WOW: Nearly $100K raised for Chicago beating victim.

The GoFundMe campaign had set a goal of just $10,000, and is now up to $140,000 or more.

THESE ARE HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS; WE JUST LIVE IN THEM: Society Could Collapse In A Decade, Predicts Math Historian.

“We should expect many years of political turmoil, peaking in the 2020s,” the cultural evolution researcher [Peter Turchin] writes.

“This is a science-based forecast, not a ‘prophecy. It’s based on solid social science.”

Turchin is a leader in cliodynamics, an interdisciplinary field of study that sees historical events such as the collapse of empires as following predictable mathematical models based on historical data.

The professor has tracked 40 factors in society that hit some kind of turning point in the 1970s. They include such aspects as wealth inequality, stagnating well-being, growing political fragmentation and governmental dysfunction.

The key to society’s armageddon will be “elite overproduction” in which the number of rich grow larger while the majority of society grapples with a stagnant standard of living and poor fiscal health, he believes. The upper echelons, too, will be ripped apart by bitter competition with a population of capable but angry “elite-wannabes” who will be shut out of power. That fissure will undermine the spirit of co-operation and cause society to fragment further, Turchin says.

Keep your powder dry — and keep lots of powder.

UPDATE (From Glenn): Specifically, this is Heinlein’s “The Year of the Jackpot,” with Turchin in the role of Potiphar Breen.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: U.S. Bombed Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia in 2016.

Congress had granted legal authority for bombing just two of those seven countries.

SALENA ZITO: Kellyanne Conway unplugged.

Conway’s conversion from pollster to campaign manager came on a Friday that she describes as the low point of the campaign.

“The worst day of the campaign was the day before I became the campaign manager. It was Aug. 11, it was a Thursday, and I went out on the road with Gov. Pence, who I adore, who has been a client and a friend of mine for 10 years,” she says.

Conway describes in detail a creeping malaise that filled the organization, and people wondering aloud, “Is it worth it? Can we win? What is going on? What are they meeting about? Why did he say that? Who is in charge?”

At the time, Manafort, Trump’s second campaign manager after Corey Lewandowski, reportedly didn’t get on with the candidate, and there was dark talk about political work he had done in Ukraine.

When the New York Times reported Manafort may have received cash payments from a political party affiliated with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the atmosphere reportedly within the campaign began to turn sour and despairing.

The next day Conway was back in Trump Tower, helping with a video shoot in which Trump “was doing different commercials and appeals and videotaped messages to groups that were holding meetings that he could not attend.” They had been working on it for an hour or so and were about to leave for Pennsylvania when Trump asked everyone but her to leave the room.

After the others had gone, Conway asked Trump what was going on. “You are running against the most joyless person in presidential political history,” she told the candidate, “and you don’t look like you are having fun anymore.”

Read the whole thing.

If any one person other than Trump himself can be credited with Trump’s victory, it’s Conway.

MERYL STREEP DROPS THE MASK:

[Hugh] Laurie embodied both as he devoted most of his speech to anti-Trump barbs like, “I’ll be able to say I won this at the last ever Golden Globes. I don’t mean to be gloomy, it’s just that it has the words ‘Hollywood,’ ‘Foreign,’ and ‘Press’ in the title. I also think to some Republicans even the word ‘association’ is sketchy.” Hugh has only been working in this country for 20 years. He hasn’t heard of the National Rifle Association yet.

Even more bizarrely, Meryl Streep, accepting a lifetime achievement award, virtually repeated Laurie’s joke, then mournfully called out the names of foreign-born actors and said, “If we kick em all out we’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed-martial arts. Which are not the arts!”

This is what it’s like to view the world through Hollyweird glasses: You actually worry that President Trump is going to deport Amy Adams and Natalie Portman.

To follow up on my post yesterday referencing the DNC-MSM “Cathedral,” Goodtime Meryl has the cerulean blues; her oikophobic worldview is far closer to her Anna Wintour-inspired Devil Wears Prada character than she’d like to admit:

Not to mention her Chief Elder character in 2014 futuristic parable The Giver. Ironically, given the massive amount of money Streep has given to Democrat causes over the last four years, and her appearance as a Hillary surrogate at the Democrat convention last year, at the climax of the film, Streep’s fascist character neatly paraphrases one of Hillary’s most infamous quotes: “When people have the power to choose, they choose wrong. Every single time.” In my review of the film over at Ed Driscoll.com, I described it as “A Chilling Cinematic Peek into Hillary Clinton’s Infamous Village.”

And just as they continually lashed out in the late ‘60s through the pre-Star Wars ‘70s, leftwing Hollywood will be very angry at us for the next four to eight years for making the choosing wrong and not supporting its building.

Related: “Two tears flowed in quick succession in that room last night. The first tear said: How nice to see Meryl Streep praising us and denouncing Donald Trump. The second tear said: How nice to be moved, together with all decent-thinking people, by Meryl Streep’s praise of us and denunciation of Donald Trump. It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.”

