HEY, ISN’T THIS HOW 2020 BEGAN AS WELL? Pelosi: Democrats will move to impeach Trump.
UPDATE: Ocasio-Cortez, youth protesters storm Pelosi office to push for climate plan. How did Pelosi respond?
(Updated and bumped.)
FOR ONCE, THEY’RE SERVING AS ROLE MODELS FOR US ALL: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle could quit social media for good.
THE PEOPLE WHO TOLD US NOT TO NORMALIZE TRUMP ARE DENORMALIZING AMERICA: Alan Dershowitz: Democrats Cannot Impeach Trump, and You Can’t Impeach Him After Leaving Office. “Congress has no power to impeach or try a private citizen, whether it be a private citizen named Donald Trump or named Barack Obama or anyone else.”
I should also note that they can’t disqualify him from running again. The penalty for impeachment only includes disqualification from offices of “trust or profit,” and as Josh Blackman and Seth Barrett Tillman demonstrated some time ago, those offices are appointed, not elected offices.
THEY’RE POWERFUL. THEY’RE NOT NECESSARILY SMART, AND THEY’RE CERTAINLY NOT WISE:
Those who think they like this new censorship really need to step back and take the long view. Conspiracy theories about taking down Donald Trump will go on for 100 years. All of these efforts at suppression will be woven and rewoven into these theories. Driving the theories off the front pages of social media will make them wilder and crazier, and we won’t be able to see them or argue with them. How many millions of serious devotees does Trump have? What will they do now? Why is depriving them of their Twitter connection a wholesome curative?
When you have the leaders of business implementing the political agenda of a political party against its opposition, that’s the definition of fascism.
SO STEP DOWN AND MAKE JAMES CLYBURN SPEAKER, OLD WHITE LADY: The Latest: Pelosi Ties Rioters’ Actions to ‘Whiteness.’
TWENTY MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE: Explainer: Trump is heading for second impeachment. Here’s how it could play out.
THE PEOPLE WHO TOLD US NOT TO NORMALIZE TRUMP HAVE DENORMALIZED AMERICA: All the platforms that have banned or restricted Trump so far.
FIGHT THE POWER: Parler CEO ‘Prepared to Take Full Legal Action’ After Big Tech Companies Target Platform. I remember one year when Michael Yon made more money suing people for stealing his photos than from selling his photos. “Matze said on his Parler account late Jan. 9 that he believes Amazon, Google, and Apple coordinated to ‘try and ensure they don’t have competition.'” Likewise, this lawsuit may turn out to be the most profitable thing Parler does.
Plus, motes and beams: “Parler has no groups-style feature, and Facebook was the number one tool for coordinating meetups for that event.”
Also, “Twitter let ‘Hang Mike Pence’ trend the same day Parler was banned from Google … the double standard is obvious.”
Meanwhile I’m watching an NFL Black Lives Matter ad right now that says “No Justice, No Peace!” But that’s different because shut up.
Related: Rep. Nunes Calls for Racketeering Investigation Into Big Tech Companies Following Parler Ban.
RIOTS FOR THEE, BUT NOT FOR ME: WA Governor who refused National Guard for Seattle’s ‘autonomous zone’ calls up Guard to protect Governor’s Mansion.
(Classical reference in headline.)
THE W.H.O. SAYS LOCKDOWNS DON’T WORK, but everyone is doing it:
Brisbane locks down as new strains put Australia on high alert.
US logs record virus caseload as millions in Asia enter new lockdowns.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY CALLS OUT MEDIA’S DOUBLE STANDARD ON RIOTS AND VIOLENCE.
QED: The Double Standard of the American Riot: The nationwide protests against police killings have been called un-American by critics, but rebellion has always been used to defend liberty.
—The Atlantic, June 1st, 2020. The article’s meta title reads, “Riots Are the American Way: On the George Floyd Protests.”
Related: Where did the Capitol protest anger come from? What to do about it?
JUSTICE DEPT. TO PROBE SHOOTING OF AIR FORCE VET AT CAPITOL RIOT:
Of the five people who died during the January 6 riot at the Capitol building in Washington, two of them will now be the subjects of investigations by the Justice Department. Three of the deaths have thus far been deemed accidental. One woman was trampled to death in the melee, while two others succumbed to unspecified “medical emergencies.” Two people were killed by others. One was Capitol Hill Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who was bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher by rioters. A Justice Department investigation into his death is already underway. The last, and the subject of the investigation in question was 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt. She was shot in the chest by an officer while attempting to break through a window inside the Capitol and later died of her injuries.
