IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T RAISE? Viagra Lifts Woman Out of COVID Coma. “Before being put into the coma, Almeida agreed to partake in experimental COVID treatments if necessary. She was 72 hours away from having her ventilator turned off when her doctors decided to inject her with a large dose of Viagra.”
BEST SELLER IN ECONOMIC THEORY: Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam. #CommissionEarned
YOU DON’T WIN FRIENDS WITH SALAD: Organic packaged salads tied to E. coli outbreak in 6 states.
SO MUCH FOR ERIC ADAMS’ TOUGH ON CRIME STANCE: Manhattan DA to stop seeking prison sentences in slew of criminal cases.
Manhattan’s new district attorney has ordered his prosecutors to stop seeking prison sentences in a slew of criminal cases, according to a set of progressive policies made public Tuesday.
In his first memo to staff on Monday, Alvin Bragg said his office “will not seek a carceral sentence” except with homicides and a handful of other cases, including domestic violence felonies, some sex crimes and public corruption.
“This rule may be excepted only in extraordinary circumstances based on a holistic
analysis of the facts, criminal history, victim’s input (particularly in cases of
violence or trauma), and any other information available,” the memo reads.Assistant district attorneys must also now keep in mind the “impacts of incarceration” including on public safety, barriers to housing and employment, financial cost and race disparities, Bragg instructed.
In cases where prosecutors do seek to put a convict behind bars, the request can be for no more than 20 years for a determinate sentence, meaning one that can’t be reviewed or changed by a parole board.
Two guesses as to who funded Bragg’s campaign: “Soros also donated $1 million to Alvin Bragg’s successful DA campaign in Manhattan, funneling the cash through the Color of Change political action committee, according to public filings.”
As Tom Cotton wrote last month: Recall, Remove & Replace Every Last Soros Prosecutor.
DAVID DEAVEL: Desmond Tutu (1931-2021): Remembering Heroes and their Limitations. “The death of South African archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu at the age of 90 on December 26, 2021, marks the definitive end of an era. With Nelson Mandela, his moral witness and advocacy helped to end the reign of South Africa’s Apartheid regime that kept black South Africans separate and desperately unequal. In today’s age in which free speech and colorblind policies are labeled as ‘white supremacist,’ it’s good to be reminded that real white supremacy as embodied in the South African regime actually happened and has largely been removed from the globe. It is also good to be reminded of the very real heroism Tutu exhibited. But, finally, it’s also good to be reminded of Tutu’s post-Apartheid misjudgments. Unlike the woke left, we don’t need to tear down the statues of heroes with feet of clay or clouded minds. We do, however, need to be able to notice that heroes have these traits—and don’t need to be followed at all times.”
ALL OF OUR INSTITUTIONS HAVE BEEN CORRUPTED, AND PEOPLE ARE NOTICING: FBI brass seen as Biden’s ‘personal Gestapo’: Poll. “Adoration of ‘G-men,’ once celebrated in the nonpartisan war on Al Capone and organized crime and now leading the effort to round up Jan. 6 Capitol riot suspects and Trump supporters, is apparently waning. In the latest sign of how today’s politics is dividing support for major Washington institutions, the latest Rasmussen Reports survey shows more people than not view the FBI as the punishing political arm of President Joe Biden.”
GREAT MOMENTS IN MESSAGING: Sheep, goats join in German efforts to encourage vaccination.
Tasty bits of bread did the trick for about 700 sheep and goats to join Germany’s drive to encourage more people to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
The animals were arranged on Monday into the shape of a roughly 100-meter (330-foot) syringe in a field at Schneverdingen, south of Hamburg.
Shepherd Wiebke Schmidt-Kochan spent several days practicing with her animals, news agency dpa reported. But she said in the end, it wasn’t difficult to work things out — she laid out pieces of bread in the shape of the syringe, which the sheep and goats gobbled up when they were let out into the field.
Organizer Hanspeter Etzold said the action was aimed at people who are still hesitating to get vaccinated.
“Sheep are such likeable animals — maybe they can get the message over better,” he said.
Or perhaps not. Why, it’s as if:
MICHAEL BARONE: Plague-year immigrants headed to Trump country. Life is better in America.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:
Shot: Fat-shaming by doctors, family, classmates is a global health problem, studies find.
—CNN, June 1st, 2021.
Chaser: CNN Finally Admits That Obesity Is a Contributing Factor in COVID Outcomes.
—Leslie Eastman, Legal Insurrection, today.
THINK OF IT AS PROFESSIONAL COURTESY: How Far Will the Left Go to Keep Criminals Out of Jail?
LOVE THE PICTURE: Elon Musk’s Starlink Internet Dishes Are Attracting Cats. The dish has a heating element to keep off snow and ice, and that attracts cats in the winter.
HE EXPANDED THE POWER AND PRESTIGE OF THE PROFESSIONAL/MANAGERIAL CLASS SO HE’S A HERO:
Meanwhile Trump threatened the power and prestige of the professional/managerial class, which was all it took to make him a villain.
Flashback: New status anxiety fuels Trump derangement.
COVID IS OVER: Cases up, deaths down.
Related: Denmark health chief says Omicron is bringing about the END of the pandemic and ‘we will have our normal lives back in two months.’ “But while infection numbers in countries with the variant are soaring, the expert said that the highly infectious Omicron appears milder than the Delta variant, and therefore more people will be infected without having serious symptoms. As a result, she said, this will provide a good level of immunity in the population.”
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Oh, Now The Atlantic Decrees Americans Are Paranoid about Catching Covid.
If you’re worried about Covid-19, then there’s an excellent chance that at least once over the past two years, either you’ve read an article or someone has sent you an article about the pandemic from The Atlantic magazine. Day after day, week after week, that publication offers at least one article or personal essay that warns you that, as bad as things may seem, they’re actually much worse and will probably get even worse tomorrow, all with a headline perfectly calibrated to go viral, no pun intended, among the most Covid-concerned: “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice.” “We Know Enough About Omicron to Know That We’re in Trouble.” “Covid Is Not Endemic Yet — And May Not Be for a Long Time.” “You Can Get COVID and the Flu at the Same Time.” “America Can’t Beat Omicron One Booster at a Time.”
