VIDEO: Rand Paul Destroys Biden Nominee Over Boys Competing in Girls’ Sports.
ALEXANDRA OCASIO SMOLLETT: AOC faces backlash as critics point out she wasn’t in Capitol building during riot.
CIRCLING BACK TO NEVER: Reporter to Psaki: When will Biden make an effort to reach out to pro-life Americans?
GOOD NEWS, IF TRUE: Biden’s team faces the ugly facts on China.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent rebukes of China give hope that the Biden administration recognizes the truth about this vicious regime.
On NBC’s “Today,” Blinken called Beijing’s coronavirus coverup a “profound problem” that continues “even today,” accusing the Communist country of failing to live up to international obligations since the first cases popped up in 2019.
Before that, he said during confirmation hearings that China’s mass detention of Uighur Muslims qualifies as “genocide.” He even admitted that Team Trump was right to take a tougher stance against China.
Beijing is already whining that these words amount to “interfering in its domestic affairs and undermining its interests.”
The good news is that the Bidenites have also offered more than words, by rushing a US Navy group to support Taiwan during the mainland’s latest effort to intimidate the free, democratic island nation.
Let’s hope this attitude continues.
HMM: Josh Hawley proposes “preemptive” ban on Big Tech mergers. “Hawley’s idea mirrors a recommendation made last fall by Democrats on the House antitrust subcommittee, suggesting there could be bipartisan support.”
THERE ARE SOME PARTS OF AMERICA I WOULD NOT ADVISE YOU TO OPPRESS: Biden readies showdown on guns.
Former CIA Director John O. Brennan is an angry man, and his anger mismanagement issues emerge not in the preface to his memoir but in its title, which reads Undaunted: My Fight Against America’s Enemies, at Home and Abroad. The CIA is an executive branch organization focused on foreign intelligence, intentionally headquartered across the Potomac in McLean, Virginia, separated from the White House, State Department, Congress, and all the other policy and partisan bodies. So, who are a CIA director’s domestic enemies—terrorist sleeper cells? Russian illegals? Shady companies aiding Iran’s nuclear procurement efforts? These would be valid targets for joint FBI-CIA attention, and probably anger too.
Four hundred pages later, the reader finds that Brennan’s list contains none of these but it is long, and he exhausts his thesaurus of abusive language against them: Arlen Specter, Richard Grenell, Devin Nunes, Lindsey Graham, Donald Rumsfeld, Michael Pompeo, Trey Gowdy, Michael Scheuer, and Gina Haspel (on and off; she didn’t invite him to CIA holiday parties), and the CIA’s Directorate of Operations generally. Pride of place goes, of course, to Donald Trump. Before Brennan has even met the newly elected Trump, but is en route to brief him in early January 2017, he records that the “mere thought” of the meeting “jarred my very soul.” Brennan’s meetings with, say, Yasser Arafat evince no such dread, and in fact are recounted pretty jauntily.
Brennan’s outbursts are a consistent theme in this memoir. They are often blamed on his “Irish temper,” as if his rage is something external, like an unruly Irish setter that jumps on strangers. Trump is “evil despicable, and vile,” with bad qualities—“incompetence, dishonesty, and cravenness,” especially when Andrew McCabe was fired from the FBI, on St. Patrick’s Day no less, when “my Irish dander was more easily ruffled.”
They often come at a cost: In late 2006, a hot-tempered draft op-ed piece attacking President Bush, while never published, found its way to the White House and would cost Brennan the job of deputy DNI a year later. His famous anti-Trump meltdown when McCabe was fired cost him a gig at Booz Allen Hamilton, and his implausible threat of a lawsuit when his clearances were pulled cost him a consultancy contract with Kissinger Associates.
Sod off, Swamp Thing.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Can Ron DeSantis Teach Media Relations to Weak Republicans? “That’s precisely what the Republican party needs — leaders who don’t fall for the false promise of respect from the mainstream media. It was bad enough before Trump won in 2016. The MSM hacks would dangle carrots for witless Republicans. If the Republicans in question did what they were told — like back stab other Republicans — they’d be treated slightly less awfully in the press. As soon as their service was no longer required, it was back to crap treatment as usual.”
