“MINNEAPOLIS POLICE CHIEF HAS IT WRONG” IS A START THAT COULD GO MOST ANYWHERE: This Minneapolis Police Chief Has It Wrong When He Uses the Nativity Story To Push Back Against ICE Raids.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
December 23, 2025
VDH: Hegseth Did What Biden Called ‘Impossible.’
We were told during the Biden administration that the recruitment for the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, and even in one case, I think one year, the Marines, was off some 40,000 to 50,000 recruits. And the Pentagon’s reaction under Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was, as we heard this echoed by a lot of the four-star admirals and generals, well, people are out of shape. They’re in gangs. They take drugs. They are wanted by private enterprise.
We have to compete with all of the excuses other than the real cause. The real cause was, as Pete Hegseth said when he came in, that people felt that the military was not emphasizing combat, battlefield efficacy. It was turning into a social justice “program.”
The subtext of Pete Hegseth’s point was that there was a particular demographic, white males from rural and often southern locales. They had died at twice their numbers in the demographic in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they weren’t joining.
Some of them were not joining because of the 8,500, maybe 8,000-8,500, that had natural immunity from prior COVID-19 infections. And yet, they did not want this experimental mRNA vaccine, and they were drummed out en masse. The majority of those fit this demographic.
The others felt that under the DEI obsessions with race and sexual orientation and gender, that people would be recruited, retained, promoted on criteria other than battlefield efficacy. So, they just stayed away from what they felt was a hostile environment. Didn’t help when then-Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley and Lloyd Austin told the nation before Congress that they were going to invest white supremacy following the death of George Floyd.
That’s over with. There is a record number of Army recruits. The military has met all of its recruiting. That is equivalent to the dramatic revolution on the southern border. Nobody thought we could close the border. We did. Nobody thought we could get recruitment back. Pete Hegseth did.
To be fair, usually when people say something is impossible, it’s because they don’t want to do it. Or worse, they don’t want anyone else doing it, either.
HMM: Is This the Rosetta Stone That Explains Epstein’s Vast Wealth and Intelligence Ties? “Benz believes Epstein went out on his own after leaving Bear Stearns and ran all of his intelligence deals through BCCI. Those intelligence ties are believed to explain why, when Epstein was busted for his underage human trafficking sex slavery ring, then-Florida U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta is alleged to have said that he gave Epstein a sweetheart plea deal because ‘he belonged to intelligence.'”
PRIVACY, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG: Italy antitrust agency fines Apple $116 million over privacy feature; Apple announces appeal.
Italy’s antitrust authority fined Apple 98.6 million euros ($116 million) on Monday after determining that operating one of its privacy features restricted App Store competition. Apple said it would appeal the sanction.
Apple abused its dominant position with its App Tracking Transparency, ATT, policy, which forces apps to obtain permission before collecting data to target users with personalized ads, the antitrust authority said in a statement.
The company rolled out ATT starting in April 2021 as part of an update to the operating system powering the iPhone and iPad. While the feature was designed to tighten up privacy, it faced criticism from Big Tech rivals that it would make it harder for smaller apps to survive without charging consumers.
The authority didn’t criticize the policy per se, but the fact that the Apple system requires third-party app makers to ask users for consent twice in order to comply with Europe’s strict privacy rules.
Am I reading this correctly? Did Italy just squeeze Apple for $116 million for complying with EU privacy rules?
Creative beak-wetting is what Europe does now instead of tech innovation.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The Epstein Stuff Probably Won’t Make Bill Clinton’s Teflon Get Sticky. “Sadly, I’ve been around long enough to know that pinning anything on Bill or Hillary Clinton has about the same odds as hitting Powerball on consecutive weeks. These people are professional breakers and skirters of the law; they have been easily getting away with whatever they want for all of those same years that we have been crossing our fingers and hoping for their downfall.”
CHANGE: FCC Set to Ban New Foreign-Made Drones.
The action, expected to be announced Monday by the Federal Communications Commission at an afternoon press conference, would target new drone models and components produced overseas, sources told Newsmax Middle East correspondent Zachary Anders.
The ban would include DJI, the popular Chinese manufacturer that dominates the consumer camera-drone market.
Importantly, the policy would not be retroactive. Anders reported that the action “does not affect drones or drone components that are currently sold in the United States,” meaning existing products already on store shelves or in consumers’ hands would not be covered by the new prohibition.
Instead, the change would work through the FCC’s authorization process.
Prepare from some growing pains while supply chains adjust.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION RENAISSANCE: Why Southern States Are Outperforming Others in Education.
Much of this success has rightly been credited to a handful of commonsense reforms: early literacy laws that require the use of phonics, the tightening of retention and promotion policies, universal literacy screeners in early grades, and rigorous curricula. But another factor may be these states’ strict disciplinary policies. The states seeing the greatest gains academically are also the ones doing the most to bring order and stability to their schools.
A teacher can use the best curriculum, and states can make schools use the best instructional methods, but if classrooms are chaotic, then students will not learn. The presence of a misbehaving peer causes other students to act out, dilutes instruction, and drives down achievement for other students.
