AT AMAZON, New Year, New You!

Plus, New Releases in Military History.

ROGER KIMBALL: Thucydides on Donald Trump & “New York Values.”

HEH:

DON SURBER: Enjoy Your Hijab, Feminists.

PAUL SPERRY: Don’t be fooled by Bernie Sanders — he’s a diehard communist. “If Sanders were vying for a Cabinet post, he’d never pass an FBI background check. There’d be too many subversive red flags popping up in his file. He was a Communist collaborator during the height of the Cold War. . . . While it may be hard to hate the old codger, it’s easy — and virtuous — to hate his un-American ideas. They should be swept into the dustbin with the rest of communist history.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Apple’s board calls diversity proposal ‘unduly burdensome and not necessary.’

GALLERY: 23 Totally Cringeworthy Home Inspection Nightmares.

SPEAKING OF CARS IN THE WINTER, last year when the Insta-Daughter got back to college after Christmas Break, the Toyota — despite having a new battery — was dead as a doornail from sitting in the cold for 5 weeks. Maybe because it’s a hybrid, the computer draws a significant amount of power even when it’s turned “off.” This year, I got her this Noco solar battery charger and when she got back it started right up.

YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH: In Sweden, Crimes Involving Refugees Are Now Classified.

UM, EVERYTHING? What E.J. Dionne Doesn’t Get About Conservatism.

In “Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond,” progressive Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. argues that not only has conservatism lost its way by jettisoning moderation, but in the process it has inflicted great harm on the country. “The breakdown in American government and the dysfunction in our politics are the result of the steady radicalization of American conservatism,” he writes. In Dionne’s telling, President Obama’s only notable contribution to the crisis has been his “failure to anticipate” conservative extremism, “and his tardiness in dealing with it.”

There are several problems here. One is contemporary progressivism’s own repudiation of moderation. Another is Dionne’s view, commonplace on the left, that the proof of the right’s immoderation is somehow found in conservatives’ refusal to embrace progressive goals.

There’s no contradiction here, once you realize that a “moderate” conservative is one who gives Democrats whatever they want.

THE PROBLEM WITH THE “WINTER BEATER” CONCEPT: If you’re going to drive an unreliable car, is winter really the best time?

I SAW THIS YESTERDAY, AND IT’S GOOD ADVICE: General James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis Email About Being ‘Too Busy To Read’ Is A Must-Read. “The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience (or by your men’s experience), i.e. the hard way. By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men. . . . Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face NOTHING new under the sun.”

SHOT: Kerry Incentivizes Hostage-Taking.

Chaser: Three American Contractors Missing in ‘Possible Kidnapping’ in Iraq.

IF IT WERE EASY, SOMEONE WOULD HAVE ALREADY DONE IT: SpaceX still can’t land a rocket on its floating landing pad.

Related: SpaceX’s Rocket Didn’t Quite Stick Its Barge Landing, But the Satellite is Good!

UH HUH: Clinton doesn’t plan to see Benghazi movie: ‘I’m just too busy campaigning.’

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CHERRY ON TOP: Iran to Get $1.7 Billion Settlement from U.S. in Addition to Sanctions Relief.

FAST-FOOD CONDIMENT PACKETS don’t actually last forever.

WORLD WAR I IN COLOR: Rare photographs capture the lives of soldiers and civilians when all was quiet on the Western Front.

COLD WAR HISTORY: The Myth Of The Cobalt Bomb. “The myth of On the Beach, like Jonathan Schell’s myth, is technically flawed in many ways. Almost all the details are wrong: radioactive cobalt would not substantially increase the lethality of large hydrogen bombs; fallout would not descend uniformly over large areas but would fall sporadically in space and time; people could protect themselves from the radioactivity by sheltering under a few feet of dirt; and the war is supposed to happen in 1961, too soon for even the most malevolent country to have acquired the megaton-nage needed to give a lethal dose of radiation to the entire earth. Nevertheless, the myth did what Norway intended it to do.”

CHANGE: OHIO AND CALIFORNIA TEACHERS READY TO SHOOT TO KILL. “Students in Anderson Union High School District in California are not only OK with their teachers carrying guns to class, they told KRCR-TV they felt safer knowing the adults were armed. Anderson Police Chief Mike Johnson doesn’t get a vote on the school board, so he didn’t share in the decision to arm teachers. But he thinks it is a good idea.”

Related: California’s rural residents discuss how Democrat-dominated Sacramento has ignored their issues.

SPACEX’S LAUNCH WAS SUCCESSFUL; now watch here as they attempt a landing on a drone ship.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Flexible Nanocomposite Film Could Yield Handheld Cancer Detector.

THE GOP UNDERESTIMATED TRUMP IN PART BECAUSE IT OVERESTIMATED THE CONSERVATISM OF ITS OWN SOUTHERN, RURAL NORTHERN, AND MIDWESTERN BASE: “It underestimated the extent to which many of its voters hadn’t so much embraced the corporate conservatism of the Chamber of Commerce or the constitutional conservatism of the Tea Party as much as they had rejected the extremism of the increasingly shrill and politically correct Left. And, yes, the size of this population calls into question the very process of building a national Republican electoral majority, but it also threatens Democrats who seem intent on drumming every blue-collar white male straight out of the party.”

Read the whole thing.

CLINTON SURROGATE DAVID BROCK TO DEMAND SANDERS RELEASE MEDICAL RECORDS: “This is what panic looks like.”