More: FLASHBACK: Meryl Streep gave Roman Polanski a standing ovation at the 2003 Oscars.

TRAFFIC INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE: Uber debuts Movement, a new website offering access to its traffic data.

Uber says it was looking at all the data it gathered and began to realize that it could be used for public benefit, and assembled a product team to make this happen. The result of this effort was Movement, which aims to address problems city officials and urban planners encounter when they’re forced to make key, transformational infrastructure decisions without access to all of, or the proper information about actual conditions and causes.

Essentially, according to Uber, it’s hoping to make it easier for those with influence over a city’s transportation picture to make the right decision, and to be able to explain why, where and when the changes are happening with accurate data backing them up. It also wants to do this in a way that makes it easy for organizations to work with, so it’s releasing the data organized around traffic analysis zones within cities, which are agreed-upon geographic demarcations that help with existing urban planning and traffic management.

Uber is the only major vested interest I can think of which stands to make more money under a sane infrastructure planning regime — which is why I doubt urban planners will make good use of this treasure trove.

THE 28TH INFANTRY DIVISION BAND MAKES A STAND AT WILTZ: The latest in StrategyPage’s Battle of the Bulge series.

In this action, for which the Band was awarded the Meritorious Unit Commendation, all but thirteen of sixty member were killed or captured. Of the thirteen, eleven were wounded…

Here’s the official history of Fifth Panzer Army’s attack on the 28th Division.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1341: Another View Of The Republicans’ Reactivation Of The Holman Rule And Lois Lerner. It’s cute when people think that there’s an existing structure of accountability or rule of law to depart from. . . .

WE THE PEOPLE: Most Americans Want Supreme Court to Keep ‘Original’ Meaning of Constitution.

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS OF THE SEA: Shark babies eat each other.

Watch the amazing moment when Sir David Attenborough and BBC filmmakers recorded the discovery that some shark babies eat each other before birth.

No. The video clip does not show the cannibalism.

THE CHICAGO WAY: U. Chicago offers $500 for ‘creative ways’ to fight city’s ‘perception of violence’

Perception?

WHAT VLADIMIR PUTIN AND HILLARY CLINTON HAVE IN COMMON:

The unclassified version of the Intelligence Community assessment has been published, and as widely predicted, it contains no bombshells. Part of that has to do with the IC protecting its sources, and part of that has to do with the fact that one could have reached most of the conclusions merely by closely following the news and being aware of recent history.

One quick observation: If Putin thought helping Trump win the election would give him the weakest possible opponent, he would not be alone in his assessment: Hillary Clinton thought the exact same thing. Team Clinton tried to help Trump win the GOP nomination race because they thought he would be the weakest possible opponent in the general.

There are lots of people in the United States that underestimated Donald Trump who now have Trump’s footprints all over their faces. Just maybe, the trend will continue. . .

Heh.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: U.S. forces strike ISIS-held village in Syria.

Four American Apache helicopters and two back-up helicopters, carried out a commando raid” in Al-Kubar on Sunday at noon…The attack targeted vehicles driven by senior IS fighters coming from Raqa, killing several and capturing others…

Didn’t Obama say the tide of war is receding?

CHANGE? U.S. Navy destroyer fires warning shots at Iranian vessels.

A U.S. Navy destroyer fired three warning shots at four of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps vessels on Sunday after they closed in at a high rate of speed in the Strait of Hormuz, two U.S. defense officials told Reuters on Monday.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the USS Mahan established radio communication with the boats but they did not respond to requests to slow down. The Navy destroyer fired warning flares and a U.S. Navy helicopter also dropped a smoke float. The Iranian vessels came within 900 yards (800 meters) of the Mahan, which was escorting two other U.S. ships, they said.

Back in ’87 or ’88, when Donald Trump was first being talked about as a possible GOP contender, he did an interview (if memory serves) with 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl. Asked about the latest Iranian provocation, Trump said that if he were President, he’d respond by ordering the military to seize an Iranian offshore oil rig.

Thirty years later, we’ll get to see if Trump still holds to that view now that he’s in office.

TWITTER PEOTUS: Trump Shoots Back: Meryl Streep is ‘A Hillary Flunky Who Lost Big’

THIS IS BETTER THAN ANGELA MERKEL’S APPROACH: Czech government tells its citizens how to fight terrorists: Shoot them yourselves.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Of Class And Classes: If you want to help poor kids get ahead, then you need to support school choice. “The long knives have come out for Education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos. But her critics aren’t attacking her because they think she’ll do a bad job. They’re attacking her because they’re afraid she’ll do a good job. But I think that her success will be important, if you care about addressing inequality in America.”

SMART DIPLOMACY: U.S. Surrendered More Than $10 Billion in Gold, Cash, Assets to Iran.

Senior Iranian officials late last week confirmed reports that the total amount of money paid to Iran over the past four years is in excess of $10 billion, a figure that runs counter to official estimates provided by the White House.

The latest disclosure by Iran, which comports with previous claims about the Obama administration obfuscating details about its cash transfers to Iran—including a $1.7 billion cash payment included in a ransom to free Americans—sheds further light on the White House’s back room dealings to bolster Iran’s economy and preserve the Iran nuclear agreement.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi confirmed last week a recent report in the Wall Street Journal detailing some $10 billion in cash and assets provided to Iran since 2013, when the administration was engaging in sensitive diplomacy with Tehran aimed at securing the nuclear deal.

Ghasemi disclosed that the $10 billion figure just scratches the surface of the total amount given to Iran by the United States over the past several years.

Barack Obama kept the Iranian terrorist regime on financial life support long enough to get his reckless nuclear deal — and the sanctions lifted.

KATE’S LAW: House to Reconsider Law Named for San Fran Woman Murdered by Illegal.

It’s a safe bet that Senate Democrats will filibuster Kate’s Law to death. Again.

CONNECTICUT DEMOCRAT SEN. CHRIS MURPHY ON HUGH HEWITT: Yeah, the Reid Rule precedent applies to Trump’s appointments too. “The precedent, yeah, I mean, I think the precedent of changing the rules in the middle of the Congress, right, was, you know, was the basis on changing the number of 60 to 50 for presidential appointees. So I assume that that precedent still holds. You can argue against it for policy grounds, but I’m not sure that the precedent changes in this Congress.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, COST-HIDING EDITION: How University Costs Keep Rising Despite Tuition Freezes: Ballooning fees are leaving some students feeling nickel-and-dimed.

At a time when public anger is laser-focused on tuition charges that are rising three times faster than inflation, something less well understood has actually been largely responsible for pushing up the cost of college: fees.

Think tuition is high? Now add fees for student activities, fees for athletics, fees for building maintenance, fees for libraries—even fees for graduation, the bills for which often arrive just as students and their families thought they were finally done paying for their higher education.

All are frustratingly piled on top of a long list of expenses beyond tuition that many people never plan for or expect, or that can’t be covered by financial aid—sometimes forcing them to take out more and more loans, or quit college altogether.

“It was, like, what is this?” Ann Roach remembered thinking as she kept getting billed for fees when her oldest son went to the University of Dayton. “It’s like buying a car. You think you have a price, and then they tell you, ‘Here’s a conveyance fee, or here’s a fee for $200 to put the license plates on.’ Nobody told us about these.”

Fees nationwide continue to increase even faster than tuition—often covering the same things but letting institutions claim tuition hikes are slowing. Now, however, in response to anger from parents and students, and pressure from legislatures, or for marketing reasons in a time when they’re struggling to attract applicants, a few universities and colleges are pledging to make them more predictable or even drop them altogether. And the resulting decline in borrowing and dropout rates on those campuses suggest the significant toll that fees were taking on their students.

They are a lot like car salesmen, when you get right down to it. Well, except that cars have gotten steadily better over the past several decades, whereas the quality of higher education has actually declined.

FRENEMIES: Airstrikes by Russia Buttress Turkey in Battle vs. ISIS.

The air missions, which took place for about a week near the strategically important town of Al Bab, represent the Kremlin’s first use of its military might to help the Turks in their fight against the militant group. The Russians seized an opening to try to build a military relationship with Turkey, a NATO member, as the United States has sought to keep the emphasis on taking Raqqa, the Islamic State’s self-declared capital.

The Russian bombing is a remarkable turnabout from November 2015, when a Turkish F-16 fighter jet shot down a Russian Su-24 attack plane that had violated Turkey’s airspace.

Russia and Turkey had already been involved in a joint effort to establish a cease-fire in Syria — one that does not involve the United States. At the same time, ties between the United States and Turkey have come under growing strain as the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has become increasingly alarmed about the Kurdish forces known as the Y.P.G. The United States has aligned itself with those forces to combat the Islamic State in Syria.

The question remains whether Turkey will lean east or west after “the reunification of Syria.”

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Of Class And Classes: If you want to help poor kids get ahead, then you need to support school choice. “The long knives have come out for Education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos. But her critics aren’t attacking her because they think she’ll do a bad job. They’re attacking her because they’re afraid she’ll do a good job. But I think that her success will be important, if you care about addressing inequality in America.”

UPDATE: BTW, I notice that this passage should be in quotation marks: “You are made invalid, and so are your views, if you cannot speak as we speak. Eat as we eat. Dress as we dress. Properly pronounce. The tools to remind you of your place — that you are uneducated — are satire. Mocking. Condescending. Smug. Disdain. Or just dismissal.” It’s from the Chris Arnade tweetstorm that I link. The marks are in my draft, but disappeared along the way somehow. I’ve emailed USA Today to get it fixed.