UM…: New York Times Outs Taylor Swift as Gay … or Something.

STAND UP FOR THE NEW YEAR: CAYATCH Back Brace Posture Corrector for Men & Women. #CommissionEarned

FUNNY, THAT DOESN’T LOOK MUCH LIKE SANCTUARY: New York mayor sues bus operators that brought migrants from Texas for $708m.

FIGHT THE POWER: $77 million antisemitism lawsuit filed against McMaster University.

SCORE ONE FOR THE GOOD GUYS: Threats of a Wider War As Israeli Strike Takes Out Terror Commander in Lebanon. “There already is a wider war — and that’s because Biden and Blinken’s negotiating partners in Tehran ordered a wider war.”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Academics called breastfeeding ‘ethically problematic’ because it endorses ‘gender roles.’ Their view is gaining traction. Well, among morons.

MICHAEL WALSH: What If Trump Weren’t On The Ballot?

WEIRD HOW THE BIG HEADLINE NUMBERS GOT REVISED DOWNWARD MUCH MORE QUIETLY 11 OUT OF 12 TIMES: Initial US employment reports overstated by 439,000 jobs in 2023.

There’s something wrong with previous U.S. jobs reports.

The government quietly erased 439,000 jobs through November 2023, a closer look at the numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows.

That means its initial jobs results were inflated by 439,000 positions, and the job market is not as healthy as the government suggests.

Since the government wiped out 439,000 jobs after the fact, the total percentage of jobs created by the government last year is even higher.

Increased government hiring has been driving the jobs numbers higher.

Even the made-up numbers suck when you look past the headlines.

NORMS? WE DON’T HAVE THOSE ANY MORE. “The failure to disclose that Austin had been hospitalized for days was a breach of the norm in which health issues of senior government officials are released with alacrity.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: There’s Useless, Then There’s Lloyd Austin Useless. “There are a lot of strange things that I could have come up with in my rather fertile imagination that might set the tone for this year, but having the Secretary of Defense win a game of hide and seek with the President of the United States is out there even for me.”

FIGHT BACK TWICE AS HARD: The pro-Hamas riots in major cities, such as the vandalism of businesses, and the blockage of roads, are illegal and can be predicate acts for civil lawsuits under RICO and other federal laws. I have two lawyer friends (both of whom I met during my undergrad days at Brandeis!) who are eager to bring such lawsuits, but they need victims to step forward and contact them.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: New Vulcan rocket sends privately-built Moon lander to space.

The launch of Vulcan, a 200-foot (60-m) tall rocket with engines made by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, was a crucial first for ULA, which developed the rocket to replace its workhorse Atlas V rocket and rival the reusable Falcon 9 from Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the satellite launch market.

The stakes were high for Vulcan. Boeing and Lockheed, which own ULA in a 50-50 split, have been seeking a sale of the business for roughly a year. And the launch was the first of two certification flights required by the U.S. Space Force before Vulcan can fly lucrative missions for the Pentagon, a key customer.

Peregrine is set to land on the moon on Feb. 23 with 20 payloads aboard, most of which will seek to gather data about the lunar surface ahead of planned future human missions. It marks the first trek to the moon’s surface as part of NASA’s Artemis moon program.

There’s a lot riding on Blue Origin’s BE-4 engines, which seem to have performed beautifully.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: ULA’s Vulcan rocket launches private US moon lander, 1st since Apollo, and human remains in debut flight.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: White House Report Card: Losing on most issues, Biden targets MAGA in reelection.

All they have left is hate and fear.

JUST BECAUSE HE CAN’T WALK OR TALK OR THINK: Biden to drop out of 2024 US election, JPMorgan top strategist predicts.

UM: Okay – Now the Joint Chiefs Head Knew About Austin and Agreed to KEEP THE SECRET?!

REINING IN CALIFORNIA’S OUT-OF CONTROL LEGISLATURE:  Last week I linked to Bill McGurn’s Wall Street Journal op-ed on our ugly situation here in California.  If you couldn’t get behind the paywall, I’ve included the text of his piece below.  (By the way, if you haven’t done so already, please sign our cute little petition.  You don’t need to be a Californian.)

Making Discrimination OK Again:

The losers in a 2020 California referendum are back again with a sneakier version.

by William McGurn – Wall Street Journal

January 1, 2024

Do they ever give up? Those looking to divvy up Americans by race, that is.

In California they tried to get race preferences approved in a 2020 referendum, but voters rejected it 57.2% to 42.8%. This was a stunning rebuke, not only because the rejection came from residents of a blue state but because the losing side had outspent opponents something like 14 to 1.

In 2023 the Supreme Court weighed in with a landmark ruling that barred colleges from treating people as members of a racial group instead of as individuals—and cast constitutional doubt on all race-based preferences. “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. Couldn’t be clearer, right?

Not in California. Undaunted state Assemblyman Corey Jackson is pushing a bill called ACA7. It takes aim at the state ban on race preferences that voters put in the constitution in 1996 when they passed Proposition 209. Californians reaffirmed Proposition 209 three years ago at the ballot box.

The language the voters agreed to and the activists hate reads as follows: “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

Unlike the 2020 effort, the new bill would leave that language intact. Instead, it would add a provision allowing the governor to create “exceptions.” Effectively that would gut the ban.

Apparently, the lesson the advocates of state-sponsored discrimination have taken from their defeat is that if at first you don’t succeed, try something sneakier.

(more…)

THIS MIGHT BE WORRISOME IF THE US INTEL COMMUNITY GENERATED MORE ACCURATE INTEL JUST ONCE IN A WHILE: U.S. Intelligence Believes Israel Can’t Win If It Fights Both Hamas and Hezbollah.

NOTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY:

BIDEN INSTITUTIONALIZES RACISM: Bet you didn’t know that the Biden regime has quietly saddled federal benefit grant programs with “Justice40,” a bureaucratic edict that stipulates 40 percent of funds must go to “underserved communities.”

The Washington Free Beacon’s Joseph Simonson reports that communities that aren’t underserved – i.e. that have majority white populations – are just out of luck, thus effectively putting a racist requirement in federal law.

HEH:

Scandal As Chris Christie Mentioned Over 50 Times In Unsealed Sizzler Documents https://t.co/CaRXZlK5hq pic.twitter.com/VKjmm6MNeG

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) January 6, 2024

AT AMAZON, Shop the Winter Sale. #CommissionEarned

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Saving the Panama Canal will take years and cost billions, if it’s even possible.

Some shippers have expressed frustration that the canal authority isn’t moving faster to address low water levels.

“No significant infrastructure projects have gone ahead in Panama to increase the fresh water supply,” Jeremy Nixon, chief executive officer of Japanese container transportation company Ocean Network Express Holdings Ltd., or ONE, wrote in a letter to Panamanian President Laurentino Cortizo Cohen that was seen by Bloomberg. “We sincerely hope that as ONE, and on behalf of our customers, that some urgent action can now be taken.”

Panama’s presidential palace didn’t respond to a request for comment on the letter.

A combination of climate change and infrastructure expansion are to blame for the canal’s woes. The canal authority completed a new set of locks in 2016 to increase traffic and keep pace with the growing size of cargo ships. What it didn’t do was build a new reservoir to pump in enough fresh water.

Then the drought hit.

Droughts come and go but inadequate infrastructure was a problem that should have been accounted for.

ICYMI:

Preference falsification has been central to the trajectory of DEI. People who abhor DEI principles and methods came to favor these publicly through a preference cascade. Every instance of preference falsification induced others to pretend they consider DEI just, efficient,…

— Timur Kuran (@timurkuran) January 3, 2024

ONLY 4? 4 Ways The BLM And Antifa Riots Were Worse Than January 6.

Related: Steven Calabresi: The January 6th Riot Was Not Like the Civil War. “No rioter brought guns to the riot in a country, which is awash in privately owned guns. I am sure many members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers owned guns, but they did not bring them to the ellipse on January 6th. The alleged ‘insurrection or rebellion’ lasted two and one half hours, peacefully dispersed on Donald Trump’s request, and occurred in one city in the third most populous country on earth after India and China. . . . The ‘insurrections or rebellions’ contemplated by Section Three must be threats to the government akin to that posed by the U.S. Civil War. The January 6, 2001 riot does not even remotely come close to reaching that level.”

Compared to what we saw from BLM and Antifa it wasn’t even a riot.