Like Exeter from This Island Earth?

AT HOT AIR: Film Review: 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. “Andrew Breitbart famously said ‘politics is downstream of culture,’ which is the succinct answer to the not infrequent questions authors like myself get about why we’re taking up space on political news sites like Hot Air with posts about things like movies and video games. . . . Until this weekend, the story of the 2012 attack on our consulate in Benghazi has been almost exclusively in the hands of the Obama Administration (and the media, but I repeat myself), who have spun a yarn about faulty intelligence leading them to believe a Youtube video caused a spontaneous protest that turned violent and could not have been prevented or mitigated. 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi now puts that story in the hands of Michael Bay. . . . Much to my surprise, Bay has instead delivered a poignant and harrowing view of the events of September 11, 2012 from the perspective of the people who were there in Benghazi as it unfolded.”

GERMANY CAN, BUT GERMANY’S CURRENT RULING POLITICAL CLASS CAN’T: Can Germany Be Honest About Its Refugee Problems?

HE SAID HE’D RESPECT YOU IN THE MORNING, BUT HE LIED: WaPo: Obama Prefers YouTube Stars To Actual Reporters.

THE ART OF THE DEAL: This is the single most stunning poll number on Donald Trump I have seen. “It’s hard to overstate how remarkable it is that the number of Republicans who could see themselves backing a Trump nomination rose 42 — FORTY TWO — percentage points in 10 months. It’s all the more remarkable when you consider that Trump was already totally known by the GOP electorate last spring, meaning that his gains since that time are almost entirely the result of him changing peoples’ minds. And it’s something else entirely when you consider how Trump got here — a mixture of bravado and anger sprinkled with a dose of controversial statements and seeming gaffes that would have felled lesser candidate many times over.”

IN THE MAIL: Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1 – 5) (Silo series).

Plus, today only at Amazon: 55% off of this Rowenta 1800-Watt Steam Iron.

And, also today only: Miracle-Gro AeroGarden Harvest, $79.95 (50% off).

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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 983.

I’M SO OLD, I REMEMBER WHEN LOW OIL PRICES WERE GOOD NEWS: Fund manager who’s been right on oil has a depressing new prediction: T. Rowe Price New Era’s Shawn Driscoll says the price for a barrel of oil could drop into the teens.

Why? Oil’s oversupply is profound and will last for at least two years, he said, and too many industry people still are in denial.

The oversupply, of course, stems from Saudi Arabia’s efforts to keep pumping to preserve market share from U.S. shale producers and other countries like Russia and Iran, which is chomping at the bit to free itself from international sanctions so it can pump oil again — at any price.

Given current demand — and without new Iranian production — “our model is saying we’re still oversupplied a million barrels a day in ’16,” said the manager of the $2.7 billion New Era mutual fund PRNEX -2.31% . “Our model for ’17 still shows oversupply with above-trend-line demand and without Iran.”

And the oversupply may be even worse than traders and investors acknowledge, because hundreds of thousands of barrels a day of new production are coming online in places like Brazil and Kazakhstan over the next couple of years.

Okay, if I were an oil investor this would be bad. And with the United States shifting from oil importer to oil exporter, our own incentives may change. But at present we’re starving a rogues’ gallery of countries that hate us — from Russia, to Saudi Arabia, to Iran — while getting cheap gas. I can live with that.

LIFE AMONG THE BARBARIANS: Bill banning child marriage fails in Pakistan after it’s deemed ‘un-Islamic.’

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OH, THOSE NEW YORK VALUES: Finally: A Public Masturbation Booth Just For Men!

LESSONS UNLEARNED:

Shot: “When South Vietnam fell…the North captured a treasure trove of American tanks, trucks and other equipment sitting in warehouses.”

—“Lessons of Vietnam — How to avoid a repeat, and why it’s crucial to do so,” Brendan Miniter, the Wall Street Journal, January 2, 2007

Chaser: “According to Reuters, the U.S.-made weaponry that fell into enemy hands including 2,300 Humvee armored vehicles, at least 40 M1A1 main battle tanks, 74,000 machine guns, and as many as 52 M198 howitzer mobile gun systems, plus small arms and ammunition.”

—“U.S. Shoots Itself In the Foot By Accidentally Arming ISIS,” the Fiscal Times, June 4th, 2015.

To be fair, “accidentally” is a perfectly cromulent substitute for the adverb “unexpectedly.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: University Of Louisville Law Professor: Law School ‘Veered to partisan agenda.’

I agree with the idea that compassion is a worthwhile and understandable objective. Indeed, it is an essential part of life. If the movement toward a “compassionate organization” were nothing more than that, who could object? However, to suggest that the law school has not adopted a partisan social agenda, and that it has not labeled non-liberals “outsiders,” is (at the very least) wrong and misleading.

There is ample evidence that the law school has veered to a partisan agenda. In a prior commentary, I discussed the diversity training conducted by the law school in collaboration with the Vice President for Diversity. At those events, faculty, staff and students were instructed to identify their religious beliefs, sexual orientation and disabilities, and attendees were ordered to clap enthusiastically (it was made quite clear that silence or even polite clapping was simply not acceptable).

