HE’S FINE, REALLY: Yikes! Did Biden Threaten To Use Military Jets Against American Citizens?

NOBODY CAN AFFORD TO BUY, NOBODY CAN AFFORD TO SELL: Home Sales Were the Lowest in Almost 30 Years in 2023. “Existing home sales, which make up most of the housing market, slid 19% in 2023 from the prior year to 4.09 million, the lowest full-year level since 1995, the National Association of Realtors said Friday.”

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: The Battle for Control of Disney Is On. “No wonder Disney+ is losing billions. And how is a movie, even a blockbuster, supposed to generate the returns that investors expect when budgets are completely out of control? Shareholders ought to be banging down Peltz’s door and demanding that he take over.”

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: DEI Destroys Excellence, Military Cohesion at Service Academies. “Academic freedom doesn’t exist at Annapolis. And those who do not repeat the party line unquestioningly, such as (um, yes) your humble correspondent, will be relentlessly pursued and fired. Cauthen goes on with his quote: The Naval Academy ‘will develop a confidential process for reporting bias incidents’ — for what it calls ‘nonpunitive informational purposes’ to ‘identify areas for potential additional training.’ My experience suggests that ‘nonpunitive’ is bunkum. Indeed, Cauthen points out that all of this comes with the whip hand of the UCMJ and quotes Article 917 as saying that.”

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY: He Was ‘Launched’ Into a Garbage Truck. “It’s your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week we have the guy who took himself out with the garbage, the craziest psychiatrist in St. Petersburg, and the Utah Man who brought a knife to a gunfight.”

GENERALS JANUARY AND FEBRUARY REPORTING FOR DUTY: Russia ‘Revs’ Up for Massive Winter Offensive In Eastern & Southern Ukraine.

GLEICHSCHALTUNG: Massachusetts Hospital May Deny Care to Some Patients in the Name of Inclusivity.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Inflation is ‘far from dead’: Why one large asset manager doubts U.S. can hit 2%.

One of Solloway’s biggest takeaways is that wage pressures across major economies are unlikely to subside by enough to be consistent with central banks’ inflation mandates. He is skeptical that U.S. inflation will settle around the Federal Reserve’s 2% target based on a few assumptions, one of which is that oil price declines seen over the past year are not likely be repeated in 2024. Solloway also questions the need for any rate cuts by the Federal Reserve.

“The risks of an escalation in the Middle East are still higher than anybody should feel comfortable with, and actual military conflict could certainly lead to a sharp, short-term rise in oil prices and another supply shock,” Solloway said via phone on Thursday. Such a supply shock “could lead to a ratcheting up of inflation expectations.”

Following the December U.S. consumer-price index reading on Jan. 11 and Thursday’s initial jobless claims data, “there doesn’t seem to be much weakness in the economic numbers looking out for the next six months,” he said. “Inflation between 3% and 4% is a more-than-likely event, and markets are not prepared for that after the last six months of good inflation readings.”

Once unleashed, inflation can be very difficult to tame. It takes some severe pain to really get the job done but, so far, we’ve only experienced some discomfort.

“NO LABELS,” NO ACCESS: No Labels Party Asks Justice Department to Investigate ‘Conspiracy’ to Block Ballot Efforts.

CLOWARD AND PIVEN SMILE: Denver hospital system may collapse due to migrant crisis: ‘We are turning down patients.’ “Eight-thousand migrants from Central America accounted for approximately 20,000 visits in 2023. Denver Health asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide funds for immigrants’ medical costs. The state and federal governments aren’t reimbursing the hospital, which spent $136 million for patients who didn’t pay.”

WHY CAN’T I CHOOSE BOTH? Who’s More Arrogant, the School Teacher Trying to Erase Trump From Wash. State Ballot or This Reporter?

IT ISN’T JUST SAN FRANCISCO: Blackstone is desperately trying to shift Manhattan office tower at HALF price after 26-storey building’s value tumbled from $605MILLION to $150MILLION.

The collapse has been pronounced in the biggest cities with DC facing a 21.1 percent vacancy rate and San Francisco’s 34 percent.

It has led to a 35 percent fall in office prices from their peak in early 2022 and left banks vulnerable to billions of dollars in shaky loans.

About $117 billion worth is expected to be due this year and needs to be repaid or refinanced, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Economists last month found 40 per cent of office loans on bank balance sheets were underwater – owing more than the property is worth.

Smaller regional banks who loaned the money to buy them could themselves be at risk if the loans default as they are not big enough to handle the losses.

Blackstone bought the 600,000-square-foot property between 55th and 56th streets from real-estate investment trust Vornado with a $308million mortgage and began a major re-fit of the historic building.

It stopped paying the mortgage in March 2022 and occupancy had fallen to an eye-watering 7.4 percent by September of last year.

That’s a 7.4 occupancy rate, not a vacancy rate.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Antony Blinken Is the Worst Sec. of State Not Named Hillary Clinton. “Westerners who advocate for any kind of capitulation — which a Palestinian state is — to Hamas, Hezbollah, or any of the other Iranian-funded terrorist savage organizations are traveling in realms of delusion heretofore unseen. None of those groups are going to be mollified by being given a little more land and a cafeteria pass at the United Nations.”

IT’S A GAS, GAS, GAS: EV Sales Run Out of Juice in Europe as Germans Tighten Belts.

Automotive executives in Germany have been warning about an approaching cliff in EV sales for months, blaming the impending gloom on a combination of high manufacturing costs at home and a government decision to end incentives for consumers.

The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, known as ACEA, said Thursday that sales of new EVs collapsed in Germany last month, when fully electric-car sales plunged 48% and plug-in hybrid sales tumbled 74%. Overall, new-car sales in the country declined 23% in December, compared with growth rates of 14.5% and 11% in France and Spain respectively.

The ACEA data showed that most of Europe was either still growing or muddling through in December as German car sales ran off the road. New-car registrations in the region, a proxy for actual sales, fell 3.3% in December compared with a year ago. Registrations finished the month at about 867,000. Sales rose 14% to 10.5 million for the entire year.

Why do Germans need cars at all when the country seems obsessed with deindustrializing?

TO BE FAIR, RIDICULOUS IS BETTER THAN YOU SHOULD EXPECT FROM BLINKEN: Blinken Unveils Grand Plan for Mideast Peace, and Yes, It’s Ridiculous. “Blinken unveiled his grand plan for Middle East peace: a Palestinian state. Yes, that’s right: Hamas murdered 1,200 Israelis, many in unimaginably gruesome ways, with Palestinian civilians gleefully cheering them on, and Blinken wants them to end up being the ones who emerge the winners from this present conflict.”

As an incentive for good behavior, the Arabs of Gaza and the West Bank shouldn’t be allowed a state until they’ve shown they can run their territories decently.

JUST LIKE BIDEN MADE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER: Soros Prosecutors = Paradise For Sex Traffickers. “It isn’t just petty criminals and the psychotic that soft-on-crime, Soros-backed DAs have opened the door for. It’s also made blue cities paradise for sex traffickers.”

EXPOSED: Biden’s Monstrous ‘Anti-Terror’ Plan to Censor Christians, Conservatives Before 2024 Election.

HMM: Oof. Team Nikki Is Lowering Expectations for New Hampshire.

THE NEXT IN MY “UNDERAPPRECIATED ALBUMS” SERIES FOR PJMEDIA/TOWNHALL VIP SUBSCRIBERS: ‘March.’ “Michael Penn recorded the first great album of the 21st century, but the truly remarkable detail is that he did it in 1989.”

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA (COLORADO EDITION): Husband of Rep. Brittany Pettersen lands hefty Jefferson County consulting gig; questions swirl around bid process.

BREAKING: Judge Orders Hearing on Fani Willis Investigations.

PROGRESS: B-21 Raider Flight Testing Now Underway. “An Air Force official confirmed to The War Zone that the initial B-21, one of six pre-production examples the service plans to acquire, flew a sortie from Edwards today. That same individual said that this was not the aircraft’s first flight from that base, but declined to say when that milestone was reached or how many times it has flown in total. The bomber, which is nicknamed Cerberus, first arrived at Edwards at the conclusion its maiden flight from Northrop Grumman’s facilities at the Air Force’s Plant 42 in Palmdale, California on November 10, 2023.”

2024: Justin Amash Might Run for the Senate and Libertarian Twitter Exploded. “Let’s just say I’m not quite as thrilled as my harder-core libertarian friends are.”

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Whoopi Goldberg vs. Aaron Rodgers: A Tale of Two Media Narratives. “The difference couldn’t be more striking. It’s also terrible given our divided times, and it fuels our unsustainable, two-tier society.”

WHOSE KIDS ARE THEY, ANYWAY? Maine Bill Strips the Rights of Parents Opposing Transgender ‘Care’ for Their Children.