JOHN HINDERAKER VISITS ENGLAND, bumps into Mark Steyn at breakfast.

UM: Wait, whut?! Biden’s Nantucket Secret Service rental vehicles burst into flames. “The vehicles were parked at the Nantucket airport and the blaze reportedly spread to just 40 feet away from the facility’s jet fuel tanks. It is currently unknown what caused the fire. Fox News reached out to the White House for information, but they did not immediately respond.” Plus: “That is going to be one interesting peek under what’s left of the hood. All five vehicles accompanying the president mysteriously and spontaneously combust in the rental drop-off parking lot after he leaves?”

Probably environmental terrorists unhappy with his carbon footprint. I mean, they weren’t Chevy Bolts, so . . .

Or somebody was destroying evidence. Always a possibility these days.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Anti-Xi protests should end American left’s China envy.

OPEN THREAD: It’s there. It’s there for you. It’s what you want.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Bar Association Drops LSAT Requirement to Increase Diversity in Law School.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: NYC Mom Hired ‘Deprogrammer’ for Daughter ‘Brainwashed’ by College’s Woke Agenda.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Building on the moon: NASA awards Texas company $57 million for lunar construction system.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Tim Cook Says He’s Ready To Pull Twitter From App Store Once President Xi Gives The Order.

BREAKING NEWS FROM 2000! Increasingly, Trust in Election Outcomes Appears Dangerously Partisan.

NOW THE TRUTH CAN BE TOLD:

In focusing on America’s rising rates of violent crime leading up to the midterm elections, Republicans were routinely accused of playing a dirty trick on voters.

“We don’t really have a common definition of what crime means,” crime-statistics analyst Jeff Asher asserted in an October interview with NPR. Apparently, the range of activities that constituted a violation of statute made it difficult to discern what voters meant when they said “crime.” And when “crime” wasn’t a nebulous concept that eluded the unsophisticated, it was cast as a problem presided over by Republicans. “Research has repeatedly shown that crime is rising faster in Republican, Trump-supporting states,” wrote Clinton-era Labor Sec. Robert Reich. It certainly wasn’t rising in cities led by lenient progressive prosecutors, as the Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein noted, citing the entirely dispassionate research produced by the Center for American Progress. Indeed, violent crimes such as homicides and rapes were down in 2022, according to the FBI’s midyear survey. “Violent crime is not soaring,” Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank asserted. “In fact, it might be declining.”

These formless arguments orbit around one animating imperative: Neutralize the crime issue. In no less a venue than the Associated Press, a mid-2021 article previewed this approach by castigating the GOP for failing to make sufficient note of (at the time) declining rates of drug offenses and burglaries while recklessly emphasizing your increased risk of being murdered by a stranger. The GOP was deploying “a new twist on an old ‘law and order’ argument from the party’s past, harkening back to President Richard Nixon.” The GOP failed to make note of the “complicated reasons for fluctuating crime rates” in 2020 and early 2021, such as the “protests that erupted after the killing of George Floyd by police”—which were accompanied by a lot of crime and a muted response from law enforcement.

Now that the election has passed, the truth can be told. Indeed, the truth was lacking only in one vital attribute: an angle.

Regarding the AP: “‘Gaslighting’ is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2022,” they report.

Speaking of mush from the wimp, I give the Biden administration credit for the rise of “gaslighting” to prominence in 2022. However, you will find nary a hint of the administration’s possible contribution to its popularity in the AP story. I pride myself in not having used the word so far in 2022. It has become a mind-numbing cliché. I can’t afford to lose the brain cells.

Of course “gaslighting” is the word of the year — Obama or retreads from his administration are in the Oval Office:

WITH HELP FROM APPLE AND THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: China’s security apparatus swings into action to smother Covid protests.

I WAS TOLD THAT WEED WAS THE ONLY THING THAT WORKED FOR CANCER PATIENTS: “Our study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests cannabis is no better at relieving pain than a placebo.”

IN FACT, IT SUPPORTS IT: The Biden Administration Is Unwilling to Oppose Discrimination Against Men.

Men are, on average, disadvantaged relative to women in several key respects in developed countries such as the United States. Men are the majority of prisoners and the majority of the homeless. Men live shorter lives in part due to higher rates of suicide and workplace deaths. Bias against male defendants may contribute to sex disparities in the American criminal justice system, including in the administration of the death penalty. American women control 60 percent of personal wealth and make or influence 85 percent of all consumer purchases.

Poorer outcomes for men may stem in part from structural inequalities in the American education system. About 77 percent of teachers in the public education system are women. Girls get higher grades than boys in all subjects. Several studies suggest that stereotyping can bias teachers’ assessment and grading against boys. The U.S. Department of Education has for some time steadily and selectively limited athletic opportunities for men. High school boys are much more likely to face (often counterproductive) disciplinary actions such as suspensions or expulsion than are girls. Women compose an ever-increasing majority of college students nationwide. The overwhelming majority of those sanctioned in schools under Title IX rules are male, and the majority of Title IX administrators are women.

The federal government is only widening these gender disparities.

All true.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Celebrities Cut Ties With Balenciaga After MyPillow Spotted In Photo Shoot.

JULIETTE OCHIENG: That Time When Some Carcass-Worshiper Called Me A House Negro Because I Suspected the Motives of Muslims.

To those whose male ancestors survived American Slavery long enough to ensure that the former would be alive in the twenty-first century and, therefore, be able to refer to me as a House Negro for suspecting the motives of the putative builders of the “Ground Zero” Mosque, I feel pity.

That pity is mixed with a sense of astonishment, however, at this conclusion: that so many black people are so well indoctrinated with perpetual anger at the sins of America’s past, that they would ignore the more egregious sins of Islam’s present and desired future.

To be fair, lots of white people are the same.

IS APPLE HELPING THE CHINESE SQUASH DISSENTERS? “In other words, Chinese iPhone users can’t do or say anything without the CCP knowing about it. Dissent can be quashed before it even starts. The Chinese people can be kept under the CCP’s thumb. And Apple is helping. . . . Here’s a theory: They’re not the good guys anymore, if they ever were. They hate free speech, anywhere it threatens to flourish.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why Honda Shifters Are So Good.

ONE’S FASTER, ONE’S COOLER: 2022 Lamborghini Countach LPI 800-4 Meets the 1990 Lamborghini Countach 25th Anniversary Edition.

SOMETIMES IT TAKES A SHOEHORN AND AXLE GREASE TO FIT A STORY INTO THE PROPER NARRATIVE: Focus on the Family Blamed for Club Q Shooting Despite Jim Daly Condemnation, Suspect’s Non-Binary Identity.

I HAD BEEN ASSURED BY POTUS HIMSELF THAT COVID WAS OVER: White House COVID Doc: The Way to ‘Move on’ From COVID Is Endless Boosters.

READER FAVORITE: Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Generation) Wireless Earbuds. #CommissionEarned

ED MORRISSEY: NBC’s Mystery of the Week: Where in the world is Miguel Almaguer after Pelosi-report retraction? “The feds don’t want to correct the record in their indictment for a reason. They don’t want to have to raise that question in court, or in the court of public opinion either. Why? We certainly can speculate on that point.”

COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: Caffeine gets you to the finish line faster, reveals new study on sprint performance.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Hyperventilating About Kanye Can’t Hide The Left’s Antisemitism Double Standard.

IT’S UNWISE TO ADOPT LEFTY GOODTHINK PHRASES LIKE “AFFIRMATIVE SURGERY”: Transgender Women Now Issued ‘New Vagina Manuals’ Following Affirmative Surgery.