Even more troubling, Professor Milligan is absolutely correct about the fact that a leftist agenda affects the classroom environment at the Brandeis School of Law. Deeply troubled by the liberal branding of the law school, and the adoption of the “social justice” mandate, a colleague had the temerity to make the following statement to his students on the final day of class last semester:

“Don’t let people here—students or faculty—pressure you to compromise your political, legal, social, or religious views. Many of our graduates look back and regret having been sheepish in expressing and developing their political views when they were at this law school. Conservative views have an equal place alongside liberal views at the Brandeis School of Law. I don’t care what the Dean says. I don’t care what your Con Law professors say. And on this point, neither should you. This is your education—not the Dean’s, not the faculty’s. Develop your political and legal views freely while you’re here. Take care. Good luck on the exam.”

What extraordinary ideas! Students should be encouraged to think for themselves. Not everyone need blindly adhere to the faculty’s (or the dean’s) liberal values.

Given the current repressive climate at the law school, perhaps the colleague should have anticipated a negative reaction to his statement. However, I doubt that he could have remotely imagined what actually happened. When the interim dean found out about the statement, she did not adopt a strong pro-free speech stance, or emphasize the importance of free speech and the exploration of ideas in a university environment. Nor did she, as one might also have expected, speak to the faculty member in order to ascertain the facts.

Heaven forbid that she follow Justice Brandeis’ admonition that “knowledge is essential to understanding and understanding should precede judging!” Instead, that very day, she marched over to file a complaint with university officials regarding the statement, and she then sent the faculty member an e-mail ordering him to schedule an appointment with the officials.

Read the whole thing.

THE EPA KNEW ABOUT FLINT MICHIGAN’S TOXIC WATER FOR MONTHS AND DIDN’T TELL ANYONE: “The EPA was looking into this almost a year ago but buried the topic in an internal food fight.” Naturally though, for the DNC-MSM, it’s still Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s fault.

A CONSERVATIVE MILLENNIAL’S DEBATE TAKEAWAYS.

SHRIMP ON A TREADMILL IS BACK AND YOU’RE STILL PAYING FOR IT: That little guy running on an underwater treadmill is a YouTube classic but the backstory is that he was part of a widely criticized research project funded by federal taxpayers. Well, he’s back and taxpayers are again funding his running in a $1.3 million National Science Foundation grant, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton. The bigger story is how NSF refuses to disclose even the most basic details about its grants. Why? Because federal laws like the FOIA are just for the little people, not federal bureaucrats.

UPDATE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES ACCORDINGLY: “Let’s banish the term ‘gun control’: the better expression is ‘gun safety,'” claims the New York Times’ Nick Kristof in full Ministry of Truth mode.

I’m not sure which is crazier — reinventing the language, or “a moral sanction against gun metaphors similar to the ‘N’ word,” as one of Chris Matthews’ guests proposed immediately after Tucson.

IMPOSSIBLE. I REMEMBER OBAMA SAYING THAT RELIGIOUS TESTS WERE ALWAYS UNACCEPTABLE. Bill Maher: Is President Obama Not Coming on My Show Because I’m an Atheist?

On last night’s Real Time, Bill Maher delivered a short monologue about how President Obama has avoided coming on his show despite doing interviews with practically everyone else in the media.

Why was that? Maher wanted to know. For all the support he gave the President, it was only fair, right?

Was it because Maher was a pothead? Was it because of a lack of viewers? Was it the quality of his audience? Maher dismissed every one of those thoughts — but he also brought up the possibility that it was because he was an atheist. . . .Just to get an official response from the White House, Maher asked his viewers to sign an official White House petition to get Obama to appear on his show. If he can get 100,000 signatures in a month, the White House promises to respond.

Well, that should be amusing.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Kerry: ‘Today Marks the First Day of a Safer World.’

ELIOT COHEN: They Won’t Miss You When You’re Gone: The last year of an administration, as seen from the inside.

WEE! Obama Cheers The Auto Industry Over A Cliff.

Because, really why should coal and heath insurance be the only industries he’s wrecked? (On the other hand, as with the insurance industry, the car manufacturers decided to get deeply in bed with the administration — what did they expect?)

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Trump Scares Democrats Almost as Much as Republicans.

Republicans say publicly and privately that they’re worried that Trump will win their nomination and then get shellacked in the general election, robbing the party of necessary support in congressional races. The truth, I suspect, is they are also concerned about him winning the presidency, which would empower the tea party wing of the party and marginalize insiders.

It’s that latter scenario that suddenly has Democratic elites wringing their hands.

For a long time, they seemed content to watch Trump wreak havoc on the Republican primary field. Now, though, it’s clear they’re alarmed at the possibility he could win the presidency.

And why wouldn’t they be?

Trump’s more open to policies that appeal to Democratic voters than any of the other Republicans in the race. Though he tends not to emphasize them in the primary — for obvious reasons — he holds or has held un-Republican positions on the social safety net, taxes, campaign finance, gay rights and other issues.

That is, he would be more likely as president to find common ground with Democrats in Congress than any of the other Republican candidates, most of whom have gotten to where they are through careful attention to party orthodoxy.

While his un-Republican positions on these issues won’t win over Democratic activists who are repulsed by his rhetoric on immigration and his inarguably loutish behavior on the campaign trail, they could present a threat to the Democratic nominee holding less sticky Democrats in place. That is, he could fray the Democratic coalition in a general election.

The Cassandras in the Republican primary have been shouting into the wind that Trump isn’t really a conservative. This has also occurred to Democratic operatives.

