WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Pentagon to Accelerate Rail Gun Projectile Weapon – Fires From Army Howitzer.

While initially conceived of and developed for the Navy’s emerging Rail Gun Weapon, the Pentagon and Army are now firing the Hyper Velocity Projectile from an Army Howitzer in order to potential harness near-term weapons ability, increase the scope, lethality and range ability to accelerate combat deployment of the lethal, high-speed round.

The rail gun uses an electromagnetic current to fire a kinetic energy warhead up to 100 miles at speeds greater than 5,000 miles an hour, a speed at least three times as fast as existing weapons.

Firing from an Army Howitzer, the rail gun hypervelocity projectile can fire the high-speed projectile at enemy targets to include buildings, force concentrations, weapons systems, drones, aircraft,vehicle bunkers and even incoming enemy missiles and artillery rounds.

“We can defend against an incoming salvo with a bullet. That is very much a focus getting ready for the future,” Dr. William Roper, Director of the Pentagon’s once-secret Strategic Capabilities Office, told Scout Warrior among a small group of reporters.

An 18th Century gun with a 21st Century round.

SOCIAL JUSTICE MEDIA: Twitter’s controversial head of China is the latest exec to leave the company.

Kathy Chen was hired seven months ago as Twitter’s managing director of Greater China based out of its Hong Kong office, but she has exited the company following restructuring in Asia. That was part of company-wide changes that included the layoff of nine percent of Twitter’s staff and the exit of a number of high-profile leaders.

Chen, who had never used Twitter before last year, was a controversial appointment when she joined Twitter in April 2016 as its first Greater China MD. Her past employment and apparent government association raised concern in China.

Recognizable names like Cisco and Microsoft apart, Quartz report that Chen previously spent seven years researching missile defense at the People’s Liberation Army and also served as CEO of a joint venture from China’s Ministry of Public Security that specialized in security and, potentially, surveillance.

Oh.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Obama Hung Democrats Out to Dry for Past Eight Years.

The Daily Beast‘s Jackie Kucinich said to CNN’s Nia-Malika Henderson on Sunday that it would be interesting to see what kind of reception President Obama will receive when he meets congressional Democrats next week, adding that the president has hung his party “out to dry” during his time in the White House.

Obama will meet Wednesday with Democrats on Capitol Hill to discuss ways to protect Obamacare from being dismantled by the incoming Republican majority, Politico reported Friday. Kucinich noted that the president has not made building relationships with lawmakers a priority during his tenure.

“He is someone who hasn’t really made Congress a priority … or the party in general over his last eight years,” Kucinich said. “Just at the end there did he start kicking in and, you know, trying to make up for lost time. So that will be really interesting in addition to him trying to save Obamacare.”

“It will be interesting to see how Democrats in that room receive a man who led them the last eight years but kind of, in a lot of ways, led them out to dry,” Kucinich continued.

Obama is leaving his party in the worst position they’ve been in since the 1920s. Publicly he’ll move on to become the party’s beloved elder statesman. Privately… less so.

SAY WHAT YOU WANT ABOUT MUSSOLINI: Nearly a century after the planning started, a New York subway arrives.

To understand the enthusiasm over a subway, something that’s normally the subject of grousing, consider that New Yorkers have been promised a Second Avenue subway since 1919. Over the ensuing century, the Second Avenue subway became the punch line of jokes and a cautionary tale about the ineffectiveness of infrastructure development in America.

“When you’d mention the Second Avenue subway to someone, they would react with a Pavlovian giggle,’’ said Jeffrey Zupan, a transportation expert and senior fellow of the Regional Plan Assn., an urban policy group. “Nobody believed it would ever happen.’’

Groundbreakings have been frequent, but each time wars or recessions would intervene to jinx the project. Meanwhile, officials were so confident the line would be built that they demolished elevated rail lines on Second and Third avenues, leaving the fast-growing Upper East Side of Manhattan with only one badly overcrowded subway on Lexington Avenue, two long blocks to the west.

Don’t count your blue state infrastructure projects before they hatch.

SHOT:

Conway on NBC on Trump keeping parts of Obamacare: "He has committed to retaining those pieces that his advisers will say are working."

— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) January 3, 2017

CHASER:

People must remember that ObamaCare just doesn't work, and it is not affordable – 116% increases (Arizona). Bill Clinton called it "CRAZY"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2017

I wouldn’t bet on anything until we see what actually comes out of Congress and onto President Trump’s desk.

CHOSEN FROM A CAST OF THOUSANDS: 10 Moments From 2016 That Sum Up SJWs Perfectly.

Are you anti-social? Uninterested in justice? Anything but a warrior? Then Social Justice Warriors could use YOU!

RICH LOWRY: Defund the United Nations.

Because nothing involving the U.N. is clean or straightforward, it’s hard to even know how much the U.S. pays in total into the U.N. system. But it’s probably around $8 billion a year. We should withhold some significant portion of it, and demand an end to the U.N.’s institutional hostility to Israel and the implementation of reforms to increase the organization’s accountability. There are individual U.N. agencies that do good work, and we can continue to support those.

Realistically, though, the U.N. will always be a disappointment. The fact is that the closest thing to what FDR envisioned in the U.N. is NATO, a like-minded group of nations that has been a force for peace, order, and freedom. This is why President-elect Donald Trump should embrace NATO and turn his critical eye to the U.N., where there is the genuine opportunity to, if nothing else, save the U.S. some money and rattle the cages of people taking advantage of our beneficence.

If there’s any way at all to introduce accountability to the U.N., I’ve yet to hear of it.

NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL FUNEMPLOYMENT: Finland just launched an experiment giving 2,000 people free money until 2019.

The experiment will also provide clues about how people behave when they’re receiving free money. Skeptics say people will sit on their couch all day. Proponents claim they’ll actually use the money to make their lives better. (Limited evidence from developing countries suggests it’s more of the latter.)

Turunen suspects the experiment will compel at least a few wannabe entrepreneurs to make the leap into starting their own business — a risky proposition in Finland today since business owners who are forced to close shop don’t receive unemployment benefits. It’s not unlike the system in place in most US states.

“The system nowadays, it’s pretty negative for people who try to do something — even little — in their lives and get something out of it,” she says.

A basic income might turn a risky move into a much safer one.

We heard similar claims in this country about ObamaCare, but they never quite panned out.

WELL, YES: Obama’s ‘Scandal-Free’ Administration Was Actually Riddled with Scandals.

No one can forget the disturbing onslaught of Obama cult products circa 2008/2009: the Obama flags, perfume, soap, soda pop, basketballs, clocks, flip-flops, soap-on-a-rope — you name it. Obama’s smiling mug was slapped on practically every product you could think of — including even sushi! — and his devoted cultists snatched it up.

Then there were the children singing Obama songs of praise, Obama’s lavish birthday bashes, and his unearned Nobel Peace Prize. While most of “Obamamania” dissipated over the ensuing years, there were still occasional reminders that he still had a very fervent and devoted following — mostly, it turned out, in the mainstream media.

For the entire eight years of Obama’s presidency, we witnessed an obsequious MSM that only very reluctantly reported negative news about their hero, dropping problematic stories like a hot potato at the first opportunity. Thus, Obama’s many scandals became old news in a matter of weeks.

Think of them as Kool Aid-drinking Democratic operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong.

RAHM EMANUEL’S CHICAGO: Chicago saw more 2016 murders than NYC, LA combined.

SOCIAL JUSTICE MEDIA: Nude Neptune sunk by Facebook’s privacy controls.

NUCLEAR OPTION: Senate Dems planning “unprecedented” obstruction of Cabinet nominees.

CUBANO EMBARGO: Venmo Keeps Flagging Payments for Cuban Food As Potential U.S. Trade Violations.

BuzzFeed’s team tried divvying up the cost of a work lunch of Cuban sandwiches, and the app flagged a payment request simply described as “Cuban.” By way of explanation, Venmo told the site that it takes U.S. trade sanctions “seriously,” especially for money transfers involving “foreign countries … on the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list maintained by the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.” Cuban could describe the cuisine you ate, or the money you’re secretly funneling to a communist dictator — hard to say, really. BuzzFeed says Venmo gives you 15 days to offer proof.

Just don’t order your lunch with a side of Russian dressing.

JIHADWATCH: Archbishop who smuggled arms for Palestinian jihad killers dies in the Vatican.

SO IT’S COME TO THIS: Rob Schneider Blasted by SJWs Over Choice of Cookware.

WELL, GOOD: Republican Congress puts priority on targeting regulations.

The House is expected to take up two bills — the Midnight Rules Act and the REINS Act (which stands for Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny) — that passed on largely party-line votes in the 114th, 113th and 112th congressional sessions, but died in the Senate. The REINS Act would require that before any new major regulation could take effect, the House and Senate would have to pass a resolution of approval. The Midnight Rules Act would let Congress invalidate rules in bulk that passed in the final year of a presidential term.

The House is also expected to consider a nonbinding resolution disapproving the Dec. 23 United Nations Security Council vote that called on Israel to stop building settlements in the West Bank. The United States abstained in that vote, allowing the measure to pass.

What about actual legislation defunding the U.N.?

MICHAEL WALSH: 2016 – The Year the Media Got What Was Coming to It.

You get the feeling that 2017 will prove even more schadenfreudelicious?

ELITISTS GOTTA ELITE:

From this week's @NewYorker pic.twitter.com/4EPsd4Eb1M

— Ben Taub (@bentaub91) January 2, 2017

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): “Do you want more Trump? Because this is how you get more Trump.”

Let me just add that our credentialed-but-not-educated elites have crashed the plane plenty of times. They always walk away unscathed afterward. The folks back in Economy Class, not so much.

I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS… German Development Minister: ‘Eight to Ten Million Refugees Are Still on The Way’

NICE CATCH: Man arrested in Saarland on suspicion of financing Isis.

The 38-year-old Syrian was arrested at his home in Saarbrücken, near the French border, on December 31st with prosecutors alleging he was planning to disguise a car as a police vehicle before driving it into a crowd.

The suspect, Hasan A., was reportedly in contact with Isis via the messaging service Telegram and police have been able to secure chats he had with a contact man from the extremist organization after seizing his mobile phone, Spiegel reported on Monday.

Hasan A. has denied the charge, claiming he made up his attack plan in order to try and trick the jihadists out of €180,000, which he could use to support his family in Syria.

Investigators also believe that the chances of the attack taking place were slim.

These days you might want to take German terror estimations with a grain of salt.

THE DEATH THROES OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: The PC Police Crack Down on . . . Kids Books.

Ranking high among the surrealities of 2016 was the meltdown at a literary festival in Australia when the American-born novelist Lionel Shriver defended the freedom of fiction writers to conjure characters unlike themselves.

“Taken to their logical conclusion,” Ms. Shriver warned, “ideologies recently come into vogue challenge our right to write fiction at all.” Among the concepts she skewered was “cultural appropriation,” the notion that members of one ethnic group mustn’t use (or eat or wear or write about) things emanating from other ethnic groups. The illogical impracticality of the idea, especially with fiction, hasn’t impeded its spread, and the resulting umbrage was a wonder to behold: An Australian writer of Egyptian and Sudanese origin stormed out of the speech, later blaming Ms. Shriver for celebrating “the unfettered exploitation of the experiences of others, under the guise of fiction.” The officials in charge of the event disavowed their keynote speaker’s remarks.

Such exquisite sensitivities put a lot of well-meaning people into terrible predicaments in 2016. In the children’s literary realm, where “diversity” has become the lodestar, the year began and ended with choler, indignation and the repudiation of books.

Of course it did.

(Behind the WSJ paywall, but you might find a way around it here.)

FASTER, PLEASE: Coming Innovations That Will Make Flying Economy (Mostly) Better.

SALENA ZITO: The art of getting to know Trump.

Obama’s books defined his public image in a large part because the political class gushed and plowed their way through his words for insights into the candidate; who was he? Was there evidence in his words that pointed to the central promise of his campaign? Could he of all people reconcile a divided country?

It literally was the most vetted book in American politics.

Donald Trump’s “The Art of the Deal”? Not so much. Which is a shame because any reporter who read the book before embarking on covering this presidential candidate, eventual nominee and now president-elect would have a much deeper understanding of who he is, how he operates and how he’ll behave going forward.

Written nearly 30 years ago (along with Tony Schwartz) it is just as revealing as Obama’s was, in terms of insights into the way this man thinks, his experiences and how he approaches business.

It serves as a blue-print for how he ran his campaign.

Read the whole thing.

BUT WHO WILL WATCH? Obama Plans Farewell Speech From Chicago.

The address is set for the evening of Jan. 10 at McCormick Place, a hulking convention center overlooking Lake Michigan. In an email to supporters, Mr. Obama said the speech would give him “a chance to say thank you for this amazing journey, to celebrate the ways you’ve changed this country for the better these past eight years, and to offer some thoughts on where we all go from here.”

After all this time, Obama still seems to believe that all he needs to do is make one more speech.

THAT BLEW UP GOOD — REAL GOOD: Reviewer Bashes ‘Rogue One’ for Thinking ‘Solution Is to Blow Things Up’

Analysis? False. Sometimes the solution is to shoot stuff.