BROADWAY BABIES SAY IT’S MORNING IN AMERICA: Mark Steyn, who knows a thing or two about theater and stagecraft, reviews Donald Trump’s rally in Steyn’s backyard, the perilously blue (David Brooks dubbed it “latte town” 20 years ago) Burlington, Vermont:

Trump has no prompters. He walks out, pulls a couple of pieces of folded paper from his pocket, and then starts talking. Somewhere in there is the germ of a stump speech, but it would bore him to do the same poll-tested focus-grouped thing night after night, so he basically riffs on whatever’s on his mind. This can lead to some odd juxtapositions: One minute he’s talking about the Iran deal, the next he detours into how Macy’s stock is in the toilet since they dumped Trump ties. But in a strange way it all hangs together: It’s both a political speech, and a simultaneous running commentary on his own campaign.

It’s also hilarious. I’ve seen no end of really mediocre shows at the Flynn in the last quarter-century, and I would have to account this the best night’s entertainment I’ve had there with the exception of the great jazz singer Dianne Reeves a few years back. He’s way funnier than half the stand-up acts I’ve seen at the Juste pour rires comedy festival a couple of hours north in Montreal. And I can guarantee that he was funnier than any of the guys trying their hand at Trump Improv night at the Vermont Comedy Club a couple of blocks away. He has a natural comic timing.

Just to be non-partisan about this, the other day I was listening to Obama’s gun-control photo-op at the White House, and he thanked Gabby Giffords, by explaining that her husband Mark’s brother is an astronaut in outer space and he’d called just before Mark’s last meeting at the White House but, not wishing to disturb the President, Mark didn’t pick up. “Which made me feel kind of bad,” said the President. “That’s a long-distance call.” As I was driving along, I remember thinking how brilliantly Obama delivered that line. He’s not usually generous to others and he’s too thin-skinned to be self-deprecating with respect to himself, but, when he wants to get laughs, he knows how to do it. Trump’s is a different style: He’s looser, and more freewheeling. He’s not like Jeb – he doesn’t need writers, and scripted lines; he has a natural instinct for where the comedy lies. He has a zest for the comedy of life.

To be sure, some of the gags can be a little – what’s the word? – mean-spirited. The performance was interrupted by knots of protesters. “Throw ‘em out!” barked Trump, after the first chants broke out. The second time it happened, he watched one of the security guys carefully picking up the heckler’s coat. “Confiscate their coats,” deadpanned Trump. “It’s ten below zero outside.” Third time it happened, he extended his coat riff: “We’ll mail them back to them in a couple of weeks.” On MSNBC, they apparently had a discussion on how Trump could be so outrageous as to demand the confiscation of private property. But in showbusiness this is what is known as a “joke”. And in the theatre it lands: everyone’s laughing and having a ball.

Plus this:

The headline in Friday’s local paper read: “BURLINGTON TRUMPED”. That’s what his fans liked. In the liberal heart of a liberal state, the supporters streaming out of the Flynn Theatre, waving genially to the social-justice doofuses across the way, couldn’t recall a night like it. Not in Vermont. In New Hampshire, sure. In South Carolina. But not in Vermont. It felt good to be taking it to the other side’s turf. And they’d like a lot more of it between now and November.

As Kathy Shaidle writes in her link to Steyn’s article, “I’d add ‘read the whole thing’ but you won’t be able to stop anyhow…”

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? This Portland Hippie Is Planning a ‘Peace Concert’ in ISIS-Controlled Syria:

James Twyman, ‘Peace Troubadour,’ is embarking on ‘the most important and dangerous peace mission’ of his life—to the Israel-Syria border and beyond, wielding his classical guitar.

ISIS generally doesn’t respond well to music.

But that isn’t stopping James Twyman, an author and musician based in Portland, Oregon, from planning a trip to ISIS-held territory in Syria later this month to help bring peace to the region through the power of a musical-prayer concert.

“Performing the peace prayers in ISIS Controlled Syria will be the most important and dangerous peace mission of my life,” the self-described “Peace Troubadour” blogged last month.

“Every peace mission I’ve been on has been dangerous, but this journey is without question the most perilous, and in my opinion—the most important,” Twyman wrote. “People everywhere are concerned about the escalating violence in the Middle East, especially with the rise of ISIS, but they don’t feel empowered to be part of the solution. That is what we are about to change.”

And if Twyman survives, he’ll totally lock-up that gig as James Taylor’s opening act in Branson and the Paris city hall.

John Kerry and James Taylor fighting ISIS their own special way in Paris, January 16, 2015. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

THIS IS A GOOD IDEA: GM Asks Friendly Hackers to Report Its Cars’ Security Flaws.

AT AMAZON, New Year, New You.

Plus, outlet deals in Outdoor Gear.

MARK STEYN: Checkpoint Charlie Hebdo.

A year ago, after the Charlie Hebdo bloodbath, Angela Merkel was walking directly alongside President Hollande in that hideous memorial parade at which the world’s leaders proclaimed that no such bloody acts of violence would ever kill free speech. No, sir, when it comes to killing free speech, leave it to smooth house-trained western politicians.

And so it was that Chancellor Merkel chose to commemorate the first anniversary of the Charlie massacre by clamping down on freedom of expression for her own benighted subjects. As The Washington Post put it:

Germany springs to action over hate speech against migrants

Who doesn’t love Germans springing? Isn’t that in The Producers? Spring time for thought-crime in Germany… [UPDATE! Scaramouche completes the thought.]

