CORRUPTION:  Report: Associated Press Took $8 million in Donations to Fund its 2022 Climate “News”.

WE’VE FALLEN AND GETTING UP IS GOING TO BE A JOB OF WORK:  A new Church Committee?

NOT EVEN SURPRISED:  School attendance correlates to what now?

THINGS THAT CAN’T GO ON WON’T:  You’ve Got To Have Faith! — Riding the catastrophic wave of change part V.

SANE:  Appeals Court Upholds Florida High School “Separating School Bathrooms Based on Biological Sex”.

NATURALLY, THE BUNGLING IS BEING BLAMED ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND “WHITE SUPREMACY,” BECAUSE OF COURSE:

THE FIRST OF A NEW WAVE OF FEMALE JOURNALISTS, WHICH ISN’T REALLY PRAISE: RIP, Barbara Walters.

I mean, she was no Oriana Fallaci.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOMS: Clang-Clang-Clang Went the Planet: Asteroids, Trolleys, Galaxies, & Babies.

RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE SITREP: WalletHub Reports: 5% plan to spend less on New Year’s vs. last year, Top 12 financial resolutions.

So a few observations I’ve been meaning to blog about. First, there have seemed to be fewer people shopping everywhere I go. Crowds, parking lots, lines at stores, none have seemed up to previous Christmases. We drove down to Atlanta with a friend last month — she and Helen shopped a lot at boutiques, and we visited a fancy furniture store — and again, lots of parking and not that many people shopping.

Second, people I’ve talked with have repeated a theme of spending less. Some of it’s from financial worries — justified, I think — regarding the coming year, some of it’s because they got used to buying less stuff during Covid. (Why buy clothes when you’re working from home in sweatpants?) A lot of people discovered that they didn’t need to go out, or shop, or whatever nearly as much as they had been doing.

Friends who own bars and restaurants agree that a lot of people just got out of the habit of going out and haven’t gotten back into it. And we know some couples where the wife discovered that she’d rather stay home with the kids, and that the savings on day care, commuting, etc. meant that going from two jobs to one wasn’t much of a financial sacrifice. And lots of people who never cooked dinner got used to it, and discovered it was better and healthier and cheaper.

So this is all anecdotal and impressionistic, but I think the Covid stuff may have induced lasting changes. They’re not necessarily bad changes — cooking at home more is surely good — but they may make it harder to recover from a down economy.

REMEMBER, FEMINISM ISN’T ABOUT MAN-HATING, THEY JUST LIKE TO TALK ABOUT KILLING ALL MEN:

OPEN THREAD: Happy New Year’s Eve eve.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: US Space Force launches new recruitment site with flashy Vulcan Centaur rocket.

NEVER BOUGHT ANY MYSELF: An Expert Explains Whether You Should Worry About Your Christmas Indulgences.

EARLIER I MENTIONED EDWARD SLINGERLAND’S NEW BOOK, Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization.

Here’s my review, which I forgot to link before.

THEY CERTAINLY HELP YOU REMEMBER WHY YOU’RE ALIVE: Can Erectile Dysfunction Drugs Help Prevent Alzheimer’s?

UPDATE: From the comments:

Maybe TMI, but hubby seems to have more energy and his brain is a lot clearer if we have sex at least once a week or so. If not, he just gets bogged down into doing and saying very little and just descends into a fog of nothingness. And, we are 60+ years of age. Men are wired to have regular sex. Women, once past child-bearing age and going through menopause, seem to be able to take it or leave it for the most part.

This goes back to our earlier discussion regarding the importance of maintenance sex. Including one reader who says InstaPundit advice saved her marriage!

HHS RULE RESTRICTS HEALTHCARE WORKERS’ RELIGIOUS, CONSCIENCE FREEDOMS: You’re a healthcare worker who doesn’t want to facilitate abortions, assisted-suicide, euthanasia, or trans-genderism, no problem, according to HHS, but you still have to assist in making it happen. Just a little compromise, so quit complaining!

