EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (NATO VS NATO, SYRIA VS SYRIA EDITION):

There’s a battle currently raging in Syria that’s receiving less attention — it’s between:

The US backed Kurdish SDF – The Syrian Democratic Forces 🇺🇸
Vs.
The Turkish backed Islamist SNA – The Syrian National Army 🇹🇷

Currently, the SNA holds the upper hand, as they recently… pic.twitter.com/RUqKG0Vyjd

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) December 10, 2024

Related:

Much has changed in the Middle East in the last two weeks except it seems that not much has changed.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Republicans Have to Learn How to Stop Being Pansies When They Have the Majority.

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? 2 extra years of life: Drinking coffee daily shows benefits for aging.

Researchers from Portugal have uncovered compelling evidence that drinking coffee isn’t just a pleasant ritual, but potentially a powerful tool for maintaining health as we get older. The study, published in Ageing Research Reviews, reveals that moderate coffee drinking could be a simple yet effective way to support healthy aging.

The global population is getting older rapidly. By 2050, people 65 and older are expected to make up 16% of the world’s population, up from 10% in 2022. This demographic shift makes understanding ways to maintain health in later years increasingly critical.

The review analyzed over 50 scientific studies, focusing specifically on how coffee impacts human health and aging. The most striking finding? Regular coffee consumption can add an average of 1.8 years to a person’s healthy life expectancy — and this benefit appears to be equally powerful for both men and women.

Between coffee and scotch, I’m hoping to come out even.

I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: New Test Scores Show 4th and 8th Graders Falling Further Behind in Math.

COLORADO GETS WEIRDER: Colorado Announces Start Date for Psychedelic Business Applications.

According to the NMD, which is part of the Colorado Department of Revenue, the state will begin accepting applications for psychedelic healing centers, cultivations and testing labs on Tuesday, December 31.

The NMD was created by the state legislature after Colorado voters passed a law that decriminalizes certain natural psychedelics and legalizes the clinical and therapeutic use of psilocybin mushrooms. The same 2023 law that created the NMD also mandated that the new agency craft rules for would-be psilocybin operators by October and be ready for applications by December 31 of this year.

Prospective psychedelic business owners must undergo background checks, and all licensees must be located 1,000 feet from a school or child-care facility and comply with local time, place and manner regulations.

I certainly hope they mean all licensees must be located no closer than 1,000 feet from schools.

TO BE FAIR, IT WAS SUPPOSED TO FAIL: The Mainstream Media FINALLY Admits Obamacare Is a Failure.

IMPRESSIVE:

President Nayib Bukele revealed that El Salvador has discovered up to $3 TRILLION in unmined gold, and he is now moving quickly to repeal the mining ban regulation so that miners can get to work.

"We've also found gallium, tantalum, tin, and many other materials needed for the… pic.twitter.com/i8ddYPPayz

— George (@BehizyTweets) December 6, 2024

It’s amazing what you have the time and resources to look for, once criminal drug gangs aren’t running the country.

CHANGE: Democrat Defection: Florida Rep Switches to the Republican Party.

THE END OF LOW INTEREST RATES? Could a Fed rate cut in December be the last of this cycle?

The U.S. labor market continues to show signs of a persistent slowdown. At the same time, inflation data is mixed, with core inflation exceeding expectations while headline inflation continued to moderate. Accelerating producer prices suggest that inflation may be more stubborn than previously anticipated.

Previously anticipated by whom? You don’t need to be Milton Friedman (although it probably helps) to know that Congress can’t conjure a trillion dollars out of thin air two or three times a year without higher inflation.

And the longer interest rates stay high, the bigger a problem this becomes: Average American household has more than $10,000 in credit card debt. “Early results for the fourth quarter of the year show preliminary data for October at a new record high for credit card debt in the month, in absolute terms.”

Bidenomics is working, except for people who buy things or borrow money.

ABC NEWS SHOULD BE SO LUCKY — OR SMART: Sunny Hostin Days Numbered on The View? “Always take those ‘sources familiar with the situation’ stories with a grain of salt the size of a lakeside cottage, but when one emerges that ‘The View’ host Sunny Hostin might be on her way out, you’ve got to look at recent events before dismissing it out of hand.”

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Can DOGE Take A Bite Out Of The Administrative State? “With the Elon Musk/Vivek Ramaswamy-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Trump47 appears to be doing things differently, not least of which because Trump finally understands how various elements of the Deep State set out to attack him and thwart his agenda.”

