Questionable Math Builds Anticipation For Release Of Trump Taxes Friday (MSNBC)

Trump’s obstruction of justice criminal referral matters. And prosecutors know it. (MSNBC)

Trump’s Brazen Tax Cheating Revealed (DC Report) In the Narrative Media, ‘tax cheating’ means paying less than a presstitute thinks somebody ought to pay. And yet they still can’t find a crime on which to indict Trump. Funny how that works.

How Murdoch’s media empire turned on Trump in 2022 (The Hill)

Jan. 6 Transcripts Shed New Light on How Trump Considered Blanket Pardons (N.Y. Times) Considered! That proves it!

Trump didn’t know White House schedule was public until last weeks of presidency: ex-aide (N.Y. Post) Why would he even care?

Judge: Jan. 6 committee evidence suggests Trump asked rally crowd to break the law (Politico) Suggests! That proves it!

Supreme Court keeps Title 42 border expulsions in place indefinitely, granting GOP-led petition (CBS)

Justice Gorsuch joins three liberal justices on Supreme Court’s Title 42 decision (The Hill)

What Biden’s woke military has wrought (Fox)

Biden admin facing third year of crisis at the southern border with uncertain immigration policies in 2023 (Fox)

Latest U.S. border statistics show waning use of Title 42 (Washington Post)

Troops Are Getting Cyber Training and Then Rapidly Leaving the Military, Report Finds Gee, I wonder why?

Air Force quietly speeds up plans to eliminate spy planes on the front line of America’s fentanyl war (CNN)

Record number of Nicaraguans making trek to US border: report (The Hill) “Here we are! We want to live in your country! Give us money!”

20K Migrants Held Up Near El Paso Hoping to Cross Border

Poll Shows Media, Politicians Hide Migration Numbers from Americans

Grover Norquist to Newsmax: NYT Wrong to Say IRS Won’t Target Families

Washington Expands the War State

Nets Play Handler for Old Joe on Border Crisis, Lament Illegals Have to ‘Wait’ to Flood U.S.

Adam Smith would have recognised the monsters of modern capitalism (The Guardian) In the Narrative Media, ‘capitalism’ means anything other than socialism.

‘A threat to unity’: anger over push to make Hindi national language of India (The Guardian) India actually ought to be about eight or nine separate countries.

Europe’s ‘anti-hate’ laws and arrests a warning for free speech in US (N.Y. Post)

These states tried an Obamacare public option. It hasn’t worked as planned. (Politico)

‘This makes my brain hurt’: Connecticut used disaster aid to rebuild million-dollar homes (Politico)

Texas Lawmakers Plan to Further Decimate Abortion Rights in Upcoming Legislative Session (The Intercept)

Republicans see little resistance from the business lobby after ‘anti-woke’ attacks (Politico)

Students Speak Out On Anti-White, Anti-Christian, Anti-American Culture At Florida University

Impoverished Canadians Seek Euthanasia As A Solution While Trudeau Vacations In Jamaica

For Teachers Unions, Parents and Children Come Last

Bankman-Fried, Michael Lewis Collaborating on Book  Of course they are.

NYC Mayor Declares “Big Brother Is Protecting You”

Larger squad? How the Hill’s newest progressives plan to wield power. (Politico)

How Expansive Welfare Benefits Can Make Being on Dole More Lucrative Than Working

Comic Book Fans Shun Superheroes’ Woke Makeovers

TV News’s Immigration Coverage Is Just Blatant Open Borders Activism

European Union Anticipates Continued Uptick in Asylum Seekers   “Here we are! We want to live in your country! Give us money!”

Read it.

For decades, progressives have focussed their attention on the restriction of free speech. This is crucial when you favour emotion over facts, because it helps to deny the others access to, well, facts. Since the 1990s, political correctness has shrunk the ever-narrowing boundaries of ‘acceptable speech,’ under the guise of not causing offense, naturally. Fast-forward 30 years, and such compassion has morphed into ‘hate speech’ and ‘hate crime’ laws, for anyone brave enough to test such matters out in court. For those who doubt the seriousness of the matter, Europe is currently awash with such sham trials—the latest being the investigation and possible 3-year imprisonment of filmmaker Tonje Gjevjon, for the crime of saying that “Men cannot be lesbians.”

More recently, the Left have shifted tactics, infiltrating the lexicon with political alternatives to existing words which require no updating. Consider the rivers of ‘neopronouns’ (e.g. ‘ze’ and ‘zir’), which lend ill-warranted authority to the notion that biological sex is not binary; aided and abetted by the fact that one in five of us already know someone who uses these newly invented pronouns seriously. Or how about the umbrella term ‘people of colour,’ which purports to be an inoffensive term for non-whites, but is in fact heavily-loaded to secure priority status without having to earn it. This is perhaps best exemplified by the outraged objections of ‘racism’ to legitimate criticism of Meghan Markle (a woman you’d be hard-pushed to pick out of a Downton Abbey line-up), while identical criticism of Prince Harry goes unchallenged.

Read it.

In courtrooms across America, defendants get additional prison time for crimes that juries found they didn’t commit, and the Supreme Court is being asked, again, to put an end to the practice.

Read it.

American Islamists are using a mosque’s destruction 30 years ago to cast Indian Muslims as living under a fascist threat. They are hoping public ignorance – about the site’s history as a Hindu temple and a court’s ruling setting aside land for a new mosque – will create a false, dangerously misleading perception of a looming Muslim genocide in India.

No matter how bad the Muslim problem is in the U.S., the problem in India is ten times worse. Hindus have lived under Muslim oppression for over 500 years.

Interestingly, the same groups lamenting the loss of a mosque were silent in 2020 when Turkey’s Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an decided to revert the ancient Christian cathedral of Hagia Sophia into a mosque. A Turkish court ruled that the 1934 decision to turn it into a museum had been illegal.

My, what a surprise.

Read it.

I spent a little time in Oxford during my recent vacation, and a day or two later Mark Steyn told me that the City of Oxford had adopted an ordinance that penalizes driving more than 15 minutes from your home. This seemed hard to believe, but in fact, it is true.

Sir Oswald Moseley died too soon. If he could have just stuck around a bit more, he would have found himself in as fascist a Britain as he could ever have dreamed.

Read it.

Mississippi could become the nation’s 10th state to eliminate its personal income tax, with Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and House Speaker Philip Gunn (R-Clinton) backing differing plans to do away with the levy when lawmakers convene their 2023 session on Jan. 3.

Similar 2023 proposals to erase immediately, or phase-out, state income taxes are also expected to be filed in West Virginia, Arkansas, Iowa, Georgia, North Dakota, Utah, and, perhaps, Wisconsin.

Read it.

Twelve states and the District of Columbia allow local governments and private investors to seize dramatically more than what is owed from homeowners who fall behind on property tax payments, according to a new report.

The practice, which Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) calls “home equity theft,” is documented in what the organization bills as the first national study aimed at exposing “the injustice of home equity theft through tax foreclosure.”

Homeowners lost more than $777 million in life savings on more than 5,600 homes, based on their market value, in transactions that took place from 2014 to 2021. The true total is probably higher because statistics from New York state and some statistics from the other states studied were not available. On average, homeowners lost 86 percent of their equity, the study found.

Government entities, which often unload properties for a fraction of their market value, collected an estimated $26 million more than they were owed on about 1,300 homes. At the same time, private investors, who purchase tax liens, took in about $250 million more than what they were owed on about 2,600 homes.

When it is possible to steal other people’s money through the political process, it will be done. Nothing is more common than politicians and parasites coordinating theft under pretext of law.

Whoopi Goldberg takes heat for repeating ‘incendiary’ Holocaust remarks: ‘She learned nothing’

‘DNA of social justice’ born out of 1968 Edgewood HS walkout

Whoopi Goldberg Doubles Down on Holocaust Views

Fact-Checking ‘The Woman King’ and the Absurdity of Reparations

Footage Shows “Looting Across Buffalo” As City Plunged Into Chaos After Blizzard

A Black Woman’s Search For Her Place in White, White Vermont  What is it with black people traveling to a place that is predominantly white and then moaning, “Oh My God there’s nothing but WHITE PEOPLE HERE!” If she wants black people, Africa is full of them. (For that matter, so is Harlem.)

Buffalo Mayor: Looters in Blizzard ‘Absolutely Reprehensible’  Call it ‘anticipatory reparations’.

Kendi’s Fallacy and Its Consequences

Apple Watch sensor has racial bias, claims new lawsuit

Two Venezuelan families. Two immigration policies. Two different outcomes. (L.A. Times)

Fentanyl seizures at the border continue to shatter records in 2022 (N.Y. Post)

Americans spent like crazy during the holidays because of high inflation (CNN)

‘A sea change’: Biden reverses decades of Chinese trade policy (Politico)

SURPRISE! CNN Guest Sees ‘Service’ Provided in GOP Migrant Busing

WORST OF 2022: The Praising and Protecting Old Joe Award 

Almost 600K Evaded Authorities at Southern Border in FY2022

15 Facts Which Prove That A Massive Economic Meltdown Is Already Happening Right Now

HUD Disaster Aid Used for High-Priced Conn. Homes: Report  Of course. What’s the use of power if you can’t abuse it?

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre: Incompetent but Failing Upward

Exclusive: $4 gas could return as soon as May, GasBuddy projects (CNN)

New IRS Requirement Raises Questions About Vow to Expand Audits Only on ‘Rich’

Cost of Living: Asylum seekers left without basics to live on – charity (BBC) They could always stay where they were. “Here I am! I want to live in your country! Give me money!”

The world’s in a ‘polycrisis’ — and these countries want to quash it by looking beyond GDP (CNBC)

Swiss Government Rejects Third-Gender Option On Official Records

The Twitter Files show the unholy alliance of state and corporate power

Democrats to Go on Offensive on Voting in 2023  Stealing elections works!

Kash Patel: GOP Must Embrace Mail-in Voting  If they cheat, we must cheat first and better.

New York Times Sunday Lead: Vote Single Party (Democrat) to Save Democracy!  In the Narrative Media, ‘democracy’ means ‘Democrat vote fraud’.

NY and CA Populations Shrinking Fast

2022 Man of the Year: Dave Weigel

‘Oops! I forgot to sign my ballot.’ Maryland plans text message option for voters to ‘cure’ their mail-in ballots in 2024. (Baltimore Sun) Cementing in place the Democrat machine.

Scheduled to Die: The Rise of Canada’s Assisted Suicide Program

Donald Trump Should ‘Plead Insanity’ If Indicted: Harvard Law Professor (Newsweek) Larry Tribe is in a race with Joe Biden to see which one can be more senile more quickly.

The Michigan lawyer pushing Trump’s voter-fraud fictions in U.S. courts (Reuters)

Donald Trump Spends Christmas Raging on Truth Social (Newsweek)

January 6 panel’s body of work boosts DoJ case against Trump, experts say (The Guardian) Experts say! That proves it!

Twitter’s James Baker Tried to Censor Trump for Sharing COVID Calm

Trump Taxes to be Released by House Friday

Biden admin pushed to bar Twitter users for COVID ‘disinformation,’ files show (N.Y. Post)

Twitter Files expose government influence on suppressing COVID messages that contradicted WH (Fox)

Why our worst fears about Covid in 2022 weren’t realized (NBC) Because people learned to stop buying Crustian bullshit.

Medical Staff on Frontline of China’s COVID Fight Say Hospitals Are ‘Overwhelmed’

Long COVID Continues to Baffle Scientists  Follow the science! — around in circles….

‘Twitter Files’ Release: How Platform Rigged COVID Debate

China ‘Interested in Offensive Bioweapons’ Since 2005, Rep. Says

The Daily Chart: Masks Forever?

Oil Jumps After China Scraps Inbound Quarantine, Will Reopen Borders Effectively Ending Zero-Covid Regime

Merck’s COVID-19 Antiviral Drug Doesn’t Reduce Hospitalization Or Death In High-Risk Vaccinated People: Study

Experts Warn of Likely Spike in Respiratory Viruses After Holidays  Get ready for another PANIC!

Growing vaccine hesitancy fuels measles, chickenpox resurgence in U.S. (Washington Post) Perhaps if people hadn’t be lied to so much they wouldn’t have ‘vaccine hesitancy’.

The case of the Supreme Court that just can’t seem to stop talking (NPR) Funny, they never minded Ruth Bader Ginsberg yakking up a storm.

A scandal rocked Virginia’s governor. Here’s what happened next (PBS) But it was a quiet rock, so you may not have heard about it.

Jacksonville City Council president says Confederate monuments will come off ‘back burner’

Arizona governor-elect asks court to sanction election denier Lake (Reuters)

Amazon Smile Continues to Frown on Christian Organizations

WashPost Shovels Anonymous Dirt: ‘Musk’s Genius Reputation Crashing Down to Earth’

Greg Abbott: Scrooge. (The Bulwark) Mona Charen is the latest former-conservative to take up the anti-right cudgel in service to her new Woke overlords.

Hey MSNBC! If Resumé Lies Cause For Resignation, When Will Biden Be Leaving?

Transphobe of the Year: Matt Walsh (The New Republic) Phobe-hunters!

Climate activists are fuming as Germany turns to coal to replace Russian gas (NPR)

No more Band-Aids: How to make the Colorado River sustainable for the long term (Arizona Republic)

Desert suburbia is growing. But the Colorado River, and Arizona’s groundwater, cannot keep up. (L.A. Times)

Popular Gasoline Reduction Strategies Aren’t Getting a Chance To Work (SciTech Daily)

Direct air capture funding has raised environmental justice concerns — but there’s more to the story (The Hill) Environmental justice!

California to cover canals with solar panels to combat drought, climate change (S.F. Chronicle)

California to flip from warm and dry to rainy and snowy (Associated Press)

Claim: More than half of Antarctica’s plants, animals could disappear due to climate change

Read it.

Lake’s loss of her election fraud suit was a foregone conclusion. And yet the court is closing the barn door after the horses have escaped, because you can’t force people to trust elections by shrieking, “You must trust us!” Trust must be earned, and once lost it must be regained or it continues to be lost.

I have been consistent in saying that election fraud must be prevented because courts will not redress it after the fact except in very minor cases such as a person submitting two ballots instead of one. The Kari Lake trial is a good example, because the plaintiffs (Lake’s side) had unusually good evidence for mass fraud that may indeed have mattered in the outcome. And yet it was always clear that the evidence wasn’t enough for a verdict in her favor and could not possibly be enough.

Read it.

which function outside of the state’s traditional educational system will not be allowed to continue their operations after Swedish security services warned that students risked being radicalized by Islamist ideology contained in course material.

The pair of schools—situated in Stockholm and Uppsala—must both shut their doors after the court ruled that they do not meet the suitability requirements stipulated by the Swedish Education Act, the national public broadcaster Sveriges Television AB (SVT) reports.

Speaking on the judgement, Eva Furberg, an alderman at the Stockholm administrative court, said: “The shortcomings in the respective management circles are serious and of such a nature and extent that the supervisory authorities have been justified in revoking the foundations’ approvals as principals.”

Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
A Muslim waits there
To try to kill you.

Read it.

Liz Warren hates billionaires. Just ask the millionaire leftist. Or don’t, she’ll be happy to virtue signal to you anyway. The Elizabeth Warren official store even sells a “billionaire tears” mug for only $28 bucks: a profit margin that would be obscene if a capitalist billionaire were doing it.

Who actually funds Warren’s political ambitions? Our investigation of her political organization reveals that it’s billionaires like Bill Gates, George Soros, Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife and eBay’s Pierre Omidyar. Advisors include Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. Like her Cherokee heritage, Warren’s identity as a crusader against billionaires is fake. Without billionaires backing her organization, she wouldn’t have achieved so much influence in the Biden administration.

Read it.

Skiers in Colorado have had their iPhone 14 or Apple Watch automatically call 911 using a new feature, putting a strain on emergency resources.

Read it.

On September 14, the residents of Martha’s Vineyard—home to former president Barack Obama’s $18 million waterfront mansion—were forced to confront an illegal immigration crisis of a magnitude most border towns experience on an hourly basis. Approximately 50 illegal aliens arrived on the island at the behest of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.), who was simply trying to help them pursue the American Dream in one of the country’s wealthiest enclaves.

The residents responded with Trumpian aplomb, calling in the National Guard to prevent the illegals from looting celebrity beach houses and defecating in their heated pools. They enlisted media allies to denounce DeSantis as “inhumane.” We’re inclined to agree. One of the primary benefits of being rich enough to own property on Martha’s Vineyard is never having to interact with a poor person who isn’t on staff. Forcing the Obamas and other left-wing oligarchs to coexist with third-world peasants is an affront to humanity.

ZMan does a deep dive.

In modern usage, the terms sophism and sophistry are used interchangeably with “inaccurate” or “deliberately misleading.” A sophist is someone who relies upon fallacious arguments or reasoning to win a debate. Someone can be accused of sophistry because they are too stupid to see the flaws in their reasoning. Other times they are accused of deliberately misleading arguments. The motivation is malice rather than stupidity or carelessness.

This negative view of sophistry was not always so. We get the word from the Greeks who used the word to mean teacher. A sophist hired himself out to rich families to instruct their sons in philosophy, math, rhetoric and music. The ability to debate in public was an important skill for an ambitious Athenian, so educating your children to be convincing orators was a primary goal of rich parents. A good sophist was one who was good at making convincing arguments.

Our negative view of this also comes from the Greeks. The reason we know about Socrates is we have the writings of Plato, who tells us Socrates was opposed to sophistry in his day. He thought arguments had to be logically sound and factually accurate, rather than just convincing. Of course, Socrates was forced to drink poison by the Athenians, because he was condemned for undermining public virtue. It turns out that the truth does not always set you free.

Read it.

Cities are loosening rules on building parking spots with new buildings: ‘It’s about the climate, it’s about walkability’

Read it.

Maybe this happens to you sometimes, too:

You go to bed with some morning obligation on your mind, maybe a flight to catch or an important meeting. The next morning, you wake up on your own and discover you’ve beat your alarm clock by just a minute or two.

What’s going on here? Is it pure luck? Or perhaps you possess some uncanny ability to wake up precisely on time without help?

Read it.

Looking for answers about how the brain works amid age-related hearing loss, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers discovered that old mice were less capable than young mice of “turning off” certain actively firing brain cells in the midst of ambient noise. The result, they say, creates a “fuzzy” sound stage that makes it difficult for the brain to focus on one type of sound — such as spoken words — and filter out surrounding “noise.”

Scientists have long linked inevitable age-related hearing loss to hair cells in the inner ear that become damaged or destroyed over time.

But the Johns Hopkins researchers say their new studies, described on December 7 in The Journal of Neuroscience, indicate that the brain has much to do with the condition, and it may be possible to treat such hearing loss by re-training the brain to tamp down the wildly firing neurons.

The Economist.

Whatever the economic weather, the sun always seemed to shine on Silicon Valley. America’s five largest technology companies—Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta—saw their revenues and profits grow at five times the rate of American gdp in the decade to 2021. Tech’s ability to thrive as others struggled seemed to be confirmed during covid-19 lockdowns, when firms in the Valley posted record earnings even as much of the economy crumpled.

In 2022 tech’s luck ran out.

Biden’s 2022 solution to student debt could fall apart in 2023 (Politico)

Six ways students can reduce debt if Biden program is killed by courts (The Hill) Of course, they don’t mention the obvious one of paying it down. (Who would do that?)

FBI suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story (L.A. Daily News)

A refugee crisis has arrived in Denver even if the U.S. won’t acknowledge it (Denver Post)

NYC Council caucus calling on Biden to declare migrant crisis an ‘emergency’ (N.Y. Post)

Judge stays Biden administration’s termination of ‘Remain in Mexico’ immigration policy (N.Y. Post)

Foreign aid groups halt work after Taliban ban on female staff (BBC)

Major NGOs halt work in Afghanistan after Taliban ban on female workers (The Hill)

These Major Breakthroughs of 2022 Will Affect Health for Years to Come (Prevention Magazine)

Most Americans don’t have peak protection against COVID (Axios) What ‘vaccine protection against COVID’? The ‘vaccines’ don’t ‘protect against COVID’.

Covid vaccinations: See the latest trend and count (NBC)

Crematory Overrun In Beijing’s Southeastern District, Burning 150 Bodies Daily: Reports

NYC’s Trendiest Communities Rocked by Thieves, NYPD Stats Indicate (Newsmax)

Top school principal hides students’ academic awards in name of ‘equity’ (N.Y. Post)

9 breakthroughs this year that gave us hope for the future (Vox)

How San Antonio became a hub for migrants (Politico) Not hard to tell: Democrat city government.

Brexit has cracked Britain’s economic foundations (CNN)

The woke university implosion — and what comes next (N.Y. Post)

New California laws in 2023 include a fur ban, new state holidays (S.F. Gate)

Here’s what new California labor laws mean for you in 2023, from minimum wage to family leave (Sacramento Bee)

ESG’s Perverse, Narrow, Fraudulent Ethical Principles

The German Constitutional Court: Over a Decade of Barking Without Biting

CNN Historian Touts ‘Hero’ Gavin Newsom, Pleads for Climate Action

Global Warming? It’s Snowing In Miami At Packers-Dolphins Game

Holiday Traditions in the Forest Revive Spiritual Relationships with Nature, and Heal Planetary Wounds (Inside Climate News) I am not making this up.

Subpoenaed Fossil Fuel Documents Reveal an Industry Stuck in the Past (The Intercept) They say that like it was a bad thing.

Can geoengineering fix the climate? Hundreds of scientists say not so fast (The Guardian)

COP15 was a success — here’s what needs to happen next (Al Jezeera)

2022: the year rewilding went mainstream – and a biodiversity deal gave the world hope (The Guardian)

In the End, Solar Power Opponents Prevail in Williamsport, Ohio (Inside Climate News)

‘It was a set-up, we were fooled’: the coal mine that ate an Indian village (The Guardian)

Scientists uncover another reason for melting of Antarctic glaciers – study (The Jerusalem Post)

Here’s how government can fight climate change and achieve energy independence (Fox)

The World Made a Biodiversity Pact, And Of Course We Aren’t Part of It (Mother Jones)

Svalbard reindeer thrive as they shift diet towards ‘popsicle-like’ grasses (The Guardian)

Extinction crisis puts 1 million species on the brink (Reuters)

Japan to begin extracting rare earth metals from seabed in 2024

Congress is finally closing an election loophole Trump exploited (MSNBC)

Russia Setting Conditions for ‘New Most Dangerous Course of Action’—ISW (Newsweek)

Henry Kissinger’s guide to avoiding another world war

Drone Hits Bomber Base Inside Russia as Putin’s Forces Bombard Ukrainian Cities

Christmas Day shooting suspects arrested following foot chase with Plano police

Greg Abbott Slammed as Thousands Lose Power in Texas During Bomb Cyclone (Newsweek) Even though ERCOT is an independent agency, it’s ALL HIS FAULT for not going out and personally stringing extension cords so people could have electricity. In his wheelchair.

“Clowns and Thugs”: Jan 6th evidence broken down by New Yorker’s Remnick (MSNBC)

Hanukkah 2022, when Netanyahu began turning out the lights on Israeli democracy (The Times of Israel)

Highest-profile January 6 trial begins with Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio (The Guardian)

Kanye West upcoming Ye24 merch SHOCKS internet: Report (The News International)

Why Kanye West’s words do matter: Antisemitism is a dangerous disease (N.Y. Daily News) But apparently Al Sharpton’s antisemitic words don’t matter. Good to get that cleared up.

Read it.

Of course, every year there is way too much bias for just one category. So Baker led a panel of NewsBusters editors to break down the Worst of 2022 into eight additional categories (The GOP Will End Democracy Award; The Damn Those Conservatives Award; The Praising and Protecting Old Joe Award;The Media Heroes Award; The Cursing the Conservative Court Award; The Joy of Hate Award for Joy Reid Rants; The Craziest Analysis Award and the Celebrity Freak-Outs Award).

Title 42 border rules confound Washington, migrants alike (Associated Press)

Twitter Files Reveal CIA, FBI Pressured Twitter To Censor Content

Politicized FBI Uses Washington Post to Claim Their Reluctance to Raid Mar-a-Lago

More migrants dropped off outside vice president’s home in freezing weather on Christmas Eve (CNN) Living breathing reminders that she’s not doing her job.

CIA Is Using a NATO Ally’s Spy Service to Conduct a Covert Sabotage Campaign

The FBI was the primary link between the intelligence community and Twitter

Europe’s New Carbon Tariff Won’t Help the Climate (Washington Post)

Steel industry united in opposing bloc’s carbon border levy (EuracTV)

Statement by UN Development Programme Administrator Achim Steiner on the outcome of COP15 (UNDP)

What the Extinction Crisis Took From the World in 2022 (The Nation)

Brazil’s Lula promises no deforestation but challenges loom (Associated Press)

Saving salmon: Chinook return to California’s far north — with a lot of human help (S.F. Chronicle)

EU’s emissions continue to fall despite return to coal (The Guardian)

‘I was just blown away’: State report shows climate change will take massive toll on Mass. without urgent action (Boston Globe) But ‘urgent action’ never happens, and neither does the threatened ‘massive toll’.

Watch: Youth activists from around the world meet at COP15 biodiversity summit (Euronews)

The Eco-Dictatorship Coming Your Way

Global Decarbonization: Negative Agricultural Impacts

The 12 Days of Global Warming

Guess What: Electricity Isn’t Free

El Paso took too long to respond to crushing migrant crisis, critics say (N.Y. Post)

Fear, misfortune and Kanye West: how Adidas lost its lustre (Financial Times)

The January 6 report is a ‘mirror test’ for the American people (CNN)

Tucker Carlson’s rage at Zelensky caps a year of getting things wrong (Washington Post) Greg Sargent loses his shit.

How Christian nationalism seeped into home schooling (Washington Post)

Schiff urges Americans not to forget role of GOP members of Congress in efforts to overturn election (The Hill)

Mike Lindell Is Finally Running Out of Friends in MAGA World (Newsweek)

McConnell team raised worries about attack on Biden inauguration, ex-NSA O’Brien told Jan. 6 committee (Politico) But nobody remembers the actual attack on the Trump inauguration.

In the World of Astrophysics, One Failed Cancel Campaign Led to Another

UK University: Don’t Say “Christmas” Because It’s Too “Christian-Centric”

Anchor Ana Cabrera bids emotional farewell to struggling CNN (N.Y. Post)

‘Terrible neighbors’: Why embattled S.F. homeless nonprofit is getting pushback from residents and businesses (S.F. Chronicle)

Movie fans can sue over misleading trailer, US judge rules (The Guardian) You can’t make this stuff up.

The Season Of Five Finger Discounts: Shoplifting A $100 Billion Problem For US Retailers

Oregon Loses Population, Idaho Gains

The DEI industrial complex

How Big Tech and the FBI Hacked the Constitution

TikTok’s Owner ByteDance Confirms Employees Tracked User Data of Journalists

DOJ decision on whether to make trump’s taxes public could be a lose-lose (The Hill)

January 6 panel’s criminal referrals are ‘worthless,’ Trump lawyer says (CNN)

Trump attorney Jenna Ellis of Colorado under investigation for alleged misconduct (Colorado Newsline)

Raskin Mocks Theory Trump Not to Blame for 1/6: ‘We Know Exactly Whodunit’ (Newsweek) Yeah, but you need proof, and that you ain’t got.

America’s Trumpiest court doesn’t care if your right to a fair trial was violated (Vox)

Trump Made Voters Think Republicans ‘Nasty,’ Chaotic, Mitch McConnell Says (Newsweek) Whereas it was actually Mitch McConnell, along with the rest of the Deep State, who made voters think that.

Faculty outraged after Penn State backtracks on diversity proposals, cancels massive racial justice center

Orange County moves to ‘high’ level of COVID-19 transmission (ABC)

China’s Zhejiang Has 1 Million Daily COVID Cases, Expected to Double

Why Some People Have Never Gotten COVID-19

Watch Out! The Media’s ‘Mask Up!’ Marauders Are Riding Again

Read it.

Did you know that in fiscal year 2022, federal tax receipts as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) hit a near record high of 19.6 percent?

According to the U.S. Treasury, in FY 2022, total federal tax receipts and additional federal government revenue topped $4.90 trillion.  Yet, over this time, Congress spent $6.27 trillion.  The difference, the 2022 deficit, was $1.37 trillion.

The difference, of course, was made up with debt.  And year after year, decade after decade, these deficits have stacked up into a mega pile of debt.  Presently, the U.S. national debt is over $31.4 trillion.  As a reference point, in December 2000, the national debt was $5.6 trillion.

“It’s nothin’ personal–it’s just business. I always liked him.”

Read it.

“Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.”

Read it.

in 2010, cursive was omitted from the new national Common Core standards for K–12 education. The students in my class, and their peers, were then somewhere in elementary school. Handwriting instruction had already been declining as laptops and tablets and lessons in “keyboarding” assumed an ever more prominent place in the classroom. Most of my students remembered getting no more than a year or so of somewhat desultory cursive training, which was often pushed aside by a growing emphasis on “teaching to the test.” Now in college, they represent the vanguard of a cursiveless world.

Read it.

In 1941 James Burnham published The Managerial Revolution to explain the fundamental transformation of society around the world. While it appeared that communism, fascism, and liberal democracy were competing for supremacy on the world stage, Burnham noted that these systems shared a common trait of empowering highly-specialized managers who operate a network of large bureaucracies with the goal of standardizing and planning their societies from the top down. This dynamic was easier to observe in the hard totalitarian states where official state organs dictated social and economic behavior. The tight grip of the managers in those societies drove them to collapse, but in the liberal West managers used a gradual approach that proved more resilient.

The lighter touch of the managerial class in the liberal democracies allowed their citizens to believe they had escaped the fate of nations that had grown too top-heavy. Comforting notions of the free market and social tolerance made American citizens feel victorious as the last remnants of the Soviet Union collapsed under the rot of hard totalitarianism, and the soft managerial elite that dominated the West was thus able to bring more aspects of society under its control. Government agencies, corporations, media outlets, and educational institutions increasingly seemed to act with one voice and one agenda, instead of behaving as the separate self-interested actors described by classical liberalism. With an incredible degree of coordination, our elite institutions demonstrated their ability to impose widespread pandemic lockdowns, vaccination protocols, and to rewrite election law on the fly with scarcely any significant protest.