Adriana Lima Road to the Runway for Victoria's Secret (VIDEO)

The fashion show airs Monday, December 5th, at 10:00pm.

I'll have babe-blogging coverage through the weekend.

Dakota Access Pipeline Protests Just Another Chance for Idiot Leftist Hijacking and Exploitation (VIDEO)

I do sympathize with the Indians, but when radical leftists hijack the protests to promote their own revolutionary/anti-capitalist agenda, they lose my support.

See the idiots Neil Young and Daryl Hannah, at the Guardian U.K., "The Standing Rock protests are a symbolic moment":

Standing together in prayer to protect water displays a deeply rooted awareness of life’s interconnected nature, and of the intrinsic value and import of traditional ways. This growing movement stems from love, it is the most human instinct to protect that which we love. An eager and engaged youth are at the core of this pipeline route resistance, learning from a population of elders who pass down unforgotten knowledge.

It is an awakening. All here together, with their non-native relatives, standing strong in the face of outrageous, unnecessary and violent aggression, on the part of militarized local and state law enforcement agencies and national guard, who are seemingly acting to protect the interests of the Dakota Access pipeline profiteers, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars, above all other expressed concerns. They stand against corporate security forces, the county sheriff and the national guard. Standing while being hit with water cannons, mace, teargas, rubber bullets. Standing without weapons and praying, the water protectors endure human rights abuses in freezing temperatures. Supplies arrive from all over as the social media universe shares the heartbreaking news to the world, that an American corporate media is not free to report. Thus, it is the ugliness of corporate America, seen around the world...

Right.

The "ugliness of corporate America" made both of these two big stars in their heyday. And look at them: blithering idiots. And hypocrites too. I don't see them out there schlepping it in the sub-zero temperatures with the reservation's natives. At CBS News This Morning:

Why All That Dancing in the Streets of Miami?

From Humberto Fontova, at FrontPage Magazine:

Fidel Castro jailed and tortured political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin during the Great Terror. He murdered more Cubans in his first three years in power than Hitler murdered Germans during his first six.

Fidel Castro shattered — through mass-executions, mass-jailings, mass larceny and exile — virtually every family on the island of Cuba. Many opponents of the Castro regime qualify as the longest-suffering political prisoners in modern history, having suffered prison camps, forced labor and torture chambers for a period three times as long in Fidel Castro’s Gulag as Alexander Solzhenitsyn suffered in Stalin’s Gulag.

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara beat ISIS to the game by over half a century. As early as January 1959 they were filming their murders for the media-shock value.

Fidel Castro also came closest of anyone in history to (wantonly) starting a worldwide nuclear war.

In the above process Fidel Castro converted a highly-civilized nation with a higher standard of living than much of Europe and swamped with immigrants into a slum/sewer ravaged by tropical diseases and with  the highest suicide rate in the Western hemisphere.

Over TWENTY TIMES as many people (and counting) have died trying to escape Castro’s Cuba as died trying to escape East Germany. Yet prior to Castroism Cuba received more immigrants per-capita than almost any nation on earth—more than the U.S. did including the Ellis Island years, in fact.

Fidel Castro helped train and fund practically every terror group on earth, from the Weathermen to Puerto Rico’s Macheteros, from Argentina’s Montoneros, to Colombia’s FARC, from the Black Panthers to the IRA and from the PLO to AL Fatah.

Would anyone guess any of the above from reading or listening to the mainstream media recently?

In fact, from their reactions, all that dancing in the streets of Miami’s Little Havana this week-end seems to strike some talking heads as odd, if not downright unseemly.

But prior to the big news this week-end many of those same celebrants could be found with itchy noses and red-rimmed eyes ambling amidst long rows of white crosses in Miami’s Cuban Memorial.  It’s a mini-Arlington cemetery of sorts, in honor of Fidel Castro’s murder victims.

The tombs are symbolic, however. Most of the bodies still lie in mass graves dug by bulldozers on the orders of the man whose family President Obama just consoled with an official note of condolence.

Some of those future celebrants were often found kneeling at the Cuban Memorial, others walking slowly, looking for a name. You might remember a similar scene from the opening frames of “Saving Private Ryan.” Many clutched rosaries. Many of the ladies would be pressing their faces into the breast of a young relative who drove them there, a relative who wrapped his arms around her spastically heaving shoulders.

Try as he might not to cry himself, this relative usually found that the sobs wracking his mother, grandmother or aunt were contagious. Yet he was often too young to remember the young face of his martyred father, grandfather, uncle, cousin -or even aunt, mother grandmother– the name they just recognized on the white cross.

“Fusilado” (firing squad execution) it says below the name– one word, but for most visitors to the Cuban Memorial a word loaded with traumatizing flashbacks.

On Christmas Eve 1961, Juana Diaz Figueroa spat in the face of the Castroite executioners who were binding and gagging her. They’d found her guilty of feeding and hiding “bandits.” (Castro and Che’s term for Cuban peasants who took up arms to fight their theft of their land to create Stalinist kolkhozes.) Farm collectivization was no more voluntary in Cuba than in the Ukraine. And Cuba’s kulaks had guns–at first anyway. Then the Kennedy-Khrushchev pact left them defenseless against Soviet tanks, helicopters and flame-throwers. When the blast from Castro’s firing squad demolished Juana Diaz’ face and torso, she was six months pregnant.

Rigoberto Hernandez was 17 when Castro’s prison guards dragged him from his jail cell, jerked his head back to gag him and started dragging him to the stake. Little “Rigo” pleaded his innocence to the very bloody end. But his pleas were garbled and difficult to understand. His struggles while being gagged and bound to the stake were also awkward. The boy had been a janitor in a Havana high school and was mentally retarded. His single mother had pleaded his case with hysterical sobs. She had begged, beseeched and finally proven to his “prosecutors” that it was a case of mistaken identity. Her only son, a boy in such a condition, couldn’t possibly have been “a CIA agent planting bombs.”

“Fuego!” and the firing squad volley riddled Rigo’s little bent body as he moaned and struggled awkwardly against his bounds, blindfold and gag. “We executive from Revolutionary conviction!” sneered the man whose peaceful death in bed President Obama seems to mourn.

Carlos Machado was 15 years old in 1963 when the bullets from the firing squad shattered his body. His twin brother and father collapsed beside Carlos from the same volley. All had resisted Castro’s theft of their humble family farm.

According to the scholars and researchers at the Cuba Archive, the Castro regime’s total death toll–from torture, prison beatings, firing squads, machine gunning of escapees, drownings, etc.–approaches 100,000. Cuba’s population in 1960 was 6.4 million. According to the human rights group Freedom House, 500,000 Cubans (young and old, male and female) have passed through Castro’s prison and forced-labor camps. This puts Fidel Castro political incarceration rate right up there with his hero Stalin’s.

It’s not enough that liberals refuse to acknowledge any justification for these Miami celebrations. No, on top of that here’s the type of thing the celebrants are accustomed to hearing from the media and famous Democrats:

“Viva Fidel! Viva Che!” (Two-time candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination Jesse Jackson, bellowed while arm in arm with Fidel Castro himself in 1984.)

"Fidel Castro is very shy and sensitive, I frankly like him and regard him as a friend." (Democratic presidential candidate, Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, and “Conscience of the Democratic party,” George Mc Govern.)

“Fidel Castro first and foremost is and always has been a committed egalitarian. He wanted a system that provided the basic needs to all Cuba has superb systems of health care and universal education…We greeted each other as old friends.”  (Former President of the United States and official "Elder Statesman” of the Democratic party, Jimmy Carter.)

“Fidel Castro is old-fashioned, courtly–even paternal, a thoroughly fascinating figure!” (NBC’s Andrea Mitchell.)

“Fidel Castro could have been Cuba’s Elvis!” (Dan Rather)

"Castro's personal magnetism is still powerful, his presence is still commanding. Cuba has very high literacy, and Castro has brought great health care to his country." (Barbara Walters.)

 “Fidel Castro is one helluva guy!” (CNN founder Ted Turner.)

Ohio State University Jihad Attacker Praised al-Qaeda Preacher and Slammed America on Facebook Minutes Before Launching Campus Rampage (VIDEO)

At Pamela's, "Ohio State Jihadist Praised al Qaeda Imam and Slammed America on Facebook Minutes Before Attempting to Slaughter the Infidels."

And here's the video from last night's CBS Evening News. Kinda hard by this time to ask, "Gee, I wonder what motivated the attack?"

It's the jihad, stupid.

Barrett Brown Released

Heh.

At the Other McCain, "Notoriously Crazy Felon Barrett Brown Has Been Released From Federal Prison."

I tweeted earlier:

@PatriarchTree Barrett's out: https://t.co/3AkD6TCvT1

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 29, 2016

Back on the outside for the first time in 4 years, Barrett enjoys an Egg McMuffin. #FreeBB pic.twitter.com/bLbX21ZcTJ

— Free Barrett Brown (@FreeBarrett_) November 29, 2016

Save 20% on Digital SLR Cameras

Great for under the tree!

At Amazon, DSLR Cameras.

More, Nikon D3400 w/ AF-P DX NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR (Black).

Also, Canon EOS Rebel T6i Digital SLR with EF-S 18-55mm IS STM Lens - Wi-Fi Enabled.

And, DSLR Accessories.

BONUS: The Complete Portrait Manual (Popular Photography): 200+ Tips and Techniques for Shooting Perfect Photos of People (Popular Photography Books).

Amazon Echo on Sale for $139.99 $179.99 (Plus Free Shipping)

*BUMPED*

Hey, it's Cyber Monday [Shopping Week].

At Amazon, Amazon Echo - White.

And shop for Amazon accessories.

Have a great day!

*BUMPED*

Kellyanne Conway and Her Family Vacation at the Ritz Carlton in Key Biscayne, Florida

The inevitable Kellyanne Conway in a bathing suit coverage, heh.

At iOWNTHEWORLD, "Were We Interested in Kellyanne Conway in a Bathing Suit?"

Lolz.

Well somebody's interested in seeing the awesome lady in her swimming attire. It looks like she's having fun, although I'm not sure if she saw the paparazzi or not.

Peter Cozzens, The Earth Is Weeping

According to Victor Davis Hanson:

Peter Cozzens reminds us that tragedy, not melodrama, best characterizes the struggles for the American West. A moving narrative, substantial documentation, and even-handed analyses explain why The Earth is Weeping is the most lucid and reliable history of the Indian Wars in recent memory.

Hey, I love VDH.

Check Cozzens, at Amazon, The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West.

David Horowitz, The Politics of Bad Faith

All this ugly ideological warfare over the tyrant Fidel reminded me of David Horowitz's book, The Politics of Bad Faith: The Radical Assault on America's Future.

And of course, shop Cyber Week at Amazon.

Favorite Reader Mail

I'm telling you, I've never seen this country so unhinged.

From Carlos Lozada of the Washington Post:

Now that the election is over, I've picked my favorite piece of 2016 reader mail, courtesy of Midge from upstate NY: pic.twitter.com/tv8LXIBygX

— Carlos Lozada (@CarlosLozadaWP) November 10, 2016

Justin Trudeau, Canada's Laughing Stock

I was gathering some links on Prime Minister Trudeau, and especially liked this one, from Terry Glavin, at Macleans, "Trudeau’s turn from cool to laughing stock":

To be perfectly fair, Trudeau did allow that Castro was a “controversial figure,” and nothing in his remarks was as explicit as the minor classic in the genre of dictator-worship that his brother Alexandre composed for the Toronto Star 10 years ago. Alexandre described Castro as “something of a superman. . . an expert on genetics, on automobile combustion engines, on stock markets. On everything.” As for the Cuban people: “They do occasionally complain, often as an adolescent might complain about a too strict and demanding father.”

This kind of Disco Generation stupidity about Castro has been commonplace in establishment circles in Canada since Pierre’s time, and neither Alexandre’s gringo-splaining nor Justin’s aptitude for eulogy are sufficient to gloss over the many things Cubans have every right to complain about.

Any political activity outside the Communist Party of Cuba is a criminal offence. Political dissent of any kind is a criminal offence. Dissidents are spied on, harassed and roughed up by the Castros’ neighbourhood vigilante committees. Freedom of movement is non-existent. Last year, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) documented 8,616 cases of politically motivated arbitrary arrest. For all our Prime Minister’s accolades about Cuba’s health care system, basic medicines are scarce to non-existent. For all the claims about high literacy rates, Cubans are allowed to read only what the Castro crime family allows.

Raul Castro’s son Alejandro is the regime’s intelligence chief. His son-in-law, Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Callejas, runs the Cuban military’s business operations, which now account for 60 per cent of the Cuban economy. The Castro regime owns and control the Cuban news media, which is adept at keeping Cubans in the dark. It wasn’t until 1999, for instance, that Cubans were permitted to know the details of Fidel’s family life: five sons they’d never heard of, all in their thirties.

Independent publications are classified as “enemy propaganda.” Citizen journalists are harassed and persecuted as American spies. Reporters Without Borders ranks Cuba at 171 out of 180 countries in press freedom, worse than Iran, worse than Saudi Arabia, worse than Zimbabwe.

So fine, let’s overlook the 5,600 Cubans Fidel Castro executed by firing squad, the 1,200 known to have been liquidated in extrajudicial murders, the tens of thousands dispatched to forced labour camps, or the fifth of the Cuban population that was either driven into the sea or fled the country in terror.

What is not so easy to overlook is that Fidel and Raúl Castro reneged on their promise of a return to constitutional democracy and early elections following the overthrow of the tyrant Fulgencio Batista. The Castros betrayed the revolutionary democrats and patriots who poured into Havana with them on that glorious January day in 1959. The Castros waged war on them in the Escambray Mountains until their final defeat in 1965, four full years after John F. Kennedy’s half-baked Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

After he solidified his base in Cuba’s Stalinist party–which had been allied with Batista, Castro’s apologists tend to conveniently forget, until the final months of 1958–Fidel Castro delivered Cuba to Moscow as a Soviet satrapy. He then pushed Russia to the brink of nuclear war with the United States in the terrifying 13-day Missile Crisis of 1962.

For all the parochial Canadian susceptibility to the propaganda myth that pits a shabby-bearded rebel in olive fatigues against the imperialist American hegemon, by the time he died on Friday night Castro was one of the richest men in Latin America. Ten years ago, when he was handing the presidency to Raúl, Forbes magazine calculated that Fidel’s personal wealth was already nearly a billion dollars.
In his twilight years, Castro was enjoying himself at his gaudy 30-hectare Punto Cero estate in Havana’s suburban Jaimanitas district, or occasionally retreating to his private yacht, or to his beachside house in Cayo Piedra, or to his house at La Caleta del Rosario with its private marina, or to his duck-hunting chalet at La Deseada.

Fidel Castro was not merely the “controversial figure” of Justin Trudeau’s encomium. He was first and foremost a traitor to the Cuban revolution. On that count alone, Castro’s death should not be mourned. It should be celebrated, loudly and happily.

Also, from Melissa Tweets:

Where the left, illustrated by Trudeau and Obama, fall short over and over: they just cannot admit evil exists.

— Melissa Mackenzie 🌐 (@MelissaTweets) November 28, 2016

Listen, you morally vacuous dumbbutts, there is good and evil. Castro is not a victim of his childhood. He was a psychopathic murderer.

— Melissa Mackenzie 🌐 (@MelissaTweets) November 28, 2016

Still more at Reason, "Justin Trudeau, Castro's Death, and the Power of Twitter."

Don't Blame Racists for Electing Trump

From Jason Riley, at the Wall Street Journal, "Democrats Are Obsessed With Race. Donald Trump Isn’t":

Don't blame racists for electing Trump. Blame former Obama voters. https://t.co/reEBd5KlKx @WSJopinion @ManhattanInst @FoxNews

— Jason Riley (@jasonrileywsj) November 23, 2016

Since when does a weekend gathering of “nearly 275” white nationalists in a country of more than 320 million people warrant front-page coverage in major newspapers? Since the election of Donald Trump, apparently.

The same media outlets that insisted Mr. Trump wouldn’t beat Hillary Clinton have spent the past two weeks misleading the public about why he did. Breathless coverage of a neo-Nazi sideshow in the nation’s capital—where antiracism protesters almost outnumbered attendees, according to the Washington Post—helps liberals illustrate their preferred “basket of deplorables” explanation for Mrs. Clinton’s loss.

The reality is that Mr. Trump didn’t prevail on Election Day because of fake news stories or voter suppression or ascendant bigotry in America. He won because a lot of people who voted for Barack Obama in previous elections cast ballots for Mr. Trump this time. In Wisconsin, he dominated the Mississippi River Valley region on the state’s western border, which went for Mr. Obama in 2012. In Ohio’s Trumbull County, where the auto industry is a major employer and the population is 89% white, Mr. Obama beat Mitt Romney, 60% to 38%. This year, Trumbull went for Mr. Trump, 51% to 45%. Iowa went for Mr. Obama easily in 2008 and 2012, but this year Mr. Trump won the state by 10 points. Either these previous Obama supporters are closet racists or they’re voting on other issues...

Keep reading.

For Decades, Cuban Americans Longed to Return Home. But Now That Fidel's Dead, Not So Much

The thrill is gone, baby.

At LAT, "For decades, Cuban Americans have longed to return to a post-Castro Cuba. But now that Fidel is dead, many aren't so eager to go."

Post-Election Polarization: A Nation Divided

At CNN, "A nation divided, and is it ever":

More than 80% of Americans say US more deeply divided on major issues than in past several years, CNN/ORC poll says. https://t.co/2waDHMX1Z7

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) November 27, 2016

(CNN) - After a bruising presidential election featuring the two least liked major-party candidates in recent history, more than 8-in-10 Americans say the country is more deeply divided on major issues this year than in the past several years, according to a new CNN/ORC poll. And more than half say they are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working in the US.

The poll's findings, released Sunday, also suggest a sizable minority personally agree with both parties on at least some issues, and nearly 8-in-10 overall hope to see the GOP-controlled government incorporate some Democratic policies into its agenda....

In the wake of a surprising election night loss, Democrats express greater dissatisfaction with the way democracy in the US is working than do Republicans (63% of Democrats are dissatisfied vs. 47% of Republicans), but some of the Republican Party's core supporters express deeper dissatisfaction than the GOP as a whole.

Among white evangelicals, 60% say they are dissatisfied, 62% of rural Americans say the same, and whites without college degrees, a typically GOP-leaning group which broke heavily for Trump in the recent election, are broadly dissatisfied (61% vs. 52% among whites who hold college degrees).

The sense that the country is sharply riven is near universal, with 85% saying so overall, including 86% of independents, 85% of Republicans and 84% of Democrats. It's also sharply higher than it was in 2000 when the nation last elected a president who did not win the popular vote (64% thought the nation more sharply split then).

The share who see deeper divides now tops 8-in-10 across gender, racial, age and educational divides. The biggest difference on the question comes across ideological lines, with 91% of liberals saying the country is more divided on top issues compared with 80% of conservatives.

Peak Demand? Oil Industry Anticipates Day of Reckoning

At WSJ, "Oil Industry Anticipates Day of Reckoning":

This month, European oil company MOL Group delivered a stark message to investors: Demand for fuel in its key markets is bound to fall.

So-called peak oil demand is a mind-bending scenario that global producers such as Royal Dutch Shell PLC and state-owned Saudi Aramco are beginning to quietly anticipate. But MOL has a transformation plan that is among the most explicit responses to the trend, indicating how the landscape may change for big energy providers over the next decade.

The Hungarian company is rethinking its traditional focus on fuel supply and shifting investment to petrochemicals, the key ingredient of everyday plastic products and a sector where MOL believes growth will continue even when its fuel business falters.

Although there will still be customers for its fuel, the company reckons demand will soon flatten and then start falling in its Eastern European markets around 2030. “We see that as an inevitability,” MOL Chief Financial Officer Jozsef Simola said.

Big oil players such as Exxon Mobil Corp, BP PLC and Saudi Arabia—which is leading recent efforts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to boost oil prices—are also anticipating significant shifts in demand, though there is no consensus on the timing and their moves have been gradual. They are increasing their investment in petrochemicals, pumping more natural gas, driving down costs and even diversifying into alternative energy sources like solar power.'

Last month Shell finance chief Simon Henry caused a stir when he said the company sees oil demand peaking in five to 15 years. Shell’s latest published forecasts have consumption flattening toward the end of that period.

State-owned China National Petroleum Corp. quietly issued a report in the summer predicting that China’s oil consumption—a major driver of growth in recent decades—will begin to fall by 2030, if not sooner. Global demand is expected to follow suit.

The International Energy Agency, which advises industrialized countries on energy policy, says consumption will continue to rise for decades in its most likely scenario. But that picture shifts radically if governments take further action to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius with more stringent policies like carbon pricing, strict emissions limits and the removal of fossil-fuel subsidies. If that happens, oil demand could peak within the next 10 years, the IEA says.

“The question is more a question of when, rather than if,” Dominic Emery, BP’s vice president for long-term planning and policy, told the Economist Energy Summit in London this month. BP says oil demand could fall by the late 2020s if tougher emissions laws are enacted.

Others don’t see peak demand coming so quickly. Exxon expects consumption to grow through 2040, though at a decelerating pace. Likewise, OPEC sees demand continuing to grow beyond 2040, but acknowledges new technologies and efforts to curb climate change could mean consumption peaks within the next three decades.

Still, OPEC mainstay Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter of oil, is pushing its state oil company to invest heavily in petrochemical plants around the world. The kingdom is trying to diversify away from oil, publicly list Aramco to raise money for other industries, and build a new base of renewable energy.

Peak demand “will be later than the common dates that are being thrown around, but if it does happen, because we’re building multiple engines for the economy and we’re planning for an economy beyond oil, we’ll be ready,” Saudi Arabia’s energy minister, Khalid al Falih, told a conference in Istanbul last month.

Timing and preparing for peak demand are critical to companies’ fortunes. Energy producers could move too fast to adapt to shifts that are still years away. Or new technologies and policies could leave them vulnerable to changes that happen sooner than expected...

Still more.

This is all very speculative, because predictions about "peak demand" depend on what happens with "climate change" and the left's "climate change" industry. Leftists want to phase-out oil. Fine. But in the decades ahead, as the worst-case-scenarios of the doomsday climate industry don't pan out, we'll see continued robust demand for petroleum consumption.

See the Los Angeles Times for yesterday's hilarious related doomsday front-page story:

Trump seems ready to fight the world on climate change, and it could cost the U.S. https://t.co/L7ayHCqXeq

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) November 26, 2016

It's the Democrats, Not Donald Trump, Who've Racialized Politics to the Point in Which Everyone Wants to Slit Each Other's Throats

Or so it seems.

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Democrats, Not Trump, Racialize Our Politics."

Cyber Monday Shopping: PlayStation 4 Pro 1TB Console and Extra Controller

Go for it.

At Amazon, PlayStation 4 Pro 1TB Console + Extra Controller Bundle.

Also, DualShock 4 Wireless Controller for PlayStation 4 - Jet Black (CUH-ZCT2).

BONUS: DMC Devil May Cry: Definitive Edition - PlayStation 4, and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare - PS4 Legacy Edition.

'Westworld': Season Finale Trailer (VIDEO)

Watch, at the Hollywood Reporter (but careful the spoilers at the post), "'Westworld': A Closer Look at the Season Finale Trailer."

Another spoiler alert here, "'Westworld': Arnold's Identity Revealed."

It was really good. I'm enjoying this show about as much as anything I've ever watched on HBO.

Cyber Monday Deals Week is Here [BUMPED]

I'll post this link throughout the week.

At Amazon, Cyber Monday Deals and Specials.