THAT ONE HIT THE EXPIRATION DATE IN NOVEMBER OF 2008: Flashback: Obama Promises No Vacations For Himself As President.

AT AMAZON, fresh Lightning Deals, updated every hour.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Muslims Say U.S. Government More Dangerous than ISIS. To be fair, you might get quite a few non-muslims to agree with you, these days.

BRIDGE OF SPIES, OR BRIDGE OF LIES? “Bridge of Spies is a film about the Communist infiltration of the United States, but in Steven Spielberg’s telling, it’s ordinary New Yorkers who seem more repellent than Rudolf Abel.”

Plus: “Spielberg, like virtually all of Hollywood, either thought Communists in America were a phantom threat (they weren’t), were idealists (not true) or, at worst, that there was little to no moral difference between the Soviet Union and the United States in the Cold War. These are lies on a scale with excusing slavery. They are lies, indeed, comparable to Spielberg’s finding, in Munich, moral equivalence between Mossad and the murderers of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics.”

IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO SEND an Amazon Gift Card!

MY USA TODAY COLUMN IS ABOUT KNOXVILLE’S OWN ZAEVION DOBSON: Where Do Heroes Come From?

THE ARGUMENT FOR TRUMP’S VIABILITY, IN A NUTSHELL: “I am puzzled by the argument that a TV celebrity can’t win an election in a celebrity-obsessed culture against an unlikable, cackling harridan.”

DIAGNOSING silly bullshit.

DISASTER: POLL SHOWS MOST AMERICANS STILL DON’T THINK DIE HARD IS A CHRISTMAS MOVIE.

The original Die Hard is one of the most watchable films of the 1980s — but I agree: just because a film is set during the Christmas season doesn’t make it a Christmas movie.

So why not watch “It’s a Wonderful Fountainhead” instead?

VIDEOS: Conversations On Strength With Mark Rippetoe.

BECAUSE PRO SPORTS AREN’T POLITICIZED ENOUGH ALREADY: The NBA Joins Team Gun Control.

Personally, I’d rather they practice tattoo control, instead.

THE CREAKING JOINTS OF DEMOCRACY: “But ask yourself this question: why is the left so unhappy—and Bernie Sanders getting so much traction—near the end of the rule of the most leftist president in the nation’s history?”, Steve Hayward asks at Power Line.

Read the whole thing.

BAD THINGS HAPPEN WHEN YOU CHOOSE SOCIALISM AS YOUR RELIGION:

● Emetic WashPost Front Page: ‘The Quiet Impact of Obama’s Christian Faith:’ “This sappy spectacle was authored by Post reporter Greg Jaffe, who back in 2010 pulled a similar trick in placing Obama next to the last president. He reported Obama was waging a far more aggressive war on al-Qaeda than Bush had… Naturally, Jaffe never goes anywhere near Rev. Jeremiah Wright or his church, despite that memoir’s title being inspired by Wright. Jaffe only discusses what Obama wants discussed.”

● A Muslim Yellow Badge of Moral Cretinism: An ignorant professor compares treatment of Muslims to treatment of Jews during the Holocaust.

● The Guardian puts Scrooge to shame with holiday hit pieces.

● Salon commences annual attempt to ruin Christmas.

● As does Martin O’Malley: “A Christmas Refugee Roundup sounds like something Donald Trump would concoct. Remember: Jesus was a refugee child who fled death gangs.”

● As does National Journal’s Ron Fournier: “Santa: All I want for Christmas is a Congress that recognizes climate change as a threat to His creation.”

Regarding that last item, perhaps it’s time to implement the plan put forth by the Comedian in Chief’s “Science” “Czar” early in his administration:

Shooting pollutants into the upper atmosphere — what could go wrong? Which is why, like Al Gore, I’m calling for Defcon Five levels of implantation on this proposal.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH: HOLD ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER’ ACCOUNTABLE, after it disrupted both shoppers at Minneapolis’s giant Mall of America, and its airport yesterday (and also tried to disrupt those flying out of LAX), Walter Hudson writes. “We need a provision enabling law enforcement to aggressively pursue the organizers of trespass and disruption. Penalties should be harsh, including prison time. Government’s one job is to protect individual rights, including property rights and freedom from unlawful disruption. Under the status quo, it has failed.”

Good luck with that, given the Blue On Blue nature of Black Lives Matter: “Minneapolis City Councilwoman DOXES Constituents Who Criticized Her Black Lives Matter Protesting,” Chuck Ross writes at the Daily Caller.

BUZZFEED: RUBIO AND CRUZ DON’T HAVE LATINO CRED BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT MEXICAN-AMERICANS, Stephen Kruiser writes at PJM.

Because once somebody has an (R) after his name, he’s fair game for any abuse the left wants to hurl at him, racism be damned. See also: “George Takei: ‘Blackface’ not racist; Clarence Thomas has ‘abdicated his African American heritage,’” and with Sarah Palin, “SHE IS NOT A WOMAN, SHE IS A REPUBLICAN” as a bumper sticker spotted on a car with a Christian fish symbol (!) in an Oregon church parking lot shouted in 2008.

GOVERNMENT IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER. Ex-Lawrence Mayor Spent Literacy Grant On Spa Treatments, Gentlemen’s Clubs, Prosecutor Says.

THE HILL: TRUMP HAS “DISPLACED” OBAMA “AS THE CENTRAL PLAYER ON THE POLITICAL STAGE” DURING THIS “VERY TRUMP CHRISTMAS.”

But whose fault is that? This month, Obama chose to chose to appear on Jerry Seinfeld’s “Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee” video series. As a result, NBC, which since 2008 has seemed like a network built to worship Obama in much the same way that ABC — the House of Stephanopoulos — wears its devotion to Bill and Hillary on its sleeve, dubbed Obama America’s “Comedian In Chief” on Tuesday.

But if that’s what the semi-retired president has chosen to reduce himself down to in his final year in office, would you rather have your comedy from Obama, who seems genuinely bitter and angry with the American people, or from somebody like Trump, who appears to be having the time of his life under the spotlight?

Which dovetails remarkably well with Glenn’s recent theory in USA Today that Obama and other leftists have chosen Trump as their destructor.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million donation to Newark public schools failed miserably — here’s where it went wrong. Spoiler: He put his money into public schools with unionized teachers and inept administrators.

He should have done some research first.

ILYA SHAPIRO: President Obama’s Top Ten Constitutional Violations of 2015. Must’ve been hard to narrow it down.

FLASHBACK: Why George W. Bush Never Left D.C. Until the Day After Christmas.

“[H]ere’s the thing: In December, we never left Washington, D.C., until the day after Christmas. Never. Mr. Bush and his wife, Laura, would always depart the White House a few days before the holiday and hunker down at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland,” Curl wrote in a 2013 column that was republished Thursday.

After a few years, curiosity finally got to the former Washington Times reporter and he asked a low-level administration official why.

“I still remember what she said,” Curl wrote. “’So all of us can be with our families on Christmas.’”

“Who was ‘us’? Hundreds and hundreds of people, that’s who. Sure, the reporters who covered the president, but also dozens and dozens on his staff, 100 Secret Service agents, maybe more, and all of those city cops required whenever the president’s on the move in D.C.,” Curl added in his column.

However, things seemingly changed when Obama took office.

“[T]his president would never delay his trip to his island getaway. He’s off every year well before Christmas. Hundreds and hundreds head off with him, leaving family behind,” Curl wrote.

Class, and the lack thereof.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: NYU Spends $1.1 Million To Renovate President’s Penthouse While Students Drown in Debt.

WITH ALL THE EXCITEMENT ABOUT ELON MUSK AND JEFF BEZOS’S COMPETITION, this piece from Rand Simberg is worth revisiting.

THESE 6,604 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES MAY HAVE WASHINGTON’S TOUGHEST JOBS: They work for the federal government’s 72 inspectors general, the taxpayers’ first responders in the fight against waste and fraud. But the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton says the story here isn’t how many of them there are but how many tax dollars each is responsible for overseeing. The 6,604 work at the eight largest federal departments, which together spend more than $3 trillion every year.

“These watchdogs – full-time auditors, investigators and others with related skills – fight waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending and each one of them is responsible, on average, for $503 million … And that’s just top eight; there are 64 other inspectors general in the federal government. Call it a ‘target-rich environment’ for all of them,” Barton writes.

Like first-responders in the military, law enforcement, civil emergencies and fire-fighting, the IG staffers have a huge role in helping protect the quality of life in America.

TRUMP PROPOSES, OBAMA DISPOSES: U.S. Plans Mass Deportation of Illegal Central American Migrants.

To stanch the flow of illegal migrants, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is preparing a national operation to deport Central American families in the U.S. who have evaded removal orders, according to a government official with knowledge of the plan.

Raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a DHS unit, would begin in January and target hundreds of families that entered the U.S. illegally and who have ignored a final order to leave the country, said the official. Such an order is issued by a judge in immigration court. . . .

The possible roundup for deportation of families caught immigrant advocates by surprise.

“This is the last thing we expected from the administration at this point, given the court decision,” said Marilena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy organization in Los Angeles. “It is time that administration acknowledge once and for all that these mothers and children are refugees just like Syrians.”

Ms. Hincapie said such a plan “really puts immigrant families on edge.”

On Tuesday, the administration announced that it deported 235,413 in the year that ended Sept. 30, a 25% drop from the previous year and the lowest since Mr. Obama took office. In fiscal 2014, the U.S. removed 315,953 people.

Pretty sure that if Trump had advocated this, it would be racist and absurd. But since Obama’s doing it, it’s fine.

YES, IT’S DELIGHTFULLY WARM TODAY. I went running and did yardwork in a t-shirt in the sunshine. But Christmas Eve was warmer in 1955. “Three fourths of the country was over 60 degrees, and Ashland Kansas, Geary Oklahoma and Encinal Texas were all over 90 degrees. Fort Lauderdale was 85 degrees. All of the stations below were over 60 degrees on Christmas Eve, 1955.”

Plus: “Last winter, the East Coast had record cold. That was ignored because it was ‘less than 1% of the Earth.’ But this week, the Eastern US defines the global climate.”

It’s all about the narrative.