THAT NEW CAR SMELL: Toyota’s New Power Plant Will Create Clean Energy from Manure.

HAIL, BRITANNIA: Medical issues affect British army readiness as one in five soldiers — about 18,000 — is unable to participate in full combat situations.

Conservative Member of Parliament, Andrew Bowie, a former naval officer, uncovered the figures through a written response to a parliamentary question.

“I think these figures are very worrying,” Bowie told The Independent. “Far from the 82,000 soldiers that the British army is supposed to have, it seems that, when medically unavailable soldiers are taken into account, it is more like 60,000.

“This gap is placing a huge burden on an already overstretched Army required to carry out the roles the government asks them to do on our behalf.”

For perspective on the size of today’s army, Britain suffered almost 60,000 casualties on the first day of the Somme.

WE’LL FIND OUT SOON ENOUGH: Franken’s office disputes report that he plans to resign.

When Minnesota Public Radio reported late Wednesday that Franken planned to resign on Thursday, Franken’s office denied it on Twitter.

“Not accurate,” the tweeted stated. “No final decision has been made and the Senator is still talking with his family.”

The tweet capped a long day of calls for Franken to step aside, starting with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) Wednesday morning.

“Enough is enough,” she told reporters at a news conference. “We need to draw a line in the sand and say none of it is okay, none of it is acceptable. We as elected leaders should absolutely be held to a higher standard, not a lower standard, and we should fundamentally be valuing women. That is where this debate has to go.”

Franken’s office said he would make an announcement about his political future on Thursday. No other details were provided.

Stay tuned…

TECH WARS: Amazon Fires Back after Google Removes YouTube from Fire TV.

FROM THE VAULTS: 6 Tom Petty Albums That Need to Be Released Soon.

IT’S OFFICIAL — NOW EVERYTHING IS OVER-HOPPED: Scientists turn beer into fuel.

NORTH KOREA: Piggy Brother Is Watching You.

SPOILER ALERT: YES. Can ‘Feminist’ Lena Dunham Sink Any Lower?

THEY ALL KNEW: Harvey Weinstein’s Web of Complicity Included National Enquirer and CAA.

According to the Times, at least eight agents at Creative Artists Agency were aware that Weinstein had sexually harassed or threatened female clients, yet the agency continued to do business with him and send actresses to meet with him.

The story also details Weinstein’s close relationship with tabloid journalists, detailing how Weinstein would provide tips to reporters about others in exchange for killing stories about his infidelities. The story also documents Weinstein’s close relationship with Bill and Hillary Clinton, and discloses that Weinstein was involved in a documentary project about Hillary Clinton until revelations of his sexual misconduct came to light.

Bryan Lourd, the managing partner of CAA, declined to tell the Times whether he was aware of the allegations against Weinstein, citing client confidentiality. In a statement in response to the story, CAA apologized to clients who were “let down,” and vowed to use its influence and resources “to help create permanent change.”

I’ll believe in permanent change when managers like Lourd are permanently canned.

FOLLOW ME: Most U.S. airlines set to limit use of ‘smart bags.’

The bags generally have USB ports where customers can recharge their phones and other devices. They might also have GPS to track the bag’s location in case it gets lost, electronic locks and a weight scale to prevent overpacking. Some even a motor to propel the bags so that they can double as a scooter or just follow their owner around the airport.

Airlines are worried that the batteries could cause a fire in the cargo hold that would go undetected. Most of the bans will allow fliers to check the bags if the battery can be removed and carried by the passenger in the cabin. But many of the bags already on the market have batteries that can’t be removed.

American was the first U.S. carrier to announce a new policy Friday to require passengers checking smart luggage to remove the lithium ion batteries. If the bag will be traveling in the cabin, the battery can remain installed as long as it is powered off.

I have yet to see one of these bag in the wild, but you have to believe that luggage following owners around airports will be the norm in the not-distant future.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND, HOW DO THEY WORK? German Young Socialists Want the Government to Fund ‘Feminist Porn’ on TV.

LET’S HAVE THEM DO THAT THEN: F-35s Could Shoot Down North Korean Missiles.

Subscription required, but a nice tool to have for implementing Austin Bay’s “return of serve” option for neutralizing North Korea.

WINNING: Zandi Warns “Job Market Feels Like It Might Overheat” As Manufacturing Jobs Grow At Fastest Pace On Record.

IT WAS A MILLION-TO-ONE SHOT: 240-Year-Old Statue of Jesus Had a Surprise in Its Butt.

YOU DON’T SAY: FBI Increasingly Politicized Under Comey and Mueller.

Bill Gertz:

The shift is the result of a bureaucratic culture that emerged in the 1990s and was fueled by its two most recent former directors, James Comey and Robert Mueller, who ran the agency for the past 16 years. Mueller headed the FBI from 2001 to 2013, when Comey took over and served until he was fired by Trump in May.

Both former directors currently are at the center of a fierce political debate over the FBI’s competency and integrity.

“People are finally tumbling to the realization that this [FBI] has become a proto-KGB,” said a former senior intelligence official with extensive experience in counterintelligence. “We’re in a constitutional crisis. These guys are playing out a silent coup against an elected official.”

The problem of the FBI, according to national security strategist Angelo Codevilla, is more the result of careerism and an out of control bureaucracy than liberal politicization of the ostensibly nonpartisan FBI, the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency and main domestic counterspying and counterterrorism agency.

“I’m afraid that the explanation is all too simple: Bureaucrats—employees of large organizations—figure out on which side their bread is going to be buttered,” Codevilla said. “They learn to think, feel, and do what advances their careers.”

And in our highly politicized bureaucracy, career advancement increasingly means following the (Democratic) party line.

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: Eating cheese every day might actually be healthy.

HEIR APPARENT: Conyers Endorses Son, Who Called Dad a ‘F***king Player’ for Hitting on Married Women.

WIDE-EYED: ESPRESSO Planet Hunter Ready to Drink in the Universe for Alien Worlds.

The ESPRESSO instrument, which is installed on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in northern Chile, made its first observations last month, project team members announced today (Dec. 6).

ESPRESSO is designed to find alien planets via the “radial velocity” method — that is, by detecting the tiny wobbles in a star’s movement caused by the gravitational tug of orbiting planets. The instrument is the next-generation version of the prolific HARPS spectrograph, which has discovered more than 100 exoplanets to date.

Only NASA’s famous Kepler space telescope, which looks for the tiny brightness dips caused when planets cross their star’s face, has found more alien worlds than HARPS. (The gap between the two is pretty big, however: Kepler’s tally currently stands at 2,515 planets across its two missions, along with 2,500 or so additional “candidates” awaiting confirmation by follow-up studies or observations.)

“ESPRESSO isn’t just the evolution of our previous instruments like HARPS, but it will be transformational, with its higher resolution and higher precision,” project lead scientist Francesco Pepe, of the University of Geneva in Switzerland, said in a statement.

Just how precise will ESPRESSO (whose name is short for Echelle SPectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet and Stable Spectroscopic Observations) actually be? Project team members are aiming for a velocity-measurement precision of just a few centimeters (1 inch or so) per second, compared with the 1 meter (3.3. feet) per second capability of HARPS. ESPRESSO should therefore be able to spot some of the smallest planets ever found, ESO representatives said.

Most of the exoplanets I can recall have had too much mass to really be earthlike. ESPRESSO should help find ones closer in size to Earth.

YET EMPEROR XI HAD DECREED OTHERWISE: US firms losing confidence in China business climate.

The U.S.-China Business Council’s survey showed most companies are enjoying better profitability and expecting higher revenues for their China operations as the economy revives.

But restricted market access and uncertainty over Beijing’s policies toward foreign companies have left them less optimistic about the business climate than in recent years.

The council represents 200 U.S. companies doing business with China. Results from the annual survey were based on responses from more than half its members.

Challenges include fierce competition from Chinese rivals, demands for technology transfers and strict cyber regulations.

“Most of the regulatory challenges that companies face each day did not see improvement this year,” President John Frisbie said. “The stagnation in implementation of needed economic reforms is undermining confidence among American companies that their concerns will be addressed.”

Given that Xi has spurned necessary reforms in order to consolidate more power than any Chinese leader since Mao, this is not a surprise — and seems unlikely to end well.

TOTALLY NONPARTISAN INVESTIGATION WE SWEAR, PART 1,000,006: Mueller Deputy Was Personal Attorney of Ben Rhodes, Represented Clinton Foundation.

YA THINK? A new cryptocurrency won’t solve Venezuela’s economic crisis.

Venezuelan president Nicolás Mauro thinks that a new digital currency could revive the country from economic collapse and help it sidestep US sanctions. During the latest episode of his weekly TV show Los Domingos con Maduro, the president announced his plans to launch the ‘petro’ – a digital currency somehow backed up by Venezuela’s oil, gas and diamond reserves.

“Venezuela will create a new cryptocurrency,” Maduro told his live studio audience during the five-hour broadcast, which also included Christmas songs and dancing. The petro would help Venezuela “advance in issues of monetary sovereignty, financial transactions and overcome the financial blockade,” he said. Venezuela’s existing currency, the bolívar, is rapidly dropping in value, reducing the monthly minimum wage to just over $4.30 and plunging millions of Venezuelans into poverty.

It looks like Maduro has had one eye on the rising price of bitcoin, which is already on its way to $12,000 after breaking the $10,000 barrier for the first time late in November. Somewhat ironically, some Venezuelan citizens are already well ahead of Maduro when it comes to the cryptocurrency, and started mining bitcoin as a way of earning enough US dollars to import food and medical supplies.

Venezuelan opposition leaders quickly decried Maduro’s proposal, saying it lacks credibility and has no hope of being passed by congress.

A legislature can pass anything it has the votes for. Making it work is a different matter, and one where socialist governments have a history of total failure.

HAVE YOU NO DECENCY, SIR?

Full story here, if you can stomach it.

STEPHEN GUTOWSKI: NRA Blasts Misleading Claims Made About Gun Background Check Bill Ahead of House Vote.

Despite what appears in the bill’s text, Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights, described it as establishing “a gun control super-database” and “expanding the Brady-NICS gun owner registry.”

“Weak Republicans always push gun control laws under the guise of ‘enforcing the laws we have,’ but only end up pushing the Democrat agenda, giving gun owners more reasons to worry,” he said.

Meanwhile an alert from Erich Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America (GOA), claimed Fix NICS “would require that the rolls of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and ObamaCare be trolled for recipients with PTSD, ADHD, or Alzheimer’s—that is, people who have had guardians appointed,” the group’s legislative council said it was not arguing the bill would create new categories of prohibited people. Instead, he said, the bill’s attempt to gather all of the records required under current law, which dates back nearly a decade, is the problem.

“No, we are not arguing that ‘Fix NICS’ adds new categories,” Michael Hammond, general counsel for GOA, told the Free Beacon. “But we are arguing that 18 U.S.C. 922(g), as interpreted by the 2007 NICS Improvement Amendments Act and its regulations at 27 CFR 478.11, is so potentially broad, that, if every eligible name were submitted to NICS, as the bill proposes, the result would be the submission of a large number of names of otherwise law-abiding Americans.”

More to come, I’m sure.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Jerusalem Is the Capital of Israel, Mueller Mania and Much, Much More.