THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT: T. Rex’s tiny arms weren’t meek after all — new research says they were meant for ‘vicious slashing.’

It’s important to note that while T. Rex’s forelimbs were indeed small in relation to the dinosaur’s huge body and jaws, they were still one meter (three feet) in length and may have been capable of bench-pressing over 180 kg (400 pounds) each. Stanley has identified several clues that suggest T. Rex mini-arms were actually secret weapons capable of inflicting ferocious damage.

For starters, the arms are strong and robust, as indicated by the bones that make up the limbs themselves but also the coracoid, which is the shoulder bone that helps control arm movement. Being so short in relation to the dinosaur’s towering body, the arms would have been perfectly adapted to slashing at close quarters. Another hint is that T. Rex had two claws on each forelimb instead of the typical three most other theropods feature. Having just two claws would have helped T. Rex exert 50 percent more pressure when slashing and clawing. The (8-10 cm long) sickle-shaped claws would have caused deep wounds.

I don’t know if the science is settled, but this theory is much more exciting than the old one.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Hey, they mock Trump’s “tiny hands,” too, and yet he uses them to send slashing tweets. . . .

THE MOST 2017 HEADLINE YET: Transgender Makeup Artist Leads Thousands of Occultists in Monthly Hexes on Trump.

MORE SHIFTING SAUDI SANDS: Second Saudi Prince Confirmed Killed During Crackdown.

The Duran and Al-Masdar News both report that the prince died when his security contingent got into a firefight with regime gunmen attempting to make an arrest.

Prince Aziz (44) who was the youngest son of King Fahad.

The Duran’s Adam Garrie points out that Prince Abdul Aziz was deeply involved in Saudi Oger Ltd, a company which until it ceased operations in the summer of this year, was owned by the Hariri family. Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri was punitively in charge of the company until it ceased operations.

You’ll recall that late last night it was reported that Hariri may have been pushed out by the Saudis, and some say he’s being forcibly detained in the Kingdom.

More:

Prince Abdul Aziz’s strange and sudden death which is said to have occurred during an attempted arrest, sheds light on the theory that the clearly forced resignation of former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri had more to do with internal Saudi affairs than the Saudi attempt to bring instability to Lebanon.

The Saudi Royal family has now lost two princes in 24 hours.

Yes, but they have thousands of them. The question seems to be whether a few deaths and a little infighting will bring them more or less into line with Crown Prince Salman — or if they’ll stage a revolt.

POLL: Democratic advantage for ’18 might not be what it seems.

CULTURE OF COLLUSION: Tony Podesta Lobbied For Russia’s ‘Uranium One’ And Did Not File As A Foreign Agent.

PATRICK POOLE: Trump’s Koigate Is Fake News Spun by Shameless White House Press Corps.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Crisis in Venezuelan hospitals — too many patients, too few beds.

Services are very limited in both public hospitals and private clinics, where shortages of supplies have reduced the number of beds available to little more than 25 percent of what the country needs, according to experts.

But finding a hospital bed is no guarantee that the patient will receive the required treatment because hospitals have less than 5 percent of the supplies and medicines needed to function normally, said Douglas Leon Natera, president of the Venezuelan Medical Federation.

“Any Venezuelan who gets sick here in the country today runs the risk of entering a clinic only to have the relatives leave crying” because “there’s nothing” in many hospitals, Leon Natera told el Nuevo Herald in a telephone interview.

“We have barely 3 or 4 percent of the supplies and medicines [needed], which is really nothing,” he said. “And the showcase hospitals, which receive the most resources, may have only 10 to 12 percent.”

Pummeled by the collapse of the Chavista economic model and low oil prices, the government of President Nicolas Maduro has put strict limits on the importation of food, medicines and other basic goods.

Unexpectedly.

RENT SEEKERS GOTTA SEEK RENTS: Insurers make billions off Medicaid in California during Obamacare expansion.

Medicaid is rarely associated with getting rich. The patients are poor, the budgets tight and payments to doctors often paltry.

But some insurance companies are reaping spectacular profits off the taxpayer-funded program in California, even when the state finds that patient care is subpar.

Health Net, a unit of Centene Corp., the largest Medicaid insurer nationwide, raked in $1.1 billion in profit from 2014 to 2016, according to state data obtained by Kaiser Health News. Anthem, another industry giant, turned a profit of $549 million from California’s Medicaid program in the same period.

Overall, Medicaid insurers in the Golden State made $5.4 billion in profits from 2014 to 2016, in part because the state paid higher rates during the inaugural years of the nation’s Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Last year, they made more money than all Medicaid insurers combined in 34 other states with managed care plans.

There’s something rotten in California.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Another Massacre, Rand Hurt, Donna Sings and Much, Much More.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: Army Close to Finalizing Pinks and Greens Uniform for All Soldiers.

WELL, YES: The Research Proves The No. 1 Social Justice Imperative Is Marriage.

Professor Bill Galston, President Clinton’s domestic policy advisor and now a senior fellow at Brookings, explained in the early 1990s that an American need only do three things to avoid living in poverty: graduate from high school, marry before having a child, and have that child after age twenty. Only 8 percent of people who do so, he reported, will be poor, while 79 percent who fail to do all three will.

Sociologists have referred to keeping these things in proper order as the “success sequence.” It remains true, according to a new research investigation from the Brookings and the American Enterprise institutes. It takes a deeper look at this “first comes love, then comes marriage” sequence by class and generation.

The increase of baby carriages coming before marriage is terribly alarming among the working poor. Working-class women are nearly three times more likely to have babies out of wedlock than upper-class women. Poor women are about five times more likely. These two groups are far less likely to be married overall and twice as likely to be cohabiting, suffering further from inherent instability of living together without marriage.

Successful lefties practice bourgeois values while promoting anything but — almost as though they enjoy having a permanent underclass to lord over.

UH-OH: Is the Tax Bill in Trouble in the Senate?

KATE PACKER BEESON: Democrats are so focused on tearing down the GOP they can’t see their own shortcomings.

The Democrats seemed shocked the race between Clinton and Trump remained relatively close because they seemed to stop talking to the white working-class voters who, for decades, had defined their base.

So when they lost the election, there was a reckoning. The leadership of the Democratic Party was drummed up and new, forward-looking leaders took the reins and offered an alternative to what they saw as the disaster of Donald Trump. Wait, no. That isn’t what happened. Instead, they re-elected Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the house. They elected Chuck Schumer as Senate majority leader and completely sold out to the New York and California wings of the Democratic Party.

Instead of talking about middle-class tax cuts, they talked about transgender bathroom access. Instead of talking about fixing Obamacare, which was crushing many in the middle class with high premiums and complicated doctor selections, they walked right into the trap of the alt-right and began tearing down Civil War statues.

In the first big test of party strength: the Virginia governor’s race, they have thrown up all over themselves. Virginia should be easy for them. Clinton won it in 2016. Trump’s numbers are completely under water. The Republican candidate has awkwardly embraced Trump and some of his controversial positions while trying not to hug him too close. But somehow they ended up with one of the least inspiring Democratic candidates Virginia has seen in a long time. And they backed an ad that seemed to depict Virginians who drive pickup trucks as a bunch of rednecks looking to plow down children of color.

As Bill Whittle likes to say, if Republicans had to run unopposed, they’d lose every time.

WHAT’S GOING ON IN SAUDI? Saudi deputy governor of Asir province killed in helicopter crash.

AND: Lebanon PM forced to resign by Saudi Arabia.

MORE: Bahrain orders citizens to leave Lebanon as Saudi Arabia and Iran spar for influence in Beirut.

AND THE BIG ONE: Saudi Arabia Arrests 11 Princes, Including Billionaire Alwaleed bin Talal.

The last item is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman consolidating his power and perhaps trying to instill faith in foreign investors for his mega-city projects. As for the other three, either the Middle East is just a little more chaotic than normal, or perhaps Salman just had a very busy weekend.

Stay tuned.

GIVE THE VOTERS WHAT THEY ASK FOR, GOOD AND HARD: Democrats Poised for Complete Dominance in the West.

It is the stuff of liberal fantasies: a vast, defiant territory, sweeping along the country’s Pacific coastline, governed by Democrats and resisting President Trump at every turn.

A single election in a wealthy Seattle suburb on Tuesday could make that scenario a reality, handing the party full control of government in Washington State — and extinguishing Republicans’ last fragile claim on power on the West Coast. The region has been a rare Democratic stronghold on an electoral map now dominated by vast swaths of red, and Republicans’ only toehold on power there has been a one-seat majority in the Washington State Senate.

The prospect of such far-reaching autonomy for Democrats, who already hold all three governors’ offices as well as both houses of the legislatures in Oregon and California, has infused extraordinary energy into what might have been a low-key special election. The race is on track to draw more than $9 million in campaign spending, a record-breaking sum for Washington State. National environmental and abortion rights groups have mobilized, business associations and oil companies have poured in money, and a former vice president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., has intervened on the Democratic side.

Sharon Nelson, the Democratic leader in the Washington State Senate, conveyed the party’s grand aspirations in an almost Trump-like phrase: “A blue wall,” Ms. Nelson enthused, “from the Canadian border to the Mexican border.”

Leading in the polls and anticipating victory, Democrats have sketched an aggressive agenda on issues where strong consensus appears to exist in the party, including new laws on gun control, contraception and environmental regulation. Ms. Nelson said she had met with the speaker of the Oregon Statehouse about enacting policy across state lines. The three states’ Democratic governors have spoken regularly about policy collaboration, and over the summer began coordinated talks on climate change with foreign heads of state.

Let’s hope Kurt Schlichter is taking notes for another People’s Republic prequel.

HMM: Rand Paul assaulted at Kentucky home.

“Senator Paul was blindsided and the victim of an assault,” Kelsey Cooper, a spokeswoman for Paul, said in a statement. “The assailant was arrested and it is now a matter for the police. Senator Paul is fine.”

The suspect was identified as 59-year-old Rene Boucher of Bowling Green, according to a statement from police. The Warren County Attorney’s Office issued a warrant for Boucher’s arrest shortly after the assault on Friday.

More:

Boucher is a Bowling Green anesthesiologist and pain specialist who developed a product called Therm-a-Vest, a cloth vest partially filled with rice and secured by Velcro straps that is designed to relieve back pain by delivering heat directly to the areas of the back where most pain is felt.

Boucher applied for a patent for the vest in 2003 and has marketed it through the QVC shopping channel.

Odd.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: 4 Shockingly Good Horror Movie Remakes.

These are great picks — fear not, Neil LaBute’s harebrained attempt at remaking The Wicker Man isn’t one of them.

I CERTAINLY HOPE NOT: Must We Fight China? An Alternative to the Establishment’s Defeatism.

SHE’S RADIOACTIVE: Memo Reveals Details of Hillary Clinton-DNC Deal.

In exchange for Hillary for America’s (HFA) helping the cash-strapped DNC raise money, the party committee agreed “that HFA personnel will be consulted and have joint authority over strategic decisions over the staffing, budget, expenditures, and general election related communications, data, technology, analytics, and research.”

Specifically, the DNC agreed to hire a communications director from “one of two candidates previously identified as acceptable to HFA.” And while the DNC maintained “the authority to make the final decision” on senior staff in the communications, technology and research departments, the party organization said it would choose “between candidates acceptable to HFA.”

The memo stipulates the DNC had to hire a communications director by September 11, 2015, months before the first nominating contests in early 2016.

However, the memo also made clear that the arrangement pertained to only the general election, not the primary season, and it left open the possibility that it would sign similar agreements with other candidates.

Still, it clearly allowed the Clinton campaign to influence DNC decisions made during an active primary, even if intended for preparations later.

The story says the “memo [was] obtained by NBC News,” but didn’t detail who or how.

FORCED MARRIAGE: New Bride Accidentally Kills 17 People While Attempting to Poison Her Husband.

BECAUSE THE RACIST STATES OF AMERIKKKA WOULD NEVER ELECT A BLACK MAN: Ta-Nehisi Coates Claims Donald Trump Is Only President Because He’s White.

EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Wilson Predicts Trump Will Pretend ‘Somebody is Trying to Kill Barron’ and Resign.

YOU DON’T SAY: Steny Hoyer Says Jamming Obamacare through Congress ‘didn’t work.’

The law cost the Democrats the House and eventually the Senate and cost millions the insurance and doctors they liked and forced people to buy coverage they can’t afford to use and is a regulatory mess and turned the insurance industry into unsatisfiable welfare queens and can’t be successfully implemented as written and outed Barack Obama as an unscrupulous liar… but other than that it’s worked just fine.

JUDICIAL WATCH: New Documents Show FBI Deputy Director McCabe Did Not Recuse Himself from the Clinton Email Scandal Investigation until Week Before Presidential Election.

The news that Clinton used a private email server broke March 2, 2015. Five days later, former Clinton Foundation board member and Democrat party fundraiser, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe met with the McCabes to recruit her for a run for the state Senate. She announced her candidacy on March 12. Soon afterward, McAuliffe-aligned political groups donated nearly $700,000 (40% of the campaign’s total funds) to McCabe’s wife for her campaign. Around that time, Gov. McAuliffe would also come under criminal investigation by the FBI.

An April 29, 2015, document titled “Protocol regarding Potential Conflicts of Interest” sent from the Washington Field Office to various FBI officials – and self-approved by McCabe – indicates that he was “consulting with individuals within the Washington Field Office and [FBI headquarters]” prior to the announcement of his wife’s political campaign:

In March 2015, Dr. Jill McCabe announced her candidacy for Virginia State Senate. Dr. McCabe is the wife of Washington Field Office ADIC Andrew McCabe. Prior to Dr. McCabe’s official announcement, the [assistant director] consulted with individuals within [Washington Field Office] and [FBI headquarters] to identify limitations on his participation in her campaign and to identify areas where Dr. McCabe’s campaign may present potential conflicts of interest for the ADIC in WFO investigations and operations. [Emphasis added]

While this same document advises against McCabe’s involvement in “all public corruption investigations” concerning the state of Virginia during the campaign, no restrictions are advised in his involvement in Virginia cases following the campaign or his involvement with the Clinton email investigation. Also, it advises with respect to other conflicts of interest the Washington Field Office “will assess all other matters on a case-by-case basis,” and provide a “protocol” for their examination, which would be reviewed by a subordinate of McCabe’s, the Chief Division Counsel.

“The FBI is compromised. Mr. McCabe should have been nowhere near the Hillary Clinton investigations,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “That he saw fit to recuse himself only days before the election further demonstrates the FBI’s Clinton email investigation was a sham. No wonder it took a year and a federal lawsuit to get these records. It is well past time for the Justice Department to reopen the Clinton email investigation.”

This whole thing stinks.

PUBLISHING BLUES: Teen Vogue Shutters Shortly After Publishing ‘Guide to Anal Sex’ for Teen Girls.