Kelly Rohrbach on Vacation in Hawaii

Following-up from the other day, "Kelly Rohrbach Invites You to Explore (VIDEO)."

At Taxi Driver, "Kelly Rohrbach Topless on Her Vacation."

And at the Sun U.K., "PHWOAR-BACH: Baywatch star Kelly Rohrbach does topless yoga on the beach in Hawaii - Kelly, 27, is enjoying some downtime on the island after her success in the latest Baywatch film."

Jennifer Delacruz's M.L.K. Day Forecast

It's been record warm temperatures this last few days, and while it's supposed to be cooler today, it was roasting outside already when I stepped out to get the newspaper.

Here's lovely Ms. Jennifer:

Racial Injustice Today

I saw this last week but neglected to post. Racial injustice just ain't what it used to be.

Behind the making of this weeks NYer cover. #NewYorker #Magazine #magaazines #illustration #gouache #MLKDay2018 #MLK https://t.co/3sOwENSMrd pic.twitter.com/pGLn6UoVci

— Mark Ulriksen (@MarkUlriksenArt) January 9, 2018

Where Can a Black Person Get Their Hair Done?

When I had an Afro back in the day, my mom used to take me to a black barbershop in Santa Ana, which was the only place where they knew how to give me a haircut. And when I was college in my 20s, even though I wore my hair short and close-cropped, some of the barbers at the local barbershop in Costa Mesa used to groan as I sat down in their seat. I don't know why you're a barber if you don't like giving a mulatto man a haircut?

At the far-left Affinity Magazine (and I do mean far-left, *smh*):

I'm tired of being rejected from hair salons for being black. How can a "professional" hairstylist not be able to do black hair? https://t.co/KBBk64EvVl

— Affinity Magazine (@TheAffinityMag) January 11, 2018

Moira Donegan

I meant to post this earlier. It's good:

Whatever you thought of the Shitty Media Men List, this honest, clear piece, by its creator, should not be missed. https://t.co/Ca9kv4ALco

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) January 11, 2018

Books from 'Shithole Countries'

Heh, I'm hip with the entrepreneurial exploitation of the president, lol.

A New York bookstore is featuring books today by writers from #ShitholeCountries including Nelson Mandela and Malala Yousafzai pic.twitter.com/CrQa5oFSoY

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) January 13, 2018

This is How Radical Leftists View the President, at Home and Abroad

At Der Spiegel:

New Der SPIEGEL Cover: The Age of Fire and Fury https://t.co/jxgHScxKrO pic.twitter.com/wVKK5aHrcE

— SPIEGEL ONLINE English (@SPIEGEL_English) January 12, 2018

Peeled Pomegranates

We used to eat pomegranates off the trees in my neighborhood back in the day. Oh boy, what I'd have given for one peeled, lol.

Seen on Twitter just now:

Someone sent me a picture of these completely peeled pomegranates and brb I have fainted pic.twitter.com/bLUB5FAXu0

— Helen Rosner (@hels) January 15, 2018

Aziz Ansari

Honestly, I'm just glad I'm married and I'm not dealing with society's sex panic as an everyday participant in the dating market. It's bad enough being at far-left college for my day job, although it's been like this on campus for a long time already, so I don't have to adjust my orientation too much. (My rule has been to never be alone with a woman in a closed room, and that's been the rule since graduate school, when we were told that's the rule; it's a good rule.)

Anyway, I think Mr. Ansari is more aggressive than I ever was dating, but it's not abnormal at all.

See Caitlin Flanagan, at the Atlantic, "The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari."

The allegations of sexual misconduct against @AzizAnsari amount to "3,000 words of revenge porn," @CaitlinPacific argueshttps://t.co/FV55XuBFaX pic.twitter.com/i0rf0Qhrv2

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) January 15, 2018

And here's the piece itself, on "Babe.net", of all places, "I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life."

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

This has turned into racial virtue signalling day for the radical left. Here's the New York Times, attacking President Trump, at Memeorandum, "Donald Trump's Racism: The Definitive List."

And WaPo's taking the president to task for golfing, although President Obama golfed all the time, and it was never a problem. At Memorandum, "On MLK Day, President Trump visits Trump golf course."

So, with that, here's President Trump's M.L.K Day greeting. We're lucky we have this president:

Robyn Lawley Uncovered for Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2017 (VIDEO)

Nice.

Death Toll from Montecito Mudslides Rises to 20

This is from yesterday's paper, too true, "Hope fades for those still buried by Montecito mudslide."

