NOW SHE’S SUING: Christian worker loses her job after being ‘targeted’ by Islamic extremists. “She claims that she was told that she would go to Hell for her religion, that Jews were responsible for the September 11th terror attacks, and that a friend was reduced to tears having been bullied for wearing a cross.” If you take all this anti-racism/anti-hate stuff seriously, the Islamists will be highly vulnerable. If, on the other hand, the authorities decide they don’t really mean it, well, let’s make that clear.

As a great man said, punch back twice as hard!

INSTAPUNDIT READER T. L. JAMES asks me to plug his new science fiction novel. Done!

BLUE COLLAR PHILOSOPHY: Obama’s Green Jobs Failure. “Not only is President Obama’s push for green jobs an abysmal failure, he is attacking the one area that has the potential to create plenty of jobs.”

HERSCHEL SMITH PAINTS AN UGLY PICTURE of the border.

DAN MITCHELL: European Economic Crisis Highlights an Increasingly Important Reason to Oppose Gun Control.

About a year ago, I spoke at a conference in Europe that attracted a lot of very rich people from all over the continent, as well as a lot of people who manage money for high-net-worth individuals.

What made this conference remarkable was not the presentations, though they were generally quite interesting. The stunning part of the conference was learning – as part of casual conversation during breaks, meals, and other socializing time – how many rich people are planning for the eventual collapse of European society.

Not stagnation. Not gradual decline. Collapse.

As in riots, social disarray, plundering, and chaos. A non-trivial number of these people think the rioting in places such as Greece and England is just the tip of the iceberg, and they have plans – if bad things begin to happen – to escape to jurisdictions ranging from Australia to Costa Rica (several of them remarked that they no longer see the U.S. as a good long-run refuge).

Don’t kid yourself. If the U.S. is bad, Costa Rica won’t be good. Plus, this question: “Here’s a thought experiment to drive the point home. If Europe does collapse, which people do you think will be in better shape to preserve civilization, the well-armed Swiss or the disarmed Brits?”

CLAUDIA ROSETT: CONFESSIONS OF A LIGHT-BULB ADDICT:

Please don’t think this is easy for me. I’m one of those crazed Americans who can’t walk into Home Depot, Target or my local grocery store right now without wanting to grab one of those king-sized shopping carts and stuff it to the gunwales with 100-watt incandescent lightbulbs.

Maybe it’s the sheer thrill of buying bulbs that in just over a month, as of Jan. 1, 2012, will be banned for sale in America. What fun, in this incandescent twilight, to acquire legally what the federal government will soon treat as contraband, should it appear in any American marketplace. Or maybe it’s that gut sense that with the dollar teetering toward an abyss of unfathomable and inflationary government spending, those beloved old 100 watt bulbs will at least provide a decent store of value, even if all I do is use them to read by for the rest of my life — meticulously taking care never to violate federal law by offering even a single bulb for sale to some fellow citizen willing to pay for it.

Or, just possibly, this urge to stockpile incandescents is the product of simmering outrage. For decades, I have written about America as the world’s beacon of freedom, which it has been. Yet here we are, wards of the nanny state, with politicians dictating that even that prime symbol of American ingenuity, Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb, shall be regulated into oblivion. All this has been ably exposed as an act of crony capitalism, designed to enrich manufacturers who prefer to sell pricier light bulbs that a lot of Americans, if free to choose, prefer not to buy.

Kick ‘em out in November. Meanwhile, it’s still not to late to stock up! Yet.

ROGER KIMBALL: What happened to the Conservatives? (British edition). “The extent to which conservatives, by betraying their principles (including the principle of patriotism), abet right-wing alternatives that are anathema to genuine conservatism is a phenomenon that is not sufficiently appreciated. More generally, conservatives, in the United States as well as in the UK, do not win elections by pretending to be liberals, but this seems to be a lesson that is difficult for conservatives to absorb.”

BRITAIN: It is likely that the army could secure Britain’s borders if planned strikes go ahead, says Francis Maude. “Speaking on Sky’s Murnaghan, and the BBC’s Politics Show, Francis Maude suggested that the army could be used to help secure British borders if Wednesday’s planned strikes over public sector pensions were to go ahead. Britain’s image would be affected, he said, ‘if people travelling to Britain are subjected to inordinately long queues and inconvenience’.”

FOLLOWING THE MONEY: 1.2 trillion taxpayer dollars spent in secret and with no accountability or oversight by elected representatives.

Here’s an interactive chart from Bloomberg.

I FEEL A DISTURBANCE IN THE FORCE: Canada to pull out of Kyoto Protocol next month. So they’re finally catching up with that dumb cowboy Bush.

