TOY STORY TURNS 20 TODAY: 15 Surprising Things You Never Knew About the Toy Story Franchise.

CHANGE: Pro-govt giants decimated in Hong Kong polls.

Stay tuned.

DOGS CAN’T HELP FALLING IN LOVE.

OUT ON A LIMB: As It Turns Out, Socialist Politicians Can Be Crooks Too. “Case in point: Three members of the ‘Squad’ — that eclectic group of freshmen congresswomen who claim allegiance to socialism and socialist policies — are all under investigation for committing financial crimes either before or after they took office. The Daily Caller has a summary of what Reps. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilham Omar are accused of — less than a year after they took office.”

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK: Newark mayor effectively bans NYC’s homeless-export program.

It took quite a while, but Newark is finally getting its revenge on John Lindsay’s reelection campaign, which featured at least one commercial whose theme was basically, “sure he’s a lousy mayor, but hey, at least you’re not living in Newark:”

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Drop the SAT and ACT as a requirement for admission, top UC officials say.

THEY’RE THE PARTY OF ILHAN OMAR NOW: 106 House Dems to Pompeo: Reverse settlement announcement ‘immediately.’

REVIEW: Glock G48.

POWERLINE:  Lie-A-Watha strikes again.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is chronic wasting disease in deer dangerous for humans?

HOW THE GREAT TRUTH DAWNED:

For all prisoners, the first discovery was of unprecedented evil, evil they could never have imagined and in as pure a form as possible. One way Solzhenitsyn conveys this evil is to compare it with earlier supposed embodiments of it, especially the tsarist regime, which, throughout the Western world, was regarded as the symbol of pure oppression. Solzhenitsyn reflects: From 1876 to 1904, a period when Russian terrorists killed many top officials, including Tsar Alexander II, the regime executed 486 people, or 17 per year. From 1905 to 1908—including the period of the revolution of 1905—executions “rocketed upwards” to 2,200, or 45 per month before coming to an abrupt halt. Although terrorists in those years killed more tsarist officials than that—were more sinning than sinned against—such brutality “astound[ed] Russian imaginations, calling forth tears from Tolstoy and indignation from Korolenko.” Of course, from 1917 to the death of Stalin in 1953, 2,200 was about the number of people killed on an average day.

* * * * * * * *

Why is it, Solzhenitsyn asks, that Macbeth, Iago, and other Shakespearean evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses, while Lenin and Stalin did in millions? The answer is that Macbeth and Iago “had no ideology.” Ideology makes the killer and torturer an agent of good, “so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors.” Ideology never achieved such power and scale before the twentieth century.

And that socialist ideology would eventually pour out of the Soviet Union, to be aped by Germany’s National Socialism and Mussolini’s socialist-inspired fascism. As Tom Wolfe wrote in his 1996 article, “Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died,” in 1882, Nietzsche declared that “God is Dead.” And as a consequence, “predicted (in Ecce Homo) that the twentieth century would be a century of ‘wars such as have never happened on earth,’ wars catastrophic beyond all imagining. And why? Because human beings would no longer have a god to turn to, to absolve them of their guilt; but they would still be racked by guilt, since guilt is an impulse instilled in children when they are very young, before the age of reason. As a result, people would loathe not only one another but themselves. The blind and reassuring faith they formerly poured into their belief in God, said Nietzsche, they would now pour into a belief in barbaric nationalistic brotherhoods.”

AT AMAZON, Holiday Deals on Women’s Watches.

DO WE NEED TO START DISCUSSING JOE BIDEN’S ANGER ISSUES? Biden, Graham Dispute Over Request for Hunter Biden Docs Gets Personal.

(Classical reference in headline.)

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Adam Schiff Ran Against Impeachment in First Campaign for Congress.

SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST: Green Terror Grips Canada in Cultic Madness.

Related: “[Historian Yuri] Slezkine’s most valuable insight is to treat the Bolsheviks as members of an apocalyptic millennial cult, without God. He draws parallels in Christian history between them and religious movements that sought to build heaven on earth, no matter how many so-called evildoers had to be liquidated to do it. If you think of the Bolsheviks as religious fanatics, their bizarre, cruel acts make a lot more sense. And to be frank, so do the words and deeds of the social justice cultists of our own time and place.”

(Classical reference in headline.)

SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: For 2020 candidates, eating tacos is the kissing babies of stumping for Latino votes.

HOMEBUYERS PROMISED ‘PARK VIEWS’ FROM NEW DEVELOPMENT GET BRIGHT BLUE PLASTIC LAKE INSTEAD (Video):

Based on the video, it looks like the residents have the beginnings of either a fine miniature golf course, or an excellent training facility for G.I. Joe…

ADDRESSING THE VITAL SHORTAGE OF WHITE, MEDICARE-ELIGIBLE DEMOCRATS IN THE RACE: Bloomberg makes his campaign launch official.

CHANGE: U.S. begins deporting asylum seekers back to Guatemala under new policy. “The procedure seems to have been successful.”

SO DID HE BACK DOWN, OR WAS I SUCKERED BY FAKE NEWS? U.S. Navy Secretary says he did not threaten to resign in dispute with Trump. “The U.S. Navy Secretary said on Saturday he did not threaten to resign amid a disagreement with President Donald Trump over whether a Navy SEAL convicted of battlefield misconduct should face a board of peers who may oust him from the elite force. . . . Spencer said Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher should face a board of peers because ‘the process matters for good order and discipline,’ Reuters reported on Friday. On Saturday, Spencer said ‘good order and discipline is also obeying orders from the president of the United States,’ and he said that he hopes ‘to contribute going forward’ in his role.”

‘FORD V. FERRARI:’ MALE BONDING, ‘FAST AND FURIOUS’ STYLE, IN THE ‘MAD MEN’ ERA. My review of the new film, which is well worth seeing on the big screen, both for its brilliant racing sequences, and to cheese off the SJW woke scolds who object to its petrol-fueled macho theme.

(Bumped.)

WELL THAT WAS DUMB. BUT WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT? Chick-fil-A Put an Obama and Hillary Supporter in Charge, but Dumped Christians. “Money for social justice and Muslim refugees, but not for the Salvation Army. . . . The donations were coming out of the Chick-fil-A Foundation. The Executive Director of the CFA Foundation is Rodney D. Bullard, a former White House fellow and Assistant US Attorney. Some may have mistaken him for a conservative because he was a fellow in the Bush Administration, but he was an Obama donor, and, more recently, had donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign while at Chick-fil-A.”

Personnel is policy.

WITH HELP FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES, OF COURSE! How Stalin Hid Ukraine’s Famine From The World.