[guest post by Dana]

A post-Christmas nap is on the agenda, so this will be brief.

Let’s start with Christmas “wishes” from the President-elect:

Merry Christmas to all, including to the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal (where we lost 38,000 people in its building 110 years ago), always making certain that the United States puts in Billions of Dollars in “repair” money, but will have absolutely nothing to say about “anything.” Also, to Governor Justin Trudeau of Canada, whose Citizens’ Taxes are far too high, but if Canada was to become our 51st State, their Taxes would be cut by more than 60%, their businesses would immediately double in size, and they would be militarily protected like no other Country anywhere in the World. Likewise, to the people of Greenland, which is needed by the United States for National Security purposes and, who want the U.S. to be there, and we will!…

Merry Christmas to the Radical Left Lunatics, who are constantly trying to obstruct our Court System and our Elections, and are always going after the Great Citizens and Patriots of the United States but, in particular, their Political Opponent, ME. They know that their only chance of survival is getting pardons from a man who has absolutely no idea what he is doing. Also, to the 37 most violent criminals, who killed, raped, and plundered like virtually no one before them, but were just given, incredibly, a pardon by Sleepy Joe Biden. I refuse to wish a Merry Christmas to those lucky “souls” but, instead, will say, GO TO HELL! We had the Greatest Election in the History of our Country, a bright light is now shining over the U.S.A. and, in 26 days, we will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

President Zelensky announced that the Ukraine for Grain program has already begun sending 500 tons of wheat to Syrians.

Meanwhile, Holocaust survivor Ludmila Lipovsky, 83, was stabbed to death by a Palestinian outside her assisted living facility. Reports say that security guards at the scene acted quickly to subdue the suspect after they heard the terrorist shout “Allahu Akbar.”

Russian surface-to-air missiles suspected in the downing of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Kazakhstan, killing dozens, a U.S. official told ABC News.

And some good news:

Authorities are calling it a holiday miracle. A 78-year-old man with dementia who went missing two days before Christmas in Malibu was found within hours with the help of drones equipped with thermal imaging cameras, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

. . . the elderly man was reported missing at about 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 23. A caller told dispatchers that the man had dementia and had left his home to retrieve his mail at 4:30 p.m. but had not returned and could not be found after a search of the area. . . At 8:50 p.m. that same day, the drones located the man lying in a field of thick brush off the side of a roadway about a quarter-mile from his home.

Have a lovely weekend.

—Dana

[Update by JVW: I added the unique and original title “Weekend Open Thread” to this post after Dana confirmed that she didn’t mean for it to be untitled like the fourth Led Zeppelin album.]

[guest post by Dana]

I wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a Happy Christmas (and Christmas Eve)!

I’m finishing up Alexei Navalany’s memoir, Patriot. (Side-note: It’s refreshing to see patriot being used in the finest sense of the word.) Navalny’s description of one of the three ways in which he learned to endure his imprisonment and unknown future, is worth contemplating:

I decided from the beginning that if I was going to be released as a result of pressure or a political scenario it would happen within six months of my arrest, “while the iron was hot.” And, if it didn’t, I was up the creek for the foreseeable future. I needed to adjust my thinking so that when they did extend my sentence I would feel even more sure I was doing the right thing when I boarded that plane back to Moscow. . .

The second technique is so old you may roll your eyes heavenward when you hear it. It is religion. It is doable only for believers but does not demand zealous, fervent prayer by the prison barracks window three times a day (a very common phenomenon in prisons).

I have always thought, and said openly, that being a believer makes it easier to live your life and, to an even greater extent, engage in opposition politics. Faith makes life simpler.

The initial position for this exercise is the same as for the previous one. You lie in your bunk looking up at the one above and ask yourself whether you are a Christian in your heart of hearts. It is not essential for you to believe some old guys in the desert once lived to be eight hundred years old, or that the sea was literally parted in front of someone. But are you a disciple of the religion whose founder sacrificed himself for others, paying the price for their sins? Do you believe in the immortality of the soul and the rest of that cool stuff? If you can honestly answer yes, what is there left for you to worry about? Why, under your breath, would you mumble a hundred times something you read from a hefty tome you keep in your bedside table? Don’t worry about the morrow, because the morrow is perfectly capable of taking care of itself.

