I SEE NOTHING INACCURATE IN THIS HEADLINE: Scummy Privileged Leftist Highway Protestors Hate Us. “Fewer people are lower than a leftist protester who disrupts the lives of regular people just to make a gesture that accomplishes nothing. They behave like scummy privileged children as they make themselves more important than people with real responsibilities. And I truly mean this when I say privileged because they clearly don’t know what it’s like to have your job reprimand you for being five minutes late or driving an hour to a job that barely pays you enough money to take care of your bills. The thousands of people they interrupted on the highway in Los Angeles suffer the repercussions of being unable to make it to their destination on time. How many parents were late picking up their children? How many had their jobs on the line as they sat in man-made traffic?”

Nothing is as important as them having an opportunity to feel significant, and morally superior, when deep down they know they’re anything but.

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE! Fiddling with Volcanic C02: A made-up, disparate accounting model.

ROBERT GRABOYES: Antisemitism’s Sharp Left Turn: An Open Letter to My Left-of-Center Friends.

I THINK THIS HAS BEEN KNOWN FOR QUITE A WHILE: ‘Long flu’ has emerged as a consequence similar to long COVID.

SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED: Asked about its $244 million BLM donation, Microsoft told its investors to pound sand.

“According to the Claremont Institute’s Black Lives Matter (BLM) Funding Database,” I began, “Microsoft has contributed almost a quarter of a billion dollars to the BLM movement and related causes since 2020. This was done despite warnings at the time that BLM has neo-Marxist roots, pushes Anti-American values and promotes policies like defunding the police that harm the very communities it claims to help. Since that time, reports of mismanagement and self-dealing have raised serious questions about BLM’s use of donated funds. Most recently, BLM aligned itself with antisemitism by promoting pro-Hamas imagery in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel. In light of all this, is Microsoft now prepared to admit its support of BLM was a mistake and renounce that support?”

Microsoft never answered the question. It’s unclear why, but Microsoft does provide a list of reasons it claims grant it the right to tell shareholders who own the company to go pound sand including, among other things, if it deems a submitted question to be “in bad taste.”

Perhaps relatedly, Microsoft did answer a general question regarding how it keeps “political ideology out of business decisions.” Unfortunately, the multi-paragraph answer provided absolutely no principle that shareholders could rely on to keep the political and ideological biases of relevant corporate decision-makers out of Microsoft’s decisionmaking.

Opacity means they have something to hide.

I’M HAPPY TO SEE SANITY REASSERTING ITSELF, BUT SURPRISED TO SEE IT HAPPENING AT BROWN: Forty-one students arrested, booked within University Hall following second sit-in demanding divestment, ceasefire: University ‘is prepared to escalate’ charges if similar actions are taken in the future.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Biden Finally Built an EV Charging Station But There’s One Little Problem…

UNEXPECTEDLY! It’s starting to look like China regrets its private-enterprise crackdown.

China held its annual Central Economic Work Conference, or CEWC, on Monday and Tuesday. It was attended by all of the country’s top leaders, including President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang.

A document released after the conference sets the agenda for China’s economy — the second-largest economy in the world — for the next year. And strikingly, this year’s readout acknowledges that China needs to prioritize economic development.

“Next year, we must persist in seeking progress while maintaining stability, promote stability through growth, and establish the new before breaking the old,” states the meeting’s official readout.

The wording in this document suggests “hints of remorse at overzealous growth-negative policy implementation,” Rory Green, the chief China economist at GlobalData.TS Lombard, wrote in a note on Wednesday.

I’m not sure the business climate is going to improve until Xi is gone.

LIFE IN THE BIDEN ERA: Jewish students face swastika, ‘intifada’ calls amid Hanukkah celebrations.

I HAD BEEN TOLD BY ALL THE BEST LEFTISTS THAT DARK MONEY IS A THREAT TO OUR DEMOCRACY: Soros Dark Money Keeps Biden’s SuperPAC Alive.

FLASHBACK: A New Class problem. “A common thread among anti-semitism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Americanism is the fear of being outdone by people willing to work harder. It’s not surprising that such a fear exists among a disproportionate number of those who take state-supported jobs. It’s thus not surprising, then, that New Class sensibilities are so often anti-American and anti-capitalist, and increasingly (or perhaps I should say, once again) anti-Semitic, too.”

Plus: “I can’t help but notice that anti-Americanism, and the various manifestations of what some have called Transnational Progressivism, are most common among people who, well, have state-supported managerial or intellectual jobs, the people who made up what Milovan Djilas and others called the ‘New Class’ of bureaucrats and managers in the old Communist world. Not surprisingly, the New Class was deeply concerned with matters of status and position, and deeply opposed to things that might have led to competition on merit. “

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Walls close in on Jew-haters as government starts investigations of campus anti-Semitism.

