THE HILL: McCarthy’s ghost smiles as Dems point the finger at Russia.

YOU CAN, BUT IT’S NOT EASY: Can You Get Too Much Protein?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why you might want to think twice before shaving your pubic hair. I don’t think that this study shows that pubic hair protects against STI’s, but rather that people who have more sex partners are more likely to go bare.

DESIGNER CAROLINA HERRERA: ‘Of Course’ I Would Dress Melania Trump.

Good for her. The politicalization of everything up to and including fashion does nothing to hurt Trump — either Trump — and everything to reinforce Flyover Country’s suspicions of the coastal “elites.”

NEW FROM AUDRA COLDIRON: The Amishland Storyteller: Battling cancer with family, friends, and faith.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Controlling a Hand Exoskeleton with Your Mind. “Six quadriplegic individuals tested the device in everyday situations; they successfully picked up coffee cups, ate donuts, squeezed sponges, and signed documents, the researchers reported. The fact that the system functions outside the laboratory, in busy, unsupervised environments, is a dramatic improvement upon previous brain-controlled robotic limbs.”

PRIVACY: Baltimore’s aerial surveillance continues unchecked.

The Baltimore surveillance program broke new ground by bringing wide-area persistent surveillance—a technology that the military has been developing for a decade—to municipal law enforcement. The police department kept the program secret from the public, as well as from the city’s mayor and other local officials, until it was detailed in August by Bloomberg Businessweek. Privacy advocates, defense attorneys, and some local legislators called for the program to be suspended immediately, until the technology could be evaluated in public hearings.

But in the three months since the public discussion began, the police have continued to use the surveillance plane to monitor large events, such as the Baltimore Marathon, and essential questions remain unanswered. The police continue to classify the program as an ongoing trial, but the private company that operates it for the police—Persistent Surveillance Systems—doesn’t have a permanent contract and no specific regulations govern its operations.

Why are Democrat-run cities such cesspits of militarized police surveillance?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The erotic carp calendar you never knew you needed is here in time for Christmas.

I THINK WE SHOULD RETURN TO THE PRE-KENNEDY RULE AGAINST UNIONIZATION FOR FEDERAL EMPLOYEES: Federal government workers union is ready to “fight back” against Trump.

HERE WE GO AGAIN:

Trump hasn't said much about homelessness—and that's making a lot of people nervous https://t.co/zGFqHcJlD9 pic.twitter.com/Jvt7oGEJU3

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) December 8, 2016

As Glenn noted years ago, the mainstream media only makes an issue out of homelessness when a Republican is in the White House.

NEWS-READING GRIN: Pope Warns That ‘Fake News’ Is a ‘Sickness’ Comparable to Eating Excrement.

TRUMP, OBAMA, AND “GIRLY JOBS” FOR “MANLY MEN.”

FORTUNATELY, SHE ADDED, I HAVEN’T HAD ONE OF THOSE SINCE 1979: Valerie Jarrett: Trump’s Win Was ‘Soul-Crushing.’

SO THIS IS STARTING TO SOUND LIKE “RECKLESS DISREGARD:” Washington Post Appends “Russian Propaganda Fake News” Story, Admits It May Be Fake.

In the latest example why the “mainstream media” is facing a historic crisis of confidence among its readership, facing unprecedented blowback following Craig Timberg November 24 Washington Post story “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say”, on Wednesday a lengthy editor’s note appeared on top of the original article in which the editor not only distances the WaPo from the “experts” quoted in the original article whose “work” served as the basis for the entire article (and which became the most read WaPo story the day it was published) but also admits the Post could not “vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s finding regarding any individual media outlet”, in effect admitting the entire story may have been, drumroll “fake news” and conceding the Bezos-owned publication may have engaged in defamation by smearing numerous websites.

Here’s the note:

Editor’s Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.

So in reliance on an un-checked list by an outside group that insists on anonymity, the WaPo designated a bunch of sites as Russian propaganda tools. And this is the “real news” outfit that is getting all uppity about “fake news.”

PAYBACK’S A… YOU KNOW: Republicans Explore Budget Maneuver to Chip Away at Dodd-Frank.

They are exploring use of a tactic known as reconciliation, a procedural shortcut tied to the budget, which would allow them to make legislative changes to the 2010 regulatory-overhaul law with just a simple majority in the Senate. Republicans are likely to hold 52 seats in the 100-seat chamber, meaning they could pass such changes with just GOP votes.

