A WALK THROUGH THE MALL TELLS ME THE SAME THING: Study: The average American has grown wider, but not taller.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, JULIA IOFFE! The journalist who said Trump radicalized more people than ISIS wishes people would be kinder at Christmas.

AT AMAZON, trending Last Minute Deals.

VIDEO: Torah on One Foot: Selfish Love vs. Selfless Love.

This is quite lovely.

LOGISTICS: Inside FedEx’s Christmas Miracle. “Like nearly every person you meet who works in a managerial position at FedEx, Kirkeminde has worked here forever. Nineteen years as of November. He also, like nearly everyone you meet at FedEx, started as a package handler—an entry-level position that involves long hours on your feet scanning packages, unloading packages, or shifting packages along belts.”

THAT’S GOTTA BE EXTRA-ROUGH FOR A WOMAN WITH THREE BROKEN RIBS ALREADY: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Has Cancerous Growths Removed From Lung. Just the recovery from the broken ribs was rough for Rand Paul, and he’s a lot younger and stronger. But there’s good news: “Post-surgery, there was no evidence of any remaining disease.”

TRUMP’S GREAT TALENT IS HIS ABILITY TO DRIVE PEOPLE CRAZY:

For example:

He’s even got Hillary Clinton, of all people, telling us that actions have consequences.

A consequence of Hillary’s actions in Libya — “we came, we saw, he died” — was black people being sold as slaves in open-air slave markets. So maybe she should sit this one out. But note how despite her dreadful track record, she’s still treated as part of the competent establishment. Because, in fact, competence is not required for membership in the establishment, as the last decade or two demonstrate.

UPDATE: Is Trump speaking for the “forgotten part of America” that actually fights its wars? “And in the post-election analysis of the 2016 cycle, discussion of war fatigue has been all but absent. This oversight may plausibly be due to the fact that most American elites in the chattering class have not, at least in recent years, been directly affected by on-going conflicts. Children of elites are not as likely to serve and die in the Middle East, and elite communities are thus less likely to make this a point of conversation. The costs of war remain largely hidden, and an invisible inequality of military sacrifice has taken hold.”

UPDATE (From Ed): Howard Dean: US Should Leave Afghanistan.

—The Nation magazine, April 20, 2011.

ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Heh.

But maybe the peace-loving left never really loved peace:

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Are Hershey’s Kisses Suddenly Missing Their Tips?

The issue apparently initially came to light thanks to members of the Facebook group The Wedding Cookie Table Community. The page’s Pittsburgh-based founder Laura Magone told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that a fellow baker first pointed out the problem over two weeks ago. But things got even more bizarre when Magone called to complain: “Hershey has told people on this page (including me today) they are intentionally breaking off the tips of the iconic American Hershey kiss at the factory so the tips don’t break off in transit — this makes no sense,” Magone wrote on Facebook. She told the Post-Gazette that answer “doesn’t pass the smell test,” and urged other members of the group to also call and complain.

They can keep the tips just so long as they keep making the ones with the sliver of almond inside.

SPYING: Grad student who doxxed Republicans had ‘terabytes’ of highly sensitive data.

Jackson Cosko, who was arrested for “doxxing” the Republican senators at the height of the Kavanaugh hysteria, apparently had downloaded “terabytes of data” prior to his arrest, The Daily Caller reported this week.. Upon reviewing the material in a sealed courtroom, the judge overseeing the case expressed notable alarm, stating that there is “a sense of great risk to the public” over the possibility of Cosko being allowed access to computers.

Calling Cosko “malicious and hostile,” the judge said: “He downloaded more information that was originally understood. There is no combination of conditions that could ensure the safety of the community.”

“The judge took the unusual step of kicking reporters and even Cosko’s own mother out of the courtroom for more than a half hour while prosecutors and the defense discussed what they found with the judge,” The Caller revealed.

Leftists are dangerous and crazy.

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Budweiser looking at making marijuana-infused drinks.

JEFF DUNETZ: Federal Judge Slaps Down Leftist Attempt To Access Trump’s Tax Returns.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Democratic ‘New Green Deal’ Is Another Way Of Saying New Taxes.

In Bernie Sanders territory, blue Vermont voters in 2016 elected anti-carbon tax Republican Phil Scott as Governor instead of pro-carbon tax Democrat Sue Minter. In 2010, Republican primary voters kicked carbon tax-supporting congressman Bob Inglis out of office, choosing Trey Gowdy as his replacement.

This year Florida Republican Carlos Curbelo introduced a carbon tax bill at a much-hyped event at the National Press Club. The bill is a large tax hike which gives broad new power to federal bureaucrats. It would increase household costs and harm economic growth.

While sitting in a comfortable chair on stage, Curbelo even acknowledged the bill would cause some people to lose their jobs. He said, “We have a fund in place to help those individuals get retrained and find other work.” Who doesn’t love being retrained?

Curbelo promised that if re-elected he would travel the country touting his carbon tax plan. He received predictable praise from the beltway press. Just as predictably, “green” members of the carbon tax-industrial complex attacked him in the election for his “failure to be a true climate champion.” Curbelo lost while Florida Republicans won tough races for the governorship and U.S. Senate.

Vanity left-wing billionaire Tom Steyer, a key funder of the carbon tax cause, piled on last week. At the UN climate confab, he called Curbelo a “pretend environmentalist.”

Analysts call that the Megyn Kelly/Weekly Standard treatment.

IT TAKES TWO TO MAKE PEACE: If You Like the Peace Process, Please Don’t Read Polls of Palestinians.

If a new presidential election was held today between the current president, Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas, and the leader of the terrorist group Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas would beat Fatah 49 percent to 42 percent.

88 per cent said that Palestinians who sell property to Jews are traitors. 64 percent said the punishment for selling property to Jews should be the death penalty.

Palestinians oppose the concept of a two-state solution, 55 percent to 43 percent.

“A large minority of 44 percent thinks that armed struggle is the most effective means of establishing a Palestinian state next to the state of Israel while 28 percent believe that negotiation is the most effective means and 23 percent think non-violent resistance is the most effective.”

In lieu of negotiations, “54 percent support a return to an armed intifada,” i.e. terrorism.

50 percent of Palestinians reject in principle the holding of negotiations in order to resolve the conflict.

None of this is essentially new, but it does bear repeating.

CNN’S WOLF BLITZER TRIES TO DEFEND DEMS ON BORDER SECURITY AND IT DOES NOT GO WELL:

Blitzer claims “Democrats support border security.”

Stephen Miller: “They voted against Kate’s law, they voted against ending sanctuary cities, they voted against deporting MS-13 gang members [and] violent criminals, they voted…against a physical border wall.”

Allie Beth Stuckey tweets, “Stephen Miller just spit out so many facts Wolf literally doesn’t know what to do.”

Gentlemen, you can’t deploy facts here – this is CNN!

OH, COME ON: If You Fall Asleep Easily, It Could Be A Red Flag Of These 9 Things.

For the first time in my adult life I’m both staying asleep through the night and falling asleep about when I want to — and now this is a thing I’m supposed to be concerned about?

I’ll try not to lose any sleep over it.

WHO’S TROLLING WHO? Sonny Bunch is having fun trolling Vice, the new film in which Christian Bale plays Dick Cheney, calling it “The best superhero origin story of the year:”

Vice—the new biopic about our greatest living vice president, Dick Cheney—is the movie our country needs right now: a story about a small-town guy who overcame the odds and kept his fellow Americans safe in an age of nihilistic terror. It is also the hagiography we need right now, a reminder that America’s greatness lies not with its natural resources or fantastic wealth but within the spirit of her citizens.

One gets the sense that writer/director Adam McKay intended Vice as a damning critique of the Republican Party’s Darth Vader. If that’s the case, he’s badly missed the mark. The Dick Cheney we see in Vice is someone to admire, someone who has overcome adversity and made something of himself despite early stumbles.

Besides (presumably) a fat paycheck and a chance to make Oscar bait for the woke era, it seems pretty obvious that Bale took on the role of Cheney to atone for the popularity of his Batman movies among conservatives (QED). I guess for continued employment in a one party town, it was very important for him to remind Hollywood that, yes, those people like some of my movies, but don’t ever think I’m one of them.

MATT MARGOLIS: Democrats Secretly Used Russian Tactics in 2017 Alabama Senate Special Election. “Democrats want to win at all costs, even employing false flag operations if necessary.”

WASHINGTON POST ‘JOURNALIST’ LAUNCHES PC ATTACK ON TRUMP WALL FUND: Jeff Bezos’ party-line daily displays this slogan on its logo: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” That should be “Journalism Dies Here,” thanks to newsroom activism such as this latest example described by Jeff Dunetz at The Lid. 

SPENGLER: China leapfrogs the US in 5G Internet.

In a Dec. 14 op-ed for the Washington Post, former Acting CIA director Michael Morell declared that our present tangle with China is not a trade war but a tech war. If China’s flagship telecom equipment company Huawei gets the jump on the rollout of 5G internet, Morell said, China will have the capacity to monitor communications, sabotage industrial systems, and “will have a significant head start economically, in cybersecurity and in signals intelligence — i.e., in promoting its economy, protecting its secrets and stealing those of its rivals.”

That’s the least of our problems.

Read the whole thing.

ROGER SIMON: Time for the US to Recognize Israeli Sovereignty over the Golan.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Gasoline Shortages Grip Venezuela’s Capital Ahead of Christmas.

Caracas awoke to shuttered service stations and long lines of vehicles as motorists tried to fill up their tanks before Venezuela’s extended-Christmas vacation kicks off. For the second consecutive day, honking messes of cars crawled along many of the city’s main arteries as residents thronged few remaining operational stations.

“I should be buying presents or helping to plan my sister’s wedding, but here I am stuck trying to gas-up since yesterday,” said Greiska Velasquez, a 23-year-old dentistry student, as her Chevrolet Aveo inched along a row of vehicles that stretched two blocks. “Nothing works here anymore, not even the gasoline.”

Sitting atop even more oil than Saudi Arabia, Venezuela has long sold the world’s cheapest gasoline, costing less than penny to fill up a tank.

The Chavistas bought votes by selling gasoline at below cost, and then ran out of gasoline — unexpectedly.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UMN pays for students to discuss how ‘heterosexism…has damaged us.’

IT WAS 20 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK: Clinton impeachment looking better, 20 years after.

THAT’S NOT HOW THIS WORKS: North Korea Won’t Denuclearize Unless U.S. Removes Threat.