YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for December 9, 2019. “Bullock and Harris drop Out, Bloomberg rises (though slowly), Booker gets weepy, Tulsi sings, and Democrats have a diversity problem.”

BUT TRUMP SHOULD BE IMPEACHED FOR NOT LISTENING TO THE EXPERTS…: New Pentagon Papers? IG probe conclusions show Afghan war futility — and lies.

AT AMAZON, Holiday Gift Guides for Every Interest.

LAVRENTIY BERIA SMILES: After Throwing Everything Against the Wall, Dems Finally Scrape Together Four Things They Want to Impeach Trump Over.

FASTER, PLEASE: Clinical trial to test stem cells against type 1 diabetes.

DISPATCHES FROM LAPUTA: The Insanity of Progressivism Comes Right Out of Gulliver’s Travels. 

(Classical reference in headline.)

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How to Convert a School Bus to an RV.

CAM EDWARDS: The Michael Bloomberg Speech He Doesn’t Want You To Hear. “On February 5th, 2015, in front of less than 400 people, Michael Bloomberg had a speaking gig at the Aspen Institute, a think tank in Colorado that sponsors a variety of speakers to the ski town. Ordinarily the various speeches and events are recorded or streamed live, but either way, the speeches are in the public domain and available for public consumption. Since the Aspen Institute is all about exchanging ideas, that makes sense, but Bloomberg did something unheard of and blocked the release of virtually every second of footage of his talk that had been recorded.”

According to a report at the time, Bloomberg urged that “police should seize guns from male minorities between ages 15 and 25.”

AS THEY SAY AT AT HIS WEBSITE, UNEXPECTEDLY: Bloomberg Fumbles Facts, Laws in Gun-Control Policy Rollout.

SCOTUS: Supreme Court leaves in place Kentucky abortion law mandating ultrasounds. “Doctors must perform ultrasounds and have women listen to fetal heartbeats before performing abortions.”

I SAW A FRIEND TALKING ABOUT THIS GADGET FROM KEURIG, AND I THOUGHT THEY WERE JOKING: Drinkworks Home Bar: Cocktails, Brews, Wines and More.

THIS WHOLE THING HAD TO BE AN ELABORATE HOAX: New York man eats Art Basel banana that sold for $120G.

RIP: PAUL VOLCKER, THE CARTER-REAGAN FED CHAIRMAN WHO BEAT INFLATION, DIES AT AGE 92. Combined with President Reagan’s tax cuts, Volker’s fight against inflation “‘set the table for the long economic expansions of the 1980s and 1990s,’ former St. Louis Fed President William Poole said in a 2005 tribute.”

UPDATE: At Power Line, Steve Hayward quotes from his Age of Reagan series: “Reagan had his first meeting with Volcker over lunch on his third day in the Oval Office. Reagan opened the lunch with a question that must have nearly knocked Volcker out of his chair: Why do we need a Federal Reserve anyway?” Read the whole thing.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER: Alan Dershowitz to Mark Levin: Democrats Are Using Soviet Tactics to Take Down Donald Trump.

EXCEPT FOR ALL THE HEAP BIG WAMPUM: Warren Denies Receiving ‘Any Benefit’ as a Result of Her Native-American Lie.

CRACKS IN THE COLOSSUS: China’s Latest Bond Scare Casts Doubt on a $1.3 Trillion Market.

THIS KIND OF TAKE ON DIVERSITY IS ANATHEMA, EXCEPT WHEN IT’S NECESSARY TO ELECT A DEMOCRAT: Democrats’ December debate lineup could be all white, but diversity isn’t only about race.

QUESTIONS ASKED: What’s Going on With Drudge? Did Matt Drudge Shift to the Left and Sell the Drudge Report? 

JEN RUBIN: Ted Cruz is Putin’s stooge.

Rubin, WaPo link, all the usual disclaimers apply. But between her and SE Cupp, “conservative” women didn’t exactly have a great weekend.

JOEL KOTKIN: The Middle Class Rebellion.

We usually associate rebellions with the rise of the desperate. But increasingly we are seeing large protests in comparatively wealthy countries that are led not by working class sans-culottes or starving peasants, but what was once the stable middle class.

Perhaps the best example today may be Hong Kong, where largely middle-class students and office workers are challenging the world’s most powerful autocracy, one that, by the way sees itself as the tribune of the “workers and peasants.” Although the protests are seen largely as based on issues of personal freedom and democracy, it also reflects a wider, deeper and more pervasive malaise in a city with a per capita income of $60,000, almost four times the national average and three time that of Beijing or Shanghai.

Whether in Europe, East Asia or the Americas, this new middle-class rebellion may be seen as what one Marxist publication called “a strike against the rising cost of living.”

Although the leftists identify this more with protests against things like subway fare hikes, in the latest uprising the key has been those things, notably energy and housing prices, which threaten to “proletarianize” the living standards of the not long ago decently comfortable.

Much of this rise in costs derives from virtue-signaling green policies adopted by the gentry, at the expense of the middle class:

Such policies have proven exceedingly unpopular among much of the middle orders, who have launched a devastating and occasionally violent gilets jaune rebellion. President Emmanuel Macron’s energy price rise may be popular in the salons of the Paris elite, but not so much among the vast majority, notably the 90 percent of regional residents who work outside the central district, as well as large swaths of smaller cities and towns of La France Périphérique.

Other rebellions against the urban climate agenda have spread to normally more placid places like Norway and the Netherlands. Steady energy price rises from green policies, as well as boosts in subway fares, have resulted in major protests around Chile’s capital Santiago, with 20 deaths and 1,200 injured.

Of course, no rational person would like to see similar violence spread or would oppose sensible environmental policy that does not target the middle orders. But it will continue worsen as long as policy makers, and the private sector, ignore the basic needs and aspirations of the majority population. If not, this rebellion will spread beyond places like Paris, Santiago and Hong Kong, with political consequences that will be difficult to predict but could be profound.

The green religion demands sacrifice, mostly from the lower orders.

FAKE NEWS: Border Patrol Agent Debunks Viral Video Showing Illegal Immigrant Scaling Trump Wall.

STANLEY FISH ON The Unbearable Virtue-Mongering of Academics. See, academia is a field where you advance by acquiring a reputation. But acquiring a reputation by virtue-mongering takes much less effort than acquiring one via the quality of your work.

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KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Ted Cruz Is the Democrats’ Bogeyman Again. “I really enjoy how Chuck Todd looks like he is about to burst a vein and Cruz is smiling and calm, waiting for the idiot to wander into his lair. The MSM is so desperate to cling to their Trump/Russia fantasies that they reach hysterical schoolgirl levels of ninny-ess at times.”