“As offensive as Trump is, we underestimate his threat at our own peril,” veteran Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis said. “I’ve heard too often about candidates who can’t win, who do. The country is divided and angry, and as bad as his ideas are, Trump will try to exploit this by appealing to those desperate for change.”

Well, the country is angry because we have the worst political class in our history. Thus, a “burn it all down” candidate is appealing to people in both parties.

FILE THIS AWAY FOR FUTURE REFERENCE:

Whoever the Republican candidate is, I hope he’s being awfully straight with his advisors over the skeletons in his closet, because it’s never too early to start wargaming responses to the inevitable October DNC-MSM “surprise.”

DON SURBER: “Remember how Barack Obama inherited a bad economy from George Walker Bush? Obama may turn over an even worse one to his successor.”

I’M SURE IT WILL BE AS SUCCESSFUL AS HIS OTHER INSURANCE-REFORM EFFORTS: Obama unveils plan to reform unemployment insurance.

President Obama on Saturday unveiled an unemployment insurance plan that he says will provide stability and opportunity to workers in a rapidly changing economy.

The president’s three-pronged plan includes wage insurance of up to $10,000 over two years, expanded unemployment insurance coverage and more opportunities for laid off workers to retrain and reenter the workforce.

“If a hardworking American loses her job, regardless of what state she lives in, we should make sure she can get unemployment insurance and some help to retrain for her next job,” Obama said in his weekly address.

Prediction: None of this will do much good, even if it’s enacted.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: Changeling’s Island e-arc. Dave Freer is one of my oldest friends in the field, who in the dark days of 2003 talked me into staying in the game and writing more. He’s also one of the best and most offbeat writers of sf/f working today.

WEIRD, PEOPLE ON MY BLOG WERE SAYING MORE OR LESS THIS LAST WEEK: History Flips.

DID YOU EXPECT TRUTH IN PRAVDA? Lies of Guantanamo.

DID WE EVER GET OBAMA’S? David Brock demands Sanders’ medical records.

AND WE HAVE TWO KIDS IN COLLEGE: All I can do is work harder, but this is not news.  We can feel it in the air. A recession worse than 2008 is coming.  Hold on to the sides of the boat.  Between this and our foreign policy, the water is about to get very choppy.

AGAIN, IF THIS IS NOT EMBARRASSING WE WANT PICTURES OF THE PRESIDENT ON HIS KNEES: Iran: American sailors are crybabies.

WERE THEY TRULY INTELLIGENT?  BY THEMSELVES, THAT IS? Is the Left Even on America’s Side Anymore? And for anyone looking for the rest of that quote, it goes “I don’ t know and I don’t know how we can ever find out.  I’m not a lab man; I’m an operator.”

NO. NEXT QUESTION: Does Anyone Believe Trump Seriously Cares about Whether Ted Cruz Is a Natural-Born Citizen?

HOW ABOUT PICTURES OF THE PRESIDENT ON HIS KNEES?  There are no words for the amount of nausea this administration inspires in me. White House Does Not Think Pictures of Sailors on Their Knees are Embarrassing.

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HOMELAND SECURITY: How Neighbors Can Protect Their Community.

PREDICTION: SOMEONE WITH POLITICAL CONNECTIONS WILL MAKE A LOT OF MONEY OUT OF THIS. One of D.C.’s Most Contentious Pieces of Real Estate is 25 Feet Underground.

In the upscale Washington, D.C. neighborhood of Dupont Circle, where galleries, bars, and bookshops jostle for room, a 75,000-square-foot expanse in the heart of the quarter has been almost untouched for 20 years. That’s because in order to access it, you have to grab a flashlight and descend 25 feet below ground, into the vast, abandoned streetcar tunnels that flank Connecticut Avenue.

For the past 60 years, the city and its residents have wondered what to do with this vast subterranean space, whose history features a long list of failed attempts to repurpose it, including plans to make it into a gym, a greenmarket, and a storage facility for funeral urns.

Well, the way things are going it should probably be stocked as a fallout shelter.

THE GERMAN TEENS WHO Rebelled Against Hitler.

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HARDLY SURPRISING, CONSIDERING THAT IT WAS ONE OF AMERICA’S BIGGEST SOCIAL-POLICY DISASTERS, AND WE ALL KNOW WHERE THOSE TEND TO COME FROM: “The truth is that Prohibition, in its essence, was a deeply progressive movement. Thus, for example, the forces of women’s liberation backed Prohibition—and the suffragettes were backed in turn by the Temperance Union, whose support (in the certainty that women would vote to outlaw liquor) helped gain women the vote. The goo-goos, the good-government types, similarly aided Prohibition, seeking to purge the rows of rowdy saloons that cluttered the major cities of America—and they enlisted the help of the Prohibitionists to create a national income tax, ending the federal government’s dependence on liquor taxes.”

IMMUNOLOGY: What The Appendix Is For.

DON SURBER: “Trump’s ground game is Twitter.”

BERNIE SANDERS YELLS AT WIKIPEDIA AND CLOUD OVER…CAMPAIGN LOGOS? Sanders’ campaign sent a DMCA takedown notice to Wikipedia for reproducing its campaign logo(!), then eventually came to its senses when it realized that the whole idea of creating a campaign logo is to see it as widely dispersed as possible.

