NOT ALL IMMIGRANTS ARE THE SAME:

Two countries in Europe have made a thorough analysis of the fiscal contribution of immigrants by country of origin, Denmark and the Netherlands.

The findings from these two countries look remarkably similar: pic.twitter.com/aWBFSTzH8U

— Jonatan Pallesen (@jonatanpallesen) January 15, 2025

LIMITED TIME DEAL: Instant Pot Duo Plus 9-in-1 Electric Pressure Cooker, Slow Cooker, Rice Cooker. #CommissionEarned

ALL FAMILY BUSINESS IS BEING SETTLED:

🚨MASSIVE BREAKING: Speaker Mike Johnson has removed Congressman Mike Turner, who voted against the resolution to censure Adam Schiff, from the Intelligence Committee.

Mike has also been very outspoken on funding for Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/HXGYolhSzR

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 15, 2025

REPORT: Hunter Biden Artworks Worth ‘Millions of Dollars’ Burned Up in LA Fires.

Remember Hunter Biden’s supposed stint as an artist? It was, without doubt, one of the shallowest, most obvious money-laundering efforts undertaken by any member of the Biden family, and that’s really saying something. Hunter’s “art” was reminiscent of what might result from a bomb going off in a paint factory when a truck loaded with bolts of canvas sat parked outside; a talented kindergartner could finger-paint more compelling art than Hunter’s best efforts. But somehow, Hunter’s daubs gained some acclaim in the art community – at least the art community that was willing to help the Biden family to launder bribes – and the paintings sold for, wonder of wonders, a lot of money.

But hey, they sold to anonymous buyers. Give me a break.

Now, the New York Post is breaking the exclusive, heartbreaking story of how Hunter Biden paintings and other artworks worth “millions of dollars” have, according to a source close to the Biden family, reportedly burned up in the ongoing LA-area wildfires.

A trove of nearly 200 artworks by Hunter Biden has been destroyed — one of the casualties of the wildfires ravaging Los Angeles, The Post has learned.

The controversial art had been in storage near the Pacific Palisades home of Hunter’s Hollywood attorney Kevin Morris and is valued at “millions of dollars,” a source close to the Biden family said.

Morris, who loaned the first son nearly $5 million to help pay a tax bill and has been financing a documentary on him, lives in a sprawling five-bedroom, six-bathroom home which is among the few houses still intact in the posh neighborhood, The Post can confirm.

Still though, look on the upside: In the midst of responding to the unspeakable, unending horror in California, Flo from Progressive and Jake from State Farm are about to break the tension with some massive laughs:

LMFAO. Imagine the insurance adjusters face when they file this claim. https://t.co/ZgoDqwunie

— Prison Mitch (@MidnightMitch) January 15, 2025

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Legal Victory Secured for Young Adults in Pennsylvania Open Carry Case.

Writing for the majority, Circuit Judge Kent A. Jordan stated, “It is undisputed that 18-to-20-year-olds are among ‘the people’ for other constitutional rights such as the right to vote, freedom of speech, the freedom to peaceably assemble, and the right against unreasonable searches and seizures. We therefore reiterate our holding that 18-to-20-year-olds are, like other subsets of the American public, presumptively among ‘the people’ to whom Second Amendment rights extend.”

Judge Jordan, a George W. Bush appointee, was joined by Judge D. Brooks Smith, another Bush appointee, while Judge L. Felipe Restrepo, an Obama appointee, dissented.

Previously: Appeals court says Colorado ban on gun sales to those under 21 can take effect.

Win some, lose some — but I might have purchased a pistol or two (for myself, of course) that are more in line with my 19-year-old’s tastes.

JEFFREY CARTER: The Opportunity Costs of Offensive War: They Used To Be High.

I listened to Marc Andreessen’s interview with the Hoover Institution. It’s worth your time. One subject they talk about is drones. Drones started out as a game. Fun to fly. Businesses have adopted them for different projects. But, as we have seen in Ukraine, drones can be a highly effective offensive weapon on the battlefield.

