Rashida Tlaib, New Muslim Democrat in Congress, Vows to 'Impeach the Motherf—er!' (VIDEO)

Video at CBS News 4 Boston, "Rep. Rashida Tlaib Not Apologizing After Call Trump an Expletive."

And from Vodka Pundit, at Instapundit, "GREAT MOMENTS IN TOTAL LACK OF SELF-AWARENESS: New Muslim Congresswoman Vows to ‘Impeach the Motherf**ker!’."

Senior Dems, now the majority leadership in Congress, were not pleased. There goes the impeachment messaging, oops!

At Politico, "Dems livid after Tlaib vows to ‘impeach the motherf—er’: Party leaders fear such explosive talk only gives ammunition to the GOP":

From @politico: 'Dems livid after Tlaib vows to ‘impeach the motherf—er.'' Even the guy who filed articles of impeachment on Day 1 is mad at her. But didn't she just say, perhaps in more colorful language, what some of them have said privately? https://t.co/3Znshs0Igi pic.twitter.com/AdRi2D9aNx

— Byron York (@ByronYork) January 4, 2019

This is a bit lame. Can’t be unapologetic about the comments then run away from the press when asked about them https://t.co/YP3udse950

— Sam Stein (@samstein) January 4, 2019

House Democrats are furious that an incoming freshman’s expletive-riddled statement about impeaching Donald Trump has suddenly upended their carefully crafted rhetoric on their plans to take on the president.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats have long argued that impeachment is a last resort that would come at the end of exhaustive oversight and investigations. But on the second day of the new Congress, the news was jammed with talk of Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who told a crowd of progressive activists Thursday night that “we’re gonna impeach the motherf---er.”

Rank-and-file Democrats, immediately fearful of the damage the comment could cause, unloaded on their new colleague Friday morning. Republicans, they argued, would hold it up as proof that Democrats are playing politics rather than pursuing genuine oversight of the president — even if the GOP never showed interest in investigating Trump scandals while it was in power.

“Mueller hasn’t even produced his report yet!” said Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), referring to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. “People should cool their jets a little bit, let the prosecutors do their job and finish the investigation.”

“Inappropriate,” added Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.). “As elected officials I think we should be expected to set a high bar… It’s not helpful.”

Even Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), who introduced an impeachment resolution earlier this week, was shocked. His eyes bulged in disbelief when a reporter read him Tlaib’s comments and he was speechless for several seconds.

After he regained his composure, Sherman said that kind of language is detrimental to the cause: “That’s not language I would use … I think the office of the presidency should be treated with respect.”

Party elders also sought to calm talk of impeachment without criticizing Tlaib directly. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the new chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, called Talib’s comments “inappropriate” and said, “We need to be patient.”

“You can’t accomplish very much of anything unless you have civility and show respect for your colleagues,” Cummings said. “Those kind of comments do not take us in the right direction.”

Pelosi said while she didn’t agree with the language, she also didn’t think anyone “should make a big deal” about the expletive, noting the president is also known for having a foul mouth sometimes.

“I'm not in the censorship business. I don't like that language, I wouldn't use that language, but I wouldn't establish language standards for my colleagues,” Pelosi said during an MSNBC town hall Friday morning.

She added that impeachment is “very divisive“ and shouldn’t be taken “without the facts.”

Meanwhile, Republicans were already seizing on the comment to accuse Democrats of showing their true goal — removing Trump from office...

Lisa Delpit, 'Multiplication Is for White People'

At Amazon, Lisa Delpit, 'Multiplication Is for White People': Raising Expectations for Other People's Children.

Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well

At Amazon, Derrick Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism.

Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory

At Amazon, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (Third Edition).

Jennifer Delacruz's Weekend Forecast

Clear and cool today, very cold overnight, but rain likely for the weekend.

Here's the fabulous Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:

Alexis Ren Thong Bikini

At Drunken Stepfather, "Alexis Ren Still in a Thong of the Day."

Freezing, Blustery Southern California Weather (VIDEO)

This is new, these "hard freeze" warnings.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Mitt Romney Interview with CNN's Jake Tapper (VIDEO)

Folks are pretty pissed off at Romney, who hasn't even been sworn in yet.

He had an op-ed up at WaPo yesterday, supposedly "scorching" President Trump. Maybe if Romney "scorched" the Democrats like he scorches Trump people wouldn't be so angry?

See, "Mitt Romney: The president shapes the public character of the nation."

Policies and appointments are only a part of a presidency. A president must also unite us, inspire us, and defend our vital institutions. https://t.co/jmIw8XbV4k

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) January 2, 2019

And at CNN tonight (I watched it):

Spending Less Time on Twitter

I generally don't make New Year's resolutions, because like most everybody else, I can't keep them.

I should try, though, to spend less time on Twitter.

The problem is that I really do use the platform as my primary source of news.

It's weird, but it's almost like reading the newspaper in the morning used to be (in the old days, especially before the web). I wake up and grab my phone, which might be 7 or 8 in the morning, but by then it's almost Noon in D.C., the center of all political happenings. I follow a lot of journalists, and all their tweets of current news get me caught up with the big stories.

Frankly, breaking news is on the platform. Happens all the time.

So, how do I break up with Twitter, at least a little bit, when I need some outlet for current, breaking news? I need news as part of my job, as part of my professional life as a professor of political science.

How do I break up, like Allie Beth Stuckey pledges she'll break up in 2019?

My goal for 2019 is to spend less time on this cesspool of a website.

— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) January 1, 2019

It's hard.

I haven't mentioned it, but I was locked out of Twitter for 12 hours last month because I tweeted Robert Stacy McCain's post stating "Jonathan Yaniv is Not a Woman."

(See also, Julie Bindel, "Meghan Murphy, Twitter and the new trans misogyny.")

It's ridiculous.

Not only is Twitter a hate dumb, it's an Orwellian thought-crimes nightmare of Silicon Valley tech-sector censorship.

I would say, "Who needs it?"

But I do, otherwise I'd have bailed out long ago.

In any case, I will be limiting my time on Twitter as much as I can.

If anything I should be blogging more, putting up more original essays and linking to the considerable amount of really excellent old school blogging content that's still out there.

I'll try to do that.

Thanks for reading for the new year, 2019!

I'll of course be posting a lot on books and my Amazon sales, because it's fun. But I want to do more old fashioned blogging, with original content and really excellent link-arounds.

More later.

Thanks again!

Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name

At Amazon, Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.

Ariela J. Gross, What Blood Won't Tell

Ariela J. Gross, What Blood Won't Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America.

Graham Greene, The Quiet American

*BUMPED.*I

'm just seeing that this book is something of a collector's item.

An older used Bantam paperback is going for more than a brand new Penguin classics edition.

At Amazon, the Bantam paperback, Graham Greene, The Quiet American.

And the Penguin classic is here.

Joachim Fest, Hitler

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Joachim C. Fest, Hitler.

Amid Shutdown, Toilets Overflow at Joshua Tree National Monument

The Los Angeles Times had a piece the other day touting the free admission to Joshua Tree, and now, not so much.

See, "Amid government shutdown, Joshua Tree campgrounds will close as toilets near capacity":

At Joshua Tree, the fun is over. Blame the federal government shutdown - and feces. https://t.co/9NPAbn9RQr

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 31, 2018

The fun is over at Joshua Tree National Park. Blame feces.

Campgrounds at the park will close at noon Wednesday, park officials said, citing health and safety concerns over the park’s vault toilets, which are near capacity.

Park visitor centers, flush toilets, water-filling stations and dump stations are all closed because of the federal government’s partial shutdown. Vault toilets — the waterless bathrooms in which visitors can relieve themselves into a sealed container that is buried underground — had remained open. But with no workers to pump out the waste, those are being closed now as well.

But the park left the main gates open and let cars stream in for free, as there are no government employees to charge the typical $30-a-car entrance fee.

Some rangers remained to patrol the 1,235-square-mile park, a popular winter destination for hikers and rock climbers.

Park officials said Monday in a news release that human waste in public areas, off-road driving and other infractions are becoming a problem as the government shutdown drags on.

The park’s restrooms and visitor centers have been closed and trash collection suspended since the partial shutdown began Dec. 22, but the park itself remains open.

At Joshua Tree, the Indian Cove and Black Rock campgrounds will be open for day use only, from sunrise to sunset. Rattlesnake Canyon will be closed to reduce the number of search and rescue events for rangers already spread thin, park officials said.

Some local volunteers have been doing their part to clean up the park and restock toilets.

“I want to extend a sincere thanks to local businesses, volunteer groups and tribal members who have done their best to assist in picking up litter and helping maintain campgrounds,” park Supt. David Smith said in a statement. “This is no reflection on their efforts and the park is very fortunate to have a community that exhibits the kind of care and concern witnessed over the last week.”

The lack of restrooms has been an issue at other national parks as well.

Yosemite National Park visitors using the side of the road as a toilet have prompted the park to close two campgrounds and a popular redwood grove for public safety reasons.

The park’s restrooms and visitor centers have been closed and trash collection suspended since the shutdown began, but the park itself remains open...

More.

Out in Paper: Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Neal Stephenson, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.: A Novel.

Mackenzie Maynard's Wednesday Forecast

It's really cold.

I'm visiting in Yucca Valley and it's been in the 30s in the daytime, sheesh.

Here's the lovely new lady, Ms. Mackenzie, at ABC News 10 San Diego:

Sarah Churchwell, Behold, America

At Amazon, Sarah Churchwell, Behold, America: The Entangled History of 'America First' and 'the American Dream'.

President Trump Still Committed to Syria Withdrawal

At LAT, "Trump still committed to Syria troop withdrawal, despite mixed signals":

Lindsey Graham outlined three conditions he said Trump had set down for a full withdrawal:
-permanent destruction of the Islamic State militants
-protection for Syria’s Kurds
-curbs on Iran
Those requirements would be extremely difficult to meet. https://t.co/eqnQGgtJ1I

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 1, 2019

President Trump’s already confusing policies toward Syria have become even more difficult to parse, both in Washington and in the region convulsed by nearly eight years of civil war, after a flurry of contradictory statements over the last 72 hours.

On Sunday, Trump met with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a vocal critic of the president’s plan to pull troops out of Syria. After the meeting, Graham said he “felt a lot better” about the situation, describing the withdrawal plan as being “in a pause situation.”

Graham later outlined three conditions he said Trump had set down for a full withdrawal: permanent destruction of the Islamic State militants; protection for Syria’s Kurds, whose militias have been the main U.S. ally in the fight against Islamic State; and curbs on Iran. Those requirements would be extremely difficult to meet.

On Monday, Trump tweeted praise for himself, claiming he should be getting more plaudits for the decision to pull out — a move that has spooked Republican foreign policy hawks and prompted Defense Secretary James N. Mattis’ sudden resignation.

In his tweets, the president alluded for the first time to a timetable that could be slower than the 30-day withdrawal he first suggested.

“If anybody but Donald Trump did what I did in Syria, which was an ISIS loaded mess when I became President, they would be a national hero,” Trump wrote, referring to Islamic State.

“ISIS is mostly gone, we’re slowly sending our troops back home to be with their families, while at the same time fighting ISIS remnants......”

According to multiple administration officials, however, neither Graham’s comments nor Trump’s tweet mean that the president is abandoning his plan to withdraw the 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria.

What remains unsettled is how and when the withdrawal will take place, matters that national security advisor John R. Bolton will take up with the leaders of Israel and Turkey when he travels to the region for meetings this week. The administration’s special representative for Syria, James Jeffrey, is scheduled to accompany Bolton.

In the region, meanwhile, all the warring factions already have begun repositioning themselves for a Syria without the United States — while keeping an eye on the mixed signals from Washington.

Iran, which sees Syria as a crucial link to its allies in Lebanon, stands to gain from having U.S. forces out of the area. Its officials expressed satisfaction with Trump’s move.

A U.S. withdrawal will lead to “strengthening stability in the region,” Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, the Iranian armed forces chief of staff, said.

“America's withdrawal from Syrian territories is a humiliating retreat for Washington, which had put its forces in Syria without the permission of its government or people,” he said.

“Americans cause chaos everywhere they go,” he added.

By contrast, America’s main ally in the Syrian fighting, the Kurdish militia groups, have much to fear.

Under U.S. protection, the Kurds have carved out a de facto state covering a large swath of northern and eastern Syria, territory that includes roughly 90% of the country's gas as well as essential water and hydroelectric resources.

But they fear attack from Turkey, which is also a U.S. ally, but which sees the Kurds as a national security threat because of the large Kurdish minority in its territory.

The Kurdish areas are now under threat from all sides, which has caused Kurdish militia leaders to move closer to Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, who is allied with Iran and Russia and whose forces the U.S. has fought.

Protecting the Kurds has been a chief concern for U.S. military officials and for Graham.

After his meeting Sunday, Graham suggested that Trump would slow down the withdrawal to make sure the Kurds were not harmed.

“I think we’re in a pause situation where we are reevaluating what’s the best way to achieve the president’s objective of having people pay more and do more,” Graham said, referring to Trump’s call for Middle Eastern countries to pay the cost of rebuilding Syria after nearly a decade of war...

Still more.

Francisco Cantú, The Line Becomes a River

A report from the front lines of the illegal immigration wars.

At Amazon, Francisco Cantú, The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border.

Yana Vozharovskaya

At Drunken Stepfather, "Yana Vozharovskaya Bikini of the Day."

And at Luv Celebs:

Yana Vozharovskaya – Maxim Australia Magazine (January 2019) #luvcelebs @ https://t.co/phVPZZ75Lu pic.twitter.com/TqjqJ1mYpm

— Ashly Parnell (@luvClebs) December 23, 2018

The Montavilla Initiative

I'm a bleeding heart on homelessness, mostly because the leftist media gets the story all wrong, all the time. As noted previously, the bulk of O.C. homeless have been regular white working-class folks, busted down after the 2008 crash. It's not all Latinos and other minorities. Go to Anaheim and see for yourself.

In any case, at the Los Angeles Times, "Neighborhood advocates or vigilantes? A group in Portland makes life tougher for the homeless" (via Hot Air):

The Montavilla neighborhood is a place just about anybody might want to live in.

It has an “almost suburban” feel, a city website notes, but it’s near downtown Portland, with a population that’s more diverse than the city as a whole. Homes range from pricey modern to modest bungalow; businesses of every stripe do a bustling trade.

Last year Montavilla made Lonely Planet’s list of the 10 best U.S. neighborhoods.

It also broke apart over homelessness and rising crime.

Like many American cities, Portland struggles with homelessness. What’s the solution to getting people off the streets? What’s the right balance between compassion and safety? Why does the world’s richest country have so many people living in tents?

Last month, Portland-area voters funded $653 million for affordable housing, on top of $258 million in 2016. These are major investments for a city its size. But relief may be years away.

In Montavilla, the debate over homelessness has taken on an edge in the last two years as a neighborhood patrol has marched up to the line of vigilantism — and, some say, crossed it. Experts say similar groups have sprung up in other cities, including Long Beach and the west San Fernando Valley, as a conservative, tough-love response to the problem.

In June 2017, the Montavilla Neighborhood Assn. passed a resolution asking the city to “cease further sweeps of [homeless] camps,” which could be “unconstitutional and human rights violations.”

That fall, a new board of directors was voted in that included Micah Fletcher, a survivor of last year’s infamous stabbings by a white supremacist on a light rail train. Around the same time, however, a new conservative nonprofit, Montavilla Initiative, formed as an alternative. Battle lines hardened.

Montavilla Initiative began doing its own foot patrols; the city-partnered neighborhood association stopped doing them.

Interactions between citizen patrol groups led by Montavilla Initiative and the area’s homeless are now at the center of the neighborhood’s divide. On the one hand, local officials and homeless advocates accuse Montavilla Initiative of harassing vulnerable homeless people. On the other, leaders of the nonprofit say homeless encampments foster crime, and they’re just trying to make the neighborhood safer.

Multnomah County official Kim Toevs said Montavilla Initiative members harassed people who use the county’s largest needle exchange site, part of a program that has operated for 22 years in the neighborhood. It offers addiction counseling, exchanges millions of syringes annually, and gives out naloxone, proven to save lives by halting overdoses.

The county had to hire extra security after seven visits by the group, officials said.

“What we see here, about [their] behavior, harassing our clients, and making them feel stalked and scared, is hateful action,” Toevs said.

Ibrahim Mubarak, executive director of a homeless advocacy group, Right 2 Survive, said Montavilla Initiative members are “running havoc on houseless people,” slashing their tents, throwing cold water on them, following them around. “They’re all about getting [homeless] people out of the neighborhood,” he said.

Mubarak later acknowledged, however, that he had not witnessed the incidents himself, and had no proof that they were committed by Montavilla Initiative. “This is happening in the neighborhood to those people, but we don’t know for sure that it’s Montavilla Initiative,” he said.

Of 15 homeless people interviewed for this article, many said they’re aware of what they call the “neighborhood watchers.” One voiced support, but most said they were afraid of them. They don’t seem to differentiate between the new, Montavilla Initiative patrols and the ones the neighborhood association used to do...

More.

Buh-Bye 2018 LOL!

From Roger Simon, at Pajamas, "Bye-bye, 2018 —The Year of Living Hatefully":

Bye bye, 2018 The Year of Living Hatefully https://t.co/CFSq8POwnq #RogerLSimon via @pjmedia_com

— Roger Simon (@rogerlsimon) December 31, 2018

In 1982 Peter Weir and Mel Gibson made a film adapted from a 1978 Christopher Koch novel, The Year of Living Dangerously, about an attempted coup in Indonesia in 1965.

While it isn't clear yet whether we had an attempted coup in the USA in 2018 (or earlier), we did have a year in which people despised each other seemingly as never before in our country -- sometimes with reason but quite often not.

2018 was The Year of Living Hatefully -- one of them anyway.

Practically no one was happy. Or if they were, they didn't show it. All they wanted to do was vilify the opposition or even their neighbors.

Democrats hating Republicans (see the new movie "Vice") and vice versa were just the tip of a rancid iceberg. Never Trumpers hate Trumpers and the reverse, Sanders supporters hate Beto supporters, Antifa hate the bourgeoisie, the Proud Boys hate Antifa, FOX hates CNN and MSNBC hates FOX...It goes on and on. Families and friends split from each other. People shut up at work for fear they'll be fired. Thanksgiving is a festival of hostility, Christmas (when we're allowed to speak its name) is only slightly better.

Twitter has become axis mundi for hurling vicious insults at people you never met, or don't even know, while our college campuses -- suffused with reactionary "intersectionality"  -- have become ground zero for the promotion of competitive victimhood, another perfect excuse to hate the other without knowing him or her or "zhe."

That all this is happening in a country awash in affluence, also as almost never before, with close to full employment for all ethnic and racial groups, even some salaries rising after decades, is the cliché about not being able to stand prosperity on steroids. The way we are going utopia would be Hell.

So what's behind all this?

Before all Democrats scream Donald Trump and all Republicans shout The Media, allow me to remind everyone this has been going on for a long time. Calling 2018 The Year of Living Hatefully (or, perhaps more accurately, living in or through hate) is but the culmination of a trend that has been going on for many years.

There is and has been an emptiness in American society and I am going to suggest a cause I never thought I would, not because it is unique to me -- it hardly is -- but because I have, until relatively recently, been a rather typical agnostic of my generation.

It is the absence of God, augmented by the ongoing secularization of our culture largely perpetrated by that same generation (mine). We now almost have in America what the French call laïcité. It doesn't work there (they hate each other more than we do) and it won't here.

And before you go after to me to remind me that church- and synagogue-going people can be just as bad as everybody else, I will say, "Yes, of course," then continue on to say that the majority of believing religious people, especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition (I don't know the others well enough to comment), tend not to live lives as dominated by hate.

They are the people we see in the old Hollywood movies that we like to watch over the holidays. They are Americans from an era that may never have existed but may actually have more than we realize. (Excuse the Zen-ish  deliberate contradiction.) It's Jimmy Stewart in "It's a Wonderful Life" or "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." You can bet he went to church. Why can't we be like that now?

As for whether 2019 will be any better in this regard -- most likely not...

Still more.

'So we have Andy Cohen, gleefully smiling as he grips his phallic-symbol bottle of popping champagne...'

My mom had CNN on when I was visiting over there yesterday. I saw all the previews for AC360's New Year's Eve gig with Andy Cohen, and I can barely recall who Andy Cohen is. I know Kathy Griffin is out, and no love lost there, dang! But Andy Cohen?

Ann Althouse has never heard of him. See, "Speaking of white men not 'reflecting the gender and racial diversity' we've come to expect in liberal America — see previous post — look at what just came in the email from CNN?"

I'm going over to my mom's for New Year's Eve dinner. I don't think I'll be be ringing in 2019, though. Either way, no Andy and Anderson for me. Pfft. (*Eye roll.*)

The Coming Age of Post-Truth Geopolitics

At Foreign Affairs, "Deepfakes and the New Disinformation War":

@BobbyChesney and I have a piece coming out in @ForeignAffairs on Deep Fakes in the January/February edition. For a preview, https://t.co/chl5MjoJ0X pic.twitter.com/oqrENugpa8

— Danielle Citron (@daniellecitron) December 11, 2018

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but there is nothing that persuades quite like an audio or video recording of an event. At a time when partisans can barely agree on facts, such persuasiveness might seem as if it could bring a welcome clarity. Audio and video recordings allow people to become firsthand witnesses of an event, sparing them the need to decide whether to trust someone else’s account of it. And thanks to smartphones, which make it easy to capture audio and video content, and social media platforms, which allow that content to be shared and consumed, people today can rely on their own eyes and ears to an unprecedented degree.

