Political Correctness, Leftist Intolerance, and the University of Missouri Campus Protests

I walked in at 6:00pm exactly tonight, just in time to flip the remote over to Fox Business Channel for the GOP presidential debate. My wife had dinner ready, bless her heart, and I poured a glass of wine and ate dinner with my family while the debate played out, with low volume, on the television.

At work today I saw all the incredible coverage at Memeorandum on the political correctness earthquake at Mizzou. There's no way I can catch up with all of the news tonight. Sure beats a slow news day, that's for sure.

In any case, I'll have more on the debate later.

Check Memeorandum for all the totalitarian campus action, "University of Missouri, please immediately fire employees who taunted media," and "As Missouri Activists Block Journalists, a Divide Over ‘Respect’ and Rights."

And at the Missourian, "UPDATE: MU faculty member resigns courtesy appointment, apologizes for photojournalist incident."

Now, at Instapundit, "Meanwhile, looking at the Mizzou YikYak feed, a lot of students are sorry the university caved, but worried about this potential threat," and "NEO-NEOCON: More on Missouri—and more and more and more..."

At the Other McCain, "Well, That Didn’t Take Long," and "‘Systemic Racism,’ Anarchy and Incipient Totalitarianism at University of Missouri."

Finally, here's James Rosen on Special Report, covering the Missouri protests:

Starter Home Gift Guide

At Amazon, Shop Holiday Home & Garden Gift Guide - Starter Home.

And ICYMI, from Alonzo Hamby, Man of Destiny: FDR and the Making of the American Century.

Plus, back by popular demand, Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam.

The 'Rising American Electorate' Not So Fired-Up for 2016 Election

The Democrats have a major uphill climb to a third Democrat term in the White House in 2017.

The "Rising American Electorate," another term for Obama's "coalition of the ascendant" (ethnic minorities, Millennials, and single women), have a significant lag in voter enthusiasm relative to the older, whiter electorate.

Far-left Greg Sargent, at the Washington Post, even makes note of it, "Here’s Hillary Clinton’s big 2016 challenge, in one chart."

Combine the enthusiasm gap with the intense anger and pessimism in polling data, especially among those same older, whiter voters, and we're seeing the stirrings of a major earthquake election next November. The Obama interregnum is coming to a bitter end. It's all going to come crashing down for the Democrats. I expect Hillary Clinton to be a formidable candidate, but she's not going to generate the kind of enthusiasm that Obama did. Not by a long-shot.

I'll be keeping an eye on this all the way to November 8, 2016.

Voters Anxious About the Future, New Los Angeles Times Polls Finds

Instapundit linked my post on the angry voters at the Wall Street Journal poll. See, "WELL, WITH THE WORST POLITICAL CLASS IN HISTORY, THERE’S PLENTY TO BE ANGRY ABOUT: Americans’ Mood Darkened by Widespread Anger, New WSJ/NBC News Poll Finds."

And now here comes the Los Angeles Times with virtually identical findings. For leftists, the anxiety is economic inequality, especially class envy at the corporate rich. For conservatives, rapid social change, especially moral decay and unchecked immigration, is generating tremendous fear. Huge pessimism is the constant theme across the spectrum.

See, "Poll On the left and right, voters express anxiety over future":

On the left and right, voters express anxiety over the future in a new poll https://t.co/YhMV0PM0mc pic.twitter.com/WFVcaBv6Pd

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) November 9, 2015

One year before the presidential election, a pervasive disquiet has shaped voter attitudes, with a majority of Republicans pessimistic about moral values and the increasing diversity of the country's population, and Democrats uneasy about an economy they see as tilted toward the rich.

By more than 2 to 1, voters both nationally and in California say they are more worried than hopeful about changes in the country's morals and values. By nearly the same margin, more worry than express hope about the changing national economy. And by 5 to 1, they say they are worried about how the nation's politics have changed.

California voters and those nationwide largely agree on those points but diverge on others. Nationally, for example, voters divide almost evenly on whether cultural diversity worries them or makes them hopeful. In California, those who are "mainly hopeful" about the changes caused by cultural diversity outnumber those "mainly worried" 56% to 41%.

Those concerns — detailed in a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll, conducted online by SurveyMonkey — have been driving voter decisions about which candidates they favor for president. Both in California and nationwide, they have helped propel two nontraditional candidates, businessman Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, to the forefront of the Republican field...

Voters' downbeat mood is particularly notable in light of economic numbers typically associated with good times. The nation's unemployment rate, 5%, is the lowest since April 2008, and the economy has grown steadily, albeit slowly, since the recession officially ended in June 2009.

Still, by 70% to 29%, voters see the country as headed in the wrong direction. California voters are only marginally more positive, with 63% saying the country is headed the wrong way and 34% seeing the nation as being on the right path.

That sense of the country headed the wrong way has been true now for a dozen years, through two presidencies, for "the longest period of sustained pessimism in more than a generation," said Neil Newhouse, a veteran Republican pollster who advised Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in 2012.

Pessimism is particularly profound among white voters, especially those without a college education. In California, fewer than 1 in 4 non-college-educated whites say the country is on the right track, and 70% say they are worried about the way the economy has changed. Nationally, the worried share among the group is even higher, 74%.

By contrast, racial and ethnic minority voters have a considerably more upbeat view, particularly those who have graduated from college.

Those two groups — whites who have not graduated from college and minorities who have — stand at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Non-college-educated whites have become a bulwark for Republicans, while upwardly mobile minority voters have reshaped the Democratic Party.

In California, where about half of college-educated minority voters are optimistic about the economy, the two groups are of similar size, each about one-fifth of the electorate. Nationally, whites without college degrees outnumber college-educated minorities by about 3 to 1.

Among the Republicans in the presidential race, several candidates have tapped into the pessimistic mood of whites who did not graduate from college, none more directly than Trump, whose slogan "Make America great again" expresses a sense of better times gone.

Trump has a significant lead among white voters nationwide who have not graduated from college. Rubio, by contrast, does notably better with the college-educated; he is in first place with that group of voters among Republicans in California.

Trump's strongest base of support, however, comes from those troubled by the effects of immigration.

Nationally, voters divide closely over whether "immigrants from other countries mainly strengthen American society" or "mainly weaken" it, with 49% seeing immigrants as a source of strength and 43% as a weakness.

In California, with its much larger population of minorities, 59% see immigrants strengthening America and 35% say they "mainly weaken American society."

Trump's backers are overwhelmingly in the "mainly weaken" camp: 73% in California and 82% nationally take that view...

Emily Ratajkowski by Mark Sacro

At Egotastic!, "EMILY RATAJKOWSKI WET SHOWER TOPLESS OUTTAKES."

SeaWorld to Phase Out Killer Whale Shows in San Diego (VIDEO)

I guess it was inevitable.

At the San Diego Union-Tribune, "SeaWorld to end theatrical killer whale show," and "'Blackfish' director wary of SeaWorld plan."



More video, "SeaWorld's new plan to lure more visitors."

Brazil's Crisis Hits Emerging Middle Class

At WSJ, "Brazil’s Economic Crisis Beats the Emerging Middle Class Back Down":

RIO DE JANEIRO—When proper electricity arrived in Santa Marta, a small favela in the shadow of Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue, longtime resident Cândida Oliveira Silva was happy to get the bill.

For the 52-year-old homemaker, it meant having legal proof of address and “feeling like a citizen” for the first time. But in recent months it has also meant cutting back on all but the most basic expenses. Reduced government subsidies and a drought have raised her bill to about 280 reais ($72) a month, roughly five times what it was a year ago.

“I can’t travel anymore, I can’t afford to eat at even a modest restaurant,” Ms. Silva said. Rising inflation and Brazil’s plummeting currency have quashed any hopes of visiting her daughter in San Francisco.

Ms. Silva’s struggle to maintain her standard of living amid rising prices shows how a spiraling economic crisis has pushed Brazil’s emerging middle class to the brink.

Urban unemployment rose to 7.6% in September, tied with August for the highest rate in more than five years. Economists on average expect gross domestic product will shrink 3.1% this year and 1.9% next year, according to the Central Bank of Brazil’s latest weekly survey. Inflation approaching 10% has forced the poor to stop buying meat and the central bank to ratchet up interest rates. A disorganized effort by the government to stem a widening budget deficit has resulted in painful tax increases, further crimping family budgets.

Experts say it is hard to estimate how many people are at risk of falling down Brazil’s social ladder, as official data aren’t yet available. But with wages rising less than inflation, around 35 million members of Brazil’s lower middle class are vulnerable, says Maurício Prado, a partner at research firm Plano CDE.

“They have low education and low job formalization,” he said. “There is confluence of negative factors.”

The situation is threatening to derail what Brazilian leaders have extolled as a transformation of the country’s economy and society. Long counted among the world’s most unequal nations, Brazil made significant progress in the past decade toward reducing its gaping income disparity, authorities say.

Strong prices for commodity exports stuffed public coffers with money that was used to weave a social safety net, including a cash-transfer program targeting nearly 14 million impoverished families. Minimum-wage increases averaging more than 11% a year since 2003 transferred more wealth toward the bottom of the spectrum.

Between 2003 and 2013, Brazil’s median household income grew 87% in real terms, compared with a 30% rise in per capita gross domestic product, says Marcelo Neri, an economist who wrote a book on the “new middle class” and served as President Dilma Rousseff’s strategic-affairs minister.

“People who were left behind—uneducated people, people in the northeast and rural areas, poor people, black people, domestic workers, informal workers—these people grew at a much faster rate than the country as a whole,” Mr. Neri said...

Remember, Rousseff’s a Marxist. I guess the withering away of the state toward the communist utopia's going to have to wait.

But keep reading.

Hot Outtakes from Lily Aldridge's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2014 Shoot (VIDEO)

A little flashback with Lily.

She's coming up next month with the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.

Mountain Lion Captured in San Dimas (VIDEO)

Cool video.

I love how the lion takes a few swings before being thrown into the animal control truck.

Russian Model Sofia Nikitchuk Tries on Swimsuits Ahead of Miss World Competition (VIDEO)

At Ruptly:

Kristallnacht

It was November 9-10, 1938.

From John Lang, at WSJ, "From Kristallnacht to the Kindertransport to, Finally, America."

And check out Martin Gilbert, Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction.

University of Missouri Resignations Covered on 'CBS Evening News' (VIDEO)

You know, you're not really "marginalized" when you have that much power, the power to bring down the president and chancellor at two state campuses at the state university.

We should expect to be seeing more of this stuff. The coddled are revolting.

Standardized Tests Are 'Modern-Day Slavery'

I think leftists are starting to spew increasingly hyper-ideological agitation as the last year of the Obama administration is almost upon us. They're literally pushing the boundaries as far as they can, perhaps in the hope that some of the craziness actually sticks.

At FrontPage Magazine, "'Social Action' Principal: School Tests are 'Inequality' and 'Modern Day Slavery'":

I know there are plenty of kids who think that school is slavery. But finally there's a principal who agrees with them.

Think about it. They're rounded up on buses, sent to buildings, forced to learn things and then answer questions about them. It's just like slavery or the Holocaust or something terrible. We must all join together to stamp out all learning and test-taking so we can finally achieve true social justice utopia.

Just ask the principal of the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action.

In an online rant, a Bronx public school principal has likened standardized testing to slavery, redlining and crack cocaine in damaging the lives of minorities.

Educational standards. They're just like crack cocaine and slavery...

Keep reading.

You know, this principal's only saying out loud what the Obama administration's attack on standardized tests is all about.

Timely Reminder: Kirsten Powers: The Silencing — How the Left is Killing Free Speech

It's not even about "free speech" on our campuses these days. We're to the point of no speech. Coddled student leftists literally don't want anyone to talk to them. They don't want media and debate, and if you violate their "safe spaces," they'll take down your institution with boycotts, hunger strikes, and financial ruin.

ICYMI, "University of Missouri President and Chancellor Step Aside Amid Protests."

And here's Kristen Powers' book, which is a keeper, The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech.

Semi-Trailer Big-Rig Crashes Into Apartment Building in Garden Grove

I take this off-ramp to get gas on the way to work on some Tuesdays and Thursdays. I was planning on stopping there in the morning, heh.

At ABC News 7 Los Angeles:

BIG RIG UPDATE: At least 3 apts damaged in crash; Residents were evacuated from building https://t.co/Ylx4cdPvUc pic.twitter.com/Q7BVPgxYzX

— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) November 10, 2015

University of Missouri President and Chancellor Step Aside Amid Protests

The MSM take is at the New York Times (via Memeorandum).

This whole thing is kind of mind-boggling. And fascinating.

The left's racial grievance industry demands "safe spaces" for oppressed minorities, and the universities can't roll over fast enough.

Graduate student Jonathan Butler, who is black, staged a hunger strike. He's interviewed at the Washington Post, "‘Justice is worth fighting for': A Q&A with the graduate student whose hunger strike has upended the University of Missouri":

Marginalized populations are not obligated to educate and converse about our experiences, but we did to make this campus more aware.

— ConcernedStudent1950 (@CS_1950) November 10, 2015

A lot of people who otherwise wouldn’t pay attention to this type of protest now are because of the solidarity you received from the football team. For those who are just tuning into this story, what do you want them to know?

Butler: The campus climate here at the University of Missouri is an ugly one, it’s one that often we don’t talk about and it’s one that, when issues come up, whether it’s sexual assault, whether it’s Planned Parenthood, whether it’s racism, it gets swept under the rug because we want to rest on our traditions and rest on all these values that we hold in high esteem. And I think the message is that underneath all of that there is a lot of dirt and there’s a lot of pain and there’s a lot of hurt. There’s things that need to be changed. And at the end of it all, even if you don’t really understand what I’m saying, even if you can’t really understand systemic oppression and systemic racism, is the fact we can’t be at a university where we have values like “Respect, Responsibility, Discovery and Excellence” and we don’t have any of those things being enacted on campus, especially in terms of respect. I’m on a campus where people feel free to call people the n-word, where people feel free as recently as last week, to used [their] own feces to smear a swastika in a residential hall. Everything that glitters is not gold. We really need to dig deep and be real with ourselves about the world we live in and understand that we’re not perfect but understand that just because we’re not perfect doesn’t mean we don’t start to understand and address the issues around us...

Basically, demands for respect, amid amorphous "racial incidents," shut down a university, and almost derailed a major collegiate football program, with potential financial losses in the million dollar range.

It's pretty striking.

More at Memeorandum.

Plus, lots of coverage at Instapundit, "WHILE IT’S FUN TO SIT BACK AND WATCH THE “REVOLT OF THE CODDLED” AS COLLEGE CAMPUSES SELF-DESTRUCT...", and "MIZZOU AND YALE SHOW WHY IT’S TIME TO BURN UNIVERSITIES TO THE GROUND..."

Still more, "MY SECRET PLAN TO END THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE BY USING INSIDERS TO MAKE HIGHER EDUCATION LOOK RIDICULOUS CONTINUES TO ADVANCE..."

Well, I need to read around a bit myself. More on this later. We're reaching some kind of tipping point, that's for sure.

Black Activists Turn on Shaun King for Collapse of 'Justice Together' Org, Financial Irregularities

Heh.

I saw this story yesterday, at Sooper Mexican, "UH OH!! Race Huckster Shaun King Being CALLED OUT By Supporters With #ShaunKingLetMeDown Hashtag!!"

And now at Instapundit, "HE’S JUST ANOTHER WHITE GUY SCAMMING PEOPLE OF COLOR: Black Activists Turn on Shaun King for Collapse of ‘Justice Together’ Org, Financial Irregularities."

FLASHBACK: "#BlackLivesMatter Organizer Shaun King's Racial Appropriation."

We're Headed for an Economic Civil War

From Joel Kotkin, at the Daily Beast, "Are We Heading for An Economic Civil War?":

Forget that red state-blue state stuff. The real chasm dividing the US is economic, with one economy for industry and one for tech, and the friction between them is getting fierce.
When we speak about the ever-expanding chasm that defines modern American politics, we usually focus on cultural issues such as gay marriage, race, or religion. But as often has been the case throughout our history, the biggest source of division may be largely economic.

Today we see a growing conflict between the economy that produces consumable, tangible goods and another economy, now ascendant, that deals largely in the intangible world of media, software, and entertainment. Like the old divide between the agrarian South and the industrial North before the Civil War, this threatens to become what President Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward, defined as an “irrepressible conflict.”

Other major economic divides—between capital and labor, Wall Street versus Main Street—defined politics for much of the 20th century. But today’s tangible-intangible divide is particularly tragic because it undermines America’s peculiar advantage in being a powerhouse in both the material and non-material worlds. No other large country can say that, certainly not China, Japan, or Germany, industrial powerhouses short on resources, while our closest cousins, such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, remain, for the most part, dependent on commodity trade.

The China syndrome and the shape of the next slowdown

Over the past decade, the United States has enjoyed two parallel booms that combined to propel the economy out of recession. One was centered in places like Houston, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Oklahoma City, and across much of the Great Plains. These areas were all located in the first states to emerge from the recession, and benefited massively from a gusher in energy jobs due largely to fracking.

At the same time, another part of the economy, centered in Silicon Valley as well as Seattle, Austin, and Raleigh/Durham, has also been booming. Though far more restricted than their counterparts in the “tangible” economy in terms of both geography and jobs, the tech/digital economy did not lag when it came to minting fortunes. By 2014, the media-tech sector accounted for six of the nation’s wealthiest people. Perhaps more important, 12 of the nation’s 17 billionaires under 40 also hail from the tech sector.

Until China’s economy hit a wall this fall, these two sectors were humming along, maybe not enough to restore the economy to its ’90s trim robustly enough to improve conditions in many parts of the country. But as China begins to cut back on commodity purchases, many key raw material prices—copper and iron to oil and gas as well as food stuffs—have fallen precipitously, devastating many developing economies in South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

Plunging prices are also beginning to hurt many local economies in the U.S., particularly in the “oil patch” that spreads from west Texas to North Dakota. This is one reason why overall economic growth has fallen, and is unlikely to revive strongly in the months ahead. Overall, according to the most recent numbers, job growth remains slow and long-term unemployment stubbornly high while labor participation is stuck at historically low levels. Much of this loss is felt by the kind of middle and working class people who tend to work in tangible industries...

Keep reading.

High Costs of College Textbooks Come Under Attack

I'm assigning the digital book version of George C. Edwards, et al., Government in America: People, Politics, and Policy. For the spring semester, I've got the digital package set up through the publisher for about $70.00, and students will also get a loose-leaf version of the hard-copy textbook for $5.00. It'll be just a little more if the students use the campus bookstore.

It's a good deal.

But a lot of professors have their students spending much more than that, and we've seen that controversy at Cal State Fullerton, where the math professor is refusing to assign the department's consensus textbook. It's turned into a lawsuit.

In any case, here's more at the O.C. Register, "Required reading: faculty's pricey textbooks":

It’s been long understood at Fullerton College that faculty cannot make a single cent off any self-created, custom course materials, from books to course packs.

However, roughly two miles away at Cal State University, Fullerton, no such policy exists to keep faculty from doing just that.

Schools across Orange County vary in how they handle faculty authored educational materials -- a touchy topic that exploded in recent weeks into a nationwide debate about academic freedom and soaring textbook costs.

In the region, at least 500 higher-education classes during the most recent school session are taught by faculty members who require students to use their published works, according to a Register analysis of public documents.

Sales of faculty-written materials at these schools could amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single semester or quarter, assuming new copies are purchased in each case, based on the Register’s sampling of schools.

The priciest such text at Chapman in the most recent semester was law professor Michael B. Lang’s “Federal Tax Accounting,” which comes with a $206 price tag at the campus bookstore. It can be purchased on Amazon in used condition for about $100.

At Cal State University Long Beach, a new copy of “Language Learning Disabilities in School-Age Children and Adolescents: Some Principles and Applications,” co-written by professor Geraldine P. Wallach, sells for $197 at the campus bookstore. Online, the book can be rented for as low as $17.

“I think you bring upon yourself greater scrutiny when the book is not only expensive, but also happens to be written by a campus faculty member who benefits from its use,” said Meredith Turner, assistant executive director of the California State Student Association.

At least two schools in the county have rules in place to address the topic of faculty-authored course materials. Nationwide, some institutions, such as University of Missouri and Iowa State University, require academic authors to give any royalties back to the school, or to charity.

Cal State Fullerton has no such policy. Last week, the president of the roughly 39,000-student campus stood by the school’s decision to reprimand associate math professor Alain Bourget, who assigned less expensive alternative textbooks instead of a text co-written by the math department chair and vice chair.

Many faculty authors say they assign their books because they are experts in the field and are offering specialized knowledge. The profits argument is overblown, they contend, as typical royalties are meager and academic book advances are rare. The professors’ cut is often 10 percent to 18 percent, according to Stephen Gillen, a media and publishing attorney.

In fact, faculty authors in a class-action case in New York court allege royalty payments have essentially remained flat over the years while textbook prices have ballooned by more than 80 percent in the last 10 years, according to the lawsuit...

I don't have a problem with professors assigning their own textbooks. Actually, it's kind of cool to take a class with a professor who's a major published author.

I do have a problem if those same professors require less senior faculty to use their textbooks for classes offered by their academic department, which is what's happening at Cal State Fullerton. I'd be fighting that tooth and nail if I was dealing with it at my college.

Keep reading, in any case.

Kristen Keogh's Got Your Cooling Sunday Weather

The warm fall afternoons right now are spectacular.

Via ABC News 10 San Diego:

Robert Stacy McCain on William F. Buckley, Jr.'s, God and Man at Yale

I love Robert's writing.

See, "The Godless Men at Yale":

Every time I mention William F. Buckley Jr.’s God and Man at Yale here, it sells a few copies via the Amazon Associates link, a surprise that is both pleasant (because I need the money) and troubling, because it bugs me to realize that today, in 2015, there are conservatives who have not yet read that 1951 classic. Buckley’s book, published not long after he had graduated from Yale, immediately ignited a firestorm among the liberal elite. God and Man at Yale was published amid the Cold War tempest that history has called “McCarthyism,” and Buckley pointed out the ways in which “the superstition of academic freedom” was used to protect teaching that was clearly hostile to capitalism and Christianity...

Keep reading.

Here's the Amazon link to Buckley's book, God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom'.

For Enemies of the United States, the U.S. Navy is a Frightening Adversary

The "silent service," via Theo Spark:

Countdown to Black Friday Deals in Camera, Photo & Video

At Amazon, Shop - Countdown to Black Friday in Camera, Photo & Video .

Lovely India Reynolds Rule 5

She's still one of the most spectacular Page 3 models in Britain.

Monica Sims for Playboy (VIDEO)

Flashback to September, at Egotastic!, "MONICA SIMS TOPLESS DIP AS PLAYMATE OF THE MONTH."

Why Trade Deals Are a Tough Sell

At the Wall Street Journal, "Why Opposition to Trade Deals Is So Entrenched":

HAMBURG—Few places have a longer affinity for free trade than this German city, home to one of Europe’s busiest ports.

The city’s left-leaning government overruled environmentalists in 2012 and approved deepening the Elbe River for bigger container ships. License plates boast of the city’s founding role in the Hanseatic League, a medieval alliance that was among the world’s first free-trade blocs.

But unease over new trade deals runs deep in Hamburg these days, as it does in the U.S. and across much of the developed world. The more aggressively leaders push to expand the reach of multilateral agreements into sensitive zones such as drug patents and investor protections, the more aggressively opponents push back.

Ire here is directed at portions of the proposed Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, which would join the U.S. and the European Union in a vast common market with more than 800 million of the world’s richest consumers.

The freshly completed Pacific trade deal between the U.S., Japan and 10 other countries has sparked similar outcries, underscoring the challenge of completing sweeping pacts that go far beyond eliminating tariffs—few of which exist between the U.S. and Europe...

Keep reading.

Alarming Increase in the Deaths of Middle-Aged Whites

I saw something on this the other day, even in passing. Perhaps at the Wall Street Journal, "The Death Rate Is Rising for Middle-Aged Whites."

The piece is cited by Dr. Helen Smith, "Why are middle-aged whites dying at such high rates?" And Instapundit links, and recomments to "see the discussion in the comments."

Then there's the piece out this morning from Ross Douthat, at the New York Times, "The Dying of the Whites." Douthat's speculative, but good in debunking the prevailing leftist memes about the superiority of the European welfare state model.

More on this from Tom Maguire, "No Country For Middle Aged White Men. Or Women."

Finally, head back over to NYT for an update on the phenomenon, "More Details on Rising Mortality Among Middle-Aged Whites."

American Society Becoming Increasingly Secular, Particularly Among the Young

Pew Research was out recently with a new poll on religion in America, "U.S. Public Becoming Less Religious."

The findings aren't all that striking, actually. The key thing is religious observance, as measured by regular church attendance. Barely one-in-four "young Millennials" attend church on a weekly basis, about half that of the "silent generation" of Americans born between 1928 and 1945. Nevertheless, it's clear that youth culture is fundamentally different than mainstream traditionalism, particularly on homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

Noteworthy are the findings for those who identify no religious affiliation, the "nones." The largest group of any category among Democrats is the "nones." That's to say that Democrats are increasing a secular movement, even outwardly hostile to religious practice and public policies informed by faith.

Truth Revolt wrote about this, "Pew Poll: Young Adults Losing Their Religion, Politics Coincides":

Young adults, beholden to causes like climate change, abortion, and gay-marriage, view Republicans as "anti-science" and bigoted. Young adults in turn relate Republicans’ political views with their faith, and thus, run from both.

While a growing number of Americans, particularly within the younger demographic, shun religion, they have embraced another one in its place – that of secular-progressivism. What is perhaps most ironic, is that this political philosophy, so imbued with moral relativism, is as much if not more "anti-science" than the Judeo-Christian faiths its adherents mock.

Of course true believers do not see it that way. Rather, they view their political ideology as the more enlightened way forward and evangelize it with the vim and vigor. What results, however, is a populace that is less tolerant and increasingly devoid of a moral compass with which to guide it through life...

Half of the New Canadian Cabinet Members Chose to Skip 'So Help Me God' in Their Oaths of Office

Well, I'd be surprised if they did say "so help me God" in their oaths of office, lol.

Damned secular collectivists.

At Blazing Cat Fur.

WATCH: Dramatic Video of Drunk Passenger Clinging to Lifeboat Before Falling Into Ocean

ABC 7 Los Angeles reported that the passenger had been drinking and was belligerent with crew members.

But here's London's Daily Mail, "Desperate search for passenger who was filmed falling into the sea after clinging to the side of a life boat on Royal Caribbean cruise ship."

And at the Heavy, "WATCH: Man Jumps Overboard Royal Caribbean Cruise Ship."

Watch, at ABC News, "High Seas Search After Passenger Goes Overboard on Cruise Ship."

16 Death Row Inmates Have Exhausted Appeals, Could Be Executed, Under New California Single-Drug Method for Capital Punishment

It's not likely these dudes would get the hot needle anytime soon. The new protocol is itself subject to appeal.

Frankly, we should just go back to the firing squad. It's more humane.

At the Los Angeles Times, "California proposes new single-drug method for executions."

Million Mask March Anarchists 'Glassed' Six Police Horses, Stabbed Them in the Eye With Sticks (VIDEO)

At London's Daily Mail, "Scotland Yard chief slams 'despicable' Million Man Mask protesters who glassed six police horses and rammed them in the eye with sticks," and "Chaos on the streets of London: Million Mask March anarchist - in a £500 jacket - trashes police car as fireworks are aimed at horses in clashes outside Buckingham Palace and Hunger Games premiere."

Also at the Mirror UK, "Million Mask thugs burned and cut police horses and tried to gouge eyes out with sticks."

Stalin’s Daughter

I don't know.

I keep coming across all this new scholarship on Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union.

Here's Rosemary Sullivan, Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva.

Last night I posted Sheila Fitzpatrick's, On Stalin's Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics.

And I'm reading, Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928.

Ceramic Heater with Adjustable Thermostat

A best-selling item at Amazon, with these cooler nights coming, even on the West coast.

Here, Lasko 754200 Ceramic Heater with Adjustable Thermostat.

And for some reading by the room heater, Alonzo Hamby, Man of Destiny: FDR and the Making of the American Century.

And by popular demand, from Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam.

Many Residents in California, Arizona, and Nevada Claimed to See UFO on Saturday Night (VIDEO)

Heh.

At ABC News 10 San Diego:



Added: At the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Mystery light over ocean was missile test" (via Memeorandum).

Controversial Alabama-LSU Sign Urges 'Finish What Katrina Started'

Meaning, "Get blacks to move out of the 9th ward"?

Or something more sinister.

At AL.com, "How far is too far? Controversial Alabama-LSU sign decried on social media."

The sign's seen here, "Shots fired..." (And here.)

Via Memeorandum.

More at NOLA.com, "Odell Beckham responds to Hurricane Katrina sign at Alabama, including Leonard Fournette picture."

Western Civilization is Slipping Away

From Victor Davis Hanson, at National Review, "Is the West Slip, Slip, Slipping Away?":

Sometimes a culture disappears with a whimper, not a bang. Institutions age and are ignored, and the complacent public insidiously lowers its expectations of state performance.

Infrastructure, the rule of law, and civility erode — and yet people are not sure why and how their own changing (and pathological) individual behavior is leading to the collective deterioration that they deplore.

There is still a “West” in the sense of the physical entities of North America, Europe, many of the former British dominions, and parts of Westernized Asia. The infrastructure of our cities and states looks about as it did in the recent past. But is it the West as we once knew it — a unique civilization predicated on free expression, human rights, self-criticism, vibrant free markets, and the rule of law?

Or, instead, is the West reduced to a wealthy but unfree leisure zone, driven on autopilot by computerized affluence, technological determinism, and a growing equality-of-result, omnipotent state? Tens of thousands of migrants — reminiscent of the great southward and westward treks of Germanic tribes in the late fifth century, at the end of the Roman Empire — are overwhelming the borders of Europe. Such an influx should be a reminder that the West attracts people, while the non-West drives them out, and thus should spark inquiries about why that is so. But that discussion would be not only impolite, but beyond the comprehension of most present-day Westerners, who take for granted — though they cannot define, much less defend — their own institutions.

No one claims that such mass immigration into Europe is legal. No one wonders what happened to the fossilized idea of legal immigration, much less the legal immigrant who went through what has now been rendered the pretense of bureaucratic application for legal entry into Europe. Germany, which lectures others on law, is lawless. In theory, Westerners have the power to stop the mostly young males from the Middle East from swarming their borders, but in fact they apparently lack the will. Or is it worse than that?

Without confidence in their own values, much less pride in their accomplishments, are they assuaging the guilt over their privilege by symbolic acts of undermining the foundations of their own culture? Certainly, Germany, which insists on European Union laws of finance applying to its fellow European nation Greece, has no compunction about destroying, for its own particular purposes, the Union’s immigration statutes as they apply to Middle Easterners.

The same is true in the United States. Millions of foreign nationals from Latin America, and Mexico in particular, simply have crossed the border without even the pretense of legality. They assume Americans not only won’t enforce their own laws, but also will find ways to demonize any who suggest that they should. If there is now no such thing as an “illegal alien,” what in theory prevents anyone from arriving from anywhere at any time and making claims on the American state?

Again, the irony is not just that millions of Mexican nationals want into the U.S., but that, ostensibly, no one in Mexico or even the United States knows why that is so (certainly not the National Council of La Raza [“the Race”]) — much less wonders whether Mexico might learn from the U.S. about ways to make a nation’s own people become content enough to stay in their homeland. Only in the West does a migrant fault his host for insufficient hospitality while exempting his homeland, which drove him out.

Sanctuary cities illustrate how progressive doctrine can by itself nullify the rule of law. In the new West, breaking statutes is backed or ignored by the state if it is branded with race, class, or gender advocacy. By that I mean that if a solitary U.S. citizen seeks to leave and then reenter America without a passport, he will likely be either arrested or turned back, whereas if an illegal alien manages to cross our border, he is unlikely to be sent back as long as he has claims on victimhood of the type that are sanctioned by the Western liberal state.

Do we really enjoy free speech in the West any more? If you think we do, try to use vocabulary that is precise and not pejorative, but does not serve the current engine of social advocacy — terms such as “Islamic terrorist,” “illegal alien,” or “transvestite.” I doubt that a writer for a major newspaper or a politician could use those terms, which were common currency just four or five years ago, without incurring, privately or publicly, the sort of censure that we might associate with the thought police of the former Soviet Union...

Still more.

Book Publishers to Release Some of Most Anticipated Titles on Tuesday

They're hoping to cash-in on familiar faces for the holiday season, after a lackluster sales year so far.

At WSJ, "Book Publishers Hope Holidays Bring Cheer":

The biggest bets are on familiar names and faces, a reminder of how much track records matter to readers at this time of the year. HarperCollins Publishers, for example, has printed 700,000 hardcover copies of Mitch Albom’s “The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto,” a story narrated by a guitarist touched by the supernatural. HarperCollins, like The Wall Street Journal, is owned by News Corp.

Tuesday also marks the return of Jon Meacham, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Random House is printing 390,000 copies of Mr. Meacham’s new work, “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush,” making it the publisher’s biggest nonfiction work of the year.

On the lighter side, Grand Central Publishing will publish 120,000 hardcover copies of model Christie Brinkley’s “Timeless Beauty: Over 100 Tips, Secrets, and Shortcuts to Looking Great,” while Simon & Schuster has teed up 75,000 copies of TV producer Shonda Rhimes’s memoir “Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person.”

The relatively large print runs come at a time when the digital book market is in flux. E-book sales in the first half were down 10% from a year earlier, according to an industry report, a decline that industry executives attribute in part to higher prices set by the major publishers.

“There may not be one stand-out title yet, but I think the breadth and complexion of this holiday’s new titles is better than in 2014,” said Mary Amicucci, Barnes & Noble Inc.’s vice president of adult trade and children’s books...

Keep reading.

And don't miss all your best-seller book sales at Amazon.

Donald Trump Chases Television Ratings with Appearance on 'Saturday Night Live' (VIDEO)

It's not clear that Nielson ratings translate into political votes, according to Mary McNamara, at the Los Angeles Times, "Why huge 'SNL' ratings won't help Donald Trump become president":

Every presidential candidate is obsessed with polls, but only Donald Trump fixates on ratings. Not approval ratings, television ratings.

"I get the best ratings," he said recently, appearing to channel NBC executives to explain why he had been asked to host "Saturday Night Live" this weekend.

It's something Trump says a lot, almost as often as he says "I'm going to build a wall." In September, he warned that television itself would collapse should he withdraw from the race — no doubt something that he will be saying even more if he continues to lose his lead in the polls.

There is something quaint and almost endearing about Trump's faith in Nielsen; it may be one of the last great attempts to restore ratings to their former position of glory, and, indeed, empower them further.

But ratings have never been the same as votes — just ask the cast of "Empire" — or even political support, and for all his frequently self-referenced business experience, Trump seems to have missed a major shift in the television industry: Ratings ain't what they used to be.

Once an easy and instant predictor of success, the television numbers game has become if not outdated then deeply complicated. Judging from the awards bestowed in recent years, ratings have an almost antithetical relationship with voters' notions of "best" or "outstanding." A narrow but deeply dedicated group of followers is now deemed as valuable as a large, less passionate audience who may be tuned in more out of curiosity or habit.

Overnight ratings, which is what Trump deals in for the most part, have become less meaningful, and any gains he brings to shows like "Saturday Night Live" are one-time bumps rather than a business model; it's not as if he were joining the cast (or at least not yet.)

Like the current crop of Republican candidates, television is now too broad and disparate for its traditional measurements, making "success" an increasingly complicated term, gauged as much, if not more, in nuance than numbers.

And Donald Trump has never been big on nuance...

Interesting, but I think she misses the point.

Candidates nowadays are looking to reach younger voters, especially Millennials, by appearing on late-night television. It's not just SNL --- which Hillary Clinton exploited to massive positive media spin of late --- but folks like Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, and Stephen Colbert, etc. If campaigns didn't expect political dividends from such appearances they wouldn't schedule them.

But keep reading, in any case.

Peter Beinart Justifies Jihad Terrorism

At the Astute Bloggers, "PETER BEINART IS EVIL."

And flashback to April, at FrontPage Magazine, "PETER BEINART GOES FULL ANTI-ISRAEL."

Wide Chute Antioxidative Slow Masticating Juicer

Boy, the hipster products these days are amazing!

At Amazon, SKG New Generation Wide Chute Antioxidative Slow Masticating Juicer.

Lots more stuff here, Shop Holiday Home & Garden Gift Guide - Trendsetter.

Matt Bevin’s Kentucky Win Is the End of an Era — And That Should Scare Democrats Everywhere

A great piece, from Josh Kraushaar, at National Journal:

Former House Speak­er Tip O’Neill fam­ously said, “all polit­ics is loc­al.” After Re­pub­lic­an Matt Bev­in’s sur­pris­ingly con­vin­cing vic­tory to be­come Ken­tucky’s next gov­ernor, the max­im should be re­versed. All loc­al polit­ics are now na­tion­al. Bev­in, with help from the Re­pub­lic­an Gov­ernors As­so­ci­ation, ef­fect­ively util­ized na­tion­al is­sues—gay mar­riage, Planned Par­ent­hood, fed­er­al en­ergy policy, Pres­id­ent Obama’s health care law—to bludgeon Demo­crat Jack Con­way, who tried to dis­tance him­self from his party’s na­tion­al brand to no avail.

And the biggest drag of all for Con­way was Obama. The RGA un­leashed a last-week $1 mil­lion ad blitz con­nect­ing the Demo­crat­ic state at­tor­ney gen­er­al to Obama—a po­tent line of at­tack in a state where the pres­id­ent’s dis­ap­prov­al rat­ing is near 70 per­cent.

