Measles Outbreak Fears Plague the Super Bowl

A race against the clock.

At ABC News, "Super Bowl Alert: Race to Contain Measles Outbreak at the Super Bowl."

PREVIOUSLY: "California Measles Outbreak: 107 Cases, Latest in Affluent Far-Left Marin County."

Mitt Romney, Foreseeing Third Defeat, Decides Not to Run in 2016

More on Mitt Romney, at the New York Times, "Support Waning, Romney Decides Against 2016 Bid."

The moneyed power-brokers were bailing out on him. Indeed, they took him at his word he wasn't running again and glommed onto Jeb Bush's emerging campaign.

Again, I think it's good Mitt bowed out, although the prospect of a Bush/Clinton general election battle in 2016 gives me the creeps.

VIDEO: Eddie Elguera, Tony Hawk, and Christian Hosoi, et al., at 'El Gato Classic'

This is phenomenal.

Tony Hawk especially is shredding like it was yesterday. Amazing.



Plus, at Thrasher, "The El Gato Classic."

Santa Monica's 'Vidiots' Movie Rental Store to Close

I'm surprised it's still open, heh.

At LAT, "Vidiots movie rental store in Santa Monica is closing after 30 years":

The shelves at the Vidiots movie rental store are covered with dozens of messages scribbled by filmmakers on the covers of faded VHS and DVD containers. Notes from "Chinatown" writer Robert Towne, reclusive "Thin Red Line" director Terrence Malick and others praise the Santa Monica store's brainy staff and the mammoth film selection that has made it famous among film buffs worldwide.

One message, from Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone, stands out now: "What would life be like without Vidiots?"

Its patrons and fans will soon find out. Vidiots is closing in April after years of struggling to survive the onslaught of Internet rentals, streaming services and online piracy.

Rentals have dropped 24% in the last six months and are down 60% from the store's peak years in the early 2000s, co-owner Cathy Tauber said.

The store tried being a nonprofit, soliciting donations and hosting in-store events with directors. It even auctioned off a lunch with actress Laura Dern and a pitch meeting with an executive producer of the TV series "Homeland" to raise funds.

Tauber said the store also considered launching an online crowdfunding campaign but thought that it wouldn't be a long-term fix.

"We are just bleeding money. We just can't do that anymore," she said. "We didn't want to do something and end up right back where we were in six months."

Video rental stores have been suffering for years after reaching a peak in the late 1990s and early 2000s as DVDs took off, said Mark Fisher, chief executive of the Entertainment Merchants Assn.

There were about 20,000 locations that got at least 50% of their revenue from renting films in 1999 compared with the 3,900 independent and supermarket outlets that rented discs in the U.S. in 2013, he said. An explosion in movie rental kiosks like Redbox, which has more than 35,000 locations in the U.S., has also hurt stores such as Vidiots.

The stores that survive have found ways to supplement their revenue with other retail sales, Fisher said.

One chain in the Midwest, Family Video, owns and develops the land it is on and has actually expanded locations in recent years by integrating a pizza chain into its stores, according to a report from the Entertainment Merchants Assn.

But independent stores like Vidiots have struggled to find a model that works...

Strange.

I saw some lady renting videos out of one of the Redbox machines are Ralph's the other day. Seems like so last century, despite the automation.

More.

Israel Yinon, Renowned Conductor, Dies After Collapsing Onstage in Lucerne, Switzerland

You never know when you're going to go.

In this case, at least he died with his conducting boots on, doing what he loved to do. RIP.

At the Times of Israel, "Renowned Israeli conductor dies on stage during concert," and London's Daily Mail, "Internationally renowned conductor drops dead in front of screaming audience and musicians during a symphony in Switzerland."

Amedy Coulibaly Made GoPro Video of Attack at Hyper Cacher Market in Porte de la Vincennes, France - #ParisAttacks

Jake Tapper reports, at CNN, "French Terrorist Taped Rampage in Kosher Grocery Store with Chest Mounted GoPro."

California Measles Outbreak: 107 Cases, Latest in Affluent Far-Left Marin County

If your child is unvaccinated, not only are you reducing scientific herd immunity, you're putting your child at risk of catastrophic illness or even death.

Leftists are anti-science that way, though. Vile crackpots and Utopian ideologues, frankly.

At LAT, "Measles outbreak grows to 107 cases, latest in Marin County."

PREVIOUSLY: "Affluent Leftists Dominate the Ranks of Anti-Vaxxers, Overwhelmingly Voted for Obama."

Live Audio from Mitt Romney's Call to Supporters

There's a lot of fresh, talented faces in the GOP field. A bid for the nomination was gonna be no Sunday stroll.

It's better Romney's not running, mainly so that the GOP can present a fresh, more diverse face to the electorate in 2016.

Listen to Romney's call to supporters, at CNN, "Romney: It's for the best that I step aside."

Plus, at Hugh Hewitt's, "The Romney Statement: Not Running" (via Memeorandum).

Still more, at Bloomberg (via Memeorandum), "New Iowa Poll: Romney Would Have Faced Many Campaign Hurdles," and "How Mitt Romney Made His Decision Not to Run."

Let's Stick Together

I can't resist, heh.

Some Bryan Ferry:

Super Bowl Tickets Selling for More Than $10,000 on StubHub (VIDEO)

Hey, if you've got the money...

At CBS News This Morning, "Inside StubHub's Super Bowl Ticket Operation."

When Bread Bags Weren't Funny

From Megan McArdle, at Bloomberg:

Last week, in her State of the Union response, Joni Ernst mentioned going to school with bread bags on her feet to protect her shoes. These sorts of remembrances of poor but honest childhoods used to be a staple among politicians -- that's why you've heard so much about Abe Lincoln's beginnings in a log cabin. But the bread bags triggered a lot of hilarity on Twitter, which in turn triggered this powerful meditation from Peggy Noonan on how rich we have become. So rich that we have forgotten things that are well within living memory:

I liked what Ernst said because it was real. And it reminded me of the old days.

There are a lot of Americans, and most of them seem to be on social media, who do not know some essentials about their country, but this is the way it was in America once, only 40 and 50 years ago:

America had less then. Americans had less.

If you were from a family that was barely or not quite getting by, you really had one pair of shoes. If your family was doing OK you had one pair of shoes for school and also a pair of what were called Sunday shoes -- black leather or patent leather shoes. If you were really comfortable you had a pair of shoes for school, Sunday shoes, a pair of play shoes and even boots, which where I spent my childhood (Brooklyn, and Massapequa, Long Island) were called galoshes or rubbers. At a certain point everyone had to have sneakers for gym, but if you didn’t have sneakers you could share a pair with a friend, trading them in the hall before class.

If you had just one pair of shoes, which was the case in my family, you had trouble when it rained or snowed. How to deal with it?

You used the plastic bags that bread came in. Or you used plastic bags that other items came in. Or you used Saran Wrap if you had it, wrapping your shoes and socks in it. Or you let your shoes and socks get all wet, which we also did.

I am a few years younger than Noonan, but I grew up in a very different world -- one where a number of my grammar school classmates were living in public housing or on food stamps, but everyone had more than one pair of shoes. In rural areas, like the one where Joni Ernst grew up, this lingered longer. But all along, Americans got richer and things got cheaper -- especially when global markets opened up. Payless will sell you a pair of child's shoes for $15, which is two hours of work even at minimum wage...

Keep reading.

My dad was born in 1913, in Jim Crow Missouri. He faced a lot of hardship in life, to say nothing of racism. Stories like Joni Ernst's were a staple of the dinner table around my house growing up. Thriftiness wasn't just some noble virtue, it was a way of life. And we weren't bad off at all. My dad drove a Mercedes. It's just once you do things a certain way, you don't change when things get better for you.

And yes, we are an extremely affluent society these days. Even the poorest Americans have access to the kind of basic commodities that the poor of the developing world can only dream about.

Amazing.

'A Muslim allowed a topless Jew to sit on his camel. And we say we can't live side by side?...'

Heh, at Truth Revolt, "Chelsea Handler Goes Topless....Again."

Those Star of David doilies are the best!

Germaine Greer Slams 'Trannies' as 'Delusional' — No 'Such Thing' as 'Transphobia'

Heh, at Kathy Shaidle's, "Germaine Greer calls trannies ‘delusional’ — Plus: 3D printing to create vaginas?":

Greer was uncompromising in her rhetoric, condemning from the beginning of her speech the “pressure on women to be clean, sweet, perfumed and submissive” and later suggested that trans women do not know what it is to “have a big, hairy, smelly vagina”. Greer was robust in her championing of the woman as an autonomous person and was anxious not to be diverted into what she described as “side issues”.

Keep reading.

This was Greer during her appearance at the Cambridge Union Society.

Apparently, the talk didn't go over too well with the trans community.

At the Independent UK, "Germaine Greer 'should not be invited back' to Cambridge University after appearing to deny the existence of transphobia":

Germaine Greer’s views on transwomen have long been the subject of controversy.

In the Nineties, at her Cambridge college of Newnham, the famed feminist attempted to block the appointment of transgender colleague Rachel Padman to a fellowship. Her opposition, she claimed, was not down to her gender identity but instead the method of her appointment to the college.

In 2012, she was glitter-bombed at a book signing in New Zealand by LGBT activist group Queer Avengers for comments she made in a column in 2009. She wrote that transwomen “seem to us ghastly parodies” and claimed the idea of being trans was a “delusion”.

Greer faced similar protests ahead of her address at Cambridge Union Society this week. A counter-event was staged against what one student called Greer’s “hate speech” by student activist group CUSU LGBT+. And it turns out her talk contained as much potentially inflammatory material as they predicted.

Speaking about her Newnham college opposition, the Cambridge Student quoted her as telling the Union: “I didn’t know there was such a thing [as transphobia]. Arachnaphobia, yes. Transphobia, no.”

She went on to suggest that trans women are not women because they do not know what it is like “to have a big, hairy, smelly vagina”.

Elsewhere, she argued that allowing individuals to undergo surgical procedures during transitioning was “unethical” because they “remove healthy tissue and create lifelong dependence on medicine”.

Greer continued that she hoped there would be more opportunities for people to exist within their own orientations and sexualities in the future without reliance on medical assistance.

“To invite Germaine Greer back to speak in Cambridge condones her transmisogny,” CUSU LGBT+ said.

But-Heads! Mindless Leftist Zombies Lurking in the Shadows!

I had to giggle out loud a couple of times.

At Theo Spark's, "Andrew Klavan: Attack of the But-Heads!"

Return of Eliminationist Anti-Semitism in Europe is Return to the Norm

Once again, from the awesome Charles Krauthammer, "Do we really mean ‘never again’?":

Amid the ritual expressions of regret and the pledges of “never again” on Tuesday’s 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a bitter irony was noted: Anti-Semitism has returned to Europe. With a vengeance.

It has become routine. If the kosher-grocery massacre in Paris hadn’t happened in conjunction with Charlie Hebdo, how much worldwide notice would it have received? As little as did the murder of a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse. As little as did the terror attack that killed four at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.

The rise of European anti-Semitism is, in reality, just a return to the norm. For a millennium, virulent Jew-hatred — persecution, expulsions, massacres — was the norm in Europe until the shame of the Holocaust created a temporary anomaly wherein anti-Semitism became socially unacceptable.

The hiatus is over. Jew-hatred is back, recapitulating the past with impressive zeal. Italians protesting Gaza handed out leaflets calling for a boycott of Jewish merchants. As in the 1930s. A widely popular French comedian has introduced a variant of the Nazi salute. In Berlin, Gaza brought out a mob chanting, “Jew, Jew, cowardly pig, come out and fight alone!” Berlin, mind you.

European anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem, however. It’s a European problem, a stain, a disease of which Europe is congenitally unable to rid itself.

From the Jewish point of view, European anti-Semitism is a sideshow. The story of European Jewry is over. It died at Auschwitz. Europe’s place as the center and fulcrum of the Jewish world has been inherited by Israel. Not only is it the first independent Jewish commonwealth in 2,000 years. It is, also for the first time in 2,000 years, the largest Jewish community on the planet.

The threat to the Jewish future lies not in Europe but in the Muslim Middle East, today the heart of global anti-Semitism, a veritable factory of anti-Jewish literature, films, blood libels and calls for violence, indeed for another genocide.

The founding charter of Hamas calls not just for the eradication of Israel but for the killing of Jews everywhere. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah welcomes Jewish emigration to Israel — because it makes the killing easier: “If Jews all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.’’ And, of course, Iran openly declares as its sacred mission the annihilation of Israel...

These are just plain facts, spoken plainly.

Keep reading.

PREVIOUSLY: "Pat Condell: Jews in Europe Report Surge in Anti-Semitism."

VIDEO: Katy Perry Super Bowl Press Conference

Highlights here, via the NFL:



Watch the full clip here, "Katy Perry's Pepsi Super Bowl XLIX Halftime Show Press Conference."

Video Shows Kristiana Coignard Allegedly Wielding Knife Before Killed by Police

It's hard to see anything in the surveillance video, but the woman does lunge at one of the officers, apparently just after she'd pulled a butcher's knife out of her knapsack.

At LAT, "Video shows girl pull knife on Texas police before they shoot her."

And the full police video is here: "Video of Longview Police Department Lobby on night teen was fatally shot by officers." (The kill shot is just after 11:00 minutes. )

Hayat Boumeddiene, Jihad Wife in #ParisAttacks, Fled France with Help of Syria Terror Network

Seriously.

Jihadists literally can flow in and out of Europe like a summer breeze.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Underground Terror Network Said to Benefit Would-Be Jihadists in Europe: Officials Say Wife of Paris Gunman Used Resources to Reach Islamic State Territory in Syria":

PARIS—When a young Frenchwoman showed up early this month at an Islamic State border checkpoint in northern Syria, the extremists controlling that arid expanse were expecting her.

They waved her right through and let her bodyguards accompany her, according to Western counterterrorism officials.

The militants had been told to give Hayat Boumeddiene special treatment by the network of chaperones who had arranged her travel. The reason would soon be clear: The same day she crossed the border, her husband, Amedy Coulibaly, unleashed his terror spree in Paris, and she became the most-wanted woman in France.

No charges have been filed but authorities are eager to question Ms. Boumeddiene. “She is the prize—a high-value asset—because she knows a lot about the preparation of the attack,” said a counterterrorism official.

Her journey from the gritty suburbs of Paris to the Syrian border followed a circuitous route that—much like an underground railroad—allowed her to slip away covertly.

Islamic State’s ability to provide safe harbor to friends and family removes potential obstacles for would-be attackers in the West. They no longer need to be part of a terror group’s rank-and-file to benefit from its resources, according to Western counterterrorism officials and people close to militant networks.

There isn’t any evidence Mr. Coulibaly took orders from Islamic State, although he pledged his allegiance in a video that circulated online after his death.

But he didn’t act in isolation either. Instead, he tapped into a grass-roots network that grew along with al Qaeda and has begun to reconfigure around Islamic State. “It’s a new operating mode. The logic is different,” said Daniel Fellous, a French lawyer specializing in terror cases.

Years before Mr. Coulibaly took to the streets of Paris armed with AK-47s—killing four hostages at a kosher grocery and a policewoman—the people suspected of shepherding his wife to Syria were cutting their teeth on a narrower mission: recruiting and sending French nationals to fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan, according to court documents.

French authorities thought they had dismantled the network.

In July 2014, a French court convicted nine members on charges of assisting an Afghan jihadist network suspected of planning terrorist attacks. Some, however, were released due to time served while awaiting trial. And some group members had logistical expertise that French police now suspect was put to use in helping Mr. Coulibaly.

Phone taps, interrogations and other documents compiled as part of that trial and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal portray a homegrown network that spread tentacles across continents.

It included Yassine Bouzid, who navigated Alpine byways to reach Italy’s Adriatic coast; Zahir Chouket, whose myriad contacts in Turkey could move people through to Afghanistan; and Mohamed Belhoucine, a lanky computer programmer who went by the handle “oussama911.”

During the trial, Mr. Bouzid acknowleged helping militants reach Afghanistan. For a while, he said, he viewed jihad as similar to the brigades of international volunteers during Spain’s civil war in the 1930s, but would have never supported attacks on civilians.

Police recently questioned him in connection to Mr. Coulibaly’s attacks, according to Mr. Fellous, who represents Mr. Bouzid. No charges have been brought against him, Mr. Fellous said.

Mr. Chouket was convicted in absentia and remains on the run. Police updated an existing arrest warrant to include suspicions he was involved in Ms. Boumeddiene’s escape. His legal representation is unknown.

Mr. Belhoucine dropped out of one of France’s top engineering schools because—as he wrote in a letter contained in the court documents—“multidisciplinary teaching doesn’t correspond to my professional ambitions.”

According to the court documents, Mr. Belhoucine fielded emails from Afghanistan, reporting on the status of French militants bearing nicknames like “Call of Duty 4,” based on the warfare videogame. “I was in charge of passing on messages from the men on the front,” he told police...

Still more.

Pitbull-Dachshund Mix

A wiener dog with a bite pounds-per-square-inch that would crush your throat.

Heh.

At Blazing Cat Fur, "‘I Can’t Stop Looking At This Pit Bull-Dachshund Mix’."

Economic Growth Slows to 2.6 Percent in Fourth Quarter

Click through especially for the graph on quarterly GDP since 2000. The fourth quarter of 2008 was almost negative 9 percent. Man, talk about a crash.

Here, "U.S. Economic Growth Slows to 2.6% in Fourth Quarter: GDP Underscores Obstacles Facing Recovery as Troubles Mount Abroad."