“WE GET ALL THE BENEFITS AND YOU GET ALL THE BILLS:” British video mocks migrants.

AND NOW, THE CALL FOR THE ‘WISE MEN’ TO SAVE OBAMA FROM HIMSELF: That would be the “council of elders” that columnist Bernie Quigley proposes at The Hill. At Red State, Moe Lane responds, “Shocker: 2008 Obama supporter thinks democracy doesn’t work!”

It never fails. You get some ostensibly well-meaning, but ultimately self-deluding guy (in this case, Bernie Quigley) who in 2008 declares Barack Obama to be the ” New JFK” who shows “organizational and conceptual abilities already that are superior to any candidate in our time.”  And, not least because of people like Mr. Quigley, Barack Obama gets elected – and then proceeds to demonstrate an appalling lack of organizational and conceptual abilities, to the point where the Democratic party outside of the executive branch now looks like a minor, regional party that is one bad cycle away from losing the East Coast*.  And, oh, yeah: the country’s foreign policy is in worse shape than ever, and things aren’t really improving.  One would think that this might suggest to people like Mr. Quigley that maybe, just maybe, he backed the wrong horse in 2008…. HAHAHAHA!

Nah, it just tells him that the country’s ungovernable: “Late in life, the great Amb. George Kennan declared that America needed a “council of elders” to contain the excesses of democracy. The governors, perhaps meeting in a selective and representative regional council, like a board of trustees at a university or a board of directors of a corporation, might offer America saving grace at a time of dangerous crossing.”  Because the problem’s not Barack Obama, you see. It’s democracy itself.

As Moe adds, Quigley “is one of the guys who can apparently write ‘the nefarious triumvirate of Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and especially George W. Bush’ with a straight face, and apparently no sense of shame.” Back in 2012, Quigley wrote that Elizabeth Warren’s “claim to be ‘part Indian’ is correct in mythical terms…In the heartland it is almost universal for those who have been there for a few generations to claim Indian blood; that is, to wish it were there even if it isn’t. It is not so much a lie as it is the acculturation of personal and regional American myth; the fabric of old-soul American consciousness.” Rachel Dolezal, call your office. You too, Dan Rather!

But regarding “the council of elders,” at the beginning of 2010, when Scott Brown was sent to the Senate by Massachusetts voters with the hope that he would save America from the debacle of Obamacare, Mickey Kaus wrote, “I’d guess we’re about 36 hours away from a Beltway call for ‘wise men,'” the first of several from pundits hoping to save Obama from himself. But unlike Lyndon Johnson, who met with the New Deal-era Democrat grandees dubbed “the Wise Men” in late 1967 and again in March of 1968, the latter meeting occurring shortly before Johnson concluded that Vietnam — and his presidency — both appeared lost, why would Obama listen to Quigley’s “council of elders?” After all, he professes to believe that “I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”

Between the race riots, the campus riots, the massive expansion of the federal government and the concurrent belief in its infallibility, the military debacles overseas, a feeling in general that the nation was out of control and now this latest call for the wise men to bail him out, it really does feel like we’re living out the last year of the Johnson administration, doesn’t it? Funny, when Democratic operatives with bylines were submitting Tiger Beat-style articles in 2007 and 2008 dreamily forecasting which Democrat presidencies Obama’s would most closely resemble, LBJ’s rarely made the list. Wonder why?

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I predicted this in 2009. And boy, was I right.

BERNIE SANDERS’ GAY RIGHTS RECORD NOT AS GOOD AS HIS SUPPORTERS MIGHT IMAGINE: As Gay Rights Ally, Bernie Sanders Wasn’t Always in Vanguard.

Mr. Sanders, who first publicly endorsed gay marriage in 2009, expressed varying levels of support for gay rights as he rose from the mayor of liberal Burlington to a congressman and then a senator with statewide support among more socially conservative constituencies such as hunters, blue-collar workers and older voters.

Hey, not everybody can be as progressive on gay rights as Dick Cheney.

JOHN C. WRIGHT’S: Somewhither.

FASTER (THAN LIGHT) PLEASE: Blue skies spotted 100 light years away: Astronomers discover Neptune-sized planet that looks similar to Earth.

THINGS THAT MAKE URBAN FANTASY WRITERS SQUEE: The Mysterious Secrets Of New York City’s Underworld (Videos).

MY DENTIST TALKED TO ME ABOUT THIS LAST YEAR: We’re going to be farmers of teeth, he said.

WOULDN’T IT BE NICE TO LET IT WORK FOR US: Singapore: the Power of Economic Freedom.

THANKSGIVING: Why George Washington Thought Gratitude Was Essential for the American Character.

WORTH READING: An Interview with Novelist Thomas Mallon.

THE BEST POET IN THE ROOM: Doesn’t want any wretched refuse!

I HAVE MENTIONED MY SHOCKED FACE, RIGHT? How The New York Times whitewashes Palestinian terror.

TASTE THE TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION: Newsweek didn’t fear the web in 1995.

STILL MORE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE: Number of Unaccompanied Kids Crossing Border Has Doubled in Last Year.

THIS IS MY REALLY SHOCKED FACE: VA spends millions promoting Obamacare, little cutting wait times.

THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE: Obama’s new cancer Rx is a war on men.

IT’S ALRIGHT.  IT’S NOT LIKE I NEED TO SLEEP.  EVER: Obama’s Most Dangerous Year.

THERE IS NO WAY SATIRE CAN IMPROVE UPON REAL LIFE FOR ITS PURE ABSURDITY:

Satire: “Pardoned White House Turkey Defects To ISIS.”

—DuffelBlog, yesterday.

Real Life:

Speaking at his annual Thanksgiving turkey pardoning on Wednesday, President Barack Obama joked about raising teenage daughters, his critics and the 2016 presidential race.

“As you may have heard, for months, there has been a fierce competition between a bunch of turkeys trying to win their way into the White House,” Obama said.

Following a long pause and some laughter he added, “some of you caught that.”

Obama pardoned two California-raised turkeys, named “Honest” and “Abe,” who will retire to a historic farm in Leesburg, Virginia, rather than end up on Americans’ Thanksgiving tables.

The turkeys were raised by Dr. Jihad Douglas, whom Obama referred to as “Dr. Douglas,” side-stepping the man’s first name, which can refer to spreading Islam through violence. Obama referred to a second turkey farmer, Joe Hedden, by his first and last names.

—Reuters, Wednesday.

Pictured standing to Obama’s right in this photo at the National Turkey Federation Website, Dr. Jihad Douglas is the federation’s current chairman, and president of Aviagen Turkeys, Inc.

RANDALL KENNEDY: Black Tape At Harvard Law:

In a grand corridor of Harvard Law School, framed professors’ photographs hang on a wall. A week ago, someone put slivers of black tape over the faces of most of the African-American professors. I am one of those whose photograph was marked.

Last Thursday, on my way to teach contracts, I received an email from a student who alerted me to the defacement. I saw the taped photos, including my own, right before class. Since then I have been asked repeatedly how I feel about having been targeted by what some deem to be a racial hate crime. Questioners often seem to assume that I should feel deeply alarmed and hurt. I don’t.

The identity and motives of the person or people behind the taping have not been determined. Perhaps the defacer is part of the law school community. But maybe not. Perhaps the defacer is white. But maybe not. Perhaps the taping is meant to convey anti-black contempt or hatred for the African-American professors. But maybe it was meant to protest the perceived marginalization of black professors, or was a hoax meant to look like a racial insult in order to provoke a crisis, or was a rebuke to those who have recently been taping over the law school’s seal, which memorializes a family of slaveholders from colonial times. Some observers, bristling with certainty, insist that the message conveyed by the taping of the photographs is obvious. To me it is puzzling. . . .

Disturbing, too, is a related tendency to indulge in self-diminishment by displaying an excessive vulnerability to perceived and actual slights and insults. Some activists seem to have learned that invoking the rhetoric of trauma is an effective way of hooking into the consciences of solicitous authorities. Perhaps it is useful for purposes of eliciting certain short-term gains.

In the long run, though, reformers harm themselves by nurturing an inflated sense of victimization. A colleague of mine whose portrait was taped over exhibited the right spirit when he jauntily declared that it would take far more than tape to slow him down.

Indeed.

THANKSGIVING FLASHBACK: The Pilgrims And Property Rights.

WELL, THERE’S AN ELECTION COMING: Number of Migrants Illegally Crossing Rio Grande Rises Sharply.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE NEWS AGENCY SOON TO ANNOUNCE IT IS VOLUNTARILY CLOSING ITS DOORS? “What’s the carbon footprint of an email?”, AFP asks:

Paris (AFP) – A long list of seemingly harmless everyday actions contribute to emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other climate-altering greenhouse gases.

Driving a car and flipping a light switch have a clear “carbon footprint” — much less obvious is the harm caused by sending a simple text message or opening a bottle of water.

* * * * * * *

Sending even a short email is estimated to add about four grammes (0.14 ounces) of CO2 equivalent (gCO2e) to the atmosphere.

To put this into perspective, the carbon output of hitting “send” on 65 mails is on par with driving an average-sized car a kilometre (0.6 of a mile).

The culprits are greenhouse gases produced in running the computer, server and routers but also those emitted when the equipment was manufactured.

It gets worse when you send an email with a large attachment, which puts about 50 gCO2e into the air. Five such messages are like burning about 120 grammes (0.27 pounds) of coal.

So imagine how much carbon a giant electronic news gathering operation connected to a large server farm such as AFP emits. Since they’ve demonstrated that they believe their own efforts are hurting the environment so badly, they must take the lead and voluntarily shutter their doors to send the correct message to the rest of us, to prove that they take all of what they’ve written above seriously.

After all, as Glenn likes to say, I’ll believe global warming is a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start to act like it’s a crisis themselves.

Speaking of which, note the dateline on the above article. Aren’t there other, more pressing stories going on in Paris these days for AFP to reporting on? (Or is their article a retreat to their ideological “safe space” while under siege?)

IMAGINE THANKSGIVING WITHOUT THE STRESS: I don’t have to imagine it. I can remember it. It was just yesterday. But this is pretty much the approach I follow: “You know what we’re having for Thanksgiving at our house this year? With minor variations, we’re having the same thing we’ve had every year since my birth in 1973.” In my case, we’ve been doing it pretty much the same way since we first added lamb to the menu, which was about 15 years ago.

WILLIE NELSON: ‘I’M A GREAT BERNIE AND HILLARY FAN.’

Which is a reminder that not everyone who gets mugged by reality becomes a conservative.