And from just a little while ago, at LAT, "Death toll from Montecito mudslides climbs to 20, as authorities continue search for the missing":

The death toll in the Montecito mudslides climbed to 20 on Sunday, as officials continued to work to clear the mud and debris-strewn 101 Freeway, which has been closed indefinitely.

The body of the latest victim, who has not been identified, was discovered as authorities continued to search for several people still missing from the deluge, officials said. At least four other people are still unaccounted for.

On Saturday, search and rescue crews recovered the body of Morgan Corey, 25, who was found in debris near Olive Mill Road about 9 a.m., officials said.

At an afternoon news conference at the Earl Warren Fairgrounds, Santa Barbara County Fire Chief Eric Peterson spoke about the difficulties and challenges faced by emergency responders in their search for survivors.

"I have felt the heartbreak of knowing that even with all of your skill and all of your training and all of your planning, you couldn't save everybody," he said. "No one could have planned for the size and scope of what a 200-year storm immediately following our largest wildfire could bring."

A candlelight vigil for the victims of the mudslide is scheduled for 5 p.m. Sunday in the sunken gardens area outside the Santa Barbara County Courthouse.

CalTrans crews continued to work Sunday to clear a two-mile stretch of the 101 Freeway in Montecito that was initially expected to re-open Monday. But officials said cleaning up one part of the freeway at Olive Mill Road was proving especially difficult.

Aided by private contractors and the Army Corps of Engineers, crews have been working around the clock to clear the freeway, a major north south artery that carries about 100,000 vehicles through the Central Coast each day.

The cleanup is focused on what CalTrans calls "dewatering" — using pumps to suck up the mud and rainwater. Once all the mud and debris is removed, the pavement and overpasses must be evaluated for structural safety, and then signs and guardrails reinstalled and lines repainted.

"It's really an overwhelming situation, and we don't want to give an estimate that isn't accurate," said Colin Jones, a spokesman for the California Department of Transportation, said about the freeway re-opening.

In addition to the 101, many local roads are blocked. Santa Barbara City Fire Chief Pat McElroy said the big push on Saturday was to clean roads in the Santa Barbara and Montecito areas in order to improve vehicular access.

"As it stands, we're still having to go in on foot in many areas," he said.

State Route 192, which cuts across the foothills, is also unsafe in places, and officials are trying to establish an alternative route as soon as possible.

With the 101 closed, hundreds of people have taken to traveling the coast by boat. Two sightseeing companies, Island Packers in Ventura and Condor Express in Santa Barbara, have worked together to turn their vessels into a ferry service between the cities.

Tickets on the Condor Express, a 75-foot catamaran that normally takes tourists whale watching, were in high demand last week, with many trips packed with the maximum 127 passengers, assistant manager Katie Fitts said.

The 90-minute trip over the water was significantly shorter than the more than four-hour detour on the 5 Freeway, and ferry passengers included firefighters, city workers and medical personnel from Cottage Hospital, she said.

"There are people trying to get to their families that have been struck by this tragedy and people trying to get to work … surgeons and nurses," Fitts said...

More at that top link.

New History of the Ukrainian Famine

This is Sophie Pinkham's review of Anne Applebaum's Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine. It's really good, dang!

(Pinkham's the author of Black Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine.)

At the Nation, "The Candle of Memory":

In 1928, Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union had a food problem. Because of policies that gave farmers little incentive to sell their grain, the state could no longer feed the urban population. Stalin became convinced that counterrevolutionary “kulaks”—a mostly imaginary class of fat-cat capitalist peasants—were hoarding grain. He ordered requisitions that angered the peasants and discouraged production, leading to further grain shortages, which in turn were followed by even more requisitions. Stalin had quickly made his own suspicions come true: Peasants began to hoard and hide grain—in protest and as a means of survival.

In response to this crisis, the Communist Party’s Central Committee decided to collectivize agriculture in 1929. Collective farms were to function like state-owned agricultural factories, with peasant farmers transmogrified into workers. The fantasy was that scientific innovations would vastly improve productivity, providing bountiful food for the cities, with plenty left over to export in exchange for the hard currency needed for rapid industrialization.

Though some high-ranking members of the party (notably Nikolai Bukharin) opposed forced collectivization, Stalin chose to employ the most coercive and violent methods available to him. He began by having millions of “kulaks” deported to distant collective farms, depriving them of the ties to community that would aid them in a rebellion. Many peasants chose to destroy their crops and slaughter their livestock rather than turn them over to the state; some of the more religious ones came to believe that the Soviet Antichrist was ringing in the end of the world. Others, more accurately, saw collectivization as a form of “second serfdom.” Peasants lynched and murdered Soviet officials and volunteers in charge of collectivization.

