Rita Ora Bootylicious (VIDEO)

At LOVE Advent:

Rita Ora is the busy little bootylicious bee of the 2017 LOVE Advent line-up. Directed by Rankin, the British singer is the latest star to be revealed for the sexy festive tradition. Ora’s sultry performance is set to her latest single, Anywhere, with the GIF-style film setting pulses racing.

Isaac Asimov, Foundation

At Amazon, Isaac Asimov, Foundation.

Deal of the Day

At Amazon, Today's Deals.

More, Up to 40% Off Coleman Camping Gear.

And especially, Coleman 24-Piece Enamel Dinnerware Set.

Plus, Samsung Gear VR w/Controller (2017) - Latest Edition - Note 8, GS8s, GS7s, Note 5, GS6s (US Version w/ Warranty).

More, Olive Drab Green Warm Wool Fire Retardant Blanket, 66 x 90 (80% Wool) - U.S. Military.

Also, Carhartt Men's Arctic Quilt Lined Sandstone Traditional Coat.

Still more, Honeywell 360 Degree Surround Fan Forced Heater with Surround Heat Output, Charcoal Grey.

BONUS: Charles A. Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.

Economic Freedom Fighters

Katie Hopkins was tweeting about her supposed upcoming visit to South Africa yesterday, but those tweets have been taken down. Here's a blog post (attacking her) with some screen shots, "Katie Hopkins Joins Apartheid Deniers."

She tweeted:

“If you are a white farmer / former farmer in #SA and would be prepared to share your truths face to face - katie@katiehopkins.co.uk Jan 2018 … Thank you. I am hoping to inspire ‘real journalists’ to get off their sofa / WiFi to search for the stories that matter” she Tweeted. So what are these “stories that matter”?

She also engaged the Economic Freedom Fighters, and I checked them out. They're freakin' hardcore, man. From their "about" page":

Remembering Frantz Fanon who died on this day in 1961 #ForwardToDecolonization pic.twitter.com/I5Ml74OyMr

— EFF (@EFFSouthAfrica) December 6, 2017

1. The ECONOMIC FREEDOM FIGHTERS is a radical and militant economic emancipation movement that brings together revolutionary, fearless, radical, and militant activists, workers’ movements, nongovernmental organisations, community-based organisations and lobby groups under the umbrella of pursuing the struggle for economic emancipation.

2. The EFF is a radical, leftist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movement with an internationalist outlook anchored by popular grassroots formations and struggles. The EFF will be the vanguard of community and workers’ struggles and will always be on the side of the people. The EFF will, with determination and consistency, associate with the protest movement in South Africa and will also join in struggles that defy unjust laws.

3. The EFF takes lessons from the notation that “political power without economic emancipation is meaningless”. The movement is inspired by ideals that promote the practice of organic forms of political leadership, which appreciate that political leadership at whatever level is service, not an opportunity for self-enrichment and self-gratification.

4. The EFF draws inspiration from the broad Marxist-Leninist tradition and Fanonian schools of thought in their analyses of the state, imperialism, culture and class contradictions in every society. Through organic engagement and a constant relationship with the masses, Economic Freedom Fighters provide clear and cogent alternatives to the current neo-colonial economic system, which in many countries keep the oppressed under colonial domination and subject to imperialist exploitation.

5. The EFF is a South African movement with a progressive internationalist outlook, which seeks to engage with global progressive movements. We believe that the best contribution we can make in the international struggle against global imperialism is to rid our country of imperialist domination. For the South African struggle, the EFF pillars for economic emancipation are the following:

a. Expropriation of South Africa’s land without compensation for equal redistribution in      use.
b. Nationalisation of mines, banks, and other strategic sectors of the economy,       
    without compensation.
c. Building state and government capacity, which will lead to the abolishment of 
    tenders.
d. Free quality education, healthcare, houses, and sanitation.
e. Massive protected industrial development to create millions of sustainable jobs,
     including the introduction of minimum wages in order to close the wage gap
     between the rich and the poor, close the apartheid wage gap and promote rapid
     career paths for Africans in the workplace.
f. Massive development of the African economy and advocating for a move from
   reconciliation to justice in the entire continent.
g. Open, accountable, corrupt-free government and society without fear of
    victimisation by state agencies.

6. The EFF appreciates the role played by the fathers and mothers of South Africa’s liberation movement. The EFF draws inspiration from the radical, working class interpretation of the Freedom Charter, because, since its adoption in 1955, there have been various meanings given to the Freedom Charter. The EFF’s interpretation of the Freedom Charter is one which says South Africa indeed belongs to all who live in it, and ownership of South Africa’s economic resources and access to opportunities should reflect that indeed South Africa belongs to all who live in it. The EFF’s interpretation of the Freedom Charter is that which says the transfer of mineral wealth beneath the soil, monopoly industries and banks means nationalisation of mines, banks and monopoly industries.

7. The EFF’s interpretation of the Freedom Charter also accepts that while the state is in command and in control of the commanding heights of South Africa’s economy, “people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions”, meaning that there will never be wholesale nationalisation and state control of every sector of South Africa’s economy. Nationalisation of strategic sectors and assets will be blended with a strong industrial policy to support social and economic development.

8. Economic Freedom Fighters will contest political power, because we are guided by the firm belief that we need political power in order to capture the state and then transform the economy for the emancipation of black South Africans, especially Africans. The forms in which the EFF contests political power will, from time to time, be reviewed in the light of prevailing circumstances, but the primary role of mass organisation and activism, as a means to raise the political consciousness of the people, will remain the bedrock of our political practice.

9. Therefore, the EFF will be involved in mass movements and community protests that seek the betterment of people’s lives. The EFF will also associate with movements that demand land through land occupation, aimed at making the message clear that our people do need land. The EFF will support all trade unions and workers that stand up in demand of better working conditions and salaries wherever and whenever they do so. The EFF will not be bound by narrow alliance loyalties that compromise the interests of workers just because they are in a different trade union. Our pursuit of the basic demands of the Freedom Charter is above forms of organisation that the working class, and indeed black people, may fashion in the course of struggles. In other words, alliances and other forms of organisation are relevant to the extent that they maximise our march towards realising the vision outlined in the Freedom Charter.

10. The EFF is guided by revolutionary internationalism and solidarity that defined the politics of the July 26 Movement, which led the Cuban Revolutionary struggles. We will partake in international struggles that seek to emancipate the economically unliberated people of Africa and the world. We will form part of the progressive movements in the world that stand against continued imperialist domination.

Aims and Objectives:

To establish and sustain a society that cherishes revolutionary cultural values and to create conditions for total political and economic emancipation, prosperity and equitable distribution of wealth of the nation.
To attain and defend the National Integrity and Liberation of the oppressed black majority of South Africa.
To participate in the worldwide struggle for the complete eradication of imperialism, colonialism, racism and all other forms of discrimination.
To participate in, support and promote all struggles for the attainment of the complete independence and unity of African states and by extension, the African continent.
To oppose resolutely, tribalism, regionalism, religious and cultural intolerance.
To oppose oppression of women and the oppression of all other gendered persons.
To oppose patriarchy, sexism, and homophobia and any cultural or religious practices that promotes the oppression of anyone, women in particular.

Why is Everything Burning?

Arson's one of the main causes of the fires. It makes me so angry.

A good piece, at USA Today, "California fires: Why is everything burning?"

#California #wildfires: Why is everything burning? https://t.co/dJzSwZBa1A

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 8, 2017

Gift Guide

Love it, heh.

At the O.C. Register, "Holiday gift guide."

Holiday gift guide https://t.co/o0atK2lX6q pic.twitter.com/nrVDsOXbcM

— O.C. Register (@ocregister) December 8, 2017

Porn Star August Ames Commits Suicide

This story is sad and infuriating.

At the Independent Journal Review, "Porn Star August Ames Found Dead After Bullying Over Refusing to Shoot With Man Who Does Gay Scenes."

TWITTER- @AugustAmesxxx ❤
INSTAGRAM- https://t.co/UB42y0wW9q ❤
ONLYFANS- https://t.co/CpeVxiWNnI ❤
WISHLIST- https://t.co/Qj9lsCzcnV ❤ pic.twitter.com/9FLF3XehkW

— AugustAmesFan™ (@AugustAmesFan) December 4, 2017

Also, at the Federalist, "Porn Star Commits Suicide After Mob Hounds Her for Refusing Partner Who Had Gay Sex":

August Ames was a porn star who said she would not have sex on camera with a guy who had done gay porn. Apprently the "tolerance brigade" of gay porn starns litterally hounded her until she really did kill herself

— Kinda Bored & Why Am I Wasting Time Here? (@lamblock) December 8, 2017

The Gaystapo drove August Ames to suicide because she wouldn’t work with a crossover actor in a state where it’s no longer illegal to knowingly infect someone with AIDS.

— Craigé Schmuckatelli (@CraigR3521) December 8, 2017

For a while now, the joke has been that political correctness is moving so swiftly that not only will you have to approve of gay sex, it will become mandatory. I don’t mean this as an unfortunately literal bit of gallows humor, but Ames’ death does raise eyebrows because it speaks to a frightening dystopia where any traditional deference to female vulnerability becomes subservient to liberal pieties about sexuality.

The day Ames killed herself, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about a case involving a Colorado cake baker who doesn’t want to make cakes for gay weddings. The baker, quite understandably and credibly, insists there’s a rather large expressive and artistic component to his vocation, so he shouldn’t be forced to endorse any particular message or religious ceremony he disagrees with. The counterargument is that it’s just a cake, and as long as you’re open for business, you have to serve anyone without discrimination.

Well, I’m scratching my head trying to figure out how Ames’s detractors weren’t extending the exact same logic of “public accommodation” to her. After all, she’s open for business, if you want to call it that. Wouldn’t it be discrimination to exclude working with an entire class of people?

RTWT.

Scenic View

Viewed on Twitter:

pic.twitter.com/1rYubbm8rj

— Jessica Miller (@camstarwar) October 29, 2017

'Say You Love Me'

From yesterday's drive-time, at Jack FM Los Angeles:

Pearl Jam
Alive
9:17 AM

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
American Girl
9:16 AM

Capital Cities
Safe And Sound
12/06/17
9:13 AM

Pink Floyd
Another Brick In The Wall
9:10 AM

Berlin
The Metro
9:06 AM

AC/DC
Dirty Deeds
8:54 AM

Third Eye Blind
Semi-Charmed Life
8:49 AM

David Bowie
China Girl
8:45 AM

Elton John
Rocket Man
8:40 AM

Kings Of Leon
Use Somebody
8:37 AM

ZZ Top
Sharp Dressed Man
8:32 AM

Dead Or Alive
You Spin Me Round
8:22 AM

Red Hot Chili Peppers
Dani California
8:17 AM

Fleetwood Mac
Say You Love Me
8:13 AM

REO Speedwagon
Keep On Loving You
8:06 AM

New Order
Bizarre Love Triangle
8:03 AM

Today's Shopping

At Amazon, Today's Deals.

See especially, Save Up to 40% on Maxi-Cosi & Safety 1st Car Seats.

Plus, Shop Fisher-Price Toys.

And, Save 30% or More on Toys from ECR4Kids.

More, Olive Drab Green Warm Wool Fire Retardant Blanket, 66 x 90 (80% Wool) - U.S. Military.

Also, Carhartt Men's Arctic Quilt Lined Sandstone Traditional Coat.

Still more, Honeywell 360 Degree Surround Fan Forced Heater with Surround Heat Output, Charcoal Grey.

BONUS: Douglas Massey, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass.