Therein lies a great danger. Imagine a video depicting the Israeli prime minister in private conversation with a colleague, seemingly revealing a plan to carry out a series of political assassinations in Tehran. Or an audio clip of Iranian officials planning a covert operation to kill Sunni leaders in a particular province of Iraq. Or a video showing an American general in Afghanistan burning a Koran. In a world already primed for violence, such recordings would have a powerful potential for incitement. Now imagine that these recordings could be faked using tools available to almost anyone with a laptop and access to the Internet—and that the resulting fakes are so convincing that they are impossible to distinguish from the real thing.

Advances in digital technology could soon make this nightmare a reality. Thanks to the rise of “deepfakes”—highly realistic and difficult-to-detect digital manipulations of audio or video—it is becoming easier than ever to portray someone saying or doing something he or she never said or did. Worse, the means to create deepfakes are likely to proliferate quickly, producing an ever-widening circle of actors capable of deploying them for political purposes. Disinformation is an ancient art, of course, and one with a renewed relevance today. But as deepfake technology develops and spreads, the current disinformation wars may soon look like the propaganda equivalent of the era of swords and shields.

DAWN OF THE DEEPFAKES

Deepfakes are the product of recent advances in a form of artificial intelligence known as “deep learning,” in which sets of algorithms called “neural networks” learn to infer rules and replicate patterns by sifting through large data sets. (Google, for instance, has used this technique to develop powerful image-classification algorithms for its search engine.) Deepfakes emerge from a specific type of deep learning in which pairs of algorithms are pitted against each other in “generative adversarial networks,” or GANS. In a GAN, one algorithm, the “generator,” creates content modeled on source data (for instance, making artificial images of cats from a database of real cat pictures), while a second algorithm, the “discriminator,” tries to spot the artificial content (pick out the fake cat images). Since each algorithm is constantly training against the other, such pairings can lead to rapid improvement, allowing GANS to produce highly realistic yet fake audio and video content.

This technology has the potential to proliferate widely. Commercial and even free deepfake services have already appeared in the open market, and versions with alarmingly few safeguards are likely to emerge on the black market. The spread of these services will lower the barriers to entry, meaning that soon, the only practical constraint on one’s ability to produce a deepfake will be access to training materials—that is, audio and video of the person to be modeled—to feed the GAN. The capacity to create professional-grade forgeries will come within reach of nearly anyone with sufficient interest and the knowledge of where to go for help.

Deepfakes have a number of worthy applications. Modified audio or video of a historical figure, for example, could be created for the purpose of educating children. One company even claims that it can use the technology to restore speech to individuals who have lost their voice to disease. But deepfakes can and will be used for darker purposes, as well. Users have already employed deepfake technology to insert people’s faces into pornography without their consent or knowledge, and the growing ease of making fake audio and video content will create ample opportunities for blackmail, intimidation, and sabotage. The most frightening applications of deepfake technology, however, may well be in the realms of politics and international affairs. There, deepfakes may be used to create unusually effective lies capable of inciting violence, discrediting leaders and institutions, or even tipping elections.

Deepfakes have the potential to be especially destructive because they are arriving at a time when it already is becoming harder to separate fact from fiction. For much of the twentieth century, magazines, newspapers, and television broadcasters managed the flow of information to the public. Journalists established rigorous professional standards to control the quality of news, and the relatively small number of mass media outlets meant that only a limited number of individuals and organizations could distribute information widely. Over the last decade, however, more and more people have begun to get their information from social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, which depend on a vast array of users to generate relatively unfiltered content. Users tend to curate their experiences so that they mostly encounter perspectives they already agree with (a tendency heightened by the platforms’ algorithms), turning their social media feeds into echo chambers. These platforms are also susceptible to so-called information cascades, whereby people pass along information shared by others without bothering to check if it is true, making it appear more credible in the process. The end result is that falsehoods can spread faster than ever before.

These dynamics will make social media fertile ground for circulating deepfakes, with potentially explosive implications for politics. Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election—spreading divisive and politically inflammatory messages on Facebook and Twitter—already demonstrated how easily disinformation can be injected into the social media bloodstream. The deepfakes of tomorrow will be more vivid and realistic and thus more shareable than the fake news of 2016. And because people are especially prone to sharing negative and novel information, the more salacious the deepfakes, the better...

Keep reading.

Alexis Ren Luisda (VIDEO)

More of Ms. Alexis, the freakin' hottie.

How My Brooklyn Literary Friendships Fell Apart in the Age of Trump

This is an excellent read.

At Quillette, "Confessions of a ‘Soulless Troglodyte’: How My Brooklyn Literary Friendships Fell Apart in the Age of Trump."

"...he was kind enough to thank me in the book’s acknowledgements. But the novel didn’t sell well. And Daniel found a way to blame the bad numbers on Trump’s presidency." https://t.co/P6yxc3fdAy

— Quillette (@QuilletteM) December 21, 2018

Bre Payton Has Died

She was just 26 and deeply loved by many, many people.

She came down with the H1N1 flu and never recovered. It's stunning really.

At the Federalist, via Memeorandum, "Bre Payton, Beloved Staff Writer At The Federalist, Has Passed Away."

Also, "Friends, Colleagues Share Memories Of Bre Payton, Prayers For Her Family."

As Bre Payton’s family and friends prepare for a funeral in her home state of California and a memorial service in Washington D.C., friends and colleagues sent prayers, love, and memories across Twitter.
https://t.co/QJKo4mv0jg

— The Federalist (@FDRLST) December 29, 2018

Last one - @ShannonBream ended @FoxNewsNight by paying tribute to @Bre_Payton, adding that her family has started the Bre Payton Scholarship Fund that, as Bream explained, "will go towards those that are supporting young, rising, Christian leaders." #RIP pic.twitter.com/aqemIG3XjZ

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) December 29, 2018

What Happened to California's 'Bustling' Recreational Marijuana Market?

Hey, don't blame me --- I voted against this stupid legalization plan.

At LAT, "One year of legal pot sales and California doesn’t have the bustling industry it expected. Here’s why":

California’s legal pot market hasn’t performed as state officials and the cannabis industry had hoped. https://t.co/mQaVVpbCO0

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 27, 2018

When Californians voted in 2016 to allow the sale of recreational marijuana, advocates of the move envisioned thousands of pot shops and cannabis farms obtaining state licenses, making the drug easily available to all adults within a short drive.

But as the first year of licensed sales comes to a close, California’s legal market hasn’t performed as state officials and the cannabis industry had hoped. Retailers and growers say they’ve been stunted by complex regulations, high taxes and decisions by most cities to ban cannabis shops. At the same time, many residents are going to city halls and courts to fight pot businesses they see as nuisances, and police chiefs are raising concerns about crime triggered by the marijuana trade.

the numerous challenges when he takes office in January as legislators hope to send him a raft of bills next year to provide banking for the pot industry, ease the tax burden on retailers and crack down on sales to minors.

