YOUR TWITTER JUXTAPOSITION OF THE DAY:

LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: New NYT/CBS poll: Americans more fearful now about likelihood of a terrorist attack than at any time since 9/11.

CHANGE: Home Depot looks to adapt for baby boomers who aren’t so into ‘do-it-yourself’ anymore.

I’ve sort of gone the other way. I was into DIY for a while, then kind of got over it, now I find myself more willing to do projects again. Not sure why, though I suspect it’s because I don’t have any kids at home now . . .

OBAMA’S WHEEL OF MISFORTUNE: Mr. President, can you solve the puzzle?

THE QUESTION ON WHICH A MILLION LEGAL CAREERS HANG: Will Technology Create More Legal Jobs Than It Destroys?

Ben Barton, call your office!

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Which is why pointing the finger at Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck for the crimes of Jared Lee Loughner is only partially correct. The strident and vocal standard bearers in the various Tea Party movements, exemplified in Arizona by the likes of Russell Pearce and Jack Harper, could not develop such a big fan base were they not enablers for a much larger group of people who take the Roosevelt way of looking at the world to heart. Using crosshairs in a gun sight to identify political opponents would not seem that strange to them, because they see politics as a zero-sum game in which one’s opponent should be stuffed and hung on the wall next to the deer heads Sarah shows off on her Alaska show. Many progressives want to say that the lumpen proletariat would not be so wacko without a Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin to stir them up. I say we can assign a certain amount of blame to the chefs in the kitchen, but we also have to identify the problem at its source.

—Loring Wirbel, “Violent Depravity as a National Pastime,” Monday, January 10, 2011, after an apolitical lunatic severely wounded Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, killed Bush #41-appointed Federal Judge John Roll, and shot 17 others.

Loring Wirbel, board member of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Colorado chapter and co-chair of the ACLU’s Colorado Springs chapter, called for supporters of GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump to be shot before they vote for the billionaire businessman.

Comparing Trump to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, Wirbel wrote in his Facebook page:

The thing is, we have to really reach out to those who might consider voting for Trump and say, “This is Goebbels. This is the final solution. If you are voting for him I will have to shoot you before election day.” They’re not going to listen to reason, so when justice is gone, there’s always force, as Laurie would say.

—“Colorado ACLU Board Member: Shoot Trump Voters ‘Before Election Day,’” as spotted by Derek Hunter of the Daily Caller, today.

By the way, note the Eiffel Tower-as-peace symbol on Wirbel’s Facebook page:

IN EDITORIAL ABOUT GUN CONTROL, New York Times falls for hoax site. “Even better, the original source appears to be a parody of the NY Times.” To be fair, these days the New York Times is a parody of the New York Times.

SO OBAMA’S IN FAVOR OF RECYCLING, RIGHT? Ex-Gitmo detainee, Osama Bin Laden aide resurfaces on battlefield in Yemen.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: P.C. Suppression Of Public Concerns Fuels Trump’s Popularity:

Pundits cite Trump’s verbal sloppiness and ridiculousness as proof that he must soon implode. But Trump sees his daily bombast as an injection of outrage for a constituency now hooked on someone who finally voices their pent-up anger. The more reckless Trump’s doses of scattergun outrageousness, the better the fix for his supporters. Trump’s vague “make America great again” was the natural bookend to Barack Obama’s even more vacuous “hope and change.”

The popularity of such empty slogans reflects a culture in which no one any longer trusts institutions, the media, government, or politicians. The public no longer respects U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the IRS, the VA, or the GSA. Even the once-hallowed Secret Service has become a near laughingstock of incompetency, corruption, and politicization. Is the purpose of NASA really Muslim outreach, as NASA chief Charles Bolden suggested in 2010?

The world that we are told about by our government bears no resemblance to what we see and hear every day.

Yep.

CULTURE CLASH: Republicans Threaten Cuts to University of Tennessee Knoxville Over Anti-Christmas Flap. I think this has mostly blown over, but speaking as a former lobbyist of sorts, what strikes me is how oblivious people on campus are to the correlation of forces here. It doesn’t matter if you have a couple of hundred students chanting in a meeting room on campus; these legislators are responsive to their constituents, and they have pretty much complete control over the university if they want to exercise it. Generally speaking, they don’t want to exercise it. But enough high-profile embarrassments, and that can change, and if it does there’s not much either the faculty or the administration can do about it. This is, I suspect, a lesson that a lot of universities will be learning in coming years. If only someone had warned them.

EXPERIMENTS IN THE OBVIOUS: Woman gets 34% more matches on Tinder after digitally enhancing her cleavage to a DD. Actually, the surprising result is only 34% more?

UNEXPECTEDLY: Released Gitmo Detainee Now an Al Qaeda Leader in Yemen.

NATIONAL PUBLIC RANSOM NOTE EDITING: See How NPR Hacks Hack Up Testy Interview with Ted Cruz.

SO I BOUGHT THIS 22-FOOT LITTLE GIANT LADDER the other day when it was on the Gold Box sale. I’d been planning to buy one for a while, but the price was irresistible. Got it and unboxed it yesterday and it seems very cool. Easy to use (once I read the instructions), very solid, surprisingly light for its size. Nice.

PHONING IT IN UNTIL JANUARY OF 2017: Obama’s Phony War Against ISIS.

GRANDDAUGHTER OF MAN WHO PUT 120,000 JAPANESE AMERICANS BEHIND BARBED WIRE calls Trump’s proposal to suspend Muslim immigration “reprehensible.”

PROSECUTORS DETAIL ROTHERHAM RAPISTS’ HELLISH ABUSE:  Behold a nation fundamentally transformed.

As John Podhoretz adds, “Remember: the Rotheram scandal involved 1,400 girls. One thousand, four hundred girls. In Britain.”

THE IMPLICIT THREAT OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’ GUN CONTROL EDITORIALS: The Times Justifies Its War on Guns, Robert Farago writes at the Truth About Guns, who believes that Times editor Andrew Rosenthal may not have thought through the implicit threat of coercion implied by his editorials. “Rosenthal fails to understand that HIS position is ‘surrender your guns or we’ll shoot you.’ How can guns be removed from Americans without the use of deadly force? By the same token, Rosenthal only needs look here – or contact the NRA – to see that the vast majority of gun owning Americans are peaceful patriots. Well they are unless and until the government enacts the Times’ anti-gun rights agenda. At that point, the Times and its ilk will reap what they sow.”

Like Pauline Kael before him, Rosenthal lives “in a rather special world,” where American citizens beyond Manhattan are “outside my ken,” as Kael famously said. And similarly much prefers his ignorance to the risk of being permanently contaminated by the potential badthink emanating from The Other.

Related: Speaking of implicit threats (not to mention magical thinking!), New Republic: BAN ALL GUNS!

THEN THE LAW IS AN ASS: This Lamborghini 400 GT Could Cruise at 140 MPH All Day. Unfortunately, you can’t do that legally.

DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: Prosecutors Detail Rotherham Rapists’ Hellish Abuse. “Why they are calling this ‘groomed’ I don’t understand. They were raped, straight-up.”

TRUMP IS THE END RESULT OF A EXHAUSTED, DYSFUNCTIONAL POLITICAL SYSTEM WELL-DESERVING OF EUTHANASIA: “When It Comes To Donald Trump, I Hate Everyone,” Mollie Hemingway writes at the Federalist. “I hate Donald Trump, people who love Donald Trump, people who hate Donald Trump, and media who cover Donald Trump.” Plus this:

I know many of the people who say they’re voting for Trump are probably just normal people who don’t pay a ton of attention to politics and think he’s an entertaining fellow who is funny and candid. It’s not entirely surprising that a man who has been a household name for decades would enjoy the support he has. I’m a political junkie, and once a week I have to think really hard about who all the candidates running for president even are. And another portion of his voters are probably people who are just sick to death of Washington, D.C., even if they’re not particularly ideological.

ONE REASON WHY ENCRYPTION HAS A SHELF LIFE: Google Finds Dwave Quantum annealer is 100 million times faster than a classic single core computer and discusses scaling and improving quantum computers.

SPACE HISTORY: NASA’s Very First Idea For A Space Station. “Although the Atlas wasn’t powerful enough to deliver an entire space station into orbit, Convair engineers came up with an ingenious solution—one that was later eyed for many other space projects, but has yet to be tried. The idea was that after the rocket had done the job of delivering the mission into a 400-mile-high orbit, the now-empty forward propellant tank (which had contained non-toxic liquid oxygen) would become the living quarters of the new space station. An inflatable structure made of rubber nylon was also proposed to provide insulation inside the stainless steel body of the rocket, and to subdivide the tank into different rooms. This trick would immediately give engineers enough volume to fit a four-story habitat, complete with a laboratory, a kitchen, a washroom, a playroom, and sleeping facilities for four people. . . . With its vertical design, the bottle-shaped station would make 2.5 rotations per minute to give its inhabitants a little bit of artificial gravity. A hallmark of the 1950s—the nuclear reactor—would produce all the needed electricity. All add-on components of the station would be launched on Atlas rockets upgraded with a custom-built space tug. In addition, the station could be expanded by adding extra empty tanks left over from crew exchange and resupply missions. A special airlock would allow exiting the station to board incoming ships and conduct assembly work. The no-longer-needed main engine of the rocket, and its associated pressure tanks, could be reused for oxygen storage.”

CHANGE: “The world is not merely as religious as it used to be. In important ways, it is much more intensely religious than ever before.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to tell if you’re in a David Lynch movie.

TRIGGER WARNING! Clicking on above link may violate safe space protocols for Lebanon Valley College students.