CREEPY: Microsoft automatically upgrading Windows 7 & 8 users to Windows 10.

This is all part of Microsoft’s plan, of course. Last October, the company announced that it would reclassify Windows 10 as a “Recommended” update from older versions starting in early 2016, at which point many more users would get the upgrade without explicit permission. That reclassification began on February 1, and auto-upgrades have been rolling out ever since. If complaints are reaching a higher volume now, perhaps it’s because the rollout is getting more aggressive.

Here’s what the Recommended update looks like, according to ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley: First, users will receive a notification saying their PCs are scheduled to receive Windows 10 in the next three or four days. Users can click a small link to cancel or postpone the update, but simply closing the window will cause the notification to appear again one hour before the scheduled update time. If users don’t cancel or postpone within that timeframe, the update will begin automatically.

Most of us (me included) are in the habit of dismissing those dialog boxes without really reading them, but I don’t recall anything so major as an operating system upgrade being covered by one.

NEVER BRING AN AX TO A GUN FIGHT: Customer with concealed carry permit fatally shoots ax-wielding attacker at 7-Eleven.

Investigators said the shooting happened at the store in White Center at approximately 5:45 a.m. local time. Witnesses said the man entered the store and swung a hatchet toward the customer before turning his attention to the clerk.

As the assailant attacked, the customer pulled out a pistol and fired, hitting the suspect. The clerk suffered minor injuries to his stomach and the suspect was pronounced dead at the scene.

The customer who shot the suspect is described as a 60-year-old Seattle man who visits the store every morning to get coffee. His name was not immediately released.

Authorities said the man who shot the attacker had a concealed carry permit and likely would not face charges as a result of his action.

“This could have been a lot worse,” King County Sheriff’s Sergeant Cindi West told KCPQ. “The clerk could be the one laying there dead on the floor right now.”

Stories like this one deserve more attention, and local merchants should recognize the brave action taken by one of their own customers.

CHUTZPAH: “The Trumpian meltdown and freakshow at Breitbart is a fulfillment of its founder’s legacy,” or so it is said at that bastion of editorial and managerial stability, The New Republic.

CHANGE: Michelle Fields, Ben Shapiro Resign From Breitbart.

Fields and Shapiro informed Breitbart News chairman Steve Bannon of their decision Sunday night.

“Today I informed the management at Breitbart News of my immediate resignation,” Fields said in a statement sent to BuzzFeed News. “I do not believe Breitbart News has adequately stood by me during the events of the past week and because of that I believe it is now best for us to part ways.”

In his own statement, Shapiro said the episode was emblematic of how he believes the site’s management had sold out the legacy of its founder and namesake, the late Andrew Breitbart.

I didn’t know Breitbart well enough to hold an informed opinion about Shapiro’s concerns, but this situation is clearly a mess.

JED BABBIN: “Obama’s Libya Sh*t Show.”

Since then, Libya has devolved into warring terrorist factions. It has two rival “governments” claiming to rule it. In fact, Libya is now a safe haven for terrorist networks including ISIS, which is probably the fastest-growing and most dangerous to U.S. national security. ISIS controls significant parts of that nation.

On September 10, 2012, one day before the terrorist attacks in Benghazi left four Americans dead, there were at least ten terrorist groups that had active operational terror cells within Benghazi’s city limits, according to a report on the attacks published by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

A little more than two weeks ago, the assessment of our top commander in Africa, Gen. Don Bolduc, was that the spread of ISIS across Libya was so strong that further U.S. military involvement would be essential even if there were to be an agreement between the two rival factions claiming to govern Libya (though neither does).

Obama, of course, denies any responsibility for the massive policy failure after he chose to intervene militarily in behalf of the rebels seeking Qaddafi’s overthrow. This past week he blamed what he called the Libya “sh*t show” on our NATO allies, particularly British PM David Cameron, who he said was distracted and didn’t keep an eye on Libya.

Ruined nations, abandoned allies, ISIS still growing…

The mess the next President will inherit is so big it’s almost wonder anybody still wants the job.

DIGESTING JOS:

Once shoppers get used to buy-one-get-one-or-more deals, as they had at Jos. A. Bank Clothiers, they stop coming back when the promotions end.

Jos. A. Bank’s parent, Tailored Brands Inc., found that out as it attempted to fold the former Maryland-based retailer into its Men’s Wearhouse portfolio and move away from discounting, perhaps too quickly.

After ending the year with slumping sales and a $1 billion quarterly loss, the company is preparing to close 250 stores, including about 140 Jos. A. Bank locations.