WHY IS THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION SO FULL OF HATE? Biden Press Sec Used Insult Condemned by Dem Officials as ‘Homophobic.’
THE EXPERTS’ TRACK RECORD WAS BETTER A HALF-CENTURY AGO, BUT STILL A LOT WORSE THAN THEY PRETENDED: “Of the countless lies the American people are meant to believe, perhaps the greatest is the myth of expertise.”
Related: The Suicide of Expertise.
SQUAD GOALS: ‘Squad’ member Cori Bush defended Antifa during summer riots.
Flashback: Bush tweeted in December that her goal was to “defund the police:”
But not all police: When asked by MSNBC’s Joy Reid after the Capitol Hill riot if the Capitol Police made her feel safe, “I did until today.”
HERE COMES $2 TRILLION WORTH OF PAIN: Hans Bader at Liberty Unyielding explains why the national response to the vastly more lethal Spanish Flu of 1918 was superior to the current lockdowns and multi-Trillion-dollar relief packages.
Or, to put it another way, when government says the solution to a problem is A, you know it’s almost invariably actually the precise opposite of A.
BACK TO THE FUTURE: Daimler to spin off trucks, change name to Mercedes-Benz.
From Mercedes-Benz to DaimlerChrysler to Daimler to Mercedes-Benz.
SO MUCH FOR BIDEN’S ERA OF NORMALCY: Nation buys guns at blistering pace.
SALENA ZITO: Billy Carter may have been ‘small beer’ in comparison with Frank Biden.
The same can be said of Biden himself: Our Biggest Liar? Joe Biden.
AGAIN, I’VE BEEN PUTTING UP THE IP THAT REVERTED:
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Noah’s Boy.
Tom Ormson and Kyrie Smith are suffering the growing pains of young romance and young business people. Tom worries obsessively about the new fryer in the diner exploding.
As though he didn’t have enough on his mind, though, life decides it’s time for a sabretooth with vengeance on her mind to come to town, and for the Great Sky Dragon to try to arrange a marriage for Tom.
Meanwhile, out at the old amusement park, the one with the really good wooden roller-coaster, a series of bizarre murders is taking place.
And, as if that were not enough, Conan Lung, dragon shifter, ex-triad member and waiter extraordinaire starts his country singing career with an original song “If I Could Fly to You.”
When Kyrie is kidnapped, it’s all Tom can do to make sure he protects her while not eating anyone.
NOBODY WANTS TO KNOW. OR FOR YOU TO KNOW. Joanne Jacobs: How Badly Are Students Doing?
ARE THE OLD GODS RETURNING? Humongous wave appears to bear face of Greek sea god Poseidon.
THANK YOU MUCHLY, BUT WE ALREADY KNEW: A data maven says fraud affected the election outcome.
1) We remember the impossible numbers in the middle of the night (those of us who were awake.)
2) Even if we didn’t, the courts’ refusal to let anyone present a case often on bizarre, spurious “standing” grounds, would be a red flag.
3) The democrats trying to shut up anyone who even mentions fraud is as good as an admission of guilt. What the innocent do, like say the Republicans after 2016, is make sure the opposition gets all possible opportunities to show what they think is evidence.
4) The military-occupied capital is totally what people who didn’t steal the election would do.
AFTER THEY BLACKLIST EVERYONE, THEY’LL BE THE ONES ISOLATED: Today’s blacklisted American: Professor fired from journal he founded.
We’re the majority.
COMMIES GOTTA COMMIE: John Brennan and the Aging Radicals
OF COURSE HE DOES: George Gascon Supports Parole For Charles Manson Cult Member.
OH, DEAR LORD: Leftist Pushing For Biden To Appoint ‘Reality Czar’.
a) stop with the Czars already. b) leftists couldn’t find reality with two hands and a seeing eye dog. That’s why they think they can remake reality with words.
