DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: Democrats were for occupying capitols before they were against it.
FINALLY, AN IRAN DEAL WORTH ENDORSING: Massive Israeli Raid Hits Iranian Targets in Syria.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION PROVING THAT WALLS WORK: Razor wire surrounds US Capitol ahead of Joe Biden inauguration.
IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Study: Coffee reduces risk for prostate cancer.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Obsessed De Blasio Purging Trump Organization from City Contracts.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: Is it really possible to unperson a billionaire President of the United States?
Answer: Bill De Blasio is doing his best to find out.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- Twitter caught planing to double down against dissent
- Communist China using U.S. crackdown on free speech to justify their own crackdowns
- BLM undercover at Capitol Riot
Bonus Sanity: Kim Cattrall makes the best career decision ever.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
I’M PRETTY SURE MARTIN SCORSESE DIDN’T INTEND FOR TAXI DRIVER TO BE A HOW-TO GUIDE: John Sullivan trained for Olympics and appeared in an Uber commercial before becoming a left-wing activist and rioting at the Capitol.
Andy Ngo has the video of Sullivan’s Uber ad:
“You talkin’ to me?”
UPDATE: Who Is John Sullivan, Who Was the Woman With Him and Their Appearance on CNN After the Capitol?
COLLECTIVE GUILT AND THE NEW WITCH HUNT:
Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” was the question used in congressional hearings in the 1950s in what was portrayed as a witch hunt against leftists that blighted American freedom of speech. A new witch hunt is sweeping Washington, Silicon Valley, and much of the media based on the following question: “Do you currently have any doubts or have you ever written or said anything disparaging the vote counts of the 2020 presidential election?”
Anyone who questions the final vote of that election is now literally being derided as a traitor. Regardless of 65 million mail-in ballots (for which fraud is “vastly more prevalent,” according to the New York Times), regardless of the last minute changes in election procedures in key swing states, and regardless of controversies about computer voting software, anyone who does not attest to the final proclaimed vote count is finding themselves forever damned – or at least that is the intent of Democratic activists and social media companies.
Read the whole thing.
POLICE BRUTALITY: ‘I Don’t Think She Deserved to Die’: Black Activist Who Filmed Ashli Babbitt Shooting Speaks Out. ‘She didn’t have a weapon. She didn’t have anything.’
However, he’s more than a “journalist” here; he’s an Antifa/BLM activist. He’s been charged by the Justice Department for rioting, though their argument that he can’t be a journalist because he’s not affiliated with a major media organization is BS.
A POST-PRESIDENCY PERKS INVENTORY: Being a former President is one of the cushiest retirements anybody could hope for, but Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) may well result in the withdrawal or reduction of such benefits. This Roll Call post does a good job of listing the present perks and where the reform urge is heading. But be prepared for the predictable TDS bias.
NUKE POWER, NOT WHAT IT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO: Remember nuclear power? It may be set for a huge comeback, argues Jonah Gottschalk, thanks in significant part to the Trump years.
HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): Mother Who Let Toddler Decide Their Own Gender States She’s Been Accused Of Child Abuse.
GOOGLE MADE THE SAME PROMISE BEFORE THEY ACQUIRED NEST, THEN BROKE IT A COUPLE YEARS LATER: Google completes acquisition of Fitbit, reiterates privacy promises.
“MISINFORMATION” IS OUR NEW CHINESE-STYLE CODE WORD FOR “WRONGTHINK.” Duke profs suggest Biden pursue ‘new laws’ to combat ‘misinformation.’
THE UNITED STATES IS A WORLD LEADER, HAVING ADMINISTERED ROUGHLY A THIRD OF THE TOTAL GLOBAL DOSES: More Than 35 Million Shots Given: Covid-19 Vaccine Tracker: The U.S. has administered 11.9 million doses; Europe’s rollout begins.
DAVID BERNSTEIN: Trump is the only president in decades who has appealed to a particular segment of the American electorate.
Trump, to almost everyone’s surprise, wins. So how do big government, big business, elite experts and so on, i.e., the establishment, react, from his fans’ perspective? Without even giving Trump a chance, they decree that he is illegitimate, that he needs to be resisted, and that his voters are beyond redemption; “this is 1932 in Germany” was not a rare reaction.