My job is to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and leave it to good old Jesus and the rest of his family to deal with everything else. They won’t let me down and will sort out all my headaches. As they say in prison here: they will take my punches for me.

Of course, this encouragement does not necessarily mean that the Distressing Circumstance will be removed. But it does mean that a way to endure is ours. And in that way lies hope.

—Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Let’s go!

First new item

And then it blew up:

“Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief, and set our country up for success in 2025,” Trump and Vance said in a statement. “The only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS combined with an increase in the debt ceiling. Anything else is a betrayal of our country.”

Also from the President-elect:

In a phone interview. . .Trump said getting rid of the debt ceiling entirely would be the “smartest thing it [Congress] could do. I would support that entirely.”

“The Democrats have said they want to get rid of it. If they want to get rid of it, I would lead the charge,” Trump added.

Trump suggested that the debt ceiling is a meaningless concept — and that no one knows for sure what would happen if it were to someday be breached — “a catastrophe, or meaningless” — and no one should want to find out.

“It doesn’t mean anything, except psychologically,” he said.

And this morning:

If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under “TRUMP.” This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!

Second news item

Oops:

In recent years, dozens of news organizations around the world have quoted or covered a young Chinese man named Wang Jingyu, who portrayed himself as a brave dissident standing up to Communist Party repression. But an NPR investigation this year uncovered evidence linking Wang to an elaborate con involving impersonation of government officials, credit card fraud and stretching from a Bangkok detention center to a village in the Netherlands.

NPR’s reporting has now led at least 10 news organizations to review their stories featuring Wang and retract or amend them. Those news organizations include the Associated Press, Al Jazeera, Germany’s Deutsche Welle, leading newspapers in the Netherlands and Norway as well as Radio Free Asia, which is funded by the U.S. government.

Third news item

You’ve got to be kidding:

A group of conservative lawmakers are floating the idea of replacing Speaker of the House Mike Johnson with billionaire Elon Musk.

…

Lawmakers in the Senate and House of Representatives have recently toyed with having billionaire Musk take on the role. This follows Johnson receiving pushback from Republicans, including President-elect Donald Trump and Musk, for his proposed government spending bill.

Fourth news item

Finnish citizens, unnerved by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are taking up weapons training:

The popularity of weapons training in the Nordic country has soared in recent months. Few places tell the story of the rise in Finnish affinity for self-defense more than shooting ranges that are riding a boom of interest.

. . .

The Vantaa Reservist Association, which operates a gun range. . . has more than doubled its membership over the last two years and now counts over 2,100 members.

Earlier this year, the coalition government announced plans to open more than 300 new ranges — a big jump from the 670 in operation today.

Authorities are encouraging citizens to take up interest in national defense in the country with a 1,340-kilometer (830-mile) border with Russia, where firing shots in ice hockey has been more of a pastime than shooting bullets.

Fifth news item

President Zelensky on Putin’s latest nonsense:

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin a “dumbass”. The scathing remarks from the Ukrainian leader came as he reacted to Putin’s latest remarks on Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“People are dying, and he thinks it’s “interesting”… Dumbass,” Zelenskyy wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, captioning the video of Putin talking about the war. The Russian leader was addressing his annual televised press conference, in which he claimed that Russia’s Oreshnik missile cannot be intercepted by air defences and urged the West and Ukraine to “conduct a technological experiment.”

“Let’s call it a high-tech duel of the 21st century. Let them determine some site to hit, let’s say in Kyiv, concentrate all their air defences there, and we will strike there with the Oreshnik and see what happens,” Putin said. “It’s interesting,” he remarked.

Sixth news item

Putin plans to block YouTube in Russia, Yulia Navalnaya pushes back:

Lately, I’ve heard the same sentiment repeated over and over: everything seems to be going Putin’s way. He’s confident, moving from victory to victory, achieving all his goals.

Yet, this week, Putin effectively announced plans to completely block YouTube in Russia. So confident in himself that he’s battling a video-hosting platform. Things are supposedly going so well for him that he’s afraid of the truth.

The slowdown of YouTube began back in the summer, but the regime chose to deliver the final blow during the New Year holidays—a traditional time for sneaky acts, hoping that ordinary people, too preoccupied with figuring out how to afford food for the holiday table, won’t notice.

Technologically, Putin’s regime has the means to block YouTube in Russia. But does that mean all hope is lost? That tens of millions of Russians will lose access to uncensored information and fall victim to Putin’s propaganda? Not necessarily.

This is where I want to address @Google, the corporation that owns YouTube. Tens of millions of your users in Russia are not just numbers in a report. They are real people, many of whom see your platform as their only window to the free world, their sole source of information and support. These users have placed their trust in you, and you can—and must—stand up for them.

We know it can be done. In 2018, Roskomnadzor tried to block Telegram. The messaging app fought back by embedding anti-censorship tools directly into its platform. After two years of futile attempts, Putin’s censors had to admit defeat. More recently, in 2024, the Signal messaging app was also targeted for blocking. But the attempt failed because Signal implemented bypass mechanisms, ensuring it remained accessible to Russian users.

Putin’s censorship can be defeated—if you choose to fight it. Without resistance, the only outcome is loss: loss of freedom and betrayal of the millions of users who depend on you.

We must help everyone we can to learn the truth. Because in the end, truth always prevails.

Have a great weekend.

—Dana

[guest post by JVW]

I’m hearkening back to a post of mine from eight years ago, in which I wrote:

Thanks Democrats. The party of the young and the multicultural is now led by a 76-year-old white woman and a 66-year-old white man. You can’t make this stuff up.

UPDATE:
The number two House Democrat? Seventy-seven-year-old white male.

The number two Senate Democrat? Seventy-two-year-old white male.

Then four years ago, upon the Democrats’ ascension back into power, I commented upon the same dynamic:

The House Democrat Caucus today nominated Nancy Pelosi (D – eSalon) [then 80 years old] to serve another term as Speaker of the House. She faced no opposition for the post and her top two lieutenants, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer [then 81] and Majority Whip James Clyburn [then 82], were also returned to their leadership positions.

Well, guys, the party of youth and vibes is at it again! Jim Geraghty has an interesting piece on internal competition within the Dems’ caucus:

Now, 2028 is a long way off, and on Tuesday, AOC lost an election — House Democrats had to decide whether she or northern Virginia representative Gerry Connolly should be the next ranking member of the Oversight and Accountability Committee. At 35, AOC is less than half the age of 74-year-old Connolly, but House Democrats preferred him over her, 131 to 84. (That’s a 60.9 percent to 39.1 percent split.) Connolly is undergoing chemotherapy and immunotherapy for esophagus cancer.

So there you have it: our Adorably Ornery Clueless niece remains the future — not the present — of the Democrat Party. And Mr. Geraghty then quotes a similar observation made at The Hill by Mike Lillis:

On Wednesday, the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee confirmed the ranking member positions for the senior lawmakers of four top committees — Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, Financial Services, and Appropriations.

That puts Reps. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), 75; Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), 73; Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), 86; and Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), 81, in some of the most prominent seats to confront the incoming Trump administration next year.

None of them faced competition from younger members.

And the trend will continue on Monday, when the Steering and Policy panel is scheduled to fill out its committee roster, which will keep a number of veteran lawmakers in the ranking member spots they currently hold.

That list includes Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), 76, at the top of the Homeland Security Committee; Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.), 71, as ranking member of the Small Business Committee; Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), 76, on the Science, Space and Technology Committee; and Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), 71, on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

It comes as no surprise that Democrats, a party comprised largely of career politicians who worm their way up through the lowest level of the political sewers until they finally find a lifetime sinecure in a Congressional seat where they are guaranteed 60% of the vote even if they are incarcerated or dead, would have an awful lot of elderly legislators using the halls of Congress as Heaven’s waiting room. But given the fact that it was only voters 44 and younger who provided majority support to Kamala Harris (though by lower margins than they did for Joe Biden four years ago), you would think the Democrats might give them a bit more authority. Then again, when choosing among AOC, Ilhan Omar, Greg Casar, Eric Swalwell, and the like, perhaps the Democrats are indeed taking the wiser path.

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

Although it appears that the sentencing for Dominique Pelicot follows French guidelines, I agree with Gisèle Pelicot‘a kids: that the guilty men involved weren’t given nearly enough jail time for their heinous crimes:

A judge in France on Thursday found the former husband of Gisèle Pelicot, who admitted to drugging and raping her repeatedly over the course of almost a decade and inviting dozens of other men to assault her as well, guilty of aggravated rape. Forty-nine men whom Dominique Pelicot brought into his home to assault his wife were also convicted Thursday as part of the same landmark trial.

The man convicted of orchestrating the sustained assaults over the years was given the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, while his co-accused were handed sentences ranging from three to 15 years.

As the NYT previously reported:

Gisèle had no idea about the rapes until police told her after discovering thousands of photos and videos taken by her then-husband, who had documented the abuse after recruiting strangers on the internet.

About the sentencing of the defendants other than Pelicot, there is this:

Of the 50 accused of rape, just one was acquitted but was instead convicted of aggravated sexual assault. Another man was also found guilty of the sexual assault charge he was tried for — producing 51 guilty verdicts in all.

. . . the court was more lenient, with many defendants getting less than a decade in prison. The five judges voted by secret ballot, by majority for the convictions and sentences.

For the defendants other than Dominique Pelicot, sentences ranged from three to 15 years imprisonment, with some of the time suspended for some of them. Arata told six defendants they were now free, accounting for time already spent in pretrial detention.

Gisèle Pelicot proved herself a courageous individual, who, although the victim of a cruel nightmare, went public with her name and the crimes against her:

The trial began on Sept. 2 and, almost every day, Pelicot came face to face with her former husband, Dominique, or one of the 50 other men charged with assaulting her. She insisted that videos submitted as evidence, made by her ex-husband and showing men assaulting her while she appeared unconscious, be shown in the court.

After thanking her supporters for giving her strength during the arduous trial, she made a larger point:

“I wanted to open the doors of this trial last September so that society could see what was happening. I’ll never regret this decision. I have confidence in our capacity, collectively, to find a better future, in which men and women alike can live harmlessly together with mutual respect,” she said.

One can only hope that other rape victims take courage from Pelicot. How refreshing it would be to see rapists humiliated and shamed rather than victims. As Pelicot said about the guilty men: “It’s not for us to feel shame — it’s for them.”

May she find some peace in her life after this dark, dark season.

—Dana

[guest post by JVW]

As he shuffles his way out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — needing to be led, no doubt, by people who still can recall where the exit doors are — Joe Biden has delivered a valediction of sorts on his horrible four year reign. Not in a mainstream progressive publication such as The Atlantic, let alone a more center-left sometimes heterodox publication like Harper’s; no, the President (more accurately the people who have been acting on his behalf for at least the last nine or so months, if not longer) chose the unambiguously left-wing toilet read The American Prospect to unload his special pleadings upon an audience who he hopes is inclined to accept it. Noah Rothman calls out Team Biden on their mendacity, and thus spares us the torture of having to read the piece attributed to the President:

Biden admonished readers who thoughtlessly expected to see their economic conditions improve under this administration. It will “take years to see the full effects” of his policies, the essay promises. You see, all the good stuff is backloaded. But, as the author repeatedly stressed, building “the economy from the middle out and bottom up,” a new economy that dispenses with “a failed approach called trickle-down economics,” is a complex undertaking. So complex, in fact, that the president himself doesn’t seem to understand it.

Biden tickled progressive erogenous zones by repeating the words “invest” and “investment” like a mantra. Indeed, the op-ed boasted, the legislation passed in Biden’s first two years marks “the most significant investment in the United States since the New Deal.” It was stimulus the already overheated American economy couldn’t painlessly absorb. Team Biden even has the gall to admit that the “Inflation Reduction Act is the largest single investment in clean energy in the history of the world.” For those of us who know what inflation is, that sentence contains a contradiction. It’s telling that Biden thought it was one he didn’t have to address given his intended audience.

And, given the man and the moment, the essay naturally made hash out of the complexities of globalization:

[. . .] He mourned a status quo he inherited in which the fruits of American innovation are shared all the world over: “Scientific discoveries and inventions developed in America were commercialized in countries abroad, bolstering their manufacturing instead of ours.” By “commercialized,” we must assume he means American-designed goods being manufactured abroad, which is a convoluted way of describing comparative advantage. [. . .]

In promoting the CHIPS act, which seeks to create a domestic semiconductor industry from whole cloth, Biden touted the output from three Taiwanese-owned TSMC chip plants in Arizona: “America will be the only economy in the world to have all five of the most advanced semiconductor manufacturers in the world operating on its shores.” This is the same phenomenon. The only difference is that Biden seems to like it when Americans are manufacturing products innovated abroad — an economic step backward that is obvious to all who haven’t romanticized America’s industrial past.

Noah Rothman goes on to refer to the point which I made back in September about the Administration’s increase in IRS spending being a colossal failure; he reflects upon the irony of blue-collar Joe presiding over a Presidential term in which private-sector unions actually lost membership; and he ridicules the Democrats’ predilection for moving a double-sawbuck from your left front pocket to your right front pocket and pretending that you are somehow twenty dollars wealthier. He laments that Joe Biden ran as the normal Democrat among the 2020 contenders, yet upon his inauguration immediately allowed himself to be flattered by left-wing historians who told him he could be FDR or LBJ (instead, he unwittingly ended up as FJB) and young activists who convinced him to fight all of their self-righteous culture wars. And it leads Mr. Rothman to draw a very sad conclusion:

It’s the same mistake, over and over again. Perhaps Team Biden kept making it because they bought into the Left’s hype, or maybe they were so lethargic and unimaginative that they couldn’t conceive of an alternative approach. In either case, the president should not expect anyone, much less the progressive Left, to salvage his legacy.

As Joe Biden’s disastrous administration ends in scandal, incompetence, and pathos, we should all take a moment to acknowledge the myriad lessons to be learned by his malodorous leadership. Whether it be the folly of electing a man who clearly is in cognitive decline, the problems stemming from pandering to the loudest and most online members of your coalition rather than the people who may have held their nose and voted for you, or the perils of building your administration from hacks, time-servers, cronies, and yes-men rather than trying to find a broad swath of experience and ability, the Biden Administration will forever be tainted with the fetid stench of failure. We can only hope and pray that the next guys up are at least to some degree an improvement. We’ll find out soon enough.

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

Surprising no one, the Republican House Committee recommended that Liz Cheney be criminally investigated for her role on the Jan. 6 committee:

Committee on House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight lead by Rep. Barry Loudermilk released a second report concerning the Jan. 6 bipartisan group charged with investigating the events that took place at the Capitol in 2021.

1. Former Representative Liz Cheney colluded with “star witness” Cassidy Hutchinson without Hutchinson’s attorney’s knowledge.

2. Former Representative Liz Cheney should be investigated for potential criminal witness tampering based on the new information about her communication.

. . .

4. Former Representative Liz Cheney used the January 6 Select Committee as a tool to attack President Trump, at the cost of investigative integrity and Capitol security.

(All of this comes after Trump has said that repeatedly that he will begin pardoning convicted Jan. 6 participants on Day 1 of his tenure.)

Cheney blasted Loudermouth in response to his nonsense:

“January 6th showed Donald Trump for who is really is – a cruel and vindictive man who allowed violent attacks to continue against our Capitol and law enforcement officers while he watched television and refused for hours to instruct his supporters to stand down and leave. The January 6th Committee’s hearings and report featured scores of republican witnesses, including many of the most senior officials from Trump’s own White House, campaign and Administration. All of this testimony was painstakingly set out in thousands of pages of transcripts, made public along with a highly detailed and meticulously sourced 800 page report. The Department of Justice conducted its
own independent investigation and reached the same fundamental conclusions. “Now, Chairman Loudermilk’s ‘Interim Report’ intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee’s tremendous weight of evidence, and instead fabricates lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did. Their allegations do not reflect a review of the actual evidence, and are a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth.

No reputable lawyer, legislator or judge would take this seriously.”

Trump has made no bones about going after Liz Cheney for her role on the Jan. 6 committee. As recently as Sunday, Trump told NBC’s Meet the Press host that the leaders of the Jan. 6 committee “lied” and “should go to jail.” Trump had already amplified posts in July 2024 that said that Cheney should have to go before a ”televised military tribunal.” Moreover, just last month, Trump said that Cheney should have to “face gunfire” directed at her.

Anyway, I’m always amused to see how much a smart and fearless woman like Cheney gets under Trump’s skin.

Loudermilk’s full report can be read here.

—Dana

[guest post by JVW]

The beleaguered ruling coalition of Liberals and the New Democratic Party in Canada was dealt a blow today by the resignation of Finance Minister Cynthia Freeland. The minister alleges that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had asked her to step aside from the post on Friday in return for an appointment to lead a different ministry, but over the weekend she decided that she would instead leave the coalition government while retaining her seat in Parliament.

Ms. Freeland blasted the Prime Minister in her resignation letter, accusing him of using “costly political gimmicks” to try to paper-over a $60 billion (CAD) budget deficit from this past year, nearly 50% larger than what the government had projected. She also accused the Prime Minister of not taking seriously and preparing for the upcoming Trump Administration’s threatened trade war with Canada, though Mr. Trudeau did scurry down to Mar-a-Lago in the aftermath of the election in an attempt to mend fences.

Dominic LeBlanc, current Public Safety Minister and a long-time crony of Mr. Trudeau’s from their schoolboy days together, has been temporarily appointed to head the Finance Ministry, and will for the time being lead both ministries, at least until the government can get a thorny budget passed through Parliament. This is not sitting well at all with the rest of the coalition, with the NDP’s leader Jagmeet Singh now calling for the Prime Minister to step down. A Liberal back-bencher, Wayne Long, who had led an earlier attempt by rogue members of his party to dump Mr. Trudeau, estimates that the 153 Liberal MPs are divided roughly into thirds, with one-third desiring to dump the PM, one-third staunchly supporting him, and the remainder keeping their powder dry for the time being.

The coalition has been losing support in public polling, and the Conservative Party leadership headed by Pierre Poilievre has been agitating for Prime Minister Trudeau to call for an early election to give Canadians a chance to make their voices heard on a national Carbon Tax which the Conservatives (and even some members of the ruling coalition) have complained is driving up prices to such a degree as to make daily items almost unaffordable for the average Canadian. Every Canadian province is now poorer (by measure of median per capita incomes) than all fifty states of our own union, according to the Fraser Institute. Since Mr. Trudeau became PM nine years ago and brought in a progressive high-tax/high-spending agenda, Canada’s economic growth has significantly lagged our own.

The next federal election in Canada must come no later than October 20, 2025, but increasingly it appears that it will take place much sooner, especially if the Trudeau Government is sunk by a no confidence vote early in the new year. The past fifteen months has been a doozy for the core of the Anglosphere with significant political change in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the United States. In the coming year we could see the same in Canada and Australia, both of whom will be holding elections in the first nine months. Whether this is a sign of civic health or dysfunction, I will leave to the reader to determine.

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

Let’s go!

First news item

That was then, this is now:

[Pete] Hegseth has called policies allowing gays and transgender troops to serve in the military part of a “Marxist agenda.” But on Thursday, when he met with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), reporters asked him whether he thought gays should serve in the military, and he replied, “Yes.”

And once an unapologetic critic of women serving in combat roles, Hegseth called women “some of our greatest warriors” during a recent Fox News appearance.

The apparent pivot comes as Hegseth faces allegations of sexual assault, excessive drinking and financial mismanagement — all of which have led to more probing questions about his suitability for the role. And it follows meetings with potential confirmation swing vote Republican senators such as Ernst, Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

Second news item

Just say no!:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims he won’t restrict access to vaccines if confirmed to lead U.S. health policy, but his right-hand man has other ideas.

Kennedy’s personal attorney Aaron Siri, who has been helping Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services interview candidates for top health jobs, has sued the Food and Drug Administration to withdraw its approval for the polio vaccine, The New York Times reported.

Siri and Kennedy have also been asking candidates their views on vaccinations, suggesting that if confirmed, Kennedy—who for years has peddled debunked conspiracy theories about vaccines causing autism—would stack the HHS and the agencies it oversees with fellow anti-vaxxers, the Times reported.

P.S. The report notes that Kennedy wants Siri to join him as the HHS’s general counsel.

Third news item

The hell she put them through:

A woman who accused three former Duke University men’s lacrosse players of rape nearly two decades ago admitted she lied about the allegations and asked them for forgiveness.

Crystal Mangum, the former exotic dancer, confessed to lying about the encounter in 2006 during her appearance on the “Let’s Talk with Kat” podcast, hosted by Katerena DePasquale.

“I testified falsely against them by saying that they raped me when they didn’t, and that was wrong,” Magnum said during the episode, released Wednesday. “And I betrayed the trust of a lot of other people who believed in me.”

“I made up a story that wasn’t true because I wanted validation from people and not from God and that was wrong when God already loved me for who I was regardless,” she added.

Fourth news item

Ah, okay:

TIME magazine owner Marc Benioff congratulated Donald Trump after the publication named the president-elect its Person of the Year on Wednesday. Benioff is the founder of Salesforce and acquired TIME in 2018.

“In some years this is a hard, hard choice,” editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs told MSNBC on Thursday. “This year, not a hard choice… but this was an obvious decision for those of us at TIME.”

Hours later, Benioff tweeted at Trump and said there is “promise” in the country and expressed a willingness to be “working together.”

“Congratulations to President @realDonaldTrump on being named TIME Person of the Year 2024. This marks a time of great promise for our nation. We look forward to working together to advance American success and prosperity for everyone. May G-d bless the United States of America,” he wrote.

The report notes:

On Thursday, it was reported that Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong nixed an editorial criticizing the president-elect’s cabinet nominations. The intervention came weeks after Soon-Shiong put the kibosh on an editorial endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos did the same at his Washington Post.

Fifth news item

The fall of Syria:

In one of the biggest turning points for the Middle East in generations, the fall of Assad’s government wiped out a bastion from which Iran and Russia exercised influence across the Arab world. Moscow gave asylum to Assad and his family, Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s ambassador to international organizations in Vienna, said on his Telegram channel.

His sudden overthrow, at the hands of a revolt partly backed by Turkey and with roots in jihadist Sunni Islam, limits Iran’s ability to spread weapons to its allies and could cost Russia its Mediterranean naval base. It could allow millions of refugees scattered for more than a decade in camps across Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan to finally return home.

For Syrians, it brought a sudden unexpected end to a war in deep freeze for years, with hundreds of thousands dead, cities pounded to dust and an economy hollowed by global sanctions.

. . .

U.S. President Joe Biden, in a televised address, cheered Assad’s fall but acknowledged that it was also a moment of risk and uncertainty.

“As we all turn to the question of what comes next, the United States will work with our partners and the stakeholders in Syria to help them seize an opportunity to manage the risk,” Biden said.

With Islamists now in charge in Syria, well. . .

I was reading about that time Vogue magazine ran a fawning profile of Asma Al Assad, and defended the decision to highlight the wife of the murderous, vile animal who is Bashar Al Assad, while referring to her as “the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies.”

And then I read the brilliant, yet crushing Clive James’ poem about Asma al Assad, titled Asma Unpacks Her Pretty Clothes:

Wherever her main residence is now,
Asma unpacks her pretty clothes.
It takes forever: so much silk and cashmere
To be unpeeled from clinging leaves of tissue
By her ladies. With her perfect hands, she helps.

Out there in Syria, the torturers
Arrive by bus at every change of shift
While victims dangle from their cracking wrists.
Beaten with iron bars, young people pray
To die soon. This is the middle ages
Brought back to living death. Her husband’s doing,
The screams will never reach her where she is.

Asma’s uncovered hair had promised progress
For all her nation’s women. They believed her.
We who looked on believed the promise too,
But now, as she unpacks her pretty clothes,
The dream at home dissolves in agony.

Bashar, her husband, does as he sees fit
To cripple every enemy with pain.
We sort of knew, but he had seemed so modern
With Asma alongside him. His big talk
About destroying Israel: standard stuff.
A culture-changing wife offset all that.

She did, she did. I doted as Vogue did
On her sheer style. Dear God, it fooled me too,
So now my blood is curdled by the shrieks
Of people mad with grief. My own wrists hurt

As Asma, with her lustrous fingertips —
She must have thought such things could never happen —
Unpacks her pretty clothes.

Sixth news item

Regarding Ukraine, the President-elect has thoughts about the war started by Putin:

I think the most dangerous thing right now is what’s happening, where Zelensky has decided, with the approval of, I assume, the President, to start shooting missiles into Russia. I think that’s a major escalation. I think it’s a foolish decision. But I would imagine people are waiting until I get in before anything happens. I would imagine. I think that would be very smart to do that.

So Zelensky’s decision to go after the enemy that unlawfully invaded his country in an attempt to subsume Ukraine, is the “most dangerous” happening right now??

SMDH.

Seventh news item

Crazy happenings in New Jersey skies:

It has been nearly a month since drones were first reported hovering over multiple New Jersey counties, and still there are no clear answers on who may be controlling the aircraft.

Most recently, on Thursday, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security said in a joint statement that there is no evidence the drones pose a threat to national security or public safety.

The FBI and DHS said that both agencies were working with authorities in New Jersey and that they have reviewed images of the drones. They appear to be manned aircrafts flying legally in the area, the agencies said. There have been no reported drone sightings in restricted air spaces, they said. 

“To be clear, they have uncovered no such malicious activity or intent at this stage,” the joint statement read. “While there is no known malicious activity occurring in New Jersey, the reported sightings there do, however, highlight the insufficiency of current authorities.”

Have a great weekend.

—Dana

[guest post by Dana]

. . .even the once unimaginable:

President-elect Donald Trump has invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend his inauguration next month, multiple sources told CBS News, and inauguration officials are making plans for additional foreign dignitaries to attend the swearing-in ceremony.

Trump invited Xi in early November, shortly after the election, sources said, but it was not clear whether he has accepted the invitation.

One can hardly imagine an American presidential inauguration being attended by one of the world’s vile dictators, and at the invitation of the President-elect. But given Trump’s comments a few short months ago, none of this should be surprising:

“They hate when I say, you know, when the press — when I called President Xi, [the press] said, ‘Well, he called President Xi brilliant.’ Well, he’s a brilliant guy. He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. I mean, he’s a brilliant guy, whether you like it or not. And they go crazy.

Just so we’re clear, this is who Trump’s affection is directed toward:

Xi presides over a dictatorship that makes systematic use of slave labor and torture, that mercilessly persecutes religious minorities, that engages in the ghastly practice of harvesting vital organs from Falun Gong practitioners and other dissenters, and that imprisons between 1 million and 3 million Uighur Muslims in concentration camps. Its absolute control is reinforced by an Orwellian system of high-tech surveillance designed to suppress any whisper of thoughtcrime or opposition. It is a literally genocidal regime that constantly threatens to plunge East Asia into war in order to conquer its democratic island neighbor, Taiwan.

(In addition to Xi, Trump is apparently also considering inviting other world leaders, like Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.)

—-Dana