WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: COPD patient receives world’s first robotic double lung transplant.

WISE ADVICE FOR TRUMPERS FROM A REAGAN VETERAN: Donald Devine served for more than four years as “Reagan’s Terrible Swift Sword” at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

That’s the federal agency that manages the career civil service. It’s not a cabinet-level position, but OPM can be among the two or three most powerful tools for a president intent on fixing things rather than merely talking about them.

Devine led the team of Reagan appointees at OPM (of which, yes, I was proudly one) that eliminated more than 100,000 unnecessary government jobs, reduced the cost of civil service health benefits while expanding the choices available, made pay dependent upon job performance for career workers, increased accountability among career senior executives, and changed federal retirement from a defined benefit program with an unfunded liability of more than $560 billion to a defined contribution program.

Achieving those goals required daily hand-to-hand political combat with the Mainstream Media, Democrats who controlled Congress and federal employee unions and professional associations. But Devine had Reagan’s support, he stood fast and fought the hard fights, and won most of them. The first major steps toward fundamental reform of the workforce were accomplished.

These matters are even more central in the Washington about to enter the second Trump era. The career bureaucracy is the foundation of the Administrative State that has been weaponized by the Left and turned the federal government into a sprawling behemoth the Founders would instantly recognize as an enemy of individual liberty and republican governance. Trump didn’t appreciate how important personnel was in his first term. There are signs today that Trump learned some hard lessons in that regard and is proceeding accordingly.

The incoming Chief Executive, his White House Chief of Staff Susan Wiles (with whom I worked for a time in the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign), and all of his principal assistants would do well to sit down and carefully read Devine’s latest contribution to The American Spectator, “Controversial Appointees, Clay Pigeons, and Successful Government Politics.”

And Wiles and Stephen Miller in particular will find much wise insight and practical smarts about how to manage political bureaucracies at every level of the federal establishment in Devine’s other book of note in these matters – “Political Management of the Bureaucracy: A Guide to Reform and Control.”

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Pennsylvania Supreme Court Upholds State’s Firearms Preemption Law.

BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Cream, with 4.5% Squalane to Strengthen Skin’s Moisture Barrier. #CommissionEarned

“I CARRY:” Smith & Wesson Bodyguard 2.0 Pistol in a Galco Holster. I recently purchased the Bodyguard 2.0 for pocket carry in a sticky holster and I’m quite happy with it. I’ve put a couple of hundred rounds through it so far with no malfunctions; it’ll take a couple of hundred more before I’m ready to actually carry it, but it’s smooth and accurate — much more comfortable to shoot than my Ruger LCP.

From the article: “In the end, choosing between a small .380 ACP pistol and a larger 9 mm comes down to the intended use, skill level of the user and external factors like the need for absolute concealment. With the Bodyguard 2.0, it’s now a lot less of a compromise, and that’s a good thing indeed.”

READER FAVORITE: Apple AirTag 4 Pack. #CommissionEarned

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A MUCH BIGGER BLOG: What Modern Socialists Don’t Want You To Know About Hitler.

I sat down with historian, sociologist, and author Dr. Rainer Zitelmann to learn about the misunderstood economic philosophy of Adolf Hitler and the true meaning of national socialism. Drawing from his book “Hitler’s National Socialism,” Rainer explains how Hitler’s economic policies blended the planned economy of Stalin’s Soviet Union with social Darwinist beliefs, attempting to harness the benefits of competition toward the single-minded objectives of the state. We explore the key differences between national socialism, fascism, and communism, and why many people today fail to grasp the lessons of 20th-century totalitarian regimes. While the battle between capitalism and socialism continues, Rainer highlights historical case studies in East and West Germany, North and South Korea, Venezuela, Vietnam, and China, proving that economic freedom is the key to human flourishing.

Via Dennis of Small Dead Animals, who notes, “Zitelmann chats on Dad Saves America about the appalling and consistent lack of understanding of Adolf Hitler’s concept of National Socialism. One idea that just won’t die for the left is the spurious notion that Hitler was an advocate of capitalism, despite his advocacy of four year plans and strict government control over the economy.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Stanford expert on ‘lying and technology’ accused of lying about technology.

On Nov. 1, Jeff Hancock, a well-known and oft-cited researcher who leads the Bay Area school’s Social Media Lab, filed an expert declaration in a Minnesota court case over the state’s new ban on political deepfakes. Republicans have sued to block the ban, arguing it’s an unconstitutional limit on free speech. Hancock defended the law in his declaration, explaining how artificial intelligence makes it easier to fabricate videos and discussed deepfakes’ psychological impacts. But he seems to have made an ironic mistake.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why do humans have toenails?

EMPEROR ZOOLANDER FIDDLES: Watch: Pro-Hamas Simps Destroy Montreal While Justin Trudeau Dances at a Taylor Swift Concert.

Related: This is the way.

Notice Calgary has had no riots.

That's because when the pro-Hama shitbags set up at University of Calgary they were evicted by force within a day.

When the pro-Hamas shitbags blocked a road last week, they were forcefully removed in less than an hour.

Quit trying to indulge… https://t.co/QokMhYo5UE

— Cory Morgan (@CoryBMorgan) November 23, 2024

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Rocket Report: Next Vulcan launch slips into 2025; Starship gets a green light.

GRAVY TRAIN DERAILS AT MSNBC: Top Anchors Face Huge Pay Cut After Comcast Severs Ties With Left-Wing Network.

Comcast is finally cutting ties with MSNBC, the media conglomerate announced Wednesday. That’s bad news for the exorbitantly compensated and increasingly unhinged personalities who call the left-wing network home (for now). MSNBC and other declining television assets—but not the reality TV powerhouse Bravo—will be spun off into a new publicly traded company by the end of next year. That means MSNBC will soon be divorced from the ostensibly more serious and less overtly partisan NBC News, which routinely shares reportage, fact-checking (if you can call it that), and contributors with its sister network. Comcast brass on Wednesday told MSNBC staffers that  the network’s name and peacock logo might not survive the breakup. The outrageously inflated salaries of the network’s top anchors almost definitely won’t.

The move suggests Comcast executives can no longer justify to shareholders the enormous incomes of “star” hosts such as Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, and Joy Reid. MSNBC and other Comcast-owned cable networks continue to make money, but those profits have declined substantially in recent years. That explains why executives and investors are eager to rid themselves of the “declining assets.” Comcast’s stock price rose in after-hours trading on Tuesday after news of the decision was leaked to the press. MSNBC’s hosts have had a good run, earning sizable fortunes preaching partisan hysteria to a dwindling audience of elderly viewers. In the week following this year’s election, the network drew just 65,000 primetime viewers in the coveted 25-54 age demographic, less than 10 percent of total viewers.

So what happened to cable TV division of the DNC-MSM? Man who hosts podcasts that can run over three hours is unusually succinct: Joe Rogan’s brutal five-word explanation for why liberal media is ‘hemorrhaging’ audiences.

Joe Rogan has claimed liberal media outlets are hemorrhaging readers due to Americans no longer trusting them.

Rogan, 57, had been speaking about a recent op-ed from Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, adding: ‘you’re not accurate, you’re delusional.’

Bezos had published the opinion piece, titled ‘The hard truth: Americans don’t trust the news media’, in late October.

In it, Bezos said: ‘It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility.

‘Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.‘

The comedian and UFC commentator said Bezos’ observations seem to be playing out across the media landscape.
He said: ‘I was just reading something about CNN’s ratings and MSNBC’s ratings post-election. All these left-wing kooks on YouTube are hemorrhaging subscribers.

‘Where people go, ‘you guys are out of touch, you’re not accurate, you’re delusional’.’

‘People are speaking with their subscriptions and they’re speaking with their purchasing of the Washington Post and their purchasing of the New York Times.’

At the 1992 Republican convention, Washington Post employee Ginny Carroll wore a button that said “Yeah, I’m in the Media, Screw You!” Finally, enough angry readers and viewers have returned the favor.

QED: Doom Spiral: The Liberal Washington Post is on Track to Lose a Whopping $77 Million This Year.

THE HONEYMOON IS OVER: Trump’s Pick for Labor Secretary Is a Teachers’ Union Fave.

Hard to believe, but Donald Trump on Friday night nominated a favorite of teachers union chief Randi Weingarten as his Labor Secretary. Why would Mr. Trump want to empower labor bosses who oppose his economic agenda and spent masses to defeat him?

Mr. Trump’s regrettable choice is Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Ms. Weingarten on Thursday tweeted her support for the freshman Republican. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, who spoke at the Republican National Convention, has also been pulling for her. In a Truth Social post, Mr. Trump said she’ll work toward “historic cooperation between Business and Labor.” But Ms. Chavez-DeRemer has backed union giveaways like the Pro Act, which are not “cooperation.”

Another potentially bad pick: Trump picks Dr. Janette Nesheiwat as nation’s next surgeon general.

What could go wrong?

Janette Nesheiwat endorsed masks for children, promoted COVID vaccination for all age groups, and approved of censorship by social media companies. pic.twitter.com/8UHq7B4YLk

— TechJudge (@techjudge) November 23, 2024

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: How a Series of Selfies Led to a Killer’s Conviction.

A series of selfies taken by a murderer helped a prosecution build a damning case against him and put the killer behind bars.

On Wednesday, Jose Ibarra was found guilty of the murder of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley.

Riley was murdered while she was out for a run at the University of Georgia campus in Athens, Georgia on the morning of February 22, 2024. During the trial, prosecutors argued that Ibarra killed Riley after she fought off his attempt to rape her.

Ibarra was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was convicted on three counts of felony murder and counts of malice murder, kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated assault with intent to rape, and “peeping Tom” (in a separate incident earlier that day).

Last week, FBI Special Agent Jamie Hipkiss took the stand and showed the court numerous selfies taken on Ibarra’s phone that showed him wearing the same clothes as the suspect seen in surveillance footage on the day of Riley’s death.

It’s 21st century America in a nutshell: cellphone addiction, moral narcissism, and while photography Website PetaPixel apparently doesn’t want to mention this to upset their more delicate readers, an incredibly violent illegal immigrant, but then they’re far from alone regarding that last detail:

I’m not sure what’s worse. Joe Biden apologizing for calling Laken Riley’s killer an illegal alien or Jonathan Capehart all but demanding he do so. https://t.co/CsMgVxNqTF

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) November 20, 2024

THERE’S A DOWNSIDE TO EVERYTHING: Study: Weight-loss meds like Ozempic might increase food waste.

SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: ‘Visibly startled’ garden gnome made of Ecstasy found in Netherlands drugs raid.

Police found a garden gnome weighing nearly 2kg and made of the drug Ecstasy during a raid in the Netherlands.

The gnome was found among a stash of narcotics and seized by officers in the southern province Noord-Brabant during a large drug search.

“Drugs appear in many shapes and sizes, but every now and then we come across special things,” the Dongemond regional police said in a social media post.

They said the garden gnome was “in a strange place”, prompting them to test it for narcotics.

This is your garden gnome. This is your garden gnome on molly. Any questions?

THE DEEPEST CIRCLE OF HELL IS RESERVED FOR THOSE WHO BETRAY A BENEFACTOR: Venezuelan migrant charged with raping his boss’ 14-year-old daughter while living in their Colorado home.

SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST:

Judging by Thursday night’s wintry Steelers at Browns game, where Amazon resorted to digital technology to display a virtual gridiron under all of the powder,  and sports fans debated replacing Huntington Bank Field with a domed stadium, Cleveland hasn’t gotten the “end of snow” message just yet:

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Dance Craze Transition Edition.

READER FAVORITE: Flying Orb Ball, 2023 Upgraded Galaxy ball Toy. #CommissionEarned

GRADUALLY, THEN SUDDENLY: How Harris Lost the ‘Weird’ War.

When CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski reported on Harris’s 2019 comments, anchor Erin Burnett responded: “taxpayer-funded gender transition surgery for detained migrants—she actually said she supported that?” Burnett later added, “these are things that—it would be hard to think that you would come up with taxpayer-funded gender transitions for detained migrants.”

In other words, as an individual policy, it’s perhaps not terribly meaningful. But it’s weird.

In a new essay for New York magazine, Simon van Zuylen-Wood writes about “the Democratic Party’s break with reality,” as seen through the lens of Donald Trump’s increased voter support in New York City, of all places. He recalls that he had thought Harris might be in trouble earlier in the campaign when he started seeing the surging popularity in Brooklyn of the camouflage trucker hats sold by the Harris-Walz campaign. It was one of the cartoonish ways in which the Harris campaign tried to appeal to “normal” voters.

“Scanning as working class, the hats seemed to be worn exclusively by people who didn’t match that description,” van Zuylen-Wood notices. “They reminded me of the Big Buck Hunter arcade game at a bar near the campus of my elite college, which lent wry ‘authenticity’ to the setting and whose plastic rifles were the only kind most of us had any interest in handling. I wondered if some of the hat wearers were in on the joke or simply liked the aesthetic. But some of these people looked sincere, as though they felt the hats really reflected the campaign’s resonance with regular folks.”

Sure enough, it turned out that the people who bought the hats and voted for Harris were all just guessing at what normal people were like. The whole attempt at simulating normalcy was weird.

Back in August, Bari Weiss’ Free Press had a short post on Kamala’s camouflaged caps: No, the Harris-Walz Camo Cap Is Not for Rednecks. It’s an appeal to girls and gays:

[T]he camo hats—which sold out earlier this month, netting nearly $1 million for the Harris campaign—were made for girls and gays, not deer-hunting rednecks in Alabama. They are actually a nod to pop singer Chappell Roan, a lesbian and self-proclaimed “drag queen” who sells a nearly identical hat on her own website, except the slogan is “Midwest Princess,” in reference to her hit album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.

Kamala’s camo hat is meant to appeal to people who know what Chappell Roan merch looks like—almost definitionally people who would have voted for Kamala Harris anyway. It follows the Harris campaign’s embrace of the “Brat” aesthetic, inspired by British musician Charli XCX’s album of the same name. As a member of the target audience for this sort of thing, I must ask: How many gay guys do Democrats think there are in this country?!

Much less than the straight guys that camp Kamala completely ignored – or dismissed over their “toxic masculinity” or compared to National Socialists – only to suddenly wonder why men are listening to (or watching on YouTube) Joe Rogan’s podcasts and voting for the candidate he endorsed, while Democrats Bud Lighted their brand.

HENCE TRUMP’S PICKS FOR FDA AND NIH:

So what are the odds of a second COVID event in a second Trump administration?https://t.co/nD17x2JT9s

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) November 22, 2024

HOW STUPID ARE THEY? THIS STUPID. Notre Dame apologizes after telling hockey fans not to wear green, Shamrocks, ‘Fighting Irish.’

UNIVERSITY OF DENIAL: U. Minnesota activists still protesting Trump win two weeks after the fact.

BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: Le Creuset Classic Cast Iron Handle Skillet, 9″, Marseille. #CommissionEarned