The Silence Breakers

Time jumped the shark years ago. They can't give the "person of the year" to just one person. It has to be for a movement, otherwise no one would give a fuck.

Here, "The Silence Breakers."

“Women have had it with bosses and coworkers who not only cross boundaries but don’t even seem to know that boundaries exist,” Time magazine writes. “These silence breakers have started a revolution of refusal, gathering strength by the day.” pic.twitter.com/NUr6wo50ZR

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) December 6, 2017

Sara Sampaio for LOVE Advent (VIDEO)

Here's the latest installment:

SoCal Wildfires (VIDEO)

Here's the report from last night at CBS Evening News:

Wildfire on the Sepulveda Pass, Nearby the Getty Center (VIDEO)

The 405 freeway is closed nearby the Getty Center in Los Angeles.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Evelyn Taft's Wildfires Forecast

It's bad people.

Something like 150 structures destroyed by fire up in Ventura. It was windy, cold, and dry when I left for work yesterday at 6:00am. Then I saw the news about the fires.

Here's the lovely Ms. Evelyn. Stay safe, folks:

The Tax Reform Bill is Killing and Raping Americans

Oh my goodness this is cracking me up!

Leftists have lost their minds, heh.

From yesterday's roundup, at Maggie's Farm, "Tuesday morning links."

BONUS: Today's roundup, "Wednesday morning links."

End of Apartheid in South Africa?

This is depressing.

At NYT, "End of Apartheid in South Africa? Not in Economic Terms":

End of Apartheid in South Africa? Not in Economic Terms. This a powerful @NYTimes read ... https://t.co/jyNPeqaTYT

— Jason Burke (@burke_jason) November 15, 2017

CROSSROADS, South Africa — The end of apartheid was supposed to be a beginning.

Judith Sikade envisioned escaping the townships, where the government had forced black people to live. She aimed to find work in Cape Town, trading her shack for a home with modern conveniences.

More than two decades later, Ms. Sikade, 69, lives on the garbage-strewn dirt of Crossroads township, where thousands of black families have used splintered boards and metal sheets to construct airless hovels for lack of anywhere else to live.

“I’ve gone from a shack to a shack,” Ms. Sikade says. “I’m fighting for everything I have. You still are living in apartheid.”

In the history of civil rights, South Africa lays claim to a momentous achievement — the demolition of apartheid and the construction of a democracy. But for black South Africans, who account for three-fourths of this nation of roughly 55 million people, political liberation has yet to translate into broad material gains.

Apartheid has essentially persisted in economic form.

This reality is palpable as turmoil now seizes South Africa. Enraged protesters demand the ouster of President Jacob Zuma over disclosures of corruption so high-level that it is often described as state capture, with private interests having effectively purchased the power to divert state resources in their direction. The economy keels in recession, worsening an official unemployment rate reaching nearly 28 percent.

Underlying the anger are deep-seated disparities in wealth. In the aftermath of apartheid, the government left land and other assets largely in the hands of a predominantly white elite. The government’s resistance to large-scale land transfers reflected its reluctance to rattle international investors.

Today, millions of black South Africans are chronically short of capital needed to start businesses. Less than half of the working age population is officially employed.

The governing party, the African National Congress, built empires of new housing for black South Africans, but concentrated it in the townships, reinforcing the geographic strictures of apartheid. Large swaths of the black population remain hunkered down in squalor, on land they do not legally own. Those with jobs often endure commutes of an hour or more on private minibuses that extract outsize slices of their paychecks.

“We never dismantled apartheid,” said Ayabonga Cawe, a former economist for Oxfam, the international anti-poverty organization, and now the host of a radio show that explores national affairs. “The patterns of enrichment and impoverishment are still the same.”

South Africa began the post-apartheid era facing challenges as formidable as those confronted by Europe at the end of World War II, or the Soviet Union after communism. It had to re-engineer an economy dominated by mining and expand into modern pursuits like tourism and agriculture, while overcoming a legacy of colonial exploitation, racial oppression and global isolation — the results of decades of international sanctions.

