Friday, February 18, 2022

Ezra Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

At Amazon, Ezra Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China.




How Chinese Grand Strategy Exploits U.S. Power

 From Mark Pottinger, at Foreign Affairs, "Beijing’s American Hustle":

Although many Americans were slow to realize it, Beijing’s enmity for Washington began long before U.S. President Donald Trump’s election in 2016 and even prior to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2012. Ever since taking power in 1949, the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has cast the United States as an antagonist. But three decades ago, at the end of the Cold War, Chinese leaders elevated the United States from just one among many antagonists to their country’s primary external adversary—and began quietly revising Chinese grand strategy, embarking on a quest for regional and then global dominance.

The United States and other free societies have belatedly woken up to this contest, and a rare spirit of bipartisanship has emerged on Capitol Hill. But even this new consensus has failed to adequately appreciate one of the most threatening elements of Chinese strategy: the way it exploits vital aspects of American and other free societies and weaponizes them in the service of Chinese ambitions. Important U.S. institutions, especially in finance and technology, cling to self-destructive habits acquired through decades of “engagement,” an approach to China that led Washington to prioritize economic cooperation and trade above all else.

If U.S. policymakers and legislators find the will, however, there is a way to pull Wall Street and Silicon Valley back onside, convert the United States’ vulnerabilities into strengths, and mitigate the harmful effects of Beijing’s political warfare. That must begin with bolder steps to stem the flow of U.S. capital into China’s so-called military-civil fusion enterprises and to frustrate Beijing’s aspiration for leadership in, and even monopoly control of, high-tech industries—starting with semiconductor manufacturing. The United States must also do more to expose and confront Beijing’s information warfare, which spews disinformation and sows division by exploiting U.S. social media platforms—platforms that are themselves banned inside China’s own borders. And Washington should return the favor by making it easier for the Chinese people to access authentic news from outside China’s so-called Great Firewall.

Some have argued that because the CCP’s ideology holds little appeal abroad, it poses an insignificant threat to U.S. interests. Yet that ideology hardly appeals to the Chinese people, either, and that hasn’t prevented the party from dominating a nation of 1.4 billion people. The problem is not the allure of Leninist totalitarianism but the fact that Leninist totalitarianism—as practiced by the well-resourced and determined rulers of Beijing—has tremendous coercive power. Accordingly, U.S. leaders should not ignore the ideological dimension of this contest; they should emphasize it. American values—liberty, independence, faith, tolerance, human dignity, and democracy—are not just what the United States fights for: they are also among the most potent weapons in the country’s arsenal, because they contrast so starkly with the CCP’s hollow vision of one-party rule at home and Chinese domination abroad. Washington should embrace those strengths and forcefully remind American institutions that although placating China might help their balance sheets in the short term, their long-term survival depends on the free markets and legal rights that only U.S. leadership can secure.

THE ART OF POLITICAL WARFARE

The West’s sluggishness in realizing that it has been on the receiving end of China’s elaborate, multidecade hostile strategy has a lot to do with the hubris that followed the United States’ triumph in the Cold War. U.S. policymakers assumed that the CCP would find it nearly impossible to resist the tide of liberalization set off by the collapse of the Berlin Wall. According to this line of thought, by helping enrich China, the United States would loosen the party’s grip on its economy, people, and politics, setting the conditions for a gradual convergence with the pluralistic West.

That was, to put it mildly, a miscalculation, and it stemmed in part from the methods the CCP employs to prosecute its grand strategy. With enviable discipline, Beijing has long camouflaged its intention to challenge and overturn the U.S.-led liberal order. Beijing co-opted Western technologies that Americans assumed would help democratize China and instead used them to surveil and control its people and to target a growing swath of the world’s population outside China’s borders. The party now systematically cultivates Western corporations and investors that, in turn, pay deference to Chinese policies and even lobby their home capitals in ways that align with the CCP’s objectives.

Beijing’s methods are all manifestations of “political warfare,” the term that the U.S. diplomat George Kennan, the chief architect of the Cold War strategy of containment, used in a 1948 memo to describe “the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives.” Kennan credited the Soviet Union with “the most refined and effective” conduct of political warfare. Were he alive today, Kennan would marvel at the ways Beijing has improved on the Kremlin’s playbook.

Kennan’s memo was meant to disabuse U.S. national security officials of “a popular attachment to the concept of a basic difference between peace and war.” He was hopeful that Americans could shed this handicap and learn to fight in the political realm to forestall a potentially catastrophic military conflict with the Soviets. To a great extent, Washington did exactly that, marshaling partners on every continent to contain Soviet influence.

Today, free and open societies are once again coming to terms with the reality of political warfare. This time, however, the campaign is directed by a different kind of communist country—one that possesses not just military power but also economic power derived from its quasi-marketized version of capitalism and systematic theft of technology. Although there are holdouts—financiers, entertainers, and former officials who benefited from engagement, for example—polls show that the general public in the United States, European countries, and several Asian countries is finally attuned to the malevolent nature of the Chinese regime and its global ambitions. This should come as no surprise, given the way the CCP has conducted itself in recent years: covering up the initial outbreak of COVID-19, attacking Indian troops on the Chinese-Indian border, choking off trade with Australia, crushing the rule of law in Hong Kong, and intensifying a campaign of genocide against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China.

HIDE AND BIDE NO MORE

Those aggressive moves represent merely a new phase of a decades-old strategy. In writing his recent book The Long Game, the U.S. scholar Rush Doshi pored over Chinese leaders’ speeches, policy documents, and memoirs to document how Beijing came to set its sights on dismantling American influence around the globe. According to Doshi, who now serves on the National Security Council staff as a China director, three events badly rattled CCP leaders: the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square; the lopsided, U.S.-led victory over the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s forces in early 1991; and the collapse of the Soviet Union that same year. “The Tiananmen Square protests reminded Beijing of the American ideological threat; the swift Gulf War victory reminded it of the American military threat; and loss of the shared Soviet adversary reminded it of the American geopolitical threat,” writes Doshi. “In short order, the United States quickly replaced the Soviet Union as China’s primary security concern, that in turn led to a new grand strategy, and a thirty-year struggle to displace American power was born.”

China’s new grand strategy aimed first to dilute U.S. influence in Asia, then to displace American power more overtly from the region, and ultimately to dominate a global order more suited to Beijing’s governance model. That model isn’t merely authoritarian; it’s “neo-totalitarian,” according to Cai Xia, who served for 15 years as a professor in the highest temple of Chinese communist ideology: the Central Party School in Beijing...

Keep reading.

 

Todd Gitlin, The Sixties

At Amazon, Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage.




Joe Rogan Speaks the Way Men Do With Each Other in Private

And that's the fundamental basis of his appeal, which is gargantuan with 11 million viewers. 

Andrew Sullivan has thoughts:

No, the left is not calling all masculinity toxic. But they get pretty quiet when you ask for a definition of non-toxic masculinity that doesn’t end up sounding like being a woman. And, no, they’re not explicitly denying that there are biological differences between men and women — they just speak and act on the premise that there aren’t, that boys do not need a different kind of education than girls, that all-male groups are problematic, and that finding a way to direct masculinity to noble ends is somehow enabling the oppression of women, or gay people. The result is that men are subject to left derision, right machismo, and complete cultural derailment.

And that’s where Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson come in. They too, of course, are mocked constantly, demeaned as chauvinists or white supremacists, etc. But what Rogan does is speak and talk the way men do with each other in private, which, in this media era, is a revelation. He doesn’t entertain the woke bromides of gender theory because he’s lived a life, clearly loves being a man as much as Adele says she loves being a woman, and believes, as he once put it, that “bad men are just bad human beings who happen to be men.”

He lifts weights, watches fights, eats elk meat, smokes pot, dabbles in DMT, and asks the kind of questions normie men might ask of experts. Which is why they listen. They feel at home with him. Unlike so much of the MSM, he feels real: not a throwback to patriarchy but an opening to a kind of brotherhood that feels sane to many disoriented men in America — especially the majority who haven’t yet bent the knee to the doctrines of the successor ideology.

He’s in no way a bully or blowhard. Just listen to him: his tone is mellifluous, curious, amused. His masculinity is unforced, funny and real. He’s genuinely ingenuous — the way most humans are, possessing the kind of credulousness journalists are trained out of. But that’s why he has 11 million listeners and CNN has a little over 500,000. One of his most frequent guests is the brilliant comic Tim Dillon — openly gay and stereotypically male.

Rogan’s politics are eclectic, but they reflect a male concern with practical things, straightforward people, and solutions. The idea that he is a right-wing ideologue is silly and untrue. He readily admits when he’s wrong and often self-deprecates. He’s not afraid to show emotion and choke up — whether it’s over the triumph of female fighters or putting down a puppy or the death of Chadwick Boseman. Rogan is simply not the brutish caricature that left-Twitter and CNN would have you think.

The same goes for Peterson. The Canadian prof and clinical psychologist is cantankerous, yes, but also compassionate...

RTWT: "Between the World and Men Truckers, Rogan, Peterson and the revolt of masculinity."

What a Catch!

Dreamy.

On Twitter

A lovely naughty one here.

And look at that beautiful all-natural woman reeling in a marlin!



Prime Minister Justine Trudeau Hurls Nazi Slurs at Melissa Lantsman, Jewish-Canadian Member of Parliament (VIDEO)

Here's Ms. Lantsman on Twitter, "I think the Prime Minister should think long and hard about his own history before singling out a Jewish Member of Parliament and falsely accusing me of standing with a Swastika. What a disgraceful statement unbecoming of anyone in public office - he owes me an apology."

And at the New York Post, "Justin Trudeau sparks outrage after accusing Jewish conservatives of supporting swastikas."

She appeared on Laura Ingraham's show last night:


Thursday, February 17, 2022

Edward N. Luttwak, The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy

At Amazon, Edward N. Luttwak, The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy.




Justin Trudeau: A liberal Despot

This is from Megan Murphy, the righteous Canadian anti-trans feminist who was kicked off Twitter a couple of years back for violating Jack's politically incorrect diktats. She's in Mexico now, it turns out, in exile and flying under the radar. I miss her voice --- a voice of sanity in a world of madness.

At Spiked, "The Canadian PM has invoked emergency powers to crush the truckers’ peaceful protest":

The Emergencies Act has never been used before in Canadian history. Its predecessor, the War Measures Act, was invoked only once during peacetime – by Justin’s father, then prime minister Pierre Trudeau, in the 1970s. The War Measures Act was used to give sweeping powers of arrest and internment to the police in response to a Quebecois separatist group, Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), which, in 1970, kidnapped and murdered the deputy premier of Quebec, Pierre Laporte. At the time the powers were invoked, 23 members of the FLQ were already in prison, including four who had been convicted of murder. This was an actual terrorist group, responsible for illegal activities, including bombings, kidnapping and murder – not tens of thousands of happy Canadians, peacefully protesting by playing street hockey, singing the national anthem, dancing, barbequeing and setting up bouncy castles for kids, as we see in Ottawa today.

The Emergencies Act defines a national emergency as an ‘urgent and critical situation’ that ‘seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it’. The Act cannot be applied to lawful advocacy, protest or dissent.

Tellingly, even when the War Measures Act was invoked by Pierre Trudeau in the 1970s, in response to a group causing actual violence and perpetrating illegal acts, this was widely criticised as an infringement on civil liberties. During what was called the October Crisis, the military was deployed in Quebec and about 400 people were arrested under the measure.

Invoking the Emergency Act now, in response to peaceful Canadians engaging in legal protest, is a stretch of epic and frightening proportions. Yet many progressive Canadians seem relieved at Trudeau’s decision and thankful he is finally ‘taking action’ against the nuisance of having to confront diversity of opinion in their country, after having spent the past two years in a virtual bubble, away from people who hold different views and perspectives to themselves.

The response to the convoy and its supporters has, from the get go, been both inspiring and appalling. Across Canada people have expressed a long forgotten sense of pride in their country. So many – myself included – had lost faith that Canadians would ever push back against the Liberal government’s ongoing abuse of power against its citizens. At the same time, progressives and the mainstream media have engaged in an abhorrent and endless deluge of hateful and defamatory attacks on their neighbours. Claims that protesters are white nationalist, violent terrorists continue to dominate the narrative, without evidence, fuelled by a prime minister intent on pitting Canadians against one another and on ignoring our charter rights.

Ironically, considering the claims of those who insist the Freedom Convoy is a dangerous movement, it is the protesters and their supporters who have faced the most vicious attacks. For instance, GiveSendGo – the crowdfunding platform convoy organisers began using to fundraise in support of the truckers for things like food, lodging and fuel – was hacked this week after it refused to comply with an order from the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario to prevent disbursement of funds. Tammy Giuliani, the owner of a gelato café in Ottawa, was forced to close this week after a list of donors to the convoy’s fundraising campaign was leaked via the hack and those opposing the protests began threatening Giuliani, her staff and the shop. Major banks have frozen accounts collecting funds for the truckers, and the Canadian government has threatened to freeze the bank accounts and suspend the vehicle insurance of truckers who continue to participate in the protests.

Trudeau’s decision to invoke the Emergency Act is nothing less than an attack on democracy...

RTWT. 

Long Live Lindsey Pelas!

Out of this world!




As Ottawa Tries to Stop the Flow of Money to Protesters, Questions Remain on Who Will Be Targeted – and Whether the Tactics Will Work (VIDEO)

Totalitarians.

At Blazing Cat Fur:

Ottawa’s new emergency law enlists a huge range of financial players in a bid to cut off funds to protesters tied to the trucker blockades, but questions remain about who will be targeted and whether it will even work.

A new order and regulations under the Emergencies Act, which the federal government invoked on Monday, requires a long list of entities — this includes banks, insurance companies, credit unions, trust and loan companies, payment processors and online fundraising platforms — to continuously determine whether they should freeze accounts and halt services for individuals or companies tied to illegal assemblies and blockades that have gripped the country for weeks...

Eileen Gu or the Chained Woman?

I've already blogged about Eileen Gu, but nothing like this. 

There are at least 600,000 million Chinese living in abject poverty, but Chairman Xi can't let the cat out of the bag. So, Ms. Gu is promoted to the top of Wiebo while human-trafficking victim Xiaohuamei (little flower plum) is censored and crushed under the boot-heel of totalitarianism.

Absolutely unreal story. I already loathe China. I'm to the point of no longer reporting on the regime because it makes me furious. The diabolical hypocrisy is stunning. Americans like Eileen Gu to the cretins of the International Olympic Committee --- with this whole Olympics propaganda regime --- have blood on their hands. And that's to say nothing of the Chinese Communist Party thugs who should be destroyed rather than coddled. This is all so sickening, even anti-American. 

At the New York Times. "Who Is the Real China? Eileen Gu or the Chained Woman?":

Two women have dominated Chinese social media during the Beijing Winter Olympics.

One is Eileen Gu, the 18-year-old skier born and raised in California who won a gold medal for China. The other is a mother of eight who was found chained around her neck to the wall of a doorless shack.

The Chinese internet is exploding with discussions about which of the two represents the real China. Many people are angry that the government-controlled algorithms glorify Ms. Gu, who fits into the narrative of the powerful and prosperous China, while censoring the chained woman, whose deplorable conditions defy that narrative.

The two women’s starkly different circumstances — celebrated vs. silenced — reflect the reality that to the Chinese state, everyone is a tool that serves a purpose until it does not.

Whether she wants it, Ms. Gu has become a powerful propaganda tool for Beijing to demonstrate its appeal to global talent and the benefits of being loyal to China. She represents the successful China that Beijing would like the world to admire.

The chained woman represents the poor and backward China that hundreds of millions still inhabit. They sometimes appear in the state media to demonstrate the country’s success in eradicating extreme poverty until their miseries become an inconvenient truth.

“Does Eileen Gu’s success have anything to do with ordinary Chinese?” goes the headline of one viral article that was censored later.

“Can we remember these women while cheering for Eileen Gu?” asks another headline.

“To judge whether a society is civilized or not, we should not look at how successful the privileged are but how miserable the disadvantaged are,” the article said. “Ten thousand sports champions can’t wash away the humiliation of one enslaved woman, not to mention tens of thousands of them.”

The Chinese government doesn’t like where the debate is heading. The juxtaposition of the two women highlights that underneath the glamorous surface of one of the world’s largest economies lie jarring poverty and widespread abuse of women’s rights.

It defeats the purpose of recruiting star athletes like Ms. Gu: to showcase a powerful China with global appeal.

“The reality is that the vast majority of Chinese won’t have the opportunity to become Eileen Gu,” Li Yinuo, founder of a prominent education company in Beijing, wrote in an article. But the tragedy of the chained woman, she wrote, could happen to anyone.

A few hours later, her article was deleted.

Embedded in the debate is a deep disappointment among middle-class Chinese who are usually willing to go along with the government’s narratives but are incensed by the repeated lies, lack of action and subsequent censorship in the case of the chained woman.

They feel that the government is pouring too many resources behind a privileged member of the society while neglecting another member in dire need of help. They’re worried that the latter’s misfortune could happen to them or their daughters.

Many social media users, including some self-claimed nationalistic little pinks, posted a quote from a famous Chinese novel: “I love the country. But does the country love me?”

The story of the chained woman — whose name, according to the government, is Xiaohuamei (little flower plum) — has captivated the Chinese internet since a short video went viral in late January. In it, a middle-age woman with a dazed expression stood in the dark shack with a chain on her neck. Subsequent videos revealed that she had lost most of her teeth and seemed to be mentally disturbed.

The local authorities issued four conflicting statements in the following two weeks. In the latest statement on Thursday, the authorities reported that Xiaohuamei could be a victim of human trafficking and that her husband was under investigation for false imprisonment. The government had denied both earlier.

The fates of the two women converged online last week after Ms. Gu won her gold medal.

At one point, Ms. Gu, who grew up in an upscale neighborhood in San Francisco and represents some of the biggest brands, like Louis Vuitton and Tiffany & Company, occupied 10 of the 20 hottest hashtags on Weibo. The hashtag about Xiaohuamei was nowhere to be seen, even though many people were still talking about her.

Some social media users were outraged by the lopsided treatment of the two women. They felt that even though they had tried their best to be the obedient and useful tools in the giant machinery of the Chinese state, Xiaohuamei’s tragedy showed that the state won’t necessarily offer them protection...

And watch here, "To give the full story, here is the original video that caused the social media storm, which is still ongoing today (tw distressing content, not sure why the lock is blurred, as if that is the most shocking thing about this video..)."


Hooters Girl Jade Amber (VIDEO)

Everything you wanted to know about working at Hooters.

Watch:



Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Lawrence Wright, The Plague Year

At Amazon, Lawrence Wright, The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid.




'Sunday Night Football' Sideline Reporter Michele Tafoya Reflects on Her Career (VIDEO

Michele Tafoya is retiring from sidelines reporting. Sunday's Super Bowl was her last night with NBC, and it was emotional

Here she is discussing all the overwhelming feelings in those final moments.

Also, what's up next for Ms. Tafoya.


Jessica Vaughn

On Twitter.

More here.

And the most beautiful blonde, Jessica Simpson




Three San Francisco School Board Members Recalled (VIDEO)

This is very big news. It's every time now: Every time there's an election this year, Democrats will get fucking shellacked. 

And the three members recalled last night weren't "liberals." They're radicals, way outside of the mainstream. While overall turnout was low at 25 percent, the percentage of Chinese-Americans voting was near 80 percent. That never happens. San Francisco's Chinese community is very hands-off toward politics, but not this time. When you fuck with the schools you're fucking with a bloc of voters who aren't going to take any shit. 

S.F.'s District Attorney, Chesa Boudin --- who was raised by Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn --- will be up for recall in June. No doubt this race will be fought ferociously, and it may be tight, but once this dude gets the boot local districts throughout the entire country will be given notice: We will take you out. 

At the Los Angeles Times, "From liberal San Francisco, school board recall is a three-alarm warning for Democrats":


San Francisco is quite familiar with earthquakes, and what happened Tuesday — the ouster of three extreme lefties from the Board of Education — was not one of those.

Earthquakes are sudden and unexpected. The result of Tuesday’s recall was neither.

The removal of board members Gabriela López, Faauuga Moliga and Alison Collins was destined the moment the city’s liberal establishment, led by Mayor London Breed, joined the effort along with several discontented millionaires, who threw in loads of cash.

What happened Tuesday was more a foreshock, a warning — as if Democrats needed any more of those — that November’s midterm elections could be very bad indeed, as parents unsettled by two years of pandemic-related upheaval vent their frustrations at the polls.

The circumstances of the recall were both unique and broadly reflective.

In a place that prides itself on social justice and forward thinking, members of the school board outdid themselves by moving to strip the names of, among others, Presidents Washington and, Lincoln and Sen. Dianne Feinstein from 44 public schools.

The intent was to remediate the country’s history of injustices: George Washington owned slaves, Abraham Lincoln oversaw the slaughter of Native Americans, and Feinstein, as mayor in 1984, replaced a Confederate flag that had been vandalized at City Hall with a new one. The result was outrage.

In another instance of misplaced priorities, board members spent hours debating whether a father who was white and gay brought sufficient diversity to a parental advisory committee. His appointment was ultimately nixed, but there was no recovering the time that was wasted.

Perhaps most antagonizing, the board moved to end merit-based admissions to Lowell High School, one of the city’s most sacred institutions, where Asian American students are the majority. (The move catalyzed the city’s Asian American community, long an important force in San Francisco politics.) Old comments surfaced from Collins, in which she stated Asian Americans used “white supremacist” thinking to get ahead and were racist toward Black students. She apologized, then sued the school district and five fellow board members, seeking $87 million in damages, for removing her title as vice president. A judge summarily rejected the case.

All of which was too much for this famously tolerant city, as students struggled with distance learning and public schools remained closed even as others in neighboring communities reopened.

Inclusion, sensitivity and righting history’s wrongs are all well and good. But there was a strong sense that “we are not getting the basics right,” as Siva Raj, a father of two who helped launch the recall effort, put it.

He and others would have removed all seven members of the board, but only the three who were targeted were eligible for recall.

It is foolish — and one of the bad habits of political prognosticators — to overinterpret the results of any one election. To be clear, San Francisco hasn’t changed. A city that gave Joe Biden 85% support won’t be voting Republican in the lifetime of any adult within sight of Coit Tower. But the results are noteworthy precisely because the recall took place in liberal San Francisco...

San Francisco is not "liberal." It's a communist enclave, Moscow by the Bay, and the voters have had enough with this takeover by critical theory. 

Leftists around the country (and Canada, in the worst way) are not learning the lessons of the 2021 elections. Democrats will pay for their snobbery and elitism. These are wealthy champagne socialists who wouldn't deign to rub shoulders with the poor and working class proletarians delivering their goods from Amazon Prime and their Door Dash dinners. Workers, truck drivers, literally front-line health care professionals, kept this country functioning through the damned pandemic/lockdown. Enough is enough. 

No, not only do these clowns know "what's best" for everybody else, they don't have to live with the horrific consequences of their experiments in creating the communist utopia.

I'd like to say "take them out" in a more literal sense, but mostly I mean take them out at the ballot box. 


Tuesday, February 15, 2022

Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men

At Amazon, Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.




Sarah Palin's Libel Claim Against the New York Times Rejected by Jury (VIDEO)

I haven't really followed this. Mostly, I'm interested because Ms. Palin's been out of the spotlight for a while. 

At the Wall Street Journal, "Jury Rejects Sarah Palin’s Defamation Claims Against the New York Times":

A federal jury concluded the New York Times didn’t defame Sarah Palin in a 2017 editorial, a verdict that follows a judge’s surprise announcement that he planned to rule against the former Republican vice-presidential candidate after jurors finished their work.

The verdict, delivered on Tuesday by jurors in Manhattan, is the latest chapter in a closely watched libel trial that probed the inner workings of a national news outlet and tested the scope of legal protections for the media.

Jurors reached their judgment after a weeklong trial in which Ms. Palin and leading figures from the Times testified.

Ms. Palin filed her lawsuit in 2017 shortly after the Times published an editorial about gun violence and political rhetoric. The editorial referenced a 2011 shooting that killed six people and wounded then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat. It incorrectly suggested that an ad circulated by Ms. Palin’s political-action committee inspired the Arizona spree....

[U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff], a veteran jurist with a strong independent streak, concluded that Ms. Palin hadn’t presented sufficient evidence to prove the Times had acted with “actual malice,” meaning the outlet either knowingly published a false statement or showed a reckless disregard for the truth.

“This is an example of very unfortunate editorializing on the part of the Times,” he said, but added that the law sets a very high standard that Ms. Palin didn’t meet...

 

More Than 100 Million Watched Super Bowl LVI

I'm not surprised. 

It's the entertainment event of the year, blowing out all the competition, time and again. 

According to Forbes, "The live broadcast, featuring the LA Rams’ first #SuperBowl championship as an L.A. team, averaged 99.18 million viewers on NBC and an additional 1.03 million on Telemundo for an over-the-air tally of 100.21 million viewers."

Well, whoa doggie! Hold your horses!

Actually, according to the Athletic, "Super Bowl LVI watched by 112.3 million viewers, up 14% from last year."

Damn!


Your Valentine's Day Special

I hope you got out there to buy your sweetie chocolate and flowers. 

We need more old-style romanticism in this country. Cucks suck. Show 'em how it's done before pounding 'em into the pavement.

On Twitter.