JERRY POURNELLE: Stringing up Gibson; tales of the American Nomenklatura. “The biggest result of the legal harassments of Microsoft was to convert the Microsoft District of Columbia office from a sales organization to a lobby. More lobbyists mean more revenue for the Nomenklatura, more parties for the staff, more campaign donations for the Members of Congress and the Senators.”

OH, GREAT. Now our secret is out.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Occupy Oakland calls for Total West Coast Port Shutdown. Because nothing says we care about the working class like inducing economic breakdown.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, THE GOVERNMENT WOULD BE SEEKING POWERS TO LOCK UP AMERICAN CITIZENS INDEFINITELY WITHOUT TRIAL: AND THEY WERE RIGHT! “The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself. The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday. The bill was drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Why Not Pay Higher Taxes? “Here are a random 12 complaints that I hear from those who become furious about proposed higher income tax rates.”

Including this one: “Opening a bakery at 5AM for forty years or owning a fleet of semis is a constant headache in a way being the regional director of the Department of the Interior is not. By that, I mean it is far harder to net $150,000 in the muscular private sector than in the world of the tenured bureaucratic technocracy. If one reads the resumes of a Steven Chu, Hilda Solis, Eric Holder or Barack Obama there is a long government cursus honorum that almost ensures that none of these grandees has a clue how a business works or how fragile is expected income, how sure are expenses. So the technocratic class that soared to prosperity through government subsidies and employment is somewhat resented by the more conservative small business private sector that both supports it and so frequently finds itself on the receiving end of the latter’s disdain.”

WAIT, I THOUGHT THAT ELECTING OBAMA WOULD MAKE US UNIVERSALLY LOVED OR SOMETHING: Pakistanis burn Obama effigy and US flag.

Frankly, he doesn’t seem to be doing any better with those people than that Bush fellow. . . .

UPDATE: Reader Brian Gates emails: “Is it my imagination, or has the Bush-era ‘angry foreigners hate George W Bush’ coverage given way to ‘angry foreigners hate the United States, and, therefore, symbols of all we hold dear, like mom, apple pie, the flag, and Barack Obama’?”

SCOTT OTT: Jon Huntsman’s Disqualifying Distortion About Vietnam. “Perhaps as stunning as the Huntsman remark was the way CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and seven Republican candidates let it stand unchallenged, as if it were unassailable common knowledge. They should all know better, and speak up. As H.R. McMaster wrote in his 1997 book Dereliction of Duty, President Lyndon Johnson’s leadership of the war effort was characterized by marginalizing the Joint Chiefs of Staff, lying to Congress about troop levels, and pursuing Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s tactic of ‘graduated pressure,’ which treated military force as a communication tool rather than a way to achieve victory.”

To be fair, they were probably just thinking about tomorrow’s lunch. That’s what I usually do when Huntsman’s talking.

PAT CADDELL: New Hampshire Democrats Should Dump Obama. And Draft Hillary.

OBAMA DOESN’T WANT US TO HAVE IT, but China is open to buying Canadian oil. Not going ahead with that pipeline may turn out to be one of the longest-lasting blunders of Obama’s presidency, though there’s a lot of competition for that slot.

LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Former AG Sues Five Additional Law Schools for Age Discrimination in Faculty Hiring.

AT AMAZON, rolling out the Cyber Monday deals.

A GOOD QUESTION: If the Foreign Office is preparing for a eurozone crash, why isn’t it warning British citizens travelling abroad? “There is a real problem here – any such official warning would trigger panic and make the eurozone’s horrible problems even worse.”

Jim Bennett emails: “When are they going to start acting like it’s a crisis? Every Brit expat in southern Spain will be trying to get to Gibraltar where their ATM cards will still work, if the Spanish ones stop working, for example. Maybe they need more border agents and guards pre-positioned to deal with the crowds. That’s one example, I’m sure there are many more.”

THINGS YOU DON’T NEED TO KNOW: The Silence Of The Mainstream Media.

THINK OF IT AS EVOLUTION IN ACTION: “We’ve already killed all the dumb terrorists, so all that’s left are the smart ones.”

RUSSIA TODAY: Medvedev: If We Can Put a Man in a Gulag, Why Can’t We Send Him to Mars?

POPULAR SCIENCE: The Season’s Hottest Gadgets.

AT AMAZON, Black Friday deals on clothing and accessories.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Why Democrats needs to apologize to Paul Ryan over ‘Mediscare.’ “Now you tell us, NYTimes. Shorter version: Ryan’s idea of turning Medicare into a premium support system is actually a pretty mainstream idea.”

EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN: What Really Happened to Dominique Strauss-Kahn?

R.E.M. SLEEP STATE takes edge off painful memories.

UPDATE: Reader John Schedler writes: “Every troop in my old rifle company could have told you that. My uncle advised me that would be the case, as well. Glad to see ‘science’ is catching up.” Well, when they understand the mechanism, maybe they can produce a pill that does the same thing, but better.

CHEVY VOLT UPDATE: NHTSA releases Chevy Volt fire investigation details.

OOPS: Fiat J-Lo Ad Clusterfark Continues, Body Double’s Fiat 500 Broke Down in Mid-Shoot. So the Fiat was authentic, anyway.

IN THE MAIL: From Thomas S. Roache, The Panama Laugh.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Cairo: Paris Of The East? “Those of us old enough to have attended college back when even liberal arts and humanities professors routinely taught subjects that actually matter can dredge up our studies of the French Revolution and the subsequent 200 years of European and global reflection on the meaning and politics of that revolution to help us get to grips with what is happening in Egypt.”

UPDATE: Suddenly, the White House is changing its tone on Egypt. A bit late. “Is military rule a preferable outcome? Not at all. However, we should have tried to work through Mubarak first rather than rush to throw him aside. Meanwhile, the State Department insisted for months of brutal repression in Syria that Bashar Assad was a ‘reformer’ with whom we could work despite his alliance with Iran, while we castigated and abandoned one of the rare Arab leaders willing to keep peace with Israel. Whatever that was, it certainly wasn’t ‘smart power,’ and this outcome was predictable.”

A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO, in an unsuccessful effort to win me back from the world of Keurig, reader Aaron Blanco sent me some of his custom-roasted coffee. It was quite good, and even though the K-cup convenience won out in the end that wasn’t because of the coffee. But he writes that he’s now selling his coffee on Amazon, so those of you who aren’t brewing your coffee one cup at a time might want to give it a try.

UPDATE: Various readers write about refillable K-cups. Yes, I have one and they’re nice, but you have to fill them and then clean them, which takes away some of the appeal.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Some readers are complaining about possible “astroturf” positive reviews on Amazon.

MORE: Aaron Blanco writes: “Thanks so much for your post on our coffee. With regards to ‘astroturf’ I can say that my mom is definitely among our biggest supporters–whose isn’t? I’m trying to get her to delete her reviews for obvious reasons. (Just try to get a proud mama to stand down!) But every other review is from legitimate orders we have filled. We’re just a small biz with a product we wholeheartedly believe in, trying to make a dollar in this economy just like everybody else.”

And reader Chug Roberts emails: “The ekobrew Refillable K-Cup is MUCH better than the Solofill Reusable K-Cups. Much better – we have and use 3 of them in our office after trying out the Solofill.”

AT AMAZON, markdowns on computers, office equipment, and software.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Help Wanted: In Unexpected Twist, Some Skilled Jobs Go Begging.

DENVER—Ferrie Bailey’s job should be easy: hiring workers amid the worst stretch of unemployment since the Depression.

A recruiter for Union Pacific Corp., she has openings to fill, the kind that sometimes seem to have all but vanished: secure, well-paying jobs with good benefits that don’t require a college degree. But they require specialized skills—expertise in short supply even with the unemployment rate at 9%. Which is why on a recent morning the recruiter found herself in a hiring hall here anxiously awaiting the arrival of just two people she had invited to interviews, winnowed from an initial group of nearly five dozen applicants. With minutes to go, the folding chairs sat empty. “I don’t think they’re going to show,” Ms. Bailey said, pacing in the basement room.

Her challenge is a familiar one to recruiters, especially in industries that require workers with trade skills such as welding. Union Pacific struggles to find enough electricians who have worked with diesel engines. Manufacturers in many places can’t find enough machinists. Oil companies must fight for a limited supply of drilling-rig workers.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Custom car-maker David Kirkham emails: “Your WSJ link is (depressingly) more accurate than you may realize. I would hire 5 more guys right now if I could. However, it is virtually impossible to find anyone with skills anymore. The number one skill we are missing as a society is a work ethic. I speak to employers all the time and we all are looking for the same potential employee–someone who is honest, hard working, and who has reasonable intelligence. In other words someone who willing and able to learn new things and admit it when they screw up. Notice education is not on the list.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Brett McSweeney writes: “True. My neighbor runs a Wheel & Tire shop. He calls it an adult child minding centre.”

On the other hand, reader Don Wolff writes:

These employers are shooting themselves in the foot. Disciplined work ethic personnel are out there if they really make the effort to look. They just have to understand the ‘code’ in which to communicate and the somewhat arcane way that institutions work. The ‘code’ is Military Occupation Specialties (MOS) there is an civilianized listing here.

