HMM:

Source close to transition told me key Romney hurdle was chemistry, now @realdonaldtrump tells @foxandfriends re dinner: "a good chemistry"

— Ed Henry (@edhenry) December 2, 2016

KIMBERLY STRASSEL: Democrats Send Their Regrets.

Cue Sinatra and “My Way.” That’s how former Senate leader Harry Reid, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and President Obama ruled for eight years. They planned each charted course, each careful step. Now, they’re not finding it so amusing.

Mr. Coons is regretting giving up his tool to stop Donald Trump’s march of reformers. It’s a cabinet parade of charter-school-lovers, and law-and-order prosecutors and tax-cutters and ObamaCare-slayers, of the sort to give a good Delaware liberal night sweats. There was a day when not one of these nominees could have hoped to squeeze past a Senate filibuster. But Mr. Reid did it his way, and Mr. Trump keeps tweeting.

Former veep candidate Tim Kaine in October threatened that Republicans would be really, really sorry if they tried use what filibuster tools were left against a Hillary Clinton Supreme Court nominee. If Republicans “stonewall,” then a “Democratic Senate majority will say we’re not going to let you thwart the law,” he declared in October. Incoming Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer is now regretting that belligerence, and insisting that the Supreme Court filibuster is inviolate, and that his party never did kill it, you know, and that should count for something, and . . . blah, blah, regrets.

It would be hard to stall the confirmation process, at least after Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s regretful September news conference, the one where she stood tall and hit Republicans for refusing to confirm Mr. Obama’s end-of-the-road nominee, Merrick Garland. “This is not just some TV show [like] ‘Eight is Enough.’ Eight is not enough on the United States Supreme Court,” she railed. She’s joined in regret by the activists behind those trendy Twitter campaigns: #weneednine. #doyourjob. Bring on Mr. Trump’s own Tweetbomb: #likeyousaid.

They have a lot to regret. They’ll have much more.

(You might find a way past WSJ’s paywall here.)

EXCLUSIVE: DNC Chair Candidate Rep. Keith Ellison Met with Hamas Fundraiser Mohammed al-Hanooti.

ABOUT THAT JOBS REPORT… Labor force participation ticks down.

It remains stuck at levels not seen since 1978, when Jimmy Carter was President.

Of course, even during Carter’s Administration the trend for labor participation was upward.

If only someone had warned us that Obama would prove to be worse than Carter.

JAYVEE: IS group to step up attacks on Europe.

The European police force says more foreign fighters will try to come back to Europe, and “several dozen” capable of attacks could already be there.

Their tactics could include car bombs, kidnappings and extortion, it said.

But the report plays down the likelihood of attacks on critical infrastructure, such as nuclear sites.

It says that IS militants now prefer soft targets, and there is now a greater emphasis on “lone actors” such as the perpetrator of the lorry attack in Nice in July.

It warns that some Syrian refugees in Europe may be vulnerable to recruitment by extremists who infiltrate refugee camps.

While Barack Obama stayed focused on his “necessary war” in Afghanistan, the action had moved to the desert where Iraq and Syria meet.

CHANGE: Alone and unpopular, France’s Hollande throws in the towel.

French President François Hollande said on Thursday he would not seek re-election next year, bowing to historically low approval ratings after a troubled term in power.

The withdrawal means the 62-year-old Socialist leader is the first president of France’s fifth republic, founded in 1958, to step aside after only one term.

“I have decided that I will not be a candidate,” a stony-faced Hollande said in a solemn televised statement from the Élysée Palace in Paris during which he defended his record.

He conceded that he was unable to unite his deeply divided Socialist Party behind his candidacy ahead of the presidential election in April and May next year.

Socialism will be more popular next time, with the right people in charge.

CIVIL RIGHTS: Democrats promise to kill any national conceal carry reciprocity agreement in the senate.

Imagine having this debate over which places you could speak freely in, and in which other places you had better watch yourself.

Oh, wait…

THEY’LL GET CLEAN AFTER JUST ONE LAST FIX: Saudis Wager On Higher Oil Prices to Drive Economic Diversification.

In its thrust toward diversification, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ de-facto leader needs to monetize massive reserves of crude oil. That means building up targeted noncrude sectors such as refined petroleum products, petrochemicals and minerals mining. From there, the kingdom would help finance a push into other sectors, such as tourism, manufacturing and financial services.

That goal helped to drive the Saudis toward pushing for substantial output restraints at the cartel’s meeting in Vienna this week. It was a step the kingdom has for decades avoided, as it pursued market share at the expense of prices.

A trip on Tuesday by Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz to a coastal industrial town helps illustrate the country’s commitment to its recently mapped economic path. The king made his first visit as monarch to the oil-rich Eastern Province this week to attend events marking a string of multibillion-dollar investments by local and foreign companies in petrochemical and mining projects.

Petrochemicals and mining? That isn’t a whole lot of diversity.

PRECIOUS SNOWFLAKES: Virginia schools ban ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ ‘Huckleberry Finn’ for racial slurs.

The decision to remove “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain and “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee came after a parent filed a complaint, WCMH-TV reported. The parent cited excessive racial slurs as the reason for wanting the books banned, Superintendent Warren Holland told the news station.

The parent, whose son is biracial, said that her concerns are “not even just a black and white thing.”

“I keep hearing, ‘This is a classic, This is a classic,’ … I understand this is a literature classic. But at some point, I feel that children will not — or do not — truly get the classic part — the literature part, which I’m not disputing,” she said at a Nov. 15 school board meeting. “This is great literature. But there (are so many) racial slurs in there and offensive wording that you can’t get past that.”

No, you can’t get past that.

PROCUREMENT BLUES: The US’s military edge over Russia and China has come down to one plane.

Only one US airframe remains head-and-shoulders above any and all competition: the F-22 Raptor.

The F-22 was the first fifth-generation fighter jet, and it is like nothing else on earth. The plane can execute mind-bending aerial maneuvers, sense incoming threats at incredible distances, and fly undetected by legacy aircraft.

The coming F-35 Lightning II, a stealthy technological marvel in its own right, has an impressive radar cross section approximately the size of a basketball. The F-22, however, blows it out of the water with a cross section about the size of a marble.

For this reason, the F-22 Raptor remains the US’s only hope for breaching the most heavily protected airspace. Even so, an expert on Russian air defenses told Business Insider that F-22 pilots would have to be “operationally, tactically brilliant” to survive strikes against Russian-defended targets.

And we built fewer than 200 of them.

CUE THE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: Clinton donors feel like they torched their cash.

The frustrations from the Election Day defeat are causing a lot of problems for the Democratic National Committee, which is already working to rebuild its dilapidated image and gear up for the 2018 midterm elections. In addition, many progressive activists are worried about money as they prepare to go to war with Trump, who has vowed to undo much of President Barack Obama’s legacy.

“They’re tired,” one DNC official told The Hill regarding top Democratic donors. “They’re upset about the election, and there was significant trauma surrounding the Russians. They’re upset and they’re tired.”

On top of the defeat, donors are angry over the WikiLeaks revelations (which included leaks of their information) and the fact that the DNC will be without any sort of leadership until more than a month into the Trump administration.

The GOP was pulled out of its post-2008 doldrums by the spontaneous formation of the Tea Party just weeks after Barack Obama’s inauguration. Democrats seem unlikely (for now, anyway) to enjoy a similar grassroots boon.

GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE: Wisconsin VA Hospital May Have Infected 600 Veterans With HIV Or Hepatitis.

From October 2015 to October 2016, a dentist at the Tomah VA exposed 592 veterans to infectious diseases by reusing his own dental equipment and “cleaning” it instead of using the sterile and disposable equipment provided by the VA, said Acting Medical Center Director Victoria Brahm, according to WEAU News.

“It was purposeful that he was violating VA regulations,” Brahm said. “During all of the orientation, he used all of our equipment. He used it appropriately, so it was very purposeful from what we found in our investigation that he knew exactly what he was doing, and preferred to use his own equipment against procedure.”

Someone who was filling in for the dentist’s assistant noticed what he was doing and reported it.

The dentist, who has yet to be identified, hasn’t been fired after carelessly exposing hundreds of veterans to infectious diseases.

Abolish the VA and give veterans vouchers for the private health coverage of their choice.

CULTURE: UNESCO Deems Belgium’s Beer Culture A Treasure Of Humanity.

When Belgium’s beer culture was nominated for UNESCO recognition and protection back in 2014, beer expert Erik Verdonck explained the reasoning to NPR’s Rachel Martin:

“Well, I think, thanks to the fact that we still have 150 breweries and many of these are still family owned. So it’s not only a lot of more industrial type of beer tradition, we also keep to our typical traditions like sour beers, for instance, lambic beers close to Brussels and of course, the famous Trappist and abbey beers. This is all part of our liquid heritage, if you want.”

In its note recognizing Belgium’s beer scene, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) wrote that while the country drinks a wide variety of beer, it’s also famous for cooking with it — making everything form flavorful sauces to beer-washed cheese.

I never thought I’d say this, but if UNSECO thinks Belgium’s beer culture is special, they should come visit Colorado sometime.

UNCLEAR HEADLINES: Robbery suspect surrenders after 11 hostages taken at Florida bank.

I guess if the police have to take hostages to force the criminals to surrender, then that’s what they’ve got to do.

2016, MAN: Rogue Beaver Apprehended After Trashing Store That Sells Fake Christmas Trees.

RAHM’S KIND OF TOWN: Chicago tops 700 homicides — with a month to go in violent 2016.

The year got off to a violent start with 50 homicides in January and rarely let up even after the end of the summer — the peak season for shootings.

The numbers are simply off the charts. The 701 homicides through Wednesday marked a nearly 56 percent jump from the 450 killings a year earlier. With one month still to go, that represents the most homicides since 704 in 1998.

Police Department statistics do not include killings on area expressways, police-involved shootings, other justifiable homicides or death investigations that could later be reclassified as homicides. And police said a fatal shooting happened early Thursday, the first day of December, but an autopsy hasn’t confirmed that the death is a homicide.

Nearly 4,050 people have been shot, a 50 percent jump from 2,699 victims a year earlier, according to the department statistics. Shooting incidents rose by comparable figures, to 3,315, up 49 percent from 2,224 a year earlier.

“Peak season for shootings” sounds like something out of a dystopian science fiction novel.

OVERHEARD: WaPo (no link yet) says it’s Mad Dog Mattis for SecDef.

UPDATE: Here’s the story.

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen retired Marine Gen. James N. Mattis to be secretary of defense, nominating a former senior military officer who led operations across the Middle East to run the Pentagon less than four years after he hung up his uniform, according to people familiar with the decision.

To take the job, Mattis will need Congress to pass new legislation to bypass a federal law that states secretaries of defense must not have been on active duty in the previous seven years. Congress has granted a similar exception just once, when Gen. George C. Marshall was appointed to the job in 1950.

An announcement is likely by early next week, according to the people familiar with the decision. Mattis declined to comment. Spokespersons for Trump’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment.

Mattis, 66, retired as the chief of U.S. Central Command in spring 2013 after serving more than four decades in the Marine Corps. He is known as one of the most influential military leaders of his generation, serving as a strategic thinker while occasionally drawing rebukes for his aggressive talk. Since retiring, he has served as a consultant and as a visiting fellow with the Hoover Institution, a think tank at Stanford University.

An inspired choice, if I did say so myself.

THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT SKYNET WANTS YOU TO THINK: Artificial Intelligence Vs Humans: AI More Likely To Enhance Life Rather Than Harm It.

Most Americans already have an AI device right in their pants pocket, in the form of Google Now or Apple’s Siri. Both seem to help much more than hurt.

FASTER, PLEASE: Genetically Modified Pigs Could Ease Organ Shortage.

Researchers have been trying for decades to make animal-to-human transplants work, a process known as xenotransplantation. Pigs are a particularly promising source of organs. They produce big litters. Organs such as the kidney and liver are similar in size to those of humans. “Nobody has come up with a better animal,” says Joseph Tector, a professor of surgery who runs the xenotransplantation program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

A previous push into xenotransplantation by companies and scientists in the 1990s faltered due to a number of factors. In early experiments with nonhuman primates, their immune system attacked and rejected the pig organs. There were concerns that remnants of retroviruses in pigs’ genetic makeup, while harmless to the pigs, might end up infecting humans. Trying to modify the pig genome was a slow process; it often took years to successfully modify a single gene.

Then last year, a group led by George Church of Harvard University published a paper describing their use of a new gene-editing technology called Crispr-Cas9. Unlike previous gene-editing systems, Crispr allowed the researchers to make multiple changes simultaneously to inactivate viral remnants in the pigs’ genes.

Crispr has helped renew enthusiasm for xenotransplantation.

In the meantime, if you’re eligible, please sign your donor card.

UH-OH: Russia Launches Space Cargo Ship, But Its Fate Is Unclear.

Today’s launch started off seemingly smooth and flawless. During a live webcast of the launch, NASA spokesman Rob Navias of the Johnson Space Center in Houston announced that “all vehicle parameters [were] reported performing perfectly” about 2 minutes after liftoff. Nearly 7 minutes later, the spacecraft achieved preliminary orbit insertion.

But as Progress 65 was entering Earth’s orbit, mission controllers began to experience what Navias called ratty telemetry data during the end of the third-stage engine performance. At first it was unclear whether the third-stage engines had shut down and separated from the spacecraft. “Third-stage separation may have happened earlier than planned,” Navias said.

Shortly thereafter, Navias announced that telemetry data “received in bits and pieces indicated that the navigational antennas have deployed.” However, the fate of the spacecraft’s solar arrays was up in limbo. Though telemetry data showed the solar panels were no longer stowed, whether they were successfully deployed remains uncertain.

The ISS currently has a crew of six on board, presumably with enough rations to make it through until Progress 66.

SCIENCE: Four New Names Officially Added to the Periodic Table of Elements.

Yet we still don’t have one named Lehrerium.

STUDY: Using Ecstasy to treat PTSD: ‘I felt like my soul snapped back into place’

PTSD has garnered attention as a problem that plagues returning war veterans, but the majority of those with the disorder are civilians. The National Center for PTSD says that nearly one in 15 Americans, including one in 10 women, will be afflicted at some point in their life. PTSD can be triggered by a single, terrifying incident or by repeated abuse. In effect, the brain and body get stuck in a loop of overreaction to normal stimuli; symptoms may include nightmares, panic attacks and avoidance of normal situations or interactions that remind the patient of their initial trauma.

“It comes out of the fundamental terror part of the brain,” says Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a psychiatrist and trauma researcher in Boston. “It doesn’t allow you to focus on anything new, because you’re preoccupied with the past threat.” To break the cycle, van der Kolk says, a patient needs to get beyond the ongoing sense of visceral terror. For some patients, talking about the trauma, even thinking about it, is too much.

That’s where MDMA seems to come in. “What we see in the sessions is that it seems to kind of bring people down from being overwhelmed by emotions,” says Dr. Michael Mithoefer, a psychotherapist who led the first MAPS-funded studies using drug-assisted therapy for PTSD. “At the same time, it also kind of brings them up from being numb or disconnected from those emotions.”

That’s how Appleton describes it, too. “PTSD is always distracting you from facing your problems, because it’s terrifying. On the MDMA, you’re finally able to face the stuff that you’ve been pushing down for so many years.”

Like any cure for any disease or disorder, I hope this pans out.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Kellyanne Conway Would Be A Feminist Hero If She Were A Democrat.

Feminist? Progressives won’t even think of her as a “real” woman.

IT ISN’T ABOUT TRADE: China Raises Taxes on Imported Cars.

Chinese buyers of eye-poppingly expensive luxury cars will have to pay extra under Beijing’s latest effort to rein in ostentatious spending.

The communist government has added a 10 percent import tax, effective Thursday, on “super-luxury vehicles” priced above 1.3 million yuan ($190,000). The Finance Ministry said it is aimed at encouraging “rational consumption” and curbing energy use and emissions.

Chinese leaders are trying to nurture domestic consumption to reduce reliance on trade and investment, but worry extravagant spending by the elite is politically dangerous at a time of slowing economic growth.

Free and fair elections and a transparent economy would help Beijing with the whole legitimacy thing, don’t you know.

RELATED: See this morning’s post on China’s difficult-to-impossible-yet-totally-necessary switchover from an export-driven economy to one driven by consumer spending.

IT’S NOT WHAT TREVOR NOAH WANTS YOU TO THINK SHE MEANT: Here’s What Tomi Lahren Meant by Asking, ‘What Did the KKK Do?’