IT’S GOOD THAT IT’S A HYBRID, SO YOU CAN SAVE MONEY ON GAS: 2021 Bentley Bentayga Hybrid Gets 449 HP and 31 Miles of Pure Electric Range.
THAT’S AN AWFUL LOT FOR A GM PRODUCT: Almost Half of 2021 Cadillac Escalades Have Sold for over $100K.
TODAY AT 3:30PM EASTERN: VIP Gold Live Chat with Kruiser, Preston, VodkaPundit.
I suspect the drinks will be stronger than usual.
ELAINE CHAO RESIGNS AS TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY OVER TRUMP’S HANDLING OF CAPITOL RIOTS. “Chao is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who rebuked Trump on Wednesday from the Senate floor, during Wednesday’s joint session of Congress, saying that Congress overturning the election results at Trump’s urging would cause irreparable damage to the country.”
SOCIALIST DIGS MEMORY HOLE: AOC’s Comms Director Asks Twitter To Ban Users From Citing AOC’s Support For Violent Riots.
MESSAGE SENT: VIOLENCE WORKS. French teachers afraid to offend after jihadist murder. “Nearly half of French secondary school teachers are avoiding or downplaying subjects such as sexuality, the Holocaust and evolution to avoid angering Muslim pupils, a survey suggests.”
I’M GOING TO DONATE THIS AS SOON AS I CAN: People vaccinated can’t donate convalescent plasma after; donations are needed now. “Vitalant said the reason why is because the vaccine causes spike antibodies, and for convalescent plasma, they need nucleocapsid antibodies.”
NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT: Stephanopoulos Bristles When GOP Congressman Brings Up Media’s Role in Angry Mob.
FLASHBACK: House Dems Unanimously Block Resolution Condemning Violence and Rioting. “House Democrats unanimously blocked a resolution condemning acts of violence and rioting—including the ‘deliberate targeting of law enforcement officers’—in the wake of George Floyd’s death.”
Just a few months ago.
PRIVACY: Upcoming Apple privacy update has developers desperately seeking dodges.
Early in 2021, an iPhone update will prevent apps from using advertising identifiers known as IDFA without obtaining each user’s explicit consent for targeting. Developers expect more than two-thirds of users will block tracking when they see a popup appear within their apps.
Some app makers say they plan to use invasive tracking techniques such as “device fingerprinting” to work around the new restrictions—even though doing so risks getting them thrown off the App Store if they are caught.
“100 percent, everyone will try doing fingerprints, whether Apple enforces their rules or not,” one mobile games developer said.
If your business model requires hiding your business model from your own customers, maybe your business model sucks.
MICK MULVANEY RESIGNS OVER CAPITOL RIOTS: “Former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, who was serving as special envoy to Northern Ireland, resigned from the post on Thursday a day after pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol building. ‘I can’t do it. I can’t stay,’ Mulvaney told CNBC, saying called Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Wednesday evening to inform him of his resignation.”
IT CERTAINLY FELT LIKE IT: Earth Was Spinning Faster Last Year Than at Any Other Time in The Past 50 Years.
STEVE HAYWARD IN CITY JOURNAL: The End of Trump. “No grievance,” Lincoln said, “is a fit object of redress by mob law:”
The controversy over the fairness of the recent election needs to be seen in a broader context of the broad swath of the American people—perhaps a majority—who believe that the government is not presently protecting their individual rights and the principle of self-government. This is a serious issue—maybe the central issue—in our politics today. Judging the scene, and what to do about it, are matters requiring statesmanship of the highest order. In his Lyceum speech, Lincoln expressed worry that mobocracy increased the possibility of Caesarism—of the ambitious man thirsting for distinction on the public stage by whatever means, who “would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.”
Donald Trump has shown great perception of the defects of our political order; he has had many salutary achievements in office; he has fought hard for worthy objects against the intransigent opposition of the permanent government; his love of country is undoubted; he has given new hope to many unheard and hitherto unrespected Americans.
At the same time, his reckless public pronouncements have fallen short of the standard of the high statesmanship most needed—never more so than his remarks on the Capitol Mall on Wednesday. He has left himself vulnerable to the charge that he will exit office amid a flurry of “pulling down” not only fellow partisans, but the very institutions of our government itself.
Read the whole thing.
INDEED: Too Much Stupid To Process. “It takes a special kind of stupid to let Democrats steal two senate seats and a senate majority exactly the same way they stole Georgia’s electoral votes, but Georgia’s GOP establishment seems to have just that kind of stupid.”
NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT:
Flashbacks:
● NPR regrets elevating pro-looting anti-Semite.
● NPR headline: Police Declare Portland Protests A Riot But This Definition Could Be Rooted In Racism.
● Woke Journalists Compare Antifa Riots to D-Day Landings. Including:
IT NEEDS TO BE SOONER THAN THAT: Vaccine rollout could have U.S. back to normalcy by late summer, expert says.
PENCE ISSUE IS A DISTRACTION FROM THE REAL ISSUE OF DOES CONGRESS HAVE A BACKBONE: Lots of snarky back and forth among commenters here on Instapundit and elsewhere in the Right media in recent days regarding whether Vice President Mike Pence had the authority to exclude Electoral College votes for Biden in Wednesday’s Joint Session of Congress.
I suggest to folks on both sides of that issue that the more fundamental question is whether Congress has the authority to set aside a state’s Electoral College votes. In my view, there are two key aspects of the question:
First, is there sufficient evidence of fraud in states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and others to justify the decisions of Republican senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri to register objections to the acceptance of their Electoral College votes? I haven’t had the opportunity to review all of the evidence for all of the allegations, but, as explained, for example, in this “American Thought Leaders” interview on The Epoch Times with the Data Integrity Group, the evidence of vote manipulation in multiple states is substantial and cries out for a critical investigation.
Second, Congress has an absolute right to set aside the Electoral College votes, according to President Abraham Lincoln, who told Congress on February 9, 1865, that “the two Houses of Congress, convened under the twelfth article of the Constitution, have complete power to exclude from counting all electoral votes deemed by them to be illegal, and it is not competent for the Executive to defeat or obstruct that power by a veto …”
The process seen in Wednesday’s Joint Session, interrupted as it was by the riot around and within the Capitol, was conducted as prescribed in the Constitution. Each properly framed and submitted objection to the acceptance of a state’s certified Electoral College votes gets two hours of debate in the Senate and the House, at the end of which members of both chambers vote on whether to accept or reject the objection.
Congress considered objections in 1969 (the “faithless elector” of North Carolina) and 2005 (Democrat objection to awarding Ohio’s votes to President George W. Bush) under this process and rejected the propositions. But Congress could have accepted the objections, which would have left Electoral College votes on the floor.
This reality should not surprise anybody who is familiar with the manner in which the Founders wrote the Constitution as a “legislative supremacy” document. So long as the Senate and House are of one will, Congress has, as Willmoore Kendal and George Carey wrote, “all of the ultimate weapons in any showdown with either of the other two branches.”
Congress doesn’t like a program or action favored by the President? Congress can defund it. To cite but two examples: Congress doesn’t like how the Supreme Court is ruling? Congress can change the composition of the Court. If Congress has the will, the Founders gave it the power to do pretty much as it pleases so long as it respects the Bill of Rights.
Bottom Line: There is substantial evidence that Congress could have relied upon, had it chosen to do so, in deciding to exclude the Electoral College votes of any of the challenged states Wednesday and thereby made either Joe Biden or Donald Trump our next Chief Executive.
Had I been a senator or representative Wednesday, I would have voted to uphold the challenges presented for Arizona and Pennsylvania (as well as those planned prior to the riot for Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada), on the basis of the Data Integrity Group’s statistical analysis, not because doing so would have given Trump another four years in office, but because somebody ought to go to jail after pulling off what is likely the biggest election theft in American history.
Either we have honest elections or we don’t.
UPDATE: Thanks to reader CptNerd for this link to much easier to read version of the full Lincoln quote. I used the Congressional Globe link because the whole page makes interesting, though difficult to decipher in places, reading.
Brooks is, of course, horrified at Trump and his supporters, whom he finds childish, thuggish and contemptuous of the things that David Brooks likes about today’s America. It’s clear that he’d like a social/political revolution that was more refined, better-mannered, more focused on the Constitution and, well, more bourgeois as opposed to in-your-face and working class.
The thing is, we had that movement. It was the Tea Party movement. . . .
Yet the tea party movement was smeared as racist, denounced as fascist, harassed with impunity by the IRS and generally treated with contempt by the political establishment — and by pundits like Brooks, who declared “I’m not a fan of this movement.” After handing the GOP big legislative victories in 2010 and 2014, it was largely betrayed by the Republicans in Congress, who broke their promises to shrink government and block Obama’s initiatives.
So now we have Trump instead, who tells people to punch counterprotesters instead of picking up their trash.
When politeness and orderliness are met with contempt and betrayal, do not be surprised if the response is something less polite, and less orderly. Brooks closes his Trump column with Psalm 73, but a more appropriate verse is Hosea 8:7 “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” Trump’s ascendance is a symptom of a colossal failure among America’s political leaders, of which Brooks’ mean-spirited insularity is only a tiny part. God help us all.
Still true. I’ve been warning about this for years, but apparently to no effect. Maybe this time the people in charge will get serious?
CHARLES LIPSON: This is not what a constitutional republic looks like. “The scale and symbolic significance of this attack are new and profoundly troubling. But it is also the culmination of several disturbing trends. For months now, we have witnessed a degradation of public order — mobs roaming city streets, unpunished; an effort to take over and firebomb a federal courthouse in Portland, unpunished; delegates attacked on the streets of Washington after the Republican convention, unpunished. And now this, far worse than anything that came before.”
THIS IS MUCH MORE LIKE THE 21st CENTURY SYD MEAD PROMISED ME: James May’s first look at the 2000hp Lotus Evija.
THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP: Kamala Harris Called Riots ‘a Movement’ Last Summer, Said ‘They Should Not’ Stop.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Welcome to Banana Republic, USA.
“It could be worse,” Igor told Dr. Frederick Frankenstein. “It could be raining.”
And the violence could be worse: Trump could have (and probably actually did) win the election. As Glenn Reynolds asked earlier this morning, “Does anyone think there wouldn’t have been riots if Trump had been declared the winner?”
Of course there would have been.
The Left has put on a four-year-long temper tantrum in response to Trump’s 2016 victory, culminating with them turning 2020 into the worst year of riots since 1968. Worse was the running coup attempt against Trump that began before he was even sworn into office.
“He egged on his supporters” yesterday, the Democrat-Media Complex claims. But that’s exactly what the Democrats have done on an ongoing basis since the morning of November 9, 2016.
The Left projects. Always. If you hear a committed progressive claim that Trump is stealing Easter eggs from children, it’s a sure thing you’ll catch them hiding brightly-colored shell fragments from a crying child.
Read the whole thing, if you don’t mind me saying so myself.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: 2021 Miracle — Media Finally Finds a Mob It Doesn’t Like. “The first thing I noticed while scanning the news was that virtually every conservative commenting on the situation was condemning the violence. Immediately. That stood in stark contrast to high-ranking Democrats and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media spending all last summer telling us that things were peaceful while we were staring at burning buildings.”
IT’S COME TO THIS: Women’s Fitness magazine apologizes after telling readers to ‘burn off Christmas calories.’
“I find it really sad that in 2020 you’re promoting the need to ‘burn off’ Christmas calories,” tweeted one person.
“I think that’s a very triggering and outdated message to be sharing. You’re encouraging women to work out from a place of guilt/shame which I think is very negative and dangerous.”
A consultant psychiatrist added: “Hugely concerning and problematic language. We shouldn’t be ascribing moral labels to food and exercise or encouraging people to adopt an earn and burn mentality; it’s the fall out from these damaging marketing campaigns that I see only too well in clinic.
“As a mainstream fitness magazine, why not use the opportunity to promote the positive mental and physical health benefits to be gained from going outdoors/ exercise; improved mood, better sleep, more energy etc. Disappointing.”
Others accused the publication of using “damaging” language and urged it to delete the tweet.
The magazine has now issued an apology, explaining that its intention was simply to encourage people to work out over the festive period.
Why apologize? Stick to your guns and tell the women who find the topic of exercise to be “triggering and “damaging” and “disappointing” to simply read Cosmo instead.
GOODER AND HARDER: Washington state’s ‘re-opening plan’ called ‘a roadmap to a near complete collapse’ by hospitality industry. “Inslee announced what is called ‘Healthy Washington–Roadmap to Recovery,’ but it does not actually re-open anything, but extends restrictions.”
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Closed is open.
EVEN THE W.H.O. SAYS LOCKDOWNS ARE JUSTIFIED ONLY AS A SHORT-TERM RESPONSE TO OVERLOADED HOSPITALS: University of California infectious disease specialist denounces unscientific lockdown extension.
OUT ON A LIMB: Dear Cosmo, You’ll Never Convince Us Obesity Is Healthy.
The real question should be: Why DO mainstream magazines think they can convince us that being anorexic OR obese is beautiful and healthy? It’s not, and they can’t — at least not anymore. Ever since the internet and social media allowed independent content creators to go viral without Vanity Fair’s help, simply pushing “pretty” models isn’t going to be profitable for a costly mainstream magazine anymore. They’re now competing for “pretty” with all the healthy, normal-sized independent online creators who don’t charge a subscription fee and aren’t bogged down with all the politically correct stuffiness you see in mainstream media content. And best of all, they’re authentic.
They’re competing with YouTubers and writers like me and my friends, who barely spend any money on content yet can be just as influential, if not more. One thing that was incredibly shocking to me in my time working in cable tv is just how much these established media outlets spend on things like hair, makeup, and studio sets. I couldn’t understand how they were turning any profit…unless, they were being funded top-down, which is increasingly the case for a lot of established media outlets these days.
So, being simply “entertaining” or “aesthetically pleasing” is no longer profitable for an established fashion magazine like Cosmo. Mainstream beauty magazines need to convince their audience that they are still worth reading over an independently-run website like Evie Magazine, for instance. So they’re going to remind you why you’re really choosing their magazine: not because you’re looking for beauty or entertainment, but because they are Cosmo and Cosmo is still the arbiter of how “beauty” is defined. Nobody can compete with that.
Read the whole thing. And note that it’s appearing on a Website called Evie Magazine, founded by a woman named Brittany Martinez who explained her goals in an article at Quillette in 2019: Women Needed a Magazine that Doesn’t Lie to Them. So I Started One.
For decades, magazines have sold women countless lies about sex, emotional fulfillment and health issues—usually under the guise of “empowerment.” They prey on women’s insecurities by normalizing unhealthy extremes (first it was borderline anorexia, now it’s obesity). They encourage casual sex and lie to readers about its emotional ramifications. They tell women they’ll be unhappy with a husband and kids but fulfilled working for a male boss at a big corporation. They laud celebrities who aren’t good role models, turned Hillary Clinton into an object of worship, and attack or ignore women who don’t share their views.
Millions of women—especially here in the United States, where I live and work—have been left out. They’re tired of having to go to trashy publications just to find useful reads on health and beauty. For decades, women’s publications have tried to convince women they can be just like men, instead of celebrating femininity and what makes women wonderfully unique. It was this gap in the market that made me and my colleagues wonder: “What if there were a conservative Cosmo?”
From that question, Evie Magazine was born. She’s an online publication covering health, beauty, fashion, relationships, career and culture. Her mission is to empower, educate and entertain young women with content that celebrates femininity, encourages virtue, and offers a more honest perspective than they get elsewhere. She’s Classier than Cosmo, Sexier than Refinery29, and Smarter than Bustle. Millennial women are Evie’s audience, but so are the “Gen Z” women born from the mid-1990s onward. (Do men read Evie? Sure they do—even if they might not admit it.)
Is Evie “feminist”? That depends on your definition of feminism. The reality is, modern feminism in its doctrinaire form isn’t popular. Many women realize that, at its core, progressive third-wave feminism can express itself as a form of self-hatred: a rejection of our feminine beauty, unique gifts and the natural role we play in our communities. In effect, it seeks to turn first-rate women into second-rate men. Paradoxically, this movement also is suffused with negative and condescending attitudes toward masculinity, whereas Evie readers love their men, and are thankful for the protection and sacrifice that men often have been called upon to deliver throughout history.
I don’t know if Martinez is looking for additional funding, but Evie dovetails absolutely perfectly with the topic of an 2012 article by the Professor in the New York Post headlined, “Where big GOP bucks could matter:”
For $150 million, you could buy or start a lot of women’s Web sites. And I’d hardly change a thing in the formula. The nine articles on sex, shopping and exercise could stay the same. The 10th would just be the reverse of what’s there now.
For the pro-Republican stuff, well, just visit the “Real Mitt Romney” page at snopes.com, or look up the time Mitt Romney rescued a 14-year-old kidnap victim, to see the kind of feel-good stories that could have been running. For the others, well, it would run articles on whether Bill Clinton should get a pass on his affairs, whether it’s right that the Obama White House pays women less than men, and reports on how the tax system punishes women.
This stuff writes itself, probably more easily than the Spin Sisters’ pabulum. And opening up a major beachhead in this section of the media is probably a lot cheaper than challenging major newspapers and TV networks head on.
The only losers will be the political consultants who ate up so much of the GOP’s cash this time around.
Are rich Republican donors smart enough to do something like this? Well, we’ll find out.
They haven’t yet, but 2021 would be a damn good time to start.
WHEN ARE WE GOING TO ADMIT THAT TRUMP IS UNFIT TO BE PRESIDENT?: I know this isn’t going to win me any popularity contests with most Instapundit readers, but I’m here to express my opinion, not to reflect readers’, so here goes.
There is no evidence of widespread fraud that could plausibly be said to have cost Trump the election, nor even a single state. It’s true the media and big tech were overtly pro-Biden, and while that’s not good for democracy it’s also not illegal or fraudulent, and thus has no bearing on whether Biden won the election or not. And all that is why Trump’s lawyers lost every single case they brought before judges of all parties and ideologies, including a dozen or so rulings by Trump-appointed federal judges who would undoubtedly have preferred that he won.
But it’s more serious than that. Even if you accept any of the not-completely-crazy theories I’ve seen of how the election was “stolen,” at best that gets Trump to a narrow victory in the Electoral College. Yet the president continues to insist not just that he won, not just that the election was stolen, but that he won in a “landslide.”
There is no excuse for political violence, and Trump, admittedly, did not ask anyone to engage in violence. However, if you tell people that their votes didn’t count, that the election was a sham, that the election you lost wasn’t even close but in fact a landslide in your favor, it’s only natural to expect that some people will be inclined to resort to violence, because the whole point of elections is to settle political matters without violence. If the election process is a total fraud, then violence is to be expected.
Even in the face of the violence yesterday, Trump, while telling the rioters to go home, also continued to insist that he really won in a landslide, thus continuing to foment violence. He is unfit to be president. And no, that doesn’t excuse all the examples of bad behavior on the left over the past 4 years, and that bad behavior undoubtedly created an atmosphere in which violence becomes more acceptable (not least by the tacit and sometimes explicit acceptance of the mass violence last Summer). But the basic moral principle of “two wrongs don’t make a right” still applies. Sometimes if you fight fire with fire, you burn down your house.
FWEEDOM RIDER: The Secret Life of Kamala Harris. “I remember sitting in a large group at the coloring station. A few of the kids were talking about their mommies and daddies, but everyone went quiet when I started to cry. The teacher rushed over to see what was wrong. Honestly I didn’t even know. ‘She’ll be fine,’ the teacher assured my classmates. Suddenly it hit me. ‘Pwonouns,’ I blurted out between sobs. ‘Gin-doored pwonouns.’ My parents had to come pick me up. ‘What’s the matter?’ they asked, looking concerned. ‘Twans wives,’ I said, no longer crying. ‘Twans wives matter’.”
Heh™.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Prof decries diversity efforts as ‘performance’ of being the ‘good type’ of White people.
WHY THIS TRUMP SUPPORTER BACKS PENCE: The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz explains his view that Vice President Mike Pence was right on the issue of his authority to accept or reject states’ electoral votes.
SO WE HAVE AN ELECTION THAT 40% OF OUR NATION THINKS WAS STOLEN. THINGS CAN’T GO ON THIS WAY. We need Florida-style reforms to make elections trustworthy. Other nations manage that, and we could too except that the people in charge haven’t wanted to. We’re now seeing the results of that fecklessness and it needs to change.
Meanwhile, does anyone think there wouldn’t have been riots if Trump had been declared the winner?
ANOTHER UPDATE: Even if you believe — as David Bernstein states above — that the election didn’t turn on fraud, you should be concerned that so many people do. It’s important, as I’ve been writing since at least 2002, that elections not only be free of fraud, but trusted by the vast majority, even among those who lose. We don’t have that, and the huge number of stories about potential election fraud that were running in mainstream media right up until election day indicates that if Trump had been declared the winner, Democrats would be running around screaming fraud. We need a system that is obviously trustworthy enough that the vast majority of people will trust it, and we certainly don’t have that. Other countries do.
UNARMED PEACEFUL PROTESTER SHOT BY POLICE: Woman shot inside US Capitol dies. “Babbitt has been identified as a 35-year-old San Diego resident who served four tours with the Air Force.”
Related: Ashli Babbitt: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know.
Also: Husband pays tribute to shooting victim Ashli Babbitt.
It’s a better strategy for making martyrs, which is bad strategy indeed.
DON’T IMMANENTIZE THE ESCHATON: Nothing Illustrates the Madness of Our Age Quite as Well as Political Prayer Candles. “I mean, it’s not like Jesus went anywhere. He’s not on hiatus or taking a sabbatical from His role as the Messiah. He isn’t in the concussion protocol on the sideline, with some other currently alive human being stepping in as backup.”
HMM: Did Russian State Media Reveal a Mobile ICBM Cheating Program? “In September 2020, state-run RT (formerly Russia Today) published an article that appears to reveal a program for cheating with regard to the limit in the New START Treaty on deployed warheads by means of covert deployment of mobile ICBMs.”
RIOTS? THEY WERE MOSTLY PEACEFUL PROTESTS. Calls to impeach Trump, again, for ‘inciting’ Capitol riots.
ONE MILLIONTH SIGNATURE COLLECTED: Gavin Newsom Recall Effort Just Reached a Major Milestone.
AT AMAZON, Iron Gym Total Upper Body Workout Bar.
WAPO: “Trump Administration Seeks to Undo Decades-Long Rules on Discrimination.”
It’s not clear from the article, but it appears the Trump Administration is (finally) trying to rein in disparate impact liability under Title VI. Disparate impact liability has always been a scandal. It is liability not for discrimination at all. Rather, it makes just about everything a recipient of federal funds can do presumptively illegal, regardless of whether it is motivated by race, sex, color, religion, or national origin. The Supreme Court determined long ago that Title VI (as opposed to Title VII) does NOT impose liability for disparate impact. But that hasn’t stopped the federal bureaucracy from taking the the (erroneous) position that Title VI regulations can and do impose disparate impact liability even if Title VI itself doesn’t. You can read why the bureaucracy is dead wrong in my school discipline article.
Alas, if this 11th hour action by the Trump Administration is what I think it is, it can be rather easily repealed by the Biden Administration.
DECOUPLING: The NYSE will delist three Chinese telecoms after all. “In today’s announcement, the NYSE said it’s making the decision after receiving ‘new specific guidance’ confirming that yes, the executive order does apply to China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom.”
Related: U.S. Officials Weigh Adding Alibaba, Tencent to Investment Ban.
Alibaba founder Jack Ma could not be reached for comment.
AND THE BEARDS HAVE ALL GROWN LONGER OVERNIGHT: Same Vox writer who said riots could lead to serious social reforms also wants all the Capitol rioters arrested.
I PREDICT A SUDDEN INCREASE OF INTEREST IN LAW AND ORDER: They really are ‘defunding’ the police, and it’s not going well.
HERE WE GO AGAIN: With 2021 Still Young, We Already Have Trouble from Tehran.
Iran wasted no time setting a terrible tone for its 2021 foreign policy this week, making it clear that Tehran remains firmly committed to expanding its nuclear program and defeating U.S. sanctions.
First, its paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps navy seized a South Korean-flagged chemical tanker sailing the Persian Gulf near the Strait of Hormuz, reportedly for maritime pollution violations, according to Tehran. The tanker and crew are being held in Iran.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards repeatedly have seized ships in international waters off Iran’s coast as a means of taking hostages to use as bargaining leverage in disputes with foreign countries or companies.
The pollution charges furnish a convenient pretext for a not-so-veiled attempt to squeeze Seoul to release some of the $7 billion in Iranian assets frozen in South Korea by U.S. sanctions. The fact that the ship hijacking occurred shortly before the upcoming visit to Tehran of South Korea’s deputy foreign minister is no coincidence.
It gets worse.
They probably be rewarded handsomely for bad behavior under a Biden Administration.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Capitol Police face heat following mob breach.
The disturbing breach of security at the U.S. Capitol is raising serious questions about the safety of lawmakers and staff who work there, and drawing criticism toward the security services who are meant to keep them safe.
Images of a mob scaling walls, breaking down fences, and storming the seat of the country’s Democracy have led to criticism that the Capitol Police should have been better prepared for the possible assault.
“What the hell was law enforcement on Capitol Hill thinking by not having secured the Capitol today?” former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta asked on CNBC, calling it one of his great disappointments.
Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), asked Wednesday evening by MSNBC’s Joy Reid if Capitol Police made her feel safe, answered “I did until today.”
Bush tweeted in December that her goal was to “defund the police:”
As with the “Riots for thee, but not for me” leftists who cheered on the destruction in Minneapolis and Seattle until their own condos and Starbucks were trashed, Bush just got a first-hand look at the anarchy that happens when police are indeed defunded.
NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT:
● Shot: Biden calls storming of Capitol an ‘unprecedented assault’ on democracy.
—The New York Post, yesterday.
● Chaser: Why Won’t Joe Biden Condemn Antifa and BLM by Name for Attacking Trump Supporters?
—Matt Margolis, PJ Media.com, November 16th.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Every City Needs a ‘New York Post.’
TODAY, THEY PROBABLY WOULDN’T BOTHER: Harvard’s Top Astronomer Believes Aliens Tried To Contact Us In 2017.
WHAT DO YOU DO: When the world ends.
WHAT WILL WE DO? We Will Work Until We Can’t.
MAY? MAY? REALLY? YOU’RE GOING TO GO WITH MAY? The vanishing vote problem may have struck again in Georgia.
Now tell me, why would they not do it if we let them get away with it the first time? Explain in small words, because frankly it doesn’t make any sense.
TRUMP DIDN’T FEED THE BEAST, YOU CORRUPTOCRAT. YOU WAS NO TYRANT, THOUGH IT MIGHT BE IDIOTIC TO LET LEFTY GOVERNORS DESTROY THEIR OWN STATES AND LOCK DOWN THEIR OWN PEOPLE. BUT THAT WAS THE OPPOSITE OF TYRANNICAL. YOU KNOW THAT MEME GOING AROUND? THAT THE LEFT WAS NOT AFTER TRUMP, BUT AFTER US? TRUMP WAS ONLY STANDING IN THE WAY?
I think that meme was EXACTLY backwards. Trump was all that stood between us and these people. They’ve removed him, and they’re going to regret it.
By the way, if the protesters had got in today while these idiots didn’t run, you know what would have happened? they would have yelled at them, like the people yelling at Romney on the plane. That’s it.
After this ridiculous behavior and loud denouncing? I doubt that’s all that will happen next time. And they’re guaranteeing a next time. If you decide to bother call your congress critter and inform them that l’etat is not them, and that disabling the fire alarm doesn’t prevent fires. I doubt that they’ll listen. When government is divorced from representation and knows it, it tends to ignore the people. But you know, it’s a neighborly thing to let them know what they’ve done.
REALLY: In DC, Oligarchy Beats Democracy Every Time.
And you know what? When Democratic Party leaders find excuses for left-wing violent protesters and condemn right-wing protesters, one can understand their motives. They see left-wing protesters as being “on their side” and the right-wing protesters as “the enemy.”
When Republican Party leaders find excuses for left-wing violent protesters and condemn right-wing protesters, it’s hard not to draw the conclusion that they, too, see the left-wing as “on their side” and the right-wing as “the enemy.”
AND THIS AND WORSE NONSENSE (BASICALLY IN THE SERVICE OF CHINA, THE WORST POLLUTER AROUND) IS WHAT WE’RE FIGHTING AGAINST. THIS: Are Climate Nuremberg Trials On The Way?
But no. Oh no. You know, I do wonder why the Sons of Liberty bothered to attack the British. And why the founding fathers had an army. I mean, couldn’t they have asked the tyrant, politely, to just remove the foot from their neck and give them representation.
Oh, wait, they tried that, just like we tried the courts. Curiously, it didn’t work.
It’s almost like those in power don’t care what you say, if you can’t do anything to remove their power.
No, I don’t like where this is going. Thanks for asking.
But here’s the thing: We should have been a lot louder, a lot longer ago. We weren’t. And we tolerated the petty betrayals of our nominal side. And that has led us here. Which I don’t like. Are we doing to continue believing the left and condemning anyone who dares fight them? Including yes Orangemanbad — much uncouth. Very mean tweets. Wow, wow, wow — who is not even half as forceful as he should be?
How do you plan to explain to your kids and grandkids that they must eat the lion steak, because you went all the way to the zoo to break in and get a piece of zoo animal and there might be no more meat for years?
AGAIN, THE QUESTION IS, WHAT ELSE COULD AMERICANS DO? WHAT OTHER AVENUE DID THEY LEAVE US? The crowd in the Capitol.
For years I’ve told the left that when they used fraud to win, they’d broken the feedback mechanism. It didn’t mean their ideas were winning, that people agreed with them, or that they were safe. It was the equivalent of breaking the fire alarm and thinking they were safe from fires.
What I never expected was to hear the right condemn the people trying to break out of the burning building, because they don’t hear any fire alarms.
THIS IS THE ROOT AND CAUSE OF THE TROUBLE: One of these things is not like the other.
The same government that scrutinizes all our actions on a daily basis and presumes we’re guilty until proven innocent, when questioned by the people about the obvious flaws and issues of the elections refused any examination and told us that everything was fine, or if not, we had no standing. We should just trust their word over our lying eyes.
Next thing you know, they’ll tell us to eat cake.
WHICH THEY ALWAYS MEANT TO DO LIKE THIS, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT OUT OF PUBLIC SCRUTINY. DON’T FOOL YOURSELVES OTHERWISE: Sen. Kelly Loeffler, Other GOP Lawmakers Drop Plans to Object After US Capitol Protest.
That’s perfect, my pretty. People were objecting to fraud, so we’re going to let the fraud stand. To punish them for (and yes, in this case LARGELY peacefully) protesting the fraud.
I mean who do these hobbits think they are, to question your excellencies?
And you think this will go well? What a very interesting choice. You see I’m a writer, and I’ve read a lot of history to know what is plausible. Let’s just say you’d need a major author intervention for this to end well.
MORE PEARL CLUTCHING. MR. PENCE, HAVE YOU CONSIDERED DENOUNCING THE FRAUD THAT CAUSED PEOPLE TO REALIZE THAT NOTHING STOOD BETWEEN THEM AND ENSLAVEMENT TO THE CHINESE EMPIRE BUT WE THE PEOPLE? Congress Reconvenes, Pence Denounces Violence.
GO AND SEE IT WHILE IT’S UP. THESE KEEP DISAPPEARING: Patriots Storm Congress Raw Footage Includes Execution of Ashley Babbit.
The revolution won’t be televised. Fortunately it will be streamed from multiple angles.
GUYS, SERIOUSLY. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BELIEVE THE LEFT. IN FACT, AFTER THIS LAST YEAR, YOU SHOULD SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING CHECKING IF THE LEFT SAYS YOUR MOM LOVES YOU: The Right’s “Violent Terrorists” Respect Velvet Ropes and Walk in an Orderly Fashion.
But you know the drill. Any excuse to knife us in the back.
THERE MIGHT HAVE BEEN ANTIFA IN THE CROWD. MAYBE. ALL THE CASES I’VE SEEN BROUGHT UP HAVE BEEN DISPROVED. BUT MOSTLY WHAT THERE WAS WERE RIGHTEOUSLY INDIGNANT AMERICANS AND ONE OF THEM DIED FOR IT: Woman Fatally Shot Inside US Capitol Identified as Air Force Veteran Ashli Babbit: Reports.
And for the record, no, I will not condemn the protesters. Should they have gone into the Capitol? I don’t know. Why shouldn’t they have? It’s not like they went and hanged the corruptocrats using their own intestines as ropes. They might — or might not. Really, do you trust the reporting? In this time, in this place? — have broken windows. And then walked, carefully between the ropes? Sure, why not. Let’s roll with that narrative. They might have made a mess of Nancy Ice Cream Pelosi’s office. Maybe. Again…. reporting?
You know what they didn’t do? They didn’t kill anyone. That was reserved for someone who shot through a door sidelight at a protester. You know what else they didn’t do? Use live ammo. You know what else they didn’t do? Trample the flag, which the capitol police did, while being begged not to. You know what else they didn’t do? shine lasers in cops eyes, set fire to the building, loot it, or shoot fireworks at people.
Spare me your pearl clutching. How do you propose we get our republic back if demonstrations are “rude?” When they committed blatant fraud in two elections, right before our eyes, and thereby abolished the representative part of the republic, and with it the constitutional part, what are you going to do? Write them strongly worded letters? Or wait till they fraud 2022 just as blatantly, while you stand around being utterly stunned?
It’s time to ditch the Marquis de Queensberry rules. It’s time to stop fighting with our feet in a bucket. Yes, what happened today was very very bad. Yes, it means that what comes next will probably come with a butcher’s bill. I have sons in military age. I’m not thrilled.
BUT the fault is not of the protesters. The fault is of the corruptocrats, yes, including the Supreme Court Justices, every one of them who found it easier to roll over for fraud and not let the ridiculous level of fraud in the elections have its day in court.
If you’re going to clutch pearls and tut tut do so at those who passed the buck, refused to do their jobs or sided with the left in the hopes of being eaten last.
The angry Americans, many of them despoiled out of their livelihoods by the elite’s Covid-19 fun and games designed to destroy the economy so they could steal the election, are the least guilty here. It’s quite likely — if G-d watches out for fools, children, and the United States of America — they’ll be held up as heroes some day.
Perspective, please.
HE DID. HE THINKS THE LEFT IS NOW IN CONTROL FOREVER, AND HE WANTS TO BE IN GOOD WITH THEM: Mike Pence May Have Killed His Political Career.
January 6, 2021
POLITICAL VIOLENCE FLASHBACK: A Bernie Bro Shot Steve Scalise. “This is what happens when the likes of Eric Holder, Cory Booker, and Maxine Waters preach confrontation, intimidation, and getting in the faces of opponents.”
“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.
Because the press is pretending that political violence in America started today.
As a friend on Facebook notes, people have warned for years that the open support for Antifa from much of our political establishment would lead to a reaction from the right. Right-wing protesters used to clean up after themselves.
UPDATE: From a friend:
Two groups of people (call them A and B) both see themselves as victims and have grievances they feel aren’t being heard.
Both resort to violence.
Dem reactions to group A:
“People will do what they do”
“Tell me where it says protests have to be peaceful”
“Don’t judge a whole group by the actions of a few”
“America is racist”Dem reactions to group B:
“They are traitors”
“Violence is never acceptable”
“Arrest any people who agree with them in Congress”This doesn’t go unnoticed.
Indeed.
UNDERWEAR GNOMES, THE NEXT GENERATION: The Kremlin, FSB, and the ‘Berlin patient’s’ underpants.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: If destroying property isn’t violence, then what is happening to this camera crew’s equipment?
More:
As Victoria Taft writes: If Only the Left and Right Had Come Together to Condemn Violence When It Counted.
The DNC-MSM has been actively egging on riots since at least Ferguson in 2014. And they’ll have zero introspection over whether their fawning over leftwing rioters has driven the far right to adopt the left’s tactics.
While the rest of Washington went apoplectic over impeachment proceedings that ultimately failed to put a single lasting dent in Trump’s reelection odds, the Arkansas senator was laser-focused on news of the novel coronavirus. In January, Cotton was bailing on impeachment proceedings to warn the White House repeatedly it was wildly behind on targeted travel bans, testing production, and vaccine development. He was also rightly pointing out that the Chinese Communist Party’s assertion that the coronavirus emerged from a wet market that didn’t even sell bats, the original carrier of the virus, was most likely a cover for its real source: China’s only maximum-security biosafety-level-four facility, which was known to conduct gain-of-function experiments on coronaviruses.
And yet, like Cassandra warning Paris his actions would start the Trojan War, Cotton was roundly derided as a crackpot conspiracy theorist by most of the media.
* * * * * * * *
By late spring, a second crisis was emerging. Protests supposedly in the name of justice for George Floyd, the unarmed black man killed while kneeled on by a white cop, devolved into the sort of lawless riots anyone could see would spell doom, not productive lawmaking, for cities and businesses disproportionately of people of color. Cotton wrote a New York Times op-ed arguing that military involvement was warranted to assist law enforcement in cities unable to quell riots, an opinion shared by nearly 3 in 5 registered voters, including nearly a majority of those who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“These rioters, if not subdued, not only will destroy the livelihoods of law-abiding citizens but will also take more innocent lives,” Cotton wrote. “Many poor communities that still bear scars from past upheavals will be set back still further.”
Members of the staff of the New York Times, who hadn’t raised a word of protest when the paper published direct op-eds from the Taliban, Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, or Hamas, were so enraged that not only did they accuse their employers of literally putting black people in danger by publishing Cotton’s opinion, but they also succeeded in upending the entire editorial structure of the opinion page and chasing respected editor James Bennet from the building.
Cotton wound up raising $200,000 in the week after his column was published, which he spent on ads in the New York Times railing against Joe Biden. (Cotton, who unseated a Democratic incumbent in 2014, went on to beat his Libertarian challenger in 2020 by 33 points, as no Democrat ran in the race.)
As Ann Coulter tweets in response to today’s DC riots involving Trump supporters, “New York Times to un-retract Tom Cotton’s op-ed.”
BRYAN PRESTON: Every City Needs a New York Post.
The other day I was researching for a piece or a show, haven’t decided which, about how the Democrats at the local level and now reaching all the way up, are abdicating the basics of governance. They literally no longer care about public safety, keeping the streets clean and free of garbage, or really any Government 101 duties. They just answer to radical activists and pretend their local homeowners and business leaders don’t exist. I went looking for the latest on New York City’s garbage collection issues. Mayor Bill de Blasio hasn’t just defunded the police and politicized the entire city government. He’s turned the streets over to the largest piles of garbage and the rats that live in them. This has been going on for a couple of years. He’d rather mouth off and run for president than do his actual job.
I ended up finding useful information in one place: the New York Post. Not the Times, the alleged paper of record. It’s too busy trying to destroy the nation to report on the destruction of its own city. Not the NY Daily News. Its local coverage is better than the Times but it’s still too often a mouthpiece for the Democrats.
* * * * * * * *
If I had a billion dollars or two and wanted to make a difference at the local level, I’d spin up versions of the Post in Austin, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, everywhere the captured papers bury serious stories and stifle discussion and debate. Outlets like this one need local reporters who know their cities and will honestly report on them and the consequences that flow from the policies that those who run these cities foist on them.
More importantly, the citizens of these imperiled and increasingly dangerous cities need them too.
As Kyle Smith wrote when veteran Post reporter Steve Dunleavy passed away in 2019 at age 81, “Then as now, you had to read The Post to figure out what was really going on in the city because the Times was slightly grossed out by how sordid it all was and tended to look the other way when things got ‘too tabloidy,’ meaning ‘too interesting.’ You could always go to the Times for a 3,000-word piece on ‘Whither the UN?’ But tabloid guys like Steve served up what was really happening in these parts, at 160 proof.”
H.L. Mencken wrote in the early 1940s that “it is the prime function of a really first-rate newspaper to serve as a sort of permanent opposition in politics.” That line has been quoted by both the New York Times and the Washington Post, but curiously, Mencken’s advice goes unheeded by most newspapers once there is someone with a (D) after his name in the White House, the governor’s, or mayor’s mansion.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Link found between self-control in childhood and success later in life.
PROTESTORS STORM U.S. CAPITOL, HALT ELECTORAL COLLEGE CERTIFICATION. They are inside the Capitol, with reports of one person shot in the chest.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I’ve been mostly offline this week as I recover, but this isn’t right, tempting as it is to call this “mostly peaceful” or somesuch after the past year’s sanctioned riots. Follow the PJ Liveblog for minute by minute coverage. Excerpt:
With 40% of the country thinking the election was stolen, this was to be expected — especially after the unified voice of the media saying for years that if you feel disenfranchised it’s okay to riot. Our ruling class, and particularly our media, have been playing with fire for years and I hope that this will be enough to shock them into more sensible behavior. But so far they’ve not lived up to my hopes.
ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Bumped. I’ll be interested to see who these protesters in the Capitol are.
Also: Expert Andy Ngo: It wasn’t antifa at the Capitol riots.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: This Year, Autonomous Trucks Will Take to the Road With No One on Board.
YOU WENT FULL WEIMAR. NEVER GO FULL WEIMAR: Denmark launches children’s TV show about man with giant penis.
IT’S TERRIFYING BECAUSE THEY’RE RIGHT: The Chinese Communist Party looks forward to Joe Biden’s presidency as a “new window of hope.” That’s terrifying.
I EAGERLY AWAIT THE PRECRIME UNIT AT CNN TELLING ME WHY THIS IS WRONG: Governor Ron DeSantis Announces Partnership with Publix to Open COVID-19 Vaccination Sites.
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