WATCH: E-Cig Explodes Inside Man's Pocket!

Man, this is wild!

Via ABC News 7 Los Angeles:

E-cigarette explodes inside employee's pocket in NY wine shop https://t.co/2k4fAzoJEG pic.twitter.com/lw8vk0Wvbm

— ABC7 Eyewitness News (@ABC7) November 23, 2016

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here's to all my readers and occasional visitors!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

@YourHotBabes1 @Creeppop @vintagesnapz @SiliconEros @breastlvr @Swt_Red @nlpantyhose pic.twitter.com/g4LgIDWjOn

— Babes Paradise (@exxxcitement) November 23, 2016

Christine Garcia, San Diego's First Transgender Police Officer, Removed from Transgender Day of Awareness Event (VIDEO)

She was removed from the event even after she helped organize it.

Because LGBTQ progs are so, well, progresssive.

At the S.D. Union-Tribune, "Transgender cop's uniform keeps her out of event she organized":

San Diego’s first transgender police officer was kept out of an event at the San Diego LGBT Community Center in Hillcrest last week because she was wearing her uniform.

The Transgender Day of Awareness, an annual event to honor those who lost their lives to anti-transgender violence, was held Nov. 17 at the facility on Centre Street.

Officer Christine Garcia, who publicly transitioned last year, helped plan the event and was part of the police department security detail that watched over a commemorative march down University Avenue.

After the march, when Garcia tried to enter the event as a member of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community, she was asked to leave because her police uniform could upset others in attendance.

When leaders at the center learned what had happened they directly apologized to Garcia and San Diego police Chief Shelley Zimmerman.

“We do not wish to ever make any community member feel unwelcome at The Center – these officers are valued members of our community,” said Delores Jacobs, CEO of the center, in a statement.

Jacobs said the occurrence was a regrettable misunderstanding of the center’s already existing policy of inclusion, which seeks to acknowledge the concerns that members of the community may have without excluding others. Leaders have reviewed the policy with its staff since the event.

“While we need to support those that are uncomfortable and honor their reactions to valid and understandable difficult previous experiences, we also need to explain that… our LGBTQ San Diego police liaisons are a valued part of our community,” Jacobs wrote.

Longtime LGBTQ activist, City Commissioner Nicole Murray-Ramirez, said the incident was an outrage.

“Any officer, be they gay or straight, should be welcomed into our community center in uniform,” he said. “They protect our community and neighborhoods and make San Diego a better place.”

More video at the link.

Thanksgiving Message from President-Elect Donald Trump (VIDEO)

Via Legal Insurrection, "President-Elect Trump’s Thanksgiving Message to the Nation."

Donald Trump Announces Cabinet Picks, Going Big on Diversity (VIDEO)

At the Los Angeles Times, "Trump reaches beyond loyalists and adds diversity with latest Cabinet picks."

There's video from the "All-Star Panel," at Fox News, here.

And at USA Today, heh, "Teacher unions smarting after many members vote for Trump."

Iggy Azalea Wet T-Shirt for 'GQ Australia'

She looks pretty freakin' fantastic.

Man.

At Egotastic!, "Iggy Azalea GQ Hottie With No Top On."

Thank you for making me Woman Of the Year, @GQAustralia ! #GQMOTY pic.twitter.com/xroArXMgad

— IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) November 17, 2016

Shop Black Friday Deals Week at Amazon [BUMPED]

I'll post this link throughout the week.

Thanks so much for shopping.

At Amazon, Black Friday 2016 Deals Are Here.

BONUS: Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad.

Sean Hannity Pushing for Media 'Freeze Out' in New Trump Administration (VIDEO)

I won't be surprised if Trump indeed locks out some of the more egregious media hacks.

But see Politico, "Hannity calls on Trump to freeze out the press" (at Memeorandum).

Jackie Johnson's Fantastic Forecast

It's wonderful weather. It's expected to be warm on Thanksgiving.

Here's Ms. Jackie:

Kellyanne Conway: Leftist Media 'Never Prepared Themselves That This Guy Could Actually Win...' (VIDEO)

At great segment, from Hannity's earlier this evening.

She's so awesome. I can't wait to find out what position she's taking in the new administration.

Kendal Lee Schuler Sun-Bathing at Bondi Beach, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia (PHOTOS)

At London's Daily Mail, "EXCLUSIVE: Leonardo DiCaprio's model ex Kendal Lee Schuler announces she is pregnant with first child... after unveiling baby bump during topless sunbathing session."

And at Drunken Stepfather, "KENDAL SCHULER TOPLESS ON THE BEACH OF THE DAY."

Donald Trump Disavows the 'Alt-Right'

Oh boy.

What a day.

From Rosie Gray, at BuzzFeed, "Trump Acknowledges, Disavows White Nationalist Alt-Right Movement."

this is, to my knowledge, the most Trump has ever disavowed/acknowledged the alt-right pic.twitter.com/go7MEjUmBi

— Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) November 22, 2016

Trump on alt-right supporters: "It's not a group I want to energize. And if they are energized I want to look into it and find out why."

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 22, 2016

Trump gets asked again about the alt-right conference. 'Boy you are really into" this issue, Trump replies. Then disavows again.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 22, 2016

Michael Hirsh, National Editor of Politico Magazine, Resigns After Posting Home Address of Richard Spencer to Facebook

Just after I denounced Richard Spencer earlier today, leftist media hacks are turning the guy into a sympathetic figure.

Man, politics are messed up right now. Sheesh.

At Poynter, "Politico editor resigns after posting address of White nationalist."

Also at Twitchy, "Politico editor resigns after posting home address of Richard Spencer, urging ‘decent Americans’ to pay a visit."

Press in the Era of Trump: @Politico Natl editor @michaelphirsh doxs Richard Spencer & advocates beating him with a baseball bat at his home pic.twitter.com/9cp3rrFS4G

— Third Position (@Third_Position) November 22, 2016

William Julius Wilson, The Bridge Over the Racial Divide

This book is certainly timely, although it came out 20 years ago. But reading it again, it's uncanny how it speaks to our current troubles. Perhaps it reflects the politics of the Clinton years, when Democrats were seeking something of a "third way" between the extremes of left and right politics. Whatever it is, we definitely need to find a way to bridge our differences, which by now have become an enormous chasm of ideological division and hatred.

In any case, at Amazon, William Julius Wilson, The Bridge over the Racial Divide: Rising Inequality and Coalition Politics.

Hat Tip: J.D. Vance, who cites Professor Wilson in his book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.

'Oh, give me the beat boys and free my soul. I wanna get lost in your rock and roll and drift away...'

I actually heard this one on K-EARTH 101 a week or so back. I think my son was driving the van and I didn't even notice he'd flipped the digital dial. K-EARTH plays a lot of 1980s "new romantic," like Duran Duran and A Flock of Seagulls, which while nice, probably wears after one or two listenings.

Not so with Dobie Gray. I could listen to him over and over again. I remember first hearing this song in 1972 on the radio when I was just 11-years-old. So beautiful --- and spiritual. I could never forget it.

And the song's author just passed away a few days ago, coincidentally and strangely, considering I'm just paying attention this. See Billboard, "Mentor Williams, Writer of Dobie Gray's 'Drift Away,' Dies at 70."

Anarchists Promise Inauguration Disruption – Bikers tor Trump to Ride

Well, January 20th promises to be an interesting day, heh.

At Blazing Cat Fur.

Rural Hispanic Voters Shifted to Donald Trump

Well, this certainly goes against the "racist" Trump voters smear.

At least 29 percent of Latinos supported Trump, which is more than those Hispanics supporting Mitt Romney in 2012.

Leftist are gobsmacked, I'm telling you.

At WaPo, "Rural Hispanic voters — like white rural voters — shifted toward Trump. Here’s why":

Fascinating: Rural Hispanic voters — like white rural voters — shifted toward Trump. Here's why. https://t.co/nVNbLdqf74 @gerry_cadava

— Kathy Cramer (@KathyJCramer) November 18, 2016

Many observers contend that Hispanic voters will shape the future of American politics. But it’s not yet clear exactly what their influence will be. There’s been debate about whether they may portend a permanent Democratic majority; vote according to ethnic backgrounds — Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Cuban American; or hold political points of view that vary by economics or region, much like other Americans.

With the 2016 election, we have a new set of data to help us investigate this question. My county-by-county comparison of election results in 2016 and 2012, drawn from data available at CNN.com, Politico.com, PBS.org and other sites, shows that rural white and rural Hispanic voters have a lot in common.

Or to put it another way, the election of 2016 revealed an urban/rural divide that was as strong as the white/Hispanic divide.

Election analysts have noted that Donald Trump ran up the vote in rural, largely white counties in the Rust Belt and the Midwest. He flipped or narrowed Hillary Clinton’s margin of victory in others. Because these rural voters came out so strongly, states that hadn’t helped elect a Republican for a long time — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and most likely Michigan — delivered his electoral victory, however narrowly.

And here’s the surprise: many rural Southwestern counties with large Hispanic, predominantly Mexican populations, moved in Trump’s direction as well.

That wasn’t true in Southwestern states as a whole. States like New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas remained blue or became less red. Hillary Clinton got strong Hispanic turnout in Sun Belt metropolises like Las Vegas, Phoenix, and San Antonio.

But if you look closely at many largely Hispanic rural areas in these states, you find that Trump did better — and Hillary did worse — than did Mitt Romney or Barack Obama. Voting in these counties was much like that in similar counties in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

When postelection reports suggested that Trump performed surprisingly well among Hispanic voters, the polling firm Latino Decisions rejected the claim. The firm specializes in polling Latino voters, and enumerated the risks of relying on exit polls to understand that electorate’s behavior. The firm vigorously defended its own election eve polls, which suggested that Clinton would rack up historically wide margins from Latinos.

But Latino Decisions, in defense of polls it conducted leading up to the election, has focused on overwhelmingly Hispanic precincts in more urban areas, not the rural communities that tell a different story.

In dozens of rural counties throughout the Southwest, Clinton performed worse in 2016 than Obama did in 2012, as you can see in the figure below. In Guadalupe County, N.M., about an hour’s drive east of Albuquerque, she received 17 percent less of the vote than Obama did four years ago — 53 percent compared with Obama’s 70 percent. In several other counties where Hispanics accounted for half to nearly all of the population — Rio Arriba, N.M.; Costilla, Colo.; Greenlee, Ariz.; and Duval, Tex., for example — Clinton took home roughly 10 percent fewer votes than did Obama in 2012. In many more heavily Latino counties, her votes lagged behind Obama’s by 3 to 8 points.

Even in the South Texas counties that Latino Decisions has named bulwarks of Clinton support — the Rio Grande Valley below San Antonio, where she won between 70 and 85 percent of the vote — she didn’t do as well as Obama had done four years earlier. In Brooks County, which, according to the 2015 American Community Survey, is 89.5 percent Hispanic, Clinton’s tally was 3.9 percent less than Obama’s. In Zavala County, which is 93.1 percent Hispanic, it was 5.6 percent less. In Duval County, which is 88.8 percent Hispanic, it was 9.8 percent less.

Meanwhile, as you can see below, Trump did much better among Hispanics in the rural Southwest than Romney did. He received a greater share of the vote than Romney had in more than a dozen counties with large Hispanic populations: six percent more than Romney in Starr County, Tex., which is 95.8 percent Hispanic; 7.5 percent more in Costilla County, N.M., which is 63.6 percent Hispanic; and 9.1 percent more in Duval County, Texas, which is 88.8 percent Hispanic.

Clinton may have received more votes than Obama did in many parts of South Texas, where, as a politically-motivated student at Yale Law School, she knocked on doors in predominantly Mexican neighborhoods for the McGovern campaign. But Trump also received more votes in South Texas than Romney did. Clinton rallied thousands more voters, but so did Trump. His supporters there matched the enthusiasm of Clinton’s, just as they did in dozens of rural counties with large Hispanic populations in New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas.

In fact, two Colorado counties where Hispanics constitute about half the population flipped from blue to red. Conejos County, which is 53.7 percent Hispanic, went for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016. So did Las Animas County, which is 42.6 percent Hispanic. In both counties, turnout was lower for Clinton than it had been for Obama, and higher for Trump than it was for Romney.

To be sure, some of these rural Southwestern counties are extremely small compared with the big cities where Hispanic support for Clinton was strong. In small counties, the Hispanic vote adds up to hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands — while in cities, it totals hundreds of thousands. Therefore, rural Hispanics won’t be credited with moving the needle much in one direction or the other.

So yes, there was a Hispanic “surge” in big Southwestern cities that helped Clinton hold on to New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada, and helped make Trump’s margin of victory in Arizona and Texas narrower than it had been for any Republican in two decades. But that ignores the vote in rural counties across the country — including those that are largely Hispanic — that led to Trump’s victory.

Why would Hispanics vote for Trump, despite his many anti-immigrant and anti-Mexican statements?

One answer: poverty. The Hispanic communities in the rural Southwest that moved toward Trump were some of the poorest in their states.

Take San Miguel, Guadalupe, and Mora Counties in New Mexico, whose populations are 77.1, 79.2, and 80.2 percent Hispanic, respectively. These three counties have New Mexico’s lowest median household income, highest rates of unemployment, and lowest rates of labor market participation. The median income in these counties for families with a head of household between the ages of 25 and 44 is between $25,000 and $30,000 per year, or about half the national median income ($55,000) for families with heads in the same age range. These counties lost, on average, about 5 percent of their population between 2010 and 2015.

In other words, they’ve suffered the same tough economic circumstances as did some of the Midwestern counties that handed Trump the election. They’re more similar to than different from other forgotten counties across the United States, where voters upended the predictions of pollsters and shouted against the status quo.

Ruben Navarette Jr. wrote in The Daily Beast that the election “boiled down to a brutish tug-of-war between Latinos in the battleground states of the West … and working class whites in the Rust Belt” — let’s add the upper Midwest — and “in the end, Trump found enough white voters to offset losses with Latinos.”

But that’s only partly true. In reality, many rural Hispanics and working class whites pulled on the same side of the rope.​

200 Racist Idiots Show Up at 'Alt-Right' Conference in D.C. and the Leftist Media Goes Berzerk

I've had enough of this.

The 'alt-right" is nothing. It's like some 4chan nightmare come to life. Seriously.

Richard Spencer got full fawning treatment at the Los Angeles Times last week, "'There's nothing wrong with being white.' Trump's win brings 'white pride' out of the shadows."

And noq, Sarah Kendzior, and I'm sure numerous others, got the Times to change their headline on yesterday's alt-right conference in D.C., with the new headline denoting "white supremacists."

But the thing is, they number in the low hundreds. They're nobodies. I mean, who knew racism would be so popular in the late-Obama interregnum?

Screenshotting so you will see how MSM now portrays supremacists who want ethnic cleansing. Don't give clicks. But you must know #Resist pic.twitter.com/rOYQFenLaX

— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) November 21, 2016

LA Times has now rewritten their headline but are still glamorizing and normalizing supremacists who want ethnic cleansing pic.twitter.com/iJjLd9ALKq

— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) November 21, 2016

But see Jamie Weinstein:

As I noted to Richard Spencer in my intv today, his conference had 200-300 ppl, BronyCon 2016 had over 7,000. Not sure alt-right thriving

— Jamie Weinstein (@Jamie_Weinstein) November 21, 2016

Still more, at the New York Times (seeing a pattern here?):

"Heil the people! Heil victory," some shouted at an alt-right conference in Washington https://t.co/p45TVU0ZLI

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 21, 2016

Seahawks Wide Receiver Doug Baldwin Flips Off Coach Before Throwing TD Pass to Russell Wilson

Well, as they say, there's been a breakdown in civility, heh.

At LAT:

Seattle WR Doug Baldwin flips off his coach before throwing his first career touchdown pass https://t.co/lyhRWWpC2s pic.twitter.com/ZmCSXxHODy

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) November 21, 2016

'Alt-Right Founder Questions If Jews Are People...'

Fuck Richard Spencer.

This guy's 15 minutes are up. Flush 'im.

Here is the segment. That chryon. These times. pic.twitter.com/5vXn5GM7ll

— Colin Jones (@colinjones) November 21, 2016

BONUS: At the Hill and Twitchy, expect to see more of this as the leftist media ramps up its attacks on Trump's "white supremacist" supporters (who, even if they are, make up less than 100th of one percent of the U.S. electorate; they're minuscule):

Trump spokesman denounces racism after alt-right conference https://t.co/5taeIR98lz pic.twitter.com/u6b41pR7hm

— The Hill (@thehill) November 22, 2016

Trump team denounces 'racism of any kind' in wake of 'alt-right' conference; Tapper furious over CNN chyron https://t.co/fAG6r0Vkt2

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) November 22, 2016