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December 31, 2020
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Poll Observer Claims ‘Statistically Impossible’ Number of Military Ballots in Georgia County Went for Biden.
JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR: Dave Portnoy.
Portnoy wasn’t done. The 2016 Free Beacon Man of the Year established The Barstool Fund to raise money for small business owners. In less than two weeks, the fund brought in more than $8.7 million, and helped save dozens of small businesses from financial ruin. Portnoy’s FaceTime calls with grateful business owners provided the heartwarming content so many of us craved in these difficult times.
Portnoy has offered to go on any network to talk about his efforts, but thus far only Fox News has put him on the air. CNN has better things to do, apparently, like keeping track of Trump’s golfing schedule.
“I didn’t think I’d be the guy doing it,” Portnoy told Tucker Carlson after launching the fund. “I’d rather be sitting on a beach, betting on horses, drinking, but nobody else is going to do it. We have this big platform, so we’re going to try to help as many small businesses as we can.”
For all the awards journalists keep giving themselves, few have ever done anything to deserve one.
Until now.
For perhaps the first time in human history, a media personality has made a positive contribution to society by improving the lives of working people who don’t have time to follow politics obsessively on Twitter.
I’m so old, I can (just barely) remember a time before journalists inverted Chicago Evening Post columnist Finley Peter Dunne’s 1893 notion that “The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED: When There Wasn’t Enough Hand Sanitizer, Distilleries Stepped Up. Now They’re Facing $14,060 FDA Fees. Distilleries just learned that to cap off a brutal year, the FDA is charging them a fee normally reserved for drug manufacturing facilities.
CRUSHING THE NARRATIVE: Organic, non-organic meats have similar greenhouse gas impacts.
GOING LIVE IN FIVE… FOUR… THREE… VIP Gold Live Chat with Kruiser, Preston, VodkaPundit.
Cold drinks. Hot takes. Your questions.
HE LOST (HALF THE AUDIENCE) ON JEOPARDY, BABY: Wannabe Jeopardy! Host Ken Jennings Is A Brett Kavanaugh Rape Truther Who Hates Republicans.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Why Are Reporters Covering for Hilaria Baldwin’s Epic Con? “The Identity Politics mob is suddenly standing down. Here’s the real reason why.”
‘TIS THE SEASON: Arkansas doctor wipes away cancer patients’ bills totaling $650,000.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: 2020 Rated Worst Year Ever, Provided You Never Lived At Any Other Time In History.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Oregon Mayor Leads the Charge to Open Businesses on Jan 1, Despite Lockdowns.
THAT’LL PLAY WELL: New US dietary guidelines: No candy, cake for kids under 2.
OLD AND BUSTED: Tax the Rich.
The New Hotness? Tax the poor! Thursday is the last day before new Oregon tobacco tax hikes cigarette prices $2 per pack.
As Reason magazine notes, “Cigarette taxes hurt the poor. Cigarette taxes are extremely regressive. The poor pay a larger chunk of their income to the tax than the wealthy. This is further exacerbated by the fact that low-income, low-education and minority populations all smoke more than high-income, high-education and white populations, and by a good bit. Nearly a third of people below the poverty line smoke, while only 18% of those at or above the poverty line do. A tax on cigarettes is therefore paid mostly by society’s poorest individuals.”
OH, YEAH? JUST WATCH HIM DO IT WITH A BIG ASSIST FROM THE PRESS: Warnock Can’t Dismiss ‘Traumatizing and Disturbing’ Camp Abuse Story.
BECAUSE IT’S ESSENTIALLY TOTALITARIAN: Why cancel culture can target anyone. “The end game of cancel culture isn’t just to humiliate and punish the offender but to intimidate and ultimately silence any dissenting voices including those calling for some measure of mercy.”
THE RETROACTIVE ENDORSEMENT OF BARACK OBAMA WAS THE POINT OF NO RETURN, ASSUMING THERE HAD EVER BEEN ONE: 2020 Is The Year NeverTrump Finally Admitted They’re NeverRepublican.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: What Will Historians Make of Our Annus Horribilis?
Yet amid the death, destruction and dissension, history will show that America did not fall apart.
In remarkable fashion, researchers created a viable and safe COVID-19 vaccine in less than a year — a feat earlier described as impossible by experts.
The nation went into recession but avoided the forecasted depression. This was partly because America in early 2020 was booming by historical standards, and partly because the Trump administration and Congress quickly infused some $4 trillion of liquidity into the inert economy.
For all the charges and counter-charges of voter fraud and Trump being a sore loser, President-elect Joe Biden will eventually take office. And Donald Trump will leave it.
No one disputes that the 2020 campaign and election were abnormal. Whether they were unfair or illegitimate will likely be readjudicated in the 2022 midterm and 2024 presidential elections. By then, the people will have had time to digest the bizarre events of the annus horribilis — and with their votes make the necessary compensations.
For all of America’s troubles, the world abroad was worse. China eerily bragged that it reacted best to its own virus — even as its global popularity crashed. Europe did little better in combatting the pandemic and saw its economy in even worse shape.
More importantly, as the year ended, there was a patch of blue sky amid the storm clouds.
The Middle East may be on the verge of a historic recalibrated peace. The world is now pushing back against Chinese mercantilism. The southern border is mostly secure. The flood of illegal immigration has ebbed to a trickle. The strategies that sparked a three-year economic boom need only be reapplied in 2021.
Amid death and destruction, perhaps one day historians will conclude that what could not kill off America in 2020 only made it stronger.
As coronavirus vaccines roll out, it will be fascinating to watch which crises the Biden administration manufactures, to generate the left’s all-important moral equivalent of war mindset.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: California Tumbles Into the Sea.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: Are you ready for the Great Tech Worker Reverse Migration out of California?
Answer: You’d better be, because it sure looks like it’s coming.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- Portland police forced to dial 911 for assistance
- FDA makes distillers pay up for helping out
- Andrew Cuomo graciously allows a few thousand Bills fans to attend playoff game, takes a seat for himself
Bonus Sanity: Sorry, couldn’t find any today.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
IN THE MAIL: Battles that Changed History.
TYLER O’NEIL: 5 Great Trump Victories in 2020. “Trump achieved five great victories in 2020, opposing abortion, standing up for America, fast-tracking vaccines, peace in the Middle East, and more.”
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Boycotts, bans, and burn books: 8 outrageous incidents of Ivy League leftism in 2020.
EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: NPR on ‘Toxic Individualism:’ Pandemic Politics Driving Health Care Workers From Small Towns.
Partying like it’s 1919, when attacks on individuality were all the rage among collectivist-obsessed “Progressives:”
[Woodrow] Wilson was merely one voice in the progressive chorus of the age. “[W]e must demand that the individual shall be willing to lose the sense of personal achievement, and shall be content to realize his activity only in connection to the activity of the many,” declared the progressive social activist Jane Addams.
“New forms of association must be created,” explained Walter Rauschenbusch, a leading progressive theologian of the Social Gospel movement, in 1896. “Our disorganized competitive life must pass into an organic cooperative life.” Elsewhere, Rauschenbusch put it more simply: “Individualism means tyranny.”
Or as Mies van der Rohe, the last director of Weimar Germany’s socialist-oriented Bauhaus design school said in 1924:
The individual is losing significance; his destiny is no longer what interests us. The decisive achievements in all fields are impersonal and their authors are for the most part unknown. They are part of the trend of our time toward anonymity. Our engineering structures are examples. Gigantic dams, great industrial installations and huge bridges are built as a matter of course, with no designer’s name attached to them. They point to the technology of the future.
Curiously, Mies would have no problem building for wealthy individuals who wished to commission his work — not to mention having his name firmly associated with his designs — after he fled the Weimar Republic’s much more punitive successors for America.
VIRGINIA POSTREL: Los Angeles Locked Down, Covid Came Anyway. The city’s crisis contradicts the simple narrative that outbreaks are punishment for red-state recklessness. “Los Angeles has endured nine months of a shutdown more extreme than most of the country’s — or the world’s. In the beginning, the city even closed the parks. You still can’t enter the Venice Beach boardwalk except to pick up takeout food. No walks, bike rides or fishing on the pier.”
How’s that workin’ for you?
WOW, EVEN AFTER HE DELETED HIS CRAZY TWEET, KURT EICHENWALD’S FEED IS STILL A BOILING STEW OF CRAZY.
Here’s the one he deleted:
But the whole thing is just crazy. Sadly, not atypical of our media class today.
AT AMAZON, Iron Gym Total Upper Body Workout Bar.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Court upholds bribery conviction of Chinese exec Patrick Ho linked to Hunter Biden.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: School alleges student harassed prof. Video tells a different story.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Alec Baldwin’s Phony Wife Is An SNL Skit Waiting to Happen. “Over here in the comedy trade, Joe Biden is a target rich joke environment the likes of which hasn’t been seen in the modern era. Sadly, mainstream comedy has been castrated by political correctness and pledged fealty to the Democratic party. Unless I can get back on stage soon, you’re not going to be hearing any jokes about Joe Biden. I don’t even do political comedy on stage, but I’d break my own rules just to have a go at this guy.”
The world has never needed Stephen Kruiser more than right now.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A MUCH BIGGER BLOG: The 10 Worst Legacy Media Abuses in 2020.
THE PROGRESSIVE GOD IS A JEALOUS GOD: Trump Invokes Saint Thomas Becket In Defense Of Religious Liberty. Expect The Opposite From Biden-Harris. “Trump’s proclamation honoring the famous saint and martyr is a stark reminder that religious liberty is under threat by Democrats.”
PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE BALLOT BOX: Expert: Biden win ‘suspicious,’ 289,000 election-changing ‘excess’ votes.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: These people got ‘canceled’ in 2020. What happened to their careers?
NOW THIS IS MORE LIKE THE 21ST CENTURY I WAS HOPING FOR: The Air Force Is Building a Spacecraft That Will Beam Solar Power to Earth.
THE LIFE OF THE PARTY FINDS A WAY: Apple pulls iPhone app promoting secret parties during the COVID-19 pandemic.
MEDIA MYTH ALERT: Taking stock: Top mythbusting posts of 2020.
SCIENTISTS HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO DETERMINE WHETHER THE RHINO IDENTIFIES AS MALE OR FEMALE, NOR INQUIRE AS TO PREFERRED PRONOUNS: Extinct woolly rhinoceros found frozen in Siberian permafrost.
SO MUCH FOR THE NARRATIVE: Michael Barone: Immigrant Voters Trended Trump.
NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT: Nets Give Cold Shoulder to Eco-Terrorist Attack on Aspen Gas Lines.
Evergreen:
ACTUALLY? NOT JUST HOLLYWOOD BULLIES: Nick Searcy: Stop Being Afraid of Hollywood Bullies.
Ladies and gentlemen, dragons and imaginary creatures, it’s time to stop being afraid of bullies. The longer you submit to the bullies demands, the suckier life will get. And if 2020 didn’t give you a bellyful, trust me, the rest of us are past fed up.
LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Mode Of Instruction At 199 Law Schools During The 2020-21 Academic Year: 41% Online, 35% In-Person, 24% Hybrid.
I’ll be online for my Constitutional Law class this coming semester — with about 60 students it would be hard to do any other way — and my Distilled Spirits Law class will be online except that I hope to manage a few field trips later in the semester.
WELL SOMETHING IS DIM ALL RIGHT: Gates-Funded Plan to Dim The Sun’s Rays is Moving Forward.
Hey, someone pull Gates aside and show him the chart of human history, where humans only thrive when the Earth is warmer. We’re not going to commit suicide so he can think well of himself! Just no.
GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF LEARNED STORY PATHS, AND START THINKING ABOUT REALITY AND HOW COMPLICATED IT IS: The Very Long Game.
THAT’S NICE, I GUESS, BUT I AIN’T BUYING NO NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY. AND RESISTING COMMUNISTS AND SOCIALISTS IS NOT SEDITION. IT’S SURVIVAL: The Left Redefines Resistance as ‘Sedition’.
And yet, we do resist.
WE CAN’T GET BACK TO NORMAL UNTIL PEOPLE STOP BELIEVING THE LIES OUR MEDIA SPREADS ON THE REGULAR: We Can’t Get Back To Normal If People Think Spreading COVID Equals Murder.
THIS IS WHY THEY’RE TRYING TO INSTALL THEIR PUPPET: China’s ‘unrestricted war’ on the United States.
FOR EUROPE TOO, THINK ABOUT IT: A United Europe Aligning With China Would Be A Disaster For The United States.
The sad thing is that a prediction I made on a train in France has a good chance of coming true, if we fight our own take-over by Chinese puppets. Despite the dirty looks given me by Frenchmen who understood the muttering, it is quite possible my grandchildren will bleed or even die over there, liberating Europe from its own stupidity. This gives me no pleasure.
GUYS, THIS ONE IS GOING TO HURT SINCE FOR US UNDER LOCKDOWN IT’S ONE OF THE FEW THINGS OPEN, BUT YOU SHOULD KNOW WHO YOU’RE GETTING IN BED WITH: Senator Josh Hawley Announces Intent to Challenge January 6 Certification of Electors, With Stunning Response From Walmart.
AND AGAIN, IN CASE YOU ALREADY FORGOT: “We’re In” – Witness Testifies Dominion Voting Equipment, and Internal Data, Hacked Live During Georgia Senate Hearing.
And if the back of your mind isn’t playing Deguello, you’re not me.
BRAVO, SIR: COVID Red Flag Laws Coming To A State Near You.
AHAHAHAHAHAH! SEE, THIS IS THE PROBLEM WHEN YOU’RE CHINESE PUPPETS. YOU FORGET AMERICANS ARE ARMED AND ORNERY. MOLON LABE, SUNSHINE! COVID Red Flag Laws Coming To A State Near You.
ABSOLUTELY! THAT SNEAKY TRUMP. STEALING THE ELECTION BY HAVING LEGITIMATE VOTERS, INSTEAD OF FAKING UP ALL THE VOTES HE NEEDED! THE NERVE OF HIM: Establishment Puppets Claim Trump Stealing Election.
BRIEFLY IN SIXTH GRADE I HAD NEW MATH INFLICTED ON ME. I FOUND IT BIZARRE AND INSANE. HOWEVER, IN ITS DEFENSE, IT WAS MUCH BETTER THAN LEFTIST MATH: When Political Hatred Runs So Deep, Reality Doesn’t Matter.
Send a basic arithmetic book to a journalist today!
IT’S ALSO SHOCKING, SHOCKING, SHOCKING. BEHOLD, MY SHOCKED FACE: Sen. Marco Rubio: Dr. Fauci lied about coronavirus to manipulate our behavior — that’s appalling.
I guess Rubio was ignorant of the evil good doctor’s history? Of course, we’ll have to assume the president was too. And he shouldn’t have been.
DOMINION LIED AND PEOPLE WILL DIE UNLESS THIS STUFF IS EXPOSED AND FIXED: Tech Expert Shocks GA Election Fraud Hearing With News He ‘Got Into’ Voting System With WiFi.
Hey, SocJus, remember the last go round also started with the Supreme Court passing the buck? Sometimes the worst action you can take is nothing. Fun fact.
THIS MAY BE THE SMOKIEST GUN SINCE THE THROBBING MEMO: Margin Of Fraud.
Welcome to 2020, when @JovanHPulitzer hacked a voting machine live during a government hearing and the press insists there is no evidence of election fraud.
Shush now. Other countries have press. We have presstitutes, eternally lying back and thinking of Marx.
IF WE HAD A FOURTH ESTATE RATHER THAN A FIFTH COLUMN THIS TESTIMONY WOULD BE ALL OVER THE NEWS: Jovan Hutton Pulitzer Testimony @ GA Senate Judiciary Committee.
December 30, 2020
AT AMAZON, Bras for Women.
WHAT KIND OF ELECTED OFFICIAL HAS AN ATTITUDE LIKE THIS? Gov. Ron DeSantis waiting his ‘turn’ to take vaccine: ‘I’m an elected official, but whoop dee doo.’
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he’s waiting his turn to take the coronavirus vaccine and that the state’s elderly population should be first in line over so-called “essential” workers.
“I’m willing to take it but I am not the priority, they’re the priority,” the Republican governor said Wednesday at a Palm Beach County senior center.
“I’m under 45,” he continued. “So, people under 45 are not going to be first in line for this. And so when it’s my turn, I will take it, but this is who I want to be vaccinated. I want my parents, our grandparents to be able to get it. Granted, I mean, I’m an elected official but whoop dee doo. At the end of the day, let’s focus on where the risk is.”
Well, not a Democrat, certainly.
SPACE: A Tale of Two Launch Vehicle Programs. “There was no clearer set of contrasts between how SpaceX and NASA approach launch vehicle development than the dueling tests the two performed in early December of Starship and Space Launch System, respectively.”
NOT THE BABYLON BEE: Trans Antifa arrested over Seattle police station firebombing.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE:
“Rodney Robinson, a social studies teacher in Richmond, Virginia, was named the 2019 National Teacher of the Year on Wednesday by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).”
Flashback: Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History. And additional examples of leftist violence and eliminationist rhetoric at the link.
THE NEW YORKER IS THE LATEST LEFTIST OLD MEDIA REDOUBT UNCOMFORTABLE WITH FREE SPEECH AND A DIVERSE INTERNET: Is Substack the Media Future We Want?
Readers of magazines, newspapers, and many Web sites, which publish established writers alongside emerging ones, automatically encounter new voices; on Substack, the most successful newsletters are almost always written by people who have already cultivated an audience at traditional publications or built up a following elsewhere. (I learned about “Maybe Baby” via the Instagram Explore algorithm.) Many of these writers, like Yglesias, consolidated their reputations in the previous two decades, as bloggers, before leveraging that work into book deals or columns at traditional outlets; now, having built large followings, they are working as free agents. Substack is a natural fit for the influencer, the pundit, the personality, and the political contrarian. It’s debatable whether this represents “a better future for news.” But it’s great business for Substack.
The durability and sustainability of the digital-newsletter model remain to be seen. Carving out new ways for writers to make money from their work is surely a good thing: the United States lost sixteen thousand newsroom jobs this year, and many mainstream publications have struggled to overcome issues like discrimination, clubbiness, and prohibitively low compensation. But whether Substack is good for writers is one question; another is whether a world in which subscription newsletters rival magazines and newspapers is a world that people want. A robust press is essential to a functioning democracy, and a cultural turn toward journalistic individualism might not be in the collective interest.
Related: “The New Yorker, American weekly magazine, famous for its varied literary fare and humour. The founder, Harold W. Ross, published the first issue on February 21, 1925, and was the magazine’s editor until his death in December 1951.” No word yet if Ross checked to see if his magazine would or wouldn’t be “in the collective interest” before launching it.
QUESTION ASKED: “Why is ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner a hero for claiming to be that which he is obviously not, whereas [“Hilaria” Baldwin] is mocked?”
As Ace of Spades notes, “There’s no good answer to that,” so the MSM is trying to get “a #CancelMob formed against Mollie Hemingway, who dared to ask the unanswerable question.”
LET HE WHO HAS NEVER HUNTED FOR LIZARD PEOPLE CAST THE FIRST STONE: Feds investigate evidence Nashville bomber hunted ‘lizard people,’ other alien beings.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: LET’S MAKE A SANDWICH!
ROGER SIMON: In Praise of Josh Hawley.
President Donald Trump is obviously the leader of the Republican Party (see the latest Gallup poll on the most admired American) but should the 2020 election remain in its current dubious state and should Trump decide not to run in the future, Josh Hawley, the senator from Missouri, has moved to the head of the class for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
He has done this by being the first Republican senator to commit to objecting to electoral college certification for presidential election 2020.
This courageous act, in conjunction with similar pledges already made by members of the House, opens the door to serious discussion of the election on the floor of Congress
In so doing Hawley has cited problems that several states had, particularly Pennsylvania, in not following their own election laws. (Georgia’s problems were demonstrated today by the testimony of IT expert Garland Favorito and others in front of their Judiciary Committee.)
But equally, if not more, importantly to the future of our country, and the democratic world in general, Hawley has called out the undue influence of Big Tech in our presidential election, in this case Facebook and Twitter. (He could easily have added the giant of giants, Google, as well.)
Many have asserted these entities, as private companies, have the right to do as they wish. In a perfect world, that is correct. But this world is far from perfect and getting less so.
Big Tech controls the flow of information globally to a degree no one has ever conceived, not even Orwell or Huxley. Traditional anti-trust legislation is virtually Paleolithic when it comes to adjudicating the capabilities of these companies.
Curiously, Hawley seems to have run afoul of Walmart as well: Walmart blames deleted ‘#SoreLoser’ reply to Sen. Josh Hawley on social media team ‘mistake’ (but not before Hawley fired back hard).
SANDWICH EXCITEMENT! “Picking different breads to pair with your fillings also gets exciting.”
GREAT MOMENTS IN LAW ENFORCEMENT: Nashville Bomber’s Girlfriend Warned Cops He Was Building Bomb In RV (Includes Full Police Report).
NEW FRONTIERS IN CLASS-ACTION LAWSUITS: Hawaiian Sweet Rolls Not Hawaiian Enough.
2020 WASHINGTON FREE BEACON MAN OF THE YEAR: MAGA Matt Yglesias.
You know how it goes: You oppose defunding the cops, and a million rose emojis scream at you for hours. You sign a letter tepidly endorsing free speech, and your colleagues denounce you to your bosses and Twitter. The company you founded gets overrun by campus communists, so you quit to blog from your basement.
We’ve all been there.
Many of us would have called it quits after a year of such beatings. One tenacious egghead, though, never gave up, but kept coming back for more: Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year Matt Yglesias.
Heh. Read the whole thing.
TO BE HONEST, NOBODY’S TRACK RECORD ON THIS HAS BEEN GREAT: Don’t be Too Quick to Judge Sweden’s Covid-19 Policy: The Nordic country has taken an approach all its own, but it’s too soon to tell whether it’s right or wrong.
“IT’S A BEAUTIFUL THING, THE DESTRUCTION OF WORDS:” Dictionary.com Publishes List of Words You Must Stop Using Because #Woke.
Hey, those Newspeak Dictionaries don’t shrink themselves, you know.
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