So, from these voters’ perspective, the one time in their lifetimes and much longer a president comes around who really speaks to their worldview, the establishment tries to destroy him. Rather than the anti-Trump sentiment persuading them, it makes them stronger supporters, people who see Trump as their weapon against an establishment that disparages them.
Yes. The contempt is the biggest source of poison here. But feeling contempt for “deplorables” is a major source of self-esteem for insecure gentry-class types.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Commie Idiot AOC Is Still the Dumbest Bartender In America. “Squeaky hasn’t been in the news as much as she likes lately because America has been rather preoccupied with plague and election stuff. She’s been lurking though, waiting for the briefest of lulls in any news cycle so she could painfully remind sane people that she’s still here.”
ARE YOU NOW OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN A CONSERVATIVE? Red-State Scare: The Blacklist Arrives.
If you’re not part of Twitter, and media Twitter at that, you will be blessedly ignorant of a HUGE controversy today. The political news and commentary website Politico asked conservative commentator Ben Shapiro to guest-edit today’s edition of its morning Playbook feature. Shapiro is completely within the conservative mainstream, but that did not stop the Politico staff from freaking out. Erik Wemple is the Washington Post media columnist:
It’s the Atlantic and New York Times crybully staffers melting down over Kevin Williamson and Tom Cotton all over again, as any pretense towards journalism is replaced by safetyism.
Evergreen:
ONLY THE PART THAT REPORTS NEGATIVE THINGS ABOUT DEMOCRATS: AOC and other progressives have a new goal: Silence the press.
IT’S A FAIR COP: CNN, Fox, and MSNBC blamed ‘very strongly’ for dividing nation. But Facebook — and especially Twitter — are even worse.
NOW THEY TELL US: COVID Lockdowns Have No Clear Benefit vs Other Voluntary Measures, International Study Shows.
After Chicago’s mayor announced she wanted “bars and restaurants to reopen for indoor dining ‘as quickly as possible’” yesterday, Noah Rothman tweeted, “Major metro mayors are on a mission to retroactively validate everything lockdown skeptics have said for months only to have their motives questioned and characters impugned.” And those mayors are far from alone, at the dawn of the Harris Biden era.
Exit question:
BLUE STATE BLUES: They Can’t Leave the Bay Area Fast Enough
Rent was astronomical. Taxes were high. Your neighbors didn’t like you. If you lived in San Francisco, you might have commuted an hour south to your job at Apple or Google or Facebook. Or if your office was in the city, maybe it was in a neighborhood with too much street crime, open drug use and $5 coffees.
But it was worth it. Living in the epicenter of a boom that was changing the world was what mattered. The city gave its workers a choice of interesting jobs and a chance at the brass ring.
That is, until the pandemic. Remote work offered a chance at residing for a few months in towns where life felt easier. Tech workers and their bosses realized they might not need all the perks and after-work schmooze events. But maybe they needed elbow room and a yard for the new puppy. A place to put the Peloton. A top public school.
They fled. They fled to tropical beach towns. They fled to more affordable places like Georgia. They fled to states without income taxes like Texas and Florida.
Actually, the deal was this: California was where the high-paying tech jobs were, take it or leave it.
Given the opportunity, they’ll leave it.
ALANA NEWHOUSE: Everything is Broken: And how to fix it.
PRIVACY: WhatsApp privacy controversy causes ‘largest digital migration in human history.’
The Facebook-owned app send a notification to all of its 2 billion users forcing them to accept its privacy policy before 8 February, or else lose access to their account.
WhatsApp’s new Terms of Service includes a data-sharing agreement with Facebook, which prompted widespread condemnation from digital rights and privacy advocates.
The new policy does not effect users in the UK and Europe but it has once again raised concerns about the relationship between the world’s most popular messaging app and Facebook.
People across social media, including Elon Musk and Edward Snowden, encouraged WhatsApp users to switch to more privacy-focused alternatives, such as Signal and Telegram.
My guess is that Facebook saw this coming, but figured they’d still make more money with the data-mining they’d get out of everyone who remains.
COME BACK JOSEPH MCCARTHY, ALL IS FORGIVEN:
● NASA Researcher Pleads Guilty to Concealing China Ties.
● MIT professor charged with hiding work for China.
● Harvard Professor Arrested for Allegedly Lying About Income From China.
