Read it.

Video footage has recently emerged taken by journalist James Longman advising ‘rebels’ in Syria that the ISIS logo on their uniforms will be misunderstood by Western audiences. Longman, who is ABC News’ Chief International Correspondent, demonstrates a trend of American journalists going to war zones to essentially coach combatants on how to better present themselves to the outside world. Mainstream media has for many years pushed the myth of “moderate rebels” in Syria seeking to topple Assad, which they finally did this month.

One of the militants, who might be a member of the US-designated terror group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or possibly another hardline Islamist faction, attempts to claim to the US journalist that the emblem does not represent ISIS. Still, the man wearing the ISIS patch seems to take the hint and dutifully removes it for the camera. They swear to ABC’s Longman that they are not Daesh (or ISIS), even while openly sporting its symbols.

Having examined the disturbing video, Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada – who speaks Arabic – has issued the following reaction: “I’ve seen this video circulating today, along with the claim that James Longman told the fighter to remove the ISIS patch. He does not do that in this video clip. But it’s not much of a ‘confrontation’ either. And however Longman intended it, the fighters appear to interpret his comments as friendly advice on how to present themselves and in fact remove the patch. Understandable that this is reminding people of how Western media colluded in the rebranding of the Azov Battallion in Ukraine that they had been accurately describing as hardcore Nazis just months earlier.”

The Hill, a Voice of the Crust.

Republicans released a report Tuesday reviewing the “failures and politicization” of the now-disbanded House Jan. 6 committee, capping their investigation by recommending a criminal investigation into former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.).

The 128-page interim report forwards many of the claims circulated by the GOP since the committee was organized, complaining the Jan. 6 select committee was improperly constituted and unfairly pinned blame on President-elect Trump.

“Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi’s multimillion-dollar Select Committee was a political weapon with a singular focus to deceive the public into blaming President Trump for the violence on January 6 and to tarnish the legacy of his first Presidency,” the report states.
The report’s conclusion also calls for an FBI investigation into Cheney, accusing her of witness tampering by being in touch with star witness Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide.

In a world where Trump can be charged and convicted of a ‘fraud’ that had no victims, charging Cheney would seem a no-brainer. Democrats were the ones who started this whole lawfare business, they can hardly blame anyone when it’s done to them in turn.

Read it.

ny day now, President-elect Donald Trump will nominate a new director of the U.S. Census Bureau, replacing President Joe Biden’s man, Robert L. Santos. Whoever Trump’s nominee will be needs to grasp how vital the job is for the long-term unity of the United States and for the need to free people from the Left’s balkanizing mission.

Conservatives’ eyes often glaze over when one brings up the periodic enumeration of people mandated by the Constitution. But here’s a reason for conservatives to sit up and start taking notice: The Left really cares about the census.

The Left sees us not as a unified nation with common purposes and aspirations but as a federation of different groups. Some of these groups are dominant, and others are subordinate. This fits neatly into the Marxian “oppressor v. oppressed” template that today’s Left promotes so heavily.

The main problem with the Census is that it doesn’t just count people, which is all that the Constitution requires — it also collects tons of personal information that is used to justify intrusive government policies. The second-to-main problem is that it counts everybody, not just citizens, and that distorts the allocation of Congressional seats among the several states.

Read it.

As Margaret Thatches once famously said, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

Time to leave.

Pandemic Action Network.

Avian influenza A (H5N1) — or highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) — emerged as a growing concern in recent months as H5N1 has spread, particularly in the United States. Pandemic Action Network (PAN) began monitoring the situation through weekly tracking in early 2024. As we look toward 2025, we’ve taken stock of our reporting and observations of H5N1’s rise as well as media coverage and policy action (or lack thereof.) These weekly snapshots of zoonotic transmission and response documented in real-time over the past year show how H5N1 spread first from birds to other species — notably, dairy cows — and then to humans. A review of the year’s coverage underscores that the world is not adequately paying attention or preparing for a potential H5N1 pandemic threat. There are clear priorities for urgent action — particularly for the incoming U.S. administration.

The threat of a more severe H5N1 emergency or pandemic demands immediate efforts to strengthen surveillance, expand testing, and implement targeted vaccination campaigns, making it imperative for countries — particularly those most affected like the U.S. — to take decisive action now. The clock is ticking, and failing to act swiftly could have devastating consequences for public health and global security.

PAN urges prompt and decisive global action in preparing for and responding to the H5N1 outbreak, reinforcing the following key recommendations from global experts to avert a widespread health emergency or another devastating pandemic.

Emphasis added.

The Branch COVIDians are at it again. PREPARE TO PANIC!

CNN, a Voice of the Crust.

At least, this is what CNN is determined to share with us. You know how the Narrative Media are.

Here’s the part that sticks out like a sore thumb:

Rupnow was believed to have had “a turbulent home life,” according to court records, “which show that her parents divorced and remarried multiple times and that she had been enrolled in therapy,” the Washington Post reports.

“A Washington Post review of court records points to an unsettled childhood for Rupnow, whose parents’ custody agreements sometimes forced her to move between their homes every two or three days,” the newspaper reports.

Emphasis added.

Rupnow’s parents – Jeff and Mellissa Rupnow – have not responded to repeated requests for comment by the Washington Post or CNN.

Gee, I wonder why. Perhaps because anything they say can and will be used against them in a court of law and especially in a partisan Narrative Media.

The two rules of Modern Society: Don’t say anything to the police and don’t say anything to the media. You Will Surely Regret It.

Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen: How long before they asset that It’s All Trump’s Fault?

UPDATE: The Networks Are Struggling to Cover The Motive Behind The Madison School Shooting

Here’s what we WON’T do when Trump takes over (Mark Jacob/Stop the Presses)

Majority of Americans are ready to support Trump and large parts of his agenda, says CNBC survey (Steve Liesman/CNBC)

Why Would CBS Sports Minimize Pro-Trump Crowd at the Army-Navy Game?  That’s a real head-scratcher.

ABC, CBS Ignore Trump Winning $16 Million in Defamation Settlement  Nothing to see here, move along, move along….

Trump says he supports polio vaccine despite signs of RFK Jr’s opposition – live (Chris Stein/The Guardian)

Trump Says He’d Consider Pardoning NYC Mayor Eric Adams (Bloomberg)

Trump downplays possibility of DeSantis appointing Lara Trump to the Senate (Kimberly Leonard/Politico)  Let’s read those tea leaves, shall we?

Morning Joe: Pete Hegseth’s a ‘Retrograde Throwback’ to ‘The Crusades’  I like him already.

Trump vows to fire 49K work-from-home federal employees if they don’t return to office (Sarah K. Burris/Raw Story)  Heaven forbid!

The polio vaccine, Eric Adams and more media lawsuits: Donald Trump’s freewheeling Mar-a-Lago press conference (Megan Messerly/Politico)

Trump Says He’ll Sue Pollster Ann Selzer for Wrong Prediction (Grace Harrington/The Daily Beast)

‘That’s A Sickness’: Donald Trump Criticizes Fans Of Shooting Suspect Luigi Mangione (Igor Bobic/HuffPost)

How Trump could gut the refugee program (Ellen Ioanes/Vox)

Another Federal Judge Reverses Decision To Retire, Ruins Trump’s Plans To Fill His Seat (Jennifer Bendery/HuffPost)  Ruined! Curses, foiled again!

MSNBC Whines About Defamation Settlement, Fearmongers ‘Chilling Effect’

Failed Judicial Nominee Adeel Mangi Lashes Out at Democrats, Predicts ‘Tsunami of Bigotry’ Under Trump

Hegseth’s Guard Left the Army After the Beating of a Civilian During Training (New York Times)

Why ABC News settled with Donald Trump for $15 million (Brian Stelter/CNN)  Look out, pig, here comes some lipstick.

Trump Team Already in Backchannel Talks on Deportations (Eric Martin/Bloomberg)

Oh, Never Mind (Dan Rather/Steady)  Still lying after all these years.

‘There’s Not A Darn Thing Anybody Can Do’: Rash Of Jan. 6 Pardons Will Mean Trouble, Former Prosecutor Says (Brandi Buchman/HuffPost)

Analysis: George Stephanopoulos Now Responsible for Contributing 200 Times More to Trump Library Than He Ever Did to Clinton Foundation

Mitch McConnell Attacks Trump’s ‘America First’ Approach Despite Electoral Mandate

“Deeply Conflicted” Judge Rules Trump Doesn’t Have Immunity In New York ‘Hush Money’ Case

Republicans cry foul with some judges ‘unretiring’ before second Trump term (Anthony Adragna/Politico)

Meddling for MAGA – Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the Los Angeles Times … (Oliver Darcy/Status)

Trump is surrounding himself with vaccine skeptics (Aaron Blake/Washington Post)  Surrounding!

Republicans see agriculture and abortion, not vaccines, as top Kennedy concerns (Semafor)  But the Narrative Media will keep hammering on VACCINES! until everybody is sick of it.

Trump sues Des Moines Register, top pollster for ‘brazen election interference,’ fraud over Harris poll (Fox News)

Trump’s Retribution Tour Begins (Tara Palmeri/Puck)

Elizabeth Warren asks Trump to set conflict-of-interest rules for Musk (Michael Scherer/Washington Post)

Trump’s Time interview provides a sobering reminder (Noah Berlatsky/Public Notice)  Of what, you might ask? Why, Orange Man Bad, of course.

After Trump’s Victory, Republicans Trust the Election System Again (Charles Homans/New York Times)  No, they don’t.

Trump’s for-profit presidency (Nicole Narea/Vox)

Emboldened by ABC settlement, Trump threatens more lawsuits against the press (Hadas Gold/CNN)

Thirteen 2020 fake electors will cast real Electoral College votes for Trump on Tuesday (Marshall Cohen/CNN)

The Real Scandal of Our Media Tycoons (William Kristol/The Bulwark)

KFile: Pete Hegseth spread baseless conspiracy theories that January 6 attack was carried out by leftist groups (CNN)

Masayoshi Son and the Art of the Fake Deal (Paul Krugman/Krugman wonks out) No matter what the headline, it’s Always About Trump.

