STEVE JOBS IS OUT. TIM COOK IS IN. APPLE IS SLIDING. “Gone are the fundamental principles of good design: discoverability, feedback, recovery, and so on. Instead, Apple has, in striving for beauty, created fonts that are so small or thin, coupled with low contrast, that they are difficult or impossible for many people with normal vision to read. We have obscure gestures that are beyond even the developer’s ability to remember. We have great features that most people don’t realize exist. The products, especially those built on iOS, Apple’s operating system for mobile devices, no longer follow the well-known, well-established principles of design that Apple developed several decades ago. These principles, based on experimental science as well as common sense, opened up the power of computing to several generations, establishing Apple’s well-deserved reputation for understandability and ease of use.”

Prediction: The worse Apple does, the more Tim Cook will talk about social justice.

REMAIN CALM, ALL IS WELL: 900 ‘homegrown’ ISIS cases being investigated in US: FBI.

FLASHBACK: Me In September: The Obama/Hillary Mideast Debacles. It’s only gotten worse, of course.

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BUT WILL THEY TAKE OVER CHRIS EISGRUBER’S OFFICE? Princeton Students Petition University to Reject Protester Demands.

JAMELLE BOUIE IN 2013: Why Do These Stupid Wingnuts Still Have Any Respect for That Idiot, George W. Bush?

Jamelle Bouie in 2015: These Stupid Wingnuts Need To Pay Attention To The Excellent Example Set By George W. Bush.

UPDATE: Bush as Hitler, Swastika-Mania: A Retrospective.

Plus, from the comments: “Yes, Virginia, they are in that much trouble and even they know it.”

ED MORRISSEY: Does the strange claim that Hillary campaign demanded comedy club remove video really hold up? As Ed notes, the sourcing is thin, but what’s really damning is how plausible the story was. After all, Hillary successfully suppressed The Path to 9/11, and put a guy in jail over a YouTube video. So she’s not exactly above suspicion here.

And check out Blocking ‘The Path to 9/11’.

HMMM: CNN Selectively-Editing Trump’s ‘Muslim’ Comments?

WHY ARE DEMOCRATS SO RACIST? Gov.-elect Matt Bevin Lashes Out at ‘Overtly Racist’ Cartoon published by the Lexington Herald-Leader. “Bevin and his wife Glenna adopted four Ethiopian children in 2012.”

The Herald-Leader also apparently thinks that Syrians are black.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Reuters/Ipsos Poll: Majority of Americans Feel Like Strangers In Their Own Country.

According to the Reuters survey, 58 percent Americans say they “don’t identify with what America has become.” While Republicans and Independents are the most likely to agree with this statement, even 45 percent of Democrats share this feeling.

More than half of Americans, 53 percent, say they “feel like a stranger” in their own country. A minority of Americans feel “comfortable as myself” in the country.

There are no doubt lots of reasons underlying this feelings. Demographically, Americans holding these views tend to be white, older, live in the South and have less than a college education. Politically, they are cordoned off as the white working class. While they rarely attract much attention from the political class, they still represent an enormous block of voters.

Their numbers may be declining relative to the entire population, but they are still the largest single block of voters. In many critical swing states like Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina, they represent a significant base of voters that can determine the outcome of elections.

The reasons for their alienation are both cultural and economic. The economic anxiety sparked by the financial crisis in 2007-8 has likely pushed them further away from the mainstream political parties. This isn’t solely a phenomenon on the right, as the resurgent popularity of explicitly socialist policies on the left attest. . . .

The Democrat party, for now at least, has staked its future on appealing to young and minority voters.

Whether or not this is the politically smart play for the future remains to be seen. In the present, however, it means that a huge block of voters feel alienated and are up for grabs politically. Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is perfectly attuned to those voters who feel increasingly like “strangers” in their own country.

Panic breeds actions born out of emotions rather than somber reflection. The Republican establishment is understandably panicked at the thought of Donald Trump capturing the party’s nomination for President. It is convinced, perhaps incorrectly, that a Trump candidacy will doom the party’s chances next year.

