State to Require Home Insurance Coverage Be Offered to High-Risk Areas

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California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara introduced a new regulation Monday aimed at expanding coverage to areas at high risk of wildfires after insurers have limited options for those areas in recent years.

In recent years, wildfires have been costly, which has pushed several insurance companies to pull coverage out of the state, especially in areas at high risk for wildfires. The regulation introduced by Lara would require insurers to increase their coverage to these high-risk areas by making policies that account for 85% of their state market share. The new requirement would allow insurers to ease into the 85% by increasing their percentage by 5% every two years.

“Californians deserve a reliable insurance market that doesn’t retreat from communities most vulnerable to wildfires and climate change,” Lara said in a statement. “This is a historic moment for California.”

“My Sustainable Insurance Strategy is focused on addressing the challenges we face today and building a resilient insurance market for the future. With input from thousands of residents throughout California, this reform balances protecting consumers with the need to strengthen our market against climate risks,” he added.

The state Office of Administrative Law will review the new regulation before it takes effect. (Read more from “State to Require Home Insurance Coverage Be Offered to High-Risk Areas” HERE)

Chief Justice Roberts Warns of Four Areas of Concern in End of Year Report

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Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday addressed four areas of “illegitimate activity” that he said threaten the independence of judges: violence, intimidation, disinformation and threats to defy lawfully entered judgments.

The conservative justice expressed his concerns in the Supreme Court’s annual report.

The report was released following a tumultuous year in which the nation’s courts were unusually entangled in a tightly contested presidential race. During this time, then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who faced a host of criminal charges that he denied, repeatedly attacked the integrity of the judicial system. . .

Roberts wrote in the end of year report: “Attempts to intimidate judges for their rulings in cases are inappropriate and should be vigorously opposed.” He added that while public officials have the right to criticize rulings, they should also be aware that their statements can “prompt dangerous reactions by others.”

“Of course, the courts are no more infallible than any other branch,” Roberts wrote. “In hindsight, some judicial decisions were wrong, sometimes egregiously wrong. And it was right of critics to say so. In a democracy—especially in one like ours, with robust First Amendment protections—criticism comes with the territory. It can be healthy.” (Read more from “Chief Justice Roberts Warns of Four Areas of Concern in End of Year Report” HERE)

2024’s Biggest Loser Was Barack Obama

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As desperate, phony, and even dangerous of a campaign Democrats ran this year, and as embarrassing as the outcome was for all of them, nobody came out looking more pathetic than Barack Obama. From 2024’s vantage point, is there any way to look at his legacy but as a tragic blight on American history?

In the final months of the campaign, Obama seemed to know the outcome of the election would say just as much about him as it would about Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or Donald Trump. And, like all realistic Democrats, he knew that the nominee he supported was on track to lose. His behavior in those days was nothing short of appalling.

Obama first stood by and said nothing when George Clooney, who I had no idea was Democrat royalty, announced in The New York Times that Biden should give up his reelection campaign, as if there was some obvious plan as to what the party would do in that event. Obama did nothing and said nothing as his former vice president was squeezed out, and then he offered what should go down in Democrat history as the most uncomfortable, underwhelming endorsement a former president has ever offered a subsequent nominee. Obama participated in a highly staged phone call with Harris and, with all the enthusiasm of a mortician, told her, “It appears that people feel very strongly that you need to be our nominee.”

It never got any better, and it climaxed in the shocking display of Obama belittling black men. Because he shared in their race (somewhat), Obama felt they should do as he said. “You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses,” he told them to their faces with his arms crossed and brow furrowed. “I’ve got a problem with that because part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly now — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.” Obama literally wagged his finger to tell these grown men, “That’s not acceptable. This shouldn’t even be a question.”

If that weren’t crazed enough, he then trotted out wife Michelle to further nag male voters. “So fellas,” she said at a rally in Michigan, “before you cast your votes ask yourselves what side of history do you want to be on.” She said male “rage” is what could cost Democrats the election. “If we don’t get this election right,” she nagged, “your wife, your daughter, your mother — we as women will become collateral damage to your rage. So are you men prepared to look into the eyes of the women and children you love and tell them that you supported this assault on our safety?” (Can we get one of those overpaid consultants to advise women in politics that there’s nothing frank or authentic about referring to men as “fellas?”) (Read more from “2024’s Biggest Loser Was Barack Obama” HERE)

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Demons Must Be Delighted At How Badly Americans Have Butchered Marriage

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Screwtape knew his business. C.S. Lewis’ fictional devil knew a multitude of ways to ensnare and immiserate people, and poisoning relations between men and women was an essential weapon in his diabolic arsenal. As he put it to his protégé Wormwood, “The aim is to guide each sex away from those members of the other with whom spiritually helpful, happy, and fertile marriages are most likely.” He wanted men and women to be looking for the wrong person and also to be the wrong person.

Were he around, the wily old devil would undoubtedly gloat over current relations between men and women, which are in many ways worse even than he anticipated. There are, of course, still unhappy marriages, but whereas Screwtape took marriage as a cultural given, about half of American adults are now unmarried. The decline in marriage and childbearing has alarmed everyone from politicians to cultural commentators to Elon Musk, but observing the problem isn’t enough to fix it — people will not get married and have children just because it will be good for GDP in a few decades.

And though some people deliberately reject marriage and children, many men and women would like to get married and have kids but are struggling to pair off. Our culture does not teach men and women how to find, let alone how to be, good husbands and wives. Rather, it sometimes seems that, as Lutheran pastor Hans Fiene put it, “[O]ur culture teaches young men to be losers and young women to be narcissists.” Harsh, but perhaps fair.

Because men and women are different, the current cultural and relational wasteland will play out differently for each, often in ways that make men and women even less suited for each other, thereby establishing a relational doom loop in which cultural corruption encourages individual dysfunction that damages and destroys relationships — thereby further entrenching both the cultural and individual problems.

Pornography is an obvious example. It may be especially appealing to men who have not, as a nature documentary might put it, been able to find a mate, but it encourages habits that make it harder for them to establish and sustain a relationship with a woman. For example, porn has taught a generation of young men to be aroused by degrading and dangerous kinks, such as sexual strangulation. The result is further alienation and enmity between the sexes. (Read more from “Demons Must Be Delighted At How Badly Americans Have Butchered Marriage” HERE)

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Chinese Government Claims it Didn’t Hack US Treasury Department, but There’s a Problem

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China-backed hackers reportedly breached several U.S. Treasury Department workstations, according to the agency, which notified lawmakers about the hack.

This development comes after Chinese hackers targeted a number of major corporations as part of a broader cyberespionage effort. CNN reviewed the memo the agency sent to lawmakers.

In a letter reviewed by CNN, a Treasury official said it was informed by a third-party software service provider on December 8 that a threat actor used a stolen key to remotely access certain Treasury workstations and unclassified documents.

“Based on available indicators, the incident has been attributed to a Chinese state-sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) actor,” Aditi Hardikar, assistant secretary for management at the US Treasury, wrote in the letter.

A Treasury spokesperson said in a statement to CNN that the compromised service has been taken offline and officials are working with law enforcement and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

“There is no evidence indicating the threat actor has continued access to Treasury systems or information,” the Treasury spokesperson said.

According to the letter to Senate Banking Committee leadership, the third-party software service provider, BeyondTrust, said hackers gained access to a key used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service that Treasury uses for technical support.

(Read more from “Chinese Government Claims it Didn’t Hack US Treasury Department, but There’s a Problem” HERE)

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An Infamous COVID Doctor Is Now Fearmongering About Bird Flu

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Doctor Leana Wen, the woman who advocated for the imprisonment of individuals who refused the COVID-19 vaccine, is back with her fear mongering, communistic and iron first prescriptions. . .

During an interview with CBS News this week, Wen urged the Biden administration to rush distribute Bird Flu vaccines and testing.

Wen’s advice may feel benign, but her record shows heavy advocacy for government force — not to keep people healthy, but to exact a desired behavioral result.

Meanwhile, here’s what the CDC has to say about the situation:

(Read more from “An Infamous COVID Doctor Is Now Fearmongering About Bird Flu” HERE)

Teachers Will No Longer Need to Pass Basic Reading, Writing and Math Test for Certification in This Blue State

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A New Jersey law that removes a requirement for teachers to pass a reading, writing and mathematics test for certification will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2025.

The law, Act 1669, was passed by Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy as part of the state’s 2025 budget in June in an effort to address a shortage of teachers in the state, according to the New Jersey Monitor. Individuals seeking an instructional certificate will no longer need to pass a “basic skills” test administered by the state’s Commissioner of Education.

“We need more teachers,” Democratic Sen. Jim Beach, who sponsored the bill, said according to the New Jersey Monitor. “This is the best way to get them.”

New Jersey is especially in need of math and science teachers, according to an annual report from the state’s education department.

Just months earlier, Murphy signed a similar bill into law that created an alternative pathway for teachers to sidestep the testing requirement. A powerful teachers union, the New Jersey Education Association, was a driving force behind the bill, calling the testing requirement “an unnecessary barrier to entering the profession.” Teachers in the state are paid an average of $81,102 annually, according to the National Education Association.

(Read more from “Teachers Will No Longer Need to Pass Basic Reading, Writing and Math Test for Certification in This Blue State” HERE)

Chris Cuomo Says He Felt ‘Satisfaction’ Over Harris Loss After ‘Lefties’ Downplayed Trump Assassination Attempt

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NewsNation host Chris Cuomo disclosed Tuesday that he was satisfied by Vice President Kamala Harris’ November loss because of left-wing individuals minimizing the July 13 assassination attempt against President-elect Donald Trump.

After Trump was shot in the ear while speaking at his rally in Butler Township, Pennsylvania, some on the left downplayed the incident by claiming he was struck by glass fragments from a teleprompter rather than a bullet. Cuomo, on “The Chris Cuomo Project,” expressed disgust and outrage over the reaction, suggesting Harris’ loss was a deserved political consequence.

“What I found completely appalling and outrageous was how unimpressed lefties were by Trump getting shot in the head and how many of you would say, ‘Will you stop saying he got shot in the head? It just nicked his ear.’ Once again, to my earlier point: f**k you. You get nicked in the ear by a bullet and tell me that it’s ‘No big deal. I’m good. I’m good.’ Nah, nah. That’s crazy,” Cuomo said. “If that had happened to Harris, you guys would have talked about it for three days nonstop about how we’re in Helter Skelter mode or whatever it is. And then you go and call me a bigot for saying that. This is why you lost the election. That’s exactly why you lost the election.”

“You are out of touch. You lost the plot about how people feel in the majority. That’s what you did, and that was a perfect example of it, that situation. ‘Oh, I think it was just a teleprompter.’ You would have never assessed it that way if you didn’t wish the guy had died,” he continued. “How fucked up up is that? That you wished he had died? That you play down that he was shot at? It was disgusting. And I, for one, felt a measure of satisfaction that you were punished for it politically because there is no place for that. ‘Oh, he would have.’ He is not the standard of any kind of virtue, okay? And he still beat you.” (Read more from “Chris Cuomo Says He Felt ‘Satisfaction’ Over Harris Loss After ‘Lefties’ Downplayed Trump Assassination Attempt” HERE)

Man in Critical Condition After Being Shoved Onto Subway Tracks, Struck by Train

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A man in New York City is in critical condition after someone shoved him onto the subway tracks, where he was struck by an incoming train.

Police called the incident a random attack at the 18th Street station around 1:30 p.m. eastern on Tuesday when a masked and hooded assailant pushed the unsuspecting 45-year-old man onto the tracks just as an incoming train bulleted through the station. Two bystanders were seen fearfully jumping the turnstile to flee the scene.

According to the New York Post, the victim was immediately rushed to a local hospital, where he was in critical condition but rendered stable. Police said that no evidence suggests the attacker knew the victim or had any personal animus.

Dramatic video footage from the scene shows firefighters working to pull the injured man from between subway cars as bystanders gawk at the scene on the station platform.

The suspect, described as a man with a light complexion wearing a mask, a black jacket over a dark hooded sweatshirt and gray jeans, fled the station in an unknown direction and is still on the loose.

The incident is the latest in a series of transit attacks in the Big Apple, including two slashings on Sunday and the horrific Dec. 22 torching death of a sleeping straphanger on an F train in Brooklyn.

(Read more from “Man in Critical Condition After Being Shoved Onto Subway Tracks, Struck by Train” HERE)

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Trans Athlete Slams NCAA for Lack of Full Scholarships to Compete Against Women

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A transgender NCAA track and field athlete is blasting the college sports organization for not offering more scholarships to men who identify as women to play women’s sports in college.

Rochester Institute of Technology Sadie Schreiner recently decried the lack of sports opportunities for transgender athletes, according to Fox News.

“Among all the hurdles transfers usually have, there is an extra layer because it is trans, 50% of the country banned me from participating, and that meant I couldn’t attend any of those colleges even if they reached out to me with a full ride,” Schreiner exclaimed.

Schreiner also insisted that the state’s rules cannot prevent him from attending those schools if he wants to.

“It also became clear that states that did, no matter how adamant the coaches were to have me on their teams, the college administrations would usually stop them from allowing me to participate.”

(Read more from “Trans Athlete Slams NCAA for Lack of Full Scholarships to Compete Against Women” HERE)