AT AMAZON, Shop the Winter Sale. #CommissionEarned

NOT THE BABYLON BEE: Judge Orders Teen Who Allegedly Plotted Terror Attack Against Synagogue To Do ‘Book Report.’

WKYC reported that the Stark County Sheriff’s Office said that its deputies responded to a call in early September regarding a 13-year-old boy who was involved in “concerning conversations” on a social media platform that included numerous threats toward Temple Israel in the city of Canton.

The boy, who was not named due to his age, pleaded “true,” which is the juvenile equivalent of guilty, on Friday to misdemeanor charges of inducing panic and disorderly conduct.

According to court documents, the boy “did create a detailed plan to complete a mass shooting at the Temple Israel on the Discord platform which was reported to law enforcement and required an immediate investigatory response and notification of public individuals and agencies including the school system in which caused significant public alarm within those agencies.”

The report said that Stark County Family Court Judge Jim James suspended a 90-day sentence for the teen at the Multi-County Juvenile Attention Center and instead gave him one year of probation that included the following:

• No unsupervised use of the internet[.]
• Continue to undergo counseling with a licensed therapist[.]
• Read a book about Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz, credited with saving over 62,000 Jews during World War II. The teen is then ordered to write a book report to the juvenile probation department.

Stark County Sheriff George Maier said that the county has a “zero-tolerance policy when it comes to threats made against our community.”

Zero-tolerance but zero serious disciplinary action as well. As Stephen Miller tweeted, “Planning a mass shooting of Jews is treated like Bart Simpson opening theme hijinks now.”

NIMBYISM AND DEINDUSTRIALIZATION: Why the U.S. steel industry is dying: It’s not because of foreign competition. “So why did this happen? Why did the U.S. go from a steelmaking powerhouse to an also-ran? As usual, there are a bunch of competing explanations — import competition, bad management choices by steel companies, and unions raising wages to uncompetitive levels. But while these were factors, the biggest reason the U.S. steel industry went into terminal decline was that we stopped building things that used lots of steel.”

Deindustrialization began, in general, right after the Nixon “regulatory explosion” that gave us the EPA and OSHA, among many other federal impediments.

SHARYL ATTKISSON: American health plummets after Covid pandemic (Gallup).

The following is from Gallup News Poll.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Obesity and diabetes have both reached record highs*
• Healthy eating habits have worsened substantially since 2019; exercise unchanged
• Other key aspects of physical health have worsened since before pandemic

Key physical health metrics have notably worsened since before the Covid-19 pandemic, including obesity, diabetes and eating habits.

The percentage of U.S. adults whom Gallup classifies as obese has reached an estimated 38.4%, up 6.0 percentage points since 2019 and just shy of the record high of 39.9% measured in 2022.

A new high of 13.6% of respondents say they have been diagnosed by a medical professional with diabetes, up 1.1 points since 2019.

The most recent results, obtained Aug. 30-Sept. 8, 2023, are based on 5,316 U.S. adults surveyed by web as part of the Gallup Panel, a probability-based panel of about 100,000 adults across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

* Unexpectedly! Gender studies professor claims combatting obesity is ‘fatphobic,’ blasts agenda against fatness.

Which is an odd stance for an ideology that sees many of its practitioners stuck in a permanent 2020 mindset. Especially when, as those crazy rightwingers at the AP reported in September of 2020: COVID-19 and obesity: Doctors studying link between excess weight and severe disease.

FREE BOOK FROM M.C.A.HOGARTH:  Who Is Willing.

Alysha Forrest is looking forward to her assignment as the Songlance’s newest lieutenant, particularly when it gets her placed as the liaison to the ship’s water environment crewmembers. Interfacing with the mermaid-like Naysha and the alien Platies who serve as the ship’s navigators is an exhilarating experience, and all the other officers on the crew are eager to welcome her into the fold… all of them, except one. Mike Beringwaite, the overbearing ensign who ruined their leadership retreat years earlier, has somehow made lieutenant too. When a routine problem in the water environment throws them together, Alysha has to decide how willing she is to forgive him for what he did, whether she can work with him again, and most importantly, if she can trust him–with her life. The disaster at the leadership retreat is nothing to the one they have to handle now. If they can…. (Prequel) Alysha’s Fall 1. Second 2. Who is Willing 3. Sword of the Alliance 4. Either Side of the Strand

DON SURBER: Merry Christmas, Matt Drudge: Did you flip because you were bored, you sold the site, or you feared the FBI?

LOL:  VOX: Winter Has Disappeared Thanks to Climate Change.

IF THE ELECTIONS WERE ABOVE BOARD, THE CURRENT JUNTA WOULD ALLOW INVESTIGATIONS. BUT THEY DON’T:  2020 Election Fraud and the Courts.

THAT, OF COURSE, IS WHAT THE LEFT CALLS OPPRESSION:  Argentina’s Milei proves to be the world’s strangest ‘dictator,’ handing out freedom all over the place.

THOSE WHO DESTROY HISTORY WANT TO REPEAT IT:  Judge Orders Removal of Historic Confederate Monument in Arlington Cemetery.

IT’S BEEN ROTTEN FOR A LONG TIME:  A Glaring Sign of Rot Within the CIA.

GOOD:  Israel Expands Gaza Operation as Netanyahu Tells Hamas Terrorists to “Surrender or Die”.

AS WELL THEY OUGHT:  Family of autistic Jewish teen who had swastika carved on his back by classmates sues school.

I WISH I THOUGHT IT WAS THAT:  Colorado Supreme Court handed Trump an early Christmas present.

WHICH MEANS IT’S PROBABLY BOTH STUPID AND EVIL:  White House issues “policy framework” to lobby for its space regulatory proposal.

WE’RE IN A RACE TO MAKE ALL THE MASKS DROP:  Blessed When The Masks Fell.

IT’S ONLY ‘HYPER’ IN COMPARISON TO THE LEFT’S PERFORMATIVE MASCULINITY:  Cornel West blames Trump’s ‘hypermasculinity’ for drawing Black voters away from Democrats.

THEY’RE REFUSING TO PROVE THEIR INNOCENCE, DEMANDING THE AG PROVIDE EVIDENCE OF GUILT OR STOP HARASSING THEM:  As New Jersey investigates pro-life pregnancy center, it fights back.

INVESTIGATING THE INVESTIGATOR:  House Republicans demand special counsel Jack Smith turn over trove of records or face subpoena.

CHOKING THE ECONOMY:  The key feature of Bidenomics: Regulatory overreach.

KRUGMAN IS ALWAYS RIGHT – IT’S JUST THE WORLD THAT IS WRONG:  Constantly wrong economist warns of ‘economists who won’t admit they were wrong’.

THOUGHTS ON THE RECRUITING CRISIS: Ideology, not lack of funds, is behind our military’s recruiting crisis.

America’s military is in crisis, and it’s not one caused by the threat of a foreign adversary. Rather, the crisis we refer to is completely self-made and cannot be fixed by force. It is the fact that fewer and fewer young Americans are willing to sign up and join.

One presidential candidate recently raised the issue of re-expanding the Navy’s fleet of ships. And yes, rebuilding our navy is critical. But ships do not man themselves. What happens when we no longer have enough men and women willing to operate those ships? Nor is this problem exclusive to the Navy. What happens when we no longer have the manpower to operate artillery, drive tanks or fly and maintain fighter jets? . . .

It should really come as no surprise that our current military is having trouble bringing in new recruits. The lingering impacts of politicized vaccine mandates, as well as story after story about troops being brainwashed with divisive ideologies like woke gender theory and critical race theory, are damaging morale and discouraging potential volunteers. President Biden’s Pentagon brass seem more interested now about making sure that our military personnel are socially indoctrinated than that they are lethal.

This obsession with radical politics is diverting our military from its primary purpose, its core mission: to confront and defeat America’s enemies and defend our homeland, our interests and our way of life.

The military is trying to correct the problem by throwing more money at it in the form of bonuses. But all the money in the world is not worth doing a job you do not want to do. Putting your life on the line is not something most people just do for a paycheck. Those who treat it as such never stay long and they never go far. The question at hand is how we make the job something that people want to do again.

Young people join the military and take the oath of enlistment because they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. The problem now is that the “something bigger” has become something entirely different than it used to be and something entirely foreign to most average Americans.

Plus: “This isn’t just a problem for the military. We have to look at what young Americans are learning before they ever walk into a recruiting station or see an ad. America’s public school system is rife with openly anti-American curricula that turn people away from the thought of military service. How can we expect people to want to fight for a country they are told is not worth fighting for?”

Maybe entrusting our most important institutions to people who hate western civilization was a mistake.

Related: The US Army discovers woke doesn’t win wars — but is it too late?

Plus: Disinformation starts at the top — with America’s elites.

OPEN THREAD: Let the Christmas weekend begin!

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Intuitive Machines delays first lunar lander launch to February.

FROM THE EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM DEPARTMENT: Scientists Reveal What a Nuclear Explosion Would Do to an Asteroid.