PUTTING THE “FASTER” IN “FASTER, PLEASE:” NASA’s working on a nano-starship that travels at 1/5 the speed of light.

LOSE AN ELECTION, RESORT TO SELF-MUTILATION: The Post-Trump Haircut:

“When you see that much blonde hair on the floor, you know something is going on,” says Nicole Butler, creative director and master colorist at Daniel’s Salon in Dupont Circle. . . .

Over at Georgetown Salon & Spa, one of the most exclusive salons in D.C., much-sought-after colorist and stylist Mariangela Moore has witnessed this “take control” movement daily for the past month. “One of my clients said, ‘Think of Melania Trump and go in the opposite direction,’” she says. “She said, ‘I don’t want to be that person people see as sexual, I want to be seen as strong.’” Another professional woman cut her hair into a flattop. One client got rid of the blonde highlights she maintained forever, “because she said she never wants to be seen as cheap. I don’t know where that idea came from, but maybe that’s what she’s hearing.” A move away from the look of political parrot Kellyanne Conway, perhaps. In the comfort of Moore’s salon chair, D.C. women are expressing their anger and frustration, and taking a stand with their hair: Many have gone dark and lopped off length.

Trump wins, and Democratic women respond by making themselves less attractive. Sorry, Democratic men! Plus, calling Kellyanne Conway a “parrot” is demeaning an actual powerful woman. Smart move!

And: “For many of us, with this election, it’s like your boyfriend dumped you in a really shocking way with no explanation and then moved in next door.” Feminism!

ANDREW KLAVAN: “As a public service — and braving the anger of my readership — I’d like to expose a few other absurd fake news stories.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1312.

FURTHER EVIDENCE THAT TWITTER IS IRRELEVANT: “She may have lost the election, but Hillary Clinton can take comfort in the fact that she dominated the political conversation on Twitter in 2016.”

SO, I WAS WRITING ABOUT THIS PUTIN STUFF BACK IN JULY, but nobody seemed to care then.

Meanwhile, if you want to do something about Russian interference going forward, we need to (1) get serious with cybersecurity and not give divas like Hillary a pass because they’re divas; (2) go to paper ballots and other forms of enhanced election-integrity protections. I’d go full-bore with the kinds of standards used in many other countries: Photo ID, dyed finger, paper ballots counted in a big open room in front of many witnesses, etc. U.S. elections aren’t run according to accepted international standards, and that should be fixed.

And remember, anyone who doesn’t want to fix things is obviously a big ole Putin stooge.

MONEY, MEET MOUTH: Seaport developer ‘doubts’ climate change science.

The head of the company behind the massive $3.5 billion Seaport Square development said he doesn’t believe climate change could swamp his project, despite warnings from the city that rising seas and massive floods may batter Boston in the coming decades.

“I have my doubts,” said John Hynes III, chief executive of Boston Global Investors, told the Herald. “The global warming phenomenon that everybody’s worried about is nothing more than historic cycling.”

If you think he’s wrong, then you should support my plan to discourage wasteful and dangerous development in areas doomed to global-warming-caused flooding by taxing the Blue Zones.

OBAMA’S LAME DUCK DELUSIONS: The essay notes Obama’s carefully crafted claim regarding terror attacks on American soil.

“Over the last eight years, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland,” President Obama said to troops at MacDill Air Force Base.

Let’s take a closer look at that sentence, which the President’s speechwriters parsed with Clintonian precision.

Obama narrows his focus to foreign terrorist organizations attacking the United States. Islamic terrorist groups have carried out countless deadly attacks around the world. But the threat to our homeland hasn’t disappeared. It has evolved.

Islamic terrorist groups have recruited sympathizers already in the United States. The results have been deadly, in Boston, San Bernardino, Orlando and elsewhere.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Men: Is Trump a Litmus Test for Your Relationship?

ABANDONED U.S. MILITARY HOUSING AREA IN GERMANY MAY BECOME FUTURISTIC COMMUNE: According to the BBC, that’s the proposal.

PAUL RAHE: A Future For NATO And The European Union.

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YEAH, AT FIRST THEY BLAMED THE IRS SCANDAL ON “ROGUE EMPLOYEES,” TOO: Exclusive: DHS Says Georgia Hack May Have Been Rogue Employee: Officials tell members of Congress the attack on state firewall could have been inside job. Plus: “With few concrete answers from DHS so far, the aide said there is a lot of skepticism about the department’s innocence in the attempted breach. ‘There’s a lot of mistrust at the moment.'”

A cynic might conclude that all the sudden hoopla about Russian hacking is meant to distract from what DHS was doing.

UPDATE: From the comments:

I might suggest that the state of Georgia file charges under any number of computer crime laws. So long as they have the logs pointing to the attack source originating from DHS let loose the dogs of law! My lawyer always says “discovery is a bi#$^ whether you want it or not.”

Which would then lead to a very interesting second court case. Georgia having proved the source would very well have standing at SCOTUS for a charge of civil rights violations and a abridgement of Article IV of the US Constitution.

Interesting.

JOHN EKDAHL: Question: were all the international donations into Obama’s 2008 campaign foreign influence in our elections? Yes, but they were foreign influence that the press approved of, so questioning them was racist.

For those who’ve forgotten, dubious donations, Gangster Government edition.

Plus: “According to journalist Kenneth Timmerman, the Obama site did not ask for proof of citizenship until just recently – in contrast not just with McCain but also with Hillary Clinton. Sen. Clinton’s presidential campaign required US citizens living abroad to fax copies of their passports before it would accept donations. By contrast, foreign donors to Obama can just use credit cards and false addresses. Why has the Obama campaign chosen to operate without the basic automated credit-card controls that would prevent or hamper fraud and illegal contributions?”

The Obama campaign’s online donation system was designed to facilitate the flow of untraceable foreign money. But that’s not “foreign influence” because shut up.

WHEN “DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION” DOESN’T APPLY TO REPUBLICANS: Republican Student Gets A Liberal Dose of Intolerance at Harvard.

It ain’t easy being a Republican at Harvard, and certainly not in the era of Donald Trump, according to Emily Hall, an unabashed conservative at the world’s most famous university.

Hall, a junior who’s majoring in government, watched the presidential election results come in at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, once again finding herself in the minority while stunned Hillary Clinton supporters openly sobbed with each victory racked up by Trump.

“I felt bad for them,” Hall said of her liberal schoolmates. “But I also recognize that people would not have felt bad for me if I had been the one crying.” . . .

Hall, a 20-year-old native of Clinton, Conn., said professors and students often broached Trump’s victory as if a horrific tragedy had taken place and spoke of creating support for Clinton backers.

“Had Hillary won, I don’t know those same sentiments would have been extended, because the assumption was the majority of everyone in the room were liberals and were Democrats,” said Hall. “It was just disheartening to me.”

There have been other examples of well-meaning liberal professors not presenting balance in their lectures, she said.

“They want to include conservative perspectives in the classroom, they just don’t know how,” said Hall. “And I think they may not even realize that what they’re teaching has a liberal bent to it, because there are so few conservatives there to actually challenge that.”

All that talk about “othering,” marginalizing, and microaggressions? They put it to work when dealing with non-lefty students.

JULIETTE AKINYI OCHIENG: “One more play of the Race Card™ by President Obama before exiting stage left.”

JOURNALISM: Here’s the reason why media is pushing ‘fake news’ narrative and it’s CHILLING. “The Left and the media, as always concentric circles on a Venn diagram, attempted for days to spin a false and odious narrative placing blame for the shooting in Tucson on Sarah Palin and everyone like her. Because, vitriol. Or something. Days of vile political opportunism, on the backs of the dead. Days of disgusting smears the likes of which I’ve never seen before in my lifetime. Days of giddily and gleefully exploiting deaths, including those of a federal judge and a nine year old child, all in an attempt to score political points and to silence and demonize those with whom they disagree. That the facts did not support such claims even one iota meant nothing. In fact, they absolutely ignored all evidence and truths and proceeded to just make stuff up.”

SO A WHILE BACK I responded to a tweetstorm demanding that I comment on Trump’s “disastrous” cabinet picks by saying that they didn’t look disastrous to me.

I missed it until now, but the WaPo’s Chris Cilizza agreed a few days later:

It’s hard to say that the doomsday predictions for Trump’s Cabinet have come true — or anything close. What we’ve seen so far is a smart melange of close allies, well-respected establishment types and a few picks with helpful political repercussions for the party Trump now leads. Give credit where credit is due.

Yep.

MAD DUCK PRESIDENT TRYING TO PUNISH US ON THE WAY OUT: Obama blocks new oil, gas drilling in Arctic Ocean. [Fixed, sorry, it was late.]

APPARENTLY WE FRUSTRATE OBAMA: (High five.) No better praise for a job well done.

INCONCEIVABLE! Obama Apparently Wasn’t on “The Right Side of History” After All.

SUCKERS BORN EVERY MINUTE: Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ Sequel to Kick Off Sundance Festival.

THEY CAN’T. THEY’RE TOO BUSY DENYING THEM: Progressives Must Confront Their Racist Roots.

BUT ONLY BECAUSE HE COULDN’T TAKE THE ENTIRE COUNTRY FOR A RIDE ON THE BACK OF HIS CAR: Ted Kennedy Secretly Asked The Soviets To Intervene In The 1984 Elections