THE LEFT’S ANTI-WHITE RACISM, as explored by Rod Dreher:

Salon.com presents a racist column by an elderly white male leftist named Frank Joyce. A sample from the column:

The future of life on the planet depends on bringing the 500-year rampage of the white man to a halt. For five centuries his ever more destructive weaponry has become far too common. His widespread and better systems of exploiting other humans and nature dominate the globe.

The time for replacing white supremacy with new values is now. And just as some whites played a part in ending slavery, colonialism, Jim Crow segregation, and South African apartheid, there is surely a role whites can play in restraining other whites in this era. Beneath the sound and fury generated by GOP presidential candidates, Fox News, website trolls, police unions and others, white people are becoming aware as never before of past and present racism.

Blah blah blah.

I know, I know, it’s Salon.com. But you know what? This kind of thing is a big deal, and should not be shrugged off. Can you think of another web publication of its status in this country that could explicitly demonize others by race and gender, and say that “the future of life on the planet” depends on restraining them?

As Dreher’s former colleague Jonah Goldberg accurately wrote in early 2008, foreshadowing the last eight years, “The white man is the Jew of Liberal Fascism.” If that tacit comparison to an earlier war by national socialists causes today’s left to wince, well, they might have pondered the implications of their actions and ideology in the first place.

Related: Tweet of the Day, No. No, Salon Is Not Better Than This edition.

TRUE: “The contrast between the moralistic lectures, finger-wagging, and ostentatious dedication to high values that mark the rhetoric of the European Union on the one hand, and the sleazy indifference to corruption that characterizes much of the shadowy transactions of European elites on the other, isn’t remarked upon often enough.”

Plus: “The decline in the willingness of large German companies to observe basic standards of business ethics, and what is clearly a collapse of individual morality, point toward a more profoundly spiritual crisis, rather than merely an institutional one. Yes, regulators missed some dubious transactions. But the more important fact is that so many people were willing to sacrifice their personal integrity to participate in ugly and illegal schemes. It is not just that these people aren’t afraid of the regulators; they aren’t afraid of the consequences of breaking the moral law. When a country’s elite becomes so arrogant and so shortsighted that morality doesn’t matter to them anymore, bad things are coming. And instead of feeling smug about Europe’s challenges in this respect, Americans need to take a long, hard look in the mirror. We are losing touch with the values on which our national success depends.”

We have the worst political class in our history. The Germans, at least, can say that’s not true for them. . . .

JERRY BROWN, GREENHOUSE DISASTER: “Unstoppable” California Gas Leak Now Being Called Worst Catastrophe Since BP Spill.

FREE SPEECH, OUTSIDE THE CONTROL OF ADMINISTRATORS AND SCREAMING-GARBAGE-BABY CRYBULLY FELLOW STUDENTS: What Is Yik Yak, and Why Do College Students Love It So Much?

Related thoughts from Virginia Postrel.

The Yik Yak I saw came closer to the company’s public-relations aspirations (“home to the casual, relatable, heartfelt, and silly things that connect people with their community”) than to the hate-drenched graffiti its critics had led me to expect. Though largely banal, my samples at Princeton, and later at UCLA and Santa Monica College, revealed Yik Yak posts to be mostly good-natured, often stupid, but rarely evil. At SMC, students typically complain about the parking shortage; at UCLA, they gripe about food; at Princeton they desperately crave sleep. Everywhere they talk about sex.

Most striking is how the anonymity of Yik Yak creates a place of support and solidarity amid academic and social struggles. Shielded by anonymity, students give voice not just to the angry id that attracts condemnation and media notice but to the pain and insecurities they often won’t admit to their friends.

Read the whole thing.

Related: Guy Who Threatened To ‘Shoot Every Black’ Kid On Campus… Is Black.

AT AMAZON, year-end deals on Magazines.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. If Joseph and Mary tried to reach Bethlehem today, they might get murdered by Palestinian terrorists. “Seriously, this sort of historical revisionism, treating ancient Jewish Judeans as if they were Palestinian Arabs, and then analogizing modern Israel to the oppressors of Jesus and his family, a common trope in the UK, would be laughable if it were not so pernicious. Pernicious not simply because it’s a ridiculous distortion of history, and not simply because it’s often accompanied by a large dose of anti-Semitism.”

OF COURSE THEY DO: 44 Percent Of Democrats Support Taking Refugees From A Fictional Country.

FINALLY: THE BEATLES JOINED STREAMING MUSIC SERVICES SPOTIFY, APPLE MUSIC, AND AMAZON PRIME ON CHRISTMAS EVE.

Earlier this year, I read Geoff Emerick’s autobiography Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles on the Kindle, which, as the title implies, focuses on his career engineering the Beatles’ albums from Revolver to Abbey Road (with a timeout when he quit working with the group after he was fed up being their whipping boy during the tension-filled “White Album”). While the book is obviously aimed towards recording anoraks, Emerick gives a real sense of the internal politics of the group. It’s obvious that by the end of the Beatles, Harrison and Lennon chafed at essentially being sidemen for Paul McCartney. Yet, as Emerick writes, when manager Brian Epstein unexpectedly died at age 32 in 1967, it was McCartney who held the group together for their final years, with Lennon too drug-addled and dissipated to exert leadership – instead, making Yoko a near permanent fixture in Abbey Road Studios was his passive-aggressive way of pushing back at McCartney.

And while the public’s perception after the Beatles broke up is that Ringo was the least-talented member of the band, in part thanks to his goofy hangdog persona created for A Hard Day’s Night, he was — and is — an extremely competent four to the bar drummer, and worked tirelessly in the studio for the many, many takes the Beatles took to perfect their backing tracks. In reality, as Emerick wrote, it was really George Harrison who was looked down upon as the weakest member of the group, particularly by both McCartney and producer George Martin, both in terms of his songwriting and his lead guitar playing. It was so bad for Harrison that Martin ultimately had McCartney play lead guitar on Harrison’s 1966 song “Taxman.” Granted — it’s an awesome solo (so good, that as Emerick writes, it was pasted into the fade out of the song as well), but it must have stung for Harrison to not play lead on his own song. One of the great subplots of the Beatles’ history is Harrison’s growth, by the end of the Beatles’ run as a group into a musician and songwriter on par with Lennon and McCartney — you can make a pretty strong case for his 1970 triple-album All Things Must Pass as being the best of the Beatles’ solo albums.

No wonder that when the surviving Beatles reunited for their 1995 Anthology video series, Harrison demanded Jeff Lynne to be producer on the two John Lennon demos they overdubbed new parts onto, rather than McCartney ally Martin.

And speaking of Beatles videos — will we ever see Let It Be on Blu-Ray? I’d love to finally retire my early ’80s VHS cassette copy, which I copied onto DVD-R a decade ago.

IF IT WEREN’T FOR DOUBLE STANDARDS, THEY’D HAVE NO STANDARDS AT ALL:

VIDEO: CHRISTMASTIME FOR THE JEWS.

WHAT HAPPENED TO “MINNESOTA NICE?” A Minneapolis City Council member is drawing criticism for what some see as an effort to publicly shame constituents who objected to her involvement in Wednesday’s Black Lives Matter rally at the Mall of America and the airport. Council Member Alondra Cano, who represents the Ninth Ward, has been accused of “doxing” — posting personal information about people who criticized her for supporting the Black Lives Matter events — on Twitter.

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Apollo 8 — Gifts from Long Ago:

During Christmastime in 1968, one of the most significant events in human history occurred. The flight of Apollo 8 marked the first time humans departed Earth orbit and traveled to the dark side of the moon. The Christmas Eve lunar orbit of Apollo 8 also marked one of most profoundly unifying moments for our nation. The journey to space was on everyone’s mind Christmas morning. And the fulfillment of man’s most ancient dream was illuminated by man’s most ancient text, while the entire world watched in wonder.

With the eventual landing of Apollo 11 on the surface of the moon, the achievement of Apollo 8 was nudged into the background. School textbooks teach about Apollo 11, but not Apollo 8. Yet the lunar landing of Apollo 11 merely capped off the journey of Apollo 8. As the world watched on live television, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders departed Earth orbit for space and orbited the moon for the first time.

Read the whole thing.

MAN TRYING TO ‘TRAVEL THROUGH TIME’ SMASHES CAR THROUGH TWO FLORIDA BUSINESSES:

A Dodge Challenger plowed through two business [sic] in a Pensacola, Florida strip mall on Sunday morning, according to Pensacola News Journal.

The driver sped through the intersection of North Davis Highway and West Fairfield Drive at approximately 10:50am and careened through the front door of Advanced Tax Services.

The car then kept going, smashing through the wall and into the business next door, Pensacola Caskets.

* * * * * * *

According to the Huffington Post, the 40-year-old man was from Nashville, and had his seat belt on during the crash, and was not injured.

‘He stated that he was driving at high speeds on the interstate in an attempt to enter a time portal, and that he did not leave the time portal until the crash occurred,’ according to a police report obtained by HuffPo.

Two obvious flaws in his plan — he wasn’t driving a DeLorean, and apparently, he didn’t reach the required speed of 88 miles per hour for successful time travel. Other than that…

CHRISTMAS IN JAPAN: HUNDREDS QUEUE OUTSIDE OF KFC BRANCHES IN TOKYO FOR JAPANESE CHRISTMAS TRADITION. Though Christmas is not a national holiday in Japan, it has become a celebration of all things western.

Related: From 2012, the Smithsonian explains “Why Japan is Obsessed with Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas. Thanks to the successful ‘Kurisumasu ni wa kentakkii!’ (Kentucky for Christmas!) marketing campaign in 1974, Japan can’t get enough KFC on Christmas Day.”

VINTAGE FILM EXPLAINS how your car’s cooling system works.

AT AMAZON, fresh Lightning Deals, updated every hour.

Plus, today only at Amazon: Up to 70% Off Digital Deals.

And, also today only: Save 30% on Select Amazon Device Accessories.

Plus: Save $100 on the Fire HDX 8.9 with Wi-Fi

And: Save $30 on the Fire HD 6 Kids Edition Tablet.

I’M UNSURPRISED: Traditional Toys May Beat Gadgets in Language Development.

RETRO-TECH: 2015 was an astounding year for one cassette tape factory.