OPEN THREAD: Disport yourselves in the comment section, on the eve of Christmas Eve.

OCEANS ARE NOW BATTLEFIELDS; Golden Fleet of Trump Class Ships to be Built:

If you haven’t heard about the new Golden Fleet, behold this piece from the U.S. Naval Institute News:

The centerpiece of the Trump administration’s revamp of the U.S. Navy is the largest surface combatant America will build since World War II.

The U.S. Navy will buy two new “battleships” as part of the “Golden Fleet” effort, President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan announced Monday at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump said the Navy will start by purchasing two ships and eventually purchase 10, with a goal of 20 to 25 in total for the class with the start of construction planned for 2030.

“The U.S. Navy will lead the design, along with me, because I’m a very aesthetic person,” Trump said.

As a triple Trump voter, I give myself permission to state that Trump is a very aesthetic person. You may think he is a douche-canoe but he does have an eye. The ships will be pleasing to the eye AND with unsurpassed lethality. More from U.S. Naval Institute News:

“The future Trump-class battleship – the USS Defiant – will be the largest, deadliest and most versatile and best-looking warship anywhere on the world’s oceans,” Phelan said during the presentation. “Now there will be work for shipyards everywhere from Philadelphia to San Diego, from Maine to Mississippi, from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast, and for manufacturers that will build components for this battleship in every state.”

America’s Newspaper of Record has printed a helpful cutaway guide to the state of the art technology to be deployed on these soon to be nautical legends: Check Out These Amazing Features On The New Trump-Class Battleship.

(Classical reference in headline.)

HAYEK’S RULES FOR AI:

LLMs, much like human societies, are dynamic systems. With every retraining cycle, they receive an updated feed from the ever-changing internet, incorporating larger and larger subsections of the evolving digital world. Many models also incorporate explicit human feedback, e.g., Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback, to shape their behavior. Even small changes to the input or the training process can lead to unpredictable, large-scale effects on the model’s overall output and functionality.

The dynamic, complex nature of LLMs finds a compelling parallel in Friedrich Hayek’s 1974 Nobel Lecture, “The Pretence of Knowledge,” in which he explored economic and political systems characterized by billions of variables and interconnections. This structure aligns with the organization of LLMs. Hayek concluded that while we can understand the general principles that govern complex systems and predict the abstract consequences of interventions, we cannot predict the specific outcomes or the precise states of all their elements. In his broader theory of complexity, Hayek defines two types of order:

• Taxis: A conscious, central design or constructed order. Traditional software falls into this category.
• Kosmos: A complex, emergent, spontaneous, and functional order that arises from decentralized interactions and vast, unstructured data. LLMs function as kosmos.

The power of LLMs lies in their emergent behavior, which is far more complex than any human could consciously design. Treating LLMs as a form of kosmos represents the key conceptual breakthrough that has accelerated AI development.

Read the whole thing, despite my “accidentally” having had ChatGPT create an illustration of the wrong Hayek to accompany this link. (And I have no idea why there’s text on the back of her laptop. Was it over when ChatGPT bombed Pearl Harbor?)

US DENIES VISAS TO EU EX-COMMISSIONER, FOUR OTHERS OVER TECH RULES:

The measure targeted Thierry Breton, the former top tech regulator at the European Commission, who often clashed with tech tycoons such as Elon Musk over their obligations to follow EU rules.

Breton was described by the State Department as the “mastermind” of the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), a major piece of legislation that imposes content moderation and other standards on major social media platforms operating in Europe.

The DSA has become a bitter rallying point for US conservatives who see it as a weapon of censorship against right-wing thought in Europe and beyond, an accusation the EU furiously denies.

The DSA stipulates that major platforms must explain content-moderation decisions, provide transparency for users and ensure researchers can carry out essential work, such as understanding how much children are exposed to dangerous content.

Breton, who left the European Commission in 2024, on X slammed the ban as a “witch hunt,” comparing the situation to the US McCarthy era when officials were chased out of government for alleged ties to communism.

