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WELL, THAT’S CERTAINLY TRUE IF YOU RELY ON PRESS ACCOUNTS: You Know Less Than You Think About Guns: The misleading uses, flagrant abuses, and shoddy statistics of social science about gun violence.

Social “science” on pretty much any contested public issue is generally result-oriented crap, peddled by dishonest shills.

IT’S THE SAME PHENOMENON THAT LEADS THE GOVERNMENT TO TARGET LEGITIMATE GUN OWNERS INSTEAD OF FOCUSING ON CRIMINALS: Govt should be targeting problem drinkers, not moderate sippers.

The USDA bases its recommendations on the large volume of research showing moderate drinking can have health benefits. Studies published in the last year have linked low levels of alcohol consumption by some populations to lower heart disease risks, better control of diabetes, improved memory, and fewer instances of certain cancers.

The CDC considers drinking “excessive” if a woman consumes more than eight drinks per week or a man consumes more than 15. So while one drink per day is healthy, a woman who indulges in a second glass of wine some nights finds herself suddenly in the CDC’s “excessive” drinking category.

Government agencies contradicting one another isn’t a new phenomenon. And the CDC’s extremely conservative definition of binge drinking might not be so disconcerting if it weren’t being used by anti-alcohol activist groups to justify the elimination of alcohol advertising and raising alcohol taxes.. . .

Those who are addicted to alcohol — the ones who should be the focus of these large government agencies’ policies — are the least sensitive to price increases. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reports that alcohol tax increases did not affect the 5 percent of consumers who are the heaviest drinkers. Instead, higher prices encourage abusive drinkers to switch to cheaper brands.

In other words, government agencies and anti-alcohol activists pursue policies that would disproportionately affect regular social drinkers having a couple of beers at a barbecue, a couple of glasses of wine at dinner, or indulging a bit on New Year’s Eve.

It’s always the normals who get the shaft.

JOURNALISM: “In 2008, the mainstream press shilled for Obama. The infamous ‘Journ-o-list’ moderated what the talking points would be. Since then, the major legacy media organizations have established something of a Soviet-style interlocking directorate between themselves and the White House through marriage and family ties, and by shuttling back and forth between press and government positions.”

ISIL’S MINISTRY OF RAPE AND ENSLAVEMENT: “A special ISIL government ministry handles slaves and other ‘war spoils,’” Austin Bay writes. “Campus feminists, grievance industry magnates and jaded media elites take note: the enslavement and mass rape of Yazidi women after ISIL tool the Iraqi Yazidi city of Sinjar was no one-off war crime, it is ISIL policy, rooted in what its evil leaders regard as glorious history.”

I’m sure from Oberlin’s perspective, it’s all the West’s fault somehow, though. And don’t even get them started on the cultural appropriation of the sushi and General Tso’s chicken there — they have priorities, after all.

THE MACGUFFINIZATION OF AMERICAN POLITICS: Obama Gets Emotional Talking About His Gun Orders That Won’t Prevent a Single Gun Death.

But what else would make President Boehner cry?

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Active and reversible control of nanoparticle optical properties.

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IS THE OREGON MESS PROOF “WE NEED A CONSERVATIVE ALINSKY?”

ACTUALLY, IT’S DESIGNED FOR PRECISELY THAT: First Amendment doesn’t let you say ‘hateful things,’ Mizzou’s new vice chancellor says.

Though it’s nice of Mizzou to sponsor the F.I.R.E full employment act of 2016.

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: An Open Letter to Mark Steyn, Simon Heffer, Milo Yiannopoulos, Breitbart (London), and His Grace, Archbishop Cranmer.

THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED: “‘Every time I hear about those kids it makes me mad’: Obama cries for the victims of Newtown as he pushes gun control at speech surrounded by families who lost loved ones in mass shootings,” gushes the London Daily Mail, ignoring Obama’s silence on both the over 440 murders last year and disgraced crony Rahm Emmanuel’s sinking fortunes in Chicago, a city that should be entirely pacified, if overwhelming blue state gun control efforts actually worked.

But “The MacGuffinization of American Politics,” as Ace described how the media crafts its Obama narratives in late 2013 rolls on:

For Obama’s fanbois, this is not politics. This isn’t even America, not really, not anymore.

This is a movie. And Barack Obama is the Hero. And the Republicans are the Villains. And policy questions — and Obama’s myriad failures as an executive — are simply incidental. They are MacGuffins only, of no importance whatsoever, except to the extent they provide opportunities for Drama as the Hero fights in favor of them.

Watching Chris Matthews interview Obama, I was struck by just how uninterested in policy questions Matthews (and his panel) were, and how almost every question seemed to be, at heart, about Obama’s emotional response to difficulties– not about policy itself, but about Obama’s Hero’s Journey in navigating the plot of President Barack Obama: The Movie.

As with a MacGuffin in the movie, only the Hero’s emotional response to the MacGuffin matters.

Speaking of which, “Chris Matthews talking about Obama crying on ‘Hardball’ today will be must-see TV,” Allahpundit predicts. (An earlier tweet by Allah also inspired our headline above.) But then, as NewsBusters’ Geoffrey Dickens writes, the MSM has worked hard to pave the way for Obama’s anti-Second Amendment efforts.

Finally, just a reminder, here’s Obama on the stump in 2008:

Words — just words, to coin a phrase.

Related: Obama: Hey, forget what I said about Australia (twice) — no one’s looking to take away your guns!

More: “Obama is only this animated and energized when disarming the American people. ISIS not so much.” But then, his speech today is an attempt to distract Americans (via the supine media) from his ISIS and Al Qaeda-related epic failures.

BARACK OBAMA CHANNELS my USA Today column about Zaevion Dobson, but misses its essential message.

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: GM and Lyft Team Up for Robot Taxi Service. “Our self-driving car future may eventually include robot taxis developed by General Motors and operated by the ride-sharing service Lyft. The U.S. automaker has invested $500 million in a new partnership with Lyft intended to develop a network of on-demand autonomous vehicles without the need for human drivers.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Mark Rippetoe asks, Good Trainers vs. Bad Trainers: How Can You Tell the Difference?

NRA: “What kind of government cares more about appeasing Islamic terrorists than defending the constitutional rights of its citizens? A government that would disarm us during the age of terror.”

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Heat-Resistant Ceramic Parts Are Now 3-D Printable.

