FORGET IT, JAKE — IT’S SALON: American criticism of Cuba on human rights is total hypocrisy, given our history of terrorizing the island.

BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME: Pennsylvania State Department says Stein missed recount deadline.

Stein missed Pennsylvania’s deadline to file for a voter-initiated recount. That blown deadline is a huge blow for Democrats who have pinned their hopes on recounts in the Keystone State, Michigan and Wisconsin.

“According to Wanda Murren, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of State,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Monday, “the deadline for a voter-initiated recount was Monday, Nov. 21.”

To keep their hopes alive, Stein has mounted a legal challenge in an attempt to force a recount. While the chances of litigation are uncertain, the vote tally is clear. Trump beat Clinton in Pennsylvania, a feat not accomplished by a Republican since George H.W. Bush in 1988.

Progressives would be much better served by the Green Party than by Democrat/Wall Street wheeler-dealers like the Clintons and Nancy Pelosi — and should donate their time and money accordingly.

SHOT:

Just burned US flag at Trump Hotel NYC. We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America! Now your turn: #FlagBurningChallenge pic.twitter.com/pvMDaVIyKD

— Sunsara Taylor (@SunsaraTaylor) November 29, 2016

CHASER:

So Trump baited you into burning a flag and making liberals look bad. I think you've been played. https://t.co/6TaTh2xXR9

— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) November 30, 2016

It’s what Sarah Hoyt calls “roll hard left and die.”

And the rolling is just getting started.

2016, MAN: Arrested German spy was a onetime gay porn actor — and a secret Islamist.

Cisnormative suddenly doesn’t seem so bad.

SCRAMBLE: Prominent Republicans Begin Bid To Replace Haley In 2018.

The most well-known possible ticket for the 2018 gubernatorial election is Sen. Tim Scott and Rep. Trey Gowdy, who could announce their joint bid for the top two posts as early as December, according to The Post and Courier.

Gowdy first won his seat in the U.S. Congress in 2010, and has effectively campaigned for reelection every two years, earning just over 62 percent in the 2016 election season over Democratic challenger Chris Fedalei.

Gowdy is chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, and made news in recent months during his contentious interview with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for her actions as secretary of state during the attack, and FBI Director James Comey for recommending Clinton not be charged with the possession of classified materials. Gowdy also serves on the Ethics Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Scott became the first black senator from South Carolina when he was appointed by Haley to fill Sen. Jim DeMint’s term in 2013. Scott later won his seat in the 2014 special election with 61 percent of the vote. He currently serves on the Special Committee on Aging, as well as the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and he Chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Housing Transportation, and Community Development.

Governorships are a traditional route to the White House, and a forward-looking GOP could do a lot worse than Tim Scott or Trey Gowdy.

AND WITHOUT A COMPASS: The Democratic Party enters the wilderness.

Lisa Boothe:

What is left is the reality that the Democratic Party has been propped up by the personal likability of President Obama that pushed them past the finish line in 2008 and 2012. Now they are grappling with what is next in a post-Obama landscape.

But instead of shifting leadership or messaging strategies, they are poised to reelect the same people and failed ideas that led them into the darkness of irrelevancy. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco liberal, will likely stay at the helm. Rep. Ben Lujan, who ran the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and picked up only an embarrassing six seats for his party in the House, will stay in command as well. Chuck Schumer has already been tapped to lead Democrats in the Senate as minority leader.

A separate race for the Democratic National Committee has exposed how liberal and out of touch the party truly is right now. Candidate Rep. Keith Ellison, who once called for a separate country for black Americans, has received the endorsement of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Ellison has also been accused of anti-Semitism and has ties to the Nation of Islam. The Daily Caller has also identified law school columns in which Ellison calls the Constitution “best evidence of a white racist conspiracy to subjugate other peoples.”

The Democratic Party will likely continue its sharp turn left.

Steve’s Second Law of Holes says that when you’re opponent is in one, hand them a bigger and nicer shovel.

SOON EVERYTHING NOT COMPULSORY WILL BE FORBIDDEN:

France bans TV ad showing happy Down Syndrome kids. It could "disturb the conscience" of moms who aborted DS fetuses https://t.co/hfz3dMnvot

— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) December 1, 2016

PARTY OF YOUTH:

The average age of the House Republican leadership is 47.

The average age of the House Democratic leadership is 76.

— Curtis Kalin (@CurtisKalin) November 30, 2016

FUNNY, I’M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER WHEN LEFTIES SAID THE GOP WAS DOOMED TO REGIONAL STATUS:

@Patriot_Musket Not sure what they're freaking out about. pic.twitter.com/pxRsF4KEAc

— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) November 30, 2016

F-BOMBS? F*** YEAH! Hearing the Occasional F-Bomb Won’t Damage Your Children.

Looking back, hearing a whole lot of f-bombs doesn’t seem to have damaged any of my childhood friends — but if not, I’m sorry.

HMM: Trump considering Goldman Sachs president for top post.

President-elect Donald Trump is considering Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn for a senior administration job, possibly as director of the Office of Management and Budget, several sources close to the situation said on Wednesday.

People familiar with the matter say Cohn’s meeting with Trump on Tuesday included talks about a potential job in the new administration, possibly to run OMB, a sprawling office that will handle much of Trump’s budget policy after he takes office in January.

Cohn, who is friendly with both Republicans and Democrats in Washington, is a longtime commodities trader who became Goldman’s president and co-chief operating officer in 2006. He has long been the heir apparent to Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein.

GOOD: It will soon be illegal to punish customers who criticize businesses online.

The Consumer Review Fairness Act — full text available here — voids any provision in a form contract that prohibits or restricts customers from posting reviews about the goods, services, or conduct of the company providing the product or service. It also voids provisions that impose penalties or fees on customers for posting online reviews as well as those that require customers to give up the intellectual property rights related to such reviews. The legislation empowers the Federal Trade Commission to enforce the new law and impose penalties when necessary.

The bill also protects reviews that aren’t available via the Internet.

Senate Republicans and Democrats praised the bill’s passage. “By ending gag clauses, this legislation supports consumer rights and the integrity of critical feedback about products and services sold online,” Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) said in the announcement.

These gag-order “agreements” are unAmerican.

STRONG HORSE: French Election Hints at a European Shift Toward Russia.

Since the end of World War II, European leaders have maintained their ever-growing alliance as a bulwark against Russian power. Through decades of ups and downs in Russian-European relations, in periods of estrangement or reconciliation, their balance of power has kept the continent stable.

But a growing movement within Europe that includes Mr. Fillon, along with others of a more populist bent, is pushing a new policy: instead of standing up to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, stand with him.

Mr. Fillon has called for lifting sanctions on Russia and for partnering with Moscow in an effort to curtail immigration and terrorism. He is friendly with Mr. Putin. If pollsters are right and Mr. Fillon wins the French presidency in the spring, he could join several rising European politicians and newly elected leaders who are like-minded.

Their movement, scholars stress, is driven by forces far more formidable than any elected leader: the populist upsurge that is remaking the Continent and, simultaneously, the impersonal but overwhelming pressures of international power balancing.

NATO was founded on the premise — proven by two devastating world wars — that Europeans can’t be trusted to look after their own security needs. And after 67 years there’s still very little evidence to challenge that premise.

IF IT WEREN’T FOR DOUBLE STANDARDS…

MSM's right to discuss Trump's conflicts of interest. Just wish they'd been this interested in Clinton Foundation when Hillary was SECSTATE.

— John Schindler (@20committee) November 30, 2016

HEAD START: Study finds cash and coins help engage primary maths students.

Primary school students are more likely to understand and engage with maths if classes use real money and real-life projects, according to a Western Sydney University pilot study.

The findings come as Australian students lag behind other countries in maths, with Year 4 students dropping from 18th to 28th out of 49 countries in year 4 maths in the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science study.

The project leader, Associate Professor Catherine Attard from the School of Education, says the pilot study aimed to tackle one of the most common complaints about maths classes- that they lack relevance outside school.

“Students expect to be taught information that is meaningful and makes sense to them,” says Dr Attard.

I can vouch for this, having watched my boys catch on to totaling up their savings far faster than any pencil and paper math lesson.

TURNAROUND ARTIST: Trump taps billionaire investor Wilbur Ross for commerce secretary.

For 24 years as a banker at Rothschild, Ross developed a lucrative specialty in bankruptcy and corporate restructurings. He founded his own firm, W.L. Ross, in 2000 and earned part of his fortune from investing in troubled factories in the industrial Midwest and in some instances generating profits by limiting worker benefits. That region swung hard for Trump in the election on the promise of more manufacturing jobs from renegotiated trade deals and penalties for factories that outsourced their work abroad.

A specialist in corporate turnarounds, Ross buys distressed or bankrupt companies at steep discounts, then seeks to shave costs and generate profits. Some of those cost reductions have come from altering pay and benefits for workers. Since 2000, his firm has invested in more than 178 companies.

Ross most prominently created four companies through mergers and acquisitions that focused on steel, textiles, autos and coal. In some cases, Ross has sold the companies he packaged to even larger globe-spanning companies. In 2005, he sold the International Steel Group, which included the former Bethlehem Steel, to the Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal.

I’m still not convinced we even need a Commerce Department.

REVOLTING: From a parade of foreign leaders, a glowing farewell to Fidel Castro.

Predictable, too.

OIL WARS: Brent Crude Oil Climbs Above $50 as OPEC Said Very Close to Deal.

OPEC is very close to a deal that would remove 1.4 million barrels a day of collective production, a delegate to a ministerial meeting underway in Vienna said. An agreement would include an additional 600,000 barrels a day of cuts from non-OPEC suppliers, the delegate said. Russia, the biggest producer outside the bloc, has said that if OPEC agrees individual country quotas, it is ready to participate, including possibly by reducing its output, a person familiar with Russian thinking said.

Ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are meeting in the Austrian capital to weigh a deal first floated in September to collectively reduce output. Following days of discord, OPEC ministers on Wednesday showed optimism for a deal as United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei said he expects “some good news” later in the day.

“The market is biting at every comment from OPEC and now it seems like a deal is possible,” said Jens Pedersen, an analyst at Danske Bank A/S. “It is imperative they show that they are able to agree on something following previous failed attempts.”

Oil traders aren’t the only ones biting. $50 is the breakeven point for a whole lot of idle frackers waiting to get their fields back into production.

JAYVEE: ISIS Claims Responsibility for Ohio State Attack.

There isn’t much to back up the claim.

THE FOUR-YEAR TANTRUM: The Media, Still Throwing a Fit Over Trump.

IF YOU STRIKE AT THE QUEEN… Tim Ryan Confident in Long-Shot Bid to Oust Pelosi.

“We’re either going to say we decided to do absolutely nothing and change nothing and keep going down the same road with the same playbook and the same players, or we decided to embrace a little bit of uncertainty with [me] and go down a new road with a new messenger and a new message and someone I think could really energize our base,” Ryan said.

Pelosi, meanwhile, said even before Ryan announced his challenge that she had support from two-thirds of the caucus. A group of 50 Democratic women released a letter supporting her bid before Ryan made his intentions known, and on Tuesday more than 20 members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus signed a letter doing likewise. In addition, about two dozen members tweeted their support using the hashtag #StandWithNancy.

“Leader Pelosi is honored to receive the overwhelming support of her colleagues,” her spokesman, Drew Hammill, said in a statement. “That so many Members are so enthusiastic and eager to take active roles in the Caucus is music to her ears.”

Last I read, white men aren’t welcome in Democrat leadership positions.

IT’S MNUCHIN FOR TREASURY: Steven Mnuchin, Expected Treasury Pick, Is an Outsider to Public Policy.

He started his career at Goldman Sachs, where his father, Robert, was a legendary trader. He then worked for his Yale roommate, the hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert, who runs Sears Holdings, and later for George Soros, before striking out on his own — with the backing of Mr. Soros — to start Dune Capital Management.

He has spent much of the last decade on the West Coast, where his firm bought IndyMac, a bankrupt housing lender, in 2009 from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and rebuilt it under the name OneWest before selling it for an enormous profit to the CIT Group in 2015.

Along the way, he also developed a side business as a financier of many Hollywood hits. His name regularly appears in the credits of films. Just in the past year, he produced “Sully,” “Storks,” “The Legend of Tarzan” and “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”

Mr. Mnuchin is known as a smart, hard-working, talented executive. Henry M. Paulson Jr., the former Treasury secretary who was critical of Mr. Trump during the campaign, was very complimentary of Mr. Mnuchin’s performance at Goldman Sachs.

North Carolina banking CEO and former Cato chief John Allison would have been a bolder pick.

UNLIKELY HEADLINES: In an abrupt about-face, Romney emerges from dinner with Trump full of frog legs and high praise.

“I had a wonderful evening with President-elect Trump,” the former Massachusetts governor declared to the press after a final course of chocolate cake. “We had another discussion about affairs throughout the world, and these discussions I’ve had with him have been enlightening, and interesting and engaging.”

“What I’ve seen through these discussions I’ve had with President-elect Trump, as well as what we’ve seen in his speech the night of his victory, as well as the people he’s selected as part of his transition, all of those things combined give me increasing hope that President-elect Trump is the very man who can lead us to that better future,” he added.

That all sounds rather… diplomatic.

I will be holding a major news conference in New York City with my children on December 15 to discuss the fact that I will be leaving my …

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2016

great business in total in order to fully focus on running the country in order to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! While I am not mandated to ….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2016

do this under the law, I feel it is visually important, as President, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2016

Hence, legal documents are being crafted which take me completely out of business operations. The Presidency is a far more important task!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2016

Perhaps the biggest news item of the transition, and it went out on Twitter more than two weeks before the press conference.

No wonder they hate him.

CRASH LANDING: NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is about to get a taste of Saturn’s rings.

It’s the beginning of the end. On Nov. 30, NASA’s Cassini mission will begin the ring-grazing final chapter of its career at Saturn, one that will end with the spacecraft’s terminal plunge into the gas giant’s unforgiving atmosphere.

The second half of this chapter, in which the spacecraft will dive through the gap between Saturn and its rings, will be like a whole new mission, said Linda Spilker, Cassini’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“We’re so close to Saturn that we’ll really get measurements that just haven’t been possible,” she said.

CHOOSE YOUR POISON: Beer Volumes Declining in Markets Where Recreational Cannabis is Legal.