BRE PAYTON: Stop Pretending The Obama Administration Was ‘Scandal Free.’

So. Much. Spin. It’s almost as if Obama realizes that his legacy — which is comprised largely of executive orders that can easily be undone under a new president — is toast. To suggest an enduring legacy his team wants folks to fixate on his “scandal-free” administration because President-elect Donald Trump has said he plans to tear up the Iran nuclear deal and will work with Congress to repeal Obama’s signature health care law, effectively erasing two of Obama’s largest “accomplishments.”

The real scandal is that by and large, Obama is allowed to get away with it.

SMART DIPLOMACY: It’s Obama, Not Trump, Who Snuggled Up To Putin: Broader aims on Middle East realignment led the outgoing president’s efforts at two-track diplomacy. One track was misdirection. The other handed the region to Russia and Iran.

Is Donald Trump a Russian secret agent? Did he pay FSB hookers to pee on the bed the Obamas slept in at the Ritz in Moscow, overlooking the Kremlin? It’s silly season, so any drunk on a fat oppo-research expense account can write down any crazy foolishness they want and Buzzfeed will let you decide if it’s true because that, as Buzzfeed’s editor, Ben Smith, solemnly explained to The New York Times, is where American journalism is at in 2017. Duly noted, Buzzfeed. Enjoy the golden showers.

What’s being obscured by this grotesquerie is the origin and the actual substance of U.S. foreign policy toward Russia, which in turn affects the lives of hundreds of millions of people living in Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, and elsewhere. Or, to put it another way: Is Donald Trump likely to continue the policies of his predecessor, which set the Middle East on fire and led to 500,000 deaths in Syria, and to Putin biting off large chunks of the sovereign nation of Ukraine? Or is he likely to reverse those policies? Or can he, even if he wanted to?

The single-mindedness with which the White House and the remnants of the Clinton campaign have pursued the idea that Donald Trump is a pawn of Vladimir Putin is not based on silly stories about peeing prostitutes or secret computer servers that connect the Trump organization to the Kremlin. Rather, it’s an attempt to manufacture more smoke to obscure the reality of Obama’s own determination to collaborate with a hostile Russian leader in Syria, and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Obama had “more flexibility” after the election in 2012, and he used it.

HARDER, PLEASE: Hungary set to turn screws on Soros-backed NGOs.

Hungarian NGOs have long felt the heat under strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orban — but they now fear that, emboldened by Donald Trump’s victory, the right-wing premier will turn the screws even tighter.

First in line may be groups backed by Hungarian-born billionaire financier George Soros, whose foundation once funded the Oxford studies of a young Orban more than 25 years ago.

Last week the deputy head of Orban’s ruling party Fidesz, in power since 2010, said that non-governmental organisations should be “cleaned out of here”.

Szilard Nemeth said that criticism of government policies by “fake” civil organisations set up to “influence politics” by Soros and others was “impermissible”.

The remarks triggered alarm among beleaguered NGOs, many of which — in the absence of a credible political opposition — have long attacked Orban’s sweeping revamp of state institutions and hardline anti-immigration stance.

“This is a new level of NGO-bashing,” said Marta Pardavi, co-head of the Hungarian branch of the Helsinki Committee, a human rights group that provides free advice to asylum-seekers.

Nemeth name-checked the body as potential targets along with civil rights group TASZ and corruption watchdog Transparency International.

‘Tis a pity they can’t both lose.

IS IT FRIDAY YET? Days before Trump’s inauguration, State Dept. sends $500 million to United Nations climate fund.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Teachers Protest “Discipline Reform.”

Under pressure to reduce racial disparities in suspensions and expulsions, schools are turning to “restorative justice” programs that encourage offenders to discuss their actions and make amends.

Earlier this year, Indianapolis and New York City teachers complained about poorly implemented “restorative justice” programs, reported Emmanuel Felton in Ed Week. Now, teachers in Fresno and Des Moines are saying new discipline policies are making it harder to teach.

“As Fresno Unified officials were praising McLane High School’s restorative justice program” at a conference, “teachers at the school were circulating a petition that says those same strategies have led to an unsafe campus plagued with fights and disruptions,” reports the Fresno Bee.

You don’t have these problems when you homeschool.

OUCH:

But what lesson will people on the right take from this observation? Will they perhaps conclude that great accumulated fortunes — from Ford, to Rockefeller, to Zuckerberg to Gates — tend to be used for lefty social experimentation? Will that affect their views of economic policy? Or will they just conclude that lefties are hypocrites?

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CAN YOU IMAGINE THEM SENDING THIS TO BARACK OBAMA, WHO NEEDED TO HEAR IT JUST AS MUCH? An open letter to Trump from the US press corps. No, no you can’t. And that’s because they rolled over for Obama.

JOSEPH KENNEDY III: Democrats, Heal Thyselves.

U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III, breaking ranks with other Democrats who are trashing President-elect Donald Trump and boycotting his inaugural, is imploring his party’s rank and file to figure out why middle American voters went Republican in November.

“Somewhere along the way, we lost their trust. We have to get it back,” Kennedy said tonight, departing from many in his party who have sought to cast blame for the loss elsewhere.

Kennedy rallied roughly 160 Democrats in a high school cafeteria in deep-blue Newton, giving a brief outline of what he sees as the future of his party.

An important step, he said, is to find out why people voted for Trump, rather than reacting to everything he posts on Twitter.

“The danger with going down that road is that it risks distracting us from what the core message was on November 7 and November 8,” Kennedy said. “For some reason this time, they decided to trust Donald Trump with their vote.”

He said liberal voters need to find common ground with Trump supporters, and said berating them for their decision is the wrong way to win them back. “Folks, we lost their trust and being mortified and mystified about their vote doesn’t bring it back,” he said.

Good advice that is likely to be ignored.

THE ONE ACT THAT DEFINED PRESIDENT OBAMA: “Barack Obama will forever be the president who worked diligently to put the gun of government to the heads of the Little Sisters of the Poor.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, TAKING-SIDES EDITION: So I’m pretty sure that this UCLALawWATCH thing is official. It’s “a project to track incidents of harassment or violence following the election of Donald Trump.” I feel certain that it’s not about protecting abused Trump supporters on campus. . . .

EMPHASIS ON THE “FAKE” AND “CORRUPT.” How Fake Outrage Fuels the Corrupt Center Left. “In spite of the fact that this behavior lost them the White House and both houses of Congress, the center left of the Democratic Party continues to rely on manufactured outrage based on misleading claims in order to distract the public from its corruption and rally support from its base. During the 2016 election, whenever there was an opportunity to create an outrage campaign based on an isolated event, the center left exploited it regardless of the facts.”

LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY UPDATE: Women’s March Waffles on Sex-Worker Rights, Disinvites Women Who Oppose Abortion: The Women’s March claims to be for anyone “who believes women’s rights are human rights.” And yet… “That’s right: anything less than complete agreement about abortion and the group doesn’t even want you participating in the rally. Nevermind if you’re with the group on any or all of its myriad other principles—identify as pro-choice (but against sex-worker rights) or the cool girls don’t want to sit with you.”

Modern feminism morphed into Mean Girls so gradually I barely even noticed. Oh, who am I kidding? It was always Mean Girls.

THE PIRACY THREAT: A world tour.

Sample:

There’s no easy solution to the recurring piracy in the Strait of Malacca. Pirates usually function on the margins of society, trying to get a cut of the good life in situations where there aren’t many options. This is usually in areas where state control is weakest or absent, in failing and “flailed” states. A flailing state is something like Nigeria, Indonesia, or the Philippines, where the government is managing to keep things together but is faced with serious problems with regions that are sometimes out of control.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: WAR BY OTHER MEANS. “It is not by chance that the most fervent defenders of PC in the United States are called ‘social justice warriors,’ for behind their claims lies a permanent war.”

HAMILTON OR MADISON?: Statisticians helped identify the likely author of 12 disputed Federalist Papers.

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

REMEMBER, ONLY TRAINED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS CAN BE TRUSTED WITH FIREARMS: Contra Costa deputy arrested for allegedly firing gun at party.

ASHE SCHOW: 10 questions for Betsy DeVos about the mood on campus. “If recent outrage from the left is any indication, DeVos may receive questions on these topics from the point of view that due process rights are a hindrance to campus justice and free-speech protections foster hate speech.” Freedom is slavery.

UPDATE: Um, you do understand that this is Trump’s position, too, right?

EH, WHEN HE’S RIGHT, HE’S RIGHT:

Yes, we have smartphones and Twitter now. No, that’s not as good as flying cars and Mars bases.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Looser rules on beer sales to take effect in Pennsylvania.

THAT NUMBER IS MEANINGLESS, OF COURSE, AS ARE REFERENCES TO THE EARTH ECONOMY. THE REAL VALUE OF ALL THAT METAL IS WHAT YOU CAN BUILD WITH IT IN SPACE: NASA to explore asteroid made of $10,000 quadrillion worth of metal.

OBAMA STEPS ON HIS OWN MESSAGE: Shorter Obama: It’s ok to steal classified & leak it to a Kremlin spy front as long as the revelations mainly hurt Republicans.

Plus: Democrat hypocrisy on Wikileaks is astonishing & undermines their outrage about Putin’s meddling in 2016. Which we should be outraged over.

UPDATE: Yeah:

Plus:

Plus:

WAIT, WHAT? Not everybody that goes to the gym wants to lose weight.

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