I HAD BEEN ASSURED IN 2009 THAT “BUSINESS CLIMATE” WAS A MYTH: New Wave of Optimism Prompts Business Investment: The ‘Trump Effect” Will Cause Leftist Heads to Explode.

THREE ADDITIONAL HORSEMEN TO FOLLOW: Talk about a new year! NYT praises Trump.

NEW YEAR’S DAY: Baltimore Police Investigating First Murders Of 2018.

NEWS FLASH: POLITICIANS CAUGHT POLITICKING. Democrats are already campaigning for 2020 — and so is Trump.

The “permanent campaign” was devised by Bill Clinton and his crew in the early ’90s, and instantly became the most exhausting and inescapable feature of American politics.

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN: Praise the Lord, Pass the Ammunition? Texas AG Says It’s OK to Pack Heat in Pews.

PETER KOHANLOO: An Iranian Revolution of National Dignity.

After nearly four decades of plunderous and fanatical Islamist rule, Iranians are desperate to become a normal nation-state once more, and they refuse to be exploited for an ideological cause that long ago lost its luster. It is a watershed moment in Iran’s history: The illusion of reform within the current theocratic system has finally been shattered. Iranians, you might say, are determined to make Iran great again.

Their movement is attuned to the worldwide spirit of nationalist renewal. From the U.S. to India, and from South Africa to Britain, political leaders and the voters who elect them are reaffirming the enduring value of the nation-state. Iran hasn’t been immured from these developments, as the slogans of the current protests indicate. No longer using the rights-based lexicon of votes and recounts, Iranians are instead demanding national dignity from a regime that for too long has subjugated Iranian-ness to its Shiite, revolutionary mission.

It’s notable, for example, that protestors chant “We Will Die to Get Iran Back,” “Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, My Life Only for Iran,” and “Let Syria Be, Do Something for Me.” Put another way: The people are tired of paying the price for the regime’s efforts to remake the region in its own image and challenge U.S. “hegemony.” Some have even taken to chanting “Reza Shah, Bless Your Soul,” expressing gratitude and nostalgia for the Pahlavi era, which saw the modern, pro-Western nation-state of Iran emerge from the shambles of the Persian Empire.

Read the whole thing.

BLUE ON BLUE: Senator Al Franken’s Resignation Is Deeply Unfair.

Michael Tomasky:

Sometime today, Al Franken will resign his Senate seat. The Democrats are hoping for a banner year, and from all indicators it looks like they’ll have one, and I hope they do—if they take back one house, this horrid Trump/GOP agenda is done for.

But the Democrats’ 2018 is sure getting off to a dubious start. Franken should not be going. When he announced his resignation on December 7, I wrote a column saying that Democrats would come to regret what they’d done to him. Nevertheless, I wrote, his resignation was probably the right and necessary thing under the circumstances.

The Twitter response to the piece was huge—about four or five times the normal response I get. And it was, as near as I can remember, literally unanimously in defense of Franken. This made me start rethinking things. Yes, I still think the Democrats will regret this. But was his resignation really the right and necessary thing?

Right or wrong, it was probably the inevitable thing in the Left’s ever-escalating, hyper-competitive victimhood Olympics.

BLUE STATE BLUES: Baltimore breaks city record for killings per capita in 2017.

A surge of homicides in the starkly divided city resulted in 343 killings in 2017, bringing the annual homicide rate to its highest ever – roughly 56 killings per 100,000 people. Baltimore, which has shrunk over decades, currently has about 615,000 inhabitants.

“Not only is it disheartening, it’s painful,” Mayor Catherine Pugh told The Associated Press during the final days of 2017, her first year in office.

The main reasons are the subject of endless interpretation. Some attribute the increase to more illegal guns, the fallout of the opioid epidemic, or systemic failures like unequal justice and a scarcity of decent opportunities for many citizens. The tourism-focused Inner Harbor and prosperous neighborhoods such as Canton and Mount Vernon are a world away from large sections of the city hobbled by generational poverty.

