Joy Villa: I'm Standing for the National Anthem (VIDEO)

She's so great!

For Prager University:

Hottest Bo Krsmanovic (VIDEO)

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin

At Amazon, Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator.

Laura Ingraham, Shut Up and Sing

I posted Laura Ingraham's Billionaire at the Barricades a while back.

She's been pounding the populist hammer for some time, though.

See also, at Amazon, Laura Ingraham, Shut Up and Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the Media are Subverting America.

Marriage and Kids vs. Dogs and Netflix

I'd like to see actually statistics on this, but if it's anywhere near majority opinion, we can be relieved that humans will die out by self-extinction over the near few generations.

My god, what is wrong with these people?

It's Lauren Southern, in the U.K.:

Hundreds Dead in Egypt Mosque Massacre (VIDEO)

Well, that's not going to be good for those Thanksgiving memories.

At the Telegraph U.K., "Egypt mosque attack: At least 235 killed as militants shoot at fleeing worshippers after detonating bomb":

Egypt was last night reeling from the bloodiest terror attack in its history after suspected Isil fighters slaughtered at least 235 people during prayers by detonating explosives inside a Sinai mosque and then killing the worshippers in a hail of gunfire.

The terrorists struck a mosque in the remote town of Bir al-Abed in northern Sinai where hundreds of people had gathered for traditional Islamic prayers on Friday afternoon.

The attack began with a powerful explosion at the al-Rawdah mosque and gunmen leapt out of four off-road vehicles to kill people as they fled. Security officials and witnesses said the attackers used their vehicles to cut off escape routes and opened fire on ambulances as they reached the scene. More than 100 were wounded.

The gunmen appear to have escaped from the scene after the massacre before Egyptian security forces could arrive.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but suspicion fell on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's (Isil) affiliate in the Sinai desert, which has waged a bloody insurgency against the Egyptian military and the country’s Christian minority.

The worshippers at the al-Rawdah were mainly Sufis, who adhere to a mystic form of Islam. Isil considers Sufis to be heretics and has threatened them in the past.

The town of Bir al-Abed is home to around 2,500 people, all members of the Sawarka tribe. In conservative rural areas of Egypt it is usually only men who attend Friday prayers. With an attack so large it is believed that a significant portion of all the men in the village were either killed or wounded on Friday.

Abdel Qader Mubarak, a man originally from the village, said his entire family had been killed in the slaughter. "I can't talk, all my family are gone," he told The Telegraph.

The massacre is the worst terrorist attack on civilians in modern Egyptian history, and its death toll outstripped the 224 deaths caused when suspected Isil militants blew up a Russian airliner shortly after it took off from Sharm el-Sheikh in 2015.

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt’s president, promised to respond with “brutal force” against the attackers.

“We will remain steadfast and will fight back with an iron fist. This attack will only add to our persistence on overcoming the tragedy and we will win the battle against the forces of evil,” Mr Sisi said.

"The army and police will avenge our martyrs and return security and stability with force in the coming short period.”

Despite Mr Sisi’s pledge, the security forces have struggled to contain the jihadist insurgency in Sinai and suffered heavy casualties...

More.

Here's Jennifer Delacruz's Black Friday Forecast

She usually works the holidays, but the video wasn't up last night in time for my blog weather report.

Any time's good for me, though.

Here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:

Kyla Grogan's Black Friday Forecast

Ms. Kyla's the new on-air meteorological talent at CBS News 2 Los Angeles.

It's been record Thanksgiving heat today, not to complain, of course.

Temperatures will be subsiding over the next few days, but it's still going to be lovely.

What It's Like to Be the Only Trump Fan at Thanksgiving

You gotta read this. The best, heh.

From Mark Bauerlein, at Politico:

Heh. This Is What It's Like to Be the Only #Trump Fan at Thanksgiving Dinner. https://t.co/iBBTsZ9Sxu pic.twitter.com/yw3i483L5D

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 23, 2017

Thanksgiving Shopping

Well, time to get going on your holiday shopping.

It's a great time of year! Tomorrow's Black Friday. There'll be all kinds of sales.

So get crackin', lol.

At Amazon, Today's Deals.

