Vintage Pornography Being Restored and Refreshed for New Generation

Oh brother.

It's not like we don't have enough fresh porn for the new generation as it is. Now we need to restore and refresh old porn for the new generation?

At the New York Times, "Smut, Refreshed for a New Generation":

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Between a detention center and a post office here, there’s a large, unremarkable building on a corner. Other than a few parked cars near a loading dock, there’s not much life outside its off-white walls. But walk through the rickety front door and up the concrete stairs, and what’s inside makes the old Times Square look like Mayberry: thousands of boxes filled to overflowing with sexually explicit films and artifacts.

Welcome to the home of Vinegar Syndrome, founded in 2012 by Joe Rubin and Ryan Emerson to catalog, restore and help release old X-rated films for the home video and theatrical markets. (“Vinegar syndrome” refers to what film smells like when it starts to decay.) The company, which takes up only about a third of the 47,000-square-foot building, plans to introduce a new generation to lost and forgotten films from what’s considered the golden age of American hard-core filmmaking, roughly 1969 to 1986.

“Yes, the films are X-rated,” Mr. Emerson said. “But many of them are interesting and fascinating once you get into them. These films are time capsules.”

"Time capsules." Real highbrow time capsules, I'm sure.

Keep reading.

Employees at Zumiez, Skate Apparel and Gear Store, Killed in Maryland Mall Shooting

At the Baltimore Sun, "Three people killed in shooting at the Columbia Mall":

Gunfire pierced the Saturday morning bustle at the Mall in Columbia, a gathering place for many in the planned suburban community, sending shoppers racing for cover as two store employees were fatally shot by a man whom police said then killed himself.

Howard County police said the two employees at the skate shop Zumiez, Brianna Benlolo, 21, of College Park, Md., and Tyler Johnson, 25, of Ellicott City, Md. were killed shortly after 11 a.m.

Police, who did not release information on the identity of the shooter, said he was found just outside the store with a shotgun and a large amount of ammunition.

Five people, including one who was shot in the foot, were treated at Howard County General Hospital and released. The other four individuals were not being treated for gunshot wounds, but for injuries related to panic at the scene.

One witness said the gunman appeared to be between 18 and 21 years old and was wearing khaki pants and a white shirt.

"He looked straight at me... He pointed the gun at me and looked at my eyes," said Shafon Robinson, who had run out from a bathroom near the first floor food court after she heard two gunshots coming from Zumiez on the second floor.

Robinson's husband, Terrance Lilly, screamed at her to get down, and when she did, she said a shot sailed over her head and into the wall behind her. Two shots were fired in her direction, she said.

Her husband tried to jump over a table to grab the kids — the couple was at the mall with their three kids as well as a girlfriend of Robinson and her two children — and herd them outside to safety.

"He saved the kids," she said, but broke three bones in his face as he tried to leap over the table.

Also at Fire Andrea Mitchell, "Brianna Benlolo and Tyler Johnson dead in Mall in Columbia shooting," and "Zumiez statement on Mall in Columbia shooting."

Also at CNN, "Police: No motive yet in mall shooting."

Sexy Saturday Rule 5

With Gisele.

She's doing some work for Playboy (on Twitter and YouTube).

RELATED: At the Nug, "Two Girls One Gallery." (Via Linkiest.)

More from Bro My God, "EXCUSE ME BUT YOUR HTOL ARE VERY DISTRACTING."

Also at Bro Bible, "37 Hot Pics of Girls with Legs for Days."

See also the Plunder Guide, "Nikki Du Plessis is HOT!"

At Blackmailers Don't Shoot, "Rule 5 Thursday, Selena Gomez Is Single Edition." And the Other McCain, "Selena Gomez Available."

And Knuckledraggin', "Wirecutter – The Early Years."

And the Chive, "It’s too cold, let’s go on bikini vacation (38 photos)."

Finally, at Pirate's Cove, "If All You See……is an evil fossil fueled machine needed to ride over snow created by heat causing fossil fueled vehicles, you might just be a Warmist."

I should have more Rule 5 tomorrow, perhaps even a big roundup.

Barack's Pogrom: The Rising Tide of Hatred Against the 'Evil' One Percent

You gotta read this letter at WSJ, from Tom Perkins, "Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?" (at Memeorandum):

From the Occupy movement to the demonization of the rich embedded in virtually every word of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, I perceive a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent. There is outraged public reaction to the Google buses carrying technology workers from the city to the peninsula high-tech companies which employ them. We have outrage over the rising real-estate prices which these "techno geeks" can pay....

This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent "progressive" radicalism unthinkable now?

Actually, Kristallnacht is a pretty good analogy. I wrote about the emerging evil in the Bay Area day before yesterday, "Unhinged Leftists Escalate 'Google Bus' Protests to Home of Driverless Car Designer Anthony Levandowski." You're likely to get hurt with people like this, if not killed. They went to the guy's house and knocked on his door! And this Levandowski guy's probably Jewish!

And here's yesterday's front-page story at the Los Angeles Times, "Tech industry in San Francisco addresses backlash":

With the cost of living here at levels that almost no one but the most affluent can afford, protesters have taken to the streets to block luxury shuttles ferrying tech workers to Silicon Valley companies.

In an incident signaling growing tensions, a protester hurled a rock through the window of a Google bus in Oakland in December. On Wednesday, demonstrators stood outside the Berkeley home of a Google engineer, protesting the company's work on military robots and the tech industry's role in driving up rents and evictions in San Francisco.

See all the responses at Memeorandum.

Here's idiot Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog, "Look, I'm not sure about tactics like slashing Google buses' tires, but if Perkins is going to have the bad taste to equate his fellow richies with the victims of the Holocaust, tell me: Who's the Hitler in all this? Where's the state power?"

Actually, look no farther than the White House for your state leader. Herr Barack has been exhorting his progressive Brownshirts to violence since taking office. [Before taking office, actually.]

Everything is proceeding as conservatives warned back in 2008. See, "It's the 1930s, and You Are There."

And it's all coming to a head this year, "Obama to make inequality the defining issue of 2014."

Bring it you leftist scum. Just f-king bring it.

Republicans Approve Changes to Presidential Nominating Process

This is interesting.

At NYT, "Republicans Vote to Streamline Nominating Process":

WASHINGTON — The Republican National Committee moved Friday to consolidate its presidential nominating process in 2016, a pre-emptive effort to avoid a drawn-out campaign that many in the party say could imperil their effort to reclaim the White House.

“We have been saying for months that we were no longer going to sit around and allow ourselves to slice and dice for six months,” Reince Priebus, the party chairman, said in remarks hailing the vote on the rule changes.

The package, which cleared the 168-member committee with just nine dissenting votes, left Iowa and New Hampshire in the traditional roles of first caucus and first primary, followed by South Carolina and Nevada nominating contests, all in February. Other states are allowed to hold their primaries and caucuses starting on March 1.

After the first two weeks in March, states can hold winner-take-all elections, which will deliver large troves of delegates and are intended to yield a prospective nominee early in the process. States that violate the new rules would forfeit most of their delegates and alternates to the national convention.

The most important change to the 2016 primary calendar was not voted on here, at the party’s winter meeting, but will probably be taken up when the committee meets later this year: holding the national nominating convention sooner, in June or early July. Doing that would give the eventual presidential nominee earlier access to campaign dollars that are allowed to be spent only after a nomination is made official at the convention.

“If Mitt Romney had been nominated on July 1 rather than Sept. 1, his chances of being president would have been increased,” said Ron Kaufman, the Massachusetts Republican committeeman and a confidant of Mr. Romney’s.

Pushing back the primary calendar into February is a good move, as well as the later winner-take-all primaries. But it's a bad idea to hold the convention in June. You want to hold it as late as possible, so the nominee can ride the crest of a bump into the October debates on into election day. See Matthew Dowd for more on that, "New RNC Rules Changes: One Big Misstep."

Still more at Politico, "Republican National Committee easily passes 2016 calendar tweaks."

Menacing Air Quality in California's Central Valley

Most of the left's environmental memes are baloney, but I lived in Fresno for years, and the air quality is often terrible.

So I don't doubt this piece at all, at LAT, "A menacing air in the Central Valley":

FRESNO — On bad-air days here in the Central Valley, school officials hoist red flags to warn parents and pupils that being outside is officially deemed “unhealthful for all groups.”

This winter, though, the most polluted on record, schools have not only raised red flags. On several days, they have had to send out notices saying the red flags should really be purple—indicating “very unhealthful” air — if only they had them. But such warnings have been be so rare that schools don't even have the flags designating the most extreme conditions.

