Cut to the News
Cut through the clutter to today's top news
January 17, 2022
Good morning
Welcome to today's top news.
Leading the News . . .
Times Square subway shove victim volunteered as an advocate for the homeless . . . The straphanger randomly pushed to her death by an alleged unhinged vagrant was a senior manager at the top consulting firm Deloitte — and volunteered as an advocate for the homeless. Michelle Go — an MBA graduate of NYU’s prestigious Stern School of Business — lived on the Upper West Side and worked for Deloitte in strategy and operations and mergers
and acquisitions, according to her LinkedIn Page. But the “wonderful,’’ “kind’’ 40-year-old woman was also known for her volunteerism over the past decade with the New York Junior League, where she helped those struggling to get and stay on their feet, including the homeless.
“Michelle’s focus populations were seniors, recovering homeless, immigrants, and under resourced and academically struggling elementary and middle school kids and their parents,’’ a Junior League rep told The Post in an e-mail Sunday. Go worked on one committee with “the goal of empowering adults and young adults on the path to independent success,’’ the league said. New York Post
Heartbreaking.
Republicans prepare their wish list for filibuster-free Senate . . . Democrats may be paving an eventual path to stiffer ballot standards if they trigger the “nuclear option” to carve out a special exception to Senate filibuster rules to approve voting rights legislation. The next time Republicans take power in Washington, they will use the filibuster-free window to erase some Democratic changes and impose their own ideas about national
election integrity, political professionals say. Without a Democratic filibuster, Republicans could force states to clean up voter rolls or ban the practice of ballot harvesting. Republicans promise it won’t stop there. A filibuster exception for Democrats’ priority issue would quickly expand to accommodate Republicans the next time their party takes control of the political levers in Washington. Washington Times
Florida looms large in Republican 2024 primary . . . Florida is emerging as the epicenter of the early fight for the GOP presidential nomination as speculation grows about the possibility of as many as four Republicans from the Sunshine State pursuing the party's nod in 2024. Among the Floridians seen as potential White House hopefuls are Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and, of course, former
President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly hinted at a 2024 comeback bid. The densely packed field of Floridians weighing campaigns for the White House raises the potential for a political free-for-all that could pit some of the state’s most prominent Republicans against one another. But it also underscores the extent to which the Sunshine State has become a hub for the conservative movement in recent years.
“You’re almost guaranteed that a Floridian is going to be the nominee in 2024,” said Ford O’Connell, a Florida-based Republican strategist and former congressional candidate. The Hill
Stalled in Congress, Biden ready to do police reform by fiat . . . President Biden needs to put some points on the board. All his recent initiatives have failed. So, time for an end-run around Congress. It’s not clear what he’s planning. But it probably involves policing by psychiatrists and sociologists. According to NBC News: President Joe Biden is planning to sign executive actions on police reform as early as this month,
three people familiar with the plans said, as his administration seeks to unilaterally jumpstart an issue that’s a top priority for a key constituency. The executive actions would follow Biden’s uphill battle to advance voting rights legislation, and could coincide with a similar effort by some Democratic lawmakers to revive the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which stalled on Capitol Hill after failed attempts to craft a bipartisan measure. White House Dossier
Recent breakthroughs in 2020 election probes undercut narrative that legal avenues are exhausted . . . Mounting evidence of irregularities and rigged rules has emerged through state and local investigations, court decisions, financial disclosure, and audits in the 14 months since the election. More than a year after the disputed 2020 presidential election, a series of legal breakthroughs in the investigation of the electoral process in
decisive swing states — including official inquiries, court rulings, audits and finial disclosures — has unfolded in rapid succession recently, even as election integrity opponents continue to insist that all legal avenues for questioning the outcome have long since been exhausted. Interviewing former Trump senior economic advisor Peter Navarro about the election earlier this month, MSNBC TV host Ari Melber argued that the "outcome was established by independent secretaries of state, by the
voters of those states, and legal remedies had been exhausted with the Supreme Court never even taking, let alone siding with, any of the claims that you just referred to." Just the News
Democrats see good chance of Garland prosecuting Trump . . . Senate Democrats believe there is a good chance the Department of Justice will prosecute former President Trump for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election and inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, which would have major political reverberations ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Democratic lawmakers say they don’t have any inside information on what might
happen and describe Attorney General Merrick Garland as someone who would make sure to run any investigation strictly “by the book.” But they also say the fact that Garland has provided little indication about whether or not the Department of Justice has its prosecutorial sights set on Trump doesn’t necessarily mean the former president isn’t likely to be charged. Given the weight of public evidence, Democratic lawmakers think Trump committed federal crimes. The Hill
‘Great unifier’ Biden tells half the country to go to hell . . . President Biden went down to Georgia on Tuesday, following a trail blazed by the devil. Bemoaning Georgia’s new election law, which is less strict than that of Mr. Biden’s Delaware or Elizabeth Warren’s Massachusetts, Mr. Biden played a tune hatched in hell, the kind of stuff that stokes a civil war, not healing. Mr. Biden, who earlier called “white nationalists” the
greatest security threat facing America, went full demagogue at an Atlanta college: “I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against all enemies foreign and, yes, domestic.” The “great unifier,” who once warned Black Americans that Republicans were “gonna put y’all back in chains,” invoked America’s actual Civil War to demonize his opponents, saying, “I ask every elected official in America, how do you want to be remembered? Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George
Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?” George Wallace, Bull Connor and Jefferson Davis were all Democrats. Republicans voted in higher percentages in Congress than Democrats for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. No matter. Mr. Biden’s ace in the hole is a rotten, leftist-dominated education system that specializes in systemic ignorance, especially about
American history. He counts on the college-educated media to be reflexively socialist and to bury inconvenient facts. Washington Times
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Texas synagogue hostage crisis is a terrorism-related matter,’ FBI says . . . Biden calls Texas synagogue hostage an 'act of terror'. Finally. Malik Faisal Akram, the British national who was killed Saturday night after allegedly taking four people hostage inside a Texas synagogue, spoke "repeatedly" about a convicted terrorist during negotiations with law enforcement, according to an FBI statement obtained by Fox News. The
statement, which was released late Sunday, does not identify the terrorist serving an 86-year prison sentence in the U.S. on terrorism charges, but may shed new light on a possible motive. Fox News
‘Lady Al Qaeda’ Blamed Jews for Her Conviction . . . Her Allies Can’t Figure Why A Gunman Attacked Synagogue In Her Name. The Council on American Islamic Relations denied any connection between the terror attack at a Texas synagogue and its campaign to free imprisoned terrorist Aafia Siddiqui, one day after a fanatical gunman took Jewish congregants hostage to demand Siddiqui’s release. CAIR has been a longtime advocate for clemency for
Siddiqui, a terror operative who was dubbed "Lady al Qaeda" and sentenced to 86 years in prison in 2010 for trying to gun down U.S. FBI and military officials. During a joint press conference with Siddiqui’s attorney on Sunday, CAIR’s Dallas director Faizan Syed said it had no prior relationship to the the assailant, British national Malik Faisal Akram, and that his actions should not detract from efforts to seek clemency for Siddiqui. Washington Free Beacon
Two Arrested in UK in Connection With Texas Synagogue Hostage-Taker . . . Two teenagers have been arrested in the United Kingdom, in connection with a British national who took four hostages at a Texas Synagogue on Saturday, police have said. “As part of the ongoing investigation into the attack that took place at a Synagogue in Texas on 15 January 2022, Officers from the Counter Terror Policing North West have made two arrests in
relation to the incident,” a counter-terrorism police unit of the Greater Manchester Police said on Sunday. “Two teenagers were detained in South Manchester this evening,” the police added in the statement posted on Twitter. “They remain in custody for questioning.” Epoch Times
Putin Yanks Biden’s Chain As He Gages NATO’s Reaction To a Potential Strike on Ukraine . . . Neither side expected any breakthroughs going into the meetings in Europe. As Biden’s varsity team was trying to squeeze some diplomatic victories out of a doomed engagement, Moscow operatives had a completely different agenda. The Russians already knew that their proposal was a no-go for Washington. For Moscow, the whole encounter with the
Americans in Europe was an intelligence gathering operation designed to assess whether the US President was going to stick to his promise that he gave to Putin last month — not to intervene on behalf of Ukraine, even if Russia invades. You see, espionage is not all about gathering secrets, although the Russians are excellent at that too. NATO can barely keep up with the expulsions of Putin’s spies from Brussels. The most valuable secret about your opponent is what we call in the intelligence
business “atmospherics” intelligence, or your “read” of the mood of your adversary, especially when planning a strike. This sort of “human-terrain mapping” can only be gathered on the ground, face to face with the enemy. Townhall
Time for NATO to Close Its Door . . . The Alliance Is Too Big—and Too Provocative—for Its Own Good. The NATO alliance is ill suited to twenty-first-century Europe. This is not because Russian President Vladimir Putin says it is or because Putin is trying to use the threat of a wider war in Ukraine to force neutrality on that country and to halt the alliance’s expansion. Rather, it is because NATO suffers from a severe design flaw:
extending deep into the cauldron of eastern European geopolitics, it is too large, too poorly defined, and too provocative for its own good. Closing NATO’s open door will not resolve Washington’s problems with Russia. These problems go far beyond the alliance. But ending NATO expansion would be an act of self-defense for the alliance itself, giving it the gifts that greater limitation and greater clarity confer. Foreign Affairs
Deterring Russia requires a capable bridge tanker and Congressional support . . . Analysis. By General Phil Breedlove. Russia is building up forces along its border with Ukraine, and NATO is watching with rising alarm. The current crisis is the latest in a long line of increasingly aggressive Russian actions against its neighbors. From the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea, NATO allies and partners have faced everything from grey-zone
tactics to airborne harassment to outright war, all directed from Moscow. As long as this pattern continues, NATO must remain vigilant — to protect the independence of its allies and partners, and to deter Putin’s adventurism. A key element of U.S. deterrence strategy must be to provide NATO air power with sufficient legs — in the form of a modern, capable, interoperable tanker force. The United States remains mired in the past, making do with legacy tankers like the Eisenhower-vintage
KC-135, based on the old 707 commercial jetliner, which remain the backbone of the tanker fleet. The U.S. Air Force endures significant delays in delivery of the new KC-46 Pegasus due to quality issues. This crossroads faced by the U.S. Air Force — an aging tanker fleet combined with delays from an unproven design — calls for an alternative solution. Military Times
General Breedlove is a retired four-star general of US Air Force and a former NATO supreme commander in Europe. I had the honor of briefing him a few times, including during of the NATO summits in Brussels. I am also honored that Gen. B. endorsed my book, Putin's Playbook: Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat
America.
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Former Ukrainian president lands in Kyiv to face treason case . . . Ukraine's former President Petro Poroshenko landed in Kyiv on Monday to face treason charges in a case he says was trumped up by allies of his successor, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Poroshenko's return sets up a showdown with Zelenskiy's government in what critics say is an ill-judged distraction at a time when Ukraine is bracing for a possible Russian military offensive
and appealing to Western allies for support. Western diplomats called for political unity in Ukraine ahead of Poroshenko's arrival. Poroshenko is being investigated for alleged treason linked to the financing of Russian-backed separatist fighters through illegal coal sales while in office in 2014-15. His party accused Zelenskiy of a reckless attempt to silence political opposition. Reuters
Remember how the Obama Administration and all the "experts" were enthralled with Poroshenko? Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, on par with Russia. Sending American men and women in uniform to fight for Ukraine with nuclear Russia would be madness.
