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December 2024

The Re-Skilling of America Instead of subsidizing America’s greedy and unequal diploma mills, how about dropping degree requirements and rewarding skills? Michael Lind

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/reskilling-america

Should fewer Americans go to college? In 2022, 37.6% of adults without a disability had at least a bachelor’s degree. In 1990 only 20% of the older-than-25 population had a bachelor’s degree, and in 1970 the share was 11%. And yet according to the Strada Institute for the Future of Work, a decade after graduation with four-year degrees 45% of Americans work in jobs that do not require college diplomas. These unfortunate young Americans have wasted four years of their lives and tuition money, and in some cases have incurred sizable student loan debt, in exchange for coursework that is essentially worthless.

What explains the large-scale miscredentialing of the American workforce? The endless greed of tuition-hungry universities is one factor. But the main cause is the insistence of many American employers, including federal, state, and local government, that new hires have college diplomas—even for jobs that are currently filled by workers without four-year degrees.

Like other forms of inflation, degree inflation reduces the inflated unit of currency. Today a worker earning between $40,000 and $60,000 in inflation-adjusted 2022 dollars is as likely to have a bachelor’s degree as a worker in 2006 who earned between $60,000 and $80,000, when there were fewer college graduates as a share of the workforce. According to the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP): “Between 1990 and 2021, all occupational categories except one—teachers and librarians—experienced degree inflation, meaning the proportion of prime-age workers with a bachelor’s degree increased.”

There is no reason to believe that receptionists and bank tellers with B.A.s in popular majors like communications or business, to say nothing of gender studies, are more productive and skilled than their non-college-educated predecessors who had high school educations plus on-the-job training.

Arabs No Longer Buying the Lies of Hamas, Hezbollah by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21168/hamas-hezbollah-lies

“Where is the victory? How much did it cost? What defeat is more terrible than such losses? How can one claim victory in the face of a massacre that has destroyed all the logic of resistance? It’s not too late to ask Hezbollah to explain its unilateral and deadly decision to open the confrontation [with Israel] under Iran’s cover.” — Nabil Bou Monsef, prominent Lebanese journalist, kataeb.org, November 27, 2024.

Over the past 14 months, Hamas and Hezbollah have dragged the Palestinians and Lebanese into wars that have claimed the lives of thousands of people — all to serve their patrons in Iran. Instead of admitting their defeat, both in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, the terrorists, at the behest of Iran’s mullahs, are continuing to sell imaginary victories to the Arabs to encourage them to join the Jihad (holy war) against Israel.

After the recent ceasefire deal with Israel, supporters of the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah claimed “victory.” Some celebrated the alleged victory by firing guns into the air and flashing V signs. Many Arabs, however, saying that Hezbollah had lost hundreds of its members, including top leaders, and caused significant damage to Lebanese homes and the country’s economy, have been mocking the terrorist group.

Hezbollah’s hasty declaration of “victory” is similar to that of Hamas, Iran’s Palestinian terrorist proxy in the Gaza Strip. After earlier rounds of fighting with Israel that severely damaged the Gaza Strip’s civilian and military infrastructure, Hamas commanders would typically emerge from the debris and proclaim “victory.”

Like Hezbollah, many Palestinians and Arabs mocked Hamas for its fake wins. Even now, Hamas continues to pretend that it is winning the war, which began when the terrorist group invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, murdering 1,200 Israelis, many of whom were tortured, burned alive or beheaded. Countless others were raped, and 240 were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip, where 101 – many of whom are dead — are still held captive.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya Will Transform the NIH By Susan Quinn

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/12/jay_bhattacharya_will_transform_the_nih.html

Unlike the other cabinet nominees that Donald Trump has selected who will battle with their organizations and take no prisoners, I suspect that Jay Bhattacharya will define his actions and responsibilities differently. He’s not afraid to argue and protest injustices when he’s trying to protect citizens from the deluded powers-that-be; but he will make changes with determination and clarity, and hopefully remove those people in power that have demanded unreasonable responses to the health needs of the public.

Bhattacharya has many reasons to take retribution, especially against Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins. When Bhattacharya produced the Great Barrier Declaration, he was lambasted by Collins, now retired from the NIH:

The declaration called for speeding herd immunity by allowing people at low risk to get infected while protecting those most vulnerable, like the elderly.

It was denounced by many public health experts as unscientific and irresponsible. ‘This is a fringe component of epidemiology,’ Collins told The Washington Post shortly after the document was released. ‘This is not mainstream science. It’s dangerous. It fits into the political views of certain parts of our confused political establishment.’

