Roundup
(1) RIP, neocon extraordinaire Norman Podhoretz, dead at 95. Here’s his son’s loving tribute.
(2) The GOP health plan passes in the House. The claim is that it lowers premiums by 11%. Will it pass the Senate? And if so, will it actually do what the GOP says it will?
(3) The police have seemed clueless in the investigation of the killings at Brown. But there may be a breakthrough, or at least the possibility of a breakthrough, because the police supposedly have found DNA evidence on shell casings.
(4) Trump wraps up the year by telling the nation of his accomplishments in his second term so far. I would think they wouldn’t need reminding, but people are often very “what have you done for me lately, like in the last two minutes?” Just closing the border and putting some brakes on DEI is impressive, but the old blowhard has done a great deal more.
And there was good news on inflation.
It seems so very obvious to me that Trump has done so many good things in his second term, and the contrast with Biden couldn’t be greater. But if people don’t perceive this, it doesn’t matter.
(5) Israel claims that MIT’s nuclear scientist Nuno Loureiro was murdered by Iran:
Married father-of-three Nuno F.G. Loureiro, 47, was gunned down in the leafy Boston suburb of Brookline at 8.30pm on Monday by an unknown shooter who is still on the loose.
Loureiro specialized in nuclear science, engineering and physics and he had previously spoken out in favor of Israel, a mortal enemy of Iran.
Now, Israeli officials have said Iranian operatives targeted the leading nuclear fusion researcher, according to the Jerusalem Post.
It makes a certain amount of sense, unfortunately. Are many sleeper cells waking up?
(6) Remember Fulton County, 2020? See this:
Earlier this month, Fulton County admitted that approximately 315,000 early votes from the 2020 election were illegally certified but were nonetheless still included in the final results of that election.
The admission came during a Dec. 9 hearing before the Georgia State Election Board (SEB) stemming from a challenge filed by David Cross, a local election integrity activist. Cross filed a challenge with the SEB in March 2022. Cross alleged that Fulton County violated Georgia statute in the handling of advanced voting ahead of the November 2020 election, counting hundreds of thousands of votes even though polling workers failed to sign off on the vote tabulation “tapes” critical to the certification process.
And Fulton County admitted to it. …
“These signed tapes are the sole legal certification that the reported totals are authentic,” Cross told the SEB at the Dec. 9 hearing. “Fulton County produced zero signed tabulator tapes in early voting.” …
“These are not clerical errors. They are catastrophic breaks in chain of custody and certification,” Cross said.
“Because no tape was ever legally certified, Fulton County had no lawful authority to certify its advanced voting results to the secretary of state. Yet it did,” Cross said. “And Secretary Raffensperger accepted and folded those uncertified numbers into Georgia’s official total without questioning them.”
But everything in that election was just fine, peachy-keen, A-ok.
(7) This article on DEI and how it has harmed white male millennials has gone viral.
All they’ve done is harden hearts.
(6) This should make everyone’s blood boil. And Democrats say that democracy is at risk. Yeah, at risk from Democrats.
Trump reminds me of Herculius riding out the gates of Constantinople at the head of what was left of his army.
Police have a suspect and a warrant for the Brown murders. They’re not saying who it is publicly as yet. Also, “connections” to the murder of the MIT researcher are being investigated. This latter is said, by Israeli sources, to be an Iranian hit.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/evidence-shows-deadly-brown-mit-shootings-may-linked-sources-say-report
#6.
Ah, Raffensperger Syndrome again.
Unfortunately.
Is there a statute of limitations for perfidy? Electoral sabotage? Flat out lying time and time again.
Is there a prize for “Mega-Fortifying” elections?
If we multiply the above by several battleground states, all of which Joe Biden HAD TO WIN—and guess what! He did!! All of ‘em!!! Every single one!—at least we’ll now be able to “finally” understand Biden’s unparalleled “popularity”…
At least.
curious details, that illustrate tim blair’s law, (this may not be right)
this profile was taken down in the after math of the shooting,
https://web.archive.org/web/20251216151057/https://chrhs.watson.brown.edu/news/2025-10-14/spotlight-kharbouch
he has palestine, european education, that post modern trans national pastiche, teaching assistant to a teacher from bir zeit, (the boom u of the west bank) who is a significant figure in the anti western narrative
Also, HHS has stopped all federal funding to hospitals who perform gender surgery. More stories should show the surgery results of mutilated breasts as well as the ruined forearm from skin grafts to form “new” body parts.
This link it to libs of tiktok and is very graphic.
https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/2001758677372404146?s=20
Trump also signed a EO to change the status of marijuana which will allow better studies on the impact of the drug for cancer and pain management.
https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2001755678315315627?s=20
And there was good news on inflation.
_______
Between that and the news about the 2020 election, it has me wondering just how long it will be before “expert” becomes an insult. Something like “snake oil salesman”. Remember, in the days of the Roman Republic a dictator was considered a good thing. If you were descended from one, you got to brag about it.
(4) Good news on inflation. True. It’s now at 2.7%. That means the value of your cash savings is cut in half in 26 years. Hmmm.
One of the reasons this 2.7% rate is seen as good is because the de facto “target” inflation rate, the one that the Fed. desires as best or perfect, is a 2% inflation rate. If our economy is steady at a 2% inflation rate, then the value of cash savings is cut in half in 35 years.
Where did that target number come from? Short answer: Janet Yellen. Long ago, when she was a regional Fed. bank governor, she wrote a paper promoting the 2% target rate, and presented it at one of those annual Fed conferences.
#7.
Seems that we’re all too often surrounded by lies that have become policy and megalomaniac madmen (and institutions) who plan to implement those policies under the banner of VIRTUE…
Nothing new here, of course, except the tremendous scope of the hijacking, the technology that’s making such hijackings possible and the origins and identities of those hijackers so eager and so committed to do it.
To save the world and humanity, they tell us….
“Has Orwell’s 1984 Become Reality?”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/has-orwells-1984-become-reality
#4
As I’ve said previously, until the average Joe and Joan see big changes in their income vs expenses, mortgage interest rates such that houses are affordable, and gas consistently near $2, the Trump will not get any real credit. His tremendous results in foreign affairs will be overshadowed by people’s personal finances.
Hopefully the results of the BBB will kick in by next summer or the Ds take over Congress and immediately start the impeachment.
furthermore, the bigger picture
https://x.com/wajacobson/status/2001334807209369655
which seems to originate at brown university, may not with the professor, in question
Had a guy in the Uber. Said he was a 3-time Trump voter, but no more. No Epstein arrests, prices won’t come down, etc.
First one who talked like this. Most understand that stuff takes time.
I paid $1.889 yesterday at a Sams here in N. CO. And Ribeyes were down $2 lb.
And in Australia, cops rammed a car carrying 5 peaceful Muslims going to pay their respects at Bondi Beach.
well that was true until caesarism devolved into Empire, an institutional framework,
a whole generation of partisans like sullust, became part of the narrative class, setting the tale not only of marius in the early party of the 1st century, but catiline in the mid point
so called experts, who have gotten things so wrong, so often, well they don’t deserve the title,
2) “And if so, will it actually do what the GOP says it will? ”
Since when has any bill done what they claim it will do? Simply a set of instructions telling lawyers how to get around it.
4) Trump is bad. No matter what good he may do. They will not change their tune to the cost of their own lives.
One of the pictures of the Brown shooting person of interest looks like a fat female, imo. That image has supposedly been enhanced so who knows.
Supposedly the Brown shooter is cornered in Salem, NH.
https://x.com/nicksortor/status/2001805064579776995?s=20
I get a daily email from the Boston Globe with news stories from all the topics on which they report; news, politics, sports, the world. local, etc. I have not seen a single report on the murder of Nuno F.G. Loureiro. The silence is deafening.
I was amazed when President Trump said he negotiated “to slash prices on drugs and pharmaceuticals by as much as 400, 500, and even 600%.” Even a 100% reduction would bring the price down to zero. Does a 600% reduction mean that, if I used to pay $100 for a 30 day supply, they will now pay me $500 to take it?
#5 — 7pm PST (10 in east)… Presser y the assembly of cop-like entities in RI.. They announced, without naming, that the shooter at Brown has been “found dead” at a public storage facility in New Hampshire. They do not explain (or I couldn’t understand it, if they did) how. or how long ago, the guy got dead. They are also saying he is the killer of the MIT scientist in Brookline. The link is said to be ballistic evidence.
[My guess– recovered bullets and casings at both scenes match up.]
Truly intriguing if any support for the Israeli claim appears.
Another Mike
The cops have the name….it’s long. A Portuguese national (?), 48 years old. They might mean Portuguese born. A Brown student.
You’d think he would be too mature to get caught into the post Oct 7 antiIsrael/Jewish hate and hysteria.
But maybe he believed his instructors.
It seems that Neves Valente overlapped with Loureiro 25+ years ago at a university in Portugal. Both studying physics. This gets more bizarre by the minute.
And he’s not a Brown student. He was at Brown back in 2001-2, took a leave of absence. Not currently affiliated. Not clear what he’s done the last 23 years.
(5) The Brown U and Loureiro stories are too weird.
(7) Read the whole thing. For me, the most important point was in a late paragraph, copied below.
“Mostly I’m annoyed at myself. Because instead of settling down, proposing to my then-girlfriend (now wife), and earning a steady income that might support a family, I spent a decade insisting the world treat me fairly, when the world was loudly telling me it had no intention of doing so. I could see what was happening—I was being told point-blank what was happening—and still I thought I’d be the exception, that if I wrote one more script, took one more meeting, I’d slip through. But very few people get to be the exception.”
“…..The GOP health plan passes in the House. …………..”
Maybe premiums will be lower by 11% , or not.
Frankly this is a sick joke.
The dumbpublicans are in the majority (however slight) and this is the best they can come up with ???
Obamacare has to be discarded and a totally new plan has to be implemented that requires medical providers to prominently display all pricing to the consumer .
Presently, the insurance companies and medical providers have rigged the system; they have colluded in setting prices which, in any other business, would result in the federal govt tossing folks in jail for rigging prices and engaging in anti-competitive practices (which is a crime).
The costs for medical care and insurance will be into the stratosphere until and unless there is complete price transparency and open and intense price competition between providers. Medical providers should be prohibited from rigging prices with insurance companies.
When you buy a car, does the dealer work with auto insurance companies to set your auto insurance premiums ??
Food supermarkets – a very low margin business – are always gunning for customer business with frequent ads promoting sales.
Can you imagine food stores never posting any prices and checkout just provided one, big, fat dollar amount upon checkout with no itemized prices.
Who thinks this would sort of set up would be consumer friendly??
Or worse, ‘food insurance” companies would get involved; they would pay super inflated prices for your food purchases – allowing the food stores to score huge profits, – and pass the costs onto those “insured,” with exorbitant insurance premiums.
Oh, I forgot; don’t forget about the yearly deductible , which inexorably gets larger and larger every year.
Republicans , when in the majority and for the most part, sit around with their thumbs up their anal sphincters and do very little or nothing at all.
And once again, they are repeating this behaviour.
What a disgrace.
My question is, while gas prices drop down to 2 dollars in flyover country, will the rulers of blue states ever allow the gas prices to drop down from around 4 dollars? I doubt it. The fixed high gas prices in blue states is meant to price people out of cars. Even when Democrats take back complete control of the federal government, the 4 dollar a gallon prices in blue states will just continue to rise along with the prices throughout the country. The endgame is making driving oneself too expensive.
The person of interest who put the cops on to the Brown shooter had been sleeping in the basement of the classroom building where the shooting took place. Got suspicious when he saw the guy–something about the eyes. Followed him around. Got the cops to look at a car the guy had used. Turned out to have been in Brookline, too.
Homeless guy gets the $50k.
So, did the Brown admin know this guy had taken up residence in one of their buildings? Yes? No? If “yes”, then….. If “no”, then….
Should Brown deputize the homeless? Likely this guy’s not the only one. Doesn’t seem as if Brown could do better, given the results of their efforts so far.
Give them a dorm cafeteria card.
A FNC contributor noted the Clery report showed twenty rapes on campus in 2024. At a State school, the girls would be able to find actual…you know, young men…to walk with. Did it myself a time or two when something or other was reputed to be happening on campus, about sixty years ago. Hardly worth mentioning. It was what you did when asked. But that was then and it wasn’t an Ivy.
Speaking of young men, are they even allowed on campus?
They could hold classes on the real world. Tuition voluntary.
So much for all those security cameras.
(Unless the killer figured out a way to disable the ones that got in his way, in which case so much for maintenance…)
If true, the allegation in this article provides a possible answer…
“Brown University Accused Of Removing Cameras To Evade ICE”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/brown-university-accused-removing-cameras-evade-ice