BIDEN: RELAX, THE CHINESE ARE OUR FRIENDS. Sprawling hack of federal agencies spurs alarm in White House.
Utterly unrelated: Rep. Crenshaw: Media, Democrats Won’t Dig Into Swalwell Scandal.
HONESTLY, THIS NUMBER SEEMS LOW TO ME. One in five with COVID-19 passes it to others in household, data shows. At least, lower than I expected. But a nephew who was pretty sick with Covid for a couple of weeks never did infect my sister or brother-in-law. He did isolate himself in his room, which is an addition with separate HVAC, and I sent them one of these HEPA/UV air filters, but still. And a high school friend whose family caught it in NYC in early March never did get it; 3 out of 6 in her family were sick and the others just never came down with it despite being in constant proximity.
Plus: “Households are favorable environments for transmission.” Interestingly, our whole strategy seems to have involved keeping people in their households as much as possible.
DISPATCHES FROM THE GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA: Stacey Abrams: Challenging Election Results Is OK When She Does It.
HIS FRAUDULENCY REACHES 270: Biden Officially Passes 270 Vote Threshold As Electors Cast Their Votes.
MARK STEYN ON ONE OF ERIC SWALWELL’S PREDECESSORS: Monsieur Butterfly.
How quaint it sounds: the “honey trap”. But it can be a lonely life out there on the diplomatic circuit, and. for an enterprising intelligence agency, the wallflower at the embassy ball is still a reliable way to access your enemy’s secrets. As it happens, Mr. Hudson’s career self-detonated only a few days after the death of one of the most famous honey traps of the post-war era, the Chinese opera singer Shi Pei Pu.
Shi was a he, although for a while that wasn’t entirely clear. As a famous headline in Le Monde wondered: “Espion ou espionne?” Spy or spy-ette? James Bond or Pussy Galore? When Bernard Boursicot first saw him across a crowded room at some enchanted diplomatic evening in Beijing in 1964, the espion was certainly a he – a slip of a lad in his mid-twenties but already an accomplished singer and actor, and socially assured.
By contrast, M Boursicot was the French Embassy’s accountant, a 20-year-old schnook from the wrong side of the tracks whom the career diplomats already figured for a loser. The girls in the typing pool called him Bouricot – “Donkey” – and not as a compliment. He was a virgin, lonely and longing for love. And there, at the centre of attention, was the glamorous young Chinaman, if that’s the word.
Needless to say, read the whole thing.
(Updated and bumped.)
I BLAME #ORANGEMANBAD AND STUPID ANTI-SCIENCE RED-STATERS: Japan halts travel campaign amid record surge in COVID-19 cases.
Related: South Korea closes schools, opens new testing sites amid COVID-19 outbreak.
FIVE REASONS NOT TO THROW MORE MONEY AT COVID STIMULUS: The Heritage Foundation’s Rachel Grezler and Adam Michel line’em up like ducks.
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: In 2017, CBS’s Scott Pelley had this exchange with blogger/tweeter Mike Cernovich during a 60 Minutes interview that ultimately went quite badly — for Pelley:
Scott Pelley: How would you describe what you do?
Mike Cernovich: I’m a lawyer, author, documenter, filmmaker, and journalist.
Scott Pelley: And how would you describe your website?
Mike Cernovich: Edgy, controversial content that goes against the dominant narrative.
Scott Pelley: What’s the dominant narrative?
Mike Cernovich: The dominant narrative is that there are good guys and there are bad guys. The good guys are liberals. Everybody on the right is a bad guy. Let’s find a way to make everybody look bad. Let’s tie marginal figures who have no actual influence to anybody we cannot overwrite. That’s the narrative.
Scott Pelley: That’s not a narrative I’m familiar with. Who’s narrative is that?
Exit question: Does CBS News “have a right to bear arms access reporter? How about a freedom of religion reporter? Activism from a major news network is fine but it is weird when they claim to be unbiased.”
ROBERT HEINLEIN ON the value of an education doctorate.
SPECIAL PROSECUTOR: ‘Full Speed Ahead’: Durham Expands Russian Collusion Hoax Investigation.
THE DEVILS WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA, THEY WERE LOOKING FOR AN ELECTION TO STEAL: Linda Sarsour, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib star in Raphael Warnock vote-a-thon event. Having these three come down to defend Warnock against charges of anti-semitism is as if Lester Maddox had brought in George Lincoln Rockwell to defend him against charges of racism.
JUST THINK OF THEM AS CCP OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: NYT has not covered the Swalwell Chinese spy honeytrap scandal a single time.
ANOTHER REASON FOR ALUMNI TO STOP GIVING: What’s Up, Doc? Northwestern University hastens to cancel Joseph Epstein for advising Jill Biden to drop her favorite honorific. How dare he question a doctor of education?
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): It’s good to see the weight of our journalistic and academic establishments being brought to bear to protect the self-esteem of a rich, powerful white woman.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Proper Training After Changing Your Everyday Carry Gun.
FREE THE MARKETS: How to Fix Capitalism. Why do half of younger Americans want to live in a socialist country? It’s not just because of the nonsense spewed in schools, says Edward L. Glaeser.
Over the past 40 years, insiders have increasingly captured the American economy—from homeowners opposed to new housing construction near them to incumbent firms that benefit from the overregulation of employment to interest groups that have transformed the federal government into the equivalent of a pension system with a nuclear arsenal. The young are usually outsiders; the bill for the insiders’ triumph has been laid in their laps. The Covid-19 pandemic reinforces this dynamic. Middle-aged teachers, protected by powerful unions, Zoom their classes from the comfort of their homes, and students get lost in the shuffle. The mortality risk of the disease to the young is tiny; yet they are told to give up the freedom of their youth to protect the rest of us. . . .
What many young people today don’t realize is that socialism is a machine for empowering insiders.
Capitalism, from its inception, was designed for outsiders, but it’s been corrupted by politicians and special interests. To make it attractive again to young outsiders, Glaeser proposes restoring four fundamental freedoms.
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Solar-based Electronic Skin Generates Its Own Power.
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: NFL ratings plummet as networks slash ad prices. “Average NFL viewership has dropped approximately 8 percent from the 2019 season, but a week for week comparison shows a much worse situation. The NFL had 14.5 million viewers for Week 13 of the season, which is a 29 percent drop from the same week last season.”
MOON RACE 2020: Chinese capsule with moon rocks begins return to Earth.
MATT MARGOLIS:Poll Shows Why Church Is Essential During a Pandemic.
COMMUNISM, FASCISM, JUST OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE SAME COLLECTIVIST COIN: China’s tiny Jewish community in fear as Beijing erases its history. “Despite numbering only a thousand, China’s Jews are falling foul of Beijing’s campaign against non-sanctioned religions.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Our Electoral Processes Need To Be Fixed Well Before 2024.
The problem is that too many positions within the nomenklatura are dependent on those processes not getting fixed.
THIS WILL GO SWIMMINGLY: Russians Are Being Told Not to Drink Before And After Their COVID-19 Vaccinations.
WAIT, I THOUGHT WE WERE ALL DEAD BECAUSE OF NET NEUTRALITY: “Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock described members of the U.S. Senate as ‘gangsters and thugs’ whose votes for a 2017 tax cut exposed their willingness to ‘kill children.’’
I’m so old, I can remember comparing a politician to a gangster was the height of coolness:
● CNN: “Time for Obama to go ‘gangsta’ on GOP.”
● Don Cheadle On Obama: “I Wanted To See A More Gangsta President!”
● The Financial Times: Obama needs a gangsta to lay down the law.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Hit By Covid-19, Colleges Do The Unthinkable And Cut Tenure.
Now do the really unthinkable and cut administrators. Ha, as if that’s going to happen.
ARTHUR CHRENKOFF: Gone In 60 Weeks. “The battlespace preparation has already begun, with two independent lines of probing attack launched through the mainstream media: the question of age and infirmity, and the controversy over potential family corruption. On one level, these can be seen as completely innocent: Trump has been defeated – the media having faithfully played its part – so certain issues that were untouchable during the election campaign can now be safely aired. That, after all, is the media’s role in our political system, shining the light and holding those in power accountable. No one can accuse them of not doing their job – finally, now that it won’t help Trump. But on another level, the two lines of attack also serve to soften up public opinion, start constructing the necessary narrative, and prepare the country for the inevitable change of guard at the top, much sooner rather than later, as would normally be expected.”
Anything disposable eventually will be thrown out.
LEFTWING THUGS HAVE NEVER BEEN FRIENDS OF THE FREE PRESS: Portland MSM Shocked When Antifa Attacks Them for Covering Armed Takeover. Mike Strickland and Andy Ngo Say Told Ya So.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Facebook Fact-Checker Busted for Trashing Trump, Conservatives on Russian Propaganda Site.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: Is it Russian collusion to trash talk an American president on a Russian propaganda “news” outlet?
Answer: Not when the right people do it, comrade.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- We just had the most secure election ever…
- …and the firm providing cybersecurity to Dominion was part of that massive hack
- Yes, you’re supposed to believe both of those things
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
ROGER SIMON: The Tragic Failure of William Barr.
That was the same AG who promised, what seems like decades ago, he would get to the bottom of the reprehensible, treasonous to many, origin of the Trump-Russia investigation, known hereabouts as Spygate.
He assigned John Durham, a reputedly hard-nosed U.S. attorney from Connecticut, to uncover the sources of this outrage and bring the miscreants to justice.
Unfortunately, within that promise soon emerged a hint of trouble to come. Barr informed us that higher officials—meaning, of course, President Barack Obama and Vice-President Biden—were not in Durham’s brief to investigate, although they had attended a fateful meeting in January 2016 from whence much may have flowed.
Some people were evidently above the law.
As justification for this, Barr made it seem he was trying to put an end to the politicization of the Department of Justice and the FBI—and maybe he was …to himself.
Meanwhile, Durham’s investigation dragged on, taking much longer than expected, putatively because of COVID.
But was that so?
Certainly the pandemic caused some inconvenience, but couldn’t grand juries be convened with social distancing and masks? So many other institutions found ways to muddle through.
Some people, we are told, have actually been more productive working from home offices. Surely there was some way of making Zoom secure or other telecommunications as well for Durham’s purposes.
Apparently not enough. The delay continued and continues to this day.
And then the Hunter Biden affair broke into the headlines with the discovery of Hunter’s laptop and the so far uncontested testimony of Biden family business partner Tony Bobulinski, implicating Joe as the “big guy” in dealings with the communist Chinese.
More news broke shortly thereafter that the FBI had had the laptop in its possession for over a year.
This was followed by a leak a couple of months later, interestingly after Joe Biden had “won” the presidential election, that Hunter and James Biden (Joe’s brother) had been under investigation by the IRS and presumably the DOJ for tax evasion and money laundering for some time, much of this involving those same Chinese communists.
William Barr had been mum throughout.
The mainstream media, reliable neo-Stalinists that they are, never reported on any of this when Bobulinski went public. Even now, after the leak, they barely discuss it.
A large portion of the American public had no idea of the Biden Family Scandal when they went to vote on Nov. 3, 2020 or, even more, when they dropped those endless mail-in ballots in whatever boxes.
Polls have appeared indicating a significant number would have voted differently had they known. It was a close election, assuming Biden actually won.
Yet William Barr has remained silent.
His excuse again is that the DOJ should not get involved in politics. Or was he too angry at Donald Trump for meddling in his affairs?
Or perhaps it was a devotion to an institution rather than the American people for whom transparency is needed more than ever.
Whatever the case, that is exactly what he has done, inadvertently or not and despite his denials—get involved in politics.
Bill Barr put his hands on the scale of a presidential election!
By remaining silent on a lengthy investigation of public corruption of the family of a man who would be president, some of which involves that man directly with our principal enemy, William Barr has weighed in heavily on the election, whether he chooses to believe it or not.
He let the electorate continue in ignorance, straight into the voting booth.
Related: Barr reportedly called President Trump a ‘deposed king ranting.’
BELIEVE IN SCIENCE! SCIENCE IS REAL! FOLLOW THE SCIENCE! Also: Ohio allows high schoolers to wrestle, but forbids shaking hands before, after matches.
ANOTHER HISTORIC TRUMP TRIUMPH FOR WORLD PEACE: Burj Khalifa lights up for historic Dubai Hanukkah celebrations.
HEALTH: Covid-19 vaccines raise hope for cancer, throw open new field of medicine.
The first vaccines against Covid-19 aren’t just a landmark in the fight against the pandemic. They’re also the stepping stone for an unconventional technology that could one day defeat other ailments that have eluded doctors, from cancer to heart disease.
The shots from Moderna Inc. and a partnership of Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE use genetic material called messenger RNA to effectively transform the body’s own cells into vaccine factories. The approach had never been used outside of clinical experiments, and just how well it worked against the coronavirus stunned even some of its most enthusiastic backers.
Now, with one vaccine having gained U.S. clearance and the other close behind, the pandemic validation could wrench open a whole new field of medicine.
Remember when Vice President Joe Biden was supposed to cure cancer? President Donald Trump’s Warp Speed could prove to be more than just another laughable promise from the Obama Administration.
JUSTICE ALITO’S CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR AMERICA: Look what’s happened on the religious freedom front since his November address to The Federalist Society. It’s the gift that really could keep on giving year-round.
NOTE TO THE DESPONDENT: Yes, the Supremes blew it on the Texas case. But, just as the seeds for the first American Revolution were planted from a hundred church pulpits during the Great Awakening (See this from Ellis Sandoz), maybe Alito has watered the seeds of a new rebellion.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Kamala Harris’ husband lands teaching gig at Georgetown University.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Apocalypse Soon—Brush Up On Your Mandarin for the Biden Years. “The tangled, dysfunctional relationship that we have with China right now has been kept in check during the Trump years. The media’s October cover-up has now practically given the CCP a seat at Cabinet meetings.”
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: After Trump, The Flood…
Most of the other November 2020 Biden supporters are destined to be on a collision course, and they will soon enough realize that their differences are much stronger than what united them and that they were taken for fools. None will be disappointed more than the so-called ‘Progressives’.
The definition of the term progressive has morphed quite significantly over the last decade or so. Currently, it seems to include any one who stands up against Trump; and this is the primordial cause of the confusion and reason for future conflict between them. In reality, what defines the term ‘progressive’ in any existing progressive movement can be totally different from that of another movement; and the difference is not necessarily marginal. Being ‘progressive’ in the 21st Century implies the presence of a very specific agenda or slogan that may or may not be compatible with other ‘progressive’ agendas.
Take the Assange supporters for example. The moment they wake up from their deep slumber, they will realize that the man they supported to become President is actually the leader of the political party that has put Assange in jail for exposing his party’s dirt. I hope that Trump pulls the rug from underneath their feet and pardons Assange before the 20th of January 2021. But will this show the Assange supporters who is who? Not necessarily because if they wanted to open up their eyes and see, they would have seen from day one that Assange’s biggest enemy is none but Hillary Clinton and that she is the one responsible for his demise; not Trump.
But the Assange supporters did not play a major role in the elections; at least not directly, and at least not as much as their closest ‘progressives’; the peace activists.
The Democrats and their cohorts have portrayed Trump as a warmonger. When peace activists eventually see that Biden will have to serve his warlord masters and start new wars across the globe, they will have to think again. He is already touting hiring well known hawks in key positions in his forthcoming cabinet and team of advisors, with his Defense Secretary reportedly selected.
When it comes to street power however, none has been more powerful and effective as the combination of BLM and the environmentalists.
BLM activists have just fallen a tad short of blaming Trump for an American five-century long history of racism. But how much do BLM activists really care about Climate Change and specifically about Greta-type environmental vision of how the world should run? Moreover, most environmentalists, if not all of them, are anti-vaxxers. When they see that Biden is the trump card for the vaccine empire, they may wish they didn’t take to the streets to unseat the Trump card they had in the Whitehouse. If there is/was one person standing up against the malevolent “Gates vaccine”, it has to be Trump, and the single-issue anti-vaxxers are against Trump. Try to make sense of this.
This is not to forget and ignore that the Climate Change activists will soon find out, the hard way, that Biden will not come clean on the zero-emission promise; not only because he doesn’t want to, not only because he goes to bed with the petro-dollar lobby, but also because he does not have the alternative technology to replace fossil fuel with.
Read the whole thing.
IT’S COME TO THIS: After 105 Years, Cleveland Will Drop ‘Indians’ From Baseball Team Name.
Flashback: Scott Ott of Scrappleface: ACLU: Effort to Marginalize Indians Succeeding.
NO, THE MAJORITY-MINORITY DEMOCRATIC DOMINANCE IS NOT INEVITABLE: Morris Fiorina, writing for The Federalist, points to CUNY Professor Richard Alba’s “The Great Demographic Illusion” as essential reading for anybody who talks, writes or thinks about U.S. elections.
DIGITAL SAMIZDAT: Russia’s New Guerilla Media Are Going After Putin.
Some remarkably audacious Russian-language investigations of President Vladimir Putin and his next of kin have hit the web in recent days. In the not-so-distant past, such explosive stuff would have, and did, cost editors their jobs and publications their livelihoods. The Kremlin considers these investigations part of an organized campaign. But if so, Putin himself is its unwitting number one organizer — not only because there’s plenty to investigate, but because his ostensibly successful campaign to control the Russian media is backfiring in a technological environment that has left Putin far behind. He must now contend with an emerging group of independent outlets that are both more nimble and less vulnerable to institutional pressure.
Up until recently, the private life of the Russian leader and his close relatives has been mostly a no-go zone for Russian media. Editors knew that entering it would have consequences. In 2008, the newspaper Moskovsky Korrespondent was hastily closed down by its wealthy owner, Alexander Lebedev, after it published allegations that Putin was about to marry former rhythmic gymnastics champion Alina Kabaeva and Putin himself angrily denounced the article as an “erotic fantasy.” In 2016, a series of stories about Katerina Tikhonova, who has been identified as Putin’s younger daughter by various media though the Kremlin has not confirmed her identity, and the Russia-related materials in the Panama Papers affair resulted in the dismissal of the top editors of RBC Daily, a leading Russian business newspaper. The paper’s owner, billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, had his business premises searched by law enforcement agencies. After the editors were gone, the pressure ceased.
Now, the taboo has been broken spectacularly by two websites that have emerged in recent years — proekt.media and istories.media.
There’s a lesson in this for getting around Google, Facebook, and Twitter’s censors.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Richard Fernandez:
AT AMAZON, Lekue Silicone Bread Maker, Model , Brown.
WHAT IS IT ABOUT LEFTISTS AND PRISON RAPE? Debra Messing Issues Homophobic Insult To Trump: ‘I Hope’ You Become ‘Most Popular Boyfriend’ In Prison.
(Classical reference in headline.)
#HIMTOO: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo Accused of Sexual Harassment by Former Adviser. There’s less outrage over this than over Jill Biden’s honorific.
UGH: Foreign hackers breach US Treasury Department using Microsoft Office 365 flaws. “A breach was alleged to have taken place, affecting both the U.S. Treasury Department and the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency that works on policy relating to the Internet and telecommunications. While details of the attack are unknown, it is thought to be serious enough to have forced a meeting of the National Security Council on Saturday.”
PAUL GIGOT: The Biden Team Strikes Back: Its strategists promote an identity politics campaign against an op-ed on Jill Biden’s use of ‘Dr.’ “Why go to such lengths to highlight a single op-ed on a relatively minor issue? My guess is that the Biden team concluded it was a chance to use the big gun of identity politics to send a message to critics as it prepares to take power. There’s nothing like playing the race or gender card to stifle criticism.”
Well, and doing it in defense of a wealthy white woman with a less-than-stellar advanced degree is spot-on for today’s Democrats. Degreed Karens of the world, unite!
NOT THAT THEY’LL ADMIT IT: Trump’s Coronavirus Vaccine Timeline Vindicated, Corporate Media Hardest Hit.
KAROL MARKOWICZ: This pandemic has politicians treating the public like children.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Biden Is Poised To Hand Republicans An Incredible Tool To Investigate The Hunter Corruption Scandal.
As reporting by The New York Post, The Daily Caller News Foundation, James Rosen, Tucker Carlson, The Federalist, and others continues to pile up, corroborated drip by drip, so too do the questions for both the incoming Biden administration and the former Obama administration. Fortunately for interested U.S. senators, the two administrations are stacking up to be virtually identical — and they just might get the chance to ask a few questions.
Among Joe Biden’s intended nominees are former White House Chief of Staff and Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough, up for Veterans Affairs; former Deputy National Security Councilor and Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, up for State; and former Deputy National Security Advisor and Deputy Director of the CIA Avril Haines, up for director of national intelligence.
Then there’s former Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas — an apparent expert at wielding government power to help connected Democratic politicians — up for Homeland Security. And let’s not forget former Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, who might get Transportation (although not if the left has anything to say about it).
All of these positions require Senate approval, and during the Obama years all of these people were in position to know a little — or a lot — about the vice president’s ne’er-do-well tag-along son and all his pastimes.
It would help greatly if the GOP could just hold on to the Senate.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Find Your Place in the Vaccine Line.
WOKE CULTURE EXPLAINED: Self-Victimhood Is a Personality Type, Researchers Find.
OUR BETTERS MAKE LAWS: “Welcome to Seattle, where a dislike of being robbed, or seeing others being robbed, is disdained as ‘anti-poverty bias.’”
DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: Georgia Dem. Senate Candidate Raphael Warnock Pushes Lie that Jesus Was A ‘Palestinian.’
CANCEL CULTURE CLAIMS ANOTHER SCALP: NY Times Assistant Who Edited Cotton’s ‘Send in the Troops’ Column Resigns.
The New York Times staffer who edited Sen. Tom Cotton’s infamous “Send in the Troops” column has resigned from the paper more than six months after its publication.
Adam Rubenstein, a young editorial assistant who previously worked at The Weekly Standard, was thrust into the media spotlight last summer after the Times itself reported that he edited the notorious June submission in which Cotton called for the feds to deploy American troops into cities to suppress protests against police brutality. The column sparked a staff-wide revolt and prompted the resignation of opinions editor James Bennet.
Rubenstein left the newspaper this week, The Daily Beast has confirmed. His exit was announced—with little fanfare—in an internal Slack channel for Times staffers on Thursday. Neither Rubenstein nor the newspaper immediately responded to a request for comment.
I don’t know if Rubenstein considers himself a conservative, or merely worked at the Standard as a stepping-stone to the DNC-MSM, in the same way that Jennifer Rubin, Megyn Kelly, Dave Weigel, and Oliver Darcy all got their start at right-leaning outlets. But merely having the Standard on his resume and publishing an editorial with a viewpoint that 58 percent of Americans agree with made him a man with an enormous target on his back at the Times. Once again, the amount of acceptable opinion shrinks ever-tightly at the far left, and safetyism-obsessed Gray Lady, as Bari Weiss noted before she too departed:
Some thoughts from the Times’ new owner:
All is happening in accordance with the prophecy:
ICYMI: REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: With U.S. Senate Runoffs Near, Georgia’s Not Prosecuting Its Unprecedented Number of Double Voters.
‘UNITY’ IS FOR SAPS: So Much for Unity: Bidens Celebrate Dogs Biting a Donald Trump Chew Toy.
OH PLEASE, GET HER TO BOYCOTT MY FICTION. SHOULDN’T BE HARD: Nation’s CEOs Beg Ocasio-Cortez To Start A Boycott Against Them.
WE ALL NEED TO DO THIS. COME OUT COME OUT WHEREVER YOU ARE. REMEMBER YOU’RE AMERICANS: California businesses ignore COVID-restrictions in desperate move to survive.
AD ASTRA: On this day in 1546, Tycho Brahe was born in Denmark. His astronomical measurements were astonishingly accurate for their time.
He understood the moon to be orbiting the Earth, and the planets to be orbiting the sun (though he erroneously thought the sun was orbiting the Earth). That’s not too shabby for a guy without a telescope.
THIS IS A LOT OF THE STUPIDITY AND DISCONNECTED INSANITY OF THE ELITES: COVID-19 And The Great Reset: Global Effort “to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies”.
MIT SOLD IT TO ALPHABET WHO SOLD IT TO THE JAPANESE WHO ARE SELLING IT TO SOUTH KOREANS? Hyundai to take over robot-maker Boston Dynamics.
APPARENTLY MAYOR DE BLASIO’S THIEVE NYC THRIVE NYC BOONDOGGLE HAS NOT SOLVED THE PROBLEM: Drug users, accused murderers fed up with NYC’s lawlessness.
Well, they’re criminals, not idiots.
IT WAS MERE OVERSIGHT; ANYBODY COULD HAVE MADE SUCH A BOO-BOO: Hunter Biden failed to disclose $400K in Burisma payments.
Well…. anyone else who was Crackhead McStripperbang.
NO. IT’S ABOUT THE CONSTITUTION: This Fight Is Not About Donald Trump.
AS THE DANISH STUDY SHOWS, MASKS ARE NOT AN ADVANTAGE OF ANY KIND. FOR ASTHMATICS AND OTHER PEOPLE WITH BREATHING DIFFICULTIES THEY’RE HELL. FOR KIDS THEY’RE COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT. BUT THE AIRLINES WILL RUN OFF THEIR CUSTOMERS WITH CRAZY MANDATES, AND THEN GET GOVERNMENT BAILOUTS. BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY WILL. IT’S TIME WE STOP THE INSANITY: Two Year Old Refuses Mask Compliance.
YEP. THIS IS BARRACK OBAMA CREEPING BACK INTO THE LIMELIGHT AND THE POWER HE LOVES. TRULY WE CAN’T AFFORD THIS MAN: Joe Biden Is A Puppet On Strings For The Left.
SO, MAY WE ASSUME THE DAY ENDS IN Y? Hellenized David French Attacks Christians.
SECOND AMENDMENT WEBINAR THIS WEDNESDAY AT 1PM EST: Register here. The Future of the Second Amendment and the Right to Carry In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and again in McDonald v. Chicago (2010), the Supreme Court established the individual right to possess a firearm in the home for self-defense. Since then, the Court has been urged to review whether laws imposing restrictions on carrying guns in public and prohibitions on assault weapons violate the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court had consistently declined to take on cases addressing these issues, leaving the scope of the Second Amendment uncertain. The confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett has raised hopes (and fears) that the Court may be poised to once again address the Second Amendment. To discuss what may lie ahead, the Liberty & Law Center will host a live webinar on Wednesday, December 16, 2020. Experts will include Professor Nelson Lund and Assistant Professor Robert Leider from the Antonin Scalia Law School. The discussion will be moderated by Liberty & Law Executive Director, Professor David E. Bernstein.
SOUNDS PLAUSIBLE, WHICH MEANS WE HAVE A BIG PROBLEM: Sunday Talks, General Michael Flynn: “We Have Conclusive Evidence of Foreign Interference In Our Election”.
MOST ELITES ARE OBVIOUSLY OUT OF TOUCH, BUT OURS ARE TRULY, UNIQUELY IDIOTIC: Gleeful Bill Gates, Keep Restaurants and Bars Closed for Six Months, Allow Slow Return to New Normal Activity in 2022.
Hey, Bill, how about no? Lookee, I have a matched set of middle fingers.
ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS: Americans First.
And then my constitutional republic back!
December 13, 2020
LAST TANGO: On this day in 1972, Eugene Cernan (1934-2017) and Harrison Schmitt (1935-still kicking) took their last moon walk. They remain the last human beings to set foot on the moon.
(An interesting analogy might be the Ming Dynasty treasure voyages of the 15th century. During that period, China sent out an impressive expeditionary fleet to Java, Sumatra, India, Ceylon, Persia, Arabia and East Africa. These voyages were intended to impress the world with China’s immense wealth and power. And impress they did. But then the voyages just stopped. Scholars still debate exactly why.)
WHEN MEDIA NARRATIVES FAIL: Trump made big inroads in Hispanic areas across the nation.
IN 2021, YOU HAVE TO BE A BADASS JUST TO GO SEE IT: In Theaters Only, February 26.
UPDATE: Not a thriller movie: She Stalked Her Daughter’s Killers Across Mexico, One by One. It was a mistake to turn them over to the authorities, though. She should have just killed them, in instructive ways. At some level, everyone in the community knows who these people are. Everyone — or at least enough people — should make them afraid to be who they are.
HE’S RIGHT, AND UNLIKE JILL BIDEN, HE’S AN ACTUAL DOCTOR-DOCTOR: Rand Paul: Cloth masks are ‘theater,’ lockdown governors ‘drunk with power.’
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: WSJ op-ed writer critical of ‘Dr.’ Jill Biden gets canceled by Northwestern University.
Joseph Epstein was recognized on Northwestern University’s website as “emeritus lecturer” for more than twenty years. That changed Saturday when it was discovered that his profile is no longer available. Epstein has been canceled.
Epstein made the mistake of criticizing Jill Biden in an opinion essay published in the Wall Street Journal Friday. He calls her out for insisting on using the designation of “Dr.” with her name. He ends the essay with a suggestion that she consider stopping it, at least for now. He wrote, “please consider stowing it, at least in public, at least for now.” Many people applauded his essay, or at least the sentiment behind it, including myself. Most people with a Ph.D. do not refer to themselves as Jill Biden does, using the formal recognition of her advanced academic degree. It sounds haughty, frankly.
Whoopi Goldberg assures me though that Dr. Biden is indeed “a hell of a doctor,” and will make an excellent surgeon general.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I seem to recall the press getting snooty about Sebastian Gorka, who has a Ph.D. in political science, calling himself Dr. Gorka. Jill Biden doesn’t even have a Ph.D., but an Ed.D. of the sort also held by “Dr.” Bill Cosby.
UPDATE (From Ed): Speaking of the press and Gorka, past performance is no guarantee of future results:
More (From Ed): Whom does The New York Times consider a doctor? In 2015, Ben Carson was, for a time, “the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination,” until overtaken by Donald Trump. “That’s quite an accomplishment for what initially was considered a very longshot candidacy. Some might suggest it merits a modicum of respect – say, by referring to the longtime director of pediatric neurosurgery at the nation’s premier teaching hospital (Johns Hopkins) with the well-deserved title ‘Dr.’ Yet in the pages of the Times itself, more often than not, Carson isn’t identified that way. In fact, thumbnail analysis I just did of Times stories using the media tracking service Nexis shows that Second Lady Jill Biden (who in 2007 received a doctor of education degree, or Ed.D., from the University of Delaware) is more than three times more likely to be called ‘Dr.’ by The New York Times as Carson is.”
(Updated and bumped.)
IN AMERICA, CLASS WAR IS OFTEN DISGUISED AS CULTURE WAR: The College-Debt Debate is a Culture War Battle. “The Democrats have become the party of moneyed urban and suburban professionals, and, on the matter of college loans, progressives are happy to see the rich get richer as Americans of more modest means subsidize relatively high-income Democratic households. Biden’s approach is distinguished from the progressives’ only by being a little less of the same.”
SPACE: Three companies win NASA small launch contracts. “Astra Space, Firefly Aerospace and Relativity Space won the contracts through NASA’s Venture Class Launch Services (VCLS) 2 program, the agency announced Dec. 11. The companies will launch cubesats provided by NASA on those missions, with launches required by the end of June 2022.”
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