Its zeal to derail his campaign carries huge risks for the party, however. The Trump phenomenon is not simply the product of a media-savvy, hyper-personality candidate. It is drawing strength from very real sentiments of a huge block of voters. The Republican party may take out Trump, but it alienates these voters at its peril.

True.

CONSERVATISM, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG: Jeb: ‘Compelling Argument to Be Made’ for Internet Sales Tax.

Say what you will about Dubya, but after Democrats talked Papa Bush into raising taxes, and watching Bill Clinton go into full “you f***ed up, you trusted us” mode by sticking the shiv in during the ’92 campaign in response, he knew enough not to raise taxes. If Jeb’s going to lose the nomination anyhow, apparently he’s decided that he wants to go out full RINO.

Who knows — maybe Hillary will call for the veep position?

TO BE FAIR, AMERICA’S LEADERS ARE DOING WORSE: Michel Houllebecq: How France’s Leaders Failed Its People. “Who exactly weakened the capacities of the police forces until they were totally on edge and almost incapable of fulfilling their mission? Who exactly drilled into our heads for years the notion that borders were a quaint absurdity, and evidence of a foul and rancid nationalism? The blame, as one can see, is widely shared. . . . For 10 (20? 30?) years, our successive governments have pathetically, systematically, deplorably failed in their essential mission: to protect the population under their responsibility.”

EVIDENCING A SURPRISING DEGREE OF SANITY AND REALISM: D.C. Chief Lanier encourages people to “take the gunman out” in active shooter situations.

In an upcoming segment of “60 Minutes,” Metropolitan Police Chief Police Chief Cathy Lanier says it’s unrealistic to think police will make it to an active shooter situation in time to save lives, so victims will have to prepare to “run, hide or fight.”

“If you’re in a position to try and take the gunman down, to take the gunman out, it’s the best option for saving lives before police can get there,” she tells Anderson Cooper for the segment, which will air Sunday at 7 p.m. on CBS.

Lanier said this is radically different from what police have often told people. But after a series of tragic domestic attacks – including the 2013 murders at the D.C. Navy Yard — it is clear that merely calling 911 and waiting for a response isn’t enough.

This is an argument, of course, for widespread gun-carrying, though I’m not 100% sure that Chief Lanier actually realizes that.

ROGER SIMON: As Terrorism Dominates, Can Trump Be Stopped?

Byron York explains how “How the crazy Trump Muslim database story got started,” but to the average blue collar voter, imagine how much sensible that sounds in response to the ISIS attack on Paris when compared to Hillary’s boilerplate PC “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism” drivel?

YES, BUT WHEN IT HAPPENS TO WOMEN IT’S BECAUSE OF SEXISM: Overweight men just as likely as overweight women to face discrimination in retail settings. Though I’m not sure the study really does what the headline claims.

MARK STEYN: The Week in Nothing to do with Islam.

LIFE IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: Federal agents took more money and stuff from Americans in 2014 than burglars did.

In 2014, the federal government confiscated some $4.5 billion from Americans through civil asset forfeiture, according to a recent report from the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit libertarian law and research organization.

That’s a figure which has been growing rapidly in recent years—as recently as 2008 it was “just” $1.5 billion, and there’s compelling evidence that law enforcement agencies use this license to bolster their budgets in lean years.

In the words of one officer, civil asset forfeiture funds are “kind of like pennies from heaven. It gets you a toy or something that you need is the way that we typically look at it to be perfectly honest.”

That $4.5 billion figure is shocking on its own.

But it’s even more shocking when you put it in this perspective: in that same year, FBI records show burglars took only $3.9 billion from Americans.

So in 2014, the federal government took more money and stuff from Americans than actual burglars did.

Our government is “getting really good at separating the citizen from their property — not just really good, criminally good.”

Think of the state as a band of thieves and you will not go far wrong.

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