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JOURNALISM: “Fake News” And How The Washington Post Rewrote Its Story On Russian Hacking Of The Power Grid. “From Russian hackers burrowed deep within the US electrical grid, ready to plunge the nation into darkness at the flip of a switch, an hour and a half later the story suddenly became that a single non-grid laptop had a piece of malware on it and that the laptop was not connected to the utility grid in any way. . . . Equally fascinating, neither Ms. Coratti nor Post Public Relations responded to any of my remaining queries regarding the article’s fact checking process. In particular, the Post did not respond when I asked how headlines are fact checked and if headline writers conduct any form of fact checking to ensure their summarized version is consistent with known facts. The Post also did not respond to a request for comment on why it took nearly half a day from the time the article was rewritten until an editorial note was finally appended acknowledging that the conclusions of the original article were false and that the article had been substantively rewritten to support a different conclusion, nor did the Post comment on why the editor’s note was originally placed at the bottom of the article and only moved after I inquired about its location. Yet, perhaps most intriguing is that, as with the Santa Claus story, the Post did not respond to repeated requests for comment regarding how it conducts fact checking for its stories. This marks twice in a row that the Post has chosen not to respond in any fashion to my requests for more detail on its fact checking processes. Given the present atmosphere in which trust in media is in freefall and mainstream outlets like the Post are positioning themselves as the answer to ‘fake news’ it certainly does not advance trust in the media when a newspaper will not even provide the most cursory of insight into how it checks its facts.”

Plus: “Breaking news is a source of a tremendous amount of false and misleading news as rumors and falsehoods spread like wildfire in the absence of additional information. Top tier newspapers like the Washington Post are supposed to be a bulwark against these falsehoods, by not publishing anything until it has been thoroughly fact checked against multiple sources. Yet, it appears this is not the case – in the rush to be the first to break a story and not be scooped, reporters even at the nation’s most prestigious news outlets will take shortcuts and rush a story out the door.”

And: “Journalists must be more cautious in treating the word of governments as absolute truth. Indeed, a certain fraction of the world’s false and misleading news actually comes from the mouths of government spokespeople. Yet, in the Post’s case, it appears that a government source tipped off the Post about a sensational story of Russians hacking the US power grid and instead of reaching out to the utilities themselves or gathering further detail, the Post simply published the story as fed to them by the government officials.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Here’s how often you should wash your bath towel: It’s not as clean and fresh as you think it is. “If there is odour coming from the towel, wherever there is odour, there are microbes growing so it should be washed.”

JIHADWATCH: Archbishop who smuggled arms for Palestinian jihad killers dies in the Vatican.

SO IT’S COME TO THIS: Rob Schneider Blasted by SJWs Over Choice of Cookware.

LIVING ON THE EDGE: Chinese Man Used a Hand Grenade to Crack Walnuts for 25 Years.

WELL, GOOD: Republican Congress puts priority on targeting regulations.

The House is expected to take up two bills — the Midnight Rules Act and the REINS Act (which stands for Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny) — that passed on largely party-line votes in the 114th, 113th and 112th congressional sessions, but died in the Senate. The REINS Act would require that before any new major regulation could take effect, the House and Senate would have to pass a resolution of approval. The Midnight Rules Act would let Congress invalidate rules in bulk that passed in the final year of a presidential term.

The House is also expected to consider a nonbinding resolution disapproving the Dec. 23 United Nations Security Council vote that called on Israel to stop building settlements in the West Bank. The United States abstained in that vote, allowing the measure to pass.

What about actual legislation defunding the U.N.?

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FAKE NEWS: ABC News continues to “normalize” Donna Brazile as DNC chair.

Why is Jonathan Karl interviewing Brazile in the first place? And if he’s going to do that, how does one sit there and politely rehash the last election with her without poking the obvious elephant in the room? It has been 62 days since CNN severed their ties with Donna Brazile over the fact (no longer an “allegation”) that she cheated during one of the Democratic presidential primary debates and attempted to cheat during a second one in Flint, Michigan. And yet ABC News is inviting her to sit down for a casual New Years Day chat like any other political analyst.

There is not one reputable media outlet in the country who is even attempting to suggest that Brazile didn’t cheat or attempt to cheat on Hillary Clinton’s behalf during the primary. Even Brazile herself refuses to say that she’s innocent, instead preferring to insist that she will not be persecuted as if she were Jesus Christ or something.

I keep hearing media outlets complaining when any of their competitors provide coverage of Donald Trump in terms of his policy proposals, cabinet nominations and all the rest. The major charge they level is that these journalists are somehow “normalizing” Trump’s presidency. That’s a rather insulting phrase, since Trump actually won and must now be evaluated by the job he does. But isn’t it somehow worse to keep introducing Donna Brazile as the interim chair of the DNC and allow her to continue commenting on politics? Isn’t this an act of “normalizing” someone as the head of one of our two major parties while she’s known to have attempted to do more to directly tamper with an election than the Russians did? And where is the media outrage at the DNC for not removing this person who is known to be corrupt? All I’m hearing is crickets on that score.

We’re witnessing the “normalization” of a known cheat… a dishonest actor who was caught red handed attempting to corrupt a presidential election. This person has remained as the interim head of the Democratic Party for more than two months since being definitively exposed. And ABC News continues to propagate the fantasy that all is well and there’s nothing particularly notable about the situation.

Think of them as Democratic Party operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: Kitty Dukakis, a Beneficiary of Electroshock Therapy, Emerges as Its Evangelist. “After the first treatment, Mrs. Dukakis wrote, ‘I felt alive,’ as if a cloud had lifted — so much so that when Mr. Dukakis picked her up at Massachusetts General Hospital, she astonished him by proposing that they go out to dinner.”

INSTAPUNDIT: BEST GROUP BLOG. It was an honor just to be nominated.

UPDATE: Being called the “General Mattis of the Blogosphere” in the comments is more than I deserve, but I’ll take it.

MICHAEL WALSH: 2016 – The Year the Media Got What Was Coming to It.

You get the feeling that 2017 will prove even more schadenfreudelicious?

TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME PERFECTLY CAPTURED:

ELITISTS GOTTA ELITE:

From this week's @NewYorker pic.twitter.com/4EPsd4Eb1M

— Ben Taub (@bentaub91) January 2, 2017

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): “Do you want more Trump? Because this is how you get more Trump.”

Let me just add that our credentialed-but-not-educated elites have crashed the plane plenty of times. They always walk away unscathed afterward. The folks back in Economy Class, not so much.

THE BEST GADGETS coming in 2017.

I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS… German Development Minister: ‘Eight to Ten Million Refugees Are Still on The Way’

NICE CATCH: Man arrested in Saarland on suspicion of financing Isis.

The 38-year-old Syrian was arrested at his home in Saarbrücken, near the French border, on December 31st with prosecutors alleging he was planning to disguise a car as a police vehicle before driving it into a crowd.

The suspect, Hasan A., was reportedly in contact with Isis via the messaging service Telegram and police have been able to secure chats he had with a contact man from the extremist organization after seizing his mobile phone, Spiegel reported on Monday.

Hasan A. has denied the charge, claiming he made up his attack plan in order to try and trick the jihadists out of €180,000, which he could use to support his family in Syria.

Investigators also believe that the chances of the attack taking place were slim.

These days you might want to take German terror estimations with a grain of salt.

THE DEATH THROES OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: The PC Police Crack Down on . . . Kids Books.

Ranking high among the surrealities of 2016 was the meltdown at a literary festival in Australia when the American-born novelist Lionel Shriver defended the freedom of fiction writers to conjure characters unlike themselves.

“Taken to their logical conclusion,” Ms. Shriver warned, “ideologies recently come into vogue challenge our right to write fiction at all.” Among the concepts she skewered was “cultural appropriation,” the notion that members of one ethnic group mustn’t use (or eat or wear or write about) things emanating from other ethnic groups. The illogical impracticality of the idea, especially with fiction, hasn’t impeded its spread, and the resulting umbrage was a wonder to behold: An Australian writer of Egyptian and Sudanese origin stormed out of the speech, later blaming Ms. Shriver for celebrating “the unfettered exploitation of the experiences of others, under the guise of fiction.” The officials in charge of the event disavowed their keynote speaker’s remarks.

Such exquisite sensitivities put a lot of well-meaning people into terrible predicaments in 2016. In the children’s literary realm, where “diversity” has become the lodestar, the year began and ended with choler, indignation and the repudiation of books.

Of course it did.

(Behind the WSJ paywall, but you might find a way around it here.)

FASTER, PLEASE: Coming Innovations That Will Make Flying Economy (Mostly) Better.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1334: The IRS’s Diminished Role In Overseeing Tax-Exempt Organizations.

MEMORIES: When James Mattis Gave Away His Dinner. “A young soldier, probably no more than 18, was at our table. He was starving and devoured his beautiful dinner in just a few minutes. I will never forget the moment when General Mattis took his own untouched meal, cleared the young soldier’s plate himself, and gave him a fresh plate of his food. Mattis went without dinner that night, not making a big deal out of it, keeping the table laughing, and making sure all those young warriors were attended to.”

GERMANS ON THE MOVE: German infantry double-time past a burning American vehicle. Today’s StrategyPage.com Battle of the Bulge photo.

JOEL KOTKIN: Obama’s Not So Glorious Legacy.

Like a child star who reached his peak at age 15, Barack Obama could never fulfill the inflated expectations that accompanied his election. After all not only was he heralded as the “smartest” president in history within months of assuming the White House, but he also secured the Nobel Peace Prize during his first year in office. Usually, it takes actually settling a conflict or two — like Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter — to win such plaudits.

The greatest accomplishment of the Obama presidency turned out to be his election as the first African American president. This should always be seen as a great step forward. Yet, the Obama presidency failed to accomplish the great things promised by his election: racial healing, a stronger economy, greater global influence and, perhaps most critically, the fundamental progressive “transformation” of American politics. . . .

Whenever race-related issues came up — notably in the area of law enforcement — Obama and his Justice Department have tended to embrace the narrative that America remains hopelessly racist. As a result, he seemed to embrace groups like Black Lives Matter and, wherever possible, blame law enforcement, even as crime was soaring in many cities, particularly those with beleaguered African American communities.

Eight years after his election, more Americans now consider race relations to be getting worse, and we are more ethnically divided than in any time in recent history. As has been the case for several decades, African Americans’ economic equality has continued to slip, and is lower now than it was when Obama came into office in 2009, according to a 2016 Urban League study.

And that’s just the beginning of his failures. Read the whole thing.

SALENA ZITO: The art of getting to know Trump.

Obama’s books defined his public image in a large part because the political class gushed and plowed their way through his words for insights into the candidate; who was he? Was there evidence in his words that pointed to the central promise of his campaign? Could he of all people reconcile a divided country?

It literally was the most vetted book in American politics.

Donald Trump’s “The Art of the Deal”? Not so much. Which is a shame because any reporter who read the book before embarking on covering this presidential candidate, eventual nominee and now president-elect would have a much deeper understanding of who he is, how he operates and how he’ll behave going forward.

Written nearly 30 years ago (along with Tony Schwartz) it is just as revealing as Obama’s was, in terms of insights into the way this man thinks, his experiences and how he approaches business.

It serves as a blue-print for how he ran his campaign.

Read the whole thing.