Countdown to Black Friday Deals in Camera, Photo & Video

At Amazon, Shop - Countdown to Black Friday in Camera, Photo & Video .

Lovely India Reynolds Rule 5

She's still one of the most spectacular Page 3 models in Britain.

Monica Sims for Playboy (VIDEO)

Flashback to September, at Egotastic!, "MONICA SIMS TOPLESS DIP AS PLAYMATE OF THE MONTH."

Why Trade Deals Are a Tough Sell

At the Wall Street Journal, "Why Opposition to Trade Deals Is So Entrenched":

HAMBURG—Few places have a longer affinity for free trade than this German city, home to one of Europe’s busiest ports.

The city’s left-leaning government overruled environmentalists in 2012 and approved deepening the Elbe River for bigger container ships. License plates boast of the city’s founding role in the Hanseatic League, a medieval alliance that was among the world’s first free-trade blocs.

But unease over new trade deals runs deep in Hamburg these days, as it does in the U.S. and across much of the developed world. The more aggressively leaders push to expand the reach of multilateral agreements into sensitive zones such as drug patents and investor protections, the more aggressively opponents push back.

Ire here is directed at portions of the proposed Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, which would join the U.S. and the European Union in a vast common market with more than 800 million of the world’s richest consumers.

The freshly completed Pacific trade deal between the U.S., Japan and 10 other countries has sparked similar outcries, underscoring the challenge of completing sweeping pacts that go far beyond eliminating tariffs—few of which exist between the U.S. and Europe...

Keep reading.

Alarming Increase in the Deaths of Middle-Aged Whites

I saw something on this the other day, even in passing. Perhaps at the Wall Street Journal, "The Death Rate Is Rising for Middle-Aged Whites."

The piece is cited by Dr. Helen Smith, "Why are middle-aged whites dying at such high rates?" And Instapundit links, and recomments to "see the discussion in the comments."

Then there's the piece out this morning from Ross Douthat, at the New York Times, "The Dying of the Whites." Douthat's speculative, but good in debunking the prevailing leftist memes about the superiority of the European welfare state model.

More on this from Tom Maguire, "No Country For Middle Aged White Men. Or Women."

Finally, head back over to NYT for an update on the phenomenon, "More Details on Rising Mortality Among Middle-Aged Whites."

American Society Becoming Increasingly Secular, Particularly Among the Young

Pew Research was out recently with a new poll on religion in America, "U.S. Public Becoming Less Religious."

The findings aren't all that striking, actually. The key thing is religious observance, as measured by regular church attendance. Barely one-in-four "young Millennials" attend church on a weekly basis, about half that of the "silent generation" of Americans born between 1928 and 1945. Nevertheless, it's clear that youth culture is fundamentally different than mainstream traditionalism, particularly on homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

Noteworthy are the findings for those who identify no religious affiliation, the "nones." The largest group of any category among Democrats is the "nones." That's to say that Democrats are increasing a secular movement, even outwardly hostile to religious practice and public policies informed by faith.

Truth Revolt wrote about this, "Pew Poll: Young Adults Losing Their Religion, Politics Coincides":

Young adults, beholden to causes like climate change, abortion, and gay-marriage, view Republicans as "anti-science" and bigoted. Young adults in turn relate Republicans’ political views with their faith, and thus, run from both.

While a growing number of Americans, particularly within the younger demographic, shun religion, they have embraced another one in its place – that of secular-progressivism. What is perhaps most ironic, is that this political philosophy, so imbued with moral relativism, is as much if not more "anti-science" than the Judeo-Christian faiths its adherents mock.

Of course true believers do not see it that way. Rather, they view their political ideology as the more enlightened way forward and evangelize it with the vim and vigor. What results, however, is a populace that is less tolerant and increasingly devoid of a moral compass with which to guide it through life...

Half of the New Canadian Cabinet Members Chose to Skip 'So Help Me God' in Their Oaths of Office

Well, I'd be surprised if they did say "so help me God" in their oaths of office, lol.

Damned secular collectivists.

At Blazing Cat Fur.

WATCH: Dramatic Video of Drunk Passenger Clinging to Lifeboat Before Falling Into Ocean

ABC 7 Los Angeles reported that the passenger had been drinking and was belligerent with crew members.

But here's London's Daily Mail, "Desperate search for passenger who was filmed falling into the sea after clinging to the side of a life boat on Royal Caribbean cruise ship."

And at the Heavy, "WATCH: Man Jumps Overboard Royal Caribbean Cruise Ship."

Watch, at ABC News, "High Seas Search After Passenger Goes Overboard on Cruise Ship."

16 Death Row Inmates Have Exhausted Appeals, Could Be Executed, Under New California Single-Drug Method for Capital Punishment

It's not likely these dudes would get the hot needle anytime soon. The new protocol is itself subject to appeal.

Frankly, we should just go back to the firing squad. It's more humane.

At the Los Angeles Times, "California proposes new single-drug method for executions."

Million Mask March Anarchists 'Glassed' Six Police Horses, Stabbed Them in the Eye With Sticks (VIDEO)

At London's Daily Mail, "Scotland Yard chief slams 'despicable' Million Man Mask protesters who glassed six police horses and rammed them in the eye with sticks," and "Chaos on the streets of London: Million Mask March anarchist - in a £500 jacket - trashes police car as fireworks are aimed at horses in clashes outside Buckingham Palace and Hunger Games premiere."

Also at the Mirror UK, "Million Mask thugs burned and cut police horses and tried to gouge eyes out with sticks."

Stalin’s Daughter

I don't know.

I keep coming across all this new scholarship on Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union.

Here's Rosemary Sullivan, Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva.

Last night I posted Sheila Fitzpatrick's, On Stalin's Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics.

And I'm reading, Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928.

Ceramic Heater with Adjustable Thermostat

A best-selling item at Amazon, with these cooler nights coming, even on the West coast.

Here, Lasko 754200 Ceramic Heater with Adjustable Thermostat.

And for some reading by the room heater, Alonzo Hamby, Man of Destiny: FDR and the Making of the American Century.

And by popular demand, from Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam.

Many Residents in California, Arizona, and Nevada Claimed to See UFO on Saturday Night (VIDEO)

Heh.

At ABC News 10 San Diego:



Added: At the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Mystery light over ocean was missile test" (via Memeorandum).

Controversial Alabama-LSU Sign Urges 'Finish What Katrina Started'

Meaning, "Get blacks to move out of the 9th ward"?

Or something more sinister.

At AL.com, "How far is too far? Controversial Alabama-LSU sign decried on social media."

The sign's seen here, "Shots fired..." (And here.)

Via Memeorandum.

More at NOLA.com, "Odell Beckham responds to Hurricane Katrina sign at Alabama, including Leonard Fournette picture."

Western Civilization is Slipping Away

From Victor Davis Hanson, at National Review, "Is the West Slip, Slip, Slipping Away?":

Sometimes a culture disappears with a whimper, not a bang. Institutions age and are ignored, and the complacent public insidiously lowers its expectations of state performance.

Infrastructure, the rule of law, and civility erode — and yet people are not sure why and how their own changing (and pathological) individual behavior is leading to the collective deterioration that they deplore.

There is still a “West” in the sense of the physical entities of North America, Europe, many of the former British dominions, and parts of Westernized Asia. The infrastructure of our cities and states looks about as it did in the recent past. But is it the West as we once knew it — a unique civilization predicated on free expression, human rights, self-criticism, vibrant free markets, and the rule of law?

Or, instead, is the West reduced to a wealthy but unfree leisure zone, driven on autopilot by computerized affluence, technological determinism, and a growing equality-of-result, omnipotent state? Tens of thousands of migrants — reminiscent of the great southward and westward treks of Germanic tribes in the late fifth century, at the end of the Roman Empire — are overwhelming the borders of Europe. Such an influx should be a reminder that the West attracts people, while the non-West drives them out, and thus should spark inquiries about why that is so. But that discussion would be not only impolite, but beyond the comprehension of most present-day Westerners, who take for granted — though they cannot define, much less defend — their own institutions.

No one claims that such mass immigration into Europe is legal. No one wonders what happened to the fossilized idea of legal immigration, much less the legal immigrant who went through what has now been rendered the pretense of bureaucratic application for legal entry into Europe. Germany, which lectures others on law, is lawless. In theory, Westerners have the power to stop the mostly young males from the Middle East from swarming their borders, but in fact they apparently lack the will. Or is it worse than that?

Without confidence in their own values, much less pride in their accomplishments, are they assuaging the guilt over their privilege by symbolic acts of undermining the foundations of their own culture? Certainly, Germany, which insists on European Union laws of finance applying to its fellow European nation Greece, has no compunction about destroying, for its own particular purposes, the Union’s immigration statutes as they apply to Middle Easterners.

The same is true in the United States. Millions of foreign nationals from Latin America, and Mexico in particular, simply have crossed the border without even the pretense of legality. They assume Americans not only won’t enforce their own laws, but also will find ways to demonize any who suggest that they should. If there is now no such thing as an “illegal alien,” what in theory prevents anyone from arriving from anywhere at any time and making claims on the American state?

Again, the irony is not just that millions of Mexican nationals want into the U.S., but that, ostensibly, no one in Mexico or even the United States knows why that is so (certainly not the National Council of La Raza [“the Race”]) — much less wonders whether Mexico might learn from the U.S. about ways to make a nation’s own people become content enough to stay in their homeland. Only in the West does a migrant fault his host for insufficient hospitality while exempting his homeland, which drove him out.

Sanctuary cities illustrate how progressive doctrine can by itself nullify the rule of law. In the new West, breaking statutes is backed or ignored by the state if it is branded with race, class, or gender advocacy. By that I mean that if a solitary U.S. citizen seeks to leave and then reenter America without a passport, he will likely be either arrested or turned back, whereas if an illegal alien manages to cross our border, he is unlikely to be sent back as long as he has claims on victimhood of the type that are sanctioned by the Western liberal state.

Do we really enjoy free speech in the West any more? If you think we do, try to use vocabulary that is precise and not pejorative, but does not serve the current engine of social advocacy — terms such as “Islamic terrorist,” “illegal alien,” or “transvestite.” I doubt that a writer for a major newspaper or a politician could use those terms, which were common currency just four or five years ago, without incurring, privately or publicly, the sort of censure that we might associate with the thought police of the former Soviet Union...

Still more.

Book Publishers to Release Some of Most Anticipated Titles on Tuesday

They're hoping to cash-in on familiar faces for the holiday season, after a lackluster sales year so far.

At WSJ, "Book Publishers Hope Holidays Bring Cheer":

The biggest bets are on familiar names and faces, a reminder of how much track records matter to readers at this time of the year. HarperCollins Publishers, for example, has printed 700,000 hardcover copies of Mitch Albom’s “The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto,” a story narrated by a guitarist touched by the supernatural. HarperCollins, like The Wall Street Journal, is owned by News Corp.

Tuesday also marks the return of Jon Meacham, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Random House is printing 390,000 copies of Mr. Meacham’s new work, “Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush,” making it the publisher’s biggest nonfiction work of the year.

On the lighter side, Grand Central Publishing will publish 120,000 hardcover copies of model Christie Brinkley’s “Timeless Beauty: Over 100 Tips, Secrets, and Shortcuts to Looking Great,” while Simon & Schuster has teed up 75,000 copies of TV producer Shonda Rhimes’s memoir “Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person.”

The relatively large print runs come at a time when the digital book market is in flux. E-book sales in the first half were down 10% from a year earlier, according to an industry report, a decline that industry executives attribute in part to higher prices set by the major publishers.

“There may not be one stand-out title yet, but I think the breadth and complexion of this holiday’s new titles is better than in 2014,” said Mary Amicucci, Barnes & Noble Inc.’s vice president of adult trade and children’s books...

Keep reading.

And don't miss all your best-seller book sales at Amazon.

Donald Trump Chases Television Ratings with Appearance on 'Saturday Night Live' (VIDEO)

It's not clear that Nielson ratings translate into political votes, according to Mary McNamara, at the Los Angeles Times, "Why huge 'SNL' ratings won't help Donald Trump become president":

Every presidential candidate is obsessed with polls, but only Donald Trump fixates on ratings. Not approval ratings, television ratings.

"I get the best ratings," he said recently, appearing to channel NBC executives to explain why he had been asked to host "Saturday Night Live" this weekend.

It's something Trump says a lot, almost as often as he says "I'm going to build a wall." In September, he warned that television itself would collapse should he withdraw from the race — no doubt something that he will be saying even more if he continues to lose his lead in the polls.

There is something quaint and almost endearing about Trump's faith in Nielsen; it may be one of the last great attempts to restore ratings to their former position of glory, and, indeed, empower them further.

But ratings have never been the same as votes — just ask the cast of "Empire" — or even political support, and for all his frequently self-referenced business experience, Trump seems to have missed a major shift in the television industry: Ratings ain't what they used to be.

Once an easy and instant predictor of success, the television numbers game has become if not outdated then deeply complicated. Judging from the awards bestowed in recent years, ratings have an almost antithetical relationship with voters' notions of "best" or "outstanding." A narrow but deeply dedicated group of followers is now deemed as valuable as a large, less passionate audience who may be tuned in more out of curiosity or habit.

Overnight ratings, which is what Trump deals in for the most part, have become less meaningful, and any gains he brings to shows like "Saturday Night Live" are one-time bumps rather than a business model; it's not as if he were joining the cast (or at least not yet.)

Like the current crop of Republican candidates, television is now too broad and disparate for its traditional measurements, making "success" an increasingly complicated term, gauged as much, if not more, in nuance than numbers.

And Donald Trump has never been big on nuance...

Interesting, but I think she misses the point.

Candidates nowadays are looking to reach younger voters, especially Millennials, by appearing on late-night television. It's not just SNL --- which Hillary Clinton exploited to massive positive media spin of late --- but folks like Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, and Stephen Colbert, etc. If campaigns didn't expect political dividends from such appearances they wouldn't schedule them.

But keep reading, in any case.

Peter Beinart Justifies Jihad Terrorism

At the Astute Bloggers, "PETER BEINART IS EVIL."

And flashback to April, at FrontPage Magazine, "PETER BEINART GOES FULL ANTI-ISRAEL."

Wide Chute Antioxidative Slow Masticating Juicer

Boy, the hipster products these days are amazing!

At Amazon, SKG New Generation Wide Chute Antioxidative Slow Masticating Juicer.

Lots more stuff here, Shop Holiday Home & Garden Gift Guide - Trendsetter.

Matt Bevin’s Kentucky Win Is the End of an Era — And That Should Scare Democrats Everywhere

A great piece, from Josh Kraushaar, at National Journal:

Former House Speak­er Tip O’Neill fam­ously said, “all polit­ics is loc­al.” After Re­pub­lic­an Matt Bev­in’s sur­pris­ingly con­vin­cing vic­tory to be­come Ken­tucky’s next gov­ernor, the max­im should be re­versed. All loc­al polit­ics are now na­tion­al. Bev­in, with help from the Re­pub­lic­an Gov­ernors As­so­ci­ation, ef­fect­ively util­ized na­tion­al is­sues—gay mar­riage, Planned Par­ent­hood, fed­er­al en­ergy policy, Pres­id­ent Obama’s health care law—to bludgeon Demo­crat Jack Con­way, who tried to dis­tance him­self from his party’s na­tion­al brand to no avail.

And the biggest drag of all for Con­way was Obama. The RGA un­leashed a last-week $1 mil­lion ad blitz con­nect­ing the Demo­crat­ic state at­tor­ney gen­er­al to Obama—a po­tent line of at­tack in a state where the pres­id­ent’s dis­ap­prov­al rat­ing is near 70 per­cent.

Just as the Ken­tucky gubernat­ori­al cam­paign car­ried na­tion­al over­tones, the res­ults from Tues­day night’s elec­tion carry na­tion­al les­sons. Here are four of the most sig­ni­fic­ant takeaways...

Keep reading.

And ICYMI, the best piece since last Tuesday, from Molly Ball, "Leftists Are Losing the Culture Wars?"