From big tech to the media, the rush to kiss Trump’s ring is on (Politico)

The Battle Against Trump 2.0 Begins in the States (Tim Dickinson/Rolling Stone)

Donald Trump makes Christmas shopping easy! (Bill Press/The Hill)

Trump Presser A Gauzy, Nostalgic Harbinger Of The Next Four Years Of Suck (Gary Legum/Wonkette)

‘Still Able To Connect’: MSNBC Host Says She Called Trump Directly, But ’50 People’ Were Between Her And Harris, Biden (IJR)

NY Times Heads Into Battle Vs. Trump Alongside Radical ‘Youth Climate Activists’

‘Return on investment’: Robert Reich explains why Trump 2.0 will make billionaires even richer (Alex Henderson/Alternet.org)

CNN Fact-Checker Flags ‘Most Dangerous Part’ Of Donald Trump’s News Conference (Lee Moran/HuffPost)

Possible Trump FEMA Pick Made Millions After Florida Disaster-Response Gig (Rolling Stone)

CNN’s Bash Takes Issue With Trump Saying People Want to Be His Friend

‘They’re eating the pets:’ Trump, Vance earn PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year for claims about Haitians (PolitiFact)

Transcript: Trump’s Unhinged New Vaccine Ramblings Reveal Big Weakness (New Republic)

Kremlin Insiders Spill Putin’s Secret Plan to Manipulate Trump (Julia Davis/The Daily Beast)

Hollywood Celebrities Terrified That If Trump Deports Illegal Immigrants They May Have To Start Watching Their Own Kids (Babylon Bee)

12 Democrats Boycotting Trump’s Inauguration

Make America the Great Depression Again: Trump’s plan to kill the FDIC (Catherine Rampell/Washington Post)

Read it.

Ben Wikler, a top candidate for DNC chairman, told the Jewish Insider a pro-Hamas activist should have been allowed to speak at the Democratic National Convention in August.

Wikler said that “featuring a voice like” Palestinian Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman, who was championed by the anti-Israel “Uncommitted” movement and has a record of pro-Hamas comments, “would have conveyed the strength and unity of purpose of the Democratic Party.”

The “Uncommitted” movement, which began in Michigan as a protest of President Joe Biden’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas terrorists, staged a sit-in outside the Chicago convention after the party denied Romman a speaking slot. The group advocated for an Israeli arms embargo and a permanent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Read it.

The Iowa production line is at once essential and an exemplar of industrial atrophy. It illustrates why the richest military on Earth could not keep up with the demand for artillery ammunition after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. At that time, the U.S. was manufacturing about 14,000 shells a month. By 2023, the Ukrainians were firing as many as 8,000 shells a day. It has taken two years and billions of dollars for the U.S. to ramp up production to 40,000 shells a month—still well short of Ukraine’s needs. A big part of the reason is that we still make howitzer rounds the way our great-grandparents did. There are better, faster, safer ways. You can watch videos online of automated plants, for example, operating in Europe. Some new American facilities are starting up, but they are not yet at capacity.

The problem isn’t just howitzer shells. And it isn’t only that the U.S. can’t build drones, rockets, and missiles fast enough to meet the needs of Ukraine. America itself lacks stockpiles of the necessary components. A massive rebuilding effort is now under way, the largest in almost a century, but it will not—cannot—happen fast. And even the expanded capacity would not come close to meeting requests the size of Ukraine’s, much less restore our own depleted reserves. Take drones, for instance. In December 2023, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, called for the domestic production of 1 million annually to meet war needs—and Ukraine has met that goal. In the meantime, the supply of drones provided by the U.S. to Ukraine has numbered in the thousands, and many of those have not fared as well on the battlefield as Ukraine’s homemade, often jerry-rigged models and off-the-shelf Chinese drones. Other allies have stepped up with materiel of many kinds—artillery, armored vehicles, aircraft—but fighters in Ukraine are still coping with disabling shortages.

Read it.

Are you a criminal or some sort of illegal alien from those parts of Israel controlled by Islamic terrorists?

Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Tim Kaine, Sen. Dick Durbin, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, Sen. Raphael Warnock, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Sen. Peter Welch and Sen. Brian Schatz have some good news for you.

In a letter to President Biden, the eight Senate Democrats urged him to “promptly designate the Palestinian Territories for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and protect Palestinians present in the United States from deportation”.

The Senate Dem letter makes no mention of Hamas but falsely claims that “Israeli bombing and extensive ground operations in Gaza have left over 43,000 Palestinians dead.”

And then, since they also want to make Muslims from Judea and Samaria also undeportable, they even more laughably claim that, “The stability of the West Bank has also worsened since October 7, 2023, as violent settlers have increasingly destroyed homes, stolen livestock, demolished olive orchards, and wounded and killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians, including children.”

Read it.

Legal documents are notoriously difficult to understand, even for lawyers. This raises the question: Why are these documents written in a style that makes them so impenetrable?

MIT cognitive scientists believe they have uncovered the answer to that question. Just as “magic spells” use special rhymes and archaic terms to signal their power, the convoluted language of legalese acts to convey a sense of authority, they conclude.

In a study appearing this week in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers found that even non-lawyers use this type of language when asked to write laws.

“People seem to understand that there’s an implicit rule that this is how laws should sound, and they write them that way,” says Edward Gibson, an MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences and the senior author of the study.

The Guardian (UK).

The aim is ambitious: to complete a functioning reconstruction of the extraordinary Sutton Hoo burial ship by 2026 and test it on the river and sea, hopefully providing fresh insight into what life was like in Anglo-Saxon times.

But the project, being run by a small charity, is struggling to source the right sort of British oak to finish the build and is calling for donations, worried that if it does not get the wood from the UK, it may have to look overseas.

The historian Dan Snow is among supporters who has backed the plea for British oak from the Sutton Hoo Ship’s Company, saying it would be a shame if they had to look overseas for wood for such a project.

