RAND PAUL ISN’T PULLING PUNCHES: “How about you just admit you hate the President, love war and have been wrong for the last twenty years on every part of foreign policy?”

DON’T WORRY, THE EXPERTS ARE ON THE JOB: As doctors taper or end opioid prescriptions, many patients driven to despair, suicide. A friend on Facebook comments: “Notice the discord between academia and ordinary Americans. The thought-leaders driving the push against opioids are top academics at big name universities; meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of those who are hurt by this witch-hunt are blue-collar & middle-class Americans.”

BUSY NIGHT: Supreme Court Intervenes In Apparent Mystery Mueller Case. “Very little is known of the case, which reached the high court on Saturday, because the matter has proceeded through the federal courts under seal, meaning strict confidentiality prevails over every detail.”

OPEN THREAD: Merry Christmas-Eve-Eve.

BUCKLE YOUR SEATBELTS: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin calls bankers, will convene ‘Plunge Protection Team.’

Earlier: Be careful how you read the stock markets’ crazed gyrations.

Sometimes a little perspective is in order.

I WAS EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: A Dazzling Fireball Over California Thrilled Skywatchers This Week! See the Photos. “Fireballs aren’t rare; several thousand of them occur every day around the world, according to the AMS. But most of these dramatic meteors grace skies over the open ocean or thinly peopled tracts of land.” The Earth is emptier than we tend to realize.

AND DER HITS JÜST KEEP ON COMING: Disgraced German journalist now suspected of charity scam.

ROGER SIMON: Academy Favorite Vice Distorts History of Iraq War.

The real problem is that the history of the Iraq War is cherry-picked and rewritten in the most predictable manner.  It contains the usual shallow blather about WMDs. The canard of “blood for oil” is also brought up.  But the main idea is that Dick Cheney and his cabal–Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby flit by, although most viewers wouldn’t have a clue who they really were after seeing this movie–caused the war in Iraq.

This is, in a word, nonsense.

Just ask the Democrats themselves:

(Bumped.)

HOOD COUNTY, TX COURTHOUSE, FRIDAY NIGHT. Built in 1890-’91 in Granbury:

(Click to enlarge. Shot with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ200 in “Night Scenery” mode, on a tripod, with the night sky darkened afterwards in Photoshop, as the Lumix tends to make skies too bright and daytime-looking when shooting at “Magic Hour.”)

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Partial government shutdown to last at least through Thursday.

AT AMAZON, last-minute deals in Tools, DIY, and Yard.

Also, save on Kitchen Gadgets.

WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM HALLMARK:

There is one aspect of the holiday season that grows ever more fascinating, and that is the explosion over the past decade of cheap TV movies centering on the holiday. Since 2010, Hallmark has made – get this – 170 Christmas movies, which it puts into heavy rotation on the Hallmark channel beginning in mid-October. And now Netflix is following suit. It has released eight this season alone. Not since the days of the Western have there been so many films made with exactly the same plots and exactly the same setting with exactly the same effect.

What’s even more interesting is that they all suggest Christmas is a time of magical salvation from the forces of modern isolation and loneliness. The plots almost always involve a young woman from a big city who finds herself, for some reason, in a picturesque small town. She is either unmarried, or engaged to someone unexciting, or sadly widowed. In the small town she finds a manly man, usually someone who works with his hands, who was either her high school boyfriend and has remained a bachelor because he pines for her or is sadly widowered.

The town is wonderful. The man is wonderful. And yet the woman has a life back in the city. But a few poinsettias, a crackling fire with some stockings hanging nearby and somehow kept from catching fire, a spinet playing carols, and a bearded man who just may be the actual Santa Claus, and you know she’s not going back to her soulless lonely modern existence. She will stay in the small town, protected from the Christmas-lessness of the everyday world, and find peace.

The insatiable public appetite for this story is such that we have to assume it means something more than people liking a good Christmas movie, in part because they’re almost all very bad.

I have some thoughts, but do your own deconstruction in the comments.

REST IN PEACE, HERO: Last surviving fighter in Warsaw Ghetto uprising dies at 94.

AT AMAZON, save on Men’s Hats, Scarves, Wallets and more.

Plus, save on Bras for Women.

RAND PAUL AIRS THE GRIEVANCES:

TITLE IX NEWS: Cross-Examination as an Engine for Truth: One of the Year’s Better Decisions.

OKAY, I’VE ALWAYS BEEN A MATTIS FAN, BUT THIS HAPPENED ON HIS WATCH: Soldiers don ‘pregnancy simulators.’

The Army is ordering its hardened combat veterans to wear fake breasts and empathy bellies so they can better understand how pregnant soldiers feel during physical training.

This week, 14 noncommissioned officers at Camp Zama took turns wearing the “pregnancy simulators” as they stretched, twisted and exercised during a three-day class that teaches them to serve as fitness instructors for pregnant soldiers and new mothers.

Army enlisted leaders all over the world are being ordered to take the Pregnancy Postpartum Physical Training Exercise Leaders Course, or PPPT, according to U.S. Army Medical Activity Japan health promotion educator Jana York.

Like I said.

UPDATE: My mistake, this is from 2012. Sorry, don’t know how I missed the date, it was circulating today.

STRANGE THINGS HAPPEN WHEN YOU REPLACE RELIGION WITH IDEOLOGY: Michael Moore Replaces Christmas Angel With Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Ohio Is The First State To Accept Bitcoin For Tax Payments.

ROGER SIMON: Vice is Not Nice.

The real problem is that the history of the Iraq War is cherry-picked and rewritten in the most predictable manner.  It contains the usual shallow blather about WMDs. The canard of “blood for oil” is also brought up.  But the main idea is that Dick Cheney and his cabal–Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby flit by, although most viewers wouldn’t have a clue who they really were after seeing this movie–caused the war in Iraq.

This is, in a word, nonsense.

Just ask the Democrats themselves:

IT’S A LOT OF PEOPLE’S: The Remington 870: My Favorite Shotgun.

AT AMAZON, shop Last Minute Deals.

CHANGE: Long-Acting Contraceptives Gaining Acceptance Among U.S. Women.