“IT LOOKED UGLY”: Firm Tied to Clintons Lands First Day On Open Market, Tanks Immediately.

Laureate Education, Inc., which has close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, tanked on its first day in the stock market.

The for-profit firm’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) of stock to potential investors was put on the market Wednesday by KKR and other leveraged buyout owners in the hope of reducing a crushing $4 billion debt.

But even before the company was to go public as a NASDAQ traded firm, it was clear the stock price would not command the owner’s projected $17 to $20 price target. Late Tuesday before Wednesday’s opening, the market priced the Laureate IPO at $14, about 15% below Laureate’s estimates.

The Laureate IPO went nowhere during the day, went as low at $12.46 and closed at $13.25.

“There was no appetite for this stock. It looked ugly today,” Lon Juricic told The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group (TheDCNF). Juricic is founder and president of StreetInsider.

“There’s just a lot of questions about the company. The private owners, they’re liquidating it. Investors don’t like it’s big debt. They weren’t biting,” Juricic said. But “people don’t like these deals.”

The Clintons just don’t have the juice they once did.

HOWARD FINEMAN: A last-minute Obama decision may empower federal authorities to run the “election infrastructure” in the name of national security.

At the time ― only about a month ago ― Obama administration officials thought the move was a swell idea; good for national security and a subtle way to twist the knife in the president-elect on the topic of Russian election hacking.

But it may have been the riskiest decision of the Obama years, opening a legal door to Donald Trump forces looking to control future access to the ballot box in the name of national security, and to a new president who decries millions of (phantom) “fraudulent” votes he claims were illegally cast against him.

Obligatory:

UPDATE ON THAT CALL BETWEEN TRUMP AND TURNBULL:

Senior US officials told the Washington Post that Donald Trump abruptly hung up on Mr Turnbull after just 25 minutes – when the pair were meant to speak for an hour.

But an indignant Mr Turnbull returned serve, telling 2GB’s Ben Fordham: ‘As far as the call is concerned, I’m very disappointed, the report the president hung up is not correct, the call ended courteously.’

Emphasis added.

I’m curious about the identities of those “senior U.S. officials.”

REHABILITATION: Paralysed ‘robocop’ presented with Israeli-invented suit allowing her to walk again.

CLAIM: Border wall should be finished in two years.

In his first television interview as Homeland Security secretary, retired four-star Marine Gen. John F. Kelly told Fox News he wants the U.S.-Mexico border wall finished in two years – setting an ambitious schedule for the project ordered last week by President Trump.

“The wall will be built where it’s needed first, and then it will be filled in. That’s the way I look at it,” Kelly said. “I really hope to have it done within the next two years.”

As Bill Whittle noted on Right Angle yesterday, if you don’t patrol the border then people will demand a wall.

HMM: Pundits Stunned After Trump Hangs Up On Australia Prime Minister, Slamming “Dumb Deal”

It said the call had been scheduled to last an hour but Trump cut it short after 25 minutes when Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull tried to turn to subjects such as Syria. Turnbull told reporters the call with Trump at the weekend had been frank and candid but refused to give further details.

“I do stand up for Australia. My job is to defend Australian interests,” the former Goldman employee said in Melbourne. Turnbull refused to confirm the Post report that Trump, who had earlier spoken to world leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, had angrily told him that the call was “the worst so far”.

Political analysts were dumbfounded and said such acrimony was unprecedented, surpassing even the difficult relations between former U.S. President Richard Nixon and then Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who pulled Australian troops out of the Vietnam War. “Even that was always done in the language of foreign policy niceties,” said Harry Phillips, a political analyst of 40 years experience at Edith Cowan and Curtin universities in Perth.

As reports of the conversation hit headlines on both sides of the world, Trump tweeted shortly before midnight in Washington: “Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal.”

Boy, that escalated quickly.

NO FREE SPEECH, NO MONEY: Trump Threatens No Federal Funds for Berkeley.

UPDATE (From Glenn): You want more Trump? Because Berkeley is how you get more Trump.

ANOTHER UPDATE (from Steve): Judd Apatow is also how you get more Trump..

Apatow has since bravely deleted his tweet.

BREXIT: MPs overwhelmingly back Article 50 bill.

ASIA PIVOT: Chinese Aircraft Carrier Program Progressing Substantially Into the New Year.

The country’s sole carrier, the refurbished Soviet-era Kuznetsov-class ship, now renamed the Liaoning, was declared “combat ready” in November by Senior Capt. Li Dongyou, the political commissar onboard the ship as it departed for a training cruise that included a stopover at the purpose-built pier at the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) base near Sanya on Hainan island on the edge of the South China Sea.

The ship sailed with a battle group comprising of several PLAN destroyers, frigates and corvettes, while the Liaoning itself carried more than a dozen Shenyang J-15 Flying Shark carrier-borne fighters and several Harbin Z-9 and Changhe Z-18 helicopters onboard, including at least two Z-18J airborne early warning (AEW) helicopters.

Meanwhile, the same shipyard at Dalian that refurbished the Liaoning is building China’s second carrier. Known for now as the 001A — the Liaoning was designated the Type 001 — the new carrier is broadly similar to the Liaoning and retains the ski jump for launching aircraft, but contains a revised flight deck arrangement and other differences.

China’s carriers are vulnerable, outdated, and carry an almost pitiably-small aircraft complement. But the lessons China is learning about training, doctrine, and operations are priceless.

MIKE FLYNN: Iran ‘on Notice’ After Missile Test, Houthi Attack on Saudi Ship.

KURT EICHENWALD: Neil Gorsuch Is Supremely Qualified, and Must Not Be Confirmed.

Gorsuch, unfortunately, must be sacrificed on the altar of obscene partisanship erected by the Republicans in recent years. Temper tantrums designed to undermine the Constitution for naked political purposes cannot be rewarded. Our government cannot survive the short-term games-playing that has replaced fidelity to the intent of the Founding Fathers’ work in forming this once-great nation.

This goes back to the unconscionable decision of Republicans who refused to consider any nominee put forward by President Barack Obama following the death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. Obama nominated Merrick Garland, another eminently qualified candidate who served as chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the second most important court in the nation. But in a decision that will go down as one of the greatest abuses of the Constitution in this nation’s history, the Senate’s Republican majority, under the leadership of their unprincipled majority leader, Mitch McConnell, declared they would not give Garland hearings, would not examine his qualifications and would not take a vote.

Instead, they made up a rule: A nominee for the Supreme Court can be considered for only three-quarters of any president’s term. In the fourth year, confirmations have to wait until after the election. And so the Supreme Court has been hobbled for coming up on one year—and, because the confirmation hearings will inevitably drag on, for months more to come.

It’s called “the Biden rule,” Kurt. Named after its author, Democrat Senator Joe Biden. You might have heard of him. He was Democrat President Barack Obama’s Democrat Vice President for the last eight years. Anyway, Joe came up with the Biden Rule in 1992 when the Democrats controlled the Senate, to stop Republican President Bush from naming a conservative to the court during the last quarter of his Administration. Some might have considered that a partisan act.

And a Republican-controlled Senate seems, shall we say, somewhat unlikely to tip the ideological balance of the Senate leftward, Kurt, when they have been armed with a weapon of pure partisanship — the nuclear option — forged by Democrat Harry Reid. You might have heard of him, too. Reid once used Senate trickery to pass ObamaCare over the strenuous objections of 41 Republican Senators — including a brand-new Republican Senator sent there by the people of Massachusetts, Kurt, for the express purpose of stopping Reid’s partisan antics. But Reid was a wily devil and overturned a couple centuries of Senate rules and traditions to pass the most partisan major legislation since… ever, maybe.

So if the GOP installs Neil Gorsuch — who earned his previous position with the vote of every single Senate Democrat — without a single Democrat vote, it will be thanks to the normalization of hyperpartisanship… by Democrats.

It might not be a very tasty sandwich, Kurt, but it’s Biden and Reid’s recipe.

CHEERS! Raise a Glass to the Smithsonian’s First Beer Scholar.

FATHER KNOWS BEST: 8 Encouraging Family Movies That Show Fatherhood in a Positive Light.

I’d have ditched any one of the children’s movies on the list and replaced it with Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up. It takes a while for Seth Rogan’s stoner character to get serious about being a dad — and a mate — but the slow windup makes the payoff at the end that much more worthwhile.

IS SPACE THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH? NASA twins study may provide clue.

Astronaut Scott Kelly spent a year in space aboard the International Space Station while twin brother and former astronaut Mark Kelly stayed on Earth. Meanwhile, scientists studied both men for hints of how extended time in space might affect the human body.

The researchers have started to share some of the preliminary results from this unprecedented study and one tidbit in particular caught my attention. Scott Kelly’s telomeres, which are stretches of DNA that act as a “cap” at the end of chromosomes to protect them from deterioration, grew to be longer than his brother’s during his time in orbit.

What’s interesting about this is that telomeres are associated with aging and longer telomeres are associated with longevity. Stress is one of the things that can shorten telomeres over time. So it was surprising to find that the stress of long-term space travel did not seem to negatively affect Scott Kelly’s telomeres.

“That is exactly the opposite of what we thought,” Susan Bailey, a radiation biologist at Colorado State University working with NASA to study the effect of space on telomeres, told Nature.

The effect seems to be temporary, with telomeres returning to normal after returning to normal Earth gravity, but I wonder if short-but-frequent stays in microgravity could be used to treat aging.

NANCY PELOSI: Republicans’ health care plan will make America sick again.

Remember the dead, stacked like cordwood in front of nearly empty hospitals and clinics, heedless doctors and nurses laughing at the suffering, before ObamaCare was signed into law?

WE AREN’T AS SERIOUS ABOUT COMBATING CARBON EMISSIONS: China’s Nuclear Power Capacity Set to Overtake U.S. Within Decade.

HEALTH: How Samsung is leveraging VR to manage pain.

Together, Samsung and AppliedVR are working with a group of hospitals to validate the technology for children and adults. In one randomized controlled trial, the two have collaborated with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to evaluate the clinical utility of VR for inpatient pain management and its effect on narcotic use, length of stay, and patient satisfaction. The study is currently recruiting up to 120 hospitalized adults, according to the description on ClinicalTrials.gov’s website.

Dr. David Rhew, who is Samsung’s chief medical officer and head of healthcare and fitness, noted that virtual reality is commanding respect for its ability to relieve patients’ stress, anxiety, and pain before and after a procedure.

“Clinical findings from Cedars-Sinai and AppliedVR have shown that VR results in a 25 percent reduction in pain, in many cases obviating the need for narcotics, and a 60 percent reduction in stress and anxiety,” he said in a phone interview.

Realer, please.

NEAL K. KATYAL: Why Liberals Should Back Neil Gorsuch.

I believe this, even though we come from different sides of the political spectrum. I was an acting solicitor general for President Barack Obama; Judge Gorsuch has strong conservative bona fides and was appointed to the 10th Circuit by President George W. Bush. But I have seen him up close and in action, both in court and on the Federal Appellate Rules Committee (where both of us serve); he brings a sense of fairness and decency to the job, and a temperament that suits the nation’s highest court.

Katyal was President Obama’s former acting solicitor general.

I BLAME DANA LOESCH: Americans Are Eating So Much Bacon That Reserves Are at a 50-Year Low.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: AZ Bill Would Allow Residents to Shoot Nuisance Wildlife.

NOW WHO WILL SAVE US FROM THE WEATHER? Tom Steyer Moves Beyond Climate.

The billionaire will expand the focus of his environmental political advocacy group, NextGen Climate Action, to fund initiatives and candidates with an eye to issues well beyond the realm of climate change, Steyer said in an interview on Tuesday.

The 59-year-old Steyer, a San Francisco hedge fund manager and possible contender for next year’s California governor’s race, said he made the decision to broaden his reach in response to Trump and to a legislative agenda he described as “deplorable” and “a barrage against the basic fabric of American society.”

The exact contours of NextGen’s transition, Steyer said, will be determined by what he hears in response to a video he released Tuesday to solicit ideas from activists like the millions who attended marches over inauguration weekend. “We want to know what matters most to you, and what should be done,” he says in the clip.

As Glenn likes to say, I’ll believe the climate is in crisis when they start behaving like it’s in crisis.

BuzzFeed link, so click at your own risk.

CHANGE: United States, Saudi defence chiefs reject Iran ‘interventions’

New Pentagon chief James Mattis agreed in a telephone call with his Saudi counterpart to oppose Iranian “interventions” in the Middle East, Saudi state media reported on Wednesday.

Mattis and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman expressed “their full rejection of the suspicious activities and interventions by the Iranian regime and its agents”, the Saudi Press Agency said.

The two ministers spoke on Tuesday.

Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia regularly accuses Shiite Iran of interference in the region, while some of President Donald Trump`s picks for cabinet have adopted an anti-Iran stance.

Mattis, a retired four-star Marine general, has described Iran as “the biggest destabilising force in the Middle East”.

Well, Iran certainly didn’t have much meeting their aggression from the previous Administration.

TRAVEL: 3 Teams Advance in Hyperloop Competition.

“We could see the different engineering approaches taken by the teams and talk with them about their pods,” explained David Goldsmith, an assistant professor at Virginia Tech University, which participated in the competition.

“We saw pods that had gone down different developmental paths, and we saw pods that had gone down the same path we had,” he told TechNewsWorld. “That was invaluable.”

The competition also helped the teams define the parameters of their knowledge.

“We now know what we don’t know,” Texas A&M’s Karpetis remarked. “We did not know a lot of little things, from electronics, to breaking, to levitation, to batteries.”

If you haven’t seen the amazing Hyperloop concept in action, here’s an excellent animated presentation.

BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE WRONG? British Medical Association Wants Doctors to Stop Calling Pregnant Women ‘Expectant Mothers’