LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Flynn, RUSSIA, Comey, Holder, Nunes, The FBI and Much, Much More.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL “FASTER, PLEASE”: Honda Claims Its Electric Cars Will Charge in 15 Minutes by 2022.

The key to Honda’s plan is the battery itself. Honda currently sources batteries for plug-in hybrids from Panasonic and is looking for a partner to collaborate with on its new, quick charging battery. Honda is also working with the unique challenges of electrified cars by engineering lighter bodies that are able to go farther on a single battery charge to reduce the range anxiety that’s been plaguing EV drivers since their introduction. The goal for 2022 is for a Honda EV to go 150 miles on a 15-minute charge.

15 minutes charges is great, but the 150-mile range is still too short for most anyone outside of urban centers.

LIFE IN THE WORKERS, SOLDIERS’, AND PEASANTS’ PARADISE: North Korean nuclear tests sickening residents with ‘ghost disease,’ defectors say.

“So many people died we began calling it ‘ghost disease,'” Lee Jeong Hwa, who in 2010 escaped her home in Kilju County where the nuclear testing site Punggye-ri is located, told NBC News. “We thought we were dying because we were poor and we ate badly. Now we know it was the radiation.”

Lee isn’t the only defector who believes the radiation is taking its toll on people who lived there.

South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported in November that close to two dozen defectors said the area surrounding Punggye-ri is turning into a “wasteland” where vegetation is dying and babies are born with deformities.

The defectors said drinking water in the area came from Mount Mantap, where nuclear tests reportedly were conducted underground.

The longer China waits to do what it should have done years ago with its maniac ally, the more people will die.

SAVE BRIDGET: PJ Media Editor, a Veteran Journalist and Terror Expert, Removed from Twitter.

No warning, no explanation, and so far no redress.

THEY’LL NEVER SEE ‘EM COMING: The F-35 Can Now Fight a Ground War.

“Fielding the GBU-49 for use on the F-35A is a key milestone in delivering combat capability to the warfighter,” Brig. Gen. Todd Canterbury, director of the Air Force F-35 Integration Office, said in a statement.

“The F-35 is operational and combat ready, and integrating the GBU-49 with the aircraft makes the F-35 even more lethal than it already is.”

As originally envisioned, the single-engine stealth fighter did not include the ability hit moving targets with a laser-guided weapon in its Block 3F software load. Even though F-35s equipped with the final Block 3F configuration have the ability to identify and track multiple moving ground targets, when the Pentagon originally set the requirements for what became the Joint Strike Fighter program, the idea was that pilots would use cluster munitions to engage those enemies. However, since the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) was adopted in 2008, such weapons have fallen out of vogue. The United States is not a signatory to the treaty, but Washington abides by the provisions of the document for the most part.

The correct choice between cluster munitions or laster-guided bombs is: Yes.

DOWN PERISCOPE: The San Juan’s Final Hours.

In recent days, Argentine authorities have gathered crucial evidence to piece together a theory of what happened after the San Juan left Ushuaia on Nov. 8, bound for its home base of Mar del Plata about 260 miles south of Buenos Aires. They believe the sub took on water that caused a short circuit and a subsequent fire in a key battery compartment. The crew got the fire under control, but hours later there was a loud noise consistent with an explosion near the sub’s last reported location.

Top Argentine officials now believe a blast instantly killed the sailors and sent the vessel to the seafloor. While no one knows for sure what caused the explosion, the batteries are the likeliest culprit, Argentine naval officials and outside experts say.

“It looks like a very possible cause,” said Mike Fabey, a naval expert at Jane’s by IHS Markit, a defense consulting firm. “Battery issues of all types with submersibles are something people have been trying to deal with since submarines first went into the water. Water plus electricity equals fire.”
…
A diesel-electric sub’s batteries only hold a charge for about a week while submerged, so it must surface and “snorkel,” running its engines to recharge the batteries and ventilate stale air.

In this case, the sub surfaced amid rough seas, with 23-foot-high waves that may have caused the sub to take on too much water through its snorkel, Argentine Navy spokesman Capt. Enrique Balbi said. The snorkel is equipped with a flap to keep water out, but water can sometimes get in anyway, navy officials said.

Sloppy maintenance or sloppy seamanship would seem the likeliest culprits.

HIGH-SPEED TRAIN TO NOWHERE: Could California be seeing the onset of a recession?

Brown attaches his admonishments to the budgets he proposes to the Legislature – the initial one in January and a revised version four months later.

Brown’s latest, issued last May, cited uncertainty about turmoil in the national government, urged legislators to “plan for and save for tougher budget times ahead,” and added:

“By the time the budget is enacted in June, the economy will have finished its eighth year of expansion – only two years shorter than the longest recovery since World War II. A recession at some point is inevitable.”

It’s certain that Brown will renew his warning next month. Implicitly, he may hope that the inevitable recession he envisions will occur once his final term as governor ends in January, 2019, because it would, his own financial advisers believe, have a devastating effect on the state budget.

Everybody sees it coming, but when it does, those in charge of the state budget will find it all quite unexpected.

GOP SENATOR MIKE ROUNDS: Passing Tax Reform Without Reading Full Bill Different Than Obamacare Passage.

THE GOP LITERALLY JUST MURDERED EVERYONE TO DEATH: 5 Absurd Overreactions to the Senate Passing Tax Reform.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: 5 Christmas Songs That Should Be Buried Forever.

I’d also reintroduce pillorying for playing Christmas music in public before Black Friday. With caning on the second offense.

DC MCALLISTER: Don’t Be Fooled: The Left Doesn’t Care About Morals; It Cares About Power.

HMM: Kim Jong Nam Had Antidote In Bag When He Died In Nerve Agent Attack.

SERGEANT SCHULTZISM: FBI Releases Documents Relating to Bill Clinton-Loretta Lynch Tarmac Meeting.. “The documents show an FBI that demonstrated a studied indifference to the potential impropriety of the meeting.”

THESE REPORTS STOPPED REGISTERING EVEN AS MERE BACKGROUND NOISE WEEKS AGO: Trump denies that Tillerson is on his way out.

WELL, REALITY IS DISCRIMINATORY: Court Says Two Women Cannot Conceive a Child, Same-Sex Divorcee Shouts ‘Discrimination!’

MULL FASTER: House Intel Committee Mulls Contempt Citations Against FBI, DOJ.

YOU FIRST: Taxes Need to Go Up, Not Down.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Would You Drink Tequila from Scotland?

HEALTH: Most American Kids Today Will Be Obese by Age 35.

Obesity is classified as having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher. BMI is calculated by dividing the subject’s weight in kilograms by the square of their height in meters.

BMI is the most widely used system for establishing whether someone is underweight, of normal weight, overweight or obese. However, it’s rather simplistic and is controversial as a health indicator, as it doesn’t take into account the differences between fat and muscle (which is heavier than fat), nor does it factor in ethnic background.

The new research took data from five earlier studies about actual American children and adults’ height and weight, and simulated growth trajectories in order to project where today’s kids were likely to end up by the age of 35.

The results showed that 57.3% of today’s kids, up to the age of 19, will be obese by the age of 35. Of those, around half will become (or already be) obese during childhood, and half will become obese later on.

Good lord.

I think it’s safe to say that government dietary guidelines have been ineffective at best and practically murderous at worst.

REQUIRED READING: ‘The Strategy of Victory’: Thomas Fleming’s Last Testament to George Washington.

YES, BUT… Electricity Prices Plummet as Gas, Wind Gain Traction and Demand Stalls.

Your monthly electric bill doesn’t show the subsidies paid to producers of wind energy, but it should.

YOU DON’T SAY: Chris Matthews Says Democrats ‘Pissed on’ White Working-Class Voters Too Long.

FASTER, PLEASE: Time to Relegate Lena Dunham to the Dust Bin of History.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: How Venezuela inadvertently became a cashless economy.

The cash crunch is so acute that ATMs now provide a daily limit of 10,000 bolívars, enough to buy just a few cups of coffee. Black-market money changers charge commissions of up to 20% to score paper money for small business people who pay their workers in cash. Banks are running out of banknotes.

“Sometimes, bank tellers will only pay you half of your pension and suggest that you come back later for the rest,” said Marta Milano, who was waiting in a long line outside a state-run bank in Caracas hoping to collect her pension.

Although many nations are moving away from paper money in favor of electronic payments – for convenience and to reduce street crime – critics contend that Venezuela is inadvertently turning into a cashless society thanks to economic blunders by President Nicolás Maduro’s socialist government.

Out-of-control state spending, government currency controls and other policies have led to what many describe as hyperinflation, as well the collapse of the bolívar – which now trades at about 107,000 to the pound on the black market.

Now, there is not enough cash in circulation to keep up with skyrocketing prices.

Another thing there isn’t enough of to go around? “Unexpectedlys” for this report.

BRIDGET JOHNSON WITH JUST THE FACTS, MA’AM: Flynn Pleads Guilty to Lying to FBI, Cooperating in Mueller Probe.