Thousands Brave Bitter Cold for 126th Rose Parade

At the Los Angeles Times:

Ronni Edens bobbed her head as a marching band passed. She's been coming to the parade for more than 30 years, and paused as she tried to nail down her favorite part.

While she was brainstorming, she waved at a man on a passing float. "Happy New Year!" he shouted.

She yelled it back.

"That's the best part," Edens said. "The best part is saying 'Happy New Year' to everyone, even though they're strangers. It's the best way to start a year."

Super-Tight Red Dress Saves 21-Year-Old Woman's Life in Car Accident

The dress was so tight it acted like a corset, protecting her vital organs.

At Telegraph UK, "My £35 little red dress saved my life, says crash victim":

Zoe Turner, 21, says the skin-tight dress she wore to at a Christmas party at Leeds United's ground stopped her bones piercing her organs.

Via Pat Dollard, "Tight Red Dress Saves Hottie’s Life In Car Crash."

New Year's Eve Banner Flying Over Times Square: DE BLASIO - APOLOGIZE TO THE NYPD!!

At Gateway Pundit, "Banner Bashing De Blasio Flies Over Times Square, “De Blasio Apologize to NYPD” (Video)."

NYPD on 'High Alert' as Leftists Plan 'Kill a Pig' Protests on New Year's Eve (VIDEO)

The left is literally waging all-out war on America's law enforcement, and New York City is like ground zero. At the video, Commissioner Bill Bratton says he's not leaving anything to chance.

At Jammie Wearing Fools, "Thanks, de Blasio! NYPD Facing “Kill a Pig Night” to Celebrate New Year":

Needless to say, the “mostly peaceful” protesters are preparing for a big night. Hope nobody interrupts Obama’s latest round of golf to give him the news.

The NYPD is investigating several threats to kill NYPD officers during New Year’s Eve celebrations, DNAinfo New York has learned.

Sources say there are several gang members on social media calling for New Year’s Eve to be “Kill a Pig Night” so that it will become “The New Year’s Eve Massacre 2014.”

The threats primarily come in tweets baring a host of vicious anti-NYPD hash tags including #@deadcopseveryday, #onlydeadcops, #wingsonpigs and #laughatyourdeaths, according to law enforcement sources.

One tweet reads: “Dear Police, Don’t think this cant happen again” accompanied by a photo of armed Blank Panthers from the 1960s and 1970s, sources say.

Police officials say the NYPD is taking all threats seriously, particularly in the wake of the Dec. 20 murder of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. Their assassin, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, took to Instagram that morning announcing he was coming to New York to kill police officers.

Sources say the NYPD has received 63 threats since the shootings and there have been 16 arrests connected to them.

There are presently 23 open investigations into threats against NYPD officers, a source said.

ObamaCare's Annus Horribilis

From Michelle Malkin:

Obamacare's Annus Horribilis - the horrible year in review. Eat it, @DWStweets ==> http://t.co/JAUlYUiZ9M

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) December 31, 2014

There’s no candy coating the truth: ObamaCare has had a very terrible, horrible, crappy, none-too-happy year. What it really means is that the victims of Obamacare — taxpayers, health care consumers, health care providers, employers and employees — have had a hellish, nightmarish 2014.

RTWT.

Let's Have a National Conversation About the American Ghetto

From Michael Grable, at American Thinker, "A National Conversation about the American Ghetto":

The Left has long argued ad populum that disproportionately white police forces and disproportionately black prison populations prove American law enforcement institutionally racist.

That's essentially the perception behind, for example, the Left's long campaign against racial profiling as a police engagement technique.

Media sensationalism this year about two black deaths at the hands of white policemen inflamed the argument, while the president of the United States, the attorney general of the United States, the mayor of New York, and race-hustling entrepreneurs from Al Sharpton on down to any brother in the street with a bullhorn jumped on the black-while-walking bandwagon.

Here, however, is one standup law-enforcement professional, Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke, Jr., who begs to disagree.

