WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: The incredible tongue piercing which allows patients paralyzed from the neck down to control their wheelchairs. A magnetic tongue stud as a controller. Why didn’t I think of that?

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Hillary Clinton Supporters Slowly Realizing She Didn’t Do Anything as Secretary of State.

JOURNALISM: Media feasting on Bush ‘fake’ turkey claim; false story still repeated 10 years on. The image of Bush serving Thanksgiving dinner to the troops was so unacceptably wholesome, the press was forced to hallucinate a flaw in order to maintain its own sanity. Or what passes for that, in its case. “One reporter on the error list is Howard Kurtz, who as The Washington Post’s media critic in 2006 wrote a story about a Bush visit to Afghanistan, saying it went off better than the 2003 Iraq visit and the ‘fake turkey.’ Now at Fox News, Mr. Kurtz didn’t reply to an email seeking comment Wednesday.” It’s okay, Howard — now that you work at Fox you’re allowed to tell the truth.

Note: The turkey in this picture is also genuine. . . .

UPDATE: Related: CNN and MSNBC lose almost half their viewers in one year.

OBAMACARE’S CRUELTY: Boy with cancer loses coverage after Obamacare launch: Bureaucrats won’t help unless he is ‘pregnant or an illegal alien.’

KATHY SHAIDLE: We All Wondered What Happened.

HMM: Despite Filibuster Limits, a Door Remains Open to Block Judge Nominees. “Twelve more appeals court seats are either vacant or will be by the end of 2014. All but one are in states with at least one Republican senator. As a result, Mr. Obama still lacks unrestricted power to swiftly appoint a flurry of more clearly left-of-center judges than he has done to date, despite the fears of conservatives and the hopes of liberals, specialists said. . . . In particular, the blue slip rule could come under additional scrutiny. Under the prerogative, both home-state senators must sign off on a blue slip allowing a confirmation hearing for a nominee. Facing that obstacle, presidents generally do not make nominations without such senators’ consent.” Democrats, though, may not go along with changing the blue slip rule since it would limit their own power and patronage. But the nuclear option was mostly about packing the D.C. Circuit in order to protect K street power and patronage. So the other appointments may not matter as much to Harry Reid, et al., anyway.

CALIFORNIA LAND GRAB: Bullet train dead in water — yet state to proceed with eminent domain.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: An Outbreak Of Lawlessness. “For all the gnashing of teeth over the lack of comity and civility in Washington, the real problem is not etiquette but the breakdown of political norms, legislative and constitutional. . . . The law remains unchanged. The regulations governing that law remain unchanged. Nothing is changed except for a president proposing to unilaterally change his own law from the White House press room. That’s banana republic stuff, except that there the dictator proclaims from the presidential balcony.”

IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE TOO DUMB TO BE MARRIED TO A KARDASHIAN? Kanye West on Obama’s Failures: ‘Black People Don’t Have the Same Connections as Jewish People.’

CHARM: Obama letter to conservative: I’ve been quite respectful of you tea-baggers.

A reader snarks that Obama’s response was handwritten because he couldn’t get his computer to work . . . .

OBAMACARE’S CRUELTY: Cancer Patient Who Spoke Out Against ObamaCare Now Being Audited.

JOURNALISM: Duke Rape Accuser Got 160 TV News Stories on False Accusation, 3 on Murder Conviction.

BLOWBACK: Judge Suspends Sentencing Of Would-Be Bomber After NSA Revelations.

GETTING A HEAD START ON YOUR BLACK FRIDAY SHOPPING? Please use the Amazon links on this page. Thanks!

VANDALISM: Antigunners Plastering Businesses With Fake “No Firearms” Stickers.

HOPE YOU HAD A GOOD THANKSGIVING! Things went well at our house, where I cooked a turkey (see below) and three legs of lamb — though since the bad weather kept my brother’s family from making it, the third leg wasn’t really needed. (But it didn’t go to waste, either).

SO THANKS TO THE WONDER OF BING, I RAN ACROSS THIS FROM 2009: If Timothy F. Geithner Can Fix Our Economy, Does It Matter Whether He Paid His Taxes?

As it turns out, he didn’t do either. But now he’s cashed in with Wall Street. More argument in favor of my revolving-door surtax.

HEH: One of my Facebook friends posts that she’s thankful for Elmer Keith. Aren’t we all?

KINDA-SORTA-NOT ENTIRELY SECURE SOCKETS: SSL: Intercepted today, decrypted tomorrow. Hence the interest in Perfect Forward Secrecy. Which isn’t actually “perfect” either.

OKAY, HERE’S SOMETHING I’M NOT THANKFUL FOR: Defense Department gives local police equipment designed for a war zone.

AT AMAZON, Home Theater Systems Under $400.

Also, Vehicle GPS Units Under $100.

Plus MP3 Players Under $50 and Portable Speakers Under $150.

WE HAVE A WINNER: The Year’s Most Idiotic Rant Against Thanksgiving.

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: William Wilkins, IRS Chief Counsel, Testifies on Targeting of Tea-Party Groups.

Behind the scenes and nearly six months after the scandal first made headlines, the House Oversight Committee is quietly continuing its investigation of the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of tea-party groups. Since May, congressional investigators have interviewed over 30 witnesses and examined thousands of pages of documents.

The latest official called to testify before committee investigators is an important one: IRS chief counsel William Wilkins. Wilkins is one of just two political appointees at the IRS, a generous donor to Democratic candidates and causes, and once represented Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ. Evidence of his involvement in the targeting would spell trouble for the White House and bring renewed focus to a scandal that has largely receded from public consciousness.

The Oversight Committee has furnished none, to date, but it is expressing gross dissatisfaction with Wilkins’s testimony and, in a letter sent to him on Wednesday, offering him the opportunity to amend it. “In your testimony, you stated ‘I don’t recall’ a staggering 80 times in full or partial response to the Committee’s questions,” committee chairman Darrell Issa and Ohio representative Jim Jordan wrote. “Your failure to recollect important aspects of the Committee’s investigation suggests either a deliberate attempt to obfuscate your involvement in this matter or gross incompetence on your part.”

The most pertinent subject on which Wilkins’s memory failed him was the nature of his communications with Treasury Department officials: in particular, whether he discussed the applications of tea-party groups with anybody at the Treasury Department, whether he discussed with Treasury Department officials regulatory guidance for 501(c)(4) entities engaged in political activities, and whether he discussed with them the inspector general’s report that blew the lid off of the targeting scandal in mid May.

My prediction: Yes, yes, and oh, Hell yes.

THE WAR HERO New York Forgot.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Young men, get a ‘yes’ text before sex.