Just as the Ken­tucky gubernat­ori­al cam­paign car­ried na­tion­al over­tones, the res­ults from Tues­day night’s elec­tion carry na­tion­al les­sons. Here are four of the most sig­ni­fic­ant takeaways...

Keep reading.

And ICYMI, the best piece since last Tuesday, from Molly Ball, "Leftists Are Losing the Culture Wars?"

LAUSD Teachers Reeling from 'Restorative Justice,' with Unruly Students Escaping Consequences for Their Actions

Tell me about it.

"Restorative justice" approaches on campus have basically repealed actual consequences for student misbehavior. It's been like this at my college for awhile, and it's not even formal policy. All kids have to do is cry "racism" and they'll get off scot-free.

Thank the radical left, and the Democrat Party, for this.

At LAT, "Why some LAUSD teachers are balking at a new approach to discipline problems":

In a South Los Angeles classroom, a boy hassles a girl. The teacher moves him to the back of the room, where he scowls, makes a paper airplane and repeatedly throws it against the wall. Two other boys wander around the class and then nearly come to blows.

"Don't you talk about my sister," one says to the other. The teacher steps between them.

When she tries to regain order, another boy tells her: "Screw you."

It's another day of disruption on this campus in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has been nationally hailed by the White House and others for its leadership in promoting more progressive school-discipline policies. The nation's second-largest school system was the first in California to ban suspensions for defiance and announced plans to roll out an alternative known as restorative justice, which seeks to resolve conflicts through talking circles and other methods to build trust.

The shift has brought dramatic changes: Suspensions districtwide plummeted to 0.55% last school year compared with 8% in 2007-08, and days lost to suspension also plunged, to 5,024 from 75,000 during that same period, according to the most recent data.

The district moved to ban suspensions amid national concern that they imperil academic achievement and disproportionately affect minorities, particularly African Americans.

But many teachers say their classrooms are reeling from unruly students who are escaping consequences for their actions.

They blame the district for failing to provide the staff and training needed to effectively shift to the new approach — and their complaints are backed up by L.A. schools Supt. Ramon Cortines. He said the new discipline policies, which were pushed through by the Board of Education and former Supt. John Deasy and which he supports, were poorly executed. He compared the implementation to the flawed effort to equip students and teachers with Apple tablets.

"I will compare it to the iPad," Cortines said. "You cannot piecemeal this kind of thing and think it is going to have the impact that it should have. Don't make a political statement and then don't have the wherewithal to back it up."

Keep reading.

And flashback, "'Restorative Justice' at Beach High School Questioned Amid Breakdown of Discipline."

Mayra Suarez Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Casting Call (VIDEO)

She's fabulous.

Mikhail Lesin, Former Aide to Vladimir Putin, Found Dead in Washington, D.C., Hotel

Well, it's not like anyone would have a motive, or anything.

This guy Lesin was the founder of Russia Today, the Russian government's propaganda network, so it's an intriguing story.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Former Putin Aide Mikhail Lesin Found Dead at D.C. Hotel."

Also at Euronews, "Putin's former aide found dead in Washington hotel."

Plus, at ABC News, via Mediagazer, "Creator of Russia Today and former Russian minister of press, Mikhail Lesin, found dead in Washington DC hotel."

In Frankfurt, Germany, Hot Dog Haters Are the Wurst

Heh.

At WSJ, "German sausage fans say U.N. is full of baloney; meat warning ‘nonsense’":

FRANKFURT—Here in the city that gave its name to the famous sausage, the World Health Organization’s warning against eating processed meats is hard to swallow.

The United Nations body last week said eating frankfurters and their ilk can cause cancer. To Germans, many of whom consider sausage and cured meats comfort food, that idea doesn’t go down well.

“It’s total nonsense,” said Simone Kluge while selling sausages to a line of customers in Frankfurt’s main market hall. “If it were true, every German would have already died of wurst,” she scoffed, using the German word for sausage.

Many cultures make sausages. Italian salami, Polish kielbasa, French saucisson and British bangers are widely known. But Germans have a special affinity for the oblong food.

Of 31 types listed in the U.S. National Hot Dog and Sausage Council’s online sausage glossary, 11 come from Germany and two more come from heavily Germanic Austria. Italy is a distant second place, with six varieties.

Germany has at least three museums devoted to sausages. Sausages were a hot potato in national elections two years ago and the language is peppered with sausage references.

In a make-or-break situation, Germans say: “It’s about the sausage.” For indifference, they say: “It’s sausage to me.”

“Sausages to Germany are like pasta is to Italy,” said Andreas Fuhr, a master butcher selling his products at a weekly market in Frankfurt.

Sausages are so integral to the German diet that German Food and Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt quickly reacted to the WHO warning with a statement reassuring German consumers of their safety and he posed in the country’s biggest newspaper holding a platter piled with sausages.

“No one should be afraid of eating a bratwurst,” he declared, referring to the most ubiquitous sausage. “What counts is quantity,” he added. “Too much of something is always bad for health.”

Austria’s agriculture minister didn’t mince words, calling the WHO report “a farce.”

Two days after the WHO announcement, German newspapers were bursting with more than 200 articles about the wurst alert.

World-wide reaction to the WHO report was so vocal that the organization later issued a clarification that its finding “does not ask people to stop eating processed meats,” though eating less of them can reduce the risk of colorectal cancer.

While the criticism of processed meats gnaws at many sausage fans, it was particularly biting in Frankfurt. “Examples of processed meat include hot dogs (frankfurters), ham, sausages, corned beef, and biltong,” the agency said.

“We won’t let the WHO simply kill off our fine Frankfurt sausages,” fumed Oliver Bergmann, a master butcher at Waibel Butcher shop in Frankfurt, who has been in the trade for 30 years...

Keep reading.

On Stalin's Team

I'm on a Soviet Union jag right now, especially biographies of Stalin.

I've been checking out Professor Sheila Fitzpatrick, whose latest book is On Stalin's Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics.

Melissa Debling for Zoo Today (VIDEO)

She's a sweetie.

Watch, "Melissa Debling's very rude strip!"

More.

Faisal Mohammed

Boy, authorities were quick to rule out terrorism. But I mean, a knife attack? Just a coincidence that there's a stabbing intifada going on right now in Israel, you think?

At Atlas Shrugs, "Knife Jihad at UC Merced: Faisal Mohammad identified as Muslim who went on ‘smiling’ stabbing spree at California University," and "UC Merced jihadi’s manifesto PRAISED ALLAH, cops say motive NOT TERRORISM."

Also at Jihad Watch, "Islamic State praises Muslim who stabbed four at UC Merced," and "UC Merced stabber “devout Muslim,” manifesto included “praise Allah,” beheading plan."

Gifts for the Trendsetter

At Amazon, Shop Holiday Home & Garden Gift Guide - Trendsetter.

Plus, ICYMI, from Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam.

Ben Carson's Past Faces Deeper Questions (VIDEO)

Carson's getting the Herman Cain treatment, and it's harsh.

Enormous coverage at Memeorandum, "Exclusive: Carson claimed West Point ‘scholarship’ but never applied."

And at the Wall Street Journal, "In harsh light of presidential politics, parts of his inspirational biography are questioned":

The day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in 1968, Ben Carson’s black classmates unleashed their anger and grief on white students who were a minority at Detroit’s Southwestern High.

Mr. Carson, then a junior with a key to a biology lab where he worked part time, told The Wall Street Journal last month that he protected a few white students from the attacks by hiding them there.

It is a dramatic account of courage and kindness, and it couldn’t be confirmed in interviews with a half-dozen of Mr. Carson’s classmates and his high school physics teacher. The students all remembered the riot. None recalled hearing about white students hiding in the biology lab, and Mr. Carson couldn’t remember any names of those he sheltered.

“It may have happened, but I didn’t see it myself or hear about it,” said Gregory Vartanian, a white classmate of Mr. Carson’s who served in the ROTC with Mr. Carson and is now a retired U.S. Marshal.

Mr. Carson’s biography, a rise from poverty to become a top neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins University, is central to his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. Now, his story—told in nine books and countless inspirational speeches over the past 25 years—has come under the harsh scrutiny of presidential politics, where rivals and media hunt for embellishments and omissions that can hobble a campaign.

In 2008, Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton said she was mistaken when she claimed she and her daughter, Chelsea, had come under sniper fire and had to run for cover during a trip to Bosnia in 1996 while she was first lady. A video of the trip unearthed after her comments showed no gunfire.

The threat to the Carson candidacy is that the inconsistencies or hard-to-check anecdotes, which were told long before he ever considered a presidential run, will put off voters only now getting to know him.

Mr. Carson’s campaign manager, Barry Bennett, said Friday there was “no evidence” that any aspect of Mr. Carson’s biography wasn’t true. “There’s no facts saying they are not true. We are guilty until proven innocent,” he said. “You have no reason to believe that they are not true. There’s no evidence to point to the fact that they are even questionable.”

Still more.

Let's see how long he can hold out.

Leftists Are Losing the Culture Wars?

Actually, I don't believe leftists are losing the culture wars, although the left came out the big loser during this week's elections. It remains to be seen if we have an actual retrenchment in public policy. Homosexual marriage is here to stay, I'd say. Transsexuals using women's restrooms is a lunatic fringe issue that's only on the agenda in Democrat Party strongholds. And electing a Republican to the White House will have a dramatic effect in federal civil rights enforcement in the schools.

It's not just homosexuals and trannies, however.

See Molly Ball, at the Atlantic, "Liberals Are Losing the Culture Wars":

In Tuesday’s elections, voters rejected recreational marijuana, transgender rights, and illegal-immigrant sanctuaries; they reacted equivocally to gun-control arguments; and they handed a surprise victory to a Republican gubernatorial candidate who emphasized his opposition to gay marriage.

Democrats have become increasingly assertive in taking liberal social positions in recent years, believing that they enjoy majority support and even seeking to turn abortion and gay rights into electoral wedges against Republicans. But Tuesday’s results—and the broader trend of recent elections that have been generally disastrous for Democrats not named Barack Obama—call that view into question. Indeed, they suggest that the left has misread the electorate’s enthusiasm for social change, inviting a backlash from mainstream voters invested in the status quo.

Consider these results:

Ohio voters rejected a ballot initiative to legalize recreational marijuana by a 30-point margin.

Voters in Houston—a strongly Democratic city—rejected by a 20-point margin a nondiscrimination ordinance that opponents said would lead to “men in women’s bathrooms.”

The San Francisco sheriff who had defended the city’s sanctuary policy after a sensational murder by an illegal immigrant was voted out.

Two Republican state senate candidates in Virginia were targeted by Everytown for Gun Safety, former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s gun-control group. One won and one lost, leaving the chamber in GOP hands.

Matt Bevin, the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Kentucky, pulled out a resounding victory that defied the polls after emphasizing social issues and championing Kim Davis, the county clerk who went to jail rather than issue same-sex marriage licenses. Bevin told the Washington Post on the eve of the vote that he’d initially planned to stress economic issues, but found that “this is what moves people.”

More.

U.S. Officials Suspect Islamic State Planted Bomb Aboard Russian Jetliner in Egypt (VIDEO)

Following-up from earlier, "Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Downed Russian Passenger Jet in Egypt (VIDEO)."

There were lots of doubts initially, but not so much now.

At Telegraph UK, "Russian plane crash: US intelligence suggests bomb was planted by Islamic State as Britain suspends Sharm el-Sheikh flights - latest news."

And here's Lester Holt, at NBC Nightly News:

America's Moral Crisis and Election 2015

D.C. McAllister, at the Federalist, uses Michael Walsh's, The Devil's Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West, as a launchpad to analyze Tuesday massive repudiation of the Demonic-rats.

See, "America’s Crisis Isn’t What You Think":

In politics, as in all of life, it’s imperative to see our choices in that context. Distinguishing between heroes and villains is integral to us deciding what kind of society we want to be.

The True Nature of Our Crisis

This is how many voters are looking at the candidates running for president, even if they’re doing it unconsciously. They’re asking, who are the tricksters, the deceivers? Who are the support characters? Who are the healers? Most importantly, who will be the hero, the leader, who will stave off America’s enemies both from without and within? Who will defend her no matter the cost to himself? Who will love her and protect her? Who will heal her from the sickness that has spread throughout her body politic?

They can’t always define the sickness. Is it immigration, federal overreach, the education system, the debt, high taxes, political corruption, activist courts, all of the above? Whatever the issue, the conclusion is the same: America is in trouble. America is in crisis.

But what is the true nature of that crisis? Is it a fiscal crisis? A security crisis? A constitutional crisis? It’s all of these, but so much more. “The crisis in which the United States of America currently finds itself enmeshed is a moral crisis, which has engendered a crisis of cultural confidence, which in turn has begotten a fiscal crisis that threatens—no, guarantees—the destruction of the nation should we fail to address it,” Walsh writes.

This is an important point, because if you don’t see the crisis as a battle between good and evil—a moral crisis, as Walsh explains, that has been created by Leftist German philosophies (Hegel, Marx, Frankfurt School), subverting our culture by luring us into thinking there is no battle between good and evil (only a synthesis of both)...

Keep reading.

The left is truly diabolical, and the sheer depth of Tuesday's shellacking has even radical leftists questioning the sustainability of the Democrats as a national party.

Americans' Mood Darkened by Widespread Anger, New WSJ/NBC News Poll Finds

This is a fascinating poll, particularly in light of this week's election results.

America is deeply polarized, and not just over economics and the elitist establishment. At root here is a massive cultural divide. We've literally become two Americas, with the left militantly anti-religious and collectivist, and mainstream Americans and conservatives alienated by the nation's cultural rot. Homosexuality, race and "social justice," and murderous open borders have pushed regular people to the edge. It's not good for the country, and frankly, it's not good for the Democrats.

At WSJ, "WSJ/NBC Poll Finds Anger at Political System":

GOP primary voters are overwhelmingly unsettled by societal changes transforming the country, new WSJ/NBC poll finds https://t.co/vqGlIRPhkT

— Capital Journal (@WSJPolitics) November 4, 2015

Amy West, a 61-year-old retired schoolteacher, traces her frustration with the rest of the country to a local fight banning prayer at area schools more than a decade ago. “I have to have the Bible in my life,” she said.

A Republican from Vilonia, Ark., she plans to support Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in next year’s GOP presidential primary. She thinks he is best equipped to tackle her concerns, starting with the dwindling influence of religion in Americans’ daily lives.

Republican primary voters are overwhelmingly unsettled by societal changes transforming the country, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds, while Democratic primary voters describe themselves as proud that the country has moved further to protect the rights of minority groups and to accept gay marriage.

The results show that, in many ways, Republican and Democratic presidential candidates are being forced to tailor their messages for deeply disparate groups. If there is a unifying theme, it is anger at the political system, the Journal/NBC News poll suggests.

Some 71% of GOP primary voters agreed when asked whether they felt “out of place” in their own country and uneasy about widespread illegal immigration, the shrinking role of religion in public life and the growing acceptance of gay and lesbian rights. Among these GOP voters, 45% strongly agreed with that view, compared with just 12% among Democratic primary voters.

