Dennis Prager: America is in Jeopardy (VIDEO)

I love Dennis Prager.

I met him briefly at the David Horowitz West Coast Retreat in 2011.

I missed the 2016 PragerU Dinner, however. I'm sure that'd be a treat.

But don't miss Prager's outstanding book, Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph.

'Starboy'

Is there any wonder why youth culture's so crass nowadays?

I mean, I actually like the song, but the chorus goes, "I'ma mother-fuckin' starboy..."

Such casual profanity. But I guess it's pretty much always been like that, when you think about it. At least since the 1960s. Once you get away from prime-time television, and such, profanity is de rigueur.

Viewer caution on the opening scene at the video, which is pretty intense, considering it's pop music.

And see the Vigilant Citizen, "The Occult Meaning of the Weeknd’s “Starboy”."

Also, at the Bustle, "What Does the Weeknd's 'Starboy' Music Video Mean? There Are a Lot of Images to Comb Through — VIDEO."

Creative Loved Ones Lost to Oakland's 'Ghost Ship' Fire

At the Los Angeles Times, "Artists, college students, music lovers lost to the Oakland warehouse fire":

Artists, college students, music lovers lost to the Oakland warehouse fire https://t.co/Wf6npvV2MY

— L.A. Times: L.A. Now (@LANow) December 6, 2016

Em Bohlka was a poet with a master’s degree in literature who could quote Kurt Vonnegut. Donna Kellogg played the drums and inspired peers with her culinary skills. Feral Pines was a recent Oakland arrival, a bass guitarist, a good listener.

They were artists with day jobs, young creatives living off the grid, students dreaming of unconventional paths — at least 36, all taken by fire.

On Monday their names were scrawled on notes left at memorials that bloomed where flames had ravaged an Oakland warehouse. “Travis, we already miss you.” “Thinking of you, Ara Jo.” “Draven, you weren’t the smartest or the funniest or the bravest. That’s probably why we were best friends.”

Once a bastion of hippies and independent artists, the Bay Area in recent years has been dominated by techies and those with deep pockets who can afford the outrageous rents.

But the Oakland fire ripped through a close-knit community of artists ensconced in an underground music scene and committed to staying in the area. Their makeshift homes, their counterculture social scene, existed in a world invisible to those not searching for it.

It was where they felt accepted and safe.

“It’s an interesting group of people that all come together around the craft of electronic music and digital art,” said Josette Melchor, founder of a San Francisco-based arts nonprofit, who knew many of the victims.

“People have been doing this for decades and have been part of this community for so long. We’re not just talking about a rave, it’s really a group of close people that see each other almost every weekend, just kind of gathering around the creation of their own music.”

Melchor’s organization, Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, was inundated with calls after the fire from people looking for any way to help. In response, it established a fund for the families of victims, which had reached more than $300,000 by Monday night.

They had gathered Friday at a concert whose location, until the last minute, remained a mystery. Then came the name on social media, shortly before the doors opened: the Ghost Ship warehouse in Oakland.

Cash Askew had looked forward to what was to be a gathering of like-minded artists and musicians, many of them “queer femmes.”

A transgender woman, Askew had grown up around independent musicians and it was no surprise when she began to perform. The 22-year-old played in the goth-pop duo Them Are Us Too, which recently released its first LP and had been on tour.

“Everybody just saw this star, just saw this shooting star in her,” said Madigan Shive, a fellow musician who had known Askew for more than a decade.

Askew was accustomed to alternative venues. They felt protected, judgment-free.

“We came to those places and those spaces to share music that was often looked at as strange or esoteric,” said Askew’s girlfriend, Anya Taylor, a performance artist. “A lot of us are people who know music and we’ve been outcast because of who we are. We were making music for us.”

When Askew headed to the Ghost Ship, Taylor stayed behind because of work the next day. “Have fun,” she said. “Be safe.”

News of the fire sent the 23-year-old rushing to the warehouse, where flames had overtaken the building. For four hours, Taylor stood outside.

“I watched the building burn, and I lost the love of my life,” she said...

Keep reading.

Plus, "Building inspectors had not been inside Oakland warehouse in 30 years, officials say."

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt Picked to Head Environmental Protection Agency (VIDEO)

God what a great pick!

At USA Today, "Scott Pruitt: Trump's pick to lead the EPA," and "Trump's choice to lead EPA has a history with the agency."

Also at NYT, "Trump Picks Scott Pruitt, Climate Change Denialist, to Lead E.P.A." (via Memeorandum).

What It's Like to Apply for a Job in Donald Trump's White House

From Julie Davis, at the New York Times (via Memeorandum):

“If u filibuster, he’ll cut u off. He wants 2 know what you can do for him" The Trump intrvw: Apprentice, WH edition https://t.co/UfAnQAZEK8

— Julie Davis (@juliehdavis) December 7, 2016

WASHINGTON — When former Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia stepped off the elevator on the 26th floor of Trump Tower last week for his interview with Donald J. Trump, he expected a grilling by the president-elect and a phalanx of associates, something along the lines of the confrontational boardroom scenes at the sleek conference table in the television show “The Apprentice.”

What he found instead was Mr. Trump, calm and solicitous behind a desk cluttered with papers and periodicals, in a large corner office with a hodgepodge of memorabilia and décor that appeared little changed from the 1980s. Nick Ayers, an aide to Vice President-elect Mike Pence, and Stephen K. Bannon, who will serve as Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, listened from the sidelines. Mr. Trump, who offered Mr. Perdue a seat across from his desk, was in charge.

“He was approaching this from a deal standpoint, and he wanted to know if he was on the right track,” said Mr. Perdue, who is being considered for secretary of agriculture and wore a tie adorned with tractors to the meeting. “He believes that we in the United States have been sort of patsies over the years in the way we’ve dealt with our foreign competitors and international trade — and I agree with him — and he wanted to know what I would do about it.”

For more than a decade, millions of Americans tuned in to watch Mr. Trump interrogate prospective employees on “The Apprentice” with a mix of arrogance and disdain. But in private over the past few weeks, a less theatrical spinoff of the spectacle has unfolded in Mr. Trump’s office in Manhattan, and occasionally at his golf resort in Bedminster, N.J., or at Mar-a-Lago, his getaway in Palm Beach, Fla.

Mr. Trump’s interview style in the real world is direct but conversational, according to people who have sat opposite him. He did not take notes or appear to refer to a set list of questions, but he did have dossiers on his visitors and often displayed intricate knowledge of their backgrounds and experience. He rarely drank or ate. He kept his suit jacket on. In New York, he liked to show off the sweeping views of Central Park visible over his shoulder.

Job seekers, who must parade before the news media in the marble and bronze lobby of Trump Tower — “It was almost like walking the red carpet in Hollywood,” said Representative Lou Barletta, Republican of Pennsylvania, who has offered himself up as a secretary of transportation or labor — said that the president-elect often asked open-ended questions and had little patience for meandering answers.

“If you filibuster, he’ll cut you off,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who was initially in the running to be Mr. Trump’s secretary of state but has since said he is not interested in a cabinet post. “He wants to know what you can do for him.”

Mr. Gingrich said Mr. Trump’s approach to putting together his administration was the same one he has used with his multibillion-dollar business. “He’s used to defining jobs, measuring capability and making a judgment: ‘Do I think you can run my golf course? Do I think you can run my hotel? Do I want your restaurant in my building?’” Mr. Gingrich said.

Mr. Trump has been more hands-on in the interviews than his predecessors were. George W. Bush rarely spoke in person to more than one finalist for each cabinet post, said Clay Johnson III, who directed his transition effort in 2000. President Obama also interviewed a single finalist for each post in most cases, usually in a one-on-one discussion meant to confirm an already well-established conclusion that the candidate would be right for the job, said Dan Pfeiffer, a senior transition official in 2008.

“In some cases, he knew who he wanted and it was a question of convincing them to do it,” Mr. Pfeiffer said, citing examples like Hillary Clinton, who became Mr. Obama’s secretary of state, and Robert M. Gates, whom he persuaded to stay on as defense secretary.

Mr. Obama was also adamant that the deliberations not spill out into the open, but that has not been the case with Mr. Trump.

Members of Congress, generals, business executives and others mingle outside his office, waiting for an audience with the president-elect. Mr. Barletta waited more than 45 minutes for his meeting, passing the time chatting with his Republican colleague Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, who was waiting for his turn to audition for secretary of homeland security.

“It was like a green room, a waiting room of people you know or you know of, all waiting their turn,” said Robert L. Johnson, the founder of the television network BET, who visited Mr. Trump at Bedminster to discuss ways the incoming president could reach out to African-Americans. As Mr. Johnson was coming in, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York whom Mr. Trump is considering for secretary of state, was going out.

Mr. Trump wants a gut sense for a potential hire, people close to him said, prizing personal chemistry and an entrepreneurial spirit. But he also leans on the judgment of trusted advisers — particularly Mr. Pence and his elder daughter, Ivanka Trump — when assessing a candidate...

Fascinating.

I love stories like this.

Keep reading.

Erin Schrode, Far-Left 'Environmentalist', Destroyed by Tucker Carlson (VIDEO)

From Mark Finkelstein, at Legal Insurrection, "Liberal environmentalist compares Trump to Hitler, complains about “toxic rhetoric”."

Heh, "the irony alarm..."

.@TuckerCarlson to @ErinSchrode: “I’m sorry, I can barely hear the irony alarm is so loud in the background!” #Tucker pic.twitter.com/t31c5TSytG

— Fox News (@FoxNews) December 8, 2016

The Burqa is a Sign of Radicalism in the Community

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Brigitte Gabriel: The Burqa is 'a Sign of Radicalism in the Community."

The Anti-Breitbart Blacklist

From Matthew Vadum, at FrontPage Magazine, "The angry Left looks to punish conservative media for Trump’s victory":

Someone behind an anonymous Twitter account is trying to destroy the influential conservative Breitbart News website by smearing it as “racist” – and he’s already scared at least 47 advertisers away from Breitbart.

In the current atmosphere of left-wing hysteria over the surprise election of Donald Trump as president, this blacklisting project has already earned an impressive return on investment. Breitbart is a target of the wrath of social justice warriors because it reports the truth about the Left and it used to be run by Stephen Bannon, now slated to become chief strategist in the Trump White House. Hurting Breitbart hurts Trump and Republicans in general, the thinking goes.

The campaign takes screenshots of advertisements on Breitbart and then harasses the advertisers, demanding that they stop advertising there. It also encourages people who hate Breitbart or Trump to take screenshots of a target company’s ads placed beside content deemed objectionable and tweet the images at advertisers along with a threat to stop patronizing that company.

The cowardly crusader hiding behind this effort to frighten advertisers away from Breitbart by lying about and mischaracterizing the provocative news website’s content goes by the user name Sleeping Giants.

The user’s identity seems safe for the moment but if Breitbart files a defamation lawsuit, Twitter could be forced to disclose the user’s identity.

So far the identity of the individual or individuals behind Sleeping Giants is not known, except to Shareen Pathak, managing editor at the DigiDay blog.

Pathak reports, “The creator of the account said he would prefer to remain anonymous to avoid being harassed by Trump supporters on the internet. He said he started the account because fake news and disinformation, are, in his opinion, two of the reasons why the election turned out in favor of Trump.”

The creator of Sleeping Giants reportedly told DigiDay, “The biggest way that this disinformation will continue is ad revenue, just like any news source. Beyond really wanting to stop this nonsense, this effort was really born out of the need to inform advertisers about the kind of material that they’re sponsoring. This isn’t supposed to be a boycotting effort as much as an information effort.”

The Sleeping Giants (Twitter handle: @slpng_giants) account was created last month. At time of writing the account had 3,144 tweets and 11,200 followers. Sleeping Giants says “We are trying to stop racist websites by stopping their ad dollars. Many companies don't even know it's happening. It's time to tell them.”

Of course Breitbart isn’t even remotely racist but left-wingers don’t let facts get in the way of an activist push. They know that smear jobs work, especially in the timid corporate world where companies routinely surrender to left-wing extortionists like Al Sharpton without much of a fight.

Food manufacturer Kellogg’s has withdrawn its ads from Breitbart, claiming the site is not “aligned with our values as a company.” The company offered no examples of how Breitbart’s values actually differ from its own.

The decision by Kellogg’s will have “virtually no revenue impact on Breitbart.com,” the news organization wrote. “It does, however, represent an escalation in the war by leftist companies like Target and Allstate against conservative customers whose values propelled Donald Trump into the White House.”

The decision “appears to be one more example of an out-of-touch corporation embracing false left-wing narratives used to cynically smear the hard working Americans that populate this nation’s heartland.”

Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alexander Marlow is calling for a boycott of Kellogg’s and urging conservatives to sign the #DumpKelloggs petition. Marlow says the breakfast cereal maker’s “war” against the site demonstrates its “cowardice” and “bigotry.”

Breitbart News is the largest platform for pro-family content anywhere on the Internet. We are fearless advocates for traditional American values, perhaps most important among them is freedom of speech, or our motto ‘more voices, not less.’ For Kellogg’s, an American brand, to blacklist Breitbart News in order to placate left-wing totalitarians is a disgraceful act of cowardice. They insult our incredibly diverse staff and spit in the face of our 45,000,000 highly engaged, highly perceptive, highly loyal readers, many of whom are Kellogg’s customers. Boycotting Breitbart News for presenting mainstream American ideas is an act of discrimination and intense prejudice. If you serve Kellogg’s products to your family, you are serving up bigotry at your breakfast table.

Welch’s, a maker of juices and jams, is dropping Breitbart.

Facebook user Mary Dibbern wrote to the company: “Welch’s is advertising on the Breitbart site. I will boycott all Welch’s products, plus post a photo of the ads onto my FB and Twitter accounts if Welch’s does not stop giving Breitbart their advertising business.”

Welch’s promptly caved: “Mary, we assure you that we are taking the necessary steps to remove all Welch’s content from this site, and others like it. Thank you for reaching out.”

Other companies withdrawing advertising from Breitbart include pharmaceutical manufacturer Novo Nordisk, insurance provider Allstate, eyeglass maker Warby Parker, San Diego Zoo, 3M, AARP, Earthlink, L’Occitane, Paperless Post, Saddleback Bags, and U.S. Bank.

AppNexus Inc., a digital ad firm, has banned Breitbart from using its ad service, Bloomberg reports. The firm “decided the publication had breached a policy against content that incites violence.” AppNexus is reportedly second only to Google in the ad serving market for publishers.

AppNexus mouthpiece Joshua Zeitz said, “We did a human audit of Breitbart and determined there were enough articles and headlines that cross that line, either using coded or overt language.”

Zeitz claimed preposterously that Breitbart isn’t being targeted for its conservative inclinations. “This blacklist was solely about hate speech violation,” he said.

The Sleeping Giants effort is the same kind of malicious campaign waged by George Soros-funded groups against conservative organizations.

Led by ColorOfChange, a far-left race-baiting group whose views are largely indistinguishable from those held by Van Jones (a co-founder) and Al Sharpton, activists attacked the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) for its policy stands. Soros-funded ColorOfChange smeared corporations that donated to ALEC as racist because the group supported voter ID laws. The campaign against ALEC also led to the group disbanding the task force that had been responsible for drafting model voter ID laws to be used by state lawmakers, along with “Stand Your Ground” laws.

Soros-funded Media Matters for America (MMfA) claims to have cost “The Rush Limbaugh Show” “[h]undreds of millions of dollars in losses attributable to advertisers refusing to subsidize” the show after Limbaugh’s controversial comments about leftist birth control poster girl Sandra Fluke.

MMfA has also waged war against Breitbart News, Fox News Channel, Ann Coulter, and talk show hosts like Glenn Beck, though generally with little success.

This new attack on Breitbart is happening because left-wingers are still in deep denial over President-elect Donald Trump’s come-from-behind victory over Democrat war horse Hillary Clinton and they’re desperately searching for scapegoats.

They’re blaming purveyors of so-called fake news – which includes Breitbart since it doesn’t toe the leftist line.

For example, useful idiot Craig Timberg recently churned out an outrageous left-wing propaganda piece in the Washington Post, a newspaper that lied over and over again about Trump during the campaign.

Timberg claims a vast Russian conspiracy planted fake news before American eyeballs and that’s the real reason Trump won.

“Russian-backed phony news” was behind “[s]ome of the first and most alarming tweets after Clinton fell ill at a Sept. 11 memorial event in New York,” he wrote, adding there had been “a spate of other misleading stories in August about Clinton’s supposedly troubled health.”

She did in fact fall ill at the 9/11 event, a fact that would never have been reported by the mainstream media if an onlooker hadn’t captured Clinton collapsing as she was entering a vehicle and being held up by two security men. She suffered at least temporary brain damage in recent years when she sustained a nasty concussion. She also experienced coughing fits on the podium.

Russia’s “propaganda machinery also helped push the phony story that an anti-Trump protester was paid thousands of dollars to participate in demonstrations, an allegation initially made by a self-described satirist and later repeated publicly by the Trump campaign.”

Well, the evidence is fairly convincing that the Clinton campaign did in fact pay anti-Trump protesters to participate in demonstrations and foment violence at Trump campaign rallies. Democrat uber-thug Robert Creamer has admitted that Hillary personally knew about the false flag operation which was euphemistically referred to as “conflict engagement.”

Timberg adds, “The final weeks of the campaign featured a heavy dose of stories about supposed election irregularities, allegations of vote-rigging and the potential for Election Day violence should Clinton win, researchers said.”

This is all very interesting except that in the modern era all presidential elections are filled with allegations of electoral irregularities. It’s normal and it happens with or without fanciful conspiracy theories or Kremlin involvement.

But the Left soldiers on, inventing villains and vilifying good people.

These people can’t win on the facts or by offering rational arguments.

All they can do it attack, attack, attack.

And Breitbart won’t be their last target.

Jackie Johnson's Cooler Cloudy Forecast

More weather blogging with the lovely Ms. Jackie.

President-Elect Donald Trump is TIME's Person of the Year for 2016

At TIME, via Memeorandum, "The Last, Greatest Deal."

Donald Trump is TIME's Person of the Year 2016 #TIMEPOY https://t.co/5pTGOksevE pic.twitter.com/N8BtqTu9Nl

— TIME (@TIME) December 7, 2016

Stella Maxwell LOVE Advent 2016 (VIDEO)

These videos are the best, heh.

75th Anniversary of Pearl Harbor Attack

Seems so weird. The years are flying by.

At WSJ, "Pearl Harbor Survivor Prepares for 75th Anniversary Reunion."

And, "Pearl Harbor Survivor Makes a 5,000-Mile Trek."

Robert Coles, a 92-year-old Pearl Harbor survivor from Maine, is making his first visit since 1941 https://t.co/c1GUPZzbkc

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) December 7, 2016

Plus, photos, "Pearl Harbor’s 75th Anniversary: A Look Back at the Attack."

And at the Los Angeles Times, "At Pearl Harbor's 75th anniversary, a reminder of how America proved its greatness — and why it is still great."

Senator Sessions Isn’t a Racist, His Left-Wing Accusers Are

From Sultan Knish, at FrontPage Magazine, "They’re coming for Sessions":

They’re coming for Senator Sessions. The Alabama Senator, soon to be Attorney General, has been denounced by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which bills its poison pen letter as coming from “civil and human rights organizations.” Just don’t ask which ones.

The “civil rights” organizations include the AFL-CIO, which had just denounced its own “ugly history of racism” last year, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, whose leaders have at times defended and excused the anti-Semitic and racist Islamic terror of Hamas and Hezbollah, and the National Council of La Raza, whose name means “The Race” and reflects its racialist agenda.

A thuggish union that concedes its own ugliness and two racist groups, one of which defends Islamic terrorists, are the worst possible people to pass any kind of judgment on Senator Sessions.

But it gets worse.

There’s the Center for Responsible Lending, funded by the Sandlers, who helped cause the economic crisis by peddling subprime mortgages. Lending doesn’t get more responsible than that. And there’s also the National Lawyers Guild, which started life as a Communist front group and arguably continues as such, praising North Korea’s “free healthcare and education systems.” Move over Cuba, North Korea has even more shovel-ready free health care for the oppressed comrades of the working class.

I don’t know why the Conference couldn’t manage to get Al Qaeda to sign on to their letter against Sessions. Maybe Osama bin Laden’s iPhone can’t get any bars at the bottom of the Arabian Sea.

But this motley crew of racists, traitors and terrorists has issued its ruling and found that, “Senator Sessions is the wrong person to serve as the U.S. Attorney General.”

The right person is Vladimir Lenin. Unfortunately he’s dead and not qualified to practice law.

You would think that the “144 undersigned organizations” representing billions in wealth and untold amounts of power and influence, could manage a more coherent smear campaign. Instead the letter rehashes the same old discredited smears. Senator Sessions’ joke about the KKK smoking pot is described as “speaking favorably about the Ku Klux Klan” even while admitting that “he was helpful in the Center’s successful effort to sue and bankrupt the Ku Klux.”

Sessions is accused of undermining “voting rights” by prosecuting the “voting rights activists” who were caught mailing hundreds of absentee ballots. These “voter suppression tactics targeting African Americans” came in response to complaints of fraud by African-American officials like Perry County Commissioner Reese Billingslea and John Kennard, Alabama's first black tax assessor, who said, "The only reason these people are hollering racism now is because they are in trouble for breaking the law."

Then under "Association with White Nationalist and Hate Groups," the letter, which seems to thrive on parading its own stupidity around, proves that Sessions must be a bigot because he had received awards from the "David Horowitz Freedom Center and Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy."

Sessions was honored by the Center for Security Policy at the Smithsonian Postal Museum with its Keeper of the Flame award, which recognizes “those individuals who devote their public careers to the propagation of democracy and the respect for individual rights throughout the world.”

Past recipients have included Dick Cheney, Joe Lieberman, Garry Kasparov and Ronald Reagan.

Perhaps the Conference could specify which white nationalist hate group Lieberman and Kasparov belonged to.

Senator Sessions received the Annie Taylor Award from the Freedom Center in 2014. The next year’s recipient would go on to be African-American Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke.

It’s unknown which white nationalist hate group Clarke belongs to. Perhaps the Conference could ask the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose inept smear of Sessions it appears to have relied on, to tell them.

The Annie Taylor Award has gone to Iranian dissident Amir Fakhravar, journalist Oriana Fallaci, Baroness Caroline Cox and Democratic Senator Zell Miller. But perhaps the most notorious white supremacist to receive the award was Ward Connerly, the African-American chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute.

As smear campaigns go, the Conference’s letter is laughably terrible.

