THE WAR ON FAMILIES: Maine School ‘Socially Transitioned’ 13-year-old Girl Without Her Parents Knowledge.

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY: Which One of You Strangers Is My Wife? “This week we have the strange case of the naked groom who wasn’t, the most honest arsonist of all time, and the Chicago Man who did what we all want to do sometimes.”

THIS IS THE WAY: How Denver schools improved: Choice, accountability.

But:

A union-backed school board majority is “dismantling” Denver’s success story, write Parker Baxter, who headed the UCD study, and education writer Alan Gottlieb in Education Next. The school board offers “vague platitudes about prioritizing traditional district-managed schools and focusing on equity,” they write. “Yet there’s no evidence that traditional neighborhood schools in this city have ever provided anything close to an equitable education for all of Denver’s kids.”

No success will go unpunished.

WHO YOU GONNA BELIEVE, JOE OR YOUR OWN LYIN’ BANK STATEMENT? U.S. Misery Index Belies Biden’s ‘Hopeful Economy’ Malarkey.

MAX EDEN: What Happened in Loudoun Schools.

The report suggests that lax school discipline played a role in the second assault – but did the transgender bathroom policy truly play a role in the first? After the Daily Wire article was published, many liberal pundits insisted that it was unfair to say so because the policy was not yet officially in place. But the report contained two strongly suggestive details. First, a teacher had walked into the bathroom as the first sexual assault was occurring and seen two pairs of feet in a stall – but took no action. The assailant knew that he had a space where he could commit an assault, later commenting that “they usually don’t do anything” when seeing things like two pairs of feet in a stall. Second, top Loudoun school officials understood the connection between this incident and their bathroom policy. Shortly after the assault, the district’s chief operating officer e-mailed the superintendent, deputy superintendent, assistant superintendent, and director of communications, saying that “the incident at SBHS is related to policy 8040 [the transgender bathroom policy]. I will send a Teams appointment from 3:30 to 5.”

For many months before Daily Wire’s Rosiak broke this story, Loudoun schools had been in the news for their aggressive embrace of woke policies and ideology. After the news got out, reaction filtered along partisan lines: conservatives insisting that something was deeply rotten, liberals arguing that conservatives were wrong or simply ignoring the story altogether.

Read the whole thing.

WELL, GOOD: Federal Judge Prevents Biden’s DHS From Ending Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ Policy.

BUY AMERICAN: Germany Buys 35 F-35 Stealth Fighter Jets.

I’M MORE INCLINED TO BELIEVE THIS THAN I WAS JUST A FEW YEARS AGO: Insider Tells Tucker Carlson That CIA Was Directly Involved in JFK Assassination.

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS NO ONE IS ASKING: Who is ready for Blue Origin Space Rangers?

Variety reports that a production company co-founded by Michael Strahan, who flew to space on New Shepard in December 2021, is working with Blue Origin to develop an animated space adventure series for kids. It will be called “Blue Origin Space Rangers.” Stop laughing. I’m being serious over here.

Coming soon to Amazon Prime? … The show will include appearances of an animated Jeff Bezos as well as Strahan, a former NFL star. That might make it worth tuning in to, at least once. According to the producers, the show will “create multiple touchpoints for kids and families to explore, learn and deliver a one-of-a-kind space experience.” I’ll try to be positive and say it’s great to try to get kids interested in STEM. But I certainly hope this is not a distraction to all of the other work on Blue Origin’s plate.

Distraction? Blue Origin has yet to launch a single gram into orbit — it would be fair to ask after all these years if they ever had any focus.

ICYMI, FOR OUR VIP SUPPORTERS: Musk Is Cutting Twitter to the Bone, and the Lamentations of the Karens Are Glorious. “The story could begin — and end — with what Musk did when he found dead-ender execs racking up six figures worth of chartered jets right before he bought the company. But the story just keeps getting better, even after that.”

THIS IS SILLY: Trump’s new NFT collection is already losing value in the secondary market.

THIS IS IMPORTANT: Trump vows if elected to crack down on left-wing censorship, reclaim free speech in America.

In the first policy-related announcement of his 2024 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump vowed to sign an executive order after being elected that would ban the federal government from “colluding” with groups that impede free speech and ban federal taxpayer dollars from being spent on government-led efforts to label speech as misinformation or disinformation.

He promised to fire federal employees who have tried to censor “lawful speech” and block federal funds from going to universities that wrongfully curtail speech.

Timing is everything.

Trump is usually such a consummate showman that I don’t understand why he timed the silly NFT release to step all over an important policy statement.

GO AWAY: The Public Health™ Empire Strikes Back: Oakland, Other Cities Float Reinstating Forced Masking in Public.

AFTER MAXING OUT OUR CREDIT CARDS FOR MONTHS, SOMETHING HAD TO GIVE: Retail sales fell 0.6% in November as consumers feel the pressure from inflation.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Federal Government Reminds Arizonans Why We Hate It. “I have spent all of my life living closer to the Mexican border than most people who make United States immigration law, the majority of it here in my native Arizona. The reason I led with that is because I wanted to establish my perspective cred.”

SICK: Ukrainian orphan girl denied life-saving surgery because she’s unvaxxed.

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Oregon’s Governor’s Last Act of Political Sabotage. “Though Kate Brown has spent her years in office winnowing down the number of death row inmates from 34 to 17 and releasing violent murderers and rapists from prison, she chose this week to abolish the death penalty entirely in Oregon and ‘dismantle’ a death chamber in Oregon that hasn’t been used in decades. And here’s why: she’s bugging out of office in mere days and handing over this time bomb to the newest woke governor to deal with. She did all of it without the consent of Oregon voters.”

YOU DON’T SAY: The Fed could be facing a nightmare scenario. “There is a much more worrisome scenario, however, in which US inflation remains stubbornly high, perhaps because the combination of continued tight labor markets and elevated living costs fuel persistent rapid wage growth. Such a wage-price spiral would pose a difficult conflict between the policy needs of the US economy and those of the rest of the world. Further increases in interest rates would be essential to bring down US inflation and inflation expectations. But at a time when many of our trading partners were mired in recession, further policy tightening could create grave problems abroad: substantial job losses, widespread defaults and disruptions in international financial markets.”

Left unsaid: The federal government can’t afford prolonged tightening because of increased interest payments on $31 or so trillion in debt.

LINCOLN BROWN: Is Woke Fatigue Finally Setting In? “For years, from the office of the president of the United States to the local school boards and every office, activist, bureaucrat, and administrator in between, people have had racism, trans, and every other phobia and ‘ism’ pounded into them at every juncture. People who have known they are not racist are tired of defending themselves every minute, except perhaps when it comes to their children. And they also know that discussion is simply impossible. And even the true believers may be growing weary of confessing their sins with every other breath.”

DAVID STROM: Fusion “breakthrough” a total dud. “In simple terms the lasers delivered X amount of energy to ignite the fusion process, and the fusion process delivered about 1.5X coming out. But in order to deliver that X amount of energy (about 2 million joules) they needed 150X to generate it.”

OH: Subaru warns Ascent owners to park outside due to fire risk. “This week, Subaru announced a recall for more than 271,000 Ascent SUVs due to a potential fire risk. Although owners won’t be formally notified until early February, Subaru says that model year 2019–2022 Ascent SUVs should not be parked in garages or car ports or under other structures. Subaru also says owners should not leave their Ascent running unattended, and if they notice or smell smoke coming from the dash or driver’s footwell, they should immediately turn the car off and not attempt to restart it.”

THE ARMY’S NEXT HELICOPTER ISN’T: Tilt-Rotor, Take Two. “The cruise speed is almost twice the 175 mph of the Black Hawk it’s replacing, and significantly faster than the competing Defiant X design (265 MPH). It also has higher troop carrying capacity than the Black Hawk (14 vs. 12). ‘Firstest with the mostest’ is still hugely important in combat. And though the V-280 carries considerably less than the V-22, it has a much longer combat range.”

I’ll take two.

LIVE AT 3PM EASTERN: ‘Five O’Clock Somewhere’ with Kruiser, VodkaPundit, Special Guest Kevin Downey Jr.

THEY ONLY SUPPORT IT IN CHINA BECAUSE THEY KNOW IT WON’T HAPPEN: Democrats Defend Free Speech for Chinese Citizens but Support Censoring Fellow Americans.

AND WITHOUT ANY LOCKDOWNS TO BLAME: US Industrial Production Annual Growth Slowest Since March 2021.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: It’s Time to Rehabilitate ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside.’

I’ve seen one glimmer of hope that “Baby It’s Cold Outside” might finally be getting the rehabilitation it deserves. MSN — nobody’s idea of a cultural conservative news outlet — published a piece by Kenneth Partridge last week on the “complicated, controversial history” of the song. I read the article, waiting for the eventual condemnation, but it never came.

There’s a brief mention of having “more substantive conversations about the very real issues underlying the discourse,” but that’s about it. There’s a discussion about John Legend’s sanitized version, but even Legend calls his reworked lyrics “a joke.”

For those of us who don’t need to make jokes — the ones who know how to be civilized grownups and take part in civilized grownup delights — I offer to you what is in my mind the definitive version of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”

Much more at the link.