MARK FELTON: Cobra King — First Tank Into Bastogne 1944 (Video).

AMERICA’S GOVERNOR: DeSantis’ COVID Vaccine Grand Jury Gets the Green Light From the Florida Supreme Court.

MARK JUDGE: Raw, weird, and politically incorrect: How underground comics are pushing back against woke culture.

[Libertarian cartoonist Peter Bagge] also makes a telling comment — that when comics were underground, it wasn’t something that any creator “was going to lose a college professorship over.” In the age of the woke, that has changed. In the fall of 2020, for example, Phoebe Gloeckner, the author of the graphic novel The Diary of a Teenage Girl and an associate professor at the University of Michigan, was accused of “ curriculum-based trauma ” by students partly because she showed them Crumb’s work. The art itself might not have been offensive, but Crumb and his refusal to accept woke ideology were.

Talking to the New York Times, Crumb “refers disdainfully” to “the wokies.”

“The whole identity politics and L.G.B.T.Q. stuff,” he said, “I agree with it. These people need an equal share. I can’t argue with that. But then people get kind of intolerant about anything that could be seen as triggering.”

The establishment man Crumb and others battled in the 1960s is now the arms-folded college scold.

And so, as with so many other cultural trends, the world of comics has come full circle. Underground comics, at least those willing to buck leftist cultural trends, are once again banned by the establishment. Which means, of course, that they’re right on target.

Meanwhile, overground comics, having gotten woke — well, I think you can see where this is headed: LOL: Corrupt Leftwing Comics “Journalists” Finally Admit That the Comics Industry Is In Financial Trouble.

OLD AND BUSTED: Build the wall!

The New Hotness? Arizona Will Dismantle Container Border Wall to Settle DOJ Lawsuit.

From the comments:

This was always a stunt designed to do four things:
1. Show that an effective barrier can be built quickly
2. Demonstrate the deterrence value of a barrier
3. Draw National attention to gaps in our border deliberately left by the Biden WH and d/prog
4. Force the Biden DoJ to go on record to dismantle the barrier and clearly reveal their priorities don’t include security along our border

From that perspective it was successful. The most pro border security /anti illegal immigration President we have had since Eisenhower was unable to get a border wall fully built during his term. It’s going to take more than a President, it will take electing a critical mass of folks to Congress who will support border security.

I’m old enough to remember when Democrats at least pretended to be anti-illegal immigration:

● What Changed?! Chuck Schumer 2009 kicks Chuck Schumer 2018 right in his badoobies on illegal immigration (video).

—Twitchy, December 28, 2018.

● “Trump took to Twitter on Thursday to remind Democrats that even former President Barack Obama spoke out against illegal immigration. Trump dug up a 2011 tweet from former President Obama which said: ‘I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration.’ ‘I totally agree!’ Trump wrote, retweeting the former president.”

—The Daily Caller, December 27, 2018.

● Harry Reid in 1993: It’s insane to reward illegal immigrants by giving their children birthright citizenship.

—Hot Air, October 30, 2018.

● Bill Clinton warns of “the large number of illegal aliens” coming into America, and explains his crackdown.

—Instapundit, January 31, 2017.

BRING BACK RED DYE NO. 2: Common Red Food Dye Linked to Bowel Inflammation in Mouse Study.

SCIENCE, UNSETTLED: Groundwater replenishes much faster than scientists previously thought.

AUSTIN BAY: Putin’s Strategic Bombing Campaign Will Fail. Well, that’s a safe bet because strategic bombing pretty much always fails. But read the whole thing.

MISSING FROM THIS STORY: ANY DISCUSSION OF THE POST-GEORGE FLOYD ANTI-POLICE CAMPAIGNS, OR OF WHO’S SHOOTING AND BEING SHOT. ‘We’re seeing this every day’: UAB adds surgeons to handle surge of gunshot wounds.

IT’S AN IDEA SO CRAZY, IT JUST MIGHT WORK: Missouri mayor bans kids from attending ‘A Drag Queen Christmas.’

AT AMAZON, Last-Minute Holiday Gifts. #CommissionEarned.

THAT’S NICE: Biden hopes Christmas will ‘drain the poison that has infected our politics.’

President Joe Biden is calling on the country to “spread a little bit of kindness” this Christmas season in hopes of easing the partisan tensions plaguing U.S. politics.

Biden donned his “uniter-in-chief” hat during his annual Christmas address, delivered from the White House on Thursday, and stated that “Christmas has always been the season of hope.”

“We’re here on this Earth to care for one another, to look out for one another, to love one another. The message of Christmas is always important, especially important through tough times like the ones we’ve been through the past few years,” the president said.

