It's Time to Hold the Protesters Accountable

From Ron Christie, at the Daily Beast:

Peaceful protest is fine. But burning, rioting, and looting are disgraceful—and they make for real-life victims we somehow never hear about.

As Americans gathered last week to give thanks, I remained perplexed by the destructive reaction by thousands who protested the decision of a grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, not to indict a police officer for using lawful but deadly force to stop a teenager from assaulting him. Note that I did not indicate the race of the police officer or his assailant; physical and DNA evidence supported the claim that the teen had assaulted the officer and struggled for his gun. After charging at the officer, the teen was sadly but subsequently killed by the officer who feared for his life.

Agitators in the grievance and race-hustling industry—primarily embodied by Al Sharpton—were quick to portray the events in Ferguson as a modern-day Selma or Birmingham following the verdict. Last Sunday, Sharpton claimed the fight for justice was not over for Michael Brown, noting: “You won the first round, Mr. Prosecutor, but don’t take your gloves off. Justice will come to Ferguson.”

Never mind that the 12 jurors heard hours of testimony, studied DNA and forensic reports, and deliberated for several months before rendering their verdict. Justice was never the true goal of Sharpton and his ilk—instead they successfully constructed the false narrative that a white police officer executed a black teenager—a gentle giant—in cold blood.

And yet, what of the justice for those in Ferguson whose lives have been destroyed by the felonious activities of those who rioted, pillaged, and brought shame upon themselves for their wickedness? Just after the grand jury decision was announced, Louis Head, Brown’s stepfather, shouted “burn the bitch down” and other expletives. Rioting, shoplifting, and violent confrontation with the police took place shortly thereafter. Head, Sharpton, and thousands of protesters represent the worst of Ferguson—those seeking to advance a political agenda that America is an evil and racist country while accepting no personal responsibility for the violence and destruction they helped unleash.

More than 25 structures in Ferguson were burned, damaged, or destroyed in the wake of senseless mayhem following the grand jury verdict. Who will pay for the damage sustained by Sam Chow, an immigrant to United States 11 years ago who opened a restaurant in Ferguson in 2009 that sustained major damage in the riots? The pictures of destruction to Chow’s business are as heartbreaking as they are senseless.

Same with Natalie DuBose, an entrepreneur who opened Natalie’s Cakes and More in Ferguson after saving money following bake sales to start her own business. After the riots, her business was completely destroyed. While she is getting back on her feet through the generosity of strangers who have contributed more than $250,000, a more pointed question must be asked in the aftermath of Ferguson: Why do predominately black mobs get a free pass to riot and steal in response to a political outcome they disagree with?

Newark, Baltimore, and Philadelphia are just a handful of cities in the Northeast that have never fully recovered from damage sustained in riots in the late 1960s. Same with South Central Los Angeles in the aftermath of the verdict in which motorist Rodney King was beaten by police who were initially acquitted of charges in 1992. Rioting and looting ensued shortly after the verdict and racial tensions were tense across the United States for years to follow.

The case in Ferguson differs from King’s in that King never punched or charged police officers in their confrontation. Evidence led the grand jury not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in his use of force with Michael Brown as the facts indicated Brown had initiated and escalated physical contact with an armed police officer. The administration of justice dictated that the officer not be charged, given the lack of evidence to sustain a conviction at trial.

And yet, the temptation to stick with the narrative that Brown’s death is the new civil-rights struggle for justice in the 21st century is undercut by the substitution of facts to fit a political narrative for those seeking moral clarity. Where is the outrage of Sharpton regarding the death of Zemir Begic? You’ve never heard of Begic? The young immigrant who fled violence in Bosnia was driving home with his fiancée 20 miles away from Ferguson when a pack of black teens beat him to death with hammers early Sunday evening. Moral clarity would dictate that civil-rights and other civic leaders would speak out against such a senseless act of violence. The silence is deafening...

More.

Racial Protests Spread Across Country

At the Wall Street Journal, "Protests Spread Across Country Day After Eric Garner Grand-Jury Decision: Thousands of Demonstrators Gather in Lower Manhattan."

Also, "Social Media Help Fuel Protests After New York Officer Not Indicted Over Death of Eric Garner: Demonstrations in Wake of Grand-Jury Decision Are Echoed in Washington, Atlanta, Other Cities."

Franklin Foer, Leon Wieseltier Out at the New Republic

Mediagazer has the news of the big shakeup at the New Republic.

But don't miss this take from John Podhoretz, at Commentary, "You’ll Never Guess What Happened to This Magazine! Click Here for More!"

'What Breitbart News found after an investigation that lasted more than a month is that the details of Dunham's rape claim cannot be verified and that those details point to an innocent man who has had to hide his Facebook page and hire an attorney...'

This is just bizarre, at Big Journalism, "'LIKE HOLOCAUST DENIALISM': SLATE WRITER SLAMS BREITBART OVER DUNHAM INVESTIGATIVE PIECE."

Also, "INVESTIGATION: LENA DUNHAM ‘RAPED BY A REPUBLICAN’ STORY IN BESTSELLER COLLAPSES UNDER SCRUTINY."

Killing My Own Kid

This is awesome.

At Hot Air, "Video: The freaky deaky 'killing my own kid' prank."

The Global Shakeout from Plunging Oil

From Daniel Yergin, at the Wall Street Journal, "New supply—rather than demand—is dominating the market, and OPEC has been caught by surprise":

The decision by members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countrieson Thursday not to cut production reflects a profound shift in the world oil market. The demand for oil—by China and other emerging economies—is no longer the dominant factor. Instead, the surge in U.S. oil production, bolstered by additional new supply from Canada, is decisive. This surge is on a scale that most oil exporters had not anticipated. The turmoil in prices, with spasmodic plunges over the past few days, will likely continue.

Since 2008—when fear of “peak oil,” after which global output would supposedly decline, was the dominant motif—U.S. oil production has risen 80%, to nine million barrels daily. The U.S. increase alone is greater than the output of every OPEC country except Saudi Arabia.

The world has experienced sudden supply gushers before. In the early 1930s, a flood of oil from East Texas drove prices down to 10 cents a barrel—and desperate gas station owners offered chickens as premiums to bring in customers. In the late 1950s, the rapidly swelling flow of Mideast oil led to price cuts that triggered the formation of OPEC.

And in the first half of the 1980s, a surge in oil from the North Sea, Alaska’s North Slope and Mexico caused prices to plunge to $10 a barrel. That posed a much greater crisis for OPEC than today: Over those same years, global demand fell by more than two million barrels a day owing to a deep recession, greater conservation and the switch to coal from oil for electricity generation. This time world oil demand is still growing, but weakly.

For the past three years, oil prices hovered around $100 a barrel as disruptions in Libya, South Sudan and elsewhere, and sanctions on Iranian exports, eerily balanced out the production increases from the U.S. and Canada. But the slower global economic growth that became apparent a few months ago was accompanied by weaker demand for oil, just when Libya suddenly quadrupled output to almost a million barrels a day. The result: Prices weakened in September and then tumbled.

OPEC’s decision last week reflects the conviction of its “have” nations—the Persian Gulf countries, with very large financial reserves—that cutting output would mean losing market share, particularly to Iran and to what they see as Iran-dominated Iraq. Instead, they have adopted a strategy of leaving it to the market for now; OPEC is waiting, in the words of Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, for the oil market “to stabilize itself eventually.”

It is now clear that the new U.S. production is more resilient than anticipated. There has been a widespread view that at around $85 or $90 a barrel extracting “tight” oil from shale would no longer be economical. However, a new IHS analysis based on individual well data finds that 80% of new tight-oil production in 2015 would be economic between $50 and $69 a barrel. And companies will continue to improve technology and drive down costs...

Still more.

PREVIOUSLY: "Energy Quakes as OPEC Stands Pat."

Victoria's Secret Brought Its Annual Spectacular to London for First Time on Tuesday

A Wall Street Journal video, "Victoria's Secret Fashion Show Hits London."

Also at Victoria's Secret, "VS Live: Before the Fashion Show Promo":

The 2014 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show airs Tuesday, December 9 at 10/9c, on CBS, but you can get the excitement started an hour earlier by streaming our live pre-show coverage with the Angels and special guests. It all starts at 9/8C. In the meantime, watch this mash-up of some of our favorite moments from previous years.

Charles Krauthammer: New York's Eric Garner Decision 'Totally Incomprehensible'

From the incomparable Dr. Krauthammer, on yesterday's Special Report All-Star panel:

Israel in Trouble

Via Theo Spark, "A World Without Israel: Is Our Ally in Trouble?"

Fabulous Nina Agdal in Lingerie

Via Egotastic!, "Nina Agdal Fills Out a Bra and Other Fine Things to Ogle."

Japanese Unearth Remains, and Their Nation’s Past, on Guadalcanal

At the New York Times:

GUADALCANAL, Solomon Islands — Using a trowel to dig into the shadowy floor of the rain forest, pausing only to wipe away sweat and malaria-carrying mosquitoes, Atsushi Maeda holds up what he has traveled so far, to this South Pacific island, to find: a human bone, turned orange-brown with age.

Mr. Maeda, 21, was looking for the remains of missing Japanese soldiers at the site of one of World War II’s most ferocious battles. Others have done this work before him, mostly aging veterans or bereaved relatives. But he was with a group of mostly university students and young professionals, nearly all of them under 40 and without a direct connection to the soldiers killed here.

They had come to honor their countrymen, many of whom were no older than they are when they fell on the battlefield. The group was also searching for answers. “These young men who died here believed they were defending their family and loved ones,” said Mr. Maeda, a university junior in religious studies. “We need to rediscover their sacrifices and learn from them.”

As the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II approaches, there has been a surge in interest among young Japanese about the disastrous war that their nation has long tried to forget.

It is a phenomenon that crosses political lines, encompassing progressives who preach the futility of war as well as conservatives who question the historical record of Japan’s wartime atrocities. What these young people have in common is an urgent sense that they learned too little about the war, both from school, where classes focus on earlier Japanese history, and from tight-lipped family members, who prefer not to revisit a painful time.

Driving this nationwide pursuit into the past has been China’s hostility toward Japan over control of disputed East China Sea islands, known in China as the Diaoyu and in Japan as the Senkaku. Despite recent diplomatic maneuvering to ease tensions, anxiety about China’s rise remains strong in Japan.

“For the first time since 1945, Japan is facing a small but real possibility of conflict,” said Yurie Chiba, a magazine editor who organizes talks by veterans, has written about the new interest in World War II and argues that Japan must never go to war again. “This makes people want to learn more about those who fought in the war, to rediscover how horrible war can be.”

Continue reading.

The Cost of a False Narrative of Oppression

From Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary:

At a different moment in time, the decision of a Staten Island grand jury not to an indict a white police officer for using a choke hold on Eric Garner, an African-American who later died after being taken into custody, would not be much more than a local news item in New York. But coming as it did on the heels of the much-publicized decision of another grand jury in St. Louis County, Missouri not to indict another white cop in the shooting death of another black man, teenager Michael Brown, the Staten Island deliberations were immediately dragooned into service by mainstream media talking heads, African-American leaders, and President Obama to reinforce a narrative of oppression of blacks by white police.


Though each of these two decisions appear to stand on their own as being reasonable interpretations of the law, together they appear to justify the upsurge in demonstrations around the country protesting police behavior and asserting that blacks are being systematically victimized. But whatever one may think of these rulings or of the police, those who are hyping this story need not only to think carefully whether the story they are telling is true but also whether the net effects of their campaign against the police will hurt minorities far more than it help them.

The facts in the Staten Island case seem to be as straightforward as the Ferguson, Missouri incident were muddled. The confrontation was caught on a video taken by a cell phone and showed that a chokehold was employed. The New York City Police Department has banned chokeholds for use but they are not illegal. The grand jury clearly believed that the tragic result was not the result of a crime but observers may well wonder about the use of excessive force or why an unarmed man resisting arrest for a petty crime wound up dying in this manner.

But no more than in the Ferguson incident, the facts in that case are not really the point of the protests, the president’s statement, or what is being said about the case on the cable news networks. As awful as each of these stories may be, the willingness of the media to seize on every instance in which a white police officer kills a black civilian in order to make a point about race says more about the need of the left to fuel fears about racism for political advantage than a true flaw in the justice system or American society...

And that's a profoundly sad statement on the priorities of far-left politics in America.

Continue reading.

Walter James Casper Gets His Guy Fawkes Mask On!

Whoa!

Guy Fawkes is too well fed!

Reppy, man, you gotta lay off those major food binge-runs over to Mastic Sports Deli!

Obama Administration Exploits #Ferguson to Undermine Race Relations and Rule of Law

From David Limbaugh, at Town Hall:

I wish there were a way to address the Ferguson controversy without generating further controversy. But that's not an easy task.

I have believed for some time that the Obama administration has fanned the flames of racial tension in this country rather than attempt to extinguish them, despite its claims to the contrary. President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, in my view, have been the main culprits, which is exceedingly unfortunate, considering the opportunity their historic roles present for making great strides toward racial harmony.

The question is: Do these gentlemen truly want to promote racial harmony?

If President Obama were trying to alleviate racial tensions, would he have accused the police department in Cambridge, Massachusetts, of "acting stupidly" in arresting a friend of his, Harvard professor Henry Gates? The statement was stunningly inappropriate because he took sides reflexively without benefit of all the facts and because presidents have no business weighing in on such local matters. Does anyone doubt that race was at the forefront of Obama's mind?

But if there was any doubt, Obama removed it when "the main message" he chose to impart from the Trayvon Martin matter was implied in this bizarre statement: "My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."

Fast-forward to the present and we learn that just days after the grand jury decided not to indict police officer Darren Wilson based on his shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the White House tweeted its endorsement of an article by Christopher Emdin, Ph.D., a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. The piece, "5 Ways to Teach About Michael Brown and Ferguson in the New School Year," appeared on The Huffington Post less than two weeks after the shooting incident and before all the facts were in and the grand jury was impaneled. In his introductory paragraphs, Emdin advises teachers and parents not to ignore these types of events: "Bringing the events in Ferguson to the classroom is not only best teaching practice but a way to establish powerful expectations for the academic year."

Parts of the article appear innocuous, such as the suggestion that teachers ask students what they have heard or know about Brown in order to "spark a powerful discussion that sets the tone for the school year." The teachers can use information gathered by the class to help "students unearth the facts, fiction, and mistruths in media coverage of the events in Ferguson."

Keep reading.

'It's said that Apple's Steve Jobs got away with never having license plates on his leased Mercedes by trading it in every few months, before the 90-day limit expired...'

I'm sure that was sweet.

The rest of us, who're supposed to affix license plates within 3 months, can't just go for the quarterly trade-in.

At LAT, "Why so many cars in California don't have license plates."

This is What Prosecutors Think Happened in Ferguson

Cool graphics, at the Independent UK, "Michael Brown shootings: This is what prosecutors think happened in Ferguson."

This is what prosecutors think happened in Ferguson when Michael Brown was shot http://t.co/L2CoOOlv20 pic.twitter.com/4ltNxnuWAr

— The Independent (@Independent) November 25, 2014

Angelina Jolie and Louis Zamperini

Interesting.

I'm looking forward to seeing this film.

Yesterday, at Vanity Fair, "Read Angelina Jolie’s Moving Reflection on Showing Unbroken to Louie Zamperini Before His Death":

Universal hosted a luncheon today at the the Metropolitan Club in Midtown Manhattan to celebrate Unbroken, director Angelina Jolie’s harrowing retelling of the story of W.W. II hero Louie Zamperini. Zamperini, a bombardier in the Pacific theater, survived a plane crash and nearly two grueling months stranded at sea, only to be captured by the Japanese and held in a P.O.W. camp for two and a half years. He passed away this past July, but Jolie, who became close with Zamperini while making the film, did have a chance to show him the finished product, a moment that she captured rather poignantly during a Q&A today...

Keep reading.

Orange County Register, Riverside Press-Enterprise Lay Off 100 Employees

I drive by the O.C. Register everyday on the way home from work. I always wonder how long the newspaper's marquee building will be there.

Perhaps not too much longer.

At LAT:

Freedom Communications, the parent company of the Orange County Register and the Riverside Press-Enterprise, is laying off about 100 non-newsroom employees Wednesday.

Former casino executive Richard Mirman, who became the Register’s publisher in October, sent a memo to employees Wednesday morning explaining that the cuts are part of an attempt "to 'right size' the business back to appropriate levels."

More.

Southern California Storm Breaks Records: Flood Watches in Effect

It's very nice to have sustained rainfall.

At LAT, "California rain: 'Six straight hours of rain,' and drought continues."

Another day of this and the weather's going to take a big dent out of that drought.

FDA Could Soon Rescind Ban on Blood Donations from Homosexual Men

Pray you'll never need a blood transfusion.

At WaPo, "Government could ease 31-year-old ban on blood donations from gay men."

RELATED: At NYT, "The AIDS epidemic in America is rapidly becoming concentrated among poor, young black and Hispanic men who have sex with men."

Well, hopefully these fellows won't be looking to make blood donations.