And specific to your posting, some of these seem pertinent.

Every major Army installation runs a Separation Transfer Point in the Adjutant General’s office which knows 6 months in advance who’s coming up on the termination of their contracts. At the small cost of a regular FOIA inquiry they can obtain the name and unit of personnel who have the skills or related skills to which they need to be filled and will soon be available to the market. Another key is focusing on installations that have the larger pool of personnel in the skills they’re looking for to increase their chances of hooking the one they need. That too can be done by FOIA as well. Of course this means the prospective employer needs to do some paperwork or visit the nearest military personnel office. The other services operate similar activities.

One advantage that potential civilian employers have is that the real retention officer in the military is Mom. If she ain’t happy, there’s a good chance that traveling days may be coming to an end. Make her happy and the hiring becomes even easier.

And reader Dennis Coxe emails:

Unfortunately I could not afford to subscribe to the Wall Street Journal so I could not read the entire article, but from what is available to the general public I have to say the situation begs the question, why can’t Union Pacific hire “willing-to-work” unskilled labor and train them? This is an area that I think also contributes to the higher education bubble. As you note there are a lot of positions that do not require a full four-year degree, but business’s do not want to invest the money to hire unskilled people and train them. The usual business argument is that there is no employee loyalty so why should they (the business) invest in training people in a skill if they are just going to quit and go to a better paying job elsewhere?

This is a symptom that runs rampant throughout our society in which many people, businesses, non-profits, and government want something for nothing. If these positions are so important to the Union Pacific then they will hire and train people willing to work and commit themselves to a five- or ten-year contract with the railroad, and not wait until skilled workers get let go elsewhere.

I would guess that it’s hard to train people and not have them poached away by other employers. You can’t really hold someone to a five-year contract — but you can lock someone into 20 years of student-loan payments.

And sorry about the subscription-only link. I subscribe, so sometimes I can’t tell which ones are open. I tried to quote the key bit, anyway.

Reader Mike Steele isn’t buying it: “Crap that they cant find workers? I’ll call BS on that. I can’t find work and nobody’s hiring. I have a Masters in Management Information Systems and a MBA in Project Management. I did 21 years in the US Army, so I’m not a stranger to hard work, and I have flexibility and adaptability that is first rank. Oh and did I mention that I’m adaptable? All these folks that cry and whine to you about no workers are just BS’in I want to work, but can’t get hired!”

Somebody want to give him a job? He’s in Colorado, but will move.

BLUE BLOODS: A Crime Drama With Family Values? “I’ve made the Waltons comparison myself, but this production is in some ways the mirror image of a mafia show.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, TOM-FRIEDMAN-CALL-YOUR-OFFICE EDITION: China to Cancel College Majors That Don’t Pay. “The move is meant to solve a problem that has surfaced as the number of China’s university educated have jumped to 8,930 people per every 100,000 in 2010, up nearly 150% from 2000, according to China’s 2010 Census. The surge of college grads, while an accomplishment for the country, has contributed to an overflow of workers whose skillsets don’t match with the needs of the export-led, manufacturing-based economy.”

PLEASE SEND YOUR CONDOLENCES: James Joyner’s wife has died.

ABOVE THE LAW: A Message from Career Services: Ladies, Please Learn How to Dress Yourselves.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “I have been a long time reader and am currently in the process of separating from the US military. I noticed this post and the link it has to the Above the Law article and compared it to my recent attendance at a transition to civilian life program. The instructor gave roughly similar ideas out but the requirement for both is a bit odd, in that appearance in the work place is so far removed from students’ or service members’ normal dress that we ‘require’ instruction. Although they could have used a more formal style in communicating the information.” Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Don Howard writes: “I was recently called for jury duty in a criminal trial. When the opposing sides came in to take their places at the tables, I was sure it was a prostitution case, since a young woman at the defense table was dressed like a .. well, a slut. Nope. Lawyer. The defendants were conservatively dressed.”

I blame Ally McBeal. My female law students started dressing very differently once that show appeared. Things have regressed to the mean somewhat since then, but not for everyone.

TODAY ONLY: Steep markdowns on Panasonic shavers.

HOW THEY DO IT IN TEXAS: Customer, armed robbers engage in shootout. “Two armed suspects attempted to rob a Denny’s restaurant, but ended up fleeing for safety after a shootout with a customer.”

