Sunday Rule 5

I'm behind on my Rule 5 blogging. Been reading and watching movies this weekend, for the most part. And eating too, lol.

Here we go, at Pirate's Cove, "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup," and "If All You See……is a horrible Gaia killing plastic water bottle, you might just be a Warmist."

At the Other McCain (from last Sunday), "Rule 5 Sunday: Wax Ecstatic."

At Drunken Stepfather, "STEPLINKS OF THE DAY."

And at Knuckledraggin', "Quick, which one would you rather?"

Also at First Street Journal, "Rule 5 Blogging: American Soldiers!"

And from Proof Positive, "...the Obligatory SF 49er Cheerleader4 NO Saints," and "*Best of the Web*."

At Ode's, "Detective Quiz ~OR~ Rule 5 Woodsterman Style."

From Doug Hagin, "THE DALEYBABE SAYUKI MATSUMOTO."

And from Blackmailers Don't Shoot, "#ShirtGate Rule 5: Chicks in Space!"

At Soylent, "Your Sunday Coffee Creamer."

More at 90 Miles From Tyranny, "Morning Mistress."

At Maggie's Farm, "Saturday morning links."

Also, from Egotastic!, "Humpday Huzzah! Ewa Sonnet Glamour Model Honey Dripping Hotness."

Check Goodstuff's, "GOODSTUFFs BLOGGING MAGAZINE (166th Issue): the history of Catwoman (aka Selina Kyle)."

In a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World has the "Friday Pinup."

And at Randy's Roundtable, "Thanksgiving Football In Dallas."

BONUS: At Popaholic, "Daily Addictions."

St. Louis Rams: 'Hands Up, Don't Shoot'

At Fire Andrea Mitchell, "Pitiful. St. Louis Rams come out of tunnel in hands up don’t shoot pose."

St. Louis Rams players raise arms in apparent show of solidarity with #Ferguson protesters: http://t.co/dBLRMihdGB pic.twitter.com/kickTDkemN

— ABC News (@ABC) November 30, 2014

How Obama Marginalized the Democratic Party

I can't get enough of this meme!

From Ed Morrissey, at the Fiscal Times:

Chuck Schumer let the cat out of the bag on Monday, but only Democrats found his remarks surprising in the least. Schumer, a member of the Senate Democratic caucus leadership that will have to transition to the minority in January, tried to acknowledge the verdict delivered by voters three weeks earlier.

In a defense of big-government solutions, Schumer allowed that Democrats let their enthusiasm for nanny-state policies get the best of them in 2009, after winning the presidential election, the House, and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

“Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them,” declared the senior Senator from New York. At the time, the middle class had just experienced the economic shock of their lives, and the election was a mandate to change direction from Bush-era economic policies, Schumer told the National Press Club. “We took their mandate,” Schumer explained, “and put all focus on the wrong problem – healthcare reform.”

That’s not to say that Obamacare itself was a mistake, Schumer took care to add, but that the rush to pass a big nanny-state program ahead of economic issues in the middle of a crisis made Democrats appear out of touch with voters. “We should have done it. We just shouldn't have done it first,” Schumer explained.

“We were in the middle of a recession. People were hurting and saying, 'What about me? I'm losing my job. It's not health care that bothers me. What about me?’" Even worse, Schumer argued, the program only provided benefits to “about 5 percent of the electorate,” while “only about a third of the uninsured are even registered to vote.”

Coming from a senior member of Democratic Party leadership, the admission that Democrats blew it with Obamacare contradicts everything the party has argued since the 2010 midterms...

More.

Energy Quakes as OPEC Stands Pat

Lots going on in energy markets this week.

Here's WSJ, "Oil Stocks and the Currencies of Major Oil-Producing Nations Tumble":

Energy company stocks and the currencies of major oil-producing nations stumbled Friday as OPEC’s decision to maintain crude output levels despite a glut rippled across the globe.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ decision knocked down U.S. benchmark oil prices on Friday by 10% to $66.15 a barrel, the lowest level since September 2009.

Uneasy investors dumped energy stocks. Among the hardest hit were U.S. domestic oil producers including Continental Resources Co., the biggest producer in North Dakota’s Bakken Shale. Its shares plunged on Friday nearly 20%, to $40.98.

Exxon Mobil Corp. fell 4.2%, BP PLC dropped 5.5% and Royal Dutch Shell PLC lost 7%, all in abbreviated New York trading.

Currencies of most major oil producing nations, including Russia, Nigeria and Canada, weakened. The Russian ruble tumbled almost 3% to an all-time low of 50.57 to the dollar, before recovering slightly. The Mexican peso slid to its weakest level versus the greenback in more than two years. Russia said it would revise or cut government spending.

Pascal Menges, a portfolio manager with Lombard Odier in Switzerland who has shares in U.S. shale oil producers, said OPEC’s decision “created a very uncomfortable situation” for oil companies that must decide whether to curb investments. He predicts the global oil oversupply will decline over the winter and U.S. production growth will slow, preventing prices from falling much more.

If that is the case, he said, the least-indebted North American shale companies should stay profitable. Still, he said, he has cut his fund’s investments in oil producers, moving some of the money to companies that buy and process oil.

This is economic warfare. And frankly, a last gasp from OPEC, as markets will reach equilibrium. Established U.S. producers will keep producing and investing. OPEC's income will decline along with the all of the rest.

According to the article:

Todd Staples, president of the Texas Oil & Gas Association, a trade group, said in a statement that low crude oil prices will impact some U.S. and global operations. Still, he expects prices to eventually stabilize. “We are confident the market will find an equilibrium,” he said.

Keep reading.

Thanksgiving: The Birth of the Democrat Party

Too true.

From Doug Ross:

CARTOON: Thanksgiving -- the Birth of the Democrat Party http://t.co/jSXDdkrBFY #TurkeyDay pic.twitter.com/XfSNongXuE

— Doug Ross (@directorblue) November 27, 2014

Emblem (or Epitaph) for the Inner City Family

Seen on Twitter:

Ouch!! RT "@OlegZeltser: Just saying... pic.twitter.com/rA1kHjzv6i"

— LincolnHeadPenney (@HappiKamper) November 30, 2014

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.