OPEN THREAD: Be jolly, it’s time to put up Christmas decorations.

BUILD UP YOUR STRATEGIC BACON RESERVE WHILE YOU CAN! Quarter of all pigs worldwide could die from swine fever, animal health organization says. “The die-off would spark global pig shortages, spiking prices of pork and products that rely on the animals to be produced, said Mark Schipp, president of the World Organization for Animal Health.”

YOU WENT FULL BILL KRISTOL. NEVER GO FULL BILL KRISTOL: Is Jennifer Rubin Trying to Out “Bill Kristol” Bill Kristol? 

Earlier: Double Whammy: CBS Journo Jan Crawford Shuts Down Hillary Clinton, Jen Rubin Over Trump Judicial Nominee Criticism.

YEAH, PRETTY MUCH: ‘Boys Are Stupid; Girls Are Awesome’ – Most TV Shows & Movies Today.

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BETO O’ROURKE DROPS OUT OF RACE TO SPEND MORE TIME TAKING GUNS FROM HIS FAMILY.

I’m so old, I can remember when the Babylon Bee was still satire, before morphing into America’s Paper of Record.

SUZANNE VENKER: Just to be clear: It was women, specifically, who were groomed to shift their values away from marriage and family and onto the self. Men just followed suit. What choice did they have? “In other words, feminists want women to want what feminists want—and women tried. They really did. Now their lives are falling apart.”

THE CLOWN CAR SHRINKS: Breaking: Beto O’Rourke Is Dropping Out of the Presidential Race.

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Democrats Launch Effort to Win 2020 Election… in Court. “Democrats have launched a multi-state effort in courts across the nation seeking to tinker with the rules of the 2020 election to help oust President Donald Trump from the White House. These lawsuits are the latest in a longstanding push to use the courts to alter election rules, all in the name of ‘civil rights.’ The lawsuits are funded by dark money sources, and not-so-dark money sources such as George Soros’ Open Society Institute.”

BOING! BOING! This Is How the Mercedes-Benz GLS and GLE’s “Bounce” Mode Works. “Called Free Driving Assist, the feature is meant to get you unstuck when off-roading—but we used it just for fun.” How many SUV owners take them off-roading? I’ve taken mine offroad a couple of times, or on fire roads, but nothing you could really call off-roading.

HEH: Trevor Noah to Hillary Clinton: ‘How Did You Kill Jeffrey Epstein?’

ANALYSIS: ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Andrew Cuomo: ‘We Didn’t Have Hurricanes’ Before Climate Change.

IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP! THANKS, EGON: Boston man suing Dyson for $2.3 million after he was left partially emasculated from inserting his penis into a Dyson vacuum cleaner.

THE MEME’S THE THING: Five Times The Media Falsely Accused Trump of Sharing ‘Doctored’ Images/Photos.

TAMARA KEEL: Review: FN 509.

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FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY: Are You Ready for President Florida Man?

JOE SCARBOROUGH’S ODD FANTASY: Trump Brought Down by a Fox News ‘Cronkite Moment.’

Joe Scarborough turns his lonely eyes… to Fox News??

Looks that way. On today’s Morning Joe, Scarborough dreamed of a scenario in which Fox News would turn against President Trump, thus bringing down his presidency. Scarborough analogized it to a “Cronkite moment.” That was the time in 1968 when CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite essentially declared the Vietnam War unwinnable. LBJ was reported to have said at the time, “if I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

Time to flash the Bat-Signal to Media Myth Alert: The ‘Cronkite Moment,’ 50 years on: Remembering why it’s a media myth.

CYBERWAR: Text editor releases ‘Free Uyghur’ edition, gets swamped with Chinese spam.

FASTER, PLEASE: Water-hunting rover to land on lunar south pole in 2022.

THE DEMOCRATS IN 2020: BAN ALL THE THINGS, SPEND ALL THE MONEY! Elizabeth Warren: How does $20.5 trillion in new spending for Medicare for All — plus amnesty for illegals — sound?

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Rachel McKinnon Is a Cheat and a Bully. “Rachel McKinnon — the so-called defending “world champion” of women’s track cycling — is a man. I’ll repeat that so my meaning cannot be misconstrued. He is a man.”

First, by pretending that McKinnon is not a man, we have allowed him to cheat at sports at the expense of his female competitors. Because McKinnon being a man is directly relevant to the argument that he should not compete against women, in calling him something other than a man, we obfuscate that argument — and all for the sake of a very recently invented set of blasphemy norms (e.g. “misgendering” and “deadnaming”) that don’t apply to us non-believers.

Second, by pretending that McKinnon is not a man — but rather a vulnerable woman — we have forsworn all expectations of accountability and decency. The most egregious example of this, and the precise moment I decided to stop lending McKinnon special courtesies, was when he lauded the terminal illness of a young woman, Magdalen Berns, whom I held (and still hold) in great esteem.

Berns believed strongly that men cannot be women. As she lay on her deathbed in Scotland, at the age of 36, surrounded by her loved ones, McKinnon tweeted that he was “happy” when bad people died, that this feeling is “justified,” that Berns is a “trash human,” and further advised his followers “don’t be the sort of person who people you’ve harmed are happy you’re dying of brain cancer.” By contrast, here is a characteristically civil, clear and courageous quote from Berns: “it’s not hate to defend your rights and it’s not hate to speak the truth.”

Men can be so rude sometimes.

Read the whole thing.

SO YOU’RE SAYING “FAT-SHAMING” WORKS? Mom loses 138 pounds after 3-year-old son calls her ‘fat’: ‘That was my rock bottom.’

THEY’RE UGLY AND CONSUME HUGE AMOUNTS OF REAL ESTATE FOR MEDIOCRE ENERGY PRODUCTION: Germany’s Giant Windmills Are Wildly Unpopular.

It’s getting harder to get permission to erect the turbine towers. Local regulations are getting stricter. Bavaria decided back in 2014 that the distance between a wind turbine and the nearest housing must be 10 times the height of the mast, which, given the density of dwellings, makes it hard to find a spot anywhere. Wind energy development is practically stalled in the state now. Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, passed a law this year demanding that wind-farm operators pay 10,000 euros ($11,100) per turbine each year to communities within 3 kilometers of the windmills.

Wind projects are also often rejected or stalled because they’re deemed to interfere with military communications, air traffic control or broadcast radio stations.

Besides, local opponents of the wind farms often go to court to stall new developments or even have existing towers dismantled. According to the wind-industry lobby BWE, 325 turbine installations with a total capacity of more than 1 gigawatt (some 2% of the country’s total installed capacity) are tied up in litigation. The irony is that the litigants are often just as “green” as the wind-energy proponents — one is the large conservation organization NABU, which says it’s not against wind energy as such but merely demands that installations are planned with preserving nature in mind. Almost half of the complaints are meant to protect various bird and bat species; others claim the turbines make too much noise or emit too much low-frequency infrasound. Regardless of the validity of such claims, projects get tied up in the courts even after jumping through the many hoops necessary to get a permit.

German nuclear energy production — zero emission, zero carbon — has been cut in half in recent years.