Hospital Masks in Irvine

I tweeted yesterday:

⁦.@Communism_Kills⁩ #Outbreak in #TheOC. At least one confirmed case of #CoronaVirus. Drugstores are out of face masks as #Chinese immigrants panic. Avoid exotic food markets and immigrant concentrations. #Wuhan #CoronaOutbreak 😷 pic.twitter.com/Tk03nQItEk

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 28, 2020

Plane Diverted to March Air Force Base

It's a nightmare.

Irvine is Beijing west. All these Chinese immigrants going around with hospital face masks. It's ridiculous.

Might was well be in Wuhan!

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Megan Parry's Wednesday Forecast

January in California is a trip.

In the 70s during the day, it gets down to the low 40s in the early morning, brrr!

Here's the lovely Ms. Megan, for ABC News 10 San Diego.

Look at those overnight lows!

Why America Needs a Trump vs. Sanders Election

It's Roger Simon, via Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.

Fear and Anger Among Americans in China

Well, I'd be mad too --- especially at myself for winding up in the China dumpster in the first place.

At LAT, "Americans evacuating Wuhan, China, clear health screening and head to California":

BEIJING —  A plane evacuating 201 Americans from the Chinese city at the center of the coronavirus outbreak arrived in Alaska and continued Wednesday to Southern California after everyone aboard passed a health screening in Anchorage, where the aircraft had stopped to refuel.
The plane was the only way out of the besieged city of Wuhan in Hubei province, and Americans clamored for seats.

A couple with a 7-year-old daughter did not receive the coveted call. A 65-year-old man’s phone rang, but he gave up his spot because others needed it more.

There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to who was tapped by U.S. officials to board the flight early Wednesday whisking them away from Wuhan, the epicenter of a respiratory virus outbreak that has killed more than 130 people in the last two months.

For a week, Wuhan has been under lockdown, with no transportation out of the city, as Chinese officials desperately try to keep the new coronavirus from spreading.

The inland city of 11 million, a university and business hub often called the Chicago of China, has become a cauldron of fear, stress and boredom, with overwhelmed hospitals, empty streets and isolated residents afraid to be in the same room with close friends.

It is unclear how deadly the virus is or how easily it spreads. Most reported cases have occurred in Wuhan and surrounding Hubei province, and most patients elsewhere had recently traveled there.

But the tally of fatalities and confirmed cases, as well as the virus’ geographic reach, has increased daily, prompting the U.S. State Department to recommend that Americans avoid traveling to China. Some airlines have begun restricting flights out of the entire country, not just Wuhan.

For expatriates in Wuhan, many of whom teach English at universities and language institutes, the crisis is especially disorienting.

Many are not fluent in Chinese and worry about communicating if they go to the hospital. They share anxieties and questions with each other on WeChat and Facebook forums. On Wednesday, one man posted that he lost his temper at a Walmart cashier who rummaged through a quilt he had just bought, potentially spreading germs.

Americans still stuck in Wuhan have received no word about any future government-sponsored flights. Some are angry at U.S. officials for not doing more to help.

State Department officials could not be reached for comment.

Still more.

Mountain House Classic

At Amazon, Mountain House Classic Bucket.

Also, Mountain House Just In Case 14-Day Emergency Food Supply.

BONUS: Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual.

Jennifer Delacruz Saturday Forecast

At 10 News San Diego.

Beautiful daytime weather but bundle up at night, brrr!

Katie Bell Saturday Selfie

Click on the photo to enlarge:

i named my headache ‘idiots’. pic.twitter.com/Sn9Su1eTTb

— Katie Bell🦋 (@katieeeeebell) January 25, 2020

Joe Rogan Endorses Bernie Sanders, Chaos Ensues

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "BERNIE SANDERS WELCOMED AS NEWEST MEMBER OF ALT-RIGHT AFTER JOE ROGAN ENDORSEMENT."

And, "JOE ROGAN IS THE WALTER CRONKITE OF OUR ERA."

MoveOn.org, the organization that wanted to "censure" Bill Clinton and "move on" from impeachment, is particularly upset.

We urge Sen. Sanders and his campaign to apologize and stop elevating this endorsement. We stand in solidarity with folks hurt by this.

— MoveOn (@MoveOn) January 25, 2020

Bernie Sanders Surges in Iowa

I hope Bernie wins Iowa, at least for the momentum. He should take New Hampshire easily, as he did in 2016.

With those two states in his victory column, he'll earn tremendous momentum and perhaps force more winnowing of the field.

We'll see.

If it's Bernie vs. Trump in November, it'll be clash of the ideological titans, heh.

At NYT, "Sanders Seizes Lead in Volatile Iowa Race, Times Poll Finds":

DES MOINES — Senator Bernie Sanders has opened up a lead in Iowa just over a week before the Democratic caucuses, consolidating support from liberals and benefiting from divisions among more moderate presidential candidates who are clustered behind him, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll of likely caucusgoers.

Mr. Sanders has gained six points since the last Times-Siena survey, in late October, and is now capturing 25 percent of the vote in Iowa. Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. have remained stagnant since the fall, with Mr. Buttigieg capturing 18 percent and Mr. Biden 17 percent.

The rise of Mr. Sanders has come at the expense of his fellow progressive, Senator Elizabeth Warren: she dropped from 22 percent in the October poll, enough to lead the field, to 15 percent in this survey. Senator Amy Klobuchar, who is garnering 8 percent, is the only other candidate approaching double digits.

The changing fortunes of the two liberal candidates, and the secondary position of the two leading centrists, underscores the volatile nature of the Democratic primary after more than a year of campaigning, as voters wrestle with which of the contenders can defeat President Trump. At various times over the past six months Ms. Warren and Mr. Buttigieg had surged in Iowa, only to fall back, while Mr. Biden’s strength has ebbed and flowed here even as he remained at the top of the polls nationally.

But Mr. Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist from Vermont making his second run for the White House, appears to be peaking at the right time: this month was the first time he has finished atop a poll in Iowa, after also leading a Des Moines Register-CNN survey two weeks ago. The Times-Siena poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 4.8 percentage points.

Despite Mr. Sanders’s ascent, the combined strength of the moderate candidates is unmistakable. The poll showed that 55 percent of those surveyed said they preferred a standard-bearer who is “more moderate than most Democrats.” Just 38 percent said they wanted one who is “more liberal than most Democrats.”

A victory by Mr. Sanders in Iowa, where he suffered a narrow loss to Hillary Clinton four years ago, would represent a remarkable comeback for a 78-year-old candidate whose heart attack in October threatened to upend his candidacy. It would also create a moment of high anxiety for establishment-aligned Democrats who are deeply alarmed about a potential Sanders nomination.

Should he prevail in Iowa and face a similarly fractured field of mainstream rivals in New Hampshire, where he also currently leads in the polls, Mr. Sanders could be difficult to slow.

Several voters who backed Mr. Sanders cited the consistency of his positions over the course of his career, and their ideological alignment with his views.

“Bernie’s authentic,” said Austin Sturch, 25, of Evansdale, adding, “Pretty much everything he’s saying — I can’t put it better than he can.”

Still, much here remains uncertain. Iowa voters are famous for settling on a candidate late, and this year is no different; Mr. Sanders, along with the other senators in the race, is pinned down in Washington during Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial and unable to campaign here on weekdays. And the final results could turn on two factors that will not be known until caucus night: the size and composition of the electorate, and the preferences of voters whose first choices are eliminated because of the arcane caucus rules.

If the other leading candidates finish bunched together on caucus night on Feb. 3, it is unlikely any of them will drop out of the race after Iowa. Each of the three top hopefuls trailing Mr. Sanders has the money to compete in New Hampshire, which is just a week later.

And should no clear moderate alternative to Mr. Sanders emerge from the early nominating states, the self-financing Michael R. Bloomberg, who has already spent more than $260 million on advertising and hired more than 1,000 staff members, is awaiting the field on Super Tuesday in early March...

And more at NYT, can the Dems unite after the primaries?

A Major Fear for Democrats: Will the Party Come Together by November? Via ⁦@jmartNYT⁩ https://t.co/9Z0Pp6TYmD

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) January 25, 2020

Theodore White, Breach of Faith

At Amazon, Theodore White, Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon.

Trump Impeachment: The Last Gasp of Progressivism

Following-up, "Impeachment Trial Begins."

And from Mark Tapscott, at Instapundit, "IMPEACHMENT IS THE LAST GASP OF THE PROGRESSIVE ERA":

Donald Devine was President Ronald Reagan’s Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and is a long-respected conservative strategist and thinker.

Writing today in The Imaginative Conservative, Devine argues the Trump impeachment is nothing less than the end of liberal Big Government’s ascendancy just when progressives thought they were on the brink of final victory:

Thanks to the pervasive political correctness they created, Devine writes, “progressives had assumed their education and mainstream media ‘mocking’ of traditional values had turned America progressive and now Donald Trump had proven they had not. Now with Mr. Trump in office, the last hope to contain the effects could only be by the expert bureaucracy that was the original faith of progressive scientific administration to produce the good welfare state.

“Rather than the elected president representing the people, salvation must now come from the permanent government. In the wake of the impeachment, there was a [Washington] Post op-ed headline actually arguing publicly that ‘bureaucratic resistance is what the Founders intended.’ Another piece by the celebrated intellectual Francis Fukuyama in The Wall Street Journal argued directly that ‘American liberty depends on the deep state.’”

Devine concludes with a warning for the Right that all conservatives ought to ponder with deep seriousness, as the end of the American story is far from written and may yet go in directions that are toxic to individual liberty.

Impeachment Trial Begins

Well, here we go!

The impeachment trial is live right now in the Senate, with Chief Justice John Roberts presiding.

It's pretty amazing.

Mitch McConnell has ice water running through his veins. It's a spectacle!

At LAT:

McConnell moves to speed up Senate impeachment trial
https://t.co/HdjP2SfOrc

— Sarah D. Wire (@sarahdwire) January 21, 2020

John Yoo, The Powers of War and Peace

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, John Yoo, The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11.

Raoul Berger, Impeachment

At Amazon, Raoul Berger, Impeachment: The Constitutional Problems.

'If your girl has the capabilities of saving a beer in this fashion, think nothing. Just marry her...'

At Stepfather Presents, "Girl Sucks Down Beer Like a Champ."

Impeachment Has Been Great for Business

The GOP fundraising business, that is. Who didn't see this coming?

On Twitter:

Axios’ Swan: impeachment backlash helping Republicans build a “formidable” machine for 2020 pic.twitter.com/jyN4QPg3Bd

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) January 19, 2020

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley Goes Bald

At Althouse, "'Everything I do is political', says Representative Ayanna Pressley, about revealing that she is, in fact, completely bald."

Her hair, with braids and twists, was a political statement. Now that's all gone.

Happy Sunday! #baldsquad #baldbaddies #baldisbeautiful Thank you for the warm welcome #alopecia nation #hairlosscrew. New year. New decade. New truths. New swag. #theyaintreadyforthissmoke pic.twitter.com/M3ggSNrV9B

— Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) January 19, 2020

Maine Leftists Can't Cancel Michelle Malkin

If you've been following along, Michelle Malkin continues to take the conservative fight right to the enemy, with no backing down.

Here's her essay, "Cancel culture strikes again: Banned in Maine."

And on Twitter:

This is so crazy, but we prevail. We are on our FOURTH venue with less than an hour to go. #MalkinBannedInMaine #FreeSpeech #OpenBordersInc #AmericaFirst pic.twitter.com/IkL9LnvKCQ

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) January 17, 2020

Screw you #cancelculture and God bless you, #AmericaFirst citizens in Maine - I will never forget your persistence & patriotism! 🇺🇸🔥❤️💙 @umaineCR @MaineMayorNick @AdrienneMaine https://t.co/aXLJWtyNRB

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) January 18, 2020

In November, I was banned in Boston after speech-squelchers on the left and right forced the cancellation of my lecture at Bentley University, a small private institution. The grassroots activists who had invited me were rejected by every major event venue in the nation’s purported Cradle of Liberty. The tail-tuckers cited security concerns or jacked up their rental fees to make it prohibitively expensive to gather peacefully to discuss—gasp!—ideas.

Lou Murray of Bostonians Against Sanctuary Cities and Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies heroically persisted, pulling together a great event at a private home attended by 100 patriots who risked their privacy, friendships and even their jobs to listen to—gasp!—ideas. (Watch the video here.)

Soon after, a group of conservative students at the University of Maine, a publicly funded school, invited me to bring my nationalist message about who’s funding the destruction of America to their campus. This prompted the College Republicans’ faculty adviser, political science professor Amy Fried to resign in protest. That led to the de-chartering of the CR group. Why? Because I refused to disavow other young students who have asked trenchant, pesky questions at Young America’s Foundation and Turning Point USA lectures about the GOP elites’ support of wage-suppressing, job-outsourcing, Democrat voter-importing policies that put American students, workers and families last.

Many of those students follow a 21-year-old nationalist named Nick Fuentes who hosts a program (for now) on YouTube and DLive in his basement called “America First.” Because I refused to play the gatekeepers’ game of condemning every last joke or chatroom comment or tweet of someone followed by students whose questions I support, Fried believes that no students at her campus under her watch should be allowed to hear what I have to say about, well, anything.

How strongly do University of Maine officials oppose the free association of college students who want to know more about my work? Yesterday, I learned from Portland Sheraton at Sable Oaks general manager Ed Palmer and others that at least one University of Maine official—along with dozens of others cancel culture jihadists galvanized on social media by an anonymous Twitter account called “Support Maine’s Future”—had called to complain about the students and me after they posted an event notice last Friday. I reached out to top administrators, who did not respond by my filing deadline.

I also wrote to Fried, who responded late Tuesday evening: “I never did that. Didn’t happen. Whoever told you I did is incorrect. Thank you for checking, as you received a false report regarding me.”

I responded: “Too bad you didn’t pay me the same courtesy.”

Adrienne Bennett, a Republican candidate for U.S. Congress (Maine, District 2), challenged the school’s bullying tactics: “Free speech is the cornerstone of a free democracy. We are hearing reports that administrators from the University of Maine pressured a private Maine hotel to cancel an appearance by conservative speaker Michelle Malkin. If true, this is a disturbing development from Maine’s public, land-grant university,” she blasted. “All universities—but especially those that receive public funds—have an obligation to foster free speech and free inquiry. I support President Trump’s recent executive order on campus free speech. … I am disturbed that academic elites would interfere to block this speech. For those who disagree with Malkin’s views, the answer is debate and discourse, not censorship.”

My upcoming speaking schedule (for now) includes the New York Young Republican Club (Jan. 16); somewhere, hopefully, in Maine (Jan. 17); Liberty Forum of Silicon Valley (Feb. 11); Michigan Conservative Coalition’s Battle Cry 2020, Troy, Michigan (Feb. 14); Arizona State University (Feb. 26); and San Diego State University (April TBD).

A total of six organizations have now deemed me such a public menace that I’ve been barred from speaking at their venues or events: Mar-a-Lago (canceled by the Trump Organization after complaints by the Southern Poverty Law Center spread by left-wingers at the Miami Herald); Bentley University; the University of Minnesota (canceled at the behest of national leaders of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow); the New Jersey Right to Life Committee; an Indiana conservative group; and Young America’s Foundation.

Why is this censorship campaign from both sides of the political spectrum happening? University of Maine College Republican Jeremiah Childs astutely observed: “They’re doing this to delegitimize us because we’re popular.” Popular, peacefully expressed ideas that threaten establishment empires in both parties must be stopped. The pretense of free inquiry and association must be propped up by the tolerance hypocrites on the left and the culture warrior poseurs on the right. The illusion of “free speech” must be maintained by the keepers of the gate. Lying is lucrative. Telling the truth, controlled by no one, only gets you grief.

Sara Jean Underwood Photos

She updates her feeds almost constantly, and with some excellent content lol.

At Celeb Jihad, "SARA UNDERWOOD NUDE CAMPING PHOTOS."

Let’s ride🚐 pic.twitter.com/8opQ0eNg2K

— Sara Jean Underwood (@SaraUnderwood) January 18, 2020

Sweet dreams😴 pic.twitter.com/DzMT0xTZRH

— Sara Jean Underwood (@SaraUnderwood) January 18, 2020