New 'American Sniper' Movie Trailer

The film's out on Christmas Day.



Plus, an interview with Bradley Cooper, at CBS This Morning, "Bradley Cooper's transformation: New roles on stage and screen." (A really good interview. Cooper reports that Chris Kyle's wife thought she was watching her husband on screen. Amazing.)

FBI Accuses North Korean Government in Cyberattack on Sony Pictures

I guess this is the authoritative determination, despite the extant doubts that Pyongyang is behind the hack.

At NYT, "Obama Vows U.S. Response to North Korea Cyberattack on Sony":

In describing the United States’ evidence against North Korea, the F.B.I. said that there were significant “similarities in specific lines of code, encryption algorithms, data deletion methods, and compromised networks” to previous attacks by the North Koreans. It also said that there were classified elements of the evidence against the North that it could not reveal.

“The F.B.I. also observed significant overlap between the infrastructure used in this attack and other malicious cyberactivity the U.S. government has previously linked directly to North Korea,” the bureau said. “For example, the F.B.I. discovered that several Internet protocol addresses associated with known North Korean infrastructure communicated with I.P. addresses that were hard-coded into the data deletion malware used in this attack.”

The F.B.I. said that some of the methods employed in the Sony attack were similar to ones that were used by the North Koreans against South Korean banks and news media outlets in 2013.

“We are deeply concerned about the destructive nature of this attack on a private sector entity and the ordinary citizens who worked there,” the F.B.I. said.

It added: “Though the F.B.I. has seen a wide variety and increasing number of cyberintrusions, the destructive nature of this attack, coupled with its coercive nature, sets it apart. North Korea’s actions were intended to inflict significant harm on a U.S. business and suppress the right of American citizens to express themselves. Such acts of intimidation fall outside the bounds of acceptable state behavior.”

The F.B.I.'s announcement was carefully coordinated with the White House and reflected the intensity of the investigation; just a week ago a senior F.B.I. official said he could not say whether North Korea was responsible. But it also puts new pressure on President Obama on how to respond. Administration officials note that the White House has now described the action against Sony as an “attack,” as opposed to mere theft of intellectual property, and that suggests that Mr. Obama is now looking for a government response, rather than a corporate one.

Also, at the FBI's homepage, "Update on Sony Investigation."

George Clooney on Hollywood's Epic Cowardice

Clooney's a leftist.

But he's at least got a pair. Jeez.

At Deadline, "Hollywood Cowardice: George Clooney Explains Why Sony Stood Alone In North Korean Cyberterror Attack":

DEADLINE: How could this have happened, that terrorists achieved their aim of cancelling a major studio film? We watched it unfold, but how many people realized that Sony legitimately was under attack?

GEORGE CLOONEY: A good portion of the press abdicated its real duty. They played the fiddle while Rome burned. There was a real story going on. With just a little bit of work, you could have found out that it wasn’t just probably North Korea; it was North Korea. The Guardians of Peace is a phrase that Nixon used when he visited China. When asked why he was helping South Korea, he said it was because we are the Guardians of Peace. Here, we’re talking about an actual country deciding what content we’re going to have. This affects not just movies, this affects every part of business that we have. That’s the truth. What happens if a newsroom decides to go with a story, and a country or an individual or corporation decides they don’t like it? Forget the hacking part of it. You have someone threaten to blow up buildings, and all of a sudden everybody has to bow down. Sony didn’t pull the movie because they were scared; they pulled the movie because all the theaters said they were not going to run it. And they said they were not going to run it because they talked to their lawyers and those lawyers said if somebody dies in one of these, then you’re going to be responsible.

We have a new paradigm, a new reality, and we’re going to have to come to real terms with it all the way down the line. This was a dumb comedy that was about to come out. With the First Amendment, you’re never protecting Jefferson; it’s usually protecting some guy who’s burning a flag or doing something stupid. This is a silly comedy, but the truth is, what it now says about us is a whole lot. We have a responsibility to stand up against this. That’s not just Sony, but all of us, including my good friends in the press who have the responsibility to be asking themselves: What was important? What was the important story to be covering here? The hacking is terrible because of the damage they did to all those people. Their medical records, that is a horrible thing, their Social Security numbers. Then, to turn around and threaten to blow people up and kill people, and just by that threat alone we change what we do for a living, that’s the actual definition of terrorism...

