HMM:

WOAH. Trump transition team announces Ivanka Trump is meeting w/ Al Gore this morning to discuss climate issues

— Gabby Morrongiello (@gabriellahope_) December 5, 2016

COMEY’S FBI SHOULD INVESTIGATE THE HARD LEFT’S VIOLENT TANTRUMS: My latest NY Observer essay. (Bumped.)

PAYBACK’S A… YOU KNOW.

Every time Republicans are thwarted on any issue, I'm going to ask why the Democrats are racist, ageist and misandrists.

— Melissa Mackenzie ? (@MelissaTweets) December 5, 2016

OUCH:

BREAKING: McCrory concedes in North Carolina.

North Carolina GOP Gov. Pat McCrory has conceded the governor’s race to Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper, almost a full month after Election Day.

“Despite continued questions that should be answered regarding the voting process, I personally believe that the majority of our citizens have spoken and we should now do everything we can to support the 75th governor of North Carolina, Roy Cooper,” McCrory said in a video statement.

LOUISE MENSCH: Yes, Women Like Alpha Males – Feminists Should Stop Complaining. Well, complaining is kinda their thing.

Plus: “Well, yes. Yes, I do want militarized masculinity, and a masculine military. And as for Mattis being ‘outdated’ and ‘out of touch’, yes, please.”

And: “Interestingly though, beta males were a lot angrier even than fauxminists. Mattis and alphas like him threaten them tremendously.”

OH, I’M READY: Get Ready for a Week of ‘Fake News’ Hysteria.

Jim Geraghty:

No two ways about it, a guy who goes into a restaurant and starts firing his gun all willy-nilly is a bad dude, and he ought to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

But now there’s going to be an eager effort to shift responsibility from him to whoever wrote about this restaurant. This guy sounds like he graduated from the Yosemite Sam School of Forensic Investigation, and if he hadn’t shown up at the doorstep of this restaurant, he would have shown up at the gate of Edwards Air Force Base asking about the aliens at Area 51 or stomped around the Pacific Northwest hunting Bigfoot. Blaming “fake news” implies a warning to everyone, “don’t write or say something that could set off some nut-job.” That argument assumes that there’s a rationality to the nut-job, and it’s our responsibility to not offer anything that could cause an irrational mind to lash out.

The real goal, as Glenn noted earlier, is to silence political opponents.

TWO GRAY LADIES IN ONE:

Silly newspaper stories can have serious consequences. Take the ridiculous Metropolitan section cover-page opus in this past Sunday’s New York Times.

While most of the world cheers Lower Manhattan’s stirring revitalization since 9/11, leave it to the Times to find a “downside.” It’s “just too crowded,” according to reporter Winnie Hu’s long-winded article.

Any sane person would regard great companies at a new World Trade Center, families happily ensconced in former office buildings and myriad shopping, dining and entertaining options as cause for celebration in a zone that once rolled up the carpet at 5 p.m. on weekdays and never rolled it out on weekends.

Yet the Times absurdly depicts the area as near-unlivable, impassable by car or on foot, tourist-trampled and full of menaces to sanity and safety.

That’s just the thing for Downtown’s image as major companies decide whether to move there. (As The Post’s Lois Weiss reported, streaming music and video service Spotify is considering moving its New York headquarters to One and Four World Trade Center, a prospective deal that would be a boon to the complex and to all of Lower Manhattan.)

Spotify’s honchos presumably are savvy enough to walk around the block and see how life-affirming and exciting the neighborhood’s become. But, according to the Times, nightmares have befallen the precincts south of Chambers Street.

—“Proof that the New York Times just hates New York,” Steve Cuozzo, the New York Post, yesterday.

Over the final few weeks of his presidential campaign, at rallies all over the country, President-elect Donald Trump took up a new slogan: “Drain the swamp!” His audience, presumably tired of insider shenanigans from Washington, D.C., ate it up. They chanted the phrase in unison, cheering with relish.

There’s a good reason for this: Most normal, well-adjusted non-Beltway Americans harbor a vigorous and healthy disdain for Washington, D.C. As any well-intentioned visitor to our nation’s capital can tell you, the sights are indeed grand, and the history is inspiring. But sadly, between the trips to the Smithsonian and the National Gallery, one begins to grow rightly suspicious when passing countless upscale bars filled with sometimes-smug 28-year-olds getting hammered on $16 cocktails that were purchased, either directly or indirectly, with your own hard-earned tax dollars.

For most Americans, in other words, a glitzy Washington, D.C., is not a healthy Washington, D.C. A gleaming, prosperous industry town usually makes for a cheerful sight, but not when that “industry” revolves around taking other people’s money — truly mind-boggling amounts of money! — and transforming it into subsidized incompetence, black-hole accounting, and a leading export of sanctimony.

Ah, but never fear. The New York Times sees things differently from flyover America, as it tends to do. After a flurry of post-election stories bemoaning the various potential downsides of President Trump — some legitimate, some not — the storied Gray Lady decided to run with this doozy: “A Newly Vibrant Washington Fears That Trump Will Drain Its Culture.”