Of course, parents could just look at the sky itself.

From Stockton to Bakersfield, a haze of chemical-laced particles has tinted the air a rusty gray all winter. In the evenings there's a charcoal stripe across the horizon. The Sierra Nevada hasn't been visible for more than a month.

A high-pressure ridge, four miles high, sits off the West Coast, blocking Pacific storms from cleaning the air in the Central Valley. Pollution levels have spiked across California, but nowhere is it as bad as in this agricultural region.

With no rain since Dec. 7, fine particles that can embed in lungs and enter the bloodstream build up in an ever-darkening sky. Meteorologists don't expect the weather to shift until at least the end of the month.

When Kellie Townsend returned from her Christmas vacation at the coast, she knew right away something was wrong.
"As soon as I drove into the valley, I could feel a burning in my throat," she said.

Townsend, who works in the Earth and Environmental Sciences program at Fresno State, heeded air board warnings to stay inside. Her neighbors seemed to do the same. The only people she saw out were gardeners with leaf-blowers. For exercise there was her Lindy Hop dance class. One weekend she went to the mountains for a dose of fresh air.

But after three weeks, on a recent balmy day, the 42-year-old returned to running up and down hills near a walking trail. She purposely didn't check the air rating — which was a red alert with about three times the amount of fine particles found in air considered healthful.

"I'm scared. I can feel that something isn't right. I can feel the tightness in my chest," she said. "But I get tense when I'm inside too long. I told my husband, 'My head feels chaotic inside.' I know what will happen — I will be coughing tonight. Maybe the damage is long term. But what do I do?"

People who live in the Central Valley are used to bad air. Surrounded by mountains on three sides, home to industrial agriculture and oil fields, and with most of the state's long-distance big-rig traffic driving through on Interstate 5 and state Highway 99, the region historically has had some of the worst pollution in the nation.

Warnings about spikes usually go out in the summer and are directed at sensitive groups: children, older people and those with respiratory problems in a region where the asthma rate is three times higher than the national average.

Now the amount of fine particles — known as PM-2.5 — in the air is so high that a new group is affected: outdoorsy adults with no health problems. On many days, the air district, tracking hourly readings, sends out an alert: "Real Time Activity Risk Warning."
As the weeks stretch on, people are ignoring the warnings.

Keep reading.

One of the things that always tripped me out about Fresno was all the agricultural burning. Drive around the Valley and you see agricultural fires all the time. Sometimes you just breathe the smoke. So, yeah, air quality up there is definitely an issue.

Charles Barkley: 'I use the n-word...'

Here's Barkley with Brooke Baldwin:



And he's on record as being a big n-word aficionado, at Big Sports, "CHARLES BARKLEY: I'LL CONTINUE TO USE 'N-WORD' AROUND MY BLACK, WHITE FRIENDS."

Plus, "RICHARD SHERMAN: 'THUG' IS 'ACCEPTED WAY OF CALLING SOMEBODY THE N-WORD'."

F-king hypocrites.

Crisis in Kiev

At Bloomberg, "Ukraine's Capital Descends Into Chaos":

The biggest nation in Eastern Europe is rapidly sliding into anarchy as the world watches from the sidelines. In Kiev, Ukraine, political activists are disappearing, journalists are being shot at and government-paid thugs are hunting down protesters.

Events escalated after the Ukrainian parliament, seeking to end protests over the government's decision to scuttle an association pact with the European Union, passed a set of harsh laws last week clamping down on the freedoms of speech and assembly. The draconian measures enraged a motley crew of soccer fans and right-wing militants, who engaged in a sustained battle with police attempting to bar entry to the government quarter. The police used tear gas, rubber bullets and noise grenades, sometimes tying stones to the latter to inflict more damage. Rioters countered with sticks and makeshift shields, and before too long with real shields seized from the police. Both sides threw Molotov cocktails and stones.

Eyewitnesses said that police seemed to be intentionally shooting at cameramen and photographers. No exception was made for pro-government publications and TV channels: The goal appeared to be to prevent footage of the fighting from finding an audience. Some journalists, like this brave Polish TV reporter, nevertheless managed to document the street war.