Keep reading. No one, not a single soul in Hollywood, would sign Clooney's petition in support of Sony. Cowards, the whole lot of them. Pathetic left-wing cowards, kowtowing to tyranny.

PHOTO CREDIT: Wikimedia Commons.

Obama Blames Sony After Failing to Defend Free Speech When it Mattered

Pathetic:

Classic. Barack Hussein blames #Sony for the cyber-attack. Just classic. Let's appease every freakin' U.S. enemy on earth. #NoKo #Hacking

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 19, 2014

#Sony "made a mistake"? No the idiot Democrat Party electorate made a mistake electing this modern-day Neville Chamberlin. #NoKo #Hacking

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 19, 2014

Obama: We'll respond to #NoKo cyber-attack by making Kim Jong- un Belgian waffles, or something. #Democrat #Appeasement #Hacking

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 19, 2014

'Lights Out'

From Tuesday's drive time, when I had to tie up some end-of-semester loose ends on campus.

From UFO, via the Sound L.A.:

Locomotive Breath
Jethro Tull
11:37 AM

Back On the Chain Gang
Pretenders
11:34 AM

Us and Them
Pink Floyd
11:26 AM

Love the One You're With
Stephen Stills
11:23 AM

Runnin' with the Devil
Van Halen
11:20 AM

You're My Best Friend
Queen
11:10 AM

Renegade
Styx
11:06 AM

Rhiannon
Fleetwood Mac
11:01 AM

Boom Boom (Out Go the Lights) [Live]
Pat Travers Band
10:52 AM

Twilight Zone
Golden Earring
10:44 AM

Paradise By the Dashboard Light
Meat Loaf
10:36 AM

Lights Out
UFO
10:31 AM

Blinded By the Light
Manfred Mann's Earth Band
10:24 AM

City of Blinding Lights
U2
10:18 AM

Limelight
Rush
10:13 AM

Long As I Can See the Light
Creedence Clearwater Revival
10:10 AM

Light My Fire
The Doors
10:03 AM

'Long-Term English Learners'

The Hispanic demographic at my college is over 50 percent of student enrollment. Needless to say, for many, language issues create a major barrier to successful advancement through the curriculum.

At LAT, "California schools step up efforts to help 'long-term English learners'":

After more than 11 years in Los Angeles public schools, Dasha Cifuentes still isn't speaking or writing English at grade level. The U.S. native, whose parents are Mexican immigrants, was raised in a Spanish-speaking household and she acknowledges that the two languages get confused in her mind.

"I should be more confident in English because I was born here, but I'm embarrassed that I haven't improved myself," said Dasha, a junior at Fairfax High.

Now, however, she and other students like her are receiving more attention under a new state law and initiatives by L.A. Unified and other school districts. The law requires the state to define and identify a "long-term English learner," the first effort in the nation to do so.

In its inaugural data released Wednesday, the state has identified nearly 350,000 students in grades six through 12 who have attended California schools for seven years or more and are still not fluent in English. They make up three-fourths of all secondary school students still learning English.

Among them, nearly 90,000 are classified as long-term English learners because they also have failed to progress on the state's English proficiency exam for two consecutive years and score below grade level in English standardized tests.

"These kids need to be visible," said Shelly Spiegel-Coleman of Californians Together, a Long Beach-based nonprofit that promoted the legislation and released the state data. "In many instances, these students are sitting in mainstream classes and are not getting any specialized help."

A 2010 study by the nonprofit found that many students languished because schools failed to monitor their progress, provide appropriate curriculum or train teachers. Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the state for allegedly failing to provide legally required services for students learning English.

In addition, Fairfax Principal Carmina Nacorda said, more than 70% of her 125 long-term English learners have educational disabilities. And many educators say that students who achieve fluency in their first language more easily learn English, but that Proposition 227, the 1998 voter-approved state initiative that severely restricted bilingual education, has impeded them from doing so.

The new focus on such students comes amid a shift in California's long-running language wars. Since Proposition 227, a counter-movement has grown promoting the teaching of two languages in dual-immersion classes. State Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) has successfully placed a measure to repeal the proposition on the November 2016 ballot.

Shoot, we'll just have to require Spanish language proficiency for native Californians. That ought to level the playing field!

More.

London Pub's Offer to Feed the Homeless Christmas Dinner Goes Viral

So awesome.

This heartwarming gesture will restore your faith in London pubs http://t.co/ftSbRx1GW4 pic.twitter.com/GakbISapbB

— The Independent (@Independent) December 19, 2014

A pub in north London has been overwhelmed by support after their offer to feed the homeless a Christmas dinner went viral.

The William IV pub, on Shepherdess Walk, Islington, tweeted earlier this week: “This Sunday. We are open to the homless and hungry. Proper xmas dinner. Please spread the word and love”.

The tweet was instantly picked up by social media users, who celebrated the pub’s staff and owner’s actions. It has since been retweeted almost seven thousand times.

Chef and manager Adam Hardiman will offer homeless individuals a full roast, including a carvery of turkey, beef and salmon – with all the trimings from 12 to 3pm this Sunday.

So beautiful.

And of course, this is the kind of warm-hearted charity that big-government nanny-staters can't stand. For example, see, "Don't let the Left ruin our crusade... writes food bank pioneer ROBIN AITKEN."

Guaranteed. If the good people of the private sector do good works, leftists will try to ruin it. One way or another, leftists will destroy basic decency and holiday cheer.

Christmas with Rosie Jones

Wouldn't that be lovely.

Via Zoo Today:

Kindergartner is Fourth to Die in Redondo Beach Crash

I saw this story breaking on Twitter in real time the other night, but there was no indication of the scale of death. This is a mind-boggling loss of life.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Crash outside Christmas concert: Kindergartner is 4th to die":

6-year-old boy is the fourth victim to die from his injuries after a crowd of people was struck by a car following a Christmas concert outside a church in Redondo Beach, coroner’s officials said Friday.

Samuel Gaza, a kindergartner who had suffered head trauma and a bruised lung, died overnight at Harbor UCLA Medical Center, said Lt. David Smith of the Los Angeles County coroner’s office.

His mother, Martha Gaza, 36, of Torrance, was also killed in Wednesday night’s crash outside St. James Catholic Church. His father remains hospitalized...

More.

The story made the front-page of the Times. See, "'Joyful evening' at Redondo Beach concert, and then a horrific crash."

And video at CBS News Los Angeles, "Community In Mourning Following Deadly Redondo Beach Crash."

Kate Upton: 'Sexiest Woman Alive'

She's still the "it" girl. Can't say she's not sexy, heh.

At People, "PEOPLE Magazine Awards: Kate Upton Wins PEOPLE's Sexiest Woman Award."

British Prime Minister David Cameron Rips Labor Party Leader Ed Miliband as a 'Complete Waste of Space'

Get a giggle out of this one, heh.

Drone Video of Synchronized Holiday Lights

Heh.

This is really cool.

Bill Whittle Rips the Democrat-Socialist Left for Welcoming — No, Enabling! — America as Number 2

A great "Firewall" segment from the master commentator, Bill Whittle:

Mark Levin Hilariously Slams 'Munchkin' Republican 'Backbenchers': Says He's 'One Inch' from Leaving the GOP

I started giggling at the "munchkin" line.

Levin gets on an angry roll here, at the Right Scoop, "Mark Levin to the GOP: I AM ONE INCH AWAY FROM LEAVING YOU!"

Peter Wehner takes issue, at Commentary, "Mark Levin Should Leave the Republican Party."

Actually, I'd bet Levin has Wehner in mind when he hammers the "dissembling" Republicans.

Me, I'll all "meh." I'm a neocon. I don't identify as a Republican. I'll vote for them, mainly to stop the Democrat-Socialists. But you gotta give it to Levin for really letting it rip here. Hopefully the idiot "munchkins" boosting rhinos like Jeb Bush will get the message. Sheesh.

Be sure to give it a listen.

Hack Leaves U.S. in Quandary on How to Deal with North Korea

Well first the administration needs to prove NoKo's behind the hack. I'd say that Wired piece was a pretty compelling.

