SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:53 P.M. ET: 

THERE SHE ISN'T – FROM THE NEW YORK POST:   There she goes, Miss America.  The iconic beauty pageant is seeking a new host city after New Jersey officials said the state will no longer bankroll the troubled event in its longtime home of Atlantic City, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.  “The Miss America Organization is interviewing cities to partner with Miss America 2.0 as it prepares to celebrate its 100th anniversary,” reads a Request for Proposal for the 2020 and 2021 Miss America competition obtained by the newspaper.  “This event can bring exposure and economic activity to your city!”  The NJ Casino Reinvestment Development Authority has coughed up $12 million to stage the pageant for the past three years alone, but told the Inquirer it hadn’t responded to the RFP.  “What’s the return?” CRDA executive director Matt Doherty told the paper. “Therein lies the challenge.”   Not much of a return.  No one cares.  The "pageant" has gone politically correct.  I'm not really interested in Miss Nebraska's views on immigration reform.  The most important panel of judges is the audience, and it has made its decision.

QUOTE OF THE DAY – FROM VICTOR DAVIS HANSON VIDEO AT GATEWAY PUNDIT:  This Mueller investigation that we have is not in isolation. We had, remember, from the day Trump was elected, we were told the election machines were flawed, we were going to sue. And then there was a group, remember we were told about the Electoral College, and we were told we had to overturn the electors. And then we went to the 25th Amendment, that Trump was unbalanced. And that didn’t work. And then we went to the emoluments clause, he profited even though his businesses had lost a billion dollars. And then we’ve gone to Mueller. And so there’s a slow motion if you will, I don’t want to be too psychodramatic like MSNBC gets. But there is sort of a slow-motion coup to overturn the elections.  Hanson nails it, as usual.

HYPOCRISY, INC. – FROM BREITBART:   Many House and Senate Democrats voted to fund the same bollard-style fencing constructed by Presidents Bush and Obama that they now oppose under President Trump.  Ahead of a government shutdown, Trump is asking the Republican-controlled Congress for $5 billion in funding — just a fifth of the funding needed — to build what he continues to call a U.S.-Mexico “border wall,” though the barrier is almost identical to the bollard fencing erected by both Bush and Obama.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), along with their Democrat caucuses in the House and Senate, have objected to funding any barriers resembling a wall along the southern border.  Many of those same Democrats now opposing the funding of border barriers, once supported the use of fencing at the southern border less than a decade ago.  The Secure Fence Act of 2006, which authorized the construction of 700 miles of the same style of bollard fence that Trump is building at the border, was supported by 26 Senate Democrats at the time. In the House, 64 Democrats joined 219 Republican lawmakers to fund the border fencing.  The Democratic Party is a political joke, kept afloat by the support it receives from the mainstream press and the universities  It is not a serious governing party.

December 18,  2018