Despite this, blue and red states frame discipline differently. Alabama’s regulatory codes, for example, open with a statement that “students be allowed to learn in a safe classroom setting where order and discipline are maintained,” and that “every child in Alabama” is entitled to “the right to learn in a non-disruptive environment.” Boundaries and order are treated as inherent goods.
Many blue states, however, view school discipline as a necessary evil, to be limited as much as possible.
Read the whole thing.
RAYMOND IBRAHIM: How the Islamic Blitzkrieg Shattered Christendom.
As I never tire of reminding people, I always learn a lot from Ray’s video podcasts.
December 22, 2025
HEY, BIG SPENDER: Paramount’s new, hostile offer to Warner Bros. Discovery: Larry Ellison will personally guarantee $40 billion.
The Warner Bros. board of directors has rejected Paramount’s bid multiple times, opting instead to go with an offer from Netflix, which WBD says is more valuable. The board also said Paramount has misrepresented itself to WBD shareholders, calling into question the legitimacy of the deal’s “illusory” proposed financing.
To counteract that critique, Paramount said Oracle founder Larry Ellison – the father of Paramount CEO David Ellison – will guarantee all $40.4 billion of the equity he’s putting up to finance the $78 billion deal. That’s a big guarantee, putting Larry Ellison on the hook for about a sixth of his roughly $250 billion net worth if something falls through.
More: “Paramount offered $30 per share for WBD, including CNN and the rest of its cable channels. Netflix offered $27.75 per share for Warner Bros. and HBO. But Netflix and WBD argue that plans to spin off the cable assets will increase those stations’ overall value and will, in total, value the company more highly than Paramount’s deal.”
I find it very hard to believe that the package of limping cable channels that WBD is spinning off as Discovery Global will increase in value.
ICYMI: Russia’s Space Program Just Took Another Embarrassing Hit. “This is a bit like planning to buy a new car, but then looking at the expense and saying you’ll buy most of a new car. Instead, you’ll pull the engine out of your 1998 Accord — the engine that needs a full rebuild — and drop it under the hood of your ‘new’ car.”
THE CHIP WARS: Japan Halting Photoresist To China? “I haven’t been able to verify this yet, but according to China Observer, ‘Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry may have escalated export controls on November 20-21, adding 12 types of core semiconductor materials and related services to its ‘End User List,’ placing about 110 semiconductor-related entities from mainland China under heightened scrutiny. Mainland China is more than 60% reliant on imports for photoresist, with ArF/EUV almost entirely dependent on Japan and the Netherlands.’
SPACE: Japan’s H3 suffers second-stage anomaly, QZS-5 satellite lost.
The H3 rocket lifted off at 8:51 p.m. Eastern Dec. 22 (0151 UTC, Dec. 23) from Tanegashima Space Center carrying the Michibiki 5 (Quasi-Zenith Satellite System 5 (QZS-5)) satellite. The liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen first stage performed nominally, but issues with the second stage meant the satellite was not inserted into its intended geosynchronous transfer orbit.
A Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) press release later stated that the second stage engine’s second ignition failed to start normally and shut down prematurely. As a result QZS-5 could not be put into the planned orbit and the launch failed.
A post-launch press conference revealed that the first second stage engine cutoff occurred 27 seconds later than planned, while the second ignition was delayed by 15 seconds and terminated almost immediately after startup. Telemetry showed that hydrogen tank pressure in the second stage began falling during the first-stage burn, a behavior now under investigation.
That’s two failures in seven H3 launches, but the rocket only came into service about three years ago and reliability tends to increase over time.
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES:
BREAKING: Kamalpreet Singh, the ILLEGAL truck driver who reportedly caused a deadly crash in WA, has been RELEASED from prison after paying a $100,000 bond.
The money was then RETURNED to him after prosecutors failed to follow up on the case
WHAT?!?!pic.twitter.com/qtJmoGeQIE https://t.co/2g3QPh3PMG
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 22, 2025
2026 PREVIEW (SORT OF): Beware Of Central Economic Forecasts For 2026.
This is a central scenario that includes a lot of “dispersion,” and not just domestically. Internationally, the U.S. significantly outperforms other major economies. Hampered by structural rigidities, the eurozone and the United Kingdom remain trapped in a low-growth, low-investment equilibrium. With China’s efforts to upgrade its growth model progressing slowly, the U.S. will serve by far as the global economy’s primary engine—a concentration that creates its own set of risks.
As for the “fat tail” scenarios, their probabilities are roughly equal, offering reasons for both hope and anxiety. On the right-hand side, one finds a tantalizing vision of an economy that doesn’t merely grow but accelerates, while also expanding future capacity. In this scenario, faster-than-anticipated AI adoption, combined with robotics, is translated into tangible, economy-wide productivity gains, enabling the U.S. to pull further ahead of other major economies.
If this “productivity promise” materializes rapidly enough, the U.S. could experience a non-inflationary boom. Because the supply side expands rapidly enough to meet rising demand, inflation remains in check. This is a Goldilocks scenario on steroids: a technology-driven expansion that expands corporate margins and increases tax revenues, potentially alleviating fiscal pressures and enabling the Fed to cut rates more aggressively.