I think running down the rabbit hole of drones, robots, autonomous vehicles, and war is worth your time. I seriously doubt if Senator Virtue Signal (Hard lefty Tammy Duckworth) has seriously considered it. She’s worried about breastfeeding on the battlefield.

But, a war for humans gets hyper-scary when you think about those things. All of a sudden, the sci-fi movies of the 90s become real. Watch The Terminator, Minority Report, and other 90s sci-fi flicks for a taste and to lubricate your imagination.

Andreessen asks the question, what does a battleship do when 1000 armed drones attack at sea?

What happens when POW camps are all run using robots, AI, cameras, and algorithms?

Imagine being in a foxhole and autonomous tanks, autonomous drones, and armed robot infantry attack you. How do you stop it when there are thousands of them? Imagine if the Nazis had that at a place like Bastogne.

More importantly, several pieces of the puzzle stop countries from attacking other countries. China is rumored to be planning an attack on Taiwan. What’s stopping them today? Amphibious landing for sure. They are difficult to pull off. But what if you did it with self-driving boats, robots, and drones? No people.

World opinion, banks, and financial markets offer some deterrence. The threat of another country retaliating is a deterrent.

But, the largest deterrent and the highest opportunity cost is human life. Even butchers like Putin have a breaking point when it comes to losing human lives. Internal opinions can topple him if it gets too bad.

What happens to the costs/opportunity costs when you minimize the potential human losses on your side to almost nil?

The defender must transfer the human costs to the attacker via nuclear weapons, or the destruction of the Three Gorges Dam.

Plus:

This is why it is job number one to win the tech race on both Earth and in space. The next war is going to be fought in outer space as well as on Earth. The US cannot finish in second place when it comes to this arms race. Finishing second means losing.

I didn’t hear one question from any Senator about that when the presumptive Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth testified.

California politicians were ignorant and thought they could defy nature. Are Washington politicians any different when it comes to defense and thinking about the future?

Nope. They’re morons.

THE WORLD IN 2025:

What could explain this? We'll never know. It will remain a mystery, like Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster. pic.twitter.com/eSAHqpEwKb

— Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 (@pmarca) January 15, 2025

TEAM BIDEN COMES FULL CIRCLE: How it started: Jim Treacher: Happy Anniversary to Hunter’s Laptop.

Four years ago today, my Twitter account was instantly suspended for posting the following picture:

That’s Hunter Biden. The photo came from the laptop he abandoned at a Delaware repair shop, less than five miles from his father’s house.

Vladimir Putin didn’t take that snapshot. He didn’t plant the laptop. It belonged to Hunter, who then abandoned it and lost legal custody of it because he’s a drug addict.

And yet when I posted that photo in October 2020, just weeks before the election, my Twitter account was instantly locked down.

I don’t mean within minutes, either. The instant I clicked the button to post that, I was locked out of my account.

Here’s the warning I received:

I had been censored. Lil’ ol’ me!

So I removed the tweet, under duress, to restore access to my account.

As it turned out, I was far from the only one. Anybody who shared any part of that news story — and it is a news story — got instantly locked down by Twitter. You couldn’t even share the URL of the original NY Post story. A complete blackout.

The Democrats wanted Trump out of the White House, and they thought this story would interfere with that. So they locked it down.

How it ended: New US ‘oligarchy’ threatens democracy, Biden warns in farewell speech.

Speaking from the Oval Office, the outgoing US President criticised social media bosses who are “giving up on fact checking” and burying Americans in an “avalanche of disinformation and misinformation”.

Mr Biden’s comments will be interpreted as a thinly veiled attack on Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire owners of X and Facebook, who have scrapped fact checkers on their platforms, claiming they hinder free speech.

Channelling President Dwight Eisenhower, Mr Biden warned of the “potential rise of a tech industrial complex” threatening to undermine US democracy.

Mr Eisenhower, a former US army general, spoke in his 1961 farewell address about the rise of a “military-industrial complex”.

Mr Biden said: “Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact checking.

“The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit. We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families, and our very democracy from the abuse of power.”

Biden’s speechwriters have to be trolling us on the way, knowing that Joe is too far gone to remind them there’s no way he can mention disinformation and social media, because everyone will bring up the mass censoring of the New York Post and anyone who mentioned Hunter’s laptop in 2020. Or as Glenn wrote last year in the aforementioned Post: Hunter’s laptop, Wuhan and more: ‘Disinformation’ and ‘conspiracies’ turn out to be true — again and again.

CONFIRMATION HEARINGS: Sen. Schmitt EXPLODES Hypocritical Dem Self-Righteousness on Rule of Law. “The Democrats spent the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for Trump’s attorney general nominee Pam Bondi repeatedly asking her to commit to not engaging in any of the legal and constitutional violations the Biden Justice Department has committed over the last four years. And one senator raked his leftist colleagues over the coals for their utter hypocrisy.”

GOOD:   Anti-Israel Fake ‘Jewish Voice For Peace’ to Repay $677K For Cheating On PPP Loan.

HEH. YEAH.

When I see a GOP senator in the year 2025 talking lovingly about FISA after all the abuse we’ve seen, I see a man who’s been approached by the intelligence services with pictures of him and midgets.

— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) January 15, 2025

THAT PLUS THEY’RE COUNTING ON THE SUDDEN YET INEVITABLE BETRAYAL:  The only way this capitulation in Gaza makes sense is if there is a side deal.

MORE ON THE PAKISTANI RAPE GANGS:  Be sure you have a strong stomach before reading.

IN WHICH IT JOINS THE CHINESE. AND WE MIGHT ESCAPE, BUT BARELY:  Russia’s war economy is a house of cards.

THIS IS WHAT ISRAEL IS UP AGAINST:  Here is Hamas leader Khalil al-Haya’s full speech—which he gave live on Al Jazeera from Qatar—in which he expressed pride in the Oct. 7th massacre and vowed to repeat it.

And why the cease fire deal isn’t what it seems. Not the getting back live hostages is front-loaded, with the corpses in the distance unlikely to be reached, because Hamas will break the truce well before that?  It’s just an attempt to rescue more hostages.

BRITISH BEING BRITISH:  Nigel Farage, Elon Musk, and Tommy Robinson –what people REALLY think.

THERE IS, AT LEAST, HOPE:  This is a promising sign.

SOONER OR LATER:  The Fire Next Time.

THIS IS SEATTLE, NOT CHICAGO!  The latest Crime Report from the Seattle War Zone-Updated.

I’M SURE THE WHOLE POINT OF THE LEFT WAS TO KILL PEOPLE AND USE THE FIRE TO HELP THE PLANT REPRODUCE:  How California eco-bureaucrats halted a Pacific Palisades fire safety project to save an endangered shrub.

WELL, OF COURSE HE DID:  Gov. Newsom cut fire-fighting budget while pouring billions of dollars into his ‘Don Quixote’ green ventures: critics.

WHAT PART OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL DUTIES OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS THIS:  The World’s Biggest Landlord Is Washington.

HAVE CALIFORNIANS HAD ENOUGH?   Newsom and Bass recall efforts gain momentum after fallout from wildfires.

A STAGGERING LEVEL OF INCOMPETENT MALICE:  Los Angeles hydrants not just empty, but also broken or missing. (Short video clip.)

RON BURGUNDY WILL READ ANYTHING THAT IS PUT ON THAT TELEPROMPTER!

Biden spent his entire career crapping all over journalists, the vast majority of whom were members of his own party — and who circled the wagons to keep him in power, long after his mental decline was more than obvious. He doesn’t get to suddenly play the “free press is crumbling” game on his way out the door.