EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: The Looming Financial Contagion. “The fact that the world did not experience a systemic financial crisis in 2022 is a minor miracle, given the surge in inflation and interest rates, not to mention a massive increase in geopolitical risk. But with public and private debt having risen to record levels during the now-bygone era of ultra-low interest rates, and recession risks high, the global financial system faces a huge stress test. A crisis in an advanced economy – for example, Japan or Italy – would be difficult to contain.”

Related: Up to a third of the world could face a recession in 2023.

STANDING UP TO BIGOTRY AND HATE IN HIGHER ED: Professor advises students to report scholars who bash white people or Christians to DEI office.

Make them live up to their own book of rules.

AS EXPECTED, UNDER PRESSURE FROM THE INDUSTRY THEY’RE DROPPING METRICS THAT ONLY MATTER TO CONSUMERS: U.S. News Drops Student Loans And Employment-At-Graduation (In Addition To Expenditures-Per-Student) From Forthcoming Law School Rankings. How much debt students accumulate, and whether — and how well — graduates are employed is important information that might make law school look like a bad deal. So it’s gone!

THE NEXT CONGRESS SHOULD ZERO OUT HIS ENTIRE OFFICE: If Fauci Was so Important, Why Is His Former Position at NIAID Vacant?

LIKE HOOVER, THOUGH, HE WAS PROPPED UP BY THE MEDIA FOR HIS ENTIRE CAREER:

Any anyone who criticized him was called a “conspiracy theorist” and “anti-government.”

GOALS: SpaceX will try to follow record-breaking 2022 with busier 2023.

SpaceX has shattered the record for launches in a calendar year by a single rocket type while making large strides toward getting the successor vehicle off the ground, despite a few struggles with Falcon 9 launch delays and Starship testing mishaps.

The record launch cadence is planned to be broken again in 2023, with as many as 100 launches planned according to Elon Musk. Starship, the eventual successor to the Falcon 9, did not fly this year as had been planned but is currently on track for its first orbital test flight as early as the first quarter of 2023.

The Falcon 9 Block 5, the current operational workhorse of the SpaceX rocket fleet, launched 60 times in 2022, with all flights successfully completing their missions. This cadence has set an all-time US and worldwide record for flights by a single type in one calendar year. The previous record was set by the Soviet Soyuz-U launcher in 1979, with 45 successful launches out of 47 overall that year.

SpaceX had a goal of 50 launches in 2022, and blew right past that.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Arizona’s Doomsday Clock Is Ticking Now That Crazy Katie Hobbs Is in Charge. “The leftist creep in California didn’t happen overnight, but times are different now. Democrats no longer pretend they aren’t socialists–they fly that freak flag out in the open with glee. Obviously, Hobbs can’t shove the state off of the leftist cliff on her own, but having a wild card like that at the top could accelerate the makeover.”

SCHEDULED TO TAKE OFF SHORTLY: SpaceX rocket to carry 114 satellites in first launch of 2023.

SAD NEWS: Tennis legend Martina Navratilova diagnosed with two forms of cancer: ‘I’m hoping for a favorable outcome.’ As are we all, Martina.

In other sports/health news, Damar Hamlin, who suffered a cardiac arrest at last night’s Bills/Bengals game is sedated and in critical condition.

SOYLENT GREEN WAS NOT A HOW-TO GUIDE: New York makes human composting after death legal.

Perhaps like we all do in January, they simply wrote the wrong year down:

A DISASTER IN THE MAKING WITHOUT A COMMENSURATE SURGE IN ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION: Shift to EVs Triggers Biggest Auto-Factory Building Boom in Decades.

MARK JUDGE: Reediting Babylon and sanctifying Hollywood.

MAJOR FAILURE FOR THE “PUBLIC HEALTH COMMUNITY” HERE: Half think COVID vaccine is deadly.

Nearly a third of the nation believes the COVID-19 vaccine has killed somebody they know, highlighting the safety concerns the public still has about the shot.

As the first family renewed their call for the country to get vaccinated, 28% of likely voters told Rasmussen Reports that they “personally know” somebody they think died from the side effects of the shot.

What’s more, 49% said that vaccine side effects have caused “unexplained deaths,” one of the factors in the trending new hashtag, “#DiedSuddenly,” based on the just-released documentary.

Died Suddenly has been criticized as promoting “debunked” anti-vaccine conspiracy theories but has been seen by some 15 million people.

More Democrats, by a 33%-26% margin, believe the shot has been lethal.

And endorsements like this one from “Dr. Natalia” aren’t helping, I’d guess:

COVID really was a cult. pic.twitter.com/8hKtgW0Wfa

— RAMZPAUL (@ramzpaul) January 2, 2023

And it doesn’t help if you think this is all bullshit. We’ve never had a vaccine-PR failure like this, and part of the public health community’s job is to sell treatments and preventives to the public. Instead they took a condescending, authoritarian, and frequently dishonest approach, and now people don’t trust them. Earning and keeping that trust is job number one for these folks, and instead they betrayed and squandered it. The costs will be lasting and severe. But hey, at least they’re not the only institution to betray and squander the public trust lately. So they’ve got that going for them, which is nice.

“PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE FLAILING:” Trump unleashes his disdain for pro-life voters.

Donald Trump just made his first significant political error of the 2024 nomination battle, and it’s a doozy.

After being asked about the abortion issue by Semafor reporter Shelby Talcott, Trump took to Truth Social to post the following:

It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations in the MidTerms. I was 233-20! It was the “abortion issue,” poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters. Also, the people that pushed so hard, for decades, against abortion, got their wish from the US Supreme Court, & just plain disappeared, not to be seen again. Plus, Mitch stupid $’s!

It’s hard to express how many factually false claims Trump makes in this “Truth”.

* * * * * * * *

But if abortion was the determining issue of the cycle, you would expect a slew of pro-life candidates to struggle. Instead, they all won — even in high stakes targeted races. Marco Rubio and Ron DeSantis won easily in Florida, Brian Kemp won in Georgia, Greg Abbott won in Texas, Mike DeWine and J.D. Vance won in Ohio and the long list of Trump-endorsed Senate candidates who won — such as Ted Budd in North Carolina, Eric Schmitt in Missouri, Markwayne Mullin in Oklahoma and Katie Britt in Alabama — were all solidly pro-life. Arguing that abortion politics was more to blame for the one Senate seat that flipped — Pennsylvania’s — than the utter failure of Trump-endorsed gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano to even field a campaign is quite the stretch.

Third, Trump says pro-life voters got what they wanted from the Supreme Court then “just plain disappeared, not to be seen again.” There is literally no evidence for this statement whatsoever. The Republican Party had a massive success in turning out its voters, winning the popular vote nationwide by 51-48 percent. There’s plenty of evidence that Democrats increased the number of young voters, which was the largest in a midterm in thirty years, thanks to the abortion issue. But the increase of the pro-abortion vote doesn’t decrease the other side. Trump’s suggestion that pro-life voters didn’t show up is just a lie.

Ron DeSantis smiles.

IT’S SO NICE HAVING THE GROWNUPS BACK IN CHARGE: Katie Hobbs Laughs Her Way Through Oath of Office.

ANN ALTHOUSE SHARES MY DOUBTS about the Supreme Court’s disappearing investigation into who leaked the draft Dobbs opinion: “If they don’t even refer to an ongoing investigation, I presume the investigation is over and the hope is that we’ll forget that the leak ever occurred. We have an institution investigating itself over its own secrecy, and it’s being secretive about its investigation and its secrecy.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: “Professor George has put up one of the greatest tweets ever. Today’s American universities are strongly religious places with many, many rituals.”

s Tom Wolfe wrote in his epochal 1976 article, “The ‘Me’ Decade and the Third Great Awakening:” “It is entirely possible that in the long run historians will regard the entire New Left experience as not so much a political as a religious episode wrapped in semi military gear and guerrilla talk.” (That line was written with early ‘70s radical chic in mind, but reverberates quite nicely today, given Antifa’s current love of paramilitary cosplay.)

A PRECEDENT WE SHOULD FOLLOW: India set an ‘incredibly important precedent’ by banning TikTok, FCC Commissioner says.