Read it.

Scientists from the Kavli Institute of Delft University of Technology and the IMP Vienna Biocenter have discovered a new property of the molecular motors that shape our chromosomes. While six years ago they found that these so-called SMC motor proteins make long loops in our DNA, they have now discovered that these motors also put significant twists into the loops that they form.

Chris Arnade:

So Trump’s embrace of McDonald’s becomes a political twofer. It shows he’s one of you: He is a back-row guy at heart. But it also shows that while he should be a member of the front-row, given his education and wealth, he’s not, because such people despise him for many of the same reasons they look down on you: for what he eats, how he talks, for what he believes in, and for how he arrives at those beliefs, which isn’t by spending years reading through approved syllabi, but having gone out into the world and learned from it, one mistake after the next.

Read it.

I’m writing this from the McDonald’s in my town in upstate New York, where I do most of my writing when at home, and I “know” almost all the two dozen or so oddballs who come in, like me, sit in a corner, and either stare at the wall, rant into a cup, or work on their beat-up laptop. I know the morning regulars—the evolving group of five or so guys who are at the door when it opens at 5:30 a.m.—as well as the afternoon regulars. All the employees also “know” these oddballs, and should a new one come in, sit in a corner, and start acting a bit off, they’ll notice. That almost always leads them to offering help, or in this rare case of Luigi Mangione, calling the police.

The larger question here is, how is it that McDonald’s, a business founded and designed to make eating as quick and transactional as possible, has become America’s default community center?

The answer: It’s happened because people are fundamentally wired to make meaning, and because having a community you feel you belong to is foundational to who we are. If you provide people with a landscape of banal franchises, they will form communities and make meaning in a banal franchise.

Daily Mail (UK).

Follow The Science: Until it’s wrong, as pretty much always happens.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

Read it.

An antenna’s shape determines what kind of signals it can work with. So key aspects of its operations are in fact already locked in at manufacturing. However, a new shape-shifting antenna could dynamically adapt to different communications requirements allowing it to do the work of multiple fixed antennas.

The new design is the brainchild of a multidisciplinary team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, and was made possible by cutting-edge 3D printing techniques. The antenna features a double spiral made of “shape-memory alloy,” which changes shape when heated or cooled, and can operate effectively at frequencies ranging from 4-11 gigahertz.

Wall Street Journal.

In the land of big trucks, a tiny pickup is stealing drivers’ hearts. Now owners of the little haulers from Japan say they’re being driven off the road.

Kei trucks are smaller than a Volkswagen Beetle and powered by an engine commonly found in motorcycles, but they have beds as large as a full-size pickup from Detroit. The combination of size and utility are virtues in their home country, where both land and natural resources are scarce.

Lately they have taken off in the U.S., where owners say they do nearly everything that bigger pickups can do and come with additional features—like being super sweet and making other drivers jealous. Even in states like Texas, where bigger is almost always better, kei trucks are flying off lots.

But,  as usual, government regulation is the locust swarm in the ointment.

Read it.

Sometime around 2012 or ’13, my daughters stopped speaking in Konkani, our mother tongue. It isn’t entirely clear what provoked it; perhaps it was a teacher at their Mumbai school encouraging students to speak more English at home. Or perhaps it was something else. It doesn’t matter.

What did matter was that our home became an almost exclusively English-speaking household, with the occasional sporadic Konkani conversation. We were not alone. Clustered throughout the affluent sections of urban India are many families such as ours, speaking predominantly English and not the tongues they grew up speaking in.

Some of these families, or at least parents in these English-speaking households do make an attempt to speak their mother tongue as much as they speak in English. But even in these bilingual households, English still dominates. It takes an effort for the kids to speak in the Indian tongues, beyond a few simple phrases. English on the other hand comes naturally to them; the larger vocabulary they possess in English helping them express complex thoughts and propositions far easily.

I have been looking for a term, an acronym or a phrase that describes these families who speak English predominantly at home. These constitute an influential demographic, or rather a psychographic, in India – affluent, urban, highly educated, usually in intercaste or inter-religious unions. I propose to call them Indo-Anglians.

UPDATE: India’s New ‘English Only’ Generation (New York Times)

Read it.

A type of bacteria called Deinococcus radiodurans, nicknamed “Conan the Bacterium” for its ability to survive the harshest of extremes, can withstand radiation doses 28,000 times greater than those that would kill a human being — and the secret to its success is rooted in an antioxidant.

Now, scientists have uncovered how the antioxidant works, unlocking the possibility that it could be used to protect the health of humans, both on Earth and those exploring beyond it in the future.

The antioxidant is formed by a simple group of small molecules called metabolites, including manganese, phosphate and a small peptide, or molecule, of amino acids.

Ah, but can it speak with an Austrian accent?

The Register.

The Raspberry Pi is a moral hazard because it’s been far too good to us. For the past 12 years, the Pi series has bombarded the world with extremely affordable, extremely useful computers designed purely to promote education, innovation and the democratization of digital skills.

The full spectrum of geekery, from precocious prepubescents to CEOs of specialist technical companies, has grown to expect an endless stream of well-engineered hardware backed by a mainstream software stack and a thriving ecosystem. From the $4 Pi Pico microcontroller to the new $90 Pi 500 complete desktop computer, Raspberry is what an Apple run by Steve Woz instead of Jobs might have looked like.

As a result, we Pi fans have been spoiled rotten. We don’t see the profound challenge of mastering cheap, powerful and manufacturable at scale – the impossible triangle that sank most of the UK’s first generation of computer makers. We complain when consumers can’t get boards during supply chain meltdown because of the insane success of the Pi in commercial use.

Read it.

Picture a future where the Thanksgiving turkey on your table didn’t grow up on a farm but instead grew inside a bioreactor. Science fiction or an anticipated reality?

In 2013, the world’s first cultivated burger took center stage at a news conference in London. The Dutch scientist Mark Post of Maastricht University had grown this burger from stem cells from cows and provided the serum and other factors needed to drive these cells to form strands of muscle tissues. It cost $330,000 USD to create. The high price tag did not stop the cultivated meat industry and instead spurred even more innovation in this area.

So how did we arrive at the $330,000 burger, what has happened since, and where is the cultivated meat industry going? We spoke with Sonalie Figueiras, Founding Editor of Green Queen Media and the Food & Ag Track Chair at SynBioBeta 2025, to find out.

ZMan cuts to the chase.

An interesting subtext to the election of Donald Trump is one that has been largely ignored by the usual sources. It was not cultural issues, foreign policy or the ineptitude of Kamala Harris that drove the election. It was the economy. Widespread anxiety over the economy is what drove down support for Harris, despite the billion-dollar campaign and the billions spent in media gaslighting. No amount of jawboning could convince the public that the economy is doing as good as claimed.

There is a good reason for this. As some have predicted, inflation has been creeping back up after having moved down for a period. The American economy is experiencing what happened in the 1970’s. Contrary to popular belief, inflation did not rage for the entire decade but ran in spurts. There were periods where inflation rose, plateaued and then fell to a tolerable level. The latest data on the CPI and the PPI indicate the current economy is stuck in a similar pattern.

Regime media dismisses this as a minor blip in an otherwise glorious economy, managed by the wise and noble Biden administration, but that has not convinced anyone who buys things. The government does not measure inflation the same way it used to measure it in the 1970’s, so no talk of stagflation. If they used the old methods, inflation would be a daily feature. Of course, you also have the fact that the government now lies about all of the economic data.

Read it.

Which of these statements is true?

1. Islam is peace. —George W. Bush
2. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing to do with terrorism. —Hillary Clinton
3. The religion of Islam itself is not the problem. —Tony Blair
4. Islam is a religion of peace. What is happening is the perversion of that religion. —Tony Blair
5. There is NOTHING in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act. —David Cameron on the killing of Lee Rigby
6. The killing of Lee Rigby was a “betrayal of Islam”. —Judge Sweeney
7. The Koran is a book of peace. —Judge Haddon-Cave
8. There are lots of churches in Saudi Arabia! —Leader of Worcester City Council
9. Islam hates us, —Donald Trump
10. The Solingen stabbings were “senseless”, —Sir Keir Starmer
11. There is NOTHING in the Koran that encourages [taking girls for sex marketing], —Lord Young, government spokesman

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

UPDATE: White House Islamophobia Strategy Says Muslims Were the Real Victims of Oct 7th

Read it.

Responsible journalism requires more than repackaging doomsday scenarios; it demands rigorous fact-checking and a willingness to present a balanced view of the evidence. By failing to meet these standards, Newsweek not only erodes public trust but also diminishes the legitimacy of meaningful environmental discussions. Readers deserve better than recycled, unfounded predictions—they deserve facts. Until outlets like Newsweek prioritize accuracy over hype, they will remain complicit in the spread of misinformation masquerading as science.

Read it.

A new report highlights a disparity in the Department of Education toward both Christian and career colleges through its Office of Enforcement, an “obscure agency” created during the Obama administration and revived under President Joe Biden.

The American Principles Project’s report reveals that “nearly 70% of penalties imposed by the Office of Enforcement have been against Christian institutions and career colleges, even though these schools represent less than 10% of college students.”

When reached for comment, the Department of Education didn’t respond.

Read it.

The Chinese government in recent weeks expanded its ban on exports of a handful of minerals found in critical military and energy technologies in America. The move puts a spotlight on America’s domestic mineral supplies, many of which are locked in years-long federal permitting and regulatory reviews.

One such case is a project located at an abandoned gold mine in the heart of Idaho. That mine contains some of the nation’s largest known deposits of the rare mineral antimony, which is among those affected by China’s export restrictions. But after a staggering 14 years, the federal government has yet to give the Idaho project a green light to begin production.

Read it.

On Dec. 11, ABC News’ Jay O’Brien reported false information about Linda McMahon, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. secretary of education, on “ABC News Live Prime.”

In the first minute of an eight-minute overview, O’Brien stated that McMahon has no formal education training and little experience:

“If she receives Senate confirmation, McMahon, who has no formal teaching training and little experience in education, will be tasked with setting policies for the nation’s schools.”

This is patently false.

While receiving a bachelor’s degree in French at East Carolina University in the late 1960s, McMahon earned a teaching certificate after completing a teacher preparation program at the school. This information has been available publicly for years, reported in outlets like The Washington Post and USA Today, was confirmed in a Hartford newspaper in 2011, and has been listed in official statements from East Carolina University.

The most recent data from National Center for Education Statistics on educator qualifications reported that at least 8% of public schoolteachers in the United States had a teaching certificate instead of a bachelor’s degree in education.