The German state is apparently incapable of springing to action over organized mass sexual assault in at least five cities on a rape-out-the-old New Year’s Eve (oh, and Finland, too), but you’ve gotta be able to prioritize, right? Post reporter Anthony Faiola’s snide opening is a classic of the genre:

BERLIN — Donald Trump may be testing the boundaries of tolerance on the U.S. campaign trail. But here in Germany, the government is effectively enforcing civility, taking aim at a surge of hate speech against refugees and Muslims.

There’s actually nothing very “civil” about “enforcing civility”. Indeed, if civility (which derives from “civis” – citizen) has to be enforced, it is by definition no longer civility at all.

As a friend comments on Facebook: “This is why western countries are headed for one heck of a political debacle. We’ve developed political elites which routinely mishandle major crises, then try to silence anybody who notices. They act as if everything will work out if only we shut up about the problem. This is of course insanity. And we are all going to pay a severe price for it.”

Yes.

I HOPE THE RUSSIANS LOVE THEIR CHILDREN, TOO: Islamic State Fighter Executes His Own Mother for ‘Apostasy.’

MATTHEW CONTINETTI ON THE LAMEST DUCK:

We have entered a most dangerous period of the Obama presidency. It’s not just that every rogue actor from Kim and Putin and Castro to Maduro and Khamenei and Xi knows he has one last year to behave badly without fear of reprisal. It’s that the president and his team are isolated, aloof, detached from reality.

They think a climate deal is a rebuke to terrorism. They think the response to jihad in San Bernardino is to ‘close the gun-show loophole.’ They think a new communications strategy will convince the public that the war against ISIS is going well. I don’t question Obama’s sincerity. I question his sanity.

Read the whole thing.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Inexpensive transparent conductors from correlated metal nanostructures.

SUBPRIME 2.0: Fannie Mae Rolls Out Easy Mortgage, Catering To High-Risk Immigrants, Investor’s Business Daily notes:

The White House is rolling out a new low-income mortgage program that for the first time lets lenders qualify borrowers by counting income from nonborrowers living in the household. What could go wrong?

The HomeReady program is offered through Fannie Mae, which is now controlled by Obama’s old Congressional Black Caucus pal Mel Watt. It replaces the bankrupted mortgage giant’s notorious old subprime program, MyCommunityMortgage.

In case renaming the subprime product fails to fool anybody, the affordable-housing geniuses in the administration have re-termed “subprime,” a dirty word since the mortgage bust, “alternative.”

So HomeReady isn’t a subprime mortgage program, you see, it’s an “alternative” mortgage program.

But it might was well be called DefaultReady, because it is just as risky as the subprime junk Fannie was peddling on the eve of the crisis.

That’s going to end well — I wonder on who’s watch it will go off?

(Via Ace.)

HMM: How Training Without Helmets Could Reduce Head Injuries.

SO I GOT AROUND TO INSTALLING THE FIRE STICK TV WITH VOICE REMOTE and, as promised, here’s my review. First, installation and setup were super-easy. One minor disappointment: It’s only sort of a “stick.” It plugs into the HDMI port on your TV, but apparently the HDMI bus doesn’t really provide enough power so there’s an external power supply. You can use it without the external power, I gather, but it doesn’t work as well. There were complaints about wifi reception, but it worked fine for me — but it’s pretty close to the router. Picture was great, signing in to Netflix was easy, and everything worked fine.

The Alexa feature works fine, too. You push the voice button and ask it to do things — play music, tell you the weather, etc. — and it does them seamlessly. Not bad for the price.

HMM: Swedish pool makes splash with gender jacuzzi split.

The move follows reports by increasing numbers of women, who claim they have been groped by men as they relax in the giant bubble baths.

Sweden may have an international reputation for promoting gender equality, but the Eriksdalsbadet complex – home to one of the most popular public swimming pools in Sweden – is introducing segregated hot tubs for the first time.

The move follows reports by increasing numbers of women, who claim they have been groped by men as they relax in the giant bubble baths.

“We’ve got a lot of requests, especially from women, to split the jacuzzis,” Sara Franzén Shilwan, the head of unit at Eriksdalsbadet told The Local, but refused to reveal the number of complaints made.

However she confirmed that there had been a noticeable rise in November and December last year.

Why, whatever could have changed in Sweden that might account for this?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Escape Rooms—a Fun and Challenging Way to Maximize Your Entertainment Dollar.

ALWAYS A PLUS: Pyro Geniuses Make a Roman Candle Minigun; Surprisingly, they manage not to blow themselves up. The video is pretty cool, though it’s not actually a Gatling.

WELL, SOMEBODY HAS TO: The Times: Breitbart London Brought The Truth About Cologne To The Global Public.

DER SPIEGEL: Chaos and Violence: How New Year’s Eve in Cologne Has Changed Germany. “For some, the events finally bring to light what they have always been saying: that too many foreigners in the country bring too many problems along with them. For the others, that which happened is what they have been afraid of from the very beginning: that ugly images of ugly behavior by migrants would endanger what has been a generally positive mood in Germany with respect to the refugees.”

AN ARMY OF BILL CLINTONS:

And, like Bill, they have a bunch of Hillary-types trying to run cover and blame the accusers.

NEWS YOUR DM CAN USE. Practiced In The Arts of Deception: Moe Lane on the Art of Lying in a RPG.

BERNIE SANDERS: Bill Clinton’s behavior ‘totally disgraceful and unacceptable.’

What he doesn’t mention is that Hillary’s behavior in attacking Bill’s accusers was just as bad.

IN THE MAIL: From Douglas E. Richards, Split Second.