SAME AS IT EVER WAS: Violence Policy Center Seems To Have A Problem With Black Gun Owners.
THESE PEOPLE WOULD BE AN EMBARRASSMENT TO AMERICA: Biden State Dept. Spox Calls Cops ‘Blue Klux Klan,’ and Largest Threat to U.S. National Security’.
That is, they would be if it were even remotely plausible we elected this junta, and if any of them could find America on a map given three tries.
MY GUESS IS SOON: When (or If) Comes the Pushback?
WELL, THAT COULD BE BECAUSE WE ARE AN OCCUPIED COUNTRY: Start By Boycotting The House.
THEIR LEGAL EXPERTS ARE AS GOOD AS THEIR JOURNALISTS: CNN Legal Analyst: ‘You Don’t Have A First Amendment Right To Lie’.
First, who determines if you’re lying, or mis-remembering or misinformed?
Second, what about telling your kid there is Santa Claus?
What about not revealing your politics in the age of cancel culture?
What about fiction?
WHO is in charge of saying this lie is allowed and that one isn’t?
Also, why shouldn’t I lie to people who have no business knowing the truth?
When it comes to the busybodies of the left, I stand with Leonard Cohen:”Bless the statement by whoever it’s made: “Sir, I didn’t see nothing, I was just getting laid””
ME? I YEARN TO BREATHE FREE: Masking the Science
February 3, 2021
BUT HE’S NOT SMART, AND THERE’S NO CHANCE HE’LL DO THIS: Biden’s smartest play: Go bipartisan and watch GOP destroy itself.
KNOW YOUR PLACE, PEASANTS: John Kerry flew on private jet to accept climate award: ‘Only choice for somebody like me.’
IT’S INCREASINGLY APPARENT THAT “ANTI-RACISM” IS RACIST GARBAGE:
WHEN THE DEMOCRATS REMOVE ILHAN OMAR AND AOC, WE CAN TALK: Republicans refuse to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from panels.
VIRTUAL CONFERENCE: How to watch Space Settlement 2021 from the National Space Society this week.
The focus is the people, organizations and technology that are thinking ahead to settlement options in space, NSS said in a statement. A big focus lately in the space industry has been moon missions, as NASA continues to shoot for a 2024 astronaut landing along with a plethora of commercial vehicles through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. . . .
Invited speakers cover a span of space settlement options, ranging from astrophysicists who examine potentially habitable exoplanets to engineers working on planetary exploration. A few of the speakers include Janet Ivey (president of Explore Mars, Inc.), Alan Stern (principal investigator of the New Horizons mission that flew past Pluto) and Karlton Johnson (chair of the National Space Society’s board of governors.)
It’s tomorrow.
WELL, FOR ONE THING I’M TOLD THAT IVERMECTIN AND HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE ARE AVAILABLE OVER THE COUNTER THERE: The Mystery Of India’s Plummeting COVID-19 Cases. “I mean, hospital ICU utilization has gone down. Every indicator says the numbers are down.”
No mention of those drugs in this NPR story, though.
HIRING LITIGATORS AT THE INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE.
SPOILING THE NARRARIVE: AOC Wasn’t Even in the Capitol Building During Her ‘Near Death’ Experience.
Plus:
DELIBERATELY, AND WITH MALICE AFORETHOUGHT: Brittany Hunter: How did unelected bureaucrats hijack the role of legislators?
CANCEL CULTURE IS ALL IN YOUR MIND: Your Job From Now on Is to Stay Silent and Follow Orders.
JOHN KASS: ERASING CLASSIC LITERATURE FOR KIDS:
Classic Western literature, from Homer to Shakespeare, Mark Twain and even Harper Lee, is now being canceled, much in the same way that the Islamic State group and early Christians destroyed ancient statues that offended them.
There is something quite barbarous about it all.
Just a few days ago, zealots in San Francisco began stripping “offensive names” from public schools. Names such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and even Democratic U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein, who is a living witness to her own cancellation.
The stripping of names are public events. They pit aging, worried traditional liberals against a radical leftist movement that will devour them as surely as the relentless Bolsheviks devoured the more moderate Mensheviks.
But the purging of great literature often takes place quietly, among woke teachers and librarians. If the classics aren’t exactly banned outright or burned, they have another way:
To place offending literature on the back shelf, out of the reach of the young, where they’re lost to gather dust in the shadows.
Author Padma Venkatraman wrote an essay titled “Weeding Out Racism’s Invisible Roots: Rethinking Children’s Classics” in the School Library Journal. She supports this purge.
The woke are barbarians, and libraries — already facing obsolescence — are killing themselves.
KURT SCHLICHTER: GameStop Lets You See the Matrix.
People are getting woke – the red pill is socio-political anti-Ambien because it keeps you from falling back asleep and not seeing that everything is rigged.
They see how the ruling caste allows you this little band of autonomy, and how you are allowed some leeway to improve your material life, but the instant you try to assert power that threatens the status quo, the Matrix kicks in and its immune system reacts to snuff you out.
That was the revelation of the GameStop Revolution. You’re allowed to put your money into Wall Street and they might let you take some pennies out, but if you try to go big and play at the same level as the anointed, oh no. You don’t get to. The system shuts you down – literally. You can’t buy the hot stock. Does that apply to the hedge fund guys? You think they can’t play after you’ve been sidelined? Come on. It’s blatant market manipulation, but Wall Street owns the Asterisk Administration – Treasury Secretary & Lord High Protector of the Masters of the Universe Janet Yellin took nearly a million bucks to “speak” to the lever-pullers behind the RobinHood app – and the Administration owns the SEC, and do you think it will investigate the hedge funders who changed the rules? No, but look for FBI SWAT teams to be hitting the basements where the Reddit rebels live. That is, right after they bust more conservative meme guys for illegal memes.
Read the whole thing.
YOU MUST REPORT YOUR FAMILY AND NEIGHBORS TO THE GOVERNMENT LEST WE BECOME A FASCIST SOCIETY: ‘See Something, Say Something Online Act’ Punishes Big Tech for Not Snitching.
ADAPTING TO THE TIMES: Airstream’s Latest Travel Trailer is Aimed at Nomadic Remote Workers.
WHY IS THE LEFT SUCH A CESSPIT OF HOMOPHOBIA? White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki Tweeted A Gay Slur At Lindsey Graham.
“JEN PSAKI AIN’T NO CIRCLEBACK GIRL:” Please Call 911 If You See Jen Psaki’s Last Brain Cell.
A REVOLUTION IN FIREARMS DESIGN: The History of the Glock 17.
SCHOOL’S OUT FOR… WHATEVER: It’s Snowing in the East So Naturally Virtual School Is Canceled.
Also at the PJ mothership for our VIP supporters: Shocker: We Can’t Afford Elon Musk’s Affordable Electric Car.
If you’ve been considering becoming a member, don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT discount code.
OUT ON A LIMB: No, Biden Can’t Save Us With a ‘Reality Czar.’ Also, WTF?
HMM: Is The Silver Squeeze A Ruse? “That’s one of the problems with a decentralized swarm attack: If nobody’s in charge, then it’s much harder to filter out the noise to determine the true direction of the swarm. That can be a strength, but it also makes the swarm vulnerable to ruses like this. Extracting a signal from the huge wave of noise in everyday financial transactions is a daunting problem under the best of circumstances even when giant hedge funds aren’t baiting friendly MSM outlets with elaborate ruses.”
GOYA’S DECEMBER EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: AOC Wasn’t Even in the Capitol Building During Her ‘Near Death’ Experience.
WELL, BYE: Toronto Sketch Troupe Cancels Self. “The Sketchersons fear their lack of diversity fueled white supremacy.”
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Biden DOJ Abandons Trump Initiative, Drops Discrimination Case against Yale.
SIGH: Biden Doesn’t Need Woke Help to Destroy America. “People of good will are making a mistake if they think that the regime crisis America is now experiencing will be exacerbated not by a Joe Biden presidency, but whomever rules in his place. It is not just the radicals he will bring along with him who oppose and misrepresent America in principle.”
AND HE’S JUST GETTING STARTED: Joe Biden put me out of business. “Joe Biden just put me out of business by suspending new oil and gas leases and drilling permits. I am a petroleum geologist and generate drilling prospects in the Rocky Mountains on federal lands. I worked six years to get a prospect ready to drill and Biden just illegally broke the terms of the lease, killing the deal.”
Read the whole thing.
WHO KNEW THAT ORWELL WAS AN OPTIMIST? Social Media Bias Just Got Even More Orwellian.
HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): This app lets you order hormone blockers so you can gender reassign without ever having to see an in-person doc or shrink.
WE’RE LEARNING ABOUT THE DEEP FATS: Eating saturated fats found to reduce severity of pancreatitis.
HOUSE OF STEPHANOPOULOS SUFFERS AMNESIA: State Department’s 1st openly gay spokesperson sends signal to the world, advocates say.
CTL-F “Richard Grenell,” zero results.
NOT EXACTLY REAGAN VS PATCO: Chicago Teachers Were Ordered Back To Classrooms, When They Didn’t Show Up They Were Given Another Day.
CHRISTINA PUSHAW: The “Florida COVID-19 Whistleblower” Saga Is a Big Lie: Rebekah Jones, The Narrative, and the truth. “Jones’ story sounds impressive. There’s just one problem: It’s not true.”
WELL THIS IS KIND OF HARD ON THE INSURRECTION NARRATIVE: Investigators struggle to build murder case in death of US Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick.
Investigators are struggling to build a federal murder case regarding fallen US Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, vexed by a lack of evidence that could prove someone caused his death as he defended the Capitol during last month’s insurrection.
Authorities have reviewed video and photographs that show Sicknick engaging with rioters amid the siege but have yet to identify a moment in which he suffered his fatal injuries, law enforcement officials familiar with the matter said. . . .
In Sicknick’s case, it’s still not known publicly what caused him to collapse the night of the insurrection. Findings from a medical examiner’s review have not yet been released and authorities have not made any announcements about that ongoing process.
According to one law enforcement official, medical examiners did not find signs that the officer sustained any blunt force trauma, so investigators believe that early reports that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher are not true.
One possibility being considered by investigators is that Sicknick became ill after interacting with a chemical irritant like pepper spray or bear spray that was deployed in the crowd. But investigators reviewing video of the officer’s time around the Capitol haven’t been able to confirm that in tape that has been recovered so far, the official said.
The case could also be complicated if Sicknick had a preexisting medical condition. It could not be learned if he did.
“Medical examiners did not find signs that the officer sustained any blunt force trauma, so investigators believe that early reports that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher are not true.” And yet that’s what we’ve heard nonstop for almost a month. Will there be any media apologies? Of course not. It’s shocking enough that they’re even telling us this.
BUT THEY WERE FOLLOWING “THE SCIENCE”: Lockdown States Suffer More Covid Deaths on Average.
ROGER SIMON: Happy Days Are Here Again — For Beijing and Moscow.
You could almost say Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi was wasting his time when—speaking at a virtual event hosted by the National Committee on U.S. China relations— he warned “The United States should stop its interference in the affairs of Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang.”
The Obama-Biden-Harris administration (let’s call it what it really is) wouldn’t dream of such a thing.
As long as the CCP and Russia allow those now in control of the United States to fly their virtue-signaling LGBTQ flags over American embassies, Xi and Putin have nothing to worry about.
You probably can add Ayatollah Khamenei into the bargain, although he might have a little problem with the flag.
President Biden let them know how things would be straight out of the box when he shut down the Keystone pipeline forever.
For Putin this was Christmas in January, letting him know that evil Trump policy of an energy independent, even exporting, United States was a thing of the past and that his most treasured commodity—oil—would go up in value.
At the same time, the Chinese would reap the benefit of the excess Canadian supply while seeing their American adversary weakened, its negotiating position diminished.
Fracking, too, is clearly an endangered species. Not surprisingly, crude just reached a one-year high.
All this for no discernible improvement in carbon levels, in fact likely the reverse. The oil will now be shipped via railroad cars to the Louisiana refineries, a far more risky process than the underground pipeline that has been undergoing (and passing) the most stringent environmental inspections for years.
I wonder how soon the United States will be buying oil from China and Russia.
Xi and Putin (Trump’s supposed collaborator—as if) must find this all quite amusing, especially since our new administration is now considering rejoining that most reactionary of all United Nations dumb shows, the U.N. Human Rights Council, an organization that is dominated by dictatorial regimes and could have been invented by Orwell.
But why should that be surprising? This same administration and its rabid supporters are all for censorship and for limiting free speech, not just via Big Tech but practically across the board.
Many advocate reprogramming Trump supporters. Nothing could be more communist Chinese than that!
Imagine these same crypto-fascists complaining about the CCP’s treatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Christians, Falun Gong, or whoever. The entire Politburo would be rolling their eyes. (Didn’t I say Yang Jiechi’s speech was irrelevant?)
And what of Taiwan? Given their current behavior, would the new administration do anything since beyond the mildest lip-service to defend this vibrant, democratic island nation?
Why would they? As Tom Cotton warned last year: Joe Biden Is China’s Choice for President.
FROM BAD TO WORSE: Biden’s Retreat on Crime. Violent crime is soaring, police departments are shrinking, local activists are further hamstringing law enforcement, and now the Biden Justice Department seems likely to press for more of the “reforms” that drove up crime in the cities targeted by the Obama administration. In a podcast (which includes a transcript), Rafael Mangual and Brian Anderson of City Journal discuss the grim prospects for New York and the rest of the country.
IT’S THE BABYLON BEE’S WORLD. WE’RE JUST LIVING IN IT: NYT Writer Suggests Biden Government Appoint A ‘Reality Czar.’
Related: All hail the ‘reality czar!’ Another great proposal from the New York Times.
COLLUSION: Russian Spies are Behind Environmental Groups. Democrats Shrug. “It’s been well known for some time that the Russians are highly active in the environmental movement and that dates back to the Cold War. European environmentalists are a major priority, but Moscow has its tentacles in the US environmental movement as well.”
And there’s Joe Biden, using environmentalism as a justification for shutting down US energy extraction and transportation.
WHY DOES THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION WANT AMERICANS TO DIE? Biden Restores a Barrier to Opioid Addiction Treatment.
GIVEN THE PATHETIC RECORD OF THE “EXPERTS” ON THIS SUBJECT, LETTING EXPERTS CONTROL SPEECH ON A PANDEMIC IS CRIMINALLY STUPID: When Feds Controlled the Conversation About a Pandemic.
Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the model of a marketplace of ideas in which strong arguments drive out the weak has sometimes taken a beating. Erroneous theories of the virus and how it spreads, bogus data interpretations, and ineffective therapeutic ideas have spread faster than sober correction could keep up. Although the federal government was itself the source of no small amount of misinformation and confusion — most notably, though not solely, in former President Trump’s rambling White House briefings on the virus — some progressive thinkers remain convinced that the most serious way to fight a pandemic is for Washington, D.C. to lay down a central messaging line based on the thinking of authentic experts. With that line set down, so the theory goes, the other institutions of civil society, from the media to professional groups to local officialdom, should fall in line and reinforce that messaging. (Today, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee pressured Facebook, Google, and Twitter to do more to take down misinformation about Covid vaccines.)
Trouble is, when governments have achieved serious control over conversation about pandemics in the past, they’ve been known to make things much worse. Front and center is America’s experience during the lethal flu pandemic of 1918, which occurred during the wartime presidency of Woodrow Wilson.
To be fair, Wilson was arguably our worst president ever. So far.
POWERLINE: The DeSantis Dissent, Cont’d. I think this post by Scott Johnson has already been linked on Instapundit, but if you haven’t read it you should. DeSantis has hit on a very good way to fight back against Big Tech censorship. The post links to a report in The Sarasota Herald-Tribune. I’ll post one paragraph from the article
DeSantis said legislation he’d support also would allow $100,000 daily fines to be levied against a company that removes a political candidate from its platform during an election campaign. Any favorable support a candidate receives from a media company in getting a campaign message out also should be reported as a political contribution, the governor said.
Here’s the first Desantis Dissent post.
CHANGE? House Republicans Prepare To Oust Liz Cheney From Leadership. “The timing of her move on the eve of the vote hurt members of the caucus she ostensibly leads, according to many members. They also cited the extreme rhetoric she used in pushing for Trump’s removal from office.”
ARCTIC PAVE HAWK: A USAF HH-60G Pave Hawk lands during combat search and rescue training in south-central Alaska. Photo taken Jan. 21, 2021. The caption says the exercise was part of a North American Air Defense Command Arctic air defense operation. Rather dramatic and eerie photo.
STRATEGYTALK: Erdogan’s Turkey wants a thumb in every pie. It’s the latest StrategyTalk podcast, looking at “neo-Ottoman” Turkey’s multiple wars and President Erdogan’s power plays. First link goes to youtube– if you like it please subscribe. If you prefer the MP3 download, visit this page. You can also subscribe via iTunes.
LET ME BE THE FIRST TO ENCOURAGE THIS KIND OF BRAVERY: Paulina Porizkova shares nude photo inspired by Elizabeth Hurley: ‘Sexy has no expiration date.’
Though I like this picture even more.
CHINA’S RED LINE RULES: Leveraging Corrupt Media, China Draws a Red Line for Biden Administration
Communist China’s top foreign policy adviser, Yang Jiechi, has spoken.
Machiavellians worldwide will credit Yang for constructing a shrewd and early “red line” test of Joe Biden using “cocktail power warfare.”
Yang’s threat comes less than a week after Chinese aircraft intruded on Taiwanese air space. That was a military show of force to test the Biden administration. Yang escalated the diplomatic challenge.
Military power, diplomatic challenge? Mix them and you’ve a cocktail of the military and diplomatic elements of power.
But information power is also in play. In the immediate background lurks Hunter Biden and his potentially billion-dollar deal with Chinese communist entities. Scrutiny and analysis and totally relevant preelection examination of the Biden family’s financial arrangements with China were suppressed by social media tech titans and anti-Trump mainstream media.
My latest Creators Syndicate column.
I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER WORD ABOUT GLENN REYNOLDS’ CARBON FOOTPRINT: John Kerry took private jet to Iceland for environmental award, called it ‘only choice for somebody like me.’
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Dear Biden Voters, You’ve Been Seriously Had.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: What does it take to fully disillusion a Biden voter?
Answer: Whatever it is, Biden probably has done it twice already.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- Andrew Cuomo sets new land-speed world record for flip-flopping
- Soros-backed LA DA apparently cool with paroling a Manson Family killer
- Come meet your (pasty, scraggly, whiny) oppressor
Bonus Sanity: Californians finally turning against Gavin Newsom.
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
CLAIM: SpaceX violated launch license in Starship SN8 launch.
Just an observation: Last week Elon Musk sided with the Gamestop Reddit crowd, and since then he’s suddenly gotten unprecedented bureaucratic flak from the FAA and the Department of Justice.
UPDATE: A friend emails: “Re Musk’s new FAA problems — his biggest space rival Jeff Bezos gave a huge amount of money and an even bigger amount of uncounted in-kind services (e.g., Washington Post, Amazon refusal to help with vaccinations) to the Biden-Harris campaign. Payoff to Bezos and Blue? Why, that would imply a staggering level of corruption in the….no, no, it couldn’t be. Sometimes the Bezos-Musk rivalry reminds me of Scrooge McDuck vs. his rival Flintheart Glomgold. Glomgold was even South African.”
GOODER AND HARDER: Biden energy ban an economic hammer to Colorado.
Between 2021-2024, Biden’s leasing ban will eliminate 5,172 jobs annually, wipe out $2.8 billion in oil and natural gas investments, $1.3 billion in production, $546 million in much-needed tax revenue and a whopping $1.6 billion in high-paying wages.
Colorado’s neighbors to the north and south face similar threats from President Biden’s ban.
As the fifth-largest oil and natural gas-producing state, New Mexico extracts nearly half of its oil and 67% of its natural gas from leases on federal lands. Before the pandemic, tax revenue generated from oil and production overall comprised 20% of the state’s budget. With 62,000 jobs at stake, a federal leasing ban will be catastrophic for one of the country’s most poverty-stricken states.
A federal leasing ban is equally devastating for the Cowboy State. Wyoming’s oil and gas economy is dependent upon federal oil and gas leases. A federal leasing prohibition will severely impact 51% of the state’s oil production and a whopping 92% of its natural gas production.
Ouch.
TESTER AFRAID OF BEING TESTED AT BALLOT BOX: “Montana Senator Jon Tester (D) on Tuesday said President Joe Biden’s decision to cancel the Keystone XL Pipeline was a mistake. He came to the conclusion based on his personal experience as a farmer.”
IF ONLY THERE WERE SOME KIND OF EASY-TO-UNDERSTAND, CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRICES AND DEMAND: California City Raises Wages For Grocery Workers, Grocery Chain Responds Predictably. “In order to reward to work for grocery store employees, Long Beach passed the ‘Hero Pay’ measure, which increased the pay of grocery store employees by four dollars an hour. While the measure seems like it was well-intentioned, good intentions don’t balance budgets nor make the availability of products any more diverse. Long Beach officials were looking for a positive moment in the press, however, the Kroger grocery brand quickly put that to rest, by announcing that they were closing two grocery stores in the city, a Ralph’s location as well as a Food4Less store.”
WAR ON SCIENCE: Yale ignores science, mandates ONE MONTH quarantine for students returning to campus.
Cost of attending Yale University: $76,645 per year.
COMMIES LIE: Huawei’s HarmonyOS: ‘Fake it till you make it’ meets OS development. “After getting access to HarmonyOS through a grossly invasive sign-up process, firing up the SDK and emulator, and poring over the developer documents, I can’t come to any other conclusion: HarmonyOS is essentially an Android fork.”
This is actually a fun read if you’re at all interested in mobile OS development, or Huawei’s tech and sales woes since Trump sanctioned the Communist front company.
FIGHTING COLLUSION: Republicans Demand Hold on Biden Commerce Pick Over Huawei Concerns.
SHE’S DOING HER VERY BEST: Is Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki Even Trying Anymore?
ONLY A THIRD? Newsom approval plummeting with a third of voters support recall amid COVID-19 criticism, poll finds. “Gov. Gavin Newsom’s job approval rating among California voters has plummeted, driven largely by dissatisfaction over the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and adding fuel to a Republican-led recall campaign, according to a new poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. . . . California voters were almost evenly split when asked whether Newsom has done a good or bad job as governor, a precipitous drop from September when two-thirds of those polled gave him high marks. The poll, released Tuesday morning, also found that just 31% of those surveyed thought that Newsom and other state government leaders had done an excellent or good job handling the pandemic, while 23% said they had done a fair job, and 43% called it a poor job.”
Plus: “Less than half of California voters — 46% — approved of Newsom’s job performance, a dramatic slide for a governor who was elected with a historic margin of victory in 2018 over Republican challenger John Cox and defeated a slate of Democratic challengers in that year’s primary. Just four months ago, Newsom had a 64% approval rating — among the highest of any California governor in the last 50 years at the same point in their first term.”
What’s astonishing is that the numbers aren’t worse.
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