JORDAN MOVING FORWARD DESPITE BIDEN OVERSIGHT REBUFF: People seem to forget that Rep. Jim Jordan was an outstanding high school and college wrestling champion, including two NCAA national titles. His college record at the University of Wisconsin was 156-28-1, for an 84 percent winning percentage.

So it should come as no surprise that Jordan, the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who is promising a massive oversight effort on the Biden administration, appears totally unfazed by the brazen White House rebuff yesterday. The Biden folks might want to consider that when Jordan puts a hold on something, he really knows what he’s talking about.

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: Should Deans Tell Their Faculty To Get Off Twitter And Get Back To Work?

Plus, the real problem isn’t Twitter, but the lame people in charge of our institutions: “Barro argues also that Twitter and other social media sites, or semi-social media sites like Slack, have encouraged newsroom revolts. … [T]hey don’t care about running a news ‘organization’ qua organization. Their interests are more personal and individual than institutional. … To maintain institutions under those circumstances requires managers who have both a sense of what the institution is there for and a willingness to assert and defend that sense, including against its own members. Although many discussions of these issues focus on the younger rebellious generation and its arguable errors, the primary responsibility and the greater problem is the lack of either will or a clear sense on the part of the older managers. The greatest crisis of our time is institutional, and the crisis lies as much or more with those who are charged with maintaining them as with those who are challenging or simply not interested in them. . . . We could call this a social-media problem, or we could see it as a cultural problem, an institutional crisis more generally in contemporary society, that is amplified and exacerbated by social media.”

READER FAVORITE: Shark IZ483H Vertex Cordless Stick Vacuum. #CommissionEarned

SOUNDS LIKE A GOOD OUTCOME: Alleged Armed Robber Shot Dead After Picking Wrong Tow Truck Driver To Rob.

READER FAVORITE?!!: TurboTax Deluxe 2022 Tax Software, Federal and State Tax Return. #CommissionEarned

FIRE RISK: “The Auto Insurance EZ statistics suggest hybrid cars are twice as likely to have an accident become an accident with fire. . . . Electric cars seem to be safer but there need to be more cars in a study and a matching 12 year period of comparison.”

FASTER, PLEASE: Researchers from the Technion and the University of Tokyo have identified unique peptides with potential anti-cancer properties.

BATTLE OF THE BULGE, DECEMBER 1944: Ukraine’s current winter war is in the headlines. 78 years ago the U.S. Army was fighting a bitter winter battle — The Bulge. Six selected photos from the StrategyPage archive. ONE – An M-36 tank destroyer moves to the front. Date is December 20. TWO- U.S. tanks and 82nd Airborne paratroopers move through snow in Belgium. THREE – German Tiger 2 (aka Tiger B, King Tiger, or Bengal Tiger/Royal Tiger). This one was abandoned in Stavelot, Belgium. FOUR – A classic. “False flag” — a German Panther tank disguised as an American tank destroyer. FIVE – Another classic. Three exhausted GIs after a night fending off German counter-attacks. SIX – Bazooka guard. 101st Airborne paratrooper defending the road to Bastogne.

RELATED: A 14th Cavalry Surgeon’s Battle Of The Bulge. When The Bulge began on December 16 the 14th Cavalry Group was in the Losheim Gap.

U.S. WW2 cavalry fielded scout jeeps with machine guns, small self-propelled 75 mm howitzers and armored cars with 37 mm guns. At Losheim, the Cav provided “economy of force” — a small unit substituting for a larger formation.

Sixth SS Panzer Army deployed King Tiger tanks (88 mm guns), Panther tanks and Panzer grenadiers in half-tracks. According to Adolf Hitler’s plan, panzers would split U.S. and British forces and seize Antwerp’s port. In Hitler’s strategic fantasy, the shaken allies would then negotiate a separate peace with Berlin. Germany would turn on Russia.

Dec. 16 — German artillery slammed the Ardennes as infantry and tanks attacked the Gap, the assault shattering 14th Cav and surrounding 106th ID. German units crossed the Our River, heading west, toward Bastogne.

A battle against the SS and winter.

AT AMAZON, deals in Kitchen & Dining. #CommissionEarned.