Plus, today only at Amazon: Bestselling magazine subscriptions for $5.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 975.

WEENIES IN THE FIRE: 40 years ago, Tom Wolfe was asked by his interviewer, “Why do your critics despise you so? What have you done to merit such contempt?” He replied:

Intellectuals aren’t used to being written about. When they aren’t taken seriously and become part of the human comedy, they have a tendency to squeal like weenies over an open fire.

Or in the case of the socialist justice warriors, they first scream like weenies over an open fire, and then they go running en masse to the playground safety monitor:

However, “Twitter Unverifies Outspoken Conservative Journalist. It’s Unlikely It Ever Expected This Response in Return.”

FISH DON’T KNOW THEY’RE WET: Academics Are So Lefty They Don’t Even See It, Megan McArdle writes.

How bad is it? “University of Missouri Faculty Declare Support for ‘Muscle,’” Jonathan Last adds:

Note that last bit about freedom of speech and the First Amendment. When the left wants to build “safe spaces” and stamp out “hate speech,” the First Amendment is an outmoded, retrograde element that needs to be bent into submission. Last fall, for instance, Brenda Smith-Lezama, the vice president of Mizzou’s student body, went on MSNBC to defend Click by explaining that, “I personally am tired of hearing that First Amendment rights protect students when they are creating a hostile and unsafe learning environment for myself and for other students here.”

When denying the First Amendment rights of the student journalist Click targeted for muscle didn’t work, the faculty decided to try to wrap the First Amendment around Click herself.

It all sounds like nonsense until you remember this: Free speech, hate speech, whatever. Nobody on the left actually cares about principle here. It’s all about power.

Indeed.™ — or at the very least, attempting to survive the apocalypse.

THE GODS OF THE COPYBOOK HEADINGS SMILE: In Germany, Reality Sets In.

In 2015, as more than a million refugees and migrants streamed into Germany, many pundits and industry leaders initially praised Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “welcome policy” as not only being humane but also economically savvy. But now, as Politico reports, a new reality appears to be setting in as the German analysts have a closer look at just who the migrants are. The official government line continues to be that migrants could take some of the unoccupied jobs caused by Germany’s declining labor force (there are as many as one million such jobs). But the director of the Munich-based Ifo Center for the Economics of Education is quoted in the story that “[f]rom everything we know so far, it seems that the majority of refugees would first need extensive training and even then it’s far from certain that it would work out.”

The Politico story also notes that, according to the OECD, on average, an eighth-grader in pre-war Syria had a similar level of education to a third-grade student in Germany. And an official from the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce is quoted as saying, “[s]omeone who comes from Eritrea and says he was an electrician might have repaired a radio or laid a cable there, but he might have never seen a fuse box, as we use it in Germany.”

Plus: “Only a tiny percentage of these asylum seekers are well enough educated to hold down a middle-class enabling professional job in an economy like Germany’s.”

Then there are the cultural differences, which dwarf the educational shortfall.

POLITICO’S CARTOONIST DRAWS HORNS ON BLACK AND LATINO CANDIDATES.

Related: Politico goes with “GOP slams” angle to downplay Hillary ordering aide to strip classified markings off email.

I guess they didn’t want to recycle their “badass” description once again.

AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.

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Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

And, Today’s Featured Digital Deal. The deals are brand new every day, so browse and save!

FASTER, PLEASE: It’s not a question of if North Korea will collapse, but when.

SAN FRANCISCO CRIME BOSS RAYMOND ‘SHRIMP BOY’ CHOW FOUND GUILTY ON 162 COUNTS: “After a five-year undercover operation, Chow was arrested by the FBI in March 2014 along with a former California state senator, Leland Yee. Chow and Yee were both implicated in a racketeering operation, and Chow trafficked in drugs, weapons and stolen goods along with laundering more than $2 million, according to a federal prosecutor.”

Curiously, the Newsweek/SF Weekly article omits Yee’s party affiliation. Wonder why?

Earlier: Whatever happened to Leland Yee? Oh. He’s going to prison.

THE REPUBLICAN ESTABLISHMENT IS ROOTING FOR DONALD TRUMP OVER TED CRUZ, Erick Erickson posits:

The truth is this: the establishment wing of the Republican Party would rather Hillary Clinton win than Ted Cruz win. If Ted Cruz wins, a good number of the establishment staff would be on the unemployment line, shut out of jobs in the White House that they covet.

Ted Cruz could use this all in an advertising campaign. The establishment hates him so much they’re rooting for Trump and Hillary. The very guys who lament that the Trump nomination would be the death of the GOP, would rather see Trump win Iowa than Cruz.

However, as with Obama in 2012, Trump gets results!

Eleanor Darragh, mother of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), was born in Delaware on Nov. 23, 1934, establishing her citizenship by birth — and, according to U.S. law, that of her son, even though he was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, on Dec. 22, 1970.

The Cruz for President campaign provided Breitbart News exclusively with the birth certificate.

As Breitbart’s John Nolte adds, best that Cruz gets this issue tamped down now, lest Hillary, the original Obama birther and her operatives with bylines in the drive-by media and assault him with a standard-issue DNC-MSM October “surprise,” should he get the nomination:

As “stupid” as this issue may be for [Mark] Levin, do we want to litigate it in front of the American people today or three weeks before the general election, when Cruz is either our presidential or vice-presidential nominee? Because you have to be wearing blinders to believe that will not happen.

Read for numerous examples of leftwing coordinate late hits, the sort of thing that each GOP candidate and his advisors should start prepping for the moment it appears likely he’ll be the nominee, if not sooner.

