THE LOOMING DANGER FOR DISSIDENT PROFESSORS.

BOOK REVIEW: The Generals’ War: Operational Level Command on the Western Front in 1918.

It is now popular among most historians to dismiss the idea that leadership at the top can play the crucial role in the outcome of great historical events. With such attitudes, they are only displaying their own ignorance of how the real world works. For better or worse, leadership does matter, and Ząbecki has done a skillful job in laying out how these senior generals determined the outcome of the war. On the German side, Ludendorff, in effect Hindenburg’s chief of staff but also the real author of German military decisions, drove the German conduct of the war to its disastrous end in 1918. In some respects, Ludendorff was a proficient tactician and innovator. In fact, he was one of the few generals in the war to make a coherent and effective attempt to solve the extraordinarily difficult tactical problems the fighting in the Western theater had raised. However, the most perceptive and effective German general in the war, Crown Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria, noted of Ludendorff that he “is certainly a wonderful organizer, but not a great strategist.”[1]

That, in a nutshell, was the heart of the problem with the whole German Army. Brilliant at the sharp end of tactical competence, but incapable of perceiving the strategic consequences of their actions, Ludendorff and the German high command found themselves stuck in a strategic quandary of their own making.

Looks good enough that it just went near the top of my ever-expanding Kindle to-read list. For a look just at Allied operational art during the same timeframe, Hundred Days: The Campaign That Ended World War I is another solid read.

CATFIGHT! Pelosi rips AOC in interview: ‘large numbers of votes’ more important than ‘large number of Twitter followers.’

BECAUSE THE INMATES ARE RUNNING THE ASYLUM: Why Are 2020 Democrats Embracing Slavery Reparations? “Reparations aren’t popular with voters.”

YES, BUT IT’S POLITICALLY INCONVENIENT FOR THE GREENS: Nuclear Power Can Save the World: Expanding the technology is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions and decarbonize the economy. Nice to see this in the NYT, though, as it suggests the subject may no longer be unmentionable.

STEPHEN L. CARTER: Pete Buttigieg’s Plan to Politicize the Supreme Court: How will letting the parties appoint justices improve the court’s reputation for nonpartisanship?

SUNSPOT UPDATE: An Upcoming Grand Minimum? “The extension to the red curve above however reveals a great deal about the overall sense of that solar science community. While they do not yet wish to make a public splash announcing a new prediction, the bulk of that community appears to favor a very very long and weak minimum. That red curve predicts a minimum that is at least twice as long as any previously recorded minimum, with no indication when that minimum will end. In other words, solar scientists are now seriously considering the possibility that we are at the start of a Grand Minimum.”

Fallen Angels is just a science fiction novel, right guys? Right? Guys?

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE CULTURE OF NARCISSISM AND THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Parents charged in college cheating scam turn to consultant to understand prison life.

(Found via Iowahawk, who tweets, “Nobody wants the embarrassment of being rejected by the elite prisons.”)

CHANGE: Euroskeptic, populist parties form alliance in Europe.

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Plus, deals on Pet Food and Supplies.

BARACK OBAMA BECAME A WHITE SUPREMACIST SO GRADUALLY I BARELY NOTICED: Barack Obama Says Not ‘Everyone Who Is Disturbed by Migration’ Can Be Branded ‘Racist.’

WHEN IS TOO MANY BEYOND TOO MANY? That’s a question that’s getting some worried discussion among Democrats, thanks to the total of 18 present candidates and the prospect of as many as 30 announced candidates seeking the party’s 2020 presidential nomination.

“This is a great example of all these people looking at their own interests, as opposed to the interests of the country and the interests of their party,” David Burstein told The Epoch Times. Republicans have some interesting thoughts about all this, too.

OPEN THREAD: Is there any news to discuss?

If the news doesn’t give you enough to talk about, there’s always this, from Victor Davis Hanson:

The final irony? If the CIA, FBI, and DOJ have gone the banana republic way of Lois Lerner’s IRS and shredded the Constitution, they still failed to remove Donald Trump.

Trump still stands. In Nietzschean fashion what did not kill him apparently only made him stronger.

Talk about that, if you like.

UNIVISION HOST SUGGESTS INSTEAD OF WALL, BORDER AGENTS SHOULD JUST DODGE HURLED ROCKS.

HOW MANY SMOKING GUNS BEFORE THEY LOCK HER UP? Judicial Watch just keeps winning court decisions forcing the government to cough up embarrassing documents that pile the evidence higher and higher that the FBI probe of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal was a joke.

And as the evidence piles up, it becomes ever clearer that what Comey should have said in July 2016 was this: “I hope the Justice Department throws the book at her because I don’t know an honest prosecutor who wouldn’t file charges based on this evidence.”

LATEST CLOWN-CAR ENTRANT GETS THUMBS DOWN FROM GLENN GREENWALD:

Though the mass hysteria on the left is crazy enough that it’s tempting to blame some sinister outside force like the Russians, rather than admit that these people are just that crazy.

Flashback: Russians! Under my bed!

Related: During all the Russia hacking hype, China is rising in influence: While Russia’s role in the 2016 election dominates the news, China’s spying and alarming influence within our borders is too little noticed.

‘I EAT WHAT WHAT I SHOOT: ’ Carolina Panthers WR Torrey Smith poses with dead feral hogs after kill, makes no apologies for being ‘a country boy.’

Consider this an official invitation for Smith to come to Texas to reduce our feral hog population as well.

ISIS-INSPIRED TERRORIST PLOTTED TO RUN OVER MARYLAND’S NATIONAL HARBOR WITH A U-HAUL.

Exit quote: “’He harbored hatred for those who do not practice the Muslim faith,’ authorities say.”

THE BABYLON BEE IS REALLY ON FIRE LATELY: Ocasio-Cortez Suddenly Shifts To Speaking Like Jar Jar Binks While Addressing Crowd Of Gungans.

WHAT THE ANTI-CONSUMERISTS DON’T UNDERSTAND: Stuff Sparks Joy. While moralists on the Left and the Right denounce Americans for buying too much stuff (and not recycling enough of it, those wastrels!), Marie Kondo knows better. On her Netflix program, she shows people how to declutter their homes — not because she thinks stuff is inherently evil, but because some wise editing lets you enjoy it more. As Katherine Mangu-Ward writes in Reason: 

In almost every episode of Kondo’s Netflix show, there is a cameo by a box of cables. No one knows what they are for, yet they lurk in hall closets and file cabinets. These cord collections are a relic of a time when such stockpiles were rational. A missing cord or adapter could render extremely expensive electronics useless, and replacements could be difficult or impossible to source. Today, thanks to cheap imports from China and elsewhere, electronics are cheap and replacement parts are instantly searchable, then deliverable right to your door.

In this sense, Americans’ homes are crowded with too much stuff not because they’re too rich but because they’re still thinking of themselves as too poor. This seemingly counterintuitive notion is on display in the difference between the homes of the wealthy, which are nearly always large but devoid of visible extraneous objects, and the houses of the working class, which are much more likely to be crammed to the rafters. Poor people tend to keep everything. But the desire to hang on to lots of stuff originates in fear, not joy.

You don’t have to tell Venezuelans that it’s good to have stuff. And it’s even better when you can afford to send some of it to the landfill (and learn to ignore the recycling scolds). Read the whole thing.

COLLUSION: “A coalition of left-wing groups is targeting nearly 30 current and former Trump administration officials with a corporate blacklist meant to prevent the officials from obtaining jobs in the private sector.” This seems like it could be actionable.

WELL, HITLER WAS A VEGETARIAN: Why So Many White Supremacists Are into Veganism.

HINT TO AOC, IT’S NOT WHITE SUPREMACISTS: Who Commits Most of the World’s Extremist Violence? While progressives are seizing on recent incidents to manufacture a trend of increasing violence by white supremacists, the rate of violent hate crime in the U.S. has been steady for half a century. And most of the violence worldwide is the work of a very different kind of supremacists, as Seth Barron explains in City Journal.

RACISM IN AMERICA: “Please note that Blow is black and Trump is white. If the races were reversed, Blow’s career would be over. Ask Roseanne Barr.”

KATIE COURIC: TRUMP’S ‘BEHAVIOR’ HAS WARRANTED ‘GREATER SCRUTINY’ FROM MEDIA.

Flashback: Katie Couric Uses Christmas Poem To Campaign For ObamaCare.

More: Katie Couric & Gun Rights: A Study in Dishonesty.

Just think of her as a Democratic party operative with a byline, and it all makes sense.