IT’S HARD FOR PEOPLE TO TRUST THE GOVERNMENT, WHEN THE GOVERNMENT IS RUN BY UNTRUSTWORTHY PEOPLE: Andrew Malcolm: One-in-five Americans still trusts the federal government!

A shocking new poll out on Americans’ growing cynicism about their federal government.

It’s not really surprising that after seven years of an administration of serial liars, empty promises and failed plans, an overwhelming percentage of the public does not trust elected officials, their politics or the government they’re supposed to be running.

What’s really shocking is that 19% of Americans still do.

Nearly one-in-five say they can always or most always trust that Washington crowd. Seriously? Who are these people? Cubs fans? Newly-arrived Martians? Rachel Maddowers?

Do you know five people who swallow everything they hear from the upside-down capital of our nation? How about two? ObamaCare is working really well? ISIS is on the run? The FBI is seriously probing Hillary Clinton’s email scam?

Nineteen percent trusting is actually among the lowest in almost six decades. People even had more trust in Jimmy Carter’s presidency. People had the most trust during the first year of Lyndon Johnson’s sudden presidency. But then came Vietnam and Richard Nixon.

The newest poll from the Pew Research Center is based on 6,000 interviews this fall. It confirms suspicions that most people have felt for some time. Trust in those institutions began sagging during the second term of George W. Bush. But has absolutely cratered during these past 2,499 days of Barack Obama’s hope and change.

Fundamentally transformed.

FLASHBACK: 3 Ways To Reduce Poverty.

IT’S ONLY FAIR: If Westerners can’t do yoga and Cinco de Mayo parties, can we have our polio vaccines back?

WELL!  I FEEL SAFER NOW: Police Bust Weekly Mahjong Game Played By Elderly Women.

MY CATS ARE MICROAGGRESSIONS: Micro theory for dogs.

CUTE: Japan’s Funkiest Train Goes Star Wars.

AND WE’RE GRATEFUL: Those Zany Colonists and the Nation They Built.

WELCOME TO 1914: A Necessary Conversation.

THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE: Islamic State Radicalizes ‘Thousands’ in United States.

REMEMBER: Required Reading.

SOFT SHELLED SNOWFLAKES: Ben Shapiro to Mizzou Protesters: ‘Toughen Up’ (Video).

FASTER, PLEASE: End of daily injections for diabetes as scientists restore insulin production.

MICHAEL MCCONNELL: Yes, We Should Consider Refugees’ Religion: It’s not only fair, it’s written into the law.

WHAT’S TROUBLING ABOUT THIS PIECE IS ITS JOKEY ATTITUDE TOWARD DOMESTIC VIOLENCE.

AT AMAZON, 25% off select Dyson Products.

Plus, DuroMax Elite MX4500 4,500 Watt 7 HP OHV 4-Cycle Gas Powered Portable Generator With Wheel Kit, $409.98. Winter is coming.

And: $480 Off Nikon D3200 Two Lens VR Kit.

Plus, please do any Christmas or Hanukkah shopping through the InstaPundit Amazon links. I thank you, and my family thanks you.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN FINDS SOMETHING TO BE THANKFUL FOR: Amidst turmoil, a victory for the future.

SMITHSONIAN: STATUE OF LIBERTY WAS ORIGINALLY A MUSLIM WOMAN:

The Statue of Liberty was originally designed to be a Muslim woman, the Smithsonian Institution’s magazine says.

An article on the government-administered museum’s blog, Smart News, claims one of the designers of Lady Liberty drew inspiration from monuments in Egypt and originally intended to construct a veiled female peasant on the Suez Canal.

But the Smithsonian gets its knickers in a twist over the sight of a WWII B-29 and in 2013, published an excerpt from a since massively debunked biography of Norman Rockwell, which attempted to retcon the beloved American artist into, as his granddaughter wrote in response, “a repressed homosexual with pedophilic impulses,” so take the above story with a grain of salt. (As Cuffy tweets, “Last week called, wants its clickbait back.”)

I blame myself for this latest bit of clickbait. In early 2011, for the PJM homepage illustration accompanying an article by contributor Howard Rotberg titled “Obama’s 2015 State of the Union Address,” I created the following image:

Shortly afterward, some organization calling itself “Shariah4America” issued a statement demanding a burkha on the Statue of Liberty. And now the Smithsonian gets into the act. Oh well — Photoshopped in haste, repented at leisure.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Why the ‘Jon Stewarting’ of America’s Youth Is Awful For Political Discourse.

TOM BROKAW TURNED INTO WILLIAM DEVANE SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED: For actor turned precious metals pitchman Devane, it’s always a good time to buy gold, no matter how well or how poorly the stock market is performing.

For newsreader turned Obama pitchman Tom Brokaw, it’s always a good time to raise the gas tax, whether the economy has just flatlined, or whether ISIS just terrorized a major European city.

In January, when “4 Of 5 Top Papers [Called] For Federal Gas Tax Hike,” the Media Research Center noted that the “Washington Post’s editorial board called it the ‘perfect time’ for Congress to raise the federal gas tax.” But for Brokaw and the rest of the MSM, when isn’t it the perfect time to raise the gas tax?

STUART TAYLOR: A Little-Understood Engine of Campus Unrest: Racial Admissions Preferences.

Why are some of the most privileged students in the nation plunging into a racial grievance culture and upending their campuses as though oppressed by Halloween costumes they don’t approve, imagined racial slights, portraits of Woodrow Wilson, a tiny handful of real racial epithets, and the like?

The reasons are of course multifaceted. But one deserves far more attention than it has gotten: Many or most of the African-American student protesters really are victims — but not of old-fashioned racism.

Most are, rather, victims of the very large admissions preferences that set up racial-minority students for academic struggle at the selective universities that have cynically misled them into thinking they are well qualified to compete with classmates who are, in fact, far stronger academically.

The reality is that most good black and Hispanic students, who would be academically competitive at many selective schools, are not competitive at the more selective schools that they attend.

That’s why it takes very large racial preferences to get them admitted. An inevitable result is that many black and (to a lesser extent) Hispanic students cannot keep up with better-prepared classmates and rank low in their classes no matter how hard they work.

Studies show that this academic “mismatch effect” forces them to drop science and other challenging courses; to move into soft, easily graded, courses disproportionately populated by other preferentially admitted students; and to abandon career hopes such as engineering and pre-med. Many lose intellectual self-confidence and become unhappy even if they avoid flunking out.

This depresses black performance at virtually all selective schools because of what experts call the cascade effect. . . .

It is critical to understand that these are not bad students. They did well in high school and could excel at somewhat less selective universities where they would arrive roughly as well prepared as their classmates.

But due to racial preferences, they find themselves for the first time in their lives competing against classmates who have a huge head start in terms of previous education, academic ability, or both.

Hmm.

COVERING THE IMPORTANT NEWS: How to Talk About Star Wars at Thanksgiving With Your Ignorant, Rebellion-Backing Uncle.

Related: NRO’s Katherine Timpf: “I Will Not Apologize for Making a Joke About Star Wars:”

More than a month ago, I made some jokes about Star Wars on Red Eye, a satirical political comedy show that airs at 3 a.m., and it has resulted in me being verbally abused and told to die by a mob of enraged fans for the past four days now.

The capital-offense comments were:

“I have never had any interest in watching space nerds poke each other with their little space nerd sticks, and I’m not going to start now.”

And:

“Yesterday I tweeted something, and all I said was that I wasn’t  familiar with Star Wars because I’ve been too busy liking cool things and being attractive.”

Now, I received a few death threats right after I posted the aforementioned tweet — which, by the way, was why I was saying Star Wars fans were “crazy” in the first place. Overall, though, it wasn’t a big deal, and I kind of forgot about it.

Then, this week, one Star Wars super-super-super fan who calls himself “AlphaOmegaSin” made a ten-minute (!) video brutally ripping me apart.

She probably should consulted fellow NR contributor James Lileks, who discovered firsthand nearly 20 years ago just how much of the dark side of the Force Star Wars obsessives will conjure up, if you dare badmouth their imaginary universe.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN FINDS SOMETHING TO BE THANKFUL FOR: Amidst turmoil, a victory for the future.

ROOTING FOR INJURIES: New York Democrats Bill de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo are having a homelessness-related “pre-Thanksgiving spat,” according to Daily News:

Mayor de Blasio pointed the finger back at Gov. Cuomo on the city’s homelessness problem, as the pair continued their pre-Thanksgiving spat over the issue.

“It’s time for the governor to step up,” de Blasio said Wednesday on Good Day New York.

Cuomo had charged Tuesday de Blasio’s failures of management — and intelligence — were to blame for the increasing number of homeless people on the streets. “Throwing money at the problem is not always the answer,” Cuomo said. “It’s understanding the problem and being smart enough to know how to manage the problem.”

Mark this day in the calendar — a Democrat actually admits that “Throwing money at the problem is not always the answer.” The first step towards the road to recovery from any addiction is admitting that there’s a problem.

On the other hand, Cuomo and de Blasio can collaborate well together when there’s serious work to be done — like removing the fascist-themed ads for Amazon’s new Man in the High Castle streaming video series from New York’s subway cars, thus generating massive amounts of free publicity for the Ridley Scott-produced venture. (Whose first two episodes were pretty darn good, by the way.)

PEAK GUARDIAN FINALLY REACHED: “Gender is a prison we all live in.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: William Shatner and State Farm present “Eat, Fry, Love,” a turkey fryer fire cautionary tale (video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYkRF_FmD40

At some point in his post-Airplane II career, Shatner apparently took Kevin Pollak’s impersonation of Shatner, made it his own, and dialed it up to Warp Factor 11. Who knew ham on Thanksgiving could be so much fun?