THE LEFT: WALLS FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR THEE. In “It’s Still a Mad, Mad California,” Victor Davis Hanson writes:

Feral California out here is a live-and-let-live place, a libertarian’s dream (or nightmare). The staggering costs for its illegality are made up by the shrinking few who nod as they always have and follow the law in all its now-scary manifestations.

The rich on the coast tune out. From her nest in Rancho Mirage, a desert oasis created by costly water transfers, outgoing senator Barbara Boxer rails about water transfers. When Jerry Brown leaves his governorship, he will not live in Bakersfield but probably in hip Grass Valley. High crime, the flight of small businesses, and water shortages cannot bound the fences of Nancy Pelosi’s Palladian villa or the security barriers and walls of Mark Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley billionaires — who press for more regulation, and for more compassion for the oppressed, but always from a distance and always from the medieval assumption that their money and privilege exempt them from the consequences of their idealism. There is no such thing as an open border for a neighbor of Mr. Zuckerberg or of Ms. Pelosi.

A final window into the California pathology: Most of the most strident Californians who decry Trump’s various proposed walls insist on them for their own residences.

Which brings us to the today’s headline in the London Daily Mail, set in a another far left bubble on the opposite coast: “Now Obama’s building a wall! Workers put the finishing touches to a brick barrier around $5million DC mansion where Barack, Michelle and Sasha will live after leaving the White House.”

As Peggy Noonan wrote early last year on the rise of Trump, “There are the protected and the unprotected. The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it.” Naturally, Obama and the Silicon Valley grandees who enabled his rise to the top want their walls and their armed protection, even as they conspire to keep the rest of us unsafe.

MASCULINITY: Deployed wounded warrior completes back-to-back tours.

“Being here, you get treated like a normal person, not like an amputee. Not like an injured guy,” said Tech. Sgt. Jason Caswell, as he added more 45-pound plates to his barbell.

In the crowded 455th Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Squadron “prison gym” at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, Caswell is outlifting most. He should be – he showed many of them the ropes.

After a sports injury in 2010, Caswell underwent a year of surgeries, two years of painful limb-recovery therapy, followed by physical therapy. In October 2014, his limb still hadn’t healed and began to worsen. Caswell elected to amputate his injured leg.

It has since been replaced with a prosthetic, which has allowed him the mobility he needs to get back to work and stay fit.

Tech. Sgt. Micah Cox, an expeditor also with the 455th EAMXS, calls to him across the gym, “Show her how you strengthen your carbon fiber!”

Caswell responds with his always-ready laugh.

I’m surprised today’s Air Force allows Caswell to flaunt his male privilege like that.

FAKE NEWS: New York Times attacks Trump for accurately citing most recently available data.

TOM NICHOLS BEMOANS THE DEATH OF EXPERTISE. But the problem is that it was suicide. People would happily trust experts, but experts have again and again proven themselves to be untrustworthy. Intellectual authority requires integrity and self-discipline, and those have been in notably short supply.

UPDATE: From the comments: “A Leftist expert is always a Leftist first and foremost and an ‘expert’ in their given field a very distant second.”

THAT MEANS “THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT” IS WORKING.

TARGETED? OSU Student Advocate for CCW Shot Dead.

An Ohio State University student and advocate for campus conceal and carry was found shot to death on Thursday morning. Tarak Andrew Underiner was found dead from gunshot wounds at a residence near campus on Northwood Avenue. Police were called shortly after midnight and pronounced Underiner dead on the scene.

“Investigators do not believe this incident was random in nature nor has any connection to the University,” the report states.

Good lord.

UPDATE, from the comments: Police take guns, drugs, cash from home of University District shooting victim.

It looks like Underiner may have been a target for something other than his CCW stance.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1338.

BACK TO THE FUTURE: Can we imagine a world in which peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are permitted once again school cafeterias?

FAKE NEWS: “The average American is more likely to be shot by an armed toddler than killed by a terrorist.”

WAS THE 401k A BIG MISTAKE?

There’s a perpetual pundit debate over the best way to provide for retirement: defined benefit plans (pensions), defined contribution plans (401(k)s, IRAs and the like) or pay-as-you-go social insurance schemes (Social Security). Most retirement experts I’ve talked to prefer a mix of these, a “three-legged stool.” But as I’ve written before, this is a bit like arguing whether the Titanic would have survived the iceberg if only its hull had been painted green. All three types of retirement savings have different costs and benefits. But these costs and benefits are not the primary reason that people in Western countries have to worry about an impoverished old age.

The funny thing is that, for all the people arguing that some dire problem in one of these three retirement systems urgently requires that we switch to another kind at once, the major problem with all three is exactly the same. It’s even a problem that’s easy to state and easy to fix — no need for extensive blue-ribbon commissions or elaborate white papers. Here’s the solution: Pick whichever system you prefer; it really doesn’t matter. Now slap a 10 to 15 percent surcharge on a worker’s wage income, and divert that money into the system for the worker’s future use. Problem basically solved, because in all three cases, the only flaw that actually matters is that they’re badly underfunded.

If you expect to spend 40 years of your life working, and then another 20 or 30 years living off the money you made during that time, then you need to save a large portion of your salary. Imagine yourself storing up food for the last 30 years of your life from the harvests made during the first 40. You might hope that when you’re older, and no longer toiling in the fields, you won’t need to eat so much. Nonetheless, you’d understand that you would need to put aside a considerable portion of your harvest — something close to what you’re eating each day — to ensure that you don’t starve to death in your old age.

Saving for retirement requires considerable sacrifice in the present. Investing for retirement allows you to convince yourself that impressive returns will make present sacrifice unnecessary. Individuals, companies, and governments are all prey to this self-delusion.

Plus: “The 401(k) was not the miracle cure for our retirement problems that was promised by some of its more zealous advocates. But it wasn’t a mistake, either, or at least not the important one. The important mistake was deciding that we could spend our first 25 years in school, and our last 25 years in retirement, without cutting our consumption in between. And, at least to date, that’s one mistake we don’t seem to be able to learn from.”

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: The delusional Democrats of 2017.

The election of Donald Trump has brought unified Republican government to Washington and overturned our understanding of how politics works. Or at least it should have done so. The Democrats seem not to understand how to deal with Trump and the massive change he is about to bring to the nation’s capital. During the general election they fell for the idea that Trump can be defeated by conventional means, spending hundreds of millions of dollars in negative television advertising and relying on political consultants beholden to whatever line Politico was selling on a given day. This strategy failed Trump’s Republican primary opponents, but Democrats figured that was simply because the GOP was filled with deplorables. It was a rationalization that would cost them.

Republicans control the House, the Senate, 34 governor’s mansions, and 4,100 seats in state legislatures. But Democrats act like they run Washington.

To be fair, Democrats do still run the media which reports on Washington, which, and for good reason, they’ve long treated as no different from running Washington itself.

What they still fail to understand, even after November 8, is the power of a Republican who has figured out how to end-run the media.

NARRATIVE FAIL: I think we just found the worst media analysis of the Chicago kidnapping.

The Post was quick to cover the story, and they had a good, detailed report published early, early Thursday morning.

Then the newspaper’s first commentary on the incident was Callum Borchers’ hot take: “Pro-Trump narratives converge in one awful attack streamed on Facebook.”

Oh boy.

The basic gist of the article is this: Kidnapping and torture is bad, but it’s also bad that Trump supporters are using the attack to reaffirm their false notions about violence in Chicago, media bias and persecution of white people.

Except of course that Chicago is terribly violent, Borchers’ column was nothing but bias, and his bias was meant to distract from the fact that a white person was partially scalped while being taunted about his race.

Never change, WaPo.

YOU WANT MORE TRUMP? THIS IS HOW YOU GET MORE TRUMP. ‘Sick of These White Men Crying RACIST’: Radicals Defend Black Teens Held in Facebook Torture Case.

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BETSY DEVOS FOR SECRETARY OF EDUCATION: A “mainstream pick” whom Dems are trying to portray as a “monster” because she’s a Republican. And because she threatens the interest of teachers’ unions.

Everyone who cares about education should get behind her confirmation, as she offers the first chance in a long time to do something about our miserably failing public schools. She’s not being targeted for a wave of hate because they think she’ll do a bad job. She’s being targeted for a wave of hate because they fear she’ll do a good job.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE:

Plus: “Who exactly authorized the U.S. Military to drop 12,192 bombs in Syria? Answer: nobody. It’s never been sanctioned by Congress. Illegal war.” You’re ignoring the Nobel Peace Prize clause in Article II of the Constitution.

UPDATE: Yep.

COVERUP? DNC rejected FBI request to examine hacked email server, law enforcement official says.

“The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated. This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information. These actions caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier,” the senior law enforcement official said Thursday night in an email.

The “third party” to which the official was referring is Crowdstrike, a California-based cybersecurity firm, hired to do the work of the FBI even though, as one law enforcement official told BuzzFeed, it’s unusual for the FBI not to conduct its own forensic research.

“CrowdStrike is pretty good. There’s no reason to believe that anything that they have concluded is not accurate,” one intelligence official reportedly said.

But the latest development raises new questions as to why Democratic party leaders made the decision to deny the FBI access to its server, even while some openly questioned the legitimacy of Trump’s stunning victory, and vowed to get to the bottom of who or what attempted to call into question the very bedrock of American Democracy.

Protecting the very bedrock of American Democracy has nothing on protecting DNC secrets.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Donald Trump’s Soft Spot for Russia Could Be His Political Undoing. Now that the election’s over, it doesn’t matter that Hillary would have been just as compromised (or moreso) where Putin is concerned. If Trump is smart, he’ll provide some reassurance to people who worry he’s too close to Putin.

FAKE NEWS: One in Six Women Will Be Victims of Stalking, Says Obama. Another False Crimewave? Justice Department data says just 2.2 percent of U.S. women experience even mild stalking behavior each year.

YOU DON’T SAY: No One Knows What Trump Is Going to Tweet, Spokesman Says.

Even Trump’s harshest critics have to admit this is a welcome change after eight years of “Let me be clear” and “This is not who we are.”

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, THEY’RE NOT VERY GOOD AT HONESTY OR FAIRNESS, APPARENTLY: Minnesota fumbles firing of football coach who stood up for players’ due process rights.

Claeys defended his team on Twitter after the boycott was announced, writing: “Have never been more proud of our kids. I respect their rights & support their effort to make a better world!” Sources later told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he was initially reluctant about supporting the boycott, but came on board after speaking with the players after the press conference.

Claeys’ stance put him at odds with Coyle and university president Eric Kaler, who released a joint statement when the boycott was announced claiming people upset over the suspensions didn’t “have all the facts.”

Coyle, who has been in his position for six months, claimed his decision to fire Claeys was not entirely about the response to the sexual assault allegations.

“I determined that the football program must move in a new direction to address challenges in recruiting, ticket sales and the culture of the program,” Coyle said. “We need strong leadership to take Gopher football to the next level and address these challenges.”

Coyle’s assessment of other team problems seems misplaced.

The 2016 team enjoyed Minnesota’s best season since 2003 (Claeys was in his second season as head coach), finishing 9-4. They upset the favored Washington State Cougars in the Holiday Bowl after the boycott ended.

On the downside, while the team posted a winning record in Big Ten play (5-4), the Gophers also had the lowest-ranked recruiting class in the conference.

Coyle also cited declining ticket sales, although that likely had more to do with a sizable increase in ticket prices instituted by former Athletic Director Norwood Teague (who ironically resigned over sexual harassment allegations).

That leaves Claeys’ defense of his player’s boycott as the remaining reason for his firing.

Former coach Jerry kill, who resigned in 2015 over health concerns, heavily criticized the decision to fire Claeys and said he would not be “stepping foot back in the stadium” or the university. He also objected to Coyle’s claim that the football program needed “integrity and class.”

Alumni, donors, and legislators need to give Minnesota a taste of what happened to Mizzou, in the hopes that it will come to its senses.

WAPO BLEW IT: “No wonder WaPo got it wrong. The male symbol is a better symbol.”

OIL WARS: This “Rogue” Oil & Gas Nation Just Set A Slew Of Output Records.

With 2016 now closed out, we’re getting the first looks at year-end data. And numbers from one nation in the energy space have been particularly eye-catching this week.

Russia.

Over the last 15 years, Russia vaulted upwards in oil and gas production — challenging for the world’s top producer of crude. A fact that’s especially critical given this big producer is a “rogue” nation that lies outside the purview of OPEC.

And 2016 was another big year for Russian oil output. With stats showing the country’s production rose again this past year — to an average 10.96 million barrels per day, up from 10.72 million barrels per day in 2015.

That came on the back of strong national production in December, where Russian producers pumped 11.21 million barrels per day — marking the highest output level in nearly 30 years.

It’s possible to not feel any joy for Moscow while at the same time not shedding any tears for OPEC.

HOWIE CARR ON HATE-CRIME HYPOCRISY:

Finally, yesterday, the Chicago police charged the four aspiring rappers with a hate crime for allegedly beating, torturing and kidnapping a white mentally disabled kid from the suburbs.

They were screaming “Bleep white people!” and “Bleep Trump!” but none of the PC posse wanted to … uh, jump to any conclusions.

Take Obama — please. His flack Josh Earnest was asked if this was a hate crime.

“I think it’s too early to tell.”

No call from Obama for a “national conversation” about hate crimes. He didn’t even call it “workplace violence.” . . .

This wasn’t the first post-election black-on-white hate crime on the West Side. In November, a 50-year-old white man was dragged from his car by four people screaming obscenities about Trump. That hate crime was likewise recorded on videotape.

Police arrested Rajune Lewis, Dejuan Collins, Julian Christian and a juvenile and … do you remember seeing anything about this on the network newscasts? Me neither.

Compare this kid-glove treatment for all these thugs to what happened to the two Babson College students who drove over to Wellesley College after the election. Let’s let Babson President (and former Lt. Gov.) Muffy Healey describe how her students “engaged in behavior that was, at a minimum, insensitive, unacceptable and contrary to our core values.”

Their crime? They were yelling “Trump 2016!” and “Make America Great Again.”

Muffy banned them from campus and they were kicked out of their frat. They had to hire lawyers to fight Muffy’s fake news.

If it wasn’t for double standards, the alt-left wouldn’t have any standards at all.

True.