It was only a matter of time before someone got killed. On Jan. 22, riot police fatally shot two protesters, Sergei Nigoyan and Mikhail Zhiznevsky, on Grushevsky street in downtown Kiev. One well-known activist, Yuri Verbitsky, was found dead in the woods outside the capital. He and a colleague, Igor Lutsenko, had been taken to the woods from a Kiev hospital as part of a broader action in which police and plain-clothed thugs rounded up wounded rioters. Lutsenko, who says he was severely beaten, made his way back to the city. Police say Verbitsky died from exposure, not from the obvious injuries found on his body.

Normally a safe, friendly city, Kiev is now terrorized by groups of thugs, who freely admit they are being paid about $25 a night to scare and beat people who look like protesters.

It's hard to imagine all this happening in a 21st century European city...

More at the link.

Also at London's Daily Mail, "Activists seize government ministry building in Kiev as protests spread across Ukraine after peace talks reach stalemate," and the Independent UK, "Ukraine protests: police officer shot dead as violence continues in Kiev despite 'concessions'."

You Don't Have to Compromise Convictions to Be Compassionate

I have no idea if this is an actual Phil Robertson quote or not. No matter. I like the sentiment, via Twitter.

Mark Steyn Will Not Kiss Judicial Robes

While Steyn is not out as a contributor to National Review, he's clearly on the hook for the legal expenses he's incurred writing there.

Here's the update, which includes an admission by Steyn that he might need some help, "The Robe to Hell":

Two days after Judge Weisberg's ruling in the Mann vs Steyn case, the offers to chip in for a legal defense fund are still pouring in. I'm genuinely touched by the kindness and generosity of readers. As most of you know, I resisted such offers during my Canadian travails and suggested instead that anyone who wanted to show financial support should take out a subscription to Maclean's. But the scale of expenditures down here is so much greater I may have to break my rule and pass the hat. We'll make a decision in the next few days. In the meantime, if you've got a few bucks to toss my way, there's an autographed copy of my book on free speech with your name on it, or some other item from the SteynOnline store. That way we all win: I get enough funds to fight a full-strength defense; you get some great reading matter, or listening matter, or chest-hugging matter.

The other thing I've been tremendously moved by is the number of lawyers offering their services. I'm thinking this one through very carefully after what happened this last year, but I am poring over the various bits of legal advice. One thing that's not going to change, though, is my inclination to speak up when judges play fast and loose. As I said to Mother Jones:

The misplaced reverence for judges in America is perplexing to me. In my cultural tradition, a judge is just a bloke in a wig. He may be a smart bloke in a wig, or he may be an idiot in a wig. But the wig itself is not dispositive.

After many years in America, I have never felt so foreign as reading the pile-up of commentary from supposedly sophisticated persons tutting about how my "assailing" the judge will not be "helpful" to the case. This absurd prostration before the bench is one of the biggest structural defects in this country. Jim writes to Mark's Mailbox as follows:

I'm certainly on your side on this one but would recommend not criticizing the judiciary or previous judges ("incompetence of the previous judge", "an act of jurisprudential hygiene", "procedural bungling", etc.) while the case is pending. The judges all work together and don't like litigants to take potshots at their colleagues and procedures. For a judge to bristle against comments like that is human nature and while it may not overtly cause the judge to rule against you on motions, etc., it is likely to subconsciously influence the judge against you.

Focus on the actions/claims of the plaintiff, not on the judges. You've apparently been through litigation before so you might have a strategy for doing this, but from my vantage point it's a bad idea.

So it's "human nature" for a judge to go into a big queeny huff because one of his supplicants is doing insufficient robe-kissing? So much for judicial temperament. David Appel headlined his post on the case "Who Knew? Judges Don't Appreciate Insults From Defendants" - implying (without evidence) that Judge Weisberg's ruling is some sort of pique at my dismissing his colleague Combs-Greene as an incompetent. As Mr Appel's first commenter responds:

It's a far bigger insult to the judge for you to imply they are not impartial - letting some perceived insult influence the case - than anything Steyn has said.

Exactly. Or as Tyler Null tweets:

If that uppity-peasant theory is true, we're all f**ked.

Continue reading.

And visit Steyn's online store if you're like to pitch in that way a bit.

House GOP Sets New Push to Overhaul Immigration

The smell of desperation.

At WSJ, "Leadership's Broad Principles Will Include a Call to Grant Legal Status to Millions" (via Google):

.@Memeorandum Have a bad feeling about this. Won't help GOP while legalizing those who don't deserve legalizing. @MichelleMalkin @RSMcCain

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 24, 2014

WASHINGTON—An effort by House lawmakers to overhaul immigration policy, which seemed all but dead for much of last year, is about to be revived and take center stage in Congress, with a new push by House Republican leaders and a fresh pitch by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address Tuesday.

House GOP leaders are expected to release broad principles to guide the chamber's immigration debate as soon as the coming week. They will include a call to grant legal status to millions of people now in the country illegally, people familiar with the plans say, a step that many in the GOP oppose as a reward for people who broke U.S. law.

Behind the scenes, Republican lawmakers already are writing detailed legislation, with the encouragement of House GOP leaders, that would also offer the chance at citizenship for many here illegally, as Republicans work to find a mix of proposals that can pass the chamber.

Mr. Obama, in his address Tuesday to a joint session of Congress and the nation, is expected to again call on lawmakers to pass an overhaul of immigration laws, building on the comprehensive bill that won bipartisan approval last year in the Senate.

Many Republicans have warned that the GOP faces political peril if it doesn't overcome the resistance of many in the party to new immigration laws. If the legislative effort fails, Democrats and their allies are prepared to use the issue to attack GOP candidates in this fall's elections and the 2016 presidential race.

In the House, the immigration principles—expected to be a one-page sheet—likely will be released in time for debate at a House Republican retreat late in the week in Cambridge, Md., to discuss the year's agenda. That will help House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) figure out if there is enough support among his members to move forward.

The GOP principles will embrace legal status for many of the nation's 11.5 million illegal immigrants, people close to the process said, knowing that Democrats likely will insist on such a plan in return for support needed to pass legislation. They will also offer citizenship for people brought to the U.S. as children, new enforcement provisions and fixes to the legal immigration system, these people said.

Still, the legislation faces a long road. It will be challenging for House leaders to win over enough Democrats without losing a substantial number of Republicans. Even if the House manages to pass a series of immigration bills, they still would need to be reconciled with the Senate's broad legislation, and Mr. Boehner has said he won't work off the sweeping bill that passed that chamber.

In a sign that the debate is imminent, opponents of an immigration overhaul have begun to organize. Staff members from about 15 House offices met Thursday with the staff of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), a leading opponent of the Senate overhaul bill, to discuss their best arguments, an aide to Mr. Sessions said.

House leaders hope to bring legislation to the floor as early as April, the people close to the process said, after the deadline has passed in many states for challengers to file paperwork needed to run for Congress. Republican leaders hope that would diminish chances that a lawmaker's support for immigration bills winds up sparking a primary-election fight.

Supporters of new immigration laws said Friday that they were stepping up their activism. On Friday, the Partnership for a New American Economy, a group backed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, announced a campaign to urge entrepreneurs, farmers and students to press for the overhaul. That campaign was alongside the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Republican Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan.

Legislation being drafted would reject a "special path" to citizenship for illegal immigrants, which was included in the Senate bill, the people familiar with the process said. But it would grant legal status for all illegal immigrants who meet qualifications, allowing them to work and travel without fear of deportation.

I doubt this will help the Republicans. It's basically a Democrat voter registration effort.

Hobby Lobby Video on #ObamaCare and Religious Freedom

Via Young Cons, "Hobby Lobby made a Video about Obamacare and Religious Freedom… and it’s Awesome."

Reading Books Is Fundamental

From black leftist Charles Blow, at the New York Times:

The first thing I can remember buying for myself, aside from candy, of course, was not a toy. It was a book.

It was a religious picture book about Job from the Bible, bought at Kmart.

It was on one of the rare occasions when my mother had enough money to give my brothers and me each a few dollars so that we could buy whatever we wanted.

We all made a beeline for the toy aisle, but that path led through the section of greeting cards and books. As I raced past the children’s books, they stopped me. Books to me were things most special. Magical. Ideas eternalized.

Books were the things my brothers brought home from school before I was old enough to attend, the things that engrossed them late into the night as they did their homework. They were the things my mother brought home from her evening classes, which she attended after work, to earn her degree and teaching certificate.

Books, to me, were powerful and transformational.

So there, in the greeting card section of the store, I flipped through children’s books until I found the one that I wanted, the one about Job. I thought the book fascinating in part because it was a tale of hardship, to which I could closely relate, and in part because it contained the first drawing I’d even seen of God, who in those pages was a white man with a white beard and a long robe that looked like one of my mother’s nightgowns.