One could write a doctoral thesis regarding the multiple-layered ironies within this headline, or merely stare at it and marvel for days.

—“Post-Trump Dispatches from Planet New York Times,” Heather Wilhelm, NRO, November 15.

As Wilhelm notes, “In the election’s wake, even Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the Times, noted that the paper was profoundly out of touch. ‘We’ve got to do a much better job of being on the road, out in the country, talking to different kinds of people than we talk to,’ he said, ‘and remind ourselves that New York is not the real world.’”

Well, that’s definitely true of certain office buildings in New York.

LARRY O’CONNOR: Andrew Breitbart, John Podesta, and underage sex slaves.

ANGELA MERKEL’S GERMANY: Afghan Refugee Arrested For Rape, Murder Of Top EU Official’s Daughter.

A teenage Afghan asylum seeker has been arrested after allegedly raping and drowning a 19-year-old German student in the city of Freiburg. The student was the daughter of a top EU official, the UK’s Sunday Express reports, and volunteered regularly at a refugee center.

The victim, identified as Maria Ladenburger, was a medical student whose body was discovered in the Dreisam river Oct. 16. She attended a party on the night of the murder and was cycling home hours before her body was discovered.

The 17-year-old migrant was arrested Friday after he was identified by CCTV footage and his DNA was matched to the crime scene. The suspect, who arrived in Germany in 2015, has remained silent during interrogations.

The murder struck an already on-edge Germany after a similar incident took place two weeks later.

Good lord.

POLITICO: Democrats to give Trump Cabinet picks the Garland treatment.

Senate Democrats are preparing to put Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks through a grinding confirmation process, weighing delay tactics that could eat up weeks of the Senate calendar and hamper his first 100 days in office.

Multiple Democratic senators told POLITICO in interviews last week that after watching Republicans sit on Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court for nearly a year, they’re in no mood to fast-track Trump’s selections.

But it’s not just about exacting revenge.

Uh-huh.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1306.

COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM UPDATE: North Korea bans train travel until February 2017.

North Korea’s response to the infrastructure issues, including a power shortage, has been to blame other countries.

Kim Jong Un knows the model. Back here in America, Hillary Clinton. Robby Mook and Jen Palmieri blame everybody else for Hillary’s loss.

CUT DEEP, DOC: Donald Trump Nominates Ben Carson for HUD Secretary.

2016, MAN: David Duke responds to Jenna Jameson’s ‘massive crush’ on Bibi Netanyahu.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: What The Taiwan Call Means.

The ten minute telephone call from Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen to Donald Trump will not, by itself, cause a crisis in US-China relations, but it tells us a lot about the President-elect’s approach to foreign policy. First, it seems pretty clear that this was not a case of Trump going off script or of an over-zealous aid pushing a pet idea in the chaos of a transition. The Trump people know that China matters, that Taiwan is a sensitive issue, and that managing U.S.-China relations will be one of their most important and most difficult challenges. Trump and his key advisors knew very well that the world, and Beijing, would pay close attention to any contacts with Taiwan. Trump took the call knowing that Beijing and the rest of the world would be paying attention.
It’s much too early to tell whether Trump’s China policy, much less his foreign policy in general, will be a success; our task now is less to render judgment on his approach than to understand what it will be, and the Taiwan call offers some valuable insights into what is certain to be a disruptive and eventful Presidency. So what does the call tell us?

First, it’s a definite sign that Trump is much less constrained by the past and by the perceived taboos of the foreign policy establishment than any of his predecessors in the last two generations. . . .

Second, the Taiwan call tells us that Trump isn’t waiting for January 20th to get Obama’s hands off the foreign policy steering wheel. Obama has been trying to tie his successor’s hands on issues like the Iran deal; Trump is underlining that Obama is a lame duck, that he can’t commit the United States, and that the next administration is going to take a different line. This may or may not be wise, but Trump has so far been extremely successful in isolating and undermining Obama. The Taiwan call was one of many signals that Trump intends to manage American foreign policy very differently from his predecessor; all over the world, leaders are moving away from the postures they adopted in response to Obama’s goals and priorities in order to reposition themselves for the next era.

Third, when it coms to Asia policy, the Taiwan call is a clear sign that Trump is planning to do two things at the same time: to dump the Obama era “pivot to Asia” and simultaneously to assert the American presence in and commitment to Asia in unmistakable ways.

Given Obama’s disastrous foreign policy record, taking his hands off the steering wheel seems like a good idea.

FASCISM IS ALWAYS DESCENDING ON THE UNITED STATES, BUT ALWAYS LANDS… ANYWHERE ELSE: Two movies China desperately wants to hide.

This week, two extraordinary Canadian films — one a chilling documentary, the other a riveting drama based on its findings — were released for sale on iTunes.
…
The documentary, “Human Harvest,” won the coveted Peabody Award for its exposé of an unspeakable crime against humanity. In 1999, Chinese hospitals began performing more than 10,000 organ transplants annually, generating a vast and lucrative traffic in “transplant tourists,” who flocked to China on the assurance that they could obtain lifesaving organs without having to languish on a waiting list. China had no voluntary organ-donation system to speak of, yet suddenly it was providing tens of thousands of freshly harvested organs to patients with ready cash or high-placed connections. How was that possible?

The evidence, assembled by human-rights researchers and investigative journalists, added up to something unimaginable: China was killing enormous numbers of imprisoned men and women by strapping them down to operating tables, still conscious, and forcibly extracting their organs — and then delivering those organs to the hospital transplant centers that have become a major source of revenue. Chinese officials claim that organs come from violent criminals on death row. But “Human Harvest” makes it clear that most of those killed are peaceful citizens persecuted for their beliefs: Tibetans, Uighurs, Christians — and, above all, practitioners of Falun Gong, a Buddhist-style spiritual movement of peaceful meditation and ethical commitment.

The dramatized version starring Anastasia Lin is called The Bleeding Edge.

PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1859: Democrats Have Become the Old Fogeys of Politics — Ideologically and Physically.

OIL WARS: OPEC Production Cuts and the Illusive Power of Dealmaking.

Arguably, the most influential event that led the price collapse was the shale revolution. In June 2014, the U.S. became the leading global oil producer, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia for the first time since 1972. In effect, America took on the role of the global swing producer – it can increase or decrease production in response to price fluctuations faster than other countries. At its height in early 2015, U.S. oil production reached 9.6 million barrels per day. As a result of the price drop, it has since fallen by 900 thousand barrels – but American companies can quickly rekindle output to 10 million barrels and beyond. One of the main reasons for that is a technological feature of shale deposits: due to their small size, drilling new wells is not capital intensive. As a result, production volumes can be quickly increased. This is quite different from the big wells on traditional deposits – oil fields in western Siberia, for example.

But let’s assume that OPEC gets its act together and delivers on its promises to enforce production cuts (a big if). Let’s say that Russia follows suit and takes its small share of 300 thousand barrels a day off the market (another big if). What would happen then? The market, impressed by exporters’ discipline, would react with a modest rise in oil prices (modest because the declared cuts are modest, too). But then higher prices would allow the U.S. to pump increased volumes of crude. This oil would eventually fill the market niche vacated by OPEC and thus effectively make the production cuts meaningless. Back to square one. Welcome to the world of shale economics!

Indeed.

None of this is news to Instapundit readers, but have you hugged a fracker today?

JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER TO VISIT PEARL HARBOR: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will come to Hawaii in late December.

Abe said he was making the visit to Hawaii “to pay tribute” to military personnel from both sides of the Pacific who died in the war.

“We must never repeat the tragedy of the war,” he told reporters. “I would like to send this commitment. At the same time, I would like to send a message of reconciliation between Japan and the U.S.”

MOBSTERS RUN FAKE EMBASSY IN GHANA: You could make this stuff up but you don’t have to. The criminals were issuing (selling) fakes documents, except according to this Ghana source the “fake” U.S. visas were real visas.

The Connection Man in Ghana:

Due to the frustrating experience in acquiring a visa to travel, especially to Europe and the US, the phenomena of connection men has sprung up. While anyone familiar with visa issuance processes would disbelieve the effectiveness of these connection men to whom prospective travellers pay huge sums of money for visas, these incidents of the fake US Embassy and the example of the European country’s embassy in Ghana emphatically confirm that insiders work with these connection men to issue visas…

This fake US Embassy that operated for 10 years, which category of travellers was it serving? Could they have issued visas to human traffickers? Because $6000 is a colossal amount that very few ordinary travellers can afford. It would therefore, not be out of place to assume that most of the clients of this criminal gang were human traffickers.

The mobster embassy flew a U.S. flag and had a photo portrait of President Barack Obama.

Find the Reuters report of December 4 here.

“BAD LUCK:” Venezuela to introduce bigger bills amid soaring inflation. “The socialist-run economy is on the verge of collapse as its currency has lost 67 percent of its value on the black market, falling to 4,587 bolivars per US dollar, according to Dollar Today, a tracking agency.”

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Trump as FDR with the Fireside Tweet: Democrats think caring means a government program. Trump thinks caring is getting to keep your job, just as he promised.

President Clinton said, “I feel your pain.” President Franklin Roosevelt had “fireside chats.” And now President-elect Donald Trump is reaching out to forgotten Americans with a message that he cares about their problems, and wants to help. This could be the Democrats’ worst nightmare. . . .

Losing a job, especially one you’ve held for a long time, is traumatic for a lot of reasons beyond money. For many people, especially men, a job is a major part of their identity. When technocratic politicians such as President Obama or Hillary Clinton dismiss their feelings, that’s irritating at the very least, especially when the Democratic Party as a whole, as operative Van Jones admitted recently, has a “problem with elitism.” If anything, Democrats have seemed almost smug about the travails of blue-collar America.

Trump, by contrast, promised to save Carrier jobs during the campaign and then, even though Obama mocked him for it at the PBS town hall (“What are you going to do? … What magic wand do you have?”) Trump then went ahead and delivered. A conspicuously kept campaign promise that benefits the little guy sends a signal of caring that talk of macroeconomics does not.

Do I have to tell you to read the whole thing?