HMM: MS has mixed impact on risk for cancer, study says.

RIP: Darth Vader actor David Prowse dead at 85. Prowse was asked to audition for the roles of Darth Vader and Chewbacca but he said he chose Luke Skywalker’s father because ”you always remember the bad guys.”

That’s such a curious statement, since he chose to play one of the series’ most important good guys.

INTERVIEW: Glenn Greenwald on Biden, Free Speech, and Leaving The Intercept.

UTAH MONOLITH: The mysterious silver monolith in the desert has disappeared.

Has anyone checked the lunar crater Tycho recently for magnetic anomalies under its surface?

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The last known photo of the monolith may provide a clue to its disappearance:

IF ONLY THERE WAS A LIQUID AVAILABLE THAT COULD RELIABLY POWER CARS, AND WAS EASY AND INEXPENSIVE TO REFILL: ‘Why did it take nine hours to go 130 miles in our new electric Porsche?’

NYC ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS TO REOPEN FOR IN-PERSON LEARNING ON DEC. 7: DE BLASIO.

No word yet how badly Andrew Cuomo will lash out at reporters over this decision.

TWO, TWO, TWO 2020s IN ONE!

● Pandemic Nightmare Returns. Supply Chains Stressed, Leading to Empty Store Shelves.

● Cha-Ching: Black Friday sales hit new record totals.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Broncos won’t have quarterbacks against Saints because of COVID contact concerns.

WITH A NAME THAT CONTROVERSIAL, THEY’RE DOOMED: ‘Students for Western Civilization’ wants to set up shop at Canadian university.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A SMALLER BLOG: Hopefully AOC’s grip on a cocktail shaker was better than her grip on economics. Because she knows nothing about economics. Let me explain.

CONSPIRACY TO INTERFERE WITH CIVIL RIGHTS: Incoming Texas freshmen threatened with doxxing if they join conservative campus groups.

AT AMAZON, Hot New Releases – Updated Every Hour.

Plus, Best Selling Products – Updated Every Hour.

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

IT’S EXTREMELY EASY IF YOU TRY. Thought experiment: Imagine if Iran had assassinated an Israeli nuclear scientist.

ROGER KIMBALL: Reality and the Narrative.

The strongest argument for Biden’s victory is not the vote tally. It is the monolithic narrative, pumped up like one of those inflatable play castles at a child’s birthday party. With every passing day, that narrative becomes more boisterous, more assertive, more uncompromising. It is a collective primal scream, emitted with eyes shut and ears plugged.

There is a problem for the narrative, however. Or more to the point, there are 73 million problems. A major concession in the Biden-won-give-it-up-narrative is revealed by the hawkers of the “Unity Now” meme. Let us all come together as one nation, under Joe, and reassert the American normality that has been so sorely missing under the despotic reign of Donald Trump.

No. No, that’s not going to fly, and not only because of the snarling viciousness that attended Donald Trump and his entire administration from the moment he was elected until now. Granted, Democrats are masters of hypocrisy. I will give them that. Brazenness is part of the formula. They are utterly unembarrassed by double standards. Indeed, they glory in them.

Plus: “Inquiring minds want to know, how is it possible that voter turnout in just those key cities in just those key states was so high: often 90 percent or more? How is it possible that Joe Biden, who barely campaigned, garnered more votes in just those spots than even Barack Obama had done? How is it possible that, as everyone was getting tucked into bed on the night of November 3, Donald Trump had notable leads in almost all of those states and then, suddenly, all at once, in the wee hours, floods of votes poured in and—wouldn’t you know it—they were overwhelmingly, sometimes exclusively, for Biden? And what about those voting machines from Dominion: are we confident that they are secure?”

Read the whole thing.

EVEN WITH FRAUD, “President Trump actually came closer to winning the presidency this year than Hillary Clinton did four years ago.”

JOHN KERRY, REPORTING FOR DOODY: Apparatchik John Kerry, Climate Czar.

Suppose you are a man with a long history of personal mediocrity in important positions. You aren’t quite as publicly toxic as, say, Hillary Clinton. But no one really respects you either. You’re old, 76. You’re definitely a “me too” lothario. You have said nothing notable in 35 years in the public eye, first as a U.S. Senator, then failed presidential candidate, and finally Secretary of State.

Your biggest success was in being the face of Obama’s Iran deal, the entire premise of which was to set up an untrustworthy, fundamentalist regime hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, and deeply hated by its own people, as a dominant regional power.

So which job do you get in a Joe Biden Administration?

Climate Czar!

For the sake of the nation’s economy, let’s hope Kerry is as useless at that job as he has been at everything else in the past:

HANNAH COX: How Big Government Stacked the Deck Against Small Business.

MICHAEL WALSH: Why traditional masculine attributes still matter on the battlefield.

Heroism — the willingness to put your life on the line for family, tribe, duty, honor, country and God in the face of the greatest possible adversity — used to be considered one of the foremost masculine virtues.

Indeed, the history of western civilization from the ancient Greeks to the recent present has been the history of heroism as well: the last stands at Thermopylae, Masada, the Swiss Guard at the Vatican in 1527, the Alamo, Khartoum, and Stalingrad are still names to conjure with, learn from, and celebrate.

Indeed, just 70 years ago this week, the First Marine Division fought its way into the pages of history with their gallant stand at the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea. In temperatures as low as minus-30 degrees, the Marines held off some 100,000 Chinese attackers and fought their way in hellish conditions back to the allied lines.

Today, however, we live in a decidedly unheroic age, one in which the traditional masculine attributes of courage, physical strength, and moral fortitude have been disparaged by feminists and soy boys nearly into oblivion.

QED: Sarah Fuller Becomes The First Woman To Play In A Major College Football Game. “Props to Fuller for carving out her place in history, but Vanderbilt is in trouble if this is where their kicking game is at.”

FOR A GUY WHO SUPPOSEDLY LOST, TRUMP SURE HAD COATTAILS. FOR A GUY WHO SUPPOSEDLY WON, BIDEN SURE DIDN’T. How Democrats Suffered Crushing Down-Ballot Losses Across America.

This year, Democrats targeted a dozen state legislative chambers where Republicans held tenuous majorities, including in Pennsylvania, Texas, Arizona, North Carolina and Minnesota. Their goal was to check the power of Republicans to redraw congressional and legislative districts in 2021, and to curb the rightward drift of policies from abortion to gun safety to voting rights.

In all cases, Democrats came up short. None of their targeted legislative chambers flipped, even though Biden carried many of the districts that down-ballot Democrats did not. It could make it harder for Democrats to retain a House majority in 2022.

They did badly in Congressional races, too.

CHANGE: Arab Nation UAE Denounces Muslim Brotherhood As ‘Terrorist Group.’