THAT’S THERE IS A SYNDEY-BASED ISIS CELL SPEAKS VOLUMES: Australia Shooter Tied to Sydney-Based ISIS Cell.

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Minnesota’s massive Medicaid fraud a warning for Colorado.

A natural question follows. Does Colorado have a similar program? Like birds of a feather flocking together, both Minnesota and Colorado have a bad habit of expanding Medicaid, dating to the first expansion allowed by ObamaCare and continuing on up through COVID.

It turns out we do. The story begins with House Bill 24-1322. While the bill doesn’t create a carbon copy of Minnesota’s Department of Housing Stabilization, it did start the ball rolling on something even bigger, tasking the Department of Healthcare Policy and Financing (HCPF) with studying the feasibility of creating a similar program subsidizing both housing and nutrition in Colorado.

From the bill: “If HCPF determines that providing these services is budget neutral to the General Fund due to offsetting reductions in medical services and other expenditures, the department must seek federal authorization to cover the services by July 1, 2025.”

I looked briefly through the study produced by HCPF, and sure enough they concluded that this Medicaid expansion could be done without spending any extra money. They also found that you could shuffle some existing services around, bundling them up for convenience.

If you’re wondering how more government-subsidized services could happen without spending more money, Senate Bill 25-308, which implements the changes into law, spells it out. In broad strokes it’s more Medicaid “money laundering” with Colorado convincing the feds to give us money for something and then shifting state dollars to other priorities.

From the bill’s fiscal note: “Under the approved waiver, the state can now draw down federal Medicaid matching funds, and redirect the freed-up state funds to expand and enhance the services.”

Why, it’s almost as though massive fraud were built into everything done in response to COVID.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Everything Is Going to Hell — Cheer Up!

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: FBI stops planned New Year’s Eve Los Angeles terror attack by pro-Palestinian cell.

The “credible” threat came from radical members of the Turtle Island Liberation Front (TILF), according to a law enforcement source.

Four were collared in Lucerne Valley in the Mojave Desert, where the extremists allegedly were testing improvised explosives, while a fifth was apprehended in New Orleans.

“After an intense investigation, the Department of Justice, working with our @FBI, prevented what would have been a massive and horrific terror plot in the Central District of California (Orange County and Los Angeles),” Attorney General Pam Bondi posted Monday on X.

“The Turtle Island Liberation Front—a far-left, pro-Palestine, anti-government, and anti-capitalist group—was preparing to conduct a series of bombings against multiple targets in California beginning on New Year’s Eve,” Bondi said. “The group also planned to target ICE agents and vehicles.”

Where are the press demands for Democrats to denounce these murderous lefties?

Meanwhile, in France: Fearful French cancel NYE concert on Champs-Élysées as migrant violence grows.

“Migrant” is the wrong M-word.

HEH: Kristi Noem Fired by 17 Insiders and Counting. “There are times when the news out of Washington reminds me of ice fishing in Wisconsin. Everyone swears something just hit the line, even though nobody’s pulled a fish up all day, and the only real action comes from the guy spilling his coffee, swearing at the Packers.”

PRIORITIES:

One of these men was banned from Australia. pic.twitter.com/1SxM7Pvs7R

— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) December 14, 2025

“GAZA DOCTOR” SAYS IT ALL: ‘Gaza doctor murdered Israeli hostage by injecting air into her veins… before her father received video of her dying and begging for her life.’

The father of an Israeli woman abducted on October 7 has revealed his daughter was murdered in Gaza by a civilian doctor – and that he was later sent a video showing the moment she was killed.

In the footage, Avi Marciano said a medical worker is seen injecting air into his 19-year-old daughter’s veins as she lies on a bed inside Shifa Hospital, begging for her life.

Marciano, who was speaking publicly to a small crowd for the first time, said that by the end of the clip ‘she was sweating and showing no signs of life’.

His daughter was later identified as Cpl Noa Marciano, who the IDF said had suffered injuries during heavy bombing and gunfire but none that were considered life-threatening.

As Israeli forces advanced towards where Noa was being held, her captors moved her to Gaza City, where she was later killed.

Marciano said the video was sent to him on Telegram and showed clearly how his daughter died while in Hamas captivity.

Not died, murdered — by a doctor.

COME SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM:

Ella Cook was just 19 years old—a Conservative, a Christian, and Vice President of the Republican Club at Brown University.

She was brutally killed by a shooter in what appears to be a targeted political attack.

If you still don’t see what’s happening, you haven’t been paying… pic.twitter.com/hAgFaLNywA

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 15, 2025

Lefties are less violent when they believe they’re winning, so at least we know where they think they stand.

But as the wise man once said, “Keep your powder dry — and keep lots of powder.”

HERE WE GO AGAIN: ICE, Ilhan Omar, and a Familiar Script “It’s a fast-moving story, but credibility can’t keep up.”

CIVIL LIBERTIES AIN’T WHAT THEY USED TO BE:

ACLU deciding equity is when people of color get to murder more pedestrians is so profoundly racist, I can’t even. https://t.co/CyZroejS3l

— Logan Bowers 🏗️ 🏘️ (@loganb) December 14, 2025

HMM: Oracle’s collapsing stock shows the AI boom is running into two hard limits: physics and debt markets.

Oracle’s rapid descent from market darling to market warning sign is revealing something deeper about the AI boom, experts say: no matter how euphoric investors became over the last two years, the industry can’t outrun the laws of physics—or the realities of debt financing.

Shares of Oracle have plunged 45% from their September high and lost 14% this week after a messy earnings report revealed it spent $12 billion in quarterly capital expenditures, higher than the $8.25 billion expected by analysts.

Earnings guidance was also weak, and the company raised its forecast for fiscal 2026 capex by another $15 billion. The bulk of that is going into data centers dedicated to OpenAI, Oracle’s $300 billion partner in the AI cycle.

“We have ambitious achievable goals for capacity delivery worldwide,” Oracle co-CEO Clay Magouyrk said on an earnings call this week.

Investors worry how Oracle will pay for these massive outlays as its underlying revenue streams, cloud revenue and cloud-infrastructure sales, also fell short of Wall Street’s expectations. Analysts have described its AI buildout as debt-fueled, even though the company does not explicitly link specific debt to specific capital projects in its filings.

Eventually, investors will expect to see returns on the industry’s massive cap-ex expenses — half a trillion dollars in 2024, another $550-$600 billion in 2025, and likely that much more again in 2026.

Oracle might have made the headlines in today’s papers, but industry leader OpenAI will lose anywhere from $10-$20 billion in 2025 alone, on an estimated $13 billion in revenues. Again, that’s due to massive capital expenditures that are warping the market for chips.

I’d sure love to know in advance who will survive the inevitable shakeout (wouldn’t we all?), but I’m reasonably certain it’ll be brutal.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Busy Weekend for the Worst of Humanity. “This week it was like getting hit with a firehose of evil. I was just reading about what happened at Brown University and in Australia when the news from Brentwood about Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, was breaking. I was hoping that I could find something that didn’t involve murder to write about, but that was my hint that murder was unavoidable.”

RE-FUND THE POLICE: Los Angeles mayor urges hiring of over 400 police officers

In the Dec. 10 letter, Bass implored the council to approve $4.4 million in funding, without which the police department will no longer be able to hire incoming recruits.

“It will mean no new cadets in the police academy in January of 2026,” Bass wrote in the letter. “It will mean increasing overtime hours and costs as fewer officers will have greater workloads. It will mean that we strain officers’ health with longer shifts and more responsibility.”

Bass and the president of the Los Angeles City Council, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, did not respond to The Center Square for comment this week. The Los Angeles Police Department deferred questions to the city council and mayor’s office on Thursday and did not return calls and emails from The Center Square on Friday.

In her letter, Bass noted the nation’s second-largest city can’t have a police force that staffs at the same levels as 1995. She also noted Los Angeles doesn’t have enough police officers per 1,000 residents the way other large cities throughout the country do. The demands of the police department with the upcoming 2028 Olympics and 2026 FIFA World Cup, she wrote, would strain the LAPD.

Weird, the LA Times reported last summer that she’d reached a deal with the city council to restore hiring funds already.

Then there’s this from 2020:

She said police department budgets could be reduced if communities shift some of the burdens to other agencies.

“Police officers are the first ones to say they are law enforcement officers, they’re not social workers. What we have done in our country is, we have not invested in health, social and economic problems in communities. We leave the police to pick up the pieces,” said Bass, of Los Angeles. “In my city, for example, on any given night, we have over 40,000 people who are homeless. Why should the police be involved with that?”

Addressing substance abuse and similar issues, Bass asked why “police officers have to clean up society’s problems?”

She blamed it on the “lopsided” priorities of cities.

“Why doesn’t a city deal with its social problems so not so much money would have to go to law enforcement?” she questioned.

How’d that work out for you as mayor, Ms. Bass?

KNOWN WOLF: Police Admit Australia Terrorist Was Known to Authorities.

IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH: Biden Legacy Imperiled As Presidential Library Project Reportedly Plagued By Anemic Fundraising.

Biden’s library foundation told the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) it anticipates raking in only $11.3 million by the end of 2027, which is not nearly enough money to build the traditional legacy and records management project for each of the nation’s chief executives, The New York Times reported. The IRS filings also reportedly show the organization failed to garner any new donations in 2024, the final year of Biden’s sole term in office. Instead, it was seeded solely with $4 million remaining from his inauguration in 2021, according to the outlet.

The library foundation declined to say the amount of money it raised in 2025, but claimed Biden was just now starting to actively fundraise for the project, The New York Times reported. Moreover, Biden’s aides said they have a goal of eventually raising $200 million for the project, according to the outlet.

In part due to the lackluster fundraising, talks have recently been taking place about merging a potential Biden presidential library with pre-existing Biden-affilated institutions located at the University of Delaware, the outlet reported, citing four anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

His legacy is in no way “imperiled.” If anything, even a lackluster combo deal with the University of Delaware is still more than the President-in-Name-Only deserves.

IF HE’S GOING OUT, AT LEAST HE’S GOING OUT IN STYLE: World Leader Pretend: Maduro’s Hilarious Prop-Driven Propaganda.

PERSONNEL IS POLICY:

Remember the Biden administration’s pentagram-sporting monkeypox czar? Or the mastermind of New York’s race-based COVID policies?

Good news! They’re on Zohran Mamdani’s health advisory team.

Dr. Demetre Daskalakis made national headlines during the monkeypox outbreak when he… pic.twitter.com/3qUgh7c8U8

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) December 12, 2025

In this case, it’s probably safe to skip a step and conclude that twice is enemy action.

MOST CORRUPT ADMINISTRATION IN HISTORY:

This data is mind blowing

“Non-citizens Social Security numbers issued during the Biden Administration

2021: 270,425
2022: 590,193
2023: 964,163
2024: 2,095,247

– The Biden administration gave more non-citizens Social Security cards in 4 years than live in the state of Iowa
-… pic.twitter.com/dAgdNnqGGU

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) December 12, 2025

JULIE KELLY: DC Pipe Bomb Arrest Raises Questions About Christopher’s Wray’s FBI. “If Cole’s arrest proves to have solved the mystery of who planted the bombs, it presents another perhaps even more consequential question: Why did it take law enforcement so long to find him? Although there are no clear answers as of yet, Bongino’s description of the efforts that led to an arrest seems to contradict public comments and congressional testimony regarding the pipe bomb case previously provided by Wray.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Pope Fanboy Gov. JB Pritzker Signs Bill to Legalize Assisted Suicide.

CHARLIE IS TOO KIND:

Those are beauty pageant contestants, and you are a complete piece of shit https://t.co/LBjzsOV5ml

— (((Charlie Martin))) (@chasrmartin) December 12, 2025

HOW MANY MORE ON PURPOSE? Washington state issued almost 700 commercial driver’s licenses over the past seven years to non-US citizens—by accident.

IT’S FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: His Dirty Bomb Was a Filthy Lie “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn how not to frighten away the police, where not to hide things from the police, and why roller skates aren’t the best way to flee the police.”

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Obama administration ICE chief says Trump deportations are ‘remarkable accomplishment.’

Former acting ICE Director John Sandweg told MSNOW on Thursday, “I got to say two things quickly. One is that the way in which the White House structured this immigration enforcement operation with Stephen Miller running the policy, with Tom Homan being the border czar, but very interested … ,” the Daily Caller News Foundation reported.

He also said, “There’s always a little tension between the department and the White House, but especially so when you have three, you know, cooks in the kitchen, so to speak,” likely referring to the Department of Homeland Security.

Sandweg added that he’s aware that “there’s frustration at these numbers, but I have to tell you, this is a — it is a remarkable accomplishment. These numbers are stunning to me.

“When I look at, let’s say, 600,000 deportations this year, those are all from the interior. And I think this is a critical distinction. When you’re doing the immigration enforcement, you divide the world into the border and the interior. And during the Obama Administration, when there were 400,000 deportations, the reality is about 250,000 of those were people caught right at the border. And it’s not as impactful because those are people trying to get into the United States. This is all people in the interior.”

Amazing what you can do when you try.

SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE IS ENJOYING A SPA DAY: BLM Leader Indicted for Fraud, Money Laundering.