But equally probable is the downside scenario: not a standard recession born of exhausted demand, but a surge in volatility, stemming from financial instability, policy error, election-year politics, and geoeconomic developments.
Translation: Predictions are hard, especially about the future.
BRING BACK THE DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY: Time to ‘Spin Off’ the Navy.
Created by the National Security Act of 1947 the DoD was tasked with unifying and consolidating the management of the large armed forces establishment that emerged at the end of World War II. The act principally combined the Department of War (Army) with the Department of the Navy (Navy and Marine Corps) – two separate entities that had been constitutionally established and operated separately with different missions since the inception of our nation. The act also created a new military department, the Air Force, in recognition of the evolution and impact of air power over the previous decade. The Air Force itself was in fact a “spinoff” of sorts from the Army where it had begun as the Army Air Corps. Over the past 80 years the Department of Defense has effectively, but arguably not very efficiently, created the most lethal and advanced military in the world. However, over the past decade or so it has also been showing signs that its current structure is not producing a force that can sustain those characteristics in the face of adversaries with greater agility and deeper industrial capacity.
An alarming case in point is the DoN. Having been absorbed into the vast DoD structure, and subject to resource trade-offs of the overall defense enterprise, the DoN has lost its independence, and with it, its character and performance over the last several decades. This decline was not sudden, and it did not occur without noble efforts to resist the ill-effects of the Pentagon bureaucracy and the ever-growing attempts to centralize power in the office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). Admiral Hyman Rickover, for example, demonstrated that through sheer will, brilliance, and obstinance that a nuclear submarine program could be built without high-level corporate meddling from DoD. In the 1980s Secretary of the Navy John Lehman performed a similar feat, overcoming resistance from Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, along with all the other DoD entities conspiring for a piece of the Navy’s financial pie, in his quest to construct a 600 ship navy. That navy, as is often the case with changing administration priorities, was quickly dismantled in the years following Lehman’s departure. The decline accelerated when the Cold War ended and naïve leaders believed that end of the Soviet Union would produce something aspirational, yet elusive, for ourselves and our allies called a “peace dividend.” Our adversaries, both large and small, had different ideas and they have seized upon our retreat from maritime dominance to assert their own.
Yes, the Navy requires its own Department again — and maybe “Nuke the Pentagon” while we’re at it.
RESET EXPECTATIONS: CNBC anchor who blasted Trump’s ‘insane’ tariffs is now shocked by ‘very, very low’ inflation.
Liesman has been among the most vocal critics of Trump’s tariff strategy (3). Back in March, he warned bluntly: “I’m going to say this at the risk of my job. What President Trump is doing is insane,” adding that “there’s no bounds around President Trump.”
But on Thursday, as he dug deeper into the latest report, even the month-over-month figures looked encouraging.
“I have not looked at the internals — I’ll look at them now — but it suggests that the internals are good as well,” he said. “Let’s see. … Seasonally adjusted index for all items, less food and energy, rose 0.2% over the two months. So correct my math here … but 0.2 divided by two is 0.1. So therefore that’s a very, very low monthly rate.”
Liesman wasn’t alone in his reaction.
Exit quote: “I think the president will take this as good news. The investors will think that interest rates will get cut more, so it was positive news — there’s no other way to spin it.”
HOW IS “SANCTUARY” NOT AIDING AND ABETTING? ICE Seeks Custody of Illegal Alien Killers in Sanctuary Districts.
THIS SEEMS NEWSWORTHY:
0 AP stories on Jeanette Marken
0 PBS stories on Jeanette Marken
0 NYT stories on Jeanette Marken
0 NPR stories on Jeanette Marken
0 WSJ stories on Jeanette Marken
0 BBC stories on Jeanette Marken
0 CNN stories on Jeanette Marken
0 WAPO stories on… pic.twitter.com/KogLaTWrWd— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 21, 2025
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: MSU Denver rejects Standard American English as ‘white supremacy.’
The Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU) Writing Center has officially rejected the use of Standard American English (SAE) as part of the program, calling it a “social construct that privileges white communities” as explained on the university’s webpage devoted to “linguistic white supremacy.”
But what the university claims is an effort towards “anti-racism” could well instead run afoul of President Trump’s executive order aimed at discriminatory practices rooted in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives on college campuses.
MSU is situated on the Auraria Campus in downtown Denver, which also includes the University of Colorado at Denver (CU Denver) and Community College of Denver (CCD). The public university boasts a student population of over 17,000, including both undergraduate and graduate level coursework.
The MSU Writing Center says SAE, which has been taught in schools since the 1800s, promotes white supremacy in claiming there is a “correct” and “standard” way to write and speak American English.
So another good way to keep minority kids from advancing is to lock them into linguistic ghettos.
RECYCLING OVERKILL: Russia’s Space Program Just Took Another Embarrassing Hit. “I look at the revised ROS and wonder how to say ‘vaporware’ in Russian?”