BLOG CARNIVALS ARE STILL A THING: The Carnival of Space, #540. Lots of stuff happening.

THE VIRTUE-SIGNALLERS’ BILL COMES DUE: Mayors from seven major French cities write open letter saying they are overwhelmed by the flow of migrants.

FUNNY HOW THE ALT-RIGHT AND THE ACADEMIC LEFT SO OFTEN AGREE WITH EACH OTHER: “Ta-Nehisi Coates Deletes Twitter Account Amid Cornel West Feud…West criticized Coates as the ‘neoliberal* face of the black freedom struggle’ while claiming that Coates ‘fetishizes white supremacy.’ Now, in the fallout of West’s criticism, Coates has deleted his widely followed Twitter account. Late last night, Coates highlighted a number of instances of people co-signing and endorsing West’s column. Eventually, he noted that white nationalist Richard Spencer embraced West’s opinion,” retweeting Spencer’s tweet that West is “not wrong” that “Coates fetishizes white supremacy.”

As Rod Dreher warned earlier this year, the elite left “needs to know [that] you aren’t going to be able to count on conservative people like me to help you oppose the alt-right, because you are their ‘respectable’ left-wing mirror image.”

Why, it’s as if Ta-Nehisi Coates’ inflammatory rhetoric gives whiteness power or something.

AT THE VERY LEAST, RON JOHNSON WILL HAVE GSA BUREAUCRATS burning a lot of midnight oil over the holidays accounting for transition shenanigans.

NEWS YOU CAN USE*: The worst passwords of the year revealed (and 123456 and password still top the list).

* Especially if your name rhymes with Juan Arresta.

LUKE ROSIAK CONTINUES TO MOVE THE AWAN STORY: House IT Aides Ran Car Dealership With Markings Of A Nefarious Money Laundering Operation. “Officials told Politico that prosecutors refused to help them punish top Hezbollah operatives involved in its money laundering network because of political concerns, such as fears of jeopardizing the Obama administration’s deal with Iran. Similarly, the Awans, who had close relationships to House Democrats including Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Gregory Meeks, have not been charged with any crimes surrounding the dealership nor with their House activities. The disclosure of a House IT breach shortly before the election by Pakistani-born Democratic staffers would have had political fallout.”

RICHARD EPSTEIN: Trump’s Mixed Report Card. “The bad news is the man. The good news is his administration.” Sounds like he’s in the process of making Scott Adams’ pivot.

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RESEARCH: “Food deserts” claim is bogus. “This is a good paper with a credible research design and impressive data from some 35,000 supermarkets covering 40% of the United States. Moreover, because of the widespread attention given to ‘food deserts’ this paper probably had to be written. But color me un-surprised. The results are obvious.”

Also, when you ground-truth the government’s food-desert map, you find things like this: “Knoxville’s Federally-Designated “Food Deserts” Include Super Walmart, Sam’s Club, Kroger. Plus a couple of tasty oriental supermarkets.” And a Trader Joe’s.

Related: “If food deserts actually exist, why can’t both the USDA and the local bureaucrats make an accurate map of them?” And if they can’t make an accurate map, what’s the chance that they’ll accomplish anything no matter how well-funded?

JONATHAN ADLER: Trump’s Record On Judges: Recent focus on a few failed trial court nominations obscures impressive record of stellar nominees for appellate courts.. “It is not simply the number of appellate judges confirmed, but the caliber. Trump’s appellate nominees have been impressive, and compare favorably in terms of intellect and qualifications with those of any modern President. Among other things, they include a surprising number of legal academics, including newly confirmed judges Amy Coney Barrett (7th Circuit), Stephanos Bibas (3rd Circuit), Allison Eid (10th Circuit), and Joan Larsen (Sixth Circuit), and pending nominees David Stras (8th Circuit). Like the Reagan Administration, the Trump White House appears interested in naming judges who can help provide intellectual leadership on their respective courts — and that’s precisely what they have been doing. . . . Consistent with historical practice, the Trump White House has been far more deferential to home-state Senators when it comes to federal district courts than it has been with the circuit courts. This is no surprise because home-state Senators tend to have strong opinions about who should sit on local trial courts and how federal district court jduges should be selected. While the White House has been willing to push hard for the highest caliber appelalte nominees, it’s been more compromsing on district court picks.”

CHRISTMAS MOVIE MADNESS: The 6 Worst Christmas Movies of All Time.

AND: The Best Christmas Movies of All Time.

What, no love and/or hate for Santa Claus Conquers the Martians?

PLUS, CHRISTIAN TOTO: The 10 Best Movies of 2017 (No. 1 Got Totally Ignored).

That should provide all the Netflix & Chill you need for the season.

SOMETIMES IT’S NOT SO NICE TO MAKE TWITCHY: Rosie and Joy Reid join forces to attack #TaxCutsandJobsAct, and it’s as dumb as you’d expect.

THE FRAGILE GENERATION: Bad policy and paranoid parenting are making kids too safe to succeed.

DC MCALLISTER: Why a Rape Victim Defends Men and Criticizes the #MeToo Movement.

MITZI PERDUE: What’s Really Going on with the #OperaCarmen.

PLEASE DON’T TAKE MY SMOKED BRISKET BURRITOS AWAY: Jack in the Box sells struggling Qdoba for $305 million.

The company acquired Qdoba in 2003 when it had only 85 locations in 15 states and $65 million in sales. Jack in the Box grew Qdoba into a major national brand with more than 700 restaurants in 47 states and 2017 fiscal-year sales of more than $820 million.

But Qdoba has stumbled in recent quarters. Sales at Qdoba stores open at least a year fell 1.4% in the 2017 fiscal year, including a 3% drop for company-owned locations.

The trend worsened in the fourth quarter, with company-owned same-store sales down 4% and overall same-store sales down 2.1%.

I’ve been doing my bit to keep our local Qdoba in business, but there are only so many tacos one man can eat.

THE 21st CENTURY ISN’T WORKING OUT THE WAY I HAD HOPED. OR, TATTOO EWWW: Dear Prudence “counsels a letter writer who regrets getting a tattoo she now regards as culturally insensitive:”

I am a white person who grew up without any faith and started practicing Buddhism during college. I attended a temple, studied the history, and genuinely followed it for 13 years. During that time I got a large om symbol tattooed on my hand, which admittedly was a fad. While Buddhism is still extremely near to my heart, I kind of let it go after having to move to an area with no temples. And as the conversation about cultural appropriation has developed, I’ve been feeling deep tattoo regret.

I’ve seen a few tattoo artists who have turned me away because any cover-up will likely only turn into a giant blob. I also sought laser removal but was told the color and placement of the tattoo will render treatment ineffective. Recently, an Asian friend of mine asked me to cover the tattoo around her family because it really bothers them. I feel like a total jerk. I’ve gotten several annoyed stares and I’m not sure how to make things right.

Appropriation was just something I was not aware of a decade ago when I got this tattoo. I try to keep it covered with sleeves or gloves, but I need a better long-term solution. What do you think is the best path here?

As Dr. Theodore Dalrymple once warned, the tattoo parlor is “the refutation of the doctrine that the customer is always the right. In the tattoo parlour, the customer is always wrong.”

Similarly, Ayn Rand didn’t write The Return of the Primitive as a how-to guide.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Obama’s Iran Deal Makes Trump’s Russia ‘Collusion’ Look Like Child’s Play.

David Harsanyi:

Empowering terrorist groups. Paying ransom that emboldened our enemies to kidnap Americans. Creating an echo chamber that undermined a free press. Releasing spies, terrorists, and criminals who assisted not only our enemy and her terrorist proxies, but Russia as well. In the Iran deal, we have clear-cut case of the United States handing over extensive concessions to a nation that openly aimed to destabilize our interests, attack our allies, and kill our people — for nothing in return. It’s worse than anything we know about “Russian collusion.”

On Sunday night, Politico sent an email previewing an another investigative article alleging that the Obama administration had “derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed, Bashar al-Assad-allied, Justice Department-designated terrorist organization Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States.”

This email dramatically underplays the outlet’s reporting. While it looks like the Obama administration neutralized efforts to stop a terrorist group from funding its operations through criminal enterprises in the United States — which should be a major scandal itself — according to Josh Meyer’s source-heavy reporting, it also decided to let a top Hezbollah operative named Ali Fayad, who had not only been indicted in U.S. courts for planning to kill American government employees but whom agents believed reported to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a key supplier of weapons to Syria and Iraq, to skate free.

Exit question: “What wouldn’t the Obama administration do to save the Iran deal?”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Keep Gas From Going Bad Over Winter.

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THEY’LL NEVER FORGIVE HIM FOR BEATING THE SOVIETS: Liberals Smash Ronald Reagan After Mark Levin Says Trump’s Foreign Policy Is ‘Reagan’s Third Term.’

JOHN STOSSEL AT REASON TV ON THE DEADLY-ISMS:

CHANGE: House Passes GOP Tax Bill.