The result of Stalin’s policies was a man-made famine of terrifying scale. By the spring of 1932, peasants in the grain-growing districts of Ukraine, the northern Caucasus, the Volga region, and western Siberia were starving. Applebaum draws on oral testimonies and memoirs that offer a vivid look into the transformations wrought by famine. One Ukrainian survivor described his brother as “alive but completely swollen, his body shining as if it were made of glass.” An activist from Russia remembered Ukrainian children looking “all alike: their heads like heavy kernels, their necks skinny as a stork’s…the skin itself like yellow gauze stretched over their skeletons.” Some parents abandoned or even killed their children, unable to bear watching them starve to death. There were instances of cannibalism, usually necrophagia. Though this horror was the result of Soviet policy, the police arrested those who succumbed to it. Applebaum quotes a Polish woman who wrote in her gulag memoir about being transferred to a prison island populated by “Ukrainian cannibals”:

They described how their children died of hunger, and how they themselves, very close to starvation, cooked the corpses of their own children and ate them. This happened when they were in a state of shock caused by hunger. Later, when they came to understand what had happened, they lost their minds.

People died in the streets, and no one had the strength to bury them. Peasants were forbidden to enter the cities in search of food, and the areas most affected, including Ukraine, were closed off. Policemen and party activists searched village households and confiscated any remaining animals or food they saw, even crusts of bread. Harsh penalties—execution or 10 years’ hard labor—were imposed for any kind of theft. By the end of 1932, less than six months after the new law had been passed, 4,500 people had been executed for violating it, and more than 100,000 had received 10-year sentences.

Party members, ordinary people, and cultural figures like the author Mikhail Sholokhov wrote to Stalin, describing the horrendous situation and imploring him to help. Moscow party boss Martemyan Ryutin released an opposition platform denouncing the Soviet leader and aggressively criticizing coercive collectivization and the anti-kulak terror; he and his family were soon arrested and executed. Members of the Ukrainian Communist Party pleaded with Stalin to lower the quotas and provide food aid; some quit in protest. Many paid for these protests with their lives, and others committed suicide.

In May of 1933, the Soviet authorities finally approved substantial food aid, sent in workers to help bring in the harvest, stopped the arrests of peasants (in part because the prisons and camps were overflowing), and ended the policy of food confiscation. Grain quotas were reduced. But the damage done was almost unimaginable: Between 1931 and 1934, at least 5 million people starved to death across the Soviet Union...

RTWT.

CNN's Alisyn Camerota Starts Bawling on Live TV During Coverage of President Trump's Comments (VIDEO)

I guess tears-on-demand is one of the more genuine measures of leftist virtue signalling. (*SMH.*)

Jennifer Delacruz's Sunday Weather

It was 19 degrees at game time in Pittsburgh this morning, but it's sure nice in Southern California.

Here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer from last night:

Britney Spears Yellow Bikini on Vacation in Hawaii (PHOTOS)

At Egotastic!:

It may not have polkadots but we still love @britneyspears's itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow bikini.
More pics: https://t.co/TEduhK4MIx pic.twitter.com/2k9h3O49M8

— Egotastic! (@egotastic) January 11, 2018

Doutzen Kroes on Vacation

At Taxi Driver, "Doutzen Kroes Caught Topless on Vacation."

Those sneaky paparazzi photographer, heh.

BONUS: From Christmas 2016:

Merry Xmas to you!#Xmas #DoutzenStories #hunkemöller pic.twitter.com/veMhB8W2mO

— Doutzen Kroes (@Doutzen) December 24, 2016

Blanca Blanco Hits the Beach in Malibu

At London's Daily Mail, "Topless in Malibu: Sizzling Blanca Blanco has nip slip as she hits the beach in nothing more than bold red jacket and underwear."

BONUS: At Fox News, "Blanca Blanco responds to criticism after ignoring all-black dress code at #GoldenGlobes: 'Shaming is part of the problem'."

REPORT: President Trump Lawyer Allegedly Paid $130,000 to Silence Former Porn Star Stormy Daniels Over Sexual Encounter; Daniels Denies

Isn't this where it's all headed, really?

