THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Prof. Marc Lamont Hill: Goal of Black Lives Matter is to “dismantle the Zionist project.”
Related: The Malignant Tradition of UC Irvine’s Hate-Israel Activists.
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Rush Limbaugh Changed America.
WE’VE LEARNED A LOT ABOUT THE DOWNSIDES OF INFLAMMATION LATELY: How inflammatory signalling molecules contribute to carcinogenesis.
NEWS I HOPE YOU CAN’T USE: How to Stay Warm Without Power.
Of course, InstaPundit readers know how to run a furnace off an inverter.
More here.
WALL STREET JOURNAL: The Political Making of a Texas Power Outage: How bad energy policy led to rolling blackouts in the freezing Lone Star State.
Mr. Abbott blamed his state’s extensive power outages on generators freezing early Monday morning, noting “this includes the natural gas & coal generators.” But frigid temperatures and icy conditions have descended on most of the country. Why couldn’t Texas handle them while other states did?
The problem is Texas’s overreliance on wind power that has left the grid more vulnerable to bad weather. Half of wind turbines froze last week, causing wind’s share of electricity to plunge to 8% from 42%. Power prices in the wholesale market spiked, and grid regulators on Friday warned of rolling blackouts. Natural gas and coal generators ramped up to cover the supply gap but couldn’t meet the surging demand for electricity—which half of households rely on for heating—even as many families powered up their gas furnaces. Then some gas wells and pipelines froze.
In short, there wasn’t sufficient baseload power from coal and nuclear to support the grid. Baseload power is needed to stabilize grid frequency amid changes in demand and supply. When there’s not enough baseload power, the grid gets unbalanced and power sources can fail. The more the grid relies on intermittent renewables like wind and solar, the more baseload power is needed to back them up.
But politicians don’t care about grid reliability until the power goes out. And for three decades politicians from both parties have pushed subsidies for renewables that have made the grid less stable.
Start with the 1992 Energy Policy Act signed by George H.W. Bush, which created a production tax credit to boost the infant wind industry. Generators collect up to $25 per megawatt hour of power they produce regardless of market demand. The credit was supposed to expire in 1999, but nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program, as Ronald Reagan once quipped.
The renewables lobby found GOP allies in windy states like Texas, Oklahoma and Iowa. Former Enron CEO Ken Lay, who had made a big bet on wind, begged then Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 1998 to lobby Congress to extend the credit for five years. Congress has since extended it more than a dozen times, most recently in December.
Wind producers persuaded former Gov. Rick Perry to back a $5 billion network of transmission lines to connect turbines in western Texas to cities. This enabled them to build more turbines—and collect more tax credits. Because the Texas grid is often oversupplied, wind producers sometimes pay to off-load their power, though they still turn a profit with the tax credits.
Coal and nuclear are more strictly regulated and can’t compete, and many coal plants have shut down in Texas and elsewhere. Over the last decade about 100 gigawatts of coal power nationwide has been retired—enough to power 60 million homes. Many nuclear plants are scheduled to shut down, including large reactors in New York and Illinois this year.
We need more nice, reliable, environmentally friendly nuclear plants.
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Rush Limbaugh Changed America.
Before Rush, talk radio was different. Talk radio was about cotton candy issues. Larry King on the Mutual Broadcast Network hosted an overnight parade of callers talking about pets, childhood memories, landscaping, and just how they were doing. Scores of local talk show hosts – like Perry Marshall at KDKA in Pittsburgh – entertained with friendly chat, the sweet cotton candy that dissolves away quick into meaninglessness.
That was radio B.R. – Before Rush.
Running the board at WPBR on this August debut day, I could tell immediately this new brand of talk was revolutionary. It was listening to Sgt. Pepper for the first time. It was the first ride on the looping coaster that defied gravity. It was bold and brash and, most of all, spoke to Americans about what America was. Rush spoke to what it means to be American, and what America means as an idea.
Rush was the “fairness doctrine” and mush mouth radio put out to pasture. On Saturday the week of Rush’s debut, I would produce a radio show called “Our Eyes” where the elderly called into the eye-doctor host to talk about vision issues.
That is the radio world Rush stepped into, on the same station in Palm Beach.
Before Fox News, before Drudge and the Blogosphere, Rush was America’s alternative news source, both quoting articles that he believed his massive audience needed to hear, and pushing back on what we would now call “fake news.” As Dan McLaughlin writes, “His death also marks the decisive end of another era: the post-Reagan, post–Cold War Right of the 1990s, in which he was a central figure.”
TO BE FAIR, THEY’RE ACTUALLY DOING THE AUSSIES A FAVOR:
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace Oddly Silent on Lincoln Project Implosion After Boosting Its Top Leaders.
I RAN ACROSS THIS OLD GEM TODAY: Ace: No Matter How Hard We Run, We Can Never Escape Our Childhood Breakfast Cereals. “I wanted to be an Apple Jacks kid. . . . Kaboom was for people — children, I mean — who had decided to give up on life.”
PRESIDENT-IN-WAITING HARRIS OFF TO BRILLIANT START: Harris and Her Spokeswoman Stumble on CNN, NBC Over Questions Regarding School Reopenings.
STAY CLASSY, PARTY OF TOLERANCE AND DIVERSITY: ‘Rest in Piss:’ The Left Celebrates Rush Limbaugh’s Death.
JOE BIDEN IS STILL AUDITIONING:
Biden is fitting into a position he has pursued for almost 30 years; he finally caught the car and now doesn’t know what to do with it. But Biden is no longer auditioning. He’s going to be held to account, perhaps not by an overly friendly media, but certainly by a pandemic-weary country wondering when their kids can go back to schools in districts that are friendly to the President. Biden can start acting like a President, or continue looking like a passive hostage to special-interest union groups and foreign adversaries.
His administration is shifting the goalposts at the whims of his decades-long donors. His press secretary only offers flailing talking points. And with the exception of a brief reemergence on Fox News today, there is no Donald Trump to serve as a distraction. The realization that Joe Biden is the same Joe Biden he’s been for 37 years in Washington is going to become more apparent.
But the press, both in their role as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and because they fear being locked in the closet, will do their damnedest to prop up the husk of the president: WaPo Fact Checker Glenn Kessler forgets the ‘first rule of holes’ after getting busted running cover for lying liar Joe Biden.
WAIT A MINUTE, TRUMP ‘LAUNCHED’ THE GOP CIVIL WAR? To hear an unidentified Washington Examiner headline writer tell it, that’s exactly what former President Donald Trump did by responding to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell denunciation on the Senate floor shortly after the second acquittal of the impeached 45th Chief Executive. “Trump Launches Republican Civil War With Attack on ‘Hack’ McConnell” is how the headline read.
Examiner White House Reporter, Rob Crilly, who wrote the news story thus headlined, put the issue slightly more deftly, saying in his lead that Trump merely “threatened” a civil war with his vintage OrangeManBad verbal stomping on McConnell.
So, to apply these two standards, we would have to rewrite the history books to say, for example, that President Abraham Lincoln either launched the Civil War or threatened to do so by re-supplying Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. The bloody four-year conflict that followed was not the started by the Confederates who first fired on the freshened facility, as we were all taught many years ago.
I DUNNO, THE CIA DOESN’T SEEM TO DEAL VERY EFFECTIVELY WITH THIS WORLD: How to Escape the Confines of Time and Space According to the CIA.
JAMES LILEKS: WARNING. UNFETTERED CONVERSATIONS ARE HAPPENING!
UNFETTERED CONVERSATIONS ARE HAPPENING DESPITE CONCERNS
There’s backstory to one of the piece’s authors, who strikes me as an utterly third-rate mind without any leavening agents such as intellectual humility or a sense of history beyond the early years of Nickelodeon. The idea that people are using a private means of communication that is — what’s the word? — PRIVATE, well, it just galls. Misinformation might be spread! No — it’s probably being spread! People are saying things and using words and there’s no one from Snopes or Politico to stop them and say “hold up now, let’s run that assertion past our panel of people whose vested devotion to a particular set of ideological concepts do not align with yours, but are considered True because they believe in all the Good Things.”
There’s a spirit of busybody bossy vengeance abroad in the land, and I hate it. And by “land” I mean that nowhere place that shapes the culture.
As Glenn Greenwald wrote on Sunday, “In other words, journalists, desperate for content, have flagged Clubhouse as a new frontier for their slimy work as voluntary hall monitors and speech police.”
REVIEW: Walther PDP.
JEN PSAKI AND THE IDENTITY DEFENSE:
As it turns out, this reflex is Psaki’s primary means of dispensing with questions to which she has no answers. When the GameStop story was dominating the news cycle, a reporter asked whether the White House was concerned about the stock-market activity and whether there had been conversations with the Securities and Exchange Commission on the subject.
“Well, I’m also happy to repeat that we have the first female Treasury secretary and a team that’s surrounding her and often questions about markets,” Psaki replied. “We’ll send [you] to them.”
No further explanation was forthcoming. We were meant to be contented with the irrelevant reminder that Treasury secretary Janet Yellen was selected for her post according to the eminently progressive criterion of her gender.
Just yesterday, taking questions from Twitter for a video response, Psaki did it again when one user inquired about what President Biden is doing for small businesses.
“First and foremost, he nominated a woman to lead the Small Business Administration, who formerly worked there,” she responded, as if the gender of the SBA chief has anything remotely to do with whether the administration has plans to address the concerns of small businesses.
In the meantime though, Psaki’s schtick is great fodder of America’s Newspaper of Record: Journalists Cheer As Jen Psaki Announces The Gulags Will Be Run By A Woman Of Color.
As CNN would say, (“(How Refreshing).”
UNSURPRISING: ‘I’m glad he’s dead’: ‘Rest in piss’ trends as compassionate, tolerant liberals dance on Rush Limbaugh’s grave.
Just as their hatred for Trump is really hatred for Trump’s voters, so their hatred for Limbaugh is really hatred for Limbaugh’s audience. Without hatred for their fellow Americans, the left would have no reason to feel special.
UPDATE: Maybe he was just trying to speak slowly so you could follow him, Jeff:
ROGER SIMON: ‘Power to the People:’ The GOP Bloodbath Has Begun.
It’s not just the terminally Deep State Mitch McConnell—excoriated in an entirely justifiable statement from Donald Trump—but Kevin McCarthy and a host of other Beltway Republicans who must somehow either lose their positions of authority, that is be sidelined and rendered either impotent or inconsequential, and/or be primaried out before the election of 2022.
Otherwise the Republican Party will likely lose in 22 and again in 24 because the rank-and-file is completely out of synch with these putative party elites.
This easily could happen even given the traditional advantage of the opposition party and the moronic policies of the Biden administration. (Keystone pipeline anyone…? Brrr….)
Republican voters mostly despise their current leadership and favor Trump by large margins, if we are to believe the polls and, more importantly, our own eyes.
Many of the rank-and-file will not participate in the election, sitting it out, if these old school “leaders” and their similarly-inclined colleagues are not removed and still wield power.
Either that, or those millions known as the “deplorables” will attempt to establish a third party. Some already are. Almost all have seriously considered it.
Many previously well thought of Republican leaders incredibly remain clueless about this or deliberately have their heads in the sand. Why, for example, has Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton made an alliance with Mitt Romney, of all people, to promote minimum wage legislation?
The weeding out of these, sadly many, Deep State uniparty figures must begin immediately because 2022 will be upon us before we know it.
As reported here at The Epoch Times, the process has already begun with many in the grassroots suddenly stepping forward to volunteer for Republican Party positions at the local level.
As we used to say in the sixties, “Power to the People”—only this time, coming from the heartland of America, it may have more of a reality to it than it did then, even be more long-lasting and healing, if it succeeds.
Related: Ron DeSantis Gets 2024 ‘Tier One’ Designation From Party Insiders.
YEAH, BUT YOU GET A 55 INSTEAD OF A 50. THAT’S TEN PERCENT MORE QX RIGHT THERE! 2022 Infiniti QX55 Will Be Considerably More Expensive Than QX50.
MICHAEL WALSH: A Freedom-Loving People Needs to Call the Bluff of Those Instilling Fear.
The toll such imprisonment is taking on teens and tweens is incalculable, and can and should be laid squarely at the feet of everyone from the self-aggrandizing media gnome, Dr. Anthony Fauci, to the local school board—but, naturally, it won’t be. Not to mention the real death toll from heart disease, cancer, suicide, and other mortal threats that has been concealed by the Covid obsession, but whose true cost will eventually be revealed.
So this is the part where we call their bluff. Tell them that Joe Biden has no constitutional right to issue a “mask mandate” and then tell him what he can do with it.
Tell them Florida governor Ron DeSantis is the model of what a governor under our system of federalism ought to be.
Tell them that we have no further use for Mitch McConnell (who should have lost his seat in 2014 and now will be around to plague us until 2026) nor, indeed, for the GOP of Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Ben Sasse, and the four other senators who voted to convict Donald Trump during his shampeachment “trial.”
Tell them we demand the immediate cessation of any and all “states of emergency,” the full restitution of our civil rights, including our right to be left alone by a meddlesome and malicious government, and the reinstatement of the safeguards of our electoral system. That elections should be held on a single day, during defined hours, and not one minute earlier or later. That the “resistance” begins here and now, with the end of the COVID-19 panic.
Most of all, tell them that we’re perfectly safe, and we are no longer afraid of them, or of the unreasoning, unjustified terror they have imposed upon us. That we will no longer retreat, but advance. That we are free men and women and intend to stay that way. And that henceforth, the only thing they have to fear is us.
Read the whole thing.
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: 3D-Printed Thruster Boosts Range of CubeSat Applications.
VICTORIA TAFT: Rush Limbaugh Was My ‘Radio Dad.’
NEWS I HOPE YOU CAN’T USE: Ablation beats drug therapy for women and men with A-fib.
WHEN YOU’VE LOST THE L.A. TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD…: L.A. Unified is officially out of excuses for keeping elementary schools closed.
I BLAME PREHISTORIC SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES: Climate change killed off mammoths, sloths, megafauna.
MARK STEYN: The Indispensable Man. Rush Limbaugh, 1951-2021. “To modify Rush’s tag line: Talent returned to God.”
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Teen pot use increases with adult recreational legalization, study finds.
THE MAN WHO MADE CONSERVATISM FUN AGAIN: Rush Limbaugh Dies at 70.
SORRY, SUCKERS, ELECTION’S OVER: ‘I will not make that happen’: Biden declines Democrats’ call to cancel $50K in student debt.
It’s the right decision, but it’s got to disappoint a lot of people who were expecting a post-election payday.
R.I.P., Rush Limbaugh.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Ohio State Offering the Creepiest Sex Ed Ever.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: What is it about sex that college teachers think college students aren’t already figuring out?
Answer: Oh, right — how to be properly Woke about it.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- Michigan cleans up its voter rolls after The Most Honest Election Ever™
- UK supermarket requires sick shoppers to wear a yellow sticker
- CNN lobs nothing but softballs, Biden whiffs anyway
Bonus Sanity: The
peasantsparents are revolting.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
GOYA’S DECEMBER EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS. Ocasio-Cortez Slams Texas: That’s What Happens ‘When You Don’t Pursue A Green New Deal.’
But that’s just it — they did pursue that “Green New Deal:” “Just last week, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott proudly accepted something called the Wind Leadership Award, given with gratitude by Tri Global Energy, a company getting rich from green energy. So it was all working great until the day it got cold outside. The windmills failed like the silly fashion accessories they are, and people in Texas died.”
StrategyTalk Podcast: China’s Population Problem. The link goes to the YouTube podcast. If you like the podcast, please subscribe. If you prefer an MP3 download, go here.
GLENN GREENWALD HAS A LIST. AND IT’S A LONG LIST. The False and Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol Riot.
What took place at the Capitol on January 6 was undoubtedly a politically motivated riot. As such, it should not be controversial to regard it as a dangerous episode. Any time force or violence is introduced into what ought to be the peaceful resolution of political conflicts, it should be lamented and condemned.
But none of that justifies lying about what happened that day, especially by the news media. Condemning that riot does not allow, let alone require, echoing false claims in order to render the event more menacing and serious than it actually was. There is no circumstance or motive that justifies the dissemination of false claims by journalists. The more consequential the event, the less justified, and more harmful, serial journalistic falsehoods are.
Yet this is exactly what has happened, and continues to happen, since that riot almost seven weeks ago. And anyone who tries to correct these falsehoods is instantly attacked with the cynical accusation that if you want only truthful reporting about what happened, then you’re trying to “minimize” what happened and are likely an apologist for if not a full-fledged supporter of the protesters themselves.
One of the most significant of these falsehoods was the tale — endorsed over and over without any caveats by the media for more than a month — that Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was murdered by the pro-Trump mob when they beat him to death with a fire extinguisher. That claim was first published by The New York Times on January 8 in an article headlined “Capitol Police Officer Dies From Injuries in Pro-Trump Rampage.” It cited “two [anonymous] law enforcement officials” to claim that Sicknick died “with the mob rampaging through the halls of Congress” and after he “was struck with a fire extinguisher.”
A second New York Times article from later that day — bearing the more dramatic headline: “He Dreamed of Being a Police Officer, Then Was Killed by a Pro-Trump Mob” — elaborated on that story.
After publication of these two articles, this horrifying story about a pro-Trump mob beating a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher was repeated over and over, by multiple journalists on television, in print, and on social media. It became arguably the single most-emphasized and known story of this event, and understandably so — it was a savage and barbaric act that resulted in the harrowing killing by a pro-Trump mob of a young Capitol police officer.
It took on such importance for a clear reason: Sicknick’s death was the only example the media had of the pro-Trump mob deliberately killing anyone. In a January 11 article detailing the five people who died on the day of the Capitol protest, the New York Times again told the Sicknick story: “Law enforcement officials said he had been ‘physically engaging with protesters’ and was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher.”
But none of the other four deaths were at the hands of the protesters: the only other person killed with deliberate violence was a pro-Trump protester, Ashli Babbitt, unarmed when shot in the neck by a police officer at close range. The other three deaths were all pro-Trump protesters: Kevin Greeson, who died of a heart attack outside the Capitol; Benjamin Philips, 50, “the founder of a pro-Trump website called Trumparoo,” who died of a stroke that day; and Rosanne Boyland, a fanatical Trump supporter whom the Times says was inadvertently “killed in a crush of fellow rioters during their attempt to fight through a police line.”
This is why the fire extinguisher story became so vital to those intent on depicting these events in the most violent and menacing light possible. Without Sicknick having his skull bashed in with a fire extinguisher, there were no deaths that day that could be attributed to deliberate violence by pro-Trump protesters. . . .
The problem with this story is that it is false in all respects. From the start, there was almost no evidence to substantiate it. The only basis were the two original New York Times articles asserting that this happened based on the claim of anonymous law enforcement officials.
Despite this alleged brutal murder taking place in one of the most surveilled buildings on the planet, filled that day with hundreds of cellphones taping the events, nobody saw video of it. No photographs depicted it. To this day, no autopsy report has been released. No details from any official source have been provided.
Not only was there no reason to believe this happened from the start, the little that was known should have caused doubt. On the same day the Times published its two articles with the “fire extinguisher” story, ProPublica published one that should have raised serious doubts about it.
The outlet interviewed Sicknick’s brother, who said that “Sicknick had texted [the family] Wednesday night to say that while he had been pepper-sprayed, he was in good spirits.” That obviously conflicted with the Times’ story that the mob “overpowered Sicknick” and “struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher,” after which, “with a bloody gash in his head, Mr. Sicknick was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support.”
But no matter. The fire extinguisher story was now a matter of lore. . . .
CNN noted that investigators are “vexed by a lack of evidence that could prove someone caused his death as he defended the Capitol during last month’s insurrection.” Beyond that, “to date, little information has been shared publicly about the circumstances of the death of the 13-year veteran of the police force, including any findings from an autopsy that was conducted by DC’s medical examiner.”
Few noticed this remarkable admission buried in this article. None of this was seriously questioned until a relatively new outlet called Revolver News on February 9 compiled and analyzed all the contradictions and lack of evidence in the prevailing story, after which Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, citing that article, devoted the first eight minutes of his February 10 program to examining these massive evidentiary holes.
That caused right-wing media outlets to begin questioning what happened, but mainstream liberal outlets — those who spread the story aggressively in the first place — largely and predictably ignored it all.
This week, the paper that first published the false story — in lieu of a retraction or an explanation of how and why it got the story wrong — simply went back to the first two articles, more than five weeks later, and quietly posted what it called an “update” at the top of both five-week-old articles.
If you want to know why people are angry, and why they assume the press is lying, this is a good place to start. But there’s much, much more at the link.
Plus:
Just today, PolitiFact purported to “fact-check” a statement from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) made on Monday. Sen. Johnson told a local radio station:
“The fact of the matter is this didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me. I mean armed, when you hear armed, don’t you think of firearms? Here’s the questions I would have liked to ask. How many firearms were confiscated? How many shots were fired? I’m only aware of one, and I’ll defend that law enforcement officer for taking that shot.
The fact-checking site assigned the Senator its “Pants on Fire” designation for that statement, calling it “ridiculous revisionist history.” But the “fact-checkers” cannot refute a single claim he made. At least from what is known publicly, there is no evidence of a single protester wielding let alone using a firearm inside the Capitol on that day. As indicated, the only person to have been shot was a pro-Trump protester killed by a Capitol police officer, and the only person said to have been killed by the protesters, Officer Sicknick, died under circumstances that are still completely unclear.
That protesters were found before and after the riot with weapons does not mean they intended to use them as part of the protest. For better or worse, the U.S. is a country where firearm possession is common and legal. And what we know for certain is that there is no evidence of anyone brandishing a gun in that building. That fact makes a pretty large dent in the attempt to characterize this as an “armed insurrection” rather than a riot.
According to my “fact check” it was “mostly peaceful.” And I’m more trustworthy than Politifact, though that’s a low bar indeed.
And any journalists offended by the above need to read this. In its entirety.
If Trump and his supporters are so awful, why do you guys have to lie about them? Like, every damn time. (Bumped.)
SCARING YOU INTO MAKING HIM EVEN RICHER: Bill Gates wants you to “shift entirely to synthetic beef.” He’s also now the biggest owner of farmland in America.
JUST OUT: THE 10 WORST COLLEGES FOR FREE SPEECH, 2021 EDITION. Is your college on the list?
LET THE PARENT REVOLT BEGIN: David Catron at The American Spectator sees a revolt coming from parents who are sick and tired of hearing from teachers about why they can’t come back to work due to Covid.
My view is the long-extended sickout justified by Covid fears is the best thing to happen to American education in decades because it finally exposed the teachers unions for the frauds they are. And home-schooling has gotten a huge boost. So when do Republicans in Congress start talking up an opt-out on education taxes for parents whose kids do not attend public schools?
ANOTHER HIDDEN COST OF SUBSIDIES: TPPF’s Chuck DeVore on Reasons Behind The Texas Blackouts. “In the last 4-5 years, Texas lost a net of 3,000 megawatts of thermal out of a total installed capacity 73,000 megawatts today. We lost the thermal power because operators couldn’t see a return on investment due to be undercut by wind and solar.”
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Biden’s Rough Start With the World: This has been one of the shortest and coldest diplomatic honeymoons on record.
It hasn’t been the most promising start. Less than a month into Joe Biden’s presidency, and his administration is already engaged in spats with China, Russia and Iran. It is also discovering that U.S. allies are not quite as happy with Mr. Biden’s Feb. 4 announcement that “America is back” as many Democrats might have hoped.
In Asia the administration’s Myanmar policy—imposing sanctions that signal displeasure without materially affecting the army’s ability to rule—has attracted little enthusiasm. On Feb 15, India’s foreign minister hailed Indo-Japanese cooperation on regional infrastructure projects that link Myanmar with its neighbors, a not-so-subtle signal that India intends to go on cooperating with Myanmar no matter what Washington wants. Simultaneously, the large portion of the Indian press that supports the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is aflame with resentment that Vice President Kamala Harris’s niece, Meena Harris, seems to be siding with protesters against BJP policies.
European leaders are also dismissive of American moralism. French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the importation of U.S.-academic and cultural wokeness as a threat to the French way of life, while pragmatists on the Continent are pushing to strengthen economic relations with Russia and China—virtually ignoring the Biden administration’s efforts to raise the pressure on human-rights abusers in Moscow and Beijing. With the U.S. trade representative’s recent announcement that Trump-era retaliatory tariffs on European wine, cheese and food imports aren’t going away soon, this has been one of the shortest and coldest diplomatic honeymoons on record.
In the Middle East, Iran is showing no eagerness to ease the administration’s path back into the 2015 nuclear deal. And both Israel and the conservative Arab states resent the American shift in that direction.
You know how you can tell that Trump’s diplomacy was highly successful? The press almost never covered it.
POLITIFACT DEBUNKS THE STORY THAT PRESIDENT BIDEN PLANNED THE WINTER STORM AS ‘AN ATTACK ON TEXAS.’
To paraphrase Johnny Carson, “I didn’t even know he was Jewish.”
SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! Public university hosts workshop for whites only — and ‘other practitioners’ of racial bias.
GLENN GREENWALD: The False and Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol Riot.
Over and over, no evidence has emerged for the most melodramatic media claims — torn out Panic Buttons and plots to kill Vice President Mike Pence or Mitt Romney. What we know for certain, as The Washington Post noted this week, is that “Despite warnings of violent plots around Inauguration Day, only a smattering of right-wing protesters appeared at the nation’s statehouses.” That does not sound like an ongoing insurrection, to put it mildly.
All this matters because it inherently matters if the media is recklessly circulating falsehoods about the most inflammatory and significant news stories. As was true for their series of Russiagate debacles, even if each “mistake” standing alone can be dismissed as relatively insignificant or understandable, when they pile up — always in the same narrative direction — people rightly conclude the propaganda is deliberate and trust in journalism erodes further.
But in this case, this matters for reasons far more significant than corporate media’s attempt to salvage the last vestiges of their credibility. Washington, D.C. remains indefinitely militarized. The establishment wings of both parties are still exploiting the emotions surrounding the Capitol breach to justify a new domestic War on Terror. The FBI is on the prowl for dissidents on the right and the left, and online censorship in the name of combatting domestic terrorism continues to rise.
One can — and should — condemn the January 6 riot without inflating the threat it posed. And one can — and should — insist on both factual accuracy and sober restraint without standing accused of sympathy for the rioters.
Read the whole thing.
MRS. GRUNDY WITH A BADGE: Memo to California COVID Cops: When Crushing the Dreams of a Brewery Owner, Don’t Do a ‘Happy Dance.’
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Baylor students want Christian lecturer fired after she questioned Biden’s transgender policies.
I mean, you’re not allowed to disagree with the President. Anymore.
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Biden Won’t Rule Out Using Executive Orders To Crackdown On Second Amendment Rights. “The revelation was made during a White House press conference on Tuesday in response to a statement that Biden put out last week calling for banning semi-automatic firearms in addition to other gun control measures.”
Previously: Here Come the Lunatic Gun-Grabbers.
PELOSI LEARNS TO LOVE THOSE ‘STORM TROOPERS:’ The razor-wire barrier, military vehicles blocking streets and National Guardsmen manning checkpoints are going to remain in place at least until the Fall, Tristan Justice of The Federalist notes.
So, remember last summer when Antifa and Black Lives Matter were burning down cities, assaulting a federal courthouse, destroying police precinct headquarters and beating Trump supporters on the streets of the nation’s capital?
That was when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi accused National Guardsmen dispatched to protect the courthouse in Portland, Oregon, of acting like “storm troopers.”
But that was then and everything changed on January 6. Now, the Capitol looks like an armed camp. Madama Speaker will only give up those guardsmen when, to paraphrase Charleton Heston, they are pried from her cold, dead fingers (speaking metaphorically, of course).
HORSERACE: Ron DeSantis Gets 2024 ‘Tier One’ Designation From Party Insiders. “Balancing Floridians’ needs during the pandemic and effectively defending his decisions has Politico saying DeSantis is creating chatter within the Republican Party regarding his political future. At age 42, with a young family, he has plenty of time to decide which direction to take his career. But there is still plenty of chatter about 2024.”
DISPATCHES FROM PORTLANDIA: Portland’s So ‘Woke’ That Even the Snow Plows Bow to ‘Equity.’
I asked the Portland Bureau of Transportation why KATU-TV reported that Portland’s snow plows were being sidelined, not because of safety issues or getting the city moving and the economy going, but because of issues of “equity.”
“We don’t plow the side streets for a couple of reasons. One is a capacity reason; we don’t have the number of plows that we would need to do that. And then many of those side streets are, are too narrow for our plows, those are big machines. Especially when cars a lined up on both sides of the street parking,” John Brady with PBOT said.
John Brady, the communications director at PBOT, says if they only plowed streets they could fit, there would be an equity issue.
This isn’t the first time that snow and magic leftwing thinking have collided in the Pacific Northwest: “In a big snowstorm in 2008, Seattle applied sand rather than rock salt for environmental reasons. Icy chaos ensured, and Mayor Greg Nickels said soon after that the city would switch to salt. But it was too late, apparently: Nickels lost his job a few months later as voters turned him out of office in the spring primary.”
HMM: State Dept Refuses to Explain Iran Envoy’s Talks with China.
Malley’s diplomatic talks with China come as the Biden administration is pressing Iran to end its revamped nuclear work, which includes stockpiling highly enriched uranium, the primary fuel for a nuclear weapon. China is still party to the 2015 accord and has a vested interest in seeing the United States rejoin the agreement. It is a primary ally of the Iranian regime and has supported the rollback of a United Nations arms ban on Tehran, which would permit the Communist Party and nations like Russia to sell Iran billions in advanced arms.
Malley’s overtures to China on the Iran portfolio appear to be at odds with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s repeated promises to not pursue diplomacy with Tehran until it rolls back its nuclear work and proves it is in compliance with the restrictions placed on its program as part of the agreement. The State Department’s silence on Malley’s meeting could be an indication the Biden administration’s public statements on the deal are at odds with its private diplomacy on the matter.
Who’s in charge of Joe Biden’s foreign policy, anyway?
IF THE GOP WERE SMART (YEAH, I KNOW) THEY’D BE ALL IN ON THIS ISSUE: Democrats would delay school COVID-19 spending, threatening reopening.
And schools don’t need “spending” to reopen. They need to tell teachers that if they don’t show up they’ll be replaced.
JIM TREACHER: ‘Central Park Karen’ Amy Cooper Gets Charges Dropped After Anti-Racist ‘Psychoeducation’ Sessions.
And now I find myself wondering what “psychoeducation” entails. Was it some sort of A Clockwork Orange thing? Did they prop her eyelids open and make her watch Martin on BET until she found it funny? Did they show her pictures of black people and then give her an electric shock every time she lunged for her phone to dial 911?
Seriously, though, it sounds like they think her real crime wasn’t making a false police report, but being a racist. If so, how are a few “psychoeducation” sessions going to change that?
Should this incident follow Amy Cooper around for the rest of her life? Should she be dogged by something stupid she did while walking her actual dog? Hasn’t she learned her lesson after being shamed by the entire world?
Christian Cooper has forgiven her, saying “she’s already paid a steep price.” He’s gotten over it. He found enough grace in his heart to forgive her. Why can’t you?
Just kidding. It’s 2021, and forgiveness is for the weak. If you catch somebody being racist, you must hound them until the day they die. If you don’t, that means you’re a racist too. The same goes for sexism, ageism, transphobism, and every other -ism. And so on, and so on, until the whole world is just one big witch hunt.
And it’s not over yet for Amy Cooper: ‘Central Park Karen’ Amy Cooper set to tell her ‘story’ this week.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: DeSantis ’24 Just To Break the COVID Panic Porn Tyrants. “DeSantis continues to make all of the right people angry, which as you know is a favorite criterion of mine for judging our elected officials. DeSantis has been flying in the face of the liberal hypocrisy orthodoxy regarding whether schools should be open or not. Lib politicians are, of course, utterly beholden to the demands of teachers’ unions, who have been lobbying hard to get paid, get vaccinated, and not return to work.”
ON DRAMATICALLY RAISING THE MINIMUM WAGE: Here’s a passage from a 1990 article by historian James C. Cobb about the effect of the extension of the federal minimum wage to agricultural workers in 1967. The article is specifically about the effect in the Mississippi Delta area:
Another crucial reason for reduced agricultural employment in the Delta was the $1 per hour minimum wage law that went into effect on February 1, 1967. Social scientists and planners had seen such a law as the key to freeing black farm workers from the archaic system of credit and paternalism that had throttled them since the end of the nineteenth century. At first glance, a mandated wage of $1 per hour might seem a blessing to workers accustomed to receiving $3.50 for a twelve-hour day. Those who advocated the minimum wage law had presumed that planters would maintain employment at pre-1967 levels. Instead, the new law jerked the slack out of a system that was not yet fully mechanized and modernized. A year after the law took effect, a planter explained:
“Hell, last year was the first time we really found out what labor efficiency could mean. We knew we couldn’t use any more casual labor because of the minimum wage, and now we’re finding out we don’t need as much specialized labor either…”
One estimate suggested that the new law put twenty-five thousand able-bodied hands in the Delta out of jobs …. The elderly and partially disabled who were unable to move were thrown into far more desperate situations than when they had clung to bare subsistence as occasional field hands who could usually count on thirty days work in June and July chopping cotton and pulling weeds at $3.50 per day. … The wife of a day worker found the new law no blessing: “That dollar an hour ain’t worth nothing. It would have been better if it had been 50 cents a day if you work every day.” Although planters continued to allow elderly or totally destitute blacks to remain in their shacks rent fee, when such dwellings became vacant, planters put a torch to them.
Yes, I know this is obvious: Minimum wage laws put people out of their jobs. But it looks like a lot of people are going to have to learn the hard way soon.
PRICING TEENAGERS OUT OF WORK: Here’s What $15 Minimum Wage Would Mean for This Frozen Yogurt Shop Owner.
WE HAVE INVESTIGATED OURSELVES AND FOUND OURSELVES INNOCENT: Senior Partners at Firm Hired to ‘Review’ Lincoln Project Scandal Have Donated Thousands to Group.
TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE!
Shot: Biden Falsely Claims: ‘We Didn’t Have’ A Vaccine ‘When We Came Into Office.’
—The Daily Wire, yesterday.
Chaser: Biden gets COVID-19 vaccine, says ‘nothing to worry about.’
—AP, December 21st, 2020.
Hangover: During the same interview:
The D.T.s: “Biden said during a CNN town hall on Tuesday that former military and former police officers were fueling the ‘growth of white supremacy.’”
SOME THOUGHTS ON MUSIC AND MIND: I know, I know, it sounds like I’m off in the clouds, again. Still, I dare you to spend a couple of undistracted hours listening to Mark Knopfler, Phil Coulter and Braveheart’s “End Credits,” as I was wonderfully able to do last night.
Then just try to tell me it didn’t set you to thinking about God, who, let us never forget, is the author of all our rights and liberties, according to the preamble of Mr. Jefferson’s Declaration. Knopfler, by the way, just might be the best guitarist/songwriter ever.
TALES FROM THE SWAMPLAND: Law Firm ‘Investigating’ Lincoln Project Gave Thousands in Donations to the PAC.
IF ALLOWED, THEY WILL ABUSE THEIR POWER AGAINST ANYONE THEY SEE AS A THREAT — AND THEY’RE THE KIND OF PARANOID THAT PEOPLE WITH GUILTY CONSCIENCES TEND TO BE: FBI Arrests Activist Daniel Baker Over Posts About Police Abuse and Self Defense. “In the wake of the January 6 Capitol riot, many Democratic politicians and left-of-center pundits have been calling for the expanded use of ‘domestic terror’ laws against people whose social media rhetoric seems too radical. Those who warned that this would backfire—being used not just against those who have committed crimes but anyone whose political views or online comments are deemed risky—were accused of things like excusing terrorism or aligning with white supremacists. Yet it hasn’t taken long for these warnings to come to fruition. . . . If this is the standard going forward, a whole lot of people across the political spectrum are going to find themselves in trouble. Meanwhile, the work of stopping actual terrorism and violence will be made harder, as federal agents spend increasing amounts of time investigating, targeting, and prosecuting people for harmless posts.”
They’re much more concerned about stopping theats to their power than about stopping actual crime.
FROM ALMA BOYKIN: Familiar Tale.
Smiley Lorraine: Wolverine. Rosie Jones: 100-lb. Skunk. Morgana Lorraine: Witch with Editorial Problems.
Welcome to a world where Familiars choose magic workers, and a few others, as their partners. A world of adventure, tax-deductions, bad publisher tricks, and odd veterinary clinics, where wolverines wear glasses and iguanas sing along with the radio—badly—while casting spells and keeping their chosen humans out of mischief.
Or try to.
(Five short-stories.)
OH, YEAH, HE AND I GOT A PREVIEW OF ALL THIS 5 YEARS AGO: ‘Monster Hunter’ Scribe Shares Cancel Culture Survival Tips.
SOME WORKERS ARE LESS ESSENTIAL THAN OTHERS: Vaccine delays leave grocery workers feeling expendable.
TO BE FAIR, EXPERTISE ISN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE: India’s dramatic fall in COVID-19 cases leaves experts stumped.
NAH. THEY’RE NOW DOING VILLAIN MONOLOGUES: Officer Sicknick’s death: the only surprise here is that the NY Times actually issued any sort of retraction at all, even a mild one.
They want us to know how smart they are!
I’M SO OLD I CAN REMEMBER WHEN SNOWFALLS WERE A THING OF THE PAST: In Athens, rare snow blankets Acropolis, halts vaccinations.
EASY TO LURE SOMEONE WHO HAS NO OTHER OPTIONS: Cryptocurrency Seeks to Lure Firearms Companies Amid Threat Banks Will Cut Off Gun Industry.
ANYTHING TO DESPOIL US OF OUR RIGHTS: Media Applauds Biden’s Grotesque Exploitation Of Parkland.
SHOCKED, SHOCKED, SHOCKED. BEHOLD MY SHOCKED FACE: Wind And Solar TKO’d By Ice And Snow.
NOT VERY SHADOWY: Kamala Harris Becoming a Shadow President.
IT AIN’T NO BIG THING: An update on coronavirus from an Arizona doctor.
THE TRULY TERRIBLE THING IS THAT THIS IS A DAILY FEATURE: Today’s blacklisted Americans: Ivy league students & teachers demand revocation of all degrees earned by Republican politicians.
February 16, 2021
SALENA ZITO: Texas grid trouble offers warnings about Biden’s anti-energy policies.
The images of frozen wind turbines and solar panels brought to life how one of the most independent and powerful energy states in the country could fall to its knees when snow, ice, and frigid temperatures battered its power grid.
It was imagery that tells a cautionary tale of what the future in this country could look like if the Biden administration continues its dismantling of fossil fuel and related infrastructure industries. In short, what happened in Texas could happen anywhere, whether under the strain of a winter storm in Texas and Oklahoma or a heat wave in California.
To be fair, pumps and turbines also froze. This was an unprecedented winter storm for Texas. But yeah, all the green BS will make it worse. And, in fact, already has.
Americans used to not tolerate stuff like that. And still shouldn’t.
UPDATE: From the comments: “Build some nuke plants. In 10 years you’ll be selling power to your unicorn-powered neighbors.”
BOB MCMANUS: Expect more lies, bullying and pandering from a wounded Cuomo.
The Granny-killer isn’t going to give up. Plus:
Here’s a bold prediction: Never mind that New York City’s fiscally collapsing, rider-starved subways will spend years getting over the pandemic, the system itself won’t see a single work rule change not approved by Transport Workers Union Local 100. That is to say, there will be none. Cuomo, hogtied by his nursing-home debacle, will see to that.
And this speaks to the structural, as opposed to the human, tragedy generated by Cuomo’s decisions: A different governor might have used the dislocations caused by the pandemic to streamline government in New York, to make it more affordable and more responsive to post-pandemic realities.
But Cuomo is the governor New York has. He is an unprincipled actor to whom truth matters only when convenient, who has dug a political hole with his mouth — and who, rather than admit it, is using the power of his office to avoid a reckoning.
New York, in the event, is on its own.
Sad, but then they did elect Cuomo. And the even-worse (if that’s possible) De Blasio.
WELL, THAT WAS BEFORE THE DEMOCRATS AND THE PRESS — BUT I REPEAT MYSELF — GOT HOLD OF IT: Sen. Ron Johnson: Capitol Breach Didn’t Seem Like an ‘Armed Insurrection’ to Me.
As far as I could tell, it was mostly peaceful.
COMING SOON TO OBAMACARE: Looks like Brits with learning disabilities who contract Covid are just plain out of luck because the National Health Service — Britain’s forerunner of Obamacare — has decreed resuscitation will not be available to them. This is called “rationing healthcare.”
JUST NBC THE SMUGNESS! Snarky Chuck Todd to Texans: At Least the Cold Will Make You Want to Wear a Mask!
TYLER O’NEIL: Trump Sparks a GOP Civil War With Scathing McConnell Rebuke.
NONE OF THESE TESTS IS AS GOOD AS PEOPLE WANT TO BELIEVE: Large-scale study finds genetic testing technology falsely detects very rare variants.
HOW IT STARTED: Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle.
—David Sirota, Salon, March 6, 2013.
How’s it’s ending: Bankrupted by Socialism, Venezuela Cedes Control of Companies.
—Bloomberg.com, Friday.
As they liked to say at Bloomberg whenever bad economic news befell former President Obama, “unexpectedly.”
MINIMUM WAGE MINIMIZES EMPLOYMENT: Fast-food workers demand that their jobs get automated. Or at least that’s how I read it.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Study: Drinking, smoking, drug use raises risk for premature heart disease.
A QUESTION FOR THE WOKE ROB REINER: I wonder where Rob thinks he is in the “regime of whiteness.”
InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