The staggering problems facing Tailored Brands suggest that its corporate predecessor, Men’s Wearhouse, paid too much for Jos. A. Bank in the $1.8 billion acquisition in 2014 and overestimated its ability to integrate the chains quickly, several experts said Thursday.

Jos A. Bank used to be a place where, if you knew which lines to choose from and when to shop, you could get a good-enough suit for a great price. Then the Great Recession hit, and Jos became the place where you could buy four or five pretty bad suits for the same price.

The decline in quality may have as much to do with the store’s troubles as ending the massive discounts did.

CHANGE: America’s Air Supremacy Is Fading Fast.

As regards the much higher performance F-22, only about ninety are available for global air supremacy tasks. This is arguably too small for winning air supremacy in one theatre, let alone both Europe and the Pacific. Ongoing peacetime training attrition is further gradually reducing this small fleet. The 2009 decision ceasing F-22 production early was based in part on beliefs that it was irrelevant to countering Islamic extremists or the counterinsurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Events have now overtaken this perspective.

Scaling back American power is a feature, not a bug, to those who never believed in American exceptionalism.

PASSING THE BUCK: Obama Says European distraction led to Libya “mess.”

In a profile published Thursday in The Atlantic, the President told author Jeffrey Goldberg that British Prime Minister David Cameron became “distracted by a range of other things” after the operation. Cameron, along with former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, took the brunt of Obama’s criticism.

Although Obama thinks the intervention went as well as it could, he views Libya today as a “mess.” Privately, according to the article, he refers to the troubled state as a “sh*t show.”

It’s always anybody’s sh*t show but his.

I HAD BEEN ASSURED JOHN KERRY HAD NEGOTIATED A CEASEFIRE: Syria opposition to go to peace talks, says Assad escalating war.

REAPING WHAT MERKEL HAS SOWN: Nationalist party set for gains as 3 German states vote.

Alternative for Germany, or AfD, formed three years ago, is wooing voters with slogans such as “ENOUGH!” and “Secure borders instead of borderless crime.”

It’s expected to enter legislatures Sunday in the diverse regions: prosperous Baden-Wuerttemberg in the southwest, neighboring Rhineland-Palatinate, and relatively poor Saxony-Anhalt in the east. Other parties won’t share power with it, but its performance could complicate efforts to form state governments — particularly in Saxony-Anhalt, where polls give it up to 19 percent support.

Germany registered nearly 1.1 million people as asylum-seekers last year as Merkel insisted “we will manage” the challenge, a stance lauded by many but that drove others into AfD’s arms.

What remains to be seen is whether AfD is just an outlet for angry protest voters, or harbinger of the future of German politics.

BENDING THE COST CURVE: Montana Underestimated Medicaid Expansion “Woodwork Effect.”

Brent Mead, the executive director of the Montana Policy Institute, says the greater-than-expected enrollment numbers will significantly increase the cost of the state’s Medicaid expansion.

“The total number of projected enrollees [was] around 22,700 for expansion and 800 ‘woodwork’ enrollees,” Mead said.

The “woodwork effect” refers to the enrollment of individuals who were previously eligible for Medicaid but signed up after the program’s expansion. Montana must pay for woodwork enrollees at the pre-Medicaid expansion rate, which the Kaiser Family Foundation in 2014 listed as 32 percent for Montana.

“The state badly missed the ball on the woodwork clients,” Mead said. “The latest numbers we have are for November 2015, but applications spiked compared to the year before. The Montana Policy Institute has heard numbers are significantly higher than what the November application data shows, but we will not know for a few more months.”

Mead says the inaccurate estimate of the woodwork effect will soon force Montana to choose between spending more tax dollars on Medicaid or funding non-entitlement programs at the desired levels.

“The state will face a choice in 2017,” Mead said. “This is going to ramp up mandatory spending at the same time that commodity prices like oil, coal, and cattle are low. Something will have to give, but if I were to wager, it would be other state programs like higher education or infrastructure spending that suffer, rather than restraining a new entitlement program.”

Creating new dependents isn’t cheap.

HIS APPEAL IS BECOMING MORE SELECTIVE: Bill Clinton cancels on small crowd due to “bad weather.”

TELL US SOMETHING WE DIDN’T KNOW: U.S. Commander in Africa Says Libya Is a Failed State.

In testimony Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Army Gen. David Rodriguez said the recent agreement to form a unity government in Tripoli is an important step. Yet even with strong international support, the new government will struggle for the “foreseeable future” to establish its authority and secure Libya’s people and borders, he said.

