Biden walks on eggshells as approval sinks, far-left loses confidence, and GOP 'ready to pounce' . . . As President Biden and the Democratic Party enter a fierce midterm election year, some progressives within his own party are considering challenging him in 2024. According to a Politico report, several Democratic strategists think that a progressive will attempt to enter the 2024 primary race as a challenger to President Biden.
"Will there be a progressive challenger? Yes," Jeff Weaver, a former presidential campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders said. Some believe that Nina Turner or former 2020 presidential candidate Marianne Williamson might challenge President Biden.
In describing President Biden, another progressive strategist said that he's "deeply unpopular" and "old as sh--." Fox News

 

Democrats return with lengthy to-do list . . . Lawmakers are set to return to Washington, D.C., with a full legislative plate after punting some of their biggest priorities into 2022. Here are five things on Congress’s to-do list for the start of 2022: 1. Build Back Better revival; 2. Voting rights and filibuster reform; 3. Nord Stream 2 sanctions; 4. Funding the government; 5. Iraq War authorization. The Hill

 

Analysis: The Top Governor’s Races To Watch In 2022 . . . Democrats four years ago rode a blue wave to governors’ mansions across the country, flipping Republican-held seats in the Midwest, Northeast and West alike. Now, however, many of those governors face Republican challengers amid a political environment that looks potentially promising for the GOP, meaning that contentious races may lie ahead in some of the nation’s most pivotal battleground states. Republicans have already had two strong showings in states that lean Democratic, flipping the governor’s seat in Virginia and coming surprisingly close in New Jersey, a state that voted for President Joe Biden by 16 points in 2020. Governors in less competitive states are also facing primary challengers from the left and right, making for multiple bitter, closely-followed primaries between candidates from different wings of the same party. Here are states whose races are worthy of following as the 2022 election cycle kicks into overdrive. Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Florida. Pennsylvania, New York, Kansas, Maryland, Ohia, Texas.  Daily Caller

 

 

House Democrats begin preparing for the post-Pelosi era . . . House Democrats are bracing for a turnover in leadership next year that would amount to a seismic event for the party. After almost 19 years as House Democratic leader, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) is expected to step down at the close of this Congress, ending a historic career that included trying to end George W. Bush’s Iraq War, implementing President Barack Obama’s signature health-care law, impeaching President Donald Trump twice and squeezing President Biden’s sweeping agenda through a narrowly controlled House. Washington Post

 

Thompson calls U.S. Capitol riot a coordinated effort, eyes possible Trump criminal referral . . . Rep. Bennie G. Thompson provided a glimpse Sunday into the direction of the House investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, saying it involved a “coordinated effort” by some perpetrators and refusing himself to rule out a criminal referral against former President Donald Trump. Nearly a year after the attack, the probe’s point man said the crowd that marched to the Capitol was a combination of disheartened Trump supporters and organized instigators bent on undermining the 2020 presidential election. Washington Times

 

China and Russia Military Cooperation Raises Prospect of New Challenge to American Power . . . Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping oversaw an ambitious joint military exercise in China this summer, which along with reported collaborations in aviation, undersea and hypersonic-weapons technology point to a solidifying defense alignment, according to military analysts. U.S. officials and military specialists say it is difficult to pin down the level of collaboration between two nations that tightly control information, and whose actions are increasingly opaque to outsiders. But Western officials and defense experts are growing more convinced of the closer relationship based on recent economic alliances, military exercises and joint defense development, as well as the few public statements from government leaders. Wall Street Journal

 

More fentanyl than heroin stopped at border for first time ever as US overdoses rage . . . For the first time in America's history, federal law enforcement stationed at the borders intercepted more smuggled fentanyl than heroin over the last year. Not only were fentanyl seizures at the highest level ever recorded, but fentanyl overdoses within the United States also hit new highs, indicating the success that transnational criminal organizations had in pushing their deadly products to the public. A DEA investigation this fall found a direct link between criminal drug organizations in Mexico and fentanyl-related overdose deaths. But drug users are not necessarily choosing to consume fentanyl, which is half the problem for U.S. government efforts to stop this third iteration of the opioid crisis. Street drugs are being laced with fentanyl, making all types of illicit drugs unsafe. Washington Examiner

 

US officials ask AT&T, Verizon to delay 5G rollout over aviation industry concerns . . . Federal officials are urging the chief executives of AT&T and Verizon Communications to delay plans to introduce their new 5G wireless services next week due to safety concerns with aircraft operations. In a Dec. 31 letter, Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Steve Dickson and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg asked AT&T CEO John Stankey and Verizon Communications CEO Hans Vestberg to postpone plans to activate the technology on Jan. 5 by no more than two weeks while the FAA studies the potential for interference with aircraft operations. According to Buttigieg and Dickson, failure to postpone these plans will "force the U.S. aviation sector to take steps to protect the safety of the traveling public, particularly during periods of low visibility or inclement weather." These steps, the letter said, "will result in widespread and unacceptable disruption as airplanes divert to other cities or flights are canceled, causing ripple effects throughout the U.S. air transportation system." Officials have drawn concerns before about 5G service potentially interfering with sensitive aircraft electronics. One such instrument is the radio altimeter (also known as a radar altimeter), which measures the height of planes above the ground by using radio waves. It provides a more precise reading than a barometric altimeter. Fox Business

 

China unveils plan to 'take over' Latin America . . . Chinese Communist Party officials have unveiled an “action plan for cooperation” with Latin American countries that amounts to a “comprehensive” plan to influence the region and threaten U.S. interests, following a new summit with the nearest neighbors of the United States. “The Chinese don’t say, ‘We want to take over Latin America,’ but they clearly set out a multidimensional engagement strategy, which, if successful, would significantly expand their leverage and produce enormous intelligence concerns for the United States,” U.S. Army War College research professor Evan Ellis, a former member of the State Department policy planning staff, told the Washington Examiner. Chinese officials outlined their ambitions following a summit with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. This intergovernmental forum was launched in 2011 under the auspices of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Washington Examiner

 

Joe Biden assures Ukraine’s leader of ‘decisive’ US response to Russian invasion . . . The US and its allies will “respond decisively” if Russia invades Ukraine, President Joe Biden told his counterpart in Kyiv as tensions mounted over Moscow’s troop deployments. The call on Sunday between Biden and Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky was the latest diplomatic attempt to allay mounting tensions after Russia amassed about 100,000 soldiers on Ukraine’s eastern frontier. Washington, Moscow and Nato member states are set to meet for talks in early January, when Russia intends to press for “security guarantees” to limit the military alliance’s expansion in Europe. Biden “reaffirmed” America’s commitment to Ukraine’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity”, according to a statement by Jen Psaki, White House press secretary. Financial Times

 

Israel's Jerusalem Post website hacked on Soleimani assassination anniversary . . .  Israel's Jerusalem Post newspaper said on Monday its website had been hacked, in what it said was an apparent threat to the country. Instead of displaying a main news page, the website showed an illustration that appeared to recall top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated in a U.S. drone strike in Iraq on this day in 2020. The illustration showed a bullet-shaped object shooting out of a red ring worn on a finger, an apparent reference to a distinctive ring Soleimani used to wear. The Jerusalem Post, an English-language daily, tweeted that it was working to resolve the issue. Reuters

 

China Is Haunted by Its One-Child Policy as It Tries to Encourage Couples to Conceive . . . When China put in place its one-child policy four decades ago, policy makers said they would simply switch gears if births dropped too much. That has turned out to be not so easy. “In 30 years, the current problem of especially dreadful population growth may be alleviated and then [we can] adopt different population policies,” the Communist Party said in a 1980 open letter to members and young people.
With the number of births declining year after year, China is now racing in the opposite direction, closing abortion clinics and expanding services to help couples conceive. But a legacy of the one-child policy, scrapped in 2016, is a dwindling number of women of childbearing age as well as a generation of only children who are less eager to marry and start a family. Wall Street Journal

 

Hong Kong free press faces collapse as second news site announces closure . . . Hong Kong’s free press is on the brink of extinction after the two largest remaining independent news websites in the Chinese territory announced they were shutting down in the space of a week. Citizen News, an online news site founded in 2017, said it would cease operations on Tuesday, citing safety concerns for its reporters. The decision, which will diminish further the once freewheeling and aggressive Hong Kong press corps, was announced after pro-democracy publication Stand News closed last Wednesday. Stand News was raided by police and a number of journalists and former directors were arrested for allegedly publishing “seditious” materials. Financial Times

 

Afghan agents pour 3,000 litres of alcohol into Kabul canal amid crackdown . . . A team of Afghan intelligence agents poured about 3,000 litres of liquor into a canal in Kabul, the country’s spy agency has said, as the new Taliban authorities crack down on the sale of alcohol. Video footage released by the General Directorate of Intelligence showed its agents pouring alcohol stored in barrels into the canal after seizing it during a raid in the capital. “Muslims have to seriously abstain from making and delivering alcohol,” a religious scholar said in the video, posted by the agency on Twitter. The Guardian
 

Israel set to reopen Sunday to some vaccinated tourists; US and UK still out . . . The Health Ministry said Monday that it would allow fully vaccinated tourists from some countries to enter Israel starting Sunday, January 9, ending an almost-blanket ban on noncitizens arriving. Foreign travelers who have not been vaccinated or recovered will still not be permitted to enter Israel. Visitors from countries on the Health Ministry’s “red” no-fly list are also still barred from coming. Israel reopened to foreign tourism in early November, for the first time since the start of the pandemic, but at the end of that month once again banned foreign travelers in a bid to slow the entry of the highly contagious Omicron coronavirus variant. The Health Ministry on Monday recommended that Canada, France, South Africa, Hungary, Nigeria, Spain and Portugal be removed from its list of “red” countries. Travel to and from the United States and United Kingdom remains forbidden. Times of Israel

 

Omicron Variant May End Up Saving Lives . . . 
It’s far less lethal than previous versions, and its fast spread may finally push us to herd immunity. Should I try to catch the Omicron variant of Covid to advance the cause of herd immunity? I’ve had Covid and recovered, had the Regeneron monoclonal antibody infusion, and had the double-jab vaccine—my antibodies are off the charts. With triple protection, I probably won’t catch Omicron. Yet it is spreading like wildfire. Many people with ample antibodies are catching this variant. Importantly, it seldom leads to hospitalization or death. The prudent response to Omicron might be to encourage vaccinated people and even unvaccinated young adults to catch it, while protecting the at-risk population. One measure of a pathogen’s lethality is the case fatality rate—the ratio of the death toll to the known cases. The 28-day average case fatality rate in South Africa, the likely origin of the Omicron variant, tumbled in the past six weeks from 8% to 0.2%, barely higher than for the flu. If antibodies to the Omicron variant are even 50% effective in reducing the risk of death from more-lethal variants, those antibodies could save far more lives than the virus costs. Wall Street Journal

 

Study finds COVID spreads quickly throughout body, can linger in organs for months . . . New research has found that not only can COVID-19 spread throughout the body to a range of organs outside the respiratory system, but it can also remain there for months after the initial infection. The US National Institutes of Health study found that COVID-19 can “disseminate early during infection and infect cells throughout the entire body.” Organs in danger of infection include the brain, ocular tissue, muscles, skin, peripheral nerves as well as tissue in the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, reproductive, endocrine and lymphoid systems. Times of Israel

 

A Booming Startup Market Prompts an Investment Rush for Ever-Younger Companies . . . In the past year, there has been a notable rush of funding into the high-risk category of early-stage startups, as investors have clamored to get into companies even before they had a staff or product. While the startup sector has been deluged with increasing amounts of cash for much of the past decade, most of it has traditionally gone to later-stage private companies that have tested business models. Investors in 2021 pumped $93 billion into so-called seed-stage and early-stage startups in the U.S. through Dec. 15, a record. That amount compares with $52 billion for all of 2020 and $30 billion in 2016, according to PitchBook Data Inc. Wall Street Journal

 

Biden launches crackdown on largest US meat producers . . . US president Joe Biden is launching a crackdown on the country’s largest meat producers, including a push for tighter “Made in America” labelling rules that could fuel tensions with US trading partners. Biden’s push was announced by the White House on Monday, ahead of a planned meeting later in the day between the president and a group of independent and family-owned meat producers. The Biden administration has singled out excessive market concentration in the US meat industry as a key source of vulnerability in the country’s food supply chain, and one of the causes of high inflation. The White House on Monday said just four companies controlled 85 per cent of the beef market, 70 per cent of the pork market, and 54 per cent of the poultry market. Financial Times

 

Monthly Child-Tax-Credit Payments Cease, Ending Cushion for Family Budgets . . . Families are bracing for bank balances to suffer when the middle of January comes and the monthly child-tax-credit payment doesn’t. More than 30 million households started getting up to $300 per child in July after Congress temporarily transformed an annual tax break into a near-universal monthly benefit. Families spent the money on essentials like groceries and stashed it as emergency savings, researchers found. Democrats hailed the expansion as a simple yet groundbreaking policy that sharply cut child poverty and confidently proclaimed the credit would prove so popular and beneficial that Congress wouldn’t let it lapse. It just lapsed. Wall Street Journal

 

 

AOC filmed maskless at packed Florida bar . . . Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., was recorded without a mask in a densely packed bar in Miami, according to footage that emerged Sunday. The large crowd at the drag bar, most of whom were also without a mask, applauded the congresswoman as she waved to them. "For those of you with zero sense of humor: the whole point of this post is to expose hypocrisy. We don’t actually care she’s maskless. We care she fear mongers about Florida but then has the audacity to vacation here," wrote Brendon Leslie, the reporter who first tweeted the video. Ocasio-Cortez's home state of New York has seen a record surge in COVID-19 cases amid the spread of the omicron variant. Fox News

 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Republicans sexually frustrated, actually want to date her . . . “If Republicans are mad they can’t date me they can just say that instead of projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriend’s feet,” fumed Ms. Ocasio-Cortez in a Friday tweet. “Ya creepy weirdos.” Washington Times

 

 

Black American Triumphs Outweigh Our Tragedies . . . It always seems as if the tragedies of black Americans—instead of our triumphs—remain center stage in the media. Discussions of our history focus on the tragedies of slavery, but seldom mention the ancient African civilizations ruling the world by the power of their wealth, intelligence, and strength. Archaeological studies of these civilizations have produced breakthrough discoveries and facts that somehow never reach the dinner table in black American homes. Media stories about present-day black America often remind us of a traumatic past, highlighting criminal activity and confrontations with law enforcement. Where are the stories about the countless number of black Americans keeping our communities safe or about those who have risen above tragedy to lead successful lives today? Daily Signal

 

‘Wow, What A Terrible Year!’ Say People Living At The Absolute Peak Of Human Civilization . . . According to sources, thousands of Americans living in the most prosperous, luxurious, plentiful period in the history of the human race think this was a really terrible year. 
"2021 was just the worst," said Marley Buchanan while sipping on organic chai tea and munching on fish tacos he had summoned to his house in only 15 minutes using a pocket-sized supercomputer. "It was just a horrible, horrible year. My anxiety disorder and depression have never been worse. I have to see my therapist 3 times a week now." 

Studies have found that lifespans are longer, quality of life is better, infant mortality is lower, air travel is safer, war and violence is lower, and food is more delicious than at any time in mankind's history. In spite of these and many other amazing facts, humans seem to be getting more miserable. Experts suggest that a major war in 2022 might help turn things around and make people a little happier. Babylon Bee