UGH: Biden’s ‘extravagant’ pension is largest of any president in history – and even more than what he earned as prez.

Former President Joe Biden’s long career in politics allowed him to retire with the largest taxpayer-funded pension of any ex-prez in US history — $417,000, or more than his presidential salary, an expert says.

Biden, 83, was in line to rake in the massive amount from two pension funds in his first year as former president, according to an analysis by National Taxpayer Union Foundation Vice President Demian Brady.

“It’s pretty unusual, historically unusual, to have such a large pension amount,” Brady told The Post.

“I would have to say that it’s the largest,” the taxpayer advocate said when asked to compare Biden’s pension to his predecessors.

Pension aside, and despite never having produced any goods or honest service in the private sector, Biden has a net worth estimated at $10 million or more.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: What a Bad Day to Be a Maduro Chum. “My spidey sense told me Maduro was in super-dooper, poop-his-crocks panic mode when he announced he was ready to ‘combat drug trafficking,’ referring, of course, to the funky dust he and his PT-blow boats were funneling into the United States. But, despite the American armada off his coast, I didn’t think a humiliating pajama snatch-and-grab was on the table. All of which reminded me of a 1979 Toyota: oh, what a feeling!”

CHANGE: 4,400 Starlink Satellites to Move to Lower Orbit.

Elon Musk’s Starlink system contributes more than 9,000 satellites to an increasingly crowded Earth orbit. Of those in the Starlink system, only two are not functioning, according to Nicholls.

Nicholls also noted that the atmospheric changes brought on by solar activity can affect satellite operations. An active sun causes a thicker atmosphere, which can bring spacecraft down faster. Low solar activity, such as during the solar minimum after 2030, can have an opposite effect.

The number of debris objects and planned satellite constellations at the lower orbit—below 500 kilometers from Earth—is smaller, which reduces the likelihood of collision, Nicholls stated.

If a satellite does fail in orbit, Starlink wants to remove it as quickly as possible, improving the safety of the rest of the satellite constellation, Nicholls said.

Now if they can just get Starship launching the bigger, faster V3 satellites…

CHANGE: Scott Adams Announces He’s Converting to Christianity.

LEFTIES AS VIOLENT, SPOILED CHILDREN, EXHIBIT #1,000,006: Berlin power outage affecting 45,000 homes blamed on ‘politically motivated’ attack.

The fire broke out on Saturday morning on a cable bridge over the Teltow Canal, near the Lichterfelde power plant, according to local authorities. Initially, over 45,000 households and 2,200 businesses in four districts were without electricity. Heating and internet services were also affected.

Franziska Giffey, the city’s Senator for Economic Affairs, described the incident as “a particularly severe power outage affecting tens of thousands of households and businesses, including care facilities, hospitals, numerous social institutions and companies.”

While power was restored to thousands of households by Sunday, many others are likely to be left in the dark until Thursday, authorities estimate.

Snowy weather and freezing temperatures has slowed down efforts to restore electricity and made life extra difficult for those affected.

The incident is being investigated as a possible act of arson. Authorities compared it to a similar power outage last September in southeast Berlin, when radical activists claimed responsibility.

Authorities said they were working to confirm the authenticity of a letter claiming responsibility for the latest incident.

Maybe the West needs to start making examples of these thugs — say, with punishment of exposure for twice as long as their victims were left in the cold.

VICTORIA TAFT: Wait — Delta AND SEAL Team 6 Too? Maduro Op Has BLOCKBUSTER Spy Thriller All Over It.

LAUGHING WOLF LOOKS AT THE BIG POST-MADURO PICTURE: Eclectic Food For Thought.

PAST PERFORMANCE DOES NOT GUARANTEE FUTURE RESULTS:

Mother fuck. It’s painful how awful the Lincoln Bulwark thing has become.

— Ole Dad (@TheOleDad) January 3, 2026

Besides, I don’t see what people are so upset about.

Look, Maduro got a free helicopter ride AND a landing, so I don’t want to hear any complaints from the rest of the Commies.

— Stephen Green (@VodkaPundit) January 3, 2026

BREAKING: U.S. Will Run Venezuela For Now, Second Military Wave Stands Ready.

CARRY, BUT ALSO PRACTICE: Another Reason to Carry a Gun: FBI Stopped ISIS-Inspired New Year’s Eve Knife, Hammer Attacks.

I DUNNO, I THINK A LOT OF PEOPLE WERE AT “2025” IN “2015”:

Where we are at now. pic.twitter.com/YMixuHBlHw

— Grampy Bill 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@thompsons21481) January 2, 2026

BECAUSE OF COURSE: Spielberg Schindler’s List Foundation Now Funds Anti-Israel Groups.

HAPPY NEW YEAR: Oil and gas prices expected to stay significantly lower through 2026.

Oil and gasoline prices are expected to decline next year, according to a recent forecast from the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The EIA published its Short-Term Energy Outlook in November, which projected that the price of Brent crude oil will decline from $69 a barrel in 2025 to $55 a barrel next year. That would be well below the $81 per barrel that prevailed in 2024.

Gas prices are also projected to continue their decline into next year. Retail gas prices averaged $3.30 a gallon in 2024 and are at $3.10 a gallon this year, but are projected to decline further to $3 a gallon in 2026, according to the EIA’s report.

