OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Democrats and the Power of Delusion — are you prepared for the goatiest of rodeos?

THE DEATH STAR IS JUST MISUNDERSTOOD: In Rogue One, there is no dark or light side.

Judging from the trailers, Rogue One commits to a view of war that will not reduce to one-on-one lightsaber battles or the “honorable” logic of duels. It intends to be messy, all shades of gray. Director Gareth Edwards’ goal — aesthetically and ethically — was to make the standalone film “gritty” in the style of other in-the-trenches movies that favor following the grunts on the ground over the power players (or the Jedi samurai warriors). Edwards, who previously directed Monster and Godzilla, has cited footage from Vietnam, World War II, and the Gulf War as inspirations, and hired cinematographer Greig Fraser (Zero Dark Thirty) to achieve a look that’s as grimy as it is epic. The aim? To reflect the ways in which war is messy, visually and morally. “It’s been very easy in the past to label it as we’re the good guys and they’re the bad guys.”

I have a bad feeling about this.

IF IT WASN’T FOR DOUBLE-STANDARDS, THEY’D HAVE NO STANDARDS AT ALL: Gutless Liar, Harry Reid, Smears James Comey As A ‘Partisan’

JEFFREY TOOBIN: Gawker’s Fall & the Trump-Era Threat to 1st Amendment.

For decades, the news media benefitted from the deference paid by courts to the judgments of newspaper editors. The judge in federal court treated Gawker’s editors as if they were running a newspaper, and he declined to second-guess them about what constitutes the news. The jury in state court did the opposite. The question now is whether the law, instead of treating every publication as a newspaper, will start to treat all publications as Web sites—with the same skepticism and hostility displayed by the jury in Tampa. The new President and his fellow-billionaires, like Thiel, will certainly welcome a legal environment that is less forgiving of media organizations. Trump’s victory, along with Hulk Hogan’s, suggests that the public may well take their side, too.

I’m not sure exactly what “Trump-Era Threat” is supposed to mean. There doesn’t seem to be a threat from Trump, who knows exactly how to get what he wants out of the press. Are we supposed to feel threatened by an “era” merely because of its unseemly namesake? Perhaps then “Trump-Era Threat” is in the headline just to generate pageviews.

Who knows?

So then a more important question is, would the New Yorker have headlined a “Clinton-era threat” in Gawker’s wake had Hillary won the election?

Let’s talk about that Clinton-era threat — hypothetical, thank goodness — because it seems certain that there would have been one.

Hillary Clinton was the subject of the movie in the Citizens United case, which as a candidate she promised to see overturned — silencing political filmmakers for generations to come. It was on Clinton’s behalf (following her blunder at Benghazi) that an innocent YouTube videomaker was jailed for nearly a year. Just last week it was Clinton who urged “that Congress should take action against” purveyors of what she deems to be “fake news.” And forget mere threats, what about two years ago when Democrats tried to repeal the First Amendment? That, too, was backed by Hillary Clinton.

Whatever you might think of Donald Trump or the merits of the Gawker verdict, Hillary Clinton’s record on freedom of speech is atrocious — for which she has never been held accountable by the very press she has sought to control.

Even if Trump were to somehow turn out to be as hostile to free speech as Clinton is, at least he’d have Jeffrey Toobin et al. to hold him to account.

UPDATE: From the comments:

Was this summer the Era of Trump? First everything was George W Bush’s fault, even after he left office. Now it’s all Trump’s fault, even before he’s formally elected President.

Obama hasn’t even left the White House and it’s already like he was never there.

Faster, please.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: John Grunsfeld has a plan that uses Red Dragon to return Mars rocks to Earth.

Grunsfeld’s idea goes like this: Instead of sending the high-power SEP spacecraft to an asteroid, reconfigure it by adding a communications satellite, an imager, and ground-penetrating radar. The SEP spacecraft could then go to Mars and provide all of the power the radar needs to map the entire planet’s water sources over the course of a Martian year. With the radar’s work done, the SEP spacecraft could then undock, leaving NASA with a brand new communications and imaging satellite.

Meanwhile, in 2024, another spacecraft could launch to Mars—perhaps one of SpaceX’s Red Dragons, Grunsfeld said—carrying a small rover and a Mars ascent vehicle. This rover would have the primary purpose of collecting Martian rock samples cached by the Mars 2020 rover and then returning to the ascent vehicle. After launching back to Mars orbit, the ascent vehicle would dock with the SEP spacecraft and return to Earth.

Consider the potential achievements of this two-mission strategy. By 2025 NASA would have a new, high-bandwidth communications and imaging satellite in orbit around Mars; found all the water humans would need there; demonstrated solar electric propulsion; proved the capability of conducting a roundtrip flight to Mars before sending humans and; finally, have conducted a Mars sample return mission, the highest priority of the planetary science community.

Until there’s a permanent Martian colony big and advanced enough to launch satellites indigenously, they’ll all have to originate from Earth.

WELL, GOOD: Trump’s early appointments have climate change activists panicking.

To be fair, they’re always in a panic over something.

BUT OF COURSE: Microsoft’s New Ad Features Only Left-Wing Causes.

GOVERNMENT MEDICAL CARE: VA Hospital Left Body In Shower Room For 9 Hours.

Staff at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Florida left the body of a veteran in a shower for nine hours after the veteran died and proper pickup procedures to the morgue weren’t followed.

The Tampa Bay Times on Sunday (http://bit.ly/2goW2NK ) reported that an internal investigation concluded that staff at the Bay Pines VA Healthcare System failed to provide appropriate post-mortem care to the veteran’s body.

The investigative report said that leaving the body unattended for so long increased the chance of decomposition.

The unnamed veteran died in February after spending time in hospice care. The hospital’s Administrative Investigation Board ordered retraining for staff.

Hospital spokesman Jason Dangel said hospital officials view what happened as unacceptable but have implemented changes to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

We keep hearing promises like that from VA officials, but enough promises and excuses already. Abolish the VA and give vets vouchers for the private medical coverage of their choice.

(Hat tip, Weasel Zippers.)

SAY WHAT YOU LIKE ABOUT THE MULLAHS, BUT AT LEAST THEY MADE THE PLANES RUN ON TIME: Boeing Seals Nearly $17 Billion Iran Deal.

WE MAY NEVER KNOW THE TRUTH:

In the past two weeks, Obama has done interviews with:

– Rolling Stone
– Fareed Zakaria
– Daily Show

How did #FakeNews become a problem?

— Andrew Kugle (@AndrewJKugle) December 12, 2016

THAT’S NOT FUNNY! Chicago’s Famed Second City Comedy Theatre Issues Strict New ‘Safe Space’ Rules.

Signs at the famed Chicago’s Second City comedy theater, which produced such greats as John Belushi, Dan Akroyd, Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert (and some not-so-greats, like your humble reporter), is issuing rules for audience participation in its famous improvisation shows until its audience knows how to behave.

Or, at least, how to keep Second City, where supposedly no joke is off limits, a “safe space” from Trumpism.

Over the weekend, signs went up on Second City’s doors warning that the company “has a zero-tolerance policy and does not allow hate speech of any kind whether it’s directed toward our artists, employees or patrons,” and that anyone “verbalizing any homophobic, misogynistic, xenophobic, racist or prejudiced comments will be asked to leave.”

A taped message before Second City’s e.t.c. stage shows now tells audience members, “If you have to yell something like that, go home, shout it into your pillow and suffocate yourself with it.”

Good grief.

Second City used to take on anyone, from journalistic icons like Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley, all the way down to your local TV station lightnight movie host. Now it would seem their targets — and their appeal — have become more selective.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: The Two Largest Land Armies in Europe on the Edge of War.

FORGET IT, THEY’RE ROLLING:

If Dems treat everything Trump as equally outrageous, they'll have harder time convincing persuadables anything he's doing is outrageous

— David M. Drucker (@DavidMDrucker) December 12, 2016

SELECTED NOT ELECTED NOMINATED: DNC candidates defer to unity commission on eliminating superdelegates.

New York Assemblyman Michael Blake, also at the forum and running for DNC vice chair, said he agreed with Harrison and Ellison but cautioned about a system that did not include superdelegates at all. He said that if Republicans had had superdelegates, President-elect Donald Trump probably wouldn’t have won the Republican primary.

“There needs to be changes, no doubt about it. Think about on the other side, that if there would have been a superdelegate process, probably less a likelihood of Trump getting the nomination,” Blake said. “Sometimes we just have to figure out how to make the system better and what I want to make sure is regardless of what’s happening here, we’ll take the recommendations of the unity commission. Well let’s make sure, let’s figure out how to improve the process first rather than dramatically change it. Because what we don’t want to do as Democrats is dramatically change things and hurt ourselves in the long run.”

Buckley, weighing in last, said there “absolutely” had to be some kind of reform to the superdelegate system but he, like the others, refrained from saying whether that meant reducing their power or cutting them from the Democratic primary process altogether.

It sounds like leading Democrats want the appearance of change to appease their angry constituents, while each harboring the desire to be able to someday take advantage of the superdelegate system for themselves.

CHOCOLATE RATION INCREASED FROM 30 GRAMS TO 20: Inflation-Hit Venezuela Is Pulling Its Largest Bill From Circulation.

The surprise move, announced by Maduro during an hours-long speech, is likely to worsen a cash crunch in Venezuela. Maduro said the 100-bolivar bill will be taken out of circulation on Wednesday and Venezuelans will have 10 days after that to exchange those notes at the central bank.

Critics slammed the move, which Maduro said was needed to combat contraband of the bills at the volatile Colombia-Venezuela border, as economically nonsensical, adding there would be no way to swap all the 100-bolivar bills in circulation in the time the president has allotted.

Maybe Maduro is pulling the 100-bolivar bills to make way for a new and improved 10,000-bolivar bill.

AFTER ALEPPO: Raqqa Written Off for Now.

The president [Assad] and his allies have focused their campaign on the populous, fertile, west of his country and few people expect him to lavish limited military resources on quickly retaking the eastern deserts or Euphrates valley area from Islamic State.

The senior pro-Damascus official said that Assad had for now written off Raqqa, which has become the de facto Syrian capital of Islamic State, often referred to by the Arabic term Daesh, regarding the jihadist group as Washington’s problem to fix.

“The regime forgot about Raqqa a long time ago and made it the responsibility of the Americans. Let those alarmed by Daesh go and remove it,” the official said.

Allowing ISIS to fester in the Syrian desert gives Assad leverage over the West, the bad cop to his good cop.

GOOD ADVICE: Forget the Faithless-Elector Fantasy.

FLASHBACK: Obama Fails to Fight Putin’s Propaganda Machine.

The story of how Obama has failed to fight back against Russian propaganda is a depressingly typical one for this White House: a threat is recognized, then publicly denounced, some activity follows, only to be dropped due to a lack of interest, courage, and follow-through.

Perhaps the worst part of this unsatisfying inside-the-Beltway saga is that we know how to fight back against Kremlin lies, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel here. Back in the 1980s, when KGB disinformation was at its peak, the Reagan administration created the Interagency Active Measures Working Group, led by the State Department and the U.S. Information Agency, to counter Soviet propaganda. Using truth to fight lies, it became something of a model of how to debunk Kremlin disinformation without resorting to propaganda oneself. Let the facts speak for themselves was their watchword, and it worked.

Nothing more is needed now than to replicate the solid work of the Active Measures Working Group, sped up for the Internet age. To be fair to the White House, there are obstacles in the path. The disestablishment of USIA under President Bill Clinton, reducing its vital information mission to a mere appendage of the State Department, must be regarded as a bureaucratic error of the first order.

That was John Schindler, writing a full year before the recent election.

It was difficult to take Boris Yeltsin seriously, but Obama never did take Vladimir Putin seriously enough.

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Should Americans worry about Trump’s generals?

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Make Your Own Glow-in-the-Dark Beer With Fluorescent Yeast.

Josiah Zayner left his job in synthetic biology to start his own company, The Odin, which has a goal of increasing the accessibility of science and technology research, as Gizmodo reports. Zayner and The Odin produce kits for interested parties to conduct their own experiments, of sorts, and this bioluminescent beer kit is no different.

The fluorescent yeast kit uses a gene from a jellyfish and retails for $199. It requires about 10 hours of work over the span of two days before a user can get down to brewing.

“There is no impact on the flavor of the beer with the GFP engineering kit,” Zayner tells Eater. “You can literally add the engineered yeast to honey and water (or mash or wort) and the yeast will ferment and fluoresce.”

This is pretty much exactly the 21st Century I’ve come to expect.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Graphene And Silly Putty Make Sensor That Can Detect Heart Rate, Spider Footsteps.

CHUTZPAH: NBC’s Fake News King Brian Williams Launches Crusade Against “Fake News”

ENDORSED! Meghan McCain on VMI Coloring Book-Gate: You Want Cadets to Relieve Stress, Let Them Have a Few Drinks.

INFECTIOUS DISEASE: DNA From 17th Century Mummy Of A Child From Lithuania May Rewrite History Of Smallpox.

The researchers captured, sequenced, and completely reconstructed the smallpox DNA and then compared the strain to those from modern samples dating between 1940 and 1977, when the last known case of the disease occurred in Somalia.

The findings showed that the evolution of the smallpox virus happened more recently than previously believed and that the ancestor of all available smallpox viral strains were no older than 1580 albeit it is not yet clear what animal is the true reservoir of the pathogen and when the virus first jumped from animals to humans.

The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Current Biology on Dec. 8, also found that the evolution of the pathogen into two circulating strains, the variola major and minor, occurred after 1796, after scientist Edward Jenner came up with a vaccine.

“Our data clearly show that the VARV lineages eradicated during the 20th century had only been in existence for ∼200 years, at a time of rapidly expanding human movement and population size in the face of increasingly widespread inoculation and vaccination,” the researchers wrote in their study.

It’s a little unsettling that something so deadly and virulent could erupt so suddenly.

AUTOMATION: Carrier plans to use the money from deal with Trump to purchase robots that will replace workers.