“Seriously, it is a measure of how awful Hillary Clinton is as a candidate that she’s more or less tied with this guy.  Or, arguably, losing to him,” Moe Lane writes, having lots of fun with Bernie in full angry old man trying to return soup at a deli mode. “Second: since when do Commies – oh, I’m sorry: ‘Democratic socialists’ – care about copyright, anyway?  It all belongs to the People, right?  Bernie Sanders supports public financing of elections, yes? So why does he suddenly think that he has the right to dictate what other people do with that logo? Ownership is theft, man.  Bernie Sanders shouldn’t act so blatantly privileged, you know what I mean?”

Related: Dems’ hiding debates backfires on Hillary Clinton.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: “Can D.C. afford a $15/hour minimum wage?”, the left-leaning Brookings Institute asked in July.

Yesterday’s Washington Post article headlined “District leaders furious Walmart breaking promise to build stores in poor neighborhoods” is a succinct response:

Evans said that, behind closed doors, Walmart officials were more frank about the reasons the company was downsizing. He said the company cited the District’s rising minimum wage, now at $11.50 an hour and possibly going to $15 an hour if a proposed ballot measure is successful in November. He also said a proposal for legislation requiring D.C. employers to pay into a fund for family and medical leave for employees, and another effort to require a minimum amount of hours for hourly workers were compounding costs and concerns for the retailer.

“They were saying, ‘How are we going to run the three stores we have, let alone build two more?’ ” Evans said.

“The optics of this are horrible; they are not going to build the stores east of the river, in largely African American neighborhoods? That’s horrible; you can’t do that,” Evans said. “A deal’s a deal.”

As Tim Worstall responds at Forbes,“Obviously, the people who brokered the deal aren’t happy about this. Yet those same people are the very people that passed the laws that Walmart, informally at least, is saying have led to the change of mind. It is, obviously, always nice to see the biter bit, someone hoist on their own petard. But the people who will lose out from this are the consumers of those poorer areas of the capital. And the reason they’ll lose out is because the politicians have been loading costs onto Walmart by insisting upon higher wages in several different ways.”Additionally, Worstall notes that “Higher minimum wages mean fewer jobs as companies that would have expanded do not. And note again that not only do the workers not gain those higher wages the consumers also lose out on their benefits.”

Plus a reminder that “The correct minimum wage is, as it always has been, $0 per hour, as once even the New York Times knew.”

Why, it’s as if minimum wage laws were designed by the original “Progressives” to hurt low-skilled workers, not help them.

Related: Early evidence suggests that DC’s minimum wage law is also having a negative effect on the city’s restaurant employment.

GOOD: NASA Has Opened a Planetary Defense Office to Protect Earth from Cosmic Collisions.

For once, they’re following my advice.

LARRY KUDLOW: A Sad Marker Is Set As GE Quits Connecticut In Wake of Tax Hikes:

Connecticut has the second-highest property tax in the nation, ranking 49th out of 50. The Tax Foundation ranks Connecticut 42nd out of 50 in terms of tax climate (Massachusetts ranks 24th), and second highest in terms of state and local income-tax collections per person.

Massachusetts? It dropped its corporate tax to 8% from 9.5% and has a flat income tax of 5.15%. Connecticut, on the other hand, jacked its corporate tax to 9% from 7.5% and its top income-tax rate to 6.99% from 5%.

These are sizeable differences in favor of Massachusetts. Taxes don’t matter?

And the dirty little secret is that the pension and health-care benefits of the government unions — which dominate Democratic state politics — are roughly 50% unfunded. This spells many future tax hikes. GE’s Mr. Immelt knows it.

Not all the blame goes to Democrats. Connecticut’s first personal income tax was put in place by a Republican governor, Lowell Weicker. And Republican governors ruled for 16 years prior to Malloy’s victory in 2010.

And in last summer’s budget battle, I don’t recall any Republican initiatives to slash business taxes.

One of the key points in the Connecticut disaster is that while big corporations can get $100 million in tax credits, the woman running a small struggling business in Naugatuck gets nothing. But she’s paying for GE’s tax credit.

Connecticut’s high-tax policies do not soak the rich. The rich leave. Meanwhile, exorbitant tax and regulatory burdens slam the middle-class wage earners who have been losing take-home pay for years.

Still though, it’s nice to see that, as with the network’s on-air “talent,” not even GE believes the “high taxes are patriotic” propaganda they paid to broadcast on MSNBC for so many years.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: DNA nanotechnology controls which molecules enter cells.

A SHOVEL ADD-ON THAT WILL SAVE YOUR BACK.

ON FACEBOOK, KRISTEN HELFRECHT MURRAY SENT THIS:

Dear Glenn Reynolds, I need to ask you a small favor. Could you please pass this on to Sarah A. Hoyt on of your contributors over at Instapundit.com ( http://pjmedia.com/instapundit.) She kept me up ALL DAMN NIGHT.

You see yesterday I found one of her books, “Darkship Thieves,” while doing some NYE resolution de-cluttering. Iain Murray’s former president and founder of CEI, Fred Smith (a huge Sci-Fi fan) must have given it to him and it got mixed into my stuff. “Oh goody” I thought. I have wanted to read her work since following her contributions on instapundit and Sad Puppies. So I cracked open Darkship Thieves at around 10pm last night hoping to dip into it before going to bed. AND DIDN’T SLEEP ALL NIGHT!!!!!! I literally only put the book down because I heard my daughter’s morning alarm go off at 5:30am.

The only times I have ever compulsively read through the night was when I read Jurassic Park in one night and the first three Harry Potter books in 24 hours. Yes, I am putting Ms. Hoyt in the same group as Michael Crichton and JK Rollings.