Rodriguez estimated that it would take “10 years or so” to achieve long-term stability in Libya. He cited a “fractured society” and the lack of government institutions as major hurdles to overcome.

“The continued absence of central government control will continue to perpetuate violence, instability and allow the conditions for violent extremist organizations to flourish until the (government) and appropriate security forces are operational within Libya,” Rodriguez told the committee.

You’d think questions about Hillary Clinton’s reckless war of choice would hound her all along the campaign trail.

THAT WAS NEVER A CONDITION OF OUR AGREEMENT: Iran fires missiles marked with “Israel should be wiped out.”

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: West Virginia legislature approves constitutional carry over Democratic governor’s veto.

A TWO-STORY HOUSING MARKET: Lower-priced homes sell quickly while inventory on the higher end piles up.

A two-bedroom house in Los Angeles listed for $585,000 received 10 offers in the first week it hit the market, with the winner agreeing to pay $640,000.

Meanwhile, a four-bedroom house a few miles away, priced at $3 million, sat on the market for more than a month with no offers before selling for $2.75 million in January.

The divide in Los Angeles is typical of what is happening across the country. Housing has become a tale of two markets, brokers and economists said, with lower-priced homes selling quickly even as inventory of expensive ones piles up.

It’s difficult to accept that spending two-thirds of a million dollars on a two-bedroom house is “lower-priced.”

QUESTION ASKED: Is Luke Skywalker gay?

THE WUSSIFICATION OF AMERICA: Sometimes a pocketknife is just a pocketknife.

I don’t usually promote my own columns here on Instapundit, but this once I couldn’t resist.

PEAK INTERNET ACHIEVED: @DeepDrumpf Is An AI-Powered Twitterbot That Tweets Like Donald Trump.

@DeepDrumpf is the creation of Bradley Hayes, a postdoc at MIT’s CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab). The bot uses a technique called deep learning to recognize patterns and create new content from what is has absorbed.

@DeepDrumpf has been fattened with transcripts from addresses, victory speeches and debate remarks from Trump. The stuff it tweets could give nightmares to Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, Trump’s top two rivals on the campaign trail.

“The algorithm essentially learns an underlying structure from all the data it gets, and then comes up with different combinations of the data that reflect the structure that it was taught,” says Hayes.

Skynet is turning out to be a lot classier than anyone had ever imagined.

THANKS FOR THE WARNING BUT I’LL TAKE MY CHANCES: Happiness Can Break Your Heart Too.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Sympathy for the Donaldites.

Trumpism isn’t merely about unfocused anger – it would be super-convenient to write this off as a temper tantrum that will soon blow over and allow us to get back to the business as usual of ignoring the pleas (which are now demands) to stop the immigration disaster, to address the fallout of free trade, and to stop the useless sacrifice of our sons and daughters in wars we’re too damn gutless to win. But it isn’t. Again and again Republicans promised to solve these problems and yet every single time they’ve lied. Rubio got elected in Florida promising to oppose amnesty then not only fails to do so but stands up with the Democrats and did the exact opposite. And we’re surprised a candidate comes along and points that out?

Read the whole thing.

DOGS BITES MAN: MSNBC Reporter Has No Idea She’s Live During Interview, Tells Clinton Aide What She’ll Be Asking.

There’s been a lot of that going on.

COLORADO LOOKS TO BROADEN THERAPISTS’ POWER TO PREVENT SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

The bill, which has bipartisan support, sailed through Colorado’s House of Representatives last month by a vote of 51-12. It now heads to the Senate, where it is expected to have the backing of members of both parties.

“My hope is that with this bill, we can stop any possible attack in a school that someone may know about ahead of time,” said state representative Mike Foote, a Democrat from Lafayette and one of the legislation’s sponsors. “It may not be an imminent threat, but it could certainly be a serious threat.”

Under the bill’s language, a therapist could report a patient of any age if the patient “exhibits behavior that, in the mental health professional’s reasonable judgment, creates a dangerous environment in a school that may jeopardize the safety or well-being of students, faculty, staff, parents, or the general public.”

The reports notes “that between 2000 and 2013, about a quarter of active shooter incidents nationwide took place at schools,” but makes no mention of gun-free zones.

CRIME: Idaho pastor shot day after praying at Ted Cruz rally.

Tim Remington is expected to make a full recovery, but the motive behind his shooting remains unclear. The suspect, Kyle Odom, remains at large.

SOME SAY HE NEVER LEFT: The Hoff Is Back! David Hasselhoff Will Appear in Baywatch Movie, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson Reveals.