A SWEDISH WAY THE AMERICAN LEFT WON’T WANT TO EMULATE: Sweden Ditches Barbaric ‘Gender-Affirming’ Care for Kids.

WOEING: After years of KC-46 vision system troubles, Boeing thinks its finally cracked the code.

In May 2018, a group of defense reporters visited Boeing’s KC-46 manufacturing plant here in Everett, Wash., just months after the Air Force disclosed a major problem with a critical system that provides imagery to boom operators during the refueling process.

The message imparted by Boeing officials then was simple: A software fix, which would be available in months, was all that was needed to right the system.

At the time Air Force officials vehemently and publicly disagreed, and, it turned out, Boeing was wrong. The issue was more severe and would take far longer to rectify. After two more years of sometimes heated disputes with the Air Force, including a stern letter from the service’s top general to Boeing’s chief executive, the company agreed in May 2020 to completely redesign the KC-46’s Remote Vision System on its own dime.

Now, the company is ready to show off an early prototype of what it’s calling the Remote Vision System 2.0.

More than four years to prototype a new tracking system that should have worked the first time.

Plus: “Although the agreement on RVS 2.0 appears to have healed the rift between Boeing and the Air Force, the new system has already hit some snags and has a long road ahead of it.”

What a mess.

LINCOLN BROWN: Utah’s Most Famous RINO May Fall Off the Fence. “If you couldn’t stand a political version of a time-share pitch, let me summarize it for you.”

CHRIS BRAY: The Twitter Files Are a Business Problem.

State and local governments also expect Twitter to act on their content concerns and complaints about disinformation, which means fifty governors and attorneys general and state directors of public health and state police commanders picking up the phone, and 3,243 sheriffs and district attorneys and public health directors expecting to be able to reach out to their partners at Twitter, and close to 20,000 mayors and police chiefs, and thousands of state legislators and tens of thousands of city councilmembers, and on and on and on. “You tell this Jack Dorsey that I’m the damn mayor pro tem here in Glendale, and I want my concerns to be dealt with.”

And so, if we accept the premise that governments have special rights to demand content moderation, if the staff director of a legislative committee in the Arkansas state legislature and a sheriff in Maryland and the flag officers at all the MACOMS and Jen Psaki’s deputy assistant and a member of a county board of supervisors in Oregon and the chief of staff to the governor of Rhode Island, being Very Important People, all expect to by God get a direct meeting with Twitter executives because @buttchug623 is saying some things that they do not like at all, and oh by the way the prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is holding on line 6 and he’s pissed and when can you pencil in a half-hour with Turkmenistan’s finance minister, then how much does it cost to manage all of those relationships?

Elon Musk has fired so many people, that it looks like he doesn’t expect Twitter to be jumping through hoops for all those Very Important People any longer.

UGH: ‘Largest Operational Meltdown in Southwest Airlines History’ Continues Despite Weather Clearing. “That’s not the worst of it. By 11 p.m. ET on Monday night, the carrier had already canceled more than 2,400 flights for Tuesday and over 2,300 for Wednesday. Flight rebooking for stranded passengers will not be available until Friday, according to CNN. And the airline announced new bookings won’t be available until January 3.”

DECOUPLING: Japan to Extract Rare Earths From Seabed Starting 2024. “Japan plans on beginning the extraction of rare earth metals from the region around Minamitorishima Island in 2024 as the country attempts to wean away from depending on China for critical resources.”

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: Kamala Harris’s Most Cringeworthy Video Ever. “Kamala Harris can’t even make a holiday spirit video without telling a big, fat, cringeworthy whopper.”

Plus:

• Menstrual cramps aren’t just for women anymore.
• Californians will learn to do with less — or else.
• Krisi Noem is the most badass governor in America.

So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: These celebs defied cancel culture in 2022 and are still standing. “The new year could find more artists balling up their courage and speaking out, either in self-defense or righteous fury.”

OH: Russian lawmaker Pavel Antov found dead in Odisha hotel, second Russian tourist death in a week. “The multi-millionaire was on vacation in the Rayagada region of Odisha where he was celebrating his 65th birthday.”

NOT A SURPRISE SINCE THEY ALSO HAVE THE HIGHEST RATE OF ANY OTHER GROUP FOR SUICIDE ATTEMPTS: Transgenders Have 4.5 Times Higher Rate of Psychiatric Illness Than Normies.

ABOUT THE WEATHER: Tesla owner goes viral after his car would not charge in the cold. “When plugged into the Supercharger, the car showed a message saying that it was warming up the battery pack in preparation for charging, but it never actually started to charge – even an hour later.”

COLONIALISM, STRAIGHT UP: Minnesota University Fires Professor for Sharing Image of Muhammed in Islamic Arts Class.

ENDORSED: New Year’s Resolution: Ignore The Anti-Fun Woke Babies. “If the social justice cretins are going to continue their cancel crusades of anything that promotes free expression or what is formerly known as ‘fun’ — and of course they will — everyone else needs to wise up. Ignore the children.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Mitch McConnell Wants to Lose and Stay in the Minority. “Being in the minority means he can always use that as an excuse for never doing anything meaningful or good for Republican voters.”

RUTHLESSLY: How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate.

The United States government pressured Twitter to elevate certain content and suppress other content about Covid-19 and the pandemic. Internal emails that I viewed at Twitter showed that both the Trump and Biden administrations directly pressed Twitter executives to moderate the platform’s content according to their wishes.

At the onset of the pandemic, the Trump administration was especially concerned about panic buying, and sought “help from the tech companies to combat misinformation,” according to emails sent by Twitter employees in the wake of meetings with the White House. One area of so-called misinformation: “runs on grocery stores.” The trouble is that it wasn’t misinformation: There actually were runs on goods.

And it wasn’t just Twitter. The meetings with the Trump White House were also attended by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others.

When the Biden administration took over, its agenda for the American people can be summed up as: Be very afraid of Covid and do exactly what we say to stay safe.

In July 2021, then-U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released a 22-page advisory concerning what the World Health Organization referred to as an “infodemic,” and called on social media platforms to do more to shut down “misformation.”

Read the whole thing.

HMM: Trump Thinks Democrats Have ‘Something Big’ on Mitch McConnell.

EVERYBODY IS GOING TO GET COVID: China: Leaked estimate says 250 million people have caught COVID this month.

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Twitter Files, Part X: Banning Those Who Dared Question the COVID Narrative.

VOTING WITH OUR FEET: Interim Census Bureau Report Shows Red States on a Roll.

SANITY PREVAILS: Swiss Government Rejects Third-Gender Option On Official Records.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: A Vacation Classic With Rush Limbaugh.

BUT HE’S STILL IN POWER: Xi Starts His Third Term With Failure Upon Failure.

Xi rose to such power in part because he was boring. More flamboyant figures, such as his rival Bo Xilai, who fell in a dramatic scandal in 2012, were seen as dangerous by the party elders, semi-retired leaders who still played a strong role in selecting each generation of leadership. Xi was a solid, uncharismatic, competent fixer; that allowed him to escape the pressures that forced most “princelings” like him—the children of the founding generation of Chinese leaders—out of politics and into the private sector out of fear that they might accumulate too much power. He was a safe pair of hands, or so it seemed.

But throughout his time in office, Xi has proved anything but. He’s doubled down on party control in every aspect of Chinese life, from the tech sector to sexuality to the cinema. Rolling purges have decimated state institutions, while the economy has groaned under the weight of constant government interference—at a time when three decades of high growth were already coming to an end. The aggressive “wolf warrior” diplomacy endorsed by Xi has left China hugely unpopular worldwide, and the relationship with the United States has collapsed. A close alliance with Vladimir Putin’s Russia has been strained by the disasters of Ukraine. China is looking less like a potential colossus and more like a stumbling, if still dangerous, giant.

And yet, Xi’s power still seemed almost unassailable at home, amid blanket surveillance by both big data and secret police, a security force under his thumb, and a burst of nationalism in 2021 thanks to the country’s then-successful suppression of COVID-19. As the year draws to a close, even his domestic control seems in question. A wave of protests has led to the end of his widely unpopular zero-COVID policy—leaving China facing a potentially devastating wave of outbreaks among a still incompletely vaccinated population.

Xi’s own political power may be far weaker than anticipated—but there are plenty of ways he could still quell any opposition, with little sign of any concerted faction against him emerging within the Communist Party. Nor is there any clear sign of who would come next if he did fall. For the moment, the future of China is still in Xi’s hands.

Xi’s proven much more effective at eliminating opposition than at running the country well — so, mission accomplished.

JUST WHAT SHE ASKED FOR: Kamala Harris Got Some Illegal Immigrants for Christmas. Really.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: James Cameron Learns Hard Lesson – You’re Never Woke Enough.

DISPATCHES FROM A SANCTUARY CITY: Denver nears ‘breaking point’ trying to deal with influx of immigrants.

Voters in Denver County broke nearly five-to-one in favor of Biden against Trump.

Gooder and harder, Denver.