Californians Ignoring Lockdown Orders — Just Like the State's Democrat 'Leadership'

A nice piece. Well done.

At Just the News, "Californians doing as their elected leaders do — ignoring lockdown orders":

California has now seen 2,345,909 confirmed cases of COVID-19, and more than 26,000 have died from the virus, according to the state's public health department.

The number of cases spiked in mid-July, held steady through August and then plunged in September and October, according to state government numbers. But cases began rising in mid-November, hitting previous peak numbers from the summer (about 10,000 per day) — and never stopped going up. By Thanksgiving, they were running 15,000 a day, and the day after Christmas they hit more than 50,000.

Government officials have repeatedly locked down the state. On Dec. 3, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a new "stay-at-home" order, which prohibited residents from gathering; ordered essential businesses such as grocery stores to operate at 20% capacity; shut down bars, wineries, salons and restaurant dining; and allowed hotels to remain open only for critical infrastructure support.

But that didn't work, either. On Dec. 22, Newsom said: "Based upon all the data, it’s very likely that we're going to extend the stay at home order." A few days later, he did just that.

But with the virus spiking in early winter, reports emerged that Californians weren't really curbing their gatherings or reducing their ventures outside of their homes.

"California residents have not greatly reduced their visits to stores and workplaces since Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered them to stay at home in early December," the Modesto Bee reported based upon a review of mobility trend data collected by Google from cell phones.

"From Dec. 12 through Dec. 18, visits to California stores and restaurants were down an average of 31% compared to a January baseline," the paper reported. "That’s only slightly different than the 27% decline in visits during the same week a month earlier — before the severe shutdown — and well short of the decline in visits seen during April...

Keep reading. 

You have the California legistlators flying off to Hawaii for rest and relaxation after just telling (legislating) the rest of the state's residents to stay home.

And Dianne Feinstein? Walking through Dulles International without a mask right after calling for mandatory masks for all airport and aviation workers:

Shortly before the sighting, Feinstein penned a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration. "I write to urge you to implement a mandatory mask policy for all airport and airline employees and passengers as cases of coronavirus continue to surge," she wrote. "I ask that you issue guidance as soon as possible so passengers can have a clear understanding of the requirements and so that we may reduce exposure for workers and travelers alike."

Speaker Pelosi comes up too, that vile hypocrite.

Will Biden Take On Our Alarming China Problem?

Nah.

The Bidens are in bed with the C.C.P.

It's Glenn Reynolds, at the New York Post:

America has a China problem. And so do the Democrats and President-elect Joe Biden.

While everyone worried about the Kremlin the past several years, Beijing ran wild. And it still is. Will the Biden administration do anything about it? Or will it be OK with Chinese influence?

Back in 2015, China was behind a massive hack of records in the Office of Personnel Management, an attack so far-reaching and damaging, experts dubbed it a “Cyber Pearl Harbor.” In addition to federal personnel records — a gold mine for blackmailers and identity thieves — the hackers also stole even more valuable military and intelligence records.

The forms stolen were Standard Form 86, in which employees in sensitive positions list their weaknesses: past arrests, bankruptcies, drug and alcohol problems and the like. The 120-plus pages of questions also ­include civil lawsuits, divorce information, Social Security numbers and information on friends, roommates, spouses and relatives. Yet the Obama-Biden administration did little.

In 2018, Politico reported on extensive Chinese influence operations throughout the United States, and especially in California, where the Chinese Ministry of State ­Security has a special dedicated unit. When Free Tibet and Falun Gong protesters staged a march in San Francisco, the Beijing regime mobilized thousands of Chinese students in America — with threats of withdrawn grant funding if they didn’t cooperate — to stage a counterprotest. There were even box lunches provided.

And The Daily Beast reported about the same time on Chinese influence operations in America, quoting a former CIA official to the effect that Beijing’s goal was to “turn Americans against their own government’s interests and their society’s interest.”

Since then, we’ve seen one arrest after another involving US professors in the pay of the Chinese government. In 2020, 14 academics were arrested for alleged illegal Chinese ties — at places ranging from Harvard to UCLA to Emory to the University of Kansas...

Still more.

 

Cancel Abraham Lincoln?

Following-up, "The Canceling: America's Growing Political Crisis."

At LAT, "Cancel Abraham Lincoln? San Francisco grapples with the president’s legacy":

The statue sat like a red stain on the lawn in front of San Francisco City Hall. Abraham Lincoln’s chiseled face was covered in paint, his etched name highlighted in the bloody color at the base of the monument.

As San Francisco, like many parts of the country, grapples with how best to memorialize historic figures, the statue of the 16th president sat red-faced — literally — in front of the government building the day after Christmas.

City workers cleaned the sculpted artwork on Monday, said San Francisco County sheriff’s director of communications Nancy Hayden Crowley.

“The damage to the statue was superficial,” Crowley wrote in an email. “President Lincoln has been restored.”

But questions about a San Francisco-sized blot on Lincoln’s legacy remain.

Some social media users opined that the vandalism intentionally coincided with the 158th anniversary of the Dec. 26, 1862, hanging of 38 Native Americans on the president’s watch. According to the Associated Press, a U.S. military commission sentenced 303 Sioux fighters to execution, following the 1862 Dakota War, also known as the Sioux Uprising. Lincoln reportedly reviewed each case and decided there was evidence to convict 38 of them. The sentences of the remaining 265 were commuted.

Regina Brave, an elder in the Oglala Sioux Tribe, said the event’s history had been handed down among her people for generations. Living in South Dakota as an activist, the 79-year-old said she once supported the idea of tearing down Mt. Rushmore. But ultimately she concluded that monuments ought to remain intact, saying they are a useful way to remember bygone leaders — and their faults, including Lincoln’s.

“Hey, he’s dead,” Brave said. “But it’s worth remembering. That’s part of our history — to remember these events...

Well, at least somebody on the left has some common sense, but Ms. Regina really is brave!

Still more.

The Canceling: America's Growing Political Crisis

At the Other McCain, "Skepticism and Silence: ‘Cancel Culture’ and America’s Growing Political Crisis.

One of the things that separates 21st-century Americans from previous generations is a loss of liberty that few acknowledge. In particular, Americans have abandoned their First Amendment right to express their opinions, due to fear of what has become known as “cancel culture.”

Consider, for example, how one-sided the public discussion has been about removing Confederate monuments. In Virginia, for example, a number of communities — including the former Confederate capital of Richmond — have voted to rename Jefferson Davis Highway. What is remarkable about this is the near-total lack of vocal opposition to such projects. Arguments against this destructive iconoclasm are not difficult to make, but people are so afraid of being called “racist” that they are silent; this silence creates the false impression of a unanimous consensus in support of the radical “Black Lives Matter” agenda.

Fear of reprisal — indeed, mob violence — has introduced into our public discourse an element of dishonesty and hypocrisy. The consequence is a loss of trust. When people are compelled to endorse beliefs that they do not actually believe, they become suspicious and skeptical about the sincerity of others. One reason the news media are so widely despised in America is because partisan prejudice so controls what is reported in the media that every intelligent person recognizes their dishonesty...

Keep reading.

 

We're All in This Together!

At Blazing Cat Fur.

Boris Johnson: 'Goodbye to the Grimness of 2020' (VIDEO)

At the Independent U.K., "Brexit: Britain leaves EU single market with a whimper rather than a bang as chaos yet to materialise." And at the BBC, "Brexit: What you need to know about the UK leaving the EU."

And the prime minister:

Leftist Lockdown Vacations

Following-up, "Ontario's Finance Minister Tells People to Stay Home for Christmas -- While Hiding the Fact He's Secretly Jetted Off to St. Bart's for Christmas."

And from Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "DON SURBER: Fighting to close schools so she can vacation in a covid hotspot."

I honestly could not get this article to come up in a Google search yesterday. Odd that. (*Eye-roll.*)

What Was Great About 2020

I have to admit, it wasn't my best year.

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapuntit, "JEFF JACOBY: What was GREAT about 2020."

The Divide Between Israeli and American Jews

From Caroline Glick, "Pollard and the Great Jewish Divide":

The rift between Israeli and American Jews is palpable almost everywhere you turn today. The most glaring disparity surrounds how they view President Donald Trump. The vast majority of Israelis adore Trump. The vast majority of American Jews despise him.

But Trump isn’t the only thing or even the main thing that separates them. The main issue that separates Israelis from American Jews is the issue of exile. Israelis by and large hold to the traditional Jewish view that all Jewish communities outside of Israel are exile – or diaspora – communities. American Jews, by and large, believe that the exile exists in all Jewish communities outside Israel except in America. This disagreement is existential. It goes to the heart of what it means to be a Jew.

The divide between Israeli and American Jews is more apparent today than it was in the past but it has been around since the dawn of modern Zionism. But if one date marks the point it became an irreversible rift it was November 20, 1985, the day Jonathan Pollard was arrested outside Israel’s embassy in Washington, DC.

From the day of his arrest, Pollard became both the symbol and to a degree, the cause of the divide. That divide was unmistakable on Wednesday morning when the news broke that in the middle of the previous night, Pollard and his wife Esther had landed in Israel.

Israelis celebrated the Pollards’ arrival. Many wept watching the footage of Pollard kiss the ground on the tarmac.

In contrast, American Jews bristled both at the news and the happiness with which Israelis greeted Pollard’s arrival.

One writer angrily wrote on Twitter, “As an American Jew this isn’t a bit exciting. He spied on America. There’s no reason to celebrate this.”

Once Pollard’s parole restrictions were removed in November, it was a foregone conclusion that he would quickly make aliyah. Many Jewish officials in both the Trump administration and previous administrations expressed concern about the upcoming event that resonated with the angry poster on Twitter.

“I really hope you Israelis aren’t going to turn his arrival into a carnival,” one said recently, in a burst of frustration.

What explains their anger and frustration?

Keep reading.

 

Beautiful Alexis Ren

At Celeb Jihad, "Alexis Ren: Beautiful Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model Shows Off."

Beautiful Demi Rose

At Taxi Driver.

BONUS: "Bella Thorne in a Pink Top."

Russia's 'Info Warrior' Hackers

At WSJ, "How Russia’s ‘Info Warrior’ Hackers Let Kremlin Play Geopolitics on the Cheap":

The sprawling SolarWinds hack by suspected Russian state-backed hackers is the latest sign of Moscow’s growing resolve and improving technical ability to cause disruption and conduct espionage at a global scale in cyberspace.

The hack, which compromised parts of the U.S. government as well as tech companies, a hospital and a university, adds to a string of increasingly sophisticated and ever more brazen online intrusions, demonstrating how cyber operations have become a key plank in Russia’s confrontation with the West, analysts and officials say.

Moscow’s relations with the West continue to sour, and the Kremlin sees the cyber operations as a cheap and effective way to achieve its geopolitical goals, analysts say. Russia, they say, is therefore unlikely to back off from such tactics, even while facing U.S. sanctions or countermeasures.

“For a country that already perceives itself as being in conflict with the West practically in every domain except open military clashes, there is no incentive to leave any field that can offer an advantage,” said Keir Giles, senior consulting fellow at Chatham House think tank.

The scope of Russia’s cyber operations has grown in tandem with Moscow’s global ambitions: from cyberattacks on neighboring Estonia in 2007 to election interference in the U.S. and France a decade later, to SolarWinds, seen as one of the worst known hacks of federal computer systems.

“We can definitely see that Russia is stepping on the gas on cyber operations,” said Sven Herpig, a former German government cybersecurity official and expert at German independent public-policy think tank Stiftung Neue Verantwortung. “The development of new tools, the division of labor, the creation of attack platforms, has all increased in sophistication over the years,” he said.

Jamil Jaffer, a former White House and Justice Department official, said that cyber operations have become “a significant part of [Russia’s] play.”

“It’s allowed them to level up,” said Mr. Jaffer, senior vice president at IronNet Cybersecurity.

Russia has consistently denied engaging in state-backed hacking campaigns, including SolarWinds, maintaining that the country isn’t conducting offensive cyber operations. In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed a reset of U.S.-Russia information-security relations.

“Russia is not involved in such attacks, particularly in [SolarWinds]. We state this officially and resolutely,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said recently. “Any allegations of Russia being involved are absolutely groundless and appear to be the continuation of a kind of blind Russophobia,” he said.

But analysts say that Moscow has added hacking to its arsenal of so-called gray-area activities—a type of warfare that stops short of actual shooting—alongside disinformation campaigns and the use of “little green men,” the masked soldiers in green uniforms who appeared with Russian arms on Ukrainian territory in 2014.

Jeffrey Edmonds, a former White House and Central Intelligence Agency official who studies Russia at CNA, a nonprofit research organization that advises the Pentagon, said that Russia’s cyber operations have numerous simultaneous goals, including gathering intelligence, testing capabilities, preparing for potential conflict by mapping adversaries’ critical infrastructure and laying the groundwork for cyber negotiations.

Such operations are a relatively inexpensive and effective way to conduct geopolitics, said Bilyana Lilly, researcher at think tank Rand Corp. That is crucial for Russia, which is facing considerable economic and demographic challenges and whose economy is smaller than Italy’s. A 2012 article in an official Russian military journal said that the “complete destruction of the information infrastructures” of the U.S. or Russia could be carried out by just one battalion of 600 “info warriors” at a price tag of $100 million.

Responding to Moscow’s increased cyber activity has been a challenge. Washington’s retaliation measures—sanctions, property seizures, diplomatic expulsions, even the cyber equivalent of warning shots—appear to have done little to deter hacks...

Rad Chick

From Old Row, on Twitter:

Ontario's Finance Minister Tells People to Stay Home for Christmas -- While Hiding the Fact He's Secretly Jetted Off to St. Bart's for Christmas

At AoSHQ.

BONUS: "[Alberta Premier Jason] Kenney orders MLAs not to leave Canada unless on government business after minister's vacation: Tracy Allard, who travelled to Hawaii earlier this month, called trip 'lapse in judgment'."

'Coronasomnia'

I've had this. 

I still have it, lol.

At ABC News 7 Los Angeles:

Putting Aside the Attacks on Trump, This Is an Interesting Piece

From self-declared mean person, Kara Swisher, of (you guessed it) the New York Times, "Goodbye, Twitter Trump! And Other Predictions for 2021."

It's the other predictions that are interesting, such as:

Speaking of media companies: While the reverberations of the Warner Bros. decision to put all its 2021 movies on its HBOMax streaming service are sorting themselves out, the shift is permanent — whether offended filmmakers like it or not. Creators who adapt will benefit, especially if they devise new models of payment.

The longtime entertainment business model was built on powerful gatekeepers that made most of the money and relied on a vast network of middlemen. But in the new world, those who can assemble a fan base that they directly service will profit. Imagine the future relationship between creators and fans as a subscription business, and the economics get much more interesting. Hollywood will have to become much more nimble and entrepreneurial.

So, too, will more Americans in general, since the pandemic has accelerated the introduction of what will be permanent changes in how we work. Last December, I urged tech to be at the forefront of this major overhaul:

“And rather than accept that poor pay and poor protections for gig workers are inevitable and that the pressures of a global work force are too hard to push back, tech companies should figure out how to creatively and humanely deploy talent across the world to show that they are interested in dealing with the consequences of their inventions.”

This was pre-coronavirus — an exogenous circumstance. Now I am often asked when will work go back to normal, which is really a question of when will we get back to physical workplaces. That will certainly happen in the coming year, but in all kinds of new ways.

The coronavirus has forced the kind of work experimentation that would have taken a decade to eventually happen: limiting business travel, cutting in-person office time, questioning every cost associated with the analog workplace. Technology is making doing business cheaper and more efficient and, as it has turned out, more productive.

These changes have proved nearly useless and even dangerous when it comes to education, where physical presence is much more of an asset than we thought. More consideration will be put into how to make technology and schooling mesh better and how to provide students with the kind of experience that they are not getting, as well as a bigger focus on universal connectivity for those who are without it.

While pandemics are short term, the looming climate disaster is not. So, lastly, I’ll repeat my 2019 declaration that the “world’s first trillionaire will be a green-tech entrepreneur.” President-elect Biden, who is championing green technology, will be more successful if his efforts are seen as job creators, and not so much as giant government programs...

 

California Struggles to Contain Coronavirus Pandemic

And to think, it started out so wonderfully! (*Eye-roll.*)

From A.P., "Once a model, California now struggles to tame COVID-19":

Ambulances waited hours for openings to offload coronavirus patients. Overflow patients were moved to hospital hallways and gift shops, even a cafeteria. Refrigerated trucks were on standby, ready to store the dead.

For months, California did many of the right things to avoid a catastrophic surge from the pandemic. But by the time Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Dec. 15 that 5,000 body bags were being distributed, it was clear that the nation’s most populous state had entered a new phase of the COVID-19 crisis.

Now infections have been racing out of control for weeks, and California has routinely set new records for infections and deaths. It remains at or near the top of the list of states with the most new cases per capita.

Experts say a variety of factors combined to wipe out the past efforts, which for much of the year held the virus to manageable levels. Cramped housing, travel and Thanksgiving gatherings contributed to the spread, along with the public’s fatigue amid regulations that closed many schools and businesses and encouraged — or required — an isolated lifestyle.

Another factor could be a more contagious variant of the virus detected in Southern California, although it’s not clear yet how widespread that may be.

California’s woes have helped fuel the year-end U.S. infection spike and added urgency to the attempts to beat back the scourge that has killed more than 340,000 Americans. Even with vaccines becoming available, cases are almost certain to continue growing, and yet another surge is expected in the weeks after Christmas and New Year’s...

Still more.

Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories

At Amazon, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody.

Why Are Reporters Covering for Hilaria Baldwin?

She's a leftist married to a famous leftist actor?

From Stephen Green, at Instapundit, "CHRISTIAN TOTO: Why Are Reporters Covering for Hilaria Baldwin’s Epic Con? “The Identity Politics mob is suddenly standing down. Here’s the real reason why.”

Also, from Jon Gabriel, at Richochet, "Everything You Need to Know About the Shocking Hilaria Baldwin Scandal."

 

America is Still Standing (VIDEO)

An awesome video, featuring Kelly Shackleford, for Prager University:

'And it's just sometimes an excruciatingly heightened awareness of being, loving being alive..."

Caitlin Flanagan wrote "I Thought Stage IV Cancer Was Bad Enough" at the Atlantic in June. Not many people, myself included, know her story. It's riveting. 

Well, she did a podcast with Sully, and this short segment is so existential. She's such a graceful woman. It's really inspiring:

'Andrew Sullivan detects anti-gay bigotry: "So you agree not wanting to have sex with someone because they have a vagina is a form of bigotry, right?...'

 At Althouse:

Does genitalia matter? I can see thinking that a person's inner being matters far more than what's on the outside, and that "gender identification" is part of what's on the inside, but when it comes to sexual attraction, we're not required to go solely by what's on the inside, and indeed, if only the inside — the mind — counts, why are we having sexual intercourse at all? How can you say genitalia is irrelevant when what you're talking about is something you do with your genitalia?

More.

 

'Higher levels of drug abuse and overdoses, massive increases in mental health hospital visits, along with surging suicide rates among children have been cited by the Centers for Disease Control as stemming from pandemic school closures...'

At Issues & Insights, "The Real Reason Why Your Kids Can’t Go Back to School (Hint: It’s Not COVID-19)."

Justin Farrell, Billionaire Wilderness

At Amazon, Justin Farrell, Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West.

Is Substack the Media Future We Want?

It's Anna Wiener (whoever that is), at the New Yorker, "The newsletter service is a software company that, by mimicking some of the functions of newsrooms, has made itself difficult to categorize."

Establishment media outlets fear Substack, so they're out to destroy it. Big Media doesn't want you to read folks like Glenn Greenwald, a leftist who on Israel I can't stand, but who is amazingly good on a lot of other current stuff. See his great piece this week, "The Threat of Authoritarianism in the U.S. is Very Real, and Has Nothing to Do With Trump."

Or, Andrew Sullivan, also someone who's got a really sketchy and devious political pedigree, but has lately been on fire, "Do All Black Lives Matter? Or Just Some?"

And Matt Taibbai, "The YouTube Ban Is Un-American, Wrong, and Will Backfire: Silicon Valley couldn't have designed a better way to further radicalize Trump voters."

All of these guys are leftists, which tells you something, as they've been excommunicated form the leftist media precincts (especially Greenwald and Sullivan).

Heather Cox Richardson, How the South Won the Civil War

Heather Cox Richardson, How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America.

Is There Any Solution?

It's Bill Schneider, who used to be on CNN back in the day, with Bernard Shaw and Judy Woodruff. He's an okay guy who can turn a phrase, probably more of a weak "Cold War Liberal" than anything (but now maybe "woke"). I never really heard what happened to him at CNN, whether he was fired (unlike Jeffrey Toobin). 

In any case, this is interesting, although I doubt I'm alone when I say I don't care if there's a solution, since the left will create problems just to find solutions, and f*ck the regular people in "flyover country." 

So screw 'em either way. 

FWIW, at the Hill, "How the American system failed in 2020: Pandemic politics":

Is there any solution to the deep and bitter polarization in American politics? There is. But it’s not working.

The solution is supposed to come in the form of a crisis. In a crisis, Americans pull together and rally behind a common cause. Right now, the United States is experiencing the biggest public health crisis in over 100 years. More than 320,000 Americans have died, and the death toll continues to rise. Nevertheless, the country seems more divided than ever.

American government usually works well in a crisis — when an overwhelming sense of urgency breaks through blockages and lubricates the system. Under the right conditions, barriers fall away, and things get done. We are seeing it happen now with the economic stimulus bill.

Back in 1957, the country was shocked when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first space satellite. It led the federal government to become deeply involved in education — something that had always been regarded as a local responsibility. It also happened after the 9/11 crisis. The devastating terrorist attack overwhelmed the country’s deep political divisions. The evidence? For nearly a year after 9/11/01, a majority of Democrats approved of the job George W. Bush was doing as president.

The era of good feeling came to an end a year later, in September 2002, when the Bush administration announced the “rollout” of the invasion of Iraq. With the decision to go to war, all the old divisions came roaring back. It was Vietnam all over again.

Politicians are always hyping issues to try to turn them into crises — an environmental crisis, a debt crisis, an education crisis, an energy crisis. Or they declare “wars” on things — a war on poverty, a war on crime, a war on drugs, a war on inflation, a war on terror. Without a crisis or a “war” to rally public opinion, the system won’t work. It wasn’t designed to.

The pandemic certainly qualifies as a crisis. Thousands of Americans are dying every day. The economy has come to a standstill: no travel, no dining out, no public entertainment, no gatherings with friends and neighbors. Why is that not a crisis?

The answer is: because President Trump has steadfastly refused to acknowledge the crisis — and so have his supporters...

Blah, blah...

It's the same old stupid bull. "Never let a crisis go to waste," some idiot once said.

And to think, I used to respect this guy.

Josie Canseco in Little White Bikini

 At Taxi Driver, "Josie Canseco Flashing in Little White Bikini."

Also, at the Other McCain, "Do You Have Enough Ammunition?"

Anthony Quinn Warner: Bomber Died in Downtown Nashville Blast, Authorities Say (VIDEO)

At the Tennessean, "Nashville explosion: Anthony Warner died in explosion, was 'bomber,' authorities say." 

Watch this morning's officials' press conference here.

Dead (Once-Treasured) Diners

It's happening all over. 

At NYT, "The Treasured Diners and Hidden Haunts That Covid-19 Closed for Good":

We gather today to mourn the 150-year-old restaurant that served up platters of fried chicken and creamed corn to Abilene, Kan. To bid farewell to the New Orleans cafe that was a destination for huge crab omelets and endless conversation. To raise one last glass to the tavern in Cambridge, Mass., where the regulars arrived at 8 a.m. and the Austin diner where Janis Joplin nearly sang the neon lights off the walls.

They were local landmarks — watering holes, shops and haunts that weathered recessions and gentrification, world wars and the Great Depression, only to succumb this year to the economic ravages of the coronavirus. This is their obituary.

Thousands of businesses have closed during the pandemic, but the demise of so many beloved hangouts cuts especially deep. They were woven into the identity of big cities and small towns, their walls lined with celebrity photos and Best Of awards. Some had been around a century. Others, like the Ma’am Sir Filipino restaurant in Los Angeles, needed just a few years to win the hearts of their neighborhoods.

Their closures have left blank spaces across the country as owners liquidate their memorabilia and wistful customers leave social-media tributes recalling first dates and marriage proposals. And there are new worries: If these institutions could not survive, what can? And who will be left standing, to hold our memories and knit our communities together, when this pandemic is over?

RTWT.

Also on Twitter: 

I picked up breakfast at our diner today, caught up with the owner like always, and asked how she’s doing. She shook her head as her eyes welled above her mask. I knew what that meant. She turned her back to her staff saying she didn’t want to cry in front of her employees.

She, like millions of others, is desperate for help from the federal government. She said the first round of PPP saved her business, but that was a long time ago and she’s on the brink again. She has followed the rules & spent money to build outdoor dining, but winter is here.

We all have done our best to support small businesses this year, but it’s not enough. It is infuriating that it took Congress this long to get a relief bill and unconscionable that the President sits on it while our friends and neighbors fight for their lives. Shame.

 

Ms. Kendra's Christmas

On Twitter (and photo here). 

Also, "Having a very pink Christmas!! (VIDEO)."

Barbara Palvin

At Drunken Stepfather, "BARBARA PALVIN TIT OF THE DAY."

BONUS: "ALYSON STONER OF THE DAY."

How Christopher Lasch Repudiated the Radical Left

While at the same time excoriating conservatives and libertarians for their "neoliberal" economics, with its free markets that actually helped kill the nuclear family.

Interesting. 

See, "HOW LASCH LEFT THE LEFT."

And his magnum opus, at Amazon, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations. 

Thomas Ricks, First Principles

Thomas Ricks, First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country.

Barnes Carr, The Lenin Plot

At Amazon, Barnes Carr, The Lenin Plot: The Unknown Story of America's War Against Russia.

Jennifer Delacruz's Sunday Forecast

She's back in her home studio, for ABC 10 News San Diego:

The Rise of Political Sectarianism

Actually, this is just new and even more dramatic terminology for our growing domestic cold war and political polarization.

It's Thomas Edsall, a tried-and-true leftist, at NYT, "America, We Have a Problem":

Viewing recent events through a Trump prism may be too restrictive to capture the economic, social and cultural turmoil that has grown more corrosive in recent years.

On Oct. 30, a group of 15 eminent scholars (several of whom I also got a chance to talk to) published an essay — “Political Sectarianism in America” — arguing that the antagonism between left and right has become so intense that words and phrases like “affective polarization” and “tribalism” were no longer sufficient to capture the level of partisan hostility.

“The severity of political conflict has grown increasingly divorced from the magnitude of policy disagreement,” the authors write, requiring the development of “a superordinate construct, political sectarianism — the tendency to adopt a moralized identification with one political group and against another.”

Political sectarianism, they argue,

consists of three core ingredients: othering — the tendency to view opposing partisans as essentially different or alien to oneself; aversion — the tendency to dislike and distrust opposing partisans; and moralization — the tendency to view opposing partisans as iniquitous. It is the confluence of these ingredients that makes sectarianism so corrosive in the political sphere.

There are multiple adverse outcomes that result from political sectarianism, according to the authors. It “incentivizes politicians to adopt antidemocratic tactics when pursuing electoral or political victories” since their supporters will justify such norm violation because “the consequences of having the vile opposition win the election are catastrophic.”

Political sectarianism also legitimates

a willingness to inflict collateral damage in pursuit of political goals and to view copartisans who compromise as apostates. As political sectarianism has surged in recent years, so too has support for violent tactics.

In a parallel line of analysis, Jack Goldstone, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, and Peter Turchin, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut, contend that a combination of economic and demographic trends point to growing political upheaval. Events of the last six weeks have lent credibility to their research: On Sept. 10, they published an essay, “Welcome To The ‘Turbulent Twenties,’” making the case that the United States is “heading toward the highest level of vulnerability to political crisis seen in this country in over a hundred years.” There is, they wrote, “plenty of dangerous tinder piled up, and any spark could generate an inferno.”

Goldstone and Turchin do not believe that doomsday is inevitable. They cite previous examples of countries reversing downward trends, including the United States during the Great Depression:

To be sure, the path back to a strong, united and inclusive America will not be easy or short. But a clear pathway does exist, involving a shift of leadership, a focus on compromise and responding to the world as it is, rather than trying desperately to hang on to or restore a bygone era.

The Goldstone-Turchin argument is based on a measure called a “political stress indicator,” developed by Goldstone in his 1991 book, “Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World.” According to Goldstone, the measure “predicted the 1640s Puritan Revolution, the French Revolution of 1789, and the European Revolutions of 1830 and 1848.”

Goldstone wrote that

popular mobilization is more likely when the population is experiencing declining material conditions, plus urbanization and youth; when social competition for elite positions become heightened, political polarization and factionalism will be more likely as groups struggle for power and positions; and when state expenses fall behind revenues, as states become less capable of meeting expected demands and thus less legitimate, as well as more likely to enter conflicts with elites over taxation. And I argued that only when all of these factors coincide does a state face rising risks of major upheavals.

Turchin, in a 2017 book, “Ages of Discord: A Structural-Demographic Analysis of American History,” graphed political stress in this country, showing that from 1970 to 2012 it shot up sharply, increasing fortyfold. In the eight years since then, stress has continued to surge, Goldstone wrote, “as income inequality, political polarization and state debt have all risen further.”

While the United States is particularly vulnerable to violent upheaval, Turchin argues, a disaster “is not foreordained. On the contrary, we may be the first society that is capable of perceiving, if dimly, the deep structural forces pushing us to the brink.”

There's still more at top, but here are links to a couple of those research pieces, "Political Sectarianism in America," and "Welcome to the 'Turbulent Twenties'."

'Totally Not Kidding. We've Done It'

From Sarah Hoyt, at Instapundit, "PLEASE REMEMBER YOU’RE AMERICAN. IT’S IMPORTANT."

Human Remains Found at Site of Nashville 'RV' Bombing: Sources

The remains were possibly too shredded to ultimately identify the body.

At ABC News, "Human remains found at site of 'intentional' Nashville RV explosion: Sources."

PREVIOUSLY: "Nashville Christmas Bombing 'RV' Photo."

Dissident Women's Studies Ph.D. Speaks

It's Samantha Jones (not her real name, to protect against leftist death threats, apparently), at New Discourses, "A Dissident Women's Studies Ph.D. Speaks Out."

It's the second half of her piece that's most interesting, for example:

One of the most urgent needs is the development of a grassroots movement for intellectual diversity on campus, spearheaded by students, alumni, parents, and concerned citizens. I hope that existing conservative, centrist, or libertarian organizations can help to facilitate this movement by providing organizational and logistical support at campuses throughout the country. Everyone should take a close look at their state’s public universities’ Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity initiatives to see if intellectual diversity is included. If it is not, then the obvious first step is to advocate for the inclusion of intellectual diversity. Concerned taxpayers, students, parents, and alumni, working with the elected officials in those university districts, if necessary, need to ensure that universities have intellectual diversity in humanities and social sciences course offerings. If intellectual diversity is included in the Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity initiative (in my experience, most of these initiatives include at least a brief reference to intellectual diversity), then work can be done to survey students to see if they feel that intellectual diversity is represented, particularly in their humanities and social sciences courses. Heterodox Academy has published relevant survey data on the dearth of intellectual diversity in these fields.

If America has any chance of continuing the classical liberal values upon which it was founded, then students who have a commitment to these values have to enter the teaching profession—as doctoral students in education, as administrators, and as public school teachers. Critical pedagogy, and more specifically critical race theory, are the dominant discourses controlling all levels in American schools of education, so students need to tread lightly and assent, at least outwardly, to Critical Social Justice ideology. Once in the classroom, however, teachers should reject all pressures to teach Critical Social Justice, and especially critical race theory, because it is an inherently racist ideology and because it instantiates the problem—racism—that it purports to solve. Critical race theory also needs to be resisted because it, as its own proponents assert, “questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” (Delgado and Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction). Teachers should take a stand for fighting racism within liberalism, not by adopting critical race theory. If there is not already a nonprofit organization devoted to assisting non-woke students to enter the teaching profession—again, at all levels, as professors of education, as administrators, and as public school teachers—then one should be organized immediately. This could also be a special project for existing right- or libertarian-leaning organizations.

Another important project should be the revival of Western civilization and Great Books courses, at all levels of education, but most critically in the universities. In 1964, 15 of the 50 premier universities in America required students to take a survey of Western civilization. All 50 offered the course, and nearly all of them (41) offered it as a way to satisfy some requirement. (Source: New York Post, by Ashley Thorne “The drive to put Western civ back in the college curriculum,” March 29, 2016). But since 1987, when Jesse Jackson led 500 students around Stanford University protesting the requirement that undergraduates take a course in Western Civilization, which they denounced as Eurocentric, white-male indoctrination, most colleges have eliminated Western civ courses for diversity or multiethnic course requirements. An excellent example of a Western civ curriculum can be found in the James Madison program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, which is dedicated to “exploring enduring questions of American constitutional law and Western political thought.” Another avenue is to look into funding institutes for education in Western civilization as a new department at extant colleges and universities.

I would love to see crowd-sourced funds used to construct a beautiful classical building adjacent to one of the ugliest college campuses in the country, preferably one composed entirely of postwar Brutalist buildings. I imagine that students whose spirits are continually depressed by attending classes in the midst of such hideous architecture would feel intrigued to enter such a beautiful building. Once inside, they might learn that there is, in fact, such a thing as beauty; that it matters, and that Critical Social Justice ideology can never build anything beautiful; it can never, in fact, build anything at all—it can only destroy. Once inside that building, students might become interested in registering for a course on Western civilization, a course in which all thought is permitted, in which no one is threatened with cancellation: a microcosm of what a university environment used to be. In this way, we might plant and nurture the seed of resistance to the increasing totalitarianism of Critical Social Justice.

In the long term, it is going to be necessary to create more universities devoted to classical education, not indoctrination into Critical Social Justice ideology, as well as more K-12 private and charter schools in the classical tradition because university schools of education have been training “social justice” educators for decades now, so Critical Social Justice ideology is now in the K-12 public schools. At a policy level on this problem, we need avenues for teacher certification outside of the existing teacher colleges, which are wholly committed to critical pedagogy and other failed approaches. Forcing every licensed teacher (usually for state jobs) to undergo ideological training to gain licensure is not only a problem but should be illegal. At the personal level, my advice to everyone with kids who can afford to do so is to pull your kids out of the public schools immediately and enroll them in private schools, or home school. Although home schooling has already begun to come under attack, it is still a viable option—at least for now. In the future, homeschooling will come under increased scrutiny and I believe there will be attempts to render it illegal. I realize that not everyone can afford to home school or send their kids to private schools (many of which are not safe from Critical Social Justice, either). I strongly recommend that all parents emphasize the value of vocational training programs for their children as avenues to career paths that pay well and offer a great deal of autonomy.

My hope is that new immigrants to America will increasingly speak out against Critical Social Justice ideology as an American instantiation of what is called, in other contexts, tribalism—a form of corruption that has damaged many countries. Far from being a bastion of white supremacy, America’s liberal values are what have attracted people from all countries to undergo great hardship to come here, precisely because this is one of the few places in which ordinary people can exercise their talents to achieve a standard of living that is impossible in most of the world. It is my fervent hope that more American college students—especially the “woke” who rail against their own country as evil—would be required to spend a semester abroad in a developing country in order to gain some much-needed perspective on the struggles people face who were not fortunate enough to be born into such an “oppressive” place as America.

Lastly, I have focused mostly on academia and education because this is the sector I know best, but I strongly urge everyone, from all walks of life, to embrace your sense of humor (a quality that is conspicuously absent in woke culture). Wokeness should continue to relentlessly mocked and parodied through meme culture (Andrew Doyle’s Titania McGrath is a great example). Just as important: Be courageous. Stand up for the beliefs that have made America a great country. If you hear people treating others as members of groups, articulate the importance of treating people as individuals. As Jordan Peterson put it, “The smallest minority is the individual.” If you encounter people treating others badly because of their gender or skin color, say that this behavior is morally wrong. If you see people attempting to “cancel” others, articulate why this is a terrible way to treat others. If you witness attacks on freedom of speech and advocacy of censorship, or if you meet people who are in favor of “hate speech” laws, or laws to combat “misinformation” (a code word for non-leftist ideas), articulate why freedom of speech is an absolutely essential and non-negotiable value. If you hear people discussing why they think socialism is great, take a stand for free markets and the prosperity they have produced. If you hear people calling for retributive justice and political violence, push against it and discuss why violence is never acceptable. If you encounter attacks on meritocracy, make a case for why merit is essential to the advancement of individuals and societies. I think a lot of liberals, like me, generally, if not naively, assumed that the liberal values underpinning America would simply continue throughout our lives, but these values are under attack and they need to be vigorously and unapologetically defended. Our civilization is at stake and the hour is late.

RTWT.

Nashville Christmas Bombing 'RV' Photo

At the Metro Nashville Police Department.

And at Memeorandum, "Exclusive: Nashville explosion witness remembers chilling warning from the RV: ‘A bomb is in this vehicle’."

Christmas Women

At Drunken Stepfather, "STEPLINKS OF THE DAY."

Also, at the Other McCain, "Super Hot: Christmas Naked Rule 5!"

'Die Hard' is Definitely a Christmas Movie

At the Other McCain, where the inimitable Robert Stacy McCain regales us with Merry Christmas Eve movie-aficionado insights. 

See, "‘Happy Trails, Hans’: What Is Everybody’s Favorite Christmas Movie Really About?"

Jennifer Delacruz's Christmas Forecast

Well, I doubt Ms. Jennifer will be under your tree, but have a Merry Christmas in any case!

At ABC News 10 San Diego:

Claire Lehmann, et al., eds., Panics and Persecutions

At Amazon, Claire Lehmann et al., eds., Panics and Persecutions: 20 Quillette Tales of Excommunication in the Digital Age. 

John McWhorter, Losing the Race

At Amazon, John McWhorter, Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America.

Screw COVID Tyranny: Families Defy 'Dire Public Health Warnings' to Travel Home for the Holidays

And California's the new New York, the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. 

This could actually just be massive Democrat Party hypocrisy, since this state's almost all Democrats anyways, and thus the majority of travelers are likely to be progressives who voted for the elected officials who are literally destroying the country. 

At LAT, "Dire COVID warnings go unheeded as many insist on Christmas traditions; officials fear new surge":

Airports are seeing steady increases in travelers determined to spend Christmas with family and friends.

Coronavirus testing centers are seeing brisk business, including from some people who want to know whether they have the virus before attending holiday events.

And last-minute shoppers are still out looking for that perfect gift.

To the alarm of California health officials, Christmas is looking an awful lot like Thanksgiving, when social gatherings put an already unprecedented surge of the coronavirus into overdrive. The Thanksgiving “super-spreader” events helped fill hospitals with COVID-19 patients, forcing more restrictions on businesses and pushing the healthcare network to the brink.

But even the most dire public health warnings seemed to have failed to sink in. And in some cases, they are no match for the basic human need to spend time with loved ones, maintain family traditions and turn to others for support during challenging times.

Officials have already said that hospitals will likely have to make difficult decisions in the coming weeks about which patients will get the critical care that could mean the difference between life and death. The further spread of COVID-19 during Christmas gatherings would only prolong the crisis, officials said.

“We really can’t afford to repeat the mistakes of Thanksgiving. ... Another spike in cases from the winter holidays will be disastrous for our hospital system, and ultimately will mean many more people simply won’t be with us in 2021,” Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said Monday.

“Our hospitals are already over capacity, and the high quality medical care we’re accustomed to in L.A. County is beginning to be compromised as our frontline healthcare workers are beyond stretched to the limit.”

“Almost no one has caught COVID on a plane,” said Andrew Connors, who stood in a security line at Los Angeles International Airport on Monday morning with his daughter, Meikah.

All around them, the terminal buzzed as masked passengers queued up for security pat-downs, airport employees wiped surfaces with fervor and roller bags rumbled across the floor.

Connors said Meikah, 11, was preparing to travel alone to Marysville, Ohio, to spend Christmas with her mother. Although he was initially reluctant to put his daughter on a plane, he said he felt reassured after reading up on safety protocols and air-filtration methods onboard.

“We’re probably going to make a snowman when I get there,” she said.

She joins more than 3 million passengers who have passed through U.S. airport security checkpoints in the last three days, according to data from the Transportation Security Administration...

More.

 

Families on the Economic Brink as Congress' Christmas Relief Bill Crashes

It's bad.

At WaPo, "Families on brink of eviction, hunger describe nightmare Christmas as $900 billion relief bill hangs in limbo":

Millions of Americans who are hours away from losing unemployment aid or the small business they have spent years building have a simple plea to President Trump and Congress: Please help us.

The Washington Post has been inundated with messages and phone calls from people on the verge of losing their homes and cars and going hungry this holiday who are stunned that President Trump and Congress cannot agree on another emergency aid package. Several broke down crying in phone interviews.

Some blamed Trump for torpedoing a $900 billion relief package at the last minute. Others agreed with Trump that the proposed $600 checks for over 150 million American households was too little, too late and should be raised to at least $2,000. Others blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for not taking a deal in August.

But most told The Post they are “not political people” and are struggling to understand why Congress and the president would be able to celebrate Christmas when 14 million Americans are slated to lose unemployment aid on Saturday, the government is set to shut down on Tuesday, and an eviction moratorium that has prevented millions from losing their homes during a pandemic ends on New Year’s Eve.

Waitress Robyn Saban summed up the sentiment of many: “I’ve worked for 18 years at a diner under very hard conditions. I never called in sick except when my husband died. And now Congress is just leaving town. It makes me furious because they are leaving people hanging.”

Saban, 57, has been out of a job for nearly 10 months. The diner where she worked is up for sale.

Below are 10 voices that represent a cross-section of ages, races, political views and professions of the millions of people who are caught in the crosshairs of the stalled fight in Washington, D.C. over more aid...

Keep reading. 

The Chinese Communist Party Fail

Following-up from previously, "How the U.S. Misread Xi Jinping."

See Cai Xia, at Foreign Affairs, "The Party That Failed: An Insider Breaks With Beijing":

When Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, I was full of hope for China. As a professor at the prestigious school that educates top leaders in the Chinese Communist Party, I knew enough about history to conclude that it was past time for China to open up its political system. After a decade of stagnation, the CCP needed reform more than ever, and Xi, who had hinted at his proclivity for change, seemed like the man to lead it.

By then, I was midway through a decades-long process of grappling with China’s official ideology, even as I was responsible for indoctrinating officials in it. Once a fervent Marxist, I had parted ways with Marxism and increasingly looked to Western thought for answers to China’s problems. Once a proud defender of official policy, I had begun to make the case for liberalization. Once a loyal member of the CCP, I was secretly harboring doubts about the sincerity of its beliefs and its concern for the Chinese people.

So I should not have been surprised when it turned out that Xi was no reformer. Over the course of his tenure, the regime has degenerated further into a political oligarchy bent on holding on to power through brutality and ruthlessness. It has grown even more repressive and dictatorial. A personality cult now surrounds Xi, who has tightened the party’s grip on ideology and eliminated what little space there was for political speech and civil society. People who haven’t lived in mainland China for the past eight years can hardly understand how brutal the regime has become, how many quiet tragedies it has authored. After speaking out against the system, I learned it was no longer safe for me to live in China.

THE EDUCATION OF A COMMUNIST

I was born into a Communist military family. In 1928, at the beginning of the Chinese Civil War, my maternal grandfather joined a peasant uprising led by Mao Zedong. When the Communists and the Nationalists put hostilities on hold during World War II, my parents and much of my mother’s family fought against the Japanese invaders in armies led by the CCP.

After the Communists’ victory, in 1949, life was good for a revolutionary family such as ours. My father commanded a People’s Liberation Army unit near Nanjing, and my mother ran an office in that city’s government. My parents forbade my two sisters and me from taking advantage of the privileges of their offices, lest we become “spoiled bourgeois ladies.” We could not ride in our father’s official car, and his security guards never ran family errands. Still, I benefited from my parents’ status and never suffered the privations that so many Chinese did in the Mao years. I knew nothing of the tens of millions of people who starved to death during the Great Leap Forward.

All I could see was socialism’s bright future. My family’s bookshelves were stocked with Marxist titles such as The Selected Works of Stalin and Required Reading for Cadres. As a teenager, I turned to these books for extracurricular reading. Whenever I opened them, I was filled with reverence. Even though I could not grasp the complexity of their arguments, my mission was clear: I must love the motherland, inherit my parents’ revolutionary legacy, and build a communist society free of exploitation. I was a true believer.

I gained a more sophisticated understanding of communist thought after joining the People’s Liberation Army in 1969, at age 17. With the Cultural Revolution in full swing, Mao required everyone to read six works by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, including The Communist Manifesto. One utopian passage from that book left a lasting impression on me: “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” Although I didn’t really understand the concept of freedom at that point, those words stuck in my head.

The People’s Liberation Army assigned me to a military medical school. My job was to manage its library, which happened to carry Chinese translations of “reactionary” works, mostly Western literature and political philosophy. Distinguished by their gray covers, these books were restricted to regime insiders for the purpose of familiarizing themselves with China’s ideological opponents, but in secret, I read them, too. I was most impressed by The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by the American journalist William Shirer, and a collection of Soviet fiction. There was a world of ideas outside of the Marxist classics, I realized. But I still believed that Marxism was the only truth.

I left the military in 1978 and got a job in the party-run trade union of a state-owned fertilizer factory on the outskirts of the city of Suzhou. By then, Mao was dead and the Cultural Revolution was over. His successor, Deng Xiaoping, was ushering in a period of reform and opening, and as part of this effort, he was recruiting a new generation of reform-minded cadres who could run the party in the future. Each local party organization had to choose a few members to serve in this group, and the Suzhou party organization picked me. I was sent to a two-year program at the Suzhou Municipal Party School, where my fellow students and I studied Marxist theory and the history of the CCP. We also received some training in the Chinese classics, a subject we had missed on account of the disruption of education during the Cultural Revolution.

I plowed through Das Kapital twice and learned the ins and outs of Marxist theory. What appealed to me most were Marx’s ideas about labor and value—namely, that capitalists accrue wealth by taking advantage of workers. I was also impressed by Marx’s philosophical approach, dialectical materialism, which allowed him to see capitalism’s political, legal, cultural, and moral systems as built on a foundation of economic exploitation...

Still more at that top link.

 

How the U.S. Misread Xi Jinping

More blockbuster reporting from the Wall Street Journal, "How the U.S. Misread China’s Xi: Hoping for a Globalist, It Got an Autocrat":

BEIJING—In the two years before Xi Jinping became China’s leader in 2012, U.S. officials tried to size him up through a series of face-to-face meetings.

During talks in China in 2011, Mr. Xi, then vice president, asked about civilian control of the U.S. military, shared his thoughts on uprisings in the Middle East and spoke, unprompted, about his father, a renowned revolutionary. When he visited the U.S. in 2012, he was relaxed and affable, chatting with students and posing for pictures with Magic Johnson at a Los Angeles Lakers basketball game.

The U.S. officials’ conclusion: Although Mr. Xi was far more confident and forthright than Hu Jintao, the stiff and scripted leader he would succeed, he likely shared his commitment to stable ties with Washington and closer integration with the U.S.-led global order. Some even hoped Mr. Xi would kick-start stalled economic reforms.

It was one of the biggest strategic miscalculations of the post-Cold War era.

In the eight subsequent years, Mr. Xi has pursued an expansive, hypernationalistic vision of China’s future, displaying a desire for control and a talent for political maneuvering. Drawing comparisons to Mao Zedong, he has crushed critics and potential rivals, revitalized the Communist Party and even scrapped presidential term limits so he can, if he chooses, rule for life.

Promising a “China Dream” of national renewal, he has mobilized China’s military to enforce territorial claims, forced up to a million Chinese Muslims into internment camps and curbed political freedoms in Hong Kong.

Now, with Covid-19 under control in China but still widespread across the U.S., he is promoting his self-styled, tech-enhanced update of Marxism as a superior alternative to free-market democracy—a “China solution” to global problems.

“It was clear he was not going to be a second Hu Jintao,” said Danny Russel, who as a senior Obama administration official attended several meetings with Mr. Xi, including in 2011 and 2012. “What I underestimated about Xi Jinping was his tolerance for risk.”

Mr. Xi’s swift reversal of more than three decades of apparent movement toward collective leadership and a less intrusive party has surprised both U.S. officials and much of the Chinese elite. In hindsight, though, the roots of his approach are visible in key episodes of his life.

They include his father’s purge from the top party leadership, his teenage years in a Chinese village, his induction into the military and his exposure to nationalist and “new left” undercurrents in the party elite.

Mr. Xi’s autocratic turn also was catalyzed by a 2012 political scandal that upset the balance of power among the party elite and emboldened advocates of stronger, centralized leadership. It gave Mr. Xi the justification he needed to sideline rivals, rebuild the party and revamp its ideology.

Today China follows a new political doctrine known as “Xi Jinping Thought,” which combines many attributes of different 20th-century authoritarians. It reasserts the party’s Leninist role as the dominant force in all areas, including private business. It revives Maoist methods of mass mobilization, uses digital surveillance to replicate Stalin’s totalitarian social controls and embraces a more muscular nationalism based on ethnicity that makes fewer allowances for minorities or residents of Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Above all, Xi Jinping Thought aims to grant Mr. Xi the legitimacy to remain in power and continue his quest to make China a rich, truly global power by 2049, the centenary of Mao’s victory.

Mr. Xi has been a popular leader, bolstered in part by positive coverage in state media. Under his leadership, China has posted robust economic growth and eradicated extreme poverty, as well as curbing Covid-19 within its borders. The nation’s growing international stature also has become a source of national pride.

“His goal is to make the whole world see China as a great power, and him as a key figure in making it great,” said Xiao Gongqin, a leading figure among scholars who advocate so-called enlightened autocracy in China. “At heart, he’s a nationalist.”

Mr. Xiao, based in Shanghai, counts himself a supporter. But like many in China’s elite, he said he worries Mr. Xi “lacks a spirit of compromise. That’s his shortcoming….And there is no mechanism to correct him.”

China’s government press office declined to comment, but arranged interviews with two professors at the Central Party School, the party’s top think tank and training academy.

Both said Mr. Xi hadn’t abandoned collective leadership, but declined to predict whether he would retire in 2022, when his current term is scheduled to end. They described Xi Jinping Thought as “21st-Century Marxism,” saying his political thinking was shaped, in part, by his experiences in his youth.

“When he was young, his life was a little tortuous, but these twists and turns made comrade Xi Jinping what he is today,” said Han Qingxiang, one of the professors, who has conducted a study session on Marxism for top leaders...

RTWT.

Mary Katharine Ham's 'Op-Sec' Christmas Gifting Experiences

A great thread, via Instapundit (click through), "A DELIGHTFUL THREAD FROM MARY KATHARINE HAM: Christmas surprises and OpSec failures."

Hunter Biden’s Family Name Aided Deals With Foreign Tycoons

At WSJ, "Business dealings of Joe Biden’s son are at the center of a federal tax investigation and loom over the start of his presidency":

Hunter Biden ramped up business activities with European and Chinese tycoons as his father exited the vice presidency four years ago. For him it was a potential path to income; for the tycoons, the Biden family name promised to burnish their reputations.

The dealings got the younger Mr. Biden a discounted stake in a private-equity firm in China and consulting arrangements with a Romanian property magnate and overall allowed him to maintain a globe-trotting lifestyle, according to interviews, documents and communications reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. A Chinese energy tycoon gave Mr. Biden a 2.8-carat diamond, and entities linked to him wired nearly $5 million to Mr. Biden’s law firm, according to an investigation by Senate Republicans.

These arrangements now loom over President-elect Joe Biden. A federal criminal tax investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings is under way, with findings potentially trickling out in coming months. His business ties to well-connected people in China and other places could add to scrutiny of foreign-policy decisions taken by the Biden administration over possible conflicts of interest. All are likely to provide ammunition to Republicans.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), who has led the Senate Finance Committee whose Republican staff helped investigate Hunter Biden, has said he would continue to look into what he says are possible counterintelligence and criminal concerns related to Mr. Biden’s business dealings.

“Based on all the facts known to date, Joe Biden has a lot of explaining to do,” Mr. Grassley said recently. Hunter Biden has said he takes the tax investigation “very seriously” and is “confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately.” He declined to comment for this article and his lawyer, George Mesires, didn’t respond to questions. In 2019, Mr. Biden said he wouldn’t work with any foreign companies if his father were elected U.S. president. None of the Journal’s reporting found that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s business activities. The tax investigation doesn’t implicate the president-elect, according to people familiar with the matter. In a statement this month about the investigation, the president-elect said he is “deeply proud of his son.”

He told reporters Tuesday he had not and would not discuss the federal tax investigation with prospective attorney general candidates.

“The attorney general of the United States of America is not the president’s lawyer,” the president-elect said. “I will appoint someone who I expect to enforce the law as the law is written, not guided by me.”

Joe Biden also has previously said his family members won’t be involved in businesses that appear to create a conflict of interest and won’t have “a business relationship with anyone that relates to a foreign corporation or a foreign country.”

Some of Hunter Biden’s business deals appeared to go nowhere. Sometimes his contribution mainly consisted of making introductions to important people in business and government, according to people involved and documents.

Still, legal and consulting services he provided offered a way to generate income; the Senate Republicans’ report says the millions of dollars in wire transfers from entities linked to Shanghai energy entrepreneur Ye Jianming were described as payment for such services.

The tycoons who sought out Mr. Biden as a business partner were looking to build ties to the Washington establishment that Joe Biden inhabited for decades, and by doing so, smooth the way for major deals or ward off legal troubles, according to interviews, documents and communications. For businessmen in some countries, paying for introductions and getting close to people in power or their relatives is a normal part of doing business, and the son of a veteran American politician offered a potential trove of connections.

Mr. Ye “would say if you find a strong partner, then opportunities can flow just from this relationship,” said a former subordinate.

Mr. Biden, in an exchange about putting together a venture with Mr. Ye, pointed to the value of his family name: “Just happens that in this instance only one player holds the trump card and that’s me. May not be fair but it’s the reality because I’m the only one putting an entire family legacy on the line,” he wrote in a 2017 text message to an associate in the venture and viewed by the Journal.

A graduate of Yale Law School, Hunter Biden was for a period a registered lobbyist in Washington. He also worked in boutique investment and property development firms along with American partners who sometimes tried to raise capital among the newly well-heeled in the former Soviet Union and China.

Mykola Zlochevsky was looking to raise the standing of Ukraine’s Burisma Holdings in Washington when Hunter Biden joined its board in 2014.

President Trump and some Republican allies have tried over the past two years to draw attention to Hunter Biden’s business activities—an effort that took off as Joe Biden emerged as a likely presidential challenger.

A particular focus was Hunter Biden’s board seat with Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma Holdings. When he joined the board in 2014, Burisma’s founder Mykola Zlochevsky was looking to raise the company’s standing in Washington, as he parried legal inquiries abroad and at home where the government was vowing to clean up corruption. Mr. Biden was paid roughly $50,000 a month from 2014 to 2019. For the first three years, then-Vice President Joe Biden served as the Obama administration’s point man for international anticorruption efforts in Ukraine.

Mr. Trump and his allies have alleged corruption by the Bidens. Mr. Trump’s request to Ukraine’s president in 2019 to announce an investigation into the Bidens figured into Mr. Trump’s impeachment; the GOP-controlled Senate ultimately acquitted him.

Joe and Hunter Biden denied any wrongdoing...

 Still more.

America the Sick

I disagree with this guy's take, or mostly, his ideological stance and one-sided blame on Trump, blah, blah...

But he makes a good point here, at Der Spiegel, "A Land in Decay: Where Did America Go Wrong?":

America knows it is sick. It is showing all the symptoms. There are doubts about the legitimacy of elections, and confidence in political institutions has crumbled. The media have abandoned or lost their role as impartial observers. The country's predominantly white police force continues to deploy misguided violence against a disillusioned and outraged Black population. There are armed militias on the streets and it's become almost impossible to voice an opinion without getting overwhelmed by hateful comments on social media. To top it all off is a president who refuses to concede defeat, a society that has been battered by a pandemic that can only be contained by way of solidarity...

There's still more at that top link, FWIW.

Death and Denial in California's Central Valley

This is an interesting piece, sympathetic to both sides, although definitely a leftist New Yorker take. 

Here, "As the Vaccine Arrives, Death and Denial Rage in a California Coronavirus Epicenter: In the San Joaquin Valley, medical professionals fear that many in the public still fail to grasp the dangers of COVID-19":

The San Joaquin Valley is an emerald gash shaped like a fist in the middle of the state. It abuts the Sierra Nevada mountains and drinks in the rivers that zag from the foothills. Looked upon from an airplane cabin window at thirty thousand feet, the valley appears as a medley of pixels in every shade of green; irrigated fields collide at improbable angles. On the ground, viewed from a speeding car on Highway 99, it’s a blur of corduroy—rows of garlic, tomatoes, and fruit trees sprouting from the rich, dark loam. The San Joaquin Valley is California’s bread basket, the source of the state’s bounty, the source of much of the country’s bounty. Even the names of towns that dot this verdant blanket sound fecund: Chowchilla, Planada, Ripon.

These townships orbit midsize cities with populations exceeding three hundred thousand—Fresno, Bakersfield, Stockton—but the region is mostly rural and agricultural. Its demographics reflect that. Of the more than four million people in the valley, many are migrant workers. A hundred and twelve thousand are believed to be undocumented. At the same time, the region skews further right politically than most of California. In the 2020 Presidential election, half of the valley’s eight counties voted for Donald Trump; in the four counties that went for Joe Biden, the Democrat won by margins far narrower than that by which he won the state as a whole.

The coronavirus exacerbates the valley’s long existing divisions and pain points, says Nancy Burke, a public-health professor at the University of California, Merced. “The health indicators rival the poorest parts of Appalachia,” she told me. The counties in San Joaquin Valley “rank among the lowest in California in terms of health outcomes, as well as determinants of health, [such as] social and economic factors.” Forty-one per cent of rural residents in the region are covered by Medi-Cal, the state health insurance that is available to Californians living below the federal poverty line. So, although the region produces much of the nation’s food supply, Burke explained, the people here suffer some of the highest rates of food insecurity in the state...

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Baldwin Hills' Crenshaw Mall is Busted

It's a "black" mall, I guess. Nice part of town too. 

Who knows? It's probably just the bad economy and consumer trends away from brick-and-mortar. But someone, somewhere, will make this about racism, amirite? 

At LAT, "‘This mall has been devastated.’ A lean Christmas, empty stores and an unsettling future":

The food court is mostly shuttered. The Museum of African American Art, located improbably inside a Macy’s, is closed for now. And Black Santa is not coming to town.

The Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza may be open, but it doesn’t much feel that way.

Gone is the classic mall background noise — Top 40 music drowned out by people talking, walking, rustling shopping bags. Gone are the free weekly workouts and the book readings. The stores have signs in the windows noting that they are open with limited capacity, but more often than not there’s only a lone shopkeeper inside.

A few determined shoppers remain.

“I could have gone to Fox Hills mall but I said I’m coming here to Crenshaw, and I want to patronize it because it is struggling to come back,” said Yvette Archie, a 60-year-old veterinarian who visited the mall recently to do some Christmas shopping. “I’m hoping that we can keep it in our community and for our community.”

For decades, the Crenshaw mall has been a gathering place for Black Los Angeles and a prime venue for small businesses. Even during the pandemic, the mall has continued to serve the community with food drives and a coronavirus testing site. The mall also holds a weekly farmers market and Melanin Market LA, a showcase for small Black-owned businesses, in its parking lot.

But like its counterparts across the country, the mall has been pushed to the brink by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, the holiday shopping season — when big and small businesses alike depend on a boost in sales to help pad margins in the new year — has coincided with the worst surge in COVID-19 cases of the pandemic.

Health and government officials have urged people to stay at home but stopped short of closing malls as they had done earlier in the pandemic. Recent orders from the Los Angeles County health department limited indoor mall capacity to 20% and prohibited dining on site...

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