SOCIALISM DIDN’T BUILD THIS. CAPITALISM DID. The End of Extreme Poverty.

Related: Venezuela’s currency now worth so little shopkeepers weigh vast piles of notes instead of counting them; Scenes on the streets of Caracas said to be reminiscent of the past century’s most chaotic cases of hyperinflation.

“Bad luck.”

I HOPE THAT PRESIDENT TRUMP’S JUSTICE DEPARTMENT WILL INVESTIGATE THIS AS A CRIMINAL CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATION: The State of Pennsylvania released the personal information of GOP electors, leading to a wave of emails and phone calls which at least one elector described as “total harassment.”

Plus: “Republican electors in several other states have reported threats.” Where’s the FBI?

CHANGE SOMEONE’S LIFE: Give the Gift of Amazon Prime.

LIFE IN THE POST-ANTIBIOTIC ERA: This forgotten WWI antiseptic could be the key to fighting antibiotic resistance. And the common cold.

I WANT ONE: This Handmade Tesla Gun Is Shockingly Cool.

DISPATCHES FROM THE PARENTHESES STATES:

Time for some traffic problems in Manhattan!

City officials have intentionally ground Midtown to a halt with the hidden purpose of making drivers so miserable that they leave their cars at home and turn to mass transit or bicycles, high-level sources told The Post.

Today’s gridlock is the result of an effort by the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations over more than a decade of redesigning streets and ramping up police efforts, the sources said.

“The traffic is being engineered,” a former top NYPD official told The Post, explaining a long-term plan that began under Mayor Mike Bloomberg and hasn’t slowed with Mayor de Blasio.

“The city streets are being engineered to create traffic congestion, to slow traffic down, to favor bikers and pedestrians,” the former official said.

“There’s a reduction in capacity through the introduction of bike lanes and streets and lanes being closed down.”

—“The real reason for New York City’s traffic nightmare,” the New York Post, yesterday.

In the past, it was other people’s governments that would seek to make your life more difficult. But increasingly in California, the most effective war being waged is one the state has aimed at ourselves.

The Jerry Brown administration’s obsession with becoming a global model for reducing greenhouse gases is leading to an unprecedented drive to completely reshape how Californians live. Rather than focus on more pragmatic, affordable steps to reduce greenhouse gases – more efficient cars, rooftop solar systems and promoting home-based work – the goal increasingly seems like social engineering designed to force Californians to adopt the high-density, transit-oriented future preferred by Brown’s green priesthood.

The newest outrage comes from the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research in the form of a proposed “road diet.” This would essentially halt attempts to expand or improve our roads, even when improvements have been approved by voters. This strategy can only make life worse for most Californians, since nearly 85 percent of us use a car to get to work. This in a state that already has among the worst-maintained roads in the country, with two-thirds of them in poor or mediocre condition.

—“A ‘diet’ to give California drivers indigestion,” Joel Kotkin, the Orange County Register, May 29.

I don’t know how it compares to other states, but after leaving California, which, as Kotkin’s article hints, is notorious for having some of the worst roads in the country, I was amazed at how seriously Texas takes road maintenance, even out here in the hinterlands. And on the flip-side, for at least the last 20 years or so, it’s almost always been a safe bet: the bluer the region, the more it screws motorists.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1304: ‘The IRS Has Never Stopped Targeting Conservatives.’

THE DEMOCRATS DOUBLE DOWN:

The story of 2016 was ostensibly about how political party establishments had become empty vessels, vulnerable to takeover from populists with their own platforms and megaphones. The tumult in the GOP, from successive Tea Party rebellions to the nomination of Donald Trump, seemed to confirm this thesis. And even the Democratic elite showed some signs of weakness, as Bernie Sanders mounted a stronger-than-expected primary challenge to the establishment’s anointed candidate.

But the party’s 2016 collapse followed by the easy re-election of Nancy Pelosi as leader of the House Democratic caucus complicates this narrative. . . .

Consider: First, the Democratic elite dutifully steered voters to Hillary Clinton, virtually clearing the field for her in the primaries despite what should have arguably been—in retrospect, at least—a disqualifying scandal. And then, after four years of electoral carnage and virtual decimation of the party outside its coastal urban precincts, the Democrats have re-installed a veteran San Francisco liberal as the face of their party’s congressional agenda. To the extent that the rank-and-file has rebelled, it has not been very successful.

And neither has the party leadership, except at protecting its own positions.

DO TELL: How Stigma Sows Seeds of Its Own Defeat: Defending the liberal project is a Sisyphean task in part because successfully inculcating liberal norms leads to habits that weaken the ability to sustain them. Plus: “Stigmatization of an idea, by design, intends to convert, not persuade, by bypassing reason and going right for our tribal desire to fit in. But I think the rarely noted effect of this conversion happening is that it robs the converted of the tools to persuade others going forward. In other words, if you haven’t been persuaded by the merits of a political idea, how do you persuade others? You can’t without resorting to the same sort of stigmatizing argument. This, I think, at least partially explains the left’s staleness over the past two years, and the cultural center-left elite’s utter shock at the inadequacy of its invincible ascendant coalition.”

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him. And voting is by secret ballot. . . .

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LEFTIES WORRY ABOUT THE CREEPY SURVEILLANCE STATE THAT BARACK OBAMA BUILT OUT: Signs Of A Creepy Government Conspiracy At Standing Rock.

UPDATE: From the comments:

Back in 2009 when Nancy Pelosi and the proggies were ramming ObamaCare down our throats someone opined that they were acting like they’d never lose another election. Since then they’ve spent eight years weaponizing the federal government. Now they’ve handed all that power over to The Donald and the Republicans and they’re terrified that we’ll do to them what they wanted Hillary to do to us. They’re looking under their beds and in their closets, terrified they might find the monsters of their own creation. The monsters they thought they’d control.

But monsters, once created, are notoriously difficult to control. You’d think all those English Lit majors would have remembered that, and we should remember it too…

And this never gets old:

SEEN ON FACEBOOK: “What we’ve learned in 2016 is that the left loves poor people when they’re huddled in food banks, hungry, exhausted, desperately looking for dinner, but hates them when they cockily walk into polling stations and say ‘Fuck your status quo.'”

YES: Comey’s FBI Needs to Investigate Violent Democratic Tantrums: Robert Creamer-type operations—like coordinated nation-wide protests—require money.

It’s time for the FBI to conduct a detailed investigation into the violence and political thuggery that continue to mar the presidential election’s aftermath. A thorough probe of the protests—to include possible ties to organizations demanding vote recounts—will give the Bureau’s integrity-challenged director, James Comey, a chance to sandblast his sullied badge.

Director Comey must also include “elector intimidation” on his post-election investigation list. Reports that members of the Electoral College are being harassed and threatened by angry, vicious (and likely Democratic Party) malcontents require Comey’s quick and systematic attention.

Michael Banerian, one of Michigan’s 16 electors, told CNN: “Obviously, this election cycle was pretty divisive. Unfortunately it’s bled over into the weeks following the election and I have been inundated with death threats, death wishes, generally angry messages trying to get me to change my vote to Hillary Clinton or another person, and unfortunately, it’s gotten a little out of control.”

A little out of control? What an understatement. Let me put it to you straight and personal, Jim. Identifying electors and then attempting to intimidate them into switching their votes is an ipso facto effort to overturn a national election. Which leads to a question a competent FBI Director would already have his agents asking: Is this elector threat scheme a coordinated operation?

Why, electors live in different states. A mind with a talent for the obvious would see a federal interest. Federal as in Federal Bureau of Investigation. That’s the outfit you head, Mr. Comey—at least until the Obama Administration expires.

Which takes us back to the violent protests and political thuggery. Let me introduce you to two vicious Democratic Party operatives FBI agents should have quizzed and collared two months ago: Robert Creamer and The Hideous Scott Foval. These two creeps starred in Project Veritas’ video investigation of violent incitement during the political campaign.

Read the whole thing.

THE HILL: Reeling Dems look for new leader.

Reeling from their election losses, Democrats will hold their first audition for a new Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman at a gathering here on Friday.

The announced candidates — Rep. Keith Ellison (Minn.), former DNC Chairman Howard Dean, New Hampshire Chairman Raymond Buckley and South Carolina Chairman Jaime Harrison — will make their pitch to state party leaders at the Association of State Democratic Chairs.

Ellison, who is promising to build the “50 state strategy” Dean employed during his chairmanship with a “3,143 county strategy” of his own, is the early front-runner, racking up endorsements from Washington lawmakers and national labor groups.

But since this story was published, Dean has dropped out, meaning that the face of the Democratic Party is likely to be a Muslim with homophobia, anti-semitism, and anti-Americanism in his background, who has advocated racial segregation, along with having connections to jihadists. And Ellison’s a 9/11 Truther who compared the collapse of the twin towers to the Reichstag Fire. Yeeargh!

TAKING SIDES: SUNY-Buffalo Dean At Post-Election Forum: ‘If Hillary Clinton (Or Others) Had Won, We Would Not Be Here’; Donald Trump Was Elected Due To ‘Profound Democratic Immaturity.’ So if I were a student or faculty member at Buffalo who supported Trump — and they have those there, even if, understandably, they’re mostly keeping quiet — I’d feel marginalized and “othered” by this sort of thing. Does the law school administration care? Apparently not. Perhaps they regard that marginalization and othering as a feature, not a bug. Equally likely, they can’t imagine that anyone there voted for Trump.

SILICON VALLEY CHOSE . . . POORLY. Silicon Valley Chiefs Notably Absent From Trump’s Cabinet of Business Advisers.

TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME: On Inauguration Day, Don’t Go to Work. Don’t Buy Anything. We Need A National Strike to Stop Trump.

How much impact could a strike like this have? Hey, those lattes aren’t going to fetch themselves.

NELSON LUND: The Right to Arms and the American Philosophy of Freedom.

BOB MCMANUS: Bring On The Mad Dog: President-elect Trump makes a sterling pick to head the Pentagon.

The nation has been at war for 15 years now, the last eight half-heartedly and with no appetite even for identifying the enemy, let alone engaging him aggressively. History will judge whether that’s the correct way for a great power to prosecute necessary conflicts in a complex and dangerous world, but for the short term, it’s clear that the Obama administration has produced a sanguinary shambles.

The Mideast boils. Russia, pushed out of the region by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger more than 40 years ago, has returned and is ascendant. Afghanistan is in stalemate. Pakistan teeters. Half a world away, America is in retreat and, recognizing this, the president of the Philippines travels to China to cast his nation’s lot with Beijing, while Japan and South Korea silently wonder about American leadership.

So, too, does the nation’s hard-pressed military. It has performed brilliantly since the Twin Towers came down 15 years ago. But it has been depleted, if not exhausted, by budgetary sequestration, personnel reductions, and matériel shortfalls—and sorely vexed by wrongheaded, top-down social-justice activism.

Enter Mattis, a Marine Corps legend who was a little too tough on Iran for the outgoing administration’s tastes—hence his premature retirement—but who is now the president-elect’s pick to set things right at the Pentagon.

Trump’s best pick yet.

MY ADVICE: PLAN A CAYMAN TRIP! Winter Makes Me S.A.D. Help!

Though a Light Therapy lamp may be cheaper.

YEAH, THAT WAS HILLARY’S PROBLEM: SHE WAS TOO CIVIL AND LADYLIKE. David Faris: It’s time for Democrats to fight dirty.

TO BE FAIR, THAT’S WHAT THEY DO WITH PRETTY MUCH ALL OF AMERICA’S PROBLEMS. The Media Are Making America’s Anti-Semitism Problem Worse: In their absolute frenzy to defeat Donald Trump at all costs, the media pulled David Duke and his ilk from the filthy shadows in which they lurked, and handed them a big microphone.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. President-Elect Donald Trump’s Pick of General Mad Dog Mattis Is His Best Choice Yet.