“Senator Sessions has a 30-year record of racial insensitivity,” it claims. That’s quite a claim and it isn’t backed up.  If Sessions had spent the last 30 years going around shouting racial slurs, you would think that there would be more evidence of that to present in the left’s poison pen letters.

The Conference insists that the Attorney General has to be approved of by “every member of the public”. If that were the case, we couldn’t get a single Attorney General approved.

It states that Sessions supporting the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder raises questions about his fitness. Is the Conference really demanding an Attorney General who won’t uphold Supreme Court decisions?

The Conference’s letter is short on facts and heavy on innuendo. It’s clueless about its own charges. And mostly it opposes Sessions because he doesn’t agree with its radical policy agenda. The letter accuses him of opposing illegal alien amnesty and being skeptical about Global Warming which, according to the letter, “disproportionately affect low-income families and communities of color.”

World ends. Minorities hardest hit.

Further evidence of Sessions’ unfitness is found in that he voted to defund Planned Parenthood, opposed a push for Green Energy and Obama’s pardons for drug dealers. In short, he’s guilty of being a conservative Republican, not a radical leftist.

That’s really why the Leadership Conference opposes him, but it can’t come out and say so. The failed effort to smear Sessions as a racist isn’t about his record; it’s about blocking anyone on the right while cynically abusing a serious accusation for partisan political gain. No one who knows Sessions, including one of the accusers who serves as the basis for many of these smears, believes that he is a racist.

Furthermore the accusations are coming from actual racists like La Raza and the ADC. The ADC honored Helen Thomas after she called for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel. It was where Ralph Nader insisted that, “Jews do not own the phrase anti-Semitism.” The Leadership Conference shows no signs of having a problem with any of this.

Senator Sessions isn’t a racist. His accusers are.

Kendall Jenner LOVE Advent 2016 (VIDEO)

Via Theo Spark.

I do love this young woman Kendall.

I don't know why. I'm supposed to viscerally dislike her, as she's part of the Kardashian klan and all, heh.

Jackie Johnson's Mild Midweek Forecast

Here's the lovely Ms. Jackie.

It's been a bit nippy in the early hours, but otherwise actually quite pleasant.

Via CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

University Student: We Shouldn't Take Finals Because Trump's Election Has Been Stressful

Heh.

Trump's triggering the college trigglypuffs, lol.

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: University Student Demands We Shouldn’t Take Finals Because Trump’s Election Has Been Stressful":

Trump? You kids don’t know what real worry is like – when I was in school, our final exams were taken in the shadow of atomic war, nuclear winter, disco, and Fred Silverman’s NBC programming. Not to mention what was on the other channels...

Click through for the video.

Donald Trump's Conservative Cabinet (VIDEO)

Things are looking pretty good.

At LAT, "Step by step, Trump is assembling an administration far more conservative than his campaign":

Donald Trump expressed fondness during the presidential campaign for some of the big federal programs that serve the country’s most vulnerable, but whatever warmth he may feel does not seem to be shared by the people he is choosing to run them.

Monday’s selection of Ben Carson, the former pediatric neurosurgeon and Republican presidential hopeful, to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development was the latest move to fit the pattern of stocking the Cabinet with social conservatives deeply skeptical of the government agencies they will be asked to oversee.

Trump chose Carson despite the physician’s protest last month that he lacked the credentials needed to run a federal agency. As a child, Carson lived in what he has described as a housing project in Detroit. Since becoming a doctor, however, he has had little other direct experience with urban policy or housing issues.

He would assume a post overseeing an agency that was elevated to the Cabinet level as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society effort to combat poverty — something that Carson has declared an epic failure.

The job would test Carson’s management ability. The department, with an annual budget of $48 billion, oversees big development contracts and the distribution of lucrative grants to communities, and it has been historically susceptible to corruption in times of weak oversight.

During Ronald Reagan’s tenure, HUD money was regularly misappropriated to contractors with political ties, leading to multiple felony convictions. The agency’s standing in that administration seemed to be crystallized by Reagan’s failure to recognize his HUD secretary, Samuel Pierce, during an encounter at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 1981. Reagan addressed Pierce as “Mr. Mayor.”

Carson’s first test at managing a complex, multi-state operation came in the presidential campaign. He proved gifted at raising money, building a small-donor network that was surpassed only by that of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

But Carson’s campaign and the network of allied super PACs that supported him also stood out for how little money they spent on campaigning and how much was plowed back into payments to contractors.

His lack of experience drew attacks from many prominent Democrats.

“I have serious concerns about Dr. Carson’s lack of expertise,” said incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York. “Someone who is as anti-government as him is a strange fit for Housing secretary, to say the least.”

Schumer vowed Carson would be pushed during confirmation proceedings to prove he “is well versed in housing policy and has a vision for federal housing programs that meets the needs of Americans across the country.”

In Los Angeles, which works closely with the federal housing agency as it carries out a $23-million anti-homelessness initiative, one of the country’s largest such programs, Mayor Eric Garcetti was more cautious.

"Los Angeles stands at the forefront of the very challenges that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was created to tackle,” Garcetti said in an email. “I am hopeful that as a physician, Mr. Carson will create the much-needed connection between public health and community development in neighborhoods everywhere.”

In 2014, the last year for which full figures are available, 492,000 Californians received HUD-funded vouchers to help with rent. The city of Los Angeles received $52 million in community development grants from HUD that year.

In the Cabinet, Carson would join a list of social conservatives that includes Trump’s pick to run the Department of Health and Human Services, Georgia Rep.Tom Price, and Betsy DeVos, who has been tapped to head the Education Department.

Price is a budget hawk and crusader for cutting Medicaid and Medicare, the latter of which Trump, in the campaign, said he opposed cutting. DeVos, the wealthy former chair of the Michigan Republican Party, is a strong backer of voucher programs, which provide tax money to families to spend on private schools...

Still more.

Shelby Steele, Shame

I bought this book when it came out, but I'm now engrossed in it.

Steele offers perhaps the best explanation yet of our current (crushing) era of political polarization; it's an  merciless indictment of radical left-wing identity politics.

Not to be missed, at Amazon, Shelby Steele, Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country.

Victor Davis Hanson on 'Uncommon Knowledge' (VIDEO)

I listened to this entire interview, over 40 minutes long, and it was worth every minute.

VDH is a national treasure.

His most recent book is The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost - From Ancient Greece to Iraq.

With Peter Robinson, for the Hoover Institution's "Uncommon Knowledge":

The New York Times Snubs Hillbilly Elegy

Big mistake.

I noticed that Hillbilly Elegy was at the top of the non-fiction bestsellers at the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, and I felt a hint of pride in having read it.

But turns out the New York Times refused to cite the J.D. Vance autobiography in its list of top books of 2016.

Pathetic.

See David Forsmark, at FrontPage Magazine, "One of the most talked-about memoirs of 2016 doesn't make the cut for 'notable' books."

Buy the book at Amazon.

Vietnam Veteran Dies With Maggots in His Wounds (VIDEO)

I can hardly believe this story, at the Tulsa World, "Physician assistant who resigned in wake of veteran's death rehired at another Oklahoma VA center."

And video, at Fox News, "4 quit VA facility after veteran with maggots in wound dies: Employees resign after investigation was conducted in Oklahoma; veteran Pete Hegseth reacts on 'America's Newsroom'."

Shop Amazon Home

Here, Home Gift Guide.

I love the Keurig Coffee Makers.

And don't forget your Cuisinart fine products.

BONUS: Bernard Bailyn, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America--The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600-1675.

Evelyn Taft's Slightly Cooler Forecast

Here's the weather with the lovely Ms. Evelyn, of whom I haven't blogged in a while.

Via CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

The Social Justice Left vs. the Identitarian Alt-Right

From Ben Sixsmith, who's just a kid, by the looks of his Twitter profile.

But he's good:

Both social justice warriors & Alt-Right shift to more extreme positions to gain social status (& clicks, media etc) https://t.co/YTMQc0SayI

— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) December 3, 2016

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BONUS: Adrian Goldsworthy, Pax Romana: War, Peace and Conquest in the Roman World.

The Radicals Have Taken Over Canadian Universities

Heh.

They've taken over the American universities, too!

But see Margaret Wente, at Toronto's Globe and Mail, "Academic Extremism Comes to Canada."

BONUS: At the Other McCain, "Amid Dow Boom, Liberal Media Gloom."

Victoria's Secret Fashion Show Tonight!

It's at 10:00pm, on CBS.

12 Days of Deals

It's the twelve days of Christmas deals, at Amazon, "We’ll see your turtle doves, and raise you bookworms and music hounds. Whether the people on your list love the smell of a new bestseller, turning pages with a swipe of their finger, or just rocking out to the movie version’s soundtrack, we’ve got stuff for them all. Oh, and we’ve never been the types to read the last page first, but we do have one spoiler alert: today’s deals are awesome."

BONUS: Steve Fraser, The Limousine Liberal: How an Incendiary Image United the Right and Fractured America.

'Westworld' Loose Ends

Well, I figure we're going to see loose ends tied up next season, so nothing to lose sleep over.

But check LAT, "'Westworld' finale: We have questions."

I did wonder about this, though:

Who programmed Maeve to escape?

The biggest surprise from the finale was Ford’s secret desire to free his creations, which made him seem less like the evil lunatic this series has threaded since the pilot. Of course, he’s still a murdering psychopath who built a sexual assault theme park— despite knowing that his creations had, or could achieve, consciousness— but the last episode tried to right a few of his wrongs by exposing his plans for a robot revolt.

But if Ford engineered the escape plan, how much of this is about true sentience? We know for certain that the hosts have memories from past iterations of their characters; this was the entire purpose of Arnold’s maze. That being said, if Ford was the one who programmed Maeve’s exit from the park, does that rob her of her own organic desire to be free? Was the purpose of Maeve’s violent exit merely to distract from the bloodbath of Delos’ board executions?

And also, doesn’t unleashing an army of murderous robots still kind of make him an evil lunatic?

The bigger questions remain: Are Maeve’s thoughts entirely her own? Is her mission just beginning? And what’s next? Will she jump from park to park looking for her lost host child? Or will she take part in the new narrative that Ford built, the uprising at Westworld?

It was a little violent for me altogether, but I like the twists. I'm already looking forward to Season 2.



More at Vulture, "Westworld Season-Finale Recap: This World Doesn’t Belong to You."

Kasim Hafeez: 'Born to Hate Jews' (VIDEO)

YouTube banned this video from the site this morning, only to reinstate the clip after realizing it's an anti-hate video, not a hate video, which would be violate the service's terms.

Via Legal Insurrection, "YouTube Banned Prager U Video “Born to Hate Jews” – Reinstated After Protest and Petition."

And watch, "How do devout Muslims born in the West feel about Jews? How do they feel about Western values in general? Kasim Hafeez, who was raised a devout Muslim in England, explains."

Hopefully it won't get pulled, but if so, click on the LI link, where another video is embedded.

Death Toll Rises to 36 in Oakland Warehouse 'Ghost Ship' Fire (VIDEO)

Burning to death has gotta be one of the worst ways to go. Perhaps the black smoke overtook some of the victims first, and they passed out before being consumed in flames.

Either way, I'd rather be shot.

Don't mean to be morbid about it, but it's just so horrible.

In any case, at SF Gate, "‘Wobbly’ wall slows work at fire scene as death toll rises to 36":

The death toll in the devastating fire at a converted Oakland warehouse climbed to 36 Monday, and as emergency crews picked through the dangerously unstable rubble they said they found what they suspect is the area where the blaze started.

The number of victims recovered from the gutted building grew by three overnight, but work on retrieving more bodies was stopped around midnight because of a “wobbly” wall that made the situation dangerous for firefighters and Alameda County sheriff’s deputies, said Battalion Chief Melinda Drayton of the Oakland Fire Department. The wall was stabilized and work resumed at 9 a.m.

A few hours later, another wrinkle arose when the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. cut power to the area so potentially live power lines wouldn’t endanger workers as they brought in a crane to move the rubble. The outage was expected to affect between 50 and 500 customers in the Fruitvale area for as many as 12 hours, said Officer Johnna Watson, spokeswoman for the Oakland Police Department.

So far, a total of 11 victims have been identified and their families notified.

More, plus additional video, at the link.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi Announces Resignation (VIDEO)

That's major!

At WSJ, "Italy Rejects Reforms, Matteo Renzi Announces Resignation":

ROME—Italian voters on Sunday rejected constitutional changes backed by the government, prompting Prime Minister Matteo Renzi to announce his resignation and handing populists a victory in the heartland of Europe.

With 91% of votes counted, 59.7% of voters delivered a stinging rebuke to Mr. Renzi’s plan to overhaul Italy’s legislature to make it easier to pass laws, including measures meant to make the country more competitive.

Mr. Renzi said he would go to Italian President Sergio Mattarella Monday afternoon to tender his resignation.

“I take full responsibility for the defeat,” Mr. Renzi said in an address from Palazzo Chigi, the premier’s residence. The Italian people “have spoken in a clear and unequivocal way...we leave with no regrets,” he added.

The result means uncertainty in Italy, the European Union’s fourth-largest economy, as the bloc struggles to revive growth and define its future. Mr. Renzi’s resignation could clear the way for the formation of a caretaker government and, possibly, new parliamentary elections next year.

Among the biggest winners from Italy’s vote is the antiestablishment 5 Star Movement, which campaigned against Mr. Renzi and his agenda, saying more radical change is needed. The party has called for a nonbinding referendum on Italy’s euro membership. It also wants to abandon EU budget strictures and has said it might favor printing a parallel currency.

Public-opinion surveys indicate that roughly 30% of Italians would back 5 Star candidates if parliamentary elections were held now. That puts it neck-and-neck with Mr. Renzi’s Democratic Party and means it will have an influential voice and could even end up in power—an outcome that could ultimately threaten the integrity of the eurozone and its common currency.

Giampaolo Brunelli, a 43-year-old supporter of the 5 Star Movement, voted against the reform Sunday morning. “Renzi hasn’t done much to change this country—just like all the other politicians before him,” he said after voting in Rome.

Europe is facing a prolonged period of political upheaval, with elections also slated for 2017 in Germany, France and the Netherlands, all countries where economic anxiety, opposition to the EU and a surge in migration have fed growing support for populist parties.

Such sentiments were also at play in Austria on Sunday, when center-left candidate Alexander Van der Bellen defeated Norbert Hofer in Austria’s presidential race by 53.3% to 46.7%, according to a final count of votes case on Sunday and a projection of mail-in ballot results.

The vote ended Mr. Hofer’s bid to become the first right-wing populist president in postwar Western Europe, but the election brought to light widespread discontent with the country’s political establishment. Like the other populists across the continent, Mr. Hofer wanted to roll back the power of the European Union, toughen border controls, crack down on the flow of refugees and migrants to Europe and improve relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin...

More.

I like how WSJ identifies Hofer's party as "right-wing populist" and not "far-right" like almost all of the pathetic leftist outlets always do.

More at Telegraph U.K., "Live — Matteo Renzi concedes defeat in Italian referendum and steps down as prime minister."

USC to Play Penn State in Rose Bowl 2017

I pulled my USC Rose Bowl post yesterday because I got confused about the process. (My apologies.)

But it's all clarified now.

USC will play Penn State on January 2nd in Pasadena.

Both teams have huge winning streaks. USC's got an 8-game winning streak since starting 1-3 on the season. Penn State's currently running a 9-game winning streak, so the Rose Bowl match-up promises to be one of the most exciting of the New Year's "Big 6."

See the USC Trojans sports page, "No. 9 USC Football To Play No. 5 Penn State In 2017 Rose Bowl."

And at LAT, "USC earns Rose Bowl berth, capping dramatic turnaround":

@LindseyThiry can you tell me how USC is in the rose bowl? I thought the winner of the PAC-12 goes. UW is 4 so why isn't it Colorado?

— Andrea Cajuste (@GoodLooknNSmart) December 4, 2016

After Pac-12 Champ goes to CFP, Rose Bowl takes next highest ranked team, which ended up being USC (Beat UW & CU, plus CU lost badly to UW) https://t.co/ZitiBZ96Jm

— Lindsey Thiry (@LindseyThiry) December 4, 2016

The return to the Rose Bowl culminates a stunning turnaround for USC, which lost 52-6 to Alabama in the season opener, then dropped games on the road to Stanford and Utah. The Trojans finished the season with a 9-3 record.

During that stretch, pundits speculated about Clay Helton’s job security in his first season as full-time coach, and Helton changed quarterbacks, entrusting the offense to Sam Darnold. The redshirt freshman quarterback dropped his first start to Utah on a late comeback, but he has not lost since, becoming one of the most effective quarterbacks in the nation.

USC dominated its last eight games, winning by an average margin of almost 20 points. It played in only one close game late, against Colorado, when USC turned the ball over four times. But USC still would’ve won that game by two scores if not for a late knee by JuJu Smith-Schuster, who opted to end the game rather than score an unnecessary touchdown.

USC and Penn State first met in the Rose Bowl in 1923, resulting in a 14-3 USC win. They didn't meet again until 2009 for a 38-24 USC win.

Neither team has been back to Rose Bowl since. In the interim, each team was rocked by some of the most crippling NCAA sanctions in the organization’s history — USC for its student-athletes accepting impermissible benefits, Penn State for its wide-ranging child sexual abuse scandal.

USC will make its record 34th appearance in the bowl game, where it has a 24-9 record. Penn State will make its fourth. It has gone 1-2 all-time.

Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."




Also at Theo's, "Cartoon Roundup..."

Cartoon Credit: Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Money For Nothing."

'Queering God: Feminist and Queer Theology', at Swarthmore College

The campuses will be the craziest places in America for the next four years, at least. They were already crazy, but the coming Donald Trump administration is driving these kooks off the ledge.

At the Other McCain, "Guess What Swarthmore College Will Teach Your Children for $63,550 a Year?":

"We're here, we're queer, for $63,550 a year!"

Well, it helps to have a sense of humor about things, that's for sure.

High School Romance PSA (VIDEO)

At AdWeek, "Can You Figure Out the Mystery Inside This Remarkable Ad About High School Love?"

Via Hot Air, "Video: The “Evan” high-school romance ad":

All I’ll say is that sometimes you need to tip your cap to Team Blue for an advocacy job well done.

Click through to watch. And watch it before you read the articles. You'll never figure it out ahead of time!

Seriously. Just watch, lol.

Donald Trump Can Remake the Courts

One of the most exciting things for the coming year: what's going to happen at the Supreme Court, to say nothing of the lower federal courts.

I've been attending meetings on campus, and far-leftists in the sociology department are freaking out over the Supreme Court's threat to Roe vs. Wade, "marriage equality" (as if the Court's going to roll back not one but two recent decisions guaranteeing same-sex marriage), and homosexuals ("electroshock conversion therapy").

I mean really, they've gone hysterical. It's a serious problem on my campus, and around the nation as a whole.

In any case, at the Hill, "Trump gets chance to remake the courts":

President-elect Donald Trump has a chance to stack the courts with conservative judges, thrilling Republicans who suddenly have the opportunity to remake the judicial system.

Conservatives watched with dismay as Congress confirmed 327 of President Obama’s judicial nominees, fearing it would further entrench liberal control of the courts.

Now the tables have turned.

Trump could come into office with around 117 judicial vacancies to fill, and unlike Obama in his first term, will need only 51 votes in the Senate to confirm his nominees.

Democrats eliminated filibusters for most federal judicial nominees and executive-office appointments in 2013. Now only a simple majority, rather than 60 votes, is required to advance a nominee.

It was a power play that helped Democrats confirm Obama’s court picks when they held the majority. Now Republicans stand to benefit from the rule change, as there will be little Senate Democrats can do in the minority to stop Trump’s nominees.

“What goes around comes around,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) told The Hill this week.

“When you’re short-sighted and you think your majority is going to continue forever then you’re bound to be surprised when voters put you in the minority, so it counsels prudence and a longer view rather than short-term gratification.”

Republicans say Democrats only have Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to thank for the situation they will soon find themselves in.

“Here’s the irony of it: He changed the rules and we don’t want to break the rules to change the rules unlike what he did,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

“He put us in this position, and I’m sure he thought a lot about it before he did it.”

Of the 99 current judicial vacancies, 13 are openings on courts of appeals and 85 are on district courts, according to the Alliance for Justice, which is tracking the data...

Keep reading.

And see, "Trump says he'll announce Supreme Court pick 'very soon'," and "Pence details Trump’s ambitious agenda for first 100 days."

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Austria Dodges a Bullet: Voters Reject Far-Right Candidate Norbert Hofer (VIDEO)

I don't care who Austria elects actually, although Norbert Hofer isn't so much "far-right" as "not-leftist," and that freaks out Europe's open-borders socialists.

I do care about Marine Le Pen's election, though, and don't actually expect her to win. Leftist parties will form a common front if she makes it to the final runoff, and they'll unify and elect an anti-rightist consensus candidate that purportedly rejects the "far-right hatred."

In any case, at Telegraph U.K., "Austria election: Norbert Hofer concedes defeat as independent rival takes clear lead in the polls":

Norbert Hofer, the leader of Austria’s far Right Freedom party, has conceded defeat in the country's presidential elections.

Mr Hofer, who would have been the first far-right leader in the European Union, accepted defeat after exit polls showedMr Van der Bellen, the Green party backed candidate, with 53.6 percent of the vote.

The projection put Mr Hofer on 46.4 percent. Electoral officials said votes left to count would not affect the result, although the margins may change slightly.

Keep reading.

I imagine that margin's a little to close for comfort for a lot of leftists. It's comfortable, but not a blowout. So-called far-rightists will be emboldened to double-up on their efforts, in Austrian and around the E.U.

Chip and Joanna Gaines, The Magnolia Story

Following up, "Boycott BuzzFeed."

And more from AoSHQ, "Religons of the World and What is Acceptable."

As they say, success is the best revenge, and it turns out that Chip and Joanna Gaines have a non-fiction bestseller, at Amazon, The Magnolia Story:

Are you ready to see your fixer upper?

These famous words are now synonymous with the dynamic husband-and-wife team Chip and Joanna Gaines, stars of HGTV’s Fixer Upper. As this question fills the airwaves with anticipation, their legions of fans continue to multiply and ask a different series of questions, like—Who are these people?What’s the secret to their success? And is Chip actually that funny in real life? By renovating homes in Waco, Texas, and changing lives in such a winsome and engaging way, Chip and Joanna have become more than just the stars of Fixer Upper, they have become America’s new best friends.

The Magnolia Story is the first book from Chip and Joanna, offering their fans a detailed look at their life together. From the very first renovation project they ever tackled together, to the project that nearly cost them everything; from the childhood memories that shaped them, to the twists and turns that led them to the life they share on the farm today.

They both attended Baylor University in Waco. However, their paths did not cross until Chip checked his car into the local Firestone tire shop where Joanna worked behind the counter. Even back then Chip was a serial entrepreneur who, among other things, ran a lawn care company, sold fireworks, and flipped houses. Soon they were married and living in their first fixer upper. Four children and countless renovations later, Joanna garners the attention of a television producer who notices her work on a blog one day...

Keep reading, at Amazon.

Oakland Ghost Ship Warehouse Fire

Horrific tragedy.

In fact, it's possibly criminal.

At LAT, "Site of deadly Oakland fire is known as the GhostShip."

So far, 4 bodies have been removed from the burned Oakland warehouse as cadaver dogs are brought in to help https://t.co/TNi6iunyrB pic.twitter.com/FCs5j8UJJs

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 4, 2016

Here's why officials don't know how many people died in the Oakland warehouse fire https://t.co/ahFsbIQ8TQ pic.twitter.com/bcQgADDEP5

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 4, 2016

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At Amazon, Today's Deals New deals. Every day. Shop our Deal of the Day, Lightning Deals and more daily deals and limited-time sales.

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Ph.D. Student Allegedly Murders U.S.C. Professor Bosco Tjan, Co-Director of Dornsife Cognitive Neuroimaging Center

Absolutely horrific.

Seems like we get a story like this once a year at least. Remember UCLA had the murder-suicide shooting in June.

In any case, at LAT, "USC PhD student accused of fatally stabbing professor on campus."

The person suspected of stabbing a USC professor to death on campus yesterday is a 28-year-old PhD student https://t.co/2vQDossmyN pic.twitter.com/T1mvDycZrs

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 3, 2016

The USC psychology professor who was stabbed to death on campus joined the faculty in 2001. His name was Bosco Tjan. https://t.co/2vQDossmyN

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 3, 2016

Thanks to Everyone Who's Shopped Through My Amazon Links [BUMPED]

The response has been great!

I appreciate it so much. Remember I blog as a hobby. I have a regular job, heh.

But reader support on Amazon's been so good I feel like I must be doing something right.

Thanks again.

Here's the link for ongoing savings, Cyber Monday Deals and Specials.

BONUS: Out February 17th, from Steven Hayward, Patriotism Is Not Enough: Harry Jaffa, Walter Berns, and the Arguments that Redefined American Conservatism.

Bowe Bergdahl Asks Obama for Pardon

Just wow.

That takes some gumption, but then, Bergdahl's dad (seen hugging Obama in photos) is an Islamist, so maybe it's not a long shot after all.

At the Washington Examiner, "Bergdahl asks Obama to pardon him before Trump takes office."

Previous Bergdahl blogging here.

Democrats Risk Irrelevance If They Don't Change Their Ways

At U.S. News and World Report, "The Problems With the Left: Democrats risk becoming irrelevant if they don't change their ways":

Democrats have a policy problem too: the left's disconnect with voters on issues that matter is profound. For example, President Obama gave a cover-story interview to Rolling Stone magazine that came out this week on his legacy and the "path forward." Apparently the leader of the Democratic Party didn't think the "path forward" needed to include any discussion of defeating the Islamic State group, a strong national defense or reducing the burden of $20 trillion of national debt on young people. In fact, if you look at Pew Research's list of issues that the majority of voters described the day after the election as "very big problems," almost none of them – terrorism and crime, for starters – are mentioned by him.

On immigration, Obama did admit this: "It's going to be important for Democrats and immigration-rights activists to recognize that for the majority of the American people, borders mean something." For most Americans, Obama talking about border security is a day late and a dollar short. He defended the administration's "big-heartedness" when it came to immigration policy, but added that "we tend to dismiss people's concerns about making sure that immigration is lawful and orderly." What an understatement. Democrats paid dearly on Election Day for that tendency to be dismissive of people's concerns.

Exhibit 2 of the disconnect: "When I turn over the keys to the federal government to the next president of the United States, I can say without any equivocation that the country is a lot better off: The economy is stronger, the federal government works better and our standing in the world is higher," Obama said. But, polls show the American people feel the opposite. During the interview, Obama mentioned the Koch brothers and Fox News more than he mentioned race relations, tax reform or rebuilding infrastructure. At least he didn't get into access to bathrooms or gun control.

Instead, he engaged in long discussions of climate change and legalization of marijuana – Exhibits 3 and 4 – with Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner. I had broken my self-imposed boycott of Rolling Stone to read the interview – as a UVA graduate, I'm still disgusted at the way the magazine promoted the completely false story of a gang rape at the school. So don't get me started on Obama's praise for Rolling Stone's "great work."

Exhibit 5. Democrats should be grateful for Tim Ryan's wake-up call this week. Whether it's candidate recruitment across the United States, new leadership in Washington, or a pivot to issues that really matter to voters, the Democrats have a lot of work to do. If they don't start to change – and fast – they risk going beyond disconnected to irrelevant and insignificant.

RTWT.

Boycott BuzzFeed

At AoSHQ, "Boycott Part 1: Boycott All of Buzzfeed's Advertisers. Note Them, List Them, Write to Them Telling Them You'll Never buy Their Products Again Until They Cut all Ties With Buzzfeed."

Cited there: Paul Szoldra, of Business Insider:

Crap like that BuzzFeed piece is why so many people reflexively hate the media.

— Paul Szoldra (@PaulSzoldra) November 30, 2016

https://t.co/tmrOCGenUA pic.twitter.com/URYfCjg6IT

— Paul Szoldra (@PaulSzoldra) December 1, 2016

Also at Twitchy, "BuzzFeed’s New Excuse for the HGTV Story Isn’t Fooling Anyone."

J. D. Vance TED Talk: America's Forgotten Working Class (VIDEO)

I finished the book over the weekend.

See, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.

I can see why it's gotten such a buzz. I especially loved the last 60 or 70 pages, where Vance discusses his education, from Ohio State to Yale, as well as meeting his future wife. He drops a lot of sociological theory and such. I liked it.

Here's his TED talk from October. He's an interesting guy:

Splits in the 'Alt Right'

These people can just go away. Their 15 minutes are up.

Interesting take, though.

From Matt Pearce, at LAT, "The 'alt-right' splinters as supporters and critics agree it was white supremacy all along":

"When people start throwing Nazi salutes in public, it has a way of clarifying where everybody stands." https://t.co/34tOe68o69

— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) November 30, 2016

When people start throwing Nazi salutes in public, it has a way of clarifying where everybody stands.

The loosely defined “alt-right” movement — made up of social-media-savvy white supremacists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, misogynists and other fringe figures who supported Donald Trump’s election — has splintered in recent weeks as less hard-core supporters distance themselves from the term.

At the same time, critics and media outlets have moved to avoid using the phrase “alt-right,” saying it’s a deceptive new term for old far-right ideologies that have traditionally been shunned in American public life.

And among die-hard fascists, the writing is on the wall.

“The alt-right is and has always been the same thing as it is right now – a white identity movement,” Andrew Anglin wrote at the Daily Stormer, a popular neo-Nazi site. “Looks like we finally have this term for ourselves. Finally.”

The shift came after a meeting of white nationalists inside the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington on Nov. 19, where members threw Nazi salutes and shouted, “Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!”

The man they were saluting was the white nationalist who coined the term “alternative right,” Richard Spencer, who had just given an anti-Semitic speech in which he quoted Nazi propaganda and called the United States a “white country.”

One white nationalist called it “the Heil Heard Around the World.” Coverage of the Nazi salutes went viral, and public reaction was severe.

Readers denounced news outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, for not portraying Spencer and his supporters in a harsher light. The left-wing investigative magazine Mother Jones, which ran a deep profile of Spencer in October, was criticized for titling its piece, “Meet the Dapper White Nationalist Who Wins Even if Trump Loses.” The word “dapper” was soon removed from the headline.

Frustration also boiled over inside the mainstream media.

One Politico editor, Michael Hirsh, resigned last week after posting Spencer’s addresses on Facebook and telling followers to "Stop whining about Richard B. Spencer, Nazi, and exercise your rights as decent Americans,” according to comments first reported by the Daily Caller.

“He lives part of the time next door to me in Arlington. Our grandfathers brought baseball bats to Bund meetings,” Hirsh wrote, alluding to Jewish Americans who attacked Nazi sympathizers before World War II. “Want to join me?” (Politico’s top editors denounced Hirsh’s remarks.)

Trump himself disavowed the alt-right in a meeting with New York Times journalists, telling them, “It’s not a group I want to energize, and if they are energized I want to look into it and find out why.”

Among the alt-right’s less hard-core associates, the coverage of the Nazi salutes has been like a light suddenly turned on in a dark room. They scattered, issuing clarifications and recriminations along the way.

Paul Joseph Watson, an editor for the conspiracy-minded site InfoWars, said in July that he was “in the alt-right,” but then denied it last week, going on to argue that two different factions of the group had emerged.

“One is more accurately described as the New Right. These people like to wear MAGA [Make America Great Again] hats, create memes & have fun,” Watson wrote on Facebook, criticizing mainstream media for focusing on Trump’s racist supporters. “They include whites, blacks, Asians, Latinos, gays and everyone else. These are the people who helped Trump win the election.

“The other faction likes to fester in dark corners of sub-reddits” — a reference to branches of the social-media site Reddit — “and obsess about Jews, racial superiority and Adolf Hitler. This is a tiny fringe minority. They had no impact on the election.”

Some white nationalists themselves have a term for the split: the alt-right versus the “alt-lite.”

White nationalists are alt-right and right-wing sites like Breitbart News and its chairman, the new White House advisor Stephen K. Bannon, are alt-lite, according to Brad Griffin, a white nationalist who blogs under the pen name Hunter Wallace at the site Occidental Dissent.

“Steve Bannon is the most important figure in the alt-lite,” Griffin wrote. “We all see Breitbart as the premier alt-lite website which has popularized a diluted version of our beliefs.”

Breitbart News, which channels a more nationalistic form of mainstream conservatism, gained notoriety over the last year both for implicitly supporting Trump’s candidacy and for Bannon’s proud announcement to Mother Jones in August, “We're the platform for the alt-right.”

Left-wing critics have called the site a front for white nationalism and anti-Semitism, which its staffers have vigorously denied...

The leftist media went batshit crazy over the "alt right" a couple of weeks ago, and leftists have glommed onto the "racist" meme like it was going out of style. And it's so stupid. It's like Paul Joseph Watson says, the genuine racists are at the fever swamps , a tiny fringe, with no influence whatsoever. But to progs you'd think we were back in the 1930s.

Perpetual Leftist Victims

Aww, isn't that precious?

Leftists are sad because their votes in the big urban strongholds and coastal enclaves "don't count."

Joan Walsh is such a loser. Eight years of attacking conservatives as flyover rubes and now the shoe's on the other foot.

I'm just all torn up about this.

Kneejerk animosity toward/dismissal of NY & CA, as if 60 million Americans are an asterisk inside an "elite" "bubble," is deep, dumb, ugly.

— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) November 26, 2016

We have to change this. Our votes don't count. https://t.co/zMdpQZwx8K

— Joan Walsh (@joanwalsh) November 27, 2016

Please Say 'Merry Christmas'

It's December everybody!

It's a wonderful time of year!

Merry Christmas!

From Dennis Prager, one of the better Prager University videos I've seen:

Lauren Southern: Millennials Should Embrace Tradition (VIDEO)

She's a good lady.

She name checks Charles Murray's book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.

I Voted for Hillary. And Now I'm Going to Write for Breitbart

This is interesting.

It's Greg Ferenstein, who I've never heard of.

But trying to get a handle on what makes the other side tick sounds like a plan.

At Politico, "We can’t ignore the voices that put Trump in the White House. But maybe we can persuade them."

And here's the dude's first piece at Breitbart, "Ferenstein: My Search for Data on Trump Supporters and Racism."

Donald Trump and the Emoluments Clause

This has been something of a topic, but it hit home with I was having a discussion with my department chairwoman this week.

Here's Louise Mensch, at Heat Street:

President-Elect @realDonaldTrump Addresses #Emoluments Clause, Promises to 'Leave' His Business https://t.co/gtZI6ZQ3b8

— Heat Street (@heatstreet) November 30, 2016

Also, via the Heritage Foundation, "Emoluments Clause."

Nice Lady

Heh.

Found on Twitter:

🎣 pic.twitter.com/humaz7jZvX

— Country Girls (@DownHomeGirls) November 28, 2016

Laura Ingraham Discusses Trump's Cabinet Picks and the Ohio State Jihad Attack (VIDEO)

She's so hot.

Via Fox Business News:

Amber Lee's Chilly Morning Forecast

It's been nippy this last few mornings.

I mean, I like it, but you better have a jacket with you, heh.

Via CBS News 2 Los Angeles, the lovely Ms. Amber:

Standing Rock is the Civil Rights Issue of Our Time

Heh.

Following-up from earlier, "Dakota Access Pipeline Protests Just Another Chance for Idiot Leftist Hijacking and Exploitation (VIDEO)."

Leftists have to constantly turn every protest into the "civil rights issue of our time," whether it's black lives matter, the latest hurricane (OMG Katrina George Bush racism!), or push-back against the war on terror's "backlash" against Muslims. You name it.

Here's one of radical left's biggest enviro-shills, Bill McKibben, at the Guardian U.K., "Standing Rock is the civil rights issue of our time – let's act accordingly":

Representatives of more 200 Indian nations have gathered at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in an effort to prevent construction of an oil pipeline that threatens the tribe’s water supply, not to mention the planet’s climate. It’s a remarkable encampment, perhaps the greatest show of indigenous unity in the continent’s history. If Trump Tower represents all that’s dark and greedy in America right now, Standing Rock is by contrast the moral center of the nation...

Amazing, but you'd think leftists actually won the election in November. This kind of demonizing rhetoric is a major reason why the Democrats lost.

The idiots aren't learning the lessons of defeat, apparently.

Cyber Monday Deals Week in Electronics

The Black Friday and Cyber Week shopping's going great!

Thanks everybody!

At Amazon, Shop Deals in TV, Video and Audio, Camera, Photo and Video, Computers and Accessories, Computer Software, Cell Phones and Accessories, Office Electronics, Musical Instruments, Electronics Accessories and More.

BONUS: AmazonBasics 6-Sheet Cross-Cut Paper and Credit Card Shredder.

Kendall Jenner Looks Spectacular at Victoria's Secret Fashion Show

Here, "Kendall Jenner looks ravishing in racy red lingerie with matching thigh-high boots and feathered wings as she takes to the runway at Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in Paris."

Also, "The greatest show on earth! Gigi, Bella and Kendall join Angel veterans Alessandra and Adriana as a spectacular parade of the world's top supermodels kicks off the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in Paris."

Don't Despair

This has been my message to students since the election. Don't despair. Move on with your life and enjoy the beauty. We've survived much greater challenges in the past. We'll survive four years (maybe eight) of Donald Trump.

From Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary, "Democracy’s Future? Don’t Despair!"

Democracy’s Future? Don’t Despair! - by @tobincommentary https://t.co/O05jiMBJqT pic.twitter.com/GOtyVTfMZb

— Commentary Magazine (@Commentary) November 30, 2016