Had a post up for half an hour – didn’t like the total flow of it. It’ll be back up later, if you saw it. Meanwhile, how about an open thread like I promised?

We’re only 24 days until we reach Gore’s proclaimed point of no return on global warming climate change. Ah, Earth – we hardly knew ye.

The Saudi’s executed a Shia cleric and some rumbles of rebellion among Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority are being heard. Just to let you know – the Shia’s in Saudi Arabia live where a huge amount of Saudi Arabia’s oil is. This could get messy.

Obama, entering his last year in office, seems determined to boost gun sales, again. Anyone check to see if he’s a major stockholder in gun firms?

Gary Kasparov wonders whither America?

Rhambo took his vacation in Cuba – probably getting a few pointers on how to maintain one-party control.

Or so the Mamas and the Papas claimed…

At any rate, Victor Davis Hanson ponders what will happen in 2017 if a Republican takes office:

…In January 2017, the new president might announce a cut-off of all federal funds for sanctuary cities found in violation of federal law. Or, also taking his cue from Obama, he might allow individual municipalities to nullify federal laws as they see fit: The Endangered Species Act null and avoid inside Salt Lake City? Gay marriage illegal within the city limits of Mobile? Gun control mandates too much of a hassle for those living in Laramie? Texas towns free to burn coal as they please?

The media will object, but they will sound shrill and empty given their prior sanction of Obama’s illegal precedents. Apparently, from now on the president alone will set immigration laws, enforcing statutes he finds useful, ignoring those he doesn’t—and all without credible censure from the media…

But I’m sure Media Matters will create a chart to “prove” to our Progs that Obama had fewer unconstitutional power grabs than any other President.

Hanson is very right about this – and all of us have cause to be worried. The Obama Administration wasn’t just a policy disaster, is was a precedent disaster. More so, in my view, than even FDR’s Administration was. It will be nice if in 2017 we swear in a modern version of Calvin Coolidge – a humble man who limited himself out of an abundance of understanding about human limitations. But such people are few and far between in politics. The temptation to just ignore the law will be high for most. Obama didn’t start this ball rolling – oddly, it was Teddy Roosevelt who did – but he’s carried it the furthest and has most distinctly violated the requirement for the President to enforce the laws faithfully. Will the next President voluntarily give up the powers Obama has taken?

Story out there that Trump trade-marked “Make America Great Again” in 2012. If so, then this whole Trump phenomena is scripted from start to finish – meaning, that Trump is just following a plan he worked out in advance. Nothing will be funnier to me than to find out that this populist wave of righteous anger was really nothing more than a clever sales job – also, nothing would be less surprising.

Las Vegas money bags Sheldon Adelson purchased the Las Vegas Review-Journal – Nevada’s largest newspaper. In some ways, this is just another zillionaire buying the ability to push his views – but the difference here is that in some respects Adelson adheres to the right in politics. Nothing will break down the left’s stranglehold on popular culture than a non-left take over of newspapers, magazines and websites.

Report that Team Hillary is a little worried about the prospects in Iowa and New Hampshire. I’d give them a 90% chance of being victorious there…but if she loses one or both, the whole Democrat primary gets thrown into chaos.

And, now, how about some Mamas and Papas?

I thought we would pick up where we left off on the Thanksgiving thread. There is certainly a lot to talk about, including this recent NYT article on Climate Change which I thought was irresponsible. Talk about fear based politics and not one mention of data manipulation or previous predictions which have been way off the mark. Then of course there is this article on the Maunder Minimum which in my opinion merits attention.

And finally, on an issue all of us have discussed at length and what Democrats are fond of calling the “Great Recession”, here is a well sourced article that connects the dots better than we ever did and it reveals a lot.

Quentin Tarantino joins the #BlackLivesMatter movement, makes some anti-police statements; police get angry, Tarantino says:

They want to slander me and imply I’m saying things I didn’t say. The reason is because they want me to shut up… It’s much easier to feign outrage and start arguments with celebrities than deal with the fact that the citizenry has lost trust in them.

Just a little heads up, Quentin: you’ll find that in the general run of things, people want all celebrities to shut up. Mostly because if you’re doing movies, TV and music, you probably only have a hazy idea of how the real world works and thus anything you say is probably divorced from reality. But, that aside, I’m not going to boycott your movies over your statements recently. I won’t be going to see any of them in the future – in spite of the fact that you’re a top-notch movie maker – but that is because I’m coming more and more to the conclusion that movies which kill people in a “cool” manner are not good for the mind and spirit. To be sure, some times a movie has to have some people die – and some times has to have a lot of people die (a war picture, for instance). But there’s a difference between the depiction of the fundamental tragedy of death before one’s time, and death just put out there for our entertainment.

Readers here know that I’ve long called for massive reforms to our police and criminal justice system. But what is wrong with our system has nothing to do with race – there aren’t a host of racist cops out there gunning down people because they are black. It is true, of course, that black people in higher proportions run afoul of our broken justice system, but that is a reflection not of racist police, but of a increasingly failed society – and a failure, it must be noted, created in large part by rich, white liberals. I know how quite a lot of African-Americans feel about it all because I’ve actually listened to them talk about it – but there are also plenty of poor whites, Latinos, etc similarly ground up in the system. There’s a lot which needs to be fixed – people like Tarantino aren’t helping, at all.

Some indications that the Russian jet downed over Sinai was done in by a bomb. We’ll have to see – given that it happened in Egypt and Russians are involved, conspiracy-theories will abound. It would not, of course, surprise me to find that a terrorist did get a bomb on the plane.

Democrats lost badly in Kentucky last night – they are comforting themselves with the old “it was a low-turnout election” thing. They are also making very weird speeches about the defeat. Other than that, it was fun last night to collect some more liberal tears.

As an aside, the polling in Kentucky was downright terrible – a polling lead of five percentage points for the Democrat wound up with a nearly nine percentage point win for the Republican. 2014 polls were pretty terrible, too – you might recall how plenty of GOPers were either behind or neck and neck with their opponents, only to run up smashing victories when the votes were counted. Part of this would be the difficulty in polling in individual States, especially in an off year…but I think that polling is just getting harder and harder to do. Keep that in mind as we head into 2016. That said, latest poll is just hideous for Hillary.

Israeli professor shouted down by student radicals – because free inquiry means not letting alternative views be heard, right?

The city of Houston had a very broad anti-discrimination law up for a vote on Tuesday – Houston is the liberal corner of Texas, by the way. Should have been a slam dunk, but it went down to flaming defeat. Houston is a liberal place – meaning a rather small, rich, white Ruling Class is kept in power by strength of minority votes. Kevin Williamson over at NRO notes some problems for the Democrats in this sort of system. For me, I see the GOP opportunity – and, yes, even an opportunity to do well in places like Chicago and Detroit. It simply can’t be that a working poor African-American has anything in common with those who run the Democrat party. They don’t have much in common with those who run the Republican party, either. But if the GOP were to start offering them some things? And some things that the Democrats simply cannot offer? It could get very interesting.

And that means just about a year from now we elect Obama’s replacement. Quite honestly, none of the people running can in any conceivable circumstances be worse than Obama. And, yes, this includes Hillary – she’s corrupt and rather stupid, but I don’t think she’ll do as horrific damage as Obama has done. Of course, we’re talking someone who is 95% as bad as Obama…so, better to go with Jindal, or Cruz, or Rubio.

Still, it is a relief that we are getting to the end of Obama. Well, not the total end – he’s rather young still and we’ll have him around to expound on American life and politics for decades. But at least the pen and phone will be taken away. He’ll only be able to say asinine things – he won’t be able to do them any longer.

As an aside, Rubio won the backing of a bazillionaire who donates to GOP causes…and, of course, pro-immigration causes, because that is what our bazillionaires do. It’d be better for Rubio, I think, if he declined the assist. Let Hillary and the Democrats get money from fabulously rich people – we really don’t need it.

As another aside, for some reason illegal immigrants have got the idea that they are free to enter the US at will – and will be provided benefits when they arrive. I can’t imagine where they picked up that idea.

A bit of a Global Warming Climate Change update – turns out that Antarctic ice mass isn’t actually declining. There are 6.36 million cubic miles of ice in Antarctica; the average thickness of the sheet is 6,500 feet (that is well more than a mile, folks) – we’re going to have to warm up more than a degree or two by 2100 to make a real dent in that.

From the Never Give Up files – Warmists are saying it will be too hot to work because of Global Warming Climate Change.

Democrat Attorney General of Pennsylvania is charged with a bunch of criminal counts. The MSM will ignore this local crime story.

You might recall that Obama promised us that he wouldn’t have US boots on the ground in Syria. That promise has reached its expiration date. We’re sending 60 troops – which is enough for us to get some people killed, but not enough to actually change the situation. This is the Obama Doctrine in a nutshell.

Now they are saying that bacon increases your risk of cancer – this is utter nonsense. Just another silly scare-story. Here’s the deal, folks: you can’t get out of life alive. Eat what you like – but in moderation.