ERDOGAN’S TURKEY: Ruthless Assault on Press Freedom Shields State from Scrutiny.

The assault on critical journalism sharpened in 2014 but accelerated after the failed coup attempt in July 2016, denying Turkey’s population access to a regular flow of independent information from domestic newspapers, radio, and television stations about developments in the country.

The 69-page report, “Silencing Turkey’s Media: The Government’s Deepening Assault on Critical Media,” documents five important components of the crackdown on independent domestic media in Turkey, including the use of the criminal justice system to prosecute and jail journalists on bogus charges of terrorism, insulting public officials, or crimes against the state. Human Rights Watch also documented threats and physical attacks on journalists and media organizations; government interference with editorial independence and pressure on media organizations to fire critical journalists; the government’s takeover or closure of private media companies; and restrictions on access to the airwaves, fines, and closure of critical television stations.

It wasn’t a failed coup; it’s a successful purge.

YOU SAY THAT LIKE IT’S A BAD THING: Trump’s Ungovernment — His appointments are wrecking balls and swamp creatures, and his supporters won’t care.

But Trump won’t suffer, and here’s why. When Trump railed against “elites,” he wasn’t decrying the rich and powerful. His appeal was built on the fact of his wealth and power, on his promise to bring that wealth and power to bear on Washington and deliver benefits to the deserving. For Trump, “elites” are defined by the people with whom they sympathize. And in his narrative, they sympathize with the racial adversaries of his supporters: Hispanic immigrants, Muslim Americans, and black protesters. “Elites,” in Trump’s telling, are leaders who will not strike back against America’s enemies. This isn’t separate from his appeal to jobs and revitalization; it’s the other side of the coin. With echoes of George Wallace and Richard Nixon, Trump tied economic pain to a racialized picture of “elites.” Those elites, with their sympathy for the “other,” are the reason you are hurting; they are the reason America isn’t great. To elect Trump was to reclaim the country from those elites.

Maybe they just don’t like being called “swamp creatures.”

PROFILES IN COURAGE:

BREAKING: In a reversal, Obama declines to sign renewal of Iran sanctions, but lets it become law without his signature.

— The Associated Press (@AP) December 15, 2016

PROGRESSIVE GOVERNANCE: California DMV Calls Uber’s Autonomous Autos ‘Illegal’

The car-hailing firm on Wednesday said San Francisco residents could now hail a handful of autonomous vehicles within city limits, expanding a test that began three months ago in Pittsburgh.

Later in the day, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles told Uber it was operating autonomous vehicles without a necessary permit and could face legal action unless it takes the autos off the road. Uber executives say they believed a permit wasn’t required since the retrofitted sport-utility vehicles are manned by a driver and engineer in the front seats and therefore aren’t fully autonomous.

Uber has forgotten that in forward-looking California, nearly everything not mandatory is forbidden. There’s a wedge issue here the incoming Trump Administration could use to cleave Silicon Valley from the Democrats.

HEALTH: E-cigarette use falls among teens.

Maybe this will help put to rest some of the panic-mongering at the Surgeon General’s office.

TURNABOUT: The DOE vs. Ugly Reality.

Willis Eschenbach, courtesy of an Instapundit commenter:

Over at the Washington Post, Chris Mooney and the usual suspects are seriously alarmed by a memo sent out by the Transition Team at the Department of Energy. They describe it in breathless terms in an article entitled “Trump transition team for Energy Department seeks names of employees involved in climate meetings“. The finest part was this quote from Michael Halpern:

Michael Halpern, deputy director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Center for Science and Democracy, called the memo’s demand that Energy officials identify specific employees “alarming.”

“If the Trump administration is already singling out scientists for doing their jobs, the scientific community is right to be worried about what his administration will do in office. What’s next? Trump administration officials holding up lists of ‘known climatologists’ and urging the public to go after them?” Halpern asked.

Oh … you mean like say the Attorneys General of a bunch of states holding up their lists of known “denier” organizations and tacitly urging the public to go after them? You mean like government officials of a variety of stripes ranting about how “deniers” should be brought to trial or otherwise penalized? You mean like having sites like DeSmogBlog making ugly insinuations and false statements about every known opponent of the climate party line? You mean like Roger Pielke being hounded out of his job by the climate mob?

What follows is a exquisitely detailed look at the memo and exactly why it has caused such panic on the left.

Read the whole thing.

FLORIDA WOMAN: Woman with beer, whiskey in golf cart runs into car.

Desiree Leann Farmer, 24, of Fruitland Park ran into a vehicle in a Spanish Springs-area parking lot at 1:57 a.m. Sunday while driving in a golf cart, the Villages News reports. Police said small plastic cups “containing a Jello-like substance,” two open containers of Busch Light beer and a half-full bottle of Jim Beam whiskey were found inside Farmer’s golf cart.

Police added that her driver’s license had been suspended in June over a failure to pay a traffic fine and she failed her field sobriety tests. Officers asked how much she had drank, to which Farmer responded, “I couldn’t even tell you.”

Florida Woman was 2016 before it was cool.

21ST CENTURY DINING: Dutch restaurant serves up ‘My Little Pony Burger’ made from real horse meat.

VIDEO: Ami Horowitz Went Into a Muslim No-Go Area in Sweden, and Got Beat up by 5 Men.

In Sweden.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER? Finally! Mitt Romney lets Harry Reid have it.

YES: Trump Should Focus Blame on Government, Not Just Boeing, Lockheed Martin.

Lockheed’s F-35 gets a worse rap than it deserves, but it was the Pentagon that insisted on a one-size-fits all fighter, in pursuit of cost savings which (to say the least) never materialized.

HEALTH: Pokémon Go is a no-go when it comes to real exercise.

After analyzing the movements of actual players, the researchers calculated that Pokémon Go encouraged people to take an average of 955 extra steps per day in the first week after downloading the game. Assuming that each step covered 31.5 inches and that players walked at a pace of 2.5 miles per hour, the game prompted people to walk for 11 extra minutes each day.

That’s not much. The World Health Organization recommends that adults get at least 150 minutes of aerobic physical activity each week. If you spread that equally throughout the week, you’ll need to get 21.4 minutes of exercise each day – twice as much as Pokémon Go provides.

And that was just for the first week, when the augmented reality game was most addictive. In subsequent weeks, players spent less time walking around catching monsters; by the sixth week, they were back to their pre-Pokémon Go habits.

It does help get people out of the house, which can’t be a bad thing.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: In Major Step for Drone Delivery, Amazon Flies Package to Customer in England.

On Wednesday, Mr. Bezos announced on Twitter that his company had made its first commercial drone delivery, on Dec. 7, to an Amazon shopper in Cambridgeshire, England, a major step forward in its experiments with automated shipments.

The flight — to deliver an Amazon Fire streaming device and popcorn to a customer identified only as Richard B. — took off from a nearby Amazon warehouse and lasted 13 minutes, covering about two miles.

What will really impress is when Amazon introduces ballistic deliveries, like a long-range t-shirt cannon at football games.

GEORGE FRIEDMAN: Obama’s Deep Dive Into Putin’s Intent.

There are a number of questions to ask. First, why did Obama announce what I assume is a major analytic and covert effort to determine whether the Russians did it? Second, why did the CIA then tell officials that it already had done the deep dive and found evidence of Russian actions? Third, why didn’t the CIA tell the president that there was no need for a deep dive? Fourth, why didn’t the CIA share its information with the FBI? Fifth, how would Trump know there was no Russian effort? Finally, why does Congress want to get into the act? The last is the easiest to answer: cameras.

If all the sound and fury were correct, then either U.S. intelligence detected the attempt or the Russians with their usual clumsiness in these matters had poor operational security – unless they wanted it to become public. The detection of an operation to make Trump president did not hurt Clinton. It could devastate Trump. It was emphasized during the campaign that Russian President Vladimir Putin admired Trump, and vice versa. Given that, it would seem likely the Russians wanted Trump to be president. But of course, if they really wanted him to be president and effective, the last thing they would do is anything that would cast a shadow over him. Hacking Hillary to little effect and allowing U.S. intelligence to get wind of it would be imbecilic.

Whether or not Russian efforts were effective is the one question Democrats have yet to seriously consider (at best), and have taken pains to avoid (at worst). Also left unaddressed by the Left is the fact that the DNC’s digital security was so lax (not something we look for in a Commander-in-Chief and her coterie) that Russia was allowed free access to their servers for months. If Clinton had won, it seems likely as President she’d be the most exposed to Russian intelligence in our history, with the possible exception of if FDR had died a few months sooner and left Henry Wallace in charge.

Then there’s the actual content of the emails, which can hardly be addressed without igniting another intra-party civil war. It’s not a stretch to imagine that the primary purpose of all this sound and fury is to distract rank-and-file Democrats from all the disdain shown for them in Clintonworld.

We also have President Obama’s behavior — the unprecedented and reprehensible act of using America’s intelligence services to discredit his successor. This is small, even for the man who described Hillary Clinton as “likable enough” when they were rivals for the Democrat nomination, and who just can’t help reminding people about all the winning he’s done on the campaign trail.

It’s small and cheap and completely expected from a President who poisoned almost every American institution he touched.

JUST IN TIME FOR ROGUE ONE: 5 Things You Need to Know About Disney’s New Star Wars Experiences.

SCIENCE: New Research Suggests Monogamy Killed the Penis Bone in Humans.

So many jokes, not one of them suitable for a family-friendly website.

DOES ANYONE HERE KNOW HOW TO PLAY THIS GAME?

Was Hillary running a popular vote campaign? This is crazy. pic.twitter.com/O3ddknvX6Q

— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) December 14, 2016

Maybe we were expecting too much from an unaccomplished Senator who went on to prove the Peter Principle to be overly optimistic during her tenure at State.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. So what if Trump and Perry shut down the Energy Department? No one will miss it.

The departments of Energy and Education are little more than make-work programs for Progressives, Greens, and others whose real interests lie in preventing energy production and warping education.

FINDING HISTORY: Archaeologists discover mysterious 2,500-year-old ‘lost city’ in Greece.

Experts have already made significant progress in the archaeological project. “We found a town square and a street grid that indicate that we are dealing with quite a large city,” said Rönnlund, in the press release. The area inside the city wall measures over 99 acres, or 75 football fields.

The discovery of ancient pottery and coins will help to date the city, according to Rönnlund. “Our oldest finds are from around 500 BC, but the city seems to have flourished mainly from the fourth to the third century BC before it was abandoned for some reason, maybe in connection with the Roman conquest of the area,” he said, in the press release.

Historians know relatively little about ancient cities in the region, which makes the latest discovery particularly significant. “The preliminary results of our investigation are important as they give clear evidence that western Thessaly was no backwater, but a rich and vibrant society within the ancient world,” Rönnlund told FoxNews.com, via email.

While local authorities have known about the Vlochós remains for some time, this is the first time that systematic research has been conducted in the area.

TRANSPARENCY: Department of Energy Refuses to Tell Trump Team Who’s Working on Climate Change.

Secretary Rick Perry should send a few heads rolling and see if that doesn’t loosen a few lips.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Uber is bringing a small number of self-driving cars to its ride-hailing service in San Francisco, a move likely to both excite the city’s tech-savvy population and antagonize California regulators.

Uber’s self-driving tests in San Francisco will begin with a “handful” of Volvo luxury SUVs — the company wouldn’t release an exact number — that have been tricked out with sensors so they can steer, accelerate and brake, and even decide to change lanes. The cars will have an Uber employee behind the wheel to take over should the technology fail. Users of the app may be matched with a self-driving car, but can opt out if they prefer a human driver. Self-driven rides cost the same as ordinary ones.

The cars will be put to the test in the congested streets of San Francisco. The city can be a daunting place to drive given its famously steep hills, frequent fog, street and cable cars, an active bicycle culture, and roads that are constantly being repaved, remarked and restricted for bike lanes and traffic management.

Uber believes its technology is ready to handle all this safely, though its executives concede the vehicles are nowhere near able to drive without a human ready to take control in dicey situations.

As this former resident can tell you, driving San Francisco’s streets isn’t as much of a chore as this story makes it out to be, but anything beats trying to find a parking space — even riding the Muni.

RELIGION OF PEACE: A Saudi woman tweeted a photo of herself without a hijab. Police have arrested her.

According to a woman interviewed by the International Business Times, Shehri had tweeted about her plans to go to breakfast without a headscarf or abaya, and her followers asked her to post a picture. The tweet and photo were posted from her account @AngelQShe, which was later deleted.

Shehri, whose first name means angel, soon received hateful messages, including many with the hashtag “we demand the imprisonment of the rebel Malak al-Shehri.”

One account tweeted “we want blood.” Other users wrote, “Kill her and throw her corpse to the dogs” and “The least punishment for her is beheading her.”

Charming.

GOOD LORD: 73-year-old dementia-stricken Calif. man fatally shot by police was carrying crucifix, not gun.

RED LINES: Fierce fighting halts Aleppo evacuation.

A ceasefire was declared in Aleppo on Tuesday and buses brought in to ferry people out of the devastated enclave.

But fighting resumed on Wednesday. Syrian activists also say air strikes over rebel-held territory have resumed.

The breakdown of the deal, brokered by Russia and Turkey, is being attributed to demands from the Syrian government.

It is said to be seeking the evacuation of its own injured fighters and civilians from nearby towns encircled by opposition forces.

Looks like Assad might have begun his Aleppo reprisals too soon, while some of his own people are still subject to reprisals of their own.

YES, PLEASE: F-22 and F-35 Stealth Fighters Armed with Super Lasers?

Aircraft-launched laser weapons could eventually be engineered for a wide range of potential uses, including air-to-air combat, close air support, counter-UAS(drone), counter-boat, ground attack and even missile defense, officials said.

Lasers use intense heat and light energy to incinerate targets without causing a large explosion, and they operate at very high speeds, giving them a near instantaneous ability to destroy fast-moving targets and defend against incoming enemy attacks, senior Air Force leaders explained.

Low cost is another key advantage of laser weapons, as they can prevent the need for high-cost missiles in many combat scenarios.

Air Force Research Laboratory officials have said they plan to have a program of record for air-fired laser weapons in place by 2023.

All I want for Christmas is stealth fighters with fricken laser beams.