WELL, GOOD: Tom Homan Puts Every Illegal Migrant on Notice.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Happy New Year to the Best Readers in the History of Everything. “I want to just reflect on what an extraordinary year it has been. Honestly, it feels like 2020 is finally ending. Heck, everything from the middle of July until November 5 felt like a whole extra year had been added to 2024.”

IT’S ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: Earth’s biggest waterfall lies beneath Arctic. “This hidden giant isn’t a waterfall cascading down a mountainside or roaring over a cliff. Instead, it descends slowly and invisibly, deep beneath the icy waters of the Arctic, earning the distinction of being Earth’s largest waterfall.”

BILL WHITTLE: Did We Win the War in ’24?

WELL, GOOD: Georgia’s Attorney General Takes on Fani Willis.

BUILD MORE BEAUTIFUL CLEAN NUKES:

Pray for global warming: Wrecked by the climate agenda, the electricity grid will be at risk during the coming Arctic blast. https://t.co/wfD3kOQJ4e pic.twitter.com/7KmAR8212R

— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) December 31, 2024

At least we’re in better shape (for now?) than Puerto Rico: Nearly all of Puerto Rico is without power on New Year’s Eve. “Officials said it could take up to two days to restore power.”

BATTLESWARM: Jimmy Carter And The Weirdness Of The 1970s.

The cultural milieu of the 1970s usually gets squeezed down to “disco” and “cocaine,” but there was an awful lot more (both good and bad) going on then. It was one of the greatest decades for movies ever, but with a focus on unlikable antiheroes, urban decay and downer endings (Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver). The reaction to that extreme brought us Rocky and Star Wars (and, speaking of cocaine, The Star Wars Holiday Special). There was a tremendous ferment in music, from progressive to punk rock, very little of which was getting played on the radio, while things like “Muskrat Love” and “Disco Duck” topped the charts.

Traditional religious belief was in decline, but people flocked to see Satan in movie theaters and it was a golden age for all sorts of crackpot cults and pseudoscience.

Politically, the unpopular (though not as unpopular as depicted in the movies) Vietnam War had come to an end with America pulling out, South Vietnam collapsing, and the genocidal Khmer Rouge coming to power in Cambodia. Democrats had controlled both the House and Senate for all but four years since FDR’s election. Watergate had taken out Nixon, but not before he had carried 49 states in crushing George McGovern.

The 1976 Democratic Presidential Primary was a different kettle of fish.

Much more at the link.

Exit quote: “Once in office, Carter, a nasty piece of work masquerading as a plaster saint, proved unequal to the multiple challenges besetting the nation.”

IT’S MERELY THE SICKEST PUFF PIECE THE AP HAS WRITTEN SO FAR: Is This the Sickest Puff Piece The Associated Press Has Ever Written? “McBride is about to be one of the most celebrated congressmen in Washington — not because of anything he may accomplish, but because he is mentally ill.”

DALE FRANKS: From Legacy to History: The End of the Post-WWII Era.

America’s appetite for debt has ballooned dramatically, leaving us with $36 trillion in national debt, and an additional $55 trillion (at least) in unfunded Social Security obligations. Interest on the national debt now takes up $1 trillion annually. At this point, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and debt service cost more than all the tax revenues the US government collects every year. Every penny we spend on the departments of Defense, Commerce, Treasury, Justice, etc. is borrowed. This unsustainable level of debt is pushing us ever closer to a default on our debt.

If that happens, the US will almost certainly lose its status as the world’s reserve currency, which would cause trillions of dollars in cash, currently held in foreign hands, to come flooding back into the US. This could spark massive inflation, perhaps hyperinflation. The inevitable resulting cuts to, among other things, defense spending, means that the US guarantee of global freedom of the seas and trade will have to end, because we’ll be incapable of providing it. But, even if we avoid that, the only option open to do so is massive cuts in government spending, which again, will have to fall greatly on defense, since it’s the largest portion of discretionary spending, by far. Either way, we aren’t going to have a Reagan-era 600-ship navy to patrol the seas and secure global trade routes.

Nor is there any immediate prospect of anyone stepping into fill our shoes. There’s no globe-spanning Royal Navy, for instance. Without the threat of military retaliation, chances are high that other states, or even non-state actors, will move to make global trade less secure.

In very short order we’ve moved from the bipolar order of the Cold War to a unipolar order (circa 1991-2009) to a multipolar order — and it looks like we’re headed toward nonpolar disorder.

SAD: Ellen Page Still Looks Miserable After Succumbing to the Trans Cult

IT WILL BE SO NICE IN THREE WEEKS WHEN THE SO-CALLED GROWN-UPS ARE NO LONGER IN CHARGE:

Israel rejected an American request to transfer weapons to the Palestinian Authority.

The Biden administration's request follows the PA's operation in the Jenin refugee camp. Senior security officials say that in light of past experience, Israel fears a "reverse-fire" scenario…

— Cheryl E 🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🎗️ (@CherylWroteIt) December 30, 2024

This reply nailed it: “Am I reading this right? Biden wanted Israel to agree to hand over weapons to the people they’re at war with and whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel?”

EVEN THE TRANSITION IS MUCH SMOOTHER THAN IT WAS EIGHT YEARS AGO: Here’s A Great Sign That the New Trump Admin Will Be a Well-Oiled Machine.

GOOD RIDDANCE: Obama’s ‘Censorship’ Office Goes Bankrupt. “The Global Engagement Center, an office housed within the State Department and aiming to thwart disinformation and misinformation, has been forced by Congress to close up shop. It’s no mystery why; the taxpayer-backed GEC violated its mandate to work only overseas and devolved into a partisan enabler of speech suppression in the United States.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: China Hacks the U.S. Treasury. “According to the report, this was a state-sponsored attack, and the hacker was affiliated with the Chinese government.”

