IS THIS THE END OF FACEBOOK?

DON SURBER: 20 Who Feuded With Trump And Lost. “Oh, not everyone winds up worse, I suppose. But enough do that a wise man would ask, why risky it? . . . Notice the pattern is hating Trump in public, and being a cretin in private.”

But this is my favorite:

During the campaign, Trump tweeted, “President Obama will go down as perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States!”

Obama went on Jimmy Kimmel’s show, read the tweet, and replied, “At least I’ll go down as a president.”

Fifteen days later, we elected Trump as Obama’s successor.

Ouch.

LOTS GOING ON IN SAUDI ARABIA: Saudi Arabia Says It Intercepted Missile From Yemen Aimed at Its Capital. “The rocket was targeting the populous areas of Riyadh, but was intercepted by a surface-to-air Patriot missile and turned to shrapnel as it flew east of the King Khalid International Airport, said Col. Turki al-Maliki, a spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s coalition forces in Yemen.”

THIS IS BIG: Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal arrested in corruption crackdown: Local reports. A lot’s happening in Saudi Arabia, in general seeming to mark a major shift in direction. But I don’t know what this in particular means, and I’m not sure very many people have a good idea.

CHRISTIAN ADAMS WILL BE DISCUSSING THIS ON JUDGE JEANINE TONIGHT: U.S. Embassies Around World Still Refuse to Hang Trump Portrait, Swamp Still in Control.

CAMILLE PAGLIA:

Had Hillary won, everyone would have expected disappointed Trump voters to show a modicum of respect for the electoral results as well as for the historic ceremony of the inauguration, during which former combatants momentarily unite to pay homage to the peaceful transition of power in our democracy. But that was not the reaction of a vast cadre of Democrats shocked by Trump’s win. In an abject failure of leadership that may be one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of the modern Democratic party, Chuck Schumer, who had risen to become the Senate Democratic leader after the retirement of Harry Reid, asserted absolutely no moral authority as the party spun out of control in a nationwide orgy of rage and spite. Nor were there statesmanlike words of caution and restraint from two seasoned politicians whom I have admired for decades and believe should have run for president long ago—Senator Dianne Feinstein and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. How do Democrats imagine they can ever expand their electoral support if they go on and on in this self-destructive way, impugning half the nation as vile racists and homophobes?

How, indeed? But the Democrats, as Matthew Continetti wrote, are still in denial.

RAND PAUL ASSAULTED AT HIS HOME BY TRUMP-HATING DEMOCRAT: “Kentucky State Board of Election voting records list Boucher as a registered Democrat. . . . A Facebook account that appears to be maintained by Boucher contains numerous anti-Donald Trump postings.”

I think every Democratic politician should be asked if he/she condones this sort of political violence.

UPDATE: Oops, I see Stephen was right ahead of me. I’m leaving this up because I do think that Dem politicians should be forced to comment.

HMM: Rand Paul assaulted at Kentucky home.

“Senator Paul was blindsided and the victim of an assault,” Kelsey Cooper, a spokeswoman for Paul, said in a statement. “The assailant was arrested and it is now a matter for the police. Senator Paul is fine.”

The suspect was identified as 59-year-old Rene Boucher of Bowling Green, according to a statement from police. The Warren County Attorney’s Office issued a warrant for Boucher’s arrest shortly after the assault on Friday.

More:

Boucher is a Bowling Green anesthesiologist and pain specialist who developed a product called Therm-a-Vest, a cloth vest partially filled with rice and secured by Velcro straps that is designed to relieve back pain by delivering heat directly to the areas of the back where most pain is felt.

Boucher applied for a patent for the vest in 2003 and has marketed it through the QVC shopping channel.

Odd.

BRAVE: Nurse Delivers Own Baby Inside Her Car.

REVIEW: 2019 Porsche Cayenne.

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I CERTAINLY HOPE NOT: Will the World’s Most Worrying Flu Virus Go Pandemic? There’s good news and bad news. “Perhaps most worrying, some strains have already evolved the ability to resist Tamiflu, a frontline drug that’s used to treat flu infections.”

Dammit, I really, really don’t want to live in a John Ringo novel.

SHELBY STEELE ON THE EXHAUSTION OF AMERICAN LIBERALISM:

This is the reality that made Ms. Warren’s attack on Mr. Sessions so tiresome. And it is what caused so many Democrats at President Trump’s address to Congress to look a little mortified, defiantly proud but dark with doubt. The sight of them was a profound moment in American political history.

Today’s liberalism is an anachronism. It has no understanding, really, of what poverty is and how it has to be overcome. It has no grip whatever on what American exceptionalism is and what it means at home and especially abroad. Instead it remains defined by an America of 1965—an America newly opening itself to its sins, an America of genuine goodwill, yet lacking in self-knowledge.

This liberalism came into being not as an ideology but as an identity. It offered Americans moral esteem against the specter of American shame. This made for a liberalism devoted to the idea of American shamefulness. Without an ugly America to loathe, there is no automatic esteem to receive. Thus liberalism’s unrelenting current of anti-Americanism.

Let’s stipulate that, given our history, this liberalism is understandable. But American liberalism never acknowledged that it was about white esteem rather than minority accomplishment. Four thousand shootings in Chicago last year, and the mayor announces that his will be a sanctuary city. This is moral esteem over reality; the self-congratulation of idealism. Liberalism is exhausted because it has become a corruption.

Read the whole thing,

(Try this link from RCP if the above link requires you to login.)

WAS FUSION GPS ACTUALLY PAYING JOURNALISTS? Fusion GPS And House Intel Committee Renew Battle Over Bank Records.

Fusion GPS and the House Intelligence Committee renewed their legal battle on Friday over subpoenas for the Trump dossier firm’s bank records.

Lawyers for Fusion submitted a new request for a temporary restraining order preventing its bank, TD Bank, from producing records requested by the House panel regarding records of its transactions “with any law firm, ‘media company’ or journalist with which it has worked.”

The filing raises the possibility that Fusion has paid journalists.

Wow.

WOW: Donna Brazile: I considered replacing Clinton with Biden as 2016 Democratic nominee.

Former Democratic National Committee head Donna Brazile writes in a new book that she seriously contemplated replacing Hillary Clinton as the party’s 2016 presidential nominee with then-Vice President Biden in the aftermath of Clinton’s fainting spell, in part because Clinton’s campaign was “anemic” and had taken on “the odor of failure.”

In an explosive new memoir, Brazile details widespread dysfunction and dissension throughout the Democratic Party, including secret deliberations over using her powers as interim DNC chair to initiate the removal of Clinton and running mate Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.) from the ticket after Clinton’s Sept. 11, 2016, collapse in New York City.

Which is funny, because I remember when Republicans tried to make something of that fainting spell they were called sexist conspiracy theorists. Plus:

As one of her party’s most prominent black strategists, Brazile also recounts fiery disagreements with Clinton’s staffers — including a conference call in which she told three senior campaign officials, Charlie Baker, Marlon Marshall and Dennis Cheng, that she was being treated like a slave.

“I’m not Patsey the slave,” Brazile recalls telling them, a reference to the character played by Lupita Nyong’o in the film, “12 Years a Slave.” “Y’all keep whipping me and whipping me and you never give me any money or any way to do my damn job. I am not going to be your whipping girl!”

Which is also funny, because it was Biden telling black people that Republicans were gonna put them “back in chains.”

GOOD ADVICE: Change Your Smoke Detector Batteries When You Change Your Clocks.

FASTER, PLEASE: New colon cancer breakthrough may lead to prevention.

I WASN’T EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: “It sounded like a bomb”: Exploding washing machine knocks mom out.

DERELICTION OF DUTY:

Would Nance have determined that such a modest punishment for a history-shaping event like Bergdahl’s capture and release was sufficient in the absence of Trump’s comments? Almost certainly not. By Nance’s own admission, he felt no pressure from the president but did think that Trump’s remarks should be considered in sentencing. We’re left to conclude, then, that the Colonel did, in fact, want to send the president a message. If that’s so, it’s a disgrace. It’s unlikely to be the last display of disgraceful conduct from those who have the misfortune of finding themselves in proximity to Bowe Bergdahl.

Just another example of people in various institutions “denormalizing” themselves and their institutions in response to Trump. Trump’s presidency has revealed a stunning degree of institutional rot across much of American society.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: 4 Shockingly Good Horror Movie Remakes.

These are great picks — fear not, Neil LaBute’s harebrained attempt at remaking The Wicker Man isn’t one of them.

I CERTAINLY HOPE NOT: Must We Fight China? An Alternative to the Establishment’s Defeatism.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Republican students identify alleged vandal, UNCW investigates. “In an email obtained by Campus Reform, Yost informed Chancellor Jose Sartarelli of the individual’s identity, in response to which Sartarelli assured Yost that he would follow up on the lead, and pledged to make freedom of speech a top priority.”

SHE’S RADIOACTIVE: Memo Reveals Details of Hillary Clinton-DNC Deal.

In exchange for Hillary for America’s (HFA) helping the cash-strapped DNC raise money, the party committee agreed “that HFA personnel will be consulted and have joint authority over strategic decisions over the staffing, budget, expenditures, and general election related communications, data, technology, analytics, and research.”

Specifically, the DNC agreed to hire a communications director from “one of two candidates previously identified as acceptable to HFA.” And while the DNC maintained “the authority to make the final decision” on senior staff in the communications, technology and research departments, the party organization said it would choose “between candidates acceptable to HFA.”

The memo stipulates the DNC had to hire a communications director by September 11, 2015, months before the first nominating contests in early 2016.

However, the memo also made clear that the arrangement pertained to only the general election, not the primary season, and it left open the possibility that it would sign similar agreements with other candidates.

Still, it clearly allowed the Clinton campaign to influence DNC decisions made during an active primary, even if intended for preparations later.

The story says the “memo [was] obtained by NBC News,” but didn’t detail who or how.