Obama Administration Exploits #Ferguson to Undermine Race Relations and Rule of Law

From David Limbaugh, at Town Hall:

I wish there were a way to address the Ferguson controversy without generating further controversy. But that's not an easy task.

I have believed for some time that the Obama administration has fanned the flames of racial tension in this country rather than attempt to extinguish them, despite its claims to the contrary. President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, in my view, have been the main culprits, which is exceedingly unfortunate, considering the opportunity their historic roles present for making great strides toward racial harmony.

The question is: Do these gentlemen truly want to promote racial harmony?

If President Obama were trying to alleviate racial tensions, would he have accused the police department in Cambridge, Massachusetts, of "acting stupidly" in arresting a friend of his, Harvard professor Henry Gates? The statement was stunningly inappropriate because he took sides reflexively without benefit of all the facts and because presidents have no business weighing in on such local matters. Does anyone doubt that race was at the forefront of Obama's mind?

But if there was any doubt, Obama removed it when "the main message" he chose to impart from the Trayvon Martin matter was implied in this bizarre statement: "My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."

Fast-forward to the present and we learn that just days after the grand jury decided not to indict police officer Darren Wilson based on his shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the White House tweeted its endorsement of an article by Christopher Emdin, Ph.D., a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. The piece, "5 Ways to Teach About Michael Brown and Ferguson in the New School Year," appeared on The Huffington Post less than two weeks after the shooting incident and before all the facts were in and the grand jury was impaneled. In his introductory paragraphs, Emdin advises teachers and parents not to ignore these types of events: "Bringing the events in Ferguson to the classroom is not only best teaching practice but a way to establish powerful expectations for the academic year."

Parts of the article appear innocuous, such as the suggestion that teachers ask students what they have heard or know about Brown in order to "spark a powerful discussion that sets the tone for the school year." The teachers can use information gathered by the class to help "students unearth the facts, fiction, and mistruths in media coverage of the events in Ferguson."

Keep reading.

'It's said that Apple's Steve Jobs got away with never having license plates on his leased Mercedes by trading it in every few months, before the 90-day limit expired...'

I'm sure that was sweet.

The rest of us, who're supposed to affix license plates within 3 months, can't just go for the quarterly trade-in.

At LAT, "Why so many cars in California don't have license plates."

This is What Prosecutors Think Happened in Ferguson

Cool graphics, at the Independent UK, "Michael Brown shootings: This is what prosecutors think happened in Ferguson."

This is what prosecutors think happened in Ferguson when Michael Brown was shot http://t.co/L2CoOOlv20 pic.twitter.com/4ltNxnuWAr

— The Independent (@Independent) November 25, 2014

Angelina Jolie and Louis Zamperini

Interesting.

I'm looking forward to seeing this film.

Yesterday, at Vanity Fair, "Read Angelina Jolie’s Moving Reflection on Showing Unbroken to Louie Zamperini Before His Death":

Universal hosted a luncheon today at the the Metropolitan Club in Midtown Manhattan to celebrate Unbroken, director Angelina Jolie’s harrowing retelling of the story of W.W. II hero Louie Zamperini. Zamperini, a bombardier in the Pacific theater, survived a plane crash and nearly two grueling months stranded at sea, only to be captured by the Japanese and held in a P.O.W. camp for two and a half years. He passed away this past July, but Jolie, who became close with Zamperini while making the film, did have a chance to show him the finished product, a moment that she captured rather poignantly during a Q&A today...

Keep reading.

Orange County Register, Riverside Press-Enterprise Lay Off 100 Employees

I drive by the O.C. Register everyday on the way home from work. I always wonder how long the newspaper's marquee building will be there.

Perhaps not too much longer.

At LAT:

Freedom Communications, the parent company of the Orange County Register and the Riverside Press-Enterprise, is laying off about 100 non-newsroom employees Wednesday.

Former casino executive Richard Mirman, who became the Register’s publisher in October, sent a memo to employees Wednesday morning explaining that the cuts are part of an attempt "to 'right size' the business back to appropriate levels."

More.

Southern California Storm Breaks Records: Flood Watches in Effect

It's very nice to have sustained rainfall.

At LAT, "California rain: 'Six straight hours of rain,' and drought continues."

Another day of this and the weather's going to take a big dent out of that drought.

FDA Could Soon Rescind Ban on Blood Donations from Homosexual Men

Pray you'll never need a blood transfusion.

At WaPo, "Government could ease 31-year-old ban on blood donations from gay men."

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

Well, hopefully these fellows won't be looking to make blood donations.

'Do We Achieve World Order Through Chaos or Insight?'

At Der Spiegel, "Interview with Henry Kissinger":

Henry Kissinger seems more youthful than his 91 years. He is focused and affable, but also guarded, ready at any time to defend himself or brusquely deflect overly critical questions. That, of course, should come as no surprise. While his intellect is widely respected, his political legacy is controversial. Over the years, repeated attempts have been made to try him for war crimes.

From 1969 to 1977, Kissinger served under President Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, first as national security advisor and then as secretary of state. In those roles, he also carried partial responsibility for the napalm bombings in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos the killed or maimed tens of thousands of civilians. Kissinger also backed the putsch against Salvador Allende in Chile and is accused of having had knowledge of CIA murder plots. Documents declassified just a few weeks ago show that Kissinger had drawn up secret plans to launch air strikes against Cuba. The idea got scrapped after Democrat Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976.

Nevertheless, Kissinger remains a man whose presence is often welcome in the White House, where he continues to advise presidents and secretaries of state to this day.

Little in Kissinger's early years hinted at his future meteoric rise in American politics. Born as Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Fürth, Germany in 1923, his Jewish family would later flee to the United States in 1938. After World War II, Kissinger went to Germany to assist in finding former members of the Gestapo. He later studied political science and became a professor at Harvard at the age of 40.

Kissinger recently published his 17th book, a work with the not exactly modest title "World Order." When preparing to sit down with us for an interview, he asked that "world order" be the topic. Despite his German roots and the fact that he reads DER SPIEGEL each week on his iPad, Kissinger prefers to speak in English. After 90 minutes together in New York, Kissinger says he's risked his neck with everything he's told us. But of course, a man like Kissinger knows precisely what he does and doesn't want to say...

Keep reading.

And here's the book, World Order.

What the New York Times Won't Tell You About Ferguson

From Heather Mac Donald, at National Review, "Finding Meaning in Ferguson":

The New York Times has now pronounced on the “meaning of the Ferguson riots.” A more perfect example of what the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan called “defining deviancy down” would be hard to find. The Times’ editorial encapsulates the elite narrative around the fatal police shooting of unarmed Michael Brown last August, and the mayhem that twice followed that shooting. Unfortunately, the editorial is also a harbinger of the poisonous anti-police ideology that will drive law-enforcement policy under the remainder of the Obama administration.

The Times cannot bring itself to say one word of condemnation against the savages who self-indulgently destroyed the livelihoods of struggling Ferguson, Mo., entrepreneurs and their employees last week. The real culprit behind the riots, in the Times’ view, is not the actual arsonists and looters but county prosecutor Robert McCulloch. McCulloch presented the shooting of 18-year-old Brown by Officer Darren Wilson to a St. Louis county grand jury; after hearing three months of testimony, the grand jury decided last Monday not to bring criminal charges against Wilson. The Times trots out the by now de rigueur and entirely ad hoc list of McCulloch’s alleged improprieties, turning the virtues of this grand jury — such as its thoroughness — into flaws. If the jurors had indicted Wilson, none of the riot apologists would have complained about the length of the process or the range of evidence presented.

To be sure, most grand-jury proceedings are pro forma and brief, because the evidence of the defendant’s guilt is so overwhelming, as Andrew McCarthy has explained. Here, however, McCulloch faced a dilemma. His own review of the case would have shown the unlikelihood of a conviction. Physical evidence discredited the initial inflammatory claims about Wilson attacking Brown and shooting him in the back, and Missouri law accords wide deference to police officers who use deadly force against a dangerous suspect. Not initiating any formal criminal inquiry against Wilson was politically impossible, however, especially since the eyewitness accounts that corroborated Wilson’s version of events would have remained unknown. (Not surprisingly, the six black witnesses who supported Wilson’s story did not go to the press or social media, unlike the witnesses who spread the early lies about Wilson’s behavior.) So McCulloch used the grand-jury proceeding as a way to get the entire dossier about the case into the public domain by bringing a broad range of evidence before the grand jury and then releasing it to the public after the proceeding ended — a legal arrangement.

The Times is silent about that evidence, of course. Blood and DNA traces demonstrated that Brown had initiated the altercation by attacking Wilson while Wilson was inside his car. Brown then tried to grab Wilson’s gun, presumably to shoot him. Such an assault on a law-enforcement officer is nearly as corrosive to the rule of law and a stable society as rioting. But to the mainstream media, it is apparently simply normal behavior not worth mentioning when a black teenager attacks a cop, just as it was apparently normal and beneath notice that Brown had strong-armed a box of cigarillos from a shopkeeper moments before Wilson accosted him for walking in the middle of the street. Amazingly, anyone who brought up that earlier videoed felony was accused of besmirching Brown’s character, even though the robbery was highly relevant to the encounter that followed (and showed that Brown did not have much character to besmirch in the first place, something his sealed juvenile records would likely have confirmed).

Even if we ignore the exculpatory evidence, it is absurd to blame the riots, as the Times does, on McCulloch’s management of the grand jury or the way he announced the verdict. There would have been rioting if the grand-jury proceeding had lasted one day, so long as it failed to indict Wilson for murder. It is unlikely that the rioters even listened to, much less carefully parsed, McCulloch’s post-verdict press conference, which the Times finds biased. It is equally absurd to imply that the grand jury’s decision not to indict resulted from unprofessional behavior on McCulloch’s part or from prejudice that somehow infected the proceedings. Not indicting officers for good-faith shootings in the course of their duty is the norm, not the exception. There have been no indictments of Missouri officers for shootings since 1991. Houston grand juries have cleared officers of shootings 288 consecutive times. The Brown verdict was par for the course and not the result of some flawed, partial process.

The Times then goes into blazing hyperbole about the reign of terror inflicted “daily” on blacks by the police in Ferguson and nationally. The Times coyly cites “news accounts” — i.e., its own– claiming that the police in Ferguson “systematically target poor and minority citizens for street and traffic stops — partly to generate fines.” The Times has no evidence of such systematic targeting, proof of which would require determining the rate at which blacks and whites violate traffic and other laws and then comparing those rates to their stop rates. Studies elsewhere have shown that blacks speed at higher rates than whites. Blacks likely also have lower rates of car registration and vehicle upkeep, for economic reasons. Moreover, if authorities are using traffic fines in order to generate revenue, they would presumably “target” the people most likely to be able to pay those fines, not the poorest residents of an area.

Even more fantastically, the Times claims that “the killing of young black men by police is a common feature of African-American life and a source of dread for black parents from coast to coast.” A “common feature”? This is pure hysteria, likely penned by Times columnist Charles Blow. The public could perhaps be forgiven for believing that “the killing of young black men by police is a common feature of African-American life,” given the media frenzy that follows every such rare police killing, compared to the silence that greets the daily homicides committed by blacks against other blacks. The press, however, should know better. According to published reports, the police kill roughly 200 blacks a year — most of them attacking the officer. In 2013, there were 6,261 black homicide victims in the U.S. The police could eliminate all fatal shootings without having any significant impact on the black homicide death rate. The killers of those black homicide victims are overwhelmingly other blacks, responsible for a death risk ten times that of whites in urban areas. In 2013, 5,375 blacks were arrested for homicide, which is greater than the number of whites and Hispanics combined (4,396), even though blacks are only 13 percent of the national population.

The Times trots out the misleading statistic published by ProPublica last month that young black males are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by police than young white males — a calculation that overlooks that young black men commit homicide at nearly ten times the rate of young white and Hispanic males combined. That astronomically higher homicide-commission rate means that police officers are going to be disproportionately in black neighborhoods to fight crime, where they will more likely encounter armed shooting suspects. If the black crime rate were the same as the white crime rate, the victims of police shootings would most certainly also be equal among the races. Asians are minorities, which, according to the Times’ ideology, should make them the target of police brutality. But they barely show up in police-shooting data because their crime rates are so low.

For the years 2005–2009, a significant portion of victims in the ProPublica study — 62 percent — were resisting arrest or assaulting an officer as Michael Brown did. The cop hatred that activists and press organs like the Times do their best to foment significantly increases the chances of such aggressive and dangerous behavior...

Wow.

Keep reading.

Democrats Paved the Way for Their Own Decline

Yeah, Obama built that.

 From Charlie Cook, at National Journal:

Governing is about making choices and facing consequences. Implicitly, to focus on certain things is to de-emphasize other things. The modern Democratic Party was effectively born during President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, reacting and dealing with the Great Depression. While books have been filled with the multitude of things that Roosevelt and his New Dealers did, if you boiled it down to its essence, it was helping people get back on their feet after the great stock-market crash of 1929 and the deep depression that resulted. In 2008, we faced the Great Recession, and like other financial meltdowns, it was deep and painful. At the tail end of the George W. Bush administration and in the early Obama years, financial markets were stabilized (the overwhelming majority of the Troubled Asset Relief Program funds have been repaid, with many of the investments yielding profits for Uncle Sam), and the Obama administration should be applauded for rescuing the automobile industry. But while those actions can be legitimately seen as a good start, we then saw a grand pivot to the environment and health care, with grave consequences for the party. At another time and in different fashion, both are important priorities, but the focus on these issues has effectively decimated the Democratic Party in specific areas and among specific voter blocs. The evidence is the difference in the partisan makeup of the Congress that will be sworn in next month, compared with the one from eight years ago.

RTWT.

It's gotta hurt.

Cyber Week

It's not just Monday.

Keep shopping all week at Amazon, Shop Amazon Cyber Monday Deals Week.

Why Was Miriam Carey Killed?

This is pretty intense, at the Washington Post, "How Miriam Carey's U-turn at a White House checkpoint led to her death."

And from Instapundit, "BECAUSE THEY’RE PROTECTORS OF THE POWERFUL, THE CAPITOL POLICE AND SECRET SERVICE GOT LESS BLOWBACK FOR THIS SHOOTING OF AN UNARMED BLACK WOMAN."

Ferguson Becoming a Revolutionary Tourist Wonderland

At IBD, "Ferguson's Potemkin Protests":

Key Ferguson fact: Nearly all the protesters arrested were from out of town http://t.co/eD4M6OV69O pic.twitter.com/Uk20vs6YCC

— IBDeditorials (@IBDeditorials) December 2, 2014

Revolutionary Tourism: As shattered glass, car fires and protests blight Ferguson, an interesting fact is emerging: Nearly all of the arrestees hollering revolution are from other cities. Obviously, this isn't about Michael Brown.

In the latest batch of radicals busted over the weekend for disturbing the peace in Ferguson, 15 of the 16 didn't even live in Ferguson. They were from places as far away as Chicago and New York.

It's no anomaly, either, but a pattern.

Police said that of the 51 protesters arrested in the protests of Aug. 19 and 20, 50 were from places like New York, Des Moines and Chicago.

They come from groups like the ANSWER Coalition, the New Black Panthers, the Revolutionary Communist Party, the Organization for Black Struggle and the Soros-linked U.S. Human Rights Network.

So any talk about riots and mayhem in Ferguson being a spontaneous uprising or a grass-roots civil society effort by Ferguson's locals is nonsense...

More.

Sisters in India Beat Up Three Men for Harassing Them

Via the BBC:

'Share the Wealth' Failing to Sell

From Michael Barone, at RCP, "Nobody Is Pushing Thomas Piketty's Policies to Combat Economic Inequality":

Last spring, you may remember, the French economist Thomas Piketty was all the rage in certain enlightened circles. His book "Capital" shot up to the No. 1 spot on bestseller lists, and many economists praised his statistics showing increased income and wealth inequality. Piketty argued that, absent a world war, returns to capital will exceed economic growth, inevitably producing growing inequality in the 21st century.

There are problems with Piketty's -- or anyone else's -- statistics. Reliance on U.S. income tax returns overlooks the fact that tax cuts encourage people to realize income and misses non-taxable income such as welfare and Social Security payments.

Still, there has clearly been a boom in the incomes and wealth of the top 1 percent here and worldwide. Piketty sees this as a threat to democracy. Liberal economists and pundits hoped that his revelations would finally get politicians to support policies like Piketty's 80 percent tax rate on high incomes and progressive tax on great wealth -- and get the masses to vote for them.

So far it hasn't happened here or just about anywhere.

You didn't see any campaign ads calling for Piketty taxes this fall. You didn't even see any ads hailing Democrats for having raised taxes on high earners in early 2013. Democratic candidates in seriously contested races didn't come close to advocating such policies.

You may have heard some Democrats bemoaning income inequality. The idea that the rich get richer while everyone else doesn't gets pretty wide agreement in the polls. So does the Democrats' one redistributionist policy -- raising the minimum wage.

As a policy to address inequality, though, it's rather pathetic. About half of minimum wage earners are not in the lowest fifth households in income. Even fewer are their own household's primary earner. Almost all economists agree that when the minimum wage is raised, some employees lose their jobs.

It is only slightly hyperbolic to say that an increased minimum wage is a transfer of income from fast-food customers to fast-food workers minus those who are replaced by kiosks. That's not a very effective way to sock it to the top 1 percent.

Even after the election, some Democrats argue that they didn't hit the issue hard enough. One Democrat's advice to President Obama, according to Politico, "is focus on income inequality, and talk about and propose things, and just be a fierce advocate of addressing the economic divide. That will leave people after two years saying the Democratic Party really stands for something."

"Propose things" -- but what? A recent Congressional Budget Office report shows that when you measure federal taxes paid minus federal transfers received (welfare, food stamps, Social Security, etc.), the top 20 percent of earners pay an average of $46,500. The next 20 percent pay an average of $700. The bottom three-fifths get back more than they pay. Plus, the U.S. already relies more heavily on the income tax for revenues than any other advanced economy nation.

In other words, America already has lots of economic redistribution. American voters evidently sense that more redistribution would sap economic growth. They're willing to throw a little to minimum wage earners, but they don't want to kill the geese laying the golden eggs.

Well, it's all crashing down for the idiot leftists, and it ain't over yet.

More.

Not Working for the Working Class

From Glenn Reynolds, at USA Today:

Working class white people don't like President Obama much. According to the latest Gallup poll, only 27% approve of him. That's 21 percentage points down since he took office in 2009.

A standard talking-point is that these voters don't like Obama because they're racist. But that assumes that the key word in "white working class" is "white." In fact, the key word is "working." After all, Obama isn't any blacker than he was in 2009.

A few Democratic pundits seem to get this. Writing in Mother Jones, Kevin Drum observes: "So who does the WWC take out its anger on? Largely, the answer is the poor. In particular, the undeserving poor. Liberals may hate this distinction, but it doesn't matter if we hate it. Lots of ordinary people make this distinction as a matter of simple common sense, and the WWC makes it more than any. That's because they're closer to it. For them, the poor aren't merely a set of statistics or a cause to be championed. They're the folks next door who don't do a lick of work but somehow keep getting government checks paid for by their tax dollars."

So if Democrats want to win back the white working class — and they kind of need to, if they want to win elections, because it's an enormous demographic — maybe they need to start thinking about honoring and encouraging work, rather than talking about race or class.

I doubt this is going to sink in much with the Democrat race-grievance establishment. But sooner or later someone will come along and say, "Hey, we can't win elections. We need to moderate our message." They did that back in the 1990s, when Bill Clinton was elected as a "moderate." He could at least talk the talk. After the midterms the Democrats have doubled down on far left-wing extremism. So it could be awhile, heh.

More.

Emily Ratajkowski Christmas Lingerie

Holy cow!

She's so lovely.

At Egotastic!, "Emily Ratajkowski Officially Opens the Christmas Lingerie Season."

Cyber Monday at Amazon: Camera, Photo, and Video

At Amazon, Shop Amazon - Cyber Monday Deals in Camera, Photo & Video.

Also, at CBS News, "Cyber Monday's potential impact after drop in Thanksgiving weekend sales."

GoFundMe Shuts Down Mad Jewess Woman's Darren Wilson Page

Pathetic.

At the Mad Jewess, "The Mad Jewess Opened @GoFundMe Campaign For #DarrenWilson, @GoFundMe Shut It Down":

This is why I hardly do anything like this on the net. If you are a right-winger or God forbid, a white cop defending his life, you will get nowhere on the net. This is why we should go “Ferguson” on all of the Fed buildings if we all had half a brain.

Also at Fire Andrea Mitchell, "GoFundMe removes conservative blogger’s fundraising page for Darren Wilson."

Penny Mordaunt's Naughty Cock Speech

At Telegraph UK, "Penny Mordaunt's naughty cock speech" (VIDEO):

It has been revealed that Penny Mordaunt, who is a Royal Navy reservist as well as Conservative communities minister, made a spoof speech to the House of Commons.

Ms Mordaunt, 41, used the word "c**k" six times and "lay" or "laid" five times during an address to Parliament on March 26, 2013.

Ostensibly the speech was delivered to highlight issues around the welfare of chickens, however Ms Mordaunt - who was made a minister in the communities department after she delivered the speech - has now disclosed that the real reason for making her address was a forfeit issued during a dinner in the officers' mess.

The MP for Portsmouth North said: "Some of my Marine training officers in Dartmouth thought it would be a good idea to break my ladylike persona by getting me to yell particularly rude words during the most gruelling part of our training.

"They failed but during our mess dinner at the end of the course, I was fined for a misdemeanour. The fine was to say a particular word, an abbreviation of cockerel, several times during a speech on the floor of the Commons, and mention all the names of the officers present."

While she fulfilled the wager, she has been criticised by Labour MPs for making a mockery of the Parliamentary system.

Enough With the Ferguson Pandering

At Blazing Cat Fur:

By embracing the 'need for change' premise promoted by Al Sharpton and company, the media is complicit in spreading the lie that America is racist and blacks are mistreated.

Theo's Monday Mopsies

Check out the babes at Theo Spark's.

Dark Days Ahead for #ObamaCare

From Elise Viebeck, at the Hill:

The Obama administration is facing a slew of healthcare challenges as the winter holidays approach.

While this fall has been a far cry from last year, when HealthCare.gov was melting down, 2014 has brought wholly unexpected problems to the fore for federal health officials and the White House.

Take the conflict surrounding Jonathan Gruber, the ObamaCare consultant whose suggestion that a "lack of transparency" and voters' "stupidity" helped the law pass, went viral.

Though Democrats have sought to distance themselves from Gruber, his remarks have become a new flashpoint in debate over healthcare reform, invigorating GOP critics as the party prepares to take control of the Senate.

Gruber has agreed to testify before the House Oversight Committee on Dec. 9, in a final hearing for outgoing chairman and relentless administration antagonist Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

The gathering, also set to include Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, is sure to prove a distraction for the White House as officials try once again to keep a lid on opposition to the law.

Here are four additional challenges that the administration faces on healthcare this winter...

Keep reading.

Natasha Barnard

Some video, "Natasha Barnard's Sexy Outtakes for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit."

Also at Sports Illustrated.

Race Relations After Ferguson

Norah O'Donnell, a precious, pampered establishment leftist, sitting in for Bob Schieffer yesterday at "Face the Nation."

Ta-Nehisi Coates is interviewed. His name is pronounced to ryhmye with "Tallahassee."

"We have to get back to foundations" (of racism and theft of Native American land). These idiots will never move into the 21st century.

Here: "Will Ferguson change policing and race relations in America? (VIDEO)."

ANSWER Communists with Che Guevara Signs Lead Protest Against Walmart in Rancho Cordova (VIDEO)

From the Arden Fair Mall in Sacramento.

The Che signs can be seen at 1:35 minutes, exposing the big lie behind these so-called "minimum wage" protests.

These are the Bay Area ANSWER hordes, communist revolutionary protesters pushing for the expropriation of capital --- the "$16 billion in profits" --- from the Walmart corporate oppressors.

Frankly, I'm surprised the Che Guevara signs made it into the newscast. Usually the far-left press enables the idiot revolutionary agitators.



More at the Sacramento Bee, "UPDATE: Protests lead to arrests at a Rancho Cordova Walmart, Arden Fair mall."

CNN Pushed Bald-Face Lies to Keep Ferguson 'Peaceful Protest' Narrative Going

Naomi Schaefer Riley, at the New York Post, "CNN is lying when they say Ferguson protests were ‘peaceful’":

Here’s a quiz for you folks in the media: What happens if you’re out doing “man on the street” interviews but none of the men on the street fit your “narrative”?

If you’re CNN, you stop interviewing them.

It has been remarkable to watch the last few days as America’s self-styled “most trusted news network” has sent out teams of reporters to various areas of Ferguson, Mo., ostensibly to cover the protests there. While their cameramen are watching cars on fire and stores being looted, the reporters ramble on about how “most people here” are “peaceful protesters.”

Where are these peaceful protesters? The reporters can’t seem to find any. Instead, they turn to outside experts and some carefully vetted religious leaders to talk about “the real message” of the protests.

On Tuesday night, CNN correspondent Jason Carroll was reporting, “Most of the protesting we saw in front of the Ferguson Police Department tonight was peaceful.” Then as he started trying to explain the fires burning behind him, he was approached by three of the protesters, who proceeded to get in his face and yell at him because he was promoting a “certain narrative” — the police narrative. “You don’t understand!” one screamed.

Anchor Don Lemon quickly went elsewhere, saying he was worried about Carroll’s safety. When Lemon returned to Carroll later in the broadcast and asked him what the men were saying to him, Carroll refused to say. The reporter was stonewalling because, he explained, these men didn’t “represent” the peaceful protesters who were really the story...

Keep reading.

Epic! Thanksgiving Campaign Attack Ad Slams Obama for Two Minutes Straight (VIDEO)

Via Nice Deb, "A campaign video put out by the Conservative War Chest for Bill Cassidy, (poised to become the next Republican Senator from Louisiana,) nicely sums up the past few months."



RELATED: At Hot Air, "Landrieu not seeming to enjoy exciting runoff race."

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."



More at Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – America Held Hostage," and Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's Sunday Funnies."

CARTOON CREDIT: William Warren.

Emotional Support Animals

At Althouse, "So the lady getting on the plane with you seems to be carrying a duffel bag, 'But it turns out it wasn't a duffel bag'."

And from the comments:

This is getting crazy. Yesterday, a lady sat next to me on a flight from Denver to Newark. She had a small dog that she let out of her cage after a few hours. The dog took a crap on her side and she stepped in it. She cleaned up as best she could, but the smell lingered.

Rich Lowry on 'Meet the Press'

Quite a sensation.

Leftists are all gobsmacked, at Memeorandum.

Video via Legal Insurrection, "Lessons of #Ferguson: Don’t Rob Convenience Store, Fight With and Try to Take Cop’s Gun":

Sunday Rule 5

I'm behind on my Rule 5 blogging. Been reading and watching movies this weekend, for the most part. And eating too, lol.

Here we go, at Pirate's Cove, "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup," and "If All You See……is a horrible Gaia killing plastic water bottle, you might just be a Warmist."

At the Other McCain (from last Sunday), "Rule 5 Sunday: Wax Ecstatic."

At Drunken Stepfather, "STEPLINKS OF THE DAY."

And at Knuckledraggin', "Quick, which one would you rather?"

Also at First Street Journal, "Rule 5 Blogging: American Soldiers!"

And from Proof Positive, "...the Obligatory SF 49er Cheerleader4 NO Saints," and "*Best of the Web*."

At Ode's, "Detective Quiz ~OR~ Rule 5 Woodsterman Style."

From Doug Hagin, "THE DALEYBABE SAYUKI MATSUMOTO."

And from Blackmailers Don't Shoot, "#ShirtGate Rule 5: Chicks in Space!"

At Soylent, "Your Sunday Coffee Creamer."

More at 90 Miles From Tyranny, "Morning Mistress."

At Maggie's Farm, "Saturday morning links."

Also, from Egotastic!, "Humpday Huzzah! Ewa Sonnet Glamour Model Honey Dripping Hotness."

Check Goodstuff's, "GOODSTUFFs BLOGGING MAGAZINE (166th Issue): the history of Catwoman (aka Selina Kyle)."

In a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World has the "Friday Pinup."

And at Randy's Roundtable, "Thanksgiving Football In Dallas."

BONUS: At Popaholic, "Daily Addictions."

St. Louis Rams: 'Hands Up, Don't Shoot'

At Fire Andrea Mitchell, "Pitiful. St. Louis Rams come out of tunnel in hands up don’t shoot pose."

St. Louis Rams players raise arms in apparent show of solidarity with #Ferguson protesters: http://t.co/dBLRMihdGB pic.twitter.com/kickTDkemN

— ABC News (@ABC) November 30, 2014

How Obama Marginalized the Democratic Party

I can't get enough of this meme!

From Ed Morrissey, at the Fiscal Times:

Chuck Schumer let the cat out of the bag on Monday, but only Democrats found his remarks surprising in the least. Schumer, a member of the Senate Democratic caucus leadership that will have to transition to the minority in January, tried to acknowledge the verdict delivered by voters three weeks earlier.

In a defense of big-government solutions, Schumer allowed that Democrats let their enthusiasm for nanny-state policies get the best of them in 2009, after winning the presidential election, the House, and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

“Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them,” declared the senior Senator from New York. At the time, the middle class had just experienced the economic shock of their lives, and the election was a mandate to change direction from Bush-era economic policies, Schumer told the National Press Club. “We took their mandate,” Schumer explained, “and put all focus on the wrong problem – healthcare reform.”

That’s not to say that Obamacare itself was a mistake, Schumer took care to add, but that the rush to pass a big nanny-state program ahead of economic issues in the middle of a crisis made Democrats appear out of touch with voters. “We should have done it. We just shouldn't have done it first,” Schumer explained.

“We were in the middle of a recession. People were hurting and saying, 'What about me? I'm losing my job. It's not health care that bothers me. What about me?’" Even worse, Schumer argued, the program only provided benefits to “about 5 percent of the electorate,” while “only about a third of the uninsured are even registered to vote.”

Coming from a senior member of Democratic Party leadership, the admission that Democrats blew it with Obamacare contradicts everything the party has argued since the 2010 midterms...

More.

Energy Quakes as OPEC Stands Pat

Lots going on in energy markets this week.

Here's WSJ, "Oil Stocks and the Currencies of Major Oil-Producing Nations Tumble":

Energy company stocks and the currencies of major oil-producing nations stumbled Friday as OPEC’s decision to maintain crude output levels despite a glut rippled across the globe.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ decision knocked down U.S. benchmark oil prices on Friday by 10% to $66.15 a barrel, the lowest level since September 2009.

Uneasy investors dumped energy stocks. Among the hardest hit were U.S. domestic oil producers including Continental Resources Co., the biggest producer in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale. Its shares plunged on Friday nearly 20%, to $40.98.

Exxon Mobil Corp. fell 4.2%, BP PLC dropped 5.5% and Royal Dutch Shell PLC lost 7%, all in abbreviated New York trading.

Currencies of most major oil producing nations, including Russia, Nigeria and Canada, weakened. The Russian ruble tumbled almost 3% to an all-time low of 50.57 to the dollar, before recovering slightly. The Mexican peso slid to its weakest level versus the greenback in more than two years. Russia said it would revise or cut government spending.

Pascal Menges, a portfolio manager with Lombard Odier in Switzerland who has shares in U.S. shale oil producers, said OPEC’s decision “created a very uncomfortable situation” for oil companies that must decide whether to curb investments. He predicts the global oil oversupply will decline over the winter and U.S. production growth will slow, preventing prices from falling much more.

If that is the case, he said, the least-indebted North American shale companies should stay profitable. Still, he said, he has cut his fund’s investments in oil producers, moving some of the money to companies that buy and process oil.

This is economic warfare. And frankly, a last gasp from OPEC, as markets will reach equilibrium. Established U.S. producers will keep producing and investing. OPEC's income will decline along with the all of the rest.

According to the article:

Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil & Gas Association, a trade group, said in a statement that low crude oil prices will impact some U.S. and global operations. Still, he expects prices to eventually stabilize. “We are confident the market will find an equilibrium,” he said.

Keep reading.

Thanksgiving: The Birth of the Democrat Party

Too true.

From Doug Ross:

CARTOON: Thanksgiving -- the Birth of the Democrat Party http://t.co/jSXDdkrBFY #TurkeyDay pic.twitter.com/XfSNongXuE

— Doug Ross (@directorblue) November 27, 2014

Emblem (or Epitaph) for the Inner City Family

Seen on Twitter:

Ouch!! RT "@OlegZeltser: Just saying... pic.twitter.com/rA1kHjzv6i"

— LincolnHeadPenney (@HappiKamper) November 30, 2014

Thief Caught on Camera Stealing Holiday Home Deliveries in Yorba Linda (VIDEO)

Another leftist social justice warrior.

At CBS Los Angeles, "Caught On Camera: Brazen Thief Steals Packages From Front Porch In Yorba Linda."

Boycotting Walmart: Social Justice Warriors Are Too Enlightened to Let Poor Pay Lower Prices

From Kevin Williamson, at National Review, "Who Boycotts Wal-Mart?":

Columbia County, Ark. — There’s no sign of it here in Magnolia, Ark., but the boycott season is upon us, and graduates of Princeton and Bryn Mawr are demanding “justice” from Wal-Mart, which is not in the justice business but in the groceries, clothes, and car-batteries business. It is easy to scoff, but I am ready to start taking the social-justice warriors’ insipid rhetoric seriously — as soon as two things happen: First, I want to hear from the Wal-Mart-protesting riffraff a definition of “justice” that is something that does not boil down to “I Get What I Want, Irrespective of Other Concerns.”

Second, I want to turn on the radio and hear Jay-Z boasting about his new Timex.

It is remarkable that Wal-Mart, a company that makes a modest profit margin (typically between 3 percent and 3.5 percent) selling ordinary people ordinary goods at low prices, is the great hate totem for the well-heeled Left, whose best-known celebrity spokesclowns would not be caught so much as downwind from a Supercenter, while at the same time, nobody is out with placards and illiterate slogans and generally risible moral posturing in front of boutiques dealing in Rolex, Prada, Hermès, et al. It’s almost as if there is a motive at work here other than that which is stated by our big-box-bashing friends on the left and their A-list human bullhorns.

What might that be?

More.

The left is intent to make life worse for everyone else.

'This headline is exactly why nobody watches CNN...'

At Twitchy, "‘Your bias is showing': CNN tweet on Darren Wilson resignation keeps race front and center."

A Review of Bob Dylan at the Beacon Theater

At NYT, "Bob Dylan, Not Looking Back":

Mr. Dylan has replaced the fluidity and arrogance of youth with a more genuine, lived-in sense that he has nothing to lose and no one but himself to please. He doesn’t soften what he sees; he inhabits it, baleful and acute.

Businesses, Police Fear Rise in Shoplifting After Passage of Proposition 47

Well, when you release convicted armed robbers, crack dealers, meth heads, drug addicts and "petty" thieves onto the streets, you have good reason to worry!

Via CBS Sacramento:

Proposition 47 reduced the penalties and sentences for low-level drug and property crimes. This means shoplifting, forgery, fraud, and petty theft can now be treated as misdemeanors instead of felons, allowing some criminals in jail to go free.

Not In Time to Save the Democrats: Poll Finds Americans Optimistic

Fifty-two percent of Americans said things are going well.

Hate-Filled Leftists React to Darren Wilson Announcing His Wife's Pregnancy

It's all they've got.

Leftism is an ideology of hatred. It's Repsac's ideology.

At Truth Revolt.

So this cousin f*ckin Neanderthal Darren Wilson is gonna have a baby. Just what the world needs: A bouncing bundle of racism.

— Vision (@VisionPoet) November 26, 2014

Shopping Brawls on Black Friday

Just crazy.

At ABC News:



More at PBS: "News Wrap: Black Friday inspires shopping, protests."

Communist Agitators in Ferguson: We Want Darren Wilson Dead

From CBS correspondent Johnathan Blakely:

Via Twitchy, "‘Oh the irony’: Protesters in Ferguson chant in favor of ‘communist revolution’ [Vine]."

Another chant from this same outside group: "Who do we want? Darren Wilson! How do we want him? Dead!" #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/7wpWsgBbwa

— Jonathan Blakely (@JonathanBlakely) November 29, 2014

BECAUSE 'SOCIAL JUSTICE' IS ALL ABOUT MAKING THE CHILDREN CRY

Yep, that's about it.

Making people miserable. That's the left in action.

At Instapundit, "Kids Singing At #Seattle’s Christmas Tree Lighting Surrounded by Protesters, All Now Crying."

Ben Howe: 'I'd Have Shot Mike Brown Right In His Face'

I guess Ben Howe took some flak for this.

Give me a gun. Put me in Darren Wilson’s shoes. I’d have shot Mike Brown right in his face.
— Ben Howe (@BenHowe) November 26, 2014

Here's his response, at Red State, "Why I Said I’d Have Shot Michael Brown in the Face."

Supposedly leftists, had they been in Officer Wilson's shoes, would have let "Big Mike" snatch the gun and shoot them. They wouldn't want to be seen as "racist" for defending themselves. Of course, in the real world things don't work out like that. Leftists simply need something to decry as "racist." Indeed, the left is what's wrong with this country. We're going downhill with these f-kers in office. And the culture's already gone to hell. At this point you just got to stock up and batten down the hatches. Shoot the bastards if they try to break down the doors.

More at Memeorandum.

Ferguson Protesters Disprupt Black Friday Shopping

Well, if these idiots get in your face maybe you'll be able to take a couple of them out.

At USA Today, "Arrests across nation as protesters target Black Friday."

And from AP, "Raw: Protests Erupt in Malls, Streets," and CBS News, "Ferguson protestors disrupt Black Friday shopping (VIDEO)."

Cyber Monday Deals Week

Keep shopping, at Amazon, Shop Amazon Cyber Monday Deals Week.

California Tax-Hike Orgy on the Ballot in 2016

More reasons to move to Texas, as if anyone needed them.

At LAT, "Big state tax decisions lie ahead for California voters":

Picking a new president might not be the only crucial issue before California voters at the polls in two years' time.

They could be faced with as many as four competing initiatives asking them to extend, increase or create taxes that would raise billions of dollars in new state revenues.

Loose coalitions of labor unions and community groups already are researching, polling and building support to extend a temporary boost in top income tax brackets and a sales tax increase passed in 2012. Other groups are working to create grass-roots support for raising commercial property taxes.

Additionally, a team led by Tom Steyer, a billionaire hedge fund manager from San Francisco, probably will qualify a crude-oil-extraction tax initiative for 2016. And health and child-welfare advocates are pondering a possible $2-a-pack increase in cigarette taxes.

"We anticipate there will be a revenue measure," said Anthony Thigpenn, president of California Calls, a Los Angeles-based coalition of 37 community organizations around the state.

He said that passage of the income tax measure, Proposition 30, two years ago, wasn't enough to put the state on a stable financial footing.

"Proposition 30 stopped the bleeding but didn't restore all the cuts made, even given that the economy is better," Thigpenn said. "It was only the beginning of the discussion."

The state needs such a conversation about how to keep climbing out of the Great Recession, agreed Laphonza Butler, state council president of the 700,000-member Service Employees International Union.

"We have to make choices about investments, revenues and services," she said. "How do we stabilize the state for many years to come?"

Influential business lobbies at the Capitol don't see it that way. Butler's push for more money to pay for schools, roads and health and other programs, if it happens, would make an already expensive California even more costly and slow job creation, they contend.

The hardest fought battle could be over an attempt to change how the state's 36-year-old landmark property tax initiative, Proposition 13, treats commercial property, predicted Rex Hime, president of the California Business Properties Assn.

Currently, buildings and land get reassessed by tax appraisers only when there's a turnover of more than 50% in ownership.

"It will be Armageddon. It will be a huge, huge battle," Hime said.

The oil industry also is ready for a fight with Steyer, who said the state is missing out on $2 billion in new revenues because it's the only major oil-producing state that doesn't collect on every barrel of crude pumped from the ground.

"We haven't seen any indication he has changed his view and his plan to spend some of his wealth trying to persuade Californians to increase taxes on energy," said Tupper Hull, a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Assn.

Tobacco companies — which spent more than $50 million to defeat a 2012 initiative that would have raised taxes by $1 a pack — are honing their message, arguing that new taxes would be costly to retailers and spur cigarette smuggling.

Health groups and other proponents said they need higher levies on each pack — or even e-cigarettes — to recoup more than $1 billion in revenues lost because fewer people smoke.

Liberal Democrats in the Legislature also are considering an extension of the top state income tax brackets. That boost helped erase a $26-billion budget deficit that Gov. Jerry Brown inherited from his predecessor, Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Since then, the state treasury has accumulated a small surplus that the Legislative Analyst forecasts to grow to $4.2 billion by July.

Brown has made numerous public statements emphasizing that Proposition 30 was a temporary fix. Nevertheless, tax-hike proponents suggest that some sort of deal still could be made with the governor and business groups to keep the tax temporary but extend it beyond its current 2018 expiration date.

More.

Black Friday Deals

At Amazon.

'I got six kids to feed!' — Trapped Driver Pushes #Ferguson Protester Off I-5 For Making Him Late For Work (Video)

More from the "tolerant," "respectful" progressives on the collectivist left.

Via Gateway Pundit:

'Non-Black Allies' Told to 'Refrain from Taking Up Space' at Vigil for Michael Brown in Toronto

Demonizing white people is the rage now on the "tolerant," "progressive" left.

At London's Daily Mail, "The controversial rules for white people who were told ‘not to take up space’ at Michael Brown vigil in Toronto."

The Forgotten Americans

From Victor Davis Hanson, at National Review, "Obama’s coalition is held together only by his personal mythography":

Political analysts still are arguing over why the Democratic party was washed away in the midterm election. Since 2008, ascendant progressives had been crowing over a fresh mosaic of energized minorities, newly franchised immigrants, single young urban women, greens, gays, and — less often mentioned — upscale professionals and the 1-percenter super-wealthy.

These groups were united by their support for the expansion of entitlements, higher taxes, neo-isolationism, amnesty, opposition to any restrictions on abortion, curbs on carbon-energy development, and gay marriage. But what really held them together was Barack Obama. His exotic name, his racial background, his leftwing ideology, and his Ivy League training appealed to each of these diverse groups. Without him on the ballot — as in 2010 and 2014 — most of these identity groups apparently were not energized enough to turn out in sufficient numbers to make up for middle-class voters turned off by progressive rhetoric and the by-any-means-necessary distortions to achieve its ends.

Indeed, a cynic would sum up the unlikely liberal coalition as a bridge over the middle class. Wealthy, influential progressives had enough capital and income to support new efforts at government redistribution, higher taxes, and the sort of green projects that, at least in the short term, would slow the economy and cost blue-collar jobs — but not really affect the 1 percenters’ own livelihoods much.

At the other end, the underclass welcomed expansions of federal entitlement programs and the idea of an activist state guaranteeing an equality of result for the less-well-off, with the taxes to pay for it all falling on someone else.

Note that the new progressive coalition was largely abstract. In their own personal lives, the upscale denizens of Santa Monica, Chevy Chase, and the Upper West Side did not put their children in diverse public schools, much less live among undocumented immigrants or give up their Mercedeses and Volvo SUVs for fleets of Priuses. None promised to take two fewer trips by jet each year.

Ideally from its point of view, the new progressive partnership would end up with America looking something like California. Sky-high income, sales, and gas taxes and soaring electric rates, coupled with prohibitive housing costs along the state’s 700-mile-long coastal corridor, have turned the once golden state into two cultures strangely united by a common Democratic party.

The coastal elites champion wind and solar mandates, transgender restrooms in the public schools, gay marriage, and high-speed rail. In the interior, rarely visited by the elites or the journalists friendly to them, the preponderance of poorer and minority residents largely explains why of all the states California has the largest number of welfare recipients and the highest percentage of the population below the poverty line, and why it is nearly dead last in public-school performance.

For liberals for whom power is the true goal, California is seen as a success because there are no more conservatives like Ronald Reagan or Pete Wilson in statewide office. Over the last 30 years, unchecked illegal immigration, an influx of high-income urban liberal professionals to the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas, and a steady exodus of the white middle and working classes explain why this liberal blue state has the largest number of both poor and wealthy people in the nation — and a shrinking conservative percentage of the electorate.

But is the California progressive future applicable throughout the United States? This month’s election suggests maybe not, and for reasons that transcend the fact that Californians can bail out of their state in a way that Americans cannot their country...

Keep reading.

Pilgrims and the Roots of the American Thanksgiving

From Malcolm Gaskill, at WSJ, "English settlers of the 17th century were a diverse lot, and they became Americans despite themselves":

In the fall of 1621, 50 English men and women and 90 Native Americans gathered at New Plymouth in Massachusetts. The colonists had arrived a year earlier on a leaky wine ship, the Mayflower, and built a hillside settlement overlooking the ocean, little more than a few wooden huts in a stockade. The first winter had been terrible: Half their number had perished from malnutrition and disease. They had struggled to farm the land, were poorly supplied from England and relied on their Indian hosts for expertise and food.

But in the end, they did it. According to Edward Winslow, who had buried his wife that March, “Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling so that we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor.” The Pilgrims, as they would later be known, celebrated for three days—an event immortalized in American history as the first Thanksgiving.

The story has been heavily mythologized, and the numerous depictions of it that have come down to us are mostly patriotic romances, full of errors about the dress, technology and general atmosphere of the day. What we most tend to overlook in the Thanksgiving tale, however, is the wider context of settlement. English colonists—350,000 of them in the 17th century—were a diverse lot, and more English than you might imagine. Having left the Old World for the New, they clung to their old identities and tried to preserve them. In this, they failed, and yet from that failure, a new national character was born—the primary traits of which are still visible in Americans today...

Keep reading.

How the Civil War Created Thanksgiving

From Kenneth Davis, at the New York Times.

Also, from President Abraham Lincoln, at Real Clear History, "A Wartime Proclamation of Thanksgiving":

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

More.

10 Reasons Why Thanksgiving's My Favorite Holiday

From Rick Moran, at Pajamas Media:

I used to spend Thanksgiving with one family member or another — flying to Washington, D.C., or driving to our family house in the Chicago suburbs. It was hard for all of us to get together with 10 children splashed across North America from California to Canada, from the Midwest to the East Coast. But there were usually gatherings of three or four of us on Thanksgiving which made for a satisfying experience.

But the last decade, that hasn’t been the case. The Chicago suburban house was sold years ago after my mother died. And usually, I was working or too involved in a project to take the time. I regret those missed opportunities — especially now that travel is physically difficult for me.

But I’m not asking anyone to feel sorry for me. The long skein of memories of Thanksgivings past is more than enough to fill me up with joy and be thankful for what I have in the here and now.

Those cherished memories led me to write of the 10 reasons why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I’m sure you can add a few reasons of your own...

I like the food, football, family, and the time off from work.

Laughing at the hate-addled nihilist leftists is pretty good too.

RTWT.

The Nihilist in the White House

Obama's the chief far-left nihilist.

They tear down. Never build up. They destroy. Never unite. Like Walter James Casper III.

From Peggy Noonan, at WSJ:

Historical vindication happens. The Obama White House assumes it will happen to them. Thus they can do pretty much what they want.

What they forget is that facts largely decide what history thinks—outcomes, what happened, what it means. What they also forget, or perhaps never knew, is that the great ones are always constructive. They don’t divide and tear down. They build, gather in, create, bend, meld, and in so doing move things forward.

That’s not this crowd.

This White House seems driven—does it understand this?—by a kind of political nihilism. They agitate, aggravate, fray and separate.

Look at three great domestic issues just the past few weeks.

More.

NYPD Arrests #Ferguson Protesters Disrupting Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (VIDEO)

Vile, spiteful minority has to try to ruin the holiday for everyone else.

That's Racist! Obama Approval Drops Among Working-Class Whites

At Gallup:

PRINCETON, N.J. -- President Barack Obama's job approval rating among white non-college graduates is at 27% so far in 2014, 14 percentage points lower than among white college graduates. This is the largest yearly gap between these two groups since Obama took office. These data underscore the magnitude of the Democratic Party's problem with working-class whites, among whom Obama lost in the 2012 presidential election, and among whom Democratic House candidates lost in the 2014 U.S. House voting by 30 points.

Obama's overall job approval rating has dropped throughout the first six years of his administration, and this downward trajectory is seen both among white Americans who are college graduates and those who are not. But the gap between his approval ratings among college-educated and non-college-educated whites has grown. It was six points in 2009, when Obama had the overall highest ratings of his administration, then expanded to 10 points in 2010 and to 12 points in 2013. The gap between these two groups is at its highest yet, at 14 points so far this year.

Whites in general constitute a political challenge for Democrats and the president given their Republican orientation, as evidenced by Obama's job approval ratings so far this year of 84% among blacks, 64% among Asians, 53% among Hispanics and 32% among whites. About two-thirds of adult whites have not graduated from college, making working-class whites a particularly important group politically because of its sheer size...

Well, it's hard out there for the party of "Burn this bitch down!"

More.

And from John Hinderaker, at Power Line, "WHY THE GALLUP POLL MEANS DEEP TROUBLE FOR HILLARY."

#Ferguson Rioters Looting Same Store Michael Brown Accused of Robbing (VIDEO)

Sick.

They're vermin. Like rats on a sinking ship.

At Twitchy, "Full circle: Liquor store Michael Brown accused of robbing being looted (again) [Vine]."

Happy Thanksgiving — Gratitude

Seen on Twitter:

Thank you for serving. #HappyThanksgiving pic.twitter.com/mFwnEvCyVk

— Franci (@LadySandersfarm) November 27, 2014

#Ferguson: No Justice, No Peace — No Brains

From Erik Rush, at WND:

I would say it’s a fair bet that most of those who witnessed the violence that ensued following the announcement that a grand jury in Missouri declined to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown were not at all surprised. Indeed, it appeared that many of those anticipating the decision simply could not wait to get started looting, shooting and destroying property.

The mob appeared to have a particular penchant for razing and burning local businesses. In fact, dozens of businesses in Ferguson burned on Monday night alone, and these were mostly minority-owned. Obviously, those in the community who worked at these businesses are now out of jobs.

Even assuming the decimated businesses carried adequate insurance, of course the owners and franchisees are out of work too, though many will be able to rebuild. All of this will conspire to depress the economy in Ferguson, something of which the participants in the mayhem and madness remain oblivious.

The catalyst to all of this, as the reader is likely aware, was the fact that a man was found innocent of wrongdoing by a grand jury. When you strip away the race issues, there’s not much more to it than that. One man assaulted another – a police officer – and was killed, probably after attempting to relieve him of his sidearm. Amidst widely publicized accusations of police brutality and race-based police targeting of young blacks, a grand jury determined that the officer had not acted unlawfully. Much of the testimony upon which the grand jury decision was based, we are told, was given by those of the same ethnic group as the decedent Michael Brown. In general, the evidence in favor of Officer Darren Wilson’s account of the events was overwhelming.

There are numerous components to this situation which are engender pathos, well beyond a young man having lost his life, another’s life in upheaval and a community in tatters.

One is the disgusting behavior of the rioters, who found themselves unable to rise above the social and psychological garbage being fed them. Another is the manifest evil of those who have been feeding the aforementioned garbage to black Americans for the last several decades, and that of the agitators with more short-term agendas. With regard to the former, I refer to the politicians and career activists who perpetuate the notion that America remains an institutionally racist nation, and that racist police prowl the streets looking for the slightest excuse to gun down a black individual.

With regard to the latter, I speak of those such as the New Black Panther Party (some of whose members were arrested in the Ferguson area with bombs in the days prior to the grand jury decision), and Muslim activists who sought to enroll blacks in their effort to condemn the actions of law enforcement against militant Muslims in Missouri.

While it is not my intention to address this in depth here, the political manipulation of blacks across America in the name of Michael Brown is more than a mere distraction from the increasing attention being focused on Obama’s dismal reign. (Make no mistake: A measure of the agitation in Ferguson and elsewhere is being directly orchestrated by Obama surrogates and the DOJ itself.) As a landmark in the incremental sabotage of race relations, it is validation to the administration of what it can do, and what will be necessary to ignite even larger fires in the future...

More.

PREVIOUSLY: "Obama and the Roots of the Ferguson Rage."

Obama and the Roots of the Ferguson Rage

At FrontPage Mag:

And so the whirlwind, cultivated by Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, the mainstream media and the army of thugs they enabled, is now being reaped. As the result of a St. Louis County grand jury refusing to indict officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown, Ferguson, MO has become Ground Zero, in what irresponsible Missouri State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadali referred to on MSNBC as “St. Louis’s race war.”

One of the race war’s architects pleaded for calm shortly after the decision was announced. Yet even as Obama spoke about that “need for calm” and that there was “no excuse for violence,” he insisted, “We have to try to understand” the anger of those who demanded nothing less than a murder charge absent an ounce of evidence as an “understandable reaction” from people who believe “the law is being applied in a discriminatory fashion.”

Where did those people get that belief? Leave it to Obama to omit that critical information — the same President Obama who met with protest leaders and Sharpton on Nov. 5 at the White House. It was at that unscheduled meeting the president was ostensibly “concerned about Ferguson staying on course in terms of pursuing what it was that he knew we were advocating,” according to Sharpton. “He said he hopes that we’re doing all we can to keep peace.”

One is left to marvel at one of two realities. Either we have a president so utterly naive he believes a hoax-perpetrating, riot-inciting Al Sharpton, who denigrated the grand jury process, pre-organized protest rallies in 25 American cities, and uses his MSNBC platform to fire up racial unrest, is a man of peace. Or the president, who once urged his Latino followers to “punish our enemies,” remains as wedded to the same racial “us against them” mentality as America’s foremost racial arsonist. Is it really possible to believe the former?

Despite Obama’s superficial condemnations of violence, at least 25 businesses were set ablaze, many of which are total losses—and most of which were minority owned.  Ten cars were burned at a dealership, and a “lot of gunfire,” as Ferguson Asst. Fire Chief Steve Fair put it, made maintaining control of the streets highly problematic, if not impossible. Reporters were assaulted, the store Michael Brown robbed prior to his confrontation with Wilson was looted, and at least 61 people have been arrested. “What I’ve seen tonight is probably much worse than the worst night we ever had in August, and that’s truly unfortunate,” said St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar Monday at a 1:30 a.m press conference. Belmar further noted that there was “nothing left” along West Florissant between Solway Avenue and Chambers Road, that he heard at least 150 gun shots, and that he was surprised he and Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson, who “got lit up,” as they drove through the area, weren’t hit by that gunfire.

“We talked about peaceful protest, and that did not happen tonight,” Johnson said. “We definitely have done something here that’s going to impact our community for a long time…that’s not how we create change.”

More.

St. Louis Bomb Suspects Couldn't Afford Explosives Until 'One Suspect's Girlfriend's Electronic Benefit Transfer Card Was Replenished...'

Seriously. This is where we are as a society.

"Hey, we're gonna have to hold off on buying bombs until the girlfriend's EBT card clears."

At the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "Alleged plot included bombing Gateway Arch, killing St. Louis County prosecutor":

ST. LOUIS • Two men indicted last week on federal weapons charges allegedly had plans to bomb the Gateway Arch — and to kill St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch and Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson — the Post-Dispatch has learned.

Sources close to the investigation were uncertain whether the men had the capability to carry out the plans, although the two allegedly did buy what they thought was a pipe bomb in an undercover law enforcement sting.

The men wanted to acquire two more bombs, the sources said, but could not afford to do it until one suspect’s girlfriend’s Electronic Benefit Transfer card was replenished.

An indictment, with no mention of bombs or killings, was returned in federal court here Nov. 19 and unsealed Friday upon the arrest of Brandon Orlando Baldwin and Olajuwon Ali Davis. Their addresses and Baldwin’s age were not available; Davis is 22.

The Way to Make White People Take Racism Less Seriously

Thomas Crown, on Twitter (via Instapundit):

If you tell white folks that they have created a power structure that reinforces their privilege, they will laugh at you.

— Thomas H. Crown (@ThomasHCrown) November 25, 2014

LIBERALS WILLING TO FIGHT TO THE LAST DROP OF BLACK BLOOD!

From Ann Coulter:

The riot in Ferguson reminds me, I hate criminals, but I hate liberals more. They planned this riot. They stoked the fire, lied about the evidence and produced a made-to-order riot.

Every other riot I've ever heard of was touched off by some spontaneous event that exploded into mob violence long before any media trucks arrived. This time, the networks gave us a countdown to the riot, as if it were a Super Bowl kickoff.

From the beginning, Officer Darren Wilson's shooting of Michael Brown wasn't reported like news. It was reported like a cause.

The media are in a huff about the prosecutor being "biased" because his father was a cop, who was shot and killed by an African-American. What an assh@le!

Evidently, the sum-total of what every idiot on TV knows about the law is Judge Sol Wachtler's 20-year-old joke that a prosecutor could "indict a ham sandwich." We're supposed to be outraged that this prosecutor didn't indict the ham sandwich of Darren Wilson.

Liberals seem not to understand that they don't have a divine right to ruin someone's life and bankrupt him with a criminal trial, just so they're satisfied.

The reason most grand jury investigations result in an indictment is that most grand juries aren't convened solely to patronize racial mobs. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was basically demanding an indictment of Wilson before Big Mike's body was cold. It was only because of racial politics that this shooting wasn't dismissed without a grand jury, at all...

More.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, More Spiteful Than Ever

Seriously, you can't say he's not a spectacle.

Do read his latest screed post-Ferguson, at the Atlantic, "Barack Obama, Ferguson, and the Evidence of Things Unsaid."

Democracy in America is inseparable from the looting of native American land and the enslavement of blacks. It's unavoidable. @ashnavabi

— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) November 26, 2014

Racism is an actual tool in American history. It serves real purposes. It is not just "white people being mean to black people."

— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) November 26, 2014

Getting variations of the "go back to Africa" rebuttal. Not how this works. We are here to run you out, not the other way around.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) November 26, 2014

Hey, speak truth to power, brother. I'm sure race talk like that's doing wonders to improve race relations.

@wendyphd Coates is a huckster, actually. He should move to Botswana.

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 27, 2014

Hot Models in Mesh

Nice.

At Egotastic!, "Soho Magazine Best of Women in Mesh."

L.A. Times Features Michael Brown Stepfather on Front Page: Photo Caption Omits 'Burn this bitch down!'

Here's the Times' front-page story from Tuesday morning, following Monday night's announcement in Ferguson and the inevitable black shake-down protests and looting: "Violence erupts after grand jury fails to indict Ferguson officer."

The paper's photographer, Wally Skalij, would have witnessed Earl Head, the husband to Michael Brown's mother Lesley McSpadden, exhorting the crowd to "Burn this bitch down!" But there's no mention of the violent, profanity-laced exhortation at the newspaper.

Seems like a significant omission, but then again, the media is equally responsible for fanning the flames of racial unrest.

The caption at the photo below reads: "Lesley McSpadden, Michael Brown's mother, center, reacts in Ferguson, Mo., to the announcement of the grand jury's decision not to indict police Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of her son."

'This one goes out to the one I love...'

R.E.M., from yesterday morning on the Sound L.A.

Maggie May
Rod Stewart
3:05 PM

Highway to Hell
AC/DC
3:01 PM

Piano Man
Billy Joel
9:56 AM

Tired of Waiting for You
The Kinx
9:43 AM

De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
The Police
9:39 AM

Even The Losers
Tom Petty
9:36 AM

Last Train to Clarksville
The Monkees
9:33 AM

Another Tricky Day
The Who
9:28 AM

Born to Run
Bruce Springsteen
9:17 AM

Show Me the Way (Live)
Peter Frampton
9:12 AM

Don't Let Him Go
REO Speedwagon
9:09 AM

Sweet Hitch-Hiker
Creedence Clearwater Revival
9:06 AM

The One I Love
R.E.M.
9:03 AM

Baby Hold On
Eddie Money
8:59 AM

California Girls
The Beach Boys
8:50 AM

Something About You
Boston
8:47 AM

Black Friday Deals in Musical Instruments

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Tyranny

It's here.

In-Depth Look at the Casting Process for Victoria's Secret Fashion Show

The fashion show's coming up on December 9.

Senator Jeff Sessions: Congress Should Not Fund Wage-Reducing Imperial Amnesty

From the Kelly File:

Rep. Luis Gutiérrez Warns of GOP 'Fear Campaign' Against Illegal Immigrants

This dude's always "warning" about something.

At the Hill:

Democratic lawmakers are warning that the GOP intends to mount a “fear campaign" directed at immigrants in the country illegally who are in line to benefit from President Obama’s executive action protecting millions of them from deportation.

"There's going to be fear-mongering from the Republican Party,” Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) told reporters Monday, as champions for immigration reform sought to shift their focus from pressuring the White House for action to convincing eligible immigrants to sign up.

“The fear campaign is just starting,” Gutiérrez said during a press call hosted by America’s Voice, pointing to proposals from some GOP lawmakers who want to block the president’s plan via legislation.

“They are trying to keep our immigrants from signing up just like they were trying to keep people from signing up for ObamaCare.”

More.

#Ferguson Mayhem

Some video from CNN:



Also at Instapundit, "REPORT: No Indictment In Ferguson Case."