Read it.

Latin is useful, however; and unlike the sciences, it is not only useful to those who practise it. Indeed, Latin is useful to anyone who wishes to learn another language, or to anyone who hopes to become a doctor or a lawyer. It is useful to anyone who simply wants to improve their mental faculties, or expand the horizons of their perception, and that is without making the oft-repeated case – as I have avoided doing – that a knowledge of Latin deepens one’s understanding of Western culture, of art, philosophy and literature. If, as Phillipson maintains, students ought to “get a richer, broader, cutting-edge school experience”, the solution is to expand, rather than curtail, access to the world’s most influential language. We may not have the same use for Latin as the Romans did, but we can still make immense use of it nonetheless.

I’ve used my high-school Latin far more than I’ve ever used my high-school physics or chemistry or (dare I say it) math.

UPDATE: The Value of Latin Best Appreciated Sub Specie Aeternitatis

Read it.

A man is in custody and being questioned after another man was pushed onto the subway tracks in a New Year’s Eve attack in Manhattan.

Steve Bannon Just Took His War With Elon Musk to a Ridiculous Level (The New Republic)

What the visa feud says about the coming Trump administration (CNN) And what the coverage says about the Narrative Media.

California’s tech titans say H-1B visas are vital. Will Trump defy MAGA and support them? (L.A. Times)

Donald Trump Caught Between Elon Musk’s Wishes and American Public (Newsweek)

The US Has Deported Immigrants En Masse Before. Here’s What Happened. (Politico)

A Massive Immigration Courts Backlog Could Slow Trump’s Deportation Plans (TIME)

Immigrants and organizations in Massachusetts worried about deportations under Trump (CBS Boston)

‘Hard time believing’ Trump is ‘disciplined enough’ to enact deportation plans: Julián Castro (MSNBC)

Trump team orders ‘all intended nominees’ to stop posting on social media ahead of Senate confirmations (Diana Glebova/New York Post)

Debt Limit Battle Looms Between Trump, Conservatives

The MAGA Honeymoon Is Over – Silicon Valley and the nativist right worked together to elect Trump. (Ali Breland/The Atlantic)

Biden says Trump could learn ‘decency’ from Jimmy Carter in tribute address (Joseph Gedeon/The Guardian)

Elon Musk is on a collision course with Stephen Miller (Andrew Prokop/Vox)

Don Lemon Mocks MAGA ‘Dumb F*****g Idiots’ Over H1-B Visa Argument

Musk Still Crashing at Mar-a-Lago Bachelor Pad to Be Near Bestie Trump: Report (Miles Klee/Rolling Stone)

Jorge Ramos Is Gone from Univision, But Still Whining About Trump

Jack Smith Hands Mar-a-Lago Docs Case to Florida Prosecutors

In a war between tech bros and core MAGA, the winner is easy to spot (Adam Lashinsky/Washington Post)

“Shameful, Dangerous, & Anti-Democratic”? – German Establishment Fumes Over Musk’s “Election Interference”

Trump begins his lame duck term pre-hobbled (David R. Lurie/Public Notice)

Watch it.

Britain is the poster child for what the U.S. would be under the Democrats.

“Scientific truths and natural laws exist independent of researchers’ identities. The distribution of prime numbers does not change as a function of whether the mathematician is a white heterosexual Christian man or a transgendered, Muslim, differently sized (obese) individual. The periodic table of elements is not dependent on whether a chemist is a Latinx queer or a cisnormative Hasidic Jew. … [S]cience is liberating precisely because it does not care about your identity. It is the epistemological means by which we seek to understand the world using evidentiary rules that are unbiased. There is no other game in town, no other way of knowing.”  —  Gad Saad, The Parasitic Mind

Read it.

For years, I understood advertising was designed to manipulate behavior. As someone who studied the mechanics of marketing, I considered myself an educated consumer who could navigate rational market choices. What I didn’t grasp was how this same psychological architecture shaped every aspect of our cultural landscape. This investigation began as curiosity about the music industry’s ties to intelligence agencies. It evolved into a comprehensive examination of how power structures systematically mold public consciousness.

What I discovered showed me that even my most cynical assumptions about manufactured culture barely scratched the surface. This revelation has fundamentally altered not just my worldview, but my relationships with those who either cannot or choose not to examine these mechanisms of control. This piece aims to make visible what many sense but cannot fully articulate – to help others see these hidden systems of influence. Because recognizing manipulation is the first step toward resisting it.

This investigation unfolds in three parts: First, we’ll examine the foundational systems of control established in the early 20th century. Next, we’ll explore how these methods evolved through popular culture and counterculture movements. Finally, we’ll see how these techniques have been automated and perfected through digital systems.

I love the smell of conspiracy in the morning.

The AntiPlanner.

The news from California this week is that Michael Hursh, the CEO of the Alameda-Contra Costa Transit District (AC Transit), is resigning, but the agency will continue to pay him through September as a “senior advisor.” The real news is how much he was paid: according to Transparent California, in 2022 he collected $556,045.

Read it.

The Regime Media are stepping over each other to see who can offer the most sycophantic coverage of the legacy of the 39th President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, who passed away yesterday at the age of 100. It appears that a frontrunner has emerged.

Read it.

Today in “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” news…

Two Oregon men searching for the mythical Sasquatch tragically died after going missing in the wilderness on Christmas Eve, according to the NY Post.

The Skamania County Sheriff’s Office reported that the bodies of the men, aged 37 and 59, were discovered in a remote, forested area of Washington’s Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Authorities believe the pair succumbed to exposure due to severe weather conditions and inadequate preparation for the harsh environment.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Norovirus is surging in the U.S. What you need to know, from length of symptoms to protecting yourself (Fortune)

Norovirus cases are surging. A doctor explains what to look for (CNN)

Stomach flu cases are increasing. How to stay safe (Deseret News)

Norovirus: What to know about rising outbreaks of the gastrointestinal ailment (Washington Poop)

Lockdown Fanatic Leana Wen Pushing Bird Flu Jabs Before Trump Takes Office

Silence Of The Labs: How A Censorship Campaign Failed To Kill A COVID Origin Theory

Read it.

North Korea’s new warship design has emerged and it appears to be the largest the country has yet constructed. The vessel, which looks to be around the size of a typical modern frigate, or at the least a very large corvette, also appears to be designed to accommodate a vertical launch system (VLS) for missiles and a phased-array radar — two advanced items not previously seen on a North Korean design.

Photos of the new warship, the name of which has not been disclosed, were recently released by North Korea’s state-run Korean Central Television (KCTV). The vessel is seen being inspected by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un while under construction in a dry dock at Nampho Shipyard on the Taedong River estuary, on the west coast of the country.

What the visa feud says about the coming Trump administration (CNN)

GOP Gov. Claims Musk Is Too Rich to Be Corrupted by Conflicts of Interest (Peter Wade/Rolling Stone)

In shift, Trump downgrades soaring rhetoric on campaign promises (Brett Samuels/The Hill)

Trump’s Top 10 Best Moves of 2024 (RealClearPolitics)

Trumpers discover a type of bigotry they oppose (against themselves) (Noah Berlatsky/Public Notice)

“This is Trump’s America now!”: MAGA diehards jumpstart a new year of political violence (Amanda Marcotte/Salon)

Jimmy Carter’s Surprise Parting Gift to Donald Trump (Yasmeen Hamadeh/The Daily Beast)

Biden Angry That Lawfare Was Too Slow to Destroy Trump (David Strom/HotAir)

How Elon Musk Has Planted Himself Almost Literally at Trump’s Doorstep (New York Times)

Read it.

After Lori Lightfoot was voted out of the mayor’s seat in Chicago after her calamitous tenure, I dearly hoped that the residents of Chicago had come to their senses about progressive mayors and would vote for someone who had some understanding of fiscal responsibility and the role of a big-city mayor.

It was not to be.

The mayoralty of progressive Brandon Johnson has been, to say the least, a disaster.

Democracy means the people vote for whom they want, and they deserve to get it, good and hard.

The Foundry.

Are you aware that in our democracy the people least able to pay their debts are the ones who acquired expensive degrees to improve their earning potential? If you weren’t before, your ignorance has surely been remedied after no less than five rounds of Department of Education rulemaking aimed at relieving the distress of student-loan borrowers who found that—after years devoted to filing petty complaints over their professors’ verbal miscues—they were less upwardly mobile than they expected.

Under the Biden administration, the department worked with beaver-like diligence to appease this constituency, or at least its self-appointed representatives. Few priorities received more attention from the executive branch. Disinclined to the political exercise of negotiating with Congress, the Biden administrative preferred instead the esoteric, quasi-mystical exercises of combing statutes to uncover magical debt-nuking powers undiscovered by previous, less enterprising administrations. Whenever the fruits of their labors came under legal attack, as they often did, the Education Department deployed battalions of the executive branch’s lawyerly army to convince federal judges that the government had not taken leave of its senses.

Except that now, after all that trouble and effort, the Department of Education is withdrawing these regulations. Specifically, on Dec. 20, the department announced it was withdrawing the two most recent rules (one already enjoined by a federal court). Had student borrowers suddenly found their financial footing? Not exactly. The Associated Press reports that this is merely one part of “an administration-wide plan to jettison pending regulations to prevent President-elect Donald Trump from retooling them to achieve his own aims.” The department’s notice of withdrawal more or less confirms that cynical reading when it closes in an “oh, by the way” sort of tone, that the incoming administration would have to repeat the laborious negotiated rulemaking process to implement any new policy in this area.

Watch it.

Every day, in every way, everybody’s going keto.

Read it.

Graves, appointed by President Biden in November 2021, notably declined to halt proceedings against J6 defendants until President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in next month.

The DOJ bragged in the press release about the government’s scalp count for its unprecedented prosecution of Jan 6 protesters. “More than 1,424 individuals have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol,” Matthew Graves, the Joe Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, boasted. The investigation into the four-hour disturbance, Graves warned, is “ongoing.”

Indeed. The DOJ, astonishingly, is on pace to arrest one J6 protester a day this year; Graves has stated his intention to bring the total caseload to at least 2,000 defendants before the statute of limitations expires.

Number of Black Lives Matter rioters in prison: 0.

Number of Antifa rioters in prison: 0.

Read it.

a few pancakes on your gas stove. When they’ve finished eating, you want to pop those dirty dishes in the dishwasher. Sounds simple, and now it is. But thanks to President Joe Biden, your gas stove and your dishwasher (as well as your gas-fired boiler and water heater) might go the way of the dinosaur.

Just as former President Barack Obama took away your light bulbs, the Biden administration wants to take away your favorite appliances. One of President-elect Donald Trump’s first actions should be to get the government out of our kitchens in the same way that he gave us back our light bulbs in his first term.

This year, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Transportation have announced proposed rules that would take away your choice of appliances—and cars.

And it’s going to cost you. The DOE’s dishwasher rule would increase wash times and result in millions of dollars per year in increased product costs. Households would save less than $20 a year for some dishwasher models, and other models would result in no savings.

Read it.

Few people worked harder over the past few years to put Donald Trump behind bars than Liz Cheney, the former (alleged) Republican congresswoman from Wyoming.

Seeking revenge for Trump’s longtime criticism of her father’s “weapons of mass destruction” lie, Cheney sought to settle a family score by imprisoning Trump over the events of January 6. “No one is above the law!,” Cheney, in her grating sanctimonious style, frequently insists.

Well, except for her.

New York Post.

We went from 13 to 1,000 [members] back then within a period of a year,” he said. “Because the need was there. The need is here now once again. We’re going to step up. We’re going to make sure we have a visual presence just like we had in the ’70s, 80’s and ’90s.”

Ever since last week’s shocking slaying, “hundreds of citizens” have requested the Guardian Angels return to patrol the subway cars, Sliwa claimed.

“We’re covering the actual trains from front to back, walking through the trains and making sure that everything is okay,” he told The Post on Sunday. “We’re doing this constantly now. Starting today. that’s going to be our complete focus because the subways are out of control.”

Note that all of the most expensive places are Blue states.

Read it.

Enxhi Seli-Zacharias is an Albanian whose family migrated to Germany when she was a child. After being raised in an Islamic society, she experienced living in Germany as a liberation. She is on record as saying: “For me, Islam does not belong to Germany.”

She is now a local politician for the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland, Alternative for Germany), and actively opposes the Islamization of Germany. She resisted allowing the muezzin call to prayer via loudspeaker, and has spoken out against the formation of parallel societies. She supports the introduction of a headscarf ban in schools.

Her contrarian stances on other matters include a call to halt delivery of arms to Ukraine and opposition to vaccination against COVID-19.

Read it.

For the past three years, I was a substitute teacher in the public schools of Warren County, Virginia. I served both as an aide in classrooms with a regular full-time teacher and as a substitute alone in the classroom.

Warren County schools are probably typical of public schools everywhere: Most teachers love the students and are very frustrated that they can’t actually do what they signed up to do: teach. At the same time, many parents don’t understand why their children are not learning. Here are my insights as to why.

This, of course, just applies to government schools, which everybody assumes is what people talk about when they talk about ‘kids learning’. Savvy parents either send their kids to private schools or, if they’re really hardcore, homeschool. That’s quite a different story–but good look finding where to read it.

Read it.

The Global Engagement Center, an office housed within the State Department and aiming to thwart disinformation and misinformation, has been forced by Congress to close up shop. It’s no mystery why; the taxpayer-backed GEC violated its mandate to work only overseas and devolved into a partisan enabler of speech suppression in the United States.

Founded in 2016 and technically the product of an Obama-era executive order on counterterrorism, the GEC lapsed in December and lost congressional funding. Over the last two years, my investigative reporting in the Washington Examiner as well as that of Racket News journalist Matt Taibbi pulled back the curtain of the GEC’s ties to foreign and domestic NGOs trying to defund news outlets they say peddle disinformation – including RealClearPolitics. My reporting showed that the GEC and the State Department-funded National Endowment for Democracy combined granted almost $1 million to the British Global Disinformation Index, which created a blacklist of U.S.-based websites that published content it determined to push “adversarial narratives” and then pressured advertisers to shut them down (think the Hunter Biden laptop story and COVID-19 lab leak hypothesis).

The GEC, moreover, was involved with the Election Integrity Partnership, a consortium of left-wing nonprofit groups, universities, and federal agencies that pressured Twitter and Facebook to remove GOP-aligned content in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. The GEC also bankrolled New York-based company NewsGuard, a “misinformation” tracker that, along with the Global Disinformation Index, has found itself at the center of a lawsuit brought by the Federalist, the Daily Wire, and the State of Texas against the GEC for allegedly funding an unconstitutional “censorship scheme” that suppressed voices on the right.

And there was much rejoicing.

Read it.

That way you don’t get tied down to the crazies.

NPR.

Achievements? Say rather derelictions. I remember those years. ‘Stagflation’ was the keynote of his Presidency. For most of my life, he was universally considered the Worst President Ever, until Obama and Biden came along to save him.

UPDATE: 20th Century’s Worst President Dead at 100

UPDATE: The Regime Media Rewrite History For Jimmy Carter’s Passing

Dear Jurisprudence: Can Trump Really Run for a Third Term? (Slate)

Biden reportedly regrets ending re-election campaign and says he’d have defeated Trump (Robert Tait/The Guardian)  Why, sure, I believe that.

Washington Post ‘Cannot Abide’ Trump’s Wish for a ‘Compliant News Media’

Fani To Be Slapped With Subpoenas After Court Rules Lawmakers Can Demand Answers

Clutching Pearls to Dust: The View’s Most Terrifying Trump Predictions of 2024

Trump calls federal judge’s decision on border wall “major, crucial WIN” (Lauren Floyd/Axios)

Trump appears to side with Musk, tech allies in debate over foreign workers roiling his supporters (Michelle L. Price/Associated Press)

Mexico, Betting Trump Is Bluffing on Tariffs, Sees an Opportunity (Peter S. Goodman/New York Times)

What Are H-1B Visas? The Immigration Policy Dividing Elon Musk And Trump’s Allies Explained (Alison Durkee/Forbes)

Lefty Legal Experts Urge Congress To Disqualify Trump In Last Ditch Effort To Keep Him From Taking Office

How Donald Trump Went From Backing a TikTok Ban to Backing Off (New York Times)

Trump Weighs In on Immigrant Visa Debate but Offers Little Clarity (Ken Bensinger/New York Times)

Musk Doubles Down on Support for German Far-Right Party (Christopher F. Schuetze/New York Times)

The End of Never Trump

PBS Hosts Far-Left Smear Factory to Demonize Trump—Using Your Tax Dollars

Democrats taunt Trump with ‘President Musk’ moniker (The Hill)  I’m sure Trump will be willing to pay them some attention, once they graduate from kindergarten.

Trump’s Tariff Threats Cast Shadow Over European Auto Industry  My heart breaks for them.

As Team Trump Takes Over, MSNBC Leftists Scream ‘Oligarchy!’

German politicians attack Elon Musk article praising far-right AfD (Financial Times)

MAGA Is Already Eating Its Own. Pass the Popcorn (Paul Krugman/Krugman wonks out)

Trump hasn’t permanently changed GOP, Sununu says (Donica Phifer/Axios)

Mexico To Open Shelters For Deported Citizens On Trump’s Inauguration Day

Latest Race Hoax: Slur Posted At College ‘Fabricated’ To Make Trump Backers Look Bad

Gov. Sununu Claims Elon Musk is Too Rich to Have Conflict of Interest Between Business and Vast Influence Over Trump Administration (Kipp Jones/Mediaite)

Trump Finally Takes Sides in The Civil War Tearing MAGA Apart (Leigh Kimmins/The Daily Beast)

Elon Musk Is a National Security Risk (New York Times)

Gov. Sununu: No Conflict of Interest for Musk

‘The first to sue’: Opposing Trump’s desire to end birthright citizenship is personal for this attorney general (Lawrence Hurley/NBC News)

Cedar Sanderson.

Before I was a writer, I was a reader. I was also, for a time somewhat congruent with becoming a writer fledgling, a librarian. I am now in possession of a small personal library, a modest collection after all these years and many moves have cost me more volumes than I care to think about.

I have tried, in the past, and at least once with the help of my enthusiastic teens, to create a library catalog of my own books. This isn’t as easy as it sounds – a video recently floated through my streams of a kid who was very excited to catalog his library by… scanning all his books. This only works, you know, if your books are young enough to have a barcode. Many of mine are older than ISBNs, let alone barcoding. Some of mine have ISBNs which were reassigned to other titles decades after their publication, which was interesting to discover when we were working on the library project. Still, somehow, I’d like to get an inventory of my books. For one thing, having that would hopefully keep me from acquiring too many duplicates. For another, it might help me find gaps in the library when I’m wandering about looking at books and wondering ‘do I really need this?’ and ‘have I already got three Greek cookbooks, do I need another?’ or even ‘ooh, Thriftbooks has a sale on!’

Know the feeling.

Read it.

Three firefighters and a dozen passengers were injured in Florida on Saturday when a fire truck with its lights flashing drove around rail crossing arms and into the path of a high-speed passenger train after waiting for another train to pass, according to video of the incident and a person briefed on what happened.

The crash happened at 10:45 a.m. in crowded downtown Delray Beach. In the aftermath the Brightline train was stopped on the tracks, its front destroyed, about a block away from the Delray Beach Fire Rescue truck. Its ladder was ripped off and in the grass several yards away, The Sun-Sentinel reported.

The Delray Beach Fire Rescue said in a social media post that three Delray Beach firefighters were in stable condition at a hospital. Palm Beach County Fire Rescue took 12 people from the train to the hospital with minor injuries.

Oops.

Read it.

The University of Iowa announced that it would close its Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies department as public universities in the state continue to respond to a changing DEI landscape.

I’ll just bet.

Read it.

Biden began his term in office by abandoning Afghanistan to the Taliban and allowing the creation of a new terrorist super state. He is finishing his time in the Oval Office by watching helplessly as a new Caliphate is formed in the rubble of what was once Syria. Divorced from reality as always, his hapless State Department now calls the jihadi ruler of Damascus Al-Jolani a “pragmatist” and talks mindlessly about accommodation and cooperation with mass murderers and rapists.

Meanwhile, inside Syria, the new Islamic rulers are losing no time in consolidating their rule and making clear their intentions. On 26 December, Al-Jolani appointed former Al-Qaeda commander and Nusra Front co-founder Anas Hassan Khattab as the head of the country’s general intelligence agency. Khattab was designated a “terrorist” by the United Nations a decade ago. According to the UN, he was involved “in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing, or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf of, or in support of” and “otherwise supporting acts or activities of” the Nusra Front. This Al-Qaeda offshoot was rebranded as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in 2017.

Those are the guys who now run Syria.

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

Read it.

All prices in the US are directly linked to the Medicare pricing of healthcare services. All private insurers pay based on a fractional increase in Medicare-allowed reimbursement, for not just Medicare Advantage products but all insurance products. Medicare produces prices (and price adjustments annually), with variations for regional costs, but all reimbursement is directly tied to Medicare payment policies. That a discussion of healthcare in America can ensue without an acknowledgment of this circumstance is beyond ridiculous, and indicates that our thought leaders are idiots and we do not have a serious country.

How did this come about? Most directly when RBRVS (Resource-based Relative Value Scale) was enshrined. This was a way to “calculate” the value of medical services. Imagine that! A centralized authority can CALCULATE the value of all medical services. Who would have ever guessed? In this case, it was Dr. Hsaio, a public health expert at the Harvard School of Public Health, along with his “team.” Oh, the arrogance! Oh, the abuse! But in this case, he was working at the behest of the…you guessed it, a Conservative Republican administration under Reagan (in 1988), soon to be a little less conservative under GHW Bush. Those RBRVS calculations included a factor for training, for equipment and infrastructure, for time and effort, for ancillary costs, for regional cost of living factors, even a factor for malpractice, etc.

The formula was long, but everyone in the GHW Bush administration had full confidence in the ability of Harvard experts to CALCULATE the value of medical care. There was no factor for outcomes, of course. Or severity of illness. This was a significantly distorted, but nonetheless, Labor Theory of Value on steroids! And of course, for all who heard it, there was the unforgettable testimony of the esteemed Marxist economist, Gail Wilensky, head of the HCFA (now CMS) to Congress in the Reagan administration, in which she excoriated the “…perverse incentives inherent in a fee-for-service system.” She sounded like a member of the Soviet Politburo in the final years of the Cold War. (Did the Soviets win that?). Of course, what she meant was the perverse incentives in a fee-for-service system paid for by the deep pockets of the federal government with no questions asked. Which is how Medicare operated up to that point.

Read it.

As reported here last month, “Dutch” culture-enrichers hunted down and attacked Jews on the streets of Amsterdam after a football match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv.

The first sentences have now been handed down against four defendants charged with engaging in violent attacks, and surprise! — the mischievous youngsters received a slap on the wrist.

It’s worth noting that one of the four attackers appears to be of native European background, based on his Christian name (Lucas), and may thus not be a culture-enricher.

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

Read it.

And will, until Democrats wake up or Republicans win power.

Time to leave.

The Washington Poop, a Voice of the Crust.

In the United States, voters chose Donald Trump for a second term with popular-vote and electoral-vote victories, despite dire warnings from his critics that his return to the White House would threaten America’s democratic norms and institutions.

The painful truth is, that for the Narrative Media, ‘democracy’ is merely ‘what Democrats do’, and (as we have all witnessed) Democrats don’t really like Real Democracy all that much.

The Foundry.

The incoming Trump White House, including press secretary Karoline Leavitt, is signaling that it wants to revamp the press briefing room. This is an outstanding idea.

Numerous studies show a strained relationship between the national media and conservatives, leading many observers to hope the second Trump administration will proactively ensure that the White House briefing room brings balanced voices to express voters’ concerns.

The first Trump administration was marked by an unusually adversarial relationship with the national media, including inside the White House’s iconic James S. Brady Press Briefing Room.

President-elect Donald Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, told me that the Trump White House continued a decades-old, informal tradition of allowing the White House Correspondents Association to determine seating assignments in the briefing room.

In the second Trump term, this could all change—for the better.

I’d make them line up and take turns, first come first served. Perhaps the urge to sit down would prompt a bit of concision.

Bummer.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Norovirus cases are surging in parts of the US, CDC data shows (Associated Press)

Norovirus outbreaks surge across the US: Symptoms, risks, and prevention measures (The Economic Times)

With norovirus cases spiking in Minnesota, here’s how to avoid getting sick (Minneapolis Star-Tribune)

Bathroom-trip inducing virus spreading in St. Louis (KSDK)

Read it.

We live in a high crime society. Nobody can dispute that fact, and it has been this way for a long time. But the crime wave that we have witnessed in recent years has been truly breathtaking. Tens of thousands of gangs are running wild in our major urban areas, and the growth of those gangs has been supercharged during the past four years thanks to the reckless border policies of the Biden administration. Now we have rampant lawlessness in our streets, and it certainly isn’t going to be easy to clean up this mess.

the key fact to remember is that this is happening in Blue States and Blu Cities, governmed by Democrats. So we know where to lay the blame.

Read it.

Let’s see: Foreign government actively collaborates in an attempt to circumvent U.S. laws.

Sounds like a good case for economic sanctions to me, starting with a hard close of the border.

UPDATE Mexico Concerned Trump May Order Military Strike on Cartels  And who could blame him?

Read it.

The state of New York will charge carbon-emitting companies an estimated $75 billion in climate damage they allegedly caused between 2000 and 2018 under a law enacted on Dec. 26.

This is the very poster child of an ex post facto law.

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the Climate Change Superfund Act into law on Thursday. The law is certain to be challenged in court as a state preemption of federal regulatory oversight.

Adopted by lawmakers in June, the law—which goes into effect in 2028—will annually assess large companies’ carbon emissions across those first 19 years of the 21st century to “repair damage caused by extreme weather” they said aggravated by greenhouse gas emissions.

Wonder how they’re going to apply this to companies that don’t do business in New York.

This will have no practical effect. It’s just virtue-signaling, which a side order of we-can-sue-them-if-we-don’t-like them.

Read it.

In a Dec. 24 press release, Hochul’s office bragged about alleged “Online Safety Legislation.” One bill in particular, S895B/A6789B, “Requires Social Media Companies To Disclose Their Terms of Service Relating to Hate Speech.” But “hate speech” is a vague and easily abused term, often weaponized by anti-speech leftists like Hochul and Big Tech censors as justification for draconian censorship.

In the release, Hochul’s office detailed how the S895B requires social media companies to inform users about terms of service, while also requiring social media “to submit to the [NY] attorney general certain terms of service reports,” and offer “remedies for violations.”

Read it.

board voted unanimously to fire Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez without cause.

Johnson’s entire board resigned unanimously in November when Johnson told them to fire CPS CEO Pedro Martinez. Johnson sought to terminate Martinez because Martinez didn’t support Johnson’s push to take out a high-interest loan to cover CPS’ $300 million shortfall.

The Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU) proposal includes annual raises of 10-12 percent after factoring in cost-of-living adjustments. And the union demands 13,000 new positions despite falling school enrollment.

Martinez filed suit on his removal from the CTU negotiations because his contact calls for 180 days extension if he is fired without cause.

Read it.

When the Obama Administration first suggested the Affordable Care Act following the Financial Crisis, we argued that the outcome would be substantially higher, not lower, healthcare costs. It is interesting today that economists and the media complain about surging healthcare costs with each inflation report but fail to identify the root cause of that escalation.

The chart below tells you almost everything you need to know, but in this blog, we will revisit why the Affordable Care Act failed to make healthcare affordable and some solutions to fix the problem.

Read it.

Trover had said that Dems are making a bad mistake by ignoring the warnings of people like Joe Manchin and John Fetterman that the party needs to move toward the center and away from being held hostage by the left.

Simmons and leftist CNN analyst and historian Leah Wright Rigueur proceeded to demonstrate the Dems’ stubborn devotion to hard-left positions.

Simmons managed to keep a straight face while claiming that DEI is NOT a progressive policy, but that DEI is “really important” because “it’s going to make America more competitive.”

Right! Because nothing will make America more competitive than advancing people not on their merits, but on their membership in favored racial, gender, and sexual orientation groups!

Read it.

Information in a federal report that pointed to the COVID-19 virus being leaked from a Chinese laboratory rather than coming from nature was “silenced” from being included in discussions with President Joe Biden and in a final report in May 2021, according to sources close to the situation.

As a result, the report concluded that the virus that caused the pandemic likely was not genetically engineered at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but had come from nature, reports the New York Post on Friday.

The “zoonotic origin” theory on the virus had been backed by several people in the public health establishment including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Biden’s chief medical adviser.

Read it.

For the better part of a century, Cuba has been under the control of communists and their ideologies, and the previously inconceivable has finally happened – they’ve run out of sugar.

How is this even possible? Do you really even have to do anything to get a tropical crop to grow on an island nation with a literal year-round growing season?

According to a new report from CiberCuba, the communists are now importing sugar at about $25 a pound, and have stopped exporting entirely, after a number of “failures” over the years.

NEWS FLASH: Communism never works, and it is always a failure.

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Listen to any speech given by Democrats in 2024, and you’ll be bombarded by buzzwords, sloganeering, euphemisms, and phrases that provide a constant diversion from answering truthfully.

During this election cycle, the language is changing so fast that we need this updated glossary of terms to understand exactly what they’re talking about.

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Brownstone Institute has been tracking a little-known federal agency for years. It is part of the Department of Homeland Security created after 9-11. It is called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or CISA. It was created in 2018 out of a 2017 executive order that seemed to make sense. It was a mandate to secure American digital infrastructure against foreign attack and infiltration.

And yet during the Covid year, it assumed three huge jobs. It was the agency responsible for dividing the workforce between essential and nonessential. It led the way on censorship efforts. And it handled election security for 2020 and 2022, which, if you understand the implications of that, should make you spit out your coffee upon learning.

More than any other agency, it became the operationally relevant government during this period. It was the agency that worked through third parties and packet-switching networking to take down your Facebook group. It worked through all kinds of intermediaries to keep a lid on Twitter. It managed LinkedIn, Instagram, and most of the other mainstream platforms in a way that made you feel like your opinions were too crazy to see the light of day.

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On Thursday, Syria’s de facto authorities appointed former Al-Qaeda commander and Nusra Front co-founder Anas Hassan Khattab as the head of the country’s general intelligence agency.

Khattab, also known as Abu Ahmed Hudood, was blacklisted as a “terrorist” by the UN Security Council in September 2014 for his close association with Al-Qaeda.

ccording to the listing, for several years, he was involved “in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing, or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf of, or in support of” and “otherwise supporting acts or activities of” the Nusra Front. This Al-Qaeda offshoot was rebranded as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in 2017.

Khattab served as the administrative emir of the Nusra Front as of early 2014 and was part of its shura council by mid-2013. He was also tasked with selecting personal bodyguards for HTS leader and Syria’s de facto ruler Abu Mohammad al-Julani, who dropped his nom de guerre earlier this month and now goes by his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa.

In recent years, Khattab oversaw general security operations in Idlib. His involvement in intelligence gathering dates back to the period when HTS consolidated control over northern Syria with Turkish support; during this time, he managed surveillance of covert networks along the borders of HTS-controlled areas.