The only thing that scares the staff of The Atlantic magazine more than Covid-19 is Kevin D. Williamson.
And now, seemingly out of nowhere, The Atlantic runs an essay by Benjamin Mazer, a physician specializing in laboratory medicine, headlined with the imperative, “Stop Wasting COVID Tests, People”:
It’s quite a pivot, from when COVID was seen as something only those icky Red State voters get: Let Omicron Spell the End of the Pandemic—and the Covid Shaming: “If only blue state liberals could acknowledge the truth: that no one should feel guilt or shame for getting a highly infectious disease. After all, we don’t shame people for getting chickenpox or seasonal influenza or any number of other highly contagious respiratory viruses or diseases. It’s something many liberals actually know in other contexts; they would never shame someone for getting an illness that is even related to their behavior, like obesity, alcoholism and some forms of diabetes. Why is this a thing with COVID?”
HEH: “While it’s true that I’ve always found it rather easy to mock the Democrats, it’s never been as nearly effortless as it is these days. They’ve become such a spectacle that it’s almost as if they’re doing it for my benefit.”
GALAXY BRAINS AT WORK: Glenn Youngkin Gets Blamed for I-95 Traffic Snarls as Actual Governor Ralph Northam Appears MIA.
Youngkin will be sworn in on Saturday, January 15th.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP: Get Away From It All in Antarctica, Get COVID Anyway.
Plus:
- Crypto goes LBGTQ
- VIDEO: Biden takes unscripted questions from the press, forgets what to do with them
- NYC, there’s something awful about you
So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
WELCOME BACK, CARTER: Biden disapproval hits new high as voters give him bad grades on economy, new CNBC/Change poll says.
Despite its being memory holed by the DNC-MSM, this detail may also be driving Biden’s low poll numbers:
MEGAN FOX: Justice Roberts Talks Judicial Accountability But Fails to Acknowledge Huge Nationwide Problem. “Roberts also chalked up the inappropriate judicial behavior as ‘unintentional oversight.’ Maybe that’s because Roberts was recently caught in a similar scandal. The New York Times reported that Roberts failed to recuse himself from a case in which he had more than a $100,000 investment.”
CANCEL CULTURE IN THE LAW REVIEW WORLD: Emory Law Journal Revokes Acceptance Of Larry Alexander’s Race-Related Essay In Festschrift Honoring Michael Perry; Other Authors Pull Their Essays. Glad to see that a lot of people are fighting back, and I don’t think that Editor-in-Chief Danielle Kerker has enhanced the reputation of the Emory Law journal by taking this politicized and anti-intellectual action.
IT EITHER IS OR SOON WILL BE: We must accept COVID-19 as an endemic disease.
As far as public policy goes, the lethality of COVID-19 is a second-order issue. The more immediate question is whether it is feasible to slow its spread and, if it is, whether there are advantages in doing so.
If we think, for example, that widespread vaccination might heap high a protective rampart, then there are arguments for vaccine passports, possibly even for compulsory inoculation. If we think that the disease can be eliminated, then there are arguments for stringent suppression measures. If we think that dangerous new mutations can be kept out, then there are arguments for border restrictions and quarantines.
But what if none of these things is true? What if COVID-19 is as ineradicable and endemic as influenza? What if it comes and goes seasonally, leaving its victims with a dollop of immunity that wanes over time? What if, like the flu, it regularly mutates, meaning that recovery from one version bestows only partial protection against others? What if it is checked rather than halted by vaccines — again, like flu rather than, say, polio?
If we are dealing with such a disease, a recurrent respiratory virus, then almost all the measures that we have put in place around the world are pointless.
Let me repeat that: Almost all of them are pointless.
They aren’t pointless to the power-hungry elites who established them.
SEEMS FAIR: Georgetown law students demand refund after university moves to remote learning. “Administrators have provided ‘no discernible metric’ for return to normal, students say.”
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Matt Margolis: Trans Insanity: Now Babies Are Transphobic? “These are just unhappy people who think that, if they define themselves in some out-of-the-box manner, they’ll be happy.”
AJ Kaufman: 2022: A Busy Year for the Supreme Court. “It’s rare to have this full a plate, since the high court tends to be more reserved in case selection during election years, but 2022 will put the nine justices on the front lines before November’s midterm elections.”
Yours Truly: What the Hell Do I Have to Do to Catch Omicron? “‘Omicron may be world’s ‘natural’ vaccine that finally ends pandemic,’ reported the Daily Mail on New Year’s Eve Day. The story seems to have gotten a bit lost in the celebratory shuffle that 2021 was mercifully coming to a close.”
FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN: Why one professor refused to remove his flag.
AB STODDARD: Democrats Face a Brutal Reckoning With Hispanic Voters.
Many Hispanic voters, long a reliable part of the Democratic coalition, have walked away. It is not — yet — a majority of them, but the numbers are dramatic. Biden won 750,000 fewer Hispanic voters in 2020 than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 — in an Electoral College victory he nearly lost by fewer than 45,000 votes in three states. Donald Trump improved his margin with these voters by eight percentage points in four years, according to an analysis by the Democratic firm Catalist — a larger swing than any among white, black or Asian voters.
It gets worse. Biden’s approval ratings are awful across the board, but his support has eroded more among Hispanic voters than with any other racial group. A Pew/Marist poll from December showed his approve/disapprove numbers with Hispanic voters were 33/65, a net -32, while they were 40/56 with whites, a net of -16.
A recent Wall Street Journal poll showed Hispanic voters splitting their support between both parties, with just 37% of them backing Democrats in the House of Representatives if the midterm elections were held today, compared to the 60% they gave Democrats last November. Republicans would also garner 37% if the election were today. While Biden won 63% of Hispanic voters in 2020, this poll showed they would split their support in a 2024 rematch, with 44% for Biden and 43% for Trump.
Don’t get cocky.
CALLING THEM OUT:
DESANTIS ON AOC: "If I had a dollar for every lockdown politician who decided to escape to Florida over the last two years, I'd be a pretty doggone wealthy man."
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) January 3, 2022
Related: Ron DeSantis takes aim at AOC’s maskless Miami brunch as he blasts ‘lockdown politicians’ who call for ‘draconian’ rules in their home states then flee to the freedom of Florida. “His remarks came after Ocasio-Cortez, who has long been an advocate for mask-wearing and repeatedly cited Florida as an example of how not to do things during the coronavirus pandemic, was spotted partying in Miami on Sunday without a face covering altogether as she socialized with actor Billy Porter. DeSantis stated the hypocrisy extends beyond the New York representative, alleging ‘there are probably about a half dozen governors who have restrictions on their people and then were spotted at various points in Florida’.”
2022: Former White House Official and U.S. Army Vet Jumps Into Crucial Pennsylvania Race. “David McCormick stepped down from his role as executive officer at Bridgewater Associates Monday to run for the open Keystone State seat that will be vacated by retiring Sen. Pat Toomey.”
FOR A WHILE IT WAS CRUMBLING SLOWLY, NOW IT’S ALL AT ONCE: Joel Kotkin: Trouble in paradise: The crumbling California model.
TO BE FAIR, THAT’S BECAUSE HE’S AWFUL: Biden disapproval hits new high as voters give him bad grades on economy, new CNBC/Change poll says. “Frustrations over the economy are the main culprit behind Biden’s flagging popularity as nearly every demographic declared it their No. 1 issue.”
But his disapproval is only at a new high so far.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: US Manufacturing Slides To Weakest Since Dec 2020, New Orders Tumble.
READY TO ROLL THE DICE ON THE NEW YEAR? Speaking of it being 2022 and all, Justin Brierley of UnBelievable does some rolling of the dice and a little calculating of the odds and concludes the little white squares with the funny black dots point to the existence of you know Who!
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Dems’ Love Affair With Backstabber Liz Cheney Will Sink Them. “There’s the most bizarre part of this entire charade: Republican Liz Cheney has become the face of this witch hunt for the Democrats. I have to pay attention to the news at least five days a week and almost every social media post or news story about this big anniversary is accompanied by a picture of Cheney. She is presently the most useful to them in their stable of Republican useful idiots (Sorry, Ana Navarro!) and they’re getting their money’s worth out of her.”
COVID: The reality they invent to feed the power they crave.
Indeed, this intentional bad faith was clear to me as early as March of 2020, not because I then knew anything about the serial treacheries of characters like Anthony Fauci, Robert Redfield and Christian Drosten—I didn’t—but because I had spent much of the last quarter-century studying the pedagogy of nationhood; that is, the processes and mechanisms by which society’s sign-making elites seek to create and deploy new and embracing notions of “reality” among the general populaces nominally beholden to their power.
The first dead giveaway, as it usually is with such culture-planning operations, was the rigid lexical uniformity, and uncanny simultaneity of media messaging, especially in regard to the long-term historical significance of what is taking place.
No one with a modicum of proper intellectual restraint, or insight into the often serpentine routes of history, would ever deign to make prognostications about the dawn of a “new normal” in the midst of a crisis. That is, of course, unless he or she had a clear interest in establishing a narrative that through its early and frequent repetition, would effectively foreclose in all but the most hardy and self-confident thinkers the desire to pursue other interpretive possibilities.
The second was the absurdly open-ended nature of the new “war” in which—whether we agreed to it or not—we were now all said to be immersed.
It’s the moral equivalent of war all the time with these people, except when we’re actually at war.
FIRE THEM AND GO TO VOUCHERS: Chicago Teachers Prepare To Strike Over Return to Classroom. No profession has done more to demonstrate a combination of selfishness and replaceability during the pandemic than public school teachers.
ARE YOU READY FOR SOME GOOD NEWS? Issues & Insights takes a look at the latest Covid data and notices something VIP that isn’t being reported much elsewhere. So, no more fear porn, okay Mainstream Media???
THE HOPELESSLY POLITICIZED ABA SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM THE ACCREDITATION PROCESS ENTIRELY: ABA Proposes Changes To Diversity And Inclusion Accreditation Standard.
INFLATION IS THEFT: Pressure grows on Boris Johnson over energy bills: Prime Minister is urged to treat soaring prices as an ’emergency’ and act now to solve the cost of living crisis. “He is under growing pressure from his backbenchers to scrap the green taxes that make up a quarter of electricity bills and cost households as much as £200 a year. He is also facing demands to honour a Brexit campaign pledge to scrap VAT on fuel – knocking another £60 off annual bills.”
Related:
BIDEN: "[My wife's friend] was sayin’ ‘do you realize it’s over 5 dollars for a pound of hamburger meat?!’ 5 dollars. Well this is partly, you know, the pound of beef today costs 5 bucks compared to less than 4 bucks before the pandemic.” pic.twitter.com/lsni8p98Uk
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) January 3, 2022
WITH GOOD REASON: Poll: Media trust took a serious beating in 2021.
NEVER MIND, LIZ, WHAT THE VOTERS MIGHT ACTUALLY WANT: Liz Cheney Reveals the True Purpose of the J6 Committee. “I can tell you that the single most important thing, though, is to ensure that Donald Trump is not the Republican nominee and that he certainly is not anywhere close to the Oval Office ever again.”
THERE’S A REMEDY FOR THIS: Los Angeles homicides hit 15-year high.
Can you say constitutional carry? Sure. I knew you could.
SPOILER: NO. Can the IRS be trusted with your data?
MASS FORMATION PSYCHOSIS: Transcript of Joe Rogan Interviewing Dr. Robert Malone.
When a government hates the country it governs so much that it thinks it’s fair and logical to use psychological techniques against it that it wouldn’t use against enemies, in an open war.
If at the end of this #teamheadsonpikes doesn’t go gamboling, we need — at the very least — trials for the massive deception and harm perpetrated on America and the west.
And the rest of the world too. But you know and I know these chapeaux de derrierres were trying to eliminate the west. They’re simple minded beings, with a simple faith that the rest of the world is perfect. In other words, oikophobic morons.
THEY JUST WANT A RIDE TO SPACE: Cats are cozying up to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites.
They think these are mini stargates. It’s their way of saying “Beam me up, Elon, there’s no intelligent life down here.”
HOW ESTABLISHMENT GOP MONEY FUNDED ABORTION PILL EFFORT: The Washington Free Beacon headline this morning on Collin Anderson’s illuminating story on how the recent abortion pill approval by the FDA came about emphasizes the link to population control. But there’s much more to this story.
At the center of the beaucoup money that fueled the successful campaign by the usual assortment of liberal foundations and activists was the fortune left behind by David Packard, once a giant of the Republican Establishment. Packard viewed population control as Job #1 for his foundation. His kids and grandkids took that mandate as a justification for spending huge chunks of the Packard fortune on abortion.
“Those expenditures have allowed Packard’s successors to deliver significant victories in furthering the late billionaire’s anti-natalist agenda. Take, for example, the Food and Drug Administration’s December decision to ease the process for getting a chemical abortion pill,” Anderson writes.
“The Packard Foundation played a central role in the deregulation fight, funneling millions to liberal advocacy groups that spearheaded the legal and political push to remove the FDA’s abortion pill barriers. The foundation meanwhile invested millions of dollars into GenBioPro, the only company that makes a generic form of the abortion drug.”
BUT THEY ORDERED IT DONE IN A VERY PROFESSIONAL AND BUSINESS-LIKE WAY: Taliban orders shop owners in Afghanistan to behead all mannequins.
THAT IS THE ONLY PERFORMANCE BIDEN HAS: Joe Biden Decries the Evils of Big Meat in Bizarre, Senile Performance.
THE ONLY PLACE SHE LOOKS NATURAL? AOC Caught Living It Up in Miami Without a Mask at a Drag Bar.
WHEN GOVERNMENTS ARE AT WAR WITH THEIR PEOPLE: The West Is Burning Down Before Our Eyes.
When in the course of human events….
WHICH ONLY MAKES SENSE WHEN YOU REALIZE THE ONLY PANDEMIC GOING ON IS A TOTALITARIANISM PANDEMIC: Rhode Island Allowing COVID Positive Health Care Workers to Work Amid Shortages.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE LAW ISN’T EQUALLY APPLIED TO ALL: Highest in 25 Years: Cook County Saw 1,087 Homicides in 2021, 836 of Which Happened in Chicago.
And when a government uses career criminals as weapons against the populace.
AND ALSO GROSS STUPIDITY: NY State Advantaging Non-Whites For Covid Therapeutics Reflects Growing Racial Radicalization Of Medicine.
Look, white people are still by far the majority in this country. When you take in account that Hispanic/Latin is cultural, not racial, the left’s insane importing of people who consider themselves white only bolsters that. Yet our mentally defective health establishment thinks it can treat white people as the Nazis treated the Jews, and there will be no retribution and no consequences.
May the Good Lord save me from fools. The evil, I can handle myself.
I HAVE A COMMENTER WHO IS… WHAT’S THE WORD? PROBLEMATIC: Okay, to understand this you have to get that for years he was more or less a functional troll on the blog, though his trolls were very polite, and designed to make us think (I think. Though he admits at times he wasn’t very sane.) So for years, we spent our time screaming “Stop it Bob” and “No, Bob” and “That’s unconscionable, Bob.”
Then sometime in 2020 Bob started making sense. He’s been making more sense every passing month. This worries me for obvious reasons. First, it likely is a sign of the apocalypse. Second, how can we be sure Bob has gotten saner, and not we…. you know…. Case Study in Thinking About Fractally Wrong Ideas by Bob Fool.
IF WE’RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT THAT: When does Trump get his apology?
No, I don’t think the vaccines made much difference (if any. Sorry.) What I do think is that if we’re going to apologize to Trump, it’s time to start with the Russia!Russia!Russia! hoax! hoax! hoax! and continue all along the line. Never has a man been more maligned. And I say this as someone who thinks he has rats in his head about COVID (which probably have their basis in his germophobia. — and why for heaven’s sake does my spell check recognize homophobia but not germophobia, which I’m sure I’m misspelling?)
January 3, 2022
WELL, GOOD: Denmark health chief says Omicron is bringing about the END of the pandemic and ‘we will have our normal lives back in two months.’ “But while infection numbers in countries with the variant are soaring, the expert said that the highly infectious Omicron appears milder than the Delta variant, and therefore more people will be infected without having serious symptoms. As a result, she said, this will provide a good level of immunity in the population.”
JEFFREY CARTER: Theranos, Guilty On Four Out of Eleven Charges. “She created a lot of deception. Her stories of forced sex are her playing the victim card. It’s not relevant. She sold a bill of goods to investors that she knew was false. At the same time, the investors weren’t smart enough to sniff it out.”
Theranos’ board of directors, which included such “wise men” as Henry Kissinger, Jim Mattis, and George Schultz, wasn’t very wise either, it turned out. Which explains a lot.
OPEN THREAD: Praise You.
“A lot of people don’t realize but it honestly takes a lot of skill to dance that bad that well.” Story of my life.
GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA TWEAKING RE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN: Here Comes the Stacey Abrams Media Rebrand.
The article goes on to quote an Abrams spokesman who confirmed that the former progressive icon is actually a pragmatic moderate now who “defines herself by her values and her ability to deliver results for the common good by navigating disparate groups and ideologies.”
The rebrand might have something to do with the fact that Abrams and other “bold progressives” didn’t fare so well in 2018. Abrams did not win in Georgia, notwithstanding her dangerous plot to subvert democracy by claiming otherwise. Plenty of progressive candidates sought the Democratic nomination in 2020, only to be trounced by the bumbling geezer who wrote the 1994 Crime Bill.
This year’s election cycle is shaping up to be even more unfavorable for Democrats, mostly as a result of Joe Biden’s failed presidency. If Abrams has to pretend to be a moderate to have any shot at winning, the media will be more than happy to oblige.
An Oceania-level pivot should be no problem for Abrams and the DNC-MSM: Stacey Abrams tells Rachel Maddow she ‘did not challenge the outcome’ of 2018 election.
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China aims to complete space station in another huge year in space.
REP. BOBBY RUSH TO RETIRE AFTER 15 TERMS.
Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., the former Black Panther, ex-Chicago alderman, member of Congress and a minister, told the Chicago Sun-Times on Monday that he will not seek another term.
Rush, first elected to Congress in 1992, said in an interview he intends to stay active in his ministry and find ways to use his remarkable life story — a trajectory from a 1960s radical to House member — to inspire younger generations.
Since his first election to Congress when he toppled a Democratic incumbent in the primary, Rush, with enormous name recognition from his Black Panther days, has kept an iron grip on his first congressional district, famously defeating then state Sen. Barack Obama in the 2000 Democratic primary.
Rush, 75, has won each primary and general election by overwhelming margins in the district, anchored on Chicago’s South Side and running through the city’s southern suburbs.
David Mark of the Washington Examiner notes that Rush “is the 20th House member not seeking reelection or running for another office. Sixteen are Democrats and four are Republicans.”
Earlier: 2022 is likely to be a brutal year for Joe Biden and Democrats.
But don’t get cocky. As Glenn has written, “If you want to win, donate and volunteer. Winning takes work, and commenting on Internet blogs, even this one, doesn’t count.”
(Via Newsalert.)
THAT’S ONE WAY TO MAKE AN EXIT: Antonio Brown’s meltdown may cost him more than spot on the Tampa Bay Bucs. Head Coach Bruce Arians said after the incident that Brown was ‘no longer a Buc.’ “He needed eight more receptions, 55 more receiving yards and another receiving touchdown to hit three separate bonuses that would have earned him $333,000 each. Brown had three catches for 26 yards and was targeted five times. It’s unclear what sparked the outburst on the sideline that left the wide receiver to walking off the field.”
Related: Everyone’s Saying Same Thing About Mike Tomlin, Antonio Brown. “Many have since taken to social media to praise Tomlin for how he was able to handle things during Brown’s time in Pittsburgh. ‘Credit to Mike Tomlin, he had both Antonio Brown and Le’Veon Bell for years and kept that circus under control,’ one fan tweeted.”
UPDATE: Slap Shot redux? AB’s million-dollar “take this job and shove it” moment. “At first, people assumed that Arians had benched Brown and that Brown overreacted to it. Later, the Tampa Bay Times reported the opposite happened — Arians wanted Brown to go into the game, and Brown refused. Arians was already down one star receiver in Chris Godwin and Brady needed reliable targets in a game that the Bucs were losing at the time. An argument ensued, during which Arians apparently told Brown to ‘get out,’ and Brown decided to pull his stunt…In one sense, Arians was trying to put cash in Brown’s pocket by getting him on the field. Brown had five-plus quarters left in the season to get eight more catches from the GOAT Tom Brady, who might still be the greatest QB in the league for this season alone as well. Fifty-five yards would have been child’s play for a Brady-Brown combo, and the pair could have racked up a TD almost at will. That dance cost Brown one million dollars, in opportunity cost alone. It will likely cost him his paycheck for the next game, too. He signed a one-year, $3.1 million contract in April, which comes up to $182,350-plus per game. That wasn’t the kind of paycheck that [Johnny] Paycheck wanted to shove, needless to say.”
MORE: Report: Antonio Brown claims ankle injury prevented him from re-entering Bucs game.
Arians reportedly told Jay Glazer that Brown had refused to return to the game in the second half when he was told to. But according to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, Brown felt he was too injured to return to the game at that point. He’d missed several weeks with an ankle injury — which happened to almost exactly coincide with his fake vaccine card suspension — and had been limited leading up to Week 17 after tweaking it in practice.
What he told the staff, from what I understand, is that he was not going into the game because, in his mind, he did not feel he was healthy,” Rapoport said. “The response then from the offensive coaches and from Bruce Arians was, ‘If you are not gonna go into the game when we tell you to go into the game, then you cannot be here.’ At that point, they threw him off the sidelines and then cut him from the team.”
Was Brown’s ankle injury really the cause of his exit?
Brown’s reported claim that he was too injured to play adds a new wrinkle to everything we already know. It’s certainly plausible it was the cause, because an ankle injury would have prevented him from playing last month had he not been suspended by the NFL.
However, Brown didn’t seem to be favoring his ankle when he was jumping around in the end zone and running to the locker room.
And considering Brown’s history of being difficult, the injury story Rapoport relayed feels too simple and one-sided to be the whole truth. It may have played a part, but there’s probably more to this strange incident we have yet to hear about.
Arians doesn’t confirm injury story
If there is more to this incident, Arians didn’t reveal it when he spoke with the media on Monday. He very noticeably did not confirm that report that Brown refused to re-enter the game due to an injury.
At the moment though, “Antonio Brown still with Bucs despite assertions to the contrary…‘That’s up to [general manager Jason Licht] and what he wants to do,’ Arians said when asked about how the Buccaneers will move on from Brown. According to ESPN, the Buccaneers were talking with the NFL about to move forward with Brown’s situation. The wide receiver is sure to face some kind of discipline from the NFL due to the outburst and leaving the stadium in the middle of the game against the New York Jets. The Buccaneers still had Brown on their official roster.”
(Updated and bumped.)
DON’T SMOKE IN BED: This Mysterious Fire in Australia Has Been Burning For at Least 6,000 Years.
THE FIGHT AGAINST SEXISM: The New Political Cry in South Korea: ‘Out With Man Haters.’ Their battle cry: “Feminism is a mental illness.”
Perhaps they’ve looked at the contemporary United States and drawn their own conclusions about what feminism leads to. This would appear to be part of the global backlash — especially outside the Anglosphere — against contemporary campus-left politics. See also the French government’s anti-woke crusade.
YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP:
“We had a collaboration with some Chinese Commu…uh..Chinese Scientists” pic.twitter.com/k8e37I7p8k
— Jamie Dlux 🛸💨 (@jamiedlux) December 30, 2021
IF YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS, look at yourself and ask (1) do you really want them? (2) what are you doing to get or keep friends, and to be a friend yourself?
JIM TREACHER: AOC Knows You Want Her.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Colleges Shutting Down for Spring Semester are Betraying Students.
IS IT HYPOCRISY, GASLIGHTING OR JUST INSANITY? I suppose one might embrace the power of “and.” You remember George Zimmerman, the “White Hispanic” accused and acquitted of the murder of Trayvon Martin?
Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg certainly do, and they each utilized the February 2020 anniversary of that tragedy to play the race card on Twitter. Here’s Saint Peter’s tweet:
And here’s Elizabeth Warren’s:
That’s seemingly innocuous and makes me want to sing “Kumbaya” or “Climb Every Mountain.” Unfortunately for Warren and Buttigieg, George Zimmerman doesn’t see it that way, and filed suit against the two, claiming that because of the natural association in readers’ minds between him and Martin he was defamed. A federal court dismissed Zimmerman’s case a few weeks ago with leave to replead because of certain procedural errors in his Complaint.
Here’s the interesting part: While several infirmities in Zimmerman’s case may see him lose — this time with prejudice — buried in the judicial opinion is a discussion about how Warren and Buttigieg claimed …wait for it, wait for it… that calling someone a “racist” is not defamatory. Let that sink in.
In today’s political and media environment, no statement will expose a person to “shame, ridicule, scorn or opprobrium” as much as being called a “racist.” People lose their careers over it, and businesses are ruined when that allegation is splattered on them. You stand a better chance of maintaining the left’s respect if you rape a child (See, e.g., Polanski, Roman) than if you are caught making a bigoted remark.
That may be right, that may be wrong, but in CrazyWorld, Warren and Buttigieg filed arguments to the court claiming that “an allegation of racism or white supremacy is a matter of opinion and therefore not even actionable.” Say what? On the one hand it’s the worst thing you can call a person, but when it come to accountability, no, it doesn’t count.
It gets worse. The Court rejected Warren and Buttegiegs’ argument, holding that their assertion that “the implication that someone has racist or white supremacist attributes is not defamatory at all, let alone defamatory per se is without merit.”
As I said, there are many reasons Zimmerman could or should ultimately lose his case. But at the same time, I don’t ever want to hear either of these two craven liars take anyone to task for being a bigot, because, according to them, it’s apparently “just” opinion and can’t possibly — as a matter of law — be a bad thing.
YES: Why You Should Continually Maintain Your Everyday Carry Gear. I just dropped off one of my backup carry guns with the armorer for a full inspection and ultrasonic cleaning. I do that every couple of years for all my guns. I field strip them and clean them myself, of course, but now and again I want to go beyond that.
MAYBE WHEN HE PLAYS A WHINY COWARDLY LOSER ON TV, HE’S NOT ACTING: Patton Oswalt apologizes for being friends with Dave Chappelle.
CORN, POPPED: Hard Left Already Plotting 2024 Primary Challenge Against Biden. “Chatter about a challenge from Biden’s left flank suddenly erupted in recent days, likely because Sen. Joe Manchin killed the president’s social welfare bill two weeks ago.”
Well, it’s only mostly dead.
THAT’S STILL A LOT OF PEOPLE: Only the most brainwashed True Believers will cling to the failed narrative.
WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH CHRIS MATTHEWS IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Chris Matthews to Dems: “I Tried to Warn We Were Headed Too Far Left.” “The leftists on Twitter immediately pounced on Matthews. It’s hilarious because you can tell no one bothered to Google his past comments.”
EVERGREEN HEADLINE: It’s Jan. 6 week.
The final question: What about November’s elections? Voters are deeply concerned about the economy, about inflation, about COVID, about crime, about education, about President Joe Biden’s competence, and other issues that are becoming increasingly difficult for Democrats. Some in the party seem to know that fixating on last year, and on a former president, might not be the best way to address those concerns. Last month, Politico reported that Democrats “hoped the [January 6 committee] would wrap up its work this spring, leaving the party plenty of time before the midterms to pivot its focus to kitchen-table issues that resonate with voters.” That is not going to happen.
So yes, this is Jan. 6 week. But if some Democrats have their way, every week of 2022 will be Jan. 6 week. And then voters will have their say.
Some on the left see January 6th week as also being good for business:
“DISRUPTIVE CONTENT”: Facebook Blocks Conservative Children’s Book Publisher from Advertising.
Here’s their website where you can still order their books.
MATHEMATICS IS THE LANGUAGE OF NATURE: What if Math Is a Fundamental Part of Nature, Not Something Humans Came Up With?
MARK STEYN: America Sticks Out Its Tush.
America has cut to the chase — indeed, beyond the chase. We have reached that moment in Blazing Saddles when Mel Brooks throws away the script, and the brawling cowboys on one Hollywood soundstage crash through the wall into the next soundstage and start slugging the gentlemen of the chorus rehearsing a dance number called “The French Mistake”:
Throw out your hands!
Stick out your tush!
Hands on your hips
Give ’em a push
You’ll be surprised
You’re doing the French Mistake…America has literally lost the plot. On the last soundstage, all parts are interchangeable: Men become women, and the grizzled butch coaches of college athletics can’t wait to put ’em on the ladies’ track team. Women become men, and then pregnant men, and then threaten the hospital for the humiliation of having to give birth in a “maternity ward”. Warner Bros gives J K Rowling the bum’s rush for being so out of it as to think periods are something women have. In the TERF wars, lesbians are transphobic because they don’t wish to date women with penises. At dark on the streets of US cities, wispy, spindly, elderly eternal “college” boys cheer on hefty psycho-trannies with purple hair and hirsute cleavage as they light up precinct houses. Indulgent prosecutors release them without bail – or, if bail is still quaintly required, Seth Rogen or a Joe Biden staffer will cover it. Stories with less helpful narratives – Democrat Congresswomen getting carjacked, or blacks slaughtering blacks every weekend in Chicago, or black criminals (sprung from the big house by woke DAs) mowing down white grannies at a Christmas parade – are instantly memory-holed. Even real people adjust their actual lives to conform with the needs of the greater narrative: Thus the Vice President of the United States, the first in history to announce her pronouns on Twitter, purports to have celebrated “Kwanzaa” during her childhood in, um, a high-caste Indian household in, er, Quebec.
This is a way more surreal finale than Blazing Saddles. In today’s America, everything’s ablaze[.]
* * * * * * * *
Pace Mel Brooks, it’s not a “French Mistake” but an American one: Emanuel Macron may be a metrosexual globalist dinky boy but he denounces “le wokisme” more vigorously than any anglo leader, because he grasps that it infects everything, and in America and Her Majesty’s dominions has already done so.
In France, le wokisme comes a massive case of deja vu: “But why now, and why in a country like France, with its very different history from the United States? For that matter, why has wokeism taken hold in other European countries, where the radical movement seems in many ways to be an imitation of its American counterpart? In France, there’s an oft-noted irony within the answer. Despite vocabulary that seems appropriated from American academia, the main concepts originated with a group of leftist French academics in the 1960s and 1970s, who became the rage in many American universities and whose ideas, though simplified and sometimes caricatured, have been enthusiastically reimported into France.”
THIS YEAR, CANCEL CULTURE COMES FOR — hang on, checking notes — NORMAN MAILER:
Unfortunately, Wolff’s article is behind a Substack subscriber-only paywall, but we’ve seen this movie numerous times before by now, including Woody Allen’s autobiography and (almost) Jordan Peterson’s sequel to his best-selling 12 Rules for Life. It’s all the more astonishing when Mailer’s “White Negro” essay is readily found online, and Baldwin’s response is available for Esquire subscribers.
Regarding the former, Roger Kimball wrote in 1997:
Mailer’s flirtation with criminals like Gary Gilmore and Jack Abbott must be seen as the fulfillment of his celebration of the “psychopath” as an existential hero. In his notorious essay “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster,” first published in Dissent in 1957, Mailer definitively articulated an ethic that underlies not only his own view of the world but also the view that would inform the cultural revolution of the 1960s. In tone, “The White Negro” is a panoply of “existentialist” rant. In content, it is a manifesto on behalf of moral nihilism. Mailer speaks casually of “the totalitarian tissues of American society” and invokes “the psychic havoc of the concentration camps and the atom bomb upon the unconscious mind of almost everyone alive in these years.” The only authentic response to this situation, he says, is “to divorce oneself from society” and “to encourage the psychopath in oneself.” This is the strategy of “the hipster,” who has “absorbed the existentialist synapses of the Negro, and [who] for practical purposes could be considered a white Negro.” (Mailer’s stereotypical portrayal of blacks as beastlike sexual athletes is one of the many distasteful things about the essay.)
The rest of “The White Negro” is a glorification of the hipster and his ethic of promiscuous sex, drug-taking, and criminal violence. The hipster, Mailer explains, is part of “an elite with the potential ruthlessness of an elite, and a language most adolescents can understand instinctively, for the hipster’s intense view of existence matches their experience and their desire to rebel.” Mailer conjures the image—it is what made the essay infamous—of eighteen-year-old hoodlums who “beat in the brains of a candy-store keeper.” For Mailer such behavior is acceptable, even laudable, because the psychopath, by murdering, demonstrates his “courage” and “purge[s] his violence.” To the objection that it does not take much courage to kill someone older and weaker, Mailer explains that “one murders not only a weak fifty-year-old man but an institution as well, one violates private property, one enters into a new relation with the police and introduces a dangerous element into one’s life.” Mailer goes on to explain that “at bottom, the drama of the psychopath is that he seeks love.” Not, however, “love as the search for a mate, but love as the search for an orgasm more apocalyptic than the one which preceded it. Orgasm is his therapy—he knows at the seed of his being that good orgasm opens his possibilities and bad orgasm imprisons him.” This is one reason that the hipster adores jazz: “jazz,” Mailer tells us, “is orgasm.” The hipster’s quest “for absolute sexual freedom” entails the necessity of “becoming a sexual outlaw.”
It is not only sexual morality that the hipster discards. “Hip abdicates from any conventional moral responsibility because it would argue that the results of our actions are unforeseeable, and so we cannot know if we do good or bad. … The only Hip morality … is to do what one feels whenever and wherever it is possible, and … to be engaged in one primal battle: to open the limits of the possible for oneself, for oneself alone, because that is one’s need.”
“The White Negro” adumbrates practically everything that went wrong with American society under the assault of left-wing radicalism in the 1960s, from the addiction to violence, drugs, pop music, and sexual polymorphism, to the moral idiocy, jejune anti-Americanism, and mindless glorification of narcissistic irresponsibility and extreme states of experience. Although many critics took issue with Mailer’s exoneration of violence, the real message of the essay—if it feels good, do it!—was just then beginning to sweep the country with irresistible force. “The White Negro” represented an important opening salvo in the war on convention, restraint, and traditional morality. This, not his literary accomplishment, was the ultimate secret of Mailer’s broad appeal. Mailer, as Joseph Epstein observed, “was one of the key men responsible for releasing the Dionysian strain in American life.” He promised his readers what they longed to hear: that ultimate, self-centered ecstasy was theirs for the taking. Mailer once said that he would “settle for nothing less than making a revolution in the consciousness of our time.” He did not make the revolution, but he assuredly became one of its most egregious emblems.
Apparently, today’s puritanical left aren’t interested in exploring the worldview of their grandfathers to see how we got here, and are content to airbrush Mailer from history, 14 years after his death. Hopefully, as with Woody Allen’s autobiography, a smaller publisher will release what Random House was bullied out of publishing. In the meantime, as Andrew Sullivan asked his fellow leftists last year: What Happened To You?
“A NUCLEAR TRUTH BOMB”: Working-Age Deaths Up Whopping 40% Says Life Insurance CEO and NOT Just COVID.
NEWSWEEK: 2021: The Year of the Ruling Class’s Crackdown on Dissent.
The year 2020 was the year of the lockdown, when the Ruling Class arbitrarily, capriciously and selectively suspended the natural rights bedrock upon which American life—indeed, life itself—relies.
The year 2021 closes as the year of the crackdown, when the Ruling Class weaponized its powers to crush dissenters from its Wokeist-Scientist orthodoxy in arguably the most far-reaching, brazen and lawless assault on Americans by the state and its private-sector adjuncts in our nation’s history.
This was the year that the campus became the country. Those engaging in speech that ran afoul of the Ruling Class’ party line were treated as physical dangers to the homeland, demanding the full force of the public and private sectors to deter, punish and subdue them.
Many in our ruling class see what’s happened in Hong Kong as a role model. They need to be made to regret their choice.
CLEAN ENERGY: Chinese Utility Terminates ‘Green’ Energy Plant in Xinjiang Due to Pollutant Emissions. “In a Dec. 28 filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the company said that owing to the malfunction of an exhaust gas purification system, the operation of its Hami Xuanli Gas Power project had improperly discharged a considerable amount of wastewater containing phenol, or carbolic acid.”
PBR’S SOCIAL MEDIA STAFFER APPARENTLY SLAMMED TOO MANY PBRs FOR BREAKFAST: Pabst Blue Ribbon helpfully suggests a NSFW substitute activity for those of you who are ‘not drinking this January.’
Alternate explanation: Antonio Brown lined up his first post-NFL job surprisingly fast! Curiously, it goes on in that vein for numerous tweets. (The one above which kicked things off was deleted after more sober heads prevailed at the Pabst Brewing Company.)
THE LAPTOP CLASS GETS COVID.
For nearly two years, we’ve wondered how this will end. In retrospect, the clue is in how it began.
The initial lockdowns had a strong class-based component. The working classes were assigned the job of delivering groceries, tending to the sick, driving the trucks filled with goods, keeping the lights on, and keeping the fuel running. The professional class, among whom were the people who pushed lockdowns in the name of disease avoidance/suppression, were assigned the job of staying home in their pajamas and staying safe.
It all happened seemingly in an instant. We all had to figure out whether our job qualified and what we should do. More striking at the time was the very notion that government bureaucrats could slice and dice the population this way, deciding what can open and what cannot, who must work and who must not, what we can and cannot do based on our station in life.
So it now seems obvious to me. This whole disaster would finally come to an end (or at least the end would begin) when it became obvious that the great strategy of class division and demarcation would fail to protect the Zoom class from infection.
That day has finally arrived, with cases soaring in many parts of the country and hitting everyone of every class, whether they are being “careful” and adhering to the “mitigation measures” or not. What’s even more striking is how even the vaccines, which were supposed to codify the wisdom of class segregation, have not protected against infection.
All of this seems to have taken place over the course of December 2021, with the arrival of the seemingly mild Omicron variant. Still the other variants circulate widely, causing various degrees of severity with or without hospitalization much less death. In other words, millions from among all classes of people are finally getting sick. At this point, we seem to be seeing a big shift in attitudes.
A lot of this comes from casual conversation. A person comes down with Covid, perhaps confirmed by the newly fashionable at-home tests. “Did you get vaccinated?” the person is invariably asked. The answer comes back: yes and boosted. That’s when the chill happens. It appears that nothing can ultimately protect people from this. In which case, it is time we change our tune.
“Thousands who ‘followed the rules’ are about to get covid. They shouldn’t be ashamed,” headlines the Washington Post.
Feeling ashamed about getting covid-19 isn’t healthy or helpful, experts agree…. Remember: You’re not a failure. “Millions of other people have gotten sick,” (Seema) Varma says. “Unfortunately, you’re not alone. You’re not the only one. You’re not the first one to get covid, and you won’t be the last.” And that positive test, she reiterates, “doesn’t make you an irresponsible person.”
So on the piece goes, with a complete flip of the narrative they have long preached: anyone who gets Covid has failed to comply, disregards of Fauci’s advice, probably lives in a Red state, rejects the science, and otherwise bears the mark of selfishness and the desire to put freedom ahead of public health.
Getting Covid has heretofore been part of a human stain, consistent with the very long history of demonization of the diseased and the attempt to attribute sickness to moral sin.
Plus: “The driving ambition here, though never explicitly stated, was to assign the burden of bearing the disease to the lessers among us. That is a conventional model used in illiberal societies throughout history. The elites who had both granted and benefited from lockdowns took it as axiomatic that they deserved disease purity and health more than those who worked to keep society running. And that scheme seemed to work for a very long time. They stayed home and stayed safe and kept clean while the virus circulated in season after season.”
But the press is rushing forward in its commonplace role of helping the gentry class feel good about itself.
Flashback: America’s elites are waging class war on workers and small biz. “Lockdowns — where the laptop class stays home while working-class people bring them stuff — were enacted in many states. States that had them did no better, and often worse, than states that did not. This became obvious early but resulted in no change of policy. . . . So is it fair to call the overclass response to the pandemic a failure? Well, certainly not for the overclass, whose members are richer, more powerful and more secure in their positions than a year ago. For America? Well, that’s another story.”
BUT THERE’S NO BIAS IN SILICON VALLEY: Facebook ‘permanently’ locks account of conservative children’s book publisher.
Facebook has “permanently disabled” the ads account of a conservative children’s book publisher, claiming that Heroes of Liberty – which has published books about Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, former President Ronald Reagan and author Thomas Sowell – violated the company’s rules against “Low Quality or Disruptive Content.” Facebook originally locked the ads account on Dec. 23, and after Heroes of Liberty appealed the ruling, the company permanently disabled the account.
“The question is: is a children’s biography of Ronald Reagan no longer permissible on Facebook? We don’t know. But apparently promoting one may well kill a business,” Heroes of Liberty editor and board member Bethany Mandel told FOX Business on Sunday.
“We began investing in Facebook four months before we launched our first book,” she added. “We invested most of our marketing budget on the platform, and now our budget (the money we’ve already spent), as well as our assets and data are gone. Marketing-wise we are back in square one, financially it’s even more challenging.”
Mandel confirmed that the ads account remained disabled. She hesitated to describe the move as an example of anti-conservative bias on the part of Facebook.
“We are not in politics, we are in the business of creating beautiful stories about great people that will entertain children and give them life lessons,” she said. “To cancel children’s books because they celebrate American values that 90% of Americans believe in isn’t even anti-conservative bias, it’s anti-American. Pure madness.”
“This ad account, its ads and some of its advertising assets are disabled because it didn’t comply with our policy on Low Quality or Disruptive Content,” Facebook said in a message disabling the account on Dec. 23.
Earlier:
● Revealed: Facebook’s Secret Blacklist of ‘Dangerous Individuals and Organizations.’
● The 2020 Election Wasn’t Stolen, It Was Bought By Mark Zuckerberg.
● “What Is To Be Done About Facebook?”
● Washington Post Wants Facebook to Shut Down PJ Media and Others for ‘Climate Denial.’
As William F. Buckley famously said, “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
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