TRAVEL: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin Medically Evacuated From South Pole.

Aldrin, 86, was visiting Antarctica when “his condition deteriorated,” according to White Desert, which organizes luxury tourism trips to the icy continent. The group said Aldrin was evacuated on the first available flight out of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station to the McMurdo Station on the Antarctic coast under the care of a doctor with the U.S. Antarctic Program.

He is in stable condition, White Desert said.

The National Science Foundation provided the flight for Aldrin, who it described as an “ailing visitor.” Aldrin will be flown to New Zealand next, the NSF said.

Godspeed, Buzz.

VOX POPULI, SHUT UP: The Remainers aim to beat Brexit by playing a long game.

Britain’s elites had better tread carefully, or they’ll end up with their own destructor.

TIRED OF ALL THE WINNING: The Surest Measure of How China’s Economy Is Losing.

There are data, grounded in real-world calculations, that show China’s economic importance falling — not rising slowly, nor staying stable, but falling. The most important indicator is net private wealth, which is the single best measure of a country’s economic size and of the pool of resources available to its public sector for military or social spending.

In work dating back to 2000 and carried out with no geo-economic agenda, Credit Suisse has estimated private wealth. The new estimates, through the middle of 2016, show American private wealth at $84.8 trillion and Chinese private wealth at $23.4 trillion. Moreover, the gap is widening. With $60 trillion less in private wealth than the United States, China’s global economic leadership is a fable.

There are of course more facts to bring to the argument at hand than the Credit Suisse data, but the latter are an excellent place to start. The data series is well behaved statistically, which means it has credibility. It is measured globally, so shares can be calculated. The result: the People’s Republic of China’s level of private wealth actually fell from mid-2015, both in amount and in share.

Export-driven economies can grow only so large before the rest of the world becomes saturated with their exports. At that point, the challenge is to generate enough domestic demand for continued growth, or stagnation results. Japan, with one of the world’s highest per capita GDPs in the world, failed that challenge a quarter century ago and has stagnated ever since. China, with a much smaller per capita GDP — and just as significant, a much more corrupt government — seems unlikely to do any better than Japan did.

FASTER, PLEASE: The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency Will Test-Fire its New Larger SM-3IIA Interceptor Missile in Space.

The new missile, called the SM-3IIA, is slated to fire from a land-based missile defense site planned by the Pentagon for Poland by 2018, a Missile Defense Agency spokesman, told Scout Warrior in a statement.

SM-3 missiles, first deployed on Navy ships, are exo-atmospheric interceptor missiles designed to destroy short and intermediate range incoming enemy ballistic missiles in above the earth’s atmosphere. With the weapon, threats are destroyed in space during what’s described as the mid-course phase of flight.

“The SM-3 Block IIA missile is beingThe SM-3 IIA guided missile is a larger version of the SM-3 IB in terms of boosters and the kinetic warhead, which allows for increased operating time. The second and third stage boosters on the SM-IIA are 21″ in diameter,allowing for longer flight times and engagements of threats higher in the exo-atmosphere,” Missile Defense Agency spokesman Christopher Szkrybalo told Scout Warrior in a statement.

I’m old enough to remember to “Star Wars” detractors insisted it was impossible to “hit a bullet with a bullet.”

OIL WARS: Here’s Why the OPEC Oil Rally Is Likely to Be Short-Lived.

The oil price rally sparked by an OPEC-Russia deal to cut output is likely to be short-lived, say traders in Asia, because the agreement may only draw more supplies from storage tanks and more crude shipments from the United States.

And even without increased supplies from elsewhere, if the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia do reduce production by 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) as pledged, the cuts would not be deep enough to shrink a glut that began to build in mid-2014, traders said.

“The cut by OPEC will be largely offset by increases in U.S. production where the rig count has already increased,” said India Oil Corp’s Director of Finance A K Sharma.

This isn’t news to Instapundit readers, although I should ask you again: Have you hugged a fracker today?

CHANGE? Trump’s Treasury Choice Says ‘No Absolute Tax Cut’ for the Wealthy.

High-income households won’t receive an “absolute tax cut” under a Trump tax plan, the president-elect’s new pick for Treasury secretary said on Wednesday, a promise that is at odds with tax proposals from Donald Trump and House Republicans.

Steven Mnuchin said that “Any reductions we have in upper-income taxes will be offset by less deductions, so that there will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class.” The big tax cut, he told CNBC, will go the middle class.

I’m less concerned with tax cuts than I am with eliminating regulations which stifle business formation and product/service innovation. Wealthy Americans need something productive to do with their dollars, rather than just speculating on equities markets.

THE BENEFITS OF PALEO: New evidence that Lucy, our most famous ancestor, had superstrong arms.

RIP: The Inventor of the Big Mac Has Died.

MIRTA OJITO: I Forgot Fidel a Long Time Ago.

Growing up, Fidel loomed large in my life and in the life of most Cubans of the generation born shortly after he assumed power in 1959. Because we knew nothing else, because we were taught only one reality, Fidel came to embody not only the ideas of the revolution but also the nation itself. He was the mambí (those who fought for independence against Spain) and the bearded revolutionary; he was the national anthem and the flag, the mountains and the sea.

All powerful, all seeing, he came to replace God at a time when the government declared the country atheist. Who needs God in the face of such powerful force?

To reject him, to stand against everything he stood for was to be disloyal not only to him but to la patria – the motherland.

It is no coincidence that the government adopted words to demean those who wanted a different life. In revolutionary Cuba, people didn’t just leave the island, they “abandoned the motherland.” At first and for a long time they were called gusanos, or worms. Later, when my time came to leave, we were called escoria, or scum.

I left in a boatlift that brought more than 125,000 Cubans from the port of Mariel, in northern Cuba, to South Florida 36 years ago. On a wall in my home office I keep the departure order the government issued to the Mañana, the boat that carried me and my family to the US. Under the category of shipment, someone at the port wrote the word “lastre” or ballast.

Read — and share — the whole thing.

JUDGE: Craigslist Sperm Donor to Lesbian Couple Doesn’t Owe Child Support.

THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO BE SECURE IN THEIR PERSONS, HOUSES, PAPERS AND EFFECTS… New US computer search law takes effect Thursday.

“By sitting here and doing nothing, the Senate has given consent to this expansion of government hacking and surveillance.”

Those were the words Wednesday of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) as he failed to convince fellow senators to even hold a floor vote that could block changes to what is known as Rule 41 from taking effect Thursday.

Wyden was referencing an amended Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure, which originated from an unelected advisory committee and was signed by the Supreme Court in April. By rule, it becomes effective December 1. The measure clarifies the law allowing judges to sign warrants that let authorities hack into computers outside a judge’s jurisdiction. The rule also gives federal judges the authority to issue a warrant to search multiple computers—even without knowing who is the targeted computer owner. Previously, some judges had practiced this, while others did not.

Wyden, a handful of fellow lawmakers, and civil rights groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation oppose Rule 41. They say that under the measure, a warrant would not have to say with any particularity whose computer the authorities are searching. Wyden said Congress should vote on whether to allow this instead of the measure taking effect without any congressional approval.

More:

In a recent Medium post, Wyden said: “For law enforcement to conduct a remote electronic search, they generally need to plant malware in—i.e. hack—a device. These rule changes will allow the government to search millions of computers with the warrant of a single judge. To me, that’s clearly a policy change that’s outside the scope of an ‘administrative change,’ and it is something that Congress should consider.”

The success of constitutional separation of powers was predicated on each branch being jealous of its powers and prerogatives. The Founders don’t seem to have imagined a Congress happy to give theirs away to the Executive.

POLLING: Trump promised to repeal Obamacare, but it turns out Americans like most of it, a poll finds.

Actually, what the poll shows is that Americans like many of ObamaCare’s provisions, such as the ban on preexisting conditions. What they don’t like, such as skyrocketing premiums and losing their doctors, are the things which make the provisions possible.

Which is like saying you want all the health benefits of broccoli, but are only willing to eat the cheese sauce.

BUBBLE? As Auto Lending Rises, So Do Delinquencies.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York noted increasing distress among auto borrowers with shaky credit, as subprime delinquencies rose in the third quarter.

In the third quarter, 2 percent of subprime auto loan balances became at least 90 days delinquent, up from 1.6 percent in the third quarter of 2014.

In the depths of the recession, in the second quarter of 2009, that rate peaked at 2.4 percent.

“The increased level of distress associated with subprime loan delinquencies is of significant concern,” researchers for the New York Fed wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.

What really got GM and Chrysler in trouble the last time around was subprime lending combined with unprecedented channel-stuffing of months and months worth of unsold vehicles. I haven’t seen any reports of that this time around, so probably the worst that could happen is an ordinary automaking recession, rather than another wave of bankruptcies.

POLITICO: Why Marine Le Pen won’t win.

I wouldn’t be so sure.

CYBORG, INK: This Amputee Tattoo Artist Turned His Arm into a Prosthetic Rig.

DOWNLOAD FOR LATER: Netflix finally gives us the feature we’ve been waiting for.

CHANGE: Philip Morris CEO looks towards phasing out cigarettes.

THE DEVIL YOU SAY: It’s Not Scotch, but Tasmanian Whisky Is Flying off the Shelves.

Ten years ago there were only three distillers in Tasmania. Now there are 22, and with sales growing by more than 50 percent in the two years to June 2015, that number is expected to double over the next five years. Still, total revenue from the industry reached just A$20 million last year, a drop in the whisky world’s ocean. Scotch whisky, by comparison, generates 3.95 billion pounds ($4.9 billion) a year, accounting for about a quarter of U.K. food and drink exports.

“The only negative is volume — we can’t keep up with demand,” State Premier Will Hodgman said in an interview in Tasmania’s capital Hobart. “But we want to preserve the integrity of the brand. The bar has been set high and if they want to be competitive, the new entrants will need to prove to be equally high grade.”

Quality whisky/whiskey production is becoming democratized and recognized around the world, just like fine wine production did outside of Europe in the 1970s. There’s never been a better time to be a drinker.

CYBERSECURITY: 1 million Google accounts compromised by Android malware called Gooligan.

Gooligan, as researchers from security firm Check Point Software Technologies have dubbed the malware, has been found in at least 86 apps available in third-party marketplaces. Once installed, it uses a process known as rooting to gain highly privileged system access to devices running version 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean, and KitKat) and version 5 (Lollipop) of Google’s Android operating system. Together, the vulnerable versions account for about 74 percent of users.

The rooted devices then download and install software that steals the authentication tokens that allow the phones to access the owner’s Google-related accounts without having to enter a password. The tokens work for a variety of Google properties, including Gmail, Google Photos, Google Docs, Google Play, Google Drive, and G Suite.

You’re taking your chances if you download Android apps from anywhere other than the Google Play store.

LEVI’S: No Firearms in Our Stores. Thanks.

And another proud American institution falls prey to progressivism.

1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.#lefties

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 10, 2015

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL, BUT MOSTLY JUST CRUEL: Canadian cops to punish drunk drivers with Nickelback tunes.

The Canadian town of Kensington has hit upon a genius plan to detract its residents from drinking and driving this holiday season.

Not only will the cops charge you, they’ll also blast Nickelback while they’re haul you to jail.
The Kensington Police Service laid down the law in a Facebook post over the weekend for those “dumb enough to feel they can drink and drive.”

“When we catch you and we will catch you,” the department added, “on top of a hefty fine, a criminal charge and a years driving suspension we will also provide you with a bonus gift of playing the offices copy of Nickelback in the cruiser on the way to jail.”

Canadians always seemed so nice.

HOW HIGH CAN YOU GET? Now You Can Play Classic Arcade Games Directly In Facebook Messenger.

Messenger still creeps me out.

BECAUSE YOU’RE SO SMOOTH: Trump Victory Tour Set as Cabinet Comes Together.

I’m old enough to remember when the transition was in “chaos.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Prince Alwaleed says women driving ban hurts Saudi economy.

It’s impossible to compete with Western economies when you keep half of your potentially productive population as chattel.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Air Force Has Too Few Fighter Squadrons to Meet Commanders’ Needs.

The U.S. Air Force says a shortage of fighter pilots has become so dire that it is struggling to satisfy combat requirements abroad.

“We have too few squadrons to meet the combatant commanders’ needs,” Major General Scott Vander Hamm, the general in charge of fixing the fighter pilot crisis, said in an exclusive interview with VOA.

The Air Force is currently authorized to have 3,500 fighter pilots, but it is 725 fighter pilots short. And with fewer pilots, the number of fighter pilot squadrons have also dropped, from 134 squadrons in 1986 to 55 in 2016.

As a greater percentage of the force has needed to be deployed over the past 10 years, readiness — the ability to accomplish missions at home and abroad — has dropped 20 percent.

Perhaps the most serious part of the problem is that fighter pilot training hours have dropped from a Cold War average of 200 hours a year, to 120-150 hours.