Black Friday Deals

At Amazon.

'I got six kids to feed!' — Trapped Driver Pushes #Ferguson Protester Off I-5 For Making Him Late For Work (Video)

More from the "tolerant," "respectful" progressives on the collectivist left.

Via Gateway Pundit:

'Non-Black Allies' Told to 'Refrain from Taking Up Space' at Vigil for Michael Brown in Toronto

Demonizing white people is the rage now on the "tolerant," "progressive" left.

At London's Daily Mail, "The controversial rules for white people who were told ‘not to take up space’ at Michael Brown vigil in Toronto."

The Forgotten Americans

From Victor Davis Hanson, at National Review, "Obama’s coalition is held together only by his personal mythography":

Political analysts still are arguing over why the Democratic party was washed away in the midterm election. Since 2008, ascendant progressives had been crowing over a fresh mosaic of energized minorities, newly franchised immigrants, single young urban women, greens, gays, and — less often mentioned — upscale professionals and the 1-percenter super-wealthy.

These groups were united by their support for the expansion of entitlements, higher taxes, neo-isolationism, amnesty, opposition to any restrictions on abortion, curbs on carbon-energy development, and gay marriage. But what really held them together was Barack Obama. His exotic name, his racial background, his leftwing ideology, and his Ivy League training appealed to each of these diverse groups. Without him on the ballot — as in 2010 and 2014 — most of these identity groups apparently were not energized enough to turn out in sufficient numbers to make up for middle-class voters turned off by progressive rhetoric and the by-any-means-necessary distortions to achieve its ends.

Indeed, a cynic would sum up the unlikely liberal coalition as a bridge over the middle class. Wealthy, influential progressives had enough capital and income to support new efforts at government redistribution, higher taxes, and the sort of green projects that, at least in the short term, would slow the economy and cost blue-collar jobs — but not really affect the 1 percenters’ own livelihoods much.

At the other end, the underclass welcomed expansions of federal entitlement programs and the idea of an activist state guaranteeing an equality of result for the less-well-off, with the taxes to pay for it all falling on someone else.

Note that the new progressive coalition was largely abstract. In their own personal lives, the upscale denizens of Santa Monica, Chevy Chase, and the Upper West Side did not put their children in diverse public schools, much less live among undocumented immigrants or give up their Mercedeses and Volvo SUVs for fleets of Priuses. None promised to take two fewer trips by jet each year.

Ideally from its point of view, the new progressive partnership would end up with America looking something like California. Sky-high income, sales, and gas taxes and soaring electric rates, coupled with prohibitive housing costs along the state’s 700-mile-long coastal corridor, have turned the once golden state into two cultures strangely united by a common Democratic party.

The coastal elites champion wind and solar mandates, transgender restrooms in the public schools, gay marriage, and high-speed rail. In the interior, rarely visited by the elites or the journalists friendly to them, the preponderance of poorer and minority residents largely explains why of all the states California has the largest number of welfare recipients and the highest percentage of the population below the poverty line, and why it is nearly dead last in public-school performance.

For liberals for whom power is the true goal, California is seen as a success because there are no more conservatives like Ronald Reagan or Pete Wilson in statewide office. Over the last 30 years, unchecked illegal immigration, an influx of high-income urban liberal professionals to the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas, and a steady exodus of the white middle and working classes explain why this liberal blue state has the largest number of both poor and wealthy people in the nation — and a shrinking conservative percentage of the electorate.

But is the California progressive future applicable throughout the United States? This month’s election suggests maybe not, and for reasons that transcend the fact that Californians can bail out of their state in a way that Americans cannot their country...

Keep reading.

Pilgrims and the Roots of the American Thanksgiving

From Malcolm Gaskill, at WSJ, "English settlers of the 17th century were a diverse lot, and they became Americans despite themselves":

In the fall of 1621, 50 English men and women and 90 Native Americans gathered at New Plymouth in Massachusetts. The colonists had arrived a year earlier on a leaky wine ship, the Mayflower, and built a hillside settlement overlooking the ocean, little more than a few wooden huts in a stockade. The first winter had been terrible: Half their number had perished from malnutrition and disease. They had struggled to farm the land, were poorly supplied from England and relied on their Indian hosts for expertise and food.

But in the end, they did it. According to Edward Winslow, who had buried his wife that March, “Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling so that we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor.” The Pilgrims, as they would later be known, celebrated for three days—an event immortalized in American history as the first Thanksgiving.

The story has been heavily mythologized, and the numerous depictions of it that have come down to us are mostly patriotic romances, full of errors about the dress, technology and general atmosphere of the day. What we most tend to overlook in the Thanksgiving tale, however, is the wider context of settlement. English colonists—350,000 of them in the 17th century—were a diverse lot, and more English than you might imagine. Having left the Old World for the New, they clung to their old identities and tried to preserve them. In this, they failed, and yet from that failure, a new national character was born—the primary traits of which are still visible in Americans today...

Keep reading.

How the Civil War Created Thanksgiving

From Kenneth Davis, at the New York Times.

Also, from President Abraham Lincoln, at Real Clear History, "A Wartime Proclamation of Thanksgiving":

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

More.

10 Reasons Why Thanksgiving's My Favorite Holiday

From Rick Moran, at Pajamas Media:

I used to spend Thanksgiving with one family member or another — flying to Washington, D.C., or driving to our family house in the Chicago suburbs. It was hard for all of us to get together with 10 children splashed across North America from California to Canada, from the Midwest to the East Coast. But there were usually gatherings of three or four of us on Thanksgiving which made for a satisfying experience.

But the last decade, that hasn’t been the case. The Chicago suburban house was sold years ago after my mother died. And usually, I was working or too involved in a project to take the time. I regret those missed opportunities — especially now that travel is physically difficult for me.

But I’m not asking anyone to feel sorry for me. The long skein of memories of Thanksgivings past is more than enough to fill me up with joy and be thankful for what I have in the here and now.

Those cherished memories led me to write of the 10 reasons why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I’m sure you can add a few reasons of your own...

I like the food, football, family, and the time off from work.

Laughing at the hate-addled nihilist leftists is pretty good too.

RTWT.

The Nihilist in the White House

Obama's the chief far-left nihilist.

They tear down. Never build up. They destroy. Never unite. Like Walter James Casper III.

From Peggy Noonan, at WSJ:

Historical vindication happens. The Obama White House assumes it will happen to them. Thus they can do pretty much what they want.

What they forget is that facts largely decide what history thinks—outcomes, what happened, what it means. What they also forget, or perhaps never knew, is that the great ones are always constructive. They don’t divide and tear down. They build, gather in, create, bend, meld, and in so doing move things forward.

That’s not this crowd.

This White House seems driven—does it understand this?—by a kind of political nihilism. They agitate, aggravate, fray and separate.

Look at three great domestic issues just the past few weeks.

More.

NYPD Arrests #Ferguson Protesters Disrupting Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (VIDEO)

Vile, spiteful minority has to try to ruin the holiday for everyone else.

That's Racist! Obama Approval Drops Among Working-Class Whites

At Gallup:

PRINCETON, N.J. -- President Barack Obama's job approval rating among white non-college graduates is at 27% so far in 2014, 14 percentage points lower than among white college graduates. This is the largest yearly gap between these two groups since Obama took office. These data underscore the magnitude of the Democratic Party's problem with working-class whites, among whom Obama lost in the 2012 presidential election, and among whom Democratic House candidates lost in the 2014 U.S. House voting by 30 points.

Obama's overall job approval rating has dropped throughout the first six years of his administration, and this downward trajectory is seen both among white Americans who are college graduates and those who are not. But the gap between his approval ratings among college-educated and non-college-educated whites has grown. It was six points in 2009, when Obama had the overall highest ratings of his administration, then expanded to 10 points in 2010 and to 12 points in 2013. The gap between these two groups is at its highest yet, at 14 points so far this year.

Whites in general constitute a political challenge for Democrats and the president given their Republican orientation, as evidenced by Obama's job approval ratings so far this year of 84% among blacks, 64% among Asians, 53% among Hispanics and 32% among whites. About two-thirds of adult whites have not graduated from college, making working-class whites a particularly important group politically because of its sheer size...

Well, it's hard out there for the party of "Burn this bitch down!"

More.

And from John Hinderaker, at Power Line, "WHY THE GALLUP POLL MEANS DEEP TROUBLE FOR HILLARY."

#Ferguson Rioters Looting Same Store Michael Brown Accused of Robbing (VIDEO)

Sick.

They're vermin. Like rats on a sinking ship.

At Twitchy, "Full circle: Liquor store Michael Brown accused of robbing being looted (again) [Vine]."

Happy Thanksgiving — Gratitude

Seen on Twitter:

Thank you for serving. #HappyThanksgiving pic.twitter.com/mFwnEvCyVk

— Franci (@LadySandersfarm) November 27, 2014

#Ferguson: No Justice, No Peace — No Brains

From Erik Rush, at WND:

I would say it’s a fair bet that most of those who witnessed the violence that ensued following the announcement that a grand jury in Missouri declined to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown were not at all surprised. Indeed, it appeared that many of those anticipating the decision simply could not wait to get started looting, shooting and destroying property.

The mob appeared to have a particular penchant for razing and burning local businesses. In fact, dozens of businesses in Ferguson burned on Monday night alone, and these were mostly minority-owned. Obviously, those in the community who worked at these businesses are now out of jobs.

Even assuming the decimated businesses carried adequate insurance, of course the owners and franchisees are out of work too, though many will be able to rebuild. All of this will conspire to depress the economy in Ferguson, something of which the participants in the mayhem and madness remain oblivious.

The catalyst to all of this, as the reader is likely aware, was the fact that a man was found innocent of wrongdoing by a grand jury. When you strip away the race issues, there’s not much more to it than that. One man assaulted another – a police officer – and was killed, probably after attempting to relieve him of his sidearm. Amidst widely publicized accusations of police brutality and race-based police targeting of young blacks, a grand jury determined that the officer had not acted unlawfully. Much of the testimony upon which the grand jury decision was based, we are told, was given by those of the same ethnic group as the decedent Michael Brown. In general, the evidence in favor of Officer Darren Wilson’s account of the events was overwhelming.

There are numerous components to this situation which are engender pathos, well beyond a young man having lost his life, another’s life in upheaval and a community in tatters.

One is the disgusting behavior of the rioters, who found themselves unable to rise above the social and psychological garbage being fed them. Another is the manifest evil of those who have been feeding the aforementioned garbage to black Americans for the last several decades, and that of the agitators with more short-term agendas. With regard to the former, I refer to the politicians and career activists who perpetuate the notion that America remains an institutionally racist nation, and that racist police prowl the streets looking for the slightest excuse to gun down a black individual.

With regard to the latter, I speak of those such as the New Black Panther Party (some of whose members were arrested in the Ferguson area with bombs in the days prior to the grand jury decision), and Muslim activists who sought to enroll blacks in their effort to condemn the actions of law enforcement against militant Muslims in Missouri.

While it is not my intention to address this in depth here, the political manipulation of blacks across America in the name of Michael Brown is more than a mere distraction from the increasing attention being focused on Obama’s dismal reign. (Make no mistake: A measure of the agitation in Ferguson and elsewhere is being directly orchestrated by Obama surrogates and the DOJ itself.) As a landmark in the incremental sabotage of race relations, it is validation to the administration of what it can do, and what will be necessary to ignite even larger fires in the future...

More.

PREVIOUSLY: "Obama and the Roots of the Ferguson Rage."

Obama and the Roots of the Ferguson Rage

At FrontPage Mag:

And so the whirlwind, cultivated by Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, the mainstream media and the army of thugs they enabled, is now being reaped. As the result of a St. Louis County grand jury refusing to indict officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown, Ferguson, MO has become Ground Zero, in what irresponsible Missouri State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadali referred to on MSNBC as “St. Louis’s race war.”

One of the race war’s architects pleaded for calm shortly after the decision was announced. Yet even as Obama spoke about that “need for calm” and that there was “no excuse for violence,” he insisted, “We have to try to understand” the anger of those who demanded nothing less than a murder charge absent an ounce of evidence as an “understandable reaction” from people who believe “the law is being applied in a discriminatory fashion.”

Where did those people get that belief? Leave it to Obama to omit that critical information — the same President Obama who met with protest leaders and Sharpton on Nov. 5 at the White House. It was at that unscheduled meeting the president was ostensibly “concerned about Ferguson staying on course in terms of pursuing what it was that he knew we were advocating,” according to Sharpton. “He said he hopes that we’re doing all we can to keep peace.”

One is left to marvel at one of two realities. Either we have a president so utterly naive he believes a hoax-perpetrating, riot-inciting Al Sharpton, who denigrated the grand jury process, pre-organized protest rallies in 25 American cities, and uses his MSNBC platform to fire up racial unrest, is a man of peace. Or the president, who once urged his Latino followers to “punish our enemies,” remains as wedded to the same racial “us against them” mentality as America’s foremost racial arsonist. Is it really possible to believe the former?

Despite Obama’s superficial condemnations of violence, at least 25 businesses were set ablaze, many of which are total losses—and most of which were minority owned.  Ten cars were burned at a dealership, and a “lot of gunfire,” as Ferguson Asst. Fire Chief Steve Fair put it, made maintaining control of the streets highly problematic, if not impossible. Reporters were assaulted, the store Michael Brown robbed prior to his confrontation with Wilson was looted, and at least 61 people have been arrested. “What I’ve seen tonight is probably much worse than the worst night we ever had in August, and that’s truly unfortunate,” said St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar Monday at a 1:30 a.m press conference. Belmar further noted that there was “nothing left” along West Florissant between Solway Avenue and Chambers Road, that he heard at least 150 gun shots, and that he was surprised he and Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson, who “got lit up,” as they drove through the area, weren’t hit by that gunfire.

“We talked about peaceful protest, and that did not happen tonight,” Johnson said. “We definitely have done something here that’s going to impact our community for a long time…that’s not how we create change.”

More.

St. Louis Bomb Suspects Couldn't Afford Explosives Until 'One Suspect's Girlfriend's Electronic Benefit Transfer Card Was Replenished...'

Seriously. This is where we are as a society.

"Hey, we're gonna have to hold off on buying bombs until the girlfriend's EBT card clears."

At the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, "Alleged plot included bombing Gateway Arch, killing St. Louis County prosecutor":

ST. LOUIS • Two men indicted last week on federal weapons charges allegedly had plans to bomb the Gateway Arch — and to kill St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch and Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson — the Post-Dispatch has learned.

Sources close to the investigation were uncertain whether the men had the capability to carry out the plans, although the two allegedly did buy what they thought was a pipe bomb in an undercover law enforcement sting.

The men wanted to acquire two more bombs, the sources said, but could not afford to do it until one suspect’s girlfriend’s Electronic Benefit Transfer card was replenished.

An indictment, with no mention of bombs or killings, was returned in federal court here Nov. 19 and unsealed Friday upon the arrest of Brandon Orlando Baldwin and Olajuwon Ali Davis. Their addresses and Baldwin’s age were not available; Davis is 22.

The Way to Make White People Take Racism Less Seriously

Thomas Crown, on Twitter (via Instapundit):

If you tell white folks that they have created a power structure that reinforces their privilege, they will laugh at you.

— Thomas H. Crown (@ThomasHCrown) November 25, 2014

LIBERALS WILLING TO FIGHT TO THE LAST DROP OF BLACK BLOOD!

From Ann Coulter:

The riot in Ferguson reminds me, I hate criminals, but I hate liberals more. They planned this riot. They stoked the fire, lied about the evidence and produced a made-to-order riot.

Every other riot I've ever heard of was touched off by some spontaneous event that exploded into mob violence long before any media trucks arrived. This time, the networks gave us a countdown to the riot, as if it were a Super Bowl kickoff.

From the beginning, Officer Darren Wilson's shooting of Michael Brown wasn't reported like news. It was reported like a cause.

The media are in a huff about the prosecutor being "biased" because his father was a cop, who was shot and killed by an African-American. What an assh@le!

Evidently, the sum-total of what every idiot on TV knows about the law is Judge Sol Wachtler's 20-year-old joke that a prosecutor could "indict a ham sandwich." We're supposed to be outraged that this prosecutor didn't indict the ham sandwich of Darren Wilson.

Liberals seem not to understand that they don't have a divine right to ruin someone's life and bankrupt him with a criminal trial, just so they're satisfied.

The reason most grand jury investigations result in an indictment is that most grand juries aren't convened solely to patronize racial mobs. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was basically demanding an indictment of Wilson before Big Mike's body was cold. It was only because of racial politics that this shooting wasn't dismissed without a grand jury, at all...

More.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, More Spiteful Than Ever

Seriously, you can't say he's not a spectacle.

Do read his latest screed post-Ferguson, at the Atlantic, "Barack Obama, Ferguson, and the Evidence of Things Unsaid."

Democracy in America is inseparable from the looting of native American land and the enslavement of blacks. It's unavoidable. @ashnavabi

— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) November 26, 2014

Racism is an actual tool in American history. It serves real purposes. It is not just "white people being mean to black people."

— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) November 26, 2014

Getting variations of the "go back to Africa" rebuttal. Not how this works. We are here to run you out, not the other way around.

— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) November 26, 2014

Hey, speak truth to power, brother. I'm sure race talk like that's doing wonders to improve race relations.

@wendyphd Coates is a huckster, actually. He should move to Botswana.

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) November 27, 2014

Hot Models in Mesh

Nice.

At Egotastic!, "Soho Magazine Best of Women in Mesh."

L.A. Times Features Michael Brown Stepfather on Front Page: Photo Caption Omits 'Burn this bitch down!'

Here's the Times' front-page story from Tuesday morning, following Monday night's announcement in Ferguson and the inevitable black shake-down protests and looting: "Violence erupts after grand jury fails to indict Ferguson officer."

The paper's photographer, Wally Skalij, would have witnessed Earl Head, the husband to Michael Brown's mother Lesley McSpadden, exhorting the crowd to "Burn this bitch down!" But there's no mention of the violent, profanity-laced exhortation at the newspaper.

Seems like a significant omission, but then again, the media is equally responsible for fanning the flames of racial unrest.

The caption at the photo below reads: "Lesley McSpadden, Michael Brown's mother, center, reacts in Ferguson, Mo., to the announcement of the grand jury's decision not to indict police Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of her son."