TO QUOTE THE LATE GREAT SIR TERRY PRATCHETT: THERE IS NO GREY. THERE’S JUST WHITE THAT GOT DINGY:  Maintaining a sense of right and wrong.

THE BURNED HAND DOES TEACH:  New report says companies are starting to avoid the culture war.

THEY THINK HAVING BROKEN THE VOTE, THEY’RE SAFE:  Biden Laughs as He Continues Ignoring Reporters.

This is akin to thinking you’ll never have a fire because you broke the fire alarm. On a scale of hubris of 0 to Icarus, we’re well into Bellerophon.   Ah well, those whom the gods seek to destroy, they first drive mad.

HOW ABOUT TO HOLD HIM OVER A LOW FIRE, TILL HE SPEAKS?  House Oversight Committee Releases Resolution to Hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in Contempt of Congress.

That would be a more effective resolution, whatever the metaphorical fire might be.

THE PERFECT UNDERSTATEMENT DOESN’T EXIS–:  GOP Primary Voters Don’t Want Mike Pence.

YOU SEE, WE’RE DEALING WITH A CULT. THEIR REVEALED TRUTH CANNOT BE ARGUED WITH:  The death of debate.

AND GOOD LUCK WITH THAT TOO. WHILE I KNOW IT’S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE FOR A REPUBLICAN TO WIN AGAINST FRAUD, TRUMP MIGHT PULL IT OFF:  Never Trump 2024 – Revenge Of The Uniparty.

At this point, he’s running on spite. Having been there myself, I have full faith in spite.

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT:  SPLC: Parents Rights Groups Are Worse Than The KKK.

SHOCKED SHOCKED SHOCKED, LOOK HOW SHOCKED MY FACE IS:  Lawsuit: Trans Male Student Illegally Allowed by School to Use Girls’ Bathroom Assaults Female Student.

THE WALLS. CLOSING IN. ETC. ETC. RUN THE SCRIPT AGAIN:  Rumors of Imminent Trump indictment in Mar-a-Lago case.

He really does scare the spit out of them, doesn’t he?

IN THE WAY OF FANATICS, THEY MUST ENFORCE THEIR VISION:  Former U. Penn Swimmer Claims School Gave Girls No Choice About Competing With Trans Student Lia Thomas.

ALL I CAN SEE MISSING FROM THIS IS “ACCIDENT” PROBABLY BY RUSSIA, THOUGH IT’S POSSIBLE, IF LESS LIKELY IT COULD BE UKRAINE:  Who blew up the dam in the Ukraine?

OVER AT SUBSTACK, I have an essay on all the stories about aliens that are coming out.

OPEN THREAD: Happy Hump Day.

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Matt Walsh: I Called Up a “Trans Healthcare” Provider and Purposely Flunked the Criteria for a “Trans” Diagnosis But They Gave Me a Prescription to Get My Testicles Cut Off Anyway… in 22 Minutes.

GOOD: Blue Origin within a “few weeks” of resuming New Shepard flights.

CHRIS GETS LICHT: Jeff Zucker’s inmates still run the CNN asylum.

The irony of so many at CNN still dedicated to Jeff Zucker’s shadow campaign is that there is no other human being alive on the planet more responsible for Donald Trump’s cultural resurrection, and political career, than Jeff Zucker. He leaned into the political war and attempted to position CNN as Trump’s heel, just as he did with guiding Trump to the number-one-rated television show in the country with The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice. Jeff Zucker knows how to make stars — and that’s what network infotainment “journalists” fancy themselves to be these days. Jake Tapper will yuk it up with Stephen Colbert. Anderson Cooper will get completely shitfaced on New Year’s Eve and Jim Acosta will cry at the border wall.

Everyone Jeff Zucker hired at CNN was playing a part that he wanted them to play — and it led to record ratings, book deals and talk show appearances. Under Licht, that all sort of disappeared, and it’s back to reading the teleprompter with cause. Much was made of CNN’s decision to host former president Donald Trump in a town hall format, and the usual theatrics followed. CNN, however, needs Trump, now more than ever. That is why Chris Licht is out of a job, and why Jeff Zucker’s inmates are still running the asylum.

Related: CNN Honcho Chris Licht Is Out. Will His Corporate Overlords Now Clean House?

It demonstrated Licht’s biggest problem, as reported by former CNN anchor Brian Stelter and nearly every other media reporter eager to jump on the — mostly correct — narrative that the boss had “lost the room.” But there are a lot of very unpopular CEOs that don’t get written up in their own company’s newsletter.

So while CNN’s rank and file are likely thrilled that their nemesis is out as CEO, it doesn’t change the WBD mission for the network. WBD CEO David Zaslav and lead shareholder John Malone have made abundantly clear that they see CNN as a nonpartisan news outlet willing to treat all news as nonpartisan.

Good luck with that in 2023 — viewers want to know the worldviews of who they’re watching on TV; and it’s impossible for journalists not to express those worldviews when preening on Twitter.

BIDEN VOTERS POSTING THEIR L’S ONLINE: Los Angeles Times to cut 74 newsroom positions amid advertising declines.

The Los Angeles Times is cutting its newsroom staff, becoming the latest news organization to contract amid economic pressures brought on by advertising and print readership declines.

The Times is eliminating 74 positions in the newsroom, representing about 13% of the total.

Full-time and temporary workers will be let go, including a handful of managers. Reporting positions are expected to be largely spared but the production staff will be scaled back. Nearly a third of the cuts come from news and copy editor ranks. Some photographers, audience engagement editors and audio producers will also be affected.

Times Executive Editor Kevin Merida announced the layoffs Wednesday in a note to the newsroom, saying the decision was “made more urgent by the economic climate and the unique challenges of our industry.”

“Decisions that result in talented staffers losing their jobs are agonizing,” Merida wrote. “We will be saying goodbye to some tremendous colleagues.”

On the upside, when Joe’s former(?) boss was in the White House, the L.A. Times assured its readers: For the ‘funemployed,’ unemployment is welcome.

DESANTIS BREAKS HIS SILENCE ABOUT CALIFORNIA MIGRANT FLIGHTS:

HMM: Machines of mind: The case for an AI-powered productivity boom.

BUT IT LOOKS MORE AND MORE LIKE A DOCUMENTARY: LET’S NOT GO ALL X-FILES JUST YET.

ABOLISH THE FBI: FBI asked Twitter to censor journalists on behalf of Ukraine.. “What was particularly of note in this attempt was the direct targeting of journalists who were not toeing the line on the war in Ukraine. I happen to (mostly) support Ukraine in its efforts to defeat Russia’s aggression, for the simple reason that Ukraine was clearly the victim of the conflict. That doesn’t mean that Ukraine has the right to expect that every person in the United States should be drafted into their war effort, and it certainly doesn’t justify the suppression of basic rights at the behest of the US government on behalf of an ally.”

WELL, GOOD: Trial shows immunotherapy drug Opdivo is safe, effective against Hodgkins lymphoma.

REPORTS THAT TRUMP IS ABOUT TO BE INDICTED (Trump denies being notified):

It sounds like something big is about to happen. The Independent has a story out today saying the DOJ is about to ask a grand jury in Washington, DC to indict former President Trump.

The Independent has learned that prosecutors are ready to ask grand jurors to approve an indictment against Mr Trump for violating a portion of the US criminal code known as Section 793, which prohibits “gathering, transmitting or losing” any “information respecting the national defence”.

The use of Section 793, which does not make reference to classified information, is understood to be a strategic decision by prosecutors that has been made to short-circuit Mr Trump’s ability to claim that he used his authority as president to declassify documents he removed from the White House and kept at his Palm Beach, Florida property long after his term expired on 20 January 2021…

It is understood that prosecutors intend to ask grand jurors to vote on the indictment on Thursday, but that vote could be delayed as much as a week until the next meeting of the grand jury to allow for a complete presentation of evidence, or to allow investigators to gather more evidence for presentation of necessary.

The catch here is that even if Trump is indicted tomorrow or early next week, that indictment would probably remain sealed. There’s a separate grand jury in Florida that is looking at some of the same issues (the Mar-a-Lago documents) and it’s expected nothing will be announced until both grand juries have decided what they are going to do. In other words, unless there’s yet another anonymous leak we won’t know if this indictment story is true anytime soon.

Why, it’s as if: Biden Is Desperately Seeking Trump.

MARC ANDREESEN: AI will not destroy the world, and in fact may save it.