George Friedman, The Storm Before the Calm

At Amazon, George Friedman, The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond.

"Everybody today is talking about this Time magazine story by Molly Ball, which looks an awful lot like a secret plan to rig the election, but you're not allowed to say 'rigged' or 'stolen,' because if you do, you’re an 'extremist' and potentially a terrorist..."

 At great piece, at the Other McCain, "You Can’t Say ‘Rigged’":

One of the things you learn, if you spend as many years in the news business as I have, is that the news is not random. That is to say, the question of what stories will appear on the front page of the New York Times is not merely matter of what happened the day before, because all kinds of things happen every day, and there is only so much space on the front page of a paper. Actual choices have to be made, by human beings called “editors,” to determine what’s front-page news, what gets stuck back on Page A14, and what never gets reported at all.

The process of deciding what is “news” is not random, as I say, even though some events are of such unquestioned importance that they must be at the top of the front page. If you picked up any American newspaper on Sept. 12, 2001, this was rather obvious, but such historic events are rare, and on most days the question of what goes on A1 leaves a fair amount of leeway to the editors to make their own choices. There may be one or two stories of such unquestioned importance that they must be on the front page, but when it comes to the rest — Story 3, Story 4, Story 5, etc. — the editor’s have more room to exercise discretion.

Trust me, there is often a lot internal disagreement over such things. When I was at The Washington Times, some reporters would get very angry if a story they had pitched for A1 didn’t make the cut. It was generally the policy that A1 would have at least one Metro story, and on most days also there would be something from Sports or Features on the front page, so that out of a total of seven or eight front-page stories, the National desk would only get five or six. Well, if Bill Gertz had a story about the Chinese military that he felt deserved to be on A1, he’d get rather peeved — and understandably so — if his story was bumped back to Page A3 so that we could have, say, a feature about Georgetown University basketball on the front page. It happens.

Human beings make decisions about what counts as front-page news, and there is a certain amount of selectivity involved. You know who figured this out? Matt Drudge. The story is that when he was working as the overnight clerk at a 7-Eleven in the Maryland suburbs of D.C., he would read all the newspapers to pass the time in the wee hours when there were no customers. Reading the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Times, the New York Post, USA Today, etc., back-to-back every day for weeks on end, Drudge began to notice the different choices reflected in the content of the papers. From that insight sprang his subsequent approach to aggregating news at the Drudge Report (which, alas, he seems to have turned over to a gang of liberal dimwits in the past couple of years). Thanks to the Internet, all of us now have more access to different sources than was possible for most people back when Drudge was reading all those newspapers at 7-Eleven, so there is more widespread understanding of how media bias operates.

“Why is this story national news?”

That’s the question you have to ask, whenever a crime story makes it to CNN or to the network evening news broadcasts. Because America is a very large country, with more than 325 million people, the vast majority of crime in the United States is strictly “local news.” There were more than 16,000 murders in America in 2019, which works out to about 45 murder per day. How many of those murders even get mentioned on CNN? Not many. So when something like the Trayvon Martin shooting or the death of George Floyd becomes national news — hourly updates 24/7 on CNN — this means that a decision was made by someone. These stories didn’t just coincidentally become national news. On the day that George Floyd died, about 40 other Americans were shot to death, but none of those other deaths were deemed newsworthy by CNN...

Keep reading.

And at the American Spectator, "Why Is Identity Politics Destroying America?"

Stunning Alex Biston's Saturday Forecast

She's a hottie!

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Donald McNeil Out at the New York Times

Actually, it's both Donald McNeil and Andy Mills (a podcaster of whom I've never heard). 

But McNeil was a superstar at the newspaper. Back in spring/summer 2020, my wife and I saw him appear on CNN a number of times. He's an arrogant bastard, but he did seem to know what he was talking about. But he made an extremely detrimental faux pas while leading a field trip of young people to Peru in 2019. As Andrew Sullivan noted on Twitter last night, regarding McNeil's resignation, "This reads like a confession procured by the Khmer Rouge. It’s both ridiculous and terrifying."

As I always tell my (extremely "woke") 25-year-old son, be careful of cancel culture, and avoid partaking in it, because it always come back to you, with not-so-excellent consequences. Or another way of putting it, "the revolution eats its own."

See, "Two Journalists Exit New York Times After Criticism of Past Behavior":

Two journalists responsible for some of The New York Times’s most high-profile work of the last three years have left the paper after their past behavior was criticized inside and outside the organization.

In two memos on Friday afternoon, Dean Baquet, the paper’s executive editor, and Joe Kahn, the managing editor, informed the staff of the departures of Donald G. McNeil Jr., a science correspondent who reported on the coronavirus pandemic, and Andy Mills, an audio journalist who helped create “The Daily” and was a producer and co-host of “Caliphate,” a 2018 podcast that was found to have serious flaws after an internal investigation.

Mr. McNeil, a veteran of The Times who has reported from 60 countries, was an expert guide on a Times-sponsored student trip to Peru in 2019. At least six students or their parents complained about comments he had made, The Daily Beast reported last week. The Times confirmed he used a “racist slur” on the trip.

In their memo, Mr. Baquet and Mr. Kahn wrote that Mr. McNeil “has done much good reporting over four decades” but added “that this is the right next step.”

The statement was a turnabout from last week, when Mr. Baquet sent a note to the staff defending his decision to give Mr. McNeil “another chance.”

“I authorized an investigation and concluded his remarks were offensive and that he showed extremely poor judgment,” Mr. Baquet wrote, “but that it did not appear to me that his intentions were hateful or malicious.”

Days after that note, a group of Times staff members sent a letter to the publisher, A.G. Sulzberger, that was critical of the paper’s stance on Mr. McNeil. “Despite The Times’s seeming commitment to diversity and inclusion,” said the letter, which was viewed by a Times reporter, “we have given a prominent platform — a critical beat covering a pandemic disproportionately affecting people of color — to someone who chose to use language that is offensive and unacceptable by any newsroom’s standards.”

Mr. Sulzberger, Mr. Baquet and Meredith Kopit Levien, the chief executive of The New York Times Company, replied to the group in a letter on Wednesday, saying: “We welcome this input. We appreciate the spirit in which it was offered and we largely agree with the message.”

In a statement to Times staff on Friday, Mr. McNeil wrote that he had used the slur in a discussion with a student about the suspension of a classmate who had used the term...

Still more at that top link.

Biden Under Pressure to Delay U.S. Troop Withdrawal from Afghanistan (VIDEO)

Well, this is the administration that claims to want to "use diplomacy" and "rebuild" alliances in order to "restore America's standing in the world." 

Well, what's to restore? 

The Trump administration had, no doubt, perhaps its greatest successes in foreign policy. At the video below, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gives a somber, reasoned defense of his leadership, at both the CIA and the State Department, while serving on President Trump's foreign policy team. Pompeo notes that no American diplomats or CIA operatives were killed or bombed under his watch. He also defended the Trump administration's record at maintaining and building alliances, particularly in the Middle East, where the U.S. entered into historic agreements that have literally shifted the balance of power away from enemies such as Iran, in favor of our longtime friends and allies, especially Israel. 

Under the Trump administration, high-value and dangerous enemies intent to take out American troops and other U.S. government officials (and regular American citizens) were liquidated with very carefully-targeted actions that left minimal collateral damage (for example the pinpoint drone strike against Iran's Qassim Suleimani, the Commander of Iranian Forces, who had in the past been the Iran's leading strategist on Iran's attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and elsewhere, and U.S. intelligence reports indicated that more attacks were in the works under Suleimani's leadership). To say, as Joe Biden does a the video linked above, that "America's back" is bluster and hubris from the new Democrat administration filled with idiotic war-hawks. 

Now while I'm no isolationist, at all, I prefer to fight back when America is threatened and attacked, and screw lame "diplomacy" when U.S. vital interests are at stake. But restraining U.S. power, especially when the use of credible threats remain always in the background, is preferable to the all-out bluster approach under the new administration's foreign policy team. I mean, Pompeo notes that no new wars were hatched under President Trump, that troop withdrawals were taking place, and that in fact, it was the previous Democrat administration of Barack Obama who "lost Crimea" to Russian aggression in that southern zone of Ukrainian sovereignty, and it was the Obama administration that stood aside as Russia's "Little Green Men" launched a clandestine incursion into Ukrainian territory proper, to destabilize the legitimate government there in Kiev. 

So now we're going to KEEP troops in Afghanistan. We've been there for almost 20 years, and saying this as a big supporter of our goals in Afghanistan from the start, enough is enough. If the Taliban don't want peace, and they don't appear to be heading in that direction, abandon those losers, work with real hard diplomacy, and wield the stick of our military forces to send the big message to those backtracking on previous agreements with the U.S. government under the Trump administration that they will bear heavy costs. Maybe a few well-placed Predators drones targeting the renascent al-Qaeda ready to come out from the hillsides and safe-zones in the mountainous regions in Pakistan, will get the message that the U.S. means business, and that's without any boots on the ground. 

Everybody with a cool and calm demeanor, and personal self-honestly knows this. It's the new "globalists" in this new Biden administration who will misread the tea leaves and end up botching the current peace, and Biden himself will go down as a freakin' authoritarian and warmongering nincompoop.

In any case, at LAT, "Will Biden follow through on Trump’s plan to pull remaining troops from Afghanistan?":

WASHINGTON — President Biden is under pressure to delay the withdrawal of the remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan, a decision that has forced a vexing early debate within his national security team about whether ending America’s longest war will plunge the violence-plagued country deeper into chaos.

It’s a decision that Biden inherited from former President Trump, who negotiated a withdrawal timetable with the Taliban but left the final and most difficult step of actually ending the war to his successor.

Though Biden has long favored shrinking the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, current and former national security officials warn the president that even after nearly two decades in Afghanistan, the departure of U.S. forces there could lead to a resurgence of Al Qaeda, the militant group behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Biden’s national security team is looking for ways to pressure the Taliban to reduce attacks, break with Al Qaeda and return to peace talks before the final 2,500 troops are scheduled to depart in four months, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.

But senior military and intelligence officials are skeptical about prospects for an Afghanistan peace deal, contending that Taliban militants have shown little willingness to reduce violence or enter into a power-sharing agreement with the Afghan government, the officials said.

“We believe that a U.S. withdrawal will provide the terrorists an opportunity to reconstitute, and that reconstitution will take place within about 18 to 36 months,” said retired Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump. Dunford offered that assessment Wednesday, during the unveiling of a congressionally mandated study on policy options in Afghanistan.

But Biden faces at least as powerful political pressure not to put off withdrawal indefinitely — from liberals in his party as well as many other Americans who favor bringing troops home — even with the risk that terrorist groups will grow stronger.

“This is unacceptable,” tweeted Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) after hearing the study group recommendation to delay withdrawal. “Those who had any part in getting us into this 20 year war should not be opining about keeping us mired in it.”

At the height of the war a decade ago, U.S. forces numbered more than 100,000. By Trump’s last year in office, however, that figure had dropped from 14,000 to only 2,500 — the lowest number since the invasion in 2001.

At the same time, Taliban attacks on Afghan government troops have surged, along with assassinations of government officials and activists. Peace talks between the government and the Taliban that began last fall have stalled, and many Afghans have grown fearful that a U.S. withdrawal will cause the fighting to worsen.

If the U.S. pulls out on schedule, but without progress on a peace settlement, the Taliban is likely to step up its attacks on Afghan troops and suicide bombings in urban areas, officials say.

But an order by Biden to halt the withdrawal is likely to reignite the U.S. shooting war with the Taliban, extending American involvement in the two-decade-old conflict.

Another option is for Biden to announce a delay in the U.S. withdrawal, in hopes of convincing Taliban officials that their only option is to negotiate with the Afghan government.

“It’s going to be a tough call,” said a senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions who agreed to discuss deliberations under the condition of anonymity. “If we stay after the deadline, the Taliban is likely to take that as a sign that we are not leaving and start attacking us.”

The Afghanistan Study Group, a congressionally mandated panel of former military officers, diplomats and lawmakers charged with recommending a future path, called Wednesday for the Biden administration to extend the May withdrawal deadline “in order to give the peace process sufficient time to produce an acceptable result.”

Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, is conducting an administration review of the withdrawal agreement signed by the Trump administration and the Taliban last February and is expected to recommend options to Biden within weeks, officials said.

Biden has kept Zalmay Khalilzad, the Trump official who negotiated the deal and has led efforts to push the peace talks along, in his post, a possible sign that Biden hopes to salvage at least some of the Trump exit strategy.

The Trump-Taliban agreement set the May deadline for U.S. forces to leave, along with more than 10,000 Pentagon contractors who play an important role in assisting Afghan troops fighting the Taliban. In return for a hard deadline on withdrawal, the Taliban agreed to halt attacks on U.S. troops, a commitment it has honored.

But Biden administration officials say the Taliban has not complied with other parts of the deal, including a commitment to seek a cease-fire and to prevent Afghan territory it controls from being used by Al Qaeda members. Taliban officials have accused the U.S. of violating the deal in carrying out airstrikes to help Afghan troops — a charge the U.S. denies.

One likely outcome of Sullivan’s review is a renewed U.S. push for a cease-fire, or at least a temporary reduction in violence, between the Taliban and the Afghan government. That would keep alive the prospect that U.S. troops could leave on schedule or close to it, several U.S. officials said.

The Biden administration “is committed to a political settlement in Afghanistan, one that includes the Afghan government,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby told reporters Tuesday. He added that any decision to reduce U.S. troops below 2,500 would be “conditions-based,” a Pentagon term meaning not tied to a fixed timetable.

Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III sounded out the views of Marine Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the top commander in the Middle East, in a telephone call Monday, according to a Defense official.

McKenzie and Army Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, oversaw the steep drawdown of U.S. forces last year, but are said by associates to have deep reservations about a full withdrawal.

There are also about 8,000 troops from other countries under NATO command in Afghanistan, who would also depart if the U.S. left.

During the presidential campaign, Biden promised to “bring the vast majority of our troops home from Afghanistan” and to “focus our mission on Al Qaeda” and Islamic State, extremist groups with small but entrenched followings in Afghanistan.

He has long argued that if Al Qaeda ever reemerges in Afghanistan — where it mounted devastating terrorist attacks against the United States 20 years ago — the militants could be dealt with by small special operations teams and with airstrikes, instead of large numbers of ground troops...

 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Moans About 'Revicimization' and Decries Those Challenging Her Lies About Being 'In Fear" for Her LIfe on January 6th (VIDEO)

I mean, Gayle King, who's surprising fair usually, considering she's a gushy progressive most of the time, doesn't press "Sandy" Cortez about her outright falsities about her "harrowing" experience during the so-called "right-wing domestic terrorist siege" of the Capitol. Everybody know she was safe and secure in her office, and wasn't about to be "murdered" by Ted Cruz, or anyone else.

She's just a perpetual victim, and it's frankly sad and unbecoming for such an otherwise hip and talented woman. But that's the Dem playbook, and she's the Pied Piper of leftist-Dem "bawling" victimization scams. 

FWIW, at CBS News This Morning:

Previously, "Outrage as Claims Surface That Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Was Shelting in Her Office in the Cannon Office Building, Not Capitol Hill, Where Riot Broke Out (VIDEO)."

And check new freshman G.O.P. Congresswoman Nancy Mace obliterating A.O.C.'s lies on Twitter, "I'm two doors down from @AOC and no insurrectionists stormed our hallway..." And check Mace's whole Twitter feed, where she keeps pushing back against the "revictimization" meme pushed by the entire "Squad."

Also see, Matt Walsh on Twitter, "Democrats who sat back and cheered while millions of Americans were impacted by rioting all summer have now spent the night on the House floor tearfully describing their own trauma from a riot in which none of them were harmed. I truly despise these people. Dirtbags. All of them."

The 'Primal Scream' of Working Moms Trying to Handle At-Home Teaching Amid the Pandemic

 At NYT (with the usual disclaimers), "“I wish I had the energy to scream. All my energy just goes into getting through every day, until I can go to sleep. I have three kids, all in virtual schools since March, and work full time. And it just feels like failing, every day, at everything I do. And I just want to change, want to be by myself for one minute. I don’t know how to keep doing this. But there isn’t really another option”:

“I cannot remember the last time I did not worry, I did not spend my day worrying about so much stuff. Every day is something different. I just want to wake up and go through my day and not worry, and not wonder, and not know what the future holds. Because this right here sucks. And I’m sick of it. I’m so sick of this.”

“There is just so much talking. Talking all the time. All day long. Words. Words. Words. So much talking. I just, I need no more talking. No more words. I need no more. No more. So much talking. I just need silence. Please. Silence.”

“I love my kids. I love my family. But we are together all of the time. Like, I never appreciated teachers and school as much as I did now. I don’t want to be my child’s teacher. I am not doing good with this. But, all things considered, things are cool. Somebody else rear my children, please. I miss going out. I miss being drunk. I miss dancing.”

William Jacobson Launches 'Critical Race Training In Higher Education' Website (VIDEO)

I was watching this segment on Tucker tonight. William Jacobson started out pretty much as an everyday blogger about 10 years ago, and he's turned his blog into an entire project to literally hit-back at the radical left, across the entire country, in this case, with initiatives and programs that are available to all. He's a real mensch, heh.

In any case, see, "[W]hat’s being taught on campuses is that the … most important thing … is the color of your skin":

My appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight about our new database and interactive map of Critical Race Training in Higher Education, criticalrace.org: "we’re trying to empower parents and students."

Marjorie Taylor Greene Set to Be Removed from Committee Assignments in House Vote (VIDEO)

I've already said my piece about the disgusting CNN hack Jack Tapper, seen at the video below. Boy, has he really O.D.'d on the Kool-Aid, man.

But here's WSJ's write up on Representative Greene, who unlike Liz Cheney (as noted) is actually a movement conservative, despite her loony-bin statements and tweets (those mostly being "weaponized" by hate-mongering leftist-Dems at almost all the network and cable news shows). I'm not defending her whatever "Q-Anon" affiliations, or what not, not at all. My point, and any reasonable person's as well, is that if she's to be punished by the "uniparty" leadership in Congress, it's not going to end up well, especially for Republicans currently throwing her under the bus.

See, "Marjorie Taylor Greene Says She Regrets QAnon Comments":

WASHINGTON—Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said she regretted past social-media comments embracing conspiracy theories, hours ahead of an expected vote by the House to sanction the freshman Georgia Republican by stripping her committee assignments.

In a speech on the House floor Thursday, Mrs. Greene said she regretted posts she made about QAnon, the far-right-wing, loosely organized network and community of believers who embrace a range of unsubstantiated beliefs. Mrs. Greene said she realized in 2018 that she was receiving misinformation and stopped believing it.

“I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true and I would ask questions about them and talk about them and that is absolutely what I regret,” she said Thursday, wearing a “Free Speech” mask. “If it weren’t for the Facebook posts and comments that I liked in 2018, I wouldn’t be standing here today and you couldn’t point a finger and accuse me of anything wrong, because I’ve lived a very good life that I’m proud of.”

Democrats criticized Mrs. Greene’s speech, saying her remarks fell short of an apology. “It was unpersuasive,” said Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D., N.C.). “It is so easy to say ‘I am sorry.’ Those are three important words in our culture.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) opted Wednesday not to remove Mrs. Greene from her committees over her incendiary past comments, but urged her to publicly denounce them. Democrats said they would hold a vote to kick her off unless Republicans acted first.

The resolution, which Democrats can pass with a simple majority, would push Mrs. Greene out of her spots on the budget and education committees. But Republicans warned that Democrats would be setting a dangerous precedent by unilaterally ousting lawmakers from the other party off committees, and that such a move would open the door for Republicans to retaliate, should they retake the House majority next year.

“I remain profoundly concerned about House Republican leadership’s acceptance of extreme conspiracy theorists,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) told reporters Thursday. She said she wasn’t concerned about the possibility of GOP retribution. “If any of our members threaten the safety of other members, we’ll be the first ones to take them off of committee,” she said.

Stripping committee assignments is seen as a severe punishment by taking away a lawmaker’s ability to shape and influence legislation. Former GOP Iowa Rep. Steve King was stripped of his assignments by fellow Republicans in 2019 after questioning what was wrong with white supremacy. He lost his primary in 2020.

A loyalist to former President Donald Trump, Mrs. Greene emerged as the most contentious new House Republican before arriving in Washington. While running for the GOP nomination last year, her online activity began to draw attention, including posts tying her to QAnon and other conspiracy theories, as well as comments vilifying Muslims and other groups...

RTWT.

 

Outrage as Claims Surface That Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Was Shelting in Her Office in the Cannon Office Building, Not Capitol Hill, Where Riot Broke Out (VIDEO)

I do not know, and I'm making no claims one way or the other, but prominent Twitter personalities have painted a pretty clear picture that she was sheltering (cowering) in her office across the street from the Capitol Building during the "white supremacist domestic terrorist" siege on January 6th. 

The full truth will come out, of course, but as she's a known fabulist, it's easy to see why she can't be trusted. (See, for example, at the Dallas Morning News, "AOC to Ted Cruz: ‘You almost had me murdered’," which is pure crap.)

At London's Daily Mail, "She wasn't even in the building! AOC is accused of exaggerating her 'near-death' Capitol riot experience as it's revealed the office where she cowered was down the street and UNTOUCHED - as #AlexandriaOcasioSmollett trends on Twitter."

The New York Post, "AOC blasted for exaggerating her ‘trauma’ from Capitol riot experience."

Attacking Jack Posobiec, A.O.C. tweeted yesterday:

This is the latest manipulative take on the right.

They are manipulating the fact that most people don’t know the layout the Capitol complex.

We were all on the Capitol complex - the attack wasn’t just on the dome.

The bombs Trump supporters planted surrounded our offices too.

On previously on MSNBC:

 

Liz Cheney and Marjorie Taylor Greene

Whatever happens to these two, in this bad and ugly kerfuffle, could be decided as soon as tomorrow, and it's all like a wrecking ball just hanging above the halls of Congress, just a few feet above both parties (that is, the "uniparty" elite in Congress), ready to crush the living shit out of them all.

NYT has updates, "Live Updates: House to Vote Thursday on Removing Marjorie Taylor Greene From Committees." There's also a longer, "conflicted" piece on Ms. Cheney, who indeed represents the "swamp" to many, many voters back home in her at-large congressional constituency in Wyoming. Trouble's brewing, and it's scalding.

Whatever, here's an LAT story trying to wrap it all together, "McCarthy faces choices as GOP divides over Reps. Liz Cheney and Marjorie Taylor Greene": 

WASHINGTON — House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy faced unrest Tuesday from opposing ends of the Republican spectrum over Reps. Liz Cheney and Marjorie Taylor Greene, underscoring GOP fissures as the party seeks its pathway without Donald Trump in the White House.

Hard-right lawmakers were itching to oust Cheney, a traditional conservative and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, from her post as the No. 3 House Republican after she voted to impeach Trump last month. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) praised Cheney and aligned himself with party moderates trying to isolate or punish Greene, a first-term congresswoman gaining renown for embracing outlandish fictions such as suggestions that mass school shootings were staged.

McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) met with Greene for about 90 minutes in his Capitol office Tuesday night. Aides to the two representatives offered no immediate comment afterward.

The looming House decisions on Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Greene (R-Ga.) represent a moment of reckoning for a party struggling with its future. Two weeks after Trump left office, House Republicans are essentially deciding whether to prioritize the former president’s norm-shattering behavior and conspiracy theories and retain the loyalty of his voters over more establishment conservative values.

“At the very moment that Joe Biden is lurching to the left is the moment that the Republican Party is lurching out of existence,” GOP pollster Frank Luntz said of the new Democratic president, who is preparing to try to muscle a mammoth COVID-19 relief package through the narrowly divided Congress.

“We can either become a fringe party that never wins elections or rebuild the big tent party of Reagan,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, one of the few elected Republicans who routinely rebuked Trump, said in a written statement. Without mentioning Cheney or Greene, he added, “I urge congressional Republicans to make the right choice.”

But pro-Trump forces in and out of Washington remain powerful. John Fredericks, who led Trump’s Virginia campaigns in 2016 and 2020, warned that there would be party primaries against Cheney defenders.

“We’ve got millions and millions of woke, motivated, America-first Trump voters that believe in the movement,” Fredericks said. “If you’re going to keep Liz Cheney in leadership, there’s no party.”

Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), a leader of the effort to oust Cheney, says he has enough support to succeed.

“She’s brought this on herself,” Rosendale said. He said Cheney, who was joined by only nine other Republicans in backing impeachment, was wrong to not forewarn colleagues about her decision.

House Republicans planned a meeting for Wednesday, when Cheney’s fate as leader could be decided. A House vote on a Democratic-led move to strip Greene of committee assignments could also occur Wednesday.

Greene, who has suggested that school shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Parkland, Fla., might be hoaxes, was selected to serve on the House education and budget committees. Democrats told McCarthy this week that if he didn’t remove Greene from her committees, the House would vote to do so, according to a person familiar with the conversation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations.

Republicans say that GOP members would unite against a Democratic move to remove Greene from her committee assignments and that such an effort would help Greene cast herself as a victim of partisan Democrats...

For M.J.T., the outcome to me is much more interesting than for Ms. Cheney, who has her dad's reputation to fall back on if she attempts a political comeback. 

Ms. Greene is generally a grassroots force, and while she's freakin' looney and has a nasty online profile she's now desperately trying to scrub, she won her district in her general election race with a 75 percent share of the two-party vote! Of course she's not going to stand to the side while she gets singled out by CNN and all the other hack leftist "news" networks, because, she'd have a damn good argument that her removal from Congress should be up to the voters in HER district to decide, not the bought, corrupt "leaders" from both parties in Congress, who do not care what happens to her.

CNN's Big Trump Ratings Bubble Begins to Collapse

Anyone with a half-working brain could see this coming, and I've personally called out the "stupid" and "idiotic" hacks on the air constantly at CNN, especially the revolting Jack Tapper, who has been let loose by the Time-Warner higher-ups in Atlanta (or wherever) to spew non-stop lies and hate towards anything related to Trump, Trump's voters, the alleged "insurrection" on Capitol Hill, and on and on. It's actually sick. The dude needs to get some help, sheesh. 

Sad too, because I've always enjoyed watching the "Situation Room," with Wolf Blitzer, and even a pretty decent and fair-mined guy like him has been kowtowing to this fake outrage inflamed by lies. It's disgusting, to say the least.

And thinking about it, amid the network's ratings collapse, I've been posting Tucker Carlson videos, and just you watch, he'll soon again have the Number 1 rated prime-time cable show, in just a matter of days and weeks, if not very much longer. Regular people can't stomach non-stop hatred on the news shows all the time, so they're naturally gonna tune out. That's an obvious point the Einstein's at CNN have systematically avoided. 

At Red State:

In all fairness, this is one week into it, and short-term data is not always the most reliable. But, this dip was anticipated by most media observers, and it’s a large part of the reason networks are still so focused on Trump, his impeachment, and stories regarding the last days of his presidency. They are trying to keep that high going.

It’s also why they are laser-focused on politicians like Marjorie Taylor-Greene. Not because it’s abnormal for politicians to hold weird or controversial views, but because they want to tie those views to the larger Republican base. The Democratic Party is all-too-happy to take advantage and keep the spotlight on these issues, but at this point, they are all fairly moot.

CNN has been one of the biggest disappointments of this era. While CNN has always had a left-of-center lean, they had good folks on the air and several who genuinely tried to stay relatively balanced. But as the editorial edicts came down, it was clear that there was a marketing decision that was made to make everything as much about Trump as possible, and there was more than enough leeway given to otherwise balanced guys like Jake Tapper to absolutely let loose with all their biases. It has been tragic to see.

RTWT. 

Jeff Bezos to Step Down as Amazon C.E.O. (VIDEO)

Just catching this news, at AoSHQ, "World's Richest Man, Top Oligarch and Cartel Princeling Jeff Bezos to Step Down as CEO of Amazon."

And here's the segment from Fox News:

I don't care personally what Bezos does with his money, but since he's one of the biggest of the left's Big Tech Media Conglomerate (as he owns WaPo), this is actually pretty good news.

Disclaimer: I will continue to promote product sales through my Amazon links here at the blog. Unlike the dicks at Google, Amazon has never sent a notice about "objectionable" content here, so at least I can still get a piece of all the billions the company generates, what, every month? Gawd, if there isn't a better example of a Big Tech monopoly driving mom and pop shops out of business, what else is there? Amazon's bigger than Walmart, in online sales at least. The company's a freakin' behemoth in the Karl Marx nightmare of worker exploitation. *Shrug.*

This 'Open Letter' Was Produced by Democrat Congressional Aides, But There's No Mention of Party Affiliations or 'Bipartisanship' at the Letter, Which Can Only Be Viewed as Another Lie Leftist-Dems Keep Perpetuating About the Capitol Hill 'Insurrection'

You can read the letter if here, "An Open Letter from Congressional Staff to Senate."

I googled the first five names from the long list of signatories, and they're ALL Democrat congressional staffers. And it's not like you wouldn't know that from just reading the letter, which looks like Pelosi and Schumer just wrote it themselves and stapled on the names from the list of all their "horrified" Dem staffers "cowering" for their lives amid the "right-wing domestic terrorist insurrection" from January 6th.

It's cheap and dishonest. It's agitprop.

These people lie. If they had any standards besides double-standards perhaps folks might believe them, sheesh.

Via Memeorandum, where I spy a blurb from NYT's story about the letter, "More than 370 Democratic aides issued an unusual public appeal, notable because congressional staff members rarely publicly express their own views." 

No matter though, it's just part of the Leftist-Dem-Big Tech-Media Complex's campaign of a massive, nationally-geared gaslighting operation. Don't trust them, ever. 

Tucker Carlson from Last Night (VIDEO)

I know a lot of folks on the right are hatin' on Fox News, but frankly, I mostly just watch "Tucker" and "Ingraham," and that's only if I'm in the mood. All the cable networks are over the top right now, especially "moderate" CNN (and Jake "Asshole" Tapper, especially).

Anyway, Tucker is always worth a watch. Here's his opening segment from last night:

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Hunter Biden Planning 'Art Show" With 'Shady' Dealer 'Who Was Charged With Terrorist Threats

And his dealer has "links to China"?

Well blow me down! 

This can't be true. And we know this can't be true because the leftist-Dem-Big-Tech-Media Oligarchy suppressed any information about our "beloved and wonderful" Hunter, to rig the election last October in favor of Hunter's most "honest and caring" father, the serial liar, Joseph Robinette Biden.

Funny how the idiots in the lamestream fake-news media assume their non-readers are just bunches of backwoods redneck rubes. *Eye-roll.*

At the New York Post, "Hiding Hunter Biden laying low in LA, starting art career with shady dealer":

As federal prosecutors continue their criminal probes into Hunter Biden’s taxes and international business dealings, the President’s son — shuttling between Washington DC and a sprawling Hollywood Hills home — is lying low, consulting with lawyers and focusing on his new career in art.

Biden, who turns 51 next week, is prepping a solo show with Soho art dealer Georges Berges, who currently represents Sylvester Stallone. Berges was once arrested for “terrorist threats” and assault with a deadly weapon in California and has strong ties to China.

Biden, who continues to hold business interests in a billion-dollar Chinese investment firm, moved into the 2,000-square foot hilltop Los Angeles home with his wife Melissa Cohen in January 2020, two months before the birth of their baby boy.

The home is connected to Shane Khoh, a Los Angeles-based entrepreneur and real estate investor who is CEO of SXU Investment Holdings LLC, the California company that has owned the $3.8 million property since 2011, according to public records. Khoh, an American who is fluent in Chinese, sits on the board of Siong Heng Realty Pte Ltd., a Singapore-based real estate holding company, according to his LinkedIn profile. He is also listed as a “venture partner” of Diverse Communities Impact Fund, a private-equity group that features former Democratic New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on its board of advisors.

The house was featured in a New York Times profile of Biden as an emerging abstract painter last year. Last year Khoh told The Washington Examiner that Biden was paying $12,000 a month for the property, which features a pool house that Biden has turned into an art studio. Khoh denied any prior relationship with Biden to the newspaper...

Still more.

I'm just gobsmacked at how stupid I've been to actually hold on to any thread of optimism that this miraculous new era of national "unity" is indeed truly on the way. Don't leftist always say, "Help is on the way"? 

Well, I don't want any of their help, except to have the Democrat-idiots now in "power" indeed fulfill some of their many, many promises to reach out and "help" regular folks. I mean, shutting down the "Keystone Pipeline," putting tens of thousands of highly skilled tradesmen and women out of work has just gotta do wonders for pulling people back together, to say nothing of "reviving" the economy. But it's still early morning, and I've cut back on my coffee consumption, because drinking coffee right now only compounds my not-so-positive reactions to the daily monstrous stupidity I see from our totally and morally bankrupt Democrat coastal and beltway elites now claiming a "mandate" to literally destroy what's left of our once-beloved republic.

THE CRUSHING OF DISSENT WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES

Following-up from earlier, "John Eastman Resigns From Chapman University Law School."

From Glenn Reynolds, at Instapundit, "Colorado Relieves John Eastman of His Duties, Chapman Bars Him From Speaking at Law Review Symposium He Organized; Eastman Speaks at Arizona State Federalist Society Event Despite Opposition From Students and Dean." 

Click through to read it all at the link.

Jennifer Delacruz's Monday Forecast

Ms. Jennifer perhaps has some "comorbidities," as she continues to report her weather forecasts from her home (to be on the safe side?), while some of the network's other weather-hotties are back in the studio.

No matter. Ms. Jennifer's a treat, from home or the office.

At ABC News 10 San Deigo:

An Emboldened Extremist Wing Flexes Its Power in a Leaderless G.O.P.