My husband woke me up around 11am and I finished the last few chapters of the book and immediately, still in my PJs, teeth unbrushed, came downstairs to write this. I know it’s my own damn fault for staying up all night – but I couldn’t put her book down. And yes, I’m going on Amazon after I clean up and get dressed to buy the other two books in her series.

Thank you Ms. Hoyt. I’m tired but jazzed from reading a fantastic story. I wish I could have put it down and gotten some sleep but thank you for pulling me into a whole new world. Damn it.

I apologize for nothing.

YOU CAN TELL THAT FROM READING TWITTER: Study Finds That Liberals Are More Dogmatic And Simple-Minded Than Conservatives.

YOU HAVE TO BREAK A FEW HUMAN EGGS TO MAKE A NARRATIVE OMELET: MIGRANT SEX ATTACK ‘COVER-UP’: Welcome party for Cologne refugees turned into mass groping.

Today the council official responsible for the integration of refugees in the Cologne region admitted organisers knew about the sex attacks at the event but did not want to make a fuss.

She also shockingly said she “cannot remember” whether she advised the women who were attacked to go to the police, but added she felt the event’s student organisers “had learned from the situation”.

The appalling incident, on November 7, 2015, only became known of at all because one of the victims bravely decided to go to the police in tShe aftermath of the Cologne sex attacks.

She told the city’s Express newspaper how she and her friend were surrounded by migrants at the party, which was held on a boat, and were repeatedly groped despite asking the men to stop.

Remember when rape and sexual assault were the worst things ever, and we were always supposed to believe the victims and take immediate action?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Home Security Devices: How Good Are They?

I’M SO OLD I CAN REMEMBER WHEN FAMILIES WERE SUPPOSED TO BE OFF-LIMITS: Hillary Appears To Take A Shot At Bernie Sanders’ Grandkids “Some People Talk About Extraordinary Grandchildren, I Actually Have One.”

BERNIE SANDERS AS MONTGOMERY BURNS: Nothing says “I get the 21st Century” like trying to strongarm Wikipedia with bogus DMCA notices.

TRAILERS FROM HELL: Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories (1980):

It’s a fascinating movie, brimming with ideas, and as Larry Karaszewski (co-screenwriter of Tim Burton’s Ed Wood and former critic) notes in the above clip, a homage to Fellini’s surreal 8 ½ from 1963, with a raw and stunning jumpcut sequence illustrating the nervous breakdown of Charlotte Rampling’s character.

But Stardust Memories also cost Woody Allen his American audience — coming off Manhattan, which earned nearly $40 million at the American box office (a respectable take in 1979 dollars), Stardust Memories only returned $10.3 million, barely breaking even.  (And United Artists could have really used a hit at that time to offset the concurrent financial debacle of Heaven’s Gate, which essentially put them out of business as an independent entity.)

Woody’s US career was never the same; he went from being a mainstream American filmmaker to being an acquired elitist taste for those outside of Manhattan. (Ted Cruz, call your office.) But then, filmmaker who trashes his audience as badly as Woody did in Stardust Memories shouldn’t be surprised when they don’t return for seconds. Or as James Lileks wrote in an early Bleat, “I just remember hating the movie. Deeply. I took it personally. I had walked into the theater hoping to see another film from My Hero, and when it was done I felt stupid for admiring him. Because only idiots admired him, it seemed. I don’t think I ever looked forward to a Woody Allen movie after that one.”

IN THE MAIL: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing.

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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 982.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Elite U.S. targeting force has arrived in Iraq to fight the Islamic State. “An elite U.S. Special Operations targeting force has arrived in Iraq and will carry out operations against the Islamic State, part of a broader effort in 2016 to strike at the militants and that also includes U.S. Special Operations troops in Syria.”

HEY, CONSIDERING WHAT YOGI DID TO LEONARDO DiCAPRIO, CAN YOU FAULT RANGER SMITH FOR BEING OVERLY CAUTIOUS? Assault Rifles, Flash Bang Grenades Bought for Park Rangers, Report Finds.

From the Department of Agriculture to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is there a government agency left that isn’t kitted out like a SWAT team these days? As Mark Steyn has written “Americans will end their days in a very dark place unless this vile trend is reversed.”

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Third teacher from same Louisiana school busted for sex with student after female teen fesses up. “A Louisiana teacher faces charges for a year-long relationship with a 16-year-old female student, police in St. Charles Parish said. Kimberly Naquin, 26, is a teacher at Destrehan High, the same school where two female teachers were charged with having threesome sex trysts with a different teen student.”

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THE PIVOTAL MOMENT:Will The Republican-Controlled Senate Seriously Confirm This Judge Who Called Reagan A Bigot?

Well, of course they will — unlike his “exercise bands,” no one in the GOP dares push back against all-powerful de facto Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

THEY STILL DON’T GET IT: Catherine Rampell at the Washington Post has a shockingly ignorant piece, “Tea Partyers Love the Constitution So Much–They Want to Blow it Up.”

Sometimes I think tea partyers are in an emotionally abusive relationship with the Constitution.

One day, they proclaim its inerrancy and say it must be loved, honored and obeyed in all its original perfection. The next day, they call for a constitutional convention, arguing that it’s broken, outdated and desperately in need of a facelift.

In other words: I love you, you’re perfect, now change. . . .

