But those results are now old news. Wirepoints has just run the new Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) 2023 Report Card data and the outcomes are worse even though the impacts of covid are another year behind us.

In 2023, there were 67 Illinois schools where not a single student tested proficient in math and 32 where no student tested proficient in reading. What’s worse, officials in those schools graduated nearly 70% of their students. More than 12,000 students attend Illinois’ zero-proficiency schools. Every single one of those children will struggle in life because they lack basic reading and math skills.

Meanwhile, Congress is also working on regular spending bills (known as appropriations) that fund national defense and federal agencies. The most recent deal funds part of the federal government through March 1 and the rest through March 8.

It remains to be seen whether these bills will be honest — or loaded with gimmicks, such as phony “emergency” spending in an attempt to trick the public about what’s going on. The spending bills aren’t happening in isolation. Decades of budget gimmicks, spending sprees, and handouts to far left institutions have put America in an unsustainable position.

I never thought I’d see…

• America in another Cold War with Russia.


• Cities ignore the law under the label of "Sanctuary Cities," then complain when illegal immigrants are sent there.


• Government officials conspiring with Big Tech to censor millions of Americans online.


• Congress and the media labeling a protest as an “insurrection” while calling actual riots, “peaceful protests.”


• The American people turning a blind eye to a President who clearly is suffering from dementia and pretending that everything is all right.


• Our public schools being turned into indoctrination centers by one political party.


• Being told there are more than two sexes and that we had to agree to that or be ostracized.


• Parents wanting to ensure their children’s education being targeted as, “domestic terrorists.”


• Men competing as women in sports as something that is acceptable.


• Our military spending hours not training for war, but training on diversity and rooting out extremists.


• Mobs robbing stores because they know they won’t be arrested; and stores having to lock up items they sell out of fear of being robbed.


• Disney turning its back on family-centric content in favor of material that offends its largest customer base.


• The President declaring that the Constitution is fluid and subject to political interpretation.


• The ships of the US Navy rusting.


• People getting worthless college degrees and blaming everyone else that they can’t find a job.


• Illegal immigrants being treated better than veterans.


• The Department of Justice state that the President willfully took and distributed classified material but won’t be charged because he is elderly and has poor memory.

The comments come after the ex-US president told a crowd in South Carolina on Saturday that he would “encourage” Moscow to attack any NATO country that failed to fulfil the alliance’s military spending target of 2% of GDP, joking that “delinquent” members “gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.”

Berlin has long fallen short of the spending minimum, but reportedly plans to hit the 2% target sometime this year with assistance from a €100 billion fund created to shore up Germany’s defenses in light of the conflict in Ukraine. However, its regular budget is not expected to reach the goal for several more years, according to the Associated Press.

The bloc’s own statistics for 2023 show that most NATO states are not meeting the spending minimum. Of its 31 members, just 12 are currently spending at least 2% of GDP on defense.

Weighed down by its militaristic past, Germany has in recent decades been circumspect about its defence forces and armaments industry. But Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 upended Berlin's post-world WAR II pacifist tendencies, and forced its transformation into a proponent of heavy rearmament. Germany is now Ukraine's second biggest weapons contributor, and Scholz has been vocal in pushing other EU nations to give more.

Rheinmetall’s new factory in Unterluess is scheduled to begin production in 2025 with an initial production run of 50,000 shells a year, before progressively reaching its full annual capacity of 200,000. Putting the volume in perspective, Scholz said that thousands of shells are fired on a daily basis at the front lines in Ukraine currently.

The article highlighted that the existence of the Institut International d’Etudes Bancaires (IIEB) is barely known outside its membership while the group has no website and its meeting agendas are not made public. Members are reportedly discouraged from sharing details of the discussions. “This is not like Davos, where anyone can buy their way in,” one longtime member told FT on condition of anonymity. “This really is exclusive,” he added.

According to the report, the IIEB was established in Paris in 1950 by the heads of four lenders from across the continent – Crédit Industriel et Commercial, Union Bank of Switzerland, Société Générale de Belgique and Amsterdamsche Bank. The aim was to hold regular high-level discussions on developments in the banking sector, as well as the economy and monetary system.

The report noted there has been almost no media coverage of the IIEB’s activities during its more than seven decades of existence despite the importance of the topics under discussion.

Carlson specifically mentioned dangers to the status of the US dollar, and I suspect this comment probably mystified a great number of people. Most of the population cannot fathom the idea of a US dollar implosion set in motion by a foreign dump of the greenback as the world reserve currency. They really do believe the dollar is invincible.

What does this mean? The dollar, which has been hyperinflated through more than a decade of Federal Reserve QE money printing, has continued to remain stable only because it is the world reserve and the petro-currency. Foreign banks hold trillions in US currency in overseas coffers for this very reason. With the loss of reserve status, an endless river of dollars will then flood back into the US as foreign investors diversify away from the Fed note. Result? Massive inflationary collapse.

However, it is also the place to which many Palestinian civilians displaced by fighting elsewhere in Gaza have fled. Egypt has publicly opposed an Israeli attack on Rafah because of the possibility that it would encourage Palestinians to cross the border.

On Thursday, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters that an Israeli attack on Rafah would be a “disaster” under present conditions, and that the US would not support it. He claimed, bizarrely, that Israel was not preparing such an attack — despite numerous public statements by Israeli spokespeople and by Netanyahu himself that an attack on Rafah was both imminent and necessary to win the war, after Israel had destroyed almost all of Hamas’s terrorist Battalions in Gaza.

Also on Thursday, President Joe Biden shocked Israelis by saying that Israel’s conduct in Gaza against Hamas had been “over the top,” suggesting the US wanted to stop the war.

It was just so damaging last night because this press conference was called for Biden to show that his memory is good, that he is sharp, that the special counsel’s report was nonsense. It was really the one place where he didn’t want to make this kind of gaffe, and he did. So now that’s the headline from the event, not “Biden Comes Out Swinging.”

Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have a history of mental slipups and confusions and incoherence. In both cases, it seems to be exacerbated by age. But I think it’s very hard — in both cases — for the public to really tell how much is about age and how much is just who they are.

According to a White House readout, Biden “reaffirmed our shared goal to see Hamas defeated and to ensure the long-term security of Israel and its people” and “discussed ongoing efforts to secure the release of all remaining hostages held by Hamas.” Biden also “emphasized the need to capitalize on progress made in the negotiations to secure the release of all hostages as soon as possible” and called for urgent and specific steps to increase humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians.

The White House says Biden reaffirmed his view that a military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a “credible and executable” plan to ensure the safety of over a million people sheltering in the city. Netanyahu said in an interview earlier that Israel would go after Hamas in Rafah “while providing safe passage for the civilian population.”

Putin confirmed this when he stated, “[The Ukrainian President] had fixed his signature to some of the provisions, not to all of it. He put his signature and then he himself said, we were ready to sign it, and the war would have been over long ago. 18 months ago. However, Prime Minister Johnson came, talk to us out of it and we missed that chance. Well, you missed it. You made a mistake.” Johnson was clearly rattled by the revelation.

He responded with a short video intended to go viral on social media promoting his lengthier response in a Daily Mail article. “Around the world people are watching that ludicrous interview with Vladimir Putin conducted by Tucker Carlson,” raged Boris. “And we must not fall for this tissue of lies, above all the notion that Putin is somehow fated to succeed in Ukraine, on the contrary, he is doomed to fail,” he added. Johnson failed to mention the fact that hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved if he hadn’t intervened to scupper the peace deal.

“Syria has fought wars against the Israeli occupation, and is ready to fight wars, but it will decide when and how,” the foreign minister stressed, noting the importance of the Golan Heights – a part of southwestern Syria controlled by Israel since 1967.

Ending the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights is “at the top of our priorities,” Makded insisted, adding that “Syria is ready to pay the price for all these liberation operations.”