BIDEN, INC.: Hunter Biden Sent ‘Best Wishes From the Entire Biden Family’ to Chinese Energy Firm, Asked for $10M.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Which Type of Shotgun Load is Best for Home Defense?

AT AMAZON, Shop Amazon Warehouse Deals – Deep Discounts on Open-box and Used Products.

Plus, Shop Amazon Outlet – Clearance, Markdowns and Overstock Deals.

GOOD: Rural Washington Towns Openly Rebel Against Governor Inslee’s Latest COVID Shutdowns.

XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: Chinese Communist Party’s members have infiltrated UK firms, banks and pharmaceutical giants: Report.

Meanwhile, on this side of the pond: NBA Stays Quiet on Chinese Slave Labor.

GIVE SOME TO BIDEN, DISAPPOINT KAMALA: Drug Reverses Age-Related Mental Decline Within Days.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. They Stole It Fair And Square.

PRIVILEGE: Talking like a woman in TED Talks is associated with more popularity.

HMM: Aging, diet-induced obesity, and metabolic disease link explored in new research.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Colorado’s public school enrollment has dropped by 30,000 students. That could spell financial disaster for districts. “Public schools reported a decrease in the number of students for the first time in 30 years, many of them in early grades.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: University of Texas at Austin J-School introduces…The Dan Rather Medal for News & Guts! 

No word yet if University of Texas journalism students are also taught courses in typography, font choices, and the history of the teletypewriter.

AT AMAZON, HP Pavilion Laptop, 15.6″ Full HD IPS Touchscreen, 10th Gen Intel Core i5-1035G1 Processor up to 3.60GHz, 12GB RAM, 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD, Backlit Keyboard, HDMI, Wireless-AC, Bluetooth, Windows 10 Home.

Also, New Apple iPad Pro (12.9-inch, Wi-Fi + Cellular, 256GB) – Space Gray (4th Generation).

WELL, BYE: GOP Operative Steve Schmidt Is a Democrat Now, After Years Spent Shaming Republicans Over Trump.

SKYNET SMILES: Physics of chaos help scientists create insect-like gaits for robots.

MOVING AT THE SPEED OF GOVERNMENT: The Orion spacecraft is now 15 years old and has flown into space just once.

Congress has pumped $23.7 billion into Orion for that single flight.

On the other hand:

SpaceX is generally considered one of the most efficient space companies. Founded in 2002, the company has received funding from NASA, the Department of Defense, and private investors. Over its history, we can reliably estimate that SpaceX has expended a total of $16 billion to $20 billion on all of its spaceflight endeavors. Consider what that money has bought:

• Development of Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and Falcon Heavy rockets
• Development of Cargo Dragon, Crew Dragon, and Cargo Dragon 2 spacecraft
• Development of Merlin, Kestrel, and Raptor rocket engines
• Build-out of launch sites at Vandenberg (twice), Kwajalein Atoll, Cape Canaveral, and Kennedy Space Center
• 105 successful launches to orbit
• 20 missions to supply International Space Station, two crewed flights
• Development of vertical take off, vertical landing, rapid reuse for first stages
• Starship and Super Heavy rocket development program
• Starlink Internet program (with 955 satellites on orbit, SpaceX is largest satellite operator in the world)

To sum up, SpaceX delivered all of that for billions of dollars less than what NASA has spent on the Orion program since its inception.

Impressive.

THAT WAS DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP: FLASHBACK: Biden Was Concerned About Manipulated Voting Machines, Called for Paper Ballots.

SHOCKER: Shared nursing home staffs account for COVID-19 spread, study shows.

SECOND AMENDMENT WEBINAR THIS WEDNESDAY AT 1PM EST (BUMPED–Happening Now!): Register here. The Future of the Second Amendment and the Right to Carry In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and again in McDonald v. Chicago (2010), the Supreme Court established the individual right to possess a firearm in the home for self-defense. Since then, the Court has been urged to review whether laws imposing restrictions on carrying guns in public and prohibitions on assault weapons violate the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court had consistently declined to take on cases addressing these issues, leaving the scope of the Second Amendment uncertain. The confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett has raised hopes (and fears) that the Court may be poised to once again address the Second Amendment. To discuss what may lie ahead, the Liberty & Law Center will host a live webinar on Wednesday, December 16, 2020. Experts will include Professor Nelson Lund and Assistant Professor Robert Leider from the Antonin Scalia Law School. The discussion will be moderated by Liberty & Law Executive Director, Professor David E. Bernstein.

ANOTHER OBAMA-ERA RERUN: Remember Boko Haram? “Well, they just kidnapped 300 boys.”

GOODER AND HARDER: Why Seattle’s Proposed ‘Poverty Excuse’ for Crimes Would Destroy the City’s Economy.

WHERE DID THE VACCINE COME FROM, THOUGH? NBC, AFP: Say, why are the wealthiest nations “hoarding” half of COVID-19 vaccine doses?

Hoarding? In the first place, how do you “hoard” what hasn’t even been produced yet? In the second place, the US doesn’t plan to “hoard” anything — they plan to vaccinate the entire population. They’re not buying it to keep it in freezers forever.

But even that is a minor issue in a profoundly dishonest approach by both NBC and AFP. These nations didn’t “snap up” vaccines by elbowing their way into line. The reason these vaccines will exist at all in 2022 is because the wealthier nations pumped billions and billions of dollars into the pharmaceutical companies in order to accelerate their development. The fastest development cycle for a vaccine before this was four years, and that was for mumps in the early 60s.

The nations that did this bought tens and hundreds of millions of doses up front without even knowing whether they would be safe or effective, essentially buying hundreds of millions of pigs in pokes and hoping for the best. They accelerated reviews and approval processes to make R&D less costly for the pharmas, also enhancing their speed to final product. That was the entire purpose of Operation Warp Speed, a multibillion-dollar gamble by Americans in the hope of accelerating the path to an effective vaccine. Other countries, notably the UK and Germany, put similar strategies in place with the same goal. Those efforts are the reason why a vaccine exists at all, and likely why it exists before 2022, too. The nations that took the financial risks of that moonshot should benefit from their investment — especially since it took the form of buying those unknown doses in the first place.

Nowhere in the AFP or NBC reports does this extraordinary program even get a mention. That’s stunningly dishonest, and it’s tough to conclude anything other than these news agencies made the deliberate choice to exclude that information from its readers.

Operation Warp Speed was a triumph. But they don’t want to admit that, because you can’t spell “triumph” without Trump. . .

NOW IT’S COVID CANCEL CHRISTIANS CULTURE: New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell will not abide the presence of Christian performing artist Lauren Daigle in the Dick Clark Productions’ New Years’ Eve show.

THE DISASTER IS ALREADY IN MOTION: ‘We need a disaster plan’ for failing students. “Ruby Rodriguez, 14, is a ninth-grader at a Catholic school in Milwaukee. All classes are remote. ‘She doesn’t know what her classmates look like, because nobody ever turns on their cameras,’ and there’s no student conversation in class, writes Richards. She claims not to know her English teacher’s name. Ruby’s ‘grades have dropped from A’s and B’s to D’s and F’s’.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: Social Media Bans Video Of United Airlines Kicking Off Toddler Crying Over Mask.