I picked up the book, held it close to my chest and walked proudly to the checkout. I never made it to the toy aisle.

That was the beginning of a lifelong journey in which books would shape and change me, making me who I was to become.

That's a beautiful story.

Keep reading.

Blow was inspired to write about books from Jordan Weissmann, at the Atlantic, "The Decline of the American Book Lover." Yet, while the overall numbers on book reading are down (the average number of books read per year per person, for example), the numbers aren't all that bleak. There's lots of reading going on, even in this day and age. Indeed, Weismann argues that, 10 years after the introduction of Facebook, the decline in book reading may have bottomed out. As for Charles Blow, he needs to be spreading his gospel of book reading to the black community, especially to the kind of the inner city black thugs who dominate the news. Seriously. Go into the neighborhoods and extol the virtues of books. Bring James Baldwin to the brothers and sisters and have them shake their indifference and ignorance. That, as a long-term project, along with strengthening families, will do more to alleviate the inequality gap than all the social programs the White House wants to ram down the throats of the American people. In other words, reverse the cultural decline and you'll turn around the social disorganization from which Charles Blow was able to avoid.

How World War I Helped America's Rise to Superpower Status

At Der Spiegel, "'We Saved the World': WWI and America's Rise as a Superpower."

PREVIOUSLY: "100 Years Later, the Continuing Relevance of World War I."

Scarlett Johansson and the (BDS) Politics of Celebrity Ambassadors

This is a truly bizarre controversy. Johansson's a progressive Jewish leftist, and yet she comes under the jackboot of the anti-Israel left.

At the Times of Israel, "Scarlett Johansson responds to SodaStream criticism":

American actress Scarlett Johansson released a statement Friday about the controversy surrounding her role as the first-ever brand ambassador of the Israeli company SodaStream. Her public comments were made after she came under fire for the endorsement deal from the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

“While I never intended on being the face of any social or political movement, distinction, separation or stance as part of my affiliation with SodaStream, given the amount of noise surrounding that decision, I’d like to clear the air,” Johansson’s statement, published by The Huffington Post, read.

Since SodaStream named Scarlett Johansson the first-ever brand ambassador of its sleek, sassy seltzer makers earlier this month, the BDS movement has demanded that the starlet step down from the post, plastering the Twittersphere with blood-soaked ads bestowing upon Scarlett an “A for Apartheid.”

Their beef with the beverage company? Its principal manufacturing plant, which is located in the industrial strip of Ma’aleh Adumim, a major West Bank settlement. Many in the BDS movement, a global campaign that urges its supporters to withhold patronage of any Israeli-made goods and services, began tossing the term “blood bubbles” around the Internet, while others cried foul over Johansson’s role as an Oxfam ambassador.

In other words, a completely manufactured controversy --- i.e., a "nontroversy" if there ever was one.

More at the New Yorker (which buys into the BDS baloney), "THE POLITICS OF CELEBRITY AMBASSADORS."

And at the New York Times, "Scarlett Johansson’s SodaStream Endorsement Deal Conflicts With Charity Work, Aid Group Says":

The international aid and development group Oxfam has distanced itself from one of its own global ambassadors, the actress Scarlett Johansson, since she agreed to become the face of SodaStream, an Israeli company that makes products in a settlement built on West Bank territory Israel has occupied since 1967.

In a statement added Wednesday to a web page on Ms. Johansson’s work for the charity, Oxfam said that while it “respects the independence of our ambassadors,” the group also “believes that businesses that operate in settlements further the ongoing poverty and denial of rights of the Palestinian communities that we work to support. Oxfam is opposed to all trade from Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law.” For that reason, the statement concluded, “We have made our concerns known to Ms. Johansson and we are now engaged in a dialogue on these important issues.”

Stacey Poole Boxing Workout Photoshoot

At Egotastic!, "Stacey Poole Hits the Heavy Bag and Pours Water on Her Funbags for Workouts the Way They Ought to Be."

Mark Steyn Out at National Review — UPDATED! CORRECTION APPENDED

There's an update on the case of Michael Mann v. Mark Steyn, from Jonathan Adler, at Volokh, "Mann v. Steyn – Mann wins round two." (Via Instapundit, who worries about Steyn representing himself in court.)

Basically, there's a new judge, who's rejected Steyn's motion to dismiss and lifted a stay of discovery.

But what struck me is that National Review's apparently thrown Steyn under the bus, "Trial, and Error":

As readers may have deduced from my absence at National Review Online and my termination of our joint representation, there have been a few differences between me and the rest of the team. The lesson of the last year is that you win a free-speech case not by adopting a don't-rock-the-boat, keep-mum, narrow procedural posture but by fighting it in the open, in the bracing air and cleansing sunlight of truth and justice.

I don't read National Review all that often. Indeed, Steyn and VDH are the main reasons I visit the site. I posted on Steyn's December entry, "The Age of Intolerance." It turns out that he came under fire for it. While I recall reading Steyn's response, "Re-Education Camp," I hadn't noticed his dearth posting at National Review. Here's the last one, dated December 24th, "Mumbo-Jumbo for Beginners."

One of the things I've learned about blogging is that when the going gets rough, you're going to tough it out by your lonesome. That is to say, don't expect others to join you in your blog battles, and when they do, be sure to count your blessings and share your gratitude. It's lonely out here sometimes, a lesson Steyn learned sometime ago:

As to his [editor's] kind but belated and conditional pledge to join me on the barricades, I had enough of that level of passionate support up in Canada to know that, when the call to arms comes, there will always be some “derogatory” or “puerile” expression that it will be more important to tut over. So thanks for the offer, but I don’t think you’d be much use, would you?

Steyn's editor had problems with the former's humorous references to left's homosexual fascists as "fruits." Personally, I'm lol at that stuff, but the in-your-face style of freedom-to-blog advocacy often causes self-said allies to turn tail at moment's notice. People simply don't like confrontation, and they certainly don't want to lose followers on Twitter. The horrors!

More a V-Dare, "Mark Steyn Out at NATIONAL REVIEW?"

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg, who is editor at National Review Online, tweets:

.@irishspy @AmPowerBlog @DirectorBlue news to me. His column is in the current issue.
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) January 25, 2014

And here it is, "Yes, We Can (Say That)."

CORRECTION: Just want to be on the record that Steyn is not "out" at National Review. He's not published at "The Corner" for nearly a month, but he's still a columnist for the magazine. Sorry for the mistake.

Blame Obama for Rising Inequality

At the Hill yesterday, "State of the Union to focus on inequality."

And here's IBD:

Income inequality has soared under #Obama http://t.co/zXXX5G0BiH (See chart) #tcot #tlot pic.twitter.com/6Vp9L5rVMz

— Investors.com (@IBDinvestors) January 25, 2014

Blogger, Gmail Outage: The End is Near

I first noticed the outage because I was in the middle of posting an entry to the blog, and then folks on Twitter mentioned that Gmail was down.

Pretty wild response, at Twitchy, "‘It’s just a global apocalypse’: Panic and mockery strike after Gmail goes down."

1) Bieber is arrested 2) Gmail goes down 3) Locusts pic.twitter.com/AkBtQkZiNn
— @midnight (@midnight) January 24, 2014

I took a nap.

Screw Gmail and Blogger. Ima take a nap.
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 24, 2014

And see the Washington Post, "Yahoo tweeted about the Gmail outage — four times in a row," and "Google’s reliability team was prepping for a reddit AMA when Gmail went down."

AIPAC Slams Debbie Wasserman Schultz

As they should. She's despicable.

Interesting, though, is Foreign Policy's eyebrow-lifting angle, "One of Congress’s Most Pro-Israel Lawmakers Isn’t Pro-Israel Enough for AIPAC."

But see Breitbart's Joel Pollak, "AIPAC Confronting Debbie Wasserman-Schultz - Finally."

And here's the report that started this, at Free Beacon, "Debbie Wasserman Schultz Blocking Bipartisan Iran Sanctions: Breaks with Pro-Israel Democrats."

She's shilling for Obama's appeasement of Iran.

More here, "Debbie’s Double-Talk: DNC Chair tells Florida press she's for sanctions, tells Washington press she's for Obama."


She's vile.

Here's her anti-Israel record, at FrontPage, "Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Wrapping an Anti-Israeli Message With an Israeli Flag."

FLASHBACK: "DNC's Debbie Wasserman Schultz Caught Lying About Alleged 'Dangerous for Israel' Comment," and "Debbie Wasserman Schultz Denies Accusing Republicans of 'Undermining Israel Security' in Interview With CNN's Don Lemon."