I mean, how many Hollywood moguls, movie stars, and film icons have to be thrown under the #MeToo bus before the biggest prize is captured? I mean, c'mon, we learned a week or so ago that Democrat operatives were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to accusers of the president. Now we have a top-tier media report alleging that porn stars were paid off for their silence? And you've got a smiling photo with President Trump and the former adult star Ms. Stormy?

Oh boy, it's been a busy news day.

Stormy Daniels denies the allegations, at least according to this screen-cap of a letter on Twitter and as reported at the New York Post:

Stormy Daniels herself denies this story, but we can't expect the mainstream media or the twits on liberal twitter to spend 2 seconds fact checking something. pic.twitter.com/jHaXuZex2G

— Mark Dice (@MarkDice) January 12, 2018

JUST IN: Trump team paid porn star $130K to keep quiet about extramarital affair https://t.co/dRplGULnzv

— New York Post (@nypost) January 12, 2018

And see WSJ, "Trump Lawyer Arranged $130,000 Payment for Adult-Film Star’s Silence" (and Memeorandum):

A former porn star reached a $130,000 deal just before the 2016 election to stay silent about an alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trumphttps://t.co/uztUVwrPAm

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) January 12, 2018

A lawyer for President Donald Trump arranged a $130,000 payment to a former adult-film star a month before the 2016 election as part of an agreement that precluded her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

Michael Cohen, who spent nearly a decade as a top attorney at the Trump Organization, arranged payment to the woman, Stephanie Clifford, in October 2016 after her lawyer negotiated the nondisclosure agreement with Mr. Cohen, these people said.

Ms. Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, has privately alleged the encounter with Mr. Trump took place after they met at a July 2006 celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, these people said. Mr. Trump married Melania Trump in 2005.

Mr. Trump faced other allegations during his campaign of inappropriate behavior with women, and vehemently denied them. In this matter, there is no allegation of a nonconsensual interaction.

“These are old, recycled reports, which were published and strongly denied prior to the election,” a White House official said, responding to the allegation of a sexual encounter involving Mr. Trump and Ms. Clifford. The official declined to respond to questions about an agreement with Ms. Clifford. It isn’t known whether Mr. Trump was aware of any agreement or payment involving her.

In a statement, Mr. Cohen didn’t address the $130,000 payment but said of the alleged sexual encounter that “President Trump once again vehemently denies any such occurrence as has Ms. Daniels.”

Mr. Cohen added in the statement, addressed to The Wall Street Journal: “This is now the second time that you are raising outlandish allegations against my client. You have attempted to perpetuate this false narrative for over a year; a narrative that has been consistently denied by all parties since at least 2011.”

The Journal previously reported that Ms. Clifford, 38 years old, had been in talks with ABC’s “Good Morning America” in the fall of 2016 about an appearance to discuss Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. In that article, the Journal reported the company that owns the National Enquirer agreed to pay $150,000 to a former Playboy centerfold model three months before the election for her story of an affair a decade earlier with the Republican presidential nominee, which the tabloid newspaper didn’t publish. The company said she was paid to write fitness columns and appear on magazine covers.

Mr. Cohen also sent a two-paragraph statement by email addressed “TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN” and signed by “Stormy Daniels” denying that she had a “sexual and/or romantic affair” with Mr. Trump.

“Rumors that I have received hush money from Donald Trump are completely false,” the statement said.

Ms. Clifford didn’t respond to multiple emails seeking comment.

After the agreement, Ms. Clifford’s camp complained the payment wasn’t being made quickly enough and threatened to cancel the deal, some of the people familiar with the matter said.

The payment was made to Ms. Clifford through her lawyer in the matter, Keith Davidson, with funds sent to Mr. Davidson’s client-trust account at City National Bank in Los Angeles, according to the people.

“I previously represented Ms. Daniels,” Mr. Davidson said, referring to Ms. Clifford’s stage name. “Attorney-client privilege prohibits me from commenting on my clients’ legal matters.”

A spokeswoman for City National Bank declined to comment.

The agreement with Ms. Clifford came as the Trump campaign confronted allegations from numerous women who described unwanted sexual advances and alleged assaults by Mr. Trump...

Still more.

The 'Lowest Day' of Trump's Presidency (VIDEO)

It's Lou Dobbs and Ann Coulter, two of the right-wing media's biggest anti-immigration hardliners. (Remember Dobbs was fired from CNN for his comments on illegal immigrants.)

I mentioned the other night that folks like Michelle Malkin and Laura Ingraham weren't going to let the president slide on amnesty, and Coulter's arguing for the death of this presidency, right now. Watch: