The Morning Briefing: 2021 Has Just Been an Intolerable, Mutated Variant of 2020

Top O’ the Briefing

Happy New Year’s Eve, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. The antacids and the cash are hidden behind the sauerkraut and kielbasa in the fridge.

Well, we sort of made it. Honestly, I don’t remember if I was all that optimistic last New Year’s Eve but I would like to think that I was. The shift of a calendar from one year to the next plays a nifty little trick on our brains, making us believe that hope springs anew on January 1. Sure, the booze from the night before helps launch us onto the river of optimism, but it doesn’t give us much momentum.

After the disaster of the 2020 “election,” the biggest thing that conservatives were hoping for in 2021 was that we could put the Wuhan Chinese Bat Flu nonsense behind us.

Oops.

This is from a Morning Briefing in the middle of last February:

It behooves the Democrats to keep producing COVID panic-porn for the inevitable day when Ol’ Gropes starts tripling up on his public senior moments and is babbling a lot about trouser ferrets and the leprechaun who brings the weed to his treehouse. They’re going to need an excuse for keeping the most powerful and visible man in the world out of the public eye.

Thank you, bat flu!

The vaccine was supposed to hasten a return to normalcy, yet that’s not playing out so well, especially given the fact that vaccines are always in limited supply and our idiot elected leaders have been playing politics with the distribution.

The hope of returning to whatever the “new normal” is supposed to be by the end of this year isn’t strong. Whenever I’m asked for an estimate I say it won’t be until at least late in 2022. The problem, as we have also discussed before, is that the petty tyrants who’ve been capriciously enforcing protocols aren’t going to relinquish power easily.

Being right all of the time is a burden.

Let us leap forward and take a quick look at where we’re at here in the waning hours of this hot mess of a year.

Mr. Green informs us that China is flexing its muscle more and more in Hong Kong:

Pro-democracy website Stand News has been forcibly shut down by Hong Kong police as Beijing continues its authoritarian crackdown on the once-free, former British Crown colony.

According to local authorities, 200 agents raided Stand News’ offices, which seems a bit extreme to subdue some writers and office workers. Three men and four women, between the ages of 34 and 73, were also taken into custody and placed in the tender mercies of a Hong Kong jail.

They were taken away for suspected “seditious publications” offenses.

This is the kind of thing that gets really out of hand when America has a weak president. At the moment, we merely have a weak puppet, so the CCP feels pretty bold.

While the ChiComs are stomping about with impunity and omicron is giving Democrats another excuse to act like tyrants, an even greater evil is lurking, which Chris wrote about yesterday:

Far-left legislators and candidates are taking a scorched-earth, all-or-nothing approach to passing a socialist agenda that leaves no room for gradualism or compromise. It’s turning their fellow Democrats off, and voters are noticing as well, which may well mean a bloodbath in the 2022 midterms.

When Hillary notices that and points it out, the Democrats really do have a problem on their hands.

But there might be more to the story.

New York Post columnist Miranda Devine told Fox News last week that she believes that Hillary’s stunt where she cried through the speech-that-might-have-been is her way of putting herself out there for 2024.

Granny Maojackets is the chronic STD of American politics.

I could obviously go on with examples but I think we’ve all got a grasp of the general yuckiness all around us.

That’s how I came up with today’s headline. 2021 has simply been a variant of 2020. A mutation.

Thankfully, years aren’t viruses. There’s hope that 2022 won’t be more of the same.

Yeah, I said hope.

Now let’s hit the bubbly and find some optimism.

And Happy New Year to all of you.

Everything Isn’t Awful

NATIONAL TREASURES

Good News:

We're making our way through the worst pandemic in over a hundred years — and these two lovely ladies are still with us. pic.twitter.com/pVcJvQGbnT

— Goodable (@Goodable) December 30, 2021

Bee Me

Oh No! Girl James Bond Is Foiled When Villain Places Details Of His Evil Plans In Pickle Jar https://t.co/HrOH7lhBej

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 30, 2021