UPDATE: A reader emails: “I believe that one of the major turning points for concealed carry (at least in Texas) was the Luby’s massacre in Texas. Change the law to enable people to rely more on themselves and each other, instead of the government, and we see very different results. That sort of sums up the entire conservative vs liberal debate. Remember, when seconds count, the police are just minutes away.”

Yes, one of the survivors, Suzanna Hupp, had left her gun in her car as state law required. She became an advocate for liberalized carry laws in Texas and nationwide.

MARK STEYN: INTO THE DEBT ABYSS:

In the course of a typical day I usually receive at least a couple of emails from readers lamenting that America is now the Titanic. This is grossly unfair to the Titanic, a state-of-the-art ship whose problem was that it only had lifeboat space for about half its passengers. By contrast, the SS Spendaholic is a rusting hulk encrusted with barnacles, there are no lifeboats, and the ship’s officers are locked in a debate about whether to use a thimble or an eggcup.

A second downgrade is now inevitable. Aw, so what? We had the first back in the summer, and the ceiling didn’t fall in, did it? And everyone knows those ratings agencies are a racket, right? And say what you like about our rotten finances, but Greece’s are worse. And Italy’s. And, er, Zimbabwe’s. Probably.

The advantage the United States enjoys is that, unlike Greece, it can print the currency in which its debt is denominated. But, even so, it still needs someone to buy it. The failure of Germany’s bond auction on Wednesday suggests that the world is running out of buyers for western sovereign debt at historically low interest rates. And, were interest rates to return to their 1990-2010 average (5.7 percent), debt service alone would consume about 40 percent of federal revenues by mid-decade. That’s not paying down the debt, but just staying current on the interest payments.

And yet, when it comes to spending and stimulus and entitlements and agencies and regulations and bureaucrats, “more, more, more/how do you like it?” remains the way to bet. Will a Republican president make a difference to this grim trajectory? I would doubt it. Unless the public conversation shifts significantly, neither President Romney nor President Insert-Name-Of-This-Week’s-UnRomney-Here will have a mandate for the measures necessary to save the republic.

Well, the cautionary example of Europe’s implosion might shift that conversation at least a bit.

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: Mocking Garry Wills on being taken in by Michael Bellesiles.

EUROPE: Prepare for riots in euro collapse, Foreign Office warns. “British embassies in the eurozone have been told to draw up plans to help British expats through the collapse of the single currency, amid new fears for Italy and Spain.”

UPDATE: Euro May Unravel Before the Region’s Governments Act to Save It, UBS Says.

Meanwhile, the Great Divider is engaging in golf and basketball. “Meanwhile on this side of the Atlantic, White House Dossier reports that Barack Obama took advantage of the unseasonably warm November weather and enjoyed a leisurely round of golf, shot some hoops and then gathered Michelle and the girls aboard Marine One to attend the Towson University-Oregon State basketball game in nearby Baltimore. The Oregon State team is coached by Michelle’s brother Craig Robinson. “

THE MORE A SYSTEM IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT EQUALITY IN THEORY, THE MORE IT PRODUCES AN ARISTOCRACY IN PRACTICE: Children of the Revolution: China’s ‘princelings,’ the offspring of the communist party elite, are embracing the trappings of wealth and privilege—raising uncomfortable questions for their elders. “State-controlled media portray China’s leaders as living by the austere Communist values they publicly espouse. But as scions of the political aristocracy carve out lucrative roles in business and embrace the trappings of wealth, their increasingly high profile is raising uncomfortable questions for a party that justifies its monopoly on power by pointing to its origins as a movement of workers and peasants. . . . The state owns all urban land and strategic industries, as well as banks, which dole out loans overwhelmingly to state-run companies. The big spoils thus go to political insiders who can leverage personal connections and family prestige to secure resources, and then mobilize the same networks to protect them.”

Hey, at least the Ferraris are red.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Other than China’s state-owned industries, this sounds awfully familiar here in the US. Brings to mind what I think is your most memorable line:

We now have a government OF and FOR the well-connected, paid for BY the non-connected.

When oh when are Republicans going to figure out the power of the crony-capitalism issue?!!

When they stop aspiring to join the cronies.

AS TIMELY AS HIS CURRENT FOREIGN POLICY: Obama Goes Book Shopping, Buys “Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia.”

JEREMIAH WRIGHT still scares Democrats.

First, the notion that showing images of blacks in a video is an attempt to invoke Jeremiah Wright is preposterous. There also were plenty of whites in the video; momentary flashes of non-whites does not give the video a racial overtone.

Second, and most important, this was nothing more than a pre-emptive Democratic attempt to make it toxic for anyone to bring up Obama’s long association with Wright by making charges of racism even when Wright is not mentioned. That shows you how much the Democrats fear a true investigation of Obama’s background and his ridiculously incredible claims that he did not know that his pastor and mentor was a race-baiting flame thrower.

Given Obama’s performance in his first term, the Wright association is more dangerous than it was in 2008.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: 1980 VIDEO: Thomas Sowell Debates Frances Fox Piven.

GUNS, A BETTER INVESTMENT THAN GOLD? “This is the pattern I saw at work in Yugoslavia and the Caucasus twenty years ago as ethnic groups geared up to butcher their neighbors and drive them from their homes; I will never forget the night a Georgian poet asked me how much guns cost on the Istanbul black market; he was arming himself against what he called the ‘Abkhazian menace.’ I made a note to myself at that time: when poets buy guns, tourist season is over. They are buying them now in Damascus; something wicked this way comes.”

BLACK FRIDAY DEALS on headphones and earbuds.

Also, portable speaker systems.

TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: Spotting phony news film.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Video: Occupy Sympathizer Arrested for Threatening to Kill Gov. Nikki Haley.

EUROZONE: It is now becoming clear Germany has had enough of this euro mess.

LEADERSHIP:

“Pakistan Tells U.S. to ‘Vacate’ Air Base as Border Strike Inflames Tensions.”
“… Islamabad had already ordered the country’s border crossings into Afghanistan closed, blocking off NATO supply lines, after the strike.”

MEANWHILE: “Obama and family take in basketball game, chat with Bill Murray.” He did comment on current events, noting that the tentative deal to end the NBA lockout seems to be “a good deal.”

The country’s in the very best of hands.

A.C.O.R.N. FOUNDER: Tea partiers out-organized Occupy Wall Street.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D); Along Mexican border, US ranchers say they live in fear.

HEATHER MACDONALD: Pepper-Spraying Taxpayers: The College “Diversity” Boondoggle. “In the wake of Peppergate, it looks like two other Big Lies are quickly forming: the campus as gulag and unscrupulous banks as the source of burdensome student debt. The first new conceit will soon evaporate of its own patent insubstantiality. But the push for wholesale debt forgiveness and even easier taxpayer funding of tuition will have staying power and will simply inflate the campus diversity bureaucracy further.”

SPENGLER: Looting the Egyptian Currency: Democracy in Action. “The ugly denouement of the so-called Egyptian Spring is visible in the collapse of Egypt’s stock exchange (down 11% in the first three days of this week) and the impending collapse of the Egyptian pound, as residents and foreigners flee to hard currency. A unique sort of brutality characterizes Egypt’s currency crisis: banks cannot meet the demand for currency because it is impossible transport bank notes. Mobs hijack the armored cars, as Al Ahram reported today. . . . Now, that’s something new and nasty under the sun. I’ve observed first-hand the collapse of national currencies in Peru, Nicaragua, Russia and other blighted countries, but a breakdown of the rule of law to the point that banks cannot transport currency is something new.”

#OCCUPYFAIL: “The Occupiers have made the Democrats look bad, that is obvious. The more interesting question is, why? Because they say what other Democrats actually think, and act in ways that other Democrats approve of but are afraid to emulate.”

WALTER HUDSON: The Twilight saga is just porn for women. “Pornography imagines that women exist for the sole purpose of satisfying men. The women in porn are not only willing, but eager. They are depicted as if satisfying a man is the means by which their own life is sustained. This is without the slightest pretense, explanation, or justification. The unconditional nature of the attraction is essential to the fantasy. So it is in Twilight, only with the roles reversed. Edward Cullen and Jacob Black adore Bella, not due to any apparent merit, but simply because she is there.”

RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE SITREP: Black Friday sales up 7 percent over 2010. Some people worried that it had become a “hollow army,” but these magnificent troops rose to the occasion one more time.

AT AMAZON, Black Friday deals in Tools & Home Improvement.

THE NON-GREEN JOBS BOOM: “Forget ‘clean energy.’ Oil and gas are boosting U.S. employment. . . . The ironies here are richer than the shale deposits in North Dakota’s Bakken formation. While Washington has tried to force-feed renewable energy with tens of billions in special subsidies, oil and gas production has boomed thanks to private investment. And while renewable technology breakthroughs never seem to arrive, horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have revolutionized oil and gas extraction—with no Energy Department loan guarantees needed. The oil and gas rush has led to a jobs boom. North Dakota has the nation’s lowest jobless rate, at 3.5%, and the state now has some 200 rigs pumping 440,000 barrels of oil a day, four times the amount in 2006. The state reports more than 16,000 current job openings, and places like Williston have become meccas for workers seeking jobs that often pay more than $100,000 a year.”