This sentiment is sending many GOP voters into the camps of candidates articulating their fears, including Mr. Cruz, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and businessman Donald Trump, whose slogan is “Make America Great Again.”

By contrast, three of four Democrats voiced pride in how the country “continues to make progress as a tolerant nation” that has taken significant steps to protect the rights of African-Americans and same-sex couples, and to change how women are viewed. Some 45% of Democrats strongly held that belief, compared with 10% among Republican primary voters.

This trend helps explain former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emphasis on gay rights and support for other societal changes. She announced her support for same-sex marriage in March 2013.

“Candidates for both parties can win their respective primaries by appealing to progress on the Democratic side and unease on the Republican side,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt, of Hart Research Associates, which conducts the Journal/NBC survey with Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican firm...

Keep reading.

Californians Less Safe After Passage of Proposition 47

Crime's going to be a major issue in 2016, one more plank in the left's platform of culture war against America.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Sheriff Jim McDonnell: Thanks to Prop. 47, Californians are less safe than they were a year ago":

One year ago today, California voters adopted Proposition 47, changing drug possession and five other nonviolent felonies into misdemeanors. Proposition 47 was supposed to ease pressure on California's overflowing prisons and jails and open up funds for rehabilitation programs, along with education and victim services. But the state funds that were earmarked won't arrive until August 2016. Crime is up in many California communities. Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell says Prop. 47, though well-intended, is to blame.

RTWT.

Lily Aldridge Wears the Victoria's Secret Fantasy Bra 2015 (VIDEO)

The 2015 fashion show is December 8th.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Lily Aldridge reveals $2-million Victoria's Secret Fantasy Bra":

Talk about over-the-top underpinnings. Victoria’s Secret model Lily Aldridge revealed this year’s $2-million Fireworks Fantasy Bra at the company’s Third Street Promenade store in Santa Monica this week.

Crafted by the 125-year-old Geneva-based luxury jeweler Mouawad, the bejeweled brassiere, inspired by Victoria’s Secret's new Very Sexy Flirt demi bra, is encrusted with more than 6,500 precious stones, including diamonds, blue topaz, yellow sapphires and pink quartz, set in 18-karat gold, with a red garnet and blue topaz centerpiece. The bra comes with an equally spectacular coordinating belt that can be worn over any panty. Weighing in at a total of 1,300 carats, the set took nearly 700 hours to make.

In 1996, Claudia Schiffer debuted the very first, and least expensive, $1-million Fantasy Bra, while Gisele Bundchen modeled the most pricey version in 2000 — a $15-million satin bra embellished with more than 1,300 diamonds and rubies — so the 2015 design falls on the lower end of the price spectrum, historically speaking...

More at London's Daily Mail, "Ready for the catwalk! Lily Aldridge dazzles in stunning behind the scenes images from her Victoria's Secret Fantasy Bra shoot."

Benjamin Golden, Fired Taco Bell Marketing Manager, Remorseful After Attacking Uber Driver (VIDEO)

Following-up from the other day, "Uber Driver Attacked by Drunk Passenger in Costa Mesa (VIDEO)."

The dude was fired by Taco Bell, and now he's remorseful?

Why Depraved Leftist Democrats Lost on Houston Transsexual Bathroom Ordinance (VIDEO)

From Kelsey Harkness, at the Daily Signal, "Why LGBT Advocates Think They Lost in Houston Election":

Failing to pass the Houston Equal Rights Protection Ordinance Tuesday night came as a blow to LGBT advocates, who have won recent victories at the U.S. Supreme Court and beyond.

“We are disappointed with today’s outcome,” said a coalition of partners that make up Houston Unites, the group behind the sexual orientation and gender identity measure. “We’ve learned some important lessons, as well.”

On Wednesday, members of the campaign and LGBT supporters shared some of those lessons, dissecting what went wrong in Houston, which voted for President Barack Obama in 2012 and 2008, and how they can prevent it from happening again.

Here’s a brief recap.

The biggest hurdle LGBT groups say they failed to overcome was the branding of the Houston Equal Rights Protection Ordinance as “the bathroom bill.”

Dominic Holden, a BuzzFeed news reporter, spoke to people on the ground before the vote who appeared to be under the impression that bill was entirely about bathrooms.

“Bathrooms are the hot-ticket item—that’s what everybody is talking about,” Cory Alters, a Houston resident, told BuzzFeed. “I don’t want girls in my bathroom, and girls don’t want guys in their bathroom.”

The Houston Equal Rights Protection Ordinance (HERO) would have created legal protections in 15 categories. Sexual orientation and gender identity were two of those categories.

Opponents focused on that angle, branding HERO as a “bathroom bill.” Their fear was that the inclusion of sexual identity could allow persons with biological male bodies who identify as women to use women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-specific facilities, without having legally changed their names or undergone surgery or hormone treatment....

Similar to how LGBT analyzed why they lost, conservatives say they won by pushing both the “bathroom bill” narrative and connecting with “real people”—including minorities—on the ground...

Dave Welch, executive director of the Houston Area Pastor Council, another group that’s been fighting the ordinance for the past 18 months called the outcome a “victory of common decency.” In an email to The Daily Signal, he said:

The victory of common decency in defeating this ordinance is a reminder to pastors across the country that together and united, our voices can make a difference, even when outnumbered by a massive propaganda campaign and vastly outspent. These ordinances that are part of a national campaign of the Human Rights Campaign in their attempt to force their radical anti-faith, anti-family, anti-freedom agenda on local communities can be defeated, so we hope this encourages pastors and citizens around the country.

Ultimately, the people in Houston decided against the measure by a 62-38 margin. That margin, supporters say, is an honest reflection of the city’s values...

Feminism: How a Privileged Elite Can Claim Permanent Victimhood

Here's Robert's book, Sex Trouble: Essays on Radical Feminism and the War Against Human Nature.

And at the Other McCain:

COLLEGE 2015: My Advice for Male Students https://t.co/B3AjGDXGrj @DateOffCampus @g56yu @instapundit @AsheSchow pic.twitter.com/YbVcuEYKCu

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) November 4, 2015

No matter how rich her parents are, no matter what the tuition was at her prestigious private prep school or how elite the university she attends, a feminist always believes she is a victim of male supremacy. She’s got a trust fund, a luxury car and spends her holidays at the family vacation home, but she knows she is oppressed by patriarchy, and that guy over there? The poor slob sweating his life away for an hourly wage? He is a beneficiary of male privilege, who oppresses her by his mere existence.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

If you reject these categorical claims — if do not view the world through feminist lenses — you are a misogynist, a sexist, a rape apologist...

Keep reading.

Democrats Brutal Shellacking 2015

I guess this would be Shellacking 3.0, after 2010 and 2014.

Even far-left WaPo blogger Greg Sargent can't disguise the damage to the Democrat brand, this late stage in the Obama administration trainwreck.

See, "A brutal reality check for the Democratic Party" (at Memeorandum):

The news that Tea Party Republican Matt Bevin snatched the Kentucky governor’s mansion away from Democrats is a particularly stark reminder of how deep a hole Democrats have dug for themselves at the state level, and of the consequences that could have for the long-term success of the liberal and Democratic agenda...

There's a bunch of bullshit filler and blah, blah about how great ObamaCare is in Kentucky, or something, and then he continues:

The broader point is that the Kentucky loss underscores once again that there are serious policy consequences to the profound deficit Democrats face on the level of the states. As I’ve reported, Democrats are well aware of this and are trying to something about it: it’s conceivable that by the end of this decade, the picture could look very different. But last night is a reminder of the stakes involved.

See the whole thing at Memeorandum.

Meanwhile, from Peter Suderman, at Reason, "Yesterday’s Election: A Challenge for Democrats—and a Crisis for Politics."