Earlier: The Bill Is Coming Due For China’s ‘Capitalist’ Experiment, West Must Prepare For Fallout:
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has re-awoken to a profound truth: Rich, secure capitalists are the natural enemies of authoritarian regimes. In a hybrid autocratic-capitalist model, capitalism is the means to generate wealth, but power is the end goal. Successful capitalists naturally begin to demand that their personal and property rights be protected from authoritarian fiat. Capital in the hands of entrepreneurs is a political resource; it poses a threat to the implementation of centralized plans.
Realizing this, the CCP has begun to assert control over the private sector by “installing . . . Party officials inside private firms” and having state-backed firms invest in private enterprises. In the absence of civil rights or an independent judiciary, “private” companies have no real independence from the government in China. Dissent and demands for civil rights are a threat to the regime and will be crushed.
Read the whole thing.
China has also installed a fair shair of “party officials inside private firms” with businesses that aren’t Chinese-owned as well:
● US companies riddled with members of Chinese Communist Party.
● Big four accounting firms employ hundreds of Chinese Communist Party members.
Flashback from November of 2019: How to Conduct Business with Chinese Companies That See a Dark Future.
Related: ‘New Window Of Hope:’ Top Chinese Official Sees Improved Relations With Biden Administration.
NO, NO. WE THE PEOPLE ARE THE KEY TO STOPPING THIS NONSENSE: Manchin Key to Thwarting New Gun-Control Legislation, Second Amendment Groups Say.
HOW’S THAT UNITY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? AOC Wants a Gov’t Commission to ‘Rein in’ Media to Prevent ‘Disinformation.’
THEN WE DO NOT LIVE IN A FREE SOCIETY TODAY: Adlai Stevenson: “My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.”
THEY’RE OBSESSED WITH RACE: Biden Further Embraces Racism.
THIS IS AN OLDER ARTICLE, BUT YOU MIGHT CONSIDER WHAT IT SAYS: The Rise and Fall of Facts.
THEY’VE DONE FALSE BLAG BEFORE, AND THEY’LL DO IT AGAIN: I Saw Provocateurs At The Capitol Riot On Jan. 6.
THE LEFT SHOULD BE AWARE: Ohio Focus Group, 77 Percent Like Trump More, 23 Percent Same Opinion, Zero Percent Like Less.
Of course, they are. Which is why there will be false flag atrocities this this weekend, and the “horror” from it will mean that they “must” suppress all those evil right wingers who still support Trump. Or at least the vocal ones. Pour encourager les autres.
HOW LONG WILL WE TOLERATE THIS? A Domestic Terrorism Bill Only Antifa Could Love.
THIS IS WHAT BLOCKED MY THOUGHT AND WORK SINCE MARCH: The ‘Good American’.
SHOCKED, SHOCKED, SHOCKED: The private-sector purge is beginning.
I HOPE WE GET A CHANCE TO HAVE A SAY AGAIN: Why the Right will Neither Forgive nor Forget.
IF I HAD KIDS CURRENTLY IN THE SCHOOLS: Spirit Murder, Lizard Brains and the Abolition of Whiteness.
I wouldn’t. In the same way I wouldn’t send my kid to drill with the Hitler Youth. And no, that’s not invoking the Nazis for no reason. This is precisely the same nonsense the Nazis believed in (minus hollowed Earth) with the races sort of reversed. (If the white race is the eternal oppressor, they must be ultra-capable, otherwise they could be stopped, right? And note that’s what they believe, not what I believe.)
Yes, I do know how much hardship this would impose on some of you. I did send my kids to school mostly so I could work in peace, and then homeschooled after school. (But the schools weren’t this bad, in the nineties.) But there are work arounds and arrangements you can make, including forming co-ops and teaching pods. BTW anyone in Denver who wants someone to do a creative writing thing with your pod or group, ping me. I put my time where my mouth is.
Normally I’d say just teaching after school is good enough, but right now? I’d yank those kids out of the indoctrination factory.
BUT YOU KNOW, TRUMP WAS MEAN AND RUDE TO JOURNALISTS: AOC and other progressives have a new goal: Silence the press.
OF EVERYTHING I’VE WRITTEN: How To Read The News In Totalitarianism. this post, which I thought was somewhat bland, and just informative, got my facebook page invaded by an army of trolls and people I’d never interacted with before calling me crazy and acting like idiots. They also obviously hadn’t read any of the posts they were responding to, and fanned back three days. They also, after I started responding, denounced me for “bullying” and got me suspended for 24 hours.
According to one of the commenters on my blog, who is also in the science fiction community:
That was really disturbing. I go on FB this morning and see several entries on my f-list urgently warning people to defriend and block you.
Now, guys, I’ve written posts in which I called them names; blog posts in which I denounced the working of their cliques; blog posts in which I excoriated them in the most blunt terms. But this is the post they go militant on?
Could it be because I mention in passing the obvious false flag action planned for this weekend? The one to prepare for which this poster was distributed and local police forces warned to expect “insurrection” or a “coup”? Sort of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
January 14, 2021
TIME TO JUMP-START THE ECONOMY FOR INCOMING PRESIDENT BIDEN: Mayor Lori Lightfoot pushing for Chicago bars and restaurants to reopen for indoor dining ‘as quickly as possible.’
As Noah Rothman tweets, “Major metro mayors are on a mission to retroactively validate everything lockdown skeptics have said for months only to have their motives questioned and characters impugned.”
LEFT-WING ACTIVIST CHARGED IN CAPITOL RIOT AFTER SAYING HE WAS JUST THERE TO ‘DOCUMENT:’ John Sullivan “faces federal charges of civil disorder, entering a restricted building and violent entry or disorderly conduct…As protesters climbed over a wall near the Capitol entrance, he allegedly exclaimed in the video, ‘You guys are f—— savage. Let’s go!’ ‘There are so many people,’ Sullivan’s voice can be heard saying as the camera shows a large group of people making its way toward the building. ‘Let’s go. This s— is ours! F– yeah. I can’t believe this is reality.’ ‘We accomplished this s—,’ he said at another point ‘We did this together. F— yeah! We are all a part of this history…’ While he has denied ties to Antifa in recent interviews, his group Insurgence USA had advertised an event called ‘Kick These Fascists out of DC’ on Wednesday around the same time as a pro-Trump rally near the National Mall that preceded the Capitol chaos.”
“After the rioting, Sullivan was invited onto CNN to discuss what he witnessed at the U.S. Capitol,” the Blaze adds.
However, Curtis Houck of NewsBusters tweets, “Guys, just because the BLM/Antifa guy has been charged doesn’t mean that they planned this and it was a false flag. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but facts don’t care about your feelings.”
And as Dan McLaughlin wrote a week ago: It Doesn’t Matter if a Few of Them Were Antifa. “But the hunt to find a few false-flaggers in a mob of the most deplorable segment of Trump supporters is a red herring. Even if some of them were there, it does not change what happened, or why. And if you’re trying to sell the theory that left-wingers were a driving force in all this, you better have hard evidence for that, because you are swimming against the tide of simple common sense, basic human experience, and what we can see with our own eyes.”
UPDATE: On the other hand, “Maybe this is why you don’t do one-day show trials masquerading as impeachment,” GOP spokeswoman Liz Harrington tweets.
A QUICK WAY TO COUNTER BIG TECH CENSORSHIP?: It’s worth considering. North Dakota appears to be already doing so.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Octopus of Big Tech is strangling America. “Two days after the 2020 election, a defiant Kathy Griffin retweeted the notorious picture of her holding a prop that looked like the bloody head of a decapitated Donald Trump. Earlier last year, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, tweeted out a call to his followers to destroy Israel. Both tweets passed the censorship rules of Twitter’s 20-something judges in San Francisco.”
It’s all about being on the right team, or the wrong one.
TIME IS MUSCLE: Acting quickly after heart attack symptoms start can be a heart saver. “The longer the time between when heart attack symptoms start and a patient has an artery-clearing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), the more damage to the heart muscle.”
Hospitals have worked to cut “door to balloon time” — the lag between when you show up and when they’ve got you under a cath — but they can’t do anything about how fast you get to the door. If in doubt, go: If you’re wrong you’ve wasted a few hours. If it’s a heart attack, delaying can kill you, or leave you a heart cripple unnecessarily.
SO DON’T BUILD ONE: Calculations Show It’ll Be Impossible to Control a Super-Intelligent AI.
TIME FOR ANOTHER EMMY: Andrew Cuomo’s vaccine blunder is yet one more reminder of his pandemic failure.
Donald Trump will be an ex-president like no other because he is a political force like no other — at least since Theodore Roosevelt. Trump will not just be an ex-president. He will be the leader of a powerful movement, one that is very much alive and still very much in control of the Republican party.
Trump is not a man who accepts oblivion. Like TR, he rankles at the thought of retiring from the great game show. His businesses went bankrupt six times but he kept coming back. When The Apprentice ended, he turned to politics and won the White House. Even that wasn’t quite the overnight success that it seemed: he had contemplated running in 2000 and had talked about it even earlier. He knew what he wanted, and he dared the impossible to get it.
What will Ex-President Trump want next? Revenge — and a second term. If ambition is a hallmark of his personality, a deeply personal rivalry is a hallmark of his politics. Victory over Hillary Clinton was personal; so was dismantling Barack Obama’s legacy. Trump insisted that he had beaten Clinton in the popular vote too, or would have if not for fraud. He insisted that the crowds and online viewership for his inauguration outnumbered Obama’s. The rivalry he felt with Clinton and Obama pales next to what Joe Biden represents in Trump’s eyes: the man who unfairly denied him reelection; who will do to Trump’s legacy what Trump did to Obama’s; quite simply, the man who fired him and took his place.
Biden hardly fills a Trump-like space in the Democratic party — a party decades farther to the left today than its 78-year-old president. Trump, by contrast, has a party, and he almost certainly intends to use it. After the ludicrous but deadly pantomime coup at the Capitol last week, a pundit-class consensus says that Trump cannot possibly win again. But the pundit class is usually wrong about everything. If Trump wants the Republican nomination in 2024, who or what, exactly, will stop him from getting it?
It won’t be the DNC-MSM, that’s for sure:
For all political media’s frustrations with the Trump years, they’ve also been lucrative and a source of identity. Trump gave the Washington Post its slogan. Entire beats that did not exist prior to Trump have been incepted as a result of his presidency. The journalists who’ve covered this White House are the subjects of innumerable profiles reflecting on their enterprising work and the trauma these “beleaguered chroniclers” suffer as a result.
In a New York Times dispatch detailing the thinking within cable news networks like CNN and MSNBC, the lean years ahead in which viewers will “no longer need their nightly therapy sessions with Rachel Maddow or Don Lemon” is a frightening prospect. Equal and opposite forces are at work on Trump-friendly outfits. Fox News Channel has seen its ratings decline after the president declared war on the network for failing to uniformly advance his preferred narratives about election fraud. There is no shortage of less responsible competitors in the conservative cable news space willing to satisfy their audience’s demands for misinformation. So, what are these media ventures to do? The simplest, most commercially viable approach is not to let Trump go. And the president will almost certainly give these institutions every reason to do just that.
QED: NY Times Compares Trump Election Claims to Stalin, Hitler’s ‘Big Lie.’
And yet the Gray Lady’s obit for Trump will be nowhere near as glowing as the one they wrote for Stalin.
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Tom Cruise Uses Robots to Patrol Mission Impossible Set for COVID Violations.
OUR RULING CLASS WANTS US TO BE CHINA: A Lesson From 1930s Germany: Beware State Control of Social Media. But even overt state control would be better, or at least more honest, than what we have, which is state control implemented indirectly through corporate tools of the state.
THE VAUNTED OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT-ELECT IS REALLY FALLING DOWN ON THE JOB: Biden’s Heralded COVID Board Has No Idea What His Plan Is Either.
NEW NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SCHOLARS REPORT: Freedom to Learn: Amending the Higher Education Act.
WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS: A Glock Drum Magazine.
LIVE AND ON THE AIR, EVEN IN THE TINY REPUBLIC OF TOGO: VIP Gold Live Chat with Kruiser, Preston, VodkaPundit.
THERE WAS A TIME WHEN PEOPLE WOULD HAVE FOUND THIS CREEPY: How Facial Recognition Technology Is Helping Identify the U.S. Capitol Attackers: Huge databases and powerful AI algorithms enable a law enforcement panopticon.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Did Jack Dorsey Just Repudiate His Decision to Exile Trump from Twitter?
Insanity Wrap needs to know: When is an apology not an apology and when is regret not regret and why did Jack Dorsey even bother?
Answer: We got maybe two hours of sleep last night pondering that one, and still got nowhere with it.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- The Language Police are real, and they aren’t in the mood to talk
- Policing the crazies, Left v. Right
- Communist China gets the upper hand on… free speech
Bonus Sanity: Nope, none of that today, sorry.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
WHEN THERE WASN’T EVEN ANY HOLLYWOOD: World’s oldest known cave painting found in Indonesia.
WELL, MAYBE NOT WORSE THAN YOU THINK: California Is Worse Than You Think.
For example, the California legislature in its progressive wisdom effectively decriminalized theft as long as thieves take less than $950 worth of merchandise, officially reducing such theft to a misdemeanor but in effect making it legal, since progressive California prosecutors don’t like to be bothered by petty criminals. In practice, that means consumer goods are much harder to find in California stores than one might experience elsewhere. For me, the difference was quite revealing, as I recently returned to Maryland after spending close to nine months in Sacramento.
When I go to the Walmart near my wife’s home, I find many things openly are on display in Maryland are behind locked cases in California. Furthermore, California’s draconian labor laws mean Walmart has fewer employees, so if I wish to purchase something I easily could buy in Maryland, I have to wait for a long time and often I just walk away because no one is available to open the glass case. Yet, even with these provisions, shoplifting losses for California retailers are enormous, and the state’s pro-theft laws have encouraged organized grab-and-run rings.
My progressive colleagues, like my philosophy professor friend, see no problem with such developments. To them, the real thieves are the capitalists, the retailers like Walmart which refuse to pay “living wages” to their employees, and, according to Senator Bernie Sanders, the capitalists have “been looting” Americans for years. Thus, the wave of theft in that state is a positive development, according to progressives.
Read the whole thing.
THE MOBBING OF A PORTLAND BOOKSTORE REMINDS US WHY FAHRENHEIT 451 WAS WRITTEN:
In the novel Fahrenheit 451, author Ray Bradbury depicted a world in which firemen do not put out fires; they ignite them. In Bradury’s dystopian world, books have been outlawed, and it is the fire department’s job to go around burning them, with the eventual goal of eliminating books entirely from society. That way, the authorities reason, they can control peoples’ access to information. And by controlling what information people may access, they can control public opinion.
“You can’t build a house without nails and wood,” one character explains. “If you don’t want a house built, hide the nails and wood.”
“If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one,” the same character later says in defense of the society’s book-burning efforts. “Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it.”
Exit quote: “Of course, history’s most infamous book burners were the Nazis, who also sought to ‘win the debate’ through censorship. Antifa’s ‘anti-fascist’ credentials are not helped by adopting typically fascist tactics.”
THAT’S DIFFERENT, BECAUSE SHUT UP: When Mob Inciters Become Lions of the Left: An Aaron Sorkin film celebrates the Chicago Seven for plotting an attack on a party convention.
The Chicago Seven were countercultural heroes in the 1960s. They thumbed their noses through one of the country’s most notorious political trials, taunting the judge and making a mockery of the proceedings with flippant courtroom pranks. Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed a movie about them last year, “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” which will probably win a few Oscars.
One thing people forget about the Chicago Seven is that most of them were guilty. Jerry Rubin admitted as much later: “We wanted disruption. We planned it. . . . We were guilty as hell. Guilty as charged.”
The crime they were accused of was crossing state lines to incite a riot.
Well, if you’re a lefty you can be an unrepentant terror-bomber and get a cushy slot at a top university. But if you peacefully speak at a rally for the right, well, you get this: Law Prof John Eastman Retires From Chapman ‘Effective Immediately’ Amidst Uproar Over Speaking At Trump Rally Last Wednesday.
“Participating in a pro-Trump rally” is now a crime, apparently.
PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: GOP Congresswoman: ‘I Will Be Filing Articles of Impeachment Against Joe Biden’ on January 21.
TO BE HONEST, I CAN’T BLAME THEM: Pot use rises over the course of the year, study says.
ANN ALTHOUSE: “Tom Cotton is getting a lot of things right.”
WELCOME TO THE BIDEN ERA: Weekly initial jobless claims soar to 965,000.
BYRON YORK: Assessing Trump’s disastrous end. “With the exception of the vaccine, everything Trump did after the election has led to catastrophe for himself, the Republican Party, and the nation. It did not have to be that way. Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the election led to a series of events that cast a shadow on everything he accomplished before.”
Read the whole thing.
THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP: Libs are freaking out because of what GOP Rep. Gohmert said on the House floor … But he was quoting Nancy Pelosi verbatim.
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Nanotechnology prevents premature birth in mouse studies.
THEY FOLLOW CHINA’S MODEL, NOT SWEDEN’S: Issues & Insights points out that for decades it was thought the Left sought to implement in the U.S. a government modeled on that of Sweden. But if 2020 made nothing else clear, it showed what the Left really wants is to implement the China model.
JOURNALISTS FALSELY ACCUSE LOUIE GOHMERT (R-TX) OF CALLING FOR MORE ‘UPRISINGS’ AFTER HE QUOTES PELOSI: “‘Here’s a quote: ‘I just don’t even know why there aren’t more- why there aren’t uprisings all over the country and maybe there will be,’‘ Gohmert began. ‘Or, ‘Sadly, the domestic enemies of our voting system and honoring our Constitution are right at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with their allies in Congress.’ We were called ‘enemies’ of the state. Those were all quotes from our speaker.”
TRUMP’S SPEECH WAS NOT INCITEMENT TO IMMINENT LAWLESS ACTION. Not if words and precedent have any meaning. You don’t need to be a lawyer to figure this out – read it for yourself. The entire media and political apparatus (apparently including the interim dean of Cornell Law School) is determined to gaslight you into believing it was. But you are not the crazy one.
And, as a lawyer, I really hate to say this, but it’s now wildly apparent you can’t trust our legal system on anything even remotely political either. Don’t expect sanity from that quarter.
(Bumped, by Glenn).
IT’S “DANGEROUS” BECAUSE IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH PREVENTING VIOLENCE, BUT WAS A NAKED EXERCISE OF POLITICAL CENSORSHIP:
UPDATE: Maybe this is why he’s sounding nervous: Twitter and Facebook have seen $51 billion in combined market value wiped out since booting Trump from their platforms.
TO BE FAIR, IT WAS ONLY THE MOST RECENT ESTABLISHMENT ‘F-U’ TO HALF OF AMERICA: Trump Impeachment Was The Political Establishment’s “F-U” To Half Of America.
WELL, NOW THAT WE’VE ESTABLISHED THAT PLATFORMS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING THEIR USERS SAY, SHUT THEM DOWN LIKE PARLER: Facebook’s Sandberg deflected blame for Capitol riot, but new evidence shows how platform played role: Fliers and hashtags promoting the pro-Trump rally circulated on Facebook and Instagram in the days and weeks beforehand.
Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg has sought to deflect blame, noting the role of smaller, right-leaning services such as Parler and Gab. . . .
A growing body of evidence shows Facebook played a much larger role than Sandberg suggested.
The #StopTheSteal hashtag was widely used on the service until Monday, when a search on Facebook reported that 128,000 people were talking about it and in many cases using it to coordinate for the rally, according to Eric Feinberg, a vice president with the Coalition for a Safer Web.
Of course, back when this was America, “organizing a rally” was seen as, dare I say it, what democracy looks like.
And note that this Washington Post story suggests that it’s okay, and maybe even required, to stop people from organizing in support of their beliefs “when those beliefs are based on misinformation.” Our ruling class really wants us to be like China. (Bumped).
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
● Shot:
Why did The Post single out these four outlets and not, say, Variety or CBS News? The three journalists said no explanation had been given, but they added that the reason did not have to be detailed. CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post and The Times are seen as liberal within the Murdoch empire, which is home to Fox News and Fox Business, cable networks that were instrumental to the rise of President Trump. To publish articles based on the work of those organizations would not fit The Post’s right-leaning identity, the journalists said.
—New York Post to Staff: Stay Away From CNN, MSNBC, New York Times and Washington Post, the New York Times, yesterday.
● Chaser: Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is.
—Daniel Okrent, the New York Times, July 25th, 2004.
TOM COTTON SUGGESTS IT’S UNCONSTITUTIONAL TO IMPEACH TRUMP AFTER JANUARY 20:
Cotton quoted Abraham Lincoln, who said, “There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.”
“As I said last summer when mob violence gripped our streets, so I say again about the mob violence at our nation’s Capitol last week: those persons responsible should be held accountable in the courts to the full extent of the law,” the senator began.
He suggested that a Senate impeachment trial for Trump after January 20 would involve similar lawlessness.
“The House has passed an article of impeachment against the president, but the Senate under its rules and precedents cannot start and conclude a fair trial before the president leaves office next week. Under these circumstances, the Senate lacks constitutional authority to conduct impeachment proceedings against a former president,” Cotton argued.
“The Founders designed the impeachment process as a way to remove officeholders from public office—not an inquest against private citizens. The Constitution presupposes an office from which an impeached officeholder can be removed,” the senator insisted.
At Power Line, Scott Johnson adds that as a result of Mitch McConnell’s decision and subsequent statement, “no Senate trial will be held and Trump cannot be removed until he has left office. Can the Senate convict and remove him once he has already left office? Former Fourth Circuit Judge Michael Luttig argues in this Washington Post column that a Senate trial would be unconstitutional.” Others disagree, as the ABA Journal notes. In any case, “What a wonderful way to kick off the Harris/Biden administration,” Johnson deadpans.
YAL FIRES ITS PRESIDENT AMID SEXUAL ASSAULT INVESTIGATION:
On Wednesday, the Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) Board of Directors announced it had fired YAL President Cliff Maloney amid an ongoing sexual harassment and assault investigation. Over the weekend, multiple women had come forth with allegations against Maloney and the YAL board for either perpetrating or covering up sexual harassment and assault.
“Today, the Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) Board of Directors terminated Cliff Maloney from employment with the organization effective immediately,” the board announced in a statement dated Tuesday but posted on Twitter on Wednesday. “Losing the confidence of the board, YAL staff, and key stakeholders makes the ability to lead impossible and this action necessary.”
YAL announced that “a comprehensive search for a new leader is underway” and that the investigation continues.
On Friday evening, Addyson Rae Garner, one of the accusers who compiled a list of allegations, went public and launched the hashtag #YALtoo.
“It’s atrocious that Cliff Maloney has spouted ‘personal responsibility’ rhetoric while flagrantly violating the consent and the trust of his staff,” Garner told PJ Media over the weekend.
Garner released a four-page statement detailing at least seven allegations and denouncing YAL for allegedly covering them up. “Rape. Sexual assault. Harassment. I’ve heard it all from girls coming out of YAL. The ones who speak up are brushed off, gaslit, or fired.”
Of Maloney, she said, “He fancies himself the godfather of the liberty movement, but instead of sending people to kneecap the goons who assaulted your daughter, he’ll promote the goons—and maybe help them run for office. Consent is supposed to be a cornerstone of libertarianism, but consent has been violated by staff members of Young Americans for Liberty for years with little to no repercussion.”
Read the whole thing.
BIDEN’S CAMPAIGN PROMISED A RETURN TO NORMALCY: As Biden’s Inaguration Looms, Nearly 8 Out Of 10 Fear Civil War.
WE’RE FINE HERE, THANKS: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Wants to Liberate Red States From Their Suppression.
THE ACADEMY HAS CHOSEN SIDES: Harvard Law School all in on discrediting any and all dissension about the 2020 election.
NO AGITATORS/PROVOCATEURS JANUARY 6? He saw four distinct groups of them and J. Michael Waller knows professional agitators when he sees them, having been trained to be one and observing hundreds of demonstrations and protests since the 1970s. Just a sample:
“Then, from the north, a column of uniformed, agile younger men walked briskly, single-file, toward the inaugural stand. They came within two feet of me. Their camouflage uniforms were clean, neat, and with a pattern I couldn’t identify.
“Some had helmets and GoPro cameras. Some uniforms bore subdued insignia, including the Punisher skull. These were the disciplined, uniformed column of attackers. I had seen them in groups of two or three among the marchers on Connecticut Avenue from the Ellipse.
“Now there were a good three dozen of them, moving in a single, snakelike formation. They were organized. They were disciplined. They were prepared. ‘We’re taking the Capitol!’ the first or second announced.”
FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN: UPitt faces repercussions after prof is silenced for expressing unpopular view.
EMERGENCY EVENT: Surviving The Big Tech Purge. “The swift takedown of Parler by Google, Apple, and Amazon Web Services, together with the deplatforming of Donald Trump, Trump supporters, and conservatives, should be a wake up call.”
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