Marine Le Pen's World: French Nationalism at Heart of Her Campaign

At Blazing Cat Fur:

PARIS — France — as envisioned by far-right leader Marine Le Pen — should be its own master and have no globalization issues, European Union membership or open borders.

It would join the United States and Russia in a global battle against Islamic militants. Francs, not euros, would fill the pockets of French citizens. Borders would be so secure that illegal immigration would no longer fuel fears of terror attacks or drain public coffers.

It’s a vision that holds increasing appeal for voters once put off by the image of Le Pen’s anti-immigration party as a sanctuary for racists and anti-Semites. It has made Le Pen a leading candidate in France’s presidential election this spring...

Keep reading.

PREVIOUSLY: "France’s Next Revolution? A Conversation With Marine Le Pen."

Emily Ratajkowski Wears Nothing but Guitar Picks in Body Paint Video

At Sports Illustrated, "Emily Ratajkowski Wears Nothing but Guitar Pick - Bikini Body Painting - Sports Illustrated Swimsuit."

Rebecca Traister Unhinged

Will Roe v. Wade be overturned anytime soon?

I don't think so, but leftists have become deranged over the prospect, as well as over new regime's threat to so-called "reproductive freedom."

Now, while I don't think Roe will be taken down, I do expect more movement to weaken Planned Parenthood, including defunding the left's key abortion provider (genocide provider).

In any case, get a glimpse into leftist "pro-choice" thinking with this piece from far-left Rebecca Traister, at New York Magazine.

Notice the completely over-the-top rhetoric. It's like worlds are crashing down. An "extinction-level event," in the words of Twitter leftists.

Seriously, these people need to get a grip.

Rebecca Traister breaks down the right's step-by-step attack on access to abortion and contraception https://t.co/N1XPzeI5vj.

— NYMag PR (@nymagPR) January 10, 2017

Self-Defense Against Animals

An interesting piece.

At Instapundit, "NEWS YOU CAN USE."

I'm always worried about a mountain lion attack when I go on my big hikes at Peters Canyon.

Biloxi, Mississippi, Renames MLK Holiday ''Great Americans Day'

Oh boy, here we go.

A debate on racism and and national holidays the weekend before Donald Trump takes office.

At the Biloxi Sun Herald, "Biloxi called Monday ‘Great Americans Day’ and the internet exploded":

https://twitter.com/CityofBiloxi/status/820047337863151618?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

The city of Biloxi, MS calls MLK Day "Great Americans Day"...when they also mark Robert E. Lee's birthday.

Twitter is not about that BS: 👏🏽 pic.twitter.com/WWNrhHNNYu

— Fusion (@Fusion) January 14, 2017

It only took a few minutes after the City of Biloxi posted a Facebook status and tweet — noting that offices would be closed Monday for “Great Americans Day” — for people to start responding.

For the record, Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday.

Great Americans Day doesn’t exist as a holiday in Google, Wikipedia or for the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office, which recognizes a joint celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s and Robert E. Lee’s birthdays. It also did not appear in a LexisNexis search of all Mississippi news sources for the past 20 years.

Two hours after it was posted, the Facebook post had 64 comments and 91 shares and the responses to the city’s tweet include words that can’t be repeated on this website or in this newspaper.

The kindest were some variation of “I beg your pardon,” or “Autocorrect seems to have accidentally misspelled MLK Day.”

The city, for it’s part, then issued a series of tweets defending the name and touting its Martin Luther King Jr. Day events.

Within two hours, the Facebook post also had been amended to add that Great Americans Day was a state-named holiday and to include a link to its MLK events.

Also at Complex, "A Mississippi City Called MLK Day 'Great Americans Day' and Twitter Went Nuts."

Goldman Sachs, With Long History of Public Service, Makes Return to Washington in Trump Administration

This is pretty fascinating.

At NYT, "Goldman Sachs Completes Return From Wilderness to the White House":

“Government Sachs” is back. In the Trump administration, economic policy making is being handed to Goldman alumni. https://t.co/xOpGGxPGl3

— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 12, 2017

“Government Sachs” is back.

After eight years in the political wilderness, its name synonymous with the supposedly undue and self-serving influence in Washington that brought us the financial crisis and the Wall Street bailout, Goldman Sachs is again making its presence felt. In the Trump administration, to an unprecedented degree, economic policy making is largely being handed over to people with Goldman ties.

