Stop Lying About the Police

From Rich Lowry, at National Review:

We have heard a lot lately about tensions between the police and the communities that they serve, and the urgent need to reduce them. Here’s an easy first step: Stop lying about the cops.

The “national conversation” about race and policing we’ve been having ever since Michael Brown was shot by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo., last summer has been based on lies. The lie that Officer Wilson shot Brown while he had his hands up and was pleading “Don’t shoot.” The lie that New York City policemen targeted Eric Garner for a violent arrest because he was black. The lie, peddled especially by the progressive prince of New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio, that the police are racist.

These are the lies that fuel hatred for the police, because if the police routinely execute black men in cold blood and serve a thoroughly racist system, they deserve to be hated. They should be the subject of nightly protests. They should be showered with obloquy. They should be harried by Attorney General Eric Holder. They should be considered a stain on the national conscience to be extricated at all costs.

This is the line of reasoning that leads to protesters chanting: “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want them? Now.”

His rote praise of the police notwithstanding, especially now that he is under so much political pressure after the murders of Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, Mayor de Blasio is deeply invested in this smear. It is why he has made career anti-police agitator Al Sharpton practically deputy police commissioner. It is why he considers the police a clear and present danger to his biracial son, Dante. It is why he said the tragic death of Eric Garner in police custody was the product of “centuries of racism.”

The logic of the de Blasio view tends toward the conclusion that the police are unbelievably insidious: They recruit people of all races to go into dangerous neighborhoods on the pretense of protecting innocent people there, when in reality the mission is to harass black kids and, should the opportunity arise, kill them. If this were true, it would make the police as a class not just racists, but sociopaths...

Keep reading.

The communist left's whole program is based on lies. Deceit, subterfuge, and lies.

PREVIOUSLY: "St. Louis County Police Video Shows Antonio Martin Raising His Hand, Pointing Weapon at Officer Before Fatal Shooting."

Also, Bernard Kerik, "War Is Being Waged on Our Homeland — By the Radical Left!", and Heather Mac Donald, "The Big Lie of the Anti-Cop Left Turns Lethal."

St. Louis County Police Video Shows Antonio Martin Raising His Hand, Pointing Weapon at Officer Before Fatal Shooting

Anti-cop vigilantes were out to protest on Christmas Eve in Berkeley, Missouri.

But again, the left's protests are based on lies and anti-cop propaganda and vigilantism.

Here's video showing the suspect Martin pointing his gun at the officer: "Antonio Martin Video ZOOMED in 1080p Antonio Martin Surveillance Video. Berkeley Police Shooting."

And here's the same video that was circulated on social media, which was cropped to show only "moments before" the shooting: "St Louis shooting: CCTV shows moments before Antonio Martin's death."

Also, check the report of the incident at the Wall Street Journal, from Wednesday, "Shooting Death of Black Man by White Officer Spurs Protests in St. Louis Suburb: Authorities Release Video of Incident Near Ferguson, Mo."

Remember, leftists hate the truth. The truth demolishes leftist propaganda. It destroy leftist lies.

FLASHBACK: See Bernard Kerik, "War Is Being Waged on Our Homeland — By the Radical Left!", and Heather Mac Donald, "The Big Lie of the Anti-Cop Left Turns Lethal."

New Year, New You at Amazon

More shopping, Shop Amazon - New Year, New You Event.

The Left's Anti-Cop Vigilantes Failing to Win Hearts-and-Minds

They're f-king communists.

At Nice Deb, "Anti-Police Protesters Failing to Win Hearts and Minds — But Give It Time…"



And at Power Line, "COMMUNISTS ARE BEHIND THE ANTI-POLICE PROTESTS IN NEW YORK."

Well, not just in New York, but yeah, communists: "RACISM IS THE DISEASE, REVOLUTION IS THE CURE!"

PREVIOUSLY: "Walter James Casper Slams NYPD in Solidarity with Murderous Left-Wing Anti-Cop Vigilantism."

Funeral Service for NYPD Officer Rafael Ramos (VIDEO)

At CBS News New York, "Funeral Service for Officer Rafael Ramos at Christ Tabernacle Church In Glendale (VIDEO)."

More at ABC News Los Angeles:

Casket of slain NYPD Officer Rafael Ramos escorted out of Christ Tabernacle Church in Queens http://t.co/03aiGSGXCh pic.twitter.com/b2HzEdw0Jn

— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) December 27, 2014

Cops Turn Backs on de Blasio at NYPD Officer's Funeral (VIDEO)

Totally dissing the Marxist Mayor de Blasio.

At the New York Post, "Cops turn backs on de Blasio at executed officer’s funeral":

As Mayor Bill de Blasio took the podium Saturday at the funeral of P.O. Rafael Ramos, thousands of police officers in the streets watching video of the service inside turned their backs, in unison, to the monitors.

Instead of listening to Hizzoner, whose brief remarks were carried live on large speakers and screens outside the Glendale church, the cops chatted and generally ignored the eulogy.

The mayor — whom union officials have said has “blood on his hands” for rhetoric that has created a dangerous atmosphere for cops, and led to the assassinations of Ramos and his partner, Officer Wenjian Liu — arrived 30 minutes early to the service at Christ Tabernacle Church with wife Chirlane McCray by his side.

A huge crowd of officers refused to acknowledge de Blasio, who quietly greeted Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and his wife before slipping into the funeral home adjoining the Glendale house of worship through a side door.

The Anti-Israel, Anti-Police Alliance (#NYPD)

From William Jacobson, at Legal Insurrection:

I previously have written about the activities of anti-Israel activists in fomenting confrontation in Ferguson and New York City:

Intifada Missouri – Anti-Israel activists may push Ferguson over the edge.
Anti-Israel activist still stoking fires in #Ferguson.
“Pigs in a blanket” chanted in #Ferguson long before #NYPD executions.

I have a column at The NY Post on the subject, Partners in protest: The anti-Israel, cop-bash link.

That's really, really cool.

The Left's Campaign to Take New York City Hostage

At the New York Post, "It’s the lawlessness":

Ever since a Staten Island grand jury found no probable cause to indict a police officer in the death of Eric Garner, the protesters in this city have shown disregard for the law.

They have also been accompanied by ugly calls for “dead cops” and chants likening the NYPD to the KKK. No surprise, it crossed into violence with some smashing windows on a police car and others assaulting cops during the occupation of the Brooklyn Bridge.

But instead of demanding protesters obey the law, the mayor and others for too long validated an anger based on a smear: that cops do not value black life. Not once did we hear Mayor de Blasio or Al Sharpton state the obvious: If Eric Garner and Michael Brown had in fact put their hands up and not resisted arrest, they would be alive today.

This was followed by the official indulgence of protesters who deliberately blocked traffic, tried to disrupt events, from the Thanksgiving Day parade to the Christmas tree lighting, and later occupied the Brooklyn Bridge.

A week later, Ismaaiyl Brinsley posted “they take 1 of ours . . .  Let’s take 2 of theirs” and executed Officers Ramos and Liu as they sat in their car.

So let’s not pretend any of this is about the right to protest.

It’s lawlessness — done in a clear attempt to hold this city hostage — that is the real problem. And the city authorities who have until now winked at it.

The Backlash Against de Blasio

From Matthew Vadum, at FrontPage Mag:

Cop-bashing New York mayor Bill de Blasio seems genuinely surprised at the ferocious backlash against him in light of the execution-style weekend killing of two local cops.

After spending the past year in office attacking police, the mayor is now scrambling to put the pin back into the grenade he threw into the local body politic. His crusade against the police goes back at least to his election campaign last year when he caustically criticized then-mayor Michael Bloomberg’s stop-and-frisk policy.

De Blasio is appealing for calm and for a temporary suspension of the ugly anti-police protests his incendiary rhetoric has spawned.

Strangely, this far-left radical who, like his ally in the White House never puts politics aside for the benefit of the community, is now asking New Yorkers to do precisely that.

So far the New York Police Department isn’t in a mood to forgive de Blasio who has teamed up with racial arsonist Al Sharpton to lay waste to what’s left of civil society in the Big Apple. Before the two murders Sharpton had been leading marches where the demonstrators chanted, “What do we want? Dead cops.” Taking cues from the Westboro Baptist Church, Sharpton followers showed up at one cop memorial service chanting and heckling the mourners.

NYPD union leaders have asked de Blasio to skip police funerals and a large gathering of cops turned their backs on the mayor as he showed up Saturday at the Brooklyn hospital where the lifeless bodies of officers Rafael Ramos, 40, and Wenjian Liu, 32, had been taken after they were shot dead by an adherent of the Religion of Peace.

The shooter, Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley, was a Muslim apparently upset at what he believed were the racist killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. and Eric Garner in Staten Island. He indicated he was planning to kill “pigs,” and as Robert Spencer notes, “Brinsley’s Facebook page featured a photo of the Qur’an open to the eighth chapter, where Allah exhorts the believers to ‘strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah‘ (8:60).“

Since de Blasio was sworn in last New Year’s Day, New Yorkers have, in fits and starts, begun to realize that they elected a dangerously erratic Sandinista-loving radical as mayor. Although de Blasio’s reaction to the cop murders strikes many in the punditry as incompetent, they are being charitable. De Blasio’s behavior reflects his pathological,  hateful, profoundly anti-American ideology. He can’t conceal his contempt for those whose job it is to promote law and order.

This is what happens when a small-c communist becomes mayor of the nation’s greatest metropolis...

Keep reading.

PREVIOUSLY: "Walter James Casper Slams NYPD in Solidarity with Murderous Left-Wing Anti-Cop Vigilantism."

Walter James Casper Slams NYPD in Solidarity with Murderous Left-Wing Anti-Cop Vigilantism

Repsac3's right in line with pro-violence Gordon Barnes, "Editor of CUNY's 'Advocate' Newspaper Calls for Anti-Cop Violence to 'Bring About New, More Egalitarian Paradigm...'" To say nothing of the student red guards, "Brandeis Red Guards Threaten Daniel Mael for Reporting Khadijah Lynch's Radical Anti-Police Diatribes."

Remember, de Blasio announced his solidarity with the New York anti-cop street protests, and now Walter James Casper's attacking the NYPD officers for exercising their free speech rights to protest the city's anti-cop mayor.

Typical anti-cop scumbag:

Opposition to Mayor de Blasio has literally reached new heights http://t.co/8AQqVwkZUE pic.twitter.com/Gjwm9qYjRB

— New York Post (@nypost) December 26, 2014

Disgusting, divisive, and just plain sad.@nypost

— Walter James Casper (@repsac3) December 26, 2014

Leftist hatred straight up. That's Repsac's life and ideology.

After Christmas Rule 5

Here's a few babes to brighten the holidays.

From the Other McCain, "Rule 5 Sunday: Winter Solstice Edition."

And at Egotastic, "Sabine Jemeljanova Bedroom Photoshoot for Zoo."

And check Sabine on Twitter.

More, at Zoo, "The Girls of ZOO 2015 Calendar!"

Also at the Rio Norte Line, "Rule 5: Vintage Christmas."

At the First Street Journal, "Rule 5 Blogging: From down under!"

And from Knuckledragging, "Your Good Morning Girl."

More, from 90 Miles from Tyranny, "Morning Mistress."

And at Pirate's Cove, "If All You See……is warmth created snow, you might just be a Warmist."

Soylent Siberia has "Coffee Creamer."

Also at Drunken Stepfather, "MORNING HANGOVER DUMP OF THE DAY," and "ALESSANDRA AMBROSIO HAS NO NIPPLES FOR VOGUE BRAZIL OF THE DAY."

Proof Positive has "Friday Night Babe: Emily Wickersham!"

Ode has "A Very Merry Christmas Woodsterman Style (VIDEO)."

See also, the Hostages, "Big Boob Friday."

Also Daley Gator, "THE DALEYBABE."

Now from Wine, Women, and Politics as well, "Multiple exposure."

Front Army has "Rachel McDonald."

At Postal Dog, "Maitland Ward is my favorite Santa's helper."

Some history from Ms. EBL, "Mandy Rice Davies RIP and British Profuma Sex Scandal Affair Rule 5."

And In a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World has "Friday Pinups."

Finally, Bob Belvedere has "Tibby Muldoon."

Brandeis Red Guards Threaten Daniel Mael for Reporting Khadijah Lynch's Radical Anti-Police Diatribes

The American system of higher education remains the beachhead of leftist revolutionary agitation and indoctrination, and if you dare go against the radicals' party line you will be targeted for elimination.

Believe me, I know this personally. Always stand your ground and throw the "racism" allegations back in their faces.

Here's the background from previously, "Khadijah Lynch, Undergraduate Representative for Afro-American Studies at Brandies, Resigns After Outrageous Anti-Police Comments on Twitter."

And now check FrontPage Magazine, "Brandeis Students Threaten Journalist for Reporting Anti-Cop Statements":

Pro-Israel student activist and TruthRevolt contributor Daniel Mael has come under fire from campus progressives and fellow students for writing about a Brandeis student representative’s tweet declaring that she had “no sympathy” for the two NYPD officers murdered in Brooklyn Saturday. Since the story went viral, Mael has become the target of personal threats and a campaign to see him suspended or expelled from the school.

In his piece Saturday, Mael quoted multiple Twitter posts by Khadijah Lynch, at the time the Undergraduate Department Representative for Brandeis’ African and Afro-American Studies program, which expressed her lack of “sympathy” for the two police officers murdered earlier that day. “i have no sympathy for the nypd officers who were murdered today,” she wrote Saturday, followed by “lmao, all i just really dont have sympathy for the cops who were shot. i hate this racist fucking country.”

Mael followed the quotes with other inflammatory statements posted by Lynch, including posts asking “what the fuck even IS ‘non-violence’,” decrying “Zionism,” declaring “the fact that black people have not burned this country down is beyond me” and “I am in riot mode.”

TruthRevolt contacted Lynch for clarification about her statement about the NYPD officers; she responded by saying that any publication of her Twitter posts was “slander.” Mael reported that Lynch then returned to Twitter to say that she needed to “get my gun license. Asap.” and that “amerikkka needs an infitada” (a violent uprising).

This is the second time in recent weeks that TruthRevolt has been accused by left-wing activists of defamation for simply quoting them. The abortion activist and actress Lena Dunham went so far as to serve this publication with a cease and desist for reporting statement made in her own book.

When Mael’s article went viral, Brandeis officials distanced the school from Lynch’s comments, calling them “hurtful and disrespectful,” and African and Afro-American Studies Department Chair Chad Williams issued a statement announcing Lynch’s resignation from her position as student representative for the program. Williams also denounced online criticism of Lynch, which he described as “horrifically racist, sexist, Islamophobic and threatening physical violence.”

Now Brandeis students supportive of Lynch are attempting to start a movement to have Mael either suspended or expelled...

Keep reading.

And at Legal Insurrection, "Student Reporter under Attack at Brandeis Univ. for Reporting On anti-Police Tweets."

Californians Rising Up Against Obama's Lawless Open Borders Amnesty

Shoot, good thing.

Folks on the grassroots are standing up to Obama's lawlessness.

At LAT, "President Obama's executive action has served as a recruiting tool for groups opposing illegal immigration":

For years, Raul Rodriguez Jr. would let out an exasperated sigh, then move on, whenever he read or heard news about illegal immigration. But something clicked last summer when he saw reports of multitudes of Central Americans illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

"I've got to do something," Rodriguez, 72, said he told himself. "I've got to get off the couch and need to get people involved."

Rodriguez crafted signs denouncing illegal immigration for various rallies, including one in Murrieta a few days after busloads of Central American detainees were turned back amid vocal protests.

After President Obama announced his immigration reform plan last month, the Apple Valley resident started contacting congressional leaders to express his displeasure.

California's anti-illegal immigration movement has lost a lot of steam in the 20 years since voters passed Proposition 187, the ballot measure intended to deny taxpayer-funded services to those in the country illegally.

Polls consistently show that Californians don't see illegal immigration as the same type of threat they did in the 1990s, and a September USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll showed 73% of voters support some type of path to citizenship for those here illegally.

But the last few months have shown that the anti-illegal immigration forces remain small but potent — and a movement that backers hope will get stronger with Obama's action.

Tactics this time are changing. Robin Hvidston, president of We the People Rising, a Claremont organization, said her group and other California activists have focused on targeting congressional leaders outside the state because they know there's little they can do here.

"They see their only hope being the national government," said Roy H. Beck, who heads NumbersUSA, a powerful national advocacy group opposing illegal immigration. "They don't see a solution coming from inside California."

With Christmas Over, Millions of Gift Returns Begin

At the Wall Street Journal, "Purchases Boomerang Back to Retailers, Costing Them Dearly; Returns Are a ‘Dirty Business’":

The holidays may be over, but returns season is just getting started.

Ill-fitting sweaters, the wrong Frozen doll and unwanted accessories will be heading back to U.S. retailers, many in the same boxes they came in.

More than 20% of returns happen during the holiday season—about $60 billion in merchandise, according to Optoro, a logistics provider.

The U.S. Postal Service handled 3.2 million returns in the two weeks that followed last Christmas and said there will be even more this year. United Parcel Service Inc. expects to handle four million returns the first full week of January, up 15% from two years ago as online sales continue to grow.

“Returns in the e-commerce segment are a more important issue than they are in the typical retail channel, representing a larger percentage of overall sales,” said Mike Glenn, president and CEO of FedEx Corporate Services, on a recent call with analysts.

FedEx Corp. said it doesn’t provide projections.

Returns may be a boon for delivery companies, but they are a costly for retailers. Best Buy Co. estimates that returns, replacements and damaged goods represent about 10% of revenue and for the year cost the electronics retailer $400 million. The chain is trying to reduce those losses by selling more so-called open-box inventory online and at its stores around the country. Hudson’s Bay Co. , which owns Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor, has tried to encourage customers to return products to its stores, so it can try to land another sale in the process.

“Returns—it is just a dirty business,” said Fred Poore, chief executive of logistics platform CommerceHub, which connects manufacturers with major retailers to fill online orders.

More.

And at the Los Angeles Times, "Big discounts, crowds, return fraud expected with post-Christmas sales":

Retailers girded themselves for the second busiest shopping day of the year, but the day after Christmas is also known for something less beneficial to the bottom line: hordes of returns.

Americans were expected to throng stores to give back unwanted holiday gifts, hoping to exchange the duds for cash, gift cards, store credit or other products.

The crowds will be intensified by deep, inventory-clearing discounts meant to lure shoppers and encourage returners to stay in stores...

The crowds at some stores, however, will likely encourage criminals to try their luck, according to experts.

Return fraud is expected to cost retailers $3.6 billion this holiday season, up from $3.4 billion last year and $2.9 billion in 2012, according to the National Retail Federation.

Over the full year, the practice costs companies nearly $11 billion.

This winter, one in every 20 returns is dubious, according to the trade group – a hefty figure considering that the average person returned nearly four gifts last year.

Several strategies are common. Perpetrators purchase items at a discount online or in a store and then return it at a competing retailer’s brick-and-mortar store for full value.

More retailers are allowing consumers to return merchandise in person that was bought on the Internet, according to the National Retail Federation. But more – 18.2% this year compared with 15.5% last year – are also saying that they have endured return fraud with e-receipts.

Some 3.5% of online purchases returned to stores are fraudulent, according to the group.

Other fraud perpetrators recruit store associates, using their employee discounts to score a deal on the product before returning it for the original price. More than eight in 10 companies said they have been victims of employee collusion.

Some use counterfeit receipts – a practice reported by a quarter of retailers. Others buy electronics, take out the valuable components inside, refill the hollowed-out technology with weights and then return it in the original packaging.

The switch is an offshoot of a common tactic known as wardrobing, in which customers return clothing that they have already worn. This year, nearly three-quarters of retailers said they fell victim to the strategy, up from 62% last year.

For the most part, retail experts don’t suspect average consumers. Instead, they finger organized retail crime groups, which tend to steal merchandise en masse and then resell it.

Such groups cost retailers nearly $30 billion a year, according to the trade group. Criminals are most active in Los Angeles, followed by Miami and then Chicago.

The National Retail Federation surveyed loss-prevention executives at 60 retailers – nearly 93% of respondents said their companies experienced returns of stolen merchandise in the past year.

“These knuckleheads know when to come in – they practice this and they’re good at it,” said Bob Moraca, vice president of loss prevention for the National Retail Federation.

Stephen Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers

I'm just blazing through this book, which I pulled down off my bookshelf while watching "Band of Brothers."

At Amazon, Citizen Soldiers: The U. S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany.

Alternative Christmas Message 2014

Love the accent.

From Rosie Jones, at Zoo Today.

PREVIOUSLY: "Christmas with Rosie Jones."

Monkey in New Delhi Resuscitates Electrocuted Friend

You gotta watch this clip.

At AoSHQ, "Monkey Saves Dying Friend Morning Thread."

Year-End Deals at Amazon

If you're shopping, Shop Amazon Instant Video - Save Up to 55% on Digital Movies & TV Shows.

Sex and Drugs Helps Bristish Economy Overtake France

This calls for some Ian Dury, heh.

At the Telegraph UK, "Britain edges past France on world stage":

UK economy, boosted by the inclusion of sex and drugs in national accounts, overtakes France by a whisker to become the world's fifth largest economy.

Britain has overtaken France to become the world's fifth largest economy, new analysis shows.

A shake-up of the national accounts this summer, which showed the UK's downturn during the Great Recession was shorter and shallower than previously thought, helped Britain overtake the Gallic economy by a whisker this year.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) said Britain's acceleration was also boosted by the inclusion of sex and drugs to UK growth. While the addition of prostitution and illegal drugs form part of new pan-European accounting standards, France has refused to comply with EU rules because it does not consider them to be "voluntary commercial activities".

Eric Dubois, a director at INSEE, France's statistics office, has described drug use as a "dependency" that does not involve "free will". He said prostitution was the result of "Mafia networks and trafficking illegal immigrants".

Official estimates show prostitution added about £5.7bn to the UK economy in 2013, while illegal drugs were worth about £6.62bn.

This helped the UK to overtake France by the narrowest of margins, the CEBR's analysis showed. UK gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to total $2.828 trillion (£1.816 trillion) this year, compared with French GDP of $2.827 trillion.

The CEBR expects Britain to pull further ahead of France in the coming years. This is despite concerns about the sustainability of the UK recovery raised after further data revisions this week showed growth in five out of the previous six quarters was weaker than thought.

Nominal UK GDP is expected to grow to $2.95 trillion in 2019, compared with $2.67 trillion in France.

More.

Oil's Swift Fall Raises Fortunes of U.S. Abroad

Transformations of global petroleum politics underway.

I love it!

At the New York Times, "Oil’s Swift Fall Raises Fortunes of U.S. Abroad":

BRUSSELS — A plunge in oil prices has sent tremors through the global political and economic order, setting off an abrupt shift in fortunes that has bolstered the interests of the United States and pushed several big oil-exporting nations — particularly those hostile to the West, like Russia, Iran and Venezuela — to the brink of financial crisis.

The nearly 50 percent decline in oil prices since June has had the most conspicuous impact on the Russian economy and President Vladimir V. Putin. The former finance minister Aleksei L. Kudrin, a longtime friend of Mr. Putin’s, warned this week of a “full-blown economic crisis” and called for better relations with Europe and the United States.

But the ripple effects are spreading much more broadly than that. The price plunge may also influence Iran’s deliberations over whether to agree to a deal on its nuclear program with the West; force the oil-rich nations of the Middle East to reassess their role in managing global supply; and give a boost to the economies of the biggest oil-consuming nations, notably the United States and China.

It might even have been a late factor in Cuba’s decision to seal a rapprochement with Washington.

After a precipitous drop, to less than $60 a barrel from around $115 a barrel in June, oil prices settled at a low level this week. Their fall, even if partly reversed, was so sharp and so quick as to unsettle plans and assumptions in many governments. That includes Mr. Putin’s apparent hope that Russia could weather Western sanctions over its intervention in Ukraine without serious economic harm, and Venezuela’s aspirations for continuing the free-spending policies of former President Hugo Chávez.

The price drop, said Edward N. Luttwak, a longtime Pentagon adviser and author of several books on geopolitical and economic strategy, “is knocking down America’s principal opponents without us even trying.” For Iran, which is estimated to be losing $1 billion a month because of the fall, it is as if Congress had passed the much tougher sanctions that the White House lobbied against, he said.

Iran has been hit so hard that its government, looking for ways to fill a widening hole in its budget, is offering young men the option of buying their way out of an obligatory two years of military service. “We are on the eve of a major crisis,” an Iranian economist, Hossein Raghfar, told the Etemaad newspaper on Sunday. “The government needs money badly.” ...

In many ways, the recent price fall really is the United States’ work, flowing to a large extent from a surge in American oil production through the development of alternative sources like shale.

By offsetting declines in conventional oil production, increases in shale oil output have allowed overall American crude oil production to rise to an average of about nine million barrels a day from five million a day in 2008, according to the United States Energy Information Administration. That four-million-barrel increase is more than either Iraq or Iran, the second- and third-largest OPEC producers after Saudi Arabia, produces each day, and it has put strong downward pressure on world prices...

That's what I'm talking about!

Keep reading.

Editor of CUNY's 'Advocate' Newspaper Calls for Anti-Cop Violence to 'Bring About New, More Egalitarian Paradigm...'

Shoot, we should give thanks to this dolt, Gordon Barnes, of the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY), for so enthusiastically letting the cat out of the bag of leftist anti-cop vigilantism.

This is truly what the left is all about, but what so few of their cadres will of course honestly admit (since revolutionary leftism is today a stealth movement in which so-called "progressives" disguise the true intent of their bankrupt ideological program).

Here's Barnes' essay, at CUNY GC "Advocate," a far-left publication sporting an "A" for anarchy at its Twitter profile. See, "In Support of Violence." (And you gotta love how this dude Barnes boasts of studying in Havana, at the Instituto de Filosofía de Cuba, a clearinghouse of Marxist-Leninist ideological agitation.)

From the essay:

Calls for calm emanating from the upper strata of society are an attempt to mitigate the popular indignation that has long been bubbling under the surface of the society. The violence against property, that is destruction and theft, is only an unorganized form of something with the potential to be far more revolutionary and inspiring. To say that an all-out class war is on the horizon would be hyperbolic at this point, and maybe even myopic, but the undergirding social structures that position disenfranchised and working class peoples well below the dictatorship of capital are being pressured, the police being only one such institution. With increased organization, the Ferguson protests and riots do have the potential to transform from seemingly random attacks to ones that aim at puncturing the status quo. This is not a quixotic notion, it is within the realm of material possibilities, and activist-scholars should be lending their weight to this and other attendant struggles. The reliability and social productivity of voting for bourgeoisie parties is long dead. The demonstration turned riot, turned revolt, is the most effective means to bring about a new, more egalitarian social paradigm. While the current “unrest” in Ferguson and around the country is unlikely lead to any revolutionary impetus, it is a start. As people’s consciousness is transmuted from subservience to the prevailing ideologies of the elite to something related to their actual position in the society, drastic social change will become increasingly possible.

The death of Michael Brown has spurred this process and has fomented mass discontent with the government. Furthermore, the events in Ferguson have fomented the most visible resistance to the status quo in the United States. What is needed now is to take the next step from indiscriminate attacks to ones directly pointed at state power as well as at the lackeys and apologists who allow it to prosper. The transformative potential emanating from the protestors’ violence in Ferguson and elsewhere will not help recoup some “golden age” in the United States – there never was one – but can hopefully prove to be the kernel of radically altered social relations.

During the protests in New York City in the days after the decision to not indict Wilson, thousands took to the streets empathetically chanting “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!” Some, however, went even further, shouting the slogan “Arms Up, Shoot Back!” The former statement represents an appeal to state authorities, namely the police, to cease its murderous rampage upon those living in this country. The latter, represents a challenge – albeit prematurely and an incendiary one, given the balance of forces – to those that currently wield power, and have the legal (fictitious) right to kill whom they see fit. Instead of attempting to demonize the rioters and looters by invoking the image and memory of Martin Luther King Jr., it would be more advantageous for those “progressives” in our society to understand the Ferguson protests as part of the same genealogy as the Deacons for Defense, Malcolm X, Robert F. Williams, and the Black Panthers. What is occurring in Ferguson is symptomatic of the social dislocation that has been ever present but has yet to ferment. When the state comes down on its citizenry violently, we must resist, with equitable violence if necessary. The attacks on property in Ferguson only need be redirected for a magnificent transformation of consciousness to come out of Michael Brown’s death. If not, then Brown’s death, the deaths of the aforementioned men, and the millions who suffered and died under the jackboot of state oppression in this country would have partially been lost in vain. Let us not protest the protestors, but express our solidarity, and our commitment to their struggle, which is invariably our own struggle. As we solidarize and join with the embattled communities in and around Ferguson, let us also remember to look beyond the provincial confines of our own state and express solidarity with others who struggle for a more just and equitable society, be they in Palestine, Mexico, or Burkina Faso. In the word of the late Burkinabé revolutionary Thomas Sankara, “It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future.”

RTWT.

Barnes announces that the "time for peace has passed."

Indeed, the violent revolutionary manifesto caught the attention of the folks at the New York Post, "CUNY newspaper editorial calls for violent protests":

A disturbing editorial in a CUNY grad-student newspaper calls for rioters protesting the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown to arm themselves and wage violent war with cops.

“The time for peace has passed,” says a revolutionary editorial titled “In Support of Violence” that was penned by editor-in-chief Gordon Barnes in the Dec. 3 issue of The Advocate...

More.

Just one more leftist to add to the long train of so-called "progressives" advocating radical anti-cop vigilantism.

The left's chickens came home to roost. And leftists are now on defense after the furious political backlash against their ideological program.

These people are disgusting, genuinely evil, the dregs of society --- pushing for the death of decency and civilization. Expose them. Repudiate them. Crush the bastards.

Radical Left Anti-Christian Hatred - UPDATED!!

I saw this idiot "Male Feminist" on Twitter somehow of late.

The sheer inanity of the handle caught my attention. So-called "male-feminists" are crazy.

Via Instapundit:




And you know, as I was saying, "Leftists can't wish you a Merry Christmas..."

UPDATE: Ms. EBL, in the comments, informs me that "Male Feminist" on Twitter is a parody account, and in that case, it's totally cool. Check this thread at AoSHQ for more.

Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West

In Germany, of all places.

At Der Spiegel, "The End of Tolerance? Anti-Muslim Movement Rattles Germany":

Disenchanted German citizens and right-wing extremists are joining forces to form a protest movement to fight what they see as the Islamization of the West. Is this the end of the long-praised German tolerance of recent years?

Felix Menzel is sitting in his study in an elegant villa in Dresden's Striesen neighborhood on a dark afternoon in early December. He's thinking about Europe. A portrait of Ernst Jünger, a favorite author of many German archconservatives is hung on the wall.

Menzel, 29, is a polite, unimposing man wearing corduroys and rimless glasses. He takes pains to come across as an intellectual, and avoids virulent rhetoric like "Foreigners out!" He prefers to talk about "Europe's Western soul," which, as he believes, includes Christianity and the legacy of antiquity, but not Islam. "I see serious threats coming our way from outside Europe. I feel especially pessimistic about the overpopulation of Africa and Asia," says Menzel, looking serious. "And I believe that what is unfolding in Iraq and Syria at the moment is a clear harbinger of the first global civil war."

Menzel, a media scholar, has been running the Blaue Narzisse (Blue Narcissus), a conservative right-wing magazine for high school and university students, for the last 10 years. His small magazine had attracted little interest until now. But that is about to change, at least if Menzel has his way. "The uprising of the masses that we have long yearned for is slowly getting underway," he writes on his magazine's website. "And this movement is moving toward the right."

In Dresden, at least, the sentiments expressed in the Blaue Narzisse have become more palpable in recent weeks. Protests staged each week on Mondays initially attracted only a few dozen to a few hundred people, but more recently the number of citizens taking to the streets has reached 10,000. The group, which calls itself Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West (and goes by the German acronym Pegida), demonstrates against economic migrants and a supposed "cultural foreign domination of our country" -- whatever is meant by that.

What is going on in Germany, the world's second most popular destination for immigrants? Has the open-mindedness for which Germans had long been praised now ended? Are we seeing a return of the vague fear of being overwhelmed by immigrants that Germany experienced in the 1990s, when a hostel for asylum seekers was burned down? How large is the new right-wing movement, and will it remain limited to Dresden, or is it spreading nationwide?

So far, protests held under the Pegida label in other cities -- like Kassel and Würzburg -- have attracted only a few hundred people at a time. In fact, some of the protests attracted significantly larger numbers of counter-demonstrators. And while thousands of "patriotic Europeans" aim to take to the streets in Dresden again in the coming days, their counterparts in Germany's western states are taking a Christmas break. Pegida supporters are waiting until after the holidays to return to the streets in cities like Cologne, Düsseldorf and Unna.

Keep reading.

Christmas Eve in the Ardennes

Just now finishing up on "The Band of Brothers," so I guess this is appropriate.

At Legal Insurrection, "Christmas 1944: The Battle of the Bulge."

'The Interview' Now Available on Xbox Video

Damn. You gotta love 'Merica!

At the Hollywood Reporter, "'The Interview' Goes to YouTube, Google Play, XBox."

And video at CBS News Los Angeles, "Sony Agrees to Limited Release of 'The Interview'."

Saw Julia Roberts This Morning

In a beauty ad, for Lancome.

She's one of a kind. Style and perfection. And class.

Kelly Brook Christmas

Merry Christmas folks.

At London's Daily Mail, "She's definitely on Santa's naughty list! Kelly Brook shows off her ample assets as she performs a Christmas striptease."

Man, that woman has ample assets.

Despite Obama, Plunging Oil Prices Spur U.S. Economy to Stongest Growth in Decade

Just think how much stronger our economy would be doing if we had a pro-growth president.

At LAT, "U.S. growth is strongest in a decade":

The U.S. is rolling into the new year with impressive strength as plunging oil prices have ignited consumer spending and helped fuel the best stretch of growth in more than a decade — even as economies around the world are struggling.

A basketful of mostly upbeat economic data Tuesday pushed financial markets to record highs, with the Dow Jones industrial average breaking through the 18,000-point barrier for the first time.

Investors were spurred by a Commerce Department report that the U.S. economy expanded at a remarkable 5% annual rate in the third quarter, the fastest pace since 2003 and a far cry from the tepid growth that has plagued most of the recovery from the Great Recession.

"This is literally shoot-the-lights-out sort of stuff," said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Union Bank in New York. "This economy is pretty much roaring."

And the third quarter wasn't a fluke.

Total economic output, also known as gross domestic product, expanded at a 4.6% annual rate in the second quarter. It marks the first time the economy posted back-to-back quarters of more than 4.5% growth since 2003.

Economists don't expect the torrid pace to continue. The fourth quarter will probably keep the positive momentum, but at a more modest 2.5% to 3%.

With gasoline prices plummeting, Americans are feeling the difference in their bank accounts. Consumer spending jumped in November as incomes continued to rise.

And with a leading measure of consumer confidence on Tuesday hitting its highest level since 2007, signs point to strong spending carrying into next year, economists said.

"The U.S. economy prior to the oil price decline was doing reasonably well. It was chugging along," said Brian Bethune, chief economist at Alpha Economic Foresights.

"Then we get an accelerator, which is the drop in oil prices," he said. "It's equivalent to a big tax cut — and the tax cut is getting larger."

Although oil prices rose Tuesday — partly because strong U.S. growth signaled increased demand — they have fallen nearly 50% over the last six months.

That's caused the average price for a gallon of regular to drop to $2.38 a gallon, according to AAA. That's down 15 cents in just a week and 87 cents from a year ago.

The savings at the gas pump have boosted consumer spending, which rose 3.2% in the third quarter. Those figures beat an earlier estimate, and rose from 2.5% in the previous quarter. A big factor was an increase in spending on healthcare.

Heh. I just love it when the economy defies the leftist program of economic stagnation.

More.

EARLIER: "U.S. Fuel Costs Drop to Historic Lows, Thanks to Shale Oil Boom — And No Thanks to Obama!"

Leftists Mount New Anti-Police Protests at Memorial for Two Assassinated Policemen (VIDEO)

From Noah Rothman, at Hot Air, "Hearts and minds: Anti-police protesters crash memorial for slain NYPD officers":

If the protesters haven’t already completely lost the support of the majority of Americans who do not occupy themselves demonstrating in the streets, it will not be long before they do.

No, not long at all.

The Big Lie of the Anti-Cop Left Turns Lethal

From Heather Lynn Mac Donald, at City Journal:

Since last summer, a lie has overtaken significant parts of the country, resulting in growing mass hysteria. That lie holds that the police pose a mortal threat to black Americans—indeed that the police are the greatest threat facing black Americans today. Several subsidiary untruths buttress that central myth: that the criminal-justice system is biased against blacks; that the black underclass doesn’t exist; and that crime rates are comparable between blacks and whites—leaving disproportionate police action in minority neighborhoods unexplained without reference to racism. The poisonous effect of those lies has now manifested itself in the cold-blooded assassination of two NYPD officers.

The highest reaches of American society promulgated these untruths and participated in the mass hysteria. Following a grand jury’s decision not to indict a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer for fatally shooting 18-year-old Michael Brown in August (Brown had attacked the officer and tried to grab his gun), President Barack Obama announced that blacks were right to believe that the criminal-justice system was often stacked against them. Obama has travelled around the country since then buttressing that message. Eric Holder escalated a long running theme of his tenure as U.S. Attorney General—that the police routinely engaged in racial profiling and needed federal intervention to police properly.

University presidents rushed to show their fealty to the lie. Harvard’s Drew Gilpin Faust announced that “injustice [toward black lives] still thrives so many years after we hoped we could at last overcome the troubled legacy of race in America. . . . Harvard and . . . the nation have embraced [an] imperative to refuse silence, to reject injustice.” Smith College’s president abjectly flagellated herself for saying that “all lives matter,” instead of the current mantra, “black lives matter.” Her ignorant mistake, she confessed, draws attention away from “institutional violence against Black people.”

The New York Times ratcheted up its already stratospheric level of anti-cop polemics. In an editorial justifying the Ferguson riots, the Times claimed 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.” Some facts: Police killings of blacks are an extremely rare feature of black life and are a minute fraction of black homicide deaths. The police could end all killings of civilians tomorrow and it would have no effect on the black homicide risk, which comes overwhelmingly from other blacks. In 2013, there were 6,261 black homicide victims in the U.S.—almost all killed by black civilians—resulting in a death risk in inner cities that is ten times higher for blacks than for whites. None of those killings triggered mass protests; they are deemed normal and beneath notice. The police, by contrast, according to published reports, kill roughly 200 blacks a year, most of them armed and dangerous, out of about 40 million police-civilian contacts a year. Blacks are in fact killed by police at a lower rate than their threat to officers would predict. In 2013, blacks made up 42 percent of all cop killers whose race was known, even though blacks are only 13 percent of the nation’s population. The percentage of black suspects killed by the police nationally is 29 percent lower than the percentage of blacks mortally threatening them...

More (via Memeorandum).

Bill de Blasio's Nightmare

Leftists were touting the elections of far-left socialist mayors in 2013, especially Bill de Blasio in New York.

Things aren't looking so great now, though.

At Politico, "De Blasio’s nightmare":

Bill de Blasio, like his progressive political idol Barack Obama, is finding out that you can’t do the New Politics if you don’t pay attention to the old politics.

In Obama’s case, it was a failure to recognize the threat posed to him by Republicans who didn’t buy into his calls for a post-partisan partnership with Congress. For New York’s ambitious liberal mayor, it was an inability to keep long-simmering tensions with the city’s traditionally powerful police department from boiling over in the last few days.

Just over a year after sailing into office with 72 percent of the vote on a message of transformational change, de Blasio found his mayoralty subsumed by a torrent of anger, unleashed by the murder of two police officers in Brooklyn Sunday by a troubled gunman who said he was killing “pigs” to avenge the deaths of two men by cops in Staten Island and Ferguson, Missouri. By Monday, de Blasio was lashing out at the press corps that covers him, trying to paper over public divisions with his own police commissioner and coping with what friends described as the emotional blow of facing public rejection by many in the nation’s biggest police force. “He’s pretty badly shaken,” one told us.

That a civic tragedy would so quickly devolve into a full-blown political crisis for the new mayor was testament to the vehemence of anti-de Blasio elements in the police union – and the mayor’s mistaken belief that his 2013 victory gave him the right to shred an old Gotham political playbook that dictated a mayor show deference to the NYPD.

You can’t be big-city mayor and alienate the cops – and that’s just as true now as it was under three-term New York City Mayor Ed Koch, or even a century ago.

“Koch was loved by the cops and always told all his successors that you must have the support of the cops, that the cops can be your best friend. If Koch were alive today that’s what he would tell Bill de Blasio,” said George Arzt, former press secretary to Koch, whose election in 1977 election greatly improved City Hall-police relations.

De Blasio “needs to press reset in his relationship with the cops,” Arzt said.

Good luck with that. The bad blood between the NYPD and de Blasio is nothing new – it dates back to an election campaign centered on de Blasio’s withering criticism of the Bloomberg administration’s stop-and-frisk policy, and his close alliance with the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has organized scores of protests targeting cops over their behavior toward urban blacks.

According to a former de Blasio aide, during the general election campaign in 2013, de Blasio’s team was even convinced that members of his police detail were eavesdropping on his private conversations in his city-assigned car. Things got so bad that de Blasio, according to the staffer, would step into the street to make sure he was out of earshot of plainclothes officers...

Man, that's harsh --- and it's Politico, a left wing rag!

More.

Saudi Arabia Fears U.S. Shale Oil

At WSJ, "Why Saudis Decided Not to Prop Up Oil: In American Shale Oil, A Perceived Threat to OPEC Market Share":

In early October, Saudi Arabia’s representative to OPEC surprised attendees at a New York seminar by revealing his government was content to let global energy prices slide.

Nasser al-Dossary ’s message broke from decades of Saudi orthodoxy that sought to keep prices high by limiting global oil production, said people familiar with the session. That set the stage for Saudi Arabia’s oil mandarins to send crude prices tumbling late last month after persuading other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to keep production steady.

Hard-hit countries like Iran, Russia and Venezuela suspected the move was a coordinated effort between the oil kingdom and its longtime ally, the U.S., to weaken their foes’ economies and geopolitical standing.

But the story of Saudi Arabia’s new oil strategy, pieced together through interviews with senior Middle Eastern, American and European officials, isn’t one of an old alliance. It is a story of a budding rivalry, driven by what Saudi Arabia views as a threat posed by American energy firms, these officials said...

Once again, I just love the news out on global energy markets. It makes the idiot global warming ghouls look more idiotic than they usually do --- and that's saying something.

More at the link.

Heidi Klum's Sharper Image Too Sexy for Vegas!

At London's Daily Mail, "Heidi Klum's provocative Sharper Image ads are BANNED in Las Vegas for being 'too sexy'."

And even at Fox News:

War Is Being Waged on Our Homeland — By the Radical Left!

From Bernard Kerik, at Time:

War is being waged in our homeland. Not a war of the enemies we have become accustomed to—ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, radical extremists who hate everything we stand for and want to annihilate us.

No, this war is of our own making. It is a war on law and order. It is a war on what keeps our communities safe. It is a war on cops who live to protect those they serve.

This war is as dangerous as any global enemy we face. In some ways, it is even more dangerous because it pits Americans against Americans, those who serve against those who are served, communities against their very own.

What is worst of all is that this war is built on a lie…. a lie that has quickly become so embedded in our society that it will take a Herculean effort to bring this lie to the light of day so everyone can see it for what it is: a lie.

Our nation’s police are not at war on blacks or Hispanics or poor neighborhoods. Cops fight lawlessness each and every day, putting their lives on the line in communities all across this country to keep our citizens, children, schools, institutions, and neighborhoods safe.

Yet if you have listened to some in the media, purported civil rights leader Al Sharpton, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and others around the country over the last several weeks, you’re forced to believe that nearly all of America’s local and state police are out to kill minorities.

It’s a lie! It’s a lie that has inflamed the hearts and minds of many and turned them against every cop in the nation. It’s a lie that has the potential to rip America at its seams and cause damage far worse than any attack on our country, including that on 9/11/2001...

Well, the left is the enemy. Kerik's just making the point in a roundabout way.

Keep reading.

Top 10 Feminist Fiascoes of 2014

From Charlotte Allen, at the Los Angeles Times.

PREVIOUSLY: "Feminism Died in 1998."

David Priestland, The Red Flag

Okay, here's one more book recommendation for the night.

Check out David Priestland's magisterial chronicle, The Red Flag: A History of Communism.

I read all this stuff, all these books on Marxism and the subterranean program of leftism in America. And I'm especially fascinated with the left's current collapse, Marxist Bill de Blasio in New York, in particular. It's just too much good stuff!

Feminism Died in 1998

A roundup of radical feminist inanities, at Instapundit:

“Feminism died in 1998 when Hillary allowed henchlings and Democrats to demonize Monica as an unbalanced stalker, and when Gloria Steinem defended Mr. Clinton against Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones.”

Now the corpse is just twitching.

'Avalanche of Hate Speech'

Joe Scarborough hammers left-wing hatred and anti-cop vigilantism:

O'Reilly: de Blasio 'Has Disgraced the Office of Mayor of New York City' (Video)

Watch, at Gateway Pundit: "Bill O’Reilly: DeBlasio Should Resign Today – “He Has Disgraced the Office of Mayor of New York City” (Video)."

I'm Watching 'Band of Brothers' Until Monday Night Football Comes On...

And I might still go out to the mall after the game, or earlier if it's a blowout.

I found my box of "Band of Brothers" DVDs while looking for towels for my son the other day. I just popped it in for a viewing.

Haven't watched this series for almost 10 years, when I first got the DVDs for a Christmas gift. Sure seems like a good time to watch it again. Here's the link, at Amazon.

Last-Minute Holiday Shopping

Some deals at Amazon, Shop Amazon Fashion - Up to 70% Off.

Also, some new runners? Shop Amazon Fashion - 20% Off Athletic Shoes.

Cuba's Anti-Castro Opposition Slams Obama's Move to Normalize Relations

Folks aren't pleased down Havana way, and it's not an insignificant faction.

At LAT, "In Cuba, reactions to thaw with U.S. run from cold to warm":

The weekly ritual was underway. Silent and holding fake fuchsia-colored gladioluses, the Ladies in White paraded from church and down 5th Avenue in residential Havana to demand the release of political prisoners and, on this Sunday, to decry the Obama administration's rapprochement with Cuba.

Among the most strident enemies of successive Castro governments, the mood was downcast. Activists said Cuban President Raul Castro gave up very little to gain a great deal.

"By ending the blockade," said Maria Cristina Labrada, using the word with which Cubans refer to the U.S. embargo, President Obama "is only strengthening the repression against us."

Labrada was one of about 70 women participating in the march. A small group of men stood to one side of the avenue, holding up their hands in the shape of an L for libertad, or "freedom."

To the Cuban activists, Castro has emerged a winner in the 55-year-long standoff with the United States, sealing his legacy as the Cuban leader who would oversee official recognition by the giant neighbor to the north. Cuba released Alan Gross, a subcontractor with the U.S. Agency for International Development, who had been jailed on the island for five years, and a few other prisoners. But the release of more than 50 people promised as part of the deal has yet to materialize, activists said.

"They can let 53 go, but we are all exposed. Anyone can fall" prisoner, said another of the white-clad women, Lazara Sardiña...

More at that top link.

iOTW REPORT Ripped Off

This is a bummer, "I AM SO SICK OF THIS SHIT," and "It’s Christmas":

For every 1 post I make about credit-stripping there are 10 others that I am alerted to by the good people of iOTWreport and I do nothing about it. It just becomes another paper cut that contributes to your slow death.

Every once in awhile, though, I pop my cork and put up a post expressing my frustration. Seeing the idea I executed in a James Woods tweet, and retweeted over 1000 times, with no mention of iOTWreport, is tough to witness.

I signed off after my post, closed the laptop and watched Mission Impossible on Me TV. Metaphorical? You tell me.

For the record, I did not call out James Woods (he did nothing wrong) or Wayne Dupree (Dupree’s name being associated with this was news to me when I went back online. The post was updated by good people who try and help me because they witness first-hand how much damage is done by my loss of morale and interest in creating graphics when others benefit.)

I did not, and will not publicly name a person as a thief until they tell me straight out that they are the ones that stripped the credit off. Then I name names. And it is never rewarding, in fact, the reverse is true. The situation gets worse. Let me explain...

Keep reading.

Here's the original image, "He Built the Deaths of Many":

Carmen Electra Displays Her Curves at Hollywood Club While Pole Dance Performing New Single

Heh.

I can relate. It was a homosexual Hollywood club too, lol.

At London's Daily Mail:

Carmen Electra treats fans to raunchy pole dance at Hollywood gay club http://t.co/2L1kFkpyNi pic.twitter.com/4PnlCmBTMm

— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) December 18, 2014

De Blasio Puts Cops in the Crosshairs

Just watched the NYPD press conference, where Mayor de Blasio stupidly argued that only isolated "bad people" were spouting anti-cop hatred. Seriously. He claimed there was nary a word of violence when some 25 thousand people marched "just a few days ago." What a liar. The dude needs to actually get out there on the street and witness the hateful vigilantism of his own New York City ideological allies.

More on that when the videos are posted.

Meanwhile, at the New York Post:

Op-Ed: Bill de Blasio’s arrogance puts cops in cross hairs http://t.co/v9VsjqMVTP pic.twitter.com/3Os7zX2rtI

— New York Post (@nypost) December 22, 2014

Kate Upton Restored

I don't know why I still use Photobucket. Habit and convenience, I guess.

Their roving censors deleted my lovely photo of Ms. Upton from the other day's post, "Kate Upton: 'Sexiest Woman Alive'." (Photo restored at the link.)

But here she is again:

Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Destructive Generation

There's an enduring vitality to the work of David Horowitz. Folks may recall that in fact he's not popular among many on the right. And I take seriously the personal, professional repudiation of Horowitz by those among whom I count friends (including some very close friends from the right blogosphere). But be that as it may, when pondering the perplexing continued influence of the radical left in America, you're not going to fall astray by reading Horowitz's updates. I've read a number of his books, including those written with his long time colleague Peter Collier. The combination of personal bitterness and historical memory makes for very compelling reading. And having met Horowitz and listened to him speak on a number of occasions, I know that his words express unsurpassed first-hand experience. It's why he's so widely reviled by those on the left. He's got their number down to a tee.

Here's Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties. These are discrete essays. I recommend starting with Chapter 6, "Divided Loyalties: The Fifth-Column Left," which brilliantly chronicles the historical continuities of the left's treason and subterfuge over the decades. (And readers will be amazed at how some of the Democrat Party's top leadership today populate the history of New Left radicalism going back decades.)

And check the authors' essay at FrontPage Magazine, "Destructive Generation":

The Left that the Sixties created tends to lose the battles: whether it is the push to erase the differences between the sexes, or to take away Everyman’s SUV, or to define down the terrorism of those who would bring their war into the heartland of this country. When they have the opportunity, the American people usually reject such ideas. But the Left wages a permanent war, and therefore often seems to be winning in the midst of its losses. Its survivorship comes from the fact that even as radicals were losing the decade-long referendum on their radical plans in the Sixties, they seized cultural citadels that allowed them to continue a stealth fight later on.

One of these citadels was the “elite” media, whose commitment to leftish ideas is so complete that it has become a series of scandals: Dan Rather’s bogus “exposé” about George W. Bush’s National Guard service, for instance, or Newsweek’s fraudulent report that Americans guarding al-Qaeda soldiers at Guantanamo desecrated the Koran—a story whose retraction did not keep sister publications such as the New York Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Los Angeles Times from editorializing, in essence, that Newsweek was right even though it was wrong or from continuing to pursue the Gitmo story like a vendetta.

Another citadel is commanded by the big foundations, notably Ford and Rockefeller, which have invested vast sums in movements carrying more than a whiff of the Sixties—a separatist Hispanic movement with an ethnic agenda rather than an assimilative one; and groups such as Catholics for Free Choice, created out of whole cloth to oppose the Catholic Church on abortion and other issues.

But nowhere is the entrenchment of the Sixties mentality more complete or more destructive than in the university. That the Left should now dominate the academy involves a savage irony, of course. It was only after failing in their intent to burn down the university in the Sixties that radicals decided to get on the tenure track in the Seventies. Unimpeded in their long march through these institutions by fair-minded centrists of the sort they themselves now refuse to hire, these Leftists have brought a postmodern Dark Age to higher education—“deconstructing” objective truths to pave the way for chic academic nihilism; creating a curriculum of contempt for American history and culture; and transforming many classrooms into chambers of inquisition and indoctrination. Some of them now profess to be embarrassed by the “excess” of a Ward Churchill, and no wonder: his sin is to reveal by his blatancy the agenda they try to disguise through stealth and subtle misdirection.

Former SDS president Todd Gitlin, currently a professor of sociology and journalism at Columbia whose academic work has centered on mythologizing the Sixties, candidly acknowledged the Left’s academic coup in a recent essay he called “Varieties of Patriotic Experience.” Writing about the failure of his—and our—former comrades to produce a revolution in the streets during the Sixties, Gitlin comments:

My generation of the New Left—a generation that grew as the [Vietnam] war went on—relinquished any title to patriotism without much sense of loss … . All that was left to the Left was to unearth righteous traditions and cultivate them in universities. The much-mocked “political correctness” of the next academic generations was a consolation prize. We lost—we squandered the politics—but won the textbooks.

Gitlin is as wrong in implying that the New Left, even in its earliest moments, ever had a “righteous” plan as he is in suggesting that establishing an atmosphere of political intimidation in the universities is simply a trivial pursuit. The “consolation” offered by the takeover is revolution by other means. And not least among the Left’s objectives now that the university is under its thumb is consolidating its fantasy of the Sixties as the Last Good Time. There are literally hundreds of college courses devoted to the history of the decade, but the growing literature of second thoughts—along with other dissident views—is virtually absent from the course lists.

Our book is no exception. Running for President in 2000, George W. Bush said that Destructive Generation was one of the three books that had formed his worldview on how America veered off course in the postwar era. But university professors have consigned this book to the memory hole, along with other books of second thoughts like Commies: My Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left, by Ronald Radosh, and Professing Feminism: Indoctrination and Education in Women’s Studies, by Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge, former professors of women’s studies.

The erasure of an entire side of a critical argument calls to mind Stalin’s famous trick of airbrushing opponents out of photos so that they simply ceased to be part of history. The consequences can be measured by what is now the conventional treatment of two groups we wrote about in Destructive Generation, the Black Panther Party and the Weather Underground. Both were central to the meaning of the Sixties; both are now treated by the academy in a way that reverses novelist Milan Kundera’s famous formulation about the power of memory over forgetting. Forgetting—an induced amnesia—is exactly the point of the current pedagogy...

More.

And pick up your copy at Amazon.

Bye Candy, DLTDHYOTWO!

Candy Crowley, CNN's partisan hack and moral reprobate, gets a final sendoff.

Word is the network's looking to replace the hag with a blond hottie to rival Fox News' deep bench of bodacious broadcast babes.

The Radical Left and Violent Anti-Police Rhetoric

From the editors at the Wall Street Journal, "Progressives and the Police":

‘What do we want? Dead cops!” So chanted marchers at one of the protests organized in the last month against the failure of grand juries to indict white officers in the death of black crime suspects Michael Brown and Eric Garner. On Saturday they got their wish, as a black assailant citing revenge for Brown and Garner traveled from Maryland to murder two cops sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn.

“They were quite simply assassinated, targeted for their uniform,” New York Police Commissioner William Bratton said, and so they were. Garner and Brown were resisting arrest, but the two young officers never had a chance even to pull their guns. They had been marked for death near a high-crime housing project they were trying to protect against criminal predators.

Mayor Bill de Blasio , Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama were all quick to condemn the shooting. And let’s stipulate that no one other than the alleged shooter, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, is responsible for pulling the trigger. Chased into the subway by police, he then shot himself.

But this double assassination is also a moment of clarity about how thin the line in any society is between order and anarchy. America is full of Brinsleys who no longer abide the norms of civilized behavior, if they even know what those norms are. They need but the slightest excuse to take justice into their own hands and go on a rampage.

Especially in urban America, the police walk that line between civilization and mayhem every day. Yet since the Garner and Brown episodes, the progressive leaders in New York and Washington have talked and behaved as if the police are society’s main problem.

They have honored with joint public appearances and private meetings such racial agitators as Al Sharpton who want to stop the “broken windows” policing that has done so much to reduce crime in poor minority neighborhoods. Mr. Holder has sent federal agents to second-guess grand juries and “reform” local police as if he assumes these police chiefs and prosecutors are biased. The New York City Council staged a “die-in” as fallen victims of police.

And progressives have failed to denounce protestors who have disrupted civic life, rampaged through stores, and even assaulted police who tried to arrest law-breakers. All of this has contributed to a public climate of suspicion and hate against police in which a man like Ismaaiyl Brinsley can in his deranged mind think it is justified to stalk and execute two cops on the beat...

Yeah, sing it brothers.

While the direction of blame points only to the killer himself, the radical left has created the tinderbox in which Ismaaiyl Brinsley was waiting to explode. And despicable leftists themselves know it full well, which is why these ghouls have been mounting the most epic walkback marathon in recent years. And frankly, it's not going to help, since Americans are already recoiling at the anti-police protests and the nation's institutional machinery is making epochal course corrections to restore legitimacy and power to law enforcement agencies. Indeed, the priority for the country going forward is to further marginalize the radical left and its racist bombthowers from President Obama on down.

More.

The Left's Racism Narrative Unravels

From Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary, "As Police Die, Racism Narrative Unravels" (via Memeorandum):

Any conversation about the murders of two New York City Police officers this weekend must start by acknowledging the ordinary heroism of law enforcement personnel that puts them in harm’s way every day. We should then acknowledge that all those who have criticized police actions in Ferguson, Missouri and New York after the controversial deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner are not responsible for the slaying of Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos. We don’t know yet who or what may have influenced the reportedly mentally disturbed shooter, who was apparently bent on “revenge” for Brown and Garner. But we do know this. After four months of non-stop condemnations of the police and the justice system for both racism and deliberately targeting African Americans for violence, it is time for the race hucksters and their political enablers such as President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to stop the campaign of incitement against the police.

Conservatives know very well that attempts to politicize violence on the part of the mentally ill is deeply unfair. They know that liberal claims that either the Tea Party or conservatives such as Sarah Palin were somehow responsible for the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was sheer slander. If some angry supporters of the police now try to say Obama, Holder, or de Blasio approved or countenanced the actions of Ismaaiyl Brinsley, they are just as wrong. Obama, Holder, and de Blasio have all rightly condemned the murder of the two officers.

But once we acknowledge that, we cannot ignore the fact that the discussion about race and the police in this country has gotten out of control in recent months and that these same political leaders who should have been seeking to restrain the public from drawing extreme and general conclusions about two very extraordinary cases instead kept the pot boiling for political advantage.

Even worse than that, they have empowered and legitimized racial demagogues like Al Sharpton who have sought to profit from exploiting these tragedies to promote their own agendas. In turn, Sharpton and those like him who are given prominent air time on networks like MSNBC and CNN have encouraged protesters who have not only engaged in violence but often openly called for the killing of police, a stance that has been openly endorsed by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and other radicals.

The act of a single possibly mad gunman does not mean that Americans must never question the actions of police or ponder broader issues about race. It is misleading to claim that those who have raised such questions have given a green light to the murder of police officers. Yet those who have sought to take two very different and quite unusual incidents in Ferguson and New York and weave them into a neat narrative of racism and anti-black violence by police have done very much the same thing. The difference between the two is that the media spent much of the last four months seeking to establish that wrongheaded narrative as a fact while they will, quite rightly, give no credence or air time to those who will blame Obama for cop killers....

If there is any reproach today that should be laid at the feet of Obama, Holder, and de Blasio, it is that by helping to foster one false set of assumptions, they have now left themselves vulnerable to questions about their own willingness to accept and exploit calumnies against the police and the justice system.

That's quite fair. But keep reading.

I'd correct Tobin, though, in mentioning that the MSM is indeed giving airtime to those who would blame President Obama for the murders. Further, it's simply not possible to discount the Al Sharpton-inspired protesters who marched through New York's streets inciting violence and exhorting activists to bring about more "dead cops."

That's the burden that the left must bear and it's the complicity that it must accept, and ultimately, overcome. That will require that mainstream leaders repudiate that most strident voices of the far-left apparatus --- which of course will be prohibitively difficult since these same people are those who wield enormous power in government, academe, and the media. Indeed, American politics is going to continue something of an ideological realignment over the next couple of years. The left will most likely continue to revive its default 1960s mode of radicalism and revolutionary dogma. Street activists and college ideological rabble will continue to denounce "this fucking country" with the blessings of those highest in power, such as Eric Holder at the Justice Department, as well as his successor, Loretta Lynch. But in electoral politics, we're already seeing and we'll continue to see ostensibly mainstream candidates aggressively distance themselves from the Obama-inspired radicalism that has infected contemporary "progressivism" with the cancer of ideological evil.

Barry Rubin's Silent Revolution

I'm going to post some book selections throughout the day, for folks still working on last-minute Christmas shopping. Amazon will ship in time for Christmas if you're shopping today.

I can't recommend Barry Rubin's book enough, Silent Revolution: How the Left Rose to Political Power and Cultural Dominance.

So timely, there's no other book that pulls together the disparate ideological strands of our current far-left predicament under the Obama interregnum. I'm reading Chapter 7 right now, "Barack Obama as a Case Study of a Third Left Cadre."

Rubin's "Third Left" is the far-left ideological tendency that arose out of the ashes of the two previous lefts, the Communist Party of the 1920s-1950s and the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s. The "Third Left" today is what the MSM deceptively identifies as "progressive" liberalism. As I've said many times, progressives are communists. According to Rubin, they've adopted a subterranean ideological program of seizing power across America's leading institutions, particularly the universities and the mainstream press. Millions of students have been marinated in the cultural and intellectual theories of Third Left practitioners, and through this strategy, "the far left converted to its views tens of millions of people, most of them unaware of how outlandish these ideas were and how fundamentally they undermined the basis of America's success."

It's a classic. Available at Amazon.