And see especially, ILIFE A4s Robot Vacuum Cleaner.

Also, GOOLOO 800A Peak 18000mAh Car Jump Starter (Up to 7.0L Gas or 5.5L Diesel Engine) Portable Power Pack Auto Battery Booster Phone Charger Built-in LED Light and Smart Protection.

More, Craftsman 9-31794 Slotted Phillips Screwdriver Set, 17 Piece, and Craftsman 56-piece Universal Mechanics Tool Set.

Plus, Pyramex Cap Style 4 Point Snap Lock Suspension Hard Hat.

And, AmazonBasics AA Performance Alkaline Batteries (48 Count) - Packaging May Vary.

Here, Samsung UN65MU6300FXZA 65" 4K Ultra HD Smart LED TV (2017 Model) Plus Terk Cut-the-Cord HD Digital TV Tuner and Recorder 16GB Hook-Up Bundle.

BONUS: Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator.

Think Twice

About communism.

From Laura M. Nicolae, at the Harvard Crimson, "100 Years. 100 Million Lives. Think Twice":

"My father left behind his parents, friends, and neighbors in the hope of finding freedom. I know his story because it is my heritage; you now know his story because I have a voice. One hundred million other people were silenced." https://t.co/qgSm47yOMZ @lauramnic pic.twitter.com/AhAhPEvgQf

— Victims of Communism (@VoCommunism) November 21, 2017

In 1988, my twenty-six-year-old father jumped off a train in the middle of Hungary with nothing but the clothes on his back. For the next two years, he fled an oppressive Romanian Communist regime that would kill him if they ever laid hands on him again.

My father ran from a government that beat, tortured, and brainwashed its citizens. His childhood friend disappeared after scrawling an insult about the dictator on the school bathroom wall. His neighbors starved to death from food rations designed to combat “obesity.” As the population dwindled, women were sent to the hospital every month to make sure they were getting pregnant.

My father’s escape journey eventually led him to the United States. He moved to the Midwest and married a Romanian woman who had left for America the minute the regime collapsed. Today, my parents are doctors in quiet, suburban Kansas. Both of their daughters go to Harvard. They are the lucky ones.

Roughly 100 million people died at the hands of the ideology my parents escaped. They cannot tell their story. We owe it to them to recognize that this ideology is not a fad, and their deaths are not a joke.

Last month marked 100 years since the Bolshevik Revolution, though college culture would give you precisely the opposite impression. Depictions of communism on campus paint the ideology as revolutionary or idealistic, overlooking its authoritarian violence. Instead of deepening our understanding of the world, the college experience teaches us to reduce one of the most destructive ideologies in human history to a one-dimensional, sanitized narrative.

Walk around campus, and you’re likely to spot Ché Guevara on a few shirts and button pins. A sophomore jokes that he’s declared a secondary in “communist ideology and implementation.” The new Leftist Club on campus seeks “a modern perspective” on Marx and Lenin to “alleviate the stigma around the concept of Leftism.” An author laments in these pages that it’s too difficult to meet communists here. For many students, casually endorsing communism is a cool, edgy way to gripe about the world.

After spending four years on a campus saturated with Marxist memes and jokes about communist revolutions, my classmates will graduate with the impression that communism represents a light-hearted critique of the status quo, rather than an empirically violent philosophy that destroyed millions of lives.

Statistics show that young Americans are indeed oblivious to communism’s harrowing past. According to a YouGov poll, only half of millennials believe that communism was a problem, and about a third believe that President George W. Bush killed more people than Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who killed 20 million. If you ask millennials how many people communism killed, 75 percent will undershoot.

Perhaps before joking about communist revolutions, we should remember that Stalin’s secret police tortured “traitors” in secret prisons by sticking needles under their fingernails or beating them until their bones were broken. Lenin seized food from the poor, causing a famine in the Soviet Union that induced desperate mothers to eat their own children and peasants to dig up corpses for food. In every country that communism was tried, it resulted in massacres, starvation, and terror.

Communism cannot be separated from oppression; in fact, it depends upon it. In the communist society, the collective is supreme. Personal autonomy is nonexistent. Human beings are simply cogs in a machine tasked with producing utopia; they have no value of their own.

