December 27, 2025

SHOULD:

Posted at 2:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

Meanwhile, the usual useful idiots continue believing idiotic things.

Posted at 12:48 pm by Stephen Green

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES:

Posted at 9:36 am by Stephen Green

HEH:

Posted at 9:03 am by Stephen Green

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOMS: 2025 Men of the Year: Big, Beautiful Bunker Busters. “Seeing evil turn to ash in a smoldering plume of justice gives every self-respecting American a thrill up his leg. It’s like what Chris Matthews felt watching Barack Hussein Obama, but for non-freaks.”

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

CHANGE:

Here’s the full graph in Travis’ tweet:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

DAVE BARRY’S YEAR IN REVIEW:

In case you somehow missed this story: In late November, this raccoon got into a state liquor store in Ashland, Va., by falling though the ceiling. Once inside, the raccoon ransacked the store, leaving a trail of broken bottles…

…and apparently consuming a large quantity of booze before passing out in the bathroom next to the toilet. That’s where the raccoon was found by a store employee, who called an animal-control officer, who took it to an animal shelter. When the raccoon finally sobered up, it was hired as director of security by the Louvre Museum.

No, seriously, it was released into the wild. But the photo went majorly viral, and the raccoon became a huge celebrity. We, the American people, LOVE this raccoon. And I think I know why: After the year we’ve been through, we can relate to it. We have had way too much of 2025; it has left us, as a nation, lying face-down on the floor of despair, between the wastebasket of stupidity and the commode of broken dreams.

How did we get here? Perhaps it will help (although I doubt it) if we look back on the events of this insane year, starting with…

Needless to say, read the whole thing.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

DECLINE AND FALL: Germany’s empty churches repurposed as congregations shrink. “The number of church members in Germany is falling rapidly. In 2024 alone, the two major churches lost over a million Christians due to people leaving the church or dying. Currently, more than 45% of Germans still belong to either to the Protestant Church in Germanyor the Catholic Church. Thirty years ago, that figure stood at almost 69%. This is why churches are now being deconsecrated or desacralized. Since 2000, hundreds of Catholic and Protestant churches were decommissioned. In response to a DW inquiry, the German Bishops’ Conference informed of the closing and decommissioning of 611 Catholic churches between 2000 and 2024. The Protestant Church estimates that some 300 to 350 churches were permanently shut in the same period; more precise figures are not available.”

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

December 26, 2025

GREAT MOMENTS IN MULTICULTURALISM: MN Lt. Governor Flanagan puts on hijab, declares Somalis built Minnesota.

MORE:

Past performance is no guarantee of future results:

 

Posted at 9:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

OPEN THREAD: How was your week?

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

VDH: Pseudo-Recessions.

The Cold War ended in a U.S. victory.

Germany was reunified in October 1990.

In December 1989, Bush successfully removed the narco-dictator Manuel Noriega of Panama, who threatened the viability of the Panama Canal.

The Gulf War was won brilliantly by February 1991.

The nuclear START treaty was signed with the Soviet Union in July 1991, just before the USSR itself collapsed in December.

By any normal reckoning, Bush should have been a shoo-in: spectacular foreign policy successes and a rebounding economy after a brief recession that had ended 15 months before the November 1992 election.

Instead, the pseudo-recession of 1992 dominated the campaign. Indeed, Bush’s many achievements overseas were cleverly distorted by Clinton as proof that the globe-trotting president was more interested in the world abroad than “putting people first” at home.

As in Bush’s prior 1988 campaign, Lee Atwater would have torn the Clinton campaign apart as inexperienced and disingenuous. Atwater would have ordered Bush to talk nonstop about virtually no inflation, robust four percent economic growth, and declining unemployment.

Instead, the lackluster Bush campaign team never caught on and was crushed by Clinton, with help from the economic populist Ross Perot.

The pseudo-recession of 1992 should remind the Trump people not to repeat the same mistake in the 2026 midterms.

In 1988, Atwater was able to sell Bush as Reagan’s third term, and voters, delighted by the turnaround from the Jimmy Carter’s malaise-filled late 1970s to Reagan’s go-go 1980s economy and his sunny optimism made Bush a shoe-in. But with Atwater having passed away from brain cancer in 1991, the following year, Bush looked utterly exhausted on the campaign trail, in sharp contrast to Clinton’s rockstar energy and charisma. While Rush Limbaugh was on the scene by 1992, there was no Fox News, no original era Drudge Report, no Blogosphere, and the DNC-MSM could still shape reality uncontested for millions of voters: The Real History of the Liberal Media and George H. W. Bush.

One of my favorites was the DNC-MSM, in lockstep with their candidate Bill Clinton, pummeling Bush in the run-up to the 1992 election over a minor recession that Clinton described as “the worst economy in 50 years,” only to turn around and reveal that, as the Charlotte Business Journal wrote in 2010, “The U.S. economy actually grew 4.2% in the fourth-quarter that year and went on to enjoy a terrific decade-long run of prosperity. And we learned in hindsight that recession had actually already ended when the [September 1992 Time magazine] article was printed.” Time described it in December of that year as “Bush’s Economic Present for Clinton.”

Related: Ross Perot was the populist who betrayed populism.

UPDATE:

More:

 

Posted at 9:23 pm by Ed Driscoll

TIME HAS COME TODAY: NYC phone ban reveals some students can’t read clocks.

For years, parents and teachers have blamed technology for a range of lapsed skills — from legible handwriting to sustained attention to reading whole books — even as their proficiency with technology far outstrips their elders. Still, while educators have widely praised New York’s statewide smartphone ban that went into effect this fall, multiple teachers told Gothamist it has also laid bare an unexpected gap: How to tell time.

“The constant refrain is ‘Miss, what time is it?’ said Madi Mornhinweg, who teaches high school English in Manhattan. “It’s a source of frustration because everyone wants to know how many minutes are left in class. … It finally got to the point where we I started saying ‘Where’s the big hand and where’s the little hand?’”

According to the education department, students learn how to read clocks in first and second grade. “At NYCPS, we recognize how essential it is for our students to tell the time on both analog and digital clocks,” education department spokesperson Isla Gething said. “As our young people are growing up in an increasingly digital world, no traditional time-reading skills should be left behind.” Officials said kids are taught to master terms including “o’clock,” “half-past” and “quarter-to” in early elementary years.

Tom Wolfe’s “The Great Relearning” can’t happen soon enough, as its topics are expanding exponentially.

Classical reference in headline:

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll