December 27, 2025

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES:

Posted at 9:36 am by Stephen Green

HEH:

Posted at 9:03 am by Stephen Green

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOMS: 2025 Men of the Year: Big, Beautiful Bunker Busters. “Seeing evil turn to ash in a smoldering plume of justice gives every self-respecting American a thrill up his leg. It’s like what Chris Matthews felt watching Barack Hussein Obama, but for non-freaks.”

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

CHANGE:

Here’s the full graph in Travis’ tweet:

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

DAVE BARRY’S YEAR IN REVIEW:

In case you somehow missed this story: In late November, this raccoon got into a state liquor store in Ashland, Va., by falling though the ceiling. Once inside, the raccoon ransacked the store, leaving a trail of broken bottles…

…and apparently consuming a large quantity of booze before passing out in the bathroom next to the toilet. That’s where the raccoon was found by a store employee, who called an animal-control officer, who took it to an animal shelter. When the raccoon finally sobered up, it was hired as director of security by the Louvre Museum.

No, seriously, it was released into the wild. But the photo went majorly viral, and the raccoon became a huge celebrity. We, the American people, LOVE this raccoon. And I think I know why: After the year we’ve been through, we can relate to it. We have had way too much of 2025; it has left us, as a nation, lying face-down on the floor of despair, between the wastebasket of stupidity and the commode of broken dreams.

How did we get here? Perhaps it will help (although I doubt it) if we look back on the events of this insane year, starting with…

Needless to say, read the whole thing.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

DECLINE AND FALL: Germany’s empty churches repurposed as congregations shrink. “The number of church members in Germany is falling rapidly. In 2024 alone, the two major churches lost over a million Christians due to people leaving the church or dying. Currently, more than 45% of Germans still belong to either to the Protestant Church in Germanyor the Catholic Church. Thirty years ago, that figure stood at almost 69%. This is why churches are now being deconsecrated or desacralized. Since 2000, hundreds of Catholic and Protestant churches were decommissioned. In response to a DW inquiry, the German Bishops’ Conference informed of the closing and decommissioning of 611 Catholic churches between 2000 and 2024. The Protestant Church estimates that some 300 to 350 churches were permanently shut in the same period; more precise figures are not available.”

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

December 26, 2025

GREAT MOMENTS IN MULTICULTURALISM: MN Lt. Governor Flanagan puts on hijab, declares Somalis built Minnesota.

MORE:

Past performance is no guarantee of future results:

 

Posted at 9:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

OPEN THREAD: How was your week?

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

VDH: Pseudo-Recessions.

The Cold War ended in a U.S. victory.

Germany was reunified in October 1990.

In December 1989, Bush successfully removed the narco-dictator Manuel Noriega of Panama, who threatened the viability of the Panama Canal.

The Gulf War was won brilliantly by February 1991.

The nuclear START treaty was signed with the Soviet Union in July 1991, just before the USSR itself collapsed in December.

By any normal reckoning, Bush should have been a shoo-in: spectacular foreign policy successes and a rebounding economy after a brief recession that had ended 15 months before the November 1992 election.

Instead, the pseudo-recession of 1992 dominated the campaign. Indeed, Bush’s many achievements overseas were cleverly distorted by Clinton as proof that the globe-trotting president was more interested in the world abroad than “putting people first” at home.

As in Bush’s prior 1988 campaign, Lee Atwater would have torn the Clinton campaign apart as inexperienced and disingenuous. Atwater would have ordered Bush to talk nonstop about virtually no inflation, robust four percent economic growth, and declining unemployment.

Instead, the lackluster Bush campaign team never caught on and was crushed by Clinton, with help from the economic populist Ross Perot.

The pseudo-recession of 1992 should remind the Trump people not to repeat the same mistake in the 2026 midterms.

In 1988, Atwater was able to sell Bush as Reagan’s third term, and voters, delighted by the turnaround from the Jimmy Carter’s malaise-filled late 1970s to Reagan’s go-go 1980s economy and his sunny optimism made Bush a shoe-in. But with Atwater having passed away from brain cancer in 1991, the following year, Bush looked utterly exhausted on the campaign trail, in sharp contrast to Clinton’s rockstar energy and charisma. While Rush Limbaugh was on the scene by 1992, there was no Fox News, no original era Drudge Report, no Blogosphere, and the DNC-MSM could still shape reality uncontested for millions of voters: The Real History of the Liberal Media and George H. W. Bush.

One of my favorites was the DNC-MSM, in lockstep with their candidate Bill Clinton, pummeling Bush in the run-up to the 1992 election over a minor recession that Clinton described as “the worst economy in 50 years,” only to turn around and reveal that, as the Charlotte Business Journal wrote in 2010, “The U.S. economy actually grew 4.2% in the fourth-quarter that year and went on to enjoy a terrific decade-long run of prosperity. And we learned in hindsight that recession had actually already ended when the [September 1992 Time magazine] article was printed.” Time described it in December of that year as “Bush’s Economic Present for Clinton.”

Related: Ross Perot was the populist who betrayed populism.

UPDATE:

More:

 

Posted at 9:23 pm by Ed Driscoll

TIME HAS COME TODAY: NYC phone ban reveals some students can’t read clocks.

For years, parents and teachers have blamed technology for a range of lapsed skills — from legible handwriting to sustained attention to reading whole books — even as their proficiency with technology far outstrips their elders. Still, while educators have widely praised New York’s statewide smartphone ban that went into effect this fall, multiple teachers told Gothamist it has also laid bare an unexpected gap: How to tell time.

“The constant refrain is ‘Miss, what time is it?’ said Madi Mornhinweg, who teaches high school English in Manhattan. “It’s a source of frustration because everyone wants to know how many minutes are left in class. … It finally got to the point where we I started saying ‘Where’s the big hand and where’s the little hand?’”

According to the education department, students learn how to read clocks in first and second grade. “At NYCPS, we recognize how essential it is for our students to tell the time on both analog and digital clocks,” education department spokesperson Isla Gething said. “As our young people are growing up in an increasingly digital world, no traditional time-reading skills should be left behind.” Officials said kids are taught to master terms including “o’clock,” “half-past” and “quarter-to” in early elementary years.

Tom Wolfe’s “The Great Relearning” can’t happen soon enough, as its topics are expanding exponentially.

Classical reference in headline:

Posted at 8:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

MAMDANI WANTS TO SEE NEW YORKERS DEI IN A FIRE:

What could go wrong?

Because it worked so well on the west coast:

Posted at 8:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

SOMALI PIRATES UPDATE:

Posted at 8:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

WHEN YOU LOSE THE ABILITY TO DEBATE: As William F. Buckley famously said, “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” Because the modern left have siloed themselves off into leftist-only fiefdoms such as CNN*, M-SNOW (classical reference), and the New York Times, they’ve increasingly lost the ability to debate the other side. The result is this train wreck: One ‘Journalist’ Shows Just How Insane the Left Is Willing to Be in the Name of ‘Morality.’

I don’t know if you’ve seen this clip going around the internet, but it’s a jaw-dropper. It features MSNBC “journalist” Paola Ramos debating Malcolm and Simone Collins, a Trump-supporting couple, about genetics.

Ramos asserts that there is no scientific evidence that there are genetic differences between races, to which the Collinses assure her there is. This goes back and forth for a while, with Malcolm, in particular, trying not to lose his mind as he pushes back against Ramos’ assertion that black women are no different from any other race on a genetic level. Eventually, Ramos says these claims aren’t hers, but the NIH’s.

This is demonstrably false, as a simple search of the NIH will confirm that the Collinses were correct. While the genetic differences between races tend to be small, these small differences make for a wide amount of variability between people, including melanin levels, facial structures, and even disease susceptibility and reactions to medications.

Ramos is dead wrong, and I have the distinct feeling that “journalists” like Ramos know they’re wrong.

But the point for Ramos isn’t scientific or factual accuracy. What she was doing was trying to enforce what she sees as a moral point, not anything based in reality. This is, in the eyes of ideologically-driven hacks like Ramos, the hill that needs dying on, and it’s one she shares with her fellow ideologues.

This clip is apparently from 2022, but again, leftists who can’t debate what Jacob Savage recently dubbed “The Lost Generation” unsurprisingly falls back on repeated ad hominem attacks:

These young vibrantly-dressed fellas hide behind a shower curtain rather than engage in debate:

But of course, life isn’t easy when you’re trapped in the hurt locker:

* I know, I know, and he’s doing yeoman work as the one Republican there pushing back against all of the lefty craziness: HA! Scott Jennings Breaks Out Puppets and Crayons to Explain What ILLEGAL Means to Abby Phillip (WATCH).

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

HMMMM: We Should Cheer for Bari Weiss to Fail in Her Effort to Rehabilitate CBS’ Reputation.

There is a civil war being fought at CBS News. The battle is being played out between Bari Weiss, its new left-of-center editor-in-chief, and the left-of-Trotsky journalists she inherited at the laughingstock news operation.

There are many conservatives cheering Ms. Weiss on in her battle against her hyper-partisan corps of journalists. I’m not one of them. In fact, I’m cheering for the insurgent “journalists” to prevail, and to maintain CBS News’ well-earned reputation for being unethical, dishonest, and openly hostile to impartial political coverage.

In fact, my worst fear is that Ms. Weiss might succeed in restoring CBS News to a level of respectability such that it might able to reassert its liberal influence on politics as it once did.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 6:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

FROM BAUHAUS TO BARRY’S HOUSE: The Obama Library Is Ugly for a Reason.

Like everything having to do with Obama, it started at one price — $500 million — but then the cost of it ballooned. Now it’s at $830 million. Sounds like the Affordable Care Act that was never affordable.

As I noted, it has to be one of the ugliest buildings I’ve ever seen. It reminds me of the dismal gray buildings of the Soviet Union or some dystopian prison. Some compared it to the “Death Star” of Star Wars.

But now the Obama team is explaining why it looks the way it does.

The odd design of former President Barack Obama’s new presidential center is supposed to evoke unity and not Darth Vader, according to an Obama Foundation official, who explained the bizarre look of the austere building.

The $830 million monolith — slated to open in Chicago next year — has drawn comparisons to the “Death Star” on social media, and some locals have described it as a “concrete tomb” and a “monstrosity.”

“The shape of the building was actually meant to mimic four hands coming together to show the importance of our collective action,” Obama Foundation Deputy Director Kim Patterson told CBS Chicago.

So I have a question. Is there anything in that building that comes close to looking like four hands? It just looks like a gray blob.

You mean it’s supposed to convey some esoteric greater meaning that no one is getting? Well, that’s certainly emblematic of Barack Obama.

Brutalism as a style made some sense in postwar France, where steel was scarce, but concrete wasn’t. But of course, for Le Corbusier, the real fun was plopping down a box that would look hideous unless you learned the code behind it. (Of course, for all but Corbu’s true believers, that style still looks hideous even when you do know the mindset behind it. Perhaps even more so.)

In his 2002 review of C.P. Snow’s 1959 book, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, Orrin Judd of the Brothers Judd blog wrote:

As Snow notes, as late as say the 1850s, any reasonably well-educated, well-read, inquisitive man could speak knowledgeably about both science and the arts.  Man knew little enough that it was still possible for one to know nearly everything that was known and to have been exposed to all the religion, art, history–culture in general–that mattered.  But then with the pure science revolution of which Snow spoke–in biology and chemistry, but most of all in physics–suddenly a great deal of specialized training and education was necessary before one could be knowledgeable in each field.  Like priests of some ancient cult, scientists were separated out from the mass of men, elevated above them by their access to secret knowledge.  Even more annoying was the fact that even though they had moved beyond what the rest of us could readily understand, they could still listen to Bach or read Shakespeare and discuss it intelligently.  The reaction of their peers in the arts, or those who had been their peers, was to make their own fields of expertise as obscure as possible.  If Picasso couldn’t understand particle physics, he sure as hell wasn’t going to paint anything comprehensible, and if Joyce couldn’t pick up a scientific journal and read it, then no one was going to be able to read his books either.  And so grew the two cultures, the one real, the other manufactured, but both with elaborate and often counterintuitive theories, requiring years of study.

And thus we we end up with the formulation of Tom Wolfe’s 1975 book, The Painted Word, where modern art exists almost solely to justify the theory behind it, and as Wolfe wrote, “In short: frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can’t see a painting.”

Or a building. I’m sure the Obama Library looks wonderful to its architects, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, and presumably to Barry and Michelle, but to the rest of us, it still looks like a flak tower on the Death Star.

Posted at 6:19 pm by Ed Driscoll