RAND SIMBERG: President Ed Wood. Heh.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: When Is Ejaculation ‘Premature,’ and When Should a Penis Be Made Numb?

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): 2.5 million jobless adults living with their parents. Nearly double the number five years ago.

WHAT CHINA’S NUCLEAR MISSILE SUBS MEAN FOR THE UNITED STATES.

The range of the JL-2 is about 4500 miles. That means the sub’s missiles can’t target the continental United States from the Chinese coast. They could hit Los Angeles from a position 1000 miles west of Hawaii, while Washington, D.C., would be in range only if the submarine could sneak its way to a position about 1500 miles from the West Coast.

That’s the trick for these subs: surviving outside Chinese waters. Japan and America have assets in the Pacific that could detect submarines; a Chinese skipper would have to hide from them to get close enough to take a shot at the continental United States. And Christensen cites Office of Naval Intelligence reports that say the JIN submarines are less stealthy than Russian submarines built two decades ago. “They are too noisy to slip through U.S. antisubmarine networks,” he says. “The U.S. submarine community trained for more than 60 years to track nuclear-powered ballistic submarines . . . Given that record, I’d be surprise if China’s would live for long in a war. To me, they would be sitting ducks.”

However, American antisubmarine capabilities have waned since the Cold War. The United States will be decreasing its number of attack submarines, but those that remain will be operating in the Pacific—the Pentagon has already deployed more attack subs to Guam and Hawaii. The Littoral Combat Ship, a troubled Navy program, is expected to have antisubmarine capabilities, but those ships (as the name implies) are made to dominate shallow water.

Furthermore, last week news leaked that the Navy plans to cut nearly one-quarter of its highly specialized multi-intelligence aircraft in the next few years, including the P3C Orion sub-hunting airplane.

Don’t worry, be happy. With the money saved, you’ll be getting free birth control.

HYPOCRISY: Fordham struggles to defend condemning Ann Coulter, while embracing infanticide supporter Peter Singer.

SWING STATES HARDEST HIT: Smithfield To Shut Virginia Plant.

A WEARABLE FITNESS TRACKER THAT’S the size of a quarter.

THOMAS HENRIKSEN: The Other Tragic Foreign Story: In Afghanistan, fratricide-style insider attacks are calling into question U.S. counter-terrorism strategy.

JOHN MCCAIN: Susan Rice ‘not very bright’ in Benghazi response.

Related: “I am dead-set on making sure that we don’t promote anybody who was an essential player in the Benghazi debacle.”

Plus this commentary from Ann Althouse: “Graham’s position is so obvious, it’s weird that he had to say it, but Obama expressed himself in a very strange way. As I noted yesterday, it had an old-fashioned chivalrous quality to it, as if he were shaming Graham and McCain for picking on the gentle lady. The very idea of attacking a woman. The phrase ‘besmirch her reputation’ evokes an image of the woman as pure and unstained. Absurd!” Especially in Washington.

KITCHEN CAPERS: Inside the main kitchen of the MS Nieuw Amsterdam:

(Photo by Susan of Susan’s Cooking.com)

SUCKERS! Surprise! Jobless Claims Up 78,000 Week After Election; PA, OH Worst Hit. We sure are learning a lot of new things now that the election’s over.

LAW, SCIENCE, and the coming brawl over marijuana. “The federal government is on the wrong side of science over medical marijuana. Until that changes, there’s no chance for legalization.” Perhaps President Choom will get involved.

ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Silencing General Petraeus: No keen observer could believe the government’s Pollyanna version of these events.

SOME HELPFUL ADVICE TO WRITERS: “If you are writing a biography and either you or your subject are married to a third person, and you have sex, you have done something wrong. No mystery, no dilemma, no agonizing introspection needed. Of course, knowing what is right is the easy part. Doing it can be hard. But if you are genuinely confused about the morality of what presumably happened in this relationship, it’s time to get your moral compass reset.”

BEING EVIL? “It seems to me that Google is doing a serious disservice to the cause of freedom and humanity.”

LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Report Blasts $4.65 Million in Forgivable Loans to Texas Law Profs.

AT AMAZON, pre-Black Friday deals in Sports & Outdoors.

Also, today only: Lord Of The Rings Trilogy on Blu-Ray, $43.49.

INSTAVISION: I talk with Michael Ledeen about the expanding Petraeus scandals, a society of “rampant espionage,” and how the scandal is playing in the CIA and military.

PETER INGEMI: Is it just me or does the press want to keep Sen. Kelly Ayotte out of the Susan Rice debate?

You would think it’s kind of hard to ignore Kelly Ayotte at that event, She is tall (she towered over both Senators McCain & Graham) but she is a younger, photogenic woman who had a strong interest in this matter. I’d think that would be something to play up instead of just “two old white guys”.

I suggest that is exactly WHY she is left out.

It’s all a question of negative marketing. You can’t ignore John McCain, he is a former Presidential candidate and a war hero, but you can dismiss him, Lindsey Graham has been considered a protege of Sen McCain for a long time, if you want to pooh pooh McCain it’s fairly easy to do the same to Graham. He was a member of the impeachment crew vs Bill Clinton and is just another southern white guy.

But Kelly Ayotte is a relatively young senator, she is an up and coming member of the GOP and in fact the highest ranking member of the GOP in office out of New Hampshire. I mean how many photogenic northeast Republican women, backed by Sarah Palin, who are fearless conservatives in the Senate?

I submit and suggest that a conservative woman who is a rising star is exactly who the left and the media doesn’t want highlighted and a real effort is going to made to continue to downplay her and keep her unnoticed.

And of course if she is left out, then it is two old white guys beating up on Susan Rice, a woman of color.

It’s always about the narrative with these people.

REP. GOHMERT: Name Independent Counsel To Investigate Benghazi.

BUT IT’S ALL BECAUSE OF THE JAPANESE TSUNAMI SANDY: Unexpectedly, Right After Election, Jobless Numbers Hit New High. “Sandy drove the number of people seeking unemployment benefits up to a seasonally adjusted 439,000 last week, the highest level in 18 months.”

UPDATE: Mocking the Sandy excuse.

NEW YORK POST: “An unexpectedly defensive President Obama yesterday dared Capitol Hill Republicans to ‘go after me’ on the Benghazi consulate intelligence debacle.” Didn’t Gary Hart once say something like that? Plus:

Here’s hoping the debate begins with a dissection of Obama’s admission that Rice’s dishonest post-Benghazi appearances on TV talk shows were made “at the request of the White House.”

That’s when she repeated the already-discredited line that Benghazi was a “spontaneous” attack fueled by an Internet video.

The president accused McCain and Graham of seeking to “besmirch her reputation” — which is a little silly, given the job she herself has done of it.

Senators have an obligation to hold to account any top official who lies to the country — or who serves as a transmission line for false information.

All this eclipsed news that former CIA Director David Petraeus has reversed course and agreed to testify under oath about his undercover post-attack fact-finding trip to Benghazi.

The retired four-star general also blamed Benghazi on the video — in front of Congress, no less! — although he certainly had to have known better.

This time, he will be under oath, and lawmakers need to wring the full truth out of him. Of course, whether his own personal drama played any role in his earlier, misleading, testimony must be explored, as well.

Benghazi is important in its own right — by all accounts it represented a grave US intelligence failure.

Equally critical is the likelihood — near certainty, actually — that the murders of four Americans were politicized to serve Obama’s re-election campaign.

Indeed. And a filmmaker is in jail as a scapegoat.

CAUSING MORE DESTRUCTION THAN A TV-B-GONE IN A SPORTS BAR DURING THE SUPER BOWL: Battery-Powered Transmitter Could Crash A City’s 4G Network.

IT’S TIME TO PLAY SOAK! THE! RICH! Fun and educational!