JACK DANIELS GIVES UP WHISKEY SECRETS: Well, not quite. Voice of America has a short, informative and fun video on the whiskey and the Lynchburg, Tennessee distillery.

WHENEVER THE DEMOCRATS GAIN A MAJORITY IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, THERE IS A RENEWED CALL TO PASS THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT: I wrote about it just after they re-took the House a number of years back. So far these calls haven’t gone anywhere, in part because “equal rights” are the last thing supporters of “affirmative action” for women in science and technology or on corporate boards really want. The calls may be just an effort to rally the troops.

One item of proof that most feminist groups don’t really want an ERA is their reaction to Proposition 209. When that initiative came before California voters in 1996, feminist groups fought it tooth and nail even though it would have required the State of California to refrain from discrimination or preferential treatment based on sex in public education, public employment and public contracting. If they really had been serious about equal rights (as opposed to equal results) they’d have been pleased.

Thursday’s WaPo column does indeed invoke the new House of Representatives as a reason to pass the ERA. The hope is that Virginia will ratify and then Congress will retroactively extend the deadline for ratification (or will be excoriated for failure to do so). Interestingly, the author ridicules Phyllis Schlafly for arguing that the ERA could be interpreted to require unisex bathrooms. Of course, the Obama administration took the even less defensible position that Title IX (which is similar) requires that anatomical males be permitted to use women’s showers and play on women’s sports teams. Given that, it is strange to ridicule Schlafly.

HMM: Trump Says China Will Remove Car Tariffs, China Claims Nothing.

“My meeting in Argentina with President Xi of China was an extraordinary one,” Trump explained in a follow-up post. “Relations with China have taken a BIG leap forward! Very good things will happen. We are dealing from great strength, but China likewise has much to gain if and when a deal is completed. Level the field!”

Meanwhile, China remains silent on the matter.

The stock market, on the other hand, is making noise. The announcement appears to have helped the share price of numerous automakers. General Motors and Daimler shares rose by more than 4 percent in premarket trading while Ford and Tesla increased by about 3 percent apiece. German manufacturers fared even better.

The markets might be nuts, but they’re still more trustworthy than Beijing.

REMINDER: iPhone, iPad Users Targeted by Massive Fake Gift Card ‘Malvertizing’ Scam.

Glenn posted on this yesterday, but PJ’s own Paula Bolyard adds:

If you’ve been affected by these ads, we profusely apologize. We understand that they’re terribly aggravating and intrusive and result in an unpleasant user experience. We’re aggravated too. I assure you our tech and ad folks are working overtime to rid our site of the malicious ads.

As someone who reads PJMedia almost as much as I write for it, I can echo Paula’s aggravation. We think the attack has been dealt with, but we won’t know for sure until we stop getting reports from readers caught up in them. So if you get a hijacked ad here at Instapundit or PJMedia, please email our support team here.

Update: Paula texted me to say, “If you’re still getting the redirects to spammy sites, please try clearing your cache/history/cookies to see if that fixes the issue. If the problem persists, please email us.”

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Joy Behar Rips Into Meghan McCain, ‘Get This B***h Under Control!’

21ST CENTURY CRIME: It took seven miles to pull over a Tesla with a seemingly asleep driver.

The situation is a bit of a puzzle because Autopilot is supposed to detect if a driver’s hands are on the wheel and disengage if they’re not. Tesla has steadily tightened up these rules, with recent revisions of the software warning drivers in as little as 30 seconds. So if the driver did fall asleep at the wheel the car should have started slowing down on its own within a few minutes.

In a similar case back in January, police encountered a man asleep behind the wheel of a Tesla car on the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. When police woke him up, he insisted that everything was fine because his vehicle was “on autopilot.” Unfortunately for him, there’s no autopilot exception to drunk-driving laws.

That’s what Uber is for.

GREAT MOMENTS IN IDENTITY POLITICS: Beto O’Rourke skates past Elizabeth Warren in 2020 Dem polling.

He’s only 1/1024 ahead, but still…

UKRAINE CALLS UP RESERVES AMID TENSIONS WITH RUSSIA: Here’s part of a report from the Associated Press.

Ukraine’s president on Monday announced a partial call-up of reservists for training amid tensions with Russia, saying the country needs to beef up its defenses to counter the threat of a Russian invasion. The Kremlin dismissed the Ukrainian leader’s statement as an “absurd” attempt to inflame tensions.

Relations between the two neighbors have been strained further following a Nov. 25 incident in which the Russian coast guard fired upon and seized three Ukrainian naval vessels and their crews off the Crimean Peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko responded by introducing martial law for 30 days in much of Ukraine. For the duration of martial law, Ukrainian authorities barred entry to all Russian males aged 16 to 60 in a move the Ukrainian leader said was needed to prevent Russia from further destabilizing the country. Poroshenko said Monday that some reservists will be summoned for training as part of martial law. He also said that some military units will be redeployed to strengthen the nation’s defenses.

“Ukraine is taking its own steps in response to the threat of a large-scale Russian invasion,” the Ukrainian leader said.

Ukraine is mobilizing for war. Bluff? Political posturing? Reinforcements to deter Russian attack? Could be all three. Time will tell. Read the entire report.

BACKGROUND ANALYSIS AND CONTEXT: Here’s a column from November 2004 that helps establish the historical context. Forgive the [?] hash on the webpage– it’s a track from a cyber attack that occurred about a decade ago.

A Russian bid to return to super-power status is the truly big story behind Ukraine’s rigged election.

At the moment Russia is a European also-ran, a one-time giant with deteriorating clout. However, Russia, plus Ukraine, plus Belarus, plus Khazakstan is a geo-strategic formula for a global power re-born.

This isn’t a new discovery. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, U.S. analysts concluded that the communist leadership would spin off the Baltic and Caucaus Soviet Union. At the same time, however, they would try to keep or link the core empire strength: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan (RUBK, pronounced “rubik,” as in the tricky, tough to solve puzzle called Rubik’s Cube.)

My new book, Cocktails from Hell: 5 Complex Wars Shaping the 21st Century elaborates on the Kremlin’s shenanigans. It will be published December 18.

This recent Creators Syndicate column discusses the attack on the three Ukrainian naval vessels (the Kerch Strait incident) and examines some of its implications.

UPDATE: The StrategyPage webmaster just informed me the hash marks were from a re-format. All the hack “stuff” has been fixed. My apologies. He’s fixed the format error.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Slate Paid Someone To Write A Hit Piece On George H.W. Bush’s Service Dog.

At one of their few remaining publishing platforms, the Graham family continues to show the acumen for great journalism that led to their selling Newsweek for a buck, and the Washington Post for Jeff Bezos’ tip money.

CHANGE? With Pro-Pot Democrat in Governor’s Mansion, Minnesota Could Be Next to Legalize Weed. “Republicans will have something to say, too. And the Minnesota Legislature will be split between the two parties in 2019.”

GOING VERTICAL: An F-35B conducts a flight test above the Royal Navy’s HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier.

ORBAN’S GETTING SERIOUS: University founded by George Soros says it has been kicked out of Hungary.

There’s a lot of scare language in this Los Angeles Times report, but the truth is that Soros has rarely been a friend of existing institutions in almost any country where he performs his philanthropy. That he’s finally receiving some pushback should come as no surprise.

UNIVERSITIES BECAME DEMOCRATIC PARTY SUPER-PACS SO QUICKLY I TOTALLY NOTICED: Univ of Utah showcases anti-Trump, anti-conservative book art. “It’s funny it’s called the ‘Rising Together’ exhibition when it alienates an entire group of students based off who they voted for.”

KEEPING UP WITH THE JONES-SAN: Meet South Korea’s Shiny New ‘Aircraft Carrier.’

Large amphibious assault ships like the Dokdo -class are sometimes referred to as “aircraft carriers in disguise.” This is certainly apt in the case of Japan’s Izumo-class helicopter destroyers. Those ships are roughly 250 meters (820 feet) long and displace 24,000 tons. The Izumos are about 50 percent bigger (in terms of displacement) than Japan’s previously largest ship, the Hyuga-class helicopter destroyer. Others have pointed out that the ships are actually larger than Spain and Italy’s short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) aircraft carriers.

While the Dokdos are not quite as big as the Izumos, they might also be considered an aircraft carrier in disguise. That’s because a few months back reports emerged that South Korea is thinking of refitting the vessels to be able to carry the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter.

Back in the bad old days of the Cold War, we used to call meaningful procurements by our allies “burden-sharing.” It’s good to see Tokyo and Seoul both getting serious about it — and if China doesn’t like it (Spoiler: They don’t), well, they have no one to blame but themselves.

CHANGE: Anti-Immigrant Party Breaks Socialist Stronghold In Spain. Weird how this keeps happening.

VIOLENT INTIMIDATION IN VIOLATION OF 18 USC 241. Antifa vandalizes Purdue College Republicans adviser’s home with ‘Nazi lives here.’

Antifa’s tactics — masks in the streets and threatening people in their homes — are eeerily reminsicent of the Klan. Then again, both are militant wings of the Democratic Party.

This seems like something that the Department of Justice should be investigating.

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: GHWB Funeral Not to Be Anti-Trump Rally and Much, Much More. “I was not a Bush fan, either one of ’em, but the man was President of the United States, he was a veteran, he served his country, hopefully his family and the media harpies can focus on him at his funeral.”

That would be nice.

SO 20 YEARS AGO DURING THE CLINTON SCANDALS, PETER MORGAN AND I PUBLISHED The Appearance of Impropriety: How the Ethics Wars Have Undermined American Government, Business, and Society. With Robert Mueller indicting people right and left for process crimes, I thought I’d put the criminal-law chapter up on SSRN for your perusal.

Excerpt: “In the old days, we would refrain from ringing up the cops until after there was fairly clear evidence of a crime, such as Professor Plum lying in a pool of blood in the conservatory. Off everyone would go looking for clues, with the concrete fact of Professor Plum’s corpse to focus their energies. Today, though, we frequently summon our sophisticated investigative technicians before there is evidence of a crime. We run to the phone as soon as someone suggests Colonel Mustard might have committed some impropriety. We then try to solve the mystery of whether this or some other past indiscretion of Colonel Mustard just might constitute a crime. Nowadays, it is more remarkable when the ethics crime laboratory cannot come up with a viable theory of criminality than when it can.”

Download and enjoy; it’s not that long. (Bumped).

POLITICO: Trump names hardliner Lighthizer to be ‘vigilant’ in China talks.

Megan Cassella and Caitlyn Prysko’s use of scare quotes around “stealing” is almost comical, given Communist China’s history of doing just that. But maybe they’re just 27 and literally know nothing:

Lighthizer will work in concert with other top administration officials to demand changes to address a litany of complaints that the U.S. has about China’s practices. The White House has accused China of “stealing” corporate trade secrets and technology, and earlier this year, the administration had produced a list of roughly 142 demands they wanted Beijing to address.

Lighthizer’s reputation as a hardened negotiator might help accomplish some of Trump’s goals. Two weeks ago, Lighthizer and his office released an update to a March report slamming China, saying the country has done little to improve the problems that the Trump administration has pointed to as a way of justifying U.S. tariffs.

It’s weird how you never see the MSM-DNC refer to Democratic appointees as “softliners” or “hard left.”

NONSENSE. ALL THE BEST PEOPLE TOLD ME THAT THIS WAS A MYTH. Census confirms: 63 percent of ‘non-citizens’ on welfare, 4.6 million households.

A majority of “non-citizens,” including those with legal green card rights, are tapping into welfare programs set up to help poor and ailing Americans, a Census Bureau finding that bolsters President Trump’s concern about immigrants costing the nation.

In a new analysis of the latest numbers, from 2014, 63 percent of non-citizens are using a welfare program, and it grows to 70 percent for those here 10 years or more, confirming another concern that once immigrants tap into welfare, they don’t get off it.

Weird how all the best people keep being contradicted by data.

FIGHT THE POWER: Yellow Vests 1, Emmanuel Macron 0: France to delay global warming fuel-tax increase.

BY “HATE AND DIVISION,” HE MEANS “POLITICS I DON’T AGREE WITH,” OR WILL. Apple CEO Tim Cook: Those Who Seek Hate and Division Have No Place in Our Platforms. Get woke, go broke.

UPDATE (From Ed): “Legalistics aside, Cook is well within his rights to ban whoever he wants from his private platform. The only problem is that Cook seems to be very selective in what he considers to be sinful not to ban. For instance, the hate preacher Louis Farrakhan still has his app, the Nation of Islam, up in the Apple store. Farrakhan is a rabid and open anti-semite who has compared Jewish people to termites. If Cook considers it sinful to not take action against those who use hateful and dangerous rhetoric against other races or religions, then Cook is a sinner’s sinner.”

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Conlawprof, Normal Politics, and Fascism. Memories are short; I certainly remember the Massachusetts legislature and then-Gov. Romney.