COVER-UP OF MASS MOLESTATIONS ON NEW YEAR’S EVE IN COLOGNE DRAWS IRE:  “Oh, how the German authorities wanted to bury this story. But when nearly a hundred women reported sexual molestation by a crowd of Arabs numbering nearly 1,000 during the Silvester celebrations in the heart of Cologne, the news got out,” Michael Walsh writes. Read the whole thing.

THREE STRIKES AND YOU’RE OUT FOR ROBERT REDFORD: In 2013 the former actor turned far left proselytizer praised Bill Ayers’ Weathermen terrorist group, in a film whose national debut overlapped the Tsarnaev brothers’ Boston Marathon bombing. In 2015, Redford glowingly portrayed Dan Rather in a little-seen movie. In-between?

Redford is known for both his impeccable film resume and creating The Sundance Film Festival. He recently broadened his empire to include reality television. Specifically, he executive produced an eight-part series focusing on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Yes, the same politician currently clinging to his job thanks to his questionable leadership.

The eight-part “Chicagoland” debuted on CNN in 2014 to tepid reviews and weak ratings. That’s not the noteworthy part. The series ended up being a love letter to Emanuel.

As Christian Toto asks, “Should CNN, Robert Redford Apologize for ‘Chicagoland?’”

Given Rahm Emanuel’s sudden reputation as a pariah amongst his fellow leftists, they would be required to, if CNN’s core viewers could even remember what they’ve seen on the network that largely exists these days as a conduit between the Obama White House, its cronies such as Emanuel, and the departure lounges of the American airport system.

UPDATE: Emails show Emanuel aides, producers coordinated CNN ‘Chicagoland’ scenes.

SPYING: House Intelligence Committee Orders Investigation Into Surveillance Of Congress That It Authorized.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON HATING THE WEST, INC.:

What explains these hypocritical and incoherent attacks on the West? The answer is important because it reminds us not to take too seriously the agendas of 20-something campus critics of white privilege and those protesting against micro-aggressions and demanding safe spaces and trigger warnings.

No civilization in history has been more leisured, affluent, or self-critical than the contemporary United States and Europe, Westernized Asia, and the British Commonwealth of Nations. Globalization has made former millionaires billionaires and near millionaires multimillionaires; among them are those who run universities, the media, foundations, Wall Street, politics, and the arts, whose influence far outweighs their relative small numbers.

At some point, for the Western elite class, the acquisitive dreams of the past become the banalities of the present, as luxury cars, penthouses, and vacation homes only remind the guilty how blessed they are, whether through inheritance, the power of trillion-dollar investments, or the global market of 6 billion people. For many of our elites, trashing their culture and heritage offers a sort of medieval penance that lets them alleviate guilt without sacrificing privilege. George Soros, Al Gore, and Mark Zuckerberg often are critical of the very engines that powered them to zillionaire status. Billionaire George Lucas calls his additional multibillion-dollar buyout from Disney the work of “white slavers.” Is Lucas, then, our version of an indentured Irish immigrant, or a Balkan peasant sent in chains to Istanbul? The 1 percent hope their loud displeasures will help to square the circle of finding redemption without ceasing to satisfy their material appetites. For some, anti-Westernism is the white lace that adds something to their costly but boring outfit.

Meanwhile, James Lileks visits an Arizona shopping mall during his Christmas week reprieve from the brutal cold of Minneapolis and responds “What you see is a miracle. This is the pinnacle of civilization, in its own way:”

I sound like a high schooler criticizing the snobby kids. I get that way in malls. Not in grocery stores, even though I get irritated by food snobs who will only use Madagascar vanilla in their French Toast batter. (Along with cage-free eggs and milk from cows that didn’t take BGH and ate non-gmo clover and were slaughtered with a blade sharpened on diamonds certified to be non-conflict) Grocery stores are a marvel. Daughter accompanied me to Fry’s today — walked! Three miles! Willingly! With her father! Made my day. We had a serious conversation on the way there and an amusing one on the way back. She was impressed by the store, which has everything. And of course I made to make this a Sermon.

What you see is a miracle. This is the pinnacle of civilization, in its own way. No king in the history of mankind had access to riches like this. Look — here. (picks up box of special expensive gourmet crackers) This is someone’s livelihood. Someone got a loan, started a business, hired people, paid someone to design this, because he or she wanted to make a special cracker, and here it is next to all the other special crackers, and this is just the special cracker department in the cheese department. There’s another special cracker section in the cracker aisle. He might fail, he might win, but you can do that here, you can try. And if someone says why do we need so many cracker choices, this is why. Do you want some governing Cracker Bureau to say no, don’t make crackers, make pretzels. But I don’t want to make pretzels. I want to make crackers. Sorry, we have enough crackers. But I have this new taste. SORRY.

Now apply that to everything here! And the other store that has the stuff this one doesn’t! And the other chain that carries a different line of specialty stuff!

Boris Yeltsin had the very same reaction when he visited a Houston supermarket in 1989; he immediately knew the Soviet Union was dead when he saw its shelves stocked to the brim. Bernie Sanders considers this a bad thing — both the abundant selection of the typical supermarket and the fall of the Soviet Union. Or as Lindsey Graham joked in October, Sanders “went to the Soviet Union on his honeymoon,” and never came back.

BUT WILL HE STILL HUMP EVERY LEG?: William McGurn on how “The Big Dog–Bill Clinton–Gets Fixed.“ Donald Trump’s statement that Bill Clinton’s sexual past is “fair game” for discussion has set the pace:

Now the Clintons must expect such moments throughout her 2016 campaign. Nor can Mrs. Clinton brush them off as her hubby’s problem, especially given that many of the women who accused Bill of sexual assault also say it was Hillary who orchestrated the smears against them. . . .

Mr. Clinton is now facing the heat himself as he gets into the race. It can’t help that his past misbehavior is resurfacing at the same time Bill Cosby, once a beloved figure himself, has just been charged with sexual assault. The comparisons between the two men are too obvious.

So is the question about the different responses the two men have received. Even before Bill Cosby was charged with a crime, the allegations against him led to his being stripped of honorary degrees, booted off boards and seeing his name replaced on buildings. Bill Clinton, meanwhile, is feted and rakes in the millions.

All this would be academic except for one thing: Mrs. Clinton needs the Obama coalition, especially its young women, to propel her into office. Unfortunately, as a recent New York Times feature about a Democratic mother and her daughter recently reported, “younger women are less impressed” by Mrs. Clinton than are older women. . . .

