Boys gingerbread house.

My favorite day of the year.

❄️🎅🏻🎄

Report: 90% Of Dads Running Errands Are Just Doing It To Get Some Peace And Quiet - The Babylon Bee

Of thirty countries surveyed, the report found that dads everywhere are just trying to chill out.

The Bourne Ultimatum

🍿

My kids love Mark Rober. Most days, they beg me to watch his modern engineering videos on YouTube. They especially love the ones about Mark trying to outsmart squirrels in his backyard. You might know him better as the inventor of the porch pirate glitter bomb.

This time of year is a busy one for logistics and delivery companies. While ordinary people are away at work, their online orders arrive at their homes, piling up on the porch. Aware of this reality, thieves drive through neighborhoods, stealing packages.

Property theft is often characterized as a victim-less crime, but every crime has a victim. Companies may cover the loss, but those losses are passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices. If they don’t, they’ll go out of business, destroying jobs. For those losses that are not covered by a company, the recipient has to absorb the blow. There’s no difference between stealing a package off a porch and taking cash out of someone’s wallet.

As we watched this year’s iteration of Glitter Bomb 4.0, I was very sad. Not only had the criminals become more organized, turning crime into a mere business transaction, but the full reality of what was happening hit me. The people caught on camera with the stolen boxes were in depressing homes. Stuff was everywhere. Many thieves tripped over items on the floor as they tried to get the bomb out of the house as quickly as possible. This is poverty in America today. A stifling overabundance of cheap goods.

It offended my sense of justice. I watched people who were willing to steal from people they didn’t know, in the middle of the Christmas season, receive nothing more than a prank in return. What they deserved was so much more.

It is always wrong to steal.

Putin Blames the West for Ukraine Tensions During News Conference - WSJ

defended what he called his country’s need to protect itself against NATO’s attempts to encroach on its doorstep.

NATO rotates 4,500 troops through the Baltics, and Russia needs to defend itself with 120,000 troops on the border with Ukraine?

Biden’s Holiday Troubles Multiply as Omicron Spreads, Agenda Stalls - WSJ

Mr. Biden, for his part, has expressed annoyance both in public and in private with the way the media covers him

In case you had doubts that the president is completely out of touch with reality, he wishes to assure you that he’s completely checked out.

“We’ve saved Christmas,” Ms. Psaki quipped on Wednesday.

And we appreciate Jen picking up extra shifts down at the docks after work to pull this one off for us. Had nothing to do with private companies coming up with their own solutions to put products to shelves.

And gas prices have started to go down.

Truly excellent. Went down $.07/gallon after rising $.82/gallon. Only has to fall $.75/gallon more to get back to even.

Winning!

The point is, things are bad, everyone can see it, so don’t pretend that it’s not. Admit to the mistakes, and come up with a plan that doesn’t cost $5T, that doesn’t trap generations of Americans in welfare hell, and that doesn’t raise taxes on people and the most productive parts of the economy.

Santa Clause 2

🍿

LEGO inventions celebrating the end of Advent.

Intel Apologizes After Asking Suppliers to Avoid China’s Xinjiang Region - WSJ

On Thursday, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip maker said its letter was written only to comply with U.S. law and didn’t represent Intel’s stance on Xinjiang.

Yeah, our compliance guys said we had to write it.

No worries though, we’re totally cool with the Chinese government operating a system of concentration camps and arbitrarily detaining over a million people.

Speaking of student loans, I just read the fine print.

Any unpaid interest outstanding on loans will be capitalized when the freeze ends.

Another government program that pretends to help you while in reality hurts you.

The Forever Student Loan Emergency - WSJ

Unlike its last pause through January, the Administration isn’t saying this extension is final—probably because it’s not.

In Stunning Blow To Democracy, Legislation Decided By Majority Of Elected Representatives - The Babylon Bee

In a catastrophic blow to democracy with disastrous consequences sure to ripple throughout the free world, a majority of democratically-elected representatives decided against legislation proposed by other democratically-elected representatives.

We had a good run!

Pelosi Disappointed We’ll Never Get To Find Out What Was In The Build Back Better Bill - The Babylon Bee

The Build Back Better Bill is thousands of pages long, and with everyone in Congress being very busy and very dumb, no one there was going to read it. But if it had been passed, it would have been handed over to bureaucrats to implement, and then we’d all see what the bill actually did.

Sad!

Confronting Inflation, Biden Administration Turns to Oil Industry It Once Shunned - WSJ

The Biden administration says that oil companies face no government constraints on drilling more in the short run, even as it presses the companies to shift long term to cleaner forms of energy in response to climate change.

Facts not in evidence.

As a candidate, Mr. Biden said the country must transition away from oil, and in his first months in office he moved for more stringent regulations on the industry, explored restrictions on oil production and revoked a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.

How Fauci and Collins Shut Down Covid Debate - WSJ Opinion

“This proposal from the three fringe epidemiologists . . . seems to be getting a lot of attention – and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford. There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises,” Dr. Collins wrote. “Is it underway?”

Our tax dollars at work!

Pretty gross to see leaders in the scientific community circle the wagons as opposed to being open to the scientific process.

Glad to see bright, bright lights being shined on the technocrats.

Biden’s Omicron Reality Check - WSJ Opinion

Wasn’t Democrats’ $1.9 trillion spending bill in March supposed to pay for more testing and treatments? Too much of the money went to progressive political groups, and the U.S. pandemic recovery has been worse off for it.

The difference between the headline and the substance.

Central Intelligence

🍿

One Last Chance to Build Back Better - WSJ Opinion

Unless Congress acts soon, millions of families with children will take a financial hit as Omicron surges and the economic outlook darkens. To avoid this, Congress should enact a one-year extension of the expanded CTC and use the breathing room to devise a long-term solution.

The expanded child tax credit was set for one year in the American Rescue Plan bill. Now that it’s expiring, here’s a proposal to extend it for one more year. And suppose that happens, what do you think we’ll be discussing in December 2022?

This is why BBB failed; because the expiration dates were a lie from the start.

Student-Loan Repayment Moratorium Could Get Another Extension From Biden - WSJ

A spokesperson for the Education Department said it would announce whether it plans to extend the pause later this week.

Seems like code for an extension is coming.

Borrowers will feel great about it, except that it’s an incredibly inflationary policy. $7B/month in misallocated capital.

But borrowers enjoy swimming around in the nice warm water, not noticing that they’re getting boiled.

If the pause is extended, don’t expect payments to resume until after the midterms.

First day of winter.

❄️

Biden Emerges as Progressive Government’s Mr. Bad Example - WSJ Opinion

The virus is the most visible refutation of progressive vanity this year, but by no means the only one. Those liberal geniuses who told us they could manage the economy like a well-honed machine have managed to create the highest inflation in nearly 40 years, eroding real wages and imperiling economic stability. The brilliant ideologues who run our cities have presided over a surge in violent crime that has reduced life for many residents to a real-life dystopia. Those omniscient technocrats who know how to devise and implement a humane and functioning immigration policy have left us with a border in name only and chaos and lawlessness to accompany it. The strategic geniuses who told us “America is back” produced a debacle in Afghanistan whose full ramifications for U.S. security we haven’t even begun to see.

The sad truth is that the consequences of falling for false hope are experienced by us all.

Christmas Tree, 2021