Well, it’s nice of Breton to self-identify, but then, as James Lileks wrote twenty years ago, “‘McCarthyism’ today doesn’t mean false accusations of communism; it apparently means calling self-identified communists by their proper name.”

FASTER, PLEASE: Byron York: Trump’s most important achievement.

Second, this month, the Department of Homeland Security announced the departure of more than 2.5 million migrants who were in the country illegally. “Since January 20, 2025, DHS enforcement operations have resulted in more than 605,000 deportations,” the department said in a statement. “DHS has prioritized removing the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to return law and order to the United States. Additionally, thanks to the comprehensive efforts of DHS law enforcement, 1.9 million illegal aliens have voluntarily self-deported since January 2025.”

The first number — 605,000 deportations — has astonished some immigration enforcement veterans. In the past, the government’s deportations were in two categories. One was the number of illegal immigrants removed from the interior of the country, and the other was the number who were simply apprehended at the border and turned around back into Mexico. Obviously, the first category requires a lot more work for immigration enforcement.

Former immigration judge Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tighter immigration controls, noted that the high-water mark of removals from the interior of the country was 237,941 in 2008-2009. (Arthur attributed that number, at the very end of the George W. Bush administration, to an effort by Bush to increase interior removals, appearing tough on immigration, in hopes of persuading Congress to approve an amnesty deal.) The total number of removals was then “padded,” in Arthur’s words, by the number of illegal border crossers who had been turned around upon arrival at the border and sent back to Mexico.

Now, Trump has virtually stopped the flow of illegal crossers at the border, so the administration’s number of deportations — 605,000 — is virtually all people removed from the interior. That is a huge number; Arthur called it “epic.”

Still though, those are rookie numbers. You’ve got to pump those numbers up.

DISPATCHES FROM THE LOST GENERATION:

Until around 2015, there was a kind of guy — he probably lived in Brooklyn, maybe he had an MFA. He wrote literary fiction and some of these guys had book deals and others were trying to get them. They were very passionate about books and talked endlessly about Thomas Pynchon… https://t.co/EBiWR6tV2W

— Daniel Friedman (@DanFriedman81) December 21, 2025

SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST: Rate of glacier disappearance expected to peak by mid-2050s, scientists say. The number of glaciers disappearing worldwide is expected to sharply increase.

—ABC News, December 15th.

But why would anyone in New York City care, since it’s been flooded for 10 years?

Fourteen years ago, on June 12, 2008, ABC’s Earth 2100 offered a special on the then-far off year of 2015. Correspondent Bob Woodruff revealed that the program “puts participants in the future and asks them to report back about what it is like to live in this future world. The first stop is the year 2015.”

The special featured one of ABC’s experts warning that in 2015 the sea level would rise quickly. An on-screen graphic showed New York City being engulfed by water. (Spoiler alert: That didn’t happen.)

—“Just How WRONG Were ABC and NBC’s Climate Predictions? (Hint: NYC Not Underwater),” NewsBusters, June 4th, 2022.

UPDATE: Merry Christmas from “Famous Ghanaian prophet Eboh Noah!”

JUST IN: Famous Ghanaian prophet, Eboh Noah, predicts the world will end this Christmas through another flood.

He claims God has instructed him to build 8 arks — like Noah in the Bible.

His followers have reportedly sold all their possessions & given him the money in…

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) December 23, 2025

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Parents Take Gen Z Kid Who Doesn’t Have Anxiety Or Depression To Therapist To Find Out What’s Wrong https://t.co/bXNpxX8ZkN pic.twitter.com/8i7GUWSO6D

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 23, 2025

MORNING IN AMERICA? Boom! US Economy Grows By Big 4.3% In Third Quarter.

So, the 4.3% growth is very high and not too far away from “It’s Morning in America again.”

And it’s not even a one-quarter wonder — the last quarter showed strong 3.8% growth. It looks like it’s real and building.

Is the economic turn we desperately need for 2026 and 2028, too, finally here?

Let’s hope. It looks good at the moment.

Classical reference in headline:

FROM THE “FARTING COWS AND PLANES” FILES: “Ecologists understand the implications. Then environmental organizations continue campaigning to remove cattle from rangelands because they’re ‘destroying’ the environment. The Serengeti proved that 1.5 million large grazers make the land healthier, not worse. But admitting this would require acknowledging that maybe cattle aren’t the problem.”

1890s: Rinderpest virus arrives in East Africa via imported cattle. It spreads through wild ruminant populations catastrophically.

The Serengeti's wildebeest population collapses from over 1 million to around 200,000. Buffalo, other ungulates also devastated.

1960s: Veterinary… pic.twitter.com/zYQ6PlWRb8

— Sama Hoole (@SamaHoole) December 22, 2025

BRENDAN O’NEILL: The anti-Semitic delusions of Candace Owens.

In a way, I’m glad Candace Owens held up a copy of the notoriously anti-Semitic screed, The Talmudic Jew, during her latest digital rant. For it confirms what she is. More importantly, it lays down a gauntlet to the right. To the left too, in fact. It demands of them the following: are you going to turn a blind eye to this propagation of bloodcurdling lies about the Jews, or are you going to do something about it?

OLD AND BUSTED: “Nobody is Above the Law.”

The New Hotness? Charlottesville, VA Eliminating Use of Camera System Because Feds Might Track Illegal Aliens.

In other words, the Charlottesville City Council looked at the data and saw that the system was reuniting families, solving heinous crimes, and returning stolen property to people, and decided that protecting illegal aliens from deportation was far more important than the safety of its residents.

Does it get any more blatant than that? Nobody is even trying to pretend that the city has decided to drop using the system for privacy or any other reasons. It all boils down to weighing the safety and security of the citizenry on the one hand, and helping illegal aliens defy the law on the other.

They chose the latter. Better that illegal aliens roam free, even if it means unsolved murders and children not being found quickly.

“And now, a city council has decided that solving murders and reuniting children with their families is all well and good, but when compared to saving an illegal alien gang member from being deported, it’s nothing.”

IT’S COME TO THIS: Boston Democrat Mayor Michelle Wu Says Somalis To Thank For City’s ‘Every Achievement.’

Democratic Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said on Monday that Somalis are to thank for “every achievement” that the city has ever had.

Somalis have gained national attention after several were charged with stealing over $1 billion from Minnesota’s social programs, including those intended to feed poor children. Wu claimed that the Somalians are responsible for every positive thing that has happened in Boston.

“You cannot talk about any achievement that the city of Boston has had in safety, jobs, and economic development, in education, without talking about the Somali community that has lifted our city up. We are proud and we are grateful for our Somali community and for our Somali American neighbors. Boston and the country are clear that hate has no place in our society,” Wu said.

“We will use every attack to actually strengthen and expand the services available, to empower and work alongside our community members who are already doing so much good in the world and setting the example for the rest of the country,” Wu continued.

Related:

I most appreciate when the Somali immigrants threw the tea in the harbor. https://t.co/K2Se0ZLwmn

— Nick Freitas (@NickJFreitas) December 23, 2025

Imagine trying to explain to John Winthrop in 1630 that 400 years later Boston would be governed by an Asian woman and her principal public function would not be to preach virtue to the godly citizens but lie about the contribution of East Africans to municipal life. https://t.co/lcLUHhzJUU

— RAW EGG NATIONALIST (@Babygravy9) December 23, 2025

MATT DAMON SETS SAIL IN EPIC FIRST TRAILER FOR CHRISTOPHER NOLAN’S THE ODYSSEY:

The first footage of The Odyssey has come ashore.

On Monday, Dec. 22, Universal Pictures released a teaser trailer for director Christopher Nolan‘s action epic, adapted from Homer’s ancient Greek poem of the same name.

A synopsis for The Odyssey describes it as “a mythic action epic shot across the world using brand new IMAX® film technology.” The new trailer shows Matt Damon as the title character Odysseus and brief glimpses at his life during the Trojan War (including the iconic Trojan Horse) and his years-long journey back to his homeland.

The trailer is the first look audiences outside of movie theaters have gotten at The Odyssey, Nolan’s first movie since his 2023 drama Oppenheimer won several Oscars, since Universal first announced the movie was in development in December 2024. The film is notably being shot with all-new IMAX cameras and will be the first feature length film ever to shoot entirely with IMAX film cameras.

Nolan has certainly banked plenty of good will over the years, the trailer looks intriguing, and I can’t wait to read the reviews. The Odyssey looks to be the big movie of 2026. But just typing that sentence at the end of 2025 is a reminder of how badly the industry has stumbled, after reading “George MF Washington’s” Substack titled “Making Movies in a Low Trust Environment,” and its lengthy roster of decent, good, and great movies Hollywood churned out seemingly came out once a week throughout 1993.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Jimmy Kimmel to Face Ultimate Free Speech Test in UK. Far-left host tapped to address Great Britain, but will he finally speak truth to power?

No. Next question?

Kimmel teased the comments will address “fascism,” and it’s clear it’ll be an extension of his nightly rants against President Trump.

Channel 4 elaborated on the speech to air on Christmas Day.

“Donald Trump’s return to the White House and wide-ranging impact on the world has been the story of 2025, and it would be hard to think of a better person to address it than Jimmy Kimmel, who has found himself on the frontline of America’s battle over free speech,” the spokesperson said.

If you’re afraid of fascism, look no further than Mother England. Here is the indispensable City Journal detailing the horrors coming out of the U.K. in recent years.

According to police records analyzed by the London Times, over 12,000 Britons per year are arrested for speech-related offenses—an average of 30 per day and nearly a fourfold increase over the 2016 figure. Recent cases have reportedly included arrests for derogatory comments about migrants, displays of the national flag that others found offensive, and even silent prayer near abortion clinics. Since 2014, police can record comments merely perceived as offensive as so-called “non-crime hate incidents,” which remain on the offending party’s record even if no charges are filed.

Exit quote: “If Kimmel is set to discuss ‘fascism’ and fails to mention this sorry state of affairs, his free speech hypocrisy may be viewable from outer space.”

Oh, it will be.

UPDATE: Now Labour could ban Christmas songs: Employment Rights Bill could see end of Jingle Bells and more sung in pubs over ‘racist’ origins.

Over to you, Jimmy!

MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Once-thriving shopping mall in ailing Democrat-run* city is eerily empty on last Sunday before Christmas.

The [San Francisco Centre, formerly known as the Westfield Mall], which was valued at $1.2 billion about a decade ago, was foreclosed on in November.

It was sold to lenders, including JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank, for $133 million.

The banks have hired real estate brokerage CBRE to find a new buyer for the mall – and the firm’s executive vice president, Kyle Kovac, told CBS News that the sale signals a new era for the property.

He told the outlet: ‘Amid renewed civic leadership, three consecutive years of positive population growth and surging demand from artificial intelligence and technology firms, San Francisco Centre & Emporium is uniquely positioned to anchor the next chapter in downtown San Francisco’s recovery.’

But others are less convinced that the mall’s much-needed comeback is tangible.

Local Neil Wotherspoon, who told CBS in November that he visits the mall about once a week to order from the Panda Express in its basement – one of the only businesses still open – said he does not think the establishment’s future is bright.

‘I think these will be the last people to put the lights out,’ he said. ‘I think you’ll end up with the only people who will come here will be like me to enjoy the food. Just for the Panda, that’s right.’

Others noted how unsettling shopping in the massive mall has become since it transformed into a ghost town.

San Francisco’s top mall is essentially empty for Christmas because the city has failed to end vagrancy and make people feel safe downtown: pic.twitter.com/gajZX6w33Q

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) December 22, 2025

* You spelled “Democrat monopoly city” wrong; San Francisco’s last Republican mayor left office at the beginning of 1964.

Related:

Yeah, monopolies are terrible. Remind me, which party has controlled San Francisco for decades? https://t.co/pCARv0rD8t

— Mike LaChance (@MikeLaChance33) December 22, 2025

And considering that Schwarzenegger was the very definition of a RINO, which party has controlled Sacramento for decades?

I can assure you it is. As I’ve been reporting. California is absolutely in excess of 60 billion right now and believed to be more than 100 billion. https://t.co/xdElAyzcij

— Adam Housley (@adamhousley) December 20, 2025

SEE BS: 60 Minutes Correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, Who Cried Foul Over Delayed Immigration Piece, Was Behind ‘Intentionally False’ Hit Piece on Ron DeSantis That Even Democrats Said Was Wrong.

In her leaked email to her colleagues, Alfonsi accused CBS News and Weiss of engaging in “corporate censorship” and of “betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism.” Reporters at CBS News are threatening to quit over the Weiss decision, CNN’s Brian Stelter reported (it’s unlikely that anyone will actually quit due to the fast-shrinking job market for television reporters).

Weiss, who was appointed CBS News editor in chief in October, said in a statement Monday that the story “did not advance the ball” on what has already been reported about CECOT. “We need to be able to get the principals on the record and on camera,” she said.

There’s precedent warranting additional legwork on Alfonsi’s segments. Alfonsi was the lead correspondent on a debunked story in 2021 that DeSantis gave preferential treatment to the supermarket chain Publix to distribute coronavirus vaccines because the company donated $100,000 to DeSantis’s campaign.

“How is that not pay-to-play?” Alfonsi asked DeSantis when she confronted him after one of the governor’s press conferences.

Alfonsi’s producer for that story, Oriana Zill de Granados, also produced the “Inside CECOT” report.

Several Florida officials, including Democrats, blasted the 60 Minutes report, saying that DeSantis’s office was not involved in awarding contracts to Publix.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D., Fla.), who oversaw Florida’s emergency management division in 2021 and is known for tangling with the GOP, said that the division recommended Publix for the contract because other pharmacies were not equipped to distribute vaccines.

“No one from the Governor’s office suggested Publix. It’s just absolute malarkey,” he said.

But think of the long tradition of excellence at CBS News!

LOL at people upset "Network of Dan Rather" now sullied…. https://t.co/OrqLbIvHmb

— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) December 22, 2025

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Candace Owens Horrified To Learn Christmas Was Started By Birth Of A Jew https://t.co/ZfqY74fgWA pic.twitter.com/pyeanGIWO2

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 22, 2025

NEW SHERIFF IN TOWN: ‘Kill Switch?’ Bari Bombshell Explodes on 60 Minutes:

Did Bari Weiss give the White House a “kill switch” on honest reports from CBS News? Or did she yank the chain back on one of its most biased platforms to remind everyone that times have changed?

One can imagine which narrative the Protection Racket Media will flog.

Weiss issued a last-minute order to yank a 60 Minutes exposé on Donald Trump’s decision to partner with El Salvador on deporting criminal illegals, citing the need for more reporting and better balance. All of the usual suspects have been losing their minds ever since:

CBS News pulled a segment on Trump administration deportations of Venezuelan immigrants to an El Salvador prison from “60 Minutes,” causing staffers and media onlookers to question whether the decision was politically motivated. …

Driving the news: “60 Minutes” announced on social media around 4:30pm ET Sunday that it was dropping the segment, called “Inside CECOT,” from that evening’s broadcast lineup, but said that it would air at a later date.

• Sharyn Alfonsi, the segment’s correspondent, alleged in an email to colleagues that she learned Saturday that new CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss had “spiked our story” after Trump officials refused to be interviewed, per multiple reports.
• “Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Alfonsi wrote, per a copy of the email that journalist Liam Scott shared on X.

I’ve watched 60 Minutes and CBS News’ practical application of “standards and practices” for decades. This is not the flex that Alfonsi thinks it is. Twenty-one years ago, CBS News and 60 Minutes II ran a prime-time hit piece on George W. Bush based on fabricated documents in an attempt to influence a presidential election. “Rathergate” only cost CBS some embarrassment and retractions, and perhaps a momentary blip in sponsor support. Almost exactly twenty years later, they botched a re-edit of their softball interview with Kamala Harris so badly that the manipulation was once again easily exposed by critics and commentators. That escapade cost Paramount $16 million to settle in a lawsuit Trump filed, who most definitely preferred direct action more than Bush did at the time.

Alfonsi’s past performance is helping her case, either:

Hey remember the 60 Minutes hit job on DeSantis over the Florida vaccine roll out? Guess who. https://t.co/8h0Q6MKKox

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) December 22, 2025

Brian Stelter has thoughts:

"60 Minutes" just suffered a severe blow to its credibility. One of its own correspondents fears the program is being "dismantled," and some employees are threatening to quit: https://t.co/wz1Oo0Xr9l

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) December 22, 2025

I can remember when 60 Minutes suffered the ultimate blow to its credibility, a moment that has never once bothered Stelter:

UPDATE:

Oh, the blow to 60 Minutes's credibility was yesterday? Wake up, Tater.

If i were @bariweiss, I'd be saying "Hey, there's the door. Maybe Jezebel is hiring." https://t.co/7kHNRNtZ62

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) December 22, 2025

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Texas Issues Annual Reminder Not To Shoot Santa https://t.co/f8oryOY4UI pic.twitter.com/nuTTb2MGhs

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 21, 2025

GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: Making Movies in a Low Trust Environment. “Washington” compares and contrasts 1993’s top movies with today’s choices being proffered by DEI-infected Hollywood and compares the results to a once dominant sports team now constantly having losing seasons. “Don’t we become hyper-critical of even the smallest mistakes, mistakes of the kind we might forgive a competent team that is otherwise playing well? Worse, don’t we sometimes start to expect that our team will lose even before a single minute of game time has been played?”

And that is exactly what has happened to Hollywood over the last 20 years. The studios have performed the task of entertaining us so poorly, so regularly, that audiences feel burned. They no longer trust that the movies they pay to see will be any good, and they have begun to give up… even in the case of big blockbuster titles based on popular franchises, characters or IP of the kind audiences would have flocked to see in the 80’s and 90’s when Hollywood was releasing movies in a high trust environment.

We can debate what has changed. Some think it’s the high cost of movie tickets and popcorn combined with the inconvenience of theater-going when compared to streaming from the couch. And I know many in my right-leaning audience will blame Progressive politics, the powerful urge of Hollywood stars and directors to lecture us as if we are bad people to be taught a lesson rather than friends who deserve to be entertained… what the Critical Drinker calls “The Message.” And while that has clearly been a part of the problem, Hollywood’s woes are about much more than just politics.

The problem is that Hollywood has forgotten what movies are supposed to be about. The industry which once released “Mrs. Doubtfire”, “Schindler’s List” and “The Pelican Brief” in the same month has forgotten that movies must first entertain. They have forgotten that audiences want to see all kinds of movies, not just movies about Superheroes. They have forgotten that movies shouldn’t look like a corporate product created in a lab for the sole purpose of raising the stock price of the studio’s corporate parent. And perhaps most importantly, they have forgotten that movies need not focus obsessively on the goal of bending the arc of history towards justice… and certainly not at the expense of telling a great story.

The Critical Drinker and his cadre recently looked back on the tenth anniversary of The Force Awakens, the first Star Wars movie made under the Disney brand name. In his blockbuster “Lost Generation” article, Jacob Savage wrote, “In retrospect, 2014 was the hinge, the year DEI became institutionalized across American life.” Not coincidentally, The Force Awakens was released the following year.

In contrast to George Lucas’ constant writing and rewriting of his Star Wars concepts in the mid-1970s, as the Drinker et al note, the lack of worldbuilding by Disney as they were setting up shop on a new run of Star Wars movies was shocking. Apparently Kathleen Kennedy believed that printing up loads of “The Force is Female” t-shirts would suffice instead.

To borrow from what I wrote last week, Hollywood’s decline, a decade of DEI-driven slop coupled with the shocking murder of Rob Reiner, is a textbook example of Hemingway’s description for how one goes bankrupt: Gradually, then suddenly.

Speaking of which, one way or another, Warner Brothers being on the chopping block could likely accelerate the end of the moviegoing experience as well: Larry Ellison guarantees $40.4 billion in Paramount’s hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery.

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Jimmy Kimmel to say ‘fascism has had a great year’ in Channel 4 Christmas message.

US chat show host Jimmy Kimmel will say 2025 has been “a really great year for fascism”, when he delivers this year’s Alternative Christmas Message on Channel 4.

The presenter’s ABC talk show was briefly taken off air in September after comments he made about the shooting of Charlie Kirk.

The host’s suspension led to a debate in the US about freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Kimmel was reinstated a week after his removal.

The full quote from his address will say: “From a fascism perspective, this has been a really great year.”

The Daily Mail is of course suitably outraged: Jimmy Kimmel’s Christmas message to British public sparks outrage: ‘He should’ve stayed fired.’

Viewers in Britain and America alike hit out at the comedian for his anticipated anti-Trump rant and expected omission of censorship issues plaguing Sir Keir Starmer‘s government.

‘He’s going to whine about free speech and fascism,’ said GB News presenter Alex Armstrong on X.

‘He won’t be referring to our govt, will he? It’ll all be Trump. [Channel Four] deeply out of touch as usual.’

Commentator Paul Thacker also pointed to the recent arrest of comedian Graham Linehan for making anti-trans jokes as evidence of the ‘double standard’ in choosing Kimmel for the alternative message.

‘The British establishment chose Jimmy Kimmel to speak out against fascism and in favor of free speech. This is the same government that only recently arrested comedian Graham Linehan,’ Thacker wrote.

Worst. Hitler. Ever: Kimmel will be broadcasting in England, of all places, railing against fascism, with absolutely no repercussions from the Trump administration afterwards. And apparently, with no clue whatsoever about England arresting people for their tweets and Whatsapp posts.

SUNDAY SMILES:

WE NEED A TOTAL AND COMPLETE SHUTDOWN OF AUSTRALIA UNTIL WE CAN FIGURE WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON THERE:

Why would Australia give a non-citizen on a Visa, SIX gun licenses?

And why would he be given six licenses when his son has known links to ISIS?

Then he trains for a month with ISIS in November, and he STILL has six guns?

Big questions to answer. https://t.co/4VuyvFs28M

— 0pinionistNZ (@OpinionistNZ) December 21, 2025

pic.twitter.com/wme6ZpKwFh

— Lagertha333 (@Lagertha333) December 21, 2025

JOHN NOLTE: RINO Romney Calls for Tax Hikes, Raising Retirement Age.

Here are his suggestions for outright tax increases…

“I long opposed increasing the income level on which FICA employment taxes are applied (this year, the cap is $176,100). No longer[.]”

Currently, once your income reaches that $176,100, the government stops taking taxes for Medicare and Social Security. It sounds like Romney wants to tax people no matter how much they make.

He also argues for closing loopholes, increasing the estate tax, and similar measures.

This has always been Romney’s problem.

Actually, two of Romney’s problems.

The first is that you can always count on him to eventually cave to Democrats. There’s death, taxes, and Romney caving to Democrats.

Second is his dazzling lack of imagination.

How do we fix entitlements, Mitt?

Uh, raise the retirement age and tax increases.

Way to think out of the box, Mitt.

America cannot tax its way to either prosperity or fiscal solvency. Tax increases always-always-always slow economic growth, which — and this is key — decreases tax revenues. Romney acknowledges this and then, without evidence, wrist flicks it: “Yes, taxes can slow growth. But most of the measures I propose would have a relatively small impact on economic growth.”

In other words, I’ve acknowledged it, so I don’t have to really address it, you know, because I acknowledged it.

As the late Robert Novak famously said, “God put the Republican Party on earth to cut taxes. If they don’t do that, they have no useful function.” But Romney himself can pay more in taxes anytime he’d like:

You can write a check to the US Treasury anytime you want. Don’t forget to write “Gift to the United States” in the memo line.

You’re welcome. https://t.co/9k4VNct0j5

— Carol Roth (@caroljsroth) December 20, 2025

Bush 41 is, however, an object lesson in how Republican presidents are treated by Democrats should they accede to their wishes, and increase the taxes that Americans are paying: Clinton attacked Bush from the right for raising taxes.