U.S. production of crude oil picked up this year and is expected to remain at the level in 2026, with the EIA finding the U.S. produced 13.2 million barrels per day in 2024. The agency projected crude oil production will be 13.6 million barrels per day in 2025 – the same as in 2026.

Only tangentially related, but the EV bubble continues deflating: Ram’s TRX Supertruck Is Back with SRT Badges and a 777-HP V-8

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: More than half of UC Berkeley disability accommodations are ’emotional.’

At UC Berkeley, this year has the most students registered as disabled since 2020, according to the data.

The data, which only goes back to 2020, shows the number of students who received disability accommodations increasing every year. In 2020-2021, there were 4,153. The following year there were 4,585. This year, there are 5,711.

The greatest percentage of disabled students this year have “psychological” or “emotional” impediments. There are 2,528 registered, representing more than 50 percent of all students with disabilities at the university.

The next most common is ADHD/ADD, with 1,675 students. According to the data, 287 students have a learning disability, 290 face mobility problems, 71 struggle to hear, and 63 have impaired vision.

When most people hear “disability,” they imagine the total of 424 students in wheelchairs, or with hearing or vision loss.

NICE WORK: FBI Stopped ISIS-Inspired New Year’s Attack in North Carolina.

HE’S CERTAINLY EARNED HIS RETIREMENT: A 5 million percent return in 60 years leaves Warren Buffett’s legacy unmatched. “From 1964 — the year before Buffett took control of Berkshire — to 2024, the one-of-a-kind conglomerate delivered a compounded annual gain of 19.9%, nearly double the S&P 500′s 10.4%, resulting in an overall return of more than 5.5 million percent, according to the company’s latest annual report. The shares added another 10% to that return in 2025.”

AN IMPORTANT REMINDER:

pic.twitter.com/fOiqx1D6bg

— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) January 2, 2026

CHRIS QUEEN: College Football Rang in the New Year With a Cutoff and a Reality Check.

JOHN BOCH: When the Mainstream Media Encourages Violence Against Their Competition. “I can hear a collective sigh of relief from America’s law schools when they learn that Gerstein never got a JD. He’d be about as welcome as Jeffrey Dahmer at an annual alumni gathering. He is a Harvard grad though, just like other great minds like…David Hogg, proving yet again that was once a prestigious degree is now nothing more than a pricey piece of paper.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

USAID was not just an apple with a few worms inside, it was a festering ball of worms in the shape of an apple https://t.co/9k6ECTxg3I

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 2, 2026

YES: We need zero tolerance for Islamism.

It is this aspect which fuels the disproportionate rage of the likes of 5Pillars towards successful modern Muslim states like Jordan, Turkey and the UAE, which take a pragmatic approach towards Israel and attempt to keep Islamism firmly in check. Ironically, Islamism and Muslim identitarianism have flourished in many parts of the West due to its free speech norms, even as they are ruthlessly suppressed in much of the Islamic world itself. Britain only banned Hizb ut-Tahrir last year, trailing most of the Arab world by decades. And whilst 5Pillars is free to denounce Christmas in Britain, a Jordanian religious scholar who did the same thing was quickly picked up by security services along with a number of students involved in encouraging Muslims to shun Christmas — as 5Pillars was likewise lamenting over the past few days.

The site’s attachment to free speech is highly selective, however, as it has shared calls for Turkish teenagers on TikTok making jokes about Islamic prayer to be targeted by their universities and prosecuted.

Islamist organisations like 5Pillars exploit Western freedoms to promote an agenda that is fundamentally antithetical to Western ideals and interests. They seek to lock Muslim populations into a dead-end agenda of rage and reaction, and to promote an agenda that their own homelands see as socially destructive. The complacency and denialism of the West, which has handed sectarians the potent weapon of “Islamophobia”, risks the stability of both our own societies and that of the Islamic world.

Read the whole thing.

LEFTIES KNOW NOTHING ABOUT HISTORY, EXHIBIT #1,000,006:

I understand you’re not supposed to say this if you’re a Democrat. But Capitalism has objectively lifted the world out of poverty and cured disease.

Our quality of living today is the highest in human history of mostly because of advancements capitalism has brought us. https://t.co/9uR7nf8wVC

— Brianna Wu (@BriannaWu) January 2, 2026

Although I have a quibble with the word “mostly.”

THEY ALWAYS ARE: Mamdani is Exactly Who We Thought He Was.

Related:

The real fun will be watching what happens to Mamdani’s net worth over the next 4 to 8 years.

— Stephen Green (@VodkaPundit) January 2, 2026

THAT’S GONNA LEAVE A MARK:

Even top Putin ally Kirill Dmitriev, who is CEO of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, is dunking on Zohran Mamdani 😂 pic.twitter.com/sM3U9bN5Zp

— Ryan Saavedra (@RyanSaavedra) January 2, 2026

One day in office, and Mamdani isn’t just a citywide or national embarrassment — he’s an international embarrassment.

OH MY: Trump says US will intervene if Iran starts killing protesters: ‘Locked and loaded.’ “Trump’s warning comes as demonstrations triggered by Iran’s deteriorating economy expand beyond the capital and raise concerns about a potential heavy-handed crackdown by security forces. At least seven people — including protesters and members of Iran’s security services — have been reported killed during clashes, according to international reporting.”

Related: Israel Monitors Iran Unrest, Concerned Regime May Launch Preemptive Missile Strike.