NEWT GINGRICH POUNDS THE NEW YORK TIMES: The Old Gray Madam (remember, madams command Houses Of Ill Repute) just doesn’t get Trump. That’s obvious to everyone but libs. Read the whole thing.

AMERICAN IMPROVISATION IN THE BATTLE OF THE BULGE: White sheets as winter camouflage. The sheet-draped GIs look cold and tired. Compare the improv to the winter camouflage uniforms featured in this photo posted December 16. Note the “Marching to St. Vith” photo has another correction — 23rd Armored Infantry Battalion (7th Armored Division). Several StrategyPage and Instapundit readers think the soldiers are from the 1st Infantry Division. Both divisions arrived in the battle zone on December 17.

CHRISTMAS IN BASTOGNE 1944: Paratroopers walking past their dead comrades. A poignant photo. Over the weekend StrategyPage posted some other photos in its Battle of the Bulge commemorative series. I’ll try to post them later in the day.

RELATED: An Instapundit reader gets a thank you for helping correctly identify the Ardennes locale in a battle photo. Note the webmaster says he’ll contact the National Archives.

CHINESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER TAKES A SPIN THROUGH THE SOUTH CHINA SEA: It isn’t the first time. But we will see more of this.

Influential state-run Chinese tabloid the Global Times said the exercise showed how the carrier was improving its combat capabilities and that it should now sail even further afield.

“The Chinese fleet will cruise to the Eastern Pacific sooner or later. When China’s aircraft carrier fleet appears in offshore areas of the U.S. one day, it will trigger intense thinking about maritime rules,” the newspaper said in an editorial.

A trigger warning from Beijing?

NORAD UPDATE: Still tracking Santa.

RUSSIAN OPERATIVES USED MALWARE ON ANDROID DEVICES TO TRACK AND TARGET UKRAINIAN ARTILLERY: This Reuters report strikes me as well sourced.

The malware was able to retrieve communications and some locational data from infected devices, intelligence that would have likely been used to strike against the artillery in support of pro-Russian separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine, the report from cyber security firm CrowdStrike found…The hacking group, known commonly as Fancy Bear or APT 28, is believed by U.S. intelligence officials to work primarily on behalf of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency.

More:

The implant leveraged a legitimate Android application developed by a Ukrainian artillery officer to process targeting data more quickly, CrowdStrike said.

Its deployment “extends Russian cyber capabilities to the front lines of the battlefield”, the report said, and “could have facilitated anticipatory awareness of Ukrainian artillery force troop movement, thus providing Russian forces with useful strategic planning information”.

GERMAN TANK DISGUISED AS AMERICAN TANK DESTROYER: From StrategyPage’s Battle of the Bulge commemorative photo series. This photo is new to me. The German Panther tank has a U.S. star. It appears its silhouette was altered slightly so that from a distance it would be mistaken for an American tank destroyer. The ice and snow are authentic.

IS THE ISLAMIC STATE TARGETING CHRISTIAN CHURCHES IN THE U.S.?: This article claims ISIS intends to target Christian churches during the Christmas holidays. Terrorists make hollow threats to seed fear, but ISIS and Al Qaeda both encourage freelance attacks. My Creators Syndicate column this week argued that the Berlin attack implicitly targeted the Christmas season.

MEXICO INCREASINGLY DEPENDENT ON U.S. REFINERIES:

U.S. Gulf Coast refiners are cashing in on rising fuel demand from Mexico, shipping record volumes to a southern neighbor that has failed to expand its refining network to supply a fast-growing economy.

The fuel trade could top a million barrels per day (bpd) at times in 2017 as Mexico becomes increasingly dependent on the United States for strategic energy supplies and providing business worth more than $15 billion a year to refiners such as Valero (VLO.N), Marathon Petroleum (MPC.N) and Citgo Petroleum.

The rise in Mexico’s fuel imports reflects an economy that, after expanding for 27 quarters in a row even amid a public austerity plan, has been unable to increase its refining output to satisfy the consistent growth of its energy demand.

It has led to rapid reversal in energy trade between the two countries. In 2016, crude exporter Mexico will be a net oil importer from the United States for the first time as shipments of refined fuel heading south outnumber shipments of crude to the north, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

PEMEX’s budget cuts have affected refining operations : “Refineries in Mexico are running at about 60 percent of their 1.576 million bpd of capacity, according to the company’s data.”

In 2014 PEMEX refineries were running at 79 percent of capacity. It appears mismanagement and short-sighted government policy have also contributed to the problem.

GERMANY AS A TICKING TIME BOMB OF RAGE: A raging essay by Ed West in The Spectator.

I can understand the human urge to protect the vulnerable, refugees and Muslims generally, from hostility as these awful events repeat themselves. It’s easy to sneer at politicians who come out with vapid theological comments, as I have in the past, but their job is to protect all the country’s citizens. I can also see why this urge might convince an intelligent person that Merkel’s migration policy has actually helped the fight against terrorism. But it’s extremely unlikely; all things being equal, hosting refugees does lead to an increase in terrorism, although the risk is smaller in richer countries, largely because they have better security services. It’s at times like this when I thank God for ours, who have saved countless lives in our country by preventing a good dozen attempts at mass murder.

NINTH AIR FORCE DESTROYS A GERMAN RAILROAD YARD: Another photo in StrategyPage’s Battle of the Bulge series. This one doesn’t feature cold infantrymen, but it’s dramatic. Note the comment about the first day of good flying weather.

FAKE NEWS: A fake story becomes a scandal in Kazakhstan.

“NEXT GENERATION” AUTOMOBILE HEADLIGHTS: Mercedes-Benz calls it Digital Light. The lights function like “HD quality” projectors. “With more precise light distribution, Mercedes not only wants to improve road visibility even more, but also project additional information onto the road on the fly.”

TERRORISTS TARGET THE CHRISTMAS SEASON: It’s an icon target.

The Berlin Christmas market attack exhibits the same despicable calculation as Bastille Day in Nice. German citizens (belonging to the “Crusader coalition”) were the physical targets. However, the Christmas season — the Christian holiday — was the icon.

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION EXAMINES ITS CRISIS RESPONSE PROCESS: And well it should. Unfortunately, much of this article is devoted to the “We Don’t Have Enough Money” syndrome.

FALKLANDS WAR FALLOUT: Britain and Argentina have agreed to “a deal to identify 123 Argentine soldiers buried on the Falkland Islands. The International Committee of the Red Cross has been negotiating an agreement on taking DNA samples from the remains of men who died in the 1982 conflict. The graves in the Argentine memorial cemetery, in Darwin, are currently marked as “soldier only known to God”.”

Why did this take so long? My bet: the Argentinian government’s perpetual use of the Falklands as a political distraction. The article makes that argument, albeit less directly.

A 101ST AIRBORNE PATHFINDER UNIT HELPS GUIDE TRANSPORT AIRCRAFT TOWARD BASTOGNE: StrategyPage has published more photos from the Battle of the Bulge. Here’s one of C-47 transports dropping supplies (taken on December 26, 1944). I’ve never seen either of these.

MORE: A color photo, date taken uncertain. The webmaster wants some help identifying the area.

UPDATE ON PROBLEMATIC PHOTO: Thanks to the commenter who suggested Hunnage/Hunningen. That’ll be explored. I told the webmaster I thought he may have encountered a transcription error.

TERRORISTS TARGET EUROPEAN CHRISTMAS MARKETS: This AFP report says European police forces have responded to the Berlin terror attack by beefing up their presence at Christmas markets.

French authorities said the threat to Christmas markets and Christmas shopping crowds isn’t new:

President Francois Hollande said France was under a “high level of threat” following the events in Berlin but pointed out that the country already has a large-scale security operation in place.

“We have a high level of threat and we also have a particularly high level of mobilization and vigilance,” Hollande said.

France’s best-known Christmas market in the picturesque eastern city of Strasbourg has been a particular concern for security forces for years, with at least two jihadist cells in the city being broken up in the past few years.

More:

The large Christmas market extending along the renowned Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris was the target for a gang of six suspected jihadists arrested in November, according to prosecutors.

In the wake of the Berlin attack, officials on Tuesday added more concrete blast blocks at pedestrian entrances to the market, which is sealed off on the traffic side by barricades…

…In Britain, the central English city of Birmingham erected concrete blocks earlier this month around what it bills as the “largest authentic German Christmas market outside Germany or Austria”.

Targeting a Christmas market gives Islamist terrorists a deadly twofer. The terrorists metaphorically target a Christian holiday. They also target economic activity.

CHINA KIDNAPS A SEA DROID: Jim Dunnigan assesses the “grand theft droid” caper. The post is packed with information.

Sample:

Until the recent incident with China most of the AUV incidents were accidents and curiosities, not diplomatic showdowns. For example, in November, for the second time in 2016, Filipino fishermen in the South China Sea have caught an American AUVs in their nets. These torpedo like devices are clearly marked as to what they are and the American embassy will send someone to pick them up if found. These AUVs are silent, very small, and able to operate on their own for up to a year. The first models were two meters (six feet) long and weighed 59 kg (130 pounds) and built to operate completely on its own collecting valuable information about underwater “weather”. What this AUV does is automatically move slowly (30-70 kilometers a day) underwater, collecting data on salinity and temperature and transmitting back via a satellite link every hour or so as the AUV briefly reaches the surface. This data improves the effectiveness of sonars used by friendly forces, making it easier to detect and track enemy submarines.

OBAMA ENDS WITH A WHIMPER: Michael Goodwin is having fun.

So this is how it ends — in a whimper wrapped in self-pity and recriminations. With President Obama on the defensive at his final press conference and Hillary Clinton’s last campaign event resembling a wake, the Democratic Party is limping off the stage and into the political winter.

It was supposed to sit atop the national power pyramid for decades, a new paradigm of liberals, progressives, the young, the old, the unions and blacks, Latinos, Muslims and Asians.

The torch would be passed from Obama to Clinton, a liberal Supreme Court would vastly expand executive power and the regulatory state would enforce climate-change orthodoxy on all industry and elitist dictates on every American. Globalism would be the new patriotism.

But a funny thing happened on the way to one-party dominance: The people who work for a living said no, hell no. Their revolt brings Donald Trump to the White House amid hopes of a revival of the economy and of the American spirit.

Yes.

RECORD SETTING BRITISH AIRCRAFT TO FLY AGAIN: In 1957 this special version of the Canberra set an aircraft altitude record. As the article points out, the Canberra was designed near the end of WW2. Here’s the wiki on the U.S. B-57 version.

U.S. ARMY RETURNS TANKS TO EUROPE: That’s the title of this NBC report.

Three years after the last American tank left Europe, they are being brought back “as part of our commitment to deterrence,” Gen. Frederick “Ben” Hodges told NBC News.

Hodges, who is commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, welcomed a batch of tracked and wheeled support vehicles to a depot in the Netherlands on Thursday.

For military history buffs, an ironic read on “Bulge” day. (See 8:57 a.m. post.)

Three years ago U.S. withdrew its last tank unit from Germany — soldiers and vehicles. Here’s The Stars and Stripes coverage of the 2013 withdrawal.

“There is no [U.S.] tank on German soil. It’s a historic moment,” said Lt. Col. Wayne Marotto, 21st TSC spokesman.

It was my understanding that we still pre-positioned a few tanks in European depots but there was indeed a hiatus.

In 2014 The Stars and Stripes reported:

GRAFENWÖHR, Germany — Less than a year after they left European soil, American tanks have returned to military bases in Germany where they had been a heavy presence since World War II.

In April last year, the last Abrams tanks left Germany, coinciding with a drawdown of U.S. forces that saw the inactivation of two infantry brigades — the 170th and 172nd.

When the 22 M1A1 Abrams departed the continent it was seen as the end of an era, as tanks had been a fixture on American bases in Europe since landing at Omaha Beach in 1944.

Now, it appears that chapter of history may have been closed a bit prematurely.

On Friday, the last of 29 M1A2 SEPv2 Abrams tanks were offloaded at the railhead at the Grafenwöhr training facilities. These heavily armored vehicles are upgraded versions of the older Abrams that left 10 months ago and will become part of what the Joint Multinational Training Command at Grafenwöhr is calling the European Activity Set.

Dig the Pentagonese “activity set.” Yeah, it’s activity.

“Closed a bit prematurely.” But Obama said the tide of war was receding…

This Defense News article says that in 2015 the Army had 90 Abrams tanks pre-positioned in Europe and was adding more.

The bottom line to the NBC News article: we’re adding even more Abrams and Bradleys to European stockpiles.

This NY Times article from 2015 mentioned the small-scale pre-positioned weapons sites with heavy weapons in Germany. The NYT article focused on pre-positioning equipment in the Baltics. Telling quote: “Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University who has written extensively on Russia’s military and security services, noted, “Tanks on the ground, even if they haven’t people in them, make for a significant marker.”

That’s right. With soldiers in’em the tanks become trip wires. Here’s the confession of a Cold War NATO trip wire.

You can see why the cheeky title of this Jim Dunnigan analysis, “Iron Curtain Replaced By Paper Wall,” struck me as a fine exercise in gallows humor.

April 11, 2016: While the armed forces available to NATO far outnumber those of Russia, there is a major impediment to assembling and moving those forces to the aid of NATO nations bordering Russia. That enemy is the ancient bureaucracy that controls the movement of foreign troops crossing borders, even those forces coming to your aid. This was demonstrated in early 2015 when an U.S. Army mechanized battalion made a very well publicized road march from Poland, Lithuania and Estonia back to its base in Germany. The American battalion required hundreds of hours of effort to complete the paperwork and get the permissions required to cross so many borders in military vehicles.

TANKS IN THE SNOW, DECEMBER ’44: This startling color photo of snow-caked M-4 Shermans near St. Vith was StrategyPage’s December 15th “Bulge” photo. Here’s today’s choice: A 101st Airborne team in a foxhole. Yes, a return to stark black and white.

The paratroopers are definitely not in a safe space. A trigger warning? That’s the sound of someone chambering a round.

I learned yesterday that StrategyPage’s webmaster will continue to post new “Bulge” photos through the second week of January. WW2 veterans and their survivors have been donating military photos snapped during the conflict to the National Archives or other historical institutions. The photos aren’t new (obviously) but they are newly available. The webmaster’s series includes several classic photos, but also some rare shots (like the color pic of the Shermans).

Today, 72 years ago, the Battle of the Bulge began.

MEXICO’S CARTEL WAR TEN YEARS ON.

DRILL BABY DRILL: Britain taps new natural gas field in the North Sea.