower beds, hedges, and trees of Atherton (Berkey said that it’s not uncommon for an Atherton sentence to begin, “My arborist .  .  . ”). They clean the houses and the swimming pools, they deliver the catering, they watch the children, and they repair the roofs, the plumbing, the balconies, and the wine cellars of the very affluent and the very busy. You might say that across-the-tracks Menlo Park, along with down-market Latino neighborhoods just like it up and down the peninsula—East Palo Alto, parts of Redwood City, the southern end of San Jose—functions as a kind of oversize servants’ wing. It’s safe to say that almost every hotel maid, restaurant busboy, cashier, janitor, retail stocker, and fast-food worker in the valley is Latino.

Master and servant. Cornucopian wealth for a few tech oligarchs plus relatively steady but relatively low-paying work for their lucky retainers. No middle class, unless the top 5 percent U.S. income bracket counts as middle class. Silicon Valley is a tableau vivant of what many economists and professional futurologists say is the coming fate of America itself, a fate to which Americans, if they can’t embrace it as some futurologists hope, should at least resign themselves...

Continue reading.

Mind you, these people are overwhelmingly "progressive." The power and privilege doesn't fit the left's endless class-warfare campaigns. The Koch brothers pale in comparison to this towering pedestal of leftist prestige.

Hat Tip: Bob Belvedere and Instapundit.

Hilarious Healthcare.gov Revamped!

At Twitchy, "This revamped HealthCare.gov homepage is hilarious [Photoshop]."

That's from Caleb Howe, who's a freakin' gut-buster on Twitter.

'Baby Jesus Butt Plug' Assigned by Comparative Literature Professor at Long Beach State

It's Jordan Smith, who's listed as an "Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature" in the Department of Comparative Literature and Classics.

Oh boy, that's classic alright. And required reading!

At Campus Reform, "Prof at public college assigned students ‘The Baby Jesus Butt Plug’ as mandatory reading" (via Gary Fouse):

A professor at the California State University - Long Beach, assigned students a 104-page book entitled “The Baby Jesus Butt Plug” last week as part of the mandatory reading for an upper level comparative world literature course.

That book, which is described on Amazon.com as “Trashy and dark,” invites readers to “Step into a dark and absurd world where human beings are slaves to corporations, people are photocopied instead of born, and the baby jesus is a very popular anal probe.”

More at the link.

Funny how I just blogged about this depraved phenomenon a couple of days ago, "Increasingly Leftist Colleges Abandon Greats and Teach Garbage."

These people are freakin' disgusting. Leftist butt-plug losers. This reminds me of the assholes at Lawyers, Gays and Marriage. Yep, depraved and disgusting butt-plug losers all around.

Leanne Scotton

Via Twitter.

Leftists Attack 'Douche' Josh Romney After He Tweets Photos from Car-Wreck Rescue

Althouse has the background, "'Mitt Romney’s son rescued four people from a car crash—then tweeted a photo of himself grinning next to the wreck'."

And at Twitchy, "Josh Romney called a ‘douche’ and ‘megalomaniac’ after tweeting about rescue."

@joshromney so cute watching you brag, trying desperately to get people to respect you. Douche.

— SheriffFruitfly (@sherifffruitfly) November 29, 2013

Also, Josh Romney is a douche prick.

— Leahtron (@leahmrb) November 29, 2013

I don't know if I would have tweeted it, but he's a Romney, so the left would melt down no matter what.

Here's the more respectable response, and accurate:

@joshromney Good for you, too many people would simply drive by.

— Andy Richardson (@arichardson31) November 29, 2013

Fight Breaks Out During Ohio State-Michigan Game

At USA Today, "It was ugly."

'I think anybody who believes that we are in a period of decline or stagnation probably hasn’t been paying attention...'

That's Sebastian Thrun, Google's top research scientist, at Foreign Affairs, "Google's Original X-Man: A Conversation With Sebastian Thrun."

A phenomenal interview:

There are people who feel that the prospects of life are diminishing and that the next generation is not going to have a better life than the previous one. Do you think your child’s life will be more interesting and exciting and filled with larger prospects than yours?

If you look at history, the fear that the next generation would be worse off than the previous one has been around for many centuries. It’s not a new fear. And it’s often due to the lack of imagination of people in understanding how innovation is moving forward. But if you graph progress and quality of life over time, and you zoom out a little and look at the centuries, it’s gotten better and better and better and better.

Our ability to be at peace with each other has grown. Our ability to have cultural interchanges has improved. We have more global languages, we have faster travel, we have better communication, we have better health. I think these trends will be sustained going forward, absolutely no question. If you look at the type of things that are happening right now in leading research labs, I see so many great new technologies coming out in the next ten to 20 years. It ought to be great.

So you disagree with the notion that innovation is dead, or that we’re in a great stagnation, or a period of decline?

I think anybody who believes that we are in a period of decline or stagnation probably hasn’t been paying attention. If you look at the way society has transformed itself in the last 20 years, it’s more fundamental than the 50 years before and maybe even bigger than the 200 years before.

I’ll give an example. With the advent of digital information, the recording, storage, and dissemination of information has become practically free. The previous time there was such a significant change in the cost structure for the dissemination of information was when the book became popular. Printing was invented in the fifteenth century, became popular a few centuries later, and had a huge impact in that we were able to move cultural knowledge from the human brain into a printed form. We have the same sort of revolution happening right now, on steroids, and it is affecting every dimension of human life.

A century or two ago, you had innovations such as steam, electricity, railroads, the internal combustion engine, the telegraph and telephone and radio. Those things had ramifications that fundamentally changed the structure of society, the structure of political organization. Is the information technology revolution going to have that kind of impact?
I think the impact will be greater. I don't want to belittle any innovation. I think the steam engine, the car, television, all the examples you mentioned are landmarks of history. But if you zoom out a little bit, most of these inventions come from the last 150 to 200 years. Very few are a thousand years old or older, and given that humanity is much older than that, you could say that almost all inventions are recent. I believe the full potential of the Internet has not been realized yet, and we're not very used to it. But a hundred years from now, we will conclude this was one of the biggest revolutions ever.

I believe we live in an age where most interesting inventions have not been made, where there are enormous opportunities to move society forward. I'm excited to live right now. But I would rather live 20 years from now or 50 years from now than live today. It's going to be better and better.