Consider Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), a tea party darling, who wants to convene a constitutional convention to amend this precious political heirloom.

And not to push through just a single amendment, but nine. . . .

In a 92-page document defending his proposals, Abbott laments widespread ignorance of the Constitution and argues that his plan is “not so much a vision to alter the Constitution as it is a call to restore the rule of our current one.”

“The Constitution itself is not broken,” Abbott writes in italics. “What is broken is our Nation’s willingness to obey the Constitution and to hold our leaders accountable to it.”

In other words, the Constitution says what Abbott thinks it says, not what it actually says, or what the Supreme Court decides it says — so now we just need to rewrite it so that the text fits what’s in his head.

Abbott is not the only right-wing Constitution-thumper to call for reframing the Founding Fathers’ allegedly perfect handiwork. . . .

Because, obviously, the best way to honor that cherished, perfect, original text is by getting rid of it. 

All I can do is shake my head and feel sorry for the ignorance this column displays.

Apparently, Ms. Rampell has forgotten her basic civics, and doesn’t realize that these calls for amendment by “right-wing Constitution thumper[s]” would employ Article V, which provides a lawful, supermajoritarian and republican process for amending the Constitution. Article V–which has been used  27 times to amend the Constitution–is evidence that the founding generation did not consider the original Constitution to be “perfect.” Indeed, the first ten amendments–the Bill of Rights–were ratified only two short years after ratification of the original Constitution.

Ms. Rampell fails to grasp that the method of changing the Constitution–i.e., the process employed–matters to a “Constitution-thumper” because, well, the Constitution allows for amendments only via the processes set forth in Article V.  To a liberal/progressive, by contrast, the method of constitutional change is irrelevant, so long as the Constitution changes in the “right way”; it’s only results, not process, that matters.

Thus. to a liberal/progressive like Ms. Rampell, it is perfectly fine for five liberal/progressive Supreme Court Justices to “amend” the Constitution with a stroke of their outcome-oriented pens.  In Ms. Rampell’s eyes, using Article V’s legitimate, supermajoritarian, republican processes to effectuate constitutional change is so time-consuming and republican, it’s downright silly, and maybe even dangerous. Surely, it’s much better to just let elitist, liberal/progressive Supreme Court Justices alter the Constitution on the people’s “behalf” (unless of course they want to overrule decisions such as Roe v. Wade or roll back the Commerce Clause).

“Constitution-thumper[s]” believe in the Constitution–and this includes employing its only legal mechanism for alteration: Article V. Given the Supreme Court’s long history (since about 1937) of misconstruing the Constitution to serve liberal/progressive ends, calls to change the Constitution and restore its original vision is far from hypocrisy. It’s the height of principled constitutional conservatism. But I wouldn’t expect someone like Ms. Rampell to get that.

IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES, IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES: The Two Democrat Parties.

ASHE SCHOW: Law professor argues against ‘affirmative consent’ laws.

A University of Pennsylvania law professor is arguing that “affirmative consent” or “yes means yes” policies should be used as a rule of personal conduct, but not a standard of liability in sexual assault accusations. . . .

The rules state that each party must obtain ongoing consent from the other for each sexual activity. In reality, this translates to an impractical question-and-answer-session whenever sex occurs.

Since nonverbal communication is too ambiguous for those who have written the policies, words are all that counts. Which means that if a man (they are almost always the accused) takes a woman’s enthusiastic participation as an indication instead of explicitly asking permission again and again, he becomes a rapist. And there’s no way for him to defend himself from an accusation, because it’s her word against his, and colleges and universities are under pressure to “listen and believe” accusers no matter what the evidence.

As Robinson notes, those seeking to change the culture are the ones who would be most helped by affirmative consent being a means of conduct but not liability.

“Ironically, it is the reformers seeking to change existing norms — such as the norms of sexual consent on college campuses — who would most benefit from a criminal law that has earned moral credibility,” Robinson wrote. “It is their reform efforts that are most injured when the law’s credibility is damaged by using affirmative consent as a standard when determining guilt.”

Telling people how to have sex in a way that is counterintuitive and unnatural and then punishing them for failing to have sex in that way will never improve the culture, as men and women will increasingly become distrustful of each other instead.

Indeed.

TRAVEL THE GLOBE! STAY IN 5-STAR HOTELS! ENJOY FINE FOOD! All you have to do is be a federal bureaucrat whose job occasionally requires work overseas. The *best part, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Katie Watson, is the taxpayers foot the bill really generously.  (* Unless you’re a taxpayer. Then it’s the worst part.)

ROGER KIMBALL: Trump Fans vs. Trump Supporters: Which Group Are Polls Really Counting?

It doesn’t matter that many of Donald Trump’s positions are ridiculous, incoherent, or both. They tap into a current of emotion composed partly of anger, partly of impatience, and partly of fear.  People are angry at the inability or unwillingness of their elected officials to bring about the changes they were sent to Washington to accomplish. They are fearful, rightly, about the destruction wrought by seven years of Barack Obama on this country: the degradation of our military, the low esteem in which the rest of the world holds America, the regulatory burden that has stymied our economy, pustules of Islamic terrorism which Obama refuses even to name. These and other results of Obama’s disastrous reign have instilled great anger and great fear in large swathes of the American public.

It’s not acknowledged, not yet, by the folks who think that The New York Times or MSNBC or CNN are sources of news rather than outposts of the DNC press office, but it is nevertheless a palpable fact about America circa 2016.

The question for Trump is whether his many fans are convertible into reliable supporters. The polls measure the former. I am not at all sure that they are a reliable guide to the latter. And that is one reason that I suspect that Ted Cruz’s recent bump in the polls is more significant that Donald Trump is quite willing to admit. He half-admitted it last night, it is true, when he allowed that he had gone birther on Ted Cruz only because Cruz had suddenly been doing “a little better” in the polls.

Are Trump’s “many fans are convertible into reliable supporters?” We’ll know soon enough. But it’s entirely possible that by bringing the full fire of the New York media (read: outposts of the DNC press office) down upon his head, Ted Cruz’s “New York Values” line might just resonate enough to allow him to end-run Trump, and to carry him through the early primaries. Or not — in any case, as far as who is left with a viable shot in the primaries, to borrow from a Photoshop I did for Roger Simon around Thanksgiving…

SO IT’S AS EASY AS THAT, HUH? “To absorb newcomers peacefully, Europe must insist they respect values such as tolerance and sexual equality,” The Economist deadpans.

I’m sure Joe Biden could swing into action to implement this plan, just as soon as he’s done curing cancer. Then the EU can tap on the handy Continental-sized economy version of Staple’s “That Was Easy” button and get on with their more pressing issues, such as banning vacuum cleaners, mandating the shape of bananas, and other matters that truly vex the sharpest minds of the Euro-left.

Related! Anti-Pedophilia Bill Rejected In Pakistan As ‘Anti-Islamic.’

TWO CNBCs IN ONE: A recession worse than 2008 is coming.

That’s sounds so odd to read today, after the infamous dumpster fire of a debate CNBC masterminded in late October. The unspoken message behind the incessant attacks on the GOP POTUS candidates by Obama’s palace guard at the Comcast-owned business network is the awesome, awesome job that Obama’s been doing on the economy.

Speaking of which, “Study: 93% of US Counties Still Haven’t Recovered from the Recession.”

CARRIE LUKAS: Defining Sexism Down. “Yet campuses aren’t the only place where oppression and grievance are being defined down, often to the point of ridiculousness. Today, feminists gloss over and even explain away actual violence against women (so long as that violence is committed by men from groups that qualify as oppressed), but they stand ready to point out acts of sexism so subtle that they would otherwise be undetectable.”

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? What? Obama To Let The United Nations Decide Which Refugees Come To America.

TAHARRUSH GAMEA: HAS A NEW FORM OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT ARRIVED IN EUROPE?

The Swedish and German authorities say they have never encountered anything like it: groups of men encircling then molesting women in large public gatherings. It happened in Cologne and Stockholm, but is it really unprecedented? Ivar Arpi argues in the new Spectator that it may well be connected to a phenomenon called ‘taharrush gamea’, a form of group harassment previously seen in Egypt.

So what is taharrush gamea, and should Western police be worried? Here’s what we know.

‘Taharrush’ means sexual harassment – it’s a relatively modern word, which political scholar As’ad Abukhalil says dates back to at least the 1950s. ‘Gamea’ just means ‘collective’. Taharrush gamea came to attention in Egypt in 2005, when female protesters against the Mubarak government were sexually assaulted by plain-clothes policemen. Many subsequent cases were political in nature, but not all: as Mariam Kirollos writes, in 2006 ‘Egyptian bloggers reported cases of group sexual assault in downtown Cairo, where large groups of men groped veiled and unveiled women, and in some cases ripped their clothes off’. There were also cases of rape.

* * * * * * * *

Taharrush gamea shouldn’t be ruled out as a factor; but given what we know so far, some of the news reporting and the social media hubbub seems a little over-excited.

And we must haven’t have that – better raped than rude, to paraphrase John Derbyshire.

Oh, and by the way: “This Is The Cartoon Germany Gives To Refugees At Public Swimming Pools.”

BUILDING A BRIDGE TO CHAPPAQUIDDICK: Hillary Clinton Struggles with Answering the Question on What Her Message Is, rambles on incoherently for three and a half minutes.

Ted Kennedy, call your office! Shades of 1979 when, “As the cameras rolled, [CBS’s Roger Mudd] popped the now-famous question: Why do you want to be president? Even if he had not been a Kennedy, what followed was stunning: a hesitant, rambling and incoherent nonanswer; it seemed to go on forever without arriving anywhere. Mudd threw another softball, and Kennedy swung and missed again. On the simple question that would define him and his political destiny, Kennedy had no clue.”

IS THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE going after Donald Trump? “What?? Drug money in Miami? Illicit funds going into US real estate from fabulously wealthy foreigners whose wealth accumulation tactics might not hold up to the strictest of scrutiny? We have only been reading about this since, oh, Imelda Marcos. So why the sudden interest in Manhattan real estate? Please – the race is on to see whether the DoJ can smear Trump by linking him to some unsavory purchasers before they are obliged to not indict Hillarity! and spark an internal rebellion.”

NANCY PELOSI CAN SEE IRAN FROM HER HOUSE: “If Sarah Palin had said this, it would be a joke for years. But it was Nancy Pelosi so only Republicans will notice. Nancy Pelosi, when asked about the the sailors taken by the Iranians, said that she has ‘been to Bahrain and looked right across the Persian Gulf to Iran. Everything is very close.’ Actually, the distance from Bahrain to Iran across the Persian Gulf is about 150 miles.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Who Exactly Is the Republican Establishment?