For one thing, Americans now know that the Clintons were often lying to us about her husband’s accusers. Exhibit A? When Hillary appeared beside Bill on “60 Minutes” to deny an affair with Gennifer Flowers that her husband would later admit to under oath.

As Christopher Hitchens once put it, Bill Clinton didn’t lie about sex. He lied about women. The Clintons’ problem today is that they are being called on these lies—and neither he nor his wife has a good answer.

I always use my mom as the bellwether for presidential elections; she has supported the winner as far back as I can remember. And as a Southern lady of a certain age, she absolutely adored Bill Clinton–almost as much as Elvis. She initially planned to vote for Hillary because, in her mind, voting for Hillary would mean a “third term” for Bill.

Today, my mom says she will “never” vote for Hillary. She (correctly) thinks she is a liar who, along with Bill, has used the Clinton Foundation to sell political influence and abuse power.

I also have another, middle-aged liberal woman friend who recently told me that she will no longer support Hillary. Why? Because after Trump began the discussion about Bill’s past sexual behavior, she thinks there’s an important difference between a man who is a common philanderer, and one who abuses power to get a piece. She feels sorry for Monica Lewinsky and the way her life was ruined at a very young age.

These are only anecdotes, of course. But in my mind, they indicate that there is an “abuse of power” theme with the Clintons that is resonating very powerfully with women voters.

Trump has (once again) dared to tackle an issue that others were too fearful to address, and in doing so struck a chord with a critical part of Hillary’s “war on women” base.

21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: The Age of Hacker-Caused Blackouts Is Upon Us: A malware attack left thousands of homes without power in Ukraine and this is only the beginning. “According to security researchers for iSIGHT Partners, the malware led to ‘destructive events’ that in turn caused the blackout. Details beyond that are a little unclear, but it sounds vaguely like Stuxnet, the cyberweapon used to destroy Iranian nuclear enrichment plans by making centrifuges go berserk. Meanwhile, researchers from antivirus provider ESET, a malware package that infected the affected power plants (but may not necessarily be the one responsible for the disruption) got in by way of macro functions built into Microsoft Word documents. This kind of attack has been a fear for years now, and a very credible one at that.”

Well, be prepared. I’ve got a generator.

HISTORY: “In 1889, the Shreveport Daily Democrat was renamed and subsequently issued as the Daily Caucasian and Weekly Caucasian. The name change reflected its support for black disfranchisement and white control of Louisiana’s state government.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, THEY’RE-GETTING-REALLY-DESPERATE EDITION: Prof Sues Amherst, Says She Was Pressured To Have Sex With Students To Increase Enrollment.

THE PUBLIC IS RATIONAL: We Are Way More Scared of Government Than Guns: President Obama’s urgency on gun control is at odds with what people are really worried about. People are 8 times more scared of government than they are of guns, according to Gallup. “Yet Obama pushes forward with measures that even he acknowledges ‘will save few lives,’ almost certainly more out of politics than an interest in dealing with the most serious problems facing the country.”

Obama, like the rest of the left, wants you disarmed because disarmed people are less trouble. Also, disarmament is a potent sign of submission, which the left gets off on.

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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 971.

ME ON DANA LOESCH’S TV SHOW, on how Obama is using gun control to distract from his (and Hillary’s) miserably-failed Mideast policy.

ACCORDING TO THE NONPARTISAN CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE, Bill gutting ObamaCare would save half-trillion over a decade, CBO finds. “Legislation to gut most of ObamaCare’s mandates and taxes, known as Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act, would reduce the deficit by $516 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The bill is expected to get a vote in the House this week, and it has already been approved by the Senate. President Obama has said he would veto the bill.”

They should be sending him a new, popular, money-saving bill to veto every week between now and November.

NEW TED CRUZ AD: If Bankers, Lawyers, and Journalists Were Crossing the Rio Grande, Immigration Would Be A Crisis.

(Via TalkingPointsMemo, which for some reason thinks this point is “bizarre.” Maybe Ted should have included “paid lefty shills” in the ad. . . .)

Related: Reihan Salam on immigration: “[Trump's] emergence as the voice of the anti-immigration Right is a reflection of the failure of the Republican establishment to grapple with lawlessness at the border and half a century of mass immigration. Consider the events of the past two years. Child migrants have surged into the United States from Central America, and working-class cities and towns across the country are struggling to absorb them. Before the federal courts stepped in, President Obama signed an executive order shielding roughly half of all unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. from the threat of deportation, a move he had previously suggested was out of bounds. And now the U.S. is experiencing yet another wave of Central American arrivals. Border Patrol officials report that many unauthorized immigrants believe that the U.S. is going to welcome them with open arms, and who can blame them given the president’s rhetoric? The ongoing crisis in Syria has prompted a fierce debate over Muslim refugees, and the San Bernardino attack has shone a bright light on our immigration bureaucracy’s decision to admit one of the killers, Tashfeen Malik, an Islamic radical from Pakistan.”

UPDATE: From the comments: “If illegal immigrants were crossing the Rio Grande carrying Trump or Cruz signs, liberal journalists like Jonathon Chait would be demanding that they be shot.”

OH, I THINK THAT’S PRETTY MUCH THE GOAL: Strangling the Free Mind: Schools that censor students’ speech teach them permissibility of sacrificing free speech for a competing social good.

DIVERSITY PROBLEM: American Academics Have Moved Sharply To The Left.

What might account for the pronounced rise in the number of self-identified liberals at the expense of moderates and conservatives, starting in the mid-1990s? The Heterodox Academy post speculates that “things began changing in the 1990s as the Greatest Generation (which had a fair number of Republicans) retired and were replaced by the Baby Boom generation (which did not).”

This probably tells part of the story, but we suspect there is more going on here than organic generational replacement. One possibility is that the story told in the graph represents the legacy of the “canon wars“—the intense battles over humanities curricula between traditionalists and multiculturalists that took place during the 1980s and 1990s. Despite some consequential traditionalist protestations, like Allan Bloom’s blockbuster 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind, “its generally agreed,” as Rachel Donadio has written, “that the multiculturalists won the canon wars.” The multiculturalist victory had at least three consequences: a reduced emphasis on what was traditionally called “the Western canon” in general education classes, the expansion of the “studies” departments (African American studies, gender studies, Jewish studies, Chicano studies), and the implementation of “harassment” codes that, in practice, were more often used against people who opposed the multiculturalist project. Whether or not you approve of these developments, it’s easy to see how they could have made scholarly minded students with traditionalist leanings less inclined to get a PhD and enter an academic humanities or social science department (the Heterodox Academy posts notes that most of the conservatives in the chart come from STEM departments and professional schools).

I think that trustees, state legislators, alumni, and others should look into remedying this.

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS AT OBERLIN DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ETHNIC FOOD.

Brevity is always a goal when it comes to Internet journalism. Are the last three words of that headline really necessary?

KURT SCHLICHTER: Loser GOP Candidates Need To Stop Making Asterisks of Themselves.

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WHY DON’T WE JUST SELL OFF THE LAND AND APPLY THE PROCEEDS TO THE NATIONAL DEBT? In Oregon, frustration over federal land rights has been building for years.

WHY IS MARCO RUBIO joining with Democrats to sponsor a bill depriving college men of due process rights?

ROGER SIMON: Ted Cruz’s Foreign Policy Adviser Writes a Book on… Art?

It’s almost an insult to Victoria C. Gardner Coates to begin a review of her excellent  David’s Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art  (published today by Encounter Books) by noting the author is the chief foreign policy adviser to presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz.  Her intertwining history of art and democracy is far more interesting than any campaign tome I can think of (not a high bar, I know). Nevertheless, it’s 2016 and obviously Coates’ work is going to be getting more attention than normal because of her association with a potential president — and, in this case, that’s good.

Coates — no neophyte in the political world (she worked for Donald Rumsfeld) — is an art historian by profession with a University of Pennsylvania PhD, specializing in the Italian Renaissance. She has helped curate major exhibitions at the Getty Museum and elsewhere.  In David’s Sling she brings her interests together, unpacking the complex relationship between art and democracy from the Athens of Pericles and Phidias all the way through the World War I France of Clemenceau and Monet and on into more recent times with Picasso and Guernica.

That will likely come as a shock to the left, but then, they’ve been underestimating the breadth of interests of conservative Republicans since Coolidge era. Or as Jay Nordlinger wrote a decade and a half ago in his review of Reagan In His Own Hand:

[W]hen excerpts from the book appeared in the The New York Times Magazine, I got a marveling phone call from an old friend, reared in the liberal Democratic (and Reagan-hating, or at least-belittling) faith. “Can you believe it?” he said. “Can you believe how impressive these things are? They are completely at odds with the image we have of him.” I could only respond, Reagan-style, “What do you mean ‘we,’ Kemosabe?”

Funny how that keeps happening — it’s as if “Progressivism” is still stuck in century-old mud.

WHERE HAS THE MEDIA BEEN? HOW CAMPUS CENSORSHIP NEVER WENT AWAY: “Most people are familiar with the supposed heyday of political correctness of the 1980s and ’90s, but there is a popular misconception that speech codes and censorship were defeated in the courts of law and public opinion by the mid-’90s,” my fellow Insta-co-blogger Greg Lukianoff writes at Ricochet. “In reality, the threats to campus speech never went away. Before examining what has changed to alarm the public—rightfully—about the state of open discourse in higher education, it’s important to note what hasn’t changed.”

The media was fine with political correctness and censorship when it mostly being used against the right. But sooner or later, all revolutions eventually devour their own; which is why the MSM woke themselves somewhat from their slumber last year. Or as Kevin Williamson noted when lefty Jonathan Chait issued his widely-disseminated cri de coeur on the dangers political correctness in New York magazine last year, “Chait’s recent critique of political correctness insists that the phenomenon has undergone a resurgence. It hasn’t; contrary to Chait’s characterization, it never went away. The difference is that it is now being used as a cudgel against white liberals such as Jonathan Chait, who had previously enjoyed a measure of immunity.”

(Oh and speaking of Chait, perhaps to make up for an argument that last year that advanced the right, he’s now turned to eliminationist rhetoric to try to mend fences: “New York Magazine’s Chait ‘Votes’ For Oregon Militia Members To Be ‘Killed.’”)

BIG TOBACCO SEES BIG PROFITS COMING IN LEGALIZED MARIJUANA: Want to be the Marlboro Man of Marijuana? The tobacco giants see legal marijuana in their future and $50 billion in new profits. And, oh by the way, did you know Richard Nixon’s Justice Department funded studies by the tobacco industry on what legalization would mean for them and how best to take advantage of it? Here’s a sample:

“We are in the business of relaxing people who are tense and providing a pick up for people who are bored or depressed,” the tobacco memo added. “The human needs that our product fills will not go away. Thus, the only real threat to our business is that society will find other means of satisfying these needs.”

Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has what may be the least expected news of 2016.

ASHE SCHOW: Variety critic names ‘The Hunting Ground’ among worst films of 2015.

Entertainment magazine Variety asked its movie critics to name the worst and most overrated films of 2015.

The only female critic to provide for the list, Ella Taylor, listed “The Hunting Ground” as a film that received “empty prestige.”

“Speaking of shoddy journalism,” Taylor wrote after naming “Truth,” the film that attempted to vindicate Dan Rather, the worst film of the year, “the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has succumbed without a murmur to ‘The Hunting Ground,’ placing on its documentary feature shortlist a loaded piece of agitprop that plays fast and loose with statistics and our sympathy with victims of campus sexual assault.” . . . The filmmaker’s response to criticism has been, essentially: “Nuh uh, anyone who disagrees with us is pro-rape.”

It’s propaganda, pure and simple, of a sort that will probably be mocked in future generations if it’s remembered at all. Out: Reefer Madness. In: Raper Madness.

ANDREW KLAVAN: “Trump’s Nomination Would Represent a Paradigm Shift” — but not necessarily a good one, Andrew writes:

Trump is a lifelong left-wing friend-of-Democrats campaigning as a Republican for his own reasons. He’s a demagogue, and he’s good at it. Sometimes he speaks truth and often he spouts trash, but what’s the difference? He doesn’t believe any of it anyway. He’s simply saying whatever words he feels will tap into legitimate right-wing anger and working-class angst.

A Trump candidacy would probably result in a Clinton presidency and that, I suspect, would be fine with Trump. If, on the other hand, he went on to win the White House, I’m guessing we’d have four more years of the same kind of lawless and mean-spirited incompetence we’ve had for the last eight. American political life throws up hucksters like Trump from time to time, but usually we figure them out before they rise too far or do too much harm. I’m guessing we’ll figure it out this time too, but maybe not.

