HE’S RIGHT ABOUT THE LEFT FOR ONCE: Whoa, Chuck Schumer Admits That the Rise in Anti-Semitism Is Coming From The Political Left.

PUNCHING DOWN AT A REPRESENTATIVE WHO’S PROBABLY ON HER WAY OUT IS NOT A GOOD LOOK: White House goes at ‘MAGA’ Boebert over opposition to Biden agenda in Colorado.

SOD OFF, SWAMPY: CNN: ‘It’s Time to Limit Travel’ for Climate Change.

AUTOCRACIES USUALLY ARE: Russia, Iran, and China are Weaker Than They Appear.

KRUISER INTRODUCES A NEW WEEKLY FEATURE: Trump Derangement Syndrome Media Meltdown of the Week.

CHANGE? 14-year-old girl arrested in connection to 15 SF retail thefts, $30K loss.

A young teenage girl who police said was involved in over a dozen organized retails [sic] thefts of over $30,000 in merchandise in San Francisco was arrested, the San Francisco Police Department announced Thursday.

San Francisco police investigating organized retail crimes on the 800 block of Market Street had identified the 14-year-old girl as one of the suspects in a large number of retail thefts, SFPD said. The thefts were being committed by a “large group of juvenile and adult suspects” and stole merchandise totaling over $30,000, according to police.

When the city systematically goes after the organized crime rings, I’ll believe real change has come.

IF YOU MISSED THE DEBATE, DON’T MISS THE REPLAY: DeSantis DOMINATES in Red State-Blue State Debate With Newsom.

PRIORITIES: ICE to close Calif. facility able to hold 2,000 illegal immigrants amid ongoing crisis. “ICE was blocked by a September 2020 court order from sending more detainees to the privately-operated facility after a lawsuit demanding fewer detainees due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was then near its peak.”

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: The Battle for the Soul of Disney Is On. “For its part, Disney says Peltz’s fight is personal, not business.”

SKYNET FROWNS: Microsoft President: No Superintelligent AI Soon.

The comments by Brad Smith, also vice chairman, come one year after Microsoft-backed OpenAI released AI chatbot ChatGPT to the public, sparking a flurry of investment and concern such systems could pose an existential threat to humanity.

Recent reports suggested OpenAI founder Sam Altman may have been ousted from the company following internal wranglings over a potentially dangerous AI discovery. However, Smith rejected these claims.

“I don’t think that is the case at all,” he said, speaking to reporters in Britain on Thursday. “I think there obviously was a divergence between the board and others, but it wasn’t fundamentally about a concern like that.”

Altman was forced out of OpenAI by the company’s board earlier this month, but was swiftly reappointed after a weekend of public outcry from company employees and shareholders.

Smith added: “There’s absolutely no probability that you’re going to see this so-called AGI, where computers are more powerful than people, in the next 12 months.

Besides, if history is any guide, Microsoft’s superintelligent AI won’t be very good until version 3.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: What Did DeSantis vs Newsom Do for DeSantis vs Trump? “I like DeSantis, I didn’t need last night’s debate to convince me that he’s a better governor than Gavin Newsom. I’m also a big believer in not giving attention-seeking pathological liar Dems like Newsom any added exposure.”

ROUGH NEIGHBORHOOD: Earth-like planets may form even in harsh environments, James Webb Space Telescope finds.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has found water and organic carbon molecules near a massive, active young star that’s situated in a faraway star-forming region of space, suggesting Earth-like exoplanets could form even in the harshest environments in our Milky Way Galaxy. Potentially, some of those exoplanets may even exhibit habitable conditions.
…
The planet forming disk in question, officially designated as XUE-1, surrounds a star about as big as our sun. But that star’s much larger, and more vicious, siblings are not far away.

Don’t call your travel agent just yet.

ALL HE UNDERSTANDS IS GRAFT AND, ON THAT TOPIC, HE’S STILL QUITE SHARP: Joe Biden Reveals That He Doesn’t Understand Economics.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (CHINA EDITION): China’s factories fall deeper into contraction, more policy support expected. “Economists upgraded their forecasts for the world’s second-largest economy after better-than-expected third quarter data, but despite a flurry of policy support measures, negative sentiment among factory managers appears to have become entrenched in the face of weak demand both at home and abroad.”

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP [VIP]: Green Energy Chickens Have Come Home to Roost, Poop on Everything. “‘A highly paid senior managing director of a green energy firm thought it was going to be quick and easy to transition a [dr-evil-voice] 25 TRILLION DOLLAR [/dr-evil-voice] economy that runs mostly on oil and gas to all-electric.’ That’s the lead crazy on today’s Insanity Wrap, an entire week’s worth of the best bad news.”

WOW: Utah State QB Chooses to Forgo His Final Season to Become a Different Kind of Hero.

JOANNE JACOBS: ‘B-flation’ misleads parents: 89% say their child is at grade level. “Seventy-nine percent of parents say their child is receiving mostly B’s or better, and 89 percent believe their child is at or above grade level in reading and math, according to a new recent Gallup-Learning Heroes study, report Jennifer Dineen and Andrea Malek Ash. But standardized test scores show that’s not true for at least half of students. The gap between parents’ perceptions and test scores is very large for black and Hispanic students. ”

LET IT GO: Even in Death, Henry Kissinger Discombobulates the Left.

A BILLION HERE AND A BILLION THERE…: US Clean Energy Stocks Have Lost $30 Billion In Value In The Last 6 Months.

KRUISER: Confederate Is the New Nazi—NY Times Compares Trump to Jefferson Davis.

THANKS, FELLAS: How shooters lured historic Colorado wolves to their deaths in Wyoming.

On June 30, 2020, a Colorado Parks and Wildlife officer and two federal special agents visited all three wolf kill sites in Wyoming. They confirmed their positions, and the reported kill sites, by matching trees with trees they could see in the background of photos one of the wolf hunters posted on Facebook.

The investigation began on a Colorado biologist’s suspicion that one of the wolves reportedly killed in Wyoming had actually been killed south of the state line. When the biologist inquired with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, the agency “refused to share” wolf harvest information.

Once the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service got involved, Wyoming did turn over wolf harvest records for four animals killed near the state line. Although there are few rules and licenses aren’t necessary, wolves killed in the predator zone must be reported within 10 days. The outfitter and his son both reported their kills within three days or less.

Game and Fish also obtained DNA samples from the animals, according to large carnivore supervisor Dan Thompson. The samples, however, were not analyzed in a way that provides any insight as to where the short-lived wolf pack in northwest Colorado and southwest Wyoming originated, he said.

The outfitter told WyoFile that a special agent told him the investigation wasn’t going anywhere early on in 2020.

“He called me like a week later and said, ‘You’ve been cleared of everything,’” the man told WyoFile. “He said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’”

Seriously —- thanks, fellas.

And here’s some background on Colorado’s plan to reintroduce wolves to the Rockies, which — surprise! — is popular in Denver and Boulder but not so much in the rural areas that got outvoted.

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: This Sneaky Senator’s Insider Trade Isn’t the Most Corrupt Part of This Story.

NATO’S NEW NORTHERN FLANK: Russia warns of tension as Finland shuts last border crossing.

The northern crossing at Raja-Jooseppi closed for two weeks at 14:00 (12:00 GMT) on Wednesday, after Helsinki accused Russia of channelling asylum seekers towards Finland.

Finland says it has become the target of a Russian “hybrid operation”.
Some 900 asylum seekers have crossed the border this month.

The influx is dramatically higher than the previous number of barely one a day and Finland’s border guard says before August 2023 Russian authorities barred foreign citizens from travelling to the area without the necessary visas.

The takeaway here is that a nation of fewer than six million people was willing to close their border over 900 illegals and to get the job done in a matter of weeks.

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: How Many European Women Will Be Raped Before Their Leaders Do Something About Those ‘Refugees?’

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Satellite imagery reveals explosion at China’s Jiuquan spaceport. “The explosion is far from Jiuquan’s launch infrastructure and is unlikely to impact other launch-related activity at the site. CASIC meanwhile uses transport erector launchers for its rockets.”