Read it.

Not content with frequent planned attacks on Yuletide Christmas markets, it seems that Islamists are now infiltrating them. Along the usual seasonal fare, a festive gathering in Darmstadt, Hesse, organized by the Evangelical Michaelsgemeinde, offered a wide range of pro-Hamas and antisemitic products to its attendees.

Read it.

 … crucial services will continue without interruption. That includes all services essential for national security and public safety—such as the military and law enforcement—as well as mandatory government payments such as Social Security and veterans’ benefits.

The key fact, as the U.S. Department of Justice itself has said, is that when there is a short-term lapse in appropriations, “the federal government will not be truly ‘shut down’ … because Congress has itself provided that some activities of government should continue.” In fact, any claims that not passing a CR will result in a “shutting down” of the government “is an entirely inaccurate description,” according to the DOJ.

Such a lapse in funding would be neither catastrophic nor unprecedented, but it would pare down government services to those most essential for “the safety of human life or the protection of property.” That would not include the hundreds of billions of dollars in the federal budget that are constantly squandered and wasted on frivolous, unnecessary, and unneeded programs.

Read it.

Time to leave Turd World California.

Bloomberg.

To be clear: Biden didn’t ‘cancel’ the debt–he merely ordered that the debtors didn’t have to repay it, thereby making the taxpayers liable for it. Debt’s still there, and coming out of YOUR pocket.

Public workers, of course, are a key part of the Democrats’ power base, so the partisan corruption is strong in this one.

UPDATE: Biden Gives Last-Minute Student Loan Handout as He Abandons Broader Initiative

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

The final show of the year is a double album set. That means two hours of the dulcet sound of my voice jumping through twenty topics. There were a lot of good questions this time, so rather than try to figure out which ones were the best, I decided to do a two hour show and cover them all. There were some left out only because they were duplicates or not appropriate for a family show.

A few will become full shows in the new year. While I was talking about Strauss it occurred to me that it would make for a good trio of shows. One hour on Strauss, one hour on the neocons and one hour on Claremont. All three are tangled up together and all three are relevant to the next administration. There are more than a few people from the Jaffa cult in the Trump team.

Another thing that occurred to me while doing the show is a good feature of the new site would be a way to submit show ideas and questions/topics for these multi-topic shows that people seem to like. Over the holidays I am hoping to make some progress on the new site and maybe have it done next month. If anyone has ideas feel free to post them up in the comments

Otherwise, this is the final show of the year, other than the green door show. There will be a Sunday show and maybe some video experiments. That is another project on the drawing board. I did some experiments from the back of the truck the other day, so I might test those out over the holiday break. On the other hand, if they are terrible, I might save myself the trouble and scrap the idea.

The Antiplanner.

Something called the Oliver Wyman Forum has worked with the University of California, Berkeley to publish an annual “urban mobility readiness index.” This is supposed to be a measure of how ready cities are for the coming “mobility revolution.” Unfortunately, it is more a measure of how ready cities are for the nineteenth-century’s mobility revolution.

The latest index ranks San Francisco as the best in the world when in fact it is one of the least mobile cities and urban areas in the nation. Dallas and Houston, two of the most mobile urban areas in America, are ranked 34 and 35 out of 70 major cities. Considering that Moscow, one of the most mobility-repressed cities in the world, is ranked not far below Houston, this index isn’t providing much help regarding urban mobility.

The problem is that the authors of the report have already decided what will constitute the coming “mobility revolution”: electric cars, bicycles, mass transit, and autonomous vehicles. While I agree about autonomous vehicles, the electric car revolution has stuttered to a near-stop and bicycles and mass transit were revolutionary in the 1890s but today are insignificant on an urban scale except, maybe, in extremely poor places such as Nairobi and Lagos.

Read it.

Mona Keijzer is the Fourth Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Housing and Spatial Planning in the current Dutch cabinet. She is a member of the Tweede Kamer for the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BoerBurgerBeweging, BBB).

The following video is excerpted from a panel discussion on Dutch TV featuring Ms. Keijzer. The deputy prime minister made the mistake of referencing the Jew-hatred of Muslims, and got herself into a heap o’ trouble as a result. The other panelists employed several logical fallacies in their attacks on her, the main one being the claim that identifying a trait that is characteristic of a group implies that every member of the group possesses the trait.

It’s as if she had referred to a village of cannibals. “Oh, no! Not everybody in the village is a cannibal — there is a guy there who doesn’t eat human flesh. You shouldn’t generalize!”

The point being that there is actual empirical evidence, based on formal opinion surveys, demonstrating that a large majority of Muslims — both those at home in Crapistan and those who have made the hijra to the West — hate Jews. Not to mention the fact that Jew-hatred is included in Islamic scripture. Referring to Islam as “anti-Semitic” is thus completely warranted, and shouldn’t require defending.

Unfortunately, Ms. Keijzer falls into the trap of being defensive, and spends a lot of time on her back foot protesting that “of course not all Muslims are anti-Semites.” It’s clear that she’s never had any Counterjihad training by experts such as Bill Warner or Maj. Stephen Coughlin.

Read it.

An Indiana University class required students to determine their “privileged” and “dominant” identities—like being white or male—so that they could “address issues of oppression.” The mandatory exercise was part of a course that fulfills the school’s “social and historical studies” requirement needed to graduate.

Students were instructed to write an “in-depth reflection of two parts of [their] identity: one subordinate identity and one dominant identity,” according to documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The final assignment for the eight-week course, worth 26 percent of the final grade, assumes that each student has at least one identity group that gives them power over their peers and another that leads to their oppression.

Students were given a chart showing examples of “dominant” identities—like being white—and “subordinate” identities—like being black—and separated them by “manifestations of social oppression,” such as classism, racism, and heterosexism. Effectively, the chart shows that straight, white, Christian males are dominant over everyone else. Or, put another way, everyone else is subordinate to straight, white, Christian males, according to the chart.

Read it.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released their final report earlier this month, concluding that the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Tony Fauci funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where a lab accident likely started the initial outbreak.

Multiple U.S. agencies aided by virologist sought to cover-up this evidence, the Select Subcommittee charged, and several people broke the law by misleading congressional staff including Peter Daszak of EcoHealth, who funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab; NIH employee David Morens who served as Tony Fauci’s advisor; and former New York Governor Cuomo who lied about nursing home fatalities in his state.

Read it.

Now with just weeks to go before the Trump administration takes over the White House, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has issued some interesting and surprising admissions. He told an audience of the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday that Biden’s policy on Iran hasn’t been more muscular because Washington’s regime change efforts in the region over the past two decades have basically been failures.

It’s rare for a top official who is still in office to so bluntly describe that regime change efforts have been doomed. Blinken had been asked specifically of the US supporting Iranian opposition groups to overthrow the government in Tehran.

Read it.

It’s always hilarious when people want government to do stuff. Because not only is government awful at everything, it is excruciatingly slow at being awful at everything.

People want government to continue wasting hundreds of billions of dollars connecting us to the internet when the government already acknowledged a decade ago that everyone was already connected to the internet. The Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration has wasted yet another three years and $42 billion on yet another new government program that has connected zero people to the internet.

How are more and more people actually connecting to the internet these days? Via the private sector, obviously. And via wireless connections, of course. Via the networks built in the air rather than in the ground. And as ever more people connect wirelessly, ever more cut their grounded cords. All by its onesies, wired king Comcast is losing nearly 400,000 subscribers this year.

I’ll bet Comcast noticed that. I’ll bet their fellow wired internet providers noticed. I know China noticed. But our government didn’t. Because our government remains dishonest and steadfastly impervious to reality.

Read it.

Name a female billionaire (or even centimillionaire) who earned her own money.

Go ahead, take all the time you need. I’ll wait.

Interesting Engineering.

A team of researchers from the University of Rochester, Yale University, and Princeton University has made a big stride in neuroscience.

They have shown a method to induce learning through the direct manipulation of brain activity patterns.

This technique uses real-time brain imaging and neurofeedback. It bypasses learning processes that require effort, study, or practice.

“With our method not only can we nudge complex patterns around in the brain toward known ones, but also—for the first time—write directly a new pattern into the brain and measure what effect that has on a person’s behavior,” said Dr Coraline Iordan, lead author of the study and assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester.

Read it.

On July 7, 2023, a University of California faculty committee unanimously voted to reverse a highly controversial policy. No longer could high school students take Statistics and Data Science as alternatives to Algebra II to satisfy UC admissions requirements. The decision, made by the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS), marked a tide shift in higher education attitudes toward math.

Among the voices who had been critical of the data science courses was Stuart Russell, distinguished professor of computer science at Berkeley. “All the evidence shows that these courses were deliberately designed not to build on or deepen students’ understanding of mathematics,” he wrote in a letter supporting the BOARS decision. “Such a student could certainly not progress in the data science major at Berkeley. The University is therefore in danger of shutting a vast body of students out of careers in science and engineering by authorizing a misleading path to nowhere.”

Russell was not alone in his opinion. Since 2022, hundreds of faculty across California, including many from Berkeley, had signed a letter and a petition saying that the data science courses currently offered in the state were not rigorous enough to qualify as advanced math. Yet, much to their dismay, for years, UC had been quietly allowing students to satisfy their Algebra II admission requirements with these alternative courses.

But the BOARS decision also sparked renewed confusion about long-standing and fundamental disagreements over how to balance equity-focused initiatives and academic rigor when teaching math to high schoolers. Today, many still believe that data science and statistics courses offer more practical and inclusive options for students who may be less mathematically inclined.

At times, the debate over high school algebra has become so heated—and even personal—that it has ignited a new skirmish in the so-called “math wars,” pitting “traditionalists” against “reformists” in a protracted battle that has played out in social media spats, dueling open letters, opinion columns, and even resulted in a threat of police involvement. But while educators, policymakers, and even tech billionaires duked it out everywhere from the Twittersphere to the California State Senate, teachers, parents, and students have been left wondering what it all means for them.

The problem is the apparently inevitable drift toward the notion “everybody needs to go to college”, and so high schools have to focus on “college prep” to the exclusion of any other possible career path. This is nonsense.

Not everyone is suitable for college; the research I’ve seen indicates that one needs to have significantly above-average intelligence to profit from college-level education. In the days when most people didn’t go to college, this wasn’t a problem–colleges and universities weeded-out the people who wouldn’t fit during the admissions process. In my parents’ day, high school was as high an education as most people got, so it focused on Preparing For Life with training in trades and other useful skill, such as Home Economics for the girls and Shop for the guys. (My dad learned how to set type for letterpress printing in high school.) In Britain, still, ‘school-leaving age’ is sixteen unless one is headed for university, which option requires two years of ‘college-prep’ and a different qualifying exam.

Read it.

Sometimes in science you have to step back and take another look at underlying assumptions. Sometimes its necessary when progress stalls. One of the foundational questions of our day concerns the Fermi Paradox, the contradiction between what seems to be a high probability of extraterrestrial life and the total lack of evidence that it exists.

What assumptions underlie the paradox?

The Fermi Paradox is based on the fact that our galaxy is home to hundreds of billions of stars, with many or even most of them likely hosting multiple planets. The sheer number of planets urges us to conclude that life should be abundant, and that some of this life must have evolved into sentiency like us. Even if only a small percentage become technological space-faring civilizations, there should still be many of them. The paradoxical part is that if this is true, there should be evidence. We should see some indication that they’re out there, or they should’ve even contacted us by now. But we don’t.

Feel free to read the rest of the article, but be aware that this is an example of The Aggregation Fallacy–treating a huge amount of instances as just ‘data’ and drawing conclusions from correlations without taking into account the variations in the underlying instances.

It is entirely possible that higher-order life on Earth is unique because of two highly improbable occurrences: The cell nucleus and mitochondria. Investigate those two and I think you’ll agree.

Read it.

In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…because he thought the apocalypse was coming.

Like many of his contemporaries, Columbus believed that the Earth was supposed to last for 7,000 years total, with only ~150 years remaining. More importantly, God had left us a list of things he wanted us to get done before he returned, which included “convert everybody to Christianity,” and “rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.” Columbus saw himself as critical to achieving both goals: he would discover new sea routes to speed up the evangelization of the world, and his success in that mission would prove he was also the man to tackle the temple job.

So the most pivotal voyages in history happened because one guy wanted to tick some things off the divine to-do list before Jesus returned to vaporize the sinners and valorize the saints. But that’s not the weird part.

Read it.

Caltech researchers have quantified the speed of human thought: a rate of 10 bits per second. However, our bodies’ sensory systems gather data about our environments at a rate of a billion bits per second, which is 100 million times faster than our thought processes. This new study raises major new avenues of exploration for neuroscientists, in particular: Why can we only think one thing at a time while our sensory systems process thousands of inputs at once?

Trump and Musk unleash a new kind of chaos on Washington (CNN)  As opposed to the Old Kind of Chaos.

Shutdown watch: Musk barrages GOP to blow up “criminal” spending deal (Axios)

Government shutdown nears after Trump and Musk kill compromise (Washington Poop)

Trump brings chaos back to Washington by attempting to kill bipartisan budget deal with Musk’s help (Associated Press) Chaos was gone! And all of a sudden Trump brought it back. Orange Man Bad.

What is US birthright citizenship and can Trump end it? (Reuters)

Most Voters Disagree With Donald Trump on Birthright Citizenship: Poll (Newsweek)  Or at least that’s what they want you to believe. After all, Orange Man Bad.

Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship could be decided by the Supreme Court (Politico) As everything these days is.

Trump girds for battle with Democrats, Supreme Court over birthright citizenship (The Hill) I guess he was ungirded before this came up.

Done With Never Trump (Bret Stephens/New York Times)

“They Hate Trump” – Steve Quayle Fears ‘Nuke False Flag’ To Keep Him Out Of Office

Judge says a pardon of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes would be ‘frightening’ (Kyle Cheney/Politico)

Democratic senator says Trump’s plan to ‘cripple our democracy’ underway (Lauren Irwin/The Hill)

More On Ethical Populism – The sweet spot lies in demagogic appeals that can withstand factual scrutiny. (Brian Beutler/Off Message)

The contortions GOP senators are making for RFK Jr. (Politico)

After investigating January 6, House GOP sides with Trump and goes after Liz Cheney (Annie Grayer/CNN)

Musk’s Alleged Russia Contacts Worry Air Force’s Kendall (Anthony Capaccio/Bloomberg)  Only the government is allowed to have ‘Russian contacts’. I thought everybody knew that.

Canada proposes joint police force with US to tackle Trump’s border concerns (Mickey Djuric/Politico)  That way, the U.S. could help pay for that Canada ought to be doing for itself.

Reid Mocks CEOs and Republicans for Support of ‘Toddler’ Trump

Trump’s Attorneys Allege Juror Misconduct In New York Case

‘What choice do they have?’: America’s CEOs bend the knee to Donald Trump (Financial Times)

Republicans scrap spending bill, under pressure from Trump and Musk (Washington Post)

Trump, Musk Threaten Government Shutdown. Here’s What That Costs (Ari Natter/Bloomberg)

Georgia prosecutors urge appeals court not to toss Trump election interference case (NBC News)

Trump opposes funding bill, pushing government closer to a shutdown (NBC News)

What Elon got wrong about the CR (Politico)

Just to Be Clear, No, Trump Can’t Be Elected President Again (David S. Cohen/Rolling Stone)

LA Times owner asks editorial board to ‘take a break’ from writing about Trump – report (Dani Anguiano/The Guardian)

The Wrath of Trump: House Republicans Map a Case Against Liz Cheney (New York Times)

In Massive Twist, Trump’s Georgia Case Might Not Be Dead Yet (Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling/New Republic)

Four Ways to Unbend the Media’s Knee (Jonathan Alter/Washington Monthly)

Trump’s transition is happening over private emails. Federal officials are nervous. (Alice Miranda Ollstein/Politico)

Elon Musk fueled backlash to spending plan with false and misleading claims (Politico)

Musk Kills Government Funding Deal, Demands Shutdown Until Trump Is Sworn In (Miles Klee/Rolling Stone)

Regime Media FREAK OUT Over Elon Musk’s Role in Exposing and Killing Congress’s Christmas Cromnibus

Dems Troll ‘Vice President’ Trump as Musk Meddles With Government Funding Bill (William Vaillancourt/The Daily Beast)

In Wake of Trump Win, Biden State Department Issued Internal DEI Cable Touting ‘Reflection Rooms’ and ‘All-Gender Restrooms’ at US Embassies

Playbook: How Musk and Trump killed the CR (Politico)

‘Actually,’ MSNBC, Trump’s Energy Secretary Pick is Right, Climate Change Does Have Benefits

Anti-Trump forces build a network to aid potential political targets of the incoming administration (NBC News)

‘Unelected President Musk’: Elon posts 70 times trashing GOP bill, Trump caves (MSNBC)

Bernie Sanders blasts ‘President Elon Musk’ for derailing spending deal (Juliann Ventura/The Hill)

Behind the Curtain: Musk’s America (Axios)

Democrats: The Surrender Party

Study: Broadcast Transition Coverage Aimed At Sinking Trump’s Picks

Trump calls for abolishing the debt ceiling (Garrett Haake/NBC News)

The World’s Richest Man Wants to Burn It All Down (William Kristol/The Bulwark)

Trump Effect? US Leading Economic Indicators Positive For First Time Since Feb 2022

Appeals court removes prosecutor Fani Willis from Georgia election case against Trump and others (Kate Brumback/Associated Press)

Fani Flushed: Court Rules Fulton DA Disqualified From Trump ‘Election Interference’ Case

Georgia appeals court removes Fani Willis from Trump 2020 election case (Melissa Quinn/CBS News)

House Democrat: ‘Unelected oligarch’ Musk ‘governing by tweet’ (Ashleigh Fields/The Hill)

Trump’s Trump – As you’ve likely seen, things kind of went off the rails today on Capitol Hill. (Josh Marshall/Talking Points Memo)

Trump Tossed a Debt Limit Grenade Into Spending Talks. Here’s Why. (Alan Rappeport/New York Times)

Republicans Turn Eating Their Own Into A Spectator Sport (David Kurtz/Talking Points Memo)

Can the Muskrat shut the United States government? (Robert Reich)

Class War or Culture War? (Timothy Snyder/Thinking about)

Trump and Musk unleash a new kind of chaos on Washington (Stephen Collinson/CNN)

Democrats rage at “unelected co-president” Elon Musk (Andrew Solender/Axios)

Even some in the pro-Trump media environment are wary of his plans (Washington Post)

Trump wants to kill the debt ceiling (Dave Lawler/Axios)

Dems Troll Trump by Calling Elon the Real President (Rolling Stone)

Musk’s dangerous, exaggerated conflation of social media and democracy (Philip Bump/Washington Post)

Google Turns Up Heat on Trump Nominees, Continues to Rig Results

Whoopi Claims Musk, Vance Plotting Trump’s Murder, Blames Her Cat

Trump’s demands leave Republicans flailing with no plan on eve of shutdown (NBC News)

Read it.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul beefed up the number of New York National Guard members patrolling NYC subway stations, marking the largest military presence in the city’s subway system since the aftermath of 9/11. This heightened security measure coincides with mounting public hysteria over unidentified drones in NJ-NY airspace and the rising threat of terrorism.

On Wednseday, Gov. Hochul told reporters that 250 additional Guard members will join the already deployed 750 Guard members to combat rapes, murders, and robberies that plague NYC’s subway system.

Time to leave.

The American Mind.

Trump opponents have sold the American public on an entirely bogus propaganda narrative. The key premise of their legal and rhetorical arguments is that TPS-protected people are fleeing home-nation death traps to which it would be cruel, inhumane, and deeply immoral to forcibly return them. Already, legacy news outlets have taken that ball and run with it, describing the many horrors that supposedly await the roughly 700,000 TPS arrivals that came in during the great Biden mass migration crisis (2021-present). These include the 350,000 TPS-covered Venezuelans who mostly crossed the U.S. Southern border, the 300,000 from Haiti who did the same, and 50,000 from Ukraine.

“Deporting people to dangerous countries could amount to a death sentence,” wrote Raul A. Reyes, a pro-illegal immigration editorialist in a November 25 column for The Hill. “Look at Haiti, which in recent years has suffered civil unrest, gang violence, earthquakes and hurricanes. Sending migrants back into such dire conditions would likely constitute a violation of basic human rights.”

But what Reyes didn’t say, and what most Americans probably don’t know, is that Haitians, Venezuelans, and Ukrainians never came from those terrible home countries and were perfectly safe for years in other prosperous countries that granted them asylum, residency, and work authorizations—or otherwise tolerated their presence off-book.

Read it.

While Trump and his aides have expressed that the top priority for deportations is illegal immigrants with a criminal record, they claim that all other illegal residents, including peaceful immigrants like Grandma, will follow. But instead of conducting the “largest deportation operation in history,” President Trump should conduct the largest legalization effort that would create many millions of new legal American residents.

The problem of criminality among illegal immigrants has been blown out of proportion. The crime rate for illegal immigrants is reportedly lower than that of native-born Americans. Still, those who engage in violent crimes should face the criminal system, and it is appropriate that noncitizens who commit crimes in America be deported.

But the vast majority of illegal immigrants present in America (around 11 million in 2022, according to the Pew Research Center) are peaceful people who have come here to work and build a better life. These immigrants associate with Americans by trade, family, or both: Many of them work in construction, hospitality, and agriculture, and many live in households with American citizens.

The sleeper wakes.

The Polish government of Donald Tusk has adopted a draft law that would allow the country to temporarily suspend the right to claim asylum. The prime minister said the right to asylum “is being used today—especially on the border with Belarus—by Poland’s enemies,” and that by adopting the bill “we are taking back control of Poland’s borders.”

The bill has been in the works for a while, and is intended as a response to actions of neighbouring Belarus: the country has been flying in migrants from the Middle East and Africa in recent years, and sending them to the borders of the EU—Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania—in a bid to destabilise the region. Those three EU member states have accused Russia of complicity.

The number of migrants arriving at the borders of EU member states from Belarus has increased by 66% this year, compared with 2023. In Poland, 28,000 attempted illegal crossings were recorded by the end of October. The EU says 90% of migrants illegally crossing the Poland-Belarus border have a Russian student or tourist visa.

Read it.

“It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to deport every undocumented immigrant in our country,” Senator Dick Durbin warned.

After losing the open borders debate and the election, Democrats and their media stopped arguing that mass migration is a right and that mass deportations violate human rights.

6 out of 10 registered voters were polled in favor of deporting illegal aliens. The American people had spoken.

So Democrats and their media instead argued that mass deportations would be too expensive. The American Immigration Council, an immigration lawyers lobby group funded by the Ford Foundation, Soros and other open borders groups, was quoted in the media as warning that mass deportations might cost $88 billion a year. None of the media outlets citing the AIC have reported what it is and who it represents, but have taken its $88 billion figure as fact.

This would still make a year of mass deportations cheaper than California’s $128 billion light rail to nowhere. And unlike the light rail to nowhere, the deportations would actually go somewhere.

Mass deportations would end cartel violence and restore national security making it a far better investment than the California train that the Biden administration had decided to fund again.

Read it.

Each EO is presented to the president in a separate blue leather binder with the Seal of the President of the United States stamped in gold on the cover. Joe Biden signed about 50 EOs on the day he was sworn in (January 20, 2021), mostly reversing Trump’s policies.

You may notice that Biden has a rack of pens in front of him. Each EO is signed with a different pen and then the pens are handed out to supporters of the President as gifts. Now you can visualize Trump (without the mask) sitting at the same desk in the Oval Office with perhaps an even taller pile of binders signing away on EOs to reinstate Trump policies, establish new policies and abolish as many of Biden’s policies as possible. The best quick guide to Trump’s first 100 days is to consider the EOs he will sign on day one of his second term.

Read it.

DARPA’s mission was launched after a decade or so of provocative case reports and small uncontrolled studies that revealed improved mental capacities among various neuromodulation patients. These seemingly enhanced abilities included memory, verbal facility, spatial relations, and combined accuracy and speed on specialized learning tests.

The TNT, or Targeted Neuroplasticity Training program was established to test a series of different technologies to see if any could accelerate learning by enhancing the brain’s curious ability to continuously evolve based on experiences. Neuroplasticity is a fancy term that simply means changing neural connections to improve performance, and it encompasses learning, recall, and applying acquired knowledge.

Read it.

Harvard magazine has an excellent interview with three scientists, Michael Mina, Douglas Melton and Stuart Schreiber, all highly regarded in their fields of life sciences, who have recently left Harvard for the private sector.

Why did they leave? Mina tells an incredible story of what happened during the pandemic. At the time Mina was a faculty member at the Chan School of Public Health, he is extremely active in advising governments on the pandemic, and he brings Harvard millions of dollars a year in funding. But when he tries to hire someone at his lab, the university refuses because there is hiring freeze! Sorry, no hiring for pandemic research during a pandemic. In my talk on US Pandemic Policy I discuss the similar failure of the Yale School of Public Health and how miraculously and absurdly Tyler stepped in to save the day. The rot is deep.

Read it.

There are 85 Sharia courts—that we know of—operating across Britain, ‘normalising’ polygamy (for men), giving daughters half as much inheritance as sons and allowing men to end their marriages by saying “divorce” three times.

A report in The Times on Thursday, December 19th says that Muslims from Europe and North America are “increasingly turning” to these Islamic institutions in Britain—now described as the “Western capital” for sharia courts.

National Secular Society chief executive Stephen Evans told the newspaper of his group’s concern about “parallel legal systems in the UK undermining the principle of one law for all—and the negative impact this has on the rights of women and children.”

It is estimated that around 100,000 ‘Islamic marriages’ have been conducted in Britain, many of which are not officially registered. A good proportion are also likely to be cousin marriages, which independent MP Iqbal Mohamed earlier this month urged against banning or, indeed, “stigmatising.”

Read it.

In an age where environmental awareness has reached fever pitch, consumers are eager to invest in sustainable products and practices. However, this drive for eco-friendliness has, unfortunately, given rise to a shadowy world of ‘green scammers’—individuals and corporations that exploit the noble intentions of the environmentally conscious to deceive and profit.

The Other McCain.

Notice the slogan on Natalie Rupnow’s T-shirt: “KMFDM,” a reference to Kein Mehrheit Für Die Mitleid (“no pity for the majority”), a German rock band whose fans included Columbine High School gunman Eric Harris. Lyrics to KMFDM songs were posted on Harris’s website, and fandom of KMFDM was part of Natalie Rupnow’s obsession with mass murderers — kind of a red flag, if anyone was paying attention.

According to The Post’s review of court records, Rupnow’s parents first married in 2011, about two years after she was born.

Mellissa Rupnow had been previously married and divorced, and she had another daughter with a different man to whom she was never married. Court records indicate that this girl — Natalie Rupnow’s half sister — had other permanent legal guardians. The Post was not able to reach the half sister, who is now 20.

Mellissa and Jeff Rupnow divorced for the first time in 2014, agreeing to joint legal custody of their shared daughter, Natalie, but specifying that she would live primarily with her mother.

The couple remarried in 2017 and divorced for a second time in 2020, again agreeing to share custody but, the court records show, dividing Natalie’s time more evenly between them. During this period, Natalie would spend two days with her father, two with her mother, then three more with her father, before reversing the schedule the following week.

Shortly after Rupnow’s parents split up for the second time, the couple remarried once more. But by April 2021 they were petitioning for a third divorce. A judge granted it a month later but noted that “parties [were] admonished concerning remarriage,” according to court records.

The surprise is that she didn’t do something amazingly stupid before this.

Read it.

California’s zero emission regulations are causing truck shortages and rising costs, according to the trucking and heavy-duty vehicle industry.

State officials plan to end traditional combustion truck sales by 2036.

Time to leave.

Read it.

Is the Northern Virginia campus of George Mason University cultivating a nest of anti-Israel and antisemitic terrorist supporters a half-hour’s drive from the nation’s capital? News reports that three of its students, all of Middle Eastern origin, have had recent run-ins with the police over weapons and pro-terror material are troubling, to say the least.

Two of the students are Palestinian American sisters and leaders in the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, one of the main organizers of the protests, riots, and encampments at George Mason, Columbia, and other universities over the past year. The raid of their home, which turned up guns, ammunition, and antisemitic and anti-American “hate” material, has been reported on for a few days, though the legacy media has been downplaying the story.

But it has also emerged overnight that another George Mason University student, an Egyptian national named Abdullah Ezzeldin Taha Mohamed Hassan, was arrested in December for, according to the charging papers, “distribution of information relating to explosives, destructive devices, and weapons of mass destruction in furtherance of the commission of a federal crime of violence” to an FBI informant.

Read it.

A Maryland woman dubbed the “Black Widow” for murdering two husbands and a boyfriend for insurance money is now free after President Joe Biden commuted her 40-year prison sentence, undercutting the White House’s claim that Biden released only “non-violent” offenders in a clemency bonanza last week.

Read it.

The Biden-Harris administration approved California’s electric vehicle mandate that will ban the sale of new gas-powered cars over the next decade—a move that impacts 11 other states that agreed to adopt California’s mandate.

The Environmental Protection Agency formally granted California a waiver Wednesday, allowing it to supersede federal vehicle emissions rules with its own, stricter regulations. Under California’s rules, which the state is now empowered to enforce, 35 percent of all model year 2026 cars sold next year must be electric. That share steadily increases every year until 2035 when all new car sales in the state must be electric.

But California’s EV mandate doesn’t just impact the state’s residents. Federal law allows other states to adopt California’s emissions rules that receive a waiver from the EPA. Eleven other states and Washington, D.C.—which are collectively home to 40 percent of all new vehicle registrations—have passed laws adopting California’s electric vehicle mandate.

Doing as much damage as they can as they get shoved out the door.

Read it.

I guess we all better PANIC!

UPDATE: US confirms first severe human case of bird flu (Reuters)

UPDATE: CDC confirms first case of severe bird flu (Nathaniel Weixel/The Hill)

UPDATE: California Declares an Emergency Over Bird Flu in Cattle (Apoorva Mandavilli/New York Times)

UPDATE : Public Trust in Health Agencies Gone, Former CDC Director Says  Gee, I wonder why>=?

UPDATE: Nancy Pelosi Profited As Luxury Napa Resort Won COVID-19 Bailout

UPDATE: California Gov. Gavin Newsom declares state of emergency over bird flu, calling it a “proactive action” (Cecilio Padilla/CBS News)

Read it.

An investigation into an Omaha drug ring that police suspected of causing at least six overdose deaths “now feels wasted” after President Joe Biden commuted the 15-year prison sentence of one of the operation’s ringleaders, according to the lead investigator on the case.

Among the 1,500 commutations Biden issued last week was the case of Wendy Hechtman, a former journalist who pleaded guilty alongside her husband in 2018 of producing and selling carfentanil, a deadly drug that the federal government calls the “most potent fentanyl analog detected in the United States.” As part of the plea agreement, the Hechtmans acknowledged their drugs “did result in overdoses.”

Chris Perna, a former Omaha police detective who took down the Hechtmans, said investigators suspected that the Hechtman drug ring was linked to at least six overdose deaths in Omaha and nearby Council Bluffs, Iowa. He told the Washington Free Beacon that his department “put their lives at risk during the investigation,” but Biden’s commutation makes all that work “now feel wasted.”

Read it.

As reported by Breitbart, the study from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) determined that there are at least 7.9 million illegals being protected from immigration authorities by these rogue jurisdictions, presenting possible complications for the incoming second Trump Administration.

The vast majority of these illegals, 6.3 million, are found in the states of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Washington.

Another 820,000 are living in sanctuary counties located in states that do not have statewide “sanctuary” laws.

SciTechDaily.

A Northwestern Medicine study has discovered that metformin, a common Type 2 diabetes medication, works by blocking a key part of the mitochondrial energy production, specifically complex I, which helps lower blood glucose levels.

This breakthrough provides insight into the drug’s mechanism which has been unclear despite its broad usage for over 60 years in treating diabetes, reducing inflammation, and slowing cancer growth.

Read it.

Islamist Khalid Baqa has lodged a lawsuit against the landlord of The Saracen’s Head Inn in Amersham, Buckinghamshire. Baqa, who served four years and eight months in prison for disseminating jihadist propaganda on the London Underground, claims that the pub’s sign depicting a bearded man in a turban is “racist, xenophobic, and incites violence.” He is demanding £1,850 in damages and has vowed to extend his campaign to 30 other pubs bearing the same name if successful.

“The depiction instilled fear in me,” Baqa stated in his submission to the county court, as reported by The Telegraph. “It’s clearly inciting hatred against certain groups.” He also alleges that he contacted the pub on multiple occasions to request the removal of the sign, although The Sun says staff at the historic establishment have no record of these communications.

The Saracen’s Head, which has been in operation for 500 years, takes its name from a term historically used to describe Arabs or Muslims, particularly during the Crusades. Landlord Robbie Hayes, 52, has categorically dismissed the lawsuit as “a complete joke,” insisting the sign reflects history rather than bigotry:

Democrats, readying to battle Trump, shake up House committees (Marianna Sotomayor/Washington Post)

‘It’s Frightening’: ABC News Staffers Incensed by ‘Capitulation’ to Trump (Rolling Stone)

Trump’s lawyers allege juror misconduct in latest bid to get his hush money conviction dismissed (Michael R. Sisak/Associated Press)

A Big Pile of Money and Lawyering to Defend Trump’s Legal Targets? (Josh Marshall/Talking Points Memo)

Trump lawyers allege ‘grave juror misconduct’ in their latest attack on hush money conviction (NBC News)

Trump’s ‘hush money conviction’…. Who knows what he was ‘convicted’ for? Anybody? Bueler? Bueler?

Trump eyes donor for Air Force chief (Politico)

Trump’s tariffs could be leading to buyer’s remorse (Aaron Blake/Washington Post)

Schumer’s last sprint to beat McConnell and Trump’s judges record (Stephen Neukam/Axios)

Attorney for RFK Jr. blasts ‘hysterical’ media report as distortion of HHS pick’s views on vaccines (Jamie Joseph/Fox News)

GOP senator blocks proposal to protect federal workers from Trump (Alexander Bolton/The Hill)

How Many Illegal Aliens Reside in Sanctuary Jurisdictions? (Jason Richwine/CIS.org)

The upcoming GOP assault on Social Security (David R. Lurie/Public Notice)

The next great reform movement is poised to begin now (Chuck Todd/NBC News)

In Trump World, RFK Jr. and Elon Musk Highlight Debate Over Obesity Treatment (Gina Kolata/New York Times)

‘One of the dumbest ideas’: Abolishing the FDIC could backfire on Trump and his allies (Matt Egan/CNN)

Feds Look To Hire Up To 1,200 New DEI Bureaucrats Before Trump Takes Office (Luke Rosiak/The Daily Wire)

Trump Sues The Des Moines Register, Escalating Threats Against the Media (New York Times)  Not ‘The Media’, just the ones that lie.

Trump Takes His Canada Trolling Up a Level in Bizarre Early Morning Post (Dan Ladden-Hall/The Daily Beast)

Trump Pledged to Cut Taxes for Expats. This Republican Wants to Make It a Reality. (Richard Rubin/Wall Street Journal)

Musk and Trump are viewed roughly the same by Americans, an AP-NORC poll finds (Associated Press)

Scarborough Desperately Clings To Wisconsin to Downplay Trump Win

High tariffs proposed by Trump could wipe out corporate profits (Emily Peck/Axios)

Trump’s pick for IRS chief touted troubled tax credit to businesses (Brian Faler/Politico)

Trump planning to target progressive non-profits, US watchdog warns (David Smith/The Guardian)

Trump: Canada becoming 51st state ‘great idea’ (Filip Timotija/The Hill)

Biden Must Free the Man Who Exposed Trump’s Tax Avoidance (Rolling Stone)

Trump’s Vengeance Tour Has Already Started (William Kristol/The Bulwark)

Why conservatives condemn Luigi Mangione and celebrate Daniel Penny (Zack Beauchamp/Vox)  One was a cold-blooded murderer, the other was acting in defense of other people. That’s all you need to know, and that’s the distinction that the Left is trying to handwave away.

PBS, NY Times Fear ABC’s Trump Defamation Settlement Sends ‘A Really Chilling Message’  And rightly so.

What it’s like to cook for Donald (Politico)

Transcript: Trump’s Angry New Tirade on Truth Social Signals Dark 2025 (New Republic)

The Guardian, a Voice of the Crust.

America’s political divide is likely to get even wider thanks to a new real-estate platform that lets potential buyers see the political affiliations of their future neighbors, as well as other social data and local demographics.

This will not end well.

Watch it.

If YouTube were run by the government, what would be different?

This is why the 14th Amendment guarantee of Due Process is so important. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t apply to social media….)

Read it.

Everyone’s blaming health insurance company greed for the soaring claims denials and roadblocks to care. That’s naive. Follow the money to find the real culprits: lying politicians.

In 2013, before Affordable Care Act regulations kicked in, insurers denied roughly 1.5% of claims, according to the American Medical Association. But under ACA rules, denials increased tenfold. Now nearly 15% of claims are denied, reports Premier, an insurance consultant firm. Some insurers deny a third or more of claims, according to Kaiser Family Foundation research.

Insurers are also demanding preauthorizations for a wide range of treatments and medications, tying your doctor’s hands and dangerously delaying your care.

Your doctor has to call the insurer before beginning treatment or ordering a medication. Seldom is the person on the other end of the phone a specialist in the disease or treatment in question. It could be an OB-GYN overriding what your neurosurgeon recommends, warns the AMA.

Simplifies life amazingly.

Steve Sailer.

This is one of the funnier and crazier Democrat ploys: Senator Gillibrand (D-NY) wants to change the Constitution by having the National Archivist type the failed feminist Equal Rights Amendment, whose time limit to be ratified was up 42 years ago, into her Official Copy of the United States Constitution. Or something.

44 other Senators joined Gillibrand’s call.

But yesterday the National Archivist, Colleen Shogan, said that No, she wasn’t going to do that, that that’s not the way the Constitution works.

Senator Gillibrand is really mad at Ms. Shogan for “wrongfully inserting herself into a clear constitutional process….

Daniel Greenfield.

The 2024 election tested the limits of identity politics. Not because Kamala Harris was running as a half-black, half-Indian and full-time accent swapper, code switching her way through a multicultural landscape, only to take a beating from a national multicultural electorate.

Call it identity politics, the rainbow coalition or the minority majority, Democrats had tethered their future to defining oppressed groups and organizing them against an equally artificial majority who were given the choice of standing with the oppressed or preserving their privilege.

This construct had so thoroughly defined three generations of Democrat politics with only some very local exceptions that few national politicians know how to run on anything else except organizing racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQAIZ+ people, refugees, drag queens, terrorists, abortionists and illegal aliens into a clumsy alliance to oppose the white cisheteropatriarchy.

Read it.

In Germany, culture-enrichers with knives are increasingly causing problems in public places. The mujahideen are also known to target Christmas markets wherever they possibly can. As a result, a new law has been passed that allows police to check visitors to the Christmas markets for knives, without needing any probable cause (or “suspicion”).

The following article concerns a recent news video showing the police searching visitors to the Christmas market in the city of Ludwigshafen in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The dutiful police-girls and -boys make sure to search Potato Germans as well as “southern-looking” gentlemen.

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

Read it.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have sparked turmoil across the Southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden for over a year, targeting Western-linked container ships, tankers, and military vessels. The resulting supply chain snarls have had major implications on global trade, causing a surge in container rate prices and shipping diversions around the Cape of Good Hope. However, early indications suggest that President-elect Trump’s strongman image could help de-escalate tensions and alleviate bottlenecks across this critical maritime chokepoint.

The incoming Trump administration urgently needs a fresh strategy to de-escalate tensions in the critical Bab-el-Mandeb maritime chokepoint that caught the Biden-Harris team entirely off guard. The admin’s Yemen policies were marked by inconsistency, leading to dozens of commercial vessels being struck by kamikaze drones and missiles, with several ships sunk as a result of the chaos.

Read it.

Oh,  ya think?