WELL, GOOD: Record-breaking oil production from the US has left OPEC with its lowest crude market share in nearly a decade.

We can also thank Xi Jinping for some of that relief at the gas pump: Oil slips as markets weigh OPEC+ cuts against China demand concerns.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Uh-Oh, Kamala Harris Is Showing Up Everywhere. “The mere thought of a Harris presidency is creepy. She’s a less coherent, more radical Biden. Her one upside compared to her boss is that she tends to know how to exit a room without assistance.”

DOES THE BIBLE REALLY SAY THAT ABOUT SEX? Maybe, maybe not, depending on who you listen to and whether you’ve actually read it for yourself, according to the latest “What Would You Say” video from the Colson Center on HillFaith.

STILL NOT READY FOR PRIMETIME: GM’s Cruise laying off 900 employees, or 24% of its workforce. “The layoffs, which primarily affected commercial operations and related corporate functions, are the latest turmoil for the robotaxi startup and come one day after Cruise dismissed nine ‘key leaders’ for the company’s response to an Oct. 2 accident in which a pedestrian was dragged 20 feet by a Cruise self-driving car after being struck by another vehicle.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Trump support erupts; 14-point swing provides 10-point advantage.

I’m increasingly convinced that they’ll find a way to get rid of Biden, but not at all sure how they’ll manage or who’ll they’ll replace him with. Though maybe here’s a hint: Is It Time for a Second Look at Kamala? “Looming over this whole discussion has been the assumption that Kamala Harris would be an even weaker candidate than Biden, and so it wouldn’t be worth trying to orchestrate a clean handoff. But would she? At this point, I don’t think the answer is obvious.”

Well, she’s always been very unpopular, but Biden has gotten progressively less popular, so. . . .

HOW DESPERATE AND CRAZY CAN THEY GET? WE’RE ABOUT TO FIND OUT.

1) These people seem certifiably insane. As in, needing serious psychological help. I'm not exaggerating here, they seem to have completely lost a relationship with reality.
2) I laughed multiple times in this Supercut. https://t.co/FY6eXuzqnb

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 15, 2023

Ann Althouse comments:

My advice, and I’ve said it before, is to abandon the overblown demonization and treat Trump like the political candidate he is. About half of the electorate supports him. If it’s democracy they’re so concerned about, let them show respect for their fellow citizens and endeavor to understand the good reasons why they support Trump and not Biden and engage on the issues.

I don’t expect them to take this advice, because: 1. They’re so dug in, and 2. They don’t trust themselves to argue on the substantive merits.

They’re insane, and shouldn’t be allowed a role in public affairs until they straighten themselves out. This craziness is a danger to the Republic.

GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: Government Weaponized Against Elon Musk Once Again.

JOHN LUCAS: The Bidens Commemorate the Birth of Christ.

2024: New Polls Reveal Dissatisfaction with Biden vs. Trump.

WELL, HE WORKS FOR THE PEOPLE WHO ARE OPPRESSING THEM: Newsom Refused To Meet With Chinese Dissidents Before and After China Trip, Activist Says.

Think of Newsom as the CCP’s California satrap and you won’t go far wrong.

AT AMAZON, Last Minute Deals. #CommissionEarned

FLASHBACK: “The quip going around nonprofit circles these days is that the Ford Foundation’s support for Palestinian extremists is the one area of funding it could defend on the grounds of donor intent–an allusion to the notorious anti-Semitism of automaker and founder Henry Ford.”

THE FAMILY BUSINESS: Who Is Sara Biden? Joe’s In-Law Emerges as Central Figure in Foreign Cash Deals.

Trouble has followed Sara Catherine Jones since she married into the Biden family almost three decades ago.

Not long after her 1995 wedding to Jim Biden, she took a job with one of his brother Joe’s Senate donors, who later accused her of “fraud” and “unjust enrichment,” according to court records reviewed by RealClearInvestigations. In the years since, she and her husband have been accused of reneging on debts and failing to pay their taxes, court and property records show. Like their nephew, first son Hunter Biden, they have reportedly sold the promise of access to their powerful relative to companies, several of which have gone bankrupt, some of which are tied to foreign countries hostile to the United States.

Now, Sara Jones Biden has emerged as a key figure in the mushrooming Biden foreign influence-peddling scandal.

GOP lawmakers seek to question the 64-year-old licensed attorney as part of their investigation of President Biden for possible impeachable offenses, including bribery. They are especially interested in subpoenaed bank records that include almost a quarter million dollars in checks Sara Biden wrote to her brother-in-law Joe, conspicuously marking them as “loan repayment.” Republicans want to ask her about the origin of those loans and whether checks “were funded by Biden influence-peddling schemes with China.”

Read the whole thing.