Giles Tremlett, The International Brigades

See, Giles Tremlett, The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War.

Victor Davis Hanson for Hillsdale College (VIDEO)

Here's his book, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America.

And the video:

Why the U.S. Military Isn't Ready for Civil War

A huge platter of food for thought.

At Foreign Policy, "Why the U.S. Military Isn’t Ready for Civil War":

The unimaginable has become reality in the United States. Buffoonish mobs desecrating the U.S. Capitol building, tanks parading down the streets of Washington, running battles between protesters and militias, armed rebels attempting to kidnap sitting governors, uncertainty about the peaceful transition of power—if you read about them in another country, you would think a civil war had already begun. The basic truth is the United States might be on the brink of such a war today. Americans must now take the proposition seriously, not just as a political warning but as a probable military scenario—and a potential catastrophe.

The United States, of course, is not just any country—it is the world’s most enduring democracy and largest economy. But ever fewer Americans believe its size and power are going to save it anymore. In the aftermath of former President Donald Trump’s election, Thomas E. Ricks for Foreign Policy asked a group of national security experts to assess the chances of a civil war over the next 10 to 15 years. The consensus stood at 35 percent. A 2019 poll from Georgetown University asked registered voters how close to the “edge of a civil war” the country was, on a scale from 0 to 100. The mean of their answers was 67.23, so almost exactly two-thirds of the way.

There are plenty of reasons to trust this assessment. The United States, as is stands, is a textbook case of a country on the brink of civil conflict. The political system has been completely overwhelmed by hyperpartisanship that renders each political decision, at best, representative of the will of only half the country. The legal system is increasingly a spoil of political infighting. The Oath Keepers, one of the largest anti-government militias, have effectively infiltrated police forces and the Republican Party. Elected officials have opened the doors to vandals who desecrate their own legislatures. It has now become perfectly normal for political representatives to call for acts of violence against their political opponents. “When do we get to use the guns?” is an acceptable question at right-wing rallies. Political violence is on the rise, and the response of the courts has been to legitimize vigilantism—see the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse.

Only a spark is needed, one major domestic terrorist event that shifts the perception of the country—an anti-government patriot who takes his rage against the federal authority and finds expression in flying a drone loaded with explosives into the Capitol dome or a sheriff who decides to take up arms to defend the doctrine of interposition. It’s even possible, though unlikely, that a left-wing rejection of the police, like the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle, might force military action. Retired U.S. Army Col. Peter Mansoor, a professor of military history at the Ohio State University, is a veteran of the Iraq War who now studies the insurgencies of the past. He doesn’t have any difficulty picturing a contemporary U.S. equivalent to civil wars elsewhere. “It would not be like the first Civil War, with armies maneuvering on the battlefield,” he said. “I think it would very much be a free-for-all, neighbor on neighbor, based on beliefs and skin colors and religion. And it would be horrific.”

For the U.S. government, an outbreak of widespread political violence inside the country’s borders would necessarily become a military operation. U.S. militias are significant enough that the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security would simply be insufficient to deal with them. Only the U.S. military could be capable of dealing with insurgent forces. And from a tactical point of view, any engagement between U.S. forces and a militia (or any insurgent force of any kind for that matter) would be entirely one-sided. Despite the preparations of right-wing militias, and despite the sheer number of weapons available in the United States, the U.S. Marines are still the U.S. Marines. No militia or organized group of militias could compete with them in battle.

The real problems would be legal and bureaucratic, and these problems, in turn, would quickly take on a military character. The U.S. military isn’t culturally or institutionally designed to be an adequate domestic actor—rather, the opposite. Its role in American life has been specifically designed to make it ineffective in domestic operations. The use of the military would not be, in itself, a constitutional crisis; there are legal precedents and explicit executive orders governing the use of military force on U.S. soil. But any military response to civil unrest is highly likely to spin out of control into extended insurgency. And for all the U.S. military’s prowess, the outcome would be entirely uncertain.

Occupying forces in foreign countries are, almost without exception, seen as illegitimate by local populations. Would a U.S. force on U.S. soil face the same fundamental resistance? American forces would, after all, be American. But the United States is not like other countries. It was born in resistance to government. Its history has been filled with state resistance to federal authority. And it has experienced resistance to occupation by its own forces before. The United States currently contains a diverse assortment of anti-government movements, from groups that are little more than survivalist hobbyists to neo-Nazi accelerationists and sovereign citizens. They are armed; several members of these groups have been caught with the materials needed to build low-grade nuclear weapons. A significant portion of the American public is actively pursuing the destruction of political authority as such. What happens if they continue to enact their stated goals of overthrowing the federal government and imposing their vision of liberty by force of arms, as the events of Jan. 6, 2021, have shown they are already beginning to do?

Joint Publication 3-27 defines the armed forces’ role in homeland defense as protecting U.S. “sovereignty, territory, domestic population, and critical infrastructure against external threats and aggression or other threats, as directed by the President.” So which is it? Is the Army there to protect against “external threats”? Or is the category of “other threats” broad enough to include rebel militias?

The Insurrection Act stipulates the latter. Originally enacted in 1807, it provides for the suppression of an insurrection against a state government at the request of the governor. There is also Section 253 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which allows the president to use the armed forces to suppress insurrection or domestic violence if it (1) hinders the execution of the laws to the extent that a part or class of citizens are deprived of constitutional rights and the state is unable or refuses to protect those rights or (2) obstructs the execution of any federal law or impedes the course of justice under federal laws. There is precedent for such direct engagement: Reconstruction of the South after the Civil War; President Dwight D. Eisenhower calling troops into Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957 to enforce desegregation; the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

But the rules of force issued to the 7th Infantry Division during the Los Angeles riots specified minimum levels of force in response to levels of civilian violence. Today’s political violence threatens to be far more organized. The question is, what would happen if the U.S. military were obliged to respond in kind? ....

*****

Sixty years of U.S. experience has taught the same lesson about counterinsurgency: If you lose, you lose. If you win, you still lose. At present, the official U.S. counterinsurgency, or COIN, strategy remains a version of Petraeus’s 2006 “clear, hold, and build” strategy. In the current edition of Joint Publication 3-24, which provides the U.S. military with a doctrine for counterinsurgency operations, it is outlined as “shape, clear, hold, build, and transition,” part of a suite of COIN strategies that include the generational approach (engaging with youth who are most likely to join insurgencies) and network engagement (through social media). All of these strategies have the smack of desperation in their operating modes. The military holds on to these strategies because at least they are strategies, not because they work. For decades, the U.S. military has been defined by its ineffectiveness against insurgencies in foreign countries. Why would it do any better at home?

The central problem is that it is impossible to build legitimacy as an occupier; the process of holding, even with the best of intentions, is humiliating and disruptive. The illegitimacy of any occupying force—the French in Algeria and Indochina, the Russians in Afghanistan, the British everywhere—would meet greater opposition than ever in an American-on-American context. The defiance begins in a claim to the illegitimacy of federal authority. If you are occupying an anti-government patriot stronghold, any state-building, of any kind, will be forced. The locals don’t want government. That’s the point. But how could any force “address the underlying causes of violence,” as JP 3-24 states, without the machinery of legitimization?

You don’t have to look very far to find an example of a failed occupation on U.S. soil. The South, under Reconstruction, spawned the Ku Klux Klan, Red Shirts, and White League—terrorist organizations that beleaguered the Northern administration until it abandoned the project of reconciliation. The resentment of the occupation after the Civil War survives to this day. Many in the South have not forgotten the abuses of Sherman’s March to the Sea, nor forgiven the Northern authorities for the humiliation of subjugation. The occupied Americans hated the occupying Americans. That hatred endures.

It’s in the nature of insurgent conflict that violence builds on itself. Symbolic horrors echo. Resonance compounds. The most recent COIN manual has digested, or at least acknowledged, the problem of perception. Insurgencies and counterinsurgencies are engaged in competitive storytelling. “Insurgent groups harness narratives to communicate grievances, goals, and justifications for actions to both internal and external audiences,” JP 3-24 reads. “Insurgency narratives have three elements or components: actors and the environments in which they operate, events along a temporal continuum, and causality—cause and effect relative to the first two elements.” The key word here is “audiences.” And how good can any military force be at playing to audiences?

The tactical considerations of battles between the U.S. military and any domestic militia forces would be completely irrelevant. No one with any tactical expertise can imagine anything other than a one-sided engagement. Professional military forces are professional...

RTWT. 

Stephen Marche, The Next Civil War

At Amazon, Stephen Marche, The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future.

Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering

At Amazon, Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering.

Allen Guelzo, Robert E. Lee

At Amazon, Allen Guelzo, Robert E. Lee: A Life.

Dad and His Beautiful Daughter Go Viral in Video Rebutting 'Critical Race Theory'

So cool. 

What a wonderful little cutie.

At Pajamas, "THIS Is How You Handle the Race-Hustlers," and Fox News, "Dad-daughter duo go viral with video rejecting critical race theory: 'Your skin color does not matter': Kory Yeshua tells 'Fox & Friends' why he pushed back on CRT in daughter's school":

One of the best videos opposing Critical Race Theory that you’ll ever see. 👏🏼🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/cXOfheV0kJ

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) June 1, 2021

Substack! Holy Crap!

This blows my mind. 

My tweets are set to private, but in response to Steven Perlberg's tweet, linking his Business Insider piece (which is behind a paywall, of course), I quote-tweeted: 

.@MelissaTweets Elizabeth Bruenig's a freakin' self-declared communist? Did she take the 100 percent boost in pay? Or did she decline on principle? Can't say, because the article's behind a paywall, hence, capitalism. I can't even. *Man facepalming.*

Now, while you probably can't read the article to which Perlberg is linking, it turns out Mediaite did read it, and they've written up a piece that reveals the mind-blowing information. See, "Substack Offered NYT Reporter Taylor Lorenz $300,000: Report." 

Now that's why I yelled holy crap! when I saw that headline. You may not recall, but Ms. Lorenz is a very bad terrible person, and Tucker Carlson called her out a few weeks back, and it was glorious. But I knew how bad and terrible a person she was long ago, because, for one reason, she's been an awful no-good person for a long time, and Robert Stacy McCain wrote about her years ago, after Ms. Lorenz doxxed Pamela "Atlas Shrugged" Geller's daughters. You can't make this stuff up. (And Ms. Lorenz has of late been accused of stalking teenagers for inside interviews without the kids' parents permission, she's that bad.)

But no! She's getting offered a $300,000 advance to quite the Old Gray Lady and start her own newsletter? Well, I guess you gotta love free-market competition, which is why the New York Times is so freaked and has basically declared all-out war on the newsletter hosting platform, and this Sulzberger fellow, the publisher (or at least he used to be), is putting up some big bucks to go after top talent (some at Substack!) and have his own "by-line" bigwig writers up their game to meet the challenges of the day. Hoo boy, this is interesting.

At NYT, "Why We’re Freaking Out About Substack":

Danny Lavery had just agreed to a two-year, $430,000 contract with the newsletter platform Substack when I met him for coffee last week in Brooklyn, and he was deciding what to do with the money.

“I think the thing that I’m the most looking forward to about this is to start a retirement account,” said Mr. Lavery, who founded the feminist humor blog The Toast and will be giving up an advice column in Slate.

Mr. Lavery already has about 1,800 paying subscribers to his Substack newsletter, The Shatner Chatner, whose most popular piece is written from the perspective of a goose. Annual subscriptions cost $50.

The contract is structured a bit like a book advance: Substack’s bet is that it will make back its money by taking most of Mr. Lavery’s subscription income for those two years. The deal now means Mr. Lavery’s household has two Substack incomes. His wife, Grace Lavery, an associate English professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who edits the Transgender Studies Quarterly, had already signed on for a $125,000 advance.

Along with the revenue the Laverys will bring in, the move is good media politics for the company. Substack has been facing a mutiny from a group of writers who objected to sharing the platform with people who they said were anti-transgender, including a writer who made fun of people’s appearances on a dating app. Signing up two high-profile transgender writers was a signal that Substack was trying to remain a platform for people who sometimes hate one another, and who sometimes, like Dr. Lavery, heatedly criticize the company.

Feuds among and about Substack writers were a major category of media drama during the pandemic winter — a lot of drama for a company that mostly just makes it easy to email large groups for free. For those who want to charge subscribers on their email list, Substack takes a 10 percent fee. “The mindshare Substack has in media right now is insane,” said Casey Newton, who left The Verge to start a newsletter on Substack called Platformer. Substack, he said, has become a target for “a lot of people to project their anxieties.”

Substack has captivated an anxious industry because it embodies larger forces and contradictions. For one, the new media economy promises both to make some writers rich and to turn others into the content-creation equivalent of Uber drivers, even as journalists turn increasingly to labor unions to level out pay scales.

This new direct-to-consumer media also means that battles over the boundaries of acceptable views and the ensuing arguments about “cancel culture” — for instance, in New York Magazine’s firing of Andrew Sullivan — are no longer the kind of devastating career blows they once were. (Only Twitter retains that power.) Big media cancellation is often an offramp to a bigger income. Though Substack paid advances to a few dozen writers, most are simply making money from readers. That includes most of the top figures on the platform, who make seven-figure sums from more than 10,000 paying subscribers — among them Mr. Sullivan, the liberal historian Heather Cox Richardson, and the confrontational libertarian Glenn Greenwald.

This new ability of individuals to make a living directly from their audiences isn’t just transforming journalism. It’s also been the case for adult performers on OnlyFans, musicians on Patreon, B-list celebrities on Cameo. In Hollywood, too, power has migrated toward talent, whether it’s marquee showrunners or actors. This power shift is a major headache for big institutions, from The New York Times to record labels. And Silicon Valley investors, eager to disrupt and angry at their portrayal in big media, have been gleefully backing it. Substack embodies this cultural shift, but it’s riding the wave, not creating it.

And despite a handful of departures over politics, that wave is growing for Substack. The writers moving there full time in recent days include not just Mr. Lavery, but also the former Yahoo News White House correspondent Hunter Walker, the legal writer David Lat and the columnist Heather Havrilesky, who told me she will be taking Ask Polly from New York Magazine to “regain some of the indie spirit and sense of freedom that drew me to want to write online in the first place.”

(Speaking of that spirit: Bustle Digital Group confirmed to me that it’s reviving the legendary blog Gawker under a former Gawker writer, Leah Finnegan.)

And a New York Times opinion writer, Charlie Warzel, is departing to start a publication on Substack called Galaxy Brain. (Substack has courted a number of Times writers. I turned down an offer of an advance well above my Times salary, in part because of the editing and the platform The Times gives me, and in part because I didn’t think I’d make it back — media types often overvalue media writers.)

The Times wouldn’t comment on his move, but is among the media companies trying to develop its own answer to Substack and recently brought the columnist Paul Krugman’s free Substack newsletter to the Times platform. And newsrooms can offer all sorts of support that solo writers don’t get. Jessica Lessin, the founder and editor in chief of The Information, a newsletter-centric Silicon Valley subscription publication, said part of its edge was “sophisticated marketing around acquiring and retaining subscribers.”

Substack’s thesis is, in part, that media companies underpay their most prominent writers. So far, that seems to be bearing out. Mr. Warzel isn’t taking an advance, and many of the writers who took advances now regret doing so: They would have made more money by simply collecting subscription revenue, and paying Substack 10 percent, than making the more complex deals with money up front.

The former Vox writer Matthew Yglesias calculated that taking the advance wound up costing him nearly $400,000 in subscription revenue paid to Substack. The writer Roxane Gay told me she earned back her advance within two months of starting The Audacity ($60 a year) with an audience of 36,000, about 20 percent of them paying. She also wrestles with what she sees as Substack “trying to have it both ways” as a neutral platform and a publisher that supports writers she finds “odious,” she said, but has concluded that her dislike of someone’s work is “not enough for them to not be allowed on the platform.”

Isaac Saul, who told me his nonpartisan political newsletter Tangle brought in $190,000 in its first year, wrote recently that he came to Substack “specifically to avoid being associated with anyone else” after being frustrated by readers’ assumptions about his biases when he worked for HuffPost...

 

Tucker Carlson and Mark Steyn (VIDEO)

I'm going to be busy and tired today, as I'm swamped with grading. 

On most days, at least at this point in the semester, and given what's happening at home, I don't get to watch much news. I am watching "Outnumbered" right now, though, which is really the only other Fox News show that I can watch, or well at least for now, as the network's changed a lot of its programming, and I need to sample more of it, so I'll know more about that later. 

In any case, I did get to watch Tucker last night, but it took me until after 7:00pm pacific time to finish it, due to all the home stuff mentioned above (though I did take a nap in the mid-afternoon, and that's because I've been getting little sleep due to all the things mentioned here, and that's not good for my health, but no worries, because I have a good doctor, and I have anxiety meds I can take as needed; and I haven't needed them much, because I have a plan and schedule that I'm [pretty much] able to keep, so that keeps me busy and my mind off all the things that make me want to take my meds in the first place.)

Jonathan Turley's been on Tucker's this week already, but he was on some Fox show yesterday, and that video's here, "Evidence was overwhelming in Derek Chauvin case, jury got it right: Turley."

Here's Tucker and Steyn, the later of whom is even more hilarious than Tucker, and hopefully he gets his own show too, as he not only deserves, but we do, sheesh. *Eye-roll.*

Tucker's full opening segment from last night is here, "Tucker: Political leaders took advantage of George Floyd's death."

And here's some Amazon shopping links, "Best Selling Products" and more here.

Have a good day! 

New York Parent Andrew Guttman Pulls Daughter from Elite Brearley Private Academy, and His Scathing Letter Has Gone Viral (VIDEO)

Tucker Carlson read the guy's letter on last night's show (video below). 

It turns out parent Andrew Guttman published an open letter at Bari Weiss' page slamming pretty much everybody over at Brearley, an elite private school in Manhattan. His daughter's been attending the school for seven years, for good reason, as apparently the school's got creds, with such folks as Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, having attended there, and with media elites like Drew Barrymore and Tiny Fey sending their daughters to the school as well. 

I think all of those working on these issues --- or suffering through them --- feel as though the tide is turning, although I'm skeptical, as it's not just a few New York private schools we're talking about here, but virtually the entire U.S. educational establishment, public and private schools, colleges, and universities all, that's been infected by this evil --- honestly, diabolical --- ideological "teaching" agenda. 

And "suffer" might not be a strong enough word: Remember Ms. Jodi Shaw was fired from her position at Smith College, after months of uproar at the school over bogus claims of "racism," and then with Ms. Shaw's own travails in taking a principled position standing up to the powers that be there, who are still there, and not Ms. Shaw; and said powers, especially the president of that school, Kathleen McCartney, have never made amends to, much less apologized for anything (or not that I'm aware of), the staff at that campus who endured the abuse of whatever totally privileged black (international) woman student who made all the accusations that further inflamed an apparently already hostile climate up there in Northampton, Massachusetts.

And a brave and courageous teacher at Grace Church High School, also in Manhattan, was "relieved of his duties" this week, after he published an earlier piece at Ms. Weiss' Substack page, and the ghouls at Grace weren't pleased, but up until now, it looks like, have been not so thrilled about the "critical race theory" pedagogy then working its way over to that campus, after nearly burning down others similarly overrun campuses that have been destroyed by this wicked and evil "antiracist" shame of a "woke" teaching and learning curriculum.  

The New York Post has the story of Mr. Guttman and his daugher, and read the letter at Ms Weiss' page, "You Have to Read This Letter":

April 13, 2021

Dear Fellow Brearley Parents,

Our family recently made the decision not to reenroll our daughter at Brearley for the 2021-22 school year. She has been at Brearley for seven years, beginning in kindergarten. In short, we no longer believe that Brearley’s administration and Board of Trustees have any of our children’s best interests at heart. Moreover, we no longer have confidence that our daughter will receive the quality of education necessary to further her development into a critically thinking, responsible, enlightened, and civic minded adult. I write to you, as a fellow parent, to share our reasons for leaving the Brearley community but also to urge you to act before the damage to the school, to its community, and to your own child's education is irreparable.

It cannot be stated strongly enough that Brearley’s obsession with race must stop. It should be abundantly clear to any thinking parent that Brearley has completely lost its way. The administration and the Board of Trustees have displayed a cowardly and appalling lack of leadership by appeasing an anti-intellectual, illiberal mob, and then allowing the school to be captured by that same mob. What follows are my own personal views on Brearley's antiracism initiatives, but these are just a handful of the criticisms that I know other parents have expressed.

I object to the view that I should be judged by the color of my skin. I cannot tolerate a school that not only judges my daughter by the color of her skin, but encourages and instructs her to prejudge others by theirs. By viewing every element of education, every aspect of history, and every facet of society through the lens of skin color and race, we are desecrating the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and utterly violating the movement for which such civil rights leaders believed, fought, and died.

I object to the charge of systemic racism in this country, and at our school. Systemic racism, properly understood, is segregated schools and separate lunch counters. It is the interning of Japanese and the exterminating of Jews. Systemic racism is unequivocally not a small number of isolated incidences over a period of decades. Ask any girl, of any race, if they have ever experienced insults from friends, have ever felt slighted by teachers or have ever suffered the occasional injustice from a school at which they have spent up to 13 years of their life, and you are bound to hear grievances, some petty, some not. We have not had systemic racism against Blacks in this country since the civil rights reforms of the 1960s, a period of more than 50 years. To state otherwise is a flat-out misrepresentation of our country's history and adds no understanding to any of today's societal issues. If anything, longstanding and widespread policies such as affirmative action, point in precisely the opposite direction.

I object to a definition of systemic racism, apparently supported by Brearley, that any educational, professional, or societal outcome where Blacks are underrepresented is prima facie evidence of the aforementioned systemic racism, or of white supremacy and oppression. Facile and unsupported beliefs such as these are the polar opposite to the intellectual and scientific truth for which Brearley claims to stand. Furthermore, I call bullshit on Brearley's oft-stated assertion that the school welcomes and encourages the truly difficult and uncomfortable conversations regarding race and the roots of racial discrepancies.

I object to the idea that Blacks are unable to succeed in this country without aid from government or from whites. Brearley, by adopting critical race theory, is advocating the abhorrent viewpoint that Blacks should forever be regarded as helpless victims, and are incapable of success regardless of their skills, talents, or hard work. What Brearley is teaching our children is precisely the true and correct definition of racism.

I object to mandatory anti-racism training for parents, especially when presented by the rent-seeking charlatans of Pollyanna. These sessions, in both their content and delivery, are so sophomoric and simplistic, so unsophisticated and inane, that I would be embarrassed if they were taught to Brearley kindergarteners. They are an insult to parents and unbecoming of any educational institution, let alone one of Brearley's caliber.

I object to Brearley’s vacuous, inappropriate, and fanatical use of words such as “equity,” “diversity” and “inclusiveness.” If Brearley’s administration was truly concerned about so-called “equity,” it would be discussing the cessation of admissions preferences for legacies, siblings, and those families with especially deep pockets. If the administration was genuinely serious about “diversity,” it would not insist on the indoctrination of its students, and their families, to a single mindset, most reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Instead, the school would foster an environment of intellectual openness and freedom of thought. And if Brearley really cared about “inclusiveness,” the school would return to the concepts encapsulated in the motto “One Brearley,” instead of teaching the extraordinarily divisive idea that there are only, and always, two groups in this country: victims and oppressors.

l object to Brearley’s advocacy for groups and movements such as Black Lives Matter, a Marxist, anti family, heterophobic, anti-Asian and anti-Semitic organization that neither speaks for the majority of the Black community in this country, nor in any way, shape or form, represents their best interests.

I object to, as we have been told time and time again over the past year, that the school’s first priority is the safety of our children. For goodness sake, Brearley is a school, not a hospital! The number one priority of a school has always been, and always will be, education. Brearley’s misguided priorities exemplify both the safety culture and “cover-your-ass” culture that together have proved so toxic to our society and have so damaged the mental health and resiliency of two generations of children, and counting.

I object to the gutting of the history, civics, and classical literature curriculums. I object to the censorship of books that have been taught for generations because they contain dated language potentially offensive to the thin-skinned and hypersensitive (something that has already happened in my daughter's 4th grade class). I object to the lowering of standards for the admission of students and for the hiring of teachers. I object to the erosion of rigor in classwork and the escalation of grade inflation. Any parent with eyes open can foresee these inevitabilities should antiracism initiatives be allowed to persist.

We have today in our country, from both political parties, and at all levels of government, the most unwise and unvirtuous leaders in our nation’s history. Schools like Brearley are supposed to be the training grounds for those leaders. Our nation will not survive a generation of leadership even more poorly educated than we have now, nor will we survive a generation of students taught to hate its own country and despise its history.

Lastly, I object, with as strong a sentiment as possible, that Brearley has begun to teach what to think, instead of how to think...

Hot damn! No wonder this thing's gone viral! 

Still more at the link, and a response at the letters to the editor at the New York Post.

New Capitol 'Attack' Investigative Report Released: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Indeed Called for Capitol Police to 'Stand Down', and the Feds 'Botched' Everything With Clueless Mixed-Messages and Incompetence (VIDEO)

Now, as you know by now, I do check out CBS This Morning when I can, and as noted previously, it's the only national morning show I can watch, because the others previously mentioned are so far to the loony left that, well, it's just impossible for me to even contemplate taking these goons seriously. 

And very interestingly here, CBS's investigative reporter is none other than former Fox News correspondent Catherine Herridge, who is freakin' good, and I'll bet she got a hefty pay raise to take the job at CBS; and, from what I've heard, Fox News already pays its reporters handsomely, so good for her for making bank AND still being able to report honestly on this blockbuster cluster of a situation (and CBS should be lauded for that). 

My long headline above pretty much includes all the relevant points I might expand on in the post here, but I just have to note that if anyone looks bad --- and all the relevant official parties in D.C. and in the federal government look bad, except for former President Trump, who indeed requested a full deployment to the Capitol building, as a "preemptive" measure to guarantee security there, so I can't see how anyone in the leftist media can still blame him (but they will) --- it's Mayor Bowser; but of course all of the "M.S.M." ghouls will certainly find a way to praise her, so just f*ck 'em, as they're the biggest asshole lying media hacks anywhere, even worse than those in the official state media of Communist China or the evil propagandists for Vladmir Putin's extremely repressive regime in Moscow, now basically murdering dissident Alex Navalny by imprisoning him and denying him healthcare, after he came down with some mysterious new and suspicious COVID-like symptoms; but don't worry, the Biden administration will indeed find a way to beat out these two murderously un-democratic monster regimes, and that really is really something, when you think about it. 

Watch: 

CBS This Morning had another literally bombshell report, with some interesting twists involving the correspondent in question, but as I hate to post from the same sources back-to-back all the time, I'll try to add some variety of posts later today, if I have the chance. Until then, thanks always for reading my humble blog.

Ms. Hostetter

I mentioned how once in a while the New York Times does "get it right," or nearabouts, which, as noted, is why I still read the paper (along with the L.A. Times) on most days. 

Now, I'm not saying this article is perfect, but it's pretty good --- and darned interesting --- as it's a story that literally "hits close to home," in the O.C. where I live, and where, actually, there are indeed a lot of crazy nut cases (and while I don't know if Ms. Hostetter is crazy, her husband sounds questionable, which adds to the intrigue here, so, well, that's it). 

At NYT, "A Teacher Marched to the Capitol. When She Got Home, the Fight Began":

Kristine Hostetter was a beloved fourth-grade teacher. Then came the pandemic, the election and the Jan. 6 riot in Washington.

SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. — Word got around when Kristine Hostetter was spotted at a public mask-burning at the San Clemente pier, and when she appeared in a video sitting onstage as her husband spoke at a QAnon convention. People talked when she angrily accosted a family wearing masks near a local surfing spot, her granddaughter in tow.

Even in San Clemente, a well-heeled redoubt of Southern California conservatism, Ms. Hostetter stood out for her vehement embrace of both the rebellion against Covid-19 restrictions and the stolen-election lies pushed by former President Donald J. Trump. This was, after all, a teacher so beloved that each summer parents jockeyed to get their children into her fourth-grade class.

But it was not until Ms. Hostetter’s husband posted a video of her marching down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol on Jan. 6 that her politics collided with an opposite force gaining momentum in San Clemente: a growing number of left-leaning parents and students who, in the wake of the civil-rights protests set off by the police killing of George Floyd, decided they would no longer countenance the right-wing tilt of their neighbors and the racism they said was commonplace.

That there was no evidence that Ms. Hostetter had displayed any overt racism was beside the point — to them, her pro-Trump views seemed self-evidently laced with white supremacy. So she became their cause.

First, a student group organized a petition demanding the school district investigate whether Ms. Hostetter, 54, had taken part in the attack on the Capitol, and whether her politics had crept into her teaching. Then, when the district complied and suspended her, a group of parents put up a counter petition.

“If the district starts disciplinary action based on people’s beliefs/politics, what’s next? Religious discrimination?” it warned.

Each petition attracted thousands of signatures, and San Clemente has spent the months since embroiled in the divisive politics of post-Trump America, wrestling with uncomfortable questions about the limits of free speech and whether Ms. Hostetter and those who share her views should be written off as conspiracy theorists and racists who have no place in public life, not to mention shaping young minds in a classroom.

It has not been a polite debate. Neighbors have taken to monitoring one another’s social media posts; some have infiltrated private Facebook groups to figure out who is with them and who is not — and they have the screenshots to prove it.

Even the local yoga community, where Ms. Hostetter’s husband was a fixture, has found itself divided.

“It goes deeper than just her. A lot of conversations between parents, between friends, have already been fractured by Trump, by the election, by Black Lives Matter,” said Cady Anderson, whose two children attend Ms. Hostetter’s school.

Ms. Hostetter, she added, “just brought it all home to us.”

Complicating matters is Ms. Hostetter’s relative silence. Apart from appearing at protests and the incident at the beach, she has said little publicly over the past year, and did not respond to repeated interview requests for this article. People have filled in the blanks.

To Ms. Hostetter’s backers, the entire affair is being overblown by an intolerant mob of woke liberals who have no respect for the privacy of someone’s personal politics. Yet Ms. Hostetter’s politics, while personal, are hardly private, and to those who have lined up against her, she is inextricably linked to her husband, Alan, who last year emerged as a rising star in Southern California’s resurgent far right.

An Army veteran and former police chief of La Habra, Calif., Mr. Hostetter was known around San Clemente as a yoga guru — his specialty is “sound healing” with gongs, Tibetan bowls and Aboriginal didgeridoos — until the pandemic turned him into a self-declared “patriotic warrior.” He gave up yoga and founded the American Phoenix Project, which says it arose as a result of “the fear-based tyranny of 2020 caused by manipulative officials at the highest levels of our government.”

Throughout the spring, summer and fall, the American Phoenix Project organized protests against Covid-related restrictions up and down Orange County, and Mr. Hostetter’s list of enemies grew: Black Lives Matter protesters. The election thieves. Cabals and conspiracies drawn from QAnon, the movement that claims Mr. Trump was secretly battling devil-worshiping Democrats and international financiers who abuse children.

By Jan. 5, Mr. Hostetter, 56, had graduated to the national stage, appearing with the former Trump adviser Roger Stone at a rally outside the Supreme Court.

His appearance there and the next day at the Capitol prompted some of San Clemente’s more liberal residents to make bumper stickers that read: “Alan Hostraitor.” It also led the F.B.I. to raid his apartment in early February, though he was not arrested or charged with any crime. (He, too, did not respond to interview requests.)

Ms. Hostetter was there every step of the way, raising money and filming her husband as he rallied supporters at protests. When the American Phoenix Project filed incorporation papers in December, she was identified as its chief financial officer.

The Teacher

Ms. Hostetter grew up in Orange County back when locals still joked about the “Orange Curtain” separating its conservative and overwhelmingly white towns from liberal and diverse Los Angeles to the north. In the late 1960s, Richard M. Nixon turned an oceanside villa in San Clemente into his presidential getaway, christening it La Casa Pacifica. John Wayne kept his prized yacht, Wild Goose, docked up the coast in Newport Beach.

“Orange County,” Ronald Reagan once declared, “is where the good Republicans go before they die.”

It also was where surfers and spiritual seekers met cold warriors and conspiracy theorists, where some of the conservative movement’s most virulently racist, anti-Semitic and paranoid offshoots went. In the 1960s, Orange County saw a surge in the popularity of the John Birch Society, an anti-communist organization that in many ways presaged the rise of QAnon. In the 1980s, its surf spots became a magnet for neo-Nazis and skinheads. And in 2020, the onset of the pandemic produced a new generation of Orange County extremists.

If Ms. Hostetter had any strong political leanings before last year, she did not let on, said her niece, Emma Hall. She only picked up the first hint of her aunt’s rightward drift at small party to celebrate the Hostetters’ wedding in 2016.

“There were about six people, friends of theirs, that did not let up asking me if I was going to vote for Trump,” recalled Ms. Hall’s husband, Ryan.

Neither of the Halls gave it much thought. Ms. Hostetter seemed happy, and her new husband exuded the laid-back charm that typifies a certain kind of Southern California man in the American imagination...

More later.

 

The 'Woke' New Appeal of Totalitarianism

I don't know Roger Kimball, the bow-tie-wearing editor of the New Criterion (which I do not read), and the editor (publisher?) of Encounter Books.

But his essay today is quite good, and it's interesting to me, because I could've written it myself. I've been saying the exact same things all semester, in my (at least) twice-weekly "all class" announcements, where I sometimes add an "optional" section below the "all business" section that starts my messages, and then I offer some of my own (humble) thoughts on the news of the day --- providing links to books, as needed --- and if students read those or not, I tell them, it doesn't matter much to me, because, I also tell them, they are "free to choose" what's best for themselves; and they might not care one whit what I might have to say on the bloody, horrific violence, mayhem, and organized "mainstream" media hypocrisy that's very likely propelling us to a new --- and very "hot" --- civil war, not a "cold war," which is probably what we've been in since the 1970s, in the aftermath of the mayhem and murder inflicted back during the 1960s, care of the "Destructive Generation" that grew out of the "rights revolution" of the era, and especially the "antiwar" movement that arose in opposition to the alleged U.S. "imperialist" war in Vietnam (which was, actually, a war of the most vital national security interests), and one that's a shame we lost, as I doubt Vietnam today is anywhere near as successful, as, say, South Korea, which was not "unified" by the force of arms of both Chinese and Soviet military power.

All that said, just read Kimball, who, although he can't stomach baseball (which is strange to me, indeed), is a good guy, and a darned good thinker and writer.

At American Greatness, "The Appeal of the New Totalitarians":

It’s easy to understand and reject the horrors of totalitarianism. It is much less easy to grasp its inexorable logic or its seemingly implacable attractions.

I am not a follower or a fan of baseball. But I understand that it is, or has been, an important national pastime, beloved by many, not least, as Andrew McCarthy observes in a recent column, because it offered its acolytes a respite or oasis from politics, an arena where our differences of opinion could be redeemed or at least temporarily forgotten in the benign if intense partisanship of fandom.

It is for this reason that, impervious though I am to the charms of the sport, I regard with disdain the decision on the part of the woke commissars who run Major League Baseball to abandon Atlanta, Georgia. The reason they gave was that Georgia had passed new voter rights legislation requiring, among other things, that voters present valid identification in order to be eligible to vote. They called that a violation of “fair access to voting” when in fact it is legislation, very similar to that in effect in many other states, whose chief effect will be to make elections fairer. You need an ID to board a plane, check into a hotel, enter most urban businesses, but not to vote?

I see that Delta Airlines has also joined the woke brigade by taking a public stand against the Georgia legislation. How will the airline respond if you refuse to show a valid identification before boarding? (After Delta finished with its woke high horse, American Airlines borrowed it to present its own little exhibition of politically correct grandstanding with respect to similar legislation in Texas.)

This is all just business as usual in what more and more seems like the twilight of the republic. The cultural critic Stephen Soukup has anatomized the phenomenon in a new book that we just published at Encounter called The Dictatorship of Woke Capital: How Political Correctness Captured Big Business. Quite apart from its illuminating historical analysis, the book is a plea to turn away from the politicization of everything that stands behind such phenomena as sports concessions and airlines—to say nothing of Hollywood, the media, and the fount of it all, academia—insinuating politics into every dimension of life. “The choice here,” Soukup writes in his conclusion, “is simple.”

If we, as a civilization allow even the spirit of capitalism to become part of “the political” and part of the total state, then we will have order—for however long that lasts. If we resist the politicization of business and of capital markets, however; if we determine for ourselves that disorder and depoliticization are the preferable options, then we not only preserve liberty but also preserve the spirit of innovation and expression that harnesses liberty to create wealth and prosperity. I think Soukup is correct, and his analysis of the way the totalizing process of the politicization of everything has proceeded in other situations should give us all pause.

Political correctness has always had a silly as well as a minatory side. The silly side is evident in its juvenile narcissism. It is so obviously a product of a rich and leisured society that it is hard to take its antics seriously. There is a reason that it had its origins in the academy. Those privileged eyries could afford to allow their charges to prance around whining about how oppressed or “triggered” or offended they were since they occupied the coddled purlieus of a place apart—apart from the serious business of everyday life and in this country, anyway, apart from the less forgiving imperatives of genuine want...

Later, I'll write a full post linking this new book from Soukup, of which and whom I was unaware, but appears to be a real winner, and, obviously, reflects back well on Mr. Kimball.

And I should have more blogging tonight, or tomorrow, so thanks again for reading. 

Plus, there's still more of the American Greatness piece at the link.

 

Jack Phillips Said 'No', Again

This is a really excellent piece, and hits so close to the bone, it's almost too good.

From Bill McGurn, at WSJ, "The Christian Baker Who Said ‘No’":  

Jack Phillips is America’s most famous baker. People have taken him all the way to the Supreme Court in hopes of getting it to force him to bake them one of his custom cakes. This week he’s back in the dock, again defending his refusal to bake a custom cake with a message he says goes against his Christian faith.

Mr. Phillips owns Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colo., and holds traditional views on marriage and sexuality. The first legal action against him came via the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, when in 2012 he declined to bake a custom cake for a same-sex wedding and found himself accused of unlawful discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This time he’s being sued because he wouldn’t bake a cake celebrating a gender transition.

“Jack is being targeted for his religious beliefs,” says Kristen Waggoner, general counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, who defended Mr. Phillips in his first case and continues to represent him. “His opponents are weaponizing the law to punish and destroy him because he won’t create expression that violates his Christian faith. They want to make the law an arm of cancel culture.”

In the first go-round, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2018), the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 for Mr. Phillips. But it did so narrowly, on grounds that the commission had displayed “clear and impermissible hostility” to Mr. Phillips’s religious beliefs. (One commissioner compared Mr. Phillips’s invocation of his Christian beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust.) The court left unresolved the key constitutional question: Can the government compel people to create speech or artistic expressions to which they profoundly object?

The latest trial started Monday in Colorado state court. It dates to 2017, when Autumn Scardina called Mr. Phillips’s shop. She requested a custom cake—pink on the inside, blue on the outside—reflecting her gender transition. When the shop refused, she complained to the commission.

The commission pursued the case but dropped it in 2019 after Mr. Phillips filed a federal lawsuit against the state. Ms. Scardina then filed her own suit. Given that Mr. Phillips has already lost 40% of his business because he has stopped making his signature custom wedding cakes, these suits are plainly aimed at harassing him into submission.

A 2017 New York Times profile opened with this lead: “Jack Phillips bakes beautiful cakes, and it is not a stretch to call him an artist.” As an artist, he argues that his custom cakes are speech, and that he shouldn’t be compelled to create cakes with messages he deeply objects to.

In her court filing, Ms. Scardina says she asked for a birthday cake, not a cake celebrating her transition, and accuses Mr. Phillips of refusing her because she is transgender. But her story has shifted. In her original complaint to the commission, she wrote that she’d told the bakery the design was “intended for the celebration of my transition from male to female.”

After Masterpiece turned down this cake, Ms. Scardina called to request another. This one would feature Satan smoking a joint. Mr. Phillips declined, again because of the message...

Still more at that top link, and I do hope and pray Mr. Phillips prevails again in court, even if, once again, it goes to the Supremes.

 

David Horowitz, The Enemy Within

Due out April 6th, at Amazon, David Horowitz, The Enemy Within: How a Totalitarian Movement is Destroying America. 

Well, That Didn't Take Long: Sharon Osbourne Out at 'The Talk' as Unhinged Leftists Claim Another Scalp Over Imaginary Racism (VIDEO)

So, my wife was on target, naturally. 

Sharon Osbourne is definitely out at "The Talk," and just one quick search for "Sharon Osbourne" on Twitter gives you a glimpse into the radical --- and so "pure" --- left's utter ideological fury over the audacity that this woman might actually stand up for something, that thing being, er, the truth.

Here's my earlier entry, "'The Talk' Extends Hiatus After Sharon Osbourne's 'Controversial' Defense of Friend Piers Morgan (VIDEO)."

And now at OK Magazine, with, what looks like, a bit of actual news on some likely nasty litigation to be forthcoming: "CBS Will Reportedly Have to Pay Sharon Osbourne a 'Sizeable Settlement to Keep Her Quiet' Amid 'The Talk' Investigation." Also, "'It's All Out of Control': Sharon Osbourne 'Not Expected to Return' to 'The Talk' After Shocking On-Air Meltdown, Says Source."

It wasn't a "shocking on-air meltdown." 

Indeed, Ms. Osbourne was freakin' ambushed, and she's right to claim she was set up, for whatever reason, the most likely being that this black race-mongering beatdown queen, Sheryl Underwood, came to the taping all ready to go for the big "you be racist!" backstab --- and the rest is history, or it will be, once we get more on the true juicy details of exactly how this degenerate bull came down.

The kicker is this Don Lemon segment at CNN from the other night (below), which I did not see in real time, in which he "discusses" how "calm" was Ms. Underwood in responding to the "privileged Ms. Osbourne, who shoulda just sucked it up. And further, neither has the "brother" Mr. Lemon, nor the "I ain't never seen no white person who wasn't no racist cracka" Ms. Hill, accepted Ms. Osbourne's apology, which I had not seen until today; and they claimed Osbourne's mea culpa wasn't "really" addressing" the "underlying" issue, which is that if muthaf*ckin' black folks call you out for your "enabling" of alleged "racist" treatment of "people of color" (and a "coloured" royal, no less), then you best be shuttin' the f*ck up, bitch.

And don't forget, Ms Hill was first suspended at then basically fired from  --- after a year of turmoil, and with Ms. Hill brokering some kind of "settlement," er, payoff --- ESPN, after she basically attacked Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones (on Twitter, of course) as the second coming of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. 

And this lady's been bad news for a long time. See the Washington Examiner, for example, "Lessons from Trader Jose and Jemele Hill: Calling everything racist is a really bad way to fight racism."

I'm am done.

I can barely get through Wolf Blitzer's "The Situation Room" anymore, and if I continue to watch the network, it's going to be just to monitor how low Zucker's FUBAR programming will go down the hole of despicable and hysterically deranged leftist racial paranoia (and obvious pro-Biden/Dem "white supremacist" propaganda).

Oh brother, Sharon Osbourne should just turn the tables and retort, "Bitch Better Have My Money." (*Eyes rolling into the back of my head.*)

Blockbuster Maria Bartiromo Opening Segment on Fox News' 'Prime Time' (VIDEO)

I was busy yesterday, but I did catch this opening segment with the fabulous, and most beautiful, Italian-American, Maria Bartiromo. 

Just great stuff, and I hope more and more folks hear, and heed, her message, and shout about these very threatened notions of "liberty" and "opportunity" in the U.S. today, "from the rooftops."

Watch:

Media's Entire Georgia Narrative Is Fraudulent, Not Just The Fabricated Trump Quotes

It's Mollie Hemingway, at the Federalist. 

She's day in and day out, a one-woman wrecking-crew demolishing the endless lies streaming from all the hate-addled (and despicable) leftist media outlets, be they print, broadcast, cable, or whatever. I'm glad she's on our side. 

She's the author, most prominently, of Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court, but also, Trump vs. the Media (Encounter Broadsides Book 51).

Also, my apologies for the light blogging today, but the pace of posting should pick up a bit over the next couple of days, and into the weekend.

Be well. 

The Los Angeles Times Hails Biden as the New 'F.D.R.'; Meanwhile, 'China Joe' Lies About His Administration's Vaccine Rollout (VIDEO)

Again, you have to go to Duck Duck Go to find any decent conservative videos, especially for Tucker Carlson (and I don't know why Fox doesn't upload more of them, except to say, maybe they're afraid they'll lose even more audience share, despite Tucker's continuing killer ratings metrics). 

And if you missed it, you gotta watch Tucker's interview with Alex Berenson from Wednesday night, which was just amazing, "Tucker Carlson Tonight 2-10-21 Alex Berenson."

But don't miss it! The Los Angeles Times has found its new "New Dealer" in the 78-year-old mumbo-jumbo "China Joe."

See, "Biden’s early win on COVID-19 relief could be hard to repeat. Or he could be FDR":

WASHINGTON — President Biden’s first big legislative victory, the $1.9-trillion package he calls the American Rescue Plan, squeaked through an evenly divided Senate by the narrowest of margins, along party lines, foreshadowing the challenges ahead for his other priorities — on infrastructure, voting rights, immigration and climate change.

But the accomplishment — and the potential economic and public health impact of the wide-ranging relief program — could also mark a big step toward Biden fulfilling his Rooseveltian ambitions.

“This is going to be the biggest legislation affecting social and economic justice in decades, and it’s been achieved in the early days of an administration,” said Bob Shrum, a longtime Democratic operative.

Building on this early success won’t be easy, given Democrats’ razor-thin Senate and House majorities and the nation’s deep partisan divisions. Few of the president’s other policy initiatives are likely to be as broadly popular as combating a painful year-old pandemic. But his first 50 days have given Democrats reason to believe that the experienced, grandfatherly Biden is well-suited to capitalize on the opportunities opened up by the confluence of twin health and economic crises and a divided, distracted opposition party.

“He’s been underestimated all along ... and then he pulled off the biggest popular vote defeat of an incumbent president since Herbert Hoover lost in 1932,” said Shrum. “Nobody would have predicted this, but Biden’s not on a path to being a transitional figure. He’s on a path to being a transformational figure.”

With Republicans failing to mount a blitz against him, Biden kept his focus on his pandemic response. He amped up vaccination efforts, mourned the more than 529,000 Americans killed by COVID-19, and built public support for his relief bill, much of which — direct payments, extended unemployment benefits, a child tax credit — is targeted toward the country’s neediest families.

The fact that not a single Republican voted for the package belied its broad popularity, which Biden said was critical for passage. In a poll released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, 70% of Americans surveyed said they supported the proposal, including 41% of Republicans. And Biden, set to deliver a prime-time address Thursday to mark one year since the country first locked down to limit the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID, continues to earn high marks for his response.

“He just seems like the right person at the right time, and this is a totally unprecedented time,” said Mack McLarty, President Clinton’s first chief of staff. “He’s very self-aware, and after being vice president and serving in the Senate, he’s at a different place in his life and career. He’s very secure in himself; he’s experienced loss and that’s shaped him.

“He’s been decisive and bold, but in a very statesmanlike manner,” McLarty continued. “So far, it’s been effective.”

Republican strategist Mike DuHaime said Biden benefits from the low bar Donald Trump set by his outlandish conduct as president.

“It’s a very basic level of competency and a lack of controversy,” DuHaime said of Biden. “Just by being boring, he is clearing the bar.”

Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher said Biden also benefits from “being an old white guy.”

Belcher, who is Black, added: “It’s hard for Republicans to scare middle-of-the-road Republicans about Joe Biden.... But he’s also someone minorities have rallied around. And that makes for a combination we don’t see very often in our politics.”

Biden and Democrats have been guided by hindsight and an oft-avowed determination not to repeat perceived mistakes from President Obama’s first year by going too small on a recovery package, waiting too long for Republican support, or failing to tout its benefits.

The example of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt has also been influential for Biden and his team. Chief of Staff Ron Klain and other senior aides made a point of studying FDR’s Depression-era presidency during the transition period, and Biden hung his portrait in the Oval Office.

But past experience is only so helpful.

“It’s good to learn from the past. It’s more important to recognize changed circumstances when you’re in the moment,” said Jennifer Palmieri, who was a communications director for Obama. “The Biden team, as much as they’re relying on their experience, they’re seeing and appreciating that they’re in uncharted territory.”

Many senior aides, Palmieri noted, are on their third tour of duty at the White House after serving Presidents Clinton and Obama.

“You learn to trust your instincts,” she said. “And you come to know that to some degree, you’re damned [politically] if you do and if you don’t. So it becomes: Position yourself to actually solve the problems.”

When Biden and his aides began sketching out a relief bill before the inauguration, they didn’t start with a price tag. “We spent weeks assessing and analyzing what more the federal government could do to meet this challenge more effectively, more aggressively and more forcefully,” said Biden counselor Steve Ricchetti. “The total number and nature of the package reflected that analysis. The president had assessed that this was what was needed to address the crisis.”

Biden never budged from the $1.9-trillion bottom line, arguing that Obama’s 2009 stimulus package suggested the greater risk was spending too little. Emboldened by two Senate victories on Jan. 5 in Georgia, where the Democratic candidates won after campaigning for larger relief payments, Biden also refused to reduce the $1,400 provided for most Americans in the bill.

Once the Georgia elections suddenly put Democrats in control of the Senate, they could use a procedural option for budget bills, known as reconciliation, to pass the measure with just 50 votes — without Republican support.

Biden, who spent 36 years in the Senate, leveraged his relationships with lawmakers in both parties. He was unsuccessful in cajoling moderate Republicans, but helped negotiate a last-minute compromise on unemployment benefits to secure the decisive 50th vote from centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia.

The victory unified a Democratic caucus that had been divided over parts of the bill, in particular over a minimum wage increase that was ultimately removed on procedural grounds...

I should say, I hope the authors of this piece, Eli Stokols and Chris Megerian, had an extra set of clothes handy, after obviously drooling all over themselves while writing-up this hasty hagiography. (*Eye-roll.*)

Piers Morgan Should Be an Inspiration for Us All (VIDEO)

I wish I had the entire show from last night's Tucker Carlson. Half the time I can't stop laughing, especially during his takedown of NYT's fake-journalist and online teen stalker, Taylor Lorenz, to say nothing of the footage of CNN's Brian Stelter broadcasting a segment in his underwear. Just great stuff. 

In any case, Piers Morgan walked off the set at his morning show, "Good Morning Britain," and he demonstrated genuine courage and principles for standing up for his opinions, and refusing to be bullied.

Very good segment: