BRUCE THORNTON: The Stakes In The War On Christmas.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 952.

CORRUPT PRESIDENT CONSULTS WITH BILLIONAIRE BEFORE DOING HIS BIDDING: Obama meets Bloomberg as he prepares order on guns. I remember when money in politics was bad.

MEGAN MCARDLE:

What’s interesting about Trump’s rise is that it reveals how little power that establishment actually has. Trump is not somehow taking power away from a self-satisfied elite. But he is revealing that the elite never had the kind of dominance that populists like to imagine.

Consider the two great villains of the populist mind. The left thinks that politics is controlled by the vast fortunes spent on elections by corporations and right-wing billionaires. The right thinks that similar influence is exerted by liberal media and economic elites. Trump’s poll numbers belie both theories.

But isn’t Trump a billionaire, you will ask. Ah, but Trump is spending very little money on this campaign. The reason he’s doing so well is that he’s getting a ton of media coverage. While other candidates have to spend money to hire staffers and air ads in order to get their message out, Trump just has to say something outrageous and wait for the media to swoop down and give him eons of free air time.

The other billionaires, meanwhile, hate him. Virtually everyone in the professional Republican establishment hates him. . . . Yet the establishment, and the billionaires, with all their money, can’t seem to do a darned thing to stop Trump. So much for money buying elections. Media matters much more than money. . . . And yet, the media is also curiously powerless here. If the news media actually operated like the tacit conspiracy that many conservatives imagine, we would have all quietly gotten together and agreed to bury Trump.

Trump isn’t just a billionaire; he’s a media star who’s been building his image for decades. That does affect things.

SO THIS EU MULTICULTURALISM PROJECT IS PROCEEDING SWIMMINGLY: Riot police fire warning shots as THOUSANDS of protesters storm the site of a planned asylum centre for 1,500 migrants in Holland. They left the town hall looking like a “battlefield.” I guess they were following Barack Obama’s “get in their face” advice. . . .

“The mayoress, Miranda de Vries, said she was shocked at the violence caused by an estimated 2,500 people in the town of 27,000 that lies near the city of Utrecht.” When ten percent of your population is rioting, it’s not just a fringe phenomenon.

DRUDGE EXPLAINS WHY TRUMP IS LEADING THE GOP PRIMARY:

TAKING MY ADVICE? Adelson family confirms it bought Las Vegas Review-Journal.

I did suggest buying smaller papers in swing states. Next: Ohio? Florida?

CHANGE: Out of Gas: Turkey Is Losing Its Battle With Russia.

WHY DOES SILICON VALLEY HATE THE ENVIRONMENT? The Environmental Toll Of A Netflix Binge.

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WELL, THAT’S EXACTLY HOW IT’S SEEMED FOR THE LAST SEVEN YEARS: DHS Whistleblower: Obama More Concerned with Protecting the Rights of Islamists Than Protecting the American People.

JACK DUNPHY: Meet Garry McCarthy, Rahm Emanuel’s Patsy.

Will McCarthy take the fall for Rahm?

IT’S BEEN A DECADE SINCE EPA’S WATCHDOG AUDITED ONE OF EPA’S $542 MILLION IN COLLEGE GRANTS: The grants are for research on such vitally important topics as harvesting fog, measuring how much water we use in hotel bathroom showers and avoiding pollution caused by grilling steaks in the backyard. Sleep tight tonight, folks, your EPA has got it covered. Your wallet, that is.

HARRY REID SEEMS TO ACCOMPLISH LOT, CONSIDERING HE’S IN THE MINORITY: Democrats Are Celebrating These Conservative Policies Not Being In Omnibus Spending Bill.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Obama Administration nixed probe into Southern California jihadists.

IS THIS THE HOPE, OR THE CHANGE? ISIS Becomes a Household Word — How to Explain the Unthinkable to Your Child.

(202) 224-3121: John Hinderaker: The Omnibus Spending Bill Sells Out American Workers.

WHAT YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH IF YOU’RE A RICH SAUDI IN BRITAIN: Millionaire Cleared of Rape Charge After Claiming He Tripped and His Penis Fell Into Teen.

Ehsan Abdulaziz, a Saudi millionaire property developer, was cleared of rape charges in London this week after he claimed that he had tripped and fallen on an 18-year-old girl who was sleeping at his apartment after partying with him, penetrating her by accident.

Hm: That’s not how gravity or bodies work at all.

Nope. But it’s how influence works.

A GREAT TWEET FROM ACE:

This is the story he’s talking about.

HOW TO PLAY THE TRUMP CARD. Charlie Martin tries to make sense of The Donald:

He can say all the things they want Republicans to say, and he gets all the free press he wants. He clearly loves it too: whenever anything — terrorism, Clinton’s ongoing email scandal (remember that?), Benghazi and the repeated lies from the administration — threatens to become a political story that’s not about Trump, Trump says something new and outrageous, and the legacy media story is all about the outrageous thing Trump said. Again. No one has benefitted more, politically, from this than Hillary Clinton.

There seem to me to be two explanations for this.

One of them is that Trump really does want to be president, and thinks this is the way to do it, all — in Jonah Goldberg’s phrase — for the Greater Glory of Trump. After all, a term as president and he can really raise his price for a reality show.

The other is that he’s actually doing this to help his great friends the Clintons, who came to his wedding and whom he was very complimentary about just a few years ago.

I just wish I could tell which one to believe.

I’m not sure either — I’ve had a serious case of Trumphrenia* since his emergence on the scene this summer, but feel free to break out the hammer and tongs and hash it out in the comments below.

* Soundtrack by Dee Snider, not Pete Townshend, alas — at least for now.

MOE LANE: Harvard University does its bit to make Christmas a living Hell for its undergrads.

IS THE MUSLIM GOD THE SAME AS THE CHRISTIAN GOD? Professor at small evangelical school suspended for saying that the Muslim God and Christian God are one in the same. “By the way, she consulted those religious experts at CAIR before starting this campaign.”

Related: Public School Students Told to Practice Calligraphy by Writing ‘There is No God but Allah.’

IT’S ALWAYS NICE TO MAKE TWITCHY.

HE’S A NASTY LITTLE MAN, IN A PARTY FULL OF NASTY LITTLE MEN: “Famously vindictive, [Rahm Emanuel] alienated the local press and others, turning those who might have helped him into enemies.”