“It’s a very deep structural problem,” said Ian Goldin, who served as a senior economic adviser to Nelson Mandela when he was president of South Africa, and is now a professor of globalization at the University of Oxford in Britain. “The Russians had capitalism before the Soviet Union. Africans lost their rights 300 years ago. It’s a much longer period of subjugation.”

Even so, from 1998 to 2008, the economy expanded by roughly 3.5 percent a year, doubling the size of the black middle class. The government built millions of homes, extended the reach of clean water and electricity, and handed out cash grants to millions of poor people.

But the global financial crisis of 2008 ravaged South Africa, destroying demand for the mineral deposits at the center of its economy. It wiped out half of the roughly two million new jobs that had been created in the previous four years.

Today, South Africa is a land of astonishing contrasts.

In the Sea Point neighborhood of Cape Town, a sweep of apartments and restaurants alongside the Atlantic Ocean, women gather on the beach for an evening yoga class — some black, some white, some Asian. Children of multiple races scamper through a playground, a scene unthinkable during apartheid.

High above the city, atop the ridgeline at Table Mountain, American exchange students recount a sky diving experience while pointing smartphones at the orange sun arcing toward the ocean.

To the east, the parched land vibrates in the golden light. Judith Sikade’s tin roof is down there somewhere, reflecting the last rays of the sun.

In her community, people are cooking over coal fires and breathing in fumes. Children run barefoot on paths littered with broken glass. Grown-ups exchange word of the latest armed robbery.

All the while, they keep an eye out for the police, who frequently descend bearing sledgehammers to tear down the shacks, given that they sit on private land.

“Where’s the freedom?” Ms. Sikade said, anger rising in her voice. “Where are the changes?”

Still more.

Monday Shopping

At Amazon, Today's Deals.

See especially, Polaroid ZIP Mobile Printer w/ZINK Zero Ink Printing Technology - Compatible w/iOS & Android Devices - White.

More, AmazonBasics Lightning to USB A Cable - Apple MFi Certified - Black - 6 Feet /1.8 Meters.

And, Playskool Heroes Star Wars Galactic Heroes BB-8 Adventure Base.

Also, Extra Large 79" x 40"! Kids Carpet Playmat Rug City Life - Great For Playing With Cars And Toys - Play, Learn And Have Fun Safely - Children Baby Play Mat, For Bedroom PlayRoom Game Safe Area.

Still more, HP 23.8-inch FHD IPS Monitor with Tilt/Height Adjustment and Built-in Speakers (VH240a, Black).

Plus, DROCON Scouter Foldable Mini RC drone for kids with Altitude Hold Mode, One Key Take off Landing, 3D Flips and Headless Mode Quadcopter Easy Fly Steady for Beginners.

BONUS: Robert Bork, A Time to Speak: Selected Writings and Arguments.

Weekends at Althouse's

I noticed somewhere that Ann Althouse is a "professor emerita of law" at the University of Wisconsin.

She writes about her post-retirement weekends here, "I've completed the year without weekend weekends":

Having retired from my lawprof job, I experience weekends as the time when the people with structured jobs flow into activities that the nonstructured among us can do all the time. That affects me slightly. My job was already relatively unstructured, except for class times and the occasional meeting, so I was already experiencing the joy of the unstructured life (especially in the summertime). And when you let go of your structured employment, you will employ yourself doing something. In my case, I was and continue to be strongly structured to write this blog every morning, but the nonstructured thing about it is ending the process — breaking the trance. I don't have to break the trance because a structured task is approaching. I love that! I was pretty sure I would love that, and I chose to retire from my lawprof job so I could jump fully into the nonstructured life. Looking back on the year, I'm thoroughly happy about where I have landed...

Keep reading.

George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones (Box Set)

A great Christmas gift, at Amazon, A Game of Thrones / A Clash of Kings / A Storm of Swords / A Feast of Crows / A Dance with Dragons.