“The cannabis industry is being choked by California’s penchant for over-regulation,” said Dale Gieringer, director of California NORML, a pro-legalization group. “It’s impossible to solve all of the problems without a drastic rewrite of the law, which is not in the cards for the foreseeable future.”

After voters legalized marijuana two years ago under Proposition 64, state officials estimated in there would be as many as 6,000 cannabis shops licensed in the first few years. But the state Bureau of Cannabis Control has issued just 547 temporary and annual licenses to marijuana retail stores and dispensaries. Some 1,790 stores and dispensaries were paying taxes on medicinal pot sales before licenses were required starting Jan. 1.

State officials also predicted that legal cannabis would eventually bring in up to $1 billion in revenue a year. But with many cities banning pot sales, tax revenue is falling far short of estimates. Based on taxes collected since Jan. 1, the state is expected to bring in $471 million in revenue this fiscal year — much less than the $630 million projected in Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget.

“I think we all wish we could license more businesses, but our system is based on dual licensing and local control,” said Alex Traverso, a spokesman for the state Bureau of Cannabis Control, referring to the requirement that cannabis businesses get permission from the state and the city in which they want to operate.

Less than 20% of cities in California — 89 of 482 — allow retail shops to sell cannabis for recreational use, according to the California Cannabis Industry Assn. Cities that allow cannabis sales include Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco and San Diego.

Eighty-two of Los Angeles County’s 88 cities prohibit retail sales of recreational marijuana, according to Alexa Halloran, an attorney specializing in cannabis law for the firm Solomon, Saltsman & Jamieson. Pot shops are not allowed in cities including Burbank, Manhattan Beach, Alhambra, Beverly Hills, Inglewood, Compton, Redondo Beach, El Monte, Rancho Palos Verdes and Calabasas.

“While some cities have jumped in headfirst, we've taken a deliberate approach,” said Manhattan Beach Mayor Steve Napolitano, “to see how things shake out elsewhere before further consideration. I think that's proven to be the smart approach.”

Voters have also been reluctant to allow cannabis stores in their communities.

Of the 64 California cities and counties that voted on cannabis ballot measures in the November midterm election, eight banned the sale of cannabis or turned down taxation measures, seven allowed sales and 49 approved taxes on pot businesses, said Hilary Bricken, an attorney who represents the industry. Among them, voters in Malibu approved pot shops while Simi Valley residents voted for an advisory measure against allowing retail sales.

Javier Montes, owner of Wilmington pot store Delta-9 THC, says he is struggling to compete with a large illicit market unburdened by the taxes he pays as a licensed business.

“Because we are up against high taxes and the proliferation of illegal shops, it is difficult right now,” Montes said. “We expected lines out of our doors, but unfortunately the underground market was already conducting commercial cannabis activity and are continuing to do so.”

Montes, who received his city and state licenses in January, says his business faces a 15% state excise tax, a 10% recreational marijuana tax by the city of Los Angeles and 9.5% in sales tax by the county and state — a markup of more than 34%.

He says there isn’t enough enforcement against illegal operators, and the hard times have caused him to cut the number of employees at his shop in half this year from 24 to 12.

“It’s very hard whenever I have to lay people off, because they are like a family to me,” said Montes, who is vice president of the United Cannabis Business Assn., which represents firms including the about 170 cannabis retailers licensed by the city of Los Angeles...

I mean, who could've foreseen the problems? (*Eye rolls.*)

Still more.

Alexis Ren No Tan Lines (VIDEO)

She's an amazingly hot chick.

At Sports Illustrated Swimsuit:

Teaching The Students We Have, Not the Students We Wish We Had

This is interesting. And I tell ya, there's a lot to that "students we wish we had" line, sheesh.

At the Tax Prof (via Instapundit):

Chronicle of Higher Education op-ed: Chronicle of Higher Education op-ed:  Teaching the Students We Have, Not the Students We Wish We Had, by Sara Goldrick-Rab (Temple University) & Jesse Stommel (University of Mary Washington):

Today’s college students are radically different from the students occupying college classrooms even a decade ago. The expansion of education that propelled widespread positive change through American communities in the 20th century has reached beyond high school, and more people than ever before understand the importance of postsecondary education in all its forms.

For broader participation to lead to positive outcomes — for example, the completion of degrees without huge debt burdens — students must have good experiences in the classroom. This is especially important yet incredibly difficult as the new economics of college are compromising the time, energy, and money that students and many of their professors have to spend on quality learning.

These are the core challenges of college today — and yet they are too often ignored. Instead, symptoms of those problems dominate air time, as the stereotype persists of "academically adrift" "snowflakes" "coddled" by their universities. Consider the recent essay by Nancy Bunge, "Students Evaluating Teachers Doesn’t Just Hurt Teachers. It Hurts Students," which takes on student evaluations. Bunge contends the "unearned arrogance encouraged by the heavy reliance on student evaluations helps produce passive, even contemptuous students who undermine the spirit of the class and lower its quality for everyone."

Her enemy appears to be sites like the often-lamented Rate My Professors, but her piece also attacks the students themselves, and reinforces a set of assertions largely drawn from one influential yet extremely narrow study, Academically Adrift, by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. The limited learning lamented by the authors is said to be linked to insufficiently challenging instructors, and according to Bunge those instructors are not demanding more of their students because they want to get good grades. She cites a Chronicle survey in which faculty members claim that students are "harder to teach" these days. The overall narrative suggests we should feel sorry for the faculty. If only they could have more-engaged students to teach...

Still more.

Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler

*BUMPED.*

Magisterial.

At Amazon, Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941.

Mike Rose, Lives on the Boundary

I can related to this book.

At Amazon, Mike Rose, Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America's Educationally Underprepared.

Jessica Calarco, Negotiating Opportunities

At Amazon, Jessica Calarco, Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School.

Modern Parenting

My kids are 22 and 17, and we've been through this super-parenting phenomenon.

It's now more out of control than ever.

At NYT, a really interesting piece:

Excellent NYT piece on The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting. Helps explain the feminism paradox: Since 70s, as women shook off oppression, their happiness fell relative to men, & gap in leisure time rose. Why? They became slaves to their kids. https://t.co/PrHYfqNllc

— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) December 25, 2018

President Trump Makes Surprise Visit to Iraq to See American Troops

At Fox News:



Lefty journalists were salivating over their headlines blaring "Trump first president since 2002 not to visit troops over the holidays."

And it was in the works too:

Travel of this type is kept a secret for security reasons so the White House did not release details publicly in advance. On Thanksgiving, Pres.Trump said he had a trip to see troops planned with no details. He and Mrs. Trump left in secret for 1st visit to troops in war zone. https://t.co/8QbPw1occt

— Kelly O'Donnell (@KellyO) December 26, 2018

Chloé Bechini

At Drunken Stepfather, "Chloe Bechini is a Nude Model for Boxing Day of the Day."

Jennifer Delacruz's Post-Christmas Midweek Forecast

It sure is nice. Calm and mild weather.

Perhaps the best thing remaining about California.

Here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:

Twitter Now Enforcing Pakistani Law

Following-up from the other day, "Twitter is Losing Me."

Christina Laila was warned as well. She writes for Gateway Pundit. See, "Twitter Legal Warns TGP's Cristina Laila - Her 'Burka Tweet' Violates "Pakistan's Blasphemy Laws" - Which Are Punishable by Prison or Death."

Twitter Legal Warns TGP's Cristina Laila - Her 'Burka Tweet' Violates "Pakistan's Blasphemy Laws" - Which Are Punishable by Prison or Death @CristinaLaila1 @PamelaGeller https://t.co/hTBXPj2o4c via @gatewaypundit

— Jim Hoft (@gatewaypundit) December 22, 2018

And see Robert Spencer, at FrontPage Magazine, "TWITTER NOW ENFORCING PAKISTANI LAW: The social media giants are all Sharia-compliant now":

Remember when Barack Obama took control of the Internet away from the United States and gave it to an international organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)? Conservatives warned then that giving control of the primary means of communication to an international body could threaten the freedom of speech, and they were derided as hysterical. But now they’ve been proven correct: the social media giants are all Sharia-compliant.

FrontPage editor Jamie Glazov got the notice Saturday morning:

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Twitter Legal
Date: Sat, Dec 22, 2018 at 7:27 AM
Subject: Twitter Receipt of Correspondence
To: @JamieGlazov

Hello,

We are writing to inform you that Twitter has received official correspondence regarding your Twitter account, @JamieGlazov.

The correspondence claims that the following content is in violation of Pakistan law:Section 37 of PECA-2016, Section 295 B and Section 295 C of the Pakistan penal code

https://twitter.com/JamieGlazov/status/1035666429486321664
@JamieGlazov

Twitter has not taken any action on the reported content at this time. We are only writing to inform you that content posted to your account has been mentioned in a complaint.

This notice is not legal advice. You may wish to consult legal counsel about this matter. If you believe we have contacted you in error, please let us know by replying to this email.

For more general information on legal requests, please refer to the following Help Center article: https://t.co/lrfaq.

Sincerely,
Twitter

Click on the Twitter link, and you’ll see that the tweet in question is an advertisement for Jamie’s new book, Jihadist Psychopath. In Pakistan, jihadists aren’t psychopaths, they’re heroes.

Note also that Pakistan is accusing Glazov of being in violation of sections 295B and 295C of its penal code. Section 295B criminalizes “defiling the Holy Quran,” and carries a penalty of life imprisonment. 295C mandates that those who “by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation, or by any imputation innuendo, or insinuation, directly, defiles the sacred name of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) shall be punished with death, or imprisonment for life and shall also be liable for fine.” Yes, death and a fine.

Glazov is not alone in this. Pamela Geller received a notice from Twitter that she was in violation of Pakistani law for a tweet that noted correctly that Al Arabiya had criticized Linda Sarsour as a Muslim Brotherhood operative. Ensaf Haidar, the wife of Raif Badawi, who has been languishing for years in a Saudi prison for “insulting Islam,” got the notice for a tweet criticizing the niqab. Twitter has also notified Canadian columnist Anthony Furey and reformist imam Mohammed Tawhidi that they have violated Pakistani law.

 I haven’t. It makes me wonder what I have to do to offend the Pakistani government.

Meanwhile, “a new Android app,” according to Laura Loomer at Big League Politics, “has launched with the focus of allowing Muslims to report individuals who commit blasphemy, or insult Islam.” Now, if you’re a pious Muslim, if you see something, you can say something, and make sure that those who dare to criticize the Left’s favored religion will henceforth be able to say nothing.

Big League Politics explains that “the app, ‘Smart Pakem’, which launched in Indonesia last month at the request of the Indonesian government, will allow users and government officials to uphold Sharia law and target and report people who hold ‘misguided’ beliefs in violation of Islamic law, which forbids insults of Islam, insults against the Prophet Mohammed, or the recognition of any other religion besides Islam.”

Google has been leading the way on social media Sharia-compliance for quite some time. Anwar Awlaki’s al-Qaeda recruitment lectures were offered in Google Play store app. And in 2017, Texas imam Omar Suleiman made a successful effort to compel Google to drop search results about Islam-related terms and topics that reflected negatively upon Islam. The jihad against the freedom of speech is advancing rapidly, and most people don’t even know it’s happening. Turkey’s Anadolu Agency reported that “Google’s first page results for searches of terms such as ‘jihad’, ‘shariah’ and ‘taqiyya’ now return mostly reputable explanations of the Islamic concepts. Taqiyya, which describes the circumstances under which a Muslim can conceal their belief in the face of persecution, is the sole term to feature a questionable website on the first page of results.”

“Reputable” according to whom? “Questionable” according to whom? Why, Omar Suleiman, of course. Google execs swallowed uncritically everything he said, and dutifully buried all search results remotely critical of Islam, including ones that were demonstrably accurate in what they said.

Facebook is on the Sharia train, too. Facebook’s Vice President Joel Kaplan traveled to Pakistan in July 2017 to assure the Pakistani government that it would remove “anti-Islam” material. And Facebook has done so assiduously, banning numerous foes of jihad terror and twice now blocking the Jihad Watch Facebook page on spurious technical grounds.

And now Twitter is actually informing free Americans that they face life imprisonment or death for violating Islamic blasphemy laws. This is the legacy of Barack Hussein Obama.

Deportation Threat Shows Vietnamese Age Divide in Orange County

At LAT, "Among Vietnamese, a generational divide arises in fight against deportation threat":

In his 85 years, Lan Hoang has many times seen and heard about the power of communism to stir passions on the streets of Little Saigon.

There was the time a video store owner displayed the flag of communist Vietnam and an image of Ho Chi Minh, causing thousands of angry residents to protest. Ten years ago, hundreds of people hoisting signs gathered outside a Westminster newspaper that published a photo of a foot spa bearing the colors and stripes of the anti-communist South Vietnamese flag, calling it a desecration.

But when Hoang turned up to a protest in the neighborhood against the Trump administration’s recent threats to deport Vietnamese immigrants with criminal convictions back to their homeland, he was surprised by the apparently tepid response by older immigrants. Usually the most fervently anti-communist, only a handful showed up.

“Everyone was shouting and I looked around, wondering, ‘Where are the people my age?’ ” said the retired records clerk from Santa Ana, who said he was shocked by the White House’s move. “It’s so inspiring to see the youth taking action. They are well-educated, well-organized. I only wish that the others who have been visible for many years were here to support them.”

After word spread about a renewed push by the Department of Homeland Security to get Vietnam to accept more deportees, some people saw it as a mistake by the Trump administration given the GOP’s fading strength in Orange County and the historical support that the Republican Party has gotten from Vietnamese Americans.

But in a community where many older residents oppose undocumented immigration and younger ones tend to lean left politically, the controversy is just the latest to underscore the generational divide among those of Vietnamese descent.

“So many of our lives are in limbo. And do we get any support from our own community? Very little if you’re talking about the elders. What happened to all the voices speaking out for anti-communism? Why haven’t they mobilized?” said Tung Nguyen, 40, a Santa Ana activist who has served time in prison and helped lead protests in Little Saigon. “If they really care about human rights violations, well, violations are happening, not just in Vietnam but right here in our backyard.”

Earlier this month, Trump administration officials met with their counterparts from Hanoi to talk about a pact the two countries signed in 2008, under President George W. Bush, that protected the Vietnamese who came to the U.S. before July 12, 1995, from deportation.

More than 8,000 Vietnamese residents in the U.S. who escaped their homeland but later committed crimes — even minor ones for which they have served time — would be at risk of deportation if officials succeed in changing the agreement. Overall, since 1998, more than 9,000 Vietnamese immigrants have received a final order of removal, according to the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center.

Kim Bui, a 19-year-old sales clerk at an Anaheim snack shop, said members of her parents’ generation and older tend to be “no-shows” when the topic is immigration and deportations.

“I think these issues have a stigma to them. The older people are heavily Republican and they’re very focused on traditional values,” said Bui, who grew up in Orange County. “They are happy to talk about injustice in their homeland and they want to stay in that box, without making waves about U.S. politics.”

On social media and in the mainstream press, some young advocates for the emerging anti-deportation movement say they’ve long pushed for fairness and equality, and that Vietnamese Americans have shown up for other immigrant groups throughout U.S. history.

Still, within their own group, what’s missing is the “leadership of the older generation,” said Nguyen.

“We understand if they’re ashamed of some of us for our mistakes and our arrests,” he said, referring to immigrants with criminal records. “But do they need to punish our wives and children? Why would they not come out and fight for us so families can stay together? Why separate people who have paid the price for their bad choices or who will be exploited in Vietnam?”

Until last month, Nguyen was at risk for being deported to Vietnam. In 1996, he had been sentenced to life in prison for not intervening while one of his buddies stabbed a man to death. In 2011, Gov. Jerry Brown allowed him an early release, recognizing his bravery for saving dozens of civilians in a prison riot. Brown then gave Nguyen a full pardon this past Thanksgiving.

Last year, the Trump administration started pursuing the removal of a number of long-term residents from Vietnam and Cambodia, and to a lesser extent, Laotians, some of whom arrived in the United States decades ago as refugees, according to immigrant rights advocates and lawyers who have sued to halt the push. The administration maintains many have criminal records that subject them to deportation.

“It’s a priority of this administration to remove criminal aliens to their home country,” Katie Waldman, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, told The Times.

The latest available numbers on removals by Immigration and Customs Enforcement paint a mixed picture. In fiscal 2016, which ended in September 2016 toward the end of the Obama administration, officials removed 35 Vietnamese people. In fiscal 2017, including the first nine months of the Trump administration, officials removed more than double that number: 71.

Removals of Cambodians and Laotians have been relatively minimal: In fiscal 2016, the agency removed 74 Cambodians; the next year, it removed only 29. The agency removed zero Laotians in fiscal 2016, and five the following year.

But critics see the moves as yet another example of how, far from the U.S.-Mexico border, in both rhetoric and action, the Trump administration is signaling that no immigrant, whatever their legal status, is safe...

Stocks Extend Fall Despite Mnuchin Bid to Reassure Investors

Markets closed early today for Christmas Eve, and the news isn't good.

At WSJ:

A bruising stock selloff continued, erasing more than 350 points from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin tried to instill calm into a jittery market.

Coming off the stock market's worst week since the 2008 financial crisis, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite fell for a fourth straight session Monday as investors continued to weigh the impact of rising interest rates, slowing U.S. growth, and the ramifications of a government shutdown extending into January.

With the selloff showing little signs of slowing, Mr. Mnuchin attempted to reassure investors, saying he had spoken individually with the chief executives of six large banks to ensure they had sufficient lending capacity.

But Mr. Mnuchin's public efforts to soothe investors may have had the opposite effect, analysts said, with banks stocks falling along with most other assets Monday.

"We've gone through situations before where it's absolutely normal for the secretary of Treasury to reach out to the private sector," said Quincy Krosby, a chief market strategist at Prudential Financial, who also served several stints in the government earlier in her career.

"But what's bad is this made the papers, and says the government is very worried," said Ms. Krosby, adding that with investors focused on so many issues, "it's almost as if gravity is pulling this market toward a lower level before it bottoms out."

Adding to the market's unease were reports over the weekend that President Trump, angry over monetary policy, has considered removing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell -- a move that would stir even greater volatility and raise questions around political inference at the central bank, analysts said.

White House advisers, including Mr. Mnuchin, sought to ease those concerns as well, saying the president doesn't have the authority to remove Mr. Powell.

But Mr. Trump injected his own view on the matter on Monday, taking to Twitter to call out the Fed as being the economy's "only problem," likening the central bank to a "powerful golfer who can't score because he has no touch."

The Dow, which had been trading off its lows of the session before the tweet, moved lower in recent trading.

Thin trading volumes aren't helping matters, analysts added, and can contribute to bigger-than-normal price swings. Trading desks are usually lightly staffed in the final week of the year, with the market open half of the day on Christmas Eve and closed for all of Christmas.

The Dow Industrials fell 426 points, or 1.9%, to 22018 in recent trading, while the S&P 500 slipped 1.5%.

The Nasdaq Composite also fell, shedding 0.7%, after closing more than 20% below its recent high to enter bear-market territory on Friday.

All 11 major S&P 500 sectors were trading lower, from riskier assets such as shares of fast-growing technology companies to the market's safer corners, like dividend-paying utilities.

The ongoing fall in oil prices also hurt stocks Monday. Crude oil prices slumped more than 1% to $45 a barrel, extending the commodity's decline in recent months. Simultaneously, shares of energy companies fell 1.6%.

Stocks in Europe also fell, with the Stoxx Europe 600 declining 0.4%.

Some investors remain bullish about growth in the U.S. continuing next year, pointing to positive economic data, even though the Fed ignored Mr. Trump's calls for easy monetary policy and raised rates last week...

And at WaPo, via Memeorandum, "Treasury secretary startles Wall Street with unusual pre-Christmas calls to top bank CEOs."

How America Fractured in 1968

At the New York Times, "50 Years Later, It Feels Familiar: How America Fractured in 1968":

“The best explanation for the good old days is a bad memory.” A reminder of the wars, riots, political polarization, police shootings, racism, & assassinations of 50 years ago. https://t.co/bYYbgKQ6tU

— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) December 16, 2018

It was freezing on New Year’s Eve in Manhattan.

A fresh layer of snow blanketed the ground on the night of Dec. 31, 1967, and revelers in Times Square and Central Park seemed to look to the future with some hope. “World Bids Adieu to a Violent Year” was the Jan. 1 headline in The New York Times.

But 1968 would be tumultuous, too.

Even from the distance of a half-century, the moment feels familiar. From January to December, people demonstrated against racial injustice and economic inequality. Abroad, the United States military slogged through a seemingly interminable war. And after two terms with a Democrat in the White House, a Republican presidential candidate campaigned on a promise of law and order, and won.

It was the year between the Summer of Love and the summer of Woodstock, and some men grew their hair long while others were drafted to fight in Vietnam. “The country was bitterly divided: hawks and doves,” said Marc Leepson, an author, historian and Vietnam veteran.

It was also the year of the Tet offensive, an enormous attack by North Vietnamese forces, and of more than 16,000 American deaths in the Vietnam War, more than in any other year. Domestic support for the war effort faltered as antiwar protests exploded, most notably the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, to which the police responded with tear gas. Demonstrators, journalists and even some delegates were beaten and arrested.

Mr. Leepson spent almost all of 1968 serving at a base near the coastal city of Qui Nhon, Vietnam, and he returned home that December to a country that seemed vastly different from the one he had left.

“The enormity of everything, individually and cumulatively, didn’t hit me until I was in my parents’ living room in Hillside, N.J., watching year-end roundups on the news,” he said in a phone interview. (He eventually joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War and grew his hair past his shoulders.)

While Mr. Leepson was overseas, a different sort of battle had been brewing in the United States. The civil rights movement had been underway for years, achieving landmark federal laws and Supreme Court decisions that struck down legalized segregation and discrimination.

But vast inequality persisted, and on April 4, the movement lost a leader: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis.

In the following days, protests and riots erupted in major cities across the country. Properties were destroyed, and dozens of people lost their lives.

“His death unleashed this feeling that we were suppressed,” Sharlene Sinegal-DeCuir, a civil rights historian and an assistant professor at Xavier University of Louisiana, said of Dr. King. “Minority groups in America felt that they could now release all that and show the majority: This is our pain, and we have been telling you this for years and years.”

That message seemed to fall on deaf ears, she added, and demonstrations calling for racial justice have never stopped. “Adults need to really have an open mind and listen to the younger generation, and to their grievances,” she said. “I think that was not done in 1968.”

Instead, political opinion seemed to swing the other way. It was a presidential election year, and in March, Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, said he would not run for president again, adding that there was “division in the American house.”

As the year went on, candidates found that appeals to “law and order” were polling particularly well. Richard M. Nixon did it best, eking out a Republican victory in November against Hubert H. Humphrey, a Democrat. (George Wallace, a third-party candidate who supported segregation, won millions of votes and five states.)

That election brought the end of the Johnson administration and the so-called Warren Court — the period when the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, presided over a series of liberal rulings, most notably the 1954 decision striking down segregation in public schools. (Earlier in 1968, Chief Justice Warren told Johnson that he would retire, wrongly hoping the president could appoint a replacement before the winner of the election, whom Chief Justice Warren thought might be Nixon, took office.)

“It’s just a tremendously important moment in Supreme Court history,” Mary L. Dudziak, an author, historian and professor of law at Emory University, said of 1968. “It’s the beginning of that turn away from this era of expansive liberalism.”

But the big-picture changes were hard to recognize at the time; all year, major events made headlines at a breakneck pace. In April, a gas leak caused a huge explosion in Richmond, Ind., killing dozens of people and destroying numerous buildings. In June, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a presidential hopeful, was fatally shot at a campaign event in California. Abroad, France was shaken by widespread protests and general strikes. A brutal civil war was unfolding in Nigeria. Soviet troops invaded Czechoslovakia. And the death toll kept rising in Vietnam.

When 1968 came to a close, Time magazine highlighted some good news...

Still more.

Done with Disparate Impact Analysis

From the always outstanding Heather Mac Donald, at City Journal, "Back to Discipline":

Back to Discipline: Disparate impact reflects disparate reality. https://t.co/WnnhrUl0rn via @HMDatMI pic.twitter.com/j8xjPY9wgK

— City Journal (@CityJournal) December 23, 2018

A federal commission on school safety has repudiated the use of disparate-impact analysis in evaluating whether school discipline is racially biased. The Trump administration should go further, and extirpate such analysis from the entirety of the federal code of regulations, as well as from informal government practice.

Disparate-impact analysis holds that if a facially-neutral policy negatively affects blacks and Hispanics at a higher rate than whites and Asians, it is discriminatory. Noticing the behavioral differences that lead to those disparate effects is forbidden. In the area of school discipline, disparate-impact analysis results in the conclusion that racially neutral rules must nevertheless contain bias, since black students nationally are suspended at nearly three times the rate of white students. In 2014, the Obama administration relied on this methodology to announce that schools that suspended or expelled black students at higher rates than white students were violating anti-discrimination laws.

To understand how counterfactual such an analysis is, consider Duval County, Florida, which has Florida’s highest juvenile homicide rate. Seventy-three children, some as young as 11, have been arrested for murder and manslaughter over the last decade, according to the Florida Times-Union. Black juveniles made up 87.6 percent of those arrests and whites 8 percent. The black population in Duval County—which includes Jacksonville—was 28.9 percent in 2010 and the white population 56.6 percent, making black youngsters 21.6 times more likely to be arrested for homicide than white youngsters. Nationally, black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at ten times the rate of white and Hispanic male teens combined; if Hispanics were removed from the equation, the black-white disparity would be much greater.

Beneath those homicide numbers is a larger juvenile crime wave. “The reason so many kids commit murder in Jacksonville is not because they are murderers, but because they are everything else: drug dealers, robbers, thieves, rapists and a bunch of other types of criminals whose crimes of choice has a great likelihood of leading to a murder,” a teen murder convict, Aaron Wright, told the Florida Times-Union. Fifty-nine percent of juvenile murder convicts from Duval County who responded to the paper’s inmate survey reported that they were committing another crime such as robbery or burglary when they or their co-defendant killed their victim. Wright himself was robbing a woman when his fellow robber shot and killed her, making Wright guilty of felony murder.

The same family dysfunction and lack of socialization that create this juvenile crime wave inevitably affects classroom behavior. Duval County Public Schools also have the highest number of violent campus incidents of any Florida school district. Nationwide, schools with the highest minority populations report the highest number of disciplinary infractions. Schools that are 50 percent minority or more experience weekly gang activity at nearly ten times the rate of schools where minorities constituted 5 percent to 20 percent of the population, according to the 2018 “Indicators of School Crime and Safety” report produced by the U.S. Justice and Education Departments. Gang violence in schools with less than 5 percent minority populations was too low to be usable statistically. Widespread weekly disorder in classrooms was reported in schools with at least 50 percent minority populations at more than five times the rate as in schools with 5 percent to 20 percent minorities. More than four times as many high-minority schools reported weekly verbal abuse of teachers compared with schools with a minority student body less than 20 percent. Widespread disorder and teacher abuse at schools with less than 5 percent minority populations was again too low to be statistically reliable.

The “School Crime and Safety” reports produced during the Obama years contained identical disparities. And yet the Obama administration held that the only possible reason why blacks are disciplined in school more than whites is teacher and administrator bias. Never mind that teaching is the most “woke” profession in the country after social work, with education schools frantically indoctrinating their students in white privilege and critical race theory.

And so school districts, threatened with a loss of federal funding if they didn’t reduce racial disparities in discipline, left disruptive students in the classroom rather than removing them...

Keep reading.

Twitter is Losing Me

In my inbox this morning, and my response. I don't know how much longer I'll be on this platform, but it won't be much longer if I continue to be embroiled in stupidity like this.

I'm shaking my head.

Click on the images to enlarge and read.

Liz Cheney on 'Face the Nation' (VIDEO)

I don't know about Ms. Liz's hairdo. It makes her look older. She's a good looking woman, and a hard-headed conservative. She's matronly now, wtf?

I guess it's good for her reelection efforts. House members run for reelection every two years, so you're never really off the campaign cycle.

With Margaret Brennan this morning:

Jennifer Delacruz's Eve of Christmas Eve Forecast

It's going to be in the mid- to upper-60s over the next few days, including Christmas Day. Could be some light showers.

I'll take it. I love California Christmas weather.

Here's the lovely Ms. Jennifer, for ABC News 10 San Diego:

Sarah Perry, Melmoth

At Amazon, Sarah Perry, Melmoth: A Novel.