“The messages of hope, love, peace and joy: They’re also universal. It speaks to all of us,” he continued. “This Christmas, let’s spread a little kindness.”

Fair enough. You go first, grandpa:

To be fair, today’s holiday wishes are a step up from Biden’s Christmas wishes last year: White House Christmas message to unvaccinated: You’re looking at a winter of death for yourselves and your families:

UNEXPECTEDLY: Fillmore District’s Black Community Leaders Demand More Police.

At a meeting Monday night at San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church, Rev. Amos Brown and other Black community leaders called on the city to fix what they described as an escalating homelessness and drug problem. These issues, they said, disproportionately hurt the historically Black Fillmore District, an already vulnerable community.

Several dozen people attended the meeting, with its tone alternating between desperation and anger. Speaker after speaker sounded the same note, calling for an increased police presence. Further, they want to require homeless drug addicts to get treatment and prevent them from camping on the street.

Flashback: White Progressives Shocked to Learn Black and Latino Voters Don’t Share Their Radical ‘defund the Police’ Views.

UM:

Lefties are always the same:

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: US life expectancy fell again in 2021. “The average U.S. life expectancy shortened by seven months in 2021, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), driven mainly by COVID-19 and drug overdoses from synthetic opioids.”

CHRISTIAN TOTO: James Cameron Learns Hard Lesson – You’re Never Woke Enough.

HOLIDAY DEAL: NORPERWIS Reading Glasses 5 Pairs Quality Readers. #CommissionEarned

THE BRIAN STELTER MEMORIAL AWARD FOR WORST QUOTE OF THE YEAR:

It was a challenging task, but an esteemed panel of NewsBusters editors led by MRC President L.Brent Bozell and MRC’s Vice President for Research and Publications Brent Baker, boiled down all the biased outbursts from lefty hack hosts, anchors, reporters and pundits in 2022 and declared a winner.

This year the winner is Don Lemon!

The CNN host won for his laugh-out-loud response to CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert’s silly inquiry that “you guys aren’t allowed to be liberal anymore” under new CNN CEO Chris Licht’s leadership. To which Lemon absurdly responded: “I don’t think we ever were liberal.”  

And for once, he’s right! Certainly by the traditional, laissez-faire definition of liberal before the term was stolen by “Progressives” in the 1920s. But if pressed, how would LeMon define CNN’s ideology? Socialist? Statist? Corporatist?  The network has a penchant for doxxing its viewers, and has run odes to North Korea, Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, and Hezbollah, so totalitarian is also an option.

SELF-DEFENSE when it isn’t a gunfight.

DISPATCHES FROM A SANCTUARY CITY: Denver nears ‘breaking point’ trying to deal with influx of immigrants.

Voters in Denver County broke nearly five-to-one in favor of Biden against Trump.

Gooder and harder, Denver.

READER FAVORITE: 40X60 Monocular Telescope High Power for Adults.. #CommissionEarned

FAIL, BRITANNIA: Thoughtcrime is now a reality in Britain. “Why was an activist arrested for praying silently in the street?”

ON BIDEN’S ILLUSORY JOBS CREATION: Remember when Biden claimed to have created more new jobs — 1.1 million in the second quarter of 2022 —  than previous chief executive of the past four decades?

Well, according to the Philadelphia branch of the Federal Reserve, that number was off just a bit. Okay, actually the Philly Fed claims barely more than 10,000 net new jobs, not 1.1 million, were created from April through June.

And Issues & Insights remarks that “Biden has also discouraged work by paying Americans to stay home. Why bother climbing off the couch and finding a job when doing nothing is just as lucrative if not more so? What Biden’s policies do encourage is dependence on government, the absolute opposite of job creation.”

As usual, the I&I crew is right on the mark and well worth reading.

OLD AND BUSTED: Florida Man.

The New Hotness? Florida Iguanas! Florida Iguanas Could Fall From Trees on Christmas Weekend. “Florida is forecast to have one of its coldest Christmases in 20 years. Though it may be a welcome site to locals in the subtropical region, cold weather can be quite unpleasant for the local iguana population. When temperatures drop to near 40 degrees, iguanas become immobile and lose their grips in trees, thus making them fall to the ground like a wet sack of concrete.”

THAT’S A BIG IMPROVEMENT FROM SELLING INSURANCE: The Mayhem drone will aim to collect intelligence at hypersonic speeds.

FTX FOUNDER SAM BANKMAN-FRIED TO BE RELEASED ON $250 MILLION BAIL.