THEY’RE LOSING THEIR GRIP, AND IT’S DRIVING THEM NUTS:  At Long Last…

FRIENDS WHO TRY TO FORCE YOU TO STOP TELLING THE TRUTH ARE NOT REAL FRIENDS:  BBC Panel Hints That the US-British Relationship Will Suffer Unless Elon Musk Shuts Up About Rape Gangs.

Or should we speak more plainly: You ridiculously insular little islanders: the world doesn’t revolve around your belly button, and we will not help your elites stomp on your people and allow their kids to be raped. No. We fought a war so you can’t dictate to us. Shut up or next time Germany or Russia (or both) get froggy we won’t come save your behinds. (Is that rude? Oh, pardon me. It’s still true.)

GREAT MOMENTS IN DEMOCRATIC ORATORY:

This is Politics 101 stuff — “It’s too early to play the blame game; my heart goes out to the people impacted by the fire. When I get back to California, I will lead a full inquiry into both the cause of the fire and any shortcomings in the response to it.” Why is she clamming up?

UPDATE: Ron Burgundy, call your office!

MORE: Joe Biden narrows down his VP list, with Karen Bass emerging as one of several key contenders.

—CNN, July 31st, 2020.

OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.

TOMORROW’S PARDONS TODAY! Biden weighs preemptive pardons for Cheney, Fauci, other Trump foes.

President Biden is flirting with handing out preemptive pardons to some of President-elect Donald Trump’s favorite political targets.

In an interview with USA Today, Mr. Biden said he might hand out the get-out-of-jail-free cards to, among others, former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Mr. Biden said he urged Mr. Trump when he met with him in November to put his beef with Ms. Cheney, who voted to impeach him and co-chaired the Jan. 6 special committee, and others behind him.

“I tried to make clear that there was no need, and it was counterintuitive for his interest to go back and try to settle scores,” Mr. Biden said.

That’s pretty rich, considering Biden’s four years in office seemed to consistent primarily about settling scores against Trump. Speaking of which, here’s how the print edition of USA Today summed up the (p)resident’s term:

THE 21st CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: Is This the ‘Anti-Social Century?’

No need to go to a movie theater if you can rent first-run movies a few weeks after they’re in the theaters. Why sit in a restaurant and wait for bad service when you can pick up your food and take it home to eat at your leisure?

“Men who watch television now spend seven hours in front of the TV for every hour they spend hanging out with somebody outside their home,” writes Thompson. American females spend more time engaged with their pets than they do with friends.

Perhaps one of the problems is that we judge our self-imposed solitude based on a comparison to the first half of the 20th century. From 1900 to 1960, membership in churches and labor unions surged, there were more marriages than ever, and the biggest baby boom in history took place.

All kinds of gathering places were built: theaters, museums, concert halls, and playgrounds. But then something happened that gave us an excuse to withdraw. “From 1985 to 1994, active involvement in community organizations fell by nearly half,” reports Thompson.

What happened in the 1970s? Klinenberg, the sociologist, notes a shift in political priorities: The government dramatically slowed its construction of public spaces. “Places that used to anchor community life, like libraries and school gyms and union halls, have become less accessible or shuttered altogether,” he told me. Putnam points, among other things, to new moral values, such as the embrace of unbridled individualism. But he found that two of the most important factors were by then ubiquitous technologies: the automobile and the television set.

The construction of highways and interstates enabled the growth of the suburbs. The exodus was spurred by rising crime and racial tensions in the urban areas. As people moved farther away from each other, their only connection to reality became the television set.

Later, through smartphones and the internet, our children may have connected to others but not on the vital person-to-person level that leads to a healthy, adult psyche.

Jonathan Haidt is having some success weening kids off smartphones, but how will AI change life for young people in the 21st century? Can AI Be Blamed for a Teen’s Suicide?

(Rick Moran’s article is just for our VIP members; please use the discount code LOYALTY if you’ve been thinking of becoming a supporter.)

LAUGHING WOLF: A Resignation.

My mother was always into family, which is to say the actions of ancestors in the past who gave some cachet to those still living. She actually became a rather well respected genealogist for her work to establish legal proofs on various lines. For her, every link to royalty and nobility was yet more proof of our goodness and superiority. Me, well, I rather enjoyed the playboys, cattle thieves, and other less-than-stellar ancestors. I’ve met various members of royalty over the years, and frankly with a few exceptions I’d rather drink with whores and rogues. The latter are far better sorts in my opinion.

That said, I also have to admit I enjoyed being a direct descendant of Duncan slain by the traitor MacBeth. Of course, I am one of many who suspect the family paid off Shakespeare to make Duncan into a saint when he was far from it. It was interesting to have more than one connection to the current royal family of England. And, I have enjoyed being a member of a society The Friends of St. George’s. Another earned it, but it was interesting to be a descendant of one who had done great things.

However, current events do have an impact on the past.

Read the whole thing.

THE MOST UNDER-REPORTED STORY OF THE BIDEN PRESIDENCY:

In the last week or so, there has been a sudden burst of recognition of the extent to which Democrats and the media worked together to cover up Biden’s progressing cognitive decline. One media figure after another has come forward to call this the “most under-reported” story of the last year or several years. Some examples among many include: CBS correspondent Jan Crawford on December 30 (“That [the most under-reported story] would be, to me, Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline that became undeniable in a televised debate”); Rolling Stone, December 30 (“Matt Yglesias, Josh Barro, and Mehdi Hasan regret failing to acknowledge Biden’s cognitive decline sooner — and its impact on the 2024 election.”); MSN, January 4 (“Media facing backlash for reporting on Biden’s cognitive decline.”)

I agree that this was a very big and very under-reported story during the Biden presidency. But was it the biggest? Not to me. The biggest under-reported story of the Biden presidency was the President’s corruption.

The big difference between these two stories is that the cognitive decline story was much more difficult to cover up. Despite the best efforts of Biden’s staff to limit his appearances, restrict difficult questioning, and prevent all deviations from script, the President was still regularly out in the public eye. Even as every powerful Democrat insisted that Biden was “sharp as a tack,” we could all see him uttering confused answers to questions, mixing up his location, stumbling and falling, shaking hands with the air, and so forth. The refusal to take a simple cognitive test was a persistent tell. Yes, the left-wing media should be ashamed of their reporting; but they were not really able to fool anyone who was paying attention.

The corruption story was different. It takes some knowledge of the facts and the law to understand whether there is anything to an allegation of bribery. The mainstream media simply refused to provide the chronology of facts or a summary of the law to assist readers to understand the circumstances. As just a few examples:

As Karol Markowicz recently tweeted:

POLITICO: REPUBLICANS SEIZE! Trump, Musk unleash on California Democrats over wildfires.

Republicans are seizing on the catastrophic wildfires that tore through the Los Angeles area early Wednesday, blaming Democratic policies for the deadly, wind-fueled conflagrations that forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.

President-elect Donald Trump lashed out at Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday, calling the fires “virtually apocalyptic” in a Truth Social post and pointing a finger at state rules protecting endangered species for limiting the amount of water that gets sent south from Northern California.

“I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “He is the blame for this.”

Well, yes:

Mister, California could use a man William Mulholland again.

BOB GRABOYES: Manifest Destiny 2025Quick takes on Donald Trump’s four hemispheric ambitions. Making Canada a state — the least serious of these — is a bad idea, I agree. “However much you like Canadians—and they are likeable—they did elect Justin Trudeau as prime minister for nine years. Canada’s voting-age population is about as large as California’s (and just as statist), and its per capita income is almost exactly as small as Mississippi’s. Erase the border, and welfare dollars would rush northward with the hydrological power of the tide rushing into the Bay of Fundy.”

EVERYTHING OBAMA TOUCHES. . .