Additionally, teacher transition programs, in which non-education career individuals obtain a certificate to teach their skillset in schools, are common in the United States. Almost 20% of teachers enter the education field in this way, and are not described as “unqualified” or “untrained” by any state department of public education or public instruction.

Politico, a Voice of the Crust.

Resumes are flying around Washington as President JOE BIDEN’s national security team frantically searches for jobs once they’re kicked out of office next month.

Washington’s (in)famous revolving door as political parties trade power is nothing new. But this time around, the job market seems particularly brutal, according to eight people familiar with the job search frenzy, including Biden appointees, State Department and Pentagon officials and congressional aides.

Read it.

The team behind the Scripps National Spelling Bee whacked a hornet’s nest when it identified specific words for potential competitors to ponder.

Its list of “50 challenging third grade words” includes giraffe, groceries, and jigsaw. So far, so good. But beneath the “preferred spelling” of women, a permitted option appears: “womyn.”

Naturally, this feminist twist on “women” avoids the reference to those pesky purveyors of patriarchy: men. And what better place than third grade to pound the feminist drums?

New York Times, a Voice of the Crust.

Adeel Mangi, who would have been the first Muslim American federal appellate court judge, wrote an angry letter to President Biden describing bigotry he faced in the confirmation process.

Newsbusters.

No play or musical is safe, at this point, from being re-written into a woke cliche.

But if you didn’t think a classic could be done any more injustice than by turning Oz gay, Broadway just employed our Supreme Court’s DEI judge to ruin Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet!

…

The tortured take, which recycles overplayed pop songs as their official score, decides Juliet doesn’t “need no man” because she’s a strong independent woman, of course! So they thought… What better way to promote that message than by rewarding Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who doesn’t know what a woman is, with a cameo?

In a performance riddled with second-hand embarrassment, Jackson marched out on stage, Saturday night, wearing a pants-dress getup.

UPDATE: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a longtime theater lover, makes her Broadway debut (Rachel Treisman/NPR)

UPDATE: ‘HISTORIC’: CBS’s Norah O’Donnell Gushes Over Justice Theater Kid’s Broadway Cameo

Newsbusters.

Democrats are slowly, but surely, building a permission structure for progressive activists to kill those they determine are bad. From the rise of antisemitism to, now, the murder of an insurance CEO, few Democrats seem capable of condemning violence without adding a “but.”

To their credit, Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania have condemned both without buts. Unfortunately, when President Joe Biden condemns antisemitism in the United States, he cannot help himself but muddy the water with equal condemnations of Islamophobia. No one is chasing Muslim students off college campuses. Progressive activists are turning violent, and too few Democratic leaders want to condemn the violence without adding caveats.

Luigi Mangione’s alleged murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has also been met with lots of “buts.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren could not help but justify Thompson’s murder on television with MSNBC’s Joy Reid: “Violence is never the answer. This guy gets a trial who’s allegedly killed the CEO of UnitedHealth, but you can only push people so far, and then they start to take matters into their own hands.”

“You can only push people so far,” she reasoned. Warren is a supporter of Obamacare, the present health care system in the United States that people hate. In fact, Americans’ hatred of health care in this country has grown since passage of the legislation Warren supports. God forbid people connect the dots and decide Democrats are the ones who pushed people too far by breaking the health care system.

New York Post.

The prisoner CNN helped free from a secret facility in Syria was actually a notorious member of Bashar al-Assad’s forces known to torture those who refused to pay him off, according to a shocking local fact check.

The network went viral last week with footage of the startled prisoner being led from the prison by journalist Clarissa Ward, who called it “one of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed” in her 20 years of reporting.

But “independent and unbiased” fact-checkers Verify-Sy published a detailed report Sunday saying that the seemingly innocent prisoner was actually Salama Mohammad Salama — a first lieutenant in Syrian air force intelligence with a long history of alleged war crimes.

“We have subsequently been investigating his background and are aware that he may have given a false identity,” CNN acknowledged to The Post. “We are continuing our reporting into this and the wider story.”

Read it.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy (D.) slammed the health care industry’s “immoral system” in response to the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, saying “thousands of people” die every day at the “hands of a health care industry that mostly doesn’t give a s—t about people.”

“What I see happening in this country is a real visceral anger that the outrage at Brian Thompson’s death, or the outrage at the death of any powerful person, isn’t matched by the anger over the thousands of people who die, often anonymous deaths every single day in this country at the hands of a health care industry that mostly doesn’t give a s—t about people and only cares about profits,” Murphy said in an X post over the weekend.

“Ordinary people in this country are not indifferent to the loss of life, but these companies are,” Murphy continued. “The business model of the health care industry is to deny care, necessary medical care to people who need it and force them into bankruptcy or worse let them die in order to grow profit, … that’s an immoral system.”

NBC News, a Voice of the Crust.

David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 shooting at his high school in Parkland, Florida, who turned into a national anti-violence activist, has launched a bid to serve in leadership of the Democratic National Committee.

Hogg, 24, announced on Monday he is running to become a vice chair of the DNC, arguing he would focus on winning back young voters who have drifted from the Democratic Party to Republicans. That shift came profoundly, and abruptly, in November, when young voters who predominantly favored President Joe Biden just four years earlier backed Donald Trump in larger numbers than any Republican presidential candidate since 2008, according to NBC News exit polling.

“Moving forward, we must have a renewed focus on our youth outreach in all states and territories to rebuild our coalition after the massive shift to the right among young voters this election,” Hogg said in a statement. “We need a collaborative environment where we don’t just surround ourselves with people who agree with us. We must confront the mass exodus of people from Blue states to Red States, driven by our party’s failure to address the housing crisis at scale—which if left unaddressed, will spell disaster for us by 2030.”

Incidentally keeping the cameras on me, of course.

CBS News, a Voice of the Crust.

A man with a loaded gun in his car and a device in his underwear that would enable the firearm to act like a machine gun was arrested outside the Pentagon last week after attempting to speed off with Pentagon police officers clinging to his vehicle, according to court documents reviewed by CBS News.

Oh, boy. Some MAGA fringe cook or white supremacist, no doubt.

Prosecutors allege Kaleel Nagbe had a loaded firearm with 16 rounds, including one in the chamber, when he was stopped for a traffic infraction — holding a phone while driving — at the Pentagon complex. Prosecutors say the Pentagon police officer who stopped him smelled marijuana and subsequently ordered him out of his vehicle. Nagbe then jumped back into his car, and attempted to speed away, according to prosecutors. Justice Department court filings say “multiple officers hung onto the vehicle,” thwarting the suspect’s escape.

Oh, I guess not. Disappointment!

Read it.

They’d already be there except for The Mouse and the fact that Money Talks.

Trump plan to end birthright citizenship is more conceivable in second term (The GuardianO

Trump girds for battle with Democrats, Supreme Court over birthright citizenship (The Hill)

Trump said he would revoke birthright citizenship. It hasn’t worked in the past (L.A. Times)

Trump aims to end birthright citizenship, says American citizens with family here illegally may be deported (NBC News)

Post-Settlement Stephanopoulos: Defanged But Still Venomous

Panicked CEOs left ‘scratching their heads’ as Trump ignores their warnings: WSJ (Tom Boggioni/Raw Story)

Thom Tillis warns pressure campaign to push Cabinet nominees could backfire (Greta Reich/Politico)

Hegseth to release sexual misconduct accuser from non-disclosure agreement, Lindsey Graham says (Greta Reich/Politico)

Graham Says Hegseth Plans to Release Accuser From Confidential Agreement (Karoun Demirjian/New York Times)

“Trump’s Stooge” Gets His Reward (Julianne McShane/Mother Jones)

Will Trump Be Called On His Inflation Lie? (Paul Krugman/Krugman wonks out)

Journalists anticipate a renewed hostility toward their work under the incoming Trump administration (David Bauder/Associated Press)

Trump’s ‘explosive’ economic growth claims are no match for the $36 trillion debt (Sam Sutton/Politico)

Steve Bannon Is Already Claiming Trump Can Run Again in 2028 (David Gardner/The Daily Beast)

Trump vows to ‘hire American.’ His businesses keep hiring foreign guest workers (Curt Devine/CNN)

How Pam Bondi boosted Trump’s election fraud claims in a key swing state (Beth Reinhard/Washington Post)

Trump Allies Fear Watered Down Deportation Efforts (Wall Street Journal)

Senate Republicans Could Still Deny Trump His Worst Picks (Jill Lawrence/The Bulwark)  According to the Narrative Media, that would be all of them.

Zuckerberg, once a champion for the undocumented, embraces Trump (Popular Information)  We all wake up eventually.

ABC bends the knee (Lisa Needham/Public Notice)

Trump claims a ‘massive’ mandate, but presidents often overread their victories (Domenico Montanaro/NPR)

Humiliation for Stephanopoulos as Trump Secures Historic Defamation Settlement With ABC News–But Former Clinton Adviser Still Reportedly Inks Lucrative New Deal (Collin Anderson/freebeacon.com)  The Crust take care of their own.

Many Unhappy Returns: Journalists Deserve All the Angst Trump’s 2nd Term Brings

The American Mind.

In the hamlet of Remsenburg, Suffolk County, Long Island, New York lies a small cemetery behind the chapel of the Remsenburg Community Church. There one finds the modest final resting place of a great American, marked by a substantial rectangular headstone with a large open book sculpted on top, in which is inscribed from top to bottom:

Jeeves

Blanding’s Castle

Leave it to Psmith

Meet Mister Mulliner

Beneath this on the wide headstone you see the name of the great American:

Sir Pelham Grenville

WODEHOUSE

At the very bottom of the headstone are the words:

HE GAVE JOY TO COUNTLESS PEOPLE

ZMan lays it out.

One of the more difficult things for people to accept is that sometimes things happen that benefit no one and for reasons under no one’s control. Other than natural disasters, people just assume that everything happens for a reason and someone wanted it to happen because they gain to benefit from it happening. Conspiracy theories are born when it is not clear who made something happen. This need to know the who and why for everything gets filled by the conspiracy theory.

The collapse of Syria is a great example of this. Everyone just assumed this was another American regime change operation. Then we got stories about how it was the Turks who backed the rebels and wanted Assad gone. Once the Israelis started grabbing land, the usual suspects came in with their usual theories. There is even a theory that the Russians wanted Syria to collapse to create a quagmire for the Americans to manage in the Middle East.

All these theories make some sense, if you ignore the things that make no sense whatsoever, like the dangers of creating chaos in the region. The Israelis might be happy Assad is gone for emotional reasons, but having a bunch of Islamist warlords operating on their border just added a lot of new costs to their budget. The United States now has a new problem to manage. Guarding those Chevon oil fields suddenly got more expensive and more complicated.

Read it.

It is estimated that fewer than 23% of Americans between 17 and 22 are qualified to serve in the U.S. military. The reasons range from obesity and drug use to mental health issues. Today, less than 1% of our nation has served in the armed forces, making the U.S. military an exclusive organization.

Yet last week, federal district judge Richard Bennett ruled that the U.S. Naval Academy’s race-conscious admissions policy did not violate the Supreme Court’s recent decision to curtail affirmative action. Judge Bennett argued that the Naval Academy has a “compelling national security interest in a diverse officer corps.” He is only partially correct.

Never once while in combat or performing special missions underwater have I, nor any of my Special Operations brothers and sisters, ever wondered about the skin color of our battle buddy or dive buddy. We only cared that the person next to us had our backs. The diversity we need in our military lies in our backgrounds and what we bring to the fight, not whether we are black or white or anything in between. I served alongside men and women who didn’t care about my skin color; they cared that I was trained, prepared, and able to lead them. The diversity I brought to the table was in my life experiences – growing up in sub-Saharan West Africa and Southeast Asia, understanding cultures, and speaking three languages fluently.

As our leaders continue to focus on inclusivity instead of exclusivity, the military missed its 2023 recruiting goals by 41,000 recruits. The U.S. Navy circumvented that deficit by bringing forward delayed-entry recruits. These recruits would normally be counted in the following fiscal year; however, the Navy could mask their low 2023 numbers by robbing Peter to pay Paul and leaving a larger gap for 2024. Faced with this initial deficit for 2024, Navy leaders looked at medical conditions where 85% or more recruits eventually receive medical waivers after a thorough medical review process. In April 2024, the chief of Navy recruiting released a two-page list of conditions that would be automatically waived, bypassing even a cursory physician’s review.

Read it.

The next James Bond is increasingly unlikely to be representative of the British Isles, thanks to the British intelligence services (MI5, MI6, and GCHQ) who are offering final year university students a 2025 summer internship, provided they have the good taste not to be ‘White British’….

Read it.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has a warning for all Syrian supporters of Bashar al-Assad: if they try to come to Germany, they will be hunted down like dogs.

As for the rest of the Syrian migrants — the “good Syrians” — those will be welcomed, because Germany really, really needs all those brain surgeons, nuclear physicists, electronic engineers, opera singers, and all the other skilled professionals that keep pouring in from the Middle East.

Read it.

Democratic lawmakers are seeking to hinder a federal watchdog investigation into misconduct within the Biden administration’s $400 billion green energy loan program—a sign Democrats could be growing concerned about what the long-running probe has uncovered.

The inspector general for the Department of Energy has spent over a year investigating the Loan Programs Office, which has been accused of dishing out billions in government loans to politically connected recipients, including companies teetering on bankruptcy and entities linked to foreign adversaries.

Now Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have taken the unusual step of launching an investigation into the investigators. In a letter last week, Democrats accused DOE inspector general Teri Donaldson of “bypass[ing] competition requirements that exist to ensure taxpayer dollars are not wasted” when she hired an outside law firm, Rabalais & Associates, to assist in her probe.

Read it.

Permitting reform has swiftly risen to the forefront in Washington as a pressing national security priority. The United States is grappling with the dual challenges of escalating energy demand and mounting global competition, particularly from China. Despite the critical role of our nation’s energy infrastructure, the U.S. is ensnared in a permitting process that can prolong vital projects by several years—or even decades. SAFE’s Center for Grid Security underscores that overhauling the procedures for approving and constructing energy infrastructure is not just a matter of efficiency—it is a matter of national urgency in the face of escalating global power competition.

The dead hand of Government Present destroys our prospect of having a future.

Read it.

Let me start by saying I loathe politics. I’ve always been drawn to liberal ideas—individual freedom, protecting the vulnerable, questioning authority, and the fundamental belief that consenting adults should be free to live their lives however they choose as long as they’re not harming others. These aren’t political positions to me; they’re basic human principles. But the game of politics itself repulses me. What I’m about to share isn’t about politics; it’s about our shared reality and how we’ve lost touch with it.

What’s truly mind-numbing to me is how people don’t see what’s happening right in front of them. The media has devolved into nothing more than a propaganda mouthpiece for the establishment, programming people to react rather than think. I’ve experienced this firsthand: When I drew historical comparisons between vaccine mandates and 1933 Germany’s early authoritarian policies, I was instantly labeled an extremist and cancelled by my NYC community. Yet now, these same people casually call everyone at Trump’s MSG rally Nazis. The irony would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

Read it.

Shopping’s bizarre new Christmas advertisement, featuring a hairy man prancing around in women’s clothing and makeup.

It turns out, the strange Algerian boxer look-alike “non-binary influencer,” Cyrus Veyssi, who goes by the pronouns “they/he.” And he… I mean… they…or, he (ugh) likes to ridicule women for wanting their own bathrooms.

Veyssi, a 30 year old co-host of the Amazon Prime talk show “Influenced” marked November’s “Trans Week of Visibility” with a post blasting a female social media user for defending “the right to be protected when going into a female bathroom.”

“HIII, DIVA!” they/he condescendingly responded to the girl in a video that received nearly 68,000 likes.