FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: One in three babies born in UK last year had foreign parent – as sky-high immigration fuels population boom: The figures showed nine in ten London newborns had at least one parent from overseas.

Remember, this didn’t happen because the British electorate asked for it to happen, it happened because the Labour Party thought that Britain was too British and it’s electorate insufficiently tractable, and decided to make it more diverse. This is the result. More on that here.

PRECIOUS SNOWFLAKES: Virginia schools ban ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ ‘Huckleberry Finn’ for racial slurs.

The decision to remove “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain and “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee came after a parent filed a complaint, WCMH-TV reported. The parent cited excessive racial slurs as the reason for wanting the books banned, Superintendent Warren Holland told the news station.

The parent, whose son is biracial, said that her concerns are “not even just a black and white thing.”

“I keep hearing, ‘This is a classic, This is a classic,’ … I understand this is a literature classic. But at some point, I feel that children will not — or do not — truly get the classic part — the literature part, which I’m not disputing,” she said at a Nov. 15 school board meeting. “This is great literature. But there (are so many) racial slurs in there and offensive wording that you can’t get past that.”

No, you can’t get past that.

PROCUREMENT BLUES: The US’s military edge over Russia and China has come down to one plane.

Only one US airframe remains head-and-shoulders above any and all competition: the F-22 Raptor.

The F-22 was the first fifth-generation fighter jet, and it is like nothing else on earth. The plane can execute mind-bending aerial maneuvers, sense incoming threats at incredible distances, and fly undetected by legacy aircraft.

The coming F-35 Lightning II, a stealthy technological marvel in its own right, has an impressive radar cross section approximately the size of a basketball. The F-22, however, blows it out of the water with a cross section about the size of a marble.

For this reason, the F-22 Raptor remains the US’s only hope for breaching the most heavily protected airspace. Even so, an expert on Russian air defenses told Business Insider that F-22 pilots would have to be “operationally, tactically brilliant” to survive strikes against Russian-defended targets.

And we built fewer than 200 of them.

THE DEMOCRATS SURE DID GIVE PRESIDENT TRUMP A LOT OF POWER: Broad Expansion of FBI’s Hacking Authority Begins Today: One warrant and one judge can lead to untold numbers of system intrusions.

And this never gets old:

CUE THE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: Clinton donors feel like they torched their cash.

The frustrations from the Election Day defeat are causing a lot of problems for the Democratic National Committee, which is already working to rebuild its dilapidated image and gear up for the 2018 midterm elections. In addition, many progressive activists are worried about money as they prepare to go to war with Trump, who has vowed to undo much of President Barack Obama’s legacy.

“They’re tired,” one DNC official told The Hill regarding top Democratic donors. “They’re upset about the election, and there was significant trauma surrounding the Russians. They’re upset and they’re tired.”

On top of the defeat, donors are angry over the WikiLeaks revelations (which included leaks of their information) and the fact that the DNC will be without any sort of leadership until more than a month into the Trump administration.

The GOP was pulled out of its post-2008 doldrums by the spontaneous formation of the Tea Party just weeks after Barack Obama’s inauguration. Democrats seem unlikely (for now, anyway) to enjoy a similar grassroots boon.

WHY IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SUCH A CESSPIT OF ANTI-SEMITISM? ADL: Newly uncovered remarks by Keith Ellison are ‘disturbing and disqualifying.’

GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE: Wisconsin VA Hospital May Have Infected 600 Veterans With HIV Or Hepatitis.

From October 2015 to October 2016, a dentist at the Tomah VA exposed 592 veterans to infectious diseases by reusing his own dental equipment and “cleaning” it instead of using the sterile and disposable equipment provided by the VA, said Acting Medical Center Director Victoria Brahm, according to WEAU News.

“It was purposeful that he was violating VA regulations,” Brahm said. “During all of the orientation, he used all of our equipment. He used it appropriately, so it was very purposeful from what we found in our investigation that he knew exactly what he was doing, and preferred to use his own equipment against procedure.”

Someone who was filling in for the dentist’s assistant noticed what he was doing and reported it.

The dentist, who has yet to be identified, hasn’t been fired after carelessly exposing hundreds of veterans to infectious diseases.

Abolish the VA and give veterans vouchers for the private health coverage of their choice.

ED MORRISSEY: Obamacare RIP: Republicans Finally Have a Plan.

THE LEFT SPENT DECADES GIVING US A REALITY-TV CULTURE, AND NOW IT’S UNHAPPY WE ELECTED A REALITY-TV PRESIDENT: Donald Trump: The Showman President.

With the announcement of Trump’s triumphant (Trumphant?) Carrier deal, the word that occurs to me—not for the first time—is “showman.”

That’s not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, by the way. But it’s not something we’ve seen a lot of in recent years.

It’s not that previous presidents haven’t tried. Reagan was good at the speeches, as well as some sweeping gestures (“tear down this wall,” and the firing of the air controllers). Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and George Bush were abysmal; Clinton only so-so (playing the sax on TV comes to mind).

Obama tried and sometimes succeeded, particularly during his first campaign. Remember the Greek columns? . . .

But this is the water in which Trump swims. This is his most comfortable place to be: the showman, in the spotlight. He’s been doing it for his entire life.

That’s one of the reasons Trump preferred enormous rallies, and was relaxed when giving lengthy speeches without a teleprompter and ad-libbing extensively. He likes the spectacle of it all and realizes the important of the gesture and the symbol. And despite his more “presidential” demeanor since his election, I doubt this aspect of his personality will fade during his presidency; au contraire. And he understands the elements of surprise, of timing.

It does look that way.

KRUGMAN SAID TRUMP WOULD KILL STOCKS, BUT THE BIG ACTION IS OVERSEAS: Italy’s referendum has the potential to set off a global landslide. Of course, they said that about Brexit, too.

AT AMAZON, Cyber Monday Deals Week Savings in Patio Lawn and Garden.

Plus, save in Generators and Portable Power. Winter is coming.

JOHN FUND: Do Illegal Votes Decide Elections? There’s no way to know. But the evidence suggests that significant numbers of noncitizens cast ballots.

Donald Trump’s claim that illegal voting may have cost him a popular-vote majority has touched off outrage. Widespread voter fraud, the media consensus suggests, isn’t possible. But there is a real chance that significant numbers of noncitizens and others are indeed voting illegally, perhaps enough to make up the margin in some elections.

There’s no way of knowing for sure. The voter-registration process in almost all states runs on the honor system. The Obama administration has done everything it can to keep the status quo in place. The Obama Justice Department has refused to file a single lawsuit to enforce the requirement of the National Voter Registration Act that states maintain the accuracy of their voter-registration lists. This despite a 2012 study from the Pew Center on the States estimating that one out of every eight voter registrations is inaccurate, out-of-date or duplicate. About 2.8 million people are registered in more than one state, according to the study, and 1.8 million registered voters are dead. In most places it’s easy to vote under the names of such people with little risk of detection.

An undercover video released in October by the citizen-journalist group Project Veritas shows a Democratic election commissioner in New York City saying at a party, “I think there is a lot of voter fraud.” A second video shows two Democratic operatives mulling how it would be possible to get away with voter fraud. . . .

How common is this? If only we knew. Political correctness has squelched probes of noncitizen voting, so most cases are discovered accidentally instead of through a systematic review of election records.

The danger looms large in states such as California, which provides driver’s licenses to noncitizens, including those here illegally, and which also does nothing to verify citizenship during voter registration. In a 1996 House race, then-challenger Loretta Sanchez defeated incumbent Rep. Bob Dornan by under 1,000 votes. An investigation by a House committee found 624 invalid votes by noncitizens, nearly enough to overturn the result.

How big is this problem nationally? One district-court administrator estimated in 2005 that up to 3% of the 30,000 people called for jury duty from voter-registration rolls over a two-year period were not U.S. citizens. A September report from the Public Interest Legal Foundation found more than 1,000 noncitizens who had been removed from the voter rolls in eight Virginia counties. Many of them had cast ballots in previous elections, but none was referred for possible prosecution.

Of course not. They vote for Democrats.

WAITING FOR THE BIG BUZZFEED COVERAGE: DNC Chair Candidate Rep. Keith Ellison’s Imam: Homosexuality Is ‘Not What God Intended.’

But I think it’s still okay to be homophobic so long as you’re sufficiently diverse.

THE DALLAS OBSERVER HAS A PIECE ON THE DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE and a defense from its builder. A reader emails: “It’s the clearest defense of the pipeline construction process I think I’ve seen.”

Folk singers are threatening to boycott a music festival he sponsors. But why would anyone mind a boycott by folk singers? What’s next, a boycott by accordion-playing mimes?

Plus, a flashback on why “folk” singing is a crock. “The entire ‘folk’ movement was Stalinist through and through (including Woody Guthrie, who was a Communist Party hanger-on and probably a member. How do I know this? My late mother was Arlo’s nursery-school teacher in the Red Brooklyn of the 1940s). Of course, it was all a put-on. Woody Guthrie was a middle-class lawyer’s son. Pete Seeger was the privileged child of classical musicians who decamped to Greenwich Village. The authenticity of the folk movement stank of greasepaint. But a generation of middle-class kids who, like Holden Caulfield, thought their parents ‘phony’ gravitated to the folk movement.”

TRUMP’S FIRST “THANK YOU TOUR” RALLY. Full video here.

Trump called for the country to unify and denounced the bigotry that he said keeps America divided. Trump has been under fire for appealing to fringe elements on the right, including white nationalists.

“We condemn bigotry and prejudice in all of its forms,” Trump said. “We denounce all of the hatred and we forcefully reject the language of exclusion and separation. We have no choice. We have to, and it’s better.”

“We spend too much time focusing on what divides us,” he continued. “Now it’s time to embrace the one thing that united us: it’s America, because when America is unified, nothing is beyond our reach.” . . .

Trump used his message of unification to underscore the “America first” mindset that he trumpeted throughout his campaign. He pointed to the newly struck deal with Indiana-based Carrier to keep manufacturing jobs in America as indicative of the economic success to come under his presidency.

