10 Factors That Will Probably Determine the White House Winner Next Year

Enough with all the political speculation, here's some real political science prognostication!

From Larry Sabato et al., at Sabato's Crystal Ball, "10 Factors That Will Determine the Next President":

Here’s a thought experiment: What if Republicans nominated the 2012 version of Mitt Romney — same fundraising, same baggage, same everything — at their 2016 convention? What sort of odds would that candidate have in 2016?

We suspect the candidate would be a small favorite at the start of the campaign. He would be running against a Democrat who lacked the power of incumbency, and he would be competing in an environment where the public was ready for a change: The most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed that about three-quarters of those surveyed wanted the next president to take a different approach to governing than President Obama, similar to how the public felt about how George W. Bush’s successor should act at a similar point in the 2008 campaign. It’s hard to precisely quantify, but there’s a generic desire for change that hampers a party the longer it stays in the White House. To satisfy that general feeling, a generic Republican might do the trick, which is why we cite Romney circa 2012 as an example of what could/should be enough to win the White House: A candidate who is largely average could flip a few percentage points of the national vote from the 2012 results, which is all it will take for the Republicans to win.

However, it’s quite unclear that the Republicans will produce a candidate of even the quality of Romney. After 2012, the party took a hard look at its inadequacies, producing a report that suggested the party needed to do more to reach out to nonwhite voters. Donald Trump, the GOP’s current polling leader, is not helping on that front. The Republican leadership is worried.

What follows is an exploration of 10 factors that will probably determine the White House winner next year. Some of these — many of them, in fact — suggest that the GOP should be seen as a narrow favorite. But a few factors, combined with the live possibility that the next Republican nominee will make Mitt Romney look like Ronald Reagan, indicate to us that, as we turn the page from 2015 to 2016, that the 2016 general election is still a coin flip...

Keep reading for the 10 factors.

I hope Trump's the nominee, mainly because he's so unlike Mitt Romney, particularly in that the latter might have won in 2012 if he'd have adopted some of the former's pugnacity. Conservatives need a fighter, and while Trump's not really conservative, he's definitely fighting on those issues really dear to the conservative base. I mean, Diana West is a movement conservative, as is Ann Coulter, and they see Trump as a savior. [And I forget to mention Phyllis Schlafly --- Phyllis freakin' Schlafly!] Even Michelle Malkin, who's gone a few rounds with Trump (rather nasty rounds, in fact), concedes that she'd vote for Trump if he became the nominee, primarily because he'd indeed fight to reverse the diabolical damage leftists have inflicted on this country.

See also, "Voters Seek Vengeance Against Obama's 'Fundamental Transformation of America' (VIDEO)."

Two Suspects Arrested in Belgium in 'Paris-Style' Terror Plot for New Year's Eve (VIDEO)

At the Telegraph UK, "Belgian bikers arrested over 'plot for Paris-style attacks at New Year'."

And at WSJ, "Belgian Police Arrest Two on Terrorism Charges":

BRUSSELS—Belgian authorities said Tuesday they arrested two people on terrorism charges and broke up a plan for attacks during the holiday period, underlining fears of further mayhem in a Europe still unsettled over Islamic State’s deadly attacks in Paris last month.

Police seized Islamic State propaganda and military-style clothing but no explosives or arms in a series of raids Sunday and Monday in Brussels, Liège and the Flanders region of Belgium, prosecutors said.

The arrests were made amid stepped-up antiterrorism operations by Belgian authorities in the aftermath of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, which were planned by a Belgian national and carried out by a team that included several others with ties to Belgium, including the fugitive Salah Abdeslam, a French citizen who was born and lived in Brussels.

Belgium has conducted dozens of raids, questioned scores of people, and arrested nine people in connection with those attacks.

Belgian federal prosecutors said they hadn’t identified links between those investigations and the two new arrests, but said their continuing investigation would be looking for any connections.

Among the intended targets were the Grand Place, the Belgian capital’s central square and site of its largest Christmas market, and a nearby police station, according to a person briefed on the investigations.

The Grand Place, a Unesco heritage site and Brussels’ most important tourist site, was constructed in the 15th and 16th centuries and then rebuilt after being largely flattened in a 1695 bombardment by the French army.

Parts of the city’s New Year’s Eve celebrations are also scheduled to take place in the area. Authorities said they didn’t have information about a specific date for the attacks.

Few details of the arrests or investigation were released, but prosecutors said there was a serious indication of planned terror attacks at several prominent locations in Brussels. Six people were initially detained in a series of raids in the capital and elsewhere in Belgium, but only two were arrested and charged...

More.

Yeah, they've gotta keep the lid on in Belgium. They've got it bad. See, "Bad Brussels' Sprouts: Belgium Has Become Center of European Terror."

New California Gun Laws for 2016 (VIDEO)

California's basically a Marxist regime at this point --- and it's going to get worse before it gets better.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

President Obama's Legacy of Racial Divisiveness

From VDH, at Pajamas, "Bitter Clingers 2.0":

Clingers 1.0: “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Clingers 2.0: “Certain circumstances around being the first African-American president that might not have confronted a previous president, absolutel.  … If you are referring to specific strains in the Republican Party that suggest that somehow I'm different, I'm Muslim, I'm disloyal to the country, etc., which unfortunately is pretty far out there and gets some traction in certain pockets of the Republican Party, and that have been articulated by some of their elected officials, what I'd say there is that that's probably pretty specific to me and who I am and my background, and that in some ways I may represent change that worries them…. If you are living in a town that historically has relied on coal and you see coal jobs diminishing, you probably are going to be more susceptible to the argument that I've been wiping out the economy in your area .… I think if you are talking about the specific virulence of some of the opposition directed towards me, then, you know, that may be explained by the particulars of who I am.”

Barack Obama in the final stretch of his 2008 primary campaign explained away—off the record in an unguarded moment—his unpopularity in Pennsylvania. The problem then was a biased “them”—not so much the hard-left policies and principles of Barack Obama.

These narrow-minded clingers were supposedly not fond of Obama and similar others “who aren’t like them.” Thus, because of their parochialism, nativism, and fundamentalism, the unenlightened voters of Pennsylvania were unable to appreciate Obama’s message of “hope and change” and vero possumus—much less his landmark promises to return the Presidency to constitutional restraint, radically improve American health care, end the role of big money in politics, solve the “bad” Iraq war and win the “good” Afghan war, cool the planet and recede the seas, end government scandal, bridge the racial divide, balance the budget, reset relations with Russia, and win back the hearts and minds of the Muslim world.

For some reason, the under-educated voter seven years ago was skeptical that Obama would do any of that. Of course, Obama smeared the Clingers off the record, given that what he really thought of the white working class of Pennsylvania did not quite synch with his purported racial and class ecumenicalism.

Seven years later an unpopular (43% approval rate in the RealClearPolitics.com aggregate poll), lame-duck President Obama has come full circle in his angst and pouting. Now with no more elections looming, nothing apparently is off the record. He recently gave an interview with NPR, in which he offered a sort of Clingers 2.0 exegesis for his current poor approval ratings and absence of a legacy.

Once again the fault is with an ignorant “them” and their biases (e.g., “I may represent change that worries them”), not Obama’s own unimpressive record of governance.

A liberated Obama is more overt in his sense of victimization. Now he can be more explicit than his Clingers 1.0 indictment and quite openly allege that his family’s background and race best explain his plight...

More.

The most divisive president in American history. *SMH*.

Infrared Footage Shows Methane Spewing from Porter Ranch Gas Leak (VIDEO)

I've hesitated reporting on this story, but this infrared video is a trip.

Watch, at CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "The description for the video says the methane plumes were made visible by a 'specialized infrared camera operated by an Earthworks ITC-certified thermographer'."

Also, at CBS Evening News, "Methane gas leak creates ghost town in California."

Cold Weather in Southern California Expected to Continue This Week

My young son had a lab appointment yesterday to have blood drawn, and he was NPO after midnight. So we schlepped over there before 8:00am. The Odyssey van was frosted over and it took a few minutes before the windshield wipers took effect.

Interesting, especially in that it's been just as cold on the West Coast as it's been elsewhere across the country.

At the Los Angeles Times:

It’s been cold in Los Angeles, which means it’s time to break out the scarves, hats, parkas and gloves and dress up like Han Solo trekking across Hoth in “The Empire Strikes Back.”

Parts of Los Angeles will see overnight temperatures drop to around 40 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. Temperatures in Santa Barbara County will plummet to the low 30s, which could result in damage to crops.