If Rubio or Cruz or any other decent Republican is nominated, I’ll support him with joy and enthusiasm against the dishonest, corrupt and anti-libertarian Clinton. If Trump gets the nod, I’ll become a one-man rebel outpost, preaching right principles in a dark time.

Good luck with that — as Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist recently wrote in article titled “When It Comes To Donald Trump, I Hate Everyone,”

A Twitter user who goes by the name Political Math said of these people, and please excuse his French, “The world makes a lot of sense when you realize that the #1 priority of Trump supporters is to tell you to go [expletive deleted] yourself.” He added, “And I don’t mean this as a slur: Trump supporters are really just *more* sick of bull[deleted] out of DC than they care about Trump.”

Curiously enough, so is Andrew, but I doubt Trump’s supporters will be able to see that about him. And thus 2009 and 2016 will likely come full circle:

SLATE’S JAMELLE BOUIE: Is the Oregon Standoff Evidence of a Racial Double Standard? Not really. And we are in danger of drawing the wrong lessons from the fact that these armed militiamen are white.

CHRISTIAN ADAMS ON OBAMA’S COMING UNCONSTITUTIONAL GUN GRAB:

Americans are a well armed people, they treasure their Constitutional rights to defend themselves and their Constitution.

I’m frequently asked what can be done about it. Impeachment of the president is not the answer because it would only strengthen Obama, not weaken him. It is a waste of time. But impeachment of any attorney general or assistant attorney general who oversees such an anti-constitutional act is a different beast. Better still, hold the individual federal employees that design and implement any federal gun grab accountable, both in Congress and in the public discourse. We all know who Lois Lerner is. Let’s see who will be the face of Obama’s coming gun grab.

Read the whole thing.

HAWKS AND DOVES: The 2016 Presidential Candidate Intervention Meter.

What’s interesting is that the GOP leaders, Trump, Cruz and Rubio, are nowhere near the top.

HILLARY: ELECT ME AND I’LL GET TO THE BOTTOM OF UFOS AND AREA 51. “Ahem. These two had eight years to pursue any curiosity they had about UFOs and Area 51. It’s one thing to pander to the UFO conspiracy theorists as an outsider. It’s another to do it as part of the Clinton Restoration. What exactly would have changed since Hillary and Podesta left the Clinton White House 15 years ago, and Podesta left the Obama White House in February of last year?”

Let’s face it — Hillary is simply covering up the SHADO-y forces she and the government-media complex first buried deep underground decades ago:

Related: “Reminder: Bill Clinton Believes in UFOs and the JFK Conspiracy, And Hillary Talks to Ghosts. But these weird New Age nonsense beliefs — dopey pseudoreligions taking the place of actual religions — will be ignored, while the media continues to jeer at people for reading the Bible.”

GOOGLE IS YOUR FRIEND:  Sally Kohn of the Daily Beast refers to “the Ruby Ridge massacre in Waco, Texas.”

“Doubling down on dumb,” Kohn follows up by asking for ‘giant glaring difference’ between Wisconsin and Oregon, gets an earful.

ROSS DOUTHAT: I UNDERESTIMATED DONALD TRUMP.

I sold Trump wildly short, and his entire campaign to date has proven it.

First, Trump has had a very easy time turning his celebrity fan base into a meaningful constituency. Exactly how meaningful remains to be seen, but for months far more Republicans have told pollsters that they intend to vote for him than have rallied to any other banner. They may not all be Trump voters in the end, but that there is a significant Trump faction in our politics no sane observer can deny.

Second, that faction has turned out to include precisely the kind of voters Romney needed in 2012 and who stayed home instead: Blue-collar whites with moderate views on economics and a weak attachment to the institutional G.O.P. (So weak, a recent New York Times analysis makes clear, that many are still registered Democrats.) These “missing white voters” might not have put Romney over the top, but they certainly would have helped his chances in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan — all places where Trump is running strongly at the moment.

Third, even as he’s wooed the disaffected and non-ideological, Trump has also won over or at least neutralized an important segment of the conservative media.

Hey, maybe he’s smarter than you think.

ROBBY SOAVE: Rand Paul, White House, Want Oregon Standoff Resolved Cautiously. Why Don’t More Liberals Agree? Relentlessly demonizing misunderstood opponents is a bad idea.

Yeah, but it’s pretty much their only idea.

QUESTION ASKED. Ann Coulter: The Jeffrey Epstein Case is What the Media Thought the Duke Lacrosse and UVA Frat Cases Were, So Why Aren’t They Covering it?

RAPE CULTURE: On Perilous Migrant Trail, Women Often Become Prey to Sexual Abuse.

One Syrian woman who joined the stream of migrants to Germany was forced to pay down her husband’s debt to smugglers by making herself available for sex along the way. Another was beaten unconscious by a Hungarian prison guard after refusing his advances.

A third, a former makeup artist, dressed as a boy and stopped washing to ward off the men in her group of refugees. Now in an emergency shelter in Berlin, she still sleeps in her clothes and, like several women here, pushes a cupboard in front of her door at night.

“There is no lock or key or anything,” said Esraa al-Horani, the makeup artist and one of the few women here not afraid to give her name. She has been lucky, Ms. Horani said: “I’ve only been beaten and robbed.”

Hey, it could be worse. You could be on an American college campus. I hear things are really bad there.

SHE CROSSED THE “ARKANSAS MAFIA:” Woman Who Confronted Hillary Clinton Over Rape Claims: My Kids Are Being Threatened.

NORMAN J. ORNSTEIN PROVIDES the Washington Establishment’s take on the rise of Trump.

SHOCKER: “North Carolina did not respond to a public records request from USA TODAY Sports submitted in early July.”

BE KILLED BY MUSLIMS, BLAME ALL RELIGION: “I’m just guessing the cartoonist meant to attack religion in general and to be very obviously not about Islam.”

Violence works. Which is why I think we should respond violently to savagery.

AG LORETTA LYNCH CLARIFIES OBAMA GUN RULE. SUMMARY: “I suspect President Obama is hoping for ignorant crap like this from the media to make it look like he’s really doing something.”

What actually happened: “This has always been the law if you have a Federal Firearms License, and it’s always been illegal to be selling guns for “livelihood or profit” without first obtaining an FFL. The new EOs change nothing in that regard. But we do have some guidance from the Attorney General that indicates the Administration may indeed try to prosecute marginal cases it previously would not have. . . . So this is not to be part of any rule change, but merely a policy decision to prosecute ‘gun dealers, hobbyists and collectors,’ under the ‘new guidance.’ Rather than change the rule, they will use the current vague rule to send ‘hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.’ Though, in this case, it’s not mere harassment, but an intent to imprison. They know if they don’t put the dampers on the growing gun culture, their dream of destroying the Second Amendment will never be realized.”

“WELL, YEAH, BETTER TO AVOID A DEMOCRAT PARTY, JANET RENO-STYLE MASSACRE” — So Far, Local, State, and Federal Authorities Have Taken Low-Key Approach to Malheur Occupation.

In addition to not repeating the disasters of the Clinton-era,* isn’t a low-key response towards those occupying government property Eric Holder, Mike Bloomberg, and Jean Quan (the former mayor of Oakland) approved?

* Which should be everyone’s goal for 2016.

NO WONDER HILLARY GETS SUCH A SWEET DEAL ON THOSE DEBATES! Turns out the former Secretary of State and presumptive 2016 Democratic presidential nominee has a special arrangement with the Democratic National Committee. Essentially, it’s an incentive for hyper-dollar donors to max out to Hillary and give extra-generously to the DNC. Hillary scratches Debbie’s back, Debbie scratches Hillary’s back, while Bernie and Marty get screwed. The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Luke Rosiak quotes several campaign finance experts who say it’s unprecedented.

LUKE GITTOS: The whispers about Cosby have chilling echoes of Salem. Well, the whole country’s beset by a curious breed of godless puritanism.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): A teacher invited a teen to her home for pizza, but his mom walked in on something less than wholesome.

AT AMAZON, New Year, New You.

Plus, outlet deals in Outdoor Gear.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

When The New York Times tells the rubes that it’s time to hand in their guns, when The Washington Post suggests that Jesus is ashamed of them for not welcoming Syrian refugees the week after a terrorist attack, people react not because they love guns or hate Syrians, but because their natural urge to being told by coastal liberals that they’re awful people and that they should just obey and shut up is to issue a certain Anglo-Saxon verb and pronoun combination with all the vigor they can muster. And if they can’t say it themselves, they’ll find someone who will, even if it’s a crude jerk from Queens who can’t make a point without raising his pinky like a Mafia goon explaining the vig to you after you’ve had a bad day at the track.

—“How the P.C. Police Propelled Donald Trump,” Tom Nichols, the Daily Beast.

Nichols’ editor at the Daily Beast certainly did his part.

JUST ONE PROBLEM: WHAT IF 2017 WILL BE EVEN WORSE? The Top 10 Reasons to Take a Pill and Sleep Through 2016.

HiberNol, take me away!

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? THE MAN’S A CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLAR* AFTER ALL: Obama ‘Confident’ Gun Executive Actions are ‘Entirely Consistent’ with Second Amendment.

* No really — just ask him!

Related: “Obama criticized George W. Bush for using the urgency of the immediate post-9/11 environment to expand the president’s powers, but he only built upon that ballooning authority when he occupied the Oval Office. The next president is equally likely to cite Obama’s dubious example to pursue unilaterally the agenda preferred by his or her core supporters” — On the flip-side however, “From halting the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, to the sprawling scope of the EPA’s regulatory authority, to the implementation of a dangerous nuclear détente with Iran, to the normalization of relations with Cuba; these liberal policy achievements can be unraveled with the stroke of a pen once Barack Obama is out of office.”

Let’s hope so.

NO. NEXT QUESTION?: Can Jeb Bush Make a Comeback? Joe Rago at the Wall Street Journal interviews Jeb! to ascertain the answer to a question that answers itself:

Contra Mr. Trump, Mr. Bush is medium energy, if graded on the overly amped-up curve of his competitors. That isn’t meant as a put-down. Part of Mr. Bush’s appeal—an acquired taste, apparently—is his analytic thoughtfulness and sometimes ironic detachment. A more deliberative debate might underscore his strengths. His challenge will be to translate the exclamation mark on his “Jeb!” logo, which he told Stephen Colbert “connotes excitement,” into the genuine article. . . .

Yet one obstacle to a Bush comeback is that, at minus 25.8 points, the spread between his favorable-unfavorable polls in the Real Clear Politics average—27.5% to 53.3%—is the highest of any candidate, including Mrs. Clinton at minus 8.5. Mr. Trump, the runner-up, has net favorability at minus 23.3. The difference is that the businessman is disliked by Democrats, while Mr. Bush is not well liked among Republicans. In a Dec. 22 Quinnipiac poll, 30% of registered GOP voters viewed Mr. Trump unfavorably, versus 52% for Mr. Bush.

Mr. Bush broke with one faction of the political right on immigration and education standards—but it’s hard to imagine any specific policy apostasy that could rationalize this level of dislike. Not in an election where Mr. Trump, a lifelong Democrat who in 1999 proposed a one-time 14.25% tax on wealth, is feted as a conservative luminary. . . .

The problem with Jeb! is that he fails to exude strength and leadership at a time when Americans are desperately yearning for it. His personality reminds one of a geeky, boring history professor who drones on and on about details, when at this particular moment of history, Americans seem to want a larger-than-life hero who may be short on details, but long on courage.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Hold Onto Your Astro-Butts, 2016 Will Be a Big Year for Space.

THIS REPORT MAY NOT BE TRUE, BUT SOONER OR LATER ONE PROBABLY WILL: There’s Cougars In Them Thar Hills.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: What flight attendants really think of you.

ON #OREGONUNDERATTACK AND #YALLQAEDA: Stop Calling Everyone a Terrorist.

Related: Both the Bundy Occupation and ‘Black Lives Matter’ Are Revolts, Not Protests.

But only the latter is DNC-MSM approved.

EMERGENCY GUILT RESERVES: “If you live a life powered by guilt, it can be a hard thing to sustain. . . . Never fear, HuffPo to the rescue!”

BILL’S FEMALE ‘FANCLUB’ BACKFIRES: As Hillary Clinton’s husband hits stump for the first time the women on stage behind him scowl, grimace and look like they’d rather be ANYWHERE else.

AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in Tools & Home Improvement.

HUCKABEE CALLS 2016 CYCLE ‘BEWILDERING:’

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee called the 2016 election cycle perplexing Sunday due to voters shying away from candidates with past political experience.

“This has been, of all the election cycles I’ve been involved in, this has been one of the most bewildering, because it’s almost as if the more experience, the more preparation one has had for this job, it’s almost like it’s a detriment than it is an asset,” Huckabee told a crowd in Urbandale [Iowa].

I’m not at all sure what’s so bewildering about it — if there’s one thing the DNC-MSM told me about presidential elections in 2008, experience simply doesn’t matter when someone with overwhelming charisma has entered the race. Why shouldn’t that be true for both parties?

I HOPE NEWSBUSTERS HAS THEIR TiVOs PROGRAMMED FOR TONIGHT: I’ll be curious to read which of the late night talkers mocks Hillary’s UFO statement — or if Hillary’s palace guard even mentions it at all.

ATTENTION, CHATTANOOGANS: My former research assistant — now a hard-boiled Chattanooga criminal lawyer — has started her own law firm. She’s smart and good.

I THINK THAT’S HOW OBAMA’S BETTING: Don Surber: House of Saud About To Collapse. On the one hand, it deserves to. On the other hand, I doubt the replacement regime will be any better. And this is likely true: “President 45 is going to have to deal with this, and President 44 is going to leave him with a weakened military, adversaries who mock us, and allies who no longer trust us.”

Related thoughts from Richard Fernandez. “An administration which based its foreign policy strategy on simultaneouly befriending rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran finds that instead of dampening the competition the effect has been to heighten their conflict to a critical point. . . . ‘Nothing has gone right for Riyadh.’ To be fair, nothing has gone right for anybody at all — except ISIS — ever since the power vacuum created by Obama’s ‘leadership from behind’ imploded Syria and Iraq.”

DOES EUROPE HAVE A FUTURE? “Europeans are now faced with questions they have hitherto preferred to dodge. Are Europeans ready to fight for Europe? What is the place of Islam in a post-Christian Europe? Or, to look at it from the jihadist point of view, what is the place of Europe in a fast-expanding and globalized Islam? Is 21st-century Europe still the heart of Western civilization, or is it changing out of all recognition?”, Daniel Johnson, the founder of the British monthly Standpoint, writes at Mosaic.

“However one answers those questions, a brave new world seems to be emerging in which Europe becomes the theater where the clash of civilizations is played out. So far, the signs are that this encounter will be no more peaceful than it has been in the Middle East.”

At the moment, Mark Steyn’s question a decade ago seems rather prescient: “The hyper-rationalism of post-Christian Europe turns out to be wholly irrational: what’s the point of creating a secular utopia if it’s only for one generation?”

Related: Robert Spencer: “The Western world has moved forward since the days of fire and brimstone, but the Middle East is turning backward toward it.” That’ll play out well for all concerned in Europe.

DON SURBER: Austin Discovers Garbage In, Debt Up. “Austin, Texas, thought it was going to become rich off its recycling program. Instead, it spent more than $3 for every $2 it brought in. Demand for garbage is low, which is why people throw it away. So what is Austin’s solution to lagging prices? Increase supply.”

SO ON A READER RECOMMENDATION, I’ve stuck some of these motion-sensor LED lights around my yard and they seem to work quite well.

TWO CNNs IN ONE!

● Face it, Oregon building takeover is terrorism.

—CNN, today.

● Think Occupy Wall St. is a phase? You don’t get it.

—CNN, October 5, 2011.

As John Podhoretz tweeted yesterday, “So it’s OK to occupy a park near Wall Street but not an empty office building in the middle of Oregon? I’m against both. How about you?” Adding, “Admit it. You like people who have your politics and you make allowances, and you want people whose politics you hate to be arrested.”

This is CNN.

UPDATE: Five Times CNN Whipped Up Violence In Baltimore.

BILL CLINTON FLUSTERED WHEN ASKED WHETHER PAST IS FAIR GAME (VIDEO): “An ABC News reporter asked Bill Clinton whether his past is fair game in the 2016 presidential election. Clinton appeared flustered and unsure what to say.”

Hey, the past is only fair game when it’s a Republican. Mitt Romney teasing a student when he was a high school senior – unfit for the presidency. Obama doing drugs and Clinton abusing women in their younger days?  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ABOUT TIME: Mainstream Media Finally Takes Interest in Massive Discrepancy Between Hillary Clinton and the Benghazi Families.

WHO’S SHE KIDDING? Hillary Clinton Promises She’ll Investigate Area 51, UFOs.

Just another case of a Clinton covering up an affair.

WE SHOULD PROBABLY FIND A WAY TO BAN THIS, SINCE INCOME INEQUALITY IS OUR GREATEST PROBLEM, EXCEPT MAYBE FOR GLOBAL WARMING: The Marriages of Power Couples Reinforce Income Inequality. “These days, an investment banker may marry another investment banker rather than a high school sweetheart, or a lawyer will marry another lawyer, or a prestigious client, rather than a secretary. Whether measured in terms of income or education, there are more so-called power couples today than in the past, one manifestation of a phenomenon known as assortative mating, or more generally the pairing of like with like. These matches are great for those individuals who can build prosperous and happy family alliances, but they also propagate inequality across the generations. Of all the causes behind growing income inequality, in the longer run this development may prove one of the most significant and also one of the hardest to counter.”

Well, I’ve offered some reform proposals that would help.

21ST CENTURY WARFARE: Russia and China’s “Enhanced Human Operations” Terrify the Pentagon.

U.S. adversaries are already working on something America is reluctant to: Enhanced Human Operations (EHO).

EHOs entail modifying the body and the brain itself, creating what some have called “super soldiers.” At a press conference laying the Defense Department’s future research and development strategy on Monday, Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work warned that America would soon lose its military competitive advantage if it does not pursue technologies such employing artificial intelligence.

“Now our adversaries, quite frankly, are pursuing enhanced human operations, and it scares the crap out of us,” Work said.

Altering human beings from the inside to more effectively fight in combat presents ethical dilemmas for American scientists and military planners. Work says those ethical concerns typically don’t apply to authoritarian governments like Russia’s or China’s, but their lack of hesitation in developing EHOs may force America’s hand.

That’s usually how these things work.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Be A Moderately Successful Person.

“CAMPUS FREE SPEECH HAS BEEN IN TROUBLE FOR A LONG TIME”: I’m pleased to announce that the Cato Institute has just released my new essay as the lead essay in its January 2016 issue of Cato Unbound.

Here’s a little info about Cato Unbound, in case you aren’t familiar with it:

Each month, Cato Unbound will present an essay on a big-picture topic by an important thinker. The ideas in that essay will then be tested by the comments and criticism of equally eminent thinkers, each of whom will respond to the month’s lead essay and then to one another. The idea is to create a hub for wide-ranging, open-ended conversation, where ideas will be advanced, challenged, and refined in public view.

My essay gives a brief overview of the history of campus free speech over the last few decades and examines the recent cases of speech suppression on college campuses that have captured the media’s attention. It is live now on Cato Unbound’s website.

Replies from law professors Eric Posner and Catherine J. Ross are to come, and discussion will follow through the end of the month.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Man Infuriates Ex-Girlfriends By Putting Them All Into A Group Chat. Hilarity ensues, and one of them sets up a date with him.

JACOB SULLUM: The Absurdly Harsh Penalties That Sparked the Oregon Rancher Protest: A federal judge rejected mandatory minimums for Dwight and Steven Hammond as unconstitutional; an appeals court disagreed.

NOBODY RESPECTS A “MALE FEMINIST” ANYMORE, NOT EVEN FEMALE FEMINISTS: Planned Parenthood to male allies: You suck.

Actually, it’s probably especially female feminists.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: A Starfish-Killing, Artificially Intelligent Robot Is Set to Patrol the Great Barrier Reef.

GOOD: University of Missouri’s Efforts To Placate Protesters Have Created Backlash. “Kurt Bahr, a Republican state representative, says some of his constituents have told him that they regret attending Mizzou and do not want their children to go there, because they do not trust the new leadership of the university. One of his constituents even said that he feared for the safety of his daughter on campus thanks to the ‘instability’ there.”

Plus, this disturbing bit: “Yet the First Amendment does not give people a free pass to go round saying hateful things, points out Mr Henson.”

Um, yes, actually, it does. Perhaps lawprof Henson was misquoted by The Economist, which seems a bit weak on the First Amendment generally these days. But given what’s happened at Mizzou this year, it’s distressingly likely that he actually said this.

INSIDE THE GREAT BRITISH RECORDING STUDIOS: I have a review of veteran music journalist Howard Massey’s excellent, heavily-illustrated new book at the PJ Lifestyle blog.

(And no, that’s not my Telefunken U47 — but I wish it was!)

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Chicago Sings The Blue-Model Blues: Mayor Rahm Emanuel desperately seeks a way out of the government union trap.

IN THE MAIL: The Year’s Best Military SF and Space Opera (BAEN).

Plus, today only at Amazon: 40-70% off Lilly Pulitzer Women’s Clothing.

And, also today only: Perfect Fitness Ab Carver Pro and Ab Arch.

Plus: 77% off the Alien Anthology and Prometheus Bundle.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 970.

ERIC S. RAYMOND: Why I Joined The NRA.

After 20 years of evading joining the NRA, I finally did it last week.

I’ve never been a huge fan of the NRA because, despite the fearsome extremist image the mainstream media tries to hang on it, the NRA is actually rather squishy about gun rights. A major symptom of this is its lack of interest in pursuing Second Amendment court cases. Alan Gura, the civil-rights warrior who fought Heller vs. DC and several other key cases to a successful conclusion, was funded not by the NRA but by the Second Amendment Foundation. Also, in the past, the NRA has been too willing to acquiesce to unconstitutional legislation like the 1986 ban on sales of new automatic weapons to civilians.

So, you might well ask: why am I joining an organization I’m dubious about now, when the gun-rights cause seems to be winning? Popular support for Second Amendment rights is at record highs in the polls, a record seven states now have constitutional carry (no permit requirement), Texas just became the 45th state to legalize open carry last week…why am I joining an organization I’ve characterized as squishy?

I joined because the state-worshiping thugs on the other side are doubling down, and they still own most of the media and the machinery of the Federal government. After decades of pretending that they only wanted soi-disant “common-sense” legislation aimed at specific problems around the edges of gun policy, the Democratic Party is now openly talking of outright gun confiscation. The usual suspects in the national press are obediently amplifying their propaganda.

Some things you do for substantive effect – giving money to the SAF so Alan Gura can win another case is like that. Some things you do less for effect than as as a signal of pushback intended to create political momentum and demoralize the other side; joining the NRA is like that.

Yep. I went life-member this fall for the same reason.

SHOT: What grocery shopping in the USSR was like (video).

Chaser:

It was September 16, 1989 and Yeltsin, then newly elected to the new Soviet parliament and the Supreme Soviet, had just visited Johnson Space Center.

At JSC, Yeltsin visited mission control and a mock-up of a space station. According to Houston Chronicle reporter Stefanie Asin, it wasn’t all the screens, dials, and wonder at NASA that blew up his skirt, it was the unscheduled trip inside a nearby Randall’s location.

Yeltsin, then 58, “roamed the aisles of Randall’s nodding his head in amazement,” wrote Asin. He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, “there would be a revolution.”

* * * * * * *

“When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people,” Yeltsin wrote. “That such a potentially super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to think of it.”

—“When Boris Yeltsin went grocery shopping in Clear Lake,” the Houston Chronicle, April 7, 2014.

Incidentally, just compare the photos atop the two articles to understand Yeltsin’s amazement.

BILL IS BACK: What ‘buy one, get one free’ really means with the Clintons. “When Paula Jones, an Arkansas state worker, and Kathleen Willey, a Democratic volunteer at the White House, accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment, minions of the Clintons systematically set out to discredit them. Ditto with Juanita Broaddrick, the owner of an Arkansas nursing home, who said Bill Clinton raped her when he was Arkansas attorney general in 1978. Indeed, Errol Louis of the New York Daily News stunned a CNN interviewer last week by noting that 14 women have accused Bill Clinton of some form of sexual abuse. That’s not up to the numbers of women accusing comedian Bill Cosby of abuse, but Bill Clinton does get his own Wikipedia page listing his accusers. . . . To the extent that Hillary Clinton accuses Republicans of waging a ‘war on women,’ the history of her husband’s record with women will blunt the effectiveness of her attack. Voters may have extended sympathy to Hillary as a wronged spouse back in the 1990s, but the one-third of voters who don’t remember the impeachment of Bill Clinton well may be surprised to learn just how big Hillary’s role in discrediting Bill Clinton’s accusers has been.”