Sheriff Clarke publicly condemns anti-police populism as the Left's deflection of an urban reality with which he's professionally all too familiar and for which the Left's all too politically responsible. "This deflects," says Sheriff Clarke:

against the real thing that we need to have a conversation about in this country and it's the American ghetto. And that's where most of the policing unfortunately has to be applied. The American ghetto has chronic poverty, high unemployment where people can't find meaningful work, and kids shackled to failing public schools ensuring that they won't reach their God-given potential. This creates a permanent underclass in this country and ensures that this group of people will continue to live life at the bottom. That's the kind of conversation that we need to have, as to how these failed liberal government policies have led to the creation and emergence of the welfare state. And that characterizes the American ghetto. Let's have that conversation and get off this nonsense that it's the policing profession that needs to be transformed. There's nothing wrong with the policing of, or institution of, policing in America.

The very civil rights movement with its war on poverty which was to have rectified American racism has, instead, perversely perpetuated it in the creation of a permanent underclass living life at the bottom of an urban ignorance, criminality, and violence which most requires the very policing against which its political beneficiaries now rail. That's a pretty "fundamental transformation" of at least one aspect of America. And it's a transformation of which no American should ever be anything but ashamed...

Keep reading.

Sad that.

Ignoring the Facts: How to Promote Lynch Mobs

From Thomas Sowell, at RCP, "Are Facts Obsolete?":

Some of us, who are old enough to remember the old television police series "Dragnet," may remember Sgt. Joe Friday saying, "Just the facts, ma'am." But that would be completely out of place today. Facts are becoming obsolete, as recent events have demonstrated.

What matters today is how well you can concoct a story that fits people's preconceptions and arouses their emotions. Politicians like New York mayor Bill de Blasio, professional demagogues like Al Sharpton and innumerable irresponsible people in the media have shown that they have great talent in promoting a lynch mob atmosphere toward the police.

Grand juries that examine hard facts live in a different world from mobs who listen to rhetoric and politicians who cater to the mobs.

During the controversy over the death of Trayvon Martin, for example, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus said that George Zimmerman had tracked Trayvon Martin down and shot him like a dog. The fact is that Zimmerman did not have to track down Trayvon Martin, who was sitting right on top of him, punching him till his face was bloody.

After the death of Michael Brown, members of the Congressional Black Caucus stood up in Congress, with their hands held up, saying "don't shoot." Although there were some who claimed that this is what Michael Brown said and did, there were other witnesses -- all black, by the way -- who said that Brown was charging toward the policeman when he was shot.

What was decisive was not what either set of witnesses said, but what the autopsy revealed, an autopsy involving three sets of forensic experts, including one representing Michael Brown's family. Witnesses can lie but the physical facts don't lie, even if politicians, mobs and the media prefer to take lies seriously.

The death of Eric Garner has likewise spawned stories having little relationship to facts. The story is that Garner died because a chokehold stopped his breathing. But Garner did not die with a policeman choking him.

He died later, in an ambulance where his heart stopped. He had a long medical history of various diseases, as well as a long criminal history. No doubt the stress of his capture did not do him any good, and he might well still be alive if he had not resisted arrest. But that was his choice.

Despite people who say blithely that the police need more "training," there is no "kinder and gentler" way to capture a 350-pound man, who is capable of inflicting grievous harm, and perhaps even death, on any of his would-be captors. The magic word "unarmed" means nothing in practice, however much the word may hype emotions...

More.

PREVIOUSLY: "BuzzFeed Busted for Pushing the 'Myth' of the Left's 'Dead Cops Chant'."

BuzzFeed Busted for Pushing the 'Myth' of the Left's 'Dead Cops Chant'

Walter James Casper pushes this meme all the time at his Twitter feed.

But Hugh Hewitt busted publisher Ben Smith on BuzzFeed's despicable meme that the left's "dead cop chant" is a myth. See, "Making a Little News on New Year’s Eve" (via Memeorandum).

