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December 2021

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Jussie Smollett Convicted Of 5 Of 6 Counts Of Orchestrating Fake Hate Crime Against Himself

By on December 11th, 2021

https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2021/12/10/jussie-smollett-verdict-guilty-disorderly-conduct-fake-hate-crime-attack/

Former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett was convicted on five counts Thursday evening on charges he orchestrated a fake hate crime against himself nearly three years ago, while jurors acquitted him of one other count.

A jury of six men and six women deliberated more than nine hours over two days before finding Smollett guilty of five of six counts of disorderly conduct, accusing the actor of staging a fake racist and homophobic attack against himself in January 2019, and then lying to police about it, in a bid for publicity. Jurors found him not guilty of the sixth count of disorderly conduct.The charges for which Smollett was convicted dealt with his falsely telling several different police officers he was the victim of a hate crime and a battery.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

U.S. inflation sizzles as consumer prices post biggest annual gain since 1982 Lucia Mutikani

By on December 11th, 2021

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-consumer-prices-increase-further-133924174.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

U.S. consumer prices rose solidly in November as Americans paid more for food and a range goods, leading to the largest annual gain since 1982, posing a political nightmare for President Joe Biden’s administration and cementing expectations for the Federal Reserve to start raising interest rates next year.

The report from the Labor Department on Friday, which followed on the heels of a slew of data this month showing a rapidly tightening labor market, makes it likely the U.S. central bank will announce that it is speeding up the wind-down of its massive bond purchases at its policy meeting next week.

With supply bottlenecks showing little sign of easing and companies raising wages as they compete for scarce workers, high inflation could persist well into 2022. The increased cost of living, the result of shortages caused by the relentless COVID-19 pandemic, is hurting Biden’s approval rating. The White House and the Fed have characterized high inflation this year as transitory.

“There’s not much room to explain away this inflation from pandemic or reopening anomalies,” said Will Compernolle, a senior economist at FHN Financial in New York. “Inflation is a tax, gas and food are among the most regressive aspects of it. Lower-income Americans spend disproportionately on both.”

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

In the Race for ‘Climate Leadership,’ Everyone’s a Loser Rupert Darwall

By on December 11th, 2021

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/in-the-race-for-climate-leadership-everyones-a-loser-opinion/ar-AARGkLg

Last year, Joe Biden campaigned on the promise that America would lead the world in the fight against climate change. At last month’s Glasgow climate conference, however, President Biden diluted candidate Biden’s bold promise to a plaintive “hopefully”—implying, he said, leadership by example. At home, his climate plan in the Build Back Better bill is stalled in the Senate, and his election pledge to legislate a net-zero enforcement mechanism by the end of his first term has gone nowhere.

Aspirations to climate leadership are faring little better in Europe. Germany’s new traffic-light political coalition—the red SPD, the yellow Free Democrats, and the Greens—is making the Paris climate agreement its top priority. In April, Germany’s constitutional court ruled that its 2050 net-zero target was so distant that it violated the freedoms of young people. So, along with Sweden, Germany became the first country to legislate a 2045 net-zero target. Yet the new German government’s net-zero plan, as outlined in the coalition agreement, may as well have been designed to worsen Europe’s current energy crisis and sink its largest and most successful economy.

Under the timetable inherited from the Merkel government, zero-emitting nuclear power—which only a decade ago accounted for one-fourth of German electricity generation—will be phased out by the end of next year. To make matters worse, the new coalition is bringing forward the closure of all Germany’s coal-fired power stations from 2038 to 2030 and at the same time raising the share of renewables to 80 percent. Notes energy expert Lucian Pugliaresi, Germany’s energy policy initiatives “will not be sufficient to meet demand for electricity in Germany in 2030.”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

5 Biggest Takeaways From The Latest Review Of Wisconsin’s Rigged 2020 Election Wisconsin is a case study in the kind of ho-hum execution of elections that chips away at Americans’ confidence in our elections.By Kylee Zempel

By on December 11th, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/10/5-biggest-takeaways-from-the-latest-review-of-wisconsins-rigged-2020-election/

After a 10-month review of the 2020 election in the Dairy State, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has compiled its findings — which set off alarm bells about the state’s massive election integrity shortcomings and reveal weaknesses the swing state must shore up before the next election.

The review, which WILL said it approached “without presumption as to what it would find,” included polling, surveys, an inspection of the law, interviews with elected officials, an analysis of almost 20,000 ballots and 29,000 absentee ballot envelopes, as well as a review of tens of thousands of documents obtained through more than 460 open records requests.

“It’s clear many Republicans, like Democrats before them, are convinced that there was a ‘Big Steal.’ And much of the legacy media is of the view that, since there is little or no evidence that Trump won the election, any effort to look into whether proper procedures were followed is just part of the baseless conspiracy-mongering that pushes ‘the Big Lie,’” WILL attorneys wrote in their review of the study’s findings. “But WILL’s review indicates the truth may lie between these two poles.”

While WILL’s work also showed some state election procedures and outcomes to be above bar — including no significant issues with voting machines and limited instances of ineligible people successfully voting — some findings were troubling. Here are the top takeaways.

1. Unlawful Votes Exceeded Biden’s Margin of Victory

Tens of thousands of Wisconsin votes cast in the 2020 election did not comply with state law, especially regarding ballot drop boxes and “indefinite confinement.”

As a recent audit by the state’s Legislative Audit Bureau showed, absentee ballot dropboxes were used prevalently at the behest of the Wisconsin Elections Commission in violation of state law. These dropboxes were connected to an extra 20,000 votes for now-President Joe Biden, with no noteworthy effect for then-President Donald Trump.

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