LAST MINUTE GIFT: LEATHERMAN, Wave+, 18-in-1 Full-Size, Versatile Multi-tool. #CommissionEarned

LET THE CARDS FALL WHERE THEY MAY: FBI to Investigate Liz Cheney Over J6 Witness Tampering?

MOVE YOUR MUSCLES: Increasing daily steps might help depression.

IT’S A MILESTONE FOR ARGENTINA, TOO: Argentina’s economy exits recession in milestone for Javier Milei.

GDP expanded 3.9 per cent from July to September in seasonal-adjusted terms compared with the previous quarter, marking Argentina’s first quarter of growth since it entered recession in late 2023, the country’s statistics agency said on Monday.

Compared with the same period in 2023, GDP for the third quarter fell 2.1 per cent.

The rebound comes as Milei marks one year in office, during which time he has unleashed brutal spending cuts and a fierce deregulation drive.

The programme has brought down the country’s triple-digit annual inflation and made the libertarian one of the most prominent leaders of the global right, winning glowing endorsements from the likes of US President-elect Donald Trump and one of his closest advisers, billionaire Elon Musk.

Argentina’s sovereign bonds climbed on Monday, with the premium over US Treasuries that investors demand to hold its debt falling 4.4 per cent to 677 basis points, down from more than 2,000 when Milei took office.

Weird how leaders of the “global left” aren’t giving glowing endorsement to a program that’s working wonders for the people of Argentina.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE:

You can’t make this up. Doug Emhoff at the White House Hanukkah party gives a whole speech discussing how successful the Biden administration was at combating antisemitism.

To be abundantly clear, antisemitism has exceeded historic highs in America. pic.twitter.com/T4osvpbCoz

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) December 17, 2024

No word yet if Josh Shapiro attended the party.

CHANGE MORE OF THE SAME: AOC Hit With Major Snub in Her Bid for Leadership. “Connolly was supported by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — a true sign of her continued influence over the caucus despite no longer being in leadership. According to some reports, Pelosi was actively trying to sabotage AOC.”

SCOTT ALEXANDER: Book Review: From Bauhaus To Our House.

A prophet is without honor in his own country — or, to put it another way, a disease rarely goes pandemic in the area where it evolved. You need a naive unexposed population before ideas can really explode. Enter the United States.

In the early 1900s, the US still had a colonial inferiority complex. Europe ­­­automatically had the best and classiest of everything: the best intellectuals, the best food, and definitely the best art. A few bold Americans tried to blaze their own cultural trail, but they were overwhelmed by the power of elite Europhilia.

After World War I, some Americans visited Europe and brought back reports that the Bauhaus was pretty cool. Some modern art museums did exhibitions on the Bauhaus. Everyone agreed that they were cooler and better than we were, but nothing really came of it.

Then the Nazis took power in Germany. The socialist Bauhaus architects fled the country. Many came to America, where we colonial yokels responded with star-struck awe. Wolfe, writing before political correctness limited our stock of acceptable metaphors, says:

The reception of Gropius and his confreres was like a certain stock scene from the jungle movies of that period. Bruce Cabot and Myrna Loy make a crash landing in the jungle and crawl out of the wreckage in their Abercrombie & Fitch white safari blouses and tan gabardine jodhpurs and stagger into a clearing. They are surrounded by savages with bones through their noses – who immediately bow down and prostrate themselves and commence a strange moaning chant: The White Gods! Come from the skies at last!

The worshipful colonials immediately gave them every prestigious architecture position in the country. Gropius got the department chair at Harvard. As for Mies, the last director of the Bauhaus collective in Germany:

[He] was installed as dean of architecture at the Armour Institute in Chicago. And not just dean; master builder also. He was given a campus to create, twenty-one buildings in all, as the Armour Institute merged with the Lewis Institute of Technology. Twenty-one large buildings, in the middle of the Depression, at a time when building had come almost to a halt in the United States – for an architect who had completed only seventeen buildings in his career – o white gods! Such prostration! Such acts of homage!

And so:

The teaching of architecture was transformed overnight. Everyone started from zero…all architecture became nonbourgeois architecture, although the concept itself was left discreetly unexpressed, as it were. The old Beaux-Arts traditions became heresy, and so did the legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright, which had only barely made its way into the architecture schools in the first place. Within three years, every so-called major American contribution to contemporary architecture . . . had dropped down into the footnotes.

I found this part of the book sudden and jarring. Okay, Americans have always had an unhealthy fascination with European culture – but, really? Everyone abandoned all previous forms of architecture within a three year period just because some cool Europeans showed up? I was left to hunt down hints to the broader story. Some of these come from elsewhere in the book, and some are my own speculation.

Modernism was one of the first examples of what became known as “political correctness.” As Wolfe noted in From Bauhaus to Our House:

As for the compound taboos concerning what was bourgeois and nonbourgeois, these soon became the very central nervous system of architecture students in the universities, as if they had been encoded in their genes. There was a bizarre story in the press at the time about a drunk who had put a gun to the head of an upland Tennessee footwashing Baptist and ordered him to utter a vile imprecation regarding Jesus Christ. The victim was in no mood to be a martyr; in fact, he desperately wished to save his own hide. But he was a true believer, and he could not make the words pass his lips, try as he might, and his brains were blown out. So it was with the new generation of architects by the late 1940s. There was no circumstance under which a client could have prevailed upon them to incorporate hipped roofs or Italianate cornices or broken pediments or fluted columns or eyebrow lintels or any of the rest of the bourgeois baggage into their designs. Try as they might, they could not make the drafting pencil describe such forms.

O white gods.

The near universalism of PC architecture is what led to what Alexander described as “my all-time favorite conspiracy theory, Tartaria:”

Beside the ruined buildings of our own civilization – St. Peter’s Basilica, the Taj Mahal, those really great Art Deco skyscrapers – dwell savages in mud huts. The savages see the buildings every day, but they never compose legends about how they were built by the gods in a lost golden age. No, they say they themselves could totally build things just as good or better. They just choose to build mud huts instead, because they’re more stylish.

Of course, putting blinkers on architects would be far from the only example of political correctness to emerge from academia, alas.

SENTENCING SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN CARRIED OUT SWIFTLY:

BREAKING:

Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov has been killed by a remotely detonated bomb placed near the entrance of a building in Moscow

Kirillov was the head of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Defense Forces (NBC)

Ukraine charged him with chemical war crimes 24h ago. pic.twitter.com/ZlxiBxABJu

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) December 17, 2024

More:

Kirillov was responsible for providing Russian forces with the chemical agents the use against entrenched Ukrainian positions.

Ukraine claims that Russia has used chemical agents 4800 times since the war started.

Since 2022, more than 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been hospitalized with chemical poisoning, and 3 have died.

Full details here.

PAINFUL: Fortune’s Fool: Ketanji Jackson Makes Embarrassing Broadway Debut. “A Supreme Court justice by any other name still acts horribly. If there were a Tony Award for worst Broadway performance, Supreme Court justice and all-around joke, Ketanji Brown Jackson would be taking home a trophy. Yes, the ultimate DEI hire took to the stage in a one-time appearance Saturday in the Broadway musical ‘&Juliet.'”

The worst part might not have been Jackson demeaning herself and the court, but that an amateurish production like “&Juliet” is considered Broadway-worthy.

LIMITED TIME DEAL: Amazon Fire HD 10 tablet (newest model). #CommissionEarned

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (BEIJING EDITION): China’s November retail sales miss expectations as real estate slump deepens.

The world’s second-largest economy has been contending with pressure from multiple fronts this year. Consumer and business confidence has been hit by a prolonged property downturn, local government debt risks and high unemployment.

“The stimulus effect has been short-lived,” My Bui, economist at investment management firm AMP said in an email. While the “recent fragile but upward momentum in Chinese economic data will translate into a real GDP growth rate of 5% this year,” they are unlikely to turn around weak consumption sentiment due to falling home prices, Bui added.

November industrial production rose by 5.4% from a year ago, above the expectations of 5.3% growth among economists polled by Reuters, accelerating from a climb of 5.3% in the prior month.

That industrial production increase is partly due to China trying to export its overcapacity issue. The flood of cheap exports is annoying everybody, including allies.

MOST FUNDING FOR THE ARTS IS A MONEY LAUNDRY FOR THE LEFT: Federal agencies fund ‘highly ideological’ university art projects: report.

“FLAHERTY IS THIS CLOSE TO GETTING IT”: Kamala Harris Deputy Campaign Manager Just Said the Quiet Part Out Loud.

LOL: 100 University of Chicago faculty and activists protest lack of ‘Gaza Scholars at Risk’ program.

FIRST, YOU NEVER BEND THE KNEE: Hegseth Nomination Battle Shows Republicans An Easy Way To Stop Losing And Start Defeating The Swamp.

Washington Post congressional reporter Marianna Sotomayor agreed with the assessment and said there had been a “significant shift” on the previously embattled nominee. She credited the grassroots Republican attacks on weak Republicans as particularly helpful to Hegseth’s case.

“And I think the reason why is because the moment that Trump came out and said that he is behind his pick, we did see a number of Trump allies kind of green lighting to the MAGA base, all right, start calling senators who are a little bit worried on Hegseth. Start — start to threaten, actually, a number of senators, including Sen. Joni Ernst, that she could get primaried. This is something that Elon Musk has also said publicly that he will use his super PACs to not just find candidates to go against any senator who may vote against a nominee, but also fund those campaigns.”

The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood broke the news that Ernst was waging an “aggressive” campaign against Hegseth’s nomination in the hope she might be appointed defense secretary. Her past support for pushing transgender ideology on the military was also highlighted. The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson explained the stakes of the nomination battle in his piece, “Pete Hegseth’s Nomination Is A Hill Trump Should Die On.”

Associated Press executive editor Julie Pace also agreed that Republican voters had apparently figured out how to remind senators that they mattered at least as much as their beltway friends.

“I think Marianna has it right, there was this sort of pivot point where you could see, particularly, I think, when the pressure campaign against Ernst really started to mount, that I think that took over and became the dominant focus of a lot of these senators as opposed to some of the allegations and some of the questions around Hegseth,” Pace said.

Democrat strategist Donna Brazile said controllers had unleashed “MAGA” on senators who were “waffling” on the nominees.

Second, you get ’em skeered and keep the skeer on ’em.

What Brazile is moaning about is Republicans finally working as hard as Democrats to support their nominees.

BREAKING: House Oversight Committee asks FBI to investigate Liz Cheney for possible “witness tampering.”

Just the News is reporting that:

“Based on the evidence obtained by this Subcommittee, numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, the former Vice Chair of the January 6 Select Committee, and these violations should be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the report released by the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee and its chairman Barry Loudermilk stated […] “Evidence uncovered by the Subcommittee revealed that former Congresswoman Liz Cheney tampered with at least one witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, by secretly communicating with Hutchinson without Hutchinson’s attorney’s knowledge,” it added. “This secret communication with a witness is improper and likely violates 18 U.S.C. 1512. Such action is outside the due functioning of the legislative process and therefore not protected by the Speech and Debate clause.”

Nota Bene: a conviction of violating the federal law carries a sentence of up to 20 years.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Trump 47 Reckoning Is Hitting the Dems From All Sides Now. “One of the many false narratives that is being destroyed now is the notion that the Trump-supporting MAGA crowd was the fringe of the GOP. It was being perpetuated the Democrats’ flying monkeys in the mainstream media, and the Never Trump crowd. It was never true at any point in this election cycle.”

THE LATEST FROM ALJAZEERA ON THE POTOMAC, AKA THE WASHINGTON POST: Phony stats from the Hamas-controlled Gaza “Health Ministry” are accepted without question, but stats provided by Israel are “without evidence.” One might also note the generosity of calling a terrorist massacre an invasion by “fighters” and the falsity of calling Israel subsequent war to dislodge Hamas a “retaliatory campaign.”

DON SURBER: How Woke Died. At various points, my fellow reporters at major news organizations told me roads and birds are racist. Voting is racist. Exercise is super racist.”

THIS PROBABLY MEANS THEY’RE NOT CHEATING TOO MUCH ON THEIR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: Black Student Enrollment At Harvard Law Drops By More Than Half. “The Supreme Court decision, and the fact that Harvard College was named in the case, played a role, according to David B. Wilkins, a Harvard law professor who has studied Black representation in the legal profession. The law school also saw a steep decline in Hispanic students, to 39 students, or 6.9 percent, this fall, from 63 students, or 11 percent of the total, in 2023. Enrollment of white and Asian students increased.”

SAVING THE PLANET, ONE DEVASTATED ACRE OF LAND AT A TIME:

This is not sustainable environmentalism. This is net zero corporate land grabbing. The vast majority of mass-scale solar panels plastered on prime farmland will reduce farmland acres & risk being destroyed by bad weather, damaging the soil or end up in landfills after 25 years. pic.twitter.com/qwFssGQ0c7

— James Melville 🚜 (@JamesMelville) December 16, 2024

Things used to grow there.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (TEHRAN EDITION): Iran Extends School Closures In Tehran Amid Fuel Shortages.

President Masoud Pezeshkian, who has been advocating for reduced fuel consumption, apologised to the nation on Monday for the shortages and promised they would be resolved by next year.

State television said, citing a government statement, that “due to persistent cold weather, schools, universities and government offices in Tehran and its surroundings will be closed tomorrow (Tuesday)”.

A gas-powered plant in western Lorestan province was partially closed on Monday because of “increased consumption of gas among household consumers”, according to IRNA state news agency.

It followed a move on Sunday by the northern province of Golestan to close plants and ration electricity, according to local media.

People have also been hit with power cuts across the country, including in Tehran.

Pezeshkian doesn’t even have the “transition to green energy” as an excuse.

REVENGE OF THE NERDS: Musk crushed Taylor Swift as top 2024 surrogate, over 2-to-1.

SOME PARTS OF THE 21ST CENTURY ARE TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED:

This video shows the number and frequency of all SpaceX launches over the years

In 2024 alone, SpaceX has completed 95 rocket launches pic.twitter.com/LYgNgbw0UO

— Black Hole (@konstructivizm) December 16, 2024

SOME PARTS OF AMERICA STILL WORK: Dragon’s Daring Return: SpaceX Capsule Heads for Florida Splashdown.