AT AMAZON, save in Sports & Fitness.

HEH:

Related: “Impeachment was only added to the nothingburger because every other hyperbolic term was no longer registering with the voting public.”

Plus: “Does this mean Donald Trump isn’t an idiot? No, it just so happens that an idiot can play this game too, and clearly, better than you. . . . They can’t stop taking the bait.”

OPEN THREAD: Because I love you and want to be happy.

AMERICAN POLITICS IN THE TRUMP ERA IS SO TAWDRY. WHY CAN’T WE BE SOBER AND DIGNIFIED LIKE THE CANADIANS?

‘I HATE KIDS, TOO. WELL PLAYED:’ Mark Hamill dumps on Ivanka Trump over a photo of her kid dressed as a Stormtrooper.

Tough to fault Ivanka for her kid dressing up as a workaday foot soldier for the good guys. But have some sympathy for Hamill, too — between Luke Skywalker and the voice of the Joker, Hamill’s career is built around portraying mass-murdering terrorists — and in Skywalker’s case a communist-inspired slave-owning religious fanatic to boot. Even for an actor, it’s got to get to you after a while.

Related: It Happened To Me: Mark Hamill’s Son Got Me Pregnant, And His Family Tried to Make Me Get an Abortion.

THAT’S AWFULLY RICH COMING FROM ONE OF THE LEADERS OF THE PARTY THAT BOOED GOD: Nancy Pelosi Says She’s ‘Prayerful’ As Impeachment Moves Forward.

SPACE: SpaceX Finishes Assembling New Starship Prototype. It looks the way a spaceship ought to look.

UPDATE: Yep:

THE SCIENCE ISN’T SETTLED, BUT WHY TAKE CHANCES? 10 Reasons Why Drinking Gin Can Actually Be Good for You.

LET’S CHECK IN ON CNN’S RELIABLE SOURCES, ALREADY IN PROGRESS: Robert De Niro drops F-bombs on live TV, lashes out at pro-Trump critics.

Exit Question: When did Robert de Niro become such a douchebag? “Of course de Niro has his big new Netflix film, Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, to plug and cursing on live TV is a great way to draw attention to yourself. It’s also pathetic.”

KAMALA HARRIS: “LEAVE JOE BIDEN ALONE!”

“If you were elected president, would you allow the son or daughter of your vice president to serve on a board of an oil company outside this country?” a reported asked.

“Probably not,” Harris responded with a laugh. “The problem that we’ve got, again, with this issue is that it’s a distraction from the fact that, look, as far as I’m concerned, leave Joe Biden alone. Just leave him alone. On this issue of what this president has done that has been about corrupting America’s democracy, being in cahoots with a foreign leader, to yet again, try and manipulate the election of the President of the United States.”

“That a judgement though?” the reported asked.

“I-I-I’m not going to be distracted by what this president is trying to play, which is a game, because he knows that he is actually, probably, probably, looking at an indictment and is then trying to distract from the realities of his behaviors that have been in violation of our moral, our ethical, and probably our legal rules,” she responded.

Kamala and other Democrats can say President Trump was in “cahoots” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but they seem to forget that Ukraine and the United States have a diplomatic relationship. It was signed in the 1990s under President Bill Clinton. Trump knew of the Biden’s wrongdoings. He had an obligation to bring it to Zelensky’s attention. If he didn’t, he’d be in violation of the bilateral agreement.

It’s amazing though. Democrats are more upset that Trump discovered what took place with the Bidens and wanted to get to the bottom of it than they are about the swampy behavior Joe and Hunter displayed.

Kamala Harris was attorney general of California from 2011 through 2017.

Related: As She Sinks In Polls, Kamala Harris Is Betting Everything On ‘F—ing Moving To Iowa.’

BLUE-CHECK JOURNALIST THINKS NIXON WAS IMPEACHED.

YOU KNOW YOU’RE OVER THE TARGET WHEN YOU START RECEIVING FLAK: Biden Campaign Demands TV News Execs Stop Booking Giuliani.

Presumably, most DNC operatives with bylines will comply — unless they want another taste of the closet. Or worse.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Long-Distance Practice: A Good Idea for the Armed Citizen.

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

Plus, Shop Amazon Outlet – Clearance, Markdowns and Overstock Deals.

ROBERT FRANCIS O’ROURKE NEEDS NEW MATERIAL: Beto’s fundraising pitch: ‘Now, we don’t want anything to happen to the kitten …’

He joked that it may take a Facebook livestream event that involves a kitten to meet his fundraising goal but he’s not going anywhere any time soon.

“You know, it’s kind of raising the ante or the bar for how we compete for those dollars,” O’Rourke said. “I mean, I could maybe do a Facebook livestream with a kitten and, say, you know, ‘Now, we don’t want anything to happen to the kitten … and so, you know, send your $5 or $10 or $15 in now. And, you know, Miss Whiskers is going to be fine.’”

To be fair, O’Rourke is a big fan of recycling — including this (in)famous 1973 National Lampoon cover, from the earlier, funnier, pre-PC era of leftism:

DISPATCHES FROM THE BATHROOM WARS: Portland Bans Urinals to Respect ‘Shared Values,’ Charges Taxpayers $200M. Plus: A Mind-Bending History of Gender Rules.

Finally, in a place constantly lecturing us about protecting the environment (you know, plastic straws etc) this will waste a tremendous amount of water 
I checked and most urinals take as little as a pint of water per flush (1/8 gallon). Even “modern” toilets flush with more than a gallon of water. Some “no flush” urinals use no water at all. Multiply this by hundreds of thousands of flushes a year. Figure out how this makes sense.

Forget it, Jake. It’s Portlandia.

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Will Haiti’s Revolution Be the First Blamed on Climate Change?

Does ISIS count? Their rise was blamed on “climate change” by National Geographic in 2017.

BARBARIC: Hundreds of ‘abused’ captives freed from Nigeria Islamic school.

“GET STUFFED” IS THE APPROPRIATE RESPONSE: Biden campaign demands news channels stop booking Giuliani.

HMM: Ukraine Holds More Surprises for Biden. “He’ll face questions about a lot more than what Trump has already brought up.”

Firtash, who got rich playing middleman between Russian and Ukrainian energy companies, has long been fighting extradition to the U.S. from Austria. He’s wanted for allegedly bribing Indian officials more than a decade ago, but he could be valuable in other ways: He was once close to now-deposed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, and therefore might know about the Ukrainian activities of Paul Manafort, Trump’s disgraced former campaign chairman.

Earlier this year, on the verge of being sent to America, Firtash retained a duo of Trump-connected American lawyers and presented a Vienna court with a wealth of documents that he says prove that the extradition request was actually politically motivated. Among those documents is an affidavit from former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who testified that Biden “directly manipulated the political leadership of Ukraine on false pretexts” to prevent Firtash from leaving Austria for Ukraine – where, as a Ukrainian citizen, he couldn’t be extradited.

This is the same Shokin whom Biden has boasted of getting fired by threatening to withhold a $1 billion loan guarantee. The former prosecutor has since said that Biden — then the U.S. vice president — did it to thwart a Ukrainian investigation into Burisma, a natural gas company where his son Hunter was a well-paid board member. Although the claim is probably false, Trump has picked it up and pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate, sparking a separate scandal about the current U.S. president’s use of his office to dig up dirt on a potential election rival.

Expect the Trump team to try to show that Biden abused his power by coercing Ukrainian authorities into helping him get a prospective Russiagate witness to the U.S. If Firtash works with Trump’s people, he can also provide a steady supply of testimony and documents suggesting that Obama administration officials, including Biden, actively meddled in Ukraine’s domestic politics after 2014. Whether or not they had corrupt motives in doing so is almost irrelevant — conservative conspiracy theorists will take it from there.

It hardly takes a conspiracy theorist to see something fishy in the Bidens’ Ukraine and China connections.

THE 50 MOST MISERABLE CITIES IN AMERICA: “The state with the most miserable cities is California with 10. New Jersey is close behind with nine, and Florida comes in third with six. These cities have things in common — few opportunities, devastation from natural disasters, high crime and addiction rates, and often many abandoned houses.”

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Question: is it ethical for federal judges to participate in ABA programs?

The ABA is a partisan organization, and federal judges should not be involved in it.

HAVE DEMS CONSIDERED THE WORST IMPEACHMENT ‘WHAT IFS?’ – Probably not, so I’ve helpfully listed and described the three they should worry most about.

ANOTHER REASON TO FLOSS: Gum Disease May Raise Hypertension Risk. I wonder, though, if they don’t have the causal error running in the wrong direction.