SOCIALISTS KEEP LOOKING TO “UNEXPECTEDLY” NATIONALIZE: Nationalize Greyhound.

—Jacobin, today.

If only there was a nationalized transportation system that has existed for decades that we could use as a benchmark to see how nationalizing Greyhound would likely proceed:

After posting historic spending deficits in 2021 and 2022, Amtrak is planning to spend more in fiscal year 2024 as federal funding expands to “unprecedented” levels.

Amtrak posted operating losses of $1.08 billion in 2021 and $886.8 million in 2022, far greater than pre-COVID losses, but is still going ahead with expansion. By comparison, Amtrak lost $29.4 million in 2019, the year before the pandemic hit.

The increase in spending was pandemic-related, according to Amtrak.

Amtrak asked Congress for a $350 million bump in funding for fiscal year 2024 to $3.65 billion.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) was signed into law by President Joe Biden on November 15, 2021. The law authorizes $1.2 trillion for transportation and infrastructure spending with $550 billion of that figure going toward “new” investments and programs. Amtrak will receive $85.2 billion via IIJA from FY 2022 through FY 2026.

—Amtrak presses on with more funding and expansion despite historic losses, the Washington Examiner, May 19^th.

And it’s curious that Jacobin doesn’t want competition for Greyhound’s services, when they exist as competition among the left for Salon’s longstanding goals of nationalizing every industry in the US:

• “Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle.”

—Salon.com, March 6, 2013.

• “Let’s nationalize Fox News: Imagining a very different media…Excerpted from ‘Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA.’

—Salon.com, January 18, 2014.

• “Like [the late communist Pete] Seeger and the FDR cargo cult, Salon also harbors turn-the-clock-back fantasies of their own: Last month, the publication called for the nationalization of the news media because it was uncomfortable with the glut of right-leaning news and opinion led by — you guessed it! — Fox News. (Hmmm — I wonder if someone in the FCC read that article?) Now the Website wishes to turn the clock back on the film industry because of a perceived glut of independent films.”

—Easy Riders, Raging Stasists, Ed Driscoll.com, February 22, 2014.

• “Let’s nationalize Amazon and Google: Publicly funded technology built Big Tech. They’re huge and ruthless and define our lives. They’re close to monopolies. Let’s make them public utilities.”

—Salon.com, July 8, 2014.

NOBODY NEEDS AN AR-15: Seattle Homeowner Uses Rifle to Fend Off 4 Home Invaders in Early Morning Home Invasion Attempt.

SO I’VE FINISHED THE LAST BOOK (SO FAR) of Tom Burkhalter’s World War II series, and I’ve quite enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

The action in New Guinea reminds me of my 8th grade history teacher, Mr. Rufus Pannell, who was an antiaircraft gunner in New Guinea from 1942-1945. We quickly learned that he could be diverted from the day’s assignments with questions about his time there, and while we thought we were getting away with something, we also learned some things about American history that weren’t in the textbook.

READER FAVORITE: LEATHERMAN, Skeletool Lightweight Multitool. #CommissionEarned

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: New Mexico’s Two-Tier Criminal Justice System Overlooks Law-Breaking Gun Control Group…So Far. “Last week, we shared the insane story of a gun control group in New Mexico that managed to run afoul of a lot of gun control laws. All of these were laws that the group supports, and even had a hand in helping some of them to pass. Now, we’re seeing that they’ve likely committed a number of felonies and have even admitted to violating some of them. But state and federal authorities have done nothing so far. For some reason.”

David Gregory was not available for comment.

WHY LEFTIES DON’T GET IT: There’s a flood of depressing news these days, but buried behind the headlines are some genuinely positive developments for the American body politic. Issues & Insights explains, for example, why the crazies on the Left just can’t understand why important folks among their cohorts are heading Rightward.

“This drift is obvious enough, since it includes journalists once heralded by the left such as Matt Taibbi (who won a Young America’s Foundation award) and Glenn Greenwald, and Democratic politicians, including Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (whose speech at a Daily Caller award ceremony drew many loud cheers from the conservative audience), and Sen. John Fetterman (who recently declared that ‘I am not a progressive’).

“Celebrities such as Russell Brand, David Chappelle, and Bill Maher (who ‘has been riding an asphalt roller over the far left,’ according to Townhall) are part of the shift, as are a handful of prominent business leaders, Elon Musk for instance.”

READER FAVORITE: MyPillow Premium Bed Pillow Set of 2 Queen Medium. #CommissionEarned

STAR OF THE MAGI OR A GREAT COMET? Physicist/astronomer Eric Hedin digs into the evidence for possible explanations of the star that led the Three Wise Men to baby Jesus in Bethlehem. He concludes it’s doubtful that the most common explanation — a triple conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter — suffices. More on HillFaith today.

DAVID THOMPSON: The Year Reheated.

In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.

The year began with a tale of oysters and college lesbianism, via Bon Appétit magazine, in which Brooklynite pronoun-stipulator Isha Maratha was keen to overshare. For Ms Maratha, “My first time eating an oyster was an act of queer intimacy.” Indeed, we were told by an obliging editor, “The act of eating an oyster uniquely and intimately expresses her queerness.” And so, we were regaled, at length, with descriptions of mollusc-gobbling, stolen glances, and lemon wedges being squeezed. “There is something uniquely unspoken,” we learned, “between the eater and the eaten.”

Spartacus, call your office!

SELFISH GENE: Revealing how an ancient genetic invader inhabits our DNA.

FOXNEWS.COM: “2023 was a ‘dire’ year for freedom of speech on campus, says this organization. Will next year be any better?” 

WHO CAN BLAME THEM? Researchers find reindeer sleep while chewing their cud.

BUT THE OAKS CAN’T HELP THEIR FEELINGS, IF THEY LIKE THE WAY THEY’RE MADE: ‘Ecosexual’ woman embarks on ‘erotic’ relationship with oak tree.

HMM: Owning a pet may slow rate of cognitive decline, study suggests.

HOLOCAUST MUSEUM WEIGHS IN AS ANTI-ISRAEL GROUP FURIOUSLY BACKTRACKS ON MUSEUM STORMING EVENT:

Contrary to popular belief, apparently there are some lines that even anti-Israel types won’t cross after all. But only when they’re shamed into doing so.

As RedState previously reported, the newly formed “Doctors Against Genocide” (DAG) anti-Israel group, whose powerful allies include antisemitic members of Congress like House Hamas Caucus members Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.), announced on Christmas Day of all days that it was holding a “Stop the Genocide in Gaza” event inside the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, encouraging their supporters to obtain free tickets from the museum.

Anti-Israel protesters are preparing a protest the day after tomorrow in front of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.

It’s the main institution in the U.S. studying the Holocaust a creating awareness about the genocide.

These people are shameless pic.twitter.com/mfHYs4iWxH

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) December 26, 2023

“Doctors Against Genocide,” huh?

🇸🇾 500,000 killed in Syria?
🇾🇪 380,000 killed in Yemen?
🇦🇫 240,000 killed in Afghanistan?
🇸🇩 500,000 killed in Sudan?
🇮🇶 300,000 killed in Iraq?
It's fine. No “Doctors Against Genocide”

Israel 🇮🇱 defends itself against Hamas?
“Doctors Against Genocide” is formed! pic.twitter.com/2GSC2mVwlw

— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) December 26, 2023

On the flipside, just like that, the Middle East is prepared to — at least for the moment — pretend that the Holocaust actually happened. That’s real (and likely temporary) progress, in less than a year: On Social Media, Arabs And Muslims Deny The Holocaust.

PREDICTION: Higher Education Stories That Will Dominate Next Year.

RIP: Comedian Tommy Smothers, one-half of the Smothers Brothers, dies at 86.

OLD AND BUSTED #FightforFifteen!

The New Hotness? #FightforTwenty! Pizza Hut franchisees lay off more than 1,200 delivery drivers in California as restaurants brace for $20 fast-food wages.

TAKE A BOW TIKTOK: One in five young Americans has a positive view of Osama Bin Laden: Disturbing Daily Mail poll results also reveal three in 10 Gen-Zers think the views of the 9/11 mastermind were a ‘force for good.’

One in five young Americans has a positive view of 9/11 mastermind and Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden, according to disturbing results of a DailyMail.com poll.

The alarming survey also found three in 10 Gen Z voters believe the views of the anti-Semitic terrorist leader who slaughtered thousands of innocent people were a ‘force for good’.

Family members of 9/11 victims said the findings are ‘horrifying’ and proof of a startling trend suggesting some in the younger generation are growing sympathetic to terrorists.

* * * * * * * *

The stunning results of DailyMail.com’s poll reveal a stark change in attitudes and follow worrying examples in recent months of younger Americans questioning Bin Laden’s evil.

In November, anti-Israel TikTok users sent Bin Laden’s 2002 ‘Letter to America’ with his justification for 9/11 viral.

Some users said their ‘eyes had been opened’ and backed his claim that the attacks were a retaliation for the U.S. supporting Israel.

In the letter he also accused the American government of spreading AIDS throughout the world and described homosexuality as ‘immoral’.

So basically, the Unabomber on steroids; as this 2021 article notes, TikTok users discovering murderous primitives for the first time isn’t all that new a development: Influencer Society and Its Future. Swallow the Ted pill on Unabomber stan TikTok.

I’m so old, I can remember last month when this tweet was satire:

Earlier: TikTok May Be A Chinese Superweapon.

CHRIS QUEEN: Creating a Left-Wing Jesus. “Why does ‘universality’ only apply to certain ethnicities and their depictions of Jesus?”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Japan’s SLIM successfully enters lunar orbit, gears up for precision moon landing.

MOSTLY PEACEFUL SWATTING: Marjorie Taylor Greene shares death threat warning she will be ‘shot in the head’ and ‘skinned’ like serial killer Ed Gein’s victims sent before she was swatted on Christmas Day.

PRIORITIES: Men Can Get Free Tampons in Canadian Government Building Bathrooms Now.

DISSOLUTE OR DISSOLUSION?: Over at Law & Liberty, Helen Dale suggests that the universities might go the same way as England’s monasteries in the 16th century – from massively wealthy institutions to non-existent within a few years. She notes that one of the similarities is that both believed in obviously superstitious nonsense:

Claudine Gay, Elizabeth Magill, and Sally Kornbluth didn’t turn up trying to sell Elise Stefanik a piece of the True Cross or an ampoule of San Gennaro’s blood, but they may as well have. They believe things—as their testimony and behaviour both before and since shows—that are vacuous nonsense, rooted in emotionally incontinent wibble. They’ve adopted a tendentious definition of racism that blinds people to injustices against any group seen as dominant. They’ve divided the world into simplistic categories of oppressors and oppressed, of whites and people of colour, of colonisers and colonised. They’ve concluded discrimination is justified on behalf of the marginalised. They think “my truth” can be substituted for “the truth.”

RTWT.

OK, CHIEF: Russia threatens to take US military bases in NATO territory as chilling warning issued.

Vladimir Solovyov, a Russian broadcaster, issued the demand during a recent TV segment.

In a clip shared on X by Eastern European media outlet Nexta, Solovyov said Moscow should capture American bases in Germany, Italy and Portugal.

He said during Evening with Vladimir Solovyov: “I believe that all American occupation troops should be withdrawn from Europe, and Russian military bases should be located deep from the territory of the Russian Federation.

“For example, it is perfectly possible to occupy part of the military bases that have been prepared by the Americans in Western Europe. Ramstein could be our base.

Ambitious, considering Russia hasn’t been able to hold anything west of the Dnipro.