Many in my generation have blurred the reality of communism with the illusion of utopia. I never had that luxury...

Keep reading.

Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt

Just out this month, at Amazon, Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life.

CBS and Dish Network Failed to Reach Agreement on New Carriage Deal

My wife's bummed. She watches a lot of TV, and of course CBS has some good prime time programming. She came to me last night and said, "That's a bummer about the CBS blackout." I'm like, "What blackout?" I thought it related to Charlie Rose's firing from CBS, heh. Don't know why we'd lose access to the entire network because of that perv, lol.

At Deadline, "CBS & Its Stations Go Dark On Dish Network As Deal Deadline Passes."

CBS & Its Stations Go Dark On Dish Network As Deal Deadline Passes https://t.co/48ad1RKEEF pic.twitter.com/O1PXuu6i7m

— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) November 21, 2017

I'm going to watch football today, and CBS has the Chargers on this afternoon, so I'll miss that. Oh well. I'm only now returning to watching pro football, since it looks like the league's going to crack down on the anti-flag protests. The consumer boycotts have definitely had an impact.

LaVar Ball's Big Con

I feel bad for his boys, especially Lonzo, who's on the Lakers now, and a success in his own right. I wonder how long until Lonzo cuts his dad loose. LaVar's already damaged his other two sons' chances of making to the NBA, and that's not counting LiAngelo's shoplifting arrest in China. Troubles in the family, and it's too bad. Of course, it had to turn political with LaVar not thanking President Trump for his help in securing LiAngelo's release.

Here's Bill Plaschke, at the Los Angeles Times, "The big blowhard: LaVar Ball has made a living off the backs of his children":

LaVar Ball has not stayed in his lane; he's become shameless huckster running a con on the backs of his children https://t.co/aw8GMQx7At

— Bill Plaschke (@BillPlaschke) November 22, 2017

Just in time for the holidays, LaVar Ball has been good enough to advise us on one way to obtain a pair of his company's odd $495 sneakers.

The father of UCLA freshman basketball player LiAngelo Ball has spent the last week telling the world his son and fellow Bruins Cody Riley and Jalen Hill didn't really do too much wrong when they were caught shoplifting in three stores during the team's recent trip to China.

They were detained, confined to the country beyond their scheduled departure, released with the help of two presidents, publicly admitted their wrongdoing and are serving an indefinite team suspension.

But according to the family patriarch, a man whose publicity-seeking craziness has been excused because he is a good father, theft isn't that big of a deal.

To ESPN recently, Ball actually said, "It ain't that big of a deal.''

On CNN Monday night, he doubled down on the ignorance, saying, "The way I look at it, OK, [LiAngelo] was shoplifting. He wasn't physical. He returned it. He fessed up to it. … Nobody got hurt.''

Nobody got hurt? Nobody except the three shops from which the kids stole the items, his son's now-depleted team and, most of all, his son's shamed university.

When LaVar Ball said nobody got hurt, he meant LaVar Ball didn't get hurt. While his son was confined by the school to his Hangzhou hotel during the investigation, his father was out hawking shoes in cities as far as two hours away. While his son was watching his team's first game against Georgia Tech while sitting in that hotel, his father was actually in the stands, because who needs the kid on the court when you can peddle a branded T-shirt on TV?

LaVar Ball once seemed like a genius salesman worthy of examination, but in recent months the curtain has been drawn to reveal a shallow and shameless huckster. He once enhanced the Los Angeles sports landscape, but now he only infects it by continuing to bleat messages filled with delusion and disrespect. For someone who once epitomized sexism by telling a female sports-talk show announcer to "Stay in your lane,'' Ball has veered far from his original lane...

More.

Lindsay Shepherd

This is really troubling.

Best thing is, she recorded her inquisition, ha!

At Inside Higher Ed, "The Interrogation of a TA: University president apologizes after recording reveals how a graduate student was questioned over use of a video, which offended at least one student, of debate on nontraditional pronouns."

And the National Post, "Wilfrid Laurier University's president apologizes to Lindsay Shepherd for dressing-down over Jordan Peterson clip."

And watch Ezra Levant, at the Rebel, with excerpts from her recording. It's good:



And at tweet from Jordan Peterson on the abuse he's enduring. It's bad. Really bad:

Those who consider themselves my enemies have been posting these all around my home neighbourhood. pic.twitter.com/zF3Mc7Imsy

— Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) October 26, 2017

Leeann Tweeden

Following-up, "New Sexual Assault Allegations Against Al Franken."

Franken didn't assault this woman, Leeann Tweeden, but the photo of his mock-fondling her breasts is heavily damaging. And with more women coming forward, it doesn't look good for the guy. He was considered a 2020 prospect for the 2020 Democrat presidential nomination as well.

Heh, too bad.

Ms. Leeann posed on Playboy a while back, and other photos circulating online indicate she's got a huge rack:

New Sexual Assault Allegations Against Al Franken

He's not up for reelection until 2020, but I don't know if he's going to make that long. The pressure for his resignation is significant, and a Morning Consult poll out yesterday found half saying he should resign.

Not good for Al Franken, at Huff Post:

BREAKING: Two more women accuse Al Franken of inappropriate touching https://t.co/TdTJijO8LV pic.twitter.com/BIuhhadviG

— HuffPost (@HuffPost) November 23, 2017

There are some extremely depressing quotes in this story. https://t.co/S3xoM8aMAB pic.twitter.com/abGtO4OWng

— Nick Baumann (@NickBaumann) November 23, 2017

Piers Morgan Chews Out Dating Guru: ‘You Are A Repulsive Individual’

At Huff Post:

Piers Morgan chews out dating guru: "You are a repulsive individual" https://t.co/t2eRoVb5a8 pic.twitter.com/OVH6eOjtps

— HuffPost (@HuffPost) November 23, 2017

This seduction expert thinks British women are 'overweight' and 'entitled'

Watch the full debate: https://t.co/vuw078VG5o @piersmorgan pic.twitter.com/Xfc21gRb6C

— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) November 22, 2017

Republican Congressman Joe Barton Apologizes for Rude Nude Selfie

Well this kind of thing isn't so great for your career.

And, the issue for some is whether the good congressman is a victim of "revenge" porn. See this thread, "Earlier today Texas Tribune posted a story concerning Rep. Joe Barton (R-Ennis) that he issued an apology statement after it was learned a graphic image of him nude (apparently showing his penis), was circulating via social media."

And at the Texas Tribune:

U.S. Rep. Joe Barton has apologized for a graphic nude photo of him that circulated online. https://t.co/6JuABqgUEA pic.twitter.com/mWIOYQJ7S6

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) November 22, 2017

And from Elise Viebeck, of the Washington Post:

Rep. Joe Barton said he would report his lover to the Capitol Police if she exposed his secret sex life, w/ @mikedebonis: https://t.co/e4hcofGnA6

— Elise Viebeck (@eliseviebeck) November 23, 2017

Here's what @RepJoeBarton told his lover when she learned he was involved with other women. He doesn't leave much out. pic.twitter.com/xOyS5BI5qd

— Elise Viebeck (@eliseviebeck) November 23, 2017

Worth noting that the woman says she and Barton would text for hours, including when he was in committee meetings and on the House floor: pic.twitter.com/J359oRdzZY

— Elise Viebeck (@eliseviebeck) November 23, 2017

For those wondering about the revenge porn issue: good question. We listened to the tape. Barton brought up the Capitol Police because he was mad the woman learned about and was making contact with his other lovers. She was mad; he brought up the idea of an investigation.

— Elise Viebeck (@eliseviebeck) November 23, 2017

Here's what Barton had to say about it: pic.twitter.com/4UtoZ4OABt

— Elise Viebeck (@eliseviebeck) November 23, 2017

Finally, to sign off: if you were inappropriately propositioned by Rep. Barton or another member of Congress, we'd like to hear your story. Email us at mike.debonis@washpost.com and elise.viebeck@washpost.com.

— Elise Viebeck (@eliseviebeck) November 23, 2017

Los Angeles 'Travel Crunch' (VIDEO)

Wasn't too bad driving home this afternoon from work, but these videos of the L.A. traffic are murder.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles: