LOOKING FOR YEAR-END CHARITABLE DONATIONS? I recommend a donation to F.I.R.E. They do important work in fighting against the tide of campus totalitarianism.
WELL, THAT’S ONE WAY TO BECOME MAITRE D’ AT THE FRENCH LAUNDRY: With his star dimmed, California’s Newsom could face recall.
AT THIS POINT, I THINK IT’S FAIR TO SAY THAT THE “INTEL COMMUNITY” IS A CANCER WITHIN OUR SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT: US intel veterans lied about ‘Russian plot’ — and the media bought it hook, line and sinker. “In this case, it was former US intelligence officials who were spreading disinformation in an attempt to mislead the American public about a consequential matter touching on the front runner in an American presidential campaign. The call came from inside the house. Anyone believing the officials, who used their past titles and long experience to lend credibility to their letter, would have been shocked to learn last week that Hunter Biden is under federal investigation for tax crimes.”
Plus: “This is the kind of story voters should be aware of when choosing a president. And they would have been if there hadn’t, in effect, been an American conspiracy to misinform people, led by former US intelligence officials who shamefully abused the public trust.”
There was disinformation here all right, just not from Russia. And many people will regard the collusion involved in suppressing this story pre-election as reason to regard Biden’s presidency as illegitimate.
THIS WILL END WELL: NYC Seeks To Bar Police From Any Interaction With Homeless. “Having already slashed the budget for the NYPD, the City Council in the Big Apple is looking to enact even more restrictions on the actions of the police department. Multiple members of the Council have drafted a bill that would bar the police from any interaction with homeless individuals on the streets. That would include both responding to complaints about possible criminal behavior and outreach efforts where officers attempt to get the homeless into shelters.”
WE TAKE HARASSMENT SUPER SERIOUSLY AROUND HERE, FELLAS. A student re-attached a fallen note of support to a staff member’s door. Then her university investigated her for harassment.
Weird, it’s like unmooring harassment from any reasonable definition of the term turned out to be a tool for those in power to abuse the plebs.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Pray That Joe Biden Isn’t an Honest Politician Who Stays Bought by the CCP.
Insanity Wrap needs to know: If an honest politician is the kind who stays bought, can we hope that Joe Biden is the kind of politician who would take the money and run?
Answer: Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please let it be so.
Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
- Sick: Trans activists want ALL children on puberty blockers
- Twitter and YouTube apparently blocking search results unfavorable to Biden
- Wall Street prepares to abandon Wall Street
And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE: Family Guy Trashes Transgender Ideology.
Meanwhile, not only is real life in 2020 stranger than we imagined, it is stranger than we can imagine: Transgender activist calls for all children to be put on puberty blockers until they can determine identity.
(Classical reference in headline.)
SATIRE… OR IS IT? Governor Polis Enables “Auto Renew” for Colorado’s Mask Mandate.
Exhausted by having to manually extend Colorado’s mask mandate each month, Governor Jared Polis logged into the “Governor’s Dashboard” section of the state’s website and set the mandate to automatically renew each month for an additional 30 days.
“I just found this feature. I should’ve done it months ago,” Polis admits. “Everyone knows I’m going to keep extending the mandate, but this way I don’t even have to think about it, it just happens.”
“Come over here and take a look,” exclaimed Polis, as he excitedly offered The Oyster a glimpse of his computer. “All I did was click this button here and, boom, another 30 days with the masks.”
“Two weeks to bend the curve” seems like an awfully long time ago.
IT’S COME TO THIS: The absurdity of the ‘broken glass’ Brexit row. Remoaner loons are accusing the government of ‘dog whistling’ about Kristallnacht.
As Mark Steyn wrote, “On the matter of those racist dog whistles all these middle-age white liberals keep hearing, the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto put it very well: ‘The thing we adore about these dog-whistle kerfuffles is that the people who react to the whistle always assume it’s intended for somebody else,’ he wrote. ‘The whole point of the metaphor is that if you can hear the whistle, you’re the dog.’”
WELL, GOOD: Texas A&M apologizes to Students for Trump.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: WaPo Idiot Thinks Biden Is Head of the Church of England or Something. “To fulfill their lust for getting rid of ORANGE MAN BAD, the MSM was forced to install in the Oval Office an empty-head moron who can’t navigate three sentences without losing his ability to speak his native language. The poor dears who have to keep this charade afloat have to go way over the top to do so. They need to over-correct by making things up just so they can pretend that there is some ‘there’ there with Drooling Joe.”
“WEIRD HOW THE MSM ALL OF A SUDDEN CARES ENOUGH TO REPORT ON HUNTER’S PROBLEMS.” Report: Hunter Biden Did Not Disclose $400,000 Burisma Income.
OUR ‘BIGGEST PROBLEM’ ISN’T REALLY: Glenn Stanton says apocalyptic environmental worries have become so widespread among the young that the medical community has come up with a “climate anxiety scale” to measure it.
Fears of over-population are an integral part of such worries, but Stanton, director of global family formation studies at Focus on the Family, points to an emerging new field of data-driven analyses that suggest what we really should be worried about is having too few people:
“The greatest threat to humanity’s future is certainly not too many people consuming too many limited natural resources, but rather too few people giving birth to the new humans who will continue the creative work of making the world a better, more hospitable place through technological innovation,” he writes for the latest edition of Quillette.
It’s a bit of a long piece but well-worth the reading time because it makes a persuasive case for the proposition that the world as we know it, isn’t.
FROM BRAD SMITH:
As presidential electors vote today, a few thoughts:
1) it is not a “constitutional crisis” or an effort to “overturn the election” when a candidate challenges initial election results in court. Indeed, such challenges are part of the process, specifically provided for by law. The fact that some people think the challenges are weak on the merits is irrelevant. Al Gore did not concede defeat until well into December 2000, and even then he did not concede that he lost the election–only that George W. Bush had been “selected” president.
2) Polling in December 2016 showed that roughly half of Democrats believed–falsely and without evidence–that Russians had hacked American election tabulators and changed the results of the election.
3) The effort to get state legislatures to appoint slates of electors directly is similar to the effort, wildly popular among large segments of the Democratic Party in 2016, to convince electors to vote for a candidate who did not win their states and for whom they were not pledged–constitutionally permissible, politically catastrophic if successful, but with no chance of success;
4) In every Republican presidential win of the past 30 years–2000, 2004, and 2016–at least one Democratic House member has challenged the Electoral votes when they were counted in January.
History.
SHOULD WE CARE THE DURHAM PROBE IS EXPANDING? The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz is skeptical. Why? Well, for one thing, once his or her work is completed, a Special Counsel submits a confidential report to the Attorney General.
“What if Trump is no longer President after January and there is a Democratic Party appointed Attorney General? Under that scenario, if the Durham Report concludes that Russiagate was all a Democratic Party hoax (which it was), do you really think America will find out what is in the report,” Dunetz asks.
DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: The Myth that Americans Were Poorly Educated before Mass Government Schooling.
Related: Marvin Olasky on C-Span Booknotes discussing The Tragedy of American Compassion.
JOHN FUND: California’s Business Climate Deniers.
COLD WAR II: South China Sea: US warned Beijing of ‘major military breakthrough’ in bid to secure area.
“We’re shooting for early 2021 to be able to run a fleet battle problem that is centred on unmanned [technology].
“It will be on the sea, above the sea and under the sea as we get to demonstrate how we can align to the [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command] directives to use experimentation to drive lethality.”
The decision has been hailed as a “major breakthrough” for the US, according to Eurasiantimes.com.Training operations routinely occur in the waters, by all nations who lay claim to the region.
The US Navy regularly runs fleet battle problems, which allow the military to test how it would deploy its forces should conflict erupt.
It reportedly also wants around $2bn (£1.5bn) to produce 10 unmanned surface vessels during the next five years, a request Congress is currently raising objections about.
Will President Biden continue standing up for freedom of navigation the way President Trump has?
OF COURSE THEY DO: Media still largely ignore Hunter Biden story.
EPOCH TIMES EDITORIAL: With Our Election System Under Assault, Americans Need to Speak Up.
Many of us here at The Epoch Times have lived under communist regimes, both in China and other parts of the world, and know firsthand its tyranny. Our freedoms in America have allowed us to flourish and also to warn our fellow citizens that these very freedoms are now at risk.
If we don’t take a stance and speak out at this critical moment, we will see the CCP and its allied communist forces complete their decades-long quest to subdue American freedom.
During the Sept. 11 attacks, 40 Americans on Flight 93 fought the terrorist hijackers to defend the nation’s capital. These were ordinary people taking extraordinary action. They were brave Americans. Before they took action, they voted. Even at the moment of a life-and-death test, on a hijacked plane, they voted.
They voted, prayed, and then acted. This is the American spirit. This is the American belief and the American tradition. We take each vote as sacred. We vote to make a decision, believe in the result, and act on it.
The 2020 general election is exposing the true position of every individual, every company, every media outlet, and even every country across the globe.
At a hearing on election fraud in Michigan on Nov. 27, witness Melissa Carone was asked why more people had not come forward to testify. Her answer: “My life has been destroyed, my life has been completely destroyed, because of this. I have lost family, I have lost friends. I have been threatened. My kids have been threatened. I have had to move. I have had to change my phone number.”
But in spite of having faced this hostility, she came forward to publicly testify. She bravely put the country’s good above her own situation.
During our War of Independence, Thomas Paine said, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
So, too, is today.
Read the whole thing.
Plus, from Ann Althouse: “I’ve elided some of the text, but there’s nothing in it that goes after women in particular. It’s not misogynistic at all. Epstein is right to advise non-physicians to eschew the ‘Dr.’ honorific. He could be criticized for not showing any concern for how women in particular have used this mode of demanding respect and dignity. But in a way, he’s showing respect by talking to Jill Biden the way he’d talk to a man: It’s ridiculous! Cut the crap!”
WHY ARE LEFT-DOMINATED INDUSTRIES SUCH CESSPITS OF RACISM? Warner Bros. Concludes Misconduct Investigation Of Joss Whedon And Other Producers, Says ‘Remedial Action’ Taken.
WELCOME MARK TAPSCOTT TO PJ MEDIA’S LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS: Justice Samuel Alito’s Gift to America Will Keep Giving Year-Round.
ICYMI: REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: With U.S. Senate Runoffs Near, Georgia’s Not Prosecuting Its Unprecedented Number of Double Voters.
AT LEAST HE WASN’T BEHEADED: Tennessee Lawyer Fired for Saying Islam Isn’t a Peaceful Religion.
LEFTISTS DESERVE TO BE MOCKED, ESPECIALLY THESE LEFTISTS: Four Student Groups Demand That Harvard Discipline Law Prof Adrian Vermeule For Tweets Mocking Leftists. Frankly, this call suggests a lack of intellectual and moral fitness to practice law. These students’ behavior is both risible and fundamentally indecent.
His response should be “Go away, or I shall taunt you a second time.”
IF THEY’RE VACCINATED, WHY WEAR THE FACE DIAPER OF SUBMISSION AT ALL. YO, LEFTIES, HAVE YOU ALL LOST YOUR FRIGGING MINDS? A former Facebook exec suggested people who get a Covid vaccine should wear special masks “so that they can signal to others that they are vaccinated.”
… Our so called tech lords look like lizard people and crackheads…. because they are. Prove me wrong.
HOWEVER, TAKE IT FROM SOMEONE WHO’S LIVED THROUGH INSURRECTION AND MASSIVE NATIONAL INSANITY (IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, GRANTED), MOST INSURRECTION AND INSANITY, MOST SYSTEM CHANGE, MOST UNSTABLE AND VIOLENT TIMES, ARE STILL — LIKE RIOTS! ;) — MOSTLY PEACEFUL. AND YOU NEED TO HAVE A NORMAL LIFE, IN BETWEEN ALL THE INSANITY. EVEN THE FOUNDING FATHERS — OR THEIR WIVES, AT LEAST — PLANTED AND HARVESTED: Keeping Your Feet In An Avalanche.
WE’RE ALL EXHAUSTED AND FURIOUS, AND WONDERING IF THEY REALLY THINK WE’RE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE OUR LYING EYES. ORGANIZE? LISTEN, IT’S GOING TO GET REALLY UGLY, REALLY FAST, EVEN IF THE INDIVIDUALISTS NEVER ORGANIZE: Where things stand at this hour.
THEY WANT TO TURN US ALL INTO SHEEP, BECAUSE SHEEP ARE EASY TO SHEAR: The Dehumanization of the Non-Compliant.
WAIT, I’M SUPPOSED TO BE SURPRISED? China Watch: Leaked Database Shows CCP in US Companies.
IF YOU’RE A BELIEVER, PRAY. IF YOU’RE NOT A BELIEVER PRAY ANYWAY. THE NOVELTY JUST MIGHT GET HIMSELF’S ATTENTION: Wisconsin Supreme Court Rules Absentee Ballot Distribution Violated State Law, Opens Door For Challenges.
BLEAK BUT NOT SURRENDERING: Republican Legislatures Choose Alternate Electors in NV, WI, GA, PA, AZ to Preserve Election Challenge Options.
I’M SARAH A. HOYT AND I APPROVE THIS MESSAGE: Moving Back to America Episode 0: UP FROM DESPAIR. [VIDEO]
DOCUMENTARY ON THE CURRENT MESS: Who Is Stealing America?
[mirrored from The Epoch Times, no login required]Partly an overview of assorted fraud evidence, but some I had not seen/not presented in the various state hearings, primarily focused on China’s involvement. Takes a while to get going.
December 14, 2020
(Updated and bumped.)
BOB MCMANUS: NYC’s suffering from delusion that you can maintain order without coercion.
I think they’re fine with the coercion so long as it’s aimed at ordinary citizens and not criminals.
HMM: Exclusive: Firefly Reboot Coming To Disney+. Given what Disney has done to Star Wars, I’m not sure we should celebrate.
WELL-DESERVED, IF SO: With his star dimmed, California’s Newsom could face recall.
NOT GIVING UP: Republican electors in Pennsylvania, Georgia cast votes for Trump, hoping for court victories.
UPDATE: Also Nevada and Arizona.
ONE SIMPLE STATISTIC SHOWS CUOMO IS DESTROYING NYC’S RESTAURANT INDUSTRY FOR NO REASON:
Cuomo’s decision to follow through on his threat to shut down restaurants has received enormous backlash, in part because its very basis is undercut by the governor’s own data. Restaurants and bars have driven only 1.4 percent of New York’s COVID-19 cases, according to the state’s contact tracing program. Meanwhile, private personal gatherings have driven nearly 75 percent of the state’s COVID-19 spread.
So Cuomo is shutting down an industry—crushing small businesses and putting service workers out of a job—that is only making a minuscule contribution to the spread of COVID-19. (After all, restaurants have operated at reduced capacity, required mask-wearing, heightened sanitization protocols, and more.)
Understandably, restaurateurs were infuriated by the governor’s arbitrary and baseless order.
No reason? But why does Cuomo need one? When Oliver Stone wrote Gordon Gekko’s line at the climax of Wall Street that he was wrecking Martin Sheen’s small airline company “because it’s wreckable,” it was just another moment of leftwing projection.
BIDEN: RELAX, THE CHINESE ARE OUR FRIENDS. Sprawling hack of federal agencies spurs alarm in White House.
Utterly unrelated: Rep. Crenshaw: Media, Democrats Won’t Dig Into Swalwell Scandal.
HONESTLY, THIS NUMBER SEEMS LOW TO ME. One in five with COVID-19 passes it to others in household, data shows. At least, lower than I expected. But a nephew who was pretty sick with Covid for a couple of weeks never did infect my sister or brother-in-law. He did isolate himself in his room, which is an addition with separate HVAC, and I sent them one of these HEPA/UV air filters, but still. And a high school friend whose family caught it in NYC in early March never did get it; 3 out of 6 in her family were sick and the others just never came down with it despite being in constant proximity.
Plus: “Households are favorable environments for transmission.” Interestingly, our whole strategy seems to have involved keeping people in their households as much as possible.
DISPATCHES FROM THE GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA: Stacey Abrams: Challenging Election Results Is OK When She Does It.
HIS FRAUDULENCY REACHES 270: Biden Officially Passes 270 Vote Threshold As Electors Cast Their Votes.
MARK STEYN ON ONE OF ERIC SWALWELL’S PREDECESSORS: Monsieur Butterfly.
How quaint it sounds: the “honey trap”. But it can be a lonely life out there on the diplomatic circuit, and. for an enterprising intelligence agency, the wallflower at the embassy ball is still a reliable way to access your enemy’s secrets. As it happens, Mr. Hudson’s career self-detonated only a few days after the death of one of the most famous honey traps of the post-war era, the Chinese opera singer Shi Pei Pu.
Shi was a he, although for a while that wasn’t entirely clear. As a famous headline in Le Monde wondered: “Espion ou espionne?” Spy or spy-ette? James Bond or Pussy Galore? When Bernard Boursicot first saw him across a crowded room at some enchanted diplomatic evening in Beijing in 1964, the espion was certainly a he – a slip of a lad in his mid-twenties but already an accomplished singer and actor, and socially assured.
By contrast, M Boursicot was the French Embassy’s accountant, a 20-year-old schnook from the wrong side of the tracks whom the career diplomats already figured for a loser. The girls in the typing pool called him Bouricot – “Donkey” – and not as a compliment. He was a virgin, lonely and longing for love. And there, at the centre of attention, was the glamorous young Chinaman, if that’s the word.
Needless to say, read the whole thing.
I BLAME #ORANGEMANBAD AND STUPID ANTI-SCIENCE RED-STATERS: Japan halts travel campaign amid record surge in COVID-19 cases.
Related: South Korea closes schools, opens new testing sites amid COVID-19 outbreak.
FIVE REASONS NOT TO THROW MORE MONEY AT COVID STIMULUS: The Heritage Foundation’s Rachel Grezler and Adam Michel line’em up like ducks.
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: In 2017, CBS’s Scott Pelley had this exchange with blogger/tweeter Mike Cernovich during a 60 Minutes interview that ultimately went quite badly — for Pelley:
Scott Pelley: How would you describe what you do?
Mike Cernovich: I’m a lawyer, author, documenter, filmmaker, and journalist.
Scott Pelley: And how would you describe your website?
Mike Cernovich: Edgy, controversial content that goes against the dominant narrative.
Scott Pelley: What’s the dominant narrative?
Mike Cernovich: The dominant narrative is that there are good guys and there are bad guys. The good guys are liberals. Everybody on the right is a bad guy. Let’s find a way to make everybody look bad. Let’s tie marginal figures who have no actual influence to anybody we cannot overwrite. That’s the narrative.
Scott Pelley: That’s not a narrative I’m familiar with. Who’s narrative is that?
Exit question: Does CBS News “have a right to bear arms access reporter? How about a freedom of religion reporter? Activism from a major news network is fine but it is weird when they claim to be unbiased.”
ROBERT HEINLEIN ON the value of an education doctorate.
SPECIAL PROSECUTOR: ‘Full Speed Ahead’: Durham Expands Russian Collusion Hoax Investigation.
THE DEVILS WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA, THEY WERE LOOKING FOR AN ELECTION TO STEAL: Linda Sarsour, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib star in Raphael Warnock vote-a-thon event. Having these three come down to defend Warnock against charges of anti-semitism is as if Lester Maddox had brought in George Lincoln Rockwell to defend him against charges of racism.
JUST THINK OF THEM AS CCP OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: NYT has not covered the Swalwell Chinese spy honeytrap scandal a single time.
ANOTHER REASON FOR ALUMNI TO STOP GIVING: What’s Up, Doc? Northwestern University hastens to cancel Joseph Epstein for advising Jill Biden to drop her favorite honorific. How dare he question a doctor of education?
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): It’s good to see the weight of our journalistic and academic establishments being brought to bear to protect the self-esteem of a rich, powerful white woman.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Proper Training After Changing Your Everyday Carry Gun.
FREE THE MARKETS: How to Fix Capitalism. Why do half of younger Americans want to live in a socialist country? It’s not just because of the nonsense spewed in schools, says Edward L. Glaeser.
Over the past 40 years, insiders have increasingly captured the American economy—from homeowners opposed to new housing construction near them to incumbent firms that benefit from the overregulation of employment to interest groups that have transformed the federal government into the equivalent of a pension system with a nuclear arsenal. The young are usually outsiders; the bill for the insiders’ triumph has been laid in their laps. The Covid-19 pandemic reinforces this dynamic. Middle-aged teachers, protected by powerful unions, Zoom their classes from the comfort of their homes, and students get lost in the shuffle. The mortality risk of the disease to the young is tiny; yet they are told to give up the freedom of their youth to protect the rest of us. . . .
What many young people today don’t realize is that socialism is a machine for empowering insiders.
Capitalism, from its inception, was designed for outsiders, but it’s been corrupted by politicians and special interests. To make it attractive again to young outsiders, Glaeser proposes restoring four fundamental freedoms.
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Solar-based Electronic Skin Generates Its Own Power.
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: NFL ratings plummet as networks slash ad prices. “Average NFL viewership has dropped approximately 8 percent from the 2019 season, but a week for week comparison shows a much worse situation. The NFL had 14.5 million viewers for Week 13 of the season, which is a 29 percent drop from the same week last season.”
MOON RACE 2020: Chinese capsule with moon rocks begins return to Earth.
MATT MARGOLIS:Poll Shows Why Church Is Essential During a Pandemic.
COMMUNISM, FASCISM, JUST OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE SAME COLLECTIVIST COIN: China’s tiny Jewish community in fear as Beijing erases its history. “Despite numbering only a thousand, China’s Jews are falling foul of Beijing’s campaign against non-sanctioned religions.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Our Electoral Processes Need To Be Fixed Well Before 2024.
The problem is that too many positions within the nomenklatura are dependent on those processes not getting fixed.
THIS WILL GO SWIMMINGLY: Russians Are Being Told Not to Drink Before And After Their COVID-19 Vaccinations.
WAIT, I THOUGHT WE WERE ALL DEAD BECAUSE OF NET NEUTRALITY: “Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock described members of the U.S. Senate as ‘gangsters and thugs’ whose votes for a 2017 tax cut exposed their willingness to ‘kill children.’’
I’m so old, I can remember comparing a politician to a gangster was the height of coolness:
● CNN: “Time for Obama to go ‘gangsta’ on GOP.”
● Don Cheadle On Obama: “I Wanted To See A More Gangsta President!”
● The Financial Times: Obama needs a gangsta to lay down the law.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Hit By Covid-19, Colleges Do The Unthinkable And Cut Tenure.
Now do the really unthinkable and cut administrators. Ha, as if that’s going to happen.
ARTHUR CHRENKOFF: Gone In 60 Weeks. “The battlespace preparation has already begun, with two independent lines of probing attack launched through the mainstream media: the question of age and infirmity, and the controversy over potential family corruption. On one level, these can be seen as completely innocent: Trump has been defeated – the media having faithfully played its part – so certain issues that were untouchable during the election campaign can now be safely aired. That, after all, is the media’s role in our political system, shining the light and holding those in power accountable. No one can accuse them of not doing their job – finally, now that it won’t help Trump. But on another level, the two lines of attack also serve to soften up public opinion, start constructing the necessary narrative, and prepare the country for the inevitable change of guard at the top, much sooner rather than later, as would normally be expected.”
Anything disposable eventually will be thrown out.
LEFTWING THUGS HAVE NEVER BEEN FRIENDS OF THE FREE PRESS: Portland MSM Shocked When Antifa Attacks Them for Covering Armed Takeover. Mike Strickland and Andy Ngo Say Told Ya So.
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