OLD AND COLD: Schumer mocks GOP: ‘Nobody is taking away your gas stove.’

The New Hotness: CA Gov. Newsom is Banning Gas Cars, Gas Stoves, Gas Furnaces, Gas Water Heaters.

Rather, that’s the new hotness, assuming the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, and your household battery pack didn’t catch fire. Otherwise, Newsom is happy to let you shiver in the dark.

12 YEARS WORTH OF CHICKENS FINALLY COMING HOME TO ROOST: Obama and Biden Just Achieved the Impossible.

IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR: Trump’s Top 10 Best Moves of 2024.

These two were yuge:

No. 9: After cementing his hold on the Republican Party’s base with his commanding primary performance, Trump moved to change the leadership of the party as well. On Feb. 12, he announced his desire to see GOP chair Ronna McDaniel replaced by North Carolina GOP chairman Michael Whatley, with Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump serving as co-chair. McDaniel had always had an arms-length relationship with Trump’s MAGA movement, and she was blamed by many in the party for not doing enough to ensure Trump’s victory in 2020, both before and after the Nov. 3 election, including her lackluster support for the president’s claims that the election was rigged.
…
No. 7: The media also ridiculed Trump for campaigning in exceedingly liberal New York City. Once again, they played themselves for fools. Since Trump was spending so much time in New York City thanks to the Letitia James civil fraud trial, the E. Jean Carroll civil suit for defamation, and ultimately the so-called hush-money trial, what choice did he have? It should have been no surprise that the presumptive GOP nominee decided to campaign in his hometown. In April, Trump visited the Manhattan bodega where a clerk fatally stabbed a would-be robber and then was charged with murder by the same district attorney who had the former president on trial for vastly hyped felony charges based on the fact that he called payments to his lawyer “legal expenses.” Trump also visited a construction site and a local firehouse. But even better, and clearly one of the best moves of 2024, was Trump’s decision to hold a rally in the South Bronx while awaiting a verdict in the hush-money case. The Democrats’ smear against Trump as a racist looked pathetic as a diverse crowd of blacks and Hispanics joined whites to applaud Trump’s message of a stronger America.

On #9, the energized RNC was everything in 2024 that it should have been in 2020 but wasn’t.

Democrats could scream “Racist!” all day and all night — and did. But the crowds described in #7 told a different story.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Hope for America — We Survived Carter and Now (Almost) Biden. “The leftists in the MSM are having a field day whitewashing the real Jimmy Carter record after having to be semi-honest about Joe Biden for a bit. They’re back in their element and it’s too much even for someone like me who writes about these idiots all the time.”

SELF-DEPORTATION WORKS, TOO, EVEN THOUGH MITT ROMNEY WAS MOCKED FOR SUGGESTING IT:

Sweden has now turned its immigration into a net outflow.

They did this very complicated trick.

1, Stop letting people in
2. Stop giving any money to the ones already there

So hard, I doubt any developed nation could copy it.

— Department of Decline (@LeoMars75) December 29, 2024

I was dubious of the claim but it checks out. “Last year’s trend of fewer asylum seekers in Sweden and fewer residence permits granted continues. According to the Swedish Migration Agency’s prognosis, Sweden is on track to have the lowest number of asylum seekers since 1997 and, for the first time in over 50 years, Sweden has net emigration.”

Not that I’m saying deportation shouldn’t be used, too — use every tool in the toolbox.

OVERREACH: Just Get Us the Hell out of Syria Already.

EMIL KASTEHELMI ON RUSSIA’S BALTIC SABOTAGE EFFORTS: A thread.

The latest sabotage operation was likely aimed at Estonia, which is soon disconnecting itself from the Russian electricity grid together with Latvia & Lithuania. Singular damaged cables don’t cause a crisis yet, but we’ve likely only seen the beginning, the testing phase.

The current situation can also be described as the gray phase. The enemy is conducting sabotage, disinformation and hybrid operations, which can be followed with more significant diplomatic and even military pressure. I doubt Russia has planned to stop their actions yet.

Currently, operations are carried out through various covert arrangements, although it’s not unclear to anyone whose interests lie behind them. Russia is actively testing how the politicians and authorities in the targeted areas react to sabotage and various other operations.

The problem with the West is that countries prefer to hesitate, when clear and determined force would be needed. A show of force is the only thing Russia understands. Any display of weakness encourages Russia to continue and strike harder, as has happened throughout the year.

Metaphorically, Russia stabs soft societies with a bayonet until it meets steel. Finland has endured numerous hostile operations over the past year, such as sabotage, weaponization of migrants and cyber attacks. Now some steel has been finally shown with a strong response.

And by tiny Finland, at that. Maybe the loss of one of their “shadow fleet” tankers will give Moscow pause.

ROBERT SPENCER: Ridiculous: Appeals Court Upholds Trump’s Liability in E. Jean Carroll Sexual Abuse Case.

I’VE BEEN CONVINCED FOR A WHILE NOW:

How much more convincing do we need to demonstrate that our military is not a trained and ready force for WAR?

Our U.S. Navy has “insufficient gender experts?”

I’ll tell you what, how about ensuring our ships don’t crash into each other at sea or not shooting our own damn… https://t.co/SNsUOkHOUC

— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) December 30, 2024

The Soviet military called them zampolits.

INTERESTING, BUT TRUMP’S ENDORSEMENT TODAY MIGHT PRECLUDE THAT: Acting President Grassley?

DIFFERENCE WITHOUT DISTINCTION? Israel arrests Gaza hospital director who wrote for New York Times, accuses him of being a Hamas terrorist. “The IDF said it conducted a raid on the hospital because it was allegedly being used as a shelter by terrorists looking to escape Israel’s bombardments in northern Gaza against their bases.”