So I taped an interview with Buzzfeed’s editor-in-chief Ben Smith this morning, one that led Ben to delete a front page headline splash for this story, and which triggered a bunch of follow-on stories among media reporters like The Daily Caller’s Al Weaver. Ben’s a good guest and willing to take hard questions, but I wouldn’t have just disappeared the header that we were discussing without a note to the readers. There’s also an interesting discussion of why I think Buzzfeed will “go left” in 2015 whether it wants to or not. Anyway, here’s the audio and transcript...

Yep. Busted. If you go to the BuzzFeed article the headline's been changed.

But check this dude's tweet below, from earlier this morning, as you can see the subheading, "Protesters Against Police Brutality Aren't Advocating for 'Dead Cops'."

Uh, actually they are, and there are lots of examples, not just the video from Al Sharpton's "dead cops" protest in New York.

"Dead Cops" Chant A Myth http://t.co/OUtrDpl19a
— Chad Hill (@JavaChilly) December 31, 2014

Lies. That's all they have. Leftists are nothing but liars. You have to call them out, constantly and repeatedly. It takes time, but when they're busted their lies often do get further exposure on MSM outlets. It takes conservatives exponentially more effort to debunk the lies with the Obama-enabling media, but it can be done.

They're all despicable liars.

Violent Crime in L.A. Rose for First Time in 12 Years, LAPD Says

This year's been victorious for the left's forces of lawlessness and disruption. From soft-on-crime legislation to the anarchy in the streets, and to the radical left's all-out war on law enforcement, it's been a rough year for the bulwarks of decency and order.

The left wouldn't have it any other way.

At the Los Angeles Times, "L.A. violent crime rises for the first time in 12 years, LAPD says":

For more than a decade, the Los Angeles Police Department has pointed to year-end statistics showing big drops in crime as proof the agency was making the city safer.

But as 2014 draws to a close and the numbers show violent crime has climbed for the first time in 12 years, Chief Charlie Beck has struck a decidedly different note.

"One thing we've become trapped in doing is looking at crime year-to-year, month-to-month, day-to-day," Beck told reporters earlier this month. "When you do that you don't get a clear, overall picture."

His comments came after months of questions about the accuracy of the LAPD's crime data, which the department has long used to set crime-fighting strategies and assess the success or failure of various operations.

Through Saturday, LAPD figures showed a decline in property crimes, but more than a 12% jump in violent offenses over the same period last year. All four types of crime that account for the city's violence total had increased: Robberies and homicides were up slightly; rapes climbed 12.4%.

By far, the most dramatic rise was in aggravated assaults — serious attacks that typically involve a weapon or serious injury — which rose 24.2% compared with 2013.

The increase in assaults coincided with a Times investigation this summer that found that the LAPD significantly understated the city's true level of crime when it misclassified nearly 1,200 serious violent crimes as low-level offenses during a recent one-year period. The bulk of those errors were made when police recorded aggravated assaults as minor incidents...

More.

Socialists Hate God, Freedom, and America!

And they also hate cops.

Hate consumes.

@rsmccain @AmPowerBlog Hate, ultimately, consumes itself, and unfortunately, in the end.

— Joseph G. Simpson (@jg_simpson) December 31, 2014

Anais Zanotti: American Power's Woman of the Year for 2014

I almost forgot about AmPow's Woman of the Year!

In fact, I haven't even thought about it. I can't think of a genuine media sensation this year, unlike in 2013, when Emily Ratajkowski reigned supreme. And in 2012, Kate Upton took the top honors.

So, why Anais Zanotti?

In all of this year's babe blogging and Rule 5, Ms. Zanotti has evinced more of the "Ooh Ahh" factor than anyone else. She's fit and flirty, and not overexposed. Just a sweetie. She sky dives too!

I love Miami beach 💖 #selfie pic.twitter.com/bE8Nv2E4oQ

— Anais Zanotti (@anaiszanotti) July 11, 2014

More here, from the archives.

Also at WWTDD, "Anais Zanotti in a Bikini." And, "@PlayboyVzla pictorial this month."

And at Egotastic!, "Anais Zanotti Licks the Cream from the End of Summer’s Cone."

Get Fit New Year's Resolution

Shop for stuff to speed your fitness resolutions, at Amazon.

Evelyn Taft on Year-End's Record-Low Temperatures

The lovely Evelyn Taft, from KCBS Los Angeles, with the chilly weather forecast for CBS This Morning.

Longtime readers my recall Ms. Taft as a political scientist!



PREVIOUSLY: "The Coldest Rose Parade Ever."

Foreign Fighters Flow to Syria

Love this graphic, at the Washington Post.

Where foreign fighters in #Syria come from http://t.co/NTRbZapYHK pic.twitter.com/bKIYb5QUlo #Tunisia #Tunis #UK @duncanrobinson @conradhackett

— MinDoZa (@mindoza33) December 22, 2014

More 'Broken Windows' for Seattle: Police Seethe as Political Officials Rein in Prosecutions for 'Minor' Crimes

Seattle, a leftist utopia.

And the police aren't loving this policy of no prosecutions for so-called "minor" offenses. Once again, criminals get a free pass. It's a nationwide trend, apparently, and it's getting worse amid the left's all-out assault on law enforcement post-Ferguson.

At WSJ, "Seattle Police Chafe Under New Marching Orders: City Reins in Prosecution for Minor Crimes, Sends Some Offenders to Social Services Instead of Criminal Courts":

SEATTLE— Kathleen O’Toole, this city’s new police chief, recently visited some of her department’s stations to deliver an unusual message: It’s OK to arrest people who violently break the law.

Ms. O’Toole, who became head of the 1,350-officer force in June, said police showed admirable but excessive restraint when pelted with stones and bottles at a protest related to the death of Michael Brown, the Ferguson, Mo., black teen shot by a white officer. “If you get agitators who threaten the police or the public, you have to arrest them,” she said.

That a police chief felt the need to issue such instructions is a signal of the turmoil that has beset American law enforcement. After decades of aggressive policing and prosecution practices, combined with tough-on-crime legislation, there is increasing debate over whether those policies need to change. In recent months, that has taken an angry and at times violent turn, including the shooting of Mr. Brown and the execution-style killing of two New York City policemen.

The tactics many believe helped reduce American crime rates and make violent cities more habitable now appear to be at odds with a different set of consequences. Almost 80 million people, or nearly one-third of adult Americans, have an arrest or conviction record, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation data. Among minorities, in particular, there is a mistrust of law enforcement.

These tensions are playing out in Seattle, a fast-growing city of more than 600,000 that is home to corporate giants such as Starbucks Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. The police department is under the scrutiny of a court-appointed monitor, the result of a 2012 Justice Department complaint accusing it of a pattern of using force that denied people’s constitutional rights.

Seattle’s political leadership, including City Attorney Peter Holmes, has moved to rein in police tactics and cut down on prosecutions for minor crimes.

Many police officers have chafed at the restrictions. Earlier this year, one officer cited dozens of people for smoking marijuana in public and wrote some of the tickets to the attention of “Petey Holmes.” Rates of serious crime have started to tick up.

Out of this contentious debate has emerged a possible third way, the joint brainchild of civil-rights activists and law-enforcement officials. The three-year-old program gives beat officers the option of diverting some offenders into social-service programs rather than the criminal courts.

Other locales are trying similar experiments. In Durham County, N.C., prosecutors, defense attorneys, police and judges are working to give youthful first-time offenders an option other than adult court and a criminal record. Authorities in New York, Philadelphia and some other cities have stepped away from making arrests for minor pot possession. Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn has directed officers to limit searches during traffic stops, which in the past produced arrests.

The collateral consequences of an arrest and conviction—which can include difficulty in getting a job, scholarship or loan many years later—are now “definitely on our radar screen,” said Steven Jansen, vice president of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, a group representing thousands of prosecutors. “In the end, we have to ask, ‘Is this fair?’ ”

"Serious crime" is going up, but political officials are getting the "restorative justice" shakedown from leftist "civil rights activists" looking to weaken American law enforcement altogether.

