IT’S THE SEASON:  I Saw Mommy Kissing Memes.

IF THEIR LIPS ARE MOVING, THEY’RE LYING:  Biden Admin Takes Credit for Israeli Victories It Tried To Prevent.

NEVER BOW TO THE LEFTISTS. IT WON’T HELP YOU WITH THE LEFT, AND IT PISSES OFF THE RIGHT: By Bowing To The Leftist Mob, Caitlin Clark Abandons Her Most Ardent Defenders.

AND WE NEED BOTH:  A Word to the DOGE: ‘Reduction’ Is Not Synonymous With ‘Reform’.

GOOD. COUNTRIES NEED TO STOP SELF-HAMPERING:  El Salvador Now Looking to Mine $3 Trillion in Gold and Other Critical Minerals.

IDEOLOGY BLINDED IDIOTS:   ‘We Look Like Idiots!’ Van Jones Continues His Post-Election Tear Against Democrats.

STILL NOT TIRED OF WINNING:  ABC, Stephanopoulos Must Apologize to Trump, Pay $15 Million to Settle Defamation Suit.

BEHOLD MY SHOCKED FACE:  Comprehensive Study Finds Gaza (Hamas) Health Ministry “Civilian” Death Claims “Inflated and Misleading”

WE SAW THEM WITH THEIR MASKS OFF. WE’LL NEVER FORGET:  The Bluegeoisie.

AND THE UK WILL LEARN FROM GERMANY’S EXAMPLE:  Get ready for the Ed Miliband blackouts.

GERMAN (LACK OF) WIND PROBLEMS:   Germany Gets Dunkelf**ked Again, Norway To Dismantle Power Cables To Europe, Last Day For 30% Off.

ABOUT TIME SOMEONE NOTICED:  Obamacare is the missing word as Democrats rage against healthcare system.

SOCIALIZED MEDICAL CARE:  This Canadian man died after a hospital failed to diagnose his torn artery and left him waiting for six hours as a low-priority patient before he gave up, went home, and expired.

SAY IT “HE WAS ON OUR RADAR”:  Surprising Twists in CEO Killer Case: Suspect’s Actual Relationship to Healthcare Co, and When First ID’d.

WELL, THAT’S A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION. IT’S NOT SOMETHING GOVERNMENTS HAVE AN INTEREST IN:  Amid cuts to basic research, New Zealand scraps all support for social sciences.

I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Scientists Turn Their Focus to WA’s Mount Adams After Volcano Begins Rumbling.

MORNING IN AMERICA:

🚨Hero Daniel Penny with President-elect Donald Trump and JD Vance pic.twitter.com/2CW4vKgF1b

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 14, 2024

OPEN THREAD: Anything going on?

THE NEW SPACE RACE: SpaceX rolls 7th Starship spacecraft out for testing ahead of next launch. Cool photos at the link. Some parts of the 21st Century are turning out as I’d hoped.

TERRIFYING QUESTION ABOUT THOSE DRONES: How many of the 36K+ young Chinese men who have entered the U.S. illegally under President Joe Biden are drone operators? Check out my latest PJMedia column.

UPDATE: Everything you ever wanted to know about drones, quad-copters and other UAVs.

PROFESSOR CARRINGTON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Our Sun Could Be Overdue For a Violent Superflare, Study Warns.

HAHA, CRY MORE. LA Times Owner Killed Another Editorial and Progressives are Worked Up. “Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the LA Times, continues to shock the progressives who work at and buy his newspaper. He made news when he killed an endorsement of Kamala Harris prior to the election. This move was overshadowed when the Washington Post, owned by Jeff Bezos, did the same thing. Last month, Dr. Soon-Shiong killed another editorial, this one critical of Trump’s cabinet picks. . . . The editorial never ran. Instead, they went with another piece which was less critical of Trump’s cabinet picks. This is in keeping with a new push at the Times to expand the range of commentary. Last month Dr. Soon-Shiong said he wanted voices from ‘all sides.'”

Plus “He hasn’t done anything wrong here, he’s just telling the progressives who work for him that he wants a new tone at the paper he owns. He has every right to do this, whether they like it or not.” They don’t, and their outraged entitlement is beautiful.

MAKE THEM PAY: George Stephanopoulos and ABC apologize to Trump, are forced to pay $15 million to settle defamation suit. Plus attorney’s fees.

UPDATE (From Ed): Question asked and answered:

So the fact that ABC News and George Stephanopoulos have agreed to pay Donald Trump $15 million for defamation with a false claim of rape is going to be a front-page, lead of the evening news story for the next 3 days, right?

Stop laughing.

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) December 14, 2024

WELL, GOOD: The Emerging Breast-Cancer Treatment: No Surgery Required.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: NY Times Declares The Woke Movies Era Is Dead.

The New York Times uncorked a withering attack on woke Hollywood movies. The piece flexes its progressive bona fides, but large swathes of the article could have been written by The Critical Drinker or Film Threat’s Chris Gore.

The headline and subhead are stunning and brave in their bluntness.

Is the Awkward ‘Diversity Era’ of Hollywood Behind Us?

The past decade’s clumsiest attempts to cram new faces into old stories now feel like a moment, and a genre, of their own.

The same paper that erupted in fury over a Sen. Tom Cotton op-ed let this missive through?

The biggest takeaway? The woke movies era is over. Done. Kaput. And The New York Times appears happy to report it.

But how can Hollywood even put out product in 2025, what with all of the stars who promised to leave the country if Trump won in November…

UPDATE: So when does the woke era at the New York Times conclude? NYT Puts Menstrual Products in Men’s Bathrooms ‘To Support Transgender and Non-Binary Colleagues.’

The paper’s decision was announced by the vice president for global real estate and facilities, Victor Liu, in a company-wide Slack message. From July 26 to July 29, Liu said, the company would begin “adding menstrual products and sanitary baskets” to the office’s men’s restrooms “to support transgender and non-binary colleagues.” The company also announced that it was “removing gendered imagery and adding language that colleagues are welcome to use the restroom in which they feel most comfortable.”

The move highlights the growing cultural and political rift between legacy media companies and the general public. Polls show that Americans generally support policies that require individuals who identify as transgender to use bathrooms that match their biological sex. President-elect Donald Trump hammered the transgender issue in his successful campaign last fall, which surveys show was one of his most impactful talking points.

The Times declined to comment.

Just 1 percent of the Times’s workforce identifies as “nonbinary,” a category which includes transgender individuals but also those who simply choose not to identify with either gender, according to the paper’s 2023 “Diversity and Inclusion Report.” The number of “nonbinary” employees, the report stated, does appear to be climbing, although they are still a negligible portion of the paper’s workforce.

The Times’s efforts to appeal to a broader swath of Americans are often hamstrung by partisan reporters and junior employees who demand the paper move further left. Staff at the paper revolted in the summer of 2020 after the opinion section published a column by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) that called for sending in the military to quell left-wing riots in the nation’s cities. That column prompted at least one writer, former tech reporter Charlie Warzel, to cry in an emergency staff meeting.

More recently, Times reporters are in the midst of a “rebellion” over the paper’s coverage of the war in Gaza, according to the Wall Street Journal. Senior editors, the Journal reported in April, are worried that some reporters “are compromising their neutrality and applying ideological purity tests.”

Because if there’s a safe place for nonbinary and LGBT people, it’s definitely the Gaza Strip.