Regretfully, 30-years of inept policies pursued by the "experts," coupled with the erosion of US defense posture and lack of viable security strategy, left America without a credible deterrent. In every single US-RUS wargame that I was part of, Blue suffered significant losses and still was unable to win the conflict with Red.
This is why I am a firm advocate for permanent readiness for war, as a deterrent, but not war itself. With Russia, over Ukraine.
North Korea's Booming Hacking Industry Stole $400M in Cryptocurrency Last Year . . .
North Korean hackers stole $400 million worth of cryptocurrency last year, "launching at least seven attacks on cryptocurrency platforms," new research has found. The findings released by Chainalysis, a software company that monitors cryptocurrency, found that the attacks targeted "primarily investment firms and centralized exchanges." The hackers "made use of phishing lures, code exploits, malware, and advanced social engineering to siphon funds out of these organizations'
internet-connected 'hot' wallets into DPRK-controlled addresses," Chainalysis wrote on Thursday. "Once North Korea gained custody of the funds, they began a careful laundering process to cover up and cash out." Newsweek
A lot of Arctic infrastructure is threatened by rising temperatures . . . Thawing permafrost is a particularly unpredictable environment on which to build. As its ice content changes and the volume of liquid water increases, the soil can experience vertical movements of up to 40cm a year and its capacity to bear weight drops dramatically. This can lead to landslides, to the subsidence of individual buildings, and to the appearance of cracks
and deformities in long, linear structures such as roads and pipelines. Russia will be particularly badly hit. North America’s permafrost, which makes up half of Canada’s territory and more than three-quarters of Alaska’s, tends to be more sparsely populated than Russia’s, with human impact dominated by roads, airstrips and oil pipelines. Nonetheless, degradation is still an issue. Authorities in the Northwest Territories, one of Canada’s largest and most northerly regions, calculate that
permafrost-induced damage amounts, even today, to $41m a year, which is about $900 per resident. Economist
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Supreme Court vaccine rulings fail to recognize God-given rights . . . Opinion. By Cheryl K. Chumley. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a moment of supreme lucidity, slapped down Joe Biden’s presidential attempt to use a federal agency to bend private companies’ to his executive will — that is, to use OSHA as a COVID-19 vaccine mandate enforcer for millions of privately employed Americans. The ruling, reeling in
the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, is cause for cheer. But the rest of the Supreme Court’s determinations left plenty of wiggle room for the tyrants of the left to continue their tyrannical, COVID-19-tied clamps on individual liberties. And that’s cause for a wake-up call and rousing to patriots for more, bigger and more intense cultural and legal fights. Washington Times
18 More Federal Agencies Eye Making Vaccine Religious-Objector Lists . . . This week, we revealed that an obscure federal agency plans to keep lists of the “personal religious information” employees who had religious objections to the federal employee vaccine mandate. As it turns out, the little-known Pre-trial Services Agency for the District of Columbia isn’t the only federal agency involved. As we feared, a whole-of-government effort
looks to be underway. A little digging at the Federal Register revealed that there are at least 19 total federal agencies—including five cabinet level agencies—that have created or proposed to create these tracking lists for religious-exemption requests from their employees.
The list includes the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of the Treasury, to name only a few.
As the nation’s largest employer, with over four million civilian and military employees, the federal government has received tens of thousands of religious exemption requests. It now appears that an increasing number of federal agencies are keeping and preserving those individuals’ names, religious information, personally identifying information, and other data stored in lists across multiple government agencies. Why? Daily Signal
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Supply Chain Woes Could Worsen as China Imposes New Covid Lockdowns . . . Companies are bracing for another round of potentially debilitating supply chain disruptions as China, home to about a third of global manufacturing, imposes sweeping lockdowns in an attempt to keep the Omicron variant at bay. The measures have already confined tens of millions of people to their homes in several Chinese cities and contributed to
a suspension of connecting flights through Hong Kong from much of the world for the next month. At least 20 million people, or about 1.5 percent of China’s population, are in lockdown, mostly in the city of Xi’an in western China and in Henan Province in north-central China. The country’s zero-tolerance policy has manufacturers — already on edge from spending the past two years dealing with crippling supply chain woes — worried about another round of shutdowns at Chinese factories and
ports. New York Times
The U.S. government is boycotting the Beijing Olympics over human rights, not the corporate world . . . Late last year, human rights activists stood outside the White House for 57 hours urging the United States to stage a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics. A few weeks later, they got their wish. For two years, campaigners representing the people of Hong Kong, Tibet and China’s Xinjiang region have been pushing U.S. and Western
companies to either drop their sponsorships and broadcasts of the Games, which start Feb. 4, or to publicly condemn the repression Chinese authorities have carried out in those regions. But activists say the risk of offending the rulers of the world’s second-biggest economy has caused the companies to stick with their deals and stay mum on China’s human rights abuses, despite a U.S. State Department determination that China is committing genocide against the Uyghur minority. Washington Post
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Thousands of US flights canceled, thousands more delayed as winter storm wallops southeast . . . A dangerous winter storm slammed the southeast U.S. over the weekend, canceling and delaying thousands of flights. On Sunday alone, nearly 5,700 flights had been delayed while more than 4,700 flights had been canceled, according to the latest data from FlightAware.com.
Among the hardest hit were American Airlines, Southwest, and Delta. According to the data, American had some 630 flights canceled, and more than 300 delayed. Southwest had more than 300 flights canceled and more than 360 flights delayed. Delta had 240 flights canceled about the same number of delayed flights. Fox News
Martin Luther King's dream is alive but liberal policies are destroying Black communities . . .
Opinion. By Kendall Qualls. What has happened to the American Black family is not the dream King had and is nothing short of cultural genocide. If the American Black family was a spotted owl or a gray wolf, it would be on the endangered species list. Instead of refocusing on cultural roots of faith, family and education that sustained the Black family during the most difficult times in our country’s history, we now blame racial disparities on white privilege and systemic
racism. We know the damaging affects fatherless homes to children after seeing the steep decline of two-parents in the Black community for five decades: 85 percent of children with behavioral disorders; 90 percent of homeless and runaways; young boys and girls suffer higher rates of physical and sexual abuse, and list continues. Fox News
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Self-defense is no longer optional -- it's your obligation to yourself and your family . . . Crime has sky-rocketed, courtesy of the dumb leftist "defund the police" policies. Despite the stupid claim by Joe Biden and his ilk that gun control will eliminate crime, violence has increased dramatically recently. Criminals are finding the most devious ways to murder innocent civilians, even without using any weapons. An innocent
lady was pushed to her death onto the tracks in front of an approaching subway train in New York City. This could've been me or any of my family members, living in NYC. No, psychologists are not going to solve the crime problem. It's not their job and they are not equipped to do it. It's time that we all accept this horrible reality and become responsible for our own safety.
Train to defend yourself with my friend and former colleague, John Murphy. FPF Training's Street Encounter Skills and Tactics course, developed by John, enables citizens to defend themselves across a spectrum of likely encounters, ranging from social conflict to criminal interaction. The course begins with a five hour view ahead on YouTube, and training day one begins with acquiring hard and soft skills that are blended together to
provide a holistic approach to self-defense. Training day two culminates with a series of scenarios and exercises to ensure that students leave the class having proven that their confidence is based in demonstrated competence.
Watch this video below and sign up for John's self-defense course in your area. In addition to firearms, John also teaches how to use pepper spray (it's not as simple as you might think) and other non-lethal methods.
Subscribe to John's YouTube channel and podcast
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