Yeah, but these are mostly jobs for burly men. Those are disfavored by this administration.

UPDATE: Walter Russell Mead: The Forgotten Look of Prosperity. “The New York Times editorial page is doing its level best to kill any chance of American recovery and prosperity by crusading against anything anywhere that might help our energy woes, but sometimes its news pages inadvertently remind us that prosperity and energy development are closely connected. . . . This is what economic growth looks like. It is sudden, disruptive, often inconvenient. It messes with the status quo. New stuff gets built and not all of it looks like the Cloisters. All kinds of rough and hungry men flock to it; they sometimes misbehave. They spit on the ground, say unpleasant things about women, and generally fail to meet the behavioral standards of the Upper West Side. Decline is so much more decorous.”

KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: Stringing Up Gibson Guitar.

On a sweltering day in August, federal agents raided the Tennessee factories of the storied Gibson Guitar Corp. The suggestion was that Gibson had violated the Lacey Act—a federal law designed to protect wildlife—by importing certain India ebony. The company has vehemently denied that suggestion and has yet to be charged. It is instead living in a state of harassed legal limbo.

Which, let’s be clear, is exactly what its persecutors had planned all along. The untold story of Gibson is this: It was set up.

Most of the press coverage has implied that the company is the unfortunate victim of a well-meaning, if complicated, law. Stories note, in passing, that the Lacey Act was “expanded” in 2008, and that this has had “unintended consequences.” Given Washington’s reputation for ill-considered bills, this might make sense.

Only not in this case. The story here is about how a toxic alliance of ideological activists and trade protectionists deliberately set about creating a vague law, one designed to make an example out of companies (like Gibson) and thus chill imports—even legal ones.

So move your factories offshore. That’s clearly the signal they’re sending. Jobs for Americans? Not such a priority.

EUROPE: “The irony here is that today’s technocrats are the dunderheads or Machiavellians (take your pick) responsible for creating the funny money that was always going to lead to a crisis much like this.”

NORTH DAKOTA’S OIL BOOM: Oil Rigs Bring Camps of Men to the Prairie. “Confronted with the unusual problem of too many unfilled jobs and not enough empty beds to accommodate the new arrivals, North Dakota embraced the camps — typically made of low-slung, modular dormitory-style buildings — as the imperfect solution to keeping workers rested and oil flowing. . . . A few years ago, when the oil boom was in its infancy, these long-shrinking communities were doing anything to encourage development. Now the state population is growing, money is pouring into communities and the unemployment rate remains by far the lowest in the nation, even though more job seekers arrive every day.”

Meanwhile, in New York State, they’re begging to be allowed to drill for gas.

TECHNOLOGY: iTunes flaw allowed spying on dissidents.

THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING: Cornell Professor Falls For Plastic-Turkey Hoax.

AT AMAZON, Black Friday deals on Cellphones & Accessories.

RADLEY BALKO: Driven By Drug War Incentives, Cops Target Pot Smokers, Brush Off Victims Of Violent Crime.

HOUSE PRICES: It’s probably nothing.

WHY CRIMINAL DEFENDANTS should be thankful for Justice Scalia.

MORE BAGSHOT ROW THAN BAG END, BUT STILL: This hobbit house is an honest-to-goodness man-sized home. Not only does it fit a family of four, but it cost just over $4,650 to build.

CHANGE: Cambridge researchers translate graphene into printable circuitry material, bring basic ‘Skynet’ factory to you.

IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, MEGAN MCARDLE REVIEWS James Roberts’ Shiny Objects: Why We Spend Money We Don’t Have in Search of Happiness We Can’t Buy. My favorite bit:

One of the running themes of the economist Robin Hanson’s excellent blog is that arguments like the ones found in these books are actually an elite-status proxy war. They denigrate the one measure of high-visibility achievement—income—that public intellectuals don’t do very well on. Reading “Shiny Objects,” you get the feeling that he is onto something.

Consider the matter of status competition. Mr. Roberts, like so many before him, argues that conspicuous consumption is an unhappy zero-sum game. But this is of course true of most forms of competition: Most academics I know can rank-order everyone in the room at a professional conference with the speed and precision of a courtier at Versailles. Any competition, from looks to money to academic credentialing, both consumes a lot of resources and makes many of the participants feel bad about themselves. Why, then, does the literature on status competition always tell us that we should redistribute capital gains or inheritances and never tell us that we should redistribute academic chairs or book contracts?

Indeed. Read the whole thing, where Megan also reviews James Livingston’s Against Thrift: Why Consumer Culture is Good for the Economy, the Environment, and Your Soul.

HISTORY: Achtung Baby by U2: Twenty Years in the Rear-View Mirror.

IN THE MAIL: From Peter Schweizer, Throw Them All Out.

NEIL MUNRO: 12 Charged With Voter Fraud In Georgia Election.

CLIMATEGATE UPDATE: Climategate scientists DID collude with government officials to hide research that didn’t fit their apocalyptic global warming. “The emails paint a clear picture of scientists selectively using data, and colluding with politicians to misuse scientific information.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: $5.3B goes to students who government says don’t need it. “Universities and colleges are giving $5.3 billion in aid this year to students who the federal government says don’t need financial help, according to figures from the College Board. An additional $4 billion in federal tuition tax credits went to families making $100,000 to $180,000 — at least double the median income for U.S. households. The schools use the money — more than 20% of all U.S. financial aid — to compete for applicants who have high grade-point averages and SAT scores. Some discounts serve another purpose: They lure high-income families that can write a check for the rest of the tuition.”

NEW MARS ROVER is on the way.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Inspector General: 82% Error Rate in Investment Theft Loss Deductions.

MICKEY KAUS: More evidence for my contention that Ann Coulter is really quite sensible if you don’t provoke her with liberal BS.

ADVICE ON STAYING TRIM WHEN FAT RUNS IN THE FAMILY. I recommend the Gary Taubes approach. Also the Livestrong App.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Arrested for occupying a food court. And, even in San Francisco, ignored by shoppers.

INSTAVISION: I talk to Frank J. Fleming about his new book, Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything.

EUROPE: Germany, France Not Immune To Debt Problems.

NEWS: NY Fed Issues Mea Culpa That Nobody Saw at 6PM on Black Friday. “In a report released on Black Friday around 6 PM, when nobody is around, let alone paying attention, except for crazy people like me, the NY Fed posted a mea culpa on just how lousy its economic forecasts have been.”

ARAB SPRING: Cairo rally: One day we’ll kill all Jews.

PAKISTAN: Pakistan stops NATO supplies after raid kills up to 28. “NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two military outposts in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing as many as 28 troops and plunging U.S.-Pakistan relations, already deeply frayed, further into crisis. Pakistan retaliated by shutting down vital NATO supply routes into Afghanistan, used for sending in almost half of the alliance’s non-lethal materiel.”

TODAY ONLY: Helmet-mount 1080p HERO camera for $169.

OUCH: “President Obama ranks among the 25 “least influential people alive,” according to GQ Magazine, which placed him in the company of House Speaker John Boehner and MSNBC host Ed Schultz.”

The Ed Schultz thing has got to hurt.

A SMALL GROUP: Jewish Lesbians For Palestine.

CHANGE: Bond market hammers Italy, Spain ponders outside help.

REMEMBERING MIKE SPANN: CIA officers mark death of spy with rare request.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “Regarding the Mike Spann comment, I guess it is no longer newsworthy for the AP to note that Mr. Spann was killed in attack in which John Walker Lindh, an American, took part and which John Walker Lindh could have warned Mr. Spann earlier that day. Given that Lindh has supporters that want him released from prison, it is important for everyone to remember that an American hero was killed with the complicity of another American and that traitor should spend the rest of his life behind bars.”

MORE SCANDALS: McCaskill calls for probe into smallpox-vaccine boondoggle.

Almost two weeks ago, the Los Angeles Times reported on the peculiar case of Siga Technologies, which got a no-bid contract to supply the Pentagon with an experimental vaccine for smallpox, a dead disease, when we have a plentiful supply of traditional vaccine to handle an outbreak. Siga Technologies has close ties to the Democratic Party with its primary investor, party donor Ronald Perelman, and relatively new board member Andy Stern, the former head of the SEIU and a frequent visitor to the Obama White House. The deal amounts to almost a half-billion dollars for Perelman and Stern, and the White House appears to have intervened to relax contract requirements and eliminate any hint of competition for the project.

Under those circumstances, it should come as no surprise that a member of Congress wants this deal investigated. Should it surprise us that the demand comes from a Senate Democrat?

Not anymore.

THE HILL: Republicans see opportunity to beat Obama with Pentagon cuts. “The potential for $1 trillion in cuts to the defense budget is thrusting the issue of national security back into the spotlight of the 2012 presidential race. The cuts, set for January 2013, could also turn a strength into a vulnerability for President Obama, who has more to brag about when it comes to security and foreign affairs than the economy.”

#OCCUPYFAIL: Why African Americans aren’t embracing Occupy Wall Street. “Occupy Wall Street was started by whites and is about their concern with their plight.”