The cold snap is expected to last through the week, with freezing or near-freezing temperatures around dawn Wednesday and Thursday. Santa Ana winds in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and the Antelope Valley increase the fire risk Thursday and Friday, the weather service said.

Reaching for all those extra layers makes sense, even when temperatures hover in the low 60s, forecasters said.

"A lot of that has to do with the low humidity," said Emily Thornton, a meteorologist with the weather service in Oxnard. "Sea breezes come throughout the day and that can make it feel relatively cooler."

"I just moved here from Tennessee and I have noticed it can feel pretty cold here," she added...

Also, watch Kristen Keogh, at ABC News 10 San Diego.

David Cameron Defends Flood Record as Northern England Is Drenched (VIDEO)

At the New York Times:

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron walked the flooded streets of York on Monday as Britain’s Environment Agency warned that the country needed “a complete rethink” of its flood defenses.

Thousands of people in the north of England spent another day dealing with what they called unprecedented flooding, with roads in York and in nearby Leeds still underwater and some electricity cut off. David Rooke, the deputy chief executive of the Environment Agency, said that “we are moving from known extremes to unknown extremes.”

Some scientists speculated that the effects of climate change could be evident in a year of record flooding. “We are having more severe floods in the U.K. than 10 years ago,” said Reza Ahmadian, a lecturer on water management at Cardiff University. “This is not something just happening in the U.K. — and we will see more and more of this.”

He added, “We need to be more creative about flood defenses.”

Mr. Ahmadian suggested that building temporary reservoirs for flood relief in less populated areas could be more effective than building ever-higher and more expensive flood walls, which “just create further problems downstream.”

Mr. Cameron defended the government’s record on flood defenses, saying that it had committed to spending 2.3 billion pounds, about $3.4 billion, over the next six years and that he would consider doing more.

“Let’s have a look and see whether more needs to be done and whether the flood defenses need to be made even higher than they are already,” he told Sky News. Over the weekend, he had deployed several hundred soldiers to help with flood defenses.

Officials in Leeds, about 25 miles southwest of York, criticized Mr. Cameron for not coming there and said his government blocked a more expensive flood-prevention plan in 2011. Judith Blake, the Labour Party leader of Leeds City Council, said the government had favored the south of England over the north, echoing the Yorkshire Evening Post, which wrote on its front page on Monday, “A northern powerhouse is nothing when it is under several feet of mucky water.”

Mr. Cameron rejected the claims of southern bias. “We spend more per head of the population on flood defenses in the north than we do in the south,” he said. “The key thing is to spend the money where it is needed.”

Also, at London's Daily Mail, "David Cameron faces the wrath of flood victims as he is heckled about government cuts during visit to flood hit-areas," and "Ancient Yorkshire bridge collapses in the floods as Storm Frank is set to bring MORE misery across Britain tonight with six inches of rain and 80mph winds on the way."

More, "Flood victims' homes are targeted by LOOTERS: Thieves steal from submerged properties as Storm Frank threatens six inches more rain and 80mph gales to pile more misery on embattled families."

Motörhead's Lemmy Kilmister 'Made Keith Richards Look Like a Choirboy...'

By far the best obituary of the Motörhead frontman, at London's Daily Mail, "The rock wild man who made Keith Richards look like a choir boy: As Lemmy dies two days after being told he had aggressive cancer, it is only surprising that the hard-drinking Motorhead frontman managed to make it to 70."

Flashback, almost five years ago, "Ace of Spades — Motörhead's Lemmy Kilmister Still Touring at 65."

Is the West Disintegrating?

From Pat Buchanan, at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, "Is the West done?":

On Jan. 1, 2002, the day that euro coins and bank notes entered into circulation, my column “Say goodbye to the mother continent” contained this pessimistic prognosis: “This European superstate will not endure but break apart on the barrier reef of nationalism. For when the hard times come, patriots will recapture control of their national destinies from Brussels bureaucrats to whom no one will ever give loyalty or love.”

The column described what was already happening.

“Europe is dying. There is not a single nation in all of Europe with a birth rate sufficient to keep its population alive except Muslim Albania.”

What was predicted 14 years ago has come to pass.

Migrants into Germany from the Middle and Near East reached 1 million in 2015. EU bribes to the Turks to keep Muslim migrants from crossing over to the Greek islands, thence into the Balkans and Central Europe, are unlikely to stop the flood.

My prediction that European “patriots will recapture control of their national destinies” looks even more probable today.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who almost lost a referendum on Scottish secession, is demanding a return of British sovereignty from the EU sufficient to satisfy his countrymen, who have been promised a vote on whether to abandon the European Union altogether.

Marine Le Pen's anti-EU National Front ran first in the first round of the 2015 French elections. Many Europeans believe she will make it into the final round of the next presidential election in 2017.

Anti-immigrant right-wing parties are making strides all across Europe, as the EU is bedeviled by a host of crises.

Mass migration into the EU is causing member nations to put up checkpoints and close borders. The Schengen Agreement on the free movement of goods and people is being ignored or openly violated.

Then there is the surge of sub-nationalism, as in Scotland, Catalonia, Flanders and Veneto, where people seek to disconnect from distant capitals that no longer speak for them and reconnect with languages, traditions and cultures that give more meaning to their lives.

Moreover, the migrants entering Europe, predominantly Islamic and Third World, are not assimilating as did the European and largely Christian immigrants to America of a century ago. The enclaves of Asians in Britain, Africans and Arabs around Paris, and Turks in and around Berlin seem to be British, French and German in name only. And some of their children are now heeding the call to jihad against the crusaders invading Muslim lands.

If these trends continue, and they seem to have accelerated in 2015, the idea of a United States of Europe dies, and with it, the EU...

Still more.

German Jihadist Returns from Syria and Gives Testimony

At Der Spiegel, "Back from the 'Caliphate': Returnee Says IS Recruiting for Terror Attacks in Germany":

Islamist extremist Harry S. wasn't in Syria for long. But during his stay there, he claims, Islamic State leaders repeatedly tried to recruit him to commit terror attacks in Germany. Security officials believe he could be telling the truth.

It was an early summer morning in the Syrian desert, with not a cloud in the sky, when Mohamed Mahmoud asked those gathered around him: "Here are some prisoners. Which of you wants to waste them?"

Not long before, Islamic State (IS) had taken the city of Palmyra, and now jihadists from Germany and Austria were to participate in the executions of some of the prisoners taken in the operation. They drove to the site of the executions in Toyota pick-ups, bringing along an IS camera team in order to document the atrocity in the city of antique ruins. Even then, Mohamed Mahmoud was known to German security officials for his repeated propaganda-video calls to join the jihad. On that early summer day in Palmyra, though, he didn't just incite others. He grabbed a Kalashnikov himself and began firing. That day, Mahmoud and his group of executioners are thought to have killed six or seven prisoners.

The story comes from someone who was in Palmyra on that day: Harry S., a 27-year-old from Bremen. "I saw it all," he says.

Harry S. returned to Germany from Syria and is now in investigative custody. He has told security officials everything about the brief time he spent with Islamic State and has also demonstrated his readiness to deliver extensive testimony to German public prosecutors. He stands accused of membership in a terrorist group. His lawyer Udo Würtz declined to offer a detailed response when contacted, but said of his client: "He wants to come clean."

German investigators are extremely interested in the testimony of the apparently repentant returnee, even as they are likely unsettled by what he has to say.

A Vital Witness

Harry S., after all, is more than just a witness to firing squads and decapitations. He also says that on several occasions, IS members tried to recruit volunteers for terrorist attacks in Germany. In the spring, just after he first arrived in Syria, he says that he and another Islamist from Bremen were asked if they could imagine perpetrating attacks in Germany. Later, when he was staying not far from Raqqa, the self-proclaimed Islamic State capital city, masked men drove up in a jeep. They too asked him if he was interested in bringing the jihad to his homeland. Harry S. says he told them that he wasn't prepared to do so.

Harry S. was only in IS controlled territory for three months. Yet he might nevertheless become a vital witness for German security officials. Since the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, fear of terrorism has risen across Europe, including in Germany, and security has been stepped up in train stations and airports. And the testimony from the Bremen returnee would seem to indicate that the fear is justified. Harry S. says that, during his time in the Syrian warzone, he frequently heard people talking about attacks in the West and says that pretty much every European jihadist was approached with the same questions he had been asked. "They want something that happens everywhere at the same time," Harry S. says.

Harry S.'s path from the Bremen quarter of Osterholz-Tenever to the jihadists of Islamic State was not particularly remarkable. His radicalization was similar to many other young, directionless men from European suburbs, from the Molenbeek district of Brussels to Lohberg in Dinslaken. In Tenever, some of the residential towers are up to 20 stories tall.

The son of parents from Ghana, Harry S. grew up in "difficult conditions," according to a court file. His father left the family just as he was entering puberty. Even though Harry S. initially only managed to graduate from a lower tier high school in Germany, he dreamed of returning to his parents' homeland and working as a construction engineer.

There was even a brief moment when it looked as though he was going to get control over his life. But then, in early 2010, he and some friends robbed a supermarket, getting away with €23,500, and flew to the island of Gran Canaria for a vacation. It wasn't long before the authorities were on to them and Harry S. was sentenced to two years behind bars for aggravated theft.

A Dangerous Radical

In prison, he met a Salafist named René Marc S., the "Emir of Gröpelingen" -- a man who Bremen officials consider to be a dangerous radical. It didn't take long before prison officials noticed a "change in character" in Harry S. According to prison records, he converted to Islam and expressed "radical sentiments" about world events. After his release, the new convert visited the Furqan Mosque (which has since been shut down) in the Gröpelingen neighborhood of Bremen. At the mosque, he became part of a Salafist clique which sent at least 16 adults and 11 children to Syria in 2014.

Harry S. tried to make the journey as well. From Istanbul, he flew in April 2014 to Gaziantep, a large Turkish city near the border with Syria, but his trip came to a premature end. Turkish authorities arrested him and sent him back to Bremen, where he told police that he had wanted to help out in Syrian refugee camps. The authorities didn't believe him and confiscated his passport in an effort to prevent him from making another attempt. On Tuesdays and Saturdays, he was required to report to the local police station.

But the authorities were still unable to prevent the Salafist from traveling to Syria to join the war. Harry S. simply grabbed an acquaintance's passport and, with another Islamist from Bremen, traveled overland via Vienna and Budapest. This time, there were no police waiting for him at the border to Syria. Instead, he was met by smugglers who brought him across the border to an IS safe house set up for new arrivals from around the world.

Harry S., a large man with broad shoulders, was trained as a fighter in Syria. He claims to have been drilled in training camps together with 50 other men: sit-ups, hours of standing in the sun and forced marches lasting the entire day. Those who gave up were locked up or beaten. His Kalashnikov, it was driven home to him, should become like his "third arm" and he was told to keep the weapon in bed with him while sleeping.

Once he finished training, he says he was to become a part of a special unit, a kind of suicide squad for house-to-house combat. Harry S. claims that, during his brief time in Syria, he was never sent into battle -- but he claims to know many young men, including Germans, who died in battle. "Luckily, I managed to get away," he says.

Still more.

Jeremy Corbyn's Hard Left Draws-Up 'Stalinist Plot' to Seize Control of Labour

It's almost like a parody, except it's not.

Corbyn's hard left even plan's "reeducation camps."

At London's Daily Mail, "Hard-Left's 'Stalinist plot' to seize control of Labour: Detailed blueprint by Corbyn's supporters show they will try to oust critics, take over policy making and hold Mao-style 'political education activity' programme."

More, "'Sack the mutineers!': Labour MP urges Jeremy Corbyn to start the new year with a shadow cabinet clear out."

And at the Independent UK, "Jeremy Corbyn to dismiss 'disloyal' shadow ministers in New Year reshuffle: Hilary Benn and Maria Eagle are among party heavyweights facing demotion in the first week of January."

New Poll Finds Americans Bitterly Divided Over Obama's Handling of the Country (VIDEO)

Sixty-nine percent of Americans are angry "about the way things are going in this country today."

And the public's bitterly divided over the president's legacy, with 37 percent saying Obama's had a positive impact on the country and 37 percent saying his impact's been negative.

Polarization, in a nutshell.

At CNN, "Full results: CNN/ORC poll on views of government."

Plus, watch CNN's Jim Acosta, "Americans divided over Obama legacy."

PREVIOUSLY: "Voters Seek Vengeance Against Obama's 'Fundamental Transformation of America' (VIDEO)."

New Year, New You — BUMPED

Start the new year off with fitness, health, nutrition, organization, wellness, money management, and more --- at Amazon.

Plus, from Donald Trump, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again.

Voters Seek Vengeance Against Obama's 'Fundamental Transformation of America' (VIDEO)

From Dan Spencer, at Red State, "Revenge Replaces Hope and Change" (via Memeorandum)":

Frank Luntz tells us that Trump supporters are not just angry. They want revenge. They seek vengeance for Obama’s fundamental transformation of America. These Trumpeteers see the Donald as the antidote for all that Obama has made wrong with America. Trump’s bombastic attacks on the Republican establishment, the mainstream media and his critics are cathartic for the millions who feel “silenced, ignored and even scorned by the governing and media elite.”

According to Luntz, to understand why Trump is so popular, you have to listen to why his supporters hate Obama so much. One only has to look at the Frank Luntz focus-group conducted on December 9 to see how much Trump supporters dislike Obama...

More at the link, and watch the full segment, from Face the Nation (with Luntz speaking from Las Vegas, where the December 15 debate was about to take place).

Richest Americans, on Both Left and Right, Shape Private Tax System to Save Billions

Well, an update from the class war, from the New York Times (who else?), "For the Wealthiest, a Private Tax System That Saves Them Billions":

WASHINGTON — The hedge fund magnates Daniel S. Loeb, Louis Moore Bacon and Steven A. Cohen have much in common. They have managed billions of dollars in capital, earning vast fortunes. They have invested millions in art — and millions more in political candidates.

Moreover, each has exploited an esoteric tax loophole that saved them millions in taxes. The trick? Route the money to Bermuda and back.

With inequality at its highest levels in nearly a century and public debate rising over whether the government should respond to it through higher taxes on the wealthy, the very richest Americans have financed a sophisticated and astonishingly effective apparatus for shielding their fortunes. Some call it the “income defense industry,” consisting of a high-priced phalanx of lawyers, estate planners, lobbyists and anti-tax activists who exploit and defend a dizzying array of tax maneuvers, virtually none of them available to taxpayers of more modest means.

In recent years, this apparatus has become one of the most powerful avenues of influence for wealthy Americans of all political stripes, including Mr. Loeb and Mr. Cohen, who give heavily to Republicans, and the liberal billionaire George Soros, who has called for higher levies on the rich while at the same time using tax loopholes to bolster his own fortune.

All are among a small group providing much of the early cash for the 2016 presidential campaign.

Operating largely out of public view — in tax court, through arcane legislative provisions and in private negotiations with the Internal Revenue Service — the wealthy have used their influence to steadily whittle away at the government’s ability to tax them. The effect has been to create a kind of private tax system, catering to only several thousand Americans.

The impact on their own fortunes has been stark. Two decades ago, when Bill Clinton was elected president, the 400 highest-earning taxpayers in America paid nearly 27 percent of their income in federal taxes, according to I.R.S. data. By 2012, when President Obama was re-elected, that figure had fallen to less than 17 percent, which is just slightly more than the typical family making $100,000 annually, when payroll taxes are included for both groups.

The ultra-wealthy “literally pay millions of dollars for these services,” said Jeffrey A. Winters, a political scientist at Northwestern University who studies economic elites, “and save in the tens or hundreds of millions in taxes.”

Some of the biggest current tax battles are being waged by some of the most generous supporters of 2016 candidates. They include the families of the hedge fund investors Robert Mercer, who gives to Republicans, and James Simons, who gives to Democrats; as well as the options trader Jeffrey Yass, a libertarian-leaning donor to Republicans.

Mr. Yass’s firm is litigating what the agency deemed to be tens of millions of dollars in underpaid taxes. Renaissance Technologies, the hedge fund Mr. Simons founded and which Mr. Mercer helps run, is currently under review by the I.R.S. over a loophole that saved their fund an estimated $6.8 billion in taxes over roughly a decade, according to a Senate investigation. Some of these same families have also contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to conservative groups that have attacked virtually any effort to raises taxes on the wealthy.

Some of the biggest current tax battles are being waged by some of the most generous supporters of 2016 candidates. They include the families of the hedge fund investors Robert Mercer, who gives to Republicans, and James Simons, who gives to Democrats; as well as the options trader Jeffrey Yass, a libertarian-leaning donor to Republicans.

Mr. Yass’s firm is litigating what the agency deemed to be tens of millions of dollars in underpaid taxes. Renaissance Technologies, the hedge fund Mr. Simons founded and which Mr. Mercer helps run, is currently under review by the I.R.S. over a loophole that saved their fund an estimated $6.8 billion in taxes over roughly a decade, according to a Senate investigation. Some of these same families have also contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to conservative groups that have attacked virtually any effort to raises taxes on the wealthy...

Notice how this isn't just a conservative or Republican phenomenon. George Soros is perhaps the most important puppet-master of the Democrat Party/radical left establishment. All of these people are gaming the system for all it's worth. The difference, at least for me, is that Democrats don't care about the corruption of their wealthy elites --- just look at the epic hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton, the Democrat front-runner.

No, it's going to take a constitutional conservative revolution to shake loose the barnacles of the Beltway political class. It's coming, though. I really feel significant change is coming.

More at the link.

Rita Ora Swimsuit in Miami

At Egotastic!, "Rita Ora Skin Tight Wet Swimsuit Headlights On in Miami."

Plus, "Rita Ora Black Bikini Tug In Miami, When Bikini Bottoms Go Wrong (Or Right)."

Donald Trump Isn’t a Fascist

He's a media-savvy know-nothing?

It's that any better?

Ask John Cassidy, at the New Yorker, "Donald Trump Isn’t a Fascist; He’s a Media-Savvy Know-Nothing":

With Donald Trump ending 2015 well ahead in the Republican primary polls, the debate about what his candidacy represents is intensifying. Pointing to favorable remarks about Vladimir Putin that Trump made recently, Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, said Sunday, on “Meet the Press,” “This is a man now flirting with authoritarianism. . . . This is a serious, serious matter.”

Some people have gone so far as to suggest that Trump, in whipping up popular resentments and stigmatizing immigrants and Muslims, is exhibiting Fascist tendencies. During the last Democratic debate, Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland, said that America must never surrender its values “to the Fascist pleas of billionaires with big mouths.” Slate’s Jamelle Bouie has argued that “Fascist” is the label that best fits Trump, and the word has also cropped up in New Hampshire, where Trump is the front-runner. In a blog post, Jonathan P. Baird, an administrative law judge, noted that the candidate is popular with white supremacists and other hate groups, and wrote, “Trump is no conservative. He is not about conserving what is valuable in America’s laws and heritage. He has crossed enough lines to indicate he is something else altogether.”

That last statement is indisputable, but is “Fascism” the best way to describe the Trump phenomenon? I don’t think so...

Either do I, but a "know-nothing's' no better.

Trump's an American nationalist who's talking truth to power --- and taking it to the Beltway elite. All the prognostications that Trump was a flash-in-the-pan, that he'd be toast before the end of the year, proved false. The permanent political class has rotten eggs on its collective face. And I'd include John Cassidy as among the rotten elite toadies.

Still more, FWIW.

The Tragedy of Tamir Rice

Yeah, it's a tragedy alright.

It's a tragedy that the boy apparently reached into his waistband to pull out a toy gun. If you're a policeman and you see a black youth reaching "into his waistband," what else are you going to do?

It's terrible that this boy was killed, but it's not terrible there was no indictment. Frankly, it's one more example that the criminal justice system hasn't lost its sanity, like the leftists constantly haranguing law enforcement.

But for the far-left take, see Jelani Cobb, at the New Yorker, "Tamir Rice and America’s Tragedy."

Radical Founder of Femen Brazil Renounces Feminism, Declares Herself Pro-Life, and Apologizes to Christians

Well, she regretted having an abortion after the birth of her second child (her first born).

At Truth Revolt, "Radical Feminist Activist Denounces Feminism, Apologizes to Christians."

Holiday Bowl: USC vs. Wisconsin

It's not on until 7:30 pm (Pacific), so a late game if you're on the East Coast.

In any case, at the Los Angeles Times, "For resilient USC seniors, a period of unprecedented tumult will end in Holiday Bowl":

They came to USC knowing that part of their careers would be played under NCAA sanctions.

No bowl games for a few years? They could deal with that.

A thinned roster because of scholarship limits? That might lead to more immediate playing time.

Four coaching changes and multiple off-the-field dramas later, USC's seniors are preparing for Wednesday's Holiday Bowl against Wisconsin, a final game in a span of unprecedented tumult.

Members of the 2011 and 2012 recruiting classes will leave the program with advanced degrees in resiliency.

"We went through hell and back," fullback Soma Vainuku said. "That's how you can explain us seniors."

These are players who signed on to play for Lane Kiffin, who had succeeded Pete Carroll and in his first season guided the Trojans to an 8-5 record in 2010.

They saw Kiffin get fired, Ed Orgeron promoted to interim coach, Orgeron bolt when Steve Sarkisian was hired, Clay Helton promoted to interim coach for a bowl game, Sarkisian fired, Helton promoted again to interim coach and, finally, Helton hired as permanent coach.

They also endured three changes at defensive coordinator, numerous arrivals and departures of position coaches and controversies surrounding coaches, teammates and Athletic Director Pat Haden.

Freshman tailback Ronald Jones II marveled at the seniors' ability to play through the upheaval.

"I can't imagine," he said. "I probably couldn't have stayed. It would be hard seeing a new face every offseason and then trying to buy into his motto and system. That would have been tough."

Not everybody did stay. Six players from those classes, Marqise Lee, Leonard Williams and Nelson Agholor among them, left early for the NFL, and a handful transferred or quit or were removed from the team. But a dozen seniors from those classes will complete their eligibility this week...

More.

And don't miss Lindsey Thiry at the video above.

Distracted Walking

Instapundit linked to a recent New York Times piece on the topic, "Distracted Walkers Pose Threat to Self and Others."

I expect this topic will be growing in importance, especially considering the increasing frequency of such cases, like the one in San Diego over the weekend, "Distracted Man Dies After Falling Off Cliffs in San Diego, Family Devastated (VIDEO)."

And watch, from earlier today, at CBS This Morning, "New research shows danger of distracted walking."

Harvard Professors Threatened With Investigation for Questioning Rape Documentary

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Harvard Professors Threatened With Investigation for Questioning Rape Culture Claims":

A group of Harvard professors who criticized the campus rape documentary “The Hunting Ground” are being menaced with the possibility of a Title IX sexual harassment investigation intended to silence their criticisms.

“The Hunting Ground,” released early this year, portrays American college campuses as hotbeds of sexual assault where administrators routinely allow perpetrators to get off scot-free. The film has attracted a great deal of criticism, though, both for the data it relies on and for the individual stories it uses to portray the campus rape epidemic.

Last month, a group of 19 Harvard Law School professors published an open letter denouncing it as a “propaganda” film in advance of its airing on CNN. In particular, the professors criticized the film for its treatment of Brandon Winston, a Harvard law student whom the film treats as almost certainly guilty of raping fellow student Kamilah Willingham. In fact, a criminal grand jury failed to even indict Willingham of a sex crime, indicating a severe lack of evidence against him.

Now, though, activists appear to be searching for a way to have the professors silenced by the federal government for criticizing their film...

RELATED: From Jeannie Suk, at the New Yorker, "The Trouble with Teaching Rape Law."

Lauren Louise

On Twitter:

#Saturdayselfie 😉😉😉😉😉 pic.twitter.com/jhdAUQG0BB

— Laurenlouise Model (@laurenlouise221) December 19, 2015

And Instagram as well.

Missouri Flooding Evacuations (VIDEO)

It's bad over there. Really bad.

At the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "Historic rainfall brings floods, worries to St. Louis region," and "The rain is over, but the risk is not."

State Department Counts 'Bringing Peace' to Syria as One of Its Wins in 2015

This was a pretty excitable topic on Outnumbered this morning, on Fox News. Katherine Timpf even blew off the suggestion as "insane."

But see Politico, "State Dept. counts 'bringing peace' to Syria as a 2015 win."

The Republican Road to Absolute Chaos?

Pfft. It's not going to be that bad.

From Benjamin Ginsberg, at the Wall Street Journal, "Flirting With a Chaotic GOP Convention" (via Memeorandum):

Reports of Republican officials convening a closed-door session over the possibility of a deadlocked convention are feeding speculation over what happens if 19 weeks of primaries, caucuses and conventions leave a muddled picture.

The past nine Republican conventions began with a presumptive nominee. And the chances of delegates arriving at the convention in Cleveland next July with no clear nominee remain small. But the odds are no longer infinitesimal thanks to the multicandidate field, required early proportional voting, and the fact that only 16.2% of the delegates will have been chosen in decisive, winner-take-all contests.

Three convention scenarios can emerge after 56 states and territories choose their delegates between Feb. 1 and June 7: There will be a clear winner, a bunched up field of several candidates, or a leader who can’t get a majority of delegates on the first ballot. The latter two scenarios would make Cleveland uncharted territory.

Here’s how each of those scenarios could come about...

Keep reading, FWIW.

Actually, I expect we'll have a clear leader by Super Tuesday, March 1.

But we'll see. We'll see.

Shunned by Canada and Sweden, Unmarried Syrian Muslim Woman Opts for Sensuality-Drenched Brazil

Well, I guess those Canadian and Scandinavian welfare states aren't so welcoming after all.

At the Los Angeles Times, "FLEEING SYRIA: Refugees find dizzying freedoms and unexpected dangers in Brazil":

Soon after she arrived, she began to feel conspicuous. On the street, on the bus, in the subway, people looked. They didn’t seem hostile, just puzzled. Even in Latin America’s biggest city, a woman in a headscarf stood out.

“Everyone was staring, and I was feeling alone,” says Dana Balkhi, 27. “I felt like I was choking.”

She had come to Brazil by herself, an anomaly among unmarried Muslim women. In Syria, she had studied English literature at Damascus University and loved the novels of Jane Austen.

After a missile hit her house, she fled to Turkey with her sister, but couldn’t find work there.

Canada said no, then Sweden said no, and in the winter of 2013, she faced a choice. She could return home, as her sister did, even as civil war obliterated the country. Or she could try Brazil, which was handing out fast, low-hassle “humanitarian visas” to Syrians escaping the carnage.

She went on Google and typed: Sao Paulo Arabic community helping refugees, and found some Brazilian-based Muslims who offered to help.

Who would she be coming with? they wanted to know.

Just me, she said.

They picked her up at the airport in December 2013 and gave her a bed. She learned to brace herself for the questions, when local Muslims discovered she was on her own.

“Not everyone respects my choice,” she says. “They’ll say my family doesn’t care about me, or I’m not a good girl. Of course, there are other girls that did that, but not many.”

Who knows?

Maybe she'll hook up with a bisexual fitness club down on the Copacabana? Who needs that hijab when you can be strutting a hip monokini down the beach?

Still more.

Muslims Brutally Beat Christians in Berlin After Christmas Day Celebrations

Boy, the Islamists are assimilating really well over there.

At Pamela's, "Muslims Brutally Beat Christians in Berlin After Xmas Day Celebrations; ‘I Am Muslim, What Are You?’ Screams Attacker."

Beatles Streamed 70 Million Times During First Three Days on Spotify

I was at my son's new apartment yesterday, helping him finish his recent move, and we were listening to the Beatles. He mentioned that he'd been using Spotify.

I tweeted, and below is David Joachim, at the New York Times:

Helping my son move in at his Artist's Village apartment. Listening to the Beatles too, heh. pic.twitter.com/fIatXa8Okn

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 28, 2015

In the Beatles’ first three days on Spotify, their songs were streamed 70 million times - https://t.co/SwQWRfdb7Y

— David Joachim, NYT (@davidjoachim) December 28, 2015

Syrian Journalist and Anti-Islamic State Filmmaker Gunned Down in Turkey (VIDEO)

At the Telegraph UK, "Syria anti-Islamic State documentary maker 'assassinated' in Turkey":

Naji Jerf was killed in Gaziantep, only a couple of months after Isil claimed responsibility for killing Ibrahim Abdelkader and a friend in southern Turkey.

Tourists Skip Christmas in Bethlehem (VIDEO)

Well, it's not safe. You might get stabbed by a "Palestinian" jihadist.

At France 24:

Charlotte McKinney for LOVE Advent 2015 (VIDEO)

She's heavenly as ever.

Watch, "Day 23 - Charlotte McKinney by Drew Jarrett (LOVE Advent 2015)."

The Deep and Growing Ideological Divide in the 2016 Presidential Election

From Gerald Seib, at WSJ, "Most Important Election 2016 Feature: Deep and Growing Ideological Divide":

As the nation heads into what figures to be a dramatic election year, its defining political characteristic isn’t love or hate for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.
Instead, the most important feature of America’s political landscape is a deep and growing ideological divide.

This divide will be especially apparent early in the new year, when the most divided groups in America, the Republican and Democratic voters who show up for primary elections and caucuses, hold the keys to the presidential selection process. These folks disagree, deeply, on an array of social issues, on the nation’s top priorities, and on what kind of leader they are seeking in the next president.

Collectively, these voters are driving Republican candidates to the right and Democratic candidates to the left—and ensuring that the challenge of bringing the country together will be tougher after the election, regardless of who wins.

A clear picture of this divide emerges from the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, taken in mid-December. Consider:

— Almost 7 in 10 Republican primary voters describe themselves as strong supporters of the traditional definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman. Among Democratic primary voters, the figure is just 25%.

— Among Democratic primary voters, 62% say they strongly back immediate action to combat climate change. Just 13% of Republican primary voters share that view.

— A new issue splitting the parties at their bases is the Black Lives Matter Movement. Almost half of Democratic primary voters call themselves strong supporters of the movement. Only 6% of Republican primary voters do so.

— The National Rifle Association drives one of the biggest wedges of all. Among Republican primary voters, 59% strongly support the NRA, while just 11% of Democratic primary voters are strong backers.

Republican primary voters put national security and terrorism at the top of their list of priorities for the government. Democratic primary voters put job creation and economic growth at the top of the priority list. About a third of Democrats say health care is a high priority; among Republicans, a comparable share worry about deficits and government spending.

Republicans are more likely to say they worry that the U.S. isn’t projecting a sufficiently tough image abroad; Democrats are more likely to say they think the U.S. should be focused on concerns at home.

When pollsters asked what voters are looking for in the next president, Republicans used terms like bold and a strong leader who could restore American strength abroad. Democrats were more likely to say they want a leader who is diplomatic and inclusive and who will preserve recent progressive gains.

These differences are why the country has two main political parties, of course, and they aren’t entirely new. But there is clear evidence that the ideological divides are bigger than they used to be...

Still more.

And flashback to November, "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."

Heh. Caltrans Sign on Northbound I-15 Hacked to Read: 'Vote Donald Trump' — UPDATE: 'Vandalism Investigation' Now Underway

That's the best.

At LAT, "Caltrans sign in Corona is hacked to show support for Donald Trump."

Someone reprogrammed the northbound 15 Freeway sign https://t.co/e6FIR6hrYC pic.twitter.com/H3nUCnQmSZ

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 28, 2015

Well, this being California, I'm sure quite a few people were not pleased with the Donald Trump-hacked Caltrans sign. Here's the update, at CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "Vandalism Investigation Underway Into ‘Vote Donald Trump’ Freeway Message Sign."

Distracted Man Dies After Falling Off Cliffs in San Diego, Family Devastated (VIDEO)

Initial reports said the man was distracted by some kind of "device."


At the San Diego Union-Tribune‎, "Man in fatal fall appeared distracted by electronic device," and "Man who died in cliff fall was visiting."

More at ABC News 10 San Diego:



Still more, "Family 'heartbroken' after man falls to his death."

Today, Americans More Likely to Say Terrorists Are Winning Than at Any Time Since 9/11 (VIDEO)

Frankly, this is just sad, considering all the sacrifices made by U.S. military personnel.

Of course, the Democrats are the party of defeat, so it's no surprise the public thinks we're losing the war on terror.

At CNN:

'Undeclared' Voters Could Be Wildcard in New Hampshire

New Hampshire has both election-day voter registration and an open primary system. It makes for intense voter mobilization right up to election day.

At the Los Angeles Times, "In New Hampshire, undeclared voters could be a key wild card in the primary":

Catherine Johnson's day started at 6 a.m. She left her home in Hanover, drove 100 miles southeast across New Hampshire to a campaign event in Plaistow, then worked her way back with stops in Londonderry, Bedford and Goffstown.

Her itinerary rivals that of some presidential candidates. But Johnson will be casting a ballot, not appearing on one. She wanted to do her homework.

"I'm having so much fun," Johnson said recently as she talked of watching Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who campaigned Dec. 19 for Sen. Lindsey Graham's now-ended GOP run, and of planning to see New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is seeking the Republican nomination. She also plans to attend a Democratic primary debate.

"I just want to vote for who I think is the best leader for this time in our country's history. And I'm not sure I know who that is yet," she said.

Johnson is registered as an independent — "undeclared," as such voters are called in New Hampshire — one of 380,993, more than 40% of the electorate, who can choose to vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary on Feb. 9.

She grew up in Republican politics, the daughter of a former state party chairman, and said she spent her 7th birthday stuffing envelopes for her father's Senate campaign.

After voting for McCain in the 2008 primary, she supported President Obama for reelection in 2012, she said. She met Hillary Clinton this year and is considering the former secretary of State, but is concerned about Donald Trump's standing in the polls and considering which Republican might be the best alternative.

"You want your vote to count," she said.

Not all undeclared voters will put in her kind of mileage in weighing their options, but neither is Johnson a total anomaly in this state, which grows obsessed with presidential politics every four years. Undeclared voters represent a significant wild card here, and campaigns will work overtime to monitor their changing attitudes in the final weeks before the first ballots are cast.

"You have to recognize there's always going to be shifting ground because of the nature of New Hampshire," said Joel Benenson, chief strategist for the Clinton campaign. "You have to be vigilant and staying on top of it, and looking for changes and asking as many questions as you can to assess who's going to vote where."

Many undeclared voters are not truly independents and vote consistently in one primary or the other, analysts stress. The true swing, independent vote here might be as little as 4% of the final electorate, said Andy Smith, a University of New Hampshire pollster.

But in a close primary contest, those voters can make a significant difference. So can undeclared voters who lean toward one party or the other but don't vote in every election. Both groups add another unpredictable element to a state where more than a third of voters often make up their minds in the final three days before the primary, according to exit polls taken over the years.

It's Time to Rally Around Donald Trump

From Diana West, at Big Government (via Memeorandum):

Brent Bozell has called on conservatives to rally around Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)97%
 for the Republican presidential nomination. Ted Cruz is a good man and a fine candidate — my own second choice — but I believe GOP frontrunner Donald Trump is the candidate for American patriots to rally around.

Bozell states that Cruz is the one candidate who will return the United States to “her Constitutional foundations and Judeo-Christian values,” explaining:

On every issue of crucial importance to conservatives—defunding Planned Parenthood, ending the Obamacare nightmare, reducing the size of government, opposing amnesty—Cruz is not only with conservatives, he’s led the fight for conservatives.

To be honest, if these were the only issues under discussion in this GOP presidential primary season I would hardly be able to make myself pay attention. It’s not that they are unimportant issues. Personally, I support every one of them. But they are not existential issues. They are not the issues on which the very future of the Republic hangs. They are issues that a responsible Republican House and Senate, if they were loyal to their oath and to their constituents, could today begin to rectify all by themselves.

If they did — or if, say, a President Cruz were to ensure that Planned Parenthood was defunded, Obamacare ended, government trimmed, and amnesty once again staved off for another election cycle — we would all rejoice. However, the Constitution, the Republic, would be no more secure. On the contrary, they would still teeter on the edge of extinction, lost in a demographic, political, and cultural transformation that our fathers, founding and otherwise, would find inconceivable — and particularly if they ever found out that the crisis took hold when We the People lost our nerve even to talk about immigration and Islam.

It is in this danger zone of lost nerve and the vanishing nation-state where the extraordinary presidential candidacy of Donald Trump began. Like the nation-state itself, it started with the concept of a border, when Donald Trump told us he wanted to build a wall. Circa 21st-century-America, that took a lot of nerve.

After all, Americans don’t have walls. We don’t even have a border. We have “border surges,” and “unaccompanied alien minors.” We have “sanctuary cities,” and a continuous government raid on our own pocketbooks to pay for what amounts to our own invasion. That’s not even counting the attendant pathologies, burdens, and immeasurable cultural dislocation that comes about when “no one speaks English anymore.” A wall, the man says?

The enthusiasm real people (as opposed to media and #GOPSmartSet) have shown for Trump and his paradigm-shattering wall is something new and exciting on the political scene. So is the “yuge” sigh of relief. Someone sees the nation bleeding out and wants to stanch the flow. Yes, we can (build a wall). From that day forward, it has been Trump, dominating the GOP primary process and setting all of the potentially restorative points of the agenda, compelling the other candidates to address them, and the MSM, too. Blasting through hard, dense layers of “political correctness” with plain talk that shocks, Trump has set in motion very rusty wheels of reality-based thinking, beginning a long-overdue honest-to-goodness public debate about the future of America — or, better, whether there will be a future for America. That debate starts at the border, too.

A well-defended border is an obvious requisite for any nation-state. It bears noting, however, that before Donald Trump, not one commander in chief, and (aside from former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-CO), not one figure of national fame and repute I can think of had ever put it to the people of this land that a wall was a way to stop our border crisis: the unceasing flow into the nation of illegal masses of mainly Spanish-speaking aliens, among them terrorists, criminals (yes, including rapists and murderers) and transnational gangs. On the contrary, crime and chaos at the U.S. non-border are what every branch and bureaucracy of our government expect We, the People to accept as normal — and pay for as good citizens.

But good citizens of what — the world?

For many decades, the unspoken answer  to this inconceivable question (inconceivable, that is, before Trump) has been yes. “We Are the World” has been the USA’s unofficial anthem, the political muzak of our times that we either hum along to, or accept in teeth-gritted silence for fear of censure (or cancelled party invitations). “Openness,” “multiculturalism,” “globalism” — all have been pounded into us for so long that I think Americans despaired of ever hearing anyone give voice again to a patriotic vision of American interests. Then Trump came along and changed the tune. Americans perked up their ears. Maybe a wall — which is just the beginning of Trump’s detailed immigration policy, which Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)80%
 calls “exactly the plan America needs” — would make America possible again. That would be great, indeed.

Does Trump see it all this way, or is he going on “feel”? I don’t claim to know, although by this time in the political season, I think I am beginning to get a sense of Trump. When it comes to what is important, beginning with immigration, Trump’s instincts are as formidable as his courage. Notwithstanding Cruz and his consistent conservatism (in which Bozell places great stock), immigration wouldn’t even be a campaign issue without Donald Trump. In my opinion, the Trump plan is absoutely essential to any possible return, as Bozell puts it, to America’s constitutional foundations and Judeo-Christian principles. I actually think of it as our last shot...

Still more.

Phyllis Schlafly also argue's that Trump's the last hope for America.

Boy, conservatives have a bleak view of our prospects. You can understand why.

BONUS: "The Political Establishment's Terrified by Donald Trump's 'Tangible American Nationalism'."

Riot Ideology

From Fred Siegel, at the O.C. Register, "New riot ideology: Results through coercion":

In the summer of 1966, Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach warned that there would be riots by angry, poor minority residents in “30 or 40” American cities if Congress didn’t pass President Lyndon Johnson’s Model Cities antipoverty legislation. In the late 1960s, New York Mayor John Lindsay used the fear of such rioting to expand welfare rolls dramatically at a time when the black male unemployment rate was about 4 percent. And in the 1980s, Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry articulated an explicitly racial version of collective bargaining – a threat that, without ample federal funds, urban activists would unleash wave after wave of racial violence.

“I know for a fact,” Barry explained, “that white people get scared of the [Black] Panthers, and they might give money to somebody a little more moderate.”

This brand of thinking, which I call the riot ideology, influenced urban politics for a generation. Perhaps its model city was Baltimore, which was consumed in 1968 by race riots so intense that the Baltimore police, 500 Maryland state troopers and 6,000 National Guardsmen were unable to quell them. The “insurrection” was halted only when nearly 5,000 federal troops requested by Maryland Gov. Spiro Agnew arrived.

Since 1968, Baltimore has proved remarkably adept at procuring state and federal funds, but never really recovered from the riots. And the lawlessness never fully subsided. What began as a grand bargain to avert further racial violence after 1968 descended over the decades into a series of squalid shakedowns. Antipoverty programs that had once promised to repair social and family breakdown became by the 1990s self-justifying and self-perpetuating.

In the wake of the 2014 riots in Ferguson, Missouri, and the 2015 West Baltimore riots, a new riot ideology has taken hold, one similarly intoxicated with violence and willing to excuse it, but with a different goal. The first version of the riot ideology assumed that not only cities, but also whites could be reformed; the new version assumes that America is inherently racist beyond redemption and that the black inner city needs to segregate itself from the larger society.

The West Baltimore rioters of 2015 didn’t call for more LBJ-style antipoverty projects, but for less policing. In a “keep off our turf” version of belligerent multiculturalism, the rioters see police as both to blame for black criminality and as an embodiment of bourgeois white values. The old riot ideology referred to mostly white urban police forces as occupying armies; the new version sees even Baltimore’s integrated police force, under the leadership of a black mayor and (until recently) a black police chief, as an occupying army. Withdrawing the police from black neighborhoods is the only acceptable solution.

This new racial politics is not only coalescing around activists claiming to speak for urban blacks – represented publicly by groups like Black Lives Matter – but also is expressed in the writings of best-selling author Ta-Nehisi Coates. And Baltimore is once again center stage...

More.

The long version is at City Journal, "The Riot Ideology, Reborn."

'Son of Saul'

I saw 'Son of Saul' yesterday at the Nuart Theater, in West L.A.

Saul is a sonderkommando at Auschwitz. He's among the trustee prisoners who prepare and clean the gas chambers, removing the bodies and sending them to the ovens, and then shoveling and disposing of the ashes. It's of course the most hellish, unimaginable setting you could think of, and that's part of the captivation of this film. It's shot with a super truncated, up-close focus, primarily on Saul, with the background very blurred, and images often fleeting, which is designed to foster the imagination of the viewer. I'd prefer a little more realism myself, although the method is indeed effective. The film's also fast-paced and the action seemingly busy all the time. Saul is to a point dehumanized by it. But he comes across a boy who just having been murdered, is being prepared for burning. Saul wants to save him. He wants to give him a decent burial, with the Kaddish from a rabbi. He takes the boy as his own son. That becomes his all-encompassing quest, all the time surrounded by the wheels of industrial-scale death. Again, that's what makes the movie riveting.

In any case, I first learned of the film from Joe Morgenstern's review at the Wall Street Journal, "‘Son of Saul’ Review: From Holocaust Hell, Piercing Art." (And see, "‘Son of Saul’: Not About the Survivors.")

Also good is Kenneth Turan, at the Los Angeles Times, "Review: Set in Nazi death camps, 'Son of Saul' is a powerful, immersive vision of hell."

And see an interview with the director László Nemes, from earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival, at France 24, "'Son of Saul' makes waves at Cannes."

The official trailer is here.

Leftists and Their Media Lackeys Have Launched Campaign to Deny the 'Ferguson Effect'

From Heather Mac Donald, at WSJ, "Trying to Hide the Rise of Violent Crime":

Murders and shootings have spiked in many American cities—and so have efforts to ignore or deny the crime increase. The see-no-evil campaign eagerly embraced a report last month by the Brennan Center for Justice called “Crime in 2015: A Preliminary Analysis.” Many progressives and their media allies hailed the report as a refutation of what I and others have dubbed the “Ferguson effect”— cops backing off from proactive policing, demoralized by the ugly vitriol directed at them since a police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., last year. Americans are being asked to disbelieve both the Ferguson effect and its result: violent crime flourishing in the ensuing vacuum.

In fact, the Brennan Center’s report confirms the Ferguson effect, while also showing how clueless the media are about crime and policing.

The Brennan researchers gathered homicide data from 25 of the nation’s 30 largest cities for the period Jan. 1, 2015, to Oct. 1, 2015. (Not included were San Francisco, Indianapolis, Columbus, El Paso and Nashville.) The researchers then tried to estimate what 2015’s full-year homicide numbers for those 25 cities would be, based on the extent to which homicides were up from January to October this year compared with the similar period in 2014.

The resulting projected increase for homicides in 2015 in those 25 cities is 11%. (By point of comparison, the FiveThirtyEight data blog looked at the 60 largest cities and found a 16% increase in homicides by September 2015.) An 11% one-year increase in any crime category is massive; an equivalent decrease in homicides would be greeted with high-fives by politicians and police chiefs. Yet the media have tried to repackage that 11% homicide increase as trivial.

Several strategies are employed to play down the jump in homicides. The simplest is to hide the actual figure. An Atlantic magazine article in November, “Debunking the Ferguson Effect,” reports: “Based on their data, the Brennan Center projects that homicides will rise slightly overall from 2014 to 2015.” A reader could be forgiven for thinking that “slightly” means an increase of, say, 2%. Nothing in the Atlantic write-up disabuses the reader of that mistaken impression. The website Vox, declaring the crime increase “bunk,” is similarly discreet about the actual homicide rate, leaving it to the reader’s imagination. Crime & Justice News, published by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, coyly admits that “murder is up moderately in some places” without disclosing what that “moderate” increase may be.

A second strategy for brushing off the homicide surge is to contextualize it over a long period. Because homicides haven’t returned to their appalling early 1990s or early 2000s levels, the current crime increase is insignificant, the Brennan Center and its media supporters suggest, echoing an argument that arose immediately after I first documented the Ferguson effect nationally.

“Today’s murder rates are still at all-time historic lows,” write the Brennan researchers. “In 1990 there were 29.3 murders per 100,000 residents in these cities. In 2000, there were 13.8 murders per 100,000. Now, there are 9.9 murders per 100,000 residents. Averaged across the cities, we find that while Americans in urban areas have experienced more murders this year than last year, they are safer than they were five years ago and much safer than they were 25 years ago.”

The Atlantic is similarly reassuring about today’s homicide rate: “The relative uptick”—which, again, the magazine never specifies—“is still small compared with the massive two-decade drop that preceded it.” True enough, though irrelevant—good policing over the past two decades produced an extraordinary 50% drop in crime. America isn’t going to give all that back in one year. The relevant question: What is the current trend? If this year’s homicide and shooting outbreak continues, those 1990s violent crime levels will return sooner than anyone could have imagined.

The most desperate tactic for discounting the homicide increase is to disaggregate the average. “Fears of ‘a new nationwide crime wave’ are premature at best and wildly misleading at worst,” asserts the Atlantic, because the “numbers make clear that violent crime is up in some major U.S. cities and down in others.”

But such variance is inherent in any average. If there weren’t variation across the members of a set, no average would be needed. Any national crime increase or decrease will have counterexamples of the dominant trend within it, yet policy makers and analysts rightly find the average meaningful. The Ferguson effect’s existence does not require that every city experience depolicing and a resulting crime increase. Enough cities—in particular, those with significant black populations and where antipolice agitation has been most strident—are experiencing murder increases that cannot be ignored.

Baltimore’s per capita homicide rate, for example, is now the highest in its history, according to the Baltimore Sun: 54 homicides per 100,000 residents, beating its 1993 rate of 48.8 per 100,000 residents. Shootings in Cincinnati, lethal and not, were up 30% by mid-September 2015 compared with the same period in 2014. Homicides in St. Louis were up 60% by the end of August. In Los Angeles, the police department reports that violent crime has increased 20% as of Dec. 5; there were 16% more shooting victims in the city, while arrests were down 9.5%. Shooting incidents in Chicago are up 17% through Dec. 13...

Still more.

And see, "America's Legal Order Begins to Fray — #FergusonEffect."

Islamic State Fighters Flee Ramadi (VIDEO)

At the Wall Street Journal, "Islamic State Militants Flee Ramadi Stronghold Amid Iraqi Offensive":

BAGHDAD—Islamic State fighters fled their last bastion in the center of Ramadi Sunday night as Iraqi security forces encircled the area and prepared a final push to clear out any remaining fighters or explosives, Iraqi officials said.

State television beamed images of people celebrating in streets across the country, though the army had not yet declared Ramadi completely under its control. A number of Iraqi leaders said they were confident the city would fall within days, if not hours.

A defeat in the capital of Anbar province, which is just 60 miles from the capital Baghdad, would be Islamic State’s third major loss in as many months to Iraqi security forces and allied paramilitary groups. Those forces retook the oil refining town of Beiji in October and in November, Iraqi Kurdish forces drove the Sunni Muslim extremist group out of the strategic city of Sinjar.

A decisive victory in Sunni-majority Ramadi could strengthen national unity and soothe sectarian conflict in the Shiite-dominated country where Sunnis often complain of discrimination. It would also augur well for the coming battle to retake Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and Islamic State’s main stronghold in Iraq.

“My eyes are filled with tears now upon hearing that security forces managed to defeat Daesh in Ramadi,” said Sheikh Ghazi al-Goud, a member of parliament from Anbar province, using another name for Islamic State. “This is a victory for all Iraqis. Iraqis proved through the Ramadi fight that they are united, Sunnis and Shiite.”

One reason for the Ramadi operation’s slow progress has been the Iraqi government’s reluctance to include Iran-backed Shiite militia groups who have so far carried most of the fight against Islamic State. Moderate Iraqi leaders and U.S. officials worried that deploying the Shiite-majority militias to Ramadi could spark further sectarian strain, or lead some Sunni civilians to fight with Islamic State.

Iraqi troops, backed by U.S.-led airstrikes, have spent nearly three weeks fighting their way into Ramadi.

By late Sunday, Islamic State militants were fleeing Ramadi’s eastern suburbs along with their families and civilian hostages they had been using as human shields, a security official said.

Their departure came after Iraqi security forces encircled the city center and began pushing into a former government compound that had been the group’s last bastion in the city. Iraq’s military said they had occupied only one building in the government compound, a blood bank owned by Iraq’s ministry of health.

Iraqi troops picked their way through cratered city streets and booby-trapped buildings left behind by more than a month of almost continuous fighting, military officials said...

More.

Local Ski Resorts Going Blockbuster

Heh.

Reminds my of my younger days. We used to go skiing in the San Bernardino Mountains all the time.

This is going to be one of the best snow seasons in a long time, perhaps a decade or more.

Death Toll at 11 from Swath of Tornadoes That Wreaked Destruction in Dallas Area (VIDEO)

At USA Today, "Texas under siege: Tornadoes, flooding, snow and ice."

And at Dallas Morning News, "Garland tornado that killed 8 classified as EF4; 3 others killed in Collin County":

Hundreds huddled in shelters Sunday while trying to add up the damage to their homes, churches and schools caused by deadly storms that blew through North Texas.

A tornado that blew through Garland killing eight people Saturday night has been classified as an EF4, with winds up to 200 mph, according to the National Weather Service. And a tornado that killed two people in Copeville has been classified as an EF2.

Meteorologists also rated the tornado that touched ground in Rowlett an EF3.

Eleven people, including an infant, were killed in Dallas and Collin counties, and as many as 11 tornadoes were reported to the Weather Service. Meteorologists were working Sunday to confirm just how many tornadoes touched down across North Texas.

The reported tornadoes started as far south as Hillsboro and moving north toward Blue Ridge and northeast to Sulphur Springs...

Elites and Media Really Hate Donald Trump's Voters

True. So very, very true.

From Michael Walsh, at the New York Post.

See also the Chicago Boyz, "The Trump Phenomenon," and Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "ANALYSIS: TRUE. Elites and media really hate Donald Trump’s voters, Michael Walsh writes":

In the movie business, there’s something called the “cheer moment,” when the long-suffering hero finally decks his tormentor with a satisfying right cross. What the Beltway Republicans fail to understand is that their conservative base — which gave them stunning congressional victories in 2010 and 2014 and has nothing to show for it — has been longing for precisely that moment since Reagan crushed Mondale 49-1 in 1984.

The Trumpkins are sick of winning and having nothing to show for it, and their vengeance will be terrible. Maybe the Establishment should stop belittling them and listen instead.

Hat Tip: Memeorandum.

Behind-the-Scenes Footage with Swimsuit Model Hannah Davis (VIDEO)

She's fabulous.

Watch, via GQ, "It’s Our Pleasure to Present Hannah Davis."

Plus, flashback, "Sports Illustrated's Summer of Swim Heats Up with 2015 Cover Model Hannah Davis," and "Celebrate Fourth of July with Hannah Davis."

Ola Wanserska Wishes Very Merry Christmas by Taking Big Bite Out of Chocolate Santa Claus (VIDEO)

That's a big Santa, heh.

Watch, via Playboy, "Instagram Model Ola Wanserska Wishes You a Merry Christmas."

Kyra Santoro Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Casting Call (VIDEO)

More loveliness.

Israel's Homegrown Enemies

From Caroline Glick, at JPost.

Some background at the Times of Israel, "Clip shows far-right wedding-goers celebrating Duma killings":

Israeli youngsters, said to be friends of detainees in deadly firebombing, stab photo of 18-month-old victim; wave firebombs, rifles and knives at Jerusalem event.

And watch, "Jewish Radicals Celebrating Wedding by Stabbing Photo of Dawabsheh Baby."

Hey, it's a problem. No beating around the bush, although Glick denounces the left's false equivalence between Jewish supporters of right-wing terrorism and the global left's support for Palestinian-Iranian-Islamic terrorism for the destruction Israel.

Graduation Rates Rise, But Fewer Students Ready for College-Level Academic Work

The story's out of Greenville, S.C., so you can guess the race of the students who're graduating underprepared.

At the New York Times, "As Graduation Rates Rise, Experts Fear Diplomas Come Up Short":

GREENVILLE, S.C. — A sign in a classroom here at Berea High School, northwest of downtown in the largest urban district in the state, sends this powerful message: “Failure Is Not an Option. You Will Pass. You Will Learn. You Will Succeed.”

By one measure, Berea, with more than 1,000 pupils, is helping more students succeed than ever: The graduation rate, below 65 percent just four years ago, has jumped to more than 80 percent.

But that does not necessarily mean that all of Berea’s graduates, many of whom come from poor families, are ready for college — or even for the working world. According to college entrance exams administered to every 11th grader in the state last spring, only one in 10 Berea students were ready for college-level work in reading, and about one in 14 were ready for entry-level college math. And on a separate test of skills needed to succeed in most jobs, little more than half of the students demonstrated that they could handle the math they would need.

It is a pattern repeated in other school districts across the state and country — urban, suburban and rural — where the number of students earning high school diplomas has risen to historic peaks, yet measures of academic readiness for college or jobs are much lower. This has led educators to question the real value of a high school diploma and whether graduation requirements are too easy.

“Does that diploma guarantee them a hope for a life where they can support a family?” asked Melanie D. Barton, the executive director of the Education Oversight Committee in South Carolina, a legislative agency. Particularly in districts where student achievement is very low, she said, “I really don’t see it.”

Few question that in today’s economy, finishing high school is vital, given that the availability of jobs for those without a diploma has dwindled. The Obama administration has hailed the rising graduation rate, saying schools are expanding opportunities for students to succeed. Earlier this month, the Department of Education announced that the national graduation rate hit 82 percent in 2013-14, the highest on record.

But “the goal is not just high school graduation,” Arne Duncan, the departing secretary of education, said in a telephone interview. “The goal is being truly college and career ready.”

The most recent evaluation of 12th graders on a national test of reading and math found that fewer than 40 percent were ready for college level work. College remediation and dropout rates remain stubbornly high, particularly at two-year institutions, where fewer than a third who enroll complete a degree even within three years.

In South Carolina, even with a statewide high school graduation rate of 80.3 percent, some business leaders worry that not enough students have the abilities they need for higher-skilled jobs at Boeing, Volvo and BMW, which have built plants here in recent years. What is more, they say, students need to be able to collaborate and communicate effectively, skills they say high schools do not always teach.

“If you look at what a graduation diploma guarantees today,” said Pamela P. Lackey, the president of AT&T South Carolina, “the issue is we have a system of education that prepares them for a different type of work than we have as a reality today.”

Still, there is no single reason these rates have increased.

Economists point to a decline in the teenage pregnancy rate, as well as a reduction in violent crime among teenagers. Some districts use data systems to identify students with multiple absences or failed classes so educators can better help them. And an increasing number of states and districts offer students more chances to make up failed credits online or in short tutoring sessions without repeating a whole semester or more.

States also vary widely in diploma requirements. In California, South Carolina and Tennessee, the authorities have recently eliminated requirements that students pass exit exams to qualify for a diploma. Alaska, California, Wisconsin and Wyoming demand far fewer credits to graduate than most states, according to the Education Commission of the States, although local school districts may require more.

According to one analysis of requirements for the class of 2014, 32 states did not require that all graduates take four years of English and math through Algebra II or its equivalent, which is often defined as the minimum to be prepared for college.

“Students and their families rely on and trust the high school diploma as a signal of readiness,” said Alissa Peltzman, the vice president of state policy at Achieve, a nonprofit that performed the study. “It needs to mean something. Otherwise, it’s a false promise for thousands of students.”

Over the past decade in California, several large urban districts adopted coursework guidelines aligned to entrance requirements at the state’s public universities. Los Angeles initially required that students earn at least a C in those classes, but the number of students on track to graduate plummeted. Now grades of D or higher are accepted...

I'd bet reduced standards are the No. 1 factor in reduced college readiness. Certainly in California, if not the country as a whole. I mean, sheesh, a passing grade is a D for college credit, even in my political science classes.

But continue reading.

And it's interesting to note the inequality implications when comparing these less-well-off urban schools with affluent suburban ones, like the New Jersey school district where the battles are over whether students are pushed to get an A+ in calculus, rather than an A.