This country is going to hell. Damn.

Continue reading.

Owner of L.A.'s Golden Road Brewing Better Start to 'Share His Profits More Equitably...'

Following-up from the the other day, "Los Angeles' Minimum Wage Hike Risks Driving Businesses to Nearby Cities."

No surprise, but leftist readers of the Times took issue, captured perfectly by this totalitarian letter to the editor, "Will a wage boost lift all boats or push jobs out of L.A.?":

To the editor: Golden Road Brewing head Tony Yanow asks, "Do you want to go somewhere you can make money, or do you want to go somewhere where they are stacking the cards against you?" I, an avid IPA aficionado, would respond that I would rather support a brewer who is willing to share his profits more equitably.

I applaud the entrepreneurial spirit of brewers like Yanow. They deserve their profits. Just how much do they think they need to make before they are willing to acknowledge the efforts of their employees by paying them a living wage?

I will be watching and making my decisions about where I enjoy my IPA. The greedy ones need to know they are not the only IPA experts in town.

Sharon Fane, Burbank

Well, she "applauds" them if they're willing to redistribute their earnings. Otherwise she just considers them "greedy" bastards. Typical anti-business leftist. Damn.

Surprisingly, the Times also published a much more sensible letter carefully laying out the logic of the marketplace, from Andrew Chawke in Sherman Oaks (at the link).

Central American Migrants Allowed to Stay in U.S. Go Missing, Fail to Show Up at Deportation Hearings

Well, here's an "I told you so" follow-up from last summer's blogging on the Central American illegal immigration onslaught, when I predicted that alien migrants wouldn't be sent back home. See, "Few Central American Illegals Will Ever Be Sent Back Home — #BorderInvasion," and "Wave of Unaccompanied Alien Children Swamps the United States — #BorderInvasion."

And now, via Blazing Cat Fur, "U.S. shocker: Illegal Immigrant Families With Deportation Orders Go Missing."

College Football, Awash in Money, More Like Professional Sports Than Higher Education

You don't say?

At NYT, "What Made College Football More Like the Pros? $7.3 Billion, for a Start":

After taking a sociology exam, Cardale Jones, a quarterback at Ohio State, posted a message on Twitter that echoed across college sports: “Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain’t come to play SCHOOL, classes are POINTLESS.”

Two years after publishing that provocative statement, Jones will be the starting quarterback on Thursday against Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, the second semifinal game of college football’s new playoff system — and his words have renewed relevance. Never has the sport been so awash in money, a growth industry on campuses that some observers believe increasingly resembles professional football more than higher education.

In some ways, even the N.F.L., that $10-billion-a-year enterprise, might be struggling to compete. The University of Michigan on Tuesday introduced its new coach, Jim Harbaugh, who left the N.F.L.’s San Francisco 49ers to join the Wolverines. His base salary — $5 million annually for seven years with 10 percent increases after three and five years — will eventually amount to more than what he was earning in the N.F.L.

Harbaugh will have one of the highest base salaries in the country. The highest-paid college football coach at around $7 million this season was Alabama’s Nick Saban, who also chose to leave a head coaching position in the N.F.L., in 2007, for the riches of the college ranks.

“When you hear presidents and athletic directors talk about character and academics and integrity, none of that really matters,” said Mack Brown, a longtime coach at Texas who is now a television analyst. “The truth is, nobody has ever been fired for those things. They get fired for losing.”

Harbaugh, like most college football coaches, will receive bonuses. His incentives come for reaching the Big Ten championship game ($125,000), winning the Big Ten championship ($250,000), reaching a College Football Playoff bowl ($200,000), playing in the four-team national championship playoff ($300,000) and for team academic performance (up to $150,000). Winning a national title would bring him $500,000.

The story of college football’s gold rush can be told through television contracts. Under the championship playoff format that began this season, ESPN is paying $7.3 billion over 12 years to telecast seven games a year — four major bowl games, two semifinal bowl games and the national championship game. (In the first semifinal on Thursday, Oregon will play Florida State in the Rose Bowl; the title game is on Jan. 12.)

Each of the five major conferences — the Southeastern, the Atlantic Coast, the Pacific-12, the Big 12 and the Big Ten — will see its base revenue increase to about $50 million, from about $28 million under last season’s system. The base revenue will nearly triple for the five conferences that make up the next tier of college football.

The playoff is such a profitable showpiece that many believe it will be expanded to eight teams or more. On Tuesday, the top-selling college item on Fana-tics.com was a T-shirt depicting the playoff bracket.

“College football is growing closer and closer to being like the N.F.L.,” Brown said...

More.

Norway Turns Against Statoil

It's the state oil company, which generates about a quarter of national income.

Still, the far-left Norwegian population has turned against the company. You know, it's all about the environment to leftists. Too bad we can't ship all of ours to Scandinavia.

At the New York Times, "Norwegians Turn Ambivalent on Statoil, Their Economic Bedrock":

OSLO — This has not been a particularly good year for Statoil, the huge state-controlled oil company that has had a commanding presence in Norway’s economy and society for more than four decades.

In the spring, Statoil cut 1,000 jobs, or 4 percent of its work force. In September, it postponed a much-criticized project in the Canadian tar sands for at least three years. On Oct. 29, reflecting collapsing oil prices and a steep tumble of its stock, it reported its first quarterly loss since 2001. And in November, it announced disappointing results from the year’s program of drilling for new oil and gas in the Norwegian Arctic.

But it is not just the vicissitudes of oil markets and exploratory wells that are causing difficulties for Statoil. In an era of climate change, the company — and by extension Norway’s entire oil and gas industry, which accounts for nearly a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions worldwide — is coming under increasing pressure from within its own borders.

The activism goes beyond conventional environmental concerns to issues of the company’s pervasive presence in Norwegian life.

At the University of Bergen and other schools, for instance, professors and students have protested Statoil’s financing of academic research, worth about $12 million annually. And musicians and artists have campaigned against the company’s widespread sponsorship of cultural events and organizations, which has included cash awards to performers whom Statoil calls “Heroes of Tomorrow.”

“Basically, you’re a billboard for an oil company,” Martin Hagfors, a musician, said in an interview in his studio in Oslo’s lively Gronland district. “And if you have any sense that we need to change direction, you can’t be a billboard for an oil company.”

The tensions are playing out in Parliament, too. In June, majority and opposition parties pressured Statoil to agree to provide electricity to several North Sea oil fields from land, using clean hydroelectricity delivered by cable rather than greenhouse-gas-emitting gas generators offshore.

“There’s a growing concern that Norway is basing its welfare to such a large extent on something that is increasing global warming,” said Rasmus Hansson, who last year became the first member of the Green Party to be elected to Parliament. “It’s a moral issue.”

Statoil, which was concerned about costs and delays, fought back, and a compromise was eventually reached that will cut emissions by up to 23 million tons of carbon dioxide over the lifetime of the fields. The episode was seen as a milestone for Parliament, which normally rubber-stamps most Statoil projects.

“It was a very important thing to do at the time we did it,” said Terje Aasland, a member of Parliament with the Labor Party, the largest opposition party.

“Climate change is coming closer and closer every day,” he added. “I think people are more concerned about the future.”

A bunch of blithering idiots. The climate change consensus has completely collapsed, but these Norwegian socialists are still lapping up the global warming Kool-Aid.

It's not going to be good for the country's long-term prosperity, but leftists never learn.

Toddler Accidentally Shoots Mother Dead in Idaho Walmart

This is just horrible.

At Bearing Arms, "PUT IT IN A &*%$# HOLSTER! Toddler Kills Mother Via Negligent Discharge In Idaho."

Reports indicate she had a concealed carry permit but kept the gun in her purse. The toddler grabbed it and shot the mom accidentally. Just a tragic, tragic accident. The mom wasn't too smart, and that's sad.