DOG BITES MAN: BLM Wants to Start a Race War After Daniel Penny Verdict.

LOL, JAKE TAPPER’S SANCTIMONY:

Tapper has also never tweeted about the Gold Star families caused by Biden’s Abbey Gate massacre. But he is facing a massive defamation suite for lying about a Navy veteran’s efforts to save lives in Afghanistan. https://t.co/dKjw9qwNq0

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) December 9, 2024

He could’ve been an actor but he wound up on CNN.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Just Go Ahead and Take the ‘Elect’ out of ‘President-elect Trump’ Already. “‘In conversations that I’m having, they don’t even mention the president. It’s kind of sad,’ a Democrat close to senior lawmakers told Politico. ‘It feels like Trump is president already.'”

ELI LAKE: Assad’s Fall Has Humiliated Washington.

As president, Donald Trump challenged the Obama doctrine. Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018. On the second day of 2020, Trump ordered the air strike that killed Qasem Suleimani, the Iranian general and architect of Iran’s strategy of building up regional proxies throughout the Middle East.

But after Biden won the 2020 election, the old Obama approach returned. One of the first priorities of Biden’s new administration was to restore the nuclear bargain that Trump tried to scuttle. And Iran’s proxies continued to become emboldened. No worries. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan boasted last year, “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” Oops—eight days after Sullivan made those remarks at the Atlantic Festival, Hamas launched its October 7 pogrom.

A year later, thanks to Israel’s robust response, Hamas and Hezbollah are hobbled. Their leadership is largely eliminated, and Assad’s regime has fallen. Obama’s wisdom, in retrospect, looks foolish. It turns out that Iran was not here to stay. It turns out that another regional power—Israel—was able to extinguish much of Iran’s vaunted ring of fire, despite the warnings, arm-twisting, and weapon-shipment delays from the Biden administration. The Saudis, the Syrian people, the Lebanese, and the Israelis had a choice all along. They did not have to “share” the region with a regime intent on dominating it.

So it’s also worth tallying the price of Obama’s strategic patience. The most conservative estimates say that more than 300,000 people perished in Syria’s civil war; others put that figure at closer to 600,000. This says nothing of the 14 million refugees forced to flee Syria after Iran and Russia saved the country’s brutal tyrant. Outside groups estimate that nearly 400,000 people have died as a result of the war in Yemen, a war started by Iran’s Houthi proxies. Lebanon today is nearly a failed state because Hezbollah was the most powerful militia in the country after Iran’s years of intervention. In the meantime, Israel suffered the horror of October 7 and Gazans suffered the war Hamas initiated.

How much of this bloodshed could have been spared if Obama hadn’t clung to the fantasy of a Saudi-Iranian cold peace?

It was my impression Obama was enabling Iranian dominance, not a cold peace. Either way, the results of Obama’s (and then Biden’s) largess toward Tehran were as chaotic as they were deadly.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Sherrod Brown’s Loss Reflects the Broad Unpopularity of an Aggressive Regulatory Agenda.

JUST WAIT UNTIL TRUMP RESTORES SANCTIONS: Iran in a ‘position of unprecedented weakness’ after the fall of Assad in Syria.

Syria was Iran’s corridor for delivering logistical and armed support to the Lebanese group Hezbollah and to Hamas in Gaza, which helped ensure the security of Axis of Resistance powers while allowing Iran to exercise its influence – and deterrent capabilities – far from its own borders. “Syria represented a springboard for the Iranian regime to project its influence as far as the Mediterranean, and that has disappeared,” notes Jonathan Piron, a historian and Iran specialist at the Etopia research centre in Brussels.

“The Axis of Resistance as we knew it no longer exists,” he says. “With the Israeli operation in Lebanon, Hezbollah is no more. Its capacity for action has been significantly diminished, in any case. Now, Assad’s Syria no longer exists, either. The main pillars of the Axis of Resistance have disappeared. What is left? The Houthis [in Yemen], but they have their own agenda and are far from Tehran. And the Iraqi militias, which have refused to intervene in recent days on Syrian soil to come to the aid of Bashar al-Assad.”

The destruction of the Axis of Resistance is a direct consequence of the Hamas-led attacks of October 7 and Israel’s subsequent offensive, says David Rigoulet-Roze, associate research fellow and Middle East expert at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs.