ON GUNS, OBAMA AND HILLARY ARE FORGAINST THEM. Bernie Sanders reminds voters of Hillary Clinton’s fake pro-gun past and it’s brutal:

Incidentally, the above Hillary mailer was created before this quote from Obama in 2008 on guns:

Words — just words, to coin a phrase.

Related: Kevin D. Williamson on how Obama using the NRA as the equivalent of how Bill Clinton used Newt Gingrich as his doppelganger 20 years ago.

WHOA: HILLARY E-MAIL INSTRUCTS AIDE TO TRANSMIT CLASSIFIED DATA WITHOUT MARKINGS: “Ordering the headings stripped, and Sullivan’s apparent reluctance to work around the secure fax system, makes it all but certain that the material was classified at some level — and Hillary knew it.”

CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL ON INCENDIARY CORRECTNESS:

People who have so far been patient with Merkel are beginning to worry that the crazy scenes in front of the Cologne cathedral will soon be repeated countrywide. Ten percent now tell pollsters that they would vote for the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party if elections were held today.

It is dangerous to constrict the range of things voters can say about government policies, especially when those policies are — like Merkel’s migration policy — irregular, and likely to change the country at its core.

No doubt there is a danger of incendiary reactions when people hear of mobs of Muslim foreigners groping young women in front of the country’s most recognizable Christian landmark. But any government attempt to minimize or ignore such events would be a terrible mistake. It would be more likely to whip tempers up than to calm them down.

Read the whole thing.

Speaking of minimizing the Islamic immigrant assault on Cologne’s women, “Germany’s largest TV station is apologizing for not reporting the mass sexual assaults on women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve,” Betsy Newmark writes. “It is not enough to apologize. They should have to answer why they didn’t run the story and if anyone from either the local or national government tried to keep them from reporting on the story. More than 100 women reported that they had been sexually assaulted and two said they had been raped.”

Later her in post, Betsy adds, “The authorities don’t seem to have much confidence that they can successfully prosecute anyone” involved in the assault.

If anything can make this disaster even worse, that would do it.

HBO* PREPS DOCUDRAMA ON ANITA HILL: “A far more timely tale of sexual harassment could, in theory, catch HBO’s eye. It involves former President Bill Clinton, currently stumping for his wife, Hillary Clinton. Not only was he able to dodge the fallout from numerous accusations but his team savaged the women involved in these cases.”

* The entertainment wing of Time-Warner-CNN, which brought you Thursday’s anti-Second Amendment Obama infomercial, and whose “news” anchors dub the NRA a “terrorist organization.”

TRIGGER WARNING: ISLAMOPHOBIA AHEAD. In Your Heart, You Know He’s Right: Trump and Muslim Immigration, as explored by Roger Simon.

REFUGEES: Nothing To Worry About!

BERNIE SANDERS ACOLYTES HAVE FOUND A NEW PASTIME — DISRUPTING DONALD TRUMP CAMPAIGN EVENTS:

The radicals who gave us the “Occupy Wall Street” movement have mostly graduated and gone on to “you want fries with that?” kinds of jobs. The “Black Lives Matter” movement has not fully petered out but it now includes in its agenda regular assaults on all of the presidential campaigns.

And now, many of our upper crust university students who may not be specifically connected to the Black Lives Matter protesters and who are, and who always will be, driven by existential ennui (cf. F. Nietzsche, the will to power) have decided once again to re-imagine “democracy” to mean something like this.

They attend public events where literally thousands of people have come to hear what one man in particular has to say about the issues of the day and, at key, coordinated moments in the speech, they stand up and start shouting about what they themselves think of those issues and what they think of the man who is talking.

And Trump makes them look like fools: “Trump, Annoyed by Frequent Coordinated Disruptions at Burlington, Vermont Rally, Tells Guards to Turn One Disruptor Out Into the Ten Degree Chill and ‘Confiscate His Coat.’”

Brilliantly played.

Related: Trump Is Winning the War on Political Correctness.

JONAH GOLDBERG: THE BILL COMES DUE ON THAT ’90s SHOW:

Fast forward to two weeks ago. Hillary is as close as she’s ever been to finally fulfilling her destiny. Everyone — at least everyone who matters — is finally “Ready for Hillary.” The tireless effort by her minions to make Bill’s behavior a trivial and private issue seemed to have paid off. Bill is popular, very popular. Despite the fact that pretty much no one thinks he mended his ways after he left office, all of the sophisticated people think criticizing his “personal” behavior is boorish and deranged. At the same time, feminists have finally completed their restoration project. The last stones have been mounted atop the wall of Zero Tolerance 2.0.

And then, as Jeffrey Epstein’s flight attendant once said, Bill Clinton comes out of nowhere to bite her on the ass.

Whereas Bill was supposed to be Hillary’s “not-so secret weapon,” he’s now a liability. It’s schadenfreudetastic to watch liberals forced to choose between the Scylla of the Hillary campaign and the Charybdis of the feminist project.

Of course, liberals are mad at#…#conservatives (and Donald Trump) for pointing it out. I particularly love the subhead on this Slate piece. “The right hopes to turn the feminist consensus on rape against the Clintons.” Ah yes, those terrible conservatives, how dare they take feminists seriously!

Read the whole thing.

TEN YEARS LATER, ESPN To Air Documentary On Duke Lacrosse Rape Hoax:

It has been nearly 10 years since a group of Duke lacrosse players hosted a party that would end up getting them accused of gang-raping a stripper. On the 10th anniversary, ESPN will air a documentary about the case.