But see LAT, "Sony hack leaves U.S. in quandary on how to deal with North Korea":

With U.S. intelligence analysts quietly pointing to North Korea as having a hand in the destructive hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment computers, Obama administration officials scrambled Thursday to consider what, if anything, they should do in response.

Options are limited, partly because the United States already imposes strict sanctions on North Korea's economy and because the country's leader, Kim Jong Un, relishes confrontation with the West. White House officials are wary of playing into an effort by nuclear-armed North Korea to provoke the U.S. into a direct confrontation.

"How do you sanction the world's most heavily sanctioned country?" asked John Park, a specialist on Northeast Asia at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Hackers caused tens of millions of dollars in damage last month to Sony Pictures' computers, destroyed valuable files, leaked five films, four of them  unreleased, and exposed private employment information including 47,000 Social Security numbers.

In response to the cyberattack and a threat against movie theaters, Sony canceled the Christmas Day release of "The Interview," a comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco that depicts a fictional assassination of Kim.

The Obama administration has stopped short of saying openly that North Korea was involved in the intrusion. Such an allegation would probably bring about calls for a response, and with an unwillingness to lay out its evidence, lack of available economic punishments and little desire for acts of war, the White House so far appears reluctant to make a public accusation...

Well, yeah.

Obama wouldn't want to rush to war, or anything. The leftists might call for war crimes tribunals.

Oh wait. Wrong president.

Capital Punishment's Decline

Well, thanks to the "evolving standards of decency."

At LAT, "Capital punishment in U.S. continues its decline":

The death penalty continued its slow and steady two-decade decline this year, as fewer convicted murderers were sentenced to die and most executions were limited to just three states, according to a report to be released Thursday.

The number of new death sentences plummeted from 315 in 1996 to 72 as of Wednesday, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The number of executions carried out has fallen sharply as well. This year, 35 convicts were put to death, compared with 98 in 1999. And whereas 20 states were carrying out executions in the 1990s, only seven did so this year.

"The relevancy of the death penalty in our criminal justice system is seriously in question when 43 out of the 50 states do not apply the ultimate sanction," said Richard Dieter, the center's executive director.

Most of the executions took place in Texas (10), Missouri (10) and Florida (8). The other states to carry out executions were Oklahoma (3), Georgia (2), Arizona (1) and Ohio (1).

Even in Texas, the number of new death sentences has fallen sharply, from 48 per year in the late 1990s to fewer than a dozen per year recently.

Experts say the trend reflects a steep drop in violent crime, a growing use of "life without parole" sentences for convicted killers and a skepticism over the death penalty itself...

Well, we'll be just like the rest of the "civilized world" in no time!

More.

New Kelly Brook Bikini Pics!

Hey, an early Christmas present!

At Egotastic!, "Kelly Brook Bikini Shoot for New Look and Old Hard Happy Feelings."

Obama Uses 'Memos' in Place of Congressional Action

A creative dictator.

At USA Today:

WASHINGTON — The White House acknowledged Thursday that President Obama has used various forms of executive action when Congress has not acted, but it said the president was accurate when he said he has issued fewer executive orders than his predecessors.

It's true that Obama has issued fewer executive orders than any president in a century. But he's signed far more presidential memoranda, a lesser-known tool often used to initiate a change in federal regulations, than any other president.

"There's no doubt that the president has sought to use his executive authority to move this country forward within the confines of the law, oftentimes in the face of congressional inaction," spokesman Josh Earnest said. "I will readily concede that this president has used both executive orders and presidential memoranda to move this country forward as much as he possibly can."

Earnest responded to questions about Obama's use of presidential memoranda after USA TODAY reported Wednesday that he had signed more of those executive actions than any other president. Obama and his aides have said he issued fewer executive orders than any other president in 100 years but did not include presidential memoranda in that total.

Scholars call presidential memoranda "executive orders by another name." Earnest said there was "an important difference" between the two.

"Generally speaking, presidential memoranda are associated with more technical issues and are often directives that are related to a subset of agencies," Earnest said. "Executive orders, therefore, are more sweeping and therefore often more impactful."

