Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, December 23, 2025. It’s also National Pfeffernüße Day, celebrating the delicious German sugar-coated spice cookie served during the holidays. (This is, of course, cultural appropriation in the U.S., but you can buy them on Amazon.) Here’s an authentic German version from Wikipedia (note the scale; each cookies is about 1½ inches in diameter); the recipe was created in 1753:
It’s also National Bake Day, National Roots Day (celebrating your ancestry), and Festivus (remember this from “Seinfeld?”):
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 1 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The Coast Guard is chasing yet another Venezuelan ship (the third), which refused to be boarded and is hightailing it into the Atlantic Ocean.
The U.S. Coast Guard on Saturday tried to intercept an oil tanker linked to Venezuela that is now fleeing away from the Caribbean Sea, according to three U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive operation, days after President Trump said he would crack down on sanctioned vessels involved in the country’s oil trade.
The tanker, called the Bella 1, was en route to pick up oil in Venezuela and was not carrying cargo, according toone of the officials and ship-tracking data, and fled northeast into the Atlantic Ocean. The tanker has been under U.S. sanctions since last year for transporting Iranian oil, which federal authorities say is sold to finance terrorism.
When U.S. forces approached the Bella 1 late on Saturday, it was not flying a valid national flag, the officials said, making it a stateless vessel liable to be boarded at sea under international law.
American authorities had obtained a seizure warrant from a federal magistrate judge, which would allow them to take possession of the ship, two of the officials said. The warrant had been sought because of the Bella 1’s previous involvement in the Iranian oil trade, not because of its links to Venezuela.
But the ship did not submit to being boarded and continued sailing, one of the officials said. A second official referred to the situation as “an active pursuit.”
On Sunday morning, the vessel began broadcasting distress signals to nearby ships, according to radio messages reviewed by The Times and first posted online by a maritime blogger. The messages show the vessel traveling northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, more than 300 miles away from Antigua and Barbuda. By Sunday evening, Bella 1 had sent over 75 alerts.
The Coast Guard had successfully boarded another tanker earlier on Saturday, and the United States had taken possession of a third tanker on Dec. 10 that is now at port in Texas.
A ship chase? I’m wondering why, if the Coast Guard had the right to board it, and could have done so with helicopters, it did not. Granted it didn’t have any oil to take, but the ship itself can be taken. The question remains about what we are doing with Venezuela: are we going to war or not? Everything seems to be legal here, so I won’t kvetch that much, but what are we going to do with an empty ship?
Jim Batterson found a relevant video, and made this comments:
This in a 12-minute video, packed (except the first 30-45 seconds of yada yada) with good information on the tanker situation off Venezuela. Sal Mercogliano is a merchant marine academy graduate, former merchant mariner, and maritime history professor at Campbell University. He does a free videocast series, “What’s Up with Shipping?” several times a week. I called readers’ attention to one of them in yesterday’s Hili comments. This is a new one he posted last night and, at 2:58, he shows a scorecard of the three tankers with relevant data on each. A worthwhile 10-12 minute time investment.
Indeed worth watching. You’ll learn a lot. For example, Sal thinks that this latest chase of an empty boat is just a ruse to deter other tankers.
*Ted Cruz has announced that he’s contemplating another run for President in 2028 (he put his hat in the ring in 2016, losing to Trump), setting up a battle with J. D. Vance. Meanwhile, the Washington Post ranks the Republican contenders here.
Cruz came across as someone “seriously” considering such a run, Klein recalled.
With the future of the party up for grabs in a Donald Trump-less 2028 primary, Cruz has in recent months positioned himself as a loud voice for a more traditional, hawkish Republican foreign policy. He’s also urging the GOP to rid itself of popular MAGA pundit Tucker Carlson, who he argues is injecting the “poison” of antisemitism into the movement with his broadsides against Israel. Carlson has rejected that characterization.
As he feuds with Carlson, Cruz is weighing a second presidential bid, according to a person close to the senator and another briefed on his thinking, who spoke like others on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal conversations. A White House run would be politically risky for Cruz, 55, putting him on course to collide with Vice President JD Vance, whom many Republicans expect to enter the 2028 race.
Friction is already evident behind the scenes: Cruz has criticized Vance, a close ally of Carlson, to Republican donors, according to two people familiar with the comments. The senator has warned that Vance’s foreign policy views are dangerously isolationist, the people said.(Vance has been one of the GOP’s most prominent skeptics of U.S. intervention abroad.)
I can’t foresee voting for either of them, so I don’t have much of a dog in this fight. You might, however, be interested in how the WaPo ranks Republican candidates for the election three years away:
The standouts are Vance and Marco Rubio. The middle of the pack includes Donald Trump, Jr., Ron DeSantis, and Ted Cruz, and the dark horses include Trump himself (ain’t gonna happen), Kristi Noem, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK, Jr., and “Spencer Cox or another not-quite-MAGA candidate.” Of course I can’t get excited about any of these. But Trump himself? Here’s what the article says:
Trump has said he’d “love to” run for a third term. He can’t, though, because a president cannot serve more than two terms. “The Constitution is very clear about that,” said Josh Chafetz, a constitutional law expert at Georgetown University. Even if he wanted to start a constitutional crisis to stay in power, Trump may not have the backing of some of his most loyal supporters in Congress. “It’s pretty clear,” Trump told reporters after talking privately with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) about this. “I’m not allowed to run.” Plus, his 2024 win made him the oldest person elected president, and he will be 82 in 2028. But Trump’s musings about another term aren’t something to entirely discount as he pushes to amass presidential power in a way no modern president has.
No fricking way, and if any read wants to bet that Trump will be a candidates, I’m willing to bet.
*I’ll throw a clickbaity piece from the Free Press here, following on the release of (most of the) Epstein files. The article is called “Bill Clinton has an Epstein problem, and so does America.”
Sometimes a picture debunks a thousand words. So it is with the photographs of Bill Clinton included in the tranche of Jeffrey Epstein files that the Justice Department released Friday. The former president had minimized his relationship with the disgraced financier, but the snapshots tell a different story.
Among the photos the FBI collected in its investigation into Epstein are several of Clinton looking chummy with him, steeped in the high life. One shows Epstein and Clinton beaming in exotic Indonesian silk batik shirts. There is a photo of Clinton on what appears to be Epstein’s private jet with a blond woman sitting on the arm of his chair. In one photo, Clinton poses with Michael Jackson. In another he is dining with Mick Jagger. Then there is one with him reaching for the shoulders of actor Kevin Spacey, flanked by Secret Service officers. Most damning is a photo of Clinton in a hot tub with a woman whose face is blacked out to protect her privacy. The New York Post featured that one on the cover of its Saturday edition under the headline: “Tubba Bubba.”
None of these photos show that Clinton engaged in sex with underage girls provided to him by Epstein or Epstein’s longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, as some have speculated about Clinton. But they do puncture Clinton’s own prior explanations about his relationship with Epstein.
In his 2024 memoir, Citizen: My Life After the White House, the former president writes that Epstein invited him to fly on his private jet “to support the work of the foundation,” a reference to the Clinton Foundation, the nonprofit he established after his presidency ended in 2001. “In return for flying me, my staff, and my Secret Service detail who always accompanied me, Epstein asked only that I take an hour or two on each trip to discuss politics and economics.” Other than that, there were “two brief meetings, one at my office in Harlem and another at his house in New York.”
The photos in the Epstein files are not dated. Clinton claims that he cut off contact with Epstein in 2005, before the financier was first arrested, for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Because the files lack dates or other information, it’s impossible to know if any of them were taken on Epstein’s infamous private island, Little Saint James, which Epstein said Clinton never visited. Nonetheless, the photos make the ex-president’s relationship with Epstein appear more intimate than a few conversations about politics and economics.
Whatever happens, Clinton does appear to have some explaining to do. Even an erstwhile ally, Senator Tim Kaine, the Virginia Democrat who sought the vice presidency in 2016 on a ticket with Bill’s wife, Hillary, said so. On Meet the Press on Sunday, Kaine said he hadn’t tracked what Clinton had been saying about his relationship with Epstein, but added that, “If there are unanswered questions, you know, he should address them, and I suspect he will.”
So Clinton probably “stretched the truth”, which is no surprise as he’s done it before, but it’s no biggie. And his reputation hasn’t been great for a while, so all we have here are photos of Clinton associating with Epstein more than he said he did. Frankly, I’m tired of this “guilt by association” trope. If they get evidence that Clinton broke the law, then by all means go at him, but what we have for him and everyone else doesn’t yet rise above innuendo.
*Well, Wikipedia, which has always been woke and leaning against Israel, has finally labeled Israel’s attack on Hamas a “genocide” in the pages of Wikipedia (h/t Norman).
Wikipedia’s main “Israel” entry now declares that “following the October 7 attacks… Israel began committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” placing a blatant lie in the lead section meant for basic, non-contentious context.
The phrasing appears to have been inserted in a mid-December edit marked “per RfC,” and it has stayed up since—even as the dispute spills across the talk page.
Wikipedia’s own archived RfC summary on the Israel talk page effectively green-lights mentioning “genocide” in Wikipedia voice while arguing over how it should be framed and contextualized.
This fight is part of a wider credibility crisis: Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales recently blasted the “Gaza genocide” entry for asserting “in Wikipedia’s voice” a claim he called “highly contested,” urging editors to “attribute, don’t assert”—not launder legal conclusions as settled fact.
Israel has repeatedly rejected genocide accusations, saying it is fighting Hamas terrorists embedded in civilian areas and pointing to evacuation warnings and other steps it says are meant to reduce civilian harm.
There’s also one more sentence I found in the entry:
A United Nations Special Committee, multiple governments, and various experts and human rights organisations have concluded that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people due to the harm and loss of life inflicted on civilians during the Gaza War.
While the second big gives various opinions from groups, including the biased UN, the first statement is a flat-out claim that Israel began committing genocide after October 7. By any definition of genocide that is incorrect, and if you don’t believe me, read Maarten Boudry’s free Substack piece “They don’t believe it either. The Gaza genocide as ideological performance.” Maarten takes apart genocide claims like that made by Wikipedia, and ends this way:
That such an obvious falsehood now enjoys near-unanimous assent across universities, media, civil society, and the NGO ecosystem—with dissent incurring severe social costs—is a damning indictment of the supposed rationality of our liberal institutions.
Shame on Wikipedia!
*And this isn’t news, but it’s stuff I found on Facebook and wanted to pass on.
First, from the BBC’s FB page, my beloved Philomena becomes a cat patron:
More discoveries from Facebook, Sandra Bullock was a cheerleader at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia (now renamed, for obvious reasons, Washington Liberty High School) in 1982. This is where I went to high school, but I graduated in 1967. Bullock’s on the left:
Other notables also went to W&L. Here’s a picture from eBay of Shirley MacLaine (her last name at the time was “Beaty”), also a cheerleader. This was apparently taken in the Fifties, and MacLaine is circled.
You may know that MacLaine’s brother was Warren Beatty, a star football player at W&L. Here he is in the school yearbook, pictured on eBay:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej, unlike me, doesn’t want immortality:
Hili: Would you like to be immortal?
Andrzej: What have I done to deserve such a fate?
In Polish:
Hili: Czy chciałbyś żyć wiecznie?
Ja: Za jakie grzechy?
*******************
From The Dodo Pet:
From Black Cat Lovers:
From David Jorling:
From Emma Hilton:
(Apart from making babies, obvs.)
It’s the hill that not only exposes the raw differences between the two sexes, but also a hill that is perfectly justified in measuring then enforcing rules according to those differences.
— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) December 20, 2025
From Luana; a law that seems unfair:
Colorado just passed a law forcing every private insurer in the state to cover the cost of cheek implants, lip augmentation, nose jobs, and breast implants (among other elective cosmetic procedures) for one group of legally privileged people — men who claim to be women and women… https://t.co/4ZPGhquAyO pic.twitter.com/M7hZ67QnMg
— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) December 19, 2025
From Simon, though this certainly didn’t characterize me when I wasn’t retired:
Santa Claus is a professor! 🧪
— Keith Trujillo (@neurochicano.bsky.social) 2025-12-21T00:14:36.964Z
A melange of Christmas moggies from Larry the Cat:
Happy #Caturdaypic.twitter.com/GNFBmClLY3
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) December 20, 2025
One from my feed. Listen to that language!
The Hadzabe language, spoken by one of East Africa’s last hunter-gatherer tribes, is The hardest language to transcribe pic.twitter.com/J3YjTcIwyG
— Modern History 𝕏 (@modernhistory) December 21, 2025
Oh, and I couldn’t leave this one out, also from my feed:
Incredible footage from the perspective of wild mountain goats with cameras attached—they’re literally flying without wings. pic.twitter.com/wYzEqjpwQW
— Crazy Moments (@Crazymoments01) December 22, 2025
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This French Jewish girl was gassed as soon as she arrived at Auschwitz from the French camp, She was eight yers old.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-12-23T11:25:41.558Z
And one from Dr. Cobb. He calls this “pycnogonid slurping,” with the description, “The sea cucumber isn’t happy”:
Predation event! Pycnogonid caught a Enypniastes @echinoblog.bsky.social ! @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 884 #argentiniandeepseeps #MarineLife #CONICET
Regarding the Shirley MacLaine picture: Are they wearing what cheerleaders wore in the 50s?
My best Trump moment thus far is when he suggested that Santa was not real. Smart man!
Yes. The long, pleated skirts and letter sweaters are what I remember our cheerleaders at a Southern Virginia high school wearing in the 50s and early 60’s. Same hairdos also.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
If they give you ruled paper, write the other way. -Juan Ramon Jimenez, poet, Nobel Prize in literature (23 Dec 1881-1958)
I once tutored a student who found it impossible to do long multiplication. But turning ordinary lined paper 90° helped him keep the partial product columns aligned and enabled him to succeed. One of my happiest educational moments.
I just swooned.
Better see a doctor about that.Thank you. That genuinely made my day (and I’d already been having a very good day).
I think the Clintons’ complicated marriage is their own business, esp as they’re private citizens. He’s a charismatic guy who has a hobby many men have. So what? There’s a lot of envy around the whole idiotic Epsteinology fiasco.
Wesley Yang (tweet about CA paying for trans surgery) is a –very– bright guy, at the forefront of opposing a lot of trans nonsense. Like Emma Hilton. I’m sure they know each other (I spend a stupid amount of time between “TERF” and Zionist twitter. Could do better things but…)
D.A.
NYC
“This is going to take up a lot of my time.”
“Idiotic Epsteinology fiasco”: a nice turn of phrase, David…may I use it please? Without attribution if I am careless in conversation?
Always Jim. Thanks!
D.A.
NYC
I used to be a Wikipedia editor for skepticism, but since the woke mob started to control it, there’s no point.
Israel isn’t the one with a policy of genocide. I bet that the pages for Palestine/Hamas don’t declare that their ultimate objective is to commit genocide ‘from the river to the sea’.
I’ve tried not to get too involved in this debate because I can’t offer a solution (can anyone?) but the debacle with pro Palestinian activists trying to influence the UK government by going on a ‘hunger strike’ is pure propaganda and they are misleading the public.
A ‘rolling fast’ is not a hunger strike.
The government is not killing them, they can eat any time they want.
The UK justice system put them on remand, not the government. One protester was released pending trial and absconded.
It is not unusual for people pending trial to be held on remand until their trial. They want special treatment.
The activists are part of a protest group who smashed a policewoman’s back with a sledgehammer, leaving her disabled.
If they die, which is unlikely, then they will die in a warm bed with food in front of them, which is a privilege not extended to the people who were murdered by Hamas or literally starved during their kidnap.
The ultimate irony is that Palestinians have been throwing many of their ilk from the top of tall buildings to kill them.
“Gays for Palestine” are turkeys voting for christmas.
Joolz you’ll be aware of the horror Zionists feel about how crazy parts of wikipedia have become. Hamas playbook. This is a colossal deal due to the leverage factor of wikipedia. You want public trust? Wiki’s got it. ..
….
..
or had it.
Mostly of course it is good but they need to do some housecleaning over there.
best,
D.A.
NYC
I don’t trust the text in Wiikipedia, but will check the original sources that are quoted in articles, but even that doesn’t give the whole story. For example Malcolm Michaels is a gay man who was a drag queen called Marsha P Johnson. The trans mob keep transing the dead and claim not only that Michael was trans, but that he ‘threw the first brick at Stonewall’ so gay people owe everything to trans people. These statements have been denied by Michael himself on video and in audio. He did not arrive at Stonewall until hours after the riot started. He describes how he came out as gay. That is key information about his life, but transactivists refuse to let him speak on his own Wiki page because they want trans people to be credited with everything.
The person credited with starting the riot is black lesbian Stormé DeLarverie.
The very first Gay Pride was held on the anniversary of the riot and it was exclusively organised by gay people. No trans people were involved at all. One of the organisers of the anniversary celebration is still on twitter, and it’s amazing how many times TRAs tell him he’s lying 🤦♀️
The adorable Diane Morgan with a gorgeous cat and looking very swanky in her stylish jacket. Going to be a good day!
(I freely admit to having a “thing” for tan wide-wale corduroy, Maine Coons, and Diane Morgan)
I suppose I must have heard before that Shirley MacLaine and Warren Beatty are siblings, but had forgotten. The one that still blows my mind, though, is that James Arness (Gunsmoke) and Peter Graves (Mission Impossibe) were brothers.
Regarding why the American military is not boarding the errant tanker steaming out in the Atlantic, I heard in an interview with a maritime expert that it is difficult and dangerous to board a moving ship. The other tankers weren’t moving when they were successfully boarded.
The above may be out of date, but it offers a possible explanation.
For Pfeffernuesse fans who have an Aldi or Lidl nearby, both stores have these cookies and lots of other German Christmas goodies every year starting about mid November! Haven’t checked the Amazon prices, but I’ll wager that theirs are higher than Aldi or Lidl. (Somehow the site doesn’t allow me to do an Umlaut the way I normally would.)
The mountain goat video: the “readers add context” claims it’s A.I.
It is obviously AI.
“The middle of the pack includes Donald Trump, Jr., Ron DeSantis, and Ted Cruz, and the dark horses include Trump himself (ain’t gonna happen), Kristi Noem, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK, Jr., and “Spencer Cox…”
How exciting to see Tulsi Gabbard among the “dark horses” for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination! Even if Tulsi fails to reach the top slot, we might look forward to a Vance-Gabbard ticket, nominated by a fusion of the GOP and the Green Party. After this party wins the election, a choice between Steve Witkoff and Jill Stein for Secretary of State would have to be made at the highest level.
Quite a few horror scenarios you paint there Jon.
In a decade I’ve turned around completely on Marco Rubio. I’ve been very impressed and it’ll save us taxpayers Money b/c he can do many jobs at once. He has like 3? now. Sure he’s GoP but he’s not stupid.
(Lifelong Dem, anti-woke here, GoP curious… ).
Ted Cruz? Jill Stein.. now you’re just messin’ with me Jon! And don’t even TALK to me about AOC. regards,
D.A.
NYC
WRT to the FP article on Epstein. They should have titled it: The Free Press Discovers That Lying Is Bad. LOL