The accusation centered around Crystal Mangum, who in a bid to avoid being detained for intoxication, told police that members of the Duke lacrosse team had raped her at a party. Her accusations snowballed, and with his election coming up, District Attorney Mike Nifong pressured her to identify the alleged rapists. One of the men she identified wasn’t even at the party at the time the rape was supposed to have occurred. Mangum’s story also changed several times. (She was never punished for her false accusation, although later she was convicted of a separate murder and is currently in prison.)

But the case went forward anyway. Duke University administrators and professors maligned the lacrosse players as racists and rapists, since Mangum is African-American. The lacrosse season was cancelled, and the team’s coach was forced to resign before the students even had their day in court.

The travesty of the case eventually led to Nifong’s disbarment for “dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation.” The accused students sued, but as is often the case for falsely accused young men, they received no monetary compensation.

Two writers who helped expose the fraud were history professor K.C. Johnson and Stuart Taylor, who co-wrote a book on the case. Johnson was interviewed for the ESPN documentary, and told the Washington Examiner that to this day, he is still amazed by the “utter lack of accountability.”

“Ten years out, we as a society have learned nothing about the importance of due process in sexual assault allegations. (Indeed, the situation now is much worse than it was in 2006),” Johnson wrote in an email. “The leadership at Duke that so botched the case remains in place; the faculty who rushed to judgment remain firmly entrenched; and the key figures in the media, especially the New York Times, that so badly failed in covering Duke continue to fail in covering this issue.”

Taylor, too, brought up the lack of accountability for anyone involved in the case (with the exception of Nifong), and explained how the school and the media worked to frame these students even as the case began to fall apart.

It’s as if universities are fomenting — quite deliberately — hostile educational environments for male students.

THE… DOG:  I know many of us have wondered who was in charge of the Obama administration, but the dog seems rather a long shot.  Not impossible, mind, but unlikely.  And yet, he was the object of this plot. Man in alleged plot to kidnap Obama’s dog arrested on weapons charge.

AND THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE: Obama DIA Head Flynn: ‘Not Proud’ Of Refugee Screening Process, People In System ‘Frustrated’ With Limitations.

DUH: Ancient Romans Were Riddled With Parasites, Despite Sanitation Innovations.

FROM MY FRIEND AMANDA S. GREEN: Nocturnal Challenge (Nocturnal Lives Book 4).

INDEED: We won’t see a Slutwalk in Cologne anytime soon.

A LIVER FOR A HEART: I love love love…

HAVE I MENTIONED MY SHOCKED FACE? Hillary Clinton is running the most sexist campaign ever.

FROM MY FRIEND JEFF DUNTEMANN: The Cunning Blood.

PERHAPS THEY SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED TO PULL UP THEIR PANTS INSTEAD: U California System Encouraging Students to Formally Report ‘Unwanted Jokes’.

AT THIS TIME, IN THIS PLACE: This could backfire spectacularly.  Hint, they call it The Miracle In Philadelphia, not “the perfectly ordinary occurrence in Philadelphia”. Texas Governor Greg Abbott Calls for Convention of the States to Reclaim Power Wrongfully Assumed by Federal Government.

LEADING FROM AN ENTIRELY IMAGINARY POSITION: A Most Unserious War.

NEW FROM MY FRIEND: And comrade-at-arms Dave Freer Changeling’s Island.

WILL THE BURNT FOOL’S BANDAGED FINGER GO WABBLING BACK TO THE FIRE? Will Republicans Blow It?

IF WE WERE OCCUPIED BY AN ENEMY: Would they do anything different? Is the Left Even on America’s Side Anymore?

MIDNIGHT, THE STARS, AND YOU: Exploring the Forgotten Art Deco Artifacts of the New Yorker Hotel.

I’m certain my late father caught a few big bands there during his youth.

VIDEO METAPHOR ALERT:

Seems to sum up the new year so far rather well. Or perhaps the last seven. (Underpass is in Durham, NC, in case you’re wondering.)

(Via Terry Teachout.)

DON SURBER: If this is what they do, who needs the Republican Party? “Noonan is most famous for writing the six words that destroyed the first Bush presidency: ‘Read my lips: no new taxes.’ It was a filthy, outrageous lie by one of Our Betters. Bush never bought into Reaganism, The first Bush faked it. He deserved the humiliation in 1992. Noonan gets this wrong, too. It is all about the Republican Establishment. Americans sent them to do a job. They didn’t.”

WHEN NARRATIVES FAIL: France suffered more casualties (murders and injuries) from mass public shootings in 2015 than the US has suffered during Obama’s entire presidency.

Impossible. Obama says the US is uniquely evil. Does France even have an NRA chapter?

WELL, THAT’S MEAN: Apple Blocked Volkswagen from Demonstrating Wireless CarPlay at CES.

I HEAR THAT 13 HOURS IS GOOD: Hillary Clinton’s nightmare: Hollywood tale brings Benghazi back to life.

Related: Ironic Twist For Hillary Clinton.

WHY RED WINE IS PROBABLY BETTER FOR YOU THAN GRAPE JUICE.

TWITTER: WE WILL UNVERIFY YOU FOR THOUGHTCRIME:

Just pathetic.

Related: We’re All Trapped In The Twitter Cave.

UPDATE: Fans begin #JeSuisMilo solidarity movement after Twitter unverifies @Nero.

(Headline via Twitter user “Clarence Whorley”)

CHARLES HILL: The End Of Modernity. “The era called ‘modern’ inexorably began to come to its end when, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, a concatenation of foretold events unraveled the so-called modern world order. As always, the foreordained collapse was generated from internal weakness. We need to look no further than Europe to understand why.”

AT AMAZON, coupons galore in Patio, Lawn & Garden.

ACTUALLY, I THINK THEY ASPIRE TO BE THE OPPRESSOR: Annika Hernroth-Rothstein: Feminists Must Identify Their True Oppressor.

Just before winter break, my two sons, 8 and 13, started sitting down to pee. This happened out of nowhere, a sudden absurdity, and when I asked them why, their reply was that their school had told them that this was a matter of respect for themselves and their surroundings.

I assumed this was another one of those childhood misunderstandings, so at drop-off the next day I took a few minutes to speak to the teachers and straighten the whole thing out, forgetting for a minute that in this day and age reality is far stranger than fiction. . . .

Sweden has gotten a reputation for being a feminist state, a progressive haven of sorts where gender is fought as if it were an enemy battalion. This is supposed to lead to equality, but the feminist hegemony seems to practice willful forgetfulness when it comes to the plight of actual women in actual peril at the end of the subway line where they dare not go.

In the past years the demography in this country has changed dramatically, and it has brought with it a society within the society, with its own rules and laws, enforced by young Muslim men who have taken it upon themselves to police the banlieues and control the women who live there. These women have raised their voices at great personal risk, asking for help from the liberal society and the feminists whose chants are usually so proud and so loud. But there is no aid for the aching, for the feminists know that actual patriarchy comes with actual danger and they are unwilling to pay that price.

I’m sure that raising a generation of sitzpinklers is the solution.

ROAD AND TRACK: Why a CVT Is Basically the Perfect Transmission: A dual-clutch gearbox is an automatic, and it isn’t even the best one. I actually really like the CVT on my Lexus and Toyota hybrids.

TODAY’S BEEN A VERY BAD DAY FOR THE LEFT’S PREFERRED NARRATIVES.

● Shot: “For the faithful, it was not a good day. The left’s preferred narratives about voters, about gun violence, about radical Islam, and about Hillary Clinton’s culpability in potentially indictable offenses were all shaken to their very foundations. But that’s the thing about faith: it’s remarkably resilient. They probably didn’t even notice.”

● Chaser: Kerry Marks Terrorism Anniversary Without Mentioning Terrorism.

EL CHAPO CAUGHT*

*(for now).

GOP DEBATES ON CNN CRUSH OBAMA’S TOWN HALL RATINGS: “The President’s two hour-long appearance with Anderson Cooper on Thursday managed 2.4 million viewers. In comparison, a staggering 23.1 million people tuned in for CNN’s GOP debate in September.”

YOUR MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORS: With so little going on in the world today, the New York Times amuses itself by obsessing over Marco Rubio’s boots.

CHECK OUT THE NEW BOOK Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity: Confronting the Fear of Knowledge about threats to free speech on campus in the UK and beyond. And for a behind the scenes look at it, here is my interview with the author, Joanna Williams:

LIFE IN THE OBAMA ERA: US student visa program’s ‘many vulnerabilities’ raise spying, terror fears.

In an earlier, more confident era, we assumed that to know us was to love us, so that exposure of foreign students to America could only help. This was never actually true, but now, alas, we’ve had our noses rubbed in that.

A BOY AND HIS GUN: “Over Christmas break I took Number One Son shooting and learned something wonderful about him,” Steve Green writes.

Read the whole thing.

TERROR ARRESTS IN SACRAMENTO AND HOUSTON NAB TWO WHO ENTERED US AS IRAQI REFUGEES:

U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced in a statement Thursday that Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, 23, of Sacramento, a Palestinian born in Iraq, was arrested on charges that he allegedly traveled to Syria in 2013 to fight with various terrorist organizations, including Ansar al-Islam. He returned to the United States in 2014.

Naturally, the MSM is downplaying the Syrian connection, Ace writes. “It couldn’t have anything to do with Obama’s political demand that we allow in 10,000 fabulously vetted Syrian refugees, could it?”

Meanwhile, the Atlantic goes with the “Republicans pounced” angle to downplay the news.

FROM THE HOME OFFICE IN AL-RAQQAH, SYRIA: Cologne Rapefest: The Top Five Best Liberal Excuses.

A POTEMKIN PRESIDENCY: How The Washington Post contributed to mythology of Obama greatness.

PHILLY TERROR SUSPECT PLED DOWN AN ILLEGAL GUN CHARGE IN 2012 AND DID NO TIME. “After last night’s absurd Obama townhall, this should be the top story in America today.” Plus this: “The shooter in the attack is seen wearing Muslim-style garb – a long white robe over dark pants – on surveillance video, according to police sources, but officials have not said if they believe religion was a factor,” despite suspect saying he did shooting in the name of Islam and pledging to ISIS.

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TO SAVE EUROPE, STOP ALL ‘MIGRANTS,’ SAYS HUNGARY’S PRIME MINISTER.

Related: Report: Syrian ‘Refugees’ Among New Year’s Eve Sexual Assaulters in Cologne.

And as Glenn noted yesterday, “HOW FAR HAS TRUMP MOVED THE OVERTON WINDOW? THIS FAR: Tom Friedman calls for ‘controlling low-skilled immigration.’”

Of course, it’s too late for Europe, but as Peggy Noonan writes today, “Trump touched an important nerve in opposing the political correctness that has angered the American people for a quarter century. He changed the debate when he asked for a pause in Muslim immigration until America ‘can figure out what’s going on.’ In the age of terror, that looked suspiciously like common sense. Americans do not want America to become what Europe is becoming.”

As Milton Friedman once said, “It’s nice to elect the right people, but that’s not the way you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.”

U.S. SHIPS HELLFIRE MISSILE TO CUBA:

• a Hellfire missile
• shipped via commercial carrier to Europe
• in early 2014
• goes missing
• and months later, in June, “Lockheed Martin officials realized the missile was missing”
• but is likely in Cuba
• while the Obama administration is finalizing its easement of relations with the Communist dictatorship
• and the White House carried on with the negotiations.

Read the whole thing.

BREAKING: Philadelphia Police Officer Ambushed By Terrorist Who Says He Did it For Islam, Pledged to ISIS.

Related: “Mayor Jim Kenney wasted no time in declaring that ‘there are too many guns on the streets,’ but he might want to take that up with law enforcement. It turns out that the gun used in the shooting was, er …’In a press conference, Commissioner Ross said the gun used in the attack was a stolen police firearm.’”

More: Obama’s streak of perfect timing rolls on:

JASON RILEY: When Black Lives Mattered: To other blacks, that is.

It’s a review of Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment.

NEW EMAIL SHOWS HILLARY EVADED NATIONAL SECURITY MEASURES: Chuck Ross at the Daily Caller has a story today revealing that while Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton instructed her top advisor to send potentially sensitive national security information to her via a nonsecure method:

On June 16, 2011, Hillary Clinton’s top foreign policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, was having trouble sending his boss a list of talking points that contained sensitive — and possibly classified — information. Sullivan told Clinton there were issues “sending secure fax,” an email released by the State Department early Friday shows.

So Clinton offered a shocking solution: remove the markings identifying the information as sensitive and send it by regular fax.

“Turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure,” Clinton instructed Sullivan. . . .

It is possible that the talking points Sullivan intended to send Clinton did not contain classified information. A document being sent via a secure method does not necessarily indicate that information contained in it is classified. But Clinton hadn’t seen the talking points at that point, and likely would not have known whether they contained classified information.

By instructing Sullivan to remove markings noting the sensitive nature of the talking points, Clinton appears to have invited her aide to violate the the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual, and possibly, federal law.

The legality of Clinton’s command would likely depend on whether Sullivan followed through with his boss’ instruction. A State Department official told The Daily Caller that there is no indication that the stripped talking points were emailed to Clinton.

The official also declined to “speculate” on whether the talking points contained classified information. . . .

[T]he email is troubling because it is the first to show Clinton displaying her willingness to skirt State Department protocol — and federal law, potentially — regarding the handling of sensitive information on her personal email account.

Drip, drip, drip.

Is this the kind of person you’d trust as Commander-in-Chief? During her tenure as Secretary of State, Clinton’s cavalier disregard for simple measures designed to protect our country’s national security is breathtaking. If she were a Republican, the mainstream media would have (appropriately) disgraced and branded her as a traitor by now.

SPEAKING OF SMALL GENERATORS, I gave one to my sister for Christmas — I believe it was this model under a different brand — for her horse trailer/RV and she reports that it runs the air conditioner and refrigerator just fine. Runs on propane, which is a lot safer and easier to store.

HOW TO GET AN ENTREPRENEURIAL HERO TO THE BIG SCREEN: Make her a woman. My latest column for Bloomberg View looks at the new movie Joy.

In the movies, an entrepreneur is more likely to be a super-villain, or at the very least a mobster, than someone who builds a significant enterprise without getting anyone killed. Even the non-murderers are miserable jerks. Take Aaron Sorkin’s angry, status-obsessed Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network” or his Steve Jobs in the abysmal recent movie by that name.

So it might be a surprise to discover a big-budget, award-friendly new film telling a tale of entrepreneurial ingenuity where the protagonist is heroic and the ending is happy. Except that in this case the entrepreneur is a woman. Her gender makes self-assertion, ambition, and even a touch of ruthlessness unconventional and therefore culturally acceptable….

But “Joy” is more than a wholesome paean to girl power. It’s a portrait of entrepreneurial gumption, with a protagonist whose journey is as relevant to men as to women. On her way to fame and fortune, Joy must reawaken the creative spark dampened by her dysfunctional family, solve practical business problems of financing and distribution, confront her self-doubts, find her persuasive sales voice and subdue adversaries who take advantage of her inexperience and trust. These aren’t uniquely female challenges.

With an appearance by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who gives the movie three hearts. Read the whole thing here.

JONAH GOLDBERG: Obama — and FDR — set precedent for Trump’s one-man rule. Choose the form of your Destructor.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PEOPLE DECIDE THE AUTHORITIES CAN’T — OR WON’T — DO THEIR JOBS: German vigilante group vows to protect women from migrant attackers as 34 suspects are arrested – including three for gang-raping two teenagers. “Thousands have pledged their support to a German vigilante group which has vowed to protect women from migrants in the wake of the New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne. . . . After the group was launched, and gained thousands of followers overnight, a Dusseldorf police spokesman told local media that German police is responsible for public security. He said the police had no problem with people acting bravely in the face of crime but they were against ‘self proclaimed vigilantes’.” Well, then do your job, buddy.

Related: Unprecedented sex harassment in Helsinki at New Year, Finnish police report; Finnish police ‘tipped off’ about plans by groups of asylum seekers to sexually harass women. “’This phenomenon is new in Finnish sexual crime history,’ Ilkka Koskimaki, the deputy chief of police in Helsinki, told the Telegraph. ‘We have never before had this kind of sexual harrassment happening at New Year’s Eve.’”

The Finnish police appear to have acted more aggressively, though.

BUT WAIT, OBAMA SAID NO OTHER COUNTRY HAS THESE PROBLEMS: US becoming safer compared to Europe in both fatalities and frequency of Mass Public Shootings: US Now ranks 11th in fatalities and 12th in frequency.

IT’S LIKE THEY’RE HOLDING SOMETHING BACK: State Department Misses Second Clinton E-mail Deadline in a Week.

LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: Sources: Suspect Confesses To Shooting Officer, Says He Did It In the Name Of Islam.

WELL, THIS IS NEWS: Bombshell: In Email, Hillary Ordered Aide to Strip Classified Marking and Send Sensitive Material.

IN THE MAIL: From David McCullough, The Wright Brothers.

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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 974.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD HARDEST HIT: Getting the Pill Without a Doctor: The Revolution Begins.

As Virginia Postrel has written, requiting women to get a prescription for hormonal birth control means that some of them will end up resorting to other forms of birth control they don’t prefer, because they forgot to get to the doctor before the prescription ran out.

That may not mean a whole lot of extra unintended pregnancies or births. (Used correctly, over-the-counter methods like condoms are pretty effective, especially when a backup like the morning-after pill is available.) But “does it prevent a lot of extra unintended births” is far too narrow a question for policy makers to ask. The Soviet system, in which birth control was unavailable but abortions were extremely common, prevented a lot of unintended births. It was still a lousy system.

Absent a compelling reason that women need to see a doctor, it should be as easy as possible for them to get any form of birth control they might like to have. Obviously, this is not practically feasible in every case. We are not going to see at-home IUD insertions any time soon. But it should include oral contraceptives, some of the most extensively studied medications of all time.

Oregon now requires patients to fill out a short questionnaire and have their blood pressure checked in order to get a prescription from a pharmacist, which seems like a reasonable enough procedure to weed out the small number of women who really shouldn’t take it. Though even that may go too far.

I’m conflicted. On the one hand, I think that the dangers of hormonal birth control are substantially underestimated. On the other, I think that the vast majority of prescriptions for same are nothing more than a toll charged by doctors, with no significant actual medical oversight involved.

BECAUSE WE HAVE A STRONG WORK ETHIC, A REMNANT OF THE TIME WHEN OUR SYSTEM REWARDED HARD WORK: Why Do Americans Work So Hard? Though to my observation, that seems to be fraying in the late-Obama era.

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JOE BIDEN HARDEST HIT: Hugs, neck rubs could be ‘sexual battery,’ says university.

Are you a hugger? Do you sometimes give neck rubs to friends or acquaintances just out of friendliness? Well now you could be accused for sexual battery and expelled at East Carolina University.

All it takes is for one person who is scared from the sexual assault portion of orientation or who has friends with certain ideologies to ruin one’s life at ECU, thanks to a new policy recently adopted for the new semester going forward. . . .

Any contact, “however slight,” is considered sexual battery. Of course, it’s the accuser who decides whether it is sexual battery, and with the current pressure on colleges and universities to capitulate to accusers in the name of political correctness, any friendly contact is subject to an investigation.

Today’s university administrations — like the Victorians, but without their positive attributes.

Meanwhile, on Biden: Ouch.

I mean, even Talking Points Memo is asking: Why Does Creepy Uncle Joe Biden Get A Pass From Liberals?

THOMAS SOWELL ON GUNS AND THE SHOWMAN-IN-CHIEF.

Strike a pose; there’s nothing to it.

LYING LIAR BUSTED FOR LYING: Watchdog faults State on Clinton emails.

The State Department has been providing “inaccurate and incomplete” responses to requests for the emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a watchdog says in a new report released Thursday.

The 29-page inspector general (IG) report says the leadership of the State Department “has not played a meaningful role in overseeing or reviewing the quality” of the responses to requests for documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

As a result, requests from organizations such as The Associated Press, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Judicial Watch have been mishandled in various ways, the IG said.

In one example, CREW asked for records in 2012 that would show the number of email accounts held by then-Secretary Clinton. While senior staffers at the department regularly corresponded with her on her private account and her chief of staff was made aware of the request, the State Department replied that there were “no records responsive” to the query.

At other times, the IG said, media organizations have put in nearly identical requests for documents, only to receive different sets of records in response.

In 2015, Clinton’s use of a private email server emerged as a flashpoint in the presidential race, with Republicans using it to attack her candidacy.

Those dastardly Republicans, “using” grossly dishonest behavior to “attack” poor Hillary.

JEB BUSH TO EARN COVETED BURMA-SHAVE ENDORSEMENT: Team Jeb! Battles Trump’s Social Media Prowess with Cutting Edge Billboard Strategy.

Related: “This is what it’s come to. This is the whole Jeb campaign in one image — an antiquated advertising platform, a pitifully weak jab at the bully Trump, an overreliance on the fading authority of the Bush brand, and a bizarre blindness to how this stuff looks to other people…the saddest political ad ever.”

HEADLINES FROM 1942, AS EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: David P. Goldman asks, “Why Does Germany Condone Mass Rape?”

CHANGE: Slovakia vows to refuse entry to Muslim migrants. “Responding to the sexual assaults in Cologne and Hamburg, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has reiterated his aim to allow no Muslims into the country. According to reports, some of the attackers were refugees.”

Related: Reports: Cologne NYE assaulters were largely asylum seekers.