CONGRESSMAN ISSA RE-ELECTED: He won it on a long count, by 2,348 votes. More here.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: New machine treats tendinitis, foot pain without surgery or anesthesia.

Alex Horjatschun was in excruciating pain from tendinitis, caused by a bone spur on his heel. On a scale of 1 to 10, it was a definite 10.

“I would get up off the couch and I would be limping,” he said, and it was difficult to do his workouts or stand for any length of time.

Normally, tendinitis and plantar fasciitis, which is closely related to tendinitis, are treated with surgery or with high-powered shock waves, both of which require anesthesia.

But Horjatschun is one of the first patients to be treated with a new machine that uses lower-level sound waves — the Storz Duolith SD1. “This machine has the benefits of having the patient direct you to the areas that hurt because it’s a midrange energy level that’s tolerable,” said Horjatschun’s podiatrist, Dr. David Caminear of Connecticut Orthopaedic Specialists.

Caminear was one of the authors of a double-blind study to test the Duolith, which recently received approval from the Food and Drug Administration. The study was published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, “arguably the most prestigious orthopedic journal in the world,” Caminear said.

“I was a little skeptical of how it was going to work … but after the first treatment (the pain) seemed to really subside and after the third treatment it was like night and day,” said Horjatschun.

I hope it’s really as good as this sounds.

FASTER, PLEASE: Should The NFL Consider Ditching Thursday Night Football?

From the late ‘70s through the ‘90s, I mainly remember Thursday Night Football as an occasional treat late in the season. But as a regular item on the NFL schedule, the players reportedly hate the four day turnaround time to prepare for the games, and the recent addition of the horrid “Color Rush” uniforms only add to the debacle. To paraphrase Mies van der Rohe, when it comes to the NFL, less truly is more.

SHOOTING WITH KNIVES IS THE NEW COOL THING: Ohio State Stabbing.  Seriously, people, hoplophobia makes people into idiots.

HEALTH: More young people contracting ‘old-age’ conditions including varicose veins due to sedentary lifestyles.

AT THE HIGH POINTY TOP OF THE SKINNY PEAK ON THE RIGHT OF THE LAW SALARY DISTRIBUTION, LIFE IS STILL GOOD: Cravath Bonuses Are Out. Well, pay is good anyway. The life, well . . . .

SEEMS LEGIT: Florida man hiding in pond tells deputies their suspect ‘went that way’

Florida Man was 2016 before it was cool.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why you absolutely need to take your Miata to a track.

UH-HUH. Rosie O’Donnell: ‘No ill will’ in suggesting 10-year-old Barron Trump has autism.

THIS IS WEIRD: The Chronicle of Higher Education describes F.I.R.E. as “a group that views itself as a defender of campus free speech.”

Well, I’m sure that F.I.R.E. does view itself as a defender of campus free speech since, you know, F.I.R.E. is a defender of campus free speech. But why would the Chronicle choose such an odd formulation? Would they describe the ACLU as a group that views itself as a defender of civil liberties? By saying that F.I.R.E. “views itself” as a defender of campus free speech, this seems like an implication that others might view it differently. But who would that be? And what other view could they possibly have? An editor should have caught this.

NEWS FROM A POST-ANTIBIOTIC WORLD: Scientists have used bacteria to kill antibiotic-resistant superbugs. “When the researchers combined the two types of bacteria in the lab, Bdellovibrio caused the population of antibiotic-resistant Shigella to decline 4,000-fold.” Faster, please.

2016, MAN: A Japanese Skating Rink Froze 5,000 Dead Fish in the Ice. People Were Not Happy.

FUNNY, THAT’S NEVER BOTHERED LEFTISTS BEFORE:

Shot: We’ve Never Known Less About An Incoming President’s Ideology.

—Harry Enten, FiveThirtyEight, today.

Chaser:

It might sound odd coming from a libertarian, but I wish the Pelosi-Reid Democrats had more in common with Franklin Roosevelt. Not the Franklin Roosevelt who occupied the White House from 1933 to 1945, but the Franklin Roosevelt who aspired to the White House in the election of 1932. The Democratic platform of that year is a remarkable document, considering the way the party’s candidate went on to govern. It isn’t a libertarian manifesto—it endorses several subsidies and regulations—but it hardly embraces the enormous expansion in federal power that FDR would achieve. The very first plank calls for “an immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures by abolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating departments and bureaus, and eliminating extravagance to accomplish a saving of not less than twenty-five per cent in the cost of the Federal Government.” (It also asks “the states to make a zealous effort to achieve a proportionate result.”) Subsequent planks demand a balanced budget, a low tariff, the repeal of Prohibition, “a sound currency to be preserved at all hazards,” “no interference in the internal affairs of other nations,” and “the removal of government from all fields of private enterprise except where necessary to develop public works and natural resources in the common interest.” The document concludes with a quote from Andrew Jackson: “equal rights to all; special privilege to none.” It sounds more like Ron Paul than Pelosi.

—“The New Franklin Roosevelts: Don’t count on a candidate’s campaign stances to tell you how he’ll behave in office,” Jesse Walker, Reason.com, April 10, 2008.

Hangover:

GOOD GRIEF: Rare ‘Thunderstorm Asthma’ Kills Six in Melbourne, Australia. “Monday’s storm caused rain-sodden ryegrass pollen grains to explode and disperse over the city, with tiny pollen particles penetrating deep into lungs. About a third of patients who suffered asthma attacks Monday reported never having had asthma before. The storm overwhelmed emergency services and hospitals in the city of 4.5 million people, with 8,500 receiving hospital treatment.”

CYBER MONDAY: Shop Amazon Devices – Fire TV Family Up to $15 Off Cyber Monday.

A HEARTWARMING GENERAL MATTIS CHRISTMAS STORY:

At about 4 a.m., General Krulak would drive himself to every Marine guard post in the Washington-Annapolis-Baltimore area and deliver a small package of Christmas cookies to whatever Marines were pulling guard duty that day. He said that one year, he had gone down to Quantico as one of his stops to deliver Christmas cookies to the Marines on guard duty. He went to the command center and gave a package to the lance corporal who was on duty.

He asked, “Who’s the officer of the day?” The lance corporal said, “Sir, it’s Brigadier General Mattis.” And General Krulak said, “No, no, no. I know who General Mattis is. I mean, who’s the officer of the day today, Christmas day?” The lance corporal, feeling a little anxious, said, “Sir, it is Brigadier General Mattis.”

General Krulak said that, about that time, he spotted in the back room a cot, or a daybed. He said, “No, Lance Corporal. Who slept in that bed last night?” The lance corporal said, “Sir, it was Brigadier General Mattis.”

About that time, General Krulak said that General Mattis came in, in a duty uniform with a sword, and General Krulak said, “Jim, what are you doing here on Christmas day? Why do you have duty?” General Mattis told him that the young officer who was scheduled to have duty on Christmas day had a family, and General Mattis decided it was better for the young officer to spend Christmas Day with his family, and so he chose to have duty on Christmas Day.

General Krulak said, “That’s the kind of officer that Jim Mattis is.”

You can see why troops love him.

SO IT WASN’T A SHOOTING AT OHIO STATE, APPARENTLY, BUT A MASS STABBING: “Nine people were injured when a man ran into pedestrians with his car on the Ohio State University campus, then exited the vehicle with a butcher knife and started cutting victims.”

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: After Trump Victory, Minorities Flock to Gun Stores.

According to NBC News, minorities are heading to the gun stores to arm up following the victory of Donald Trump in the presidential election.

After Donald Trump’s win, Yolanda Scott is upgrading the crowbar she keeps in her purse to a small-caliber pistol.

Scott, an African-American, is one of many minorities who have been flocking to gun stores to protect themselves, afraid Trump’s victory will incite more hate crimes.

“You feel that racists now feel like they can attack us just because the president is doing it,” Earl Curtis, the owner of Blue Ridge Arsenal in Chantilly, Virginia, told NBC News.

I hope and suspect we’ll see a decrease in racially motivated attacks, now that the Race Agitator-in-Chief is on his way out. But even if we don’t, there’s still reason to applaud any American for exercising their constitutionally recognized right to self-defense.

Also in the plus column: Watching gun-grabbers twist themselves into knots explaining why this time is different.

SO IN THE COMMENTS YESTERDAY, a reader sings the praises of this gutter-cleaning robot from iRobot. “Cleaned my gutters better than I ever did when I did it myself.”

OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EASTASIA: Obama Expands War With Al Qaeda to Include Shabab in Somalia.

I’m old enough to remember when Democrats thought it was illegal to bomb countries without going first to Congress.

WE NEED A VACCINE: Local Transmission of Zika Virus Is Reported in Texas. “A probable case of local transmission of the Zika virus has been reported in Texas, state health officials announced on Monday, making it the second state, after Florida, in which the infection is thought to have been carried from person to person by mosquitoes.”

CHRISTMASTIME NEWS YOU CAN USE: What to Buy the RPG Gamer in Your Life.

KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: Hard times for the Sanctimonious White Lady Party.

The Democrats, on the other hand, are becoming more ideological, or at least more openly and self-consciously ideological, as the party’s progressivism becomes more and more a catechism. This has the effect of making the Democratic party less democratic. American progressives have a long and genuine commitment to mass democracy, having supported not only various expansions of the franchise but also many instruments of direct democracy such as the ballot initiative, but they also have a long and genuine commitment to frustrating democracy when it gets in the way of the progressive agenda, which is why they have spent the better part of a century working to politicize the courts, the bureaucracies, and the non-governmental institutions they control in order to ensure they get their way even when they lose at the ballot box. Democrats did not pay much attention when they started suffering losses at the state level, because they were working against federalism and toward a unitary national government controlled from Washington. And they did not fight as hard as they might to recover from their losses in Congress while Barack Obama sat in the White House, obstructing Republican legislative initiatives and attempting to govern through executive fiat — an innovation that the Democrats surely are about to regret in the direst way.

For the moment, the stylistic convergence — the Republicans becoming a little more like the selfish-coalition Democratic party, and the Democrats becoming a little more like the ideological Republican party — works to the Republicans’ advantage, though there is no reason to believe that always will be the case. The GOP had a very good run of it as a highly ideological enterprise.

The GOP shunned ideological candidates in the last three presidential elections, but only won when they nominated a candidate able to peel off one of the segments of the Obama coalition. It remains to be seen what the sometimes/sometimes-not conservative party does with this expanded coalition — if it proves effective enough to dial back the progressive ratchet of the last eight years, or if it succumbs to Democrat-style infighting.

I suspect we’ll see enough of the former to make real progress, and enough of the latter to worry us every step of the way.

21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: When I Married My Husband, I Was a Porn Addict.