Podcast: Happy New Year! We discuss the New Orleans Islamic terrorist attack, the stupidity of the current security apparatus, and more!

Exciting war story from Delta Force operator Chris Van Sant, who tells a story about improvising a plan to stop an already-moving boat carrying Islamic foreign terrorists to Iraq. The whole "plan" is made up on the fly, and is mostly carried out by just three special forces operators from three different services. The story ends with Chris Van Sant kinda-sorta bullshitting an admiral into launching a naval barrage.
Worth it!

Election Night, as the taxpayer-funded PBS covered it
Jonathan Capeheart is just a hissing, squealing deflating balloon!

The Capitol Building was struck by lightning tonight (NYE)

China (I assume, I'm just going by the dragon) uses drones and fireworks in combination and it's pretty neat

Japan launches what is claimed to be the world's biggest firework
Thanks to andycanuck

Once again I'll be taking Wednesday and Thursday off, with open threads and cafes, unless there's big news. I'll post on Friday.

Here is an excellent IBD article on Jimmy Carter: Profile In Incompetence. It's a downloadable PDF.

2 Oregon men found dead from exposure in forest while looking for Sasquatch
Nonsense. They were killed by Sasquatch, and Ewoks and Sasquatch are related. Just sayin'. [CBD]

Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States, has died at the age of 100 [Doof]

"The notion that CO2 is pollution is absolutely preposterous... The idea that [it's] going to destroy the planet or change the temperature of the Earth is totally ludicrous." "But from a totalitarian perspective, if you can convince people that CO2 is pollution, there's no human activity that doesn't result in CO2 emissions.." [dri]

Just to amplify the last entry: We started paying for pay-TV services so that we would not have to watch commercials, and could watch the original uncensored versions of movies.
Amazon and many other pay TV services now force you to watch commercials unless you pay even higher monthly fees, and now we're back to watching the same censored versions of movies we used to see on TBS.

Vandals: Amazon Prime cuts the key scenes in It's a Wonderful Life of George Bailey contemplating suicide
The whole plot of the movie concerns an angel's intervention, showing George what everyone's life would be like without him in it. If you cut the scenes of him thinking about exiting his life, then what is even the point of the movie?
Remember when we naively thought that Bezos and Amazon were generally on the right side of things? How absurd we were.
I re-watched The Name of the Rose this past year on Amazon and noticed that the semi-important scene of Christian Slater's character losing his virginity to a peasant girl were cut out. My thought was that Amazon must be using a cut of the movie shown on TV or something. I don't know if Amazon is aware it is running censored content, or if they're demanding these cuts, or seeking out versions of the film that remove politically-sensitive material. Whatever the reason, they should be ashamed and run the actual movies again. What is the point of any communications platform that engages in censorship?

Via Black Orchid, Nichole Shanahan's thoughts on the tech/H-1B debate
It is nice that we are actually permitted to debate actual policy questions again. You know, like the right guaranteed to Americans in the Constitution as our inalienable birthright, which we had until the past ten years of authoritarian tyranny by the Deep State and intelligence services.

The secret symbiosis between rap and yacht rock

The sexy cover of "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" you never knew you needed

Mash-Up: "Baby It's Cold Outside" mixed with one of the Horde's favorite songs

All I want for Christmas is more leftwing fruitcake cope videos
BTW I cued up that video after he played the Don LeMon "Elon is really president" video. I figured you saw that in a prior post. But if you don't read my posts, just go back a couple of minutes to see it.

You probably didn't know this, but Norm MacDonald was a passionate ventriloquist and loved his dolls like they were his own children
Except for his crusty "old man" puppet, who was a vicious racist

American Airlines grounds all flights due to a technical glitch, then resumes flights -- but almost every flight features serious delays
Sorry, traveling morons, but your holiday journeys will be an even bigger source of aggravation than you were expecting