Stabbed by an Islamist, now silenced by the state A victim of the Mannheim terror attack in Germany has now been convicted of anti-Islam hate speech.Sabine Beppler-Spahl

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/12/04/stabbed-by-an-islamist-now-silenced-by-the-state/

Earlier this year, activist and blogger Michael Stürzenberger became the victim of an Islamist attack because of his harsh criticism of Islam. Now, six months later, he has been convicted for incitement to hatred and given a fine by a regional court in Hamburg – also because of his harsh criticism of Islam.

In May, a former refugee from Afghanistan targeted and attacked Stürzenberger and six others during a rally organised by Stürzenberger’s campaign group, Pax Europa, in Mannheim, south-west Germany. The incident left one policeman dead, Stürzenberger severely injured – he needed several operations on his face and knee – and a nation in shock.

Stürzenberger’s incitement conviction is not directly related to the incidents in Mannheim. Instead, it relates to statements he made at a rally in Hamburg in 2020. He was originally found guilty of incitement to hatred and given a six-month prison sentence at a Hamburg court in September 2022, but appealed the conviction. Last month the court upheld the original verdict, but reduced his sentence to a fine of €3,600.

According to reports, his punishment was reduced because he had since become a victim of an assassination attempt. Another mitigating factor was that he had not given any public speeches since the Mannheim attack.

Journalists Mourn That Jack Smith’s Probes Are Dead When media ethics died. by Tim Graham

https://www.frontpagemag.com/journalists-mourn-that-jack-smiths-probes-are-dead/

Democratic attorneys waged legal war on former President Donald Trump on every level of government: federal, state, county and city. Now that he’s been reelected, all that legal wrangling is going to be curtailed. Biden-appointed special counsel Jack Smith had to fold his tent, and on Nov. 25, the networks offered live “breaking news” that just sounded like they were the broken ones.

Start with ABC’s Jonathan Karl, whose third anti-Trump book was aggressively titled “Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party.” That’s a little embarrassing for Karl and his publishers now that the GOP controls the White House, Congress and 55% of state legislative seats.

Karl decried the death of accountability for Trump: “He ultimately will not be held to account in the criminal court system for his actions to overturn the presidential election of 2020.” Karl is upset that the Orange Man isn’t in an orange jumpsuit. No jail, no justice!

CBS reporter Scott MacFarlane, whose primary beat for almost four years now has been treating Jan. 6 as worse than 9/11, was also upset: “The historic case against Donald Trump for allegations he tried to conspire to overturn an election and the ties to that horrific attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, that case is dying with a whimper today.”

This pro-prosecutor tone was not the MacFarlane spin when the Bidens were the ones being investigated. He overused the adverb “allegedly” to describe pictures of Hunter Biden’s rampant drug use when he was on trial. He lamented special counsel Robert Hur “controversially” stated President Joe Biden would appear too doddering to be convicted in his classified-documents case. Who was whimpering instead of holding politicians accountable then?

The Lies of Joe Biden and his Lying Enablers Saving the Biden syndicate. by Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-lies-of-joe-biden-and-his-lying-enablers/

Joe Biden promised, emphatically, at least six times—all pre-election—that he would not pardon his son Hunter Biden.

His media lapdogs loudly resonated those boasts.

They claimed at the time Biden was a historic, Sir Thomas More-like protector of jurisprudence, morality, and our Constitution—sacrificing even his son on the altar of the “the rule of law”.

All again shameful lies.

These now disgraced talking heads have no more apologized than they did when they championed their “51 intelligence authorities” scam, who swore Hunter’s laptop was a product of Russian chicanery.

(No one has been more slavishly and obsequiously wrong about all the Biden pardon lies than the notorious Andrew Weissmann of the failed Mueller witch-hunt “dream team”.)

Anyone who knew the long, sordid history of Joe Biden (e.g., how he defamed the truck driver who was not culpable in his first wife’s fatal crash or was caught lying about his entire college career, and plagiarized his 1988 campaign speech), knew he was lying when he made these serial promises.

His letter excusing his pardon was worse than the lie itself.

Biden essentially pardoned himself by exempting all of Hunter’s crimes since 2014, in which Hunter had enriched the Biden crime family cartel due to ‘the big guy’s’ opportune calls and appearances with foreign crooks.

Joe knew that only a silenced Hunter would save the Biden syndicate after January 20, 2025.

The Wrong Side of History After the election, leftists cope with national rejection. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-wrong-side-of-history/

The Left is a religious movement. Its manic enthusiasms are fueled by the conviction that it can and will save the world. But what happens if the world does not want to be saved by the Left?

That is the dilemma of the 2024 election for believers in the ‘right side of history’.

In 2000 and 2016 leftists resorted to conspiracy theories to explain not only to us but to themselves why they did not really lose, but the 2024 election was a landslide in which not only the electoral college, but the popular vote, not only straight white men, but the entire spectrum of the electorate rejected not just Joe Biden, but his black female girl power ringer

When the Left lost the working class, it blamed the loss on racism. The factory workers and coal miners, the proletariat on whom generations of leftists had pinned their hopes for a national regeneration, were cast out for their whiteness. Henceforth, minorities would be the standard bearers for transforming the national culture and inheriting power at the dawn of the new age.

Now that virtually every minority group except black women has turned on them, what’s left?

Apart from the essays explaining why black women and ‘trans kids’ are the only virtuous minorities still out there (often written by straight white men) there isn’t a backup plan.

The problem was built into the leftist paradigm which seeks to identify and elevate oppressed groups, but the more those groups are elevated, the less need they have for the Left, and the more likely they are to object when their former patrons start wrecking all their achievements.

Everyone has something to lose and those with the most to lose are not the children of the rich trashing the system, but those near the bottom who are the most vulnerable to social chaos.

Over a Dozen Current and Former Fox News Employees Shoot Down NBC’s Hit Piece Against Pete Hegseth–on the Record By Debra Heine

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/04/over-a-dozen-current-and-former-fox-news-employees-shoot-down-nbcs-hit-piece-against-pete-hegseth-on-the-record/

An NBC News hit piece accusing Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for defense secretary, of habitually coming to work at “Fox and Friends Weekend” hung over and smelling of alcohol has been refuted by over a dozen Fox News personalities and guests who have worked with him, including his two cohosts.

The NBC story, which is based on ten anonymous sources, claims that Hegseth’s drinking “concerned” his colleagues at Fox News.

“Two of those people said that on more than a dozen occasions during Hegseth’s time as a co-host of ‘Fox & Friends Weekend,’ which began in 2017, they smelled alcohol on him before he went on air,” the NBC story alleges. “Those same two people, plus another, said that during his time there he appeared on television after they’d heard him talk about being hungover as he was getting ready or on set.”

According to the story, “one of the sources said they smelled alcohol on him as recently as last month and heard him complain about being hungover this fall.”

NBC News reporters Chloe Melas, Courtney Kube and Sarah Fitzpatrick claim they spoke with ten current and former employees at Fox News. However, 12 of Hegseth’s colleagues at Fox have gone on the record to strongly dispute the story on social media.  And these employees say they weren’t even contacted by NBC News for comment.

Hegseth’s Fox and Friends Weekend cohost Will Cain fumed on X that NBC’s story is “Bullshit. 100 percent bullshit. Actually…horseshit.”

“Put my name on it. On the record. It’ll be your only on the record source,” Cain wrote. “Signed, The guy who sat next to him for 8 hours every week for five years starting at 6am.”

The Winning Has Already Begun

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/12/04/the-winning-has-already-begun/

Under normal circumstances, it takes a year or two before a president can have an impact on the economy or world affairs. But Donald Trump won’t be president for almost two months, and already we are feeling the effects of his election.

Consumers are more confident, manufacturers more optimistic, investors more bullish. Canada is promising to toughen up its border controls. Ukraine is talking about how to end its nearly three-year-long war. There’s a ceasefire in the Middle East.

Heck, even Trump’s favorability rating broke through 50%, a rarity since he first announced his candidacy in 2015.

Let’s look at the evidence:

The RealClearMarkets/TIPP Economic Optimism Index jumped 13.4% in November to 53.2, the highest in more than three years. Anything over 50 indicates a positive for optimism, and this is the first time the index has been positive since September 2021

Charles Lipson: Kamala Harris was a shocking candidate — but Democrats are ignoring the bigger reason for their defeat

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2024/12/03/kamala-harris-shocking-candidate-but-democrats-ignore/

The reckoning they face is urgent. By 2028, they won’t have their biggest asset: Donald Trump

Losing parties always search for explanations. When they lose big – when they lose the White House and both houses of Congress – that search becomes a full-scale reckoning. What went wrong for Democrats? How can they correct it?

Those questions aren’t lacking for answers. The problem is sorting out the ones that really matter.

The easiest answer – and surely part of the explanation – is “we need a better candidate”. Kamala Harris was truly dreadful. But that only raises another question: how did the Democrats end up with such a clunker?

The mainstream media did their best to cover for her, less because they liked Harris and more because they hated Donald Trump. That’s why they ignored her obvious defects for some six weeks after party leaders ditched Joe Biden and anointed Harris as his replacement. She was hoisted aloft by fawning journalists and broadcasters. When their hot air was finally exhausted, Kamala crashed. Even spending $1.5 billion and saturating the airways with slick commercials wasn’t enough to persuade centrist, independent voters.

Harris was sunk by several problems. The first, and most fundamental, is that she was the second-ranking official in an unpopular administration. She was inextricably bound to its failures. When almost 80 per cent of voters say that the country is “on the wrong track”, the burden is almost insurmountable.