U.S. Pays Steep Ranson for Four Innocent Hostages Held Captive by Iran

I get sick thinking about this.

America is being held hostage, by the Kenyan interloper in the White House most of all.

At WSJ, "Iran’s Hostage Triumph":

Now we know that Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian and three other Americans were hostages held by Iran in return for U.S. concessions, in case there was any doubt. And on Saturday we learned the ransom price: $100 billion as part of the completed nuclear deal and a prisoner swap of Iranians who violated U.S. laws. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps should call this Operation Clean Sweep.

The timing of Iran’s Saturday release of the Americans is no accident. This was also implementation day for the nuclear deal, when United Nations sanctions on Tehran were lifted, which means that more than $100 billion in frozen assets will soon flow to Iran and the regime will get a lift from new investment and oil sales. The mullahs were taking no chances and held the hostages until President Obama’s diplomatic checks cleared.

We’re as relieved as anyone to see the four Americans coming home, though there was no legal basis for their arrests. Mr. Rezaian had been held since July 2014 and was convicted last year of espionage without evidence. The other freed Iranian-Americans include former Marine Amir Hekmati, Christian pastor Saeed Abedini and Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, a dual citizen whose detention wasn’t previously reported.

But the Iranians negotiated a steep price for their freedom. The White House agreed to pardon or drop charges against seven Iranian nationals charged with or convicted of crimes in the U.S., mostly for violating sanctions designed to retard Iran’s military or nuclear programs. Iran gets back men who were assisting its military ambitions while we get innocents. This is similar to the lopsided prisoner swaps that Mr. Obama previously made with Cuba for Alan Gross and the Taliban for alleged deserter Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

The U.S. didn’t resolve the case of Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who disappeared in Iran in 2007. Iran claims it doesn’t know where he is. Iran also refused to release its newest hostage, oil-industry executive Siamak Namazi, who was detained in October and accused of espionage though no charges have been brought. Perhaps he’ll be held for some future ransom.

The Obama Administration also agreed to drop the names of 14 Iranian nationals from an Interpol watch list. Most notable is the CEO of Mahan Air, an Iranian carrier sanctioned for transporting members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards that is suspected of transferring arms to Bashar Assad’s regime.

The prisoner swap helps to solve the mystery of the Obama Administration’s December flip-flop on new sanctions against Tehran’s ballistic-missile program...

Still more.

Amber Lee's MLK Day Forecast

It's going to be a lovely day.

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton Come Out Swinging at South Carolina Democrat Debate (VIDEO)

It's a yawner to me.

But see the Los Angeles Times, "Sanders and Clinton bring sharp elbows to final Democratic debate before voting starts":

After a succession of Democratic presidential debates largely absent of the acrimony and personal affronts that have defined the GOP face-offs, a sharp turn in tone was expected as the Democratic candidates took the stage here Sunday.

A tight race will do that. And Hillary Clinton now finds herself in one in the crucial early states of New Hampshire and Iowa. Tonight’s debate is the final such face-off with her main rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders, before Iowa holds its caucuses on Feb. 1, and may be her best opportunity to reshape the race in advance of the voting.

Heightening the stakes, Sanders released the long-awaited details of his Medicare-for-all health plan a few hours before the debate was to start.

The plan includes significant tax increases for all working Americans. Sanders' side argues those tax hikes would simply replace the health insurance premiums that most workers and employers pay, but Clinton is likely to point to them as examples of what she says are politically untenable positions taken by Sanders, the self-declared Democratic socialist from Vermont.

Sanders’ plan would impose a payroll tax of 6.2% on employers and a 2.2% flat income tax increase that would apply to all income above the current standard deduction – $28,800 for a family of four. That would be on top of several other tax increases Sanders has already proposed, most of which target taxpayers with incomes above $250,000.

Until recently, Clinton had made only limited efforts to attack Sanders. But her approach of running above the fray has fallen short. Instead, she's in a place the Democratic establishment had not expected her to be: struggling to avoid the embarrassment of losing early states.

With polls showing the race a toss-up in Iowa and Clinton losing to Sanders in New Hampshire, she has changed her approach. Her campaign no longer looks like an operation going through the motions on its way to an inevitable nomination. It is now aggressively seeking to reestablish a comfortable lead, relentlessly attacking Sanders along the way.

Using tough words toward a rival whom Clinton barely acknowledged for months – instead directing her energy toward critiquing the Republican candidates – suggests a campaign in a state of worry. The image of unflappability it has projected since the spring is gone...

Still more.

Hillary Clinton Holds 25-Point Nationwide Lead Over Bernie Sanders in Latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll

NBC's got a Democrat debate tonight.

I've got it on the TV, although I'll probably mute it and read, heh.

At WSJ, "Hillary Clinton’s Lead Over Bernie Sanders Widens":

WASHINGTON— Hillary Clinton has widened her lead to 25 percentage points in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds.

The former secretary of state leads Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders 59% to 34%, a slightly larger margin than the 19-point gap in December.

The new national poll comes as surveys in Iowa and New Hampshire show the race tightening in the states that play host to the first two nominating contests. While losses there would be a setback for Mrs. Clinton, the new Journal/NBC News survey suggests that she would retain strong advantages in the later primaries. Mrs. Clinton owes her durable lead nationally to her strength with key subgroups in the Democratic primary electorate, including nonwhite, older and moderate-to-conservative primary voters.

The race looks much different in Iowa and New Hampshire. Aggregates of recent polls show the contests to be close in both states, with Mrs. Clinton edging Mr. Sanders in Iowa and the Vermont senator claiming a lead in neighboring New Hampshire.

Nationally, the race has changed little since October, Journal/NBC News polling finds. Support levels haven’t budged much for either of the two leading Democrats since Mrs. Clinton bounced back from a late-summer swoon, which had been driven by questions about her family’s charitable foundation and a federal probe into her use of a private email server as secretary of state.

Four in five Democratic primary voters in the new survey said they could see themselves voting for Mrs. Clinton, relatively unchanged since last March. By comparison, two-thirds said they would consider voting for Mr. Sanders, fewer than those who said so of Mrs. Clinton but up from just 21% in March.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley remains an afterthought; some 22% said they were open to supporting him, and only 2% named him as their first choice.

All three Democratic presidential candidates will square off Sunday night in North Charleston, S.C., in a debate hosted by NBC...

More.

The debate's starting right now.

Movie Review: '13 Hours,' A Great Movie and an Enormous, Enormous Problem for Hillary

At AoSHQ:

13 Hours is, doubtless, the best film of Michael Bay's career. It's also an objectively good movie.

Let me get to the politics first. The film is not blatantly political. Do not doubt, however, that it does not have an overt political meaning. It's overt -- just not in-your-face.

The film is filled with the heroes wondering "When is someone coming to help us?"

There are shots of planes lying dormant while Americans are being shot to pieces.

There is an exchange where one soldier (actually, ex-soldiers working for the CIA called G.S.R.'s) says to the other, "I just saw on the news, they're saying this is because of a protest."

The other says: "I didn't see any protest."

And neither does the filmgoer-- there is no protest. There is simply a coordinated attack which starts out of nowhere. It's obvious what this is from the start; there is no "fog of war," at least not about what started this...

Keep reading.

Plus, Manohla Dargis has the high-brow cultural review at the New York Times, ignoring the politics but confirming that this is a major film, and director Bay's a chest-pounding patriot. See, "The NYT review of '13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi'."

Switzerland Seizing Cash and Valuables from Refugees to Cover Costs of Settlement (VIDEO)

Heh.

I'm sure leftists aren't too pleased with the Swiss government. It's acting less than "welcoming," you might say, lol.

At the Washington Post, "Switzerland criticized for also seizing cash and valuables from refugees":

LONDON — Only days ago, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) sharply criticized Denmark for an immigration bill that includes a series of changes that would allow police officers to seize valuables from refugees. The agency feared the bill "could fuel fear, xenophobia."

Now, the Geneva-based organization might have to focus its criticism on the country where it is based: Switzerland. The nation also allows state authorities to seize cash and valuables from refugees, several media organizations reported on Thursday and Friday. The little-known practice has been part of the country's asylum law for almost two decades, according to Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

Denmark's current debate on a similar law had led to international criticism, but Switzerland's practice started to make headlines only after the country's public broadcaster reported on the case of a refugee who  entered the country with about $2,000. Consequently, $1,000 were seized by authorities. The TV station aired a copy of a receipt he received from authorities in return.

The Swiss law allows authorities to seize any cash or valuables above the threshold of $1,000.  However, unlike the proposed Danish law, Swiss authorities usually seize money or valuables previously declared by refugees, rather than searching them for such items or cash amounts as they arrive...

It's hard out there for a refujihadi!

Still more.

Crossroads of the West Gun Show in Costa Mesa (VIDEO)

I don't know if these are the same sponsors as the Costa Mesa gun show I attended a couple of years ago, but to attend these things is to forget you're in California. There's a huge interest in Second Amendment rights in the once-Golden State, despite the far-left moral bankruptcy in our politics.

At ABC News 7 Los Angeles, "CROSSROADS OF THE WEST GUN SHOW COMES TO COSTA MESA AS OBAMA PUSHES TOUGHER GUN REGULATIONS."

Bundy Militiamen Remove Government Cameras from #Malheur Wildlife Refuge (VIDEO)

The standoff continues.

At the Portland Oregonian, "Oregon standoff: Occupiers remove cameras, clash with conservationists."

United States to Pay $1.7 Billion in Interest to Iran in Settlement of Claims

This is taxpayer funded, of course.

At Twitchy, "'Iran won the Powerball': ABC's Jonathan Karl reports U.S. just made $1.7 billion 'direct payment' to Iran."

And at Hot Air, "Iran getting $1.7B from U.S. in “debt and interest”."

PREVIOUSLY: "Obama Administration Ends Sanctions on Iran," and "Removal of Iran Sanctions Stokes Regional Anxieties."

Removal of Iran Sanctions Stokes Regional Anxieties

Following-up, "Obama Administration Ends Sanctions on Iran."

At WSJ, "Iran Accord Stokes Anxiety Among Its Rivals":

Foes worry about how Tehran will use billions of dollars of unfrozen oil receipts

Iran celebrated the removal of economic sanctions on Sunday, even as regional rivals warned that it was still out to destabilize the Middle East and needed to be closely monitored.

Western officials said the implementation of Iran’s nuclear deal with six world powers, which allowed for the lifting of some economic sanctions, raised prospects for overhauls within Iran’s political system. The deal has been a priority for President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate in the conservative clerical regime who was elected on a platform of engagement with the world in 2013.

Mr. Rouhani hailed the implementation of the deal, saying this had turned a “golden page” in the country’s history and heralded an economic revival.

“Conditions will be better than before for political and economic relations with regional countries, and we can resolve regional problems,” Mr. Rouhani said in a televised news conference, pointing to hope that the deal would create an atmosphere of reconciliation in the region.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that his country would continue to monitor Iran’s behavior closely.

“Even after the signing of the nuclear agreement, Iran has not relinquished its aspiration to obtain nuclear weapons and it will continue to undermine stability in the Middle East and spread terrorism around the world while violating its international obligations,” a statement from Mr. Netanyahu’s office said.

In Saudi Arabia, there was concern that the lifting of sanctions would bolster Iran and its allies. A statement by 140 Sunni Muslim clerics urged Muslims to unite against the threat of Shiite Iran. It criticized actions by some minority groups in Muslim countries and accused them of “serving foreign agendas,” a veiled reference to what they view as the loyalty of Shiites in Sunni-majority Arab countries to Iran.

Iran’s rivals are also worried that Tehran will spend some of the billions of dollars of oil revenue unfrozen by the lifting of sanctions on aiding regional allies that include Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Shiite group Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Shiite-linked Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Iran’s central bank governor, Valiollah Seif, estimated these funds at $32.6 billion on Sunday. But Treasury Secretary Jack Lew estimated last July that Iran would have access to about $50 billion after sanctions relief.

Mr. Seif said on Saturday that bringing the funds back to Iran would be unreasonable, adding they would likely be used to purchase imports, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. In his speech on Sunday, Mr. Rouhani only said the money “will be at the disposal of our people for economic activities.”

Mr. Seif and other Iranian officials such as Foreign Minister Javad Zarif held up the sanctions relief as a catalyst for investment in Iran and for future cooperation in the fight against terrorism...

More.

Obama Administration Ends Sanctions on Iran

Barack Hussein makes Neville Chamberlain look like a piker.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Nuclear deal ends era of crippling sanctions for Iran":

World powers signed off Saturday on a historic deal that curbs Iran's nuclear weapons-building, eases economic sanctions that have long crippled the Islamic Republic and rewrites diplomatic dynamics throughout the Middle East.

Tens of billions of dollars will soon be available to Iran, as well as access to the international banking system and global markets for the sale of oil and gas for the first time in years, greatly bolstering its ability to rejoin the world economy.

President Obama immediately issued an executive order canceling numerous sanctions levied by the U.S.

The deal, coupled with a secretly negotiated swap that freed prisoners including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, signals a new, if still tentative, era of cooperation between Washington and Tehran after decades of sharp-edged acrimony.

“Today marks the first day of a safer world,” Secretary of State John F. Kerry said in Vienna after the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, headquartered there, certified that Iran had complied with significant steps aimed at dismantling its nuclear production capabilities and had agreed to the most rigorous inspections on Iranian soil to date.

“Today marks the moment that the Iran nuclear agreement transitions from an ambitious set of promises on paper to measurable action in progress,” Kerry added.

Word of the U.N. certification rang out from Vienna to the capitals of the negotiating countries; on the campaign trail, where Republicans were quick both to praise the Americans' release and to decry the administration's negotiating techniques; and in Los Angeles, home to the world's largest Iranian expat community.

The two countries have been bitter enemies since Iranian Islamic revolutionaries seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and took hostages. No one is expecting the renewal of diplomatic ties any time soon — indeed, sanctions remain in place tied to Iran's human-rights record and funding of groups the U.S. views as terrorists — but the Obama administration credited a newfound rapprochement with seeing the nuclear deal to fruition as well as securing the freedom of the American prisoners.

That same spirit, which experts agree has to have been approved by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, also led to the quick release last week of 10 U.S. sailors detained in Iranian waters. What might have become a major international incident a few years ago was resolved within hours.

Even as Washington's relationship with Tehran seems on a smoother course — Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, are on the phone just about daily — the United States' longest-standing allies in the region, Saudi Arabia and Israel, have appeared increasingly on the outs.

Both Saudi Arabia and Israel opposed the nuclear deal, saying Iran could not be trusted and fearing a less-isolated Iran able finally to join the world economic and political stage. The governments of both are notoriously distrustful of and unfriendly with the Obama administration. U.S. officials can point to more fruitful talks with Iran while relations with Israel and the Saudis have turned increasingly frigid...

Still more.

Academics Finally Uncover the Closed Liberal Mind

Scratch a leftist.

At iOTW Report.

Paulina Vega Casting Call for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2016

Lovely for Sunday babe blogging.

Via Sports Illustrated:

Jenn Kaelin Bounces on a Hoppity Hop

Watch, "Jenn Kaelin Montage Video."

What a find, sheesh.

At the Hostages.

Rise in Young White Drug Death Rates

Well, the white working class is supposedly dying out, so this seems of a piece.

Now this.

Black Lives Matter activists are loving it.

At the New York Times, "Drug Overdoses Propel Rise in Mortality Rates of Young Whites":

Drug overdoses are driving up the death rate of young white adults in the United States to levels not seen since the end of the AIDS epidemic more than two decades ago — a turn of fortune that stands in sharp contrast to falling death rates for young blacks, a New York Times analysis of death certificates has found.

The rising death rates for those young white adults, ages 25 to 34, make them the first generation since the Vietnam War years of the mid-1960s to experience higher death rates in early adulthood than the generation that preceded it.

The Times analyzed nearly 60 million death certificates collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 1990 to 2014. It found death rates for non-Hispanic whites either rising or flattening for all the adult age groups under 65 — a trend that was particularly pronounced in women — even as medical advances sharply reduce deaths from traditional killers like heart disease. Death rates for blacks and most Hispanic groups continued to fall.

The analysis shows that the rise in white mortality extends well beyond the 45- to 54-year-old age group documented by a pair of Princeton economists in a research paper that startled policy makers and politicians two months ago.

While the death rate among young whites rose for every age group over the five years before 2014, it rose faster by any measure for the less educated, by 23 percent for those without a high school education, compared with only 4 percent for those with a college degree or more.

The drug overdose numbers were stark. In 2014, the overdose death rate for whites ages 25 to 34 was five times its level in 1999, and the rate for 35- to 44-year-old whites tripled during that period. The numbers cover both illegal and prescription drugs.

“That is startling,” said Dr. Wilson Compton, the deputy director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. “Those are tremendous increases.”

Rising rates of overdose deaths and suicide appear to have erased the benefits from advances in medical treatment for most age groups of whites. Death rates for drug overdoses and suicides “are running counter to those of chronic diseases,” like heart disease, said Ian Rockett, an epidemiologist at West Virginia University.

In fact, graphs of the drug overdose deaths look like those of deaths from a new infectious disease, said Jonathan Skinner, a Dartmouth economist. “It is like an infection model, diffusing out and catching more and more people,” he said.

Yet overdose deaths for young adult blacks have edged up only slightly. Over all, the death rate for blacks has been steadily falling, largely driven by a decline in deaths from AIDS. The result is that a once yawning gap between death rates for blacks and whites has shrunk by two-thirds.

“This is the smallest proportional and absolute gap in mortality between blacks and whites at these ages for more than a century,” Dr. Skinner said. If the past decade’s trends continue, even without any further progress in AIDS mortality, rates for blacks and whites will be equal in nine years, he said...

Keep reading.

Via Memeorandum.

Woman Killed Walking on Train Tracks in Lodi (VIDEO)

She was probably wearing ear buds, staring at the screen of a mobile device, totally oblivious to her surroundings.

And she paid the ultimate price.

Death by texting is up, in any case, way up.

At KCRA News 4 Sacramento, "Police: Train hits, kills woman walking on tracks in Lodi."

Without Erosion Barriers, Parts of Pacific Coast Highway Could Wash Out

Well, if that last round of storms was any indication...

At LAT, "Can Pacific Coast Highway withstand El Niño? Officials pour millions of dollars into creative engineering to make sure it does":

When El Niño storms hit Southern California, Pacific Coast Highway is the first line of battle between man and nature.

This scenic ribbon of asphalt, sandwiched by steep mountains on one side and ocean on the other, has fought with rock slides and erosion since it was built almost a century ago.

El Niño rains of the past have left portions of the coastal route battered. But they also have given transportation engineers and local officials lessons in how to make PCH more stable as California faces what experts forecast will be one of the strongest El Niños on record.

In recent years, officials have spent millions of dollars in creative engineering to strengthen PCH against a double threat: rocks and heavy rain coming down the coastal mountains and high surf crashing in from the ocean. Steel rock netting, concrete debris barriers and fortified sea walls now adorn the iconic route from Santa Monica to Ventura, the highway's roughly 30 most perilous miles.

This winter's conveyor belt of El Niño storms will be a major test of these advances.

"Keeping PCH open from natural disasters coming from both the bluff side and the ocean side is quite the challenge," said Deborah Wong, a deputy director for the California Department of Transportation. "It's at sea level, so there are no pumps to pump anything. It's right by the ocean, where you also have to deal with storm surges."

For tens of thousands of residents and commuters, PCH is the vital route to get safely in and out of their isolated canyon and coastal communities.

"PCH is very vulnerable, but people have to use it every day to get anywhere. It really is a lifeline," Malibu Mayor Laura Zahn Rosenthal said. "It has people living on it, it has stores, it has restaurants, it has parks. The school buses use PCH every day! ... It impacts our security. Let's say parts of PCH come down, and we have a fire, it's much more difficult for fire engines to come through."

Local residents, resigned to a history of mudslides and flooding, are bracing for the worst..

Keep reading.

The Terrorists Freed by Obama

From Stephen Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn, at WSJ:

The president has misled the American people about the detainees released from Guantanamo: Dozens are jihadists ready to kill.

The Obama administration in recent days has proclaimed a “milestone” in its efforts to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after achieving its long-held goal of reducing the remaining population to fewer than 100 detainees. With the expedited release this month of 14 detainees, the total now stands at 93.

This is nothing to celebrate.

In reducing these numbers, the White House has freed dangerous terrorists and set aside military and intelligence assessments warning about the risks of doing so. The Obama administration has deceived recipient countries about the threats posed by the jihadists they’ve accepted. And President Obama has repeatedly misled the American people about Guantanamo, the detainees held there, and the consequences of releasing them.

On Jan. 6, as part of the Obama administration’s accelerated Guantanamo process, Mahmmoud Omar Mohammed Bin Atef was transferred to Ghana, along with another detainee named Khalid Mohammed Salih al Dhuby. Ghana’s government portrayed the deal as an act of “humanitarian assistance,” likening the Yemeni men to nonthreatening refugees from Rwanda and Syria, noting that they “were detained in Guantanamo but have been cleared of any involvement in terrorist activities, and are being released.”

That description isn’t true for either of the men. Mr. Atef, in particular, is a cause for concern. Long before his transfer, the intelligence analysts at Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) assessed him as a “high risk” and “likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” (The JTF-GTMO threat assessments of 760 Guantanamo detainees, many written in 2008, were posted online in 2011 by WikiLeaks.) It is easy to understand the analysts’ worry about Mr. Atef. He was, they said, “a fighter in Usama bin Laden’s former 55th Arab Brigade and is an admitted member of the Taliban.” He trained at al Farouq, the infamous al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, “participated in hostilities against US and Coalition forces, and continues to demonstrate his support of UBL and extremism.”

Most ominously, the report warns that he “has threatened to kill US citizens on multiple occasions including a specific threat to cut their throats upon release.”

The obvious question: Why did officials in Ghana claim that Mr. Atef had been “cleared”? Perhaps because that is what the Obama administration led them to believe. Jojo Bruce-Quansah, the information minister at Ghana’s embassy in Washington, D.C., told us that the U.S. government provided assurances that Mr. Atef was “never involved in terrorism” and presented little risk. “If that assurance was not there,” he said, there is “no way” his government “would have taken the detainees.”

How does the White House square the intelligence assessment of Mr. Atef with the assurances the administration gave Ghana? Myles Caggins, a spokesman for the National Security Council, wouldn’t address that question directly, instead telling us that Mr. Obama’s Guantanamo Review Task Force, which included officials from six government agencies, approved him for transfer “nearly six years ago.” Mr. Caggins declined to address the damning JTF-GTMO assessment.

But there is another problem with Mr. Caggins’s explanation. The president’s Guantanamo task force, which finished its work in January 2010, didn’t clear either Mr. Atef or Mr. Dhuby of involvement in terrorist activities, nor did the task force recommend their release.

The Obama administration is understandably reluctant to be forthcoming about the risks associated with closing Guantanamo—because the risks are significant. If the two detainees released to Ghana, or any of the 10 Yemeni men sent from Guantanamo to Oman on Thursday, return to waging jihad, they will hardly be alone among their former fellow detainees. According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 196 ex-detainees are now confirmed as, or suspected of, having returned to the fight; 122 of these recidivists are currently at-large...

Keep reading.

And see Hayes at the Weekly Standard, "Lying About Gitmo."

Hannah Davis Rockin’ Hawaiian Bikini Photo Shoot

At GCeleb.

Previous Hannah Davis blogging is here.

FBI Convinced Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik Tried to Detonate Bomb During San Bernardino Attack (VIDEO)

Reportedly Syed Farook placed a backpack full of bombs under a table during the holiday party, then left the scene and came back with Tashfeen to launch the attack.

At the Los Angeles Times, "FBI is now convinced that couple tried to detonate bomb in San Bernardino terror attack":

The FBI's top investigator in the San Bernardino terrorist attack said Friday that the husband and wife who shot and killed 14 people on Dec. 2 intended to detonate an explosive device inside the room, though the exact timetable of the plot remains unclear.

David Bowdich, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said Friday that investigators now believe that Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, attempted to detonate a pipe bomb hidden inside a bag at the Inland Regional Center.

What investigators still don't know is whether they planned to detonate the bomb first and then open fire on first responders, or to detonate the device as paramedics and police descended on the facility to tend to gunshot victims.

“Was the intent to detonate prior to their attack?” Bowdich asked. “We just don’t have the answer.”

During a news briefing last week, Bowdich said Farook brought a bag containing the pipe bomb into the facility when he arrived at 8:37 a.m. An FBI affidavit said the device was made of three galvanized steel pipes and smokeless powder and was attached to a remote-control toy car. The bomb was “armed and ready to detonate.”

Agents found a remote control for a toy car in the couple’s SUV, the affidavit said.

But this marks the first time officials have said they believe the couple attempted to detonate the device.

Farook and Malik drove around San Bernardino and Redlands between the time of the attack and their deaths in a gun battle with police hours later. In that three-hour, 42-minute window, the couple did not stray far from the facility, according to Bowdich. At one point, they even returned to Waterman Avenue and drove in the direction of the building.

A federal law enforcement source previously told The Times that it is possible the couple were unable to detonate the device because the remote was out of range. Sprinklers that went off after the shooting could have also interfered with the explosives, said the source, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about an active investigation.

Bowdich said it may be impossible for investigators to determine the couple’s exact plans for use of the bomb, as they have recovered no documents, schematics or other electronic data that reveal planning for the assault.

“And I will be quite frank. I am not sure we will ever know that answer,” he said Friday...

Keep reading.

How Donald Trump Won

This came out last weekend, actually.

I'm just now getting around to posting it, heh.

At Time, "Donald Trump’s Art of the Steal":

Read TIME's new cover story: How Trump Won. Now he just needs the votes https://t.co/idZIG2mfOV pic.twitter.com/pa2VcEgN1H

— TIME.com (@TIME) January 7, 2016

Read TIME's new cover story: Donald Trump’s Art of the Steal https://t.co/IGIka3rJEW pic.twitter.com/ZW325wY46e

— TIME.com (@TIME) January 8, 2016

How the real estate magnate took the Republican Party from its old bosses.

There is a reason most presidential candidates stump through diners and living rooms this time of year. They can’t fill a bigger room.

And then there is Donald J. Trump.

On the second day of January, in the Gulf Coast town of Biloxi, Miss., at least 13,000 stood for hours in a stinging chill to pack an entire sports arena for Trump, and when that venue was full, the overflow spilled into a second megaspace nearby. Trump called it the biggest crowd in Mississippi political history, which is exactly what you’d expect him to say, and also entirely plausible.

A few days earlier, Trump had packed a convention hall in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Two days later, he filled the 8,000-seat Paul Tsongas Center in Lowell, Mass., with people who waited on line in subfreezing cold. The next night, after standing for two hours in single-digit temperatures, locals filled the equivalent of two high school gymnasia on the Vermont–New Hampshire border to catch Trump’s revival show.

Given these crowds, the unprecedented Trump-driven television ratings for GOP debates and his unsinkable run at the top of the national polls–a streak of more than five months and counting–even the most mainstream Republicans are coming to grips with an idea they have resisted since last summer. This could be their nominee. And they are asking themselves, could they stop worrying and, perhaps, learn to love the Donald?

Leading Republicans unhappily find themselves deep in “probing” conversation, asking, “perhaps he wouldn’t be so bad,” says veteran strategist and lobbyist Ed Rogers. True, Trump is a wild card, a flamethrower, a man with no known party loyalties and no coherent political principles, a thrice-married casino mogul and reality-TV star, a narcissist and even a demagogue. On the other hand: Biloxi.

At a time when the crown princes of Republican politics can’t mount so much as a two-car parade, Trump is drawing the biggest crowds by far. He has the largest social-media footprint–again, by far–and lodges the sharpest attacks on Hillary Clinton while attracting the greatest number of potential recruits to Republican ranks. As a result, Washington insiders from both parties are now calling around to GOP heavies, asking, “Do you know anybody on Trump’s campaign? Who is on his foreign-policy team? I need to get to know them fast.” Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, who entertained a discussion of Stop Trump strategies at a meeting late last year, now consults regularly with the front runner by phone. Even if the GOP could resist, should it? “He’s got the mo, he’s got the masses,” says Rick Hohlt, a GOP strategist. “He’s attracting a new class of voters.” Efforts to stop him have failed miserably; meanwhile, Trump may be getting smarter as a candidate, adds Hohlt. “He knows when to push and when to back off.”

The man is moving people, and politics does not get more basic than that. Trump is a bonfire in a field of damp kindling—an overcrowded field of governors and former governors and junior Senators still trying to strike a spark. His nearest rival, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, has traction in Iowa among the evangelical bloc and—in contrast to Trump—is a tried-and-true conservative. But with little more than half the support Trump boasts in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Cruz has a long way to go to show that he can move masses.

Cruz staffers, tellingly, have been studying a 1967 tome titled Suite 3505 as a playbook for their campaign. This F. Clifton White memoir, long out of print, tells the story of the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign. That was the last successful populist rebellion inside the Republican Party, propelling a rock-ribbed conservative past the Establishment insiders–just as Cruz hopes to do. But this triumph of intramural knife fighting proved a disaster at general-election time. Goldwater suffered one of the worst defeats in American political history. It’s no wonder that GOP leaders are every bit as wary of Cruz as they are of Trump.

In short, the GOP has awakened less than a month from the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary to find itself in bed between a bombshell and a kamikaze. It’s a sobering dawn for a political party that seemed, not long ago, just a tweak or two away from glory. Republicans dominate America’s state legislatures and governors’ mansions. They control both houses of Congress. So why is their electorate leaning toward the outstretched grip of such a man as Trump?

And could Trump be a sign of something bigger even than himself?

Traditional GOP power brokers have long since lost count of the indignities Trump has inflicted on their rites and rituals. Since entering the race in June with a fantastical promise to wall off America’s southern border and send the bill to Mexico, Trump has shredded the political rule book, scattering the pieces from his private helicopter. Have mouth, will travel. Policies that would be preposterous coming from anyone else–like barring all Muslims from entering the country or hiking U.S. tariffs while somehow erasing trade barriers erected by other nations–sound magical to his supporters when served up by their hero. Outrages that would sink an ordinary candidate, like mocking a person who has a congenital disease or giving a pass to Vladimir Putin for the murder of Russian journalists, lifted Trump atop the polls and then helped keep him there. What Flubber was to physics, Trump is to politics: an antidote to gravity, cooked up by a quirky but prodigious amateur.

Other candidates work to relate their lives to the struggles of ordinary voters. Trump does the opposite, encouraging Americans to savor vicariously his billionaire’s privilege of saying whatever he damn well pleases. “I love Donald Trump because he’s so totally politically incorrect. He’s gone after every group,” says Greg Casady, 61, an Army veteran who joined an immense Trump rally in Council Bluffs, Iowa. “He’s spending his own bucks–therefore he doesn’t have to play the politically correct game. He says what we wish we could say but we can’t afford to anymore.”

Trump is an anomaly, but not the only one in this 2016 campaign. There is Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an avowed socialist who leads the early polls in the New Hampshire Democratic primary–despite the fact that he spent most of his career spurning the Democrats. Though not as shocking or aggressive as Trump, Sanders is no less the darling of a discontented army. He too draws large audiences–but unlike Trump, Sanders faces an even stronger opponent in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Big Money, the supposed superpower of post–Citizens United politics, is a dud so far. Super-PAC bets by various billionaires have done nothing to fire up such candidates as former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Bush has filled screens in key states with millions of dollars in both positive and negative ads. The result: falling poll numbers. Touted as a front runner a year ago, Bush is mired in single digits and rang in the new year by announcing that he was scrapping a round of ads in favor of more ground troops in early-voting states.

Big Media too has been brought low. The collapse of Trump was predicted so often, so erroneously, in so many outlets that the spectacle was almost comic, like a soap opera that keeps killing off the same deathless character. Televised debates became seminars in media ethics, with candidates delivering stern lectures to their questioners, while offscreen, campaigns threatened to boycott networks and blacklist reporters.

What if all of these groundswells are part of the same tsunami? By coming to grips with Trump, Republicans might begin grasping the future of presidential politics, as the digital forces that have upended commerce and communications in recent years begin to shake the bedrock of civic life.

Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Rams' Proposal the NFL Couldn't Refuse

At LAT:

The National Football League's return to Los Angeles began behind closed doors — with a coin flip.

The St. Louis Rams won the right to go first, and their owner and a top executive made their pitch in a hotel ballroom, outlining plans for a multibillion-dollar stadium in Inglewood.

Next came the backers of the Carson stadium proposal — the owners of the San Diego Chargers and the Oakland Raiders. Recruited to oversee that project was Disney Chairman and CEO Robert Iger, who spoke of his love for the NFL and his branding expertise and reminded the 32 owners that, as head of ESPN's parent company, he had paid them all plenty of money over the years.

After Iger left, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones pushed back his swivel chair and stood to address the room.

"He said he paid us. Last time I checked, that money is coming from Disney shareholders, not him," Jones said, touching off laughter.

The moment of levity was a bad omen for the Carson project.

For 11 hours on Tuesday, the owners of America's most profitable sports league — with $10 billion a year in revenue — were cloistered in a suburban hotel, just a half-hour from the small airport and their parked private jets.

Their mission: to pick the teams and stadium that would bring professional football back to L.A. after a 21-year hiatus...

Keep reading.

Ted Cruz Goes on Multipronged Attack Against Donald Trump

Following-up from earlier, "Ted Cruz Taunts Donald Trump Over His Slipping Lead and Twitter Habits," and "Ted Cruz Taunts Donald Trump Over His Slipping Lead and Twitter Habits."

Here's more, at NYT:

FORT MILL, S.C. — Disparaging Donald J. Trump’s temperament, questioning his beliefs and even knocking his polling numbers, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas laid into Mr. Trump in earnest on Saturday and abandoned any reluctance to take on his popular Republican rival.

It was a remarkable turn for a candidate who, less than a week ago, was resisting opportunities to tweak Mr. Trump even as he raised questions about Mr. Cruz’s eligibility for the presidency because of his Canadian birth.

“Donald’s record does not match what he says in the campaign,” Mr. Cruz told reporters before a national security forum here, two days after the debate that amplified their feud.

The remarks came hours after a characteristic early-morning flurry of tweets from Mr. Trump in which he attacked Mr. Cruz over his place of birth and his ties to Goldman Sachs, among other subjects. Mr. Cruz’s wife, Heidi, is a managing director in Goldman Sachs’s Houston office (she is on leave during the campaign), and during his Senate race in 2012 he obtained a loan from Goldman Sachs that he did not properly disclose...

Keep reading.

Rescuers Search for 12 Marines from Downed Helicopters in Hawaii (VIDEO)

What the hell happened? Damn.

At the San Diego Union-Tribune, "High surf declines off Oahu as rescuers search for Marines."

And watch, via ABC News 10 San Diego:

Anne Swaney, ABC 7 News Producer in Chicago, Found Murdered on Belize Vacation (VIDEO)

This is horrible news.

Watch, at CNN, "ABC producer killed in Belize while on vacation":

Chicago journalist Anne Swaney's body was found in a river near a horse farm in Belize, where she was vacationing. CNN's Sara Ganim reports.

WATCH: Donald Trump Campaign Video: 'How to Caucus Iowa'

Following-up from a week or so ago, "Donald Trump Campaign Confident of Grassroots Infrastructure in Iowa (VIDEO)."

Katrina Pierson gave confident reassurances that Trump's campaign had a major Iowa ground operation.

Interesting now that they've got this video out. Remember, they're testing a novel theory in Iowa. Can Trump's people gotta put enough popular boots on the ground.

Watch:

Former RNC Chair Michael Steele Says Donald Trump Will Be the GOP Nominee

It's BuzzFeed reporting, so FWIW.

And Michael Steele was reviled as RNC chair, but I suspect he's right about this.

At Memeorandum, "Former RNC Chair: Trump Will Be the Republican Nominee."

Environmental Activists Protest Bundy Militiamen at #Malheur National Wildlife Refuge (VIDEO)

Here's a report from yesterday, at the Oregonian, "Birders protest in Bend against refuge takeover."

And environmental protesters are there today, via Conrad Wilson, "Kierán Suckling, Executive Director, of the Center for Biological Diversity being shouted down."

And watch, via the Oregonian.

The headline at the video calls the Bundy occupiers "militants," which is the MSM's euphemism for "terrorists," if you've been following along all these years. It's always Islamist "militants." Now, it's the Bundy "militants." No media bias there, no siree.

Ted Cruz Taunts Donald Trump Over His Slipping Lead and Twitter Habits

The big thing just weeks ago was how great these two were getting along.

Not so much now.

At Politico:

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.—Hours before Ted Cruz and Donald Trump were slated to appear here at a tea party gathering, Cruz unloaded on Trump, taunting him over his poll numbers and ratcheting up attacks on his conservative credibility.

“It seems Donald has a lot of nervous energy,” he told reporters earlier Saturday in Fort Mill, S.C. “It seems for whatever reason Donald doesn’t react well when he’s going down in the polls. I imagine he’s very dismayed by the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC poll that shows in a head-to-head…he’d lose to me. Knowing Donald, that’s got to drive him nuts.”

Those remarks were in response to a question about Trump’s Saturday morning tweetstorm, in which he skewered Cruz over his Canadian birthplace (though Cruz and many legal scholars say he qualifies as natural-born citizen) and his failure to properly disclose certain loans in his 2012 Senate race.

“In terms of a commander-in-chief, we ought to have someone who isn’t springing out of bed to tweet in frantic response to the latest polls,” Cruz said.

The Texas senator, who has dismissed Trump’s conservative credibility by accusing him of having “New York values,” unpacked that line in more depth, noting that Trump himself used the phrase in a 1999 interview in which he also described himself as supporting abortion rights and not ruling out partial birth abortion, among other more liberal positions.
“Donald’s explanation, not mine, is because he’s a New Yorker, he’s from New York,” Cruz said...

More.

Also, previously, "Ted Cruz Slammed for Comments Attacking 'New York Values' (VIDEO)."

Kelly Brook Posts Unseen Photos from Playboy 2010 'Retro' Shoot to Instagram

Hmm... I thought Instagram censored nudity?

Perhaps you're allowed to show some skin after all.

At London's Daily Mail, "'What happens when we play': Kelly Brook goes topless wrapped in just red ribbons as she shares unseen snaps from retro Playboy shoot."

She's more full-bodied today.

The 2010 photos are here, "Kelly Brook Launches British Invasion in Playboy Photos."

Alessandra Ambrosio and Cristiano Ronaldo for GQ

Some Rule 5 for the ladies as well.

At London's Daily Mail, "Bikini-clad Alessandra Ambrosio drapes herself around Cristiano Ronaldo's ripped torso as they front sexy GQ cover."

And a fan page, "Cristiano Ronaldo and Alessandra Ambrosio for GQ."

Presenting GQ's latest cover star: @Cristiano Ronaldo https://t.co/MTqzGQ08W2 pic.twitter.com/RfwAdxbgGX

— GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) January 16, 2016

Tony Hawk Skates Awesome Helix Loop (VIDEO)

Heh.

He blew out his hip trying. But he finally made it!

The guy's almost 50 years old, lol.

You gotta love it.

Damian Lewis and Paul Giamatti Do Battle in 'Billions' (VIDEO)

The series premieres January 24th, on Showtime.

At the Los Angeles Times, "In 'Billions,' Damian Lewis and Paul Giamatti are alpha males doing battle."

Ted Cruz Slammed for Comments Attacking 'New York Values' (VIDEO)

Donald Trump's response to Ted Cruz's comments on "New York values" were a high point of the debate. And Cruz has now apologized.

Here's video from the Fox Business News Debate, "Trump: Cruz was insulting to New Yorkers."

And see Mike Lupica, at the New York Daily News, via Memeorandum,"Lupica: There's just no ‘value’ to Ted Cruz and his criticism to ‘New York values’."

Also, at the New York Times, "New Yorkers Quickly Unite Against Cruz After ‘New York Values’ Comment."

And watch the local report, at CBS News 2 New York, "New York Values."

Glenn Beck: 'I don't understand the Donald Trump thing...' (VIDEO)

Heh.

Here's Glenn Beck, who wanted folks to go down to Texas last year and welcome Central American refugees, talking about Thursday night's debate, on O'Reilly's show:

Ted Cruz Preps New Attacks on Donald Trump

So much for the Donald and Teddy "bromance."

At Politico, "Cruz plotting new attacks on Trump":

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C.— The Ted Cruz who came out swinging at Donald Trump on Thursday night is here to stay, now willing to not only answer Trump’s criticisms but to eagerly define his rival’s weaknesses as the 2016 race in Iowa becomes a two-man contest.

“Iowa is three weeks away,” Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler said. “People want to know how you’re different. It’s time to tell how we’re different.”

It’s a dramatic shift for Cruz, who until this week either ignored or laughed off Trump’s occasional swipes, instead describing him at every turn as a “friend” whom he “likes and respects,” and appearing deeply reluctant to acknowledge disagreement with even Trump’s most controversial comments.

That kid-glove handling stemmed from Cruz’s desire not to alienate Trump’s many supporters. And aware that the Texas senator remains, for now, the second choice of some of those voters, the Cruz campaign is being careful to stress that the Texas senator is only responding to Trump after he picked a fight first by questioning whether Cruz, born abroad to a U.S. citizen, is eligible to run the country.

"We came prepared,” Tyler said of Cruz’s aggressive response on the “birther” issue, in which he cast Trump’s argument as a desperate gambit to recover lost ground in the polls...

More.

Kenneth Medenbach, Member of Bundy Militia at #Malheur Refuge, Arrested for Stolen Vehicle (VIDEO)

At KOIN News 6 Portland, "Man arrested for stolen Malheur Refuge vehicle."

Authorities should arrest them one by one, as militiamen step away from the refuge. Better to avoid a bloodbath that way.

More at the Portland Oregonian, "Protester arrested in Burns, accused of driving stolen refuge vehicle."

Jackie Johnson's Lovely Weekend Forecast

Via CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Holly Williams Reports on the Crisis in Europe's Refugee Policy (VIDEO)

Watch, via CBS Evening News, "More than a million refugees fled to Europe last year, desperate to escape the turmoil in the Middle East. Thousands more are still making the journey. But Europe's welcome mat is wearing thin."

Jeb Bush Donors Awaiting Orders to Abandon Ship

The bigger they come the harder they fall.

Wasn't Jeb the presumptive GOP nominee?

At Politico, "Bush donors await green light to jump ship":

When Jeb Bush announced a record fundraising haul in July, the Florida Republican rewarded major donors with a two-day celebratory retreat at the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. They also delivered a message: $114 million was just the beginning of how much cash they would need to win.

Now, seven months later and just 17 days before the first ballots are cast, Bush’s donors are no longer high-fiving or strategizing how to keep funds flowing. Instead, the money spigot is shutting off as the donor class believes it is just a matter of time before the candidate they threw so much money behind drops out of the race...

He's a nice man.

I'm just so pleased he's getting shown the door though.

Still more.

WATCH: Playmates Leisure Day

Via Playboy, "You Don't Have to Tell These Beautiful Women to Relax."

If Hillary Clinton Can't Mobilize Millennial Women, She'll Lose

From Stephen Green, at Instapundit, "FEEL THE BERN: 'Sanders winning millennial women from Clinton'."

PREVIOUSLY: "Hillary Clinton's Sinking Campaign Starting to Freak Out (VIDEO)," and "Bernie Sanders Takes Stand Against Pro-Wall Street Democrats (VIDEO)."

Dow Jones Industrials Fall 391 Points in Global Market Selloff (VIDEO)

Man, folks are losing a lot of money on their investments. I couldn't care less about all the wealthy hedge fund managers and big-wig Wall Street brokers.

What about regular folks who've been socking away wage earnings in IRAs, mutual fund 401(k)s, and the like?

Watch, Alison Kosik reports for CNN, "Oil price fears crush Wall Street stocks."

And at WSJ, "Dow Tumbles 391 Points Amid Global Rout:

Oil slides below $30 a barrel and China’s Shanghai index falls 3.6%.

Plunging markets are harbingers for the larger economy, so the Dems gotta be eyeing all this market turmoil with considerable anxiety. It's been 8 years since the collapse of AIG in 2008, which triggered the Great Recession. The economic crisis helped get Obama elected. Imagine if a similar market wipe-out helps destroy Democrats this year.

Keep an eye on the politics of this. Talk about volatility. And payback's a bitch.

More, at Zero Hedge, "Black Friday."

Sean Penn's 'Terrible Regret' About Rolling Stone El Chapo Article (VIDEO)

He thought he was going to start some big important discussion about the "failed" war on drugs, but instead instigated a media backlash against bogus celebrity journalism (you know, because Rolling Stone's not having credibility problems or anything).

At the Los Angeles Times, "Sean Penn's 'terrible regret' about his 'failed' El Chapo article: No new debate about War on Drugs."

Parts of Charlie Rose's "60 Minutes" interview aired today on CBS This Morning:

Simone Villas Boas Casting Call for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2016

Just counting down the days until the new issue's released, heh.

Via Sports Illustrated:

New Claudia Romani Bikini Pics!

At Egotastic!, "Claudia Romani Thongtastic Purple Bikini In Miami."

Previous Claudia Romani blogging here.

Hillary Clinton's Sinking Campaign Starting to Freak Out (VIDEO)

Not just Hillary's campaign, but top Democrats as well, including influential black Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina (where the crucial Democrat Party primary will be held Saturday, February 27).

Dems are wiggin' out.

Here's Gretchen Carlson with Ed Henry reporting from the campaign trail.

Watch, "Clinton campaign is starting to get nervous."

It's Time for Hollywood to Stop Defining Great Drama as White Men Battling Adversity

Ouch.

Following-up from earlier, "#OscarsSoWhite."

Here's Mary McNamara, at the Los Angeles Times:

The winner of the 2016 Oscar in practically every category is … white men facing adversity.

Just two years after the much-touted breakthrough of "12 Years a Slave," the best picture nominees announced Thursday, with a few notable exceptions, follow a dishearteningly repetitive story line of white men triumphing over enormous odds: The Hollywood blacklist ("Trumbo"), the vagaries of Wall Street ("The Big Short"), Cold War politics ("Bridge of Spies"), life alone on Mars ("The Martian"), a grizzly bear attack, murderous companions and the hostilities of a cruel winter landscape ("The Revenant").

Even "Spotlight," with its supporting actress nomination for Rachel McAdams, showcases a group of mostly male journalists struggling to expose the brutal crimes committed by the Catholic Church. And though there is feminine power aplenty in "Mad Max: Fury Road," the film's titular character is, of course, Max, and its lead actress didn't even get a nomination.

To be clear, these are all good stories, powerful, well told and beautifully acted. But in world filled with billions of people who are not white men, they are certainly not the only good stories, not by a long shot.

Though our demographics and attitudes continue to change, Hollywood's definition of great drama has remained stubbornly attached to standards and expectations set back when men were men (if they were white) and everyone else needed to just shut up and listen.

Obviously, plenty of films have challenged this sensibility, telling a wide variety of stories from many points of view. But when it comes to Oscar bait, the default remains too often set at literal reading of the four essential categories of conflict: Man versus man, man versus nature, man versus society and man versus himself. As many have already pointed out, the characters in the lead actor category were a writer, scientist/astronaut, tracker, inventor and artist. The characters in lead actress? Homemaker, mother/rape survivor, inventor, wife, clerk.

Certainly "Straight Outta Compton," "Creed," "Concussion" and "Beasts of No Nation" fit the "classic" definition of literary conflict. They just didn't fit, apparently, academy voters' ideas of a classic best picture...

Hypocritical, racist Hollywood.

Who woulda thunk it?!!

Still more.

Bernie Sanders Takes Stand Against Pro-Wall Street Democrats (VIDEO)

Sanders is interviewed on CBS This Morning.

He strains to avoid naming Hillary Clinton specifically, but his attacks on the Democrat embrace of Wall Street have her name on them.

Watch, "Sanders on differences with Clinton highlighted in campaign ad."

PREVIOUSLY: "Bernie Sanders' Surge Threatens Dreaded Replay of Hillary Clinton's 2008 Debacle."

Too Late to Stop Donald Trump?

This is the existential question establishment Republicans are asking themselves right now.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Too late to stop Trump? As he glides, other candidates fall back in debate":

Tuesday night’s fractious presidential debate was the long Republican campaign condensed into little more than two hours: Donald Trump sailed above the other candidates, who mostly engaged in round-robin fighting that left each of them wounded and him largely unscathed.

As a result, the debate, the sixth in a nomination contest that has defied predictions, left a GOP establishment that fears disastrous repercussions from a Trump nomination no closer to finding a way to head him off, with the first balloting now a little more than two weeks away.

Trump repeatedly dismissed the nuanced arguments of his peers in favor of the blunt and forceful assertions that have made the billionaire the party’s national front-runner.

Declaring that "I will gladly accept the mantle of anger," he made clear that he understands what many of his establishment foes still seem not to — that much of what they see as weaknesses in his campaign are the wellsprings of its support. But in this debate, he also sanded some of his sharp edges with humor and worked to humanize himself.

His opponents, by contrast, often acting with visible desperation to attract attention as voters start making up their minds, seemed mostly intent on fighting among themselves. That precluded any single candidate from rising above the others.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, tied with Trump in first-voting Iowa, tried to take on the businessman repeatedly, but found his complaints dismissed. He was himself pummeled by other candidates who want to replace him as Trump’s main nemesis.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, in particular, clashed angrily with Cruz over their positions on immigration and taxes.

Back when the campaign started, Rubio offered an upbeat new-generation pitch as the centerpiece of his campaign. But as Thursday night showed, he has stepped away from some of what made him distinctive as he has tried to conform to the GOP electorate’s mood. He now has adopted a much harsher tone and a bleaker assessment of the nation’s standing.

In the course of the conflict, he and Cruz emptied their opposition research files onto each other, with Rubio at one point moving from criticism of Cruz’s positions on immigration, trade, crop insurance and ethanol supports to accuse the Texas senator of having once called Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked U.S. secrets, "a great public servant."

"Edward Snowden is a traitor. And if I am president and we get our hands on him, he is standing trial for treason," Rubio said.

Republicans typically pick as their nominee the person who placed second the last time out, but this race has been nothing the party has seen before. The second-place finisher last time, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, has done so poorly that he was relegated to the three-candidate opening debate, which was held before the seven finalists took the stage.

Instead, it is Trump who has controlled the race...

More.

ADDED: Just saw this, from Jonathan Chait, at New York Magazine, via Memeorandum, "Have Republicans Given Up on Fighting Donald Trump?"

Amanda Carpenter is 'Back on at 8:15am, 10am, and 1pmET today!'

Heh.

She's bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, on Instagram, "Heyo!!"

Frank Luntz Analysis of Fox Business Channel GOP Debate (VIDEO)

Anna Kooiman's taken over for Elisabeth Hasselbeck, at least for now. And she's looking fabulous. She's got the interview with the focus-group man, Frank Luntz.

On Fox & Friends:



Folks liked Ted Cruz.

He may win Iowa. It's going to be really interesting on February 1st, man.

Donald Trump Responds to Nikki Haley's Attack: 'I'm angry because our country is run horribly...' (VIDEO)

A highlight from last night's debate:

#OscarsSoWhite

Yeah, I mean, c'mon.

Watch, at CBS News 2 Los Angeles, "#OscarsSoWhite Trends on Social Media as Hollywood Diversity Questions Remain."

Donald Trump - Ted Cruz Battle Goes Primetime During Fox Business Debate (VIDEO)

At Politico, "Cruz pounds on Trump in GOP debate free-for-all."

And watch, "Trump to Cruz: Democrats Will Bring Lawsuit Against You If You're Nominee."

Surging Donald Trump Opens Double-Digit Lead in Latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll (VIDEO)

This post is going up simultaneously to the Fox Business News GOP debate in Charleston.

At WSJ, "Poll: Donald Trump Widens His Lead in Republican Presidential Race":

WASHINGTON— Donald Trump has opened a double-digit lead over his next-closest Republican rival, less than three weeks before the first votes of the 2016 presidential race are cast, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds.

A third of people who said they would vote in a Republican primary in the nationwide survey said they favored Mr. Trump to be the GOP nominee, followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 20% support, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at 13% and retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 12%.

In December, Mr. Trump had led the No. 2 candidate, Mr. Cruz, by 5 percentage points. In the new poll, his lead widened to 13 points.

The survey casts doubt on the prospect that so-called establishment voters will rally behind an alternative to Messrs. Cruz and Trump, as far more GOP primary voters favor the two outsiders over candidates with more conventional messages and resumés.

As evidence, Mr. Trump preserves his lead when the field is reduced to five candidates in a hypothetical ballot, and again when it is culled to just three.

In a three-way match-up with Messrs. Cruz and Rubio, 40% favor Mr. Trump, while 31% support Mr. Cruz, who has drawn support heavily from social conservatives. Mr. Rubio, a favorite of many centrist, business-friendly Republicans, garners just 26%.

“Trump shows remarkable resiliency with the GOP primary electorate and has even increased his support since December, while Cruz has leveled off,” said Fred Yang, a Democratic pollster at Hart Research who conducts the Journal/NBC poll with Republican Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies...

More.

And at NBC News, via Memeorandum, "Trump More Than Doubles National Lead in NBC/WSJ Poll."

Check back for more political blogging with coverage of the Charleston debate throughout the evening.

Charlotte McKinney Wet T-Shirt for Tyler Kandel Studio Los Angeles (PHOTOS)

At WWTDD, "Charlotte McKinney Feels Topless."

She's not, but that wet t-shirt is something else.

Science of Public Opinion Polling Hits Crisis of Accuracy

I've been thinking about this, considering all the polls we're seeing for the primaries.

At Reason, "Why Polls Don't Work."

Outrage Over Iran Releasing Images of Captured U.S. Sailors on Their Knees (VIDEO)

Watch, via Inside Edition.

A nice clip that should go viral, jeez.

PREVIOUSLY: "WATCH: Humiliating Video Shows U.S. Sailor Apologizing for Vessel Drifting Into Iranian Waters," and "WATCH: Footage Shows U.S. Sailors Being Captured by Iranian Naval Forces (VIDEO)."

Bob Schieffer Returns to CBS News, Talks Politics: Donald Trump is 'Master Showman...' (VIDEO)

A great segment.

I like Schieffer, an old-time liberal who loves America. Not too many like that around any more.

And Schieffer notes that he never underestimated Trump, especially because of the degree of anger across the country. He says he's never seen anything like it, and that's during 50 years of covering politics at the top levels.

'Morning Joe' Slams Hillary Clinton (VIDEO)

Well, yeah.

She's the worst.

Mika can be pretty brutal too, lol.



RELATED: "Bernie Sanders' Surge Threatens Dreaded Replay of Hillary Clinton's 2008 Debacle."

Powerball's Biggest Winner: Government

Heh.

My wife buys tickets.

Not me. I don't like the odds, lol.

From Michelle Malkin:

Ka-ching!

Wednesday’s Powerball jackpot soared to $1.5 billion as get-rich-quick mania seized America this week. But you don’t need to wait for the drawing to know who’ll score the royal payoff.

The biggest winner of the multistate numbers game is — drumroll, please — Uncle Sam.

Powerball is a government-sponsored gambling racket in 44 states, plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The feds automatically skim 25 percent off the top of a lump-sum cash award. Additional state withholding taxes vary depending on residency status. Mega-winners are taxed at the highest federal income tax bracket (nearly 40 percent); those who live in states with personal income taxes could pay up to an additional 9 percent. Local municipal taxes can add another 3-5 percent to the tax burden.

Government lotteries of all kinds raked in a whopping $70 billon in revenue last year, according to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries. Cash-strapped states pitch the rackets as civic enterprises by purporting to earmark a portion of proceeds for public education, economic development and mass transit, senior citizens’ programs, professional sports stadiums and environmental protection.

As I’ve noted during previous, high-stakes lotto crazes, the state bureaucrats who run these schemes for numeracy-challenged consumers are free to ban outside competition — including private slot machines, phone betting, instant pull tabs and card rooms. The feds help out by limiting sweepstakes and Internet gambling, as well as exempting state lottery marketing materials from Federal Trade Commission regulations that guarantee truth in advertising.

That’s right. While cracking down on ads on everything from cereal to toothpaste to cars, Washington protects states that spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year falsely promising “a dollar and a dream,” “everyone is a winner” and “somebody’s gotta win — might as well be you.”

Numeracy challenged!

And ripped off by the permanent political bureaucracy!

Keep reading.

Academy Awards 2016 Nominees

"Son of Saul" was nominated for Best Foreign Film.

And I'm trying to get out to "The Revenant," but a lot's going on on the home front. Maybe tonight, but I prefer going to the bargain matinee. Regal Cinemas at the Tustin Marketplace has a $6.00 showing if you get there before Noon.

Maybe tomorrow, heh.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Oscars 2016: Nominated foreign films weave tales of war, betrayal and youth," and "Oscars 2016: What we learned about the Oscar races from this morning's nominations."

'You're Damn Right I'm Angry...'

Heh.

You're not supposed to be angry. Everyone says don't listen to the angry voices on the far side of the room. That's not who we are. That's not what we're about. That's not what it means to be an American, blah, blah.

Actually, Donald Trump is angry and he's channeling American anger.

Shoot, he could channel it all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, lol!

At Instapundit, "DONALD TRUMP: You’re Damn Right I’m Angry, And You Should Be Too."

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2016 Final Sneak Peak (VIDEO)

The new swimsuit issue will be on newsstands in a couple of weeks!

You gotta love it!

Barack Obama Leaves Behind a Desperate, Broken Country

From Bruce Haynes:

Obama leaves behind a broken and desperate country, once mesmerized by his promises of hope and change but today victimized by his failure and indifference. And his failure drives the presidential politics we are struggling to explain today.

His goals were to unify the country and transform our politics. But today, America remains more deeply divided than ever and largely untransformed economically and compromised internationally...

That pretty much nails it.

Keep reading.

Bernie Sanders' Surge Threatens Dreaded Replay of Hillary Clinton's 2008 Debacle

A dreaded replay for Hillary and Bill, lol.

And the Democrat establishment as well!

And this is the best thing about the Sanders campaign, and the reason I've been getting a kick out of him all along.

This is great!

At Instapundit, "PEOPLE REALLY JUST DON’T LIKE HER: Ed Morrissey: The Sanders Surge Threatens a Replay of 2008 for Clinton."

High-Stakes for Tonight's GOP Debate in South Carolina (VIDEO)

This is going to be great!

Watch, at ABC News, "Republican Presidential Candidates Prepare for Tonight's Debate."

And there's a Ted Cruz scandal brewing. See the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "Ted Cruz Didn't Disclose Loan From Goldman Sachs for His First Senate Campaign."

'13 Hours' — New Benghazi Movie Reignites Debate Over Democrats' 'Stand-Down' Order (TRAILER)

The film opens tonight in the O.C., and I guess in late-night showings nationwide. Then general release tomorrow.

It's gonna be great!

At Politico, "New Benghazi movie reignites ‘stand-down’ order debate":

The creators of a new Hollywood blockbuster about the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack are renewing the politically explosive allegation that commandos called to defend the U.S. compound were told to “stand down” — a claim Democrats say has no basis in fact.

With Michael Bay’s “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” set to premiere Thursday, the five surviving members of the six-man Benghazi security team have blitzed the airwaves to promote the film and renew their assertion that a top CIA officer delayed them from immediately answering State Department distress calls. Three even testified to the same before the House Select Committee on Benghazi last spring, several sources have confirmed to POLITICO.

“There is no sensationalism in that: We were told to ‘stand down,’” said former Special Forces Officer Kris Paronto, one of the CIA contractors who fought that night, in an interview with Politico. “Those words were used verbatim — 100 percent. … If the truth of it affects someone’s political career? Well, I’m sorry. It happens.”

Top Democrats on the Benghazi panel, however, said that’s more movie fantasy than reality.

“If the film portrays them as having ordered a stand-down, it’s clearly at odds with the facts,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), whose district includes Hollywood and who sits on the committee. “If the film portrays those who went to rescue people at the diplomatic facility as doing so in disregard of orders, that’s also plainly at odds with the facts. … It may make for good entertainment; it doesn’t make for a well-informed public.”

Lawmakers have grappled with the question of a stand-down order before, and several bipartisan reports on the attacks have found no evidence of such a command being passed down the chain. Moreover, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the CIA and the Defense Department have long dismissed the idea that anyone would have held back help.

But the renewed allegations have forced lawmakers to wrestle with the issue again, and Republicans in particular may find themselves in an awkward spot. If GOP members of the Benghazi panel dispute Paronto’s assertion, they could look like they’re disparaging Americans who fought and died in service of the country. But if they side with Paronto, investigators would directly contradict some big-name intelligence officials, including former CIA Director David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who say no one was ordered to stand down...

Or course the Dems gave the stand-down order. Just like they lied about the random anti-Muslim video that started it all. They'll do anything to win elections, even sacrifice American lives.

More.

Reports of Muslim Rapes Exacerbate Divisions Over Europe's Migrant Crisis

Well, you think?

At the New York Times, "Sexual Attacks Widen Divisions in European Migrant Crisis":

ROME — In Finland, militia groups are patrolling small towns housing asylum seekers in the name of protecting white Finnish women. In Germany, far-right protesters rampaged through Leipzig on Monday, vandalizing buildings in an “anti-Islamization” demonstration. In Italy on Tuesday, an anti-immigration regional government approved the text of a law making it difficult to construct new mosques as Muslim refugees are settled in the area.

Across Europe, the migrant crisis that has engulfed the Continent since the summer is provoking new levels of public anxiety after the New Year’s Eve sexual assaults in Cologne, Germany, where witnesses and the police described predatory gangs of mostly foreign men, including some refugees, groping and robbing young women. The Cologne police are also investigating allegations of rape.

While the police say the assaults in Cologne were carried out by hundreds of men, even that is a narrow sliver of the more than one million asylum seekers who entered Europe last year. Still, the anxieties provoked by the Cologne attacks quickly spread as reports emerged of similar New Year’s Eve assaults in other German cities, as well as in Finland and Austria.

While the details in some of those reports are sketchy, and none approach what happened in Cologne, they have touched an exceptionally raw nerve as European societies face the challenge of integrating and acculturating the asylum seekers, most of them Muslims, and a majority of those single men.

Far-right political parties, which have long invoked hoary stereotypes of dark-skinned foreigners threatening European identity and security, have pounced on the reports, having already capitalized on the inability of the European Union to secure its external borders while efficiently managing the movement of migrants inside the bloc.

“This has been the elephant in the room that no one is prepared to acknowledge — that the great fear is the fear of Islam,” said Alexander Betts, director of the Refugee Studies Center at Oxford. He argued that most mainstream politicians had failed to directly address these public fears or to provide enough clarity in the migration debate, creating a vacuum that anti-immigrant leaders have rushed to fill.

Mr. Betts warned that unless political leaders could quickly articulate a nuanced argument for migration — one that confronts fears about security and religious differences, especially in the aftermath of the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris — public support for granting asylum to refugees could collapse. “To have attacks in Germany that are of a sexual nature perpetuated by men ostensibly of Muslim origin is symbolically devastating for a public commitment to asylum,” he said...

More.

Israel Slams Swedish Foreign Minister for 'Delusional' Comments on 'Extrajudicial Killings' of Palestinians (VIDEO)

Sweden pfft.

What a terrible country.

At the Guardian UK, "Israel says Swedish foreign minister is 'not welcome' in country":

Margot Wällstrom criticised over ‘incendiary’ demand for investigation into claims that Israeli forces carried out extrajudicial killings of Palestinians.

Israel has said Sweden’s foreign minister is not welcome in the country after she called for an investigation into the deaths of Palestinians involved in a four-month spate of deadly attacks on Israeli troops and civilians.

A foreign ministry spokesman, Emmanuel Nahshon, said on Wednesday that “given the incendiary and aggressive nature” of Margot Wallström’s comments, “we have made it clear that she is not welcome in Israel.”

Nahshon did not elaborate. Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely, also criticised Wallström, calling her comments “a mix of blindness and political stupidity”.

Near-daily Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers have killed 24 people and wounded dozens more in stabbings, shootings and other assaults.

Wallström said last month that she condemned the stabbing attacks by Palestinians against Israelis, but asserted that the Israeli response was “disproportionate”.

“The response cannot be … so that there are extrajudicial executions, or that it becomes disproportionate so the numbers of dead on the other side is greater than the original death toll by several factors,” she said.

At least 141 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire. About two-thirds of them were said by Israel to be attackers. The rest were killed in clashes with security forces.

Wallström called on Tuesday for an investigation into allegations that Israeli forces have carried out extrajudicial killings in clashes with Palestinians. She told Swedish MPs: “It is vital that there are thorough, credible investigations into these deaths in order to clarify and bring about possible accountability.”

Al Jazeera to Shut Down American News Channel, Citing Unsustainable Business Model

Heh.

A terrible loss. And just think, Al Gore suckered these idiots out of $500 million for his failed old "Current TV" channel.

Lolz.

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "SAD NEWS FROM THE MEDIA WORLD; Al Jazeera America to shut down in April, CNN reports...":

In an email to staff on Wednesday, Anstey said that the decision to pull the plug on Al Jazeera America was “driven by the fact that our business model is simply not sustainable in an increasingly digital world, and because of the current global financial challenges.”

Al Jazeera America launched in 2013 after its Doha-based parent company bought Current TV from Al Gore and others for $500 million. The channel was billed as a more sober alternative to the rancor and sensationalism that typifies other cable news outlets.

“Viewers will see a news channel unlike the others, as our programming proves Al Jazeera America will air fact-based, unbiased and in-depth news,” the channel’s former CEO Ehab Al Shihabi said around the time of the launch...

More.

And at Twitchy, "'Demand a refund from Al Gore?' Al Jazeera America shutting down," and "Hillaryous! Flashback: Hillary describes Americans’ appetite for Al Jazeera’s ‘real news’ [Vine]."

WATCH: David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson on Jimmy Kimmel Live! (VIDEO)

This is pretty hilarious.

And I'm really looking forward to the return of "X-Files," which premieres Sunday, January 24th.

San Diego Leaders Express Optimism for Stadium Deal with Chargers (VIDEO)

I don't know.

That new stadium proposal in Inglewood is slated at $2 billion, with no tax money. And it's really prime real estate.

I know San Diegans will be heartbroken if the team relocates.

At the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Local stadium optimism tempered by Inglewood: San Diego leaders upbeat, but Chargers focused mostly on L.A. option."

And watch, at ABC News 10 San Diego, "Chargers' future still uncertain: City officials expressed renewed optimism to keep the team."

Backlash Against South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley's #SOTU Response (VIDEO)

Major Garrett had an excellent report last night, at CBS Evening News, "Gov. Haley calls out Trump in State of the Union rebuttal (VIDEO)."

More at USA Today, via Memeorandum, "Nikki Haley: Donald Trump has contributed to ‘irresponsible talk’."

Also, at Politico, "Nikki Haley walks back attacks on Bush and Rubio."

And she's interviewed by Greta Van Susteren, where she does the walk-back, at Fox News, "Gov. Nikki Haley addresses her swipe at Trump (VIDEO)."

Hillary Clinton's in 'Deep Deep Doo-Doo, and the Clinton People Know It...'

I really miss seeing Michelle Malkin on Fox News, but then, she's got more time to write books.

From Sean Hannity's show: