OBVIOUSLY SOME OF THE RUSSIAN DEFENSE PEOPLE RETIRED IN HAWAII:  On This Day: The Black Brandt Rocket Scare.

THIS JUST DOESN’T END WELL:  The Sad Decline of the FBI: You Read It Here First.

CURIOSER AND CURIOSER SAID ALICE:  Hawaiian Who Sent False Missile Alert Won’t Cooperate With Investigation.

I KNOW WHOM I’D BET ON:  In Davos, Trump Versus The Snooty Globalists.

AND SPEAKING OF FIGHTING THE CULTURE WAR, SOME WEAPONS:   The State and Revolution Pt. 1 – by Amanda S. Green.

MEANWHILE, AT THE LESS REPUTABLE OSCARS:  A story in The Hollywood Reporter offers a stinging critique of Academy Award voters.

IT’S A HARD JOB BUT SOMEBODY’S GOT TO DO IT:  Inside the ‘XXX Oscars’: How a panel of judges picks porn’s biggest winners.

QUITTING DRINKING IS EASY, I’VE DONE IT HUNDREDS OF TIMES:   Heavy drinkers can’t quit booze even if they want to, study says.  (Of course, I’m not a heavy drinker.  But I’ve had similar issues with writing.  The longest I stayed quit was two weeks, at the end of which I had cleaned everything that stood still long enough, including boys and cats, and the entire family begged me to resume writing… and leave them alone.)

JUST BECAUSE JOBS ARE SUPERFICIALLY EQUIVALENT DOES NOT MEAN ALL JOBHOLDERS PERFORM EQUALLY – OR DID YOU NEVER HAVE A BAD TEACHER?  Why women should start talking about their salaries.

WAIT, WHAT?  Critics slam “12 Strong” — Jingoistic Film Treats Taliban Badly.  I say we heil, heil, right in der critics’ faces!

LOTS OF CONCRETE STATEMENTS ON HOW SHALE IS HELPING, PLUS SOME CONCLUSORY BOILERPLATE ABOUT HOW FOSSIL FUELS ARE BAD: The Dark Side of America’s Rise to Oil Superpower.

For countries without diversified economies, oil can be bad — the government funds itself from the exports, meaning it doesn’t have to care how the rest of the economy is doing, and the country has a roller-coaster economy driven by commodity prices. The US is big enough not to face that problem, and putting the Russians, the Saudis, and the Iranians on the back foot is a huge plus.

IMAGINE THE EXPLODING MILLENNIAL HEADS IF THIS WERE ATTEMPTED TODAY: Playboy in the Yearbook: Texas Tech’s Bunny Pages (1959-1981).

AT AMAZON, Shop Amazon Outlet – Clearance, Markdowns and Overstock Deals.

Plus, Shop Amazon Warehouse Deals – Deep Discounts on Open-box and Used Products.

HERE’S YOUR OPEN THREAD. Talk about what you like. Did anything happen today?

SHARYL ATTKISSON IN THE HILL: As walls close in on FBI, the bureau lashes out at its antagonists. “What happens when federal agencies accused of possible wrongdoing — also control the alleged evidence against them? What happens when they’re the ones in charge of who inside their agencies — or connected to them — ultimately gets investigated and possibly charged? Those questions are moving to the forefront as the facts play out in the investigations into our intelligence agencies’ surveillance activities.”

TAXES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Tom Steyer, Anti-Trump Billionaire Who Wrote “Please Raise My Taxes” Oped, Has Multiple Tax Liens.

ONE OF MY COLLEAGUES TOLD ME THAT HE SAVED HIS HOUSE FROM A FLOOD with a water shut-off tool that he bought years ago via InstaPundit with my recommendation. So here’s another reminder to have one around and to know where your shutoff valve is — before you need to. And this handy gadget doubles as a gas shutoff wrench. You may even want to keep one of these hanging by your gas meter.

MICHAEL WALSH: The Media Octopus and How to Fight It.

Read the whole thing.

LIVE FROM POTEMKIN VILLAGE, IT’S CONAN O’BRIEN! “Conan’s trip [to Haiti] was too clever by half,” Don Surber writes:

Inadvertently, he showed himself as a white guy millionaire with a Harvard degree sipping an adult beverage from some sort of coconut shell — while nearby, one million native people are still without sewers eight years after the earthquake.

How is this different from the colonialism Haitians overthrew 227 years ago?

He acts like the Great White Father, protecting his lessers from an evil man who may or may not in private have called their country a s***hole.

Haitians don’t need some TV celebrity’s protection.

They need sewers.

Christian Toto adds, “Is Hollywood More Out of Touch Than Ever Before?” Once again, Trump’s ability to drive his opponents round the bend is one of his best assets.

FCC: PERSON WHO SENT FALSE HAWAII MISSILE ALERT REFUSING TO COOPERATE.

The Hawaii Emergency Management Agency employee who mistakenly sent out a mobile alert warning of an incoming ballistic missile is refusing to cooperate with the Federal Communications Commission investigation, an FCC official said Thursday on Capitol Hill.

At a hearing with the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Lisa Fowlkes, the head of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau at the FCC, said the federal agency is pleased with the cooperation from leadership in Hawaii, but disappointed in the refusal from the key employee.

“We hope that person will reconsider,” said Fowlkes.

Well sure, he terrified 1.5 million Hawaiians into thinking they were about to be nuked into a fine paste, but FCC chairman Ajit Pai rolled back net neutrality, restoring the Internet to the same standards used prior to 2015. Who’s the bigger monster here?

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: The IRS Spent $20 Million On Private Debt Collection To Bring In $7 Million.

WARNING LIGHTS ARE FLASHING DOWN AT QUALITY CONTROL: Reese Witherspoon Appears to Have 3 Legs on the New Vanity Fair Cover, and We Have Questions:

And to make matters even weirder, there’s a behind-the-scenes shot in Vanity Fair‘s article in which Oprah has three hands! Is this some sort of conspiracy? Can someone please explain these disrespectful Photoshop disasters?

There’s always the conspiracy that Vanity Fair did it deliberately to generate buzz, but given the fallout of having to deal with the massive egos of the stars on the cover and their reps, it’s more likely that in the rush to meet the deadline, the cover simply wasn’t proofed carefully by those vaunted layers and layers of fact checkers and editors. As Hanlon’s razor posits, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

And the “disrespectful” is a nice millennial touch.

(Classical reference in headline.)

SO WHAT’S DRUDGE TRYING TO TELL US?

WEIRD, WHAT COULD ACCOUNT FOR THAT? Iran’s Fast Boats Stop Harassing U.S. Navy, Baffling Military.

KURT SCHLICHTER IS FEELING CHEERFUL: Laugh At The Democrats As They Die On Amnesty Hill.