Generational poverty, eh?

OUCH: Health Insurance Premiums Rising as High as 265% in Virginia This Year.

POWER PLAY: Beijing is pursuing a complex strategy to corner natural resources.

By building cascades of large dams on international rivers just before they leave its territory, China is re-engineering cross-border natural flows. Among the rivers it has targeted are the Mekong, the lifeline of South East Asia, and the Brahmaputra, the lifeblood for Bangladesh and north-eastern India.

With the world’s most resource-hungry economy, China has gone into overdrive to corner natural resources. On the most essential resource, freshwater, it is seeking to become the upstream controller by manipulating trans-boundary flows through dams and other structures.

China now controls vast transnational water resources. By forcibly absorbing Asia’s “water tower”, the Tibetan plateau, in 1951, it gained a throttlehold over the headwaters of Asia’s major river systems. Its actions in more recent years have sought to build water leverage over its downstream neighbours.

Such an approach has fostered increasing water-related tensions with India, most of whose northern rivers originate in Tibet. In 2017, in violation of two legally binding bilateral accords, China refused to supply hydrological data to India.

The most disturbing part of this report might be that China already feels it can act with such impunity — which is exactly how rising world powers stumble into regrettable (and major) wars.

REALITY BITES: Deep Freeze Ends a Dreadful 2017 for Climate Activists.

Folks are being warned about the health risks associated with sub-zero temperatures, which could last beyond the first week of the year and stretch as far south as east Texas. It’s even too cold for the most intrepid thrill-seekers: Cities are canceling the Polar Bear Plunge on New Year’s Day due to inhumane air and water temperatures.

It marks a frustrating end to a dreadful year for climate-change activists, who have been frozen out of the Trump Administration. After Trump’s election, environmentalists prophesied the end times, labeling the president and his advisors “anti-science” and bracing for catastrophe. Climate scientists and bureaucrats at scientific agencies reached out for counseling, seeking ways to cope with life under the Trump regime; many have resigned “in disgust.”

But for once, the climate crowd’s “dire” predictions came true. Our “Denier-in-Chief” wasted no time dismantling Obama’s climate change legacy by appointing climate skeptics to fill top cabinet posts, exiting the Paris Climate Accord, repealing the Clean Power Plan, scrubbing government websites of climate change references, and promoting American fossil-fuel use abroad. If this wasn’t bad enough for them, now the climate crowd is trying incoherently to explain to frigid Americans — who are muttering “global warming, my ass” under their double – wrapped scarves—how this frigid weather is actually caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

You’d think all the hot air would warm things up at least some, but no.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: The Obama-Iran Twidiot Brigade and Much, Much More.

HOW NOT TO FIGHT INFLATION, EXAMPLE #100,000,000,006: Venezuela raises minimum wage by 40% as economic crisis deepens.

President Nicolas Maduro said the new pay level would protect workers against what he called Washington’s “economic war” on socialism.

But most economists say his socialist government is in fact stoking a vicious cycle in a country already wrestling with the world’s fastest inflation.

The new minimum wage will come into force in January, President Maduro announced during a televised end-of-year speech, and follows six previous pay hikes in 2017.

The move is intended to counter quickening inflation coupled with a depreciating bolivar, a situation that has plunged millions of people into poverty in the once-thriving oil-rich nation.

Venezuelans will now earn at least 797,510 bolivars a month, factoring in food tickets – or just over $7 (£5.10) on the widely used black market index. Millions will still be unable to afford three meals a day or basic medicine, while the increase is likely to stoke inflation further.

Maduro’s socialist government is in effect fighting cancer with cigarets.

SICK: After “swatting” death in Kansas, 25-year old arrested in Los Angeles.

Tyler Barriss, a 25-year old from South Los Angeles, was taken into custody Friday night, according to the local ABC News affiliate. (ABC also notes that “Glendale police arrested a 22-year-old man with the same name for making bomb threats to KABC-TV” back in 2015.) NBC News, speaking to unnamed local “sources” in LA, says that Barriss “had been living at a transitional recovery center.”

Barriss is alleged to have a called in a lengthy threat to Wichita police on Thursday night after a Call of Duty game in which two teammates got into an altercation over a $1.50 wager. Screenshots posted to various Twitter accounts show the dispute escalating. Shortly thereafter, the Wichita police received a call alleging that someone at that address had killed his father, taken his family hostage, poured gasoline around the home, and was ready to light it on fire. Cops descended on the area and cordoned it off. When 28-year old Andrew Fitch opened the front door of his home to see why all the lights were flashing outside, he was shot and killed.

More:

What happened next was broken down on Friday by the Wichita police in a press conference, which you can watch online. According to the officer giving the briefing, a threatening call came in to City Hall at around 6:15pm local time. The caller said he had shot his dad in the head and was holding his mother and brother in the closet. He had a black handgun and wanted to kill himself. The call apparently continued for a full 20 minutes, even as police dispatch was looped in and officers headed to the scene.

Once there, police surrounded the Fitch residence. Andrew Fitch opened the door, saw police cars all over the place, and heard a police officer with a drawn weapon begin to shout at him: “Walk this way!” (You can see the whole ghastly incident, as captured on police cameras at the scene, along with the 911 call that began it, on the Wichita Police Facebook page. The camera footage comes at the end.)

Fitch appears confused and drops his hands, then a police spotlight shines on him, and he appears to raise his hands again. In the middle of a police officer shouting, “Walk this way!” a second time, a single shot rings out, killing Fitch.

The call and the video are on Facebook here.

This is next-level doxxing, gaming America’s militarized police departments to try and settle private disputes with deadly effect. Fitch was not even involved in the dispute, and as one Facebook commenter noted, “No one was in any actual danger before the police arrived.”

MICHAEL WALSH: The Left Just Can’t Wait for the 2018 Elections.

CHANGE: Playboy Might Kill Magazine to Focus on ‘World of Playboy.’ “Company switches focus to licensing, branding deals in post-Hefner era.”

More:

Playboy Enterprises Inc.’s controlling shareholder—private-equity firm Rizvi Traverse—is in talks to acquire the 35% stake Mr. Hefner left in trust to his heirs, a person familiar with the matter said. At the same time, the company says it is doubling down on efforts to make money from brand partnerships and licensing deals built around the Playboy name, ethos and bunny logo, with increasingly less focus on its editorial roots.

“We want to focus on what we call the ‘World of Playboy’ which is so much larger than a small, legacy print publication,” said Ben Kohn, a managing partner at Rizvi who took over as Playboy Enterprises’ chief executive in May 2016. “We plan to spend 2018 transitioning it from a media business to a brand-management company.”

Mr. Hefner’s death will hasten that transition. Rizvi, which helped him take Playboy private in 2011 in return for control of nearly two-thirds of the company, had agreed to continue publishing its flagship magazine while he remained alive. The deal also granted Mr. Hefner some ability to approve or block certain deals, people familiar with the arrangement said. Those rights don’t pass to his heirs.

It’s something of a miracle that there’s a Playboy magazine left to be shut down.

NICK FURY COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Air Force Could Test “Flying Aircraft Carriers” as Early as Next Year.

We’ve been watching this particular hush-hush DARPA project for more than two years now. In a nutshell, it calls for the creation of a new class of small, reusable drones that can be launched midair from a C-130 air transport, disperse to surveil (or, depending on the payload, attack) targets as much as 300 miles away, then return to their flying airbase to dock for refueling and rearming.

Basically, Gremlins will be flying, warlike Roombas, but supersized — big enough to carry 60 pounds of payload each.

According to our friends at Scout Warrior, who’ve also been following this project closely, one key objective of the Gremlins is to extend the range at which U.S. air forces can operate in a contested environment characterized by an adversary employing A2/AD (anti-access/aerial-denial) tactics. These include the use of cruise missiles to keep aircraft carriers at bay, forcing airplanes to fly long distances to reach their targets, and surface-to-air missiles, which make it hazardous for nonstealthy aircraft to get too close to hostile territory by air.

Obviously, nonstealthy C-130 air transports aren’t the best way to penetrate such defenses. After Phase 3 of the Gremlins project is complete, the Air Force will probably want to order up a stealthy “mothership” to take over the role of “flying aircraft carrier.” Such a mothership — perhaps a modified version of Northrop Grumman’s new B-21 bomber, or the yet-to-be revealed carrier-launched MQ-25 Stingray, could fulfill this role.

One of the Air Force’s early requirements for the new B-21 is that it be able to perform its missions manned or unmanned. If it does take on the “mothership” role, we could have drones flying drones.

HMM: Trump’s Initial Outreach to North Korea Backfired.

The Associated Press reported early Saturday that in the first month of U.S. President Donald Trump’s term in office, he sent “an American scholar” to meet with North Korean officials and to relay a message.

The message was that the new administration was appreciative of a nearly four-month freeze of the North’s nuclear and ballistic missile tests – and thought it “might just offer a ray of hope,” the news agency said in its account.

However, the AP reported North Korean officials said the lack of testing wasn’t a sign of conciliation and insisted Kim Jong Un would order tests whenever he wanted. Two days later, the North launched a new medium-range missile, ushering in a year of escalating tensions.

This new report hardly jibes with the handwringing early last year that the new Trump Administration’s loudmouth antics would cause us to stumble into war with North Korea.

DORSA DERAKHSHANI: Why I Left Iran to Play Chess in America.

Chess — a game that I have loved since I first sat down at a board — is pure. It doesn’t care about gender, ethnicity, nationality, status or politics. But too often the countries, organizations and people who enforce the rules in the world of chess are anything but.

This is a subject I know something about.

I was the second-highest-ranked player for girls under 18 in the world in 2016. I am the second-highest-ranked female chess player in Iranian history. And yet my passion for the game has taken me thousands of miles away from my home in Tehran to seek citizenship here in the United States.

From 2011 until 2015 I played for the Iranian national team. I had to follow the official Iranian dress code, which requires women to cover their hair in public. I understood that being a member of the team meant that I was an official representative of the country, so I never broke the rules. But I chafed under them.
…
Unlike on the Iranian team, I am now surrounded by people who respect me as a player and don’t care or notice what I look like. Unlike on the Iranian team, where the officials could ignore a player’s earned right to play a tournament and replace that player with someone they preferred, here the rules are consistent and fair.

In this sense, America at its best reflects the best values of chess. Chess doesn’t care how old you are or what you wear. It doesn’t care about what gender you are, or how much money you have. It is blind to all of that. It cares only about merit.

Read the whole thing.

PHIL BAKER: Worst High-Tech Disasters of 2017.

HOW DO I COUNT THE WAYS? How the ‘feminist’ left let women down in 2017.

ACTUALLY, MORE OF IT WOULD BE BETTER. Get a Grip: Trump Derangement Syndrome in Public Is Not Okay.

Steve’s Second Law of Holes says, “When your opponent is in one, hand him a bigger shovel.”

SO IT’S COME TO THIS: Leftists search for hidden meaning after Jared Kushner photobombed by Confederate flag.

THESE ARE HEINLEIN’S “CRAZY YEARS” — WE JUST LIVE IN THEM: “TransKids” Site Sells Prosthetic Penises For “Trans” Little Girls To Wear.

BUT OF COURSE: Arab DNC Leader Denounces Rachael Ray’s ‘Cultural Genocide’ in Calling Food ‘Israeli.’