Thief Caught on Camera Stealing Holiday Home Deliveries in Yorba Linda (VIDEO)

Another leftist social justice warrior.

At CBS Los Angeles, "Caught On Camera: Brazen Thief Steals Packages From Front Porch In Yorba Linda."

Boycotting Walmart: Social Justice Warriors Are Too Enlightened to Let Poor Pay Lower Prices

From Kevin Williamson, at National Review, "Who Boycotts Wal-Mart?":

Columbia County, Ark. — There’s no sign of it here in Magnolia, Ark., but the boycott season is upon us, and graduates of Princeton and Bryn Mawr are demanding “justice” from Wal-Mart, which is not in the justice business but in the groceries, clothes, and car-batteries business. It is easy to scoff, but I am ready to start taking the social-justice warriors’ insipid rhetoric seriously — as soon as two things happen: First, I want to hear from the Wal-Mart-protesting riffraff a definition of “justice” that is something that does not boil down to “I Get What I Want, Irrespective of Other Concerns.”

Second, I want to turn on the radio and hear Jay-Z boasting about his new Timex.

It is remarkable that Wal-Mart, a company that makes a modest profit margin (typically between 3 percent and 3.5 percent) selling ordinary people ordinary goods at low prices, is the great hate totem for the well-heeled Left, whose best-known celebrity spokesclowns would not be caught so much as downwind from a Supercenter, while at the same time, nobody is out with placards and illiterate slogans and generally risible moral posturing in front of boutiques dealing in Rolex, Prada, Hermès, et al. It’s almost as if there is a motive at work here other than that which is stated by our big-box-bashing friends on the left and their A-list human bullhorns.

What might that be?

More.

The left is intent to make life worse for everyone else.

'This headline is exactly why nobody watches CNN...'

At Twitchy, "‘Your bias is showing': CNN tweet on Darren Wilson resignation keeps race front and center."

A Review of Bob Dylan at the Beacon Theater

At NYT, "Bob Dylan, Not Looking Back":

Mr. Dylan has replaced the fluidity and arrogance of youth with a more genuine, lived-in sense that he has nothing to lose and no one but himself to please. He doesn’t soften what he sees; he inhabits it, baleful and acute.

Businesses, Police Fear Rise in Shoplifting After Passage of Proposition 47

Well, when you release convicted armed robbers, crack dealers, meth heads, drug addicts and "petty" thieves onto the streets, you have good reason to worry!

Via CBS Sacramento:

Proposition 47 reduced the penalties and sentences for low-level drug and property crimes. This means shoplifting, forgery, fraud, and petty theft can now be treated as misdemeanors instead of felons, allowing some criminals in jail to go free.

Not In Time to Save the Democrats: Poll Finds Americans Optimistic

Fifty-two percent of Americans said things are going well.

Hate-Filled Leftists React to Darren Wilson Announcing His Wife's Pregnancy

It's all they've got.

Leftism is an ideology of hatred. It's Repsac's ideology.

At Truth Revolt.

So this cousin f*ckin Neanderthal Darren Wilson is gonna have a baby. Just what the world needs: A bouncing bundle of racism.

— Vision (@VisionPoet) November 26, 2014

Shopping Brawls on Black Friday

Just crazy.

At ABC News:



More at PBS: "News Wrap: Black Friday inspires shopping, protests."

Communist Agitators in Ferguson: We Want Darren Wilson Dead

From CBS correspondent Johnathan Blakely:

Via Twitchy, "‘Oh the irony’: Protesters in Ferguson chant in favor of ‘communist revolution’ [Vine]."

Another chant from this same outside group: "Who do we want? Darren Wilson! How do we want him? Dead!" #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/7wpWsgBbwa

— Jonathan Blakely (@JonathanBlakely) November 29, 2014

BECAUSE 'SOCIAL JUSTICE' IS ALL ABOUT MAKING THE CHILDREN CRY

Yep, that's about it.

Making people miserable. That's the left in action.

At Instapundit, "Kids Singing At #Seattle’s Christmas Tree Lighting Surrounded by Protesters, All Now Crying."

Ben Howe: 'I'd Have Shot Mike Brown Right In His Face'

I guess Ben Howe took some flak for this.

Give me a gun. Put me in Darren Wilson’s shoes. I’d have shot Mike Brown right in his face.
— Ben Howe (@BenHowe) November 26, 2014

Here's his response, at Red State, "Why I Said I’d Have Shot Michael Brown in the Face."

Supposedly leftists, had they been in Officer Wilson's shoes, would have let "Big Mike" snatch the gun and shoot them. They wouldn't want to be seen as "racist" for defending themselves. Of course, in the real world things don't work out like that. Leftists simply need something to decry as "racist." Indeed, the left is what's wrong with this country. We're going downhill with these f-kers in office. And the culture's already gone to hell. At this point you just got to stock up and batten down the hatches. Shoot the bastards if they try to break down the doors.

More at Memeorandum.

Ferguson Protesters Disprupt Black Friday Shopping

Well, if these idiots get in your face maybe you'll be able to take a couple of them out.

At USA Today, "Arrests across nation as protesters target Black Friday."

And from AP, "Raw: Protests Erupt in Malls, Streets," and CBS News, "Ferguson protestors disrupt Black Friday shopping (VIDEO)."

Cyber Monday Deals Week

Keep shopping, at Amazon, Shop Amazon Cyber Monday Deals Week.

California Tax-Hike Orgy on the Ballot in 2016

More reasons to move to Texas, as if anyone needed them.

At LAT, "Big state tax decisions lie ahead for California voters":

Picking a new president might not be the only crucial issue before California voters at the polls in two years' time.

They could be faced with as many as four competing initiatives asking them to extend, increase or create taxes that would raise billions of dollars in new state revenues.

Loose coalitions of labor unions and community groups already are researching, polling and building support to extend a temporary boost in top income tax brackets and a sales tax increase passed in 2012. Other groups are working to create grass-roots support for raising commercial property taxes.

Additionally, a team led by Tom Steyer, a billionaire hedge fund manager from San Francisco, probably will qualify a crude-oil-extraction tax initiative for 2016. And health and child-welfare advocates are pondering a possible $2-a-pack increase in cigarette taxes.

"We anticipate there will be a revenue measure," said Anthony Thigpenn, president of California Calls, a Los Angeles-based coalition of 37 community organizations around the state.

He said that passage of the income tax measure, Proposition 30, two years ago, wasn't enough to put the state on a stable financial footing.

"Proposition 30 stopped the bleeding but didn't restore all the cuts made, even given that the economy is better," Thigpenn said. "It was only the beginning of the discussion."

The state needs such a conversation about how to keep climbing out of the Great Recession, agreed Laphonza Butler, state council president of the 700,000-member Service Employees International Union.

"We have to make choices about investments, revenues and services," she said. "How do we stabilize the state for many years to come?"

Influential business lobbies at the Capitol don't see it that way. Butler's push for more money to pay for schools, roads and health and other programs, if it happens, would make an already expensive California even more costly and slow job creation, they contend.

The hardest fought battle could be over an attempt to change how the state's 36-year-old landmark property tax initiative, Proposition 13, treats commercial property, predicted Rex Hime, president of the California Business Properties Assn.

Currently, buildings and land get reassessed by tax appraisers only when there's a turnover of more than 50% in ownership.

"It will be Armageddon. It will be a huge, huge battle," Hime said.

The oil industry also is ready for a fight with Steyer, who said the state is missing out on $2 billion in new revenues because it's the only major oil-producing state that doesn't collect on every barrel of crude pumped from the ground.

"We haven't seen any indication he has changed his view and his plan to spend some of his wealth trying to persuade Californians to increase taxes on energy," said Tupper Hull, a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Assn.

Tobacco companies — which spent more than $50 million to defeat a 2012 initiative that would have raised taxes by $1 a pack — are honing their message, arguing that new taxes would be costly to retailers and spur cigarette smuggling.

Health groups and other proponents said they need higher levies on each pack — or even e-cigarettes — to recoup more than $1 billion in revenues lost because fewer people smoke.

Liberal Democrats in the Legislature also are considering an extension of the top state income tax brackets. That boost helped erase a $26-billion budget deficit that Gov. Jerry Brown inherited from his predecessor, Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Since then, the state treasury has accumulated a small surplus that the Legislative Analyst forecasts to grow to $4.2 billion by July.

Brown has made numerous public statements emphasizing that Proposition 30 was a temporary fix. Nevertheless, tax-hike proponents suggest that some sort of deal still could be made with the governor and business groups to keep the tax temporary but extend it beyond its current 2018 expiration date.

More.

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.