He stopped in Indianapolis earlier on Thursday to celebrate his deal with the heating and air conditioning company to keep more than 1,000 factory jobs in the state. Some 800 were slated to move to Mexico with 300 transferring to North Carolina, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Trump quipped that while “globalism is wonderful,” America needs to “focus on our national community.”

Stay tuned.

Plus: Flashback: Obama Mocks Trump for Promising to Keep Carrier Plant in U.S. You know, I don’t know how Trump will turn out as President, but I’m really enjoying him as President-Elect.

UPDATE: “One of the things I will enjoy about the Trump presidency is watching non-business writers try to explain his methods.”

Here’s the real story. You need a business filter to see it clearly. In my corporate life I watched lots of new leaders replace old leaders. And there is one trick the good leaders do that bad leaders don’t: They make some IMMEDIATE improvement that everyone can see. It has to be visible, relatively simple, and fast.

Why?

Because humans are not rational. Our first impressions rule our emotions forever. Trump has a second chance to make a first impression because his performance as President is fresh ground. Trump is attacking the job like a seasoned CEO, not like a politician. He knows that his entire four-year term will be judged by what happens before it even starts. What he does today will determine how much support and political capital he has for his entire term.

So what does a Master Persuader do when he needs to create a good first impression to last for years? He looks around for any opportunity that is visible, memorable, newsworthy, true to his brand, and easy to change.

Enter Ford.

Enter Carrier.

Trump and Pence recognized these openings and took them. Political writers will interpret this situation as routine credit-grabbing and exaggerated claims. But business writers will recognize Trump’s strategy as what I will call the “new CEO Move.” Smart CEOs try to create visible victories within days of taking the job, to set the tone. It’s all about the psychology.

If you are looking at Trump’s claims of success with Ford and Carrier in terms of technical accuracy and impact on the economy, you will be underwhelmed. But if you view it through a business filter and understand that psychology is the point of the exercise, you’re seeing one of the best new CEO moves you will ever see.

I’ll say this again because it’s important. We’re all watching closely to see if President Elect Trump has the skill to be president. And while you watch, Trump and Pence are pulling off one of the most skillfully executed new CEO plays you will ever see.

Read the whole thing.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Ohio State Knife Attacker Abdul Artan Was Taking a Class About Microaggressions. His group project was due later this week.

Not from The Onion.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Questioning Legitimacy of Election Risks Civil War and Secession. “If elections lack legitimacy, then our officials, and the laws they make, are always up for contest. No one can make plans, because they don’t know how long the current regime will last. Worse still, the opponents of that regime will have few qualms about resorting to violence to hasten that end — nor will the regime hesitate to use terror and extralegal tactics to hold on to power. We’ve had such incidents in the U.S., but rarely, and so we have come to view the legitimacy of the democratic order as a sort of natural law that can be taken as a given. It isn’t so.”

We’re still suffering damage from Al Gore’s foolish decision to “un-concede” in 2000.

WOULD WEST VIRGINIA’S DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR, JIM JUSTICE, BE ABLE TO FILL THE VACANCY? Joe Manchin may be Trump’s energy secretary.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: It’s Never Too Late To Stop Smoking.

PAUL KRUGMAN ON ELECTION NIGHT: “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”

Headline today: Dow Sees Highest Close on Record.

EUROPOL VERSUS CYBER CRIME SYNDICATE: Report via VOA.

Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement agency, said Thursday it has arrested five people in an online criminal enterprise and seized 39 computer servers following a four-year-long international investigation.

Police agencies spanning the globe and representing 30 countries participated in the effort, which closed down a criminal group that has caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage through online cyberattacks, according to a written statement released by Europol.

The cops employed a technique called sinkholing.

Sinkholing refers to a technique used by police that redirects internet traffic coming from criminals to servers controlled by law enforcement. When fully implemented, the tactic stops criminals from gaining access to infected computers of their victims.

Congrats to Europol.

MORE BAD NEWS FROM A DEMOCRAT-RUN CITY: Youth homelessness in Baltimore higher than previously thought.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Campus Censorship: Some folks on the right may feel that turnabout is fair play, but that’s dangerous.

CULTURE: UNESCO Deems Belgium’s Beer Culture A Treasure Of Humanity.

When Belgium’s beer culture was nominated for UNESCO recognition and protection back in 2014, beer expert Erik Verdonck explained the reasoning to NPR’s Rachel Martin:

“Well, I think, thanks to the fact that we still have 150 breweries and many of these are still family owned. So it’s not only a lot of more industrial type of beer tradition, we also keep to our typical traditions like sour beers, for instance, lambic beers close to Brussels and of course, the famous Trappist and abbey beers. This is all part of our liquid heritage, if you want.”

In its note recognizing Belgium’s beer scene, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) wrote that while the country drinks a wide variety of beer, it’s also famous for cooking with it — making everything form flavorful sauces to beer-washed cheese.

I never thought I’d say this, but if UNSECO thinks Belgium’s beer culture is special, they should come visit Colorado sometime.

LAWYERS HELPING VICTIMS: TBA Activates Disaster Legal Assistance for Wildfires. If you’re a Tennessee lawyer and want to help, follow the link.