Pfft.

It's the Old Gray Lady, back up to her stupid, hypocritical tricks.

Because, you know, there is no "extremist wing" in the Democrat Party; oh no, A.OC. and "the Squad" don't count, because they're on NYT's side. Ditto for the Bernie Sanders "wing" in the upper chamber of Congress, most of whom are to the left of the Castro regime in Cuba.

But FWIW, which admittedly, isn't much, except that the newspaper's "screeds" do give us a glimpse into how privileged and stunningly un-self-aware are the "journalists" who write up all this agitprop for the country-club-socialists who live and die by every word published in that rag, and the same folks can't wait to get their marriage announcements into the paper's society pages (hello Jessica Valenti!). 

I read this crap so you don't have to: Have a look and judge for yourself, because that's exactly what the stupid, hypocritical "editors" at the paper DON'T expect you to do, but would rather have just tune out and burn out by avoiding their "mainstream news" and instead "radicalize yourself" on Fox News (which contrary to the most feverish of progressive dreams, is the only cable outlet right now actually reporting real news; and don't get me going about the "balanced" coverage we see daily at the corporate-big-tech-controlled CNN).

Here:

As more far-right Republicans take office and exercise power, party officials are promoting unity and neutrality rather than confronting dangerous messages and disinformation.

WASHINGTON — Knute Buehler, who led Oregon’s Republican ticket as the candidate for governor in 2018, watched with growing alarm in recent weeks as Republicans around the nation challenged the reliability of the presidential election results.

Then he watched the Jan. 6 siege at the United States Capitol in horror. And then, to his astonishment, Republican Party officials in his own state embraced the conspiracy theory that the attack was actually a left-wing “false flag” plot to frame Trump supporters.

The night after his party’s leadership passed a formal resolution promoting the false flag theory, Mr. Buehler cracked open a local microbrew and filed to change his registration from Republican to independent. “It was very painful,” he said.

His unhappy exit highlighted one facet of the upheaval now underway in the G.O.P.: It has become a leaderless party, with veterans like Mr. Buehler stepping away, luminaries like Senator Rob Portman of Ohio retiring, far-right extremists like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia building a brand on a web of dangerous conspiracy theories, and pro-Trump Republicans at war with other conservatives who want to look beyond the former president to the future.

With no dominant leader other than the deplatformed one-term president, a radical right movement that became emboldened under Mr. Trump has been maneuvering for more power, and ascending in different states and congressional districts. More moderate Republicans feel increasingly under attack, but so far have made little progress in galvanizing voters, donors or new recruits for office to push back against extremism.

Instead, in Arizona, the state Republican Party has brazenly punished dissent, formally censuring three of its own: Gov. Doug Ducey, former Senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, the widow of former Senator John McCain. The party cited their criticisms of Mr. Trump and their defenses of the state’s election process.

In Wyoming, Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, headlined a rally on Thursday to denounce Representative Liz Cheney for her vote to impeach Mr. Trump. Joining Mr. Gaetz by phone hookup was Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s son, who has been working to unseat Ms. Cheney and replace her with someone he believes better represents the views of her constituents — in other words, fealty to his father.

In Kentucky, grass-roots Republicans tried to push the state party to pass a resolution urging Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, to fully support Mr. Trump in next month’s impeachment trial. The effort failed.

And in Michigan, Meshawn Maddock, a Trump supporter who pushed false claims about voter fraud and organized buses of Republicans from the state to attend the Jan. 6 rally in Washington, is running unopposed to become the new co-chairman of the state party. While marching from the Ellipse to the Capitol on Jan. 6, Ms. Maddock praised the “most incredible crowd and sea of people I’ve ever worked with.”

Nothing is defining and dividing the G.O.P. more than loyalty to Mr. Trump and his false claims about the election.

“You’ve got 41 percent of the country, including a lot of independents, who think the election was stolen,” said Scott Reed, the former political director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a veteran Republican consultant. “That’s an amazing number. It takes months for a party that loses a national election to re-gel.”

There are still Republican officials who are responsible for the party’s political interests — but these people are under their own kinds of pressure, preaching unity to factions that have no desire to unite.

Perhaps the most prominent party official right now is Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee and a close ally of Mr. Trump’s. In an interview on Friday, she condemned the “false flag” resolution passed by Oregon Republicans and sounded exasperated at the public brawling in her party.

“If you have a family dispute, don’t go on ‘Jerry Springer,’” Ms. McDaniel said. “Do it behind closed doors. It’s my role to call them and explain that if we don’t keep our party united and focused on 2022, we will lose. If we are attacking fellow Republicans and cancel culture within our own party, it is not helpful to winning majorities.”

At the same time, Ms. McDaniel made clear that she was not going to impose top-down decision making on the party, noting that the role of the R.N.C. was to stay neutral in primaries. She said she planned to do so in the 2022 midterm elections, barring more extreme behavior emerging...

Still more at that top link, if you stomach can it, sheesh.