The Goldman alumni include Steven T. Mnuchin, the nominee for Treasury secretary; Gary D. Cohn, tapped as director of the National Economic Council and White House adviser on economic policy; and Stephen K. Bannon, who was named chief White House strategist. Jay Clayton, named to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, is a Wall Street lawyer who has represented Goldman.

This week President-elect Donald J. Trump hired Dina H. Powell, a Goldman partner who heads impact investing, as a White House adviser. Anthony Scaramucci, a Goldman alumnus (whom I spotlighted last week), is on the Trump transition committee and is expected to be named to a White House position as well.

And this after Mr. Trump campaigned against Wall Street, excoriated Senator Ted Cruz for his ties to Goldman, and castigated Hillary Clinton for giving paid speeches to big banks, Goldman among them.

The Goldman influx has so far drawn little criticism, perhaps because worries about what once would have been deemed undue influence now mix with relief that there is some adult supervision in the executive branch.

On balance, “it’s a plus,” Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who built his fortune on Wall Street, told me this week. “Whatever you may think of them individually, you can’t get to be a Goldman partner and survive if you’re stupid, lazy or unprofessional.” (Mr. Bloomberg is co-chairman of Goldman’s “10,000 Small Businesses” initiative, which provides support to fledgling entrepreneurs.)

Whatever bricks Mr. Trump threw at Wall Street during the campaign, investors have cheered his victory, driving the stock market to new highs. And Goldman has been a particular beneficiary, with its shares gaining 35 percent since Election Day — the top-performing stock in the Dow Jones industrial average in that time.

Mr. Trump, a spokeswoman of his told me, sees no contradiction here. There’s a difference between individuals who happen to have worked at Goldman Sachs, at some point in their careers, and Goldman Sachs itself. “He’s said from the beginning that he’ll hire the very best people for the job regardless of where they worked before, which is what he’s done throughout his career,” said the spokeswoman, Hope Hicks.

While the firm’s influence in a Trump administration may reach a new apex, Goldman alumni have long been fixtures in both Republican and Democratic administrations. The Goldman legend Sidney J. Weinberg headed Franklin D. Roosevelt’s influential Business Advisory and Planning Council.

Recent Treasury secretaries with Goldman roots include Robert E. Rubin, a former co-chairman, under Bill Clinton; and Henry M. Paulson Jr., a former chairman and chief executive, under George W. Bush.

Even in the Obama administration, where a Goldman pedigree was something akin to a scarlet letter, Gary Gensler was credited with reviving a moribund Commodity Futures Trading Commission and might have been Treasury secretary had Mrs. Clinton won in November.

Which raises the question: Why would such a disproportionate number of the “best people,” in Mr. Trump’s view, come from just one bank? After all, Goldman is hardly the only large bank, and it is also far from the biggest. It employs roughly 33,000 people; JPMorgan Chase’s work force is many times as large.

Many point to a unique Goldman culture that has long encouraged public service and philanthropy as integral to its business model.

Goldman “does seem to produce people who are very smart and have valuable experience,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “And they have a culture and a long tradition of leaving the firm for public service. The firm pushes them to do that.”

More.

Police Charge Black Female Student for KKK Threat Made at Arundel High School (VIDEO)

Man, I would not want to live in Baltimore.

And remember, it's all hoaxes all the time on the left. The real political violence we're seeing is black on white, leftists on Trump supporters.

At CBS News 13, "Police Charge Student for Threat Made at Arundel High School."

Added: The threats were made on Twitter; see the screencaps here.

Selena Gomez Goes Nearly Nude on Instagram

Arianny Celeste tweeted the story, but it's also at Huffington Post, "So Now There’s a Picture of Selena Gomez in a Thong on Instagram."

Ah, the celebrity life. Must be rough posting photos of your bare booty to social media, lol.

Obama Has Collapsed the Appeal of the Democrat Party. What Next for the Donkey Dunderheads?

That emerging Democrat majority thesis sure took a whacking in this election, sheesh.

Here's Ronald Brownstein, at the Atlantic, "What Happens to the Democratic Party After Obama?":

What happens to the Democrat Party after #Obama? #Trump #TrumpTrain #DEMS #MAGA https://t.co/hxIrPqowei via @RonBrownstein

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 13, 2017

The outgoing president narrowed the party’s appeal in ways that helped the GOP. Democrats may need to widen it again if they hope to recover power.

In his bittersweet farewell address this week, President Obama made a passionate case for both his policy agenda and his civic vision of a nation strengthened by diversity. But his words won’t settle the Democrats’ difficult debate about his political legacy.

Through two terms, Obama deepened the Democrats’ connection with a constellation of growing groups, namely minorities, the millennial generation, and college-educated whites, especially women. That coalition allowed him to join the ranks of Andrew Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt, the only Democrats to win a presidential popular-vote majority at least twice.

But Obama also narrowed the Democrats’ appeal, both demographically and geographically, in ways that helped Republicans seize unified control of the White House and Congress and establish their biggest advantage in state governments since the 1920s.

Both these positive and negative trends for the Democratic Party predate Obama’s first campaign, and the latter trends were accentuated by Hillary Clinton’s unique weaknesses in 2016. But Obama intensified these dynamics with a distinctive strategy that bound Democrats to the political priorities of their heavily urbanized new coalition, especially on cultural issues from gay rights to immigration reform. That came at the price of further alienating the GOP’s competing coalition of older, blue-collar, and religiously devout whites, who live largely outside of urban areas. And it was those voters who mobilized to narrowly elect Trump and preserve Republican control of Congress...

Well, it's going to be interesting to see how long leftists cling to the emerging majority thesis?

All they have to do is keep pushing the date back for majority status, and voila! Their theory is validated. Yet lots of analysts are now saying that the white working class vote is itself an emerging voting bloc, which could be a powerful swing vote in upcoming elections. Is that bloc up for grabs? At this point, most Democrats don't seem to care, despite warnings of dire political consequences to their indifference.

But we'll see. We'll see.

Still more.
 

Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points Memo: Media's 'Garbage' Reporting is 'Harming the Fabric of Our Society' (VIDEO)

Oh boy, this is an excellent segment, from last night:

Trump Didn't Kill Conservatism

A review of Patrick J. Deneen’s Conserving America? Essays on Present Discontents, at the Wall Street Journal.

And shop, Save Up to 20 Percent on Books.

The Deep State Goes to War Against President-Elect Trump, as Dems Cheer (VIDEO)

Honestly, I don't think Glenn Greenwald is a good person --- he helped smuggle Edward Snowden's stolen NSA data into Germany, to Laura Poitras (and that's not mentioning his rabid anti-Israel politics) --- but I swear he's been doing the best writing on the Democrats spy-ops smear-ops to take down the incoming Donald Trump administration.

So, with the usual FWIW warning, at the Intercept, "The Deep State Goes to War With President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer":

The legitimate and effective tactics for opposing Trump are being drowned by irrational, desperate ad hoc crusades. https://t.co/athCFT9IeO

— The Intercept (@theintercept) January 11, 2017

IN JANUARY 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address after serving two terms as U.S. president; the five-star general chose to warn Americans of this specific threat to democracy: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” That warning was issued prior to the decadelong escalation of the Vietnam War, three more decades of Cold War mania, and the post-9/11 era, all of which radically expanded that unelected faction’s power even further.

This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as “Fake News.”

Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss, as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing — eager — to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry, and damaging those behaviors might be.

The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest. There is a wide array of legitimate and effective tactics for combating those threats: from bipartisan congressional coalitions and constitutional legal challenges to citizen uprisings and sustained and aggressive civil disobedience. All of those strategies have periodically proven themselves effective in times of political crisis or authoritarian overreach.

But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth — despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie — is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.

Beyond all that, there is no bigger favor that Trump opponents can do for him than attacking him with such lowly, shabby, obvious shams, recruiting large media outlets to lead the way. When it comes time to expose actual Trump corruption and criminality, who is going to believe the people and institutions who have demonstrated they are willing to endorse any assertions no matter how factually baseless, who deploy any journalistic tactic no matter how unreliable and removed from basic means of ensuring accuracy?

Keep reading.

PREVIOUSLY: "Glenn Greenwald: Leftist Media Protect Hillary Clinton (VIDEO)."

Protesters Torch Chargers Memorabilia in San Diego (VIDEO)

Well, luckily only mementos got scorched.

At ABC News 10 San Diego:

Dana Loesch: Sorry, Not Sorry

She's an awesome woman!

Quick note to the haters in my timeline pic.twitter.com/1ZUtoaMqPv

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) January 11, 2017

Rising Waters of the Russian River (VIDEO)

And folks are still debating if the drought's over, pfft.

Here's CBS News San Francisco:

How Will Los Angeles Welcome the Chargers?

Following-up from yesterday, "Bill Plaschke: #Chargers Move to Los Angeles is Bad for Everyone."

Here's Lindsey Thiry with Gary Klein:

Woman of Color Lady Liberty on New U.S. Currency

Doesn't bother me.

That's a nice looking coin!

For the First Time, Lady Liberty Depicted as a Woman of Color on U.S. Currency https://t.co/UffU5lHduw

— EAGLE WINGS (@ConstanceQueen8) January 13, 2017

Los Angeles Foothills Fight Mudslides After the Storm (VIDEO)

It rained today for quite a bit. Not hard downpours, but consistent rain this afternoon.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

'Don't Be Cruel'

Here's Cheap Trick.

I was out Tuesday night, heading over to CVS to pick up my son's prescription, and I hear "Don't Be Cruel." I only vaguely remember that Cheap Trick covered the song, and I told myself to check the playlist at the Sound L.A.

And then yesterday during my afternoon drive time I heard it again. I'm just now getting around to checking the playlist. Here's Tuesday night's:

Lay Down Sally
Eric Clapton
11:28 PM

Sweet Emotion
Aerosmith
10:56 PM

Magic Bus
The Who
10:52 PM

In Your Eyes
Peter Gabriel
10:47 PM

Don't Be Cruel
Cheap Trick
10:38 PM

Run to You
Bryan Adams
10:34 PM

Piece of My Heart
Big Brother & The Holding Company
10:26 PM

New World Man
Rush
10:23 PM

Bennie and the Jets
Elton John
10:17 PM

You Give Love a Bad Name
Bon Jovi
10:14 PM

Do It Again
Steely Dan
10:08 PM

Rock the Casbah
The Clash
10:05 PM

Here Comes the Sun
The Beatles
10:02 PM

Pride (In the Name of Love)
U2
9:58 PM

Go Your Own Way
Fleetwood Mac
9:54 PM

Rock of Ages
Def Leppard
9:50 PM

Jeopardy
Greg Kihn Band
9:40 PM

Doctor My Eyes
Jackson Browne
9:37 PM

Dancing With Myself
Billy Idol
9:33 PM

And here's yesterday's:

Shake It Up
The Cars
4:18 PM

Here Comes My Girl
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
4:14 PM

Limelight
Rush
4:09 PM

Go Your Own Way
Fleetwood Mac
4:06 PM

So Lonely
The Police
4:01 PM

Suite: Judy Blue Eyes
Crosby, Stills & Nash
3:53 PM

Urgent
Foreigner
3:49 PM

The Valley Road
Bruce Hornsby
3:38 PM

Crazy Train
Ozzy Osbourne
3:33 PM

Don't Be Cruel
Cheap Trick
3:25 PM

Don't You (Forget About Me)
Simple Minds
3:21 PM

T.N.T.
AC/DC
3:17 PM

Dancing With Myself
Billy Idol
3:12 PM

Stuck In the Middle With You
Stealers Wheel
3:09 PM

Lonely Is the Night
Billy Squier
3:04 PM

Eleanor Rigby
The Beatles
3:02 PM

Piers Morgan Slams the Sleazy Hookers of the Left-Wing Press

Oh boy, the hits just keep coming.

I think Ben Smith might need to lay low for a while, man.

At London's Daily Mail, via Steve Green, at Instapundit, "The only hookers in this story are the cheap, lazy journalists who ran with fake Trump sleaze to urinate on his presidency."

.@piersmorgan: Shame on you, @BuzzFeed https://t.co/0UiW4GEy0V pic.twitter.com/LT5Ugureni

— Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) January 11, 2017

PREVIOUSLY: "Piers Morgan Blasts Meryl Streep's Anti-Trump Golden Globes Tirade."