They would otherwise need 60 votes to get the legislation through the Senate, putting them in the difficult position of needing support from some Democrats, who generally oppose rolling back the landmark law.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) is leading the charge to use reconciliation to pare back pieces of the law, which President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wanted to scale back or scrap.

“We need to make a number of really substantial reforms to Dodd-Frank,” Mr. Toomey said in an interview Wednesday. While he said he would prefer to make legislative changes with Democrats’ support, he is open to more partisan methods. “I am very much in favor of making sure we have all the tools to do this,” he said.

Republicans are weighing using the tool to chip away at two Dodd-Frank creations in particular: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Office of Financial Research.

The upcoming session of Congress promises at the least to be wildly entertaining.

THIS JUST IN — 2016 CONTINUES ITS SUCKAGE: Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer dies at age 69.

Keith Emerson died in March; what a brutal year this has been for pop culture.

MORGAN CHILDS FOR GQ: The Libertarian Utopia That’s Just a Bunch of White Guys on a Tiny Island.

This is the most sneering and hate-filled piece I recall seeing in a major publication.

BRICK AND MORTAR BLUES: Sears Says It’s Likely to Close Many More Stores as Sales Slide Worsens.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1309.

JOHN ELLIS: The Best Albums of 2016.

Mostly solid picks, including a near-handful I’d missed. And I’d have put David Bowie’s Blackstar higher on the list.

FAKE-NEWS HYSTERIA IS WHY OUR ELITES AREN’T TRUSTED:

Jack Shafer of Politico has the best piece yet examining the post-election phenomenon of “fake news” panic—the idea, which spread rapidly among establishment figures in the wake of the election, that Americans were fooled en masse into voting for Donald Trump by nefarious propaganda, funded in part by the Russians. His key contribution is to highlight the elitism at the heart of this idea:

The shrillness of the propaganda debate reveals a deep distrust of citizens by the elites. The Ignatiuses and Stengels of media and government don’t worry about propaganda infecting them. Proud of their breeding and life experience, they seem confident they can decode fact from fiction. What they dread is propaganda’s effect on the non-elites, whom they paternalistically imagine believe everything they read or view. But they don’t. The idea that naïve and vulnerable audiences can be easily influenced by the injection of tiny but potent messages into their media feedbag was dismissed as bunk by social scientists as early as the 1930s and 1940s. According to what academics call the hypodermic needle theory (aka magic bullet theory, aka transmission-belt model), there is little evidence that the public was the defenseless prey of mini-doses of propagandists. Larger doses don’t seem to be very effective, either.

We noted earlier this week that elite media figures actually were fooled on a large scale by a fake story about fake news because it seemed to confirmed their pre-existing assumptions. Everyone is vulnerable to misinformation and spin—to suspend disbelief when it is convenient to do so. As Shafer says, the self-righteous conceit behind the sudden preoccupation with fake news is that this tendency is somehow more pronounced among Trump voters than everyone else—indeed, that many people could only have voted for him because they were misinformed. . . .

But the collapse in public trust in the mainstream press is also driven by politics and social divides. Much of the public believes that big city reporters do not understand them or their way of life, and hold their values in contempt. And the degree of hysteria that media elites are exhibiting about “fake news,” and the rubes who were supposedly taken in, will only reinforce this perception further.

Yep.

WHITTLE, OTT, GREEN: Man’s inhumanity to kangaroo.

Full disclosure: I’m Green.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Syria President Says Victory in Aleppo Won’t End the War.

Assad, in an interview published on Thursday in the state-owned newspaper al-Watan, said he will no longer consider truce offers, adding that such offers, particularly from Americans, often come when the rebels are in a “difficult spot.”

“That is why we hear wailing and screaming and pleas for truces as the only political discourse now,” Assad said. He described his forces’ fight in Aleppo as one “against terrorism and a conspiracy” to destroy and divide Syria, allegedly led by Turkey.

“Liberating Aleppo from the terrorists deals a blow to the whole foundation of this project,” he said. But he added, “to be realistic, it doesn’t mean the end of the war.”

With Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and former commercial heart, the capital of Damascus and Homs, the third largest city under his control, Assad says “terrorists” no longer hold any cards.

“Even if we finish in Aleppo, we will carry on with the war against them,” Assad added.

It doesn’t seem possible that any amount of force or any attainable political solution will ever make Syria whole again. Iraq either, for that matter.

VIETNAM COUNTERS CHINA IN SOUTH CHINA SEA: Get ready for more of this. At the moment it’s a war of barges and dredges slowly turning reefs into islands. But the game’s changing. Trump’s already told Beijing that America won’t play by Chinese rules.