Read it.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi has announced the deployment of 600 additional police officers to Milan, citing concerns over integration challenges and rising crime rates, particularly in areas with significant immigrant populations.

Read it.

The subtle bigotry of low expectations.

Read it.

Our records of the human genome may still be missing tens of thousands of ‘dark’ genes. These hard-to-detect sequences of genetic material can code for tiny proteins, some involved in disease processes like cancer and immunology, a global consortium of researchers has confirmed.

They may explain why past estimates of our genome’s size were way larger than what the Human Genome Project discovered 20 years ago.

The new international study, still awaiting peer review, shows our library of human genes very much continues to be a work in progress, as more subtle genetic features are picked up with advances in technology, and as continued exploration uncovers gaps and errors in the record.

Read it.

New testing done at China’s Shidaowan nuclear power plant has confirmed its ability to be naturally cooled down, an industry-first milestone for achieving commercial-scale inherent safety, according to researchers.

The Shidaowan plant, a demonstration high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor with a pebble-bed module (HTR-PM), went into commercial operation last December.

Shidaowan’s twin 100-MW units house tiny uranium capsules encased in graphite shells about the size of billiard balls (dubbed “pebbles”), which make the energy density of the fuel much lower than in a traditional nuclear reactor with fuel rods. In the pebble design, the nuclear fission reaction occurs more slowly than in conventional reactors, but the fuel can withstand higher temperatures for longer and the heat resulting from the fission reaction is dispersed, enabling a passive cooling process.

The reactor doesn’t rely on large volumes of water in the cooling process—instead, a small amount of helium gas, which can withstand much higher temperatures than water, is piped through the system to naturally cool it down. If the reactor starts to get too hot, its components automatically slow down the nuclear reaction and the system cools. This setup makes such a reactor “meltdown proof,” in concept.

Read it.

President-Elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services is cause for celebration for anyone who cares about the pharmaceutical industry’s influence over regulatory agencies, and the deleterious effect it has had on the health of Americans.

Read it.

There are only two issues that Democrats might care more about than the national legalization of abortion: Blocking the passage of voter ID laws, and, blocking the mass deportation of illegal immigrants.

The reason should be relatively obvious – Keeping the border open and illegal immigrants flowing into the US is the key to election victory for progressives in the long run. If leftists are going to exterminate millions of future voters in the womb, then their only other option to fill ballot boxes is to import people from the third world and give them as much free stuff as possible so they’re sure to vote blue.

The New Neo.

I increasingly find that the vast majority of political analyses I come across are just plain stupid, and transparently so. And yes, that’s been the case since I began blogging twenty (!) years ago. But still, it’s gotten significantly worse.

It’s not just that news has become almost entirely propaganda, although that’s true. It’s that the propaganda is unconvincing on the face of it, ignoring the obvious. I once read that Soviet propaganda was like that – not meant to convince, but rather meant to tease and insult because the public knew it wasn’t true but it was an assertion of power: “See? We lie to you all the time and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

As I think I’ve said before, analyses of Kamala Harris’ loss skip her all-too-obvious failings for the most part. And why? Is it just that her identity groups – female, person of color – make her untouchable on a personal level?

Read it.

You didn’t think that the radicals would just give up and go home after Donald Trump won the election, did you? It took a little bit of time for the shock of Trump’s election victory to wear off, but now it appears that they are ready to cause widespread chaos.

Read it.

In an X post, the US firearms manufacturer Smith & Wesson described how it was “suspended indefinitely” from Facebook over the social media platform’s “ever-changing community guidelines on firearms.”

“Despite our extensive efforts and resources spent on trying to adhere to Facebook’s ever-changing community guidelines on firearms, our account was suspended indefinitely on Friday, November 22nd, 15 years after its original creation,” Smith & Wesson wrote days ago.

Smith & Wesson thanked Elon Musk and X for upholding “free speech and the right to bear arms” in an era of constant attack by the Biden-Harris regime and their anti-gunner billionaire friends who fund a network of radicalized non-profits with one goal: undermine the Second Amendment.

Read it.

Ahead of the holiday season, Amanda Calhoun appeared on MSNBC’s The ReidOut to deliver a message to its liberal viewers: It’s okay to cut off your conservative relatives.

“So, if you are going into a situation where you have family members, where you have close friends who you know have voted in ways that are against you,” Calhoun told Joy Reid earlier this month, “it’s completely fine to not be around those people and to tell them why. I think you should very much be entitled to do so, and I think it may be essential for your mental health.”

While such sentiments may be common enough among the resistance left, Calhoun is no average liberal activist. She’s a psychiatrist who serves as chief resident of Yale’s prestigious Albert J. Solnit Integrated Adult/Child Psychiatry program—and she’s not shy about her far-left activism and racial biases.

We’ve all known people like that….

Read it.

On Monday, X filed an objection in The Onion’s bid to buy InfoWars out of bankruptcy. In the objection, Elon Musk’s lawyers argued that X has “superior ownership” of all accounts on X, that it objects to the inclusion of InfoWars and related Twitter accounts in the bankruptcy auction, and that the court should therefore prevent the transfer of them to The Onion.

The legal basis that X asserts in the filing is not terribly interesting. But what is interesting is that X has decided to involve itself at all, and it highlights that you do not own your followers or your account or anything at all on corporate social media, and it also highlights the fact that Elon Musk’s X is primarily a political project he is using to boost, or stifle, specific viewpoints and help his friends. In the filing, X’s lawyers essentially say—like many other software companies, and, increasingly, device manufacturers as well—that the company’s terms of service grant X’s users a “license” to use the platform but that, ultimately, X owns all accounts on the social network and can do anything that it wants with them.

“Few bankruptcy courts have addressed the issue of ownership of social media accounts, and those courts that have were focused on whether an individual or the individual’s employer owned an account used for business purposes—not whether the social media company had a superior right of ownership over either the individual or the corporation,” Musk’s lawyers write.

Read it.

It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without turkey, long lines, and people browsing their phones for Black Friday deals in which the products had their prices raised by 80% and then cut by 80% before being stealthily replaced by Amazon with identical looking Chinese knockoffs.

And it also wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without the media launching another round of shots in its endless war on America with ‘explainers’ claiming that the Pilgrims were racist and that we should be ashamed of the holiday.

Read it.

My wife and I recently had occasion to watch the film The Sand Pebbles, and I was pointing out to her various aspects of how what sailors did Back Then compared to when I was in the Navy.

Raw Story, a Voice of the Woke Fringe.

With Donald Trump set to return to office, the Christian nationalist far right is already plotting how to take control of the schools, and indoctrinate children with “mindless obedience” for their cause, Amanda Marcotte wrote for Salon.

I guess woke people object to non-woke people doing what woke people routinely do.

Washington Examiner.

After President Joe Biden began lagging heavily behind Trump in the polls in June and July, the entrance of Harris appeared to solve Democrats’ problems. From August until right before the election, a great many accredited public polls had Harris leading Trump.

According to David Plouffe, a senior adviser on the Harris campaign, this was never reflected in internal polling, which always had Harris behind or tied with Trump.

“We didn’t get the breaks we needed on Election Day,” he said in an appearance on the Pod Save America podcast. “I think it surprised people because there was these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw.”

Plouffe added that internal polling didn’t change much throughout the election, remaining mostly static since Harris joined the race in July.

Read it.

A German man who described a judge as “obviously mentally disturbed” — after the judge issued a light sentence to a Syrian who raped a 15-year-old girl — was slapped with a €5,000 fine for “insulting” the judge. This fine given to Paul S., whose name has been changed to protect his identity, was fine almost double the fine given to the Syrian rapist. The Syrian not only did not have to serve prison time but was even complimented during his trial by the district judge for his integration efforts.

Daily Signal.

“The Census Bureau’s review of the 2020 Census revealed substantial miscounts and discrepancies tending to benefit Democrat-run states,” House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said in a statement to The Daily Signal. “Congress has a responsibility to conduct oversight of these massive errors to ensure they are not repeated in the 2030 census.”

U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Santos, an appointee of President Joe Biden, is set to testify at the hearing.

“Additionally, current integrity issues with the Census must be addressed,” Comer said.

Read it.

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to fulfill his pledge to carry out the mass illegal immigrant deportations he promised, all eyes are on the man tasked with implementing that mission: incoming “border czar” Thomas Homan, a more than 30-year law enforcement veteran who led Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the first Trump administration.

Standing in Homan’s way are a handful of Democratic governors and mayors who have vowed to fight deportations of illegal immigrants in their jurisdictions.

The most notable case is Denver mayor Mike Johnston (D.), who said last week in an interview that he is willing to put police officers at the county line to repel ICE agents, comparing Trump’s immigration plans to the massacre at Tiananmen Square.

UPDATE: CBS Evening News HIDES Border Czar Visit to the Border

Read it.

A coalition of radical anti-Israel groups is planning a “global escalation” in dozens of cities across the United States throughout the Thanksgiving holiday season.

The “Global Escalation” coalition describes itself as “a collective effort from people who share the understanding that we must urgently step up our actions to stop this genocide.” It directs activists to protest in their area and provides resources on how to organize and improve their security strategies. Some of the cities listed include New York, Chicago, Sacramento, Denver, and Charleston.

“We reject a world where genocide and war crimes go unpunished. In 3 days, for 3 days, withdraw from participating in the global economy to reject this new ‘normal,’” the coalition posted Sunday on Instagram. “Disrupt any and all entities that allow or enable genocide. Disrupt the finances fuelling or profiting from genocide.”

Read it.

Whereas we can understand how a political agenda can find its way into government institutions, how does this happen in the private sector?

What motivated these corporations that operate in a free marketplace and are owned and controlled by private stockholders to incorporate a political agenda into their business and operating practices, and what is motivating them now to back off these programs?

Has management of these corporations changed their minds regarding the business efficacy of these programs? Or did they put them in place initially to curry favor with a political regime once in power and now they are backing off to curry favor with a new regime?

Let’s recall, again, how profoundly our culture has changed.

Trump’s trade threats put the world on a precipice and may say a lot about his second term (CNN)

Mexico’s president schools Trump over his threat to institute crippling tariffs (MSNBC) Joy Reid is delusional, as always.

As Jack Smith exits, Donald Trump’s allies hint at retribution (The Economist) Do to him what would have been done to Himmler.

Could U.S. citizens get caught in Trump’s mass deportation program? (Tampa Bay Times)

Trump team eyes funding showdown with ‘sanctuary cities’ over immigration (Washington Poop) And about fargin time.

Will Eric Adams Defend the City From Trump’s Mass Deportation? (New York Magazine)

Trump’s deportations could cost California ‘hundreds of billions of dollars.’ Here’s how (CalMatters)

And so it begins (Politico)

Tariff-happy presidents are not what the Constitution envisioned (CNN) As if somebody from CNN is a constitutional scholar. Tariffs were the primary funding of the Federal government until the Civil War.

Mexico suggests it would impose its own tariffs to retaliate against any Trump tariffs (Associated Press) Good. Let’s see how that works out for them.

Trump’s Latest Tariff Threat Is Straight From His First-Term Playbook (Bloomberg)

Biden Administration Wants To Protect IRS Funding As Budget Deadline Nears (Huffington Post)

Grassley: Trump’s new tariff threats are just ‘negotiating tool’ — for now (Politico) Sure, RINO, show the playbook to the other side so they’ll know it’s not serious. What a maroon.

REGIME MEDIA: The Networks Spread Terror Over Trump Tariffs

Trump Transition Team Signs Modified White House Agreement, Without Govt Technology To Conduct Surveillance [Trump signs transition agreement with Biden, but it lacks key guardrails (Washington Poop)]

“Business As Usual”: NYT, Reuters, Vox Media Reportedly Have Zero Plans To Leave ?  And here I was hoping….

The Agony of #NeverTrump: His Comeback Has Destroyed Their Prestige (The Other McCain)

California is ‘Trump-proofing’ before Inauguration Day. Will New York do the same? (Gothamist)

Sharon Stone: Trump Won Because of ‘Uneducated’ Americans Who Don’t Travel Abroad (Breitbart) I fail to see why traveling abroad is a recommendation.

Trump’s radical plan to purge the civil service (Public Notice)

The American Thinker.

The 2020 Presidential election shared a problem with the 1998 MLB home run race: the winning candidate did too well. In 1998, steroid juicer Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris’s home run record by nine home runs or roughly 15 percent.

In 2020, Joe Biden’s 81 million votes broke Barack Obama’s 2008 record 69 million votes by 12 million votes or roughly 17 percent. Obama’s 2008 numbers were anomalous. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 numbers were closer to the norm, and Biden got nearly 25 percent more votes than she did, a cool 16 million additional votes when finally counted.

Campaigning from his basement, this cognitively-challenged, charisma-free codger did much too well in 2020, and now even the Left is noticing. With virtually all the 2024 presidential election votes counted, Kamala Harris’s vote total remains roughly seven million votes shy of Biden’s ballot box-busting performance in 2020.

Newsbusters.

As they carve their turkeys this year, Republicans can be grateful for Donald Trump, mapmaker.

He’s redrawn America’s political geography — not only winning back the White House for himself but pointing the way to victory for his party four years from now.

Before Trump, the major industrial states touching the Great Lakes were out of Republicans’ reach.

Read it.

Further evidence that surface temperatures across Greenland have been cooling for around 20 years has emerged with the recent publication of findings from a group of Thai scientists and mathematicians. Processing 31,464 satellite recording from 2000-2019 over the entire area, they found that the average temperature fell by 0.11°C. This is said to indicate a “non-significant change in LST [land surface temperature]”. The latest evidence of actual cooling over a significant area of the Arctic will not be news in scientific circles since it backs up previous findings of recent temperature falls. But the information is of course kept out of the mainstream since it casts doubt on the key Net Zero scare about soaring sea levels caused by the catastrophic melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

Washington Free Beacon.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), the chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, unveiled a bipartisan bill that would prohibit federal aid from flowing to universities that boycott Israel.

Foxx unveiled the measure, the “Protect Economic Freedom Act,” alongside Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D., N.J.) on Tuesday. It would amend the Higher Education Act to bar universities that engage in the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement from receiving federal student aid. Under the legislation, universities must submit annual certifications to the Department of Education, showing they are not engaged in a commercial boycott of Israel.

“Enough is enough. Appeasing the antisemitic mobs on college campuses threatens the safety of Jewish students and faculty, and it undermines the relationship between the U.S. and one of our strongest allies,” Foxx said in a statement. “If an institution is going to capitulate to the BDS movement, there will be consequences—starting with the Protect Economic Freedom Act.”

ADP.

On November 15, 2024, a Texas federal court struck down a U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) rule that raised the minimum salary required to be paid to most employees classified as exempt from overtime and minimum wage requirements under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The court’s order invalidates the rule nationwide effective immediately.

…

On April 23, 2024, the DOL released a final rule that would have raised the minimum salary required to be paid to most employees classified as exempt from the FLSA overtime and minimum wage requirements (the salary level test). The final rule specifically impacted those employees classified as exempt under the executive, administrative and professional employee exemptions.

The final rule raised the minimum salary in two phases. First, the final rule raised the salary amount from $684 per week ($35,568 annually) to $844 per week ($43,888 annually) effective on July 1, 2024. A second increase would have raised the salary amount to $1,128 per week ($58,656 annually) on January 1, 2025.

The final rule also increased the salary amount for certain highly compensated employees (HCEs) who are paid a salary, earn above a higher total annual compensation level, and satisfy a minimal duties test. Employees meeting the requirements of this alternative HCE test, are also exempt from the FLSA overtime and minimum wage requirements. The final rule increased the amount required to be paid to HCEs from $107,432 annually (including at least $684 per week paid on a salary or fee basis) to $132,964 annually (including at least $844 per week paid on a salary or fee basis) effective on July 1, 2024. A second increase would have raised the amount to $151,164 (including at least $1,128 per week paid on a salary or fee basis) on January 1, 2025.

Finally, the rule would have provided for an automatic update to the minimum salary and HCE amounts every three years.

UPDATE: Small business owners breathe easier over labor costs after decision to strike down overtime rule (Associated Press)

UPDATE: Overtime Rule Blocked by Court, Salary Level Takes Big Drop to $35K (HRMorning)

UPDATE: What employers should know now that the 2024 overtime rule is vacated (HRDive)

Axios, a Voice of the Crust.

Companies in the U.S. were already backing off on DEI, then Walmart entered the chat: This week the retail giant said it would cut back its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Why it matters: Walmart is the largest private employer in the country, and where it goes others are likely to follow.

Between the lines: This is a win for Robby Starbuck, a 35-year-old “anti-woke” music producer-turned-activist who’s pushed around a dozen companies to retreat on DEI this year. He first announced Walmart’s move — and took credit for it — in a post on X Monday.

UPDATE: Walmart rolls back DEI commitments amid conservative backlash (Washington Poop)

UPDATE: Walmart becomes latest — and biggest — company to roll back its DEI policies (NPR)

It’s hip, and trendy.

Marginal Revolution.

It’s been said that the radical left often ends up duplicating the policies of the radical right, just under different names and justifications, e.g. separate but equal, scientific thinking is “white” thinking and so forth. Here’s another example from Salim Furth: the re-creation of redlining. Redlining was the practice of making it more difficult to access financial products such as mortgages by grading some neighborhoods as “hazardous” for investment. Either by design or result, redlining was often associated with minority populations.

Salim shows that Massachusetts has created a modern redlining system.

UnHerd.

You would be hard pressed to find a bar in Washington D.C. where you’d find a group of people as ideologically diverse as Donald Trump’s cabinet. He’s got Tea Party veterans mingling with a Kennedy, a Teamsters ally, George Soros’s “protege”, and the former vice-chair of the Democratic Party.

And, yet, on the surface at least, D.C. is uncharacteristically calm. Some anti-abortion groups are agitating about Trump’s decision to nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr to head up the Department of Health and Human Services, but on the Right, nothing inside the conservative movement resembles a “freak out” at all right now.

“It’s the end of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” says one insider, reflecting on the feverish resistance movement that sprang into action after the President-elect’s 2016 win, creating an arms race for anti-Trump donor cash and media attention. While there’s some “grumbling” about Kennedy and Trump’s pro-union pick for Labor Secretary, nobody wants to “step on the vibes”, one senior activist tells me.

TDS is still going strong in the Narrative Media, as I document here daily.

Read it.

The Navy will sideline 17 ships to contend with a shortage of civilian mariners, the Military Sealift commander said last week, prompting concerns from the Marine Corps about how it will support and transport its own forces.

Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck, the MSC commander, told reporters on Thursday that the move to dock more than a dozen ships was meant to give overworked and understaffed civilian mariners a break as the command looks to get “the foundation back intact” for ship maintenance.

While Sobeck said this plan would take place “over the next two years,” he wouldn’t say how long it will take to get ships back in the water. The result is that ships that support the Marine Corps will not be available, causing worries for the amphibious service that will compound existing challenges getting Marines to the field.

Read it.

How will the United States foreign policy establishment and their supporting commentariat respond to the shocking political resurrection of Donald Trump? Will they grapple with painful realities and examine the deficiencies of foreign and economic policy that helped lead to this point of crisis?

Or will they do what they did last time and tell self-serving and fictitious stories about the past, a morality tale of virtuous internationalists battling primitive isolationists — the old Good Old Ways versus Orange Man Bad?

An early indication is offered by David Sanger’s article in the New York Times which is so pervaded by standard liberal nostalgia it almost writes itself.

Read it.

with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. The First was in Hanoi, followed by a highly ‘controversial’ meeting at the Korean border, which was the first time in history that a sitting American president had stepped foot into the North Korean side of the border.

There was talk at the time of the two leaders falling “in love”—however, the past couple years of Biden’s Pentagon parking a nuclear submarine at a South Korean port has done much to undo these good will displays. Washington has requested that Pyongyang abandon its nuclear weapons development, while Kim has demanded nothing less than full sanctions relief.

What will the policy be under the second Trump White House?

It worked last time.

Newsbusters.

NBC’s Today smeared Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo on Monday, after he advised state municipal governments to stop adding fluoride to their drinking water. The segment painted Ladapo as a conspiracy kook for raising concerns about water fluoridation, while spending practically no time at all actually explaining what scientific basis he had for the move.

The Foundry.

“My Mom Voted for Trump. Can We Let It Go?” Read the headline for The New York Times’ “The Ethicist” piece Friday.

The family dynamic no doubt is familiar to New York Times’ readers—the writer’s wife’s family members are committed Donald Trump haters, except his mother voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.

The writer isn’t sure if his mother voted for Trump in 2024—and still the family wants to pile on her.

If I had kids, and they did that to me, they’d be set to find their own Thanksgiving dinner.

Read it.

Corporate media outlets have buried, downplayed, or otherwise shelved a new study which reveals that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) policies cause people to become ‘hostile’ – essentially seeing racism where none exists.

The new study from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and Rutgers University found that people exposed to DEI talking points about race, religion and gender form integroup hostility and authoritarian attitudes towards others.

“What we did was we took a lot of these ideas that were found to still be very prominent in a lot of these DEI lectures and interventions and training,” said NCRI Chief Science Officer Joel Finkelstein, a co-author of the study. “And we said, ‘Well, how is this going to affect people?’ What we found is that when people are exposed to this ideology, what happens is they become hostile without any indication that anything racist has happened.”

Researchers exposed 324 participants to two sets of reading material; a racially-neutral text about corn, or the writings of race-baiters Ibram X. Kendi or Robin DiAngelo. The participants were then exposed to a racially neutral scenario in which a student was rejected from college.

Daily Signal.

I don’t always agree with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, but I can’t help but feel a bit of healthy schadenfreude at the prospect of America’s corrupt health care establishment getting the bitter taste of well-deserved disruptive medicine.

Kennedy isn’t exactly a conservative. He’s on the record supporting abortion, and he has a long track record of working not just in environmental conservation (which I support), but in advancing climate alarmism, which I consider not only wrong, but disruptive for freedom, prosperity, and environmental protection.

Yet Kennedy also represents the inquisitive spirit that the medical establishment has fought tooth-and-nail to suppress, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Big Health’s recent scandals make the kind of shake-up Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promises not only necessary, but also a just retribution.

Read it.

Infamous leftist ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s recently sued its parent company, Unilever, for allegedly censoring the woke company’s pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel rhetoric.

The Daily Wire reported that the company constantly pushed far-left talking points. This time, Unilever allegedly pushed back against Ben & Jerry’s supporting anti-Semitic protests on American college and university campuses, with the students urging the U.S. government to stop sending military aid to Israel.

According to the Wire, the fact that the woke Unilever decided to stop Ben & Jerry’s from spreading its leftist ideology shows that the culture and political status quo in this country is changing.

 

Newsbusters.

Filing this one for CBS in the better-late-than-never category (or perhaps decades late), Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes led with a lengthy profile of the upstart University of Austin (UATX) and its classical liberal education and commitment to free speech as a way of realizing that, for lack of a better term, American universities are not only hot beds of chaos (as exhibited by the aftermath of October 7), but exhibit little to no ideological and political diversity).

Read it.

More than 9,000 buildings and 7,000 vehicles have been damaged or destroyed by Hezbollah operations against the Israeli north since the start of the war, Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Tuesday – highlighting the “unimaginable” losses ahead of a potential ceasefire deal with Lebanon.

“In the conflict line settlements, there is almost no building that does not require renovation – or demolition and rebuilding,” said the Israeli newspaper’s electronic site Ynet.

According to property tax data obtained by Ynet, “a disturbing partial image emerges that indicates destruction and damage to approximately 9,000 buildings and over 7,000 vehicles that were damaged mainly by Hezbollah fire.”

Ynet adds that “about NIS 140 million [$38,368,316] has been paid to compensate for the damages.”

Imagine how peaceful the world would be if the Religion of Peace didn’t exist.

Trump’s evasion of January 6 accountability will echo for next four years and generations to come (CNN)

Trump is coming for the executive branch. Does he know what he’s doing? (Dan Balz/Washington Post)

Trump hoodwinked voters about his worst policy commitments (Lisa Needham/Public Notice)

PBS Mocks Trump’s Cabinet Picks: ‘As Low as You Could Possibly Go’

Behind the Curtain: Trump’s bad-boys fixation (Axios)

GOP senators squirm over sex-related allegations against Trump Cabinet picks (Alexander Bolton/The Hill)

Trump’s mass deportation plan could clog immigration courts for years (Russell Contreras/Axios)

I Just Listened to Steve Bannon’s Show for a Week. What’s Coming Is Clear. (Molly Olmstead/Slate)

US farm groups want Trump to spare their workers from deportation (Reuters)

The man who helped roll back abortion rights now wants to ‘crush liberal dominance’ (NPR)

Could Trump sideline government watchdogs? Some are already quitting. (Politico)

Biden should pardon Trump (Washington Post)

MLK Jr.’s daughter: Americans should not ‘retreat or recoil’ after Trump win (Cheyanne M. Daniels/The Hill)

Pete Hegseth Is the Perfect Trumpworld Monster (Ana Marie Cox/New Republic)

Trump Pentagon pick attacks UN and Nato and urges US to ignore Geneva conventions (Jason Wilson/The Guardian)

Why Trump keeps insisting that his policy proposals are wildly popular (Philip Bump/Washington Post)

At the crossroads of news and opinion, ‘Morning Joe’ hosts grapple with aftermath of Trump meeting (David Bauder/Associated Press)

Washington Post Describes Distraught Lefty ‘News Quitters’ as Just… ‘Some People’

Bill Clinton: Trump interested in 100 percent loyalty ‘no matter who gets hurt’ (Lauren Irwin/The Hill)

Trump Reportedly Planning Immediate Ban On Transgenders In US Military

Jack Of No Trades: Special Counsel Officially Drops Trump Election Interference Case

Heartbreak City: ABC, CBS, NBC Crestfallen Over Smith Filing to Drop J6 Case on Trump

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams Announces Anticipated Resignation From The Southern District Of New York (US Department of Justice)

The self-named Resistance: how’s it doing this time?

Popular vote totals make Trump’s ‘mandate’ look like a mirage (Steve Benen/MSNBC)

Schiff on possible Trump retribution: ‘That’s dictator talk’ (Lauren Irwin/The Hill)

Whiners: Hostin, Whoopi Want to Disengage from Politics After Trump’s Win

Republicans Freak Out Over Trump’s Choice for Labor Secretary (Farah Stockman/New York Times)

Blinken Comes Under Fire Over State Department ‘Therapy Sessions’ After Trump Win

Donald Trump’s Luck with the Economy May Be Turning (Steven Rattner/New York Times)

New York To Close 12 Migrant Shelters Ahead Of Trump Deportation Agenda

NYT Claims Automakers Want Trump To Keep EV Mandates. One of Them Tells the Free Beacon That’s Bogus.

These Are The Countries That Triggered Democrats Are Moving To After Trump’s Resounding Victory  Don’t go away mad … just go away.

Corporate America Isn’t So Sure (Jay Kuo/The Status Kuo)

Megyn Kelly Admits Pete Hegseth Is Not Marriage Material (Lily Mae Lazarus/The Daily Beast)

Homan: ‘I guarantee’ funds will be cut from states not cooperating on deportation (Tara Suter/The Hill)  OH NOES!

A government by toxic men, for toxic men (Noah Berlatsky/Public Notice)

This is the new progressive strategy for warring with Trump (Politico)

One Major Obstacle to Trump’s Mass Deportation Promise: Local Law Enforcement (Casey Murray/NOTUS)

Playbook: Trump begins the tariff tango (Politico)

Trump ‘Border Czar’ Pledges to Throw Denver Mayor in Jail if His City Resists Mass Deportations (Sean Craig/The Daily Beast)  HOW DARE HE!

Trump’s expanding business ties come under ethics spotlight (Rebecca Beitsch/The Hill)

Trump’s evasion of January 6 accountability will echo for next four years and generations to come (Stephen Collinson/CNN)

CNN: Walmart Prices Will Skyrocket 250% Under Trump’s China Tariff!

Mexico Threatens Trump With Counter-Tariffs, China Cries Foul

Trump opens up a new war on public schools (Amanda Marcotte/Salon)  Amanda Marcotte’s war on Trump, however, is old news.

How Trump Plans to Seize the Power of the Purse From Congress (Molly Redden/ProPublica)

Immigrants’ Resentment Over New Arrivals Helped Boost Trump’s Popularity With Latino Voters (ProPublica)

Kimmel Hypes 1,200 Percent Increase in Vasectomies After Trump Win  The more the merrier.

Donald Trump Is a Weakling. That’s the Problem. (Timothy Noah/New Republic)

Russell Vought is just the man to implement Trump’s autocratic vision (James D. Zirin/The Hill)

The Teflon Endures: Jack Smith Ends Trump Prosecutions (Kim Wehle/The Bulwark)

Mexico suggests it would impose its own tariffs to retaliate against any Trump tariffs (Associated Press)  Call me when they seal off their side of the border.

Countering Trump 2.0 – O, CANADA: State Sen. Liz Krueger knows her ideas to counter … (Politico)

Dark Times for Guac Lovers (William Kristol/The Bulwark)

Medicare proposes covering weight-loss drugs, teeing up clash with RFK Jr. (Dan Diamond/Washington Post)

Stein Freaks Trump Might Arrest People ‘Because They Disagree’ With Him

CNN Continues to PANIC Over The Idea of a Musk-Owned MSNBC

Trump team eyes quick rollback of Biden student debt relief (Michael Stratford/Politico)

Trump Plans Tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China That Could Cripple Trade (New York Times)

Trump Has Late-Night Meltdown Over New York Times Story on Close Aide (Malcolm Ferguson/New Republic)

Trump’s picks to reward top donors who helped him win, watchdogs say (Peter Stone/The Guardian)

Leftist Protests Aside, Polls Show Americans Support Trump Cabinet Picks, Transition

WATCH: ‘This Show Is Just Going To Be Legal Notes’: Trump Cabinet Picks Force ‘The View’ To Play Cleanup

Would-Be Trump Assassin Ryan Routh Echoes Democratic Rhetoric, Calls Trump a ‘Dictator’ in Jailhouse Letter  If Trump were a dictator, this guy would already be in a hole in the ground.

Don Jr. Says They’re Discussing Replacing Some Journalists at the White House Press Briefing with Podcast Bros (Sean Craig/The Daily Beast)  Just to improve the tone.

ZMan can only shake his head.

It appears the plan is to fill the time between now and when Donald Trump regains the White House with stories about starting a nuclear war with Russia. First, we got the NATO missiles strikes on Russia, then it was the Russian use of a mystery weapon that should terrify everyone. Instead, the response from NATO is a series of stories about doing even dumber things than the missile strikes. It is as if Western leaders are in a contest to see who can think of the dumbest idea possible.

So far this week we have stories leaking out from Europe that the Brits and French are talking about sending an “expeditionary force” to Ukraine. That was followed by comments from the head of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, suggesting NATO launch preemptive strikes on Russia. All of this is taking place in the looming shadow of a second Trump administration. The Europeans are carrying on as if Godzilla is approaching the continent.

Of course, all these ideas are being floated by people who would urinate themselves if faced with a physical confrontation. Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are ridiculous people who have landed in these positions due to the collapse of their respective political classes. The rest of the European political class is equally silly, but most lack the vanity of these two. Most are like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who seems to cherish being a middling mediocrity.

The American Mind.

It did not take long for the Left to demand a consolation prize for their failed leader Kamala Harris. The opening bid was replacing Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor with “Justice” Harris. What joy that would be. But it’s also mercifully implausible. Not only would the Wise Latinx Justice need to retire to make way for a proud black Brahmin, but Chuck Schumer would have to wrangle a one-vote majority that includes departing former Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. In his lame duck era, Schumer doesn’t really have the ability to rally this captious crowd behind any nominee. But for Harris? Please.

We must go back to the beginning of our quest: how to console the hapless Harris? She’ll have to do what she always does: fail upward. And there’s only one logical next step on that path: the governorship of California.

The ghastly Gavin Newsom is termed out in two years. Unless California Rs get their stuff together in a big way, he will inevitably be followed by another progressive D. And there is no bigger progressive D in Cali Town than Kamala D. Harris, D-San Francisco.

ZMan:

Tradition, like most of what makes up the organic set of relations and habits of mind we call culture is not quantifiable. Most people cannot tell you why they like that the Detroit Lions host a game every Thanksgiving. You may not care about the NFL, or the teams involved, but it is probably part of your Thanksgiving memories. The value of intangible things like tradition make sense only to the people who have them.

Washington Free Beacon.

n September 2022, the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) made a bold promise to the school’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Engagement: From then on, the department said, 50 percent of all faculty hires would be either women or minorities.

Citing the need for “culturally relevant pedagogy,” the department explained that “minoritized” professors “tend to have a greater sense” of “the human, social, and communal nature of teaching and learning.”

That is why the department was applying to UIC’s Bridge to Faculty program, which funds the recruitment and mentorship of postdoctoral scholars from “underrepresented” groups.

The money would help the engineering program hit its diversity targets, the department wrote in its application, and, by boosting the number of minority faculty, “enable students” to change “oppressive systems, discriminatory practices, and eventually society as a whole.”

The pitch paid off: When UIC announced its fourth cohort of Bridge scholars in 2023, industrial engineering was one of 10 departments chosen to host one.

There’s money in them thar grifts.

Washington Free Beacon.

Up to one million migrants are expected to have entered the United States under the controversial CPB One program by the time President Joe Biden leaves office, with the figure already nearing 900,000, according to internal Department of Homeland Security data obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

CBP One allows migrants who want to claim asylum in the United States to apply for the program in their home country using a mobile phone application. Those migrants are then given court dates, which are often scheduled years later. The Biden administration broadly expanded the program last year under the belief that it would ease pressure on the southern border.

That decision prompted criticism from Republicans who said CBP One was nothing more than a way to facilitate illegal immigration and mask the true number of individuals entering the country. Migrants who enter the country via CBP One are not counted by law enforcement agencies as traditional border crossers.