Read the whole thing.
WEIRD: Higher pollen levels may trigger pelvic pain. “Our study provides evidence to suggest increased pollen counts may trigger symptom flares in people living with UCPPS [urologic chronic pelvic pain syndrome].”
DEVELOPING: Colin Powell is Still Not a Republican.
Since the days of Nixon, the easiest to become a regular guest on network and cable news is to portray yourself as a prominent Republican who never votes for Republicans.
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: Chinese Media Told to Use Capitol Riot to Attack Democracy.
A reporter from Chinese state media shared with me the guidelines she received on how to report the Capitol riot.
She was told to focus on how the United States’ global reputation would be damaged and deteriorated in her article, mentioning how world leaders were shocked by this insurrection and were concerned about their alliance with the United States. She was also asked to write on how democracy could be hijacked by a group of uneducated people and how democracy could only be realized when the population is highly educated—and that China’s current education level is not suitable for democracy.
In the morning of Jan. 7, a reporter from Phoenix Media told me that an article published by her team about how social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube had all put restrictions on President Donald Trump’s accounts had spawned a series of online discussions about how Western countries such as the United States “don’t even have freedom of speech.”
These discussions were led by China’s Foreign Ministry and were fueled by a number of pro-Chinese Communist Party bloggers. A large number of Chinese netizens have long been under the impression—picking up cues from right-wing media elsewhere—that there is no real freedom of speech in Western countries. They accuse the Western world of holding double standards when criticizing the Chinese government for blocking website content, monitoring internet access, banning dissent and disagreement, and deleting social media accounts.
The reporter expressed concerns about how people interpreted her article and how that would make it even harder to start any discussion about freedom of speech and human rights in China. She had recently interviewed a few #MeToo victims and felt saddened seeing feminists fighting in an environment where the government’s control over the internet, media, and individual bloggers is tighter than it has been in the past decade—and where patriarchy is resurgent. The violence at the Capitol had aided the Chinese government, she said, by giving it another justification for arguing that control of speech is necessary.
Silicon Valley agrees, sadly. As Rod Dreher warned in November China’s “social credit system” was coming to America. The Capitol Hill riot was all the pretext Big Tech needed.
SMOOTH IS FAST AND SLOW IS SMOOTH: How to Train for Faster Shooting.
MEH. I WAS THERE WHEN RALPH MERKLE INVENTED THE “MERKLE CLOUD,” CAPABLE OF SEQUESTERING ENOUGH CARBON TO PLUNGE THE WORLD INTO AN ICE AGE: Carbon Engineering’s Tech Will Suck Carbon From the Sky.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
Shot:
As Roger Kimball writes on The ‘Virtue’ of the New Totalitarians:
The double standard of outrage has been detailed by many commentators. It takes nothing away from the horror of the mob descending on the Capitol this week to point out that Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and their media mouthpieces were outrage deficient when another mob assaulted the Supreme Court during the Bret Kavanaugh hearings, when Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters torched cities across the country this summer, or, indeed, when there were riots in Washington following Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017.
As the commentator Howie Carr put it, “some riots are more equal than others.” Like Carr, I condemn what happened at the Capitol last week. But I also “wonder where all this outrage was among the chattering classes when the orgy of rioting, looting, arson and murder was gripping the nation last summer.” (As usual, The Babylon Bee deployed some illuminating satire, writing that “Antifa accuses Trump supporters of cultural appropriation.”)
And as a result, welcome to the aftermath of what Rod Dreher dubs The Left’s Reichstag Fire. “Yesterday, I predicted that the Left and the liberal Establishment would use the failed Beer Belly Putsch as an opportunity to begin to implement the rudiments of a social credit system, and to otherwise marginalize and suppress right-of-center discourse and people. Well, here we go.”
Clarice Feldman dubs what followed The Night of the Tech Long Knives.
FASTER, PLEASE: Scientists develop new gene therapy strategy to delay aging.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
● Shot: Little evidence that protests spread coronavirus in US.
—Headline, AP, July 1st, 2020.
● Chaser: Possible virus exposure for lawmakers sheltering during riot.
—Headline, AP, today.
HMM: Biden to release all available COVID-19 vaccine doses later this month.. “When he takes office later this month, President-elect Joe Biden will move to release every available dose of the coronavirus vaccine, breaking with the Trump administration’s policies, a transition team spokesman said Friday. Rather than holding back enough vaccine to provide a recommended second dose for those who receive an initial dose — as the current administration has done — Biden will instead release ‘available doses immediately.'”
This isn’t crazy — there’a an argument that giving twice as many people a shot that will provide 85% immunity is better than giving half as many people a shot that will provide better than 95% immunity — but it has the potential to be a debacle if it leads to a lot of people never getting a second shot, and thus not developing long-term immunity. As the article notes, the FDA just considered and rejected the idea of a single shot for this reason. Quoth the FDA:
Using a single dose regimen and/or administering less than the dose studied in the clinical trials without understanding the nature of the depth and duration of protection that it provides is concerning, as there is some indication that the depth of the immune response is associated with the duration of protection provided. If people do not truly know how protective a vaccine is, there is the potential for harm because they may assume that they are fully protected when they are not, and accordingly, alter their behavior to take unnecessary risks.
We know that some of these discussions about changing the dosing schedule or dose are based on a belief that changing the dose or dosing schedule can help get more vaccine to the public faster. However, making such changes that are not supported by adequate scientific evidence may ultimately be counterproductive to public health.
As a rush for herd immunity, as I say, it’s not crazy. But it’s a risky scheme, and I wonder if the older patients — the very ones who need the most immunity — will be less likely to follow up in time.
INEVITABLE: Get Ready for the Biden Gun Grab.
ONE OF THE LAST OF WWII’S “SPITFIRE WOMEN” DIES AT 103: “[W]e had a job to do [and] we just got on and did it.”
QUESTION ASKED: Why Won’t Mitch McConnell Adjourn The Senate Until January 21st? “It would shut down the 2nd impeachment travesty and allow a ‘cooling off period’ until the Inauguration. If people were sincere about ‘healing’ or ‘transition integrity,’ Congress would go home. There would be nothing to attack on Capitol Hill. When Biden and the Democrats took over, they could do what they wanted.”
What I particularly loved about Kathy’s film essays was the occasional glimpses she gave us of her own life. One should not take it all as gospel: She had a carefully constructed persona as an agoraphobic misanthrope who never left the flat. Whereas, as Mark Steyn cruisers who had the good fortune to be at her dinner table will attest, in real life she was gregarious and occasionally (as I told her a couple of weeks back somewhat to her horror) verging on bubbly. I had the pleasure a few years ago of introducing her to half the Canadian cabinet over pizza at the Prime Minister’s house. Reading about it afterwards, the highly-strung leftie bloggers were horrified at the thought of the hated Shaidle piercing the holy sanctum of 24 Sussex Drive like a one-woman trial run for the mob’s storming of the US Capitol. But the various ministers of the Crown seemed to enjoy the opportunity to shoot the breeze with her — as we all did.
So here are a few vignettes, as revealed in her movie columns, of Kathy’s life. She was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and, although she got out as fast as she could, she will, after many decades away, be going home:
Read the whole thing.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Universities refuse to cancel rents for students locked out of campus housing under COVID protocol.
SO MUCH FOR COOLER HEADS PREVAILING:
Then there is the matter of Twitter banning the President’s Twitter account. The consequences of that action, as well as Google and Apple taking steps to ban Parler, will reach far and beyond the events at the Capitol. What those moves certainly won’t do is lead to any form of depolarization. These tech platforms are not going to be able to disappear 70 million people from the internet. Those people will simply be chased further underground where they will develop more mistrust that corporate media and Big Tech are in fact their enemy. Neither the media or Big Tech will do much to earn the trust of those people back.
Trump will slink away and out of power, just as he did at the conclusion of his speech on Wednesday. That much is known. However if Joe Biden and the media have any intent on ‘healing’ and ‘unifying’ post-Trump and Trumpism, they haven’t done much to show it. Maybe this is because it’s in the best interest of the Biden agenda, and the revenue of Big Tech, and the audience retention of the corporate media to keep us as we are — a nation divided.
When Obama was elected, the DNC-MSM loved cranking out pieces headlined, “We Are All Socialists Now,” “The Death of Conservatism,” and “James Carville Angles For ’40 More Years,'” as NPR gushed about Carville’s then-latest book in May of 2009. It was part wish fulfillment, and part propping up their nervous core readers — “We don’t have to worry about those guys anymore.” And then the Tea Party coalesced, and by mid-2016, NPR was reduced to running this headline: The Democratic Party Got Crushed During The Obama Presidency. Here’s Why.
In 2021, Democrats don’t care how much they’re angering the right, partly because of their hatred of Trump and his “Deplorables,” as Hillary would say, and partly because, as Stephen Miller writes above, it suits their business model. Once again, this could be a very big mistake on their part.
SYRACUSE HAS BEEN A SERIOUS EMBARRASSMENT: Free speech advocate blasts Syracuse University’s ‘PC campus culture.’
PAUL BEDARD: Final Trump Report Card: Lasting accomplishments fouled by his personality.
The problem is, without his personality, could he have withstood the media pressure to win in 2016, and not fold afterward? Mitt Romney, say, certainly lacks the strength to withstand the pressure, and for that matter to win at all.
DISPATCHES FROM FORBES’ ‘CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER AND EDITOR:’
Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. We’re going to scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we’d approach a Trump tweet. Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away.
This isn’t cancel culture, which is a societal blight. (There’s surely a nice living for each of these press secretaries on the true-believer circuit.) Nor is this politically motivated, as Forbes’ pro-entrepreneur, pro-growth worldview has generally placed it in the right-of-center camp over the past century — this standard needs to apply to liars from either party. It’s just a realization that, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, in a thriving democracy, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Our national reset starts there.
So it’s more of a list. A list written in black ink. Call it something like that. Time to cut up the lengthy genre of Hollywood movies that are against such a list into guitar picks.
FACTS WIN OUT: Jonathan Leaf reviews Peter Wood’s “learned and thoughtful demolition of the 1619 Project.”
EH, THEY’LL FOLD JUST LIKE THEY DID FOR THE SPEAKER ELECTION: As Dems Retake Government, Standoff With Party’s Left Flank Looms.
This is the Oligarchs’ Congress. The oligarchs will get what they want, the left flank will get some symbolic woke crumbs.
THEY REALLY KNOW HOW TO BUILD THE MEMORY HOLE AT CNN:
Flashbacks:
● ‘Happy Anniversary’ Al Sharpton: 25 Years Since He Incited Freddy’s Massacre.
● Massacre at Freddy’s In Harlem: Fire Fueled by Anti-Semitism Kills 8.
● “Sharpton paid to keep quiet about lack of black TV programming: suit.”
TO BE FAIR, THEY DON’T SEE THAT AS THEIR JOB: ANALYSIS: Journos Incapable of Treating Democrats Like Politicians.
TO BE FAIR, MAY OF 2020 SEEMS LIKE IT WAS MANY YEARS AGO: Remember when BLM rioters were burning down cities and Colin Kaepernick literally called for more violence? And then, instead of banning him, @Jack gave him $3M?
PLANET OF COPS: An 18-Year-Old Saw Her Mom, Aunt, And Uncle In DC In A Video — So She Named Them.
As Brooklyn College’s Freddie deBoer wrote in his classic “Planet of Cops” essay in 2017, “The woke world is a world of snitches, informants, rats. Go to any space concerned with social justice and what will you find? Endless surveillance. Everybody is to be judged. Everyone is under suspicion. Everything you say is to be scoured, picked over, analyzed for any possible offense. Everyone’s a detective in the Division of Problematics, and they walk the beat 24/7. You search and search for someone Bad doing Bad Things, finding ways to indict writers and artists and ordinary people for something, anything. That movie that got popular? Give me a few hours and 800 words. I’ll get you your indictments. That’s what liberalism is, now — the search for baddies doing bad things, like little offense archaeologists, digging deeper and deeper to find out who’s Good and who’s Bad. I wonder why people run away from establishment progressivism in droves.”
Or to put it another way:
A READER EMAILS:
Just read that cartoon/cucking post on the Insta wall… Jesus H. Christ on a chariot; you’re right, they want us to go crazy and form a circular firing squad while Biden/Schumer/Pelosi ram thru their agenda.
And the left does want to destroy voices like yours… like the PowerLine post you shared, now the left will attempt to make all aspects of conservatism “Trumpism” and discredit them/us/any dissent from their messages.
This week I recalled (sadly) your lament of how Rs in Congress spent most of ‘17 incredulous that this Trump fellow had won, and should have had legislation (your words) “lined up on the runway ready to go.”
Schumer, Pelosi et al certainly will not be doing that.
Nope. No Paul Ryans in charge on the Democratic side.
January 9, 2021
FLASHBACK: NO ENEMIES ON THE LEFT: Bernie Bro with Van Full of Guns and Explosives Plotted to Assassinate Biden. Media Buries the Lede, as Usual.
What was Treisman’s motive? He must be one of those evil Proud Boys or crazy QAnon freaks we keep hearing so much about, right?
Wrong. But to find out the actual motive, you have to go all the way down to paragraph 15 of the WaPo story (emphasis mine):
The 19-year-old’s focus on Biden started in the spring, according to the order… Days after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) suspended his presidential campaign, Treisman, who had suggested in a Reddit post that he had to “save bernie,” posted a meme with the caption questioning whether he should kill Biden.
Oh. He’s a Bernie Bro. He wanted to kill Biden to somehow help Bernie.
But you sure wouldn’t know that by reading the headline (“A 19-year-old with a van full of guns and explosives plotted to assassinate Biden, federal officials say”) or the first 14 paragraphs. Isn’t that kind of important?
No, it isn’t, because WaPo wants you to think a conservative or a right-winger or some other designated villain did it. That’s the game.
They all did the same thing in 2017 when a Bernie Bro named James T. Hodgkinson shot up a baseball field where some Republican congressmen were practicing. Steve Scalise was seriously wounded and almost killed. And the media bent over backwards to avoid mentioning that Hodgkinson was a staunch supporter of Bernie Sanders. Hell, within two months of the shooting, they had quit mentioning Hodgkinson at all.
Read the whole thing.
Evergreen:
APPLE MAKES IT OFFICIAL: Apple suspends Parler from App Store.
UPDATE: Amazon Is Booting Parler Off Of Its Web Hosting Service. “In a post on Sunday evening following publication of this story, Parler CEO John Matze said it is possible ‘Parler will be unavailable on the internet for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch.’”
ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I don’t know if you can buy Parler stock, but it should be rising on the strength of its private antitrust suit against a bunch of deep-pocketed tech firms.
NEWS FROM 1990: Future astronauts could use methane to make rocket fuel on Mars. I mean, Bob Zubrin’s whole Mars Direct mission architecture, which dates to the late 1980s, was based on methane fuel manufactured in situ on Mars.
I WAS TOLD THAT MARIJUANA IS NON-ADDICTIVE: More than half of people using cannabis for pain experience multiple withdrawal symptoms.
WAS BIDEN INAUGURATED WITH AN ACT OF POLICE BRUTALITY? Federal Prosecutor Opens Excessive Force Investigation Into the Death of Ashli Babbitt: Report. “Michael Sherwin, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said that his office has started a federal, excessive force investigation over the shooting and killing of former U.S. Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt in the Capitol on Jan. 6. Sherwin confirmed the investigation with CBS News. His civil rights section will lead the prosecution, which is being investigated by D.C. police and the FBI.”
It’s hard to tell without an investigation, but it’s not at all obvious that Babbitt was offering a threat of death or great bodily injury to anyone.
Federal prosecutors on Friday moved to drop charges against the last 39 people accused of participating in a violent protest on the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The motion to dismiss charges by the U.S. attorney’s office seemingly ends an 18-month saga that started with the Justice Department attempting to convict more than 190 people.
That effort saw the government facing off against an intensely coordinated grassroots political opposition network that made Washington the focus of a nationwide support campaign — offering free lodging for defendants, legal coordination and other support.
That’s how the left does it. And the press plays along.
I THINK IT LOOKS LIKE THEY’RE TRYING TO BE A 1999-ERA TECH COMPANY: What Do You Think of GM’s New Logo?
MAZDA’S LUXURY-BRAND AMBITIONS: Tested: 2021 Mazda 3 2.5 Turbo vs. Audi A4 45. I’ve liked the Mazdas I’ve owned — an MX-6 and an RX-7 and RX-8 — and they’ve managed to feel kinda luxurious for a non-luxury brand.
Bottom line: “As it stands now, the Mazda 3 2.5 Turbo offers a hell of a lot of car for the money, while the Audi A4 offers an appropriate amount of car for the money.”
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: The New Wave Generation Gap: Can the Boomers win a rhetorical battle with the Millennials?
When was the last time you heard or read the once-common term “generation gap”? No, I can’t remember either. Perhaps, if we’re lucky, in a short period of time the noxious three words “not so much” will be consigned to an even worse category of forgotten clichés. I thought about this last Friday when my 20-year-old son Nicky wrote an exuberant article about the wretched “classic rock” band Fleetwood Mac (the Nicks/Buckingham/Christine McVie version, not Peter Green’s). Attempting to stifle acute nausea upon reading his praise for this “amazing” band that featured “brilliant popsmiths,” I realized that this was an example of a present-day “generation gap.”
* * * * * * * *
And there were worse bloated and outrageously substance-abusing groups in that time period. It could be my contempt for Fleetwood Mac is rooted in the 90s, as my son points out. He writes: “Maybe that’s why the music of Fleetwood Mac is seeing such a strong surge in interest among the Millennials. A friend made a good point: ‘Don’t Stop’ is embedded in the consciousness of 90s kids from the ’92 and ’96 campaigns, so the sound has been in our heads even if we didn’t know the material well.” Well, there’s another reason to dismiss the Bill Clinton nostalgia.
Rumours was just for pikers. True lovers of avant-pop much prefer Tusk.
(And thank God for small favors: As far as we know, Russ Smith’s son hasn’t gotten drunk and changed his name to Celine Dion yet.)
ANDY NGO: Rage at Capitol assault makes excuses for summer riots all the more disgraceful.
Wednesday’s mob assault on Capitol Hill was shocking and brazen: Hundreds of MAGA-hat-wearing rioters broke into the seat of American democracy. They stormed the halls, looting property and assaulting law enforcers, all in service of an absurd political demand: reversing the outcome of an election.
Now where had I witnessed such scenes before? The answer: in blue-governed cities in my native Pacific Northwest throughout last summer and into the fall and winter.
* * * * * * * *
The upshot should be clear: The deadly storming of the Capitol building is the logical outcome of norms set by the left in 2020. By winking at and apologizing for Antifa, liberal elites telegraphed that political grievances ought to be resolved through violence.
And the left’s riots are still ongoing. I wonder if the leftist mob is angry at the pro-Trump rioters and/or the DNC-MSM sucking the oxygen out of their own stories?
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Personal Defense Considerations When Carrying a Firearm in a Vehicle.
GREAT MOMENTS IN PROJECTION: MSNBC Dismisses GOP Denunciation of Violence, Whole Party Is Now ‘Violent,’ ‘Fascist.’
That’s awfully rich coming from the network with an anchor who has stoked anti-Semitic street fights, which has run promos declaring “your children aren’t your own,” defended the violence of Antifa, and went all-in to agree with Obama’s “you didn’t build that” attack on entrepreneurialism. And has never met a strongman imposing socialism on a national scale it didn’t admire. QED:
As Jim Treacher adds, “I can guarantee you Chris does not realize what he just admitted.”
BIG TECH SELF-DESTRUCTS: Will Alphabet’s Unionization Effort Spread to Other Big Tech Companies? Engineering unions are rare, particularly those organized around social instead of economic issues.
Get woke, go broke.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: ‘Hang Mike Pence’ trends on Twitter after platform suspends Trump for risk of ‘incitement of violence.’
WELL, THAT’S NOT GOOD: IPhone12 will stop your implantable defibrillator.
WHEN YOU’RE PERFECTLY ADAPTED TO YOUR ENVIRONMENT: Study links little crocodile evolution in last 200M years to lack of need.
BRYAN PRESTON: Leader of Far-Left ‘Insurgence USA’ Group Encouraged Rioters to Enter the Capitol. “None of this excuses those who invaded the Capitol. It does shed some light on how it happened. Sullivan has a history of organizing a previous protest that turned violent, from which he faces criminal charges.”
HMM: Fatigue, breathing problems persist for months after COVID-19. I don’t have breathing problems — never did — but I’ve continued to feel kind of blah. I was online less than usual this week because we decamped to the beach for some recovery time. My sense of smell and taste has largely recovered — it was about 90% a week ago and is now more like 98%, I’d say, although it’s hard to tell. I keep noticing little things that I hadn’t realized I couldn’t smell until I could smell them again. But while I feel much better, I guess I’m not quite 100% either; my energy level is low and so is my motivation level. I guess that’s pretty typical with a lot of viral infections; I’ve certainly noticed it after the flu before.
Anyway, it was either a very bad or a very good week to limit my online time. I missed my usual 7-10 day Internet diet/dive trip this year, and I really needed it. This wasn’t a substitute for that, as I limited my online time to an hour or so a day, but it was something.
DON’T THINK PROGDEMS AREN’T BEHIND TECH GIANT CENSORSHIP: Hans Bader points to “hate speech” as the enabling concept behind the unprecedented censorship unleashed by Twitter, Facebook, Google and Amazon. My view is nobody should be surprised when it intensifies after His Fraudulency is sworn-in as President.
RIP: Michael Apted, director of ‘Up’ documentary series, dead at 79. “Apted, the acclaimed British director of the ‘Up’ documentaries series and films as diverse as the Loretta Lynn biopic ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ and the James Bond film ‘The World Is Not Enough,’ has died. He was 79.”
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A MUCH BIGGER BLOG: The All-Out Assault on Conservative Thought Has Just Begun.
RIP: Kathy Shaidle 1964 – 2021. “Following a tedious rendezvous with ovarian cancer, Kathy Shaidle has died, wishing she’d spent more time at the office. Her tombstone reads: GET OFF MY LAWN!”
Definitely read the whole thing.
#UNITY: ‘Utterly Shameful:’ Josh Hawley Strikes Back After Joe Biden Likens Him To Nazi Propagandist.
Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley demanded Friday that President-elect Joe Biden retract comments comparing his and Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s questioning of the 2020 presidential election results to lies spread by a Nazi propagandist.
Biden criticized Hawley and Cruz, stopping short of calling for their resignations but saying instead that he wanted to see them defeated in their next elections. Arguing that they had fed false information about the 2020 presidential election to the American people, he compared their efforts to those of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
Biden knows a thing or two about “the big lie” himself: Years After ‘Back In Chains’ Attack, Biden Calls Romney ‘A Man Of Enormous Integrity.’
Of course, with 2021 Joe, it’s entirely possible he doesn’t remember anything said by 2012 Joe.
UPDATE: Right on cue, CNN fact-checker explains why Biden didn’t call Cruz & Hawley ‘literal Nazis’ when he compared them to Goebbels.
DNC-MSM “fact checkers” are going to be awfully busy cleaning up for Placeholder Joe until President-Elect Harris finally takes office.
(Updated and bumped.)
ROGER SIMON: Welcome to West China.
Did you ever wonder what it’s like to live in a one-party state?
Well, wonder no more. You’re living in one. The major means of communication—in today’s terms that means social media—have now been taken over completely by the left.
Not only has Donald Trump—still the president of the United States—been permanently banned from Twitter, its rapidly growing, open-to-all substitute Parler has almost simultaneously been de-platformed by Google.
You can’t get their app for Android anymore.
Apple threatens to be next, demanding Parler kowtow (by Saturday!) to Cupertino’s vision of what the world should be.
I suppose that’s a social-justicey-politically-correct totalitarianism led by left-leaning… or so they want us to believe… tech billionaires.
Sound Chinese?
More than a bit.
Think this was planned?
Just the other day I wrote of the “false flag” (left-wing provocateurs) behind the mayhem in the Capitol. Many in high places pooh-poohed what I and others were saying. I wasn’t too sure of it myself.
But let’s review what’s happened since:
Josh Hawley’s forthcoming book… on Big Tech, no less… is “canceled” by Simon & Schuster. Senator Hawley had been among the most outspoken about investigating the possibility of election fraud.
Twitter permanently blocks General Flynn. I guess they don’t think he has had enough already.
Twitter permanently blocks Lin Wood, the well-known attorney working to unmask possible fraud. Ditto for the courageous Sidney Powell.
Not to be outdone, Facebook blocks President Trump’s account. (Not sure who was first—Facebook or Twitter—not that it matters.)
More insidiously, Facebook starts to delete groups or forums of people who publicly stepped away from the Democratic Party because of its scandals.
(Elsewhere it’s revealed that Facebook banned accounts at the behest of Hunter Biden.)
YouTube announces it will no longer distribute videos investigating election fraud and that producers of such videos will be punished if they do.
All this in a couple of days, the excuse being, in almost all cases, that the conservatives involved were instigating violence, the “outrage” that occurred at the Capitol.
This from the people who ignored exponentially more violence and destruction for months all across urban America.
Sense a strategy here? A plan?
I know—I’m one of those conspiracy mongers. Everything has been “debunked.” Indeed, it was “debunked” before it happened.
Only I’m not a conspiracy monger, my friends. I’m one of those guys who is perfectly willing to admit it was Lee Harvey Oswald working alone from the Texas Schoolbook Depository.
I’m the opposite. I’m a Occam’s Razor guy—what you see is what you get.
And Occam’s Razor tells me the United States is turning into a near clone of the People’s Republic of China.
As Glenn wrote last night, Trump warned you.
JOURNEY TO THE END OF TASTE: This guy got so drunk he legally changed his name to Céline Dion and has no recollection of it.
(Classical reference in headline.)
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Flagler College political science professor calls Trump supporters ‘enemy of the state.’
BUILDING MEMORY HOLES IS PRETTY ON-BRAND FOR SOMEONE NAMED CASTRO: Representative Joaquin Castro Prepares Legislation To Bar President Trump’s Name From Federal Buildings.
BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: No, Olive Garden did not revoke Sean Hannity’s lifetime pasta pass.
COLLUSION: U Alabama under investigation for possible ties to Wuhan lab. “The U.S. Department of Education has requested information from the University of Alabama regarding alleged undisclosed ties between the university and the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. . . ‘The WIV, owned by the Chinese government’s Academy of Sciences, includes a maximum biocontainment laboratory (“MCL”) that may be closely linked to the origin and/or spread of the Chinese COVID-19 virus.’”
INSTAPUNDIT’S CUCKING NOW? Don’t go crazy, people. They want you to go crazy.
TO BE FAIR, IT WANTS EVERYTHING TO BE OF, BY, AND FOR THE FEW: The Left Wants A Philanthropy Of The Few.
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Did Trump Commit a Crime When He Riled Up His Supporters Before They Rioted?
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Poll: ‘Civil War’ expectations reach new high, 71% of Trump voters.
China would love that. There are two things that would help address this: Voting reform akin to what was done in Florida after 2000, and an end to expressions of open contempt for half the nation from political and media leaders. Neither, alas, is likely.
ACTUAL DISCUSSION IS THE WAY FORWARD, BUT WILL WE TAKE IT? The elite and media response to the riot at the Capitol has been of one voice: this is an attack on “our democracy.” What they don’t understand (or refuse to) is that if you think the election was unfree and unfair, as 30-40% of people apparently do according to polling, the fake election was the attack on democracy, and it already happened, making the government illegitimate! The endless hot takes by people racing to be the first or most vigorous to give these people the “to a gas chamber – go!” treatment, rather than trying to convince them they’re wrong about the election itself, is the opposite of what a healthy polity would produce, and vastly different from the elite reaction to the riots this summer. It’s straight out of the campus playbook I’ve dealt with for the last 17 years, and the consequences are likely to be even more dangerous.
(Bumped, by Glenn, because this is important.)
PELOSI’S EFFORTS TO INSERT HERSELF INTO THE MILITARY CHAIN OF COMMAND ARE THEMSELVES SEDITIOUS, and the military is unhappy:
Ms. Pelosi also said she had spoken with Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about “preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes.” . . .
But some Defense Department officials have privately expressed anger that political leaders seemed to be trying to get the Pentagon to do the work of Congress and Cabinet secretaries, who have legal options to remove a president.
Mr. Trump, they noted, is still the commander in chief, and unless he is removed, the military is bound to follow his lawful orders. While military officials can refuse to carry out orders they view as illegal, they cannot proactively remove the president from the chain of command. That would be a military coup, these officials said.
Trying to incite a military coup is sedition.
MEDIA ROT EVEN IMPACTS C-SPAN: C-SPAN Anchor Returning to Network After Being Suspended for Lying About Hack.
The C-SPAN anchor who was suspended last year after lying about being hacked is returning to the network this week.
Steve Scully was suspended after admitting he lied when he claimed he did not create a post on his Twitter account, alleging instead that the account was hacked.
C-SPAN said Scully made the network aware of the information and “understands that he made a serious mistake.” But it said he would remain with the network, asserting he “has built a reservoir of goodwill” during his 30 years there.
“After some distance from this episode, we believe in his ability to continue to contribute to C-SPAN,” it added.
In a new statement, C-SPAN said executives view what happened last year as “a singular episode” in an otherwise successful career.
“And while it was appropriate in October for Steve to be immediately relieved of his duties leading our 2020 election coverage, we reiterate our belief that now, having completed a three-month administrative leave, he can continue to contribute to CSPAN’s mission,” it added.
Dan Rather must be thinking that some guys get all the luck.
CALIFORNIANS ARE REVOLTING AGAINST THE LOCKDOWN. New video from Reason TV:
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