RECALL GAVIN NEWSOM CAMPAIGN REACHES NEEDED 1.5 MILLION SIGNATURES.
A major upgrade could be in order for California: Grenell lays groundwork for California gubernatorial run.
GOODER AND HARDER: San Francisco supervisor says lack of tourists has criminals now targeting residents.
Flashback: San Francisco’s New Socialist, Soft On Crime D.A. Is The Last Thing The City Needs.
Why doesn’t San Francisco make it official and simply elect Bane to be their D.A.?
Related: Down south, Los Angeles County Deputy DA Filing Defamation Lawsuit Against DA George Gascon.
INTERESTING BOOK ON ANTI-AGING: I am reading David Sinclair’s book Lifespan: Why We Age―and Why We Don’t Have To and am finding the suggestions he makes to live longer very helpful. The book is a bit technical but his tips seem to boil down to taking NAD boosters in the morning along with Resveratrol, Vitamin D, K and 83 mg. of aspirin. He also skips a meal a day or has a very small one, lifts weights and jogs a bit and goes in a sauna at the gym before dunking into a cold pool. I guess one could live longer with this regimen (perhaps) but being cold and hungry doesn’t sound all that fun. If you have tried some of these techniques, have they worked for you?
THIS IS PLAUSIBLE, SINCE YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM IS ALREADY PRIMED: One dose of COVID-19 vaccine may be good for recovered patients. Of course, it’s still not clear that people who’ve had it need to be vaccinated. I had an antibody test run and my levels were high.
BREAKING: Senate Votes To Hear Witnesses In Trump Trial.
Ted Cruz has some thoughts on potential witnesses:
UPDATE: Or not! Senate strikes deal, bypassing calling impeachment witnesses.
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: I Sexted With A Bot To Quell Pandemic Loneliness.
To boldly go where Raj Koothrappali has gone before!
ANALYSIS: TRUE. The GOP must hammer the Democrats on school reopenings. “Republican members of Congress should be talking about nothing else. Not Donald Trump. Not impeachment. Not QAnon tweets. Nothing. It is clear that President Biden has abandoned the parents of schoolchildren who voted for him for a little peace and quiet coming from Washington, because that is who Joe Biden is and always has been.”
Related: Biden Administration Threw CDC Director Under The Bus After She Said Teachers Can Return To School.
More:
ROGER SIMON: The Democrats’ Chinese Communist Party Envy.
The key to our elites’ (hate the word but using it for convenience) riches and power is access to the giant Chinese market no matter how the CCP behaves.
This began with Kissinger and Nixon. The theory then, or the rationalization, was that if we opened to China, they would become like us.
Consequently, in the decades since, the U. S. government more or less looked away, doing little more than raising its eyebrows in UN conference rooms, as the CCP oppressed its minorities (If you can call millions of people minorities) in the Tibetan, Uyghur, Falun Gong, and Christian communities and simultaneously jailed, tortured and/or made life impossible for dissidents who evinced the slightest interest in democracy.
Even the horrors of Tiananmen were no more than a bump in the road. Just twelve years later China was welcomed into the World Trade Organization.
Only the uncouth orange-haired man dared to step in to stem this inevitable slide cum boondoggle for the elite. What a killjoy. Even Apple had to reconsider having all its iPhones made in China, at least for a while.
No wonder he has to be impeached—twice. And a third time if that becomes necessary. It’s not such a joke.
And you can be sure the same treatment will be given to Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida who appears to be a more sophisticated version of Trump who may know how to walk the walk more subtlety and successfully than the now former president.
In fact DeSantis already is being targeted, as our new administration is threatening to ban travel to Florida when his state—without lockdowns—fared far better against COVID than those that did like New York and New Jersey. Again—how very CCP.
What probably goes on somewhere in the head of the average liberal who once—it seems like decades ago—so ardently embraced civil liberties and the Bill of Rights is that the way of Communist China is the inevitable way of the future. As the digital empire grows and robots take over the work force, competing parties in a democratic republic will seem so old fashioned and just stand in the way of progress (read: getting rich).
Human freedom and liberty are passé 18th century ideas, the kind of thing that gets you banned on Twitter. Who needs it when the microchip in your sunglasses is telling you the right thing to do, what’s required of a “good citizen.”
When that infantile group of dumbbells invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6—calling that an “insurrection” was ludicrous; if you really wanted to overthrow the U. S. government you would do something that could have an effect, like bringing down the power grid—it was seized upon as an opportunity not only to smash Trump but to open the floodgates to a one-party system.
So what has happened to Nixon and Kissinger’s theory that the Chinese would become like us?
The reverse: We have become like them!
As Jim Geraghty wrote in October of 2019, when the CCP-NBA connection was exposed for millions of Americans to see, in a sort of prelude to what was to come the following year: We’re Not Exporting Our Values to China — We’re Importing Theirs.
BECAUSE DECENCY:
BIDENOMICS PROGRESSING SMOOTHLY: Economists Slam Biden Stimulus as ‘Economically Unjustified’ Plan That ‘Incentivizes Unemployment.’
Jared Bernstein, member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors: “One thing we learned in the 1990s was that a surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people at all skill levels, immigrant and native-born alike, to the growing economy is to let the job market tighten up. A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need. One equally surefire way to sort-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”
Yep. From Harvey Weinstein to Jeffrey Epstein to John Weaver, once it becomes public we hear that it was an “open secret” all along. Who was it secret from? Us. Not them. And who was keeping the secret? Everyone who knew but said and did nothing.
UPDATE: From the comments:
FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN: Prof defends music theory against white supremacist claims, then gets demoted. Now, he’s suing.
HMM: France wades into the South China Sea with a nuclear attack submarine. “China lays claim to nearly all of the South China Sea while Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam all also claim parts of the region, believed to hold valuable oil and gas deposits. . . . In geopolitical terms, given the patchwork of competing territorial claims, the South China Sea is not a zone to dive a nuclear submarine into without strategic reflection.”
It’s weird how the French seem to be stirring themselves all of a sudden, even as the Biden Administration establishes itself.
DEMOCRACY DIES IN VEILED THREATS: If Republican senators acquit Trump, they will own the violence that follows.
WOW, THE DEMOCRATS HAVE ONLY BEEN BACK IN POWER FOR A FEW WEEKS AND PEOPLE ARE ALREADY GOING PRO-SLAVERY: Law school defends its right to remove mural depicting slaves being freed.
WELL, YES. THE DEMOCRATS’ AND MEDIA’S — BUT I REPEAT MYSELF — EFFORT TO MAKE ELECTION FRAUD CLAIMS SUDDENLY OUT OF BOUNDS IS RISIBLE: Majority agrees: Don’t punish Trump for election theft claims.
Flashback, November 2, 2020: Will your ballot be safe? Computer experts sound warnings on America’s voting machines.
All election systems are for the most part black boxes: proprietary software and hardware jealously guarded by the handful of companies selling them. But state reviews and court cases opening up DRE systems of all makes and models for examination have for years flagged problems.
In New Jersey in 2008, Princeton computer scientist Andrew Appel and a five-member team got a rare look under the hood of an AVC Advantage DRE, part of a lawsuit alleging DREs could not reliably count votes.
Among the findings: The system sometimes only seemed to record a vote. It sometimes did record a vote but seemed not to. It would take one screwdriver and seven minutes to insert a vote-stealing program. That kind of hack would probably be invisible, Appel concluded.
More than a decade later, Appel is still talking about DRE vulnerabilities. And although the New Jersey governor, citing COVID-19, has created a nearly all-mail election, 19 New Jersey counties still have their DRE equipment on hand for the next contest, according to state records.
Nationally, if the surge in absentee ballots has not decreased in-person voting, more than 14 million registered voters would be going Tuesday to polls that are equipped with DREs.
“The whole community of computer scientists is mystified why election officials will not listen to experts about technology but will listen to the vendors (selling and maintaining it),” said Duncan Buell, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of South Carolina who examined that state’s system.
Plus: Democrats question election results: ‘We just trust the machines, and we shouldn’t.’
Matt Luceen didn’t vote for former President Donald Trump in 2020, but he came to Washington last week to protest President Biden’s inauguration, saying the election was flawed.
Mr. Luceen, a supporter of Sen. Bernard Sanders, said he toted signs that read “COUNT OUR VOTES BY HAND,” and “End the charade.”
“We don’t ever really put the paper into piles and count them by hand anymore,” the 34-year-old computer programmer said. “We just trust the machines, and we shouldn’t because we have documented proof that these machines are vulnerable.”
While Mr. Trump and his supporters have been explosively vocal about their distrust of the election system, discontent runs through a broad swath of voters from across the political spectrum.
In 2016, it was Democrats complaining that the election had been tainted by Russian interference. Two years later, the party complained that Stacey Abrams had been denied the Georgia governorship because of shenanigans with voting rolls.
Ms. Abrams never conceded, and Democrats — who took control of the U.S. House in those 2018 elections — made her cause a rallying cry, vowing to repair elections.
In 2020, it was Mr. Trump sowing complaints early and often.
And remember this? Democratic senators warned of potential ‘vote switching’ by Dominion voting machines prior to 2020 election.
In a December 2019 letter to Dominion Voting Systems, which has been mired in controversy after a human error involving its machines in Antrim County, Michigan, resulted in incorrect counts, Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden, and Amy Klobuchar and congressman Mark Pocan warned about reports of machines “switching votes,” “undisclosed vulnerabilities,” and “improbable” results that “threaten the integrity of our elections.”
“In 2018 alone, ‘voters in South Carolina [were] reporting machines that switched their votes after they’d inputted them, scanners [were] rejecting paper ballots in Missouri, and busted machines [were] causing long lines in Indiana,’” the letter reads. “In addition, researchers recently uncovered previously undisclosed vulnerabilities in “nearly three dozen backend election systems in 10 states.” And, just this year, after the Democratic candidate’s electronic tally showed he received 164 votes out of 55,000 cast in a Pennsylvania state judicial election in 2019, the county’s Republican chairwoman said, “nothing went right on Election Day. Everything went wrong. That’s a problem.”
The letter continued: “These problems threaten the integrity of our elections and demonstrate the importance of election systems that are strong, durable, and not vulnerable to attack.”
Dominion’s suing Rudy Giuliani, but not these Democrats. But an “unbiased” voting machine company that only sues Republicans has kind of blown its credibility already.
JUST THINK OF THE MEDIA AS DEMOCRATIC PARTY OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES, AND THEIR SILENCE MAKES PERFECT SENSE: Biden Is Still Separating Families at the Border. Where Is the Media Outrage?
Chinese authorities refused to provide World Health Organization investigators with raw, personalized data on early Covid-19 cases that could help them determine how and when the coronavirus first began to spread in China, according to WHO investigators who described heated exchanges over the lack of detail.
The Chinese authorities turned down requests to provide such data on 174 cases of Covid-19 that they have identified from the early phase of the outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. The investigators are part of a WHO team that this week completed a monthlong mission in China aimed at determining the origins of the pandemic.
Chinese officials and scientists provided their own extensive summaries and analysis of data on the cases, said the WHO team members. They also supplied aggregated data and analysis on retrospective searches through medical records in the months before the Wuhan outbreak was identified, saying that they had found no evidence of the virus.
But the WHO team wasn’t allowed to view the raw underlying data on those retrospective studies, which could allow them to conduct their own analysis on how early and how extensively the virus began to spread in China, the team members said. Member states typically provide such data—anonymized, but disaggregated so investigators can see all other relevant details on each case—as part of WHO investigations, said team members.
They’re hiding something, and we all have a pretty good idea what it is.
OUT ON A LIMB: Most GOP Voters Still Don’t Think Biden Was Elected Fairly.
That Time magazine article last week certainly didn’t do much to dissuade the cynicism of Trump’s supporters right now.
PANTS ‘EM. Democrats fear getting ‘caught with our pants down’ in 2022.
If you’re looking for a way to make a difference, start working on a 2022 campaign. And don’t let the “elections don’t matter” talk stop you. That’s just Dem propaganda designed to get you to stay home. A very small number of jurisdictions were responsible for all the problems in 2020, and in several of them a GOP legislature is going to change the laws to prevent a repeat. Those problems are very unlikely to affect your state or local elections.
IT BLAMES TRUMP, OF COURSE: “Report: 40% of US COVID deaths could have been avoided.”
What this Fox News article doesn’t point out is that the “experts” involved in this study–Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein–are the authors of a string of outlandish, highly politicized “studies.”
Jeff Jacoby wrote about their rent control study back in 1995. He quotes Woolhandler:
“‘If rent control vanishes, dozens will die,’ said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, an internist at Cambridge Hospital and associate professor at Harvard Medical School….
“‘One-third of our heart attack patients at Cambridge Hospital live in rent-controlled apartments. By allowing landlords to force them out, the governor and state Legislature are implementing the death penalty—a social policy sure to kill.’”
Jacoby also quotes Himmelstein:
“As doctors,” pronounces Dr. David Himmelstein, “we don’t have the power to change the law or get a person another apartment. But we do have the power to appeal to the moral consciousness of politicians as well as landlords.”
As Jacoby put it in 1995: “If only conservatives could be as sensitive and morally refined as Drs. Woolhandler and Himmelstein. Then they would realize how massive the death toll can be when liberals don’t get their way.”
Woolhandler and Himmelstein were also the authors (along with then Prof. Elizabeth Warren) of an over-hyped study of bankruptcy that wildly claimed that half of all bankruptcies stem from illness or injury. My response to that one is here.
It’s surprising to me how these folks manage to get so much attention for their work. But they definitely do.
CUOMO AIDE ADMITS THEY HID NURSING HOME DATA SO FEDS WOULDN’T FIND OUT:
Governor Cuomo’s top aide privately apologized to Democratic lawmakers for withholding the state’s nursing-home death toll from COVID-19 — telling them “we froze” out of fear the true numbers would “be used against us” by federal prosecutors, The Post has learned.
The stunning admission of a cover-up was made by Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa during a video conference call with state Democratic leaders in which she said the Cuomo administration had rebuffed a legislative request for the tally in August because “right around the same time, [then-President Donald Trump] turns this into a giant political football,” according to an audio recording of the two-hour-plus meeting.
“He starts tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes,” DeRosa said. “He starts going after [New Jersey Gov. Phil] Murphy, starts going after [California Gov. Gavin] Newsom, starts going after [Michigan Gov.] Gretchen Whitmer.”
In addition to attacking Cuomo’s fellow Democratic governors, DeRosa said, Trump “directs the Department of Justice to do an investigation into us.”
“And basically, we froze,” she told the lawmakers on the call.
“Gotta hand it to Cuomo, ‘I covered up thousands of deaths to fight fascism’ is bold. But hey, extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures right?”, one wag noted on Twitter.
Meanwhile, there is pouncing and seizing spotted by the DNC-MSM:
● Politico: Republicans Pounce! “Nearly every top Republican in the state pounced on the Post’s report, subjecting Cuomo to a barrage of criticism arguably unparalleled at any point during his decade in office.”
● The New York Times: “Condemnation was even louder from Republicans, who have seized on Mr. Cuomo’s performance on nursing homes — where more than 10,000 New Yorkers have died during the pandemic, but the state long stalled on releasing full data — as evidence of duplicity or even criminality.”
As Jim Treacher likes to say, “When Republicans screw up, that’s the story. When Democrats screw up, the Republicans’ reaction is the story.”
And speaking of screwing up:
However, Ed Morrissey asks: Are New York Democrats bailing out on Cuomo?
When only Republicans criticize a cover-up in a scandal involving thousands of deaths, the media can slough it off as pouncing. When Democrats join them in slamming Andrew Cuomo for his “betrayal,” suddenly it looks less like pouncing and more like a serious existential crisis. And that might very well be what Cuomo will shortly face:
Faster, please.
Flashback: America’s Newspaper of Record last May: CNN Praises Governor Cuomo For Killing Off The Elderly Since They Probably Would Have Voted For Trump.
WILLIAM JACOBSON: Exposing Critical Race Training in Higher Education.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. John Stossel: There Are No Socialist Success Stories. “Only capitalist countries create real wealth.”
Yeah, but the opportunities for graft — and even more vital, for self-importance and unchecked power — are so much less.
JIM GERAGHTY: The Icons of the Left Collapse.
What’s the theme that ties together Andrew Cuomo, the Lincoln Project, and California’s governing class? Since 2015 or so, a whole bunch of people who hated Donald Trump — and I am among those who believe the former president earned his animosity and scorn — chose to believe that anyone who stood in opposition to Trump had to be one of the good guys. A huge swath of the media world, elites across American society, and donors large and small, conflated political agreement in opposition to Trump with all other positive virtues. Outspoken opposition to Trump turned into an all-purpose badge of righteousness that many believed would outweigh or outshine any other issues or character flaws.
When a society adopts this kind of mentality, bad people recognize this. They pick up on the fact that certain views or opinions or labels can be used as moral get-out-of-jail-free cards. Why do you think so many self-identified feminist men keep turning out to be creeps when alone with a woman? Why do you think some billionaires describe themselves as socialist? Why do you think self-professed environmentalists keep taking private jets to climate-change conferences? Society has taught them that their viewpoint outweighs their actual behavior, actions, and in some cases, and how they treat other people.
Exit quote: “You made this bed, progressives. We tried to hold these guys accountable, but you wouldn’t listen to us. The only way we get better results is if you guys hold your own guys accountable.”
NEW YORK SUN: Impeaching the Voters:
The fact is that the Democrats are scared of a Trump comeback, and the House made no secret of it.
On the contrary, it warned in open Senate against acquitting Mr. Trump, because that would leave open the possibility that he could rebound and run for president again. That is what the Democrats’ long campaign for impeachment has been about from the start — fear of the voters. It seems that the Democrats are impeaching not so much the former president but the 74 million Americans who voted for him and, they fear, might yet do so again.
Better they should fear what comes in place of Trump, if they continue in this vein. You can declare war against 74 million people, but it may not go as planned.
Flashback:
THAT WAS ALWAYS THE GOAL, THEY JUST USED TO BE LESS OPEN ABOUT IT: Zaid Jilani: The Left Has Replaced Social Liberalism with Social Control.
THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE COVID TUNNEL: American Commitment’s Phil Kerpen tells Bill Walton there are multiple reasons to think the worst of the Covid crisis is behind us. For one thing, the decline in the present wave of “new cases” is happening across the country, not just in sections.
BTW, if you appreciate informal, substantive and intelligent conversations about the most important issues of the day, “The Bill Walton Show” will delight you. Like this one with Kerpen, Walton’s conversations are lengthy at just under 50 minutes, but in my experience always well-worth the invested time. And, no, this is not the former NBA star Bill Walton, but the Bill Walton who built Allied Capital.
FASTER, PLEASE: Synthetic ‘mini’ receptors block atherosclerosis.
REPORT: Lincoln Project Co-Founder Steve Schmidt resigns.
More: Everything the Lincoln Project touches dies. “For a supposedly conservative PAC, the Lincoln Project has rarely if ever espoused conservative values. After Trump was defeated, the group gave its backing to Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in the Georgia Senate runoffs, whose victories allow the Biden-Harris administration to enact its progressive agenda. Many have pondered the mystery of what happens to a NeverTrump organization when you take Trump out of the equation. Now we know: a cataclysmic implosion.”
As Jim Treacher asks: What Did the Lincoln Project Know About John Weaver, and When?
And from Glenn Greenwald: The Lincoln Project, Facing Multiple Scandals, is Accused by its Own Co-Founder of Likely Criminality.
WELL, ANDREA MITCHELL IS DUMB ENOUGHT TO ENTER A BATTLE OF WITS WITH TED CRUZ: How Dumb Are Reporters? “In short, by trying to match wits with Ted Cruz, Andrea Mitchell revealed herself as a person who knows little or nothing about either Shakespeare or Faulkner. That isn’t necessarily disgraceful, except that 1) she shouldn’t have picked a fight with a very smart guy from a position of ignorance, and 2) her fallback position, claiming to be a Faulkner scholar, made her look dumber than ever. Deservedly. This is all trivial, except for one fact: the politicians, reporters, writers, editors, ‘intellectuals,’ college professors and so on who try to intimidate you with their claim to be smarter and more knowledgeable than you, are, with only occasional exceptions, frauds.”
The really smart people — Richard Feynman, say, or Freeman Dyson — don’t waste time telling you how smart they are.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The World Goes On While America Sleeps.
The last impeachment distracted the President and Congress while Covid was brewing. What are we missing now?
I’M ENJOYING THE SPECTACLE OF CUOMO AND NEWSOM GOING DOWN: Cuomo Chaos: N.Y. Dems Consider Revoking Emergency Powers as Nursing Home Coverup Unravels.
DAVID BARON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Four wild animals that are thriving in cities.
I think the problem is that nobody shoots them anymore.
NO, BUT GIVE THEM TIME: Is America Too Bound by Red Tape to Support Space Entrepreneurs? “Worse, the regulatory regime that the U.S. does have, inherited from an era of government-dominance of space, lends itself (as do all intrusive rules) to abuse. That can come from ‘you will respect mah authoritah’ resentment of anybody who bucks bureaucracy. But it can also reflect government seat warmers’ discomfort with the unfamiliar and threatening world of private entrepreneurial activity.”
CAN I GET SOME OF THIS AS A BODYBUILDING SUPPLEMENT? Novel protein could reverse severe muscle wasting in disease, aging and trauma.
A PITHY MONTAGE OF IMPEACHMENT HYPOCRISY:
THIS IS CNN: Ted Cruz Eviscerates Legacy Media’s ‘Gotcha!’ Attack.
BRYAN PRESTON: Gina Carano Episode Unmasks Mickey Mouse as the Evil Emperor Palpatine (video).
To be fair, this is simply Star Wars returning to its Communist-inspired roots.
WHEN WILL HE GIVE BACK HIS EMMY? Gov. Cuomo ducks reporters after Biden WH meeting amid nursing home scandal.
Related: Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa admits they hid nursing home data so feds wouldn’t find out.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Best Personal Defense Strategies for Civil Unrest.
PANTS ‘EM. Democrats fear getting ‘caught with our pants down’ in 2022.
If you’re looking for a way to make a difference, start working on a 2022 campaign. And don’t let the “elections don’t matter” talk stop you. That’s just Dem propaganda designed to get you to stay home. A very small number of jurisdictions were responsible for all the problems in 2020, and in several of them a GOP legislature is going to change the laws to prevent a repeat. Those problems are very unlikely to affect your state or local elections.
COLOR ME SKEPTICAL ON THIS NEW WEIGHT LOSS DRUG. But good news if it works.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Biden Threatens Masks Today, Masks Tomorrow, Masks Forever!
Insanity Wrap needs to know: What’s it called when something that doesn’t seem to work needs to be extended for a long time to see if maybe that will make it work?
Answer: We’re going to go with “another year of masks” because “every big government program” was already taken.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- Cuomo duplicates ObamaCare website rollout success for vaccinations
- The Lincoln Project enters the Raiders of the Lost Ark phase
- Ryan Long’s Church of Woke
Bonus Sanity: North Dakota makes women’s sports for women.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
GOOD: Routine blood tests could be key to stopping the silent killer of liver disease. “New research has shown that results of blood tests routinely performed by GPs everywhere contain a hidden fingerprint that can identify people silently developing potentially fatal liver cirrhosis.”
FLASHBACK: “Watch Joe Biden spokesman TJ Ducklo absolutely melt down when [Bret Baier] asks him if Biden has ever used a teleprompter for news interviews from his house. Ducklo explodes and, like he did throughout the interview, accuses him of being a Trump campaign shill.”
“THEY CAN’T CANCEL US IF WE DON’T LET THEM:” Gina Carano To Produce And Star In Upcoming Film For The Daily Wire.
“I WILL DESTROY YOU:” Biden Aide Threatened a Politico Reporter Pursuing a Story on His Relationship.
A White House official tried to quash a story about his relationship with a reporter by issuing threats and using derogatory language to another reporter pursuing it, according to two sources familiar with the incident. In a sympathetic profile Monday, People revealed that White House deputy press secretary TJ Ducklo is dating Axios political reporter Alexi McCammond, who covered the Joe Biden campaign. But behind the scenes, Ducklo had previously lashed out at Politico reporter Tara Palmeri, who was reporting the story, exhibiting behavior that led to tense meetings between the Washington news outlet’s editors and senior White House officials.
The confrontation began on Inauguration Day, January 20, after Palmeri, a coauthor of Politico’s Playbook, contacted McCammond for comment while one of her male colleagues left a message for Ducklo, according to sources. Ducklo subsequently called a Playbook editor to object to the story, but was told to call the Playbook reporters with his concerns. But instead of calling the male reporter who initially contacted him, Ducklo tried to intimidate Palmeri by phone in an effort to kill the story. “I will destroy you,” Ducklo told her, according to sources, adding that he would ruin her reputation if she published it.
During the off-the-record call, Ducklo made derogatory and misogynistic comments, accusing Palmeri of only reporting on his relationship—which, due to the ethics questions that factor into the relationship between a journalist and White House official, falls under the purview of her reporting beat—because she was “jealous” that an unidentified man in the past had “wanted to fuck” McCammond “and not you.” Ducklo also accused Palmeri of being “jealous” of his relationship with McCammond. (Palmeri had no prior relationship or communication with McCammond before calling her to report on the Playbook item, which was a story that she was assigned and had not independently pursued.)
Flashback: Biden promises appointees he will fire them ‘on the spot’ if they disrespect others. The clock is ticking, Joe!
UPDATE: So much for “fire them ‘on the spot:'” Top Biden aide suspended with pay for one week after allegation by journalist of sexual harassment, threats.
(Updated and bumped.)
HAD THE COVID VACCINE? No need to quarantine if exposed.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Star Wars Fans Threatened By Strong, Independent, Free-Thinking Woman.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: The French are absolutely right to say ‘no thanks’ to US woke-ism. “Academics disagree, of course. But that’s no more a surprise than seeing manufacturers of synthetic cheese stand up in defense of Velveeta.”
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: China Bans BBC World News: ‘Fake,’ ‘Falsified Reporting.’
Insert Kissinger Iran-Iraq War quote here.
BIDEN’S RETURN TO NORMALCY: National Guard to conduct DC mission through mid-March; costs to reach nearly $500 million.
RETURN TO NORMALCY: Everything is going swimmingly at the Biden White House.
Remember, we were supposed to get rid of Trump so as to bring “decency” back to the White House.
MEH, I’M GUESSING IT’S GRIFTERS ALL THE WAY DOWN: Irony: Lincoln Project and Steve Schmidt Paint Co-Founder Jennifer Horn as a Grifter After She Resigns.
Weaver started the group with some of the biggest names in Republican politics to defeat Donald Trump. Joining him was Steve Schmidt, a Karl Rove protégé during George W. Bush’s reelection campaign, known for his no-holds-barred style of attack, who later worked on McCain’s 2008 campaign. Joining them was another McCain veteran, Reed Galen, and the Republican strategist Rick Wilson. Other co-founders included the Republican super-lawyer George Conway, husband of Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, as well as veteran Republican political operatives Mike Madrid, Ron Steslow, and Jennifer Horn.
It didn’t take long for the Lincoln Project to become a haven for “Never Trump” Republicans and capture the political world’s attention with its brutal television ads against the president. The buzz led to big business for the super-PAC, which raised more than $87 million in the 2020 election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission records. Much of the money was paid to firms run by the Lincoln Project’s co-founders, including nearly $25 million to Summit Strategic Communications, a firm run by Galen. More than $20 million was paid to TUSK Digital, run by Steslow, which employed people who worked as contractors at the Lincoln Project. . . .
Weaver continued harassing Johnson at the Lincoln Project: “Are you top, bottom, versa?” he wrote in one message shortly after Johnson started.
“His messages never stopped,” Johnson said. “And I would play along, just to be nice. Because I knew, I mean, he’s important. Like he has the strings. And we operate in the same kind of political culture of being ‘Never Trumpers.’”
Johnson said he didn’t tell Lincoln Project management about Weaver, fearing retribution if he accused one of the company’s co-founders of harassment. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, if I say something wrong, they’re gonna let me go or get rid of me,’” Johnson said.
While Johnson didn’t know it then, the Lincoln Project had already been told Weaver was preying on young men in and outside the company.
Remember, the Lincoln Project was supposedly a bastion of decency fighting against the depraved Donald Trump. Also, as with Harvey Weinstein, everyone knew and everyone kept quiet until the usefulness of keeping quiet ended. Because decency!
UPDATE: Ouch.
JOE ISN’T IN CHARGE HERE: On School Reopening, Biden Moves Behind the Sissy Pulpit. “That significant retreat moves the goalposts on reopening and shows the administration has far less ambitious expectations for schools this year. Given that Biden’s first 100 days end in April, Biden would count schools offering about 5 to 7 days of in-person instruction before the end of the school year as ‘open’.”
Teachers union tool.
VIRGINIA POSTREL: A California Coup? Gavin Newsom Has a Problem on His Hands.
After nearly a year under some of the nation’s — indeed, the world’s — toughest Covid-19 restrictions, Californians are increasingly frustrated. With little sympathy from elected officials, they’ve endured mass layoffs, wrecked businesses and lost schooling. They’ve even lost their Disneyland annual passes. Yet the virus has still devastated the state.
Now they’re taking out their frustrations on Governor Gavin Newsom, who for many epitomizes governmental high-handedness and dysfunction. It doesn’t help that the governor suffers from what could be called resting smug face. Or that he comes from San Francisco, which exemplifies the combination of scary vagrants, general disorder and sky-high housing prices that makes Californians wonder how their state got so broken. (Not to mention the school district is against George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.) . . .
Democratic officials are trying to stigmatize the recall movement as a collection of dangerous kooks. “This recall effort, which really ought to be called ‘the California coup,’ is being led by right-wing conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, anti-vaxxers and groups who encourage violence on our democratic institutions,” state party chair Rusty Hicks said in a January press conference. A few days later, the Los Angeles Times expanded his talking point into a major article titled “Far-right movements including QAnon, virus skeptics linked to Newsom recall.” . . .
The discontent isn’t just coming from Republicans or Trump supporters. Newsom’s numbers are on the skids among people who used to like him. Two recent polls show a significant decline. Among likely voters, the Public Policy Institute of California found a slight majority of 52% giving the governor a favorable rating — a drop from over 60% in the early days of the pandemic. . . .
Three specific offenses seem to catalyze the change. The most infamous was the birthday dinner with lobbyists at the upscale French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley, held even as Newsom was telling Californians not to have family gatherings for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Faulconer was among the critics who immediately pounced on the governor’s inconsistencies, tweeting that “He can celebrate birthday parties. But you can’t.”
That was in November. By then discontent with Newsom had already been growing for months, probably beginning in July when he announced that schools wouldn’t reopen. As the reality of another year of homeschooling dawned on California parents, many blamed the governor for not working to reopen schools. Interest-group politics, not science, seemed to be driving policy.
To be fair, if you didn’t want to be governed by a corrupt party hack, you shouldn’t have elected him in the first place.
WE ARE BEING PATRONIZED BY OUR INFERIORS: Ann Althouse savages Andrea Mitchell’s literary ignorance. “If you really were a person who reads and understands literature, you would know that — in the world of novels — a character who corrects other people curtly in that pedantic ‘No, that’s Faulkner’ manner is an icky prig.”
Yep, that’s our Andrea. That she got it wrong is just the icing on the cake.
WHEN YOU’VE LOST THE BEEB…: BBC News banned in China, one week after CGTN’s license withdrawn in UK.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Iowa senator wants to end tenure at state universities.
WELL, FLORIDA VOTED FOR TRUMP: Biden Considering Stronger Travel Restrictions On Red States Than On Mexico.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Higher Ed Lost 650,000 Jobs Last Year — 13% Of The Workforce.
Hollywood is collapsing, Higher Ed is on the ropes, teachers’ unions are in disrepute. There are a lot of opportunities here for the right if it’s smart enough to take them.
JONATHAN TURLEY: After quickly impeaching Trump, the House sat around and did nothing about the trial. So, have they intentionally tanked the trial?
When it comes to football, tanking allegations arise when the inexplicable speeds along the inevitable. That point was reached this season when Pederson decided not to tie the game against Washington in the third quarter with a field goal and instead put Nate Sudfeld in the game over Jalen Hurts. The House may have reached that point when the managers seemed to be trying harder to make a better case for losing than winning. That was driven home by the selection of such managers as Rep. Eric Swalwell in the wake of his scandal with Chinese spy. Sending in Swalwell, who has also been accused of reckless political rhetoric, made the Sudfeld substitution look like sheer genius.
Read the whole thing.
ABOUT THAT IMPEACHMENT TRIAL: John Daniel Davidson points in The Federalist to a fundamental weakness in the Democrats’ case against Trump: To be guilty of incitement, Trump had to clearly and without a doubt instruct his supporters to go to the Capitol and riot.
And that in turn means there must be rioters who did so because they thought that’s exactly what Trump told them to do. But no rioters saying that were produced as witnesses during the House impeachment debate or the Senate trial so far, so the Democrats use carefully edited video to prompt emotional responses that cultivate the assumption that’s what they thought. Well, no, says Davidson:
“But here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter if they thought they were carrying out Trump’s orders. It’s not Trump’s fault these people are idiots. And unless Democrats can produce some evidence that Trump gave the rioters instructions to attack the Capitol, we’ll have to rely on what we know Trump said, which was to encourage the protesters to march ‘peacefully.’” Davidson’s entire critique is arguably devastating.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Related: Ann Althouse: “The question I think should be at the core of the impeachment trial but is not: Did Trump intend that the crowd break into the Capitol and terrorize the members of Congress? . . . I want to be pointed to the part of the trial that addresses the question: Did Trump intend that the crowd break into the Capitol and terrorize the members of Congress?”
Well, they can’t point to that because he didn’t. That’s why they’re blowing smoke and peddling doctored videos for emotional impact.
I GUESS SHE’S OFF TO A SLOW START: Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) Introduces FIVE Useless Gun Control Bills.
ENABLING THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG: Biden Administration Suspends Rule Protecting Businesses from Banking Discrimination.
CALM DOWN, THEY’RE STEALING AS FAST AS THEY CAN: Biden administration sitting on $1 trillion in unspent COVID-19 relief funds.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Andrew Cuomo Should Be In Prison for His COVID-19 Lies. “It should be noted that while they were lying to the public because President Trump was turning it into a ‘political football,’ Cuomo was using his criminal lack of transparency as a political opportunity. He was regularly appearing on his brother’s CNN show to engage in an uncomfortable incestuous attention whore fest. He was hamming it up at his daily press conferences and lapping up the media attention he was undeservedly receiving.”
WHAT IF TRUMP SUPPORTERS SHUN ANYONE WHO WENT TO HARVARD? Students And Alumni Ask Harvard Law School To Shun Anyone Who Worked For The Trump Administration.
YOU DON’T SAY: Russia Defiant of White House’s Foreign Policy Agenda.
As Biden reduces American energy independence, Moscow will be able to afford that much more mischief — Tehran, too.
READER BOOK PLUG: From J.P. Mac, Death Honk: Nine Tales of the Macabre.
THE REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS ARE THE KEY TO RESISTANCE: Gov. Ron DeSantis will fight any attempt to restrict travel to and from Florida.
WHEN EZRA KLEIN HAS NOTICED. . . . California Is Making Liberals Squirm: If progressivism can’t work there, why should the country believe it can work anywhere else? “California, as the biggest state in the nation, and one where Democrats hold total control of the government, carries a special burden. If progressivism cannot work here, why should the country believe it can work anywhere else?”
Once you start looking for this pattern, you see it everywhere. California talks a big game on climate change, but even with billions of dollars in federal funding, it couldn’t build high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The project was choked by pricey consultants, private land negotiations, endless environmental reviews, county governments suing the state government. It has been shrunk to a line connecting the midsize cities of Bakersfield and Merced, and even that is horribly over budget and behind schedule. . . .
The vaccine rollout in California was marred by overly complex eligibility criteria that slowed the pace of vaccinations terribly in the early days. Those regulations were written with good intentions, as California politicians worried over how to balance speed and equity. The result, however, wasn’t fairness, but sluggishness, and California lagged behind the rest of the nation for the first weeks of the effort. Eventually, the state reversed course and simplified eligibility.
When you prize wokeness over results, you get wokeness over results.
FROM PAM UPHOFF: Destroyer.
Ice is back!
And back in trouble.
His mission–sabotage the Cyborg Empire–goes awry when the Cyborgs discover his dimensional gate, and Gior, the obnoxious young woman with the rare talent of being able to manipulate dimensional phenomena, is forced to close that gate moments before the Cyborgs capture her.
Now Ice is not just marooned in enemy territory, he needs to rescue Gior quickly, before they get a control chip into her brain.
NOW? THEY’LL GET WHAT THEY DESERVE: Hollywood Sold Its Soul to China … Now What?
The ridiculous assumption that SOMEHOW China’s market was their for the plucking was always a mirage. As it is for Nike, and all the other brands.
Stupidity should hurt. Heinlein said it was the only capital crime. They get what they deserve.
CHINA SURE IS GETTING WHAT IT PAID FOR: Biden Administration Drops Trump Plan to Track Campus ‘Confucius Institutes’.
WHEN LEFTISTS SCARE THE LEFT, THERE’S TUMBRILS ON THE HORIZON: France sees foreign threat: “out-of-control woke leftism of American campuses and its attendant cancel culture”.
WHICH IN TURN ARE CIRCLING AT RELATIVISTIC SPEED: Psaki Circles Back To The School Opening Goalposts.
WHICH IS PRECISELY THE INTENT: New “Gun Trafficking” Bill Could Cripple Legal Firearms Market.
They’ll make us all criminals, because criminals are easier to scared.
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