White House Dossier's

MASKS, SOCIAL DISTANCING RETURN TO CHINA . . . CHINA has brought back masks and social distancing in a chilling echo of lockdown as they battle a mystery pneumonia outbreak four years on from Covid. Alarming footage has emerged of mask-wearing crowds inside Chinese hospitals as fears of a new pandemic sweep across the globe. The Sun

DC area hospitals report uptick in sick visits as global concern for respiratory illnesses grows . . . The mysterious respiratory illnesses that are reportedly wreaking havoc in hospitals in China are now raising concerns for the medical community across the country and impacting Washington D.C., according to reports. FOX 5 DC has learned that hospitals, emergency rooms, urgent care locations and clinics are reportedly seeing an uptick in sick visits. Fox News 

Here we go again. Right on time for the 2024 election campaign. Watch Biden re-instituting COVID protocols for the new illness.

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The potentially high ceiling for Trump’s running mate . . . What Trump does not have at the moment is a running mate.  While the vice presidency’s importance in an administration has been frequently and famously dismissed, its importance in future presidential contests is indisputable. Since 1952, there have been 13 vice presidential running mates who later received their party’s nomination for the presidency.  
While time and circumstances may not work out later for some running mates, both often do. Being a vice presidential running mate puts a person on the inside track for a future race. The reasons for this are many.  If the person winds up serving as vice president, then this provides invaluable experience. The Hill

Hannity wants a red vs. blue state debate. Newsom and DeSantis have other plans . . . Fox’s Sean Hannity will play referee to a pair of ambitious governors. California Democrat Gavin Newsom and Florida Republican Ron DeSantis have competing priorities for Thursday’s debate. Politico

Christie Vows to Continue Doomed Campaign to the Bitter End . . . Every viable political candidate needs a plausible path to victory. There’s never much been one for 2024 presidential aspirant Chris Christie. A two-term New Jersey governor who was emphatically unpopular in the Garden State when he left office in 2018, Christie also bombed as a presidential candidate in 2016, finishing ninth in Iowa and sixth in New Hampshire. He managed to stay in the national limelight for a while by first toadying to and then disrespecting Donald Trump. But he entered the 2024 race with a really bad reputation among Republicans, particularly the MAGA majority. MSN

Missing the Forest for the Trees: Manpower Shortfalls Threaten U.S. Security . . . As the Army attempts to adjust its structure to a smaller size, some have bemoaned the service’s reported decision to reduce special operations force (SOF) units by three thousand soldiers. Shrinking is always hard, and it’s hard to argue the utility of SOF across the spectrum of conflict. But these critics are missing the forest for the trees: the reason the Army must reduce its force structure is because they are losing the existential fight to recruit new soldiers. In 2021 the Army was authorized 485,900 active-duty soldiers. Today that number is 452,000, a drop of 33,900 and in fiscal year 2023 the Army was unable to recruit the necessary number of volunteers to maintain even that reduced size. Real Clear Defense

She Praised Islamic Terror Groups. Then the Biden Admin Tapped Her To Address 'Hate and Threats of Violence" . . . Education Secretary Miguel Cardona hosted a meeting this month with an anti-Israel activist who has praised Hamas and Hezbollah and called for violence against Israel. Cardona on Nov. 15 met with 13 activists—including Palestine Legal advocacy manager Lina Assi—to address the "extremely disturbing pattern of hate and threats of violence in schools and college campuses" following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Assi has called Iran and its terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, "crucial and important" in "resisting imperialism" in the Middle East. As a student activist, she led a crowd in a chant of "Viva, viva Intifada," a call for violent uprising against the Jewish state. Free Beacon

Steve Bannon on Tucker Carlson's show . . .  Dublin in flames. What’s happening in Ireland will happen here, at scale. Tucker Carlson | X

Anti-Israel protesters plan to ‘flood’ Christmas tree lighting — and it’s despicable . . . On Wednesday, Within Our Lifetime plans to throw the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting into disarray. “Flood the tree lighting for Gaza” reads the call to the group’s 135,000 Instagram followers. “Flood” — the same word Hamas used to describe the October 7 attack in which some 1,400 innocents in Israel were killed and more than 200 kidnapped. It’s a new war on Christmas and the West.

The annual televised tree-lighting spectacular, which draws families and tourists from near and far, is a worldwide symbol of the Christian holiday and reverberates with people of all faiths. Some of the enthusiastic comments on the Within Our Lifetime post urge people to bravely “mask up” and “disrupt.” Those are their values: mayhem, done with the privilege of anonymity. We saw it when masked marauders tried to kick in Grand Central Station and climbed street poles — replacing American flags with Palestinian ones — on the eve of Veterans Day. New York Post

Israel-Hamas War: Hostage Releases Continue, CIA Director in Qatar for Talks — Latest Updates . . . Hamas began the handover of a fifth group of hostages to the Red Cross in Gaza, Egyptian officials said, as a cease-fire agreement extended into a fifth day. Negotiators are pushing the two sides to further prolong the pause and start talks on a permanent truce, Egyptian and Qatari officials said.
 

Cease-Fire: Efforts are under way to further extend the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that began on Friday.

Hostages: The return of 11 Israeli hostages from Gaza on Monday left 173 in captivity in the enclave, Israel said. An additional 20 Israeli hostages are expected to be released during the two-day extension that began Tuesday.

U.S.: CIA Director William Burns has arrived in Qatar for talks on releasing more hostages and other aspects of the war. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to make his third trip to the region since Hamas's attack.

Economic toll: The war with Hamas will cost Israel about $53 billion between 2023 and 2025, mostly due to increased defense spending, according to forecasts from Israel's central bank. Wall Street Journal

Israel-Hamas war: Identities of 11 recently-released Israeli hostages revealed . . . The identities of 11 additional hostages who were kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7 and returned Monday have been released. The Israeli military said Monday evening that 11 hostages were handed over to the Red Cross in Gaza and were on their way to Israeli territory, marking the start of the fourth swap under the original truce. IDF special forces and ISA forces accompanied the hostages into Israeli territory. The freed hostages are expected to undergo an initial medical assessment of their health, and the forces will accompany them until they are reunited with their families. Fox News

Ilon Musk and Benjamin Netanyahu tour horrors of October 7 massacre at Kibbutz Kfar Aza

Putin hijacks Israel-Gaza war to fuel tensions in the West . . . The Israeli-Hamas war has given Russia a golden opportunity to sow division among its Western enemies. It's a chance Vladimir Putin's disinformation machine was never going to miss. Since the outbreak of hostilities on October 7, Kremlin-linked Facebook accounts have ramped up their output by almost 400 percent, with the Middle East crisis now dominating posts from Russian diplomats, state-backed outlets and Putin supporters in the West. PoliticoEU

Ukraine War is Just About Over . . . The handwriting was on the wall. The end will be quite sad; Russia will very likely solidify its hold on Donbas and the Crimea, and achieve new territory to the west approaching Kiev, roughly 20 percent of Ukraine. Ukraine will be forced to set aside its goal of joining NATO even as the U.S. takes a new stand on its western border with Poland.

It is all something of a set piece. America’s habit of wandering into a conflict and then losing interest is long (Iraq) enough to count as an addition to history (Afghanistan.) “We have your back” and “we will not abandon you” join “the check’s in the mail” and “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” among  joking faux reassurances. Our proxies seem to end up abandoned and hung out to die. As in Iraq and Afghanistan, never mind Vietnam before that, what was realized at the end could have most likely been achievable at pretty much anytime after the initial hurrahs passed away. It is sad that so many had to die to likely see it happen in 2023. Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

I've been saying for a year that there's no military path to victory for Ukraine. The networks preferred to have Ukraine cheerleaders with magical thinking talents to comment on the conflict. The result of Biden's  Russia-Ukraine policy is that the second largest country in Europe (after Russia) is destroyed with no independent ability to rebuild, a quarter of a million of its men dead or severely injured, millions dispalced, and the US taxpayers are robbed of billions and billions of dollars. For nothing. Other than for the Washington Establishment's delusional dreams. Sickening.

Of course, the magic-minded cheerleader "experts," who were telling TV anchors what they wanted to hear, will never admit that they were wrong. 

Putin's Playbook Author Rebekah Koffler explains why Ukraine's victory is mathematically impossible

Any idea why I haven't been invited back on F&F, after this interview? 🤔

Money

2024 Election to Boost Dollar on Trade-War Tension, JPMorgan Says . . .The dollar is set to gain from a divisive US election contest likely between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump that will raise prospects for a trade war, according to JPMorgan.

Investors should focus on the impact on currencies from potential trade tariffs, given the commanding lead the protectionist Trump holds among Republican nominees, JPMorgan foreign-exchange strategists including Meera Chandan and Patrick Locke wrote in a Nov. 27 note. Bloomberg

Culture

NRA Claims Democrats Are Trying To Kill Its Free Speech . . . The Supreme Court is to decide a dispute between the National Rifle Association and New York State amid growing tension between the NRA and Democrat-controlled states across the country. In National Rifle Association v. Vullo, the Supreme Court will consider whether New York had the right to urge companies to cut their NRA ties in the aftermath of the Parkland school shooting in Florida that killed 17 students and staff. Newsweek

ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Corporate Media Is Eagerly Gobbling Up Hamas’ Casualty Narrative . . . When a hostage is accidentally killed by a soldier or policeman who is trying to kill the hostage-taker, who is guilty of the murder? That’s the question to understand as the press gets it wrong in Gaza. The New York Times has published a distorted and internally inconsistent “analysis “ of casualties allegedly inflicted by Israel on civilians in Gaza. Daily Caller

Rosalynn Carter to Be Honored by Presidents and Fellow First Ladies . . . Former President Jimmy Carter will emerge from hospice care to join a cast of political heavyweights paying tribute on Tuesday to Mrs. Carter, who died at 96 last week at her home in Plains, Ga. New York Times

CDC Speaks Out Over China's Pneumonia Outbreak as Concerns Grow . . . The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is communicating with health officials in China as fears grow over an outbreak of infectious respiratory diseases that has caused clusters of pneumonia among children in the north of the country. David Daigle, a spokesperson for the federal agency, told Newsweek that it would "continue to monitor the situation, collaborating with global health partners" over the increase in illness, and was "in touch with local health authorities and its country office in China." Newsweek

US Intel Officials Worry Little-Known Tech Firm Could Hand Americans’ Genetic Data To China . . . United States intelligence officials are fearful that an Abu Dhabi technology firm could hand over Americans’ genetic data to China, The New York Times reported on Monday. The company, called G42, engages in business with Chinese companies, according to the NYT. It may function as a bridge for China’s government to access cutting-edge U.S. tech and millions of Americans’ genetic data, two officials with knowledge of intelligence reports told the NYT. Daily Caller

Another carjacking foiled by a stick shift vehicle in DC area . . . Amid the crime wave of carjackings in the Washington, D.C., area, another group of would-be thieves were foiled when they attempted to steal a Porsche on Sunday after realizing they couldn't drive a stick shift.

This came after the group pistol-whipped a Bethesda, Maryland, man and stole his vehicle's keys at gunpoint. The victim ran into a nearby business while the suspects discovered they could not operate the vehicle's manual transmission. Washington Examiner