That's not always the case, said Kenneth Mayer, author of With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power.

"There's no definitive answer. I imagine that if you stacked up all 200 of these memoranda, some of them would be of great significance, and some of them would be extremely trivial," said Mayer, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "So the upshot is just counting any particular instrument, or any particular type of instrument, doesn't really tell you the whole story."

This year, Obama has used executive orders to impose economic sanctions, establish a non-discrimination policy for gays and lesbians in the federal government and give federal workers the day after Christmas off. He's used presidential memoranda to overhaul enforcement of immigration laws and extend student loan relief, and this week, he declared Bristol Bay, Alaska, off-limits to oil and gas exploration...

More.

Patton Oswalt's Deleted Tweets

My god this is absolutely hilarious.

Via AoSHQ, "The Year in Outrage."

Gonna leave Twitter for a bit. Deleted my last Tweet. Just because "Don Sterling" rhymes with "Gone curling" doesn't make it funny.

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) May 7, 2014

What Drives Leftist Ideological Hatred?

From Spengler, at Pajamas, "Why Liberals Really, Really Hate Us":

They really, really hate us. George Orwell wrote a morning “Two Minutes Hate” session into the daily life of his dystopia in 1984. One blogger notes that 2,000 of Rachel Maddow’s facebook fans wished that Ted Cruz would fall into an open elevator shaft. What would he have made of the hyperventilating hatred that liberals display against conservatives? Over at National Review, Katherine Timpf reports on a hate manifesto published by the chair of University of Michigan’s Department of Communications. Republicans “crafted a political identity that rests on a complete repudiation of the idea that the opposing party and its followers have any legitimacy at all.” wrote Prof. Susan Douglas. “So now we hate them back,” she explains. “And with good reason.”

In fact, they have their reasons to hate us. They are being silly. We know they are being silly, and they know we know, and they can’t stand it. It isn’t quite how we repudiate the idea that the opposing party has any legitimacy at all. But we can’t stop giggling.

“Reductio ad absurdum” does not begin to characterize the utter silliness of liberals, whose governing dogma holds that everyone has a right to invent their own identity. God is dead and everything is permitted, Zarathustra warned; he should have added that everything is silly. When we abhor tradition, we become ridiculous, because we lack the qualifications to replace what generation upon generation of our ancestors built on a belief in revelation and centuries of trial and error. Conservatives know better. G.K. Chesterton said it well: “Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”

The antics of the “small and arrogant oligarchy” that controls the temples of liberal orthodoxy have turned into comic material that Monty Python couldn’t have dreamed up a generation ago. There are now dozens of prospective genders, at least according to the gender studies departments at elite universities. What do the feminists of Wellesley College do, for example, when its women become men? The problem is that no-one quite knows what they have become, as a recent New York Times Magazine feature complained:

Some two dozen other matriculating students at Wellesley don’t identify as women. Of those, a half-dozen or so were trans men, people born female who identified as men, some of whom had begun taking testosterone to change their bodies. The rest said they were transgender or genderqueer, rejecting the idea of gender entirely or identifying somewhere between female and male; many, like Timothy, called themselves transmasculine.

Use the wrong terminology and you’re burned for a bigot. There used to be jokes such as: “How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, and it’s not funny.” You can’t tell that sort of joke about  Wellesley because the LGBTs never will agree on the lightbulb’s gender. There are rare cases of babies born with ambiguous genitalia, to be sure. There also are a few individuals obsessed from early childhood with the idea that they were born in the wrong body. They have difficult lives and deserve sympathy (but not public mandates for sex-change operations). Gender ambiguity in its morphological infinitude as a field of personal self-development, though, has become the laboratory for cutting-edge liberal thinking, the ultimate expression of self-invention. LGTB Studies (or “Queer Studies”) departments have or soon will be established at most of America’s top universities, classifying, advocating and defending an ever-expanding number of newly-categorized gender identities...

Yep. It's out of control.

Funny, too, how I just blogged about the transgender movement taking over women's colleges --- because if you don't capitulate you're a hater!

BONUS: "Marquette Suspends Professor John McAdams for Exposing Leftist Totalitarian Faculty."