Reminder: Iran’s defeat was made possible by Bibi Netanyahu ignoring Biden’s “Don’t!” instructions.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Are We Ready for Some BLM ‘Winter of Love’ Mostly Peaceful Stuff? “The pathetic BLM posers might want to read the room now. The idiot Obama-era politicians who propped them up all the way through the 2020 rioting have been pushed to the side. We’re not going to be seeing kneeling photo-ops from the Capitol when the Trump 47 crew rolls back into the Beltway in January.”

BILL WHITTLE’S HOT MIC: We need a HERO: Pete Hegseth vs. The Deep State. “The problem isn’t inside the Pentagon. The problem IS the Pentagon. Responsible for spending $825,000,000,000 this year alone, the political and economic pressures to simply continue with the status quo are so monumental that standing up to them is nothing less than HEROIC. Turns out we have just the man for the job.”

Watch the whole thing.

ENJOY THE MOMENT WHILE IT LASTS: Syria’s Biggest Losers: Khamenei, Putin, Obama.

RACISM, STRAIGHT UP: Black Harris staffers say they were mistreated on the campaign, blame leadership for taking base for granted.

Black Harris staffers are accusing the campaign leadership of mistreatment and “outright racial discrimination” in a damning new article outlining numerous allegations against the now defunct campaign.

The New York Times published a story Sunday titled “How Alarmed Harris Staffers Went Rogue to Reach Black and Latino Voters.” The story details a clandestine operation by some campaign staffers who ignored directives from the top and took matters into their own hands after feeling frustrated by the campaign’s lack of sufficient effort to reach voters of color in Philadelphia.

“Many staff members felt that Philadelphia’s racially diverse neighborhoods were ignored,” the Times story reads, adding that “Black campaign staff members and political operatives said campaign leadership dismissed concerns that Democrats were taking their base for granted.”

As the election drew closer, the frustration with campaign leadership on the issue reached a boiling point, according to more than 30 staffers interviewed by The Times.
…
“Some complained of outright racial discrimination. The campaign’s leadership was made aware of the survey’s results,” the article says.

So long as Democrats are blaming Harris, Biden, or each other, they aren’t doing anything to course-correct their party.

Which seems fine and fun to watch — until they do manage to put another radical in the White House.

HEH: An Open Letter to Everyone Who Will Have Their Rights Taken Away on Jan. 20, 2025. “According to the erudite leftist voices at The New York Times, The Washington Post, and all throughout social media, President-elect Literally Hitler But Also Plus Sometimes Stalin (long, I know, but I don’t make the rules) is going to quickly take away the rights of the LGBTQ++ Rainbow Coalition as soon as he’s sworn in on Inauguration Day.”

IF THEY’RE SMART, THE CITY WILL SETTLE BIG AND QUICKLY: Prosecuting Daniel Penny Was An Irreparable Miscarriage Of Justice. New York Owes Him A Massive Payout. “New York owes Penny big time. A lawyer needs to sue the city on his behalf pro bono. And if there is justice left in America, the incoming Trump Administration will immediately investigate and ideally bring charges against the prosecutors who did this to the white knight Daniel Penny.”

CORN, POPPED:

Did a ny city official just admit they neglected their responsibility to neely and the public, and that Penny only had to deal with neely and suffer through a sham prosecution due to a failure of the city?

That might end up in the lawsuit…

👀

— Dave (@DaveCrocket0) December 9, 2024

More:

This blatant racial discrimination is precisely why the Trump 47 Justice Department must open a federal probe on Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, lead prosecutor Dafna Yoran, and their office.

Conspiracy against rights (18 U.S.C. § 241) is a very serious federal civil-rights felony. https://t.co/kgKVia3JGd

— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) December 9, 2024

You can read Jumaane Williams’ full statement here but this bit stands out from the rest of the nonsense and deflection:

We don’t know everything that passengers saw or felt on that train car, and can’t dismiss any real or realized fears. We do know that neither Blackness nor poverty nor nuisance constitute an imminent threat. Yet this verdict tells people that the system is okay with violence against marginalized people.

But marginalized, mentally ill people that the city has left to wander the streets untreated should be free to commit violence at will.

Got it.

CHANGE: Is DEI doomed? “A second Trump administration is likely to be more motivated, better equipped and more focused on dismantling DEI initiatives on college campuses.”