TEN THINGS TRAINERS wish you knew about your workout.

Meanwhile, inspired by my Mark Rippetoe interview, I went to the gym on leg day yesterday and did a bunch of heavy squats and deadlifts as outlined in his new book. Today, I’ve been walking a little funny as a result. . . .

IOWA FORECAST: Moderate Weather.

HAPPY 10TH ANNIVERSARY to Bill Quick’s DailyPundit. How many of us blogging back in 2001 thought we’d still be doing it ten years later?

CHRISTMAS, 1981. “Things sure have changed in the past 30 years…”

BELARUS: The Irresistible Lure Of The Dark Side.

RUSSIA: Vast Rally In Moscow Is A Challenge To Putin’s Power.

JEFF JACOBY: The Affirmative Action Myth.

ON PJTV: Bill Whittle and I talk about our favorite Christmas toys as kids. With awesome Johnny Astro video.

CALIFORNIA ATHEISTS BLOCK OUT NATIVITY SCENES: You know, atheism would be more popular if atheists weren’t such schmucks.

HOPE AND CHANGE: U.S. Retirement Assets Declined by $1.4 Trillion.

SAYUNCLE is switching teams.

OBAMA ON SIGNING STATEMENTS, then and now. “I agree with the Obama of 2008. Just because presidents are incompetent and can’t get what they want from congress doesn’t mean they can run off and decide which laws to enforce and which to ignore. ‘Gridlock’ is not an excuse.”

JOHN HAWKINS: THE 50 BEST POLITICAL QUOTES OF 2011.

ON FACEBOOK, Jay Cost recommends Sean Trende’s The Lost Majority: Why the Future of Government Is Up for Grabs – and Who Will Take It.

And hey, if you got a new Kindle for Christmas, why not fill it up here?

MERRY CHRISTMAS:

ROSS DOUTHAT: THE CRATCHIT TAX CREDIT: “In 21st-century America, the well-off and well-educated have the best odds of enjoying the domestic stability that the Yuletide stories celebrate, while the very people who most need resilient families — the Cratchits and Baileys, the working poor and the hard-pressed middle class — are less and less likely to have them. . . . There is no government program that can guarantee a happy childhood or a devoted spouse. (If you replaced Clarence from “It’s a Wonderful Life” or the Angel Gabriel of the Gospels with a Health and Human Services bureaucrat, those stories would probably have a much grimmer ending.)” Just remember, people respond to incentives, even perverse ones.

RAND SIMBERG: Obama has achieved his goal of higher energy costs. This should be a powerful campaign theme next year: “Obama got what he wanted. Did you?”

MERRY CHRISTMAS:

MARK STEYN: “The problem with the advanced West is not that it’s broke but that it’s old and barren. Which explains why it’s broke. Take Greece, which has now become the most convenient shorthand for sovereign insolvency — ‘America’s heading for the same fate as Greece if we don’t change course,’ etc. So Greece has a spending problem, a revenue problem, something along those lines, right? At a superficial level, yes. But the underlying issue is more primal: It has one of the lowest fertility rates on the planet. In Greece, 100 grandparents have 42 grandchildren — i.e., the family tree is upside down. In a social-democratic state where workers in ‘hazardous’ professions (such as, er, hairdressing) retire at 50, there aren’t enough young people around to pay for your three-decade retirement. And there are unlikely ever to be again. . . . If the problem with socialism is, as Mrs. Thatcher says, that eventually you run out of other people’s money, much of the West has advanced to the next stage: It’s run out of other people, period.”

THE SPIRIT OF GIVING: World Giving Index 2011: U.S. Is #1 (Out of 153 Countries). “Using data from Gallup’s Worldview World Poll, the report is based on three measures of giving behaviour – giving money, volunteering time and helping a stranger. The results show that the USA is officially the most charitable nation in the world.”

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

GO DADDY GONE: Go Daddy loses over 37,000 domains due to SOPA stance.

BRITAIN TO ARGENTINA: Don’t even think about the Falklands.

OKAY, IT’S TOO LATE TO SEND CHRISTMAS GIFTS — unless you send a gift card, or a Kindle book, or an MP3. But now Amazon has rolled out its after-Christmas year-end deals.

Also, today only: Battlefield 3 for Xbox 360 and PS3, $34.99.