MORE OF THIS:  DeSantis Permitted To Gather Data On “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” in Public Universities, Judge Rules.

WHEN CHATGPT argues against itself.

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

OVER AT MY NEW SUBSTACK, I talk with David Bernstein about America’s idiotic racial classification system, “We have already reached a point where a majority of the population can qualify as owners of ‘minority business enterprise’ eligible for preferences in federal and state contracts. . . . Within a generation, something like eighty percent of the population will be eligible.”

As we discuss,this is particularly relevant as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on affirmative action in higher education. I hope they’re reading Bernstein’s book.

If you like it, please subscribe!

FROM BAUHAUS TO OUR HOUSE: The Progressive Stranglehold on Art and Architecture.

The left today completely controls high art, architecture, and pop culture in America. Leftists run the selection board at the Grammys and the appointment committee at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. They dominate the board rooms at Burning Man and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They run blockbuster movie sets in Hollywood and critically acclaimed productions in Sundance. They control the Rolling Stone editorial board and the Pulitzer Prize selection committee. They have complete control of the Smithsonian, the National Endowment for the Arts, and most state and local public art agencies. Every architecture school in America, even in conservative areas, is dominated by liberal professors and administration.

Design studio is the most important part of any architecture school curriculum, and there is no better course than studio to include leftist propaganda along with course material. Most studio projects have both a social and design component, and each semester in studio focuses on a different theme—environmental, socioeconomic, religious, and racial issues, for example. Just about any topic you might hear discussed at an elite San Francisco dinner party will find its way to the hypothetical building program, in studio, at any architecture school in the country. Liberals are educating young artists and architects, and for years, the right has just watched it happen.

If conservative America has any chance of bringing the arts and architecture back to neutral ground, they have to understand the origin of the left’s century-long grip on the arts and architecture. In the 1920s, most prominent creatives, including many American expatriates who complained about the lagging art scene in the United States, were living and working in Paris. Like the U.S., France had given this decade a nickname, “Les Annes Folles,” or “the crazy years.” Signals rang out over the streets of Paris on November 11, 1918, announcing the end of World War I. A British journalist, Helen Adam, wrote of the occasion, “It would have been strange if Paris had kept her head about her when the Armistice was signaled, and accordingly, she did not.” There was a party in the streets for the next four days; some, including many artists, would keep that party going for the next ten years. It lasted until the stock market collapse in America in 1929 brought the entire world economy to its knees.

Modernism was the new and prominent art movement at the time. Most art today, including architecture, visual art, music, theater, dance, and literature, was birthed by the modernist movement that dominated art innovation in Paris in the 1920s.

Modernism wasn’t a specific style, but was more of an idea. Part of the idea was to reject everything that came before. Modernists believed the world’s systems, styles, and traditions needed to be completely reimagined and reinvented, in hopes that the human condition would be radically transformed to make the world a fairer and more equitable place. The modernist vision in art was closely related to socialist beliefs of how business and industry should operate. Creatives believed art, especially architecture and urban planning, could fulfill the promise of equity among different socio-economic classes.

And yesterday, we all saw the dead-end of a century of modern art:

SPACE: Virgin Galactic restructures leadership as it prepares to resume flights.

BUTTIGIEG CAN’T FAIL; HE CAN ONLY BE FAILED: Bloomberg: Buttigieg’s post-Biden ambitions dented by travel meltdown.

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: 90% of online content could be ‘generated by AI by 2025,’ expert says.

Generative AI, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, could completely revamp how digital content is developed, said Nina Schick, adviser, speaker, and A.I. thought leader told Yahoo Finance Live (video above).

“I think we might reach 90% of online content generated by AI by 2025, so this technology is exponential,” she said. “I believe that the majority of digital content is going to start to be produced by AI. You see ChatGPT… but there are a whole plethora of other platforms and applications that are coming up.”

The surge of interest in OpenAI’s DALL-E and ChatGPT has facilitated a wide-ranging public discussion about AI and its expanding role in our world, particularly generative AI.

“ChatGPT has really captured the public imagination in an extremely compelling way, but I think in a few months’ time, ChatGPT is just going to be seen as another tool powered by this new form of AI, known as generative AI,” she said.

In September of 2021, the Atlantic ran piece headlined: Maybe You Missed It, but the Internet ‘Died’ Five Years Ago.

Let me explain. Dead-internet theory suggests that the internet has been almost entirely taken over by artificial intelligence. Like lots of other online conspiracy theories, the audience for this one is growing because of discussion led by a mix of true believers, sarcastic trolls, and idly curious lovers of chitchat. One might, for example, point to @_capr1corn, a Twitter account with what looks like a blue orb with a pink spot in the middle as a profile picture. In the spring, the account tweeted “i hate texting come over and cuddle me,” and then “i hate texting i just wanna hug you,” and then “i hate texting just come live with me,” and then “i hate texting i just wanna kiss u,” which got 1,300 likes but didn’t perform as well as it did for @itspureluv. But unlike lots of other online conspiracy theories, this one has a morsel of truth to it. Person or bot: Does it really matter?

Dead-internet theory. It’s terrifying, but I love it. I read about it on Agora Road’s Macintosh Cafe, an online forum with a pixelated-Margaritaville vibe and the self-awarded honor “Best Kept Secret of the Internet!” Right now, the background is a repeated image of palm trees, a hot-pink sunset, and some kind of liquor pouring into a rocks glass. The site is largely for discussing lo-fi hip-hop, which I don’t listen to, but it is also for discussing conspiracy theories, which I do.

In January, I stumbled across a new thread there titled “Dead Internet Theory: Most of the Internet is Fake,” shared by a user named IlluminatiPirate. Over the next few months, this would become the ur-text for those interested in the theory. The post is very long, and some of it is too confusing to bother with; the author claims to have pieced together the theory from ideas shared by anonymous users of 4chan’s paranormal section and another forum called Wizardchan, an online community premised on earning wisdom and magic through celibacy. (In an email, IlluminatiPirate, who is an operations supervisor for a logistics company in California, told me that he “truly believes” in the theory. I agreed not to identify him by name because he said he fears harassment.)

Peppered with casually offensive language, the post suggests that the internet died in 2016 or early 2017, and that now it is “empty and devoid of people,” as well as “entirely sterile.” Much of the “supposedly human-produced content” you see online was actually created using AI, IlluminatiPirate claims, and was propagated by bots, possibly aided by a group of “influencers” on the payroll of various corporations that are in cahoots with the government. The conspiring group’s intention is, of course, to control our thoughts and get us to purchase stuff.

To be fair, the Internet was killed when Net Neutrality was repealed; apparently it will be especially killed off as AI becomes even more ubiquitous.

Related: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s ‘Dune’ Was Never Made, but With A.I., We Get a Glimpse of His ‘Tron.’

I was recently shown some frames from a film that I had never heard of: Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1976 version of “Tron.” The sets were incredible. The actors, unfamiliar to me, looked fantastic in their roles. The costumes and lighting worked together perfectly. The images glowed with an extravagant and psychedelic sensibility that felt distinctly Jodorowskian.

However, Mr. Jodorowsky, the visionary Chilean filmmaker, never tried to make “Tron.” I’m not even sure he knows what “Tron” is. And Disney’s original “Tron” was released in 1982. So what 1970s film were these gorgeous stills from? Who were these neon-suited actors? And how did I — the director of the documentary “Jodorowsky’s Dune,” having spent two and a half years interviewing and working with Alejandro to tell the story of his famously unfinished film — not know about this?

The truth is that these weren’t stills from a long-lost movie. They weren’t photos at all. These evocative, well-composed and tonally immaculate images were generated in seconds with the magic of artificial intelligence.

* * * * * * * *

What will it mean when directors, concept artists and film students can see with their imaginations, when they can paint using all the digitally archived visual material of human civilization? When our culture starts to be influenced by scenes, sets and images from old films that never existed or that haven’t yet even been imagined?

I have a feeling we’re all about to find out.

This isn’t the Jetsons*-style 21st century I was promised, but I’m willing to explore the possibilities.

* Which might be a good thing: Stop with the Jetsons Nostalgia!

TRUST THE EXPERTS! ChatGPT fools scientists more than 1/3 of the time.

BYRON YORK: The big problem with the Joe Biden documents story.

Those White House remarks, by the way, were the ones in which Biden defended the storage of classified material in a garage close to his beloved 1967 Corvette sports car. “My Corvette is in a locked garage, OK?” Biden said in response to a question from Fox News’s Peter Doocy. “So it’s not like they’re sitting out in the street.” With that, Biden seemed to suggest that security for a really cool vintage car is certainly sufficient for classified documents, too.

The documents in the Wilmington house could present another problem for Biden, which is that Biden’s son Hunter, when he was addicted to crack and in a downward spiral, was living in the house when the documents were in the garage. That could be a problem in two senses. One, Hunter Biden, always trying to make some money off his father’s names and connections, had a lot of shady foreign associates. And two, Hunter had what you might call a lax attitude toward information security. After all, he left a laptop filled with all sorts of information at a repair shop and never returned to claim it, leading to more problems than anyone could have imagined.

Speaking of Hunter, Jonathan Turley explores: The liberal media’s cynical gaslighting on House probes into Hunter Biden.

Even in a city where influence-peddling is a virtual cottage industry, the Bidens took the corrupt practice to a truly Olympian level. The direct references to Joe Biden receiving money and benefits from these contracts should concern any citizen, let alone any journalist. Yet House Democrats blocked efforts to investigate any Biden influence-peddling.

This obstruction was only possible with an enabling and protective media downplaying the scandal. The press continued the effective blackout even as emails showed Biden repeatedly lied about having no knowledge of his son’s foreign business.

Such denials, however, are getting more difficult. The Associated Press had to withdrawits absurd recent claim there’s no evidence of Biden ever discussing his son’s dealings. There’s even audio of him leaving a message for Hunter specifically about coverage of those dealings.

Dozens of emails, pictures and witness accounts prove the president was not just aware but a possible beneficiary of this corruption. His personal interactions with his son’s business associates include at least 19 visits to the White House by Hunter’s partner, Eric Schwerin, alone from 2009 to 2015, when Biden was vice president.

Emails on Hunter’s laptop make repeated reference to not only Joe’s knowledge but efforts to hide his involvement. In one email, Biden associate James Gilliar instructed Tony Bobulinski, then Hunter’s business partner: “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u [sic] are face to face, I know u [sic] know that but they are paranoid.” Bobulinski has given sworn statements that he personally met with Joe Biden to discuss these dealings.

Emails used code names for Joe Biden such as “Celtic” or “the big guy.” In one, “the big guy” is mentioned as possibly receiving a 10% cut on a deal with a Chinese energy firm. There are also references to Hunter paying off his father’s bills from shared accounts.

Code names, cuts for “the big guy” and millions in mysterious foreign transactions would ordinarily send the media into a frenzy. But the Bidens adeptly enlisted the press into suppressing the story. Many in the media became “made men” and women who proved their loyalty. If this is a corruption scandal, there’s little the media can do to spin their own role in concealing it from the public.

No wonder Chuck Todd was especially crabby today: NBC’s Todd Claims He’s a ‘Journalist’ & ‘Deals in Facts’, Ron Johnson [R-WI] Schools Him.

“I take it at your word that you’re ethically bothered by Hunter Biden,” Todd said to Johnson to which he shot back “are you not?”

“I’m a journalist. I have to deal in facts. Senator my question to you is, I have skepticism of both parties. I sit here with skepticism of a lot of people’s work,” Todd said with a straight face.

Was it “deal[ing] in facts” when Todd claimed that bringing in more migrants will solve our nation’s inflation problem?

What about when Todd dredged up a conspiracy theory that Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis flew migrants to Martha’s Vineyard to distract from an attempt to distract from Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) proposing a vote on pro-life legislation if Republicans take control of the Senate in the 2022 midterms?

There are plenty of examples of Todd being a fact-free leftist hack. Check out our Todd archive for all the lowlights here.

Just think of Todd as a former and current Democratic Party operative with a byline, and ongoing freakouts over the GOP investigating the Bidens makes perfect sense.

VEGAN DIETS AREN’T EVEN GOOD FOR PEOPLE, AND WE’RE OMNIVORES: Vegan Diets For Pets Pose Plenty of Questions, Study Finds.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Four More Virginia Schools Admit To Withholding National Merit Awards From Students.

With four more school principals confessing they withheld National Merit awards from students, bringing the total to seven schools so far, the Fairfax County Parents Association sent the school district, state and local leaders a scathing letter, calling them out for saying that the awards “don’t matter.”

“You should hang your heads in shame,” the parents’ group, a nonpartisan volunteer grassroots organization, wrote in a letter published late Saturday morning…

In its letter, the parents’ group asked state and local leaders, “How dare you tell students that their hard work doesn’t matter? How dare you pretend that students who manage to be in the top 3% academically among seniors nationwide have not achieved an accomplishment of which they should be enormously proud? How dare you tell these students – most of whom do not come from wealth – that it doesn’t matter whether they are able to note this achievement on college applications, or applications for academic scholarships that could help pay for college?”

There should be civil rights lawsuits and a criminal investigation.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN: Green Eggs and Hamfisted: Public intellectualism once involved a degree of humility. Now it is too often hubris all the way down. “If you haven’t yet encountered it, here’s the new orthodoxy on vaccine hesitancy from self-styled public intellectuals Sam Harris and Scott Adams (paraphrased): the science as it unfolded suggested that the vaccine hesitant had no valid rational basis for that hesitancy; while those who promoted mandates were wrong only accidentally, given that they were basing their position on the science as it had been reported to them by those most credentialed to do so.”

WELL: New MIT Research Indicates That Automation Is Responsible for Income Inequality.

WELL, THAT’S A MARK IN FAVOR OF HYDROGEN CARS FOR SURE: Feds Prefer EVs over Hydrogen for Future Cars in New ‘Decarbonization’ Blueprint.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Yet Again, George Washington University Permits Antisemitism From Faculty.

Last week, the pro-Israel organization, StandWithUs, filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on behalf of Jewish and Israeli students enrolled in GW’s professional psychology program.

The complaint elucidates persistent anti-Semitic actions by a vile creature called Lara Sheehi, who also specializes in “anti-oppressive theories” and calls herself “anti-fascist.” She facilitates the program’s mandatory course, and last semester, Sheehi regularly singled out Jewish students solely for their identity.

Sheehi also invited a guest speaker who used anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews being deceitful and power-hungry. A rabid Palestinian activist, Sheehi endorsed using violence against Israeli civilians and called all Israelis “fucking racist.” When some students complained about the open bigotry they encountered in the classroom, Sheehi predictably denied the allegations and, like any dishonest gaslighting goon, claimed the students were guilty of targeting other “identity groups.”

So much for safe spaces on campus when it comes to Jew-bashing.

Read the whole thing.

OUT ON A LIMB: Climate Activism Isn’t About the Planet. It’s About the Boredom of the Bourgeoisie.

The downfall of capitalism will not come from the uprising of an impoverished working class but from the sabotage of a bored upper class. This was the view of the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942. Schumpeter believed that at some point in the future, an educated elite would have nothing left to struggle for and will instead start to struggle against the very system that they themselves live in.

Nothing makes me think Schumpeter was right like the contemporary climate movement and its acolytes. The Green movement is not a reflection of planetary crisis as so many in media and culture like to depict it, but rather, a crisis of meaning for the affluent.

* * * * * * * *

Even supposed grass-roots movements like “Just Stop Oil” or “Last Generation” (of “tomato soup on paintings” fame) are in fact funded by millionaires, like Aileen Getty, the granddaughter of legendary oil-tycoon Jean Paul Getty, and the Climate Emergency Fund.

Just like Kerry, Ehrlich, and these other groups are not really interested in solving the problem of climate change—for example, promoting research in technologies like nuclear energy, carbon capture technologies, and means of adaptation. Instead, they with to elevate their struggle to an ersatz-religion that allows them to simultaneously enjoy their wealth and lecture the rest of the world from a position of moral superiority.

In contrast, here is an extremely well-reasoned and explained pushback to the woke disease: Konstantin Kisin absolutely positively OWNS ‘woke’ youth fighting #climatechange and BOOYAH (watch).

This is the first time we’ve come across Konstantin Kisin who is a Russian/British comedian/podcaster/speaker, etc. and wow … he really did a fantastic job of putting the woke youth in their place when it comes to climate change.

And it’s not just what he says, but how he says it.

Watch:

Brilliant speech addressed to our ‘woke’ youth fighting #climatechange by Konstantine Kisin. pic.twitter.com/mFS8w0t2ip

— Brandon Taylor Moore (@LetsGoBrando45) January 14, 2023

UPDATE: What is this “British” being referenced above? So Wrong So Long. CBS rings in the new year with serial doomsayer Paul Ehrlich. “Ehrlich also thought it was even money that England would no longer exist in the year 2000, but at the dawn of 2023, England is still there. ‘Perhaps Ehrlich’s biggest mistake,’ according to Harsanyi, ‘was living long enough to be proven wrong dozens of times.’ That is good to know, but there’s more going on here than Ehrlich’s failures and media malpractice.”

OUT: MUSCLE CARS. IN: MUSCLE TRUCKS. 2023 Ford F-150 Raptor R vs. 2022 Ram 1500 TRX: The 700-HP Brawl!

WORST BOSSES ON CAPITOL HILL: Just in case anybody here on Instapundit is thinking about seeking a position as a congressional aide, or knows somebody who is, here are the 10 Senate and 10 House offices you may want to think twice about before accepting an offer, as compiled by Legistorm and reported by HillFaith.

I DUNNO; IT’S BEEN A HELL OF A WEEK: Miss Universe Is the Weirdest Thing You’ll See All Week.

None of us actually watch the Miss Universe pageant, do we? I don’t. But I opened Twitter this morning, and the videos that greeted me had me scratching my head wondering: what is this bizarre display of weirdness and why is it part of a beauty contest? Is it a prank? A hoax? A troll? A joke?

But it’s real!

The Miss Universe pageant–which proclaims to find the most beautiful woman every year in the entire universe, but only has contestants from planet Earth (disappointing)–has incorporated some kind of “dress like your country took a hit of acid and hired RuPaul to make your outfit” event. Maybe it’s because it’s being held in New Orleans. Is it “dress like a parade float”? I don’t know.

Click over to see the freak show.

GERRY ANDERSON ASSURED ME THROUGHOUT THE 1960s AND ‘70s THAT ENGLAND WOULD HAVE A THRIVING SPACE PROGRAM OF THEIR OWN BY NOW. Instead, they’re only just now orbiting a satellite via a booster air-launched off the wing of a Virgin 747:  U.K. set to make history with first-ever orbital space launch on Monday.

SENECA SCOTT: A Masturbatory ‘Homage’ to My Family.

By now, I’m sure you’ve seen it. The new Boston sculpture “honoring” Dr. Martin Luther King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, looks more like a pair of hands hugging a beefy penis than a special moment shared by the iconic couple. Created by the organization Embrace Boston, the sculpture has inspired mad jokes on Twitter, and rightly so. But for my family, it’s rather insulting. You see, Coretta was my first cousin, my grandfather’s niece, and the daughter of my great uncle Obediah Scott.

Martin married up. Coretta came from a distinguished family, with a significant legacy in her own right. There is a reason she kept the Scott name. We were a black family that owned land, lots of it. Martin knew what he was doing when he pursued her, signaling intentions to marry from the outset. After his assassination, Coretta created a legacy of her own, fighting for health-care workers and against Apartheid in South Africa.

“The Boston debacle … exposes the insidiousness of astroturfed woke movements.”

In his 2002 review of C.P. Snow’s 1959 book, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, Orrin Judd of the Brothers Judd blog wrote:

As Snow notes, as late as say the 1850s, any reasonably well-educated, well-read, inquisitive man could speak knowledgeably about both science and the arts.  Man knew little enough that it was still possible for one to know nearly everything that was known and to have been exposed to all the religion, art, history–culture in general–that mattered.  But then with the pure science revolution of which Snow spoke–in biology and chemistry, but most of all in physics–suddenly a great deal of specialized training and education was necessary before one could be knowledgeable in each field.  Like priests of some ancient cult, scientists were separated out from the mass of men, elevated above them by their access to secret knowledge.  Even more annoying was the fact that even though they had moved beyond what the rest of us could readily understand, they could still listen to Bach or read Shakespeare and discuss it intelligently.  The reaction of their peers in the arts, or those who had been their peers, was to make their own fields of expertise as obscure as possible.  If Picasso couldn’t understand particle physics, he sure as hell wasn’t going to paint anything comprehensible, and if Joyce couldn’t pick up a scientific journal and read it, then no one was going to be able to read his books either.  And so grew the two cultures, the one real, the other manufactured, but both with elaborate and often counterintuitive theories, requiring years of study.

And thus we we end up with the formulation of Tom Wolfe’s 1975 book, The Painted Word, where modern art exists almost solely to justify the theory behind it, and as Wolfe wrote, “In short: frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can’t see a painting.”

Or a modernist sculpture — although sadly, there’s no unseeing “the Boston debacle:”

CAN MR. MUSK PLEASE BUY LINKEDIN NEXT? Here’s headline on my latest column over on PJ Media: “Censorious Cowards at Linkedin Refuse to Explain Their Trashing of First Amendment, Free Speech.” This time it’s personal.

A GOOD WOMAN WITH A GUN: ‘Let Go Of My Kid’: Gun-Packin’ Mom Thwarts Attempted Child Abduction in Downtown Des Moines.

DEAL OF THE DAY: Alimens Button Down Regular Fit Long Sleeve Plaid Flannel Casual Shirts. #CommissionEarned (Bumped)

READER FAVORITE: Levi’s Men’s 501 Original Fit Jeans. #CommissionEarned

SPACE: After a slow start, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket is about to hit its stride.

JOHN STOSSEL: COVID: Who was Right? (Video.)

YOU WILL EAT BUGS AND YOU WILL LIKE IT, CITIZEN! Making the case for using insects as food for both humans and livestock.

COMER DEMANDS VISITOR LOGS FOR BIDEN’S DELAWARE HOME: House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) is demanding that the visitor logs for President Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Del., residence be made public.

That log is vital to gaining an understanding of who may have had access to the dozens of classified documents found thus far, and because Hunter Biden, the Chief Executive’s son, who has extensive financial links to the Chinese Communist Party, claimed the residence as his own while reportedly paying $50,000 a month in rent.

Comer is also demanding that the committee be given all documents related to the presence of classified documents at that location and the PennBiden Center. A Special Counsel was appointed last week by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate the situation.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Nuclear Power Cell for Space Satellites that are Cup Size Instead of Dishwasher Size.

FRED HOYLE, CALL YOUR OFFICE: “Building Blocks of Life” Discovered in Meteorite That Crashed Landed in England.

OUT: BULLETPROOF COFFEE. IN: Sex Coffee.

JON GABRIEL: You know what Biden is missing? That key Nerd to guide the White House.

In business, this might be the chief technology officer, chief financial officer, or something else. On a ship, it’s the Engineer. When The Jerk orders The Nerd to make more widgets; The Nerd tells The Jerk they need the larger Widgetmaker 3400 and 670.2 more square feet of factory floor. He’s read the latest research, studied the schematics, knows what’s possible and how to make it happen. The Nerd might not have social skills, but hand them a spreadsheet and a user manual and they won’t leave their office before knowing everything about everything.

If I walk into a company, I look for each of these roles. It might take a while to suss out since official titles vary. Maybe the chairman really calls the shots while the CEO inherited that title from their parents. But if the organization doesn’t have this Iron Triangle, I know it’s chaotic, inefficient and has high turnover.

The administration may thought the nerd was going to be played by Pete Buttigieg, but he was too lazy to learn his part:

In the case of the latest FAA failure, which grounded more than 10,000 flights, there were complaints for years about the FAA’s creaky, outdated Notice to Air Mission (NOTAM) system. (The complaints had even prompted Representative Pete Stauber (R., Minn.) to propose reforms before any of this happened.) Yet the only discernable step taken by Buttigieg was to rename NOTAM in December 2021 from its original name, Notice to Airmen, which was deemed insufficiently gender-inclusive. It speaks volumes about Buttigieg’s values, and the depth of his understanding of DOT’s responsibilities, that this was a higher priority for him than making sure the planes would not get grounded. 

It hasn’t helped Buttigieg that there is still no Senate-confirmed head of the FAA. Confirmation should be easy in Chuck Schumer’s Senate, but nominee Phillip Washington — who was nominated in July 2022 after the prior Trump-appointed head stepped down in March — still has not even had a confirmation hearing. This has less to do with Republican opposition than with the baggage that the nominee, presently the CEO of Denver International Airport, brings to the job.  

Washington, who ran the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority from 2015 to 2021, was already under fire for lacking long experience in aviation, and then the news broke in September 2022 that he had been named in a Los Angeles County search warrant involving allegations of corruption in a no-bid contract given “to a nonprofit group headed by one of Los Angeles County Supervisor and Metro board member Sheila Kuehl’s friends to shore up Kuehl’s support.” He had other issues: “In one case, he issued a no-bid contract for a nonprofit group to establish a sexual harassment hotline for the agency with a cost that worked out to $8,000 a call.” There is a whistleblower, who 

claims that Washington ordered her to pay a bill of $75,000 to Peace Over Violence in 2015, before the MTA had even authorized the contract. “He stated he’d rather not upset any of Supervisor Sheila Kuehl’s friends rather than dispute the veracity of the bill,” according to the warrant’s account of witness testimony, adding that Washington said “he would rather pay the $75,000, so he could later use that to his advantage when he needed a political favor from Supervisor Sheila Kuehl.” 

It is unlikely that Buttigieg had much to do with Biden’s nomination of Washington, but he obviously didn’t have the knowledge of the field and its players necessary to push back at the choice. That is a recurring issue: Being out of his depth, Buttigieg has to leave the serious work to others. In the rail-freight strike, the Biden administration deployed Labor secretary Marty Walsh as its point man, while Buttigieg — as Jim has again covered comprehensively — was doing public appearances at the Detroit Auto Show, appearing on late-night talk shows, and pushing Democratic talking points about inflation, climate, and race. 

And as a result:

READER FAVORITE: Wrangler Men’s George Strait Cowboy Cut Original Fit Jean. #CommissionEarned

SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! Federal government investigating ‘anti-racist’ segregation at UC San Francisco.

Yes, the investigation was spurred by a complaint from Prof. Mark Perry, with whom I talked last week.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Libertarian policy expert wants to slash aid to drive down college costs.

THE ANTI-GUN ATTITUDE IS MORE RELIGIOUS THAN THE REVERSE:

It’s interesting that Auster is writing about death by gunshot when it was so recently — just last year — that his 10-month-old granddaughter died from drugs and his 44-year-old son was arrested for that death and then died from a drug overdose.

And it’s interesting that he disparages the religion-like attitude toward rights, when “He has described right-wing Republicans as ‘jihadists.'” That blithe injection of religion appears in the above-linked Wikipedia bio. And it makes me wonder, given the quote at the top of this post, if he’d call the Black Panthers “jihadists.”

Of course not, that would be bigoted.

WHAT ARE THE ODDS: Gambling isn’t my thing, but if it’s yours and you want to put some cash on where the next batch of Joe Biden’s classified documents are found, this site is taking bets, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

FIGHT THE POWER: COVID-Narrative Dissenters File Lawsuit Against Legacy Media Over Coordinated Censorship. “A coalition of outspoken critics and skeptics of the mainstream narratives on COVID-19 has brought an antitrust lawsuit against some of the world’s largest news organizations, accusing them of working in collaboration to suppress dissenting voices surrounding the pandemic.”

SCHEDULED FOR 5:56 PM ET: Watch a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launch a classified military payload today.

MITZI PERDUE ON UKRAINE: Why the Russian invaders make crippling police a priority.

AN ART HISTORY FACULTY STATEMENT on recent events at Hamline University. “The tenure-stream faculty of the Department of Art History at the University of Minnesota writes to address the recent non-renewal of adjunct instructor, Dr. Erika López Prater, from her term appointment at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. As has been widely reported, and especially well documented in a New York Times article of January 8, 2023, Dr. López Prater showed a 14th-century manuscript painting depicting the Prophet Mohammad in her art history survey course, prompting student complaint and the subsequent cancellation of Dr. López Prater’s spring semester course. This happened without the due process of formal investigation, without an opportunity for Dr. López Prater to respond to the administration’s ill-informed and unfounded accusations, and without good-faith institutional investment in open dialogue or the restorative practices of communication and relational repair. The blame for the mishandling falls entirely to Hamline’s administration.”

Yeah, Hamline appears to be run by morons.

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Some Biden-related questions no one seems to be asking.

Related: Confidential Government Communications.

THEY NEED GUILLIBLE, UNINFORMED VOTERS: Democrats push to amend Constitution so 16-year-olds can vote. I would tie the drinking and gun-owning age to the voting age.

HMM: Summary Of Changes To The Forthcoming U.S. News Law School Rankings.

I SUSPECT THAT A LOT OF “LONG COVID” IS REALLY SOMETHING ELSE: ‘I thought I had long Covid but it was testosterone deficiency caused by ‘male menopause.’

I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: New study offers even more proof lockdowns were deadly.

In hopes of containing the pandemic, Americans across the country were forced to suffer through lockdown orders, closed schools, and shuttered workplaces in the spring of 2020. In Democratic-controlled areas, many of these restrictions lingered into 2021. Yet they didn’t work. We all got COVID-19 anyway, more than a million Americans nonetheless died of the disease, and in a dark and ironic twist, most COVID-19 spread actually happened at home .

Meanwhile, those restrictions themselves evidently had deadly consequences. A new study from Casey B. Mulligan and Rob Arnett published in the journal Inquiry finds that non-COVID deaths were highly elevated above expected trends in the U.S. in 2020 and 2021. They report that over this period, approximately 97,000 Americans died annually (not including COVID deaths) above the baseline trend, a statistic known as “excess deaths.”

These deaths included 32,000 deaths from heart disease and hypertension, some of which may have been fueled by the disruption to healthcare services and healthy lifestyles from the COVID restrictions. Meanwhile, deaths due to obesity-related illness, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related causes were all 12,000-15,000 above expected trends. All these factors were heavily influenced by the way COVID-19 lockdowns fueled social isolation, sedentary lifestyles, and mental health issues.

The data “point to a historic, yet largely unacknowledged, health emergency,” the study concludes. “COVID-19 is deadly, but so were the draconian steps taken to mitigate it.”

Prediction: None of the people who called you a “murderer” if you went kayaking without a mask will apologize, or take any responsibility.

THAT ZERO-COVID STRATEGY IS GOING SWIMMINGLY, CHAIRMAN XI: China admits nearly 60k COVID deaths in the past month but some experts say it’s much higher.

OPEN THREAD: Saturday night’s alright for blogging.

CONFIRMED: Joe Biden Did Have Documents Classified as ‘Top Secret.’

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Space Force weighing new approach for selecting national security launch providers.. “An option under consideration for NSSL Phase 3 is to create ‘on ramps’ to allow emerging launch providers to compete.”

1/14/1976: British Airways Receives First Concorde.

HOLLYWOOD IN TOTO: Why North Dallas Forty Is the Best Sports Film Ever.

The book “North Dallas Forty” is, of course, better than the movie, but for all Gent’s wit it might have been “Dandy” Don himself who got the best laugh.

Several former Dallas Cowboys attended the film’s premiere, and when asked about the movie Meredith quipped, “Heck if I knew that [Gent] was that good of a receiver I’d have thrown to him more.”

The ’70s Dallas Cowboys are legends, but Gent’s insight and willingness to speak the truth about the NFL has stood the test of time for its insight, humor and courage. There hasn’t been anything like it before or after.

I use this quote from the movie often:

“Every time I call it a game, you call it a business. And every time I call it a business, you call it a game!” – O.W. Shaddock (John Matuszak)

If that isn’t America’s Team well, it certainly is America’s psyche.

Other than the head coach (played by veteran Oklahoma-born character actor G.D. Spradlin) having hair, the film absolutely nails the atmosphere, egos, and paranoia of the Tom Landry-era Cowboys of the ’60s and ’70s. If only the budget had afforded an audience in the stands for the big game, instead of going the “we’ll shoot at night, add the crowd via sound effects, and hopefully nobody will notice” route.

DAMAR HAMLIN REUNITES WITH TEAM FOR FIRST TIME SINCE INJURY.

MANY OTHERS ARE SEEING SOMETHING VERY DIFFERENT: ‘I see love and strength:’ King family delivers powerful speeches as Embrace memorial honoring MLK is unveiled.

“I love this monument,” she said. “I see the love and strength and unity in these hands and how they symbolize a beautiful marriage and partnership. It was one that changed the world.”

At long last, the 20-foot tall, 40-foot wide monument — five years in the making — was officially unveiled Friday during a two-hour ceremony near the common’s 1965 Freedom Rally Plaza, the site of the memorial.

More than 1,000 people — many local and state officials, representatives and community activists and leaders — attended the celebration that featured songs and speeches, including powerful remarks from the King family.

The $10 million bronze sculpture, designed by Mass Design Group and American conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas, depicts a photo of the couple hugging after MLK won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

Guys, if you say so: Boston unveils its bronze sculpture honoring MLK and people have questions.

What is this?The EMBRACE? Why not a statue of MLK Jr. and Coretta standing? Does this look pornographic to anyone else? #Boston Did you approve this? #statues #art https://t.co/VZIF1LO8Gl

— Deborah Taylor (@DeborahTaylor01) January 14, 2023

I SAY, WHY TAKE CHANCES? Skipping Meals Could Be Much Worse For You Than We Realized.

I’d guess that meal-skipping is a marker for other traits. Before I started working out heavily, I could skip lunch without incident. Now if I do that, I feel starved and kinda weak.

WHAT WERE THEY COVERING UP, EXACTLY?

Related: Former FBI exec: Bureau has become completely political. “Ex-FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker on Tuesday became the latest law enforcement or political figure to support creating an independent commission modeled after the U.S. Senate’s 1970s Church Committee to investigate the FBI’s practices and impose reforms on the storied law enforcement agency.”

And expand this to the whole DOJ, Attorney General Merrick Garland very much included: Majority see FBI as Biden’s ‘personal Gestapo’ after Trump raid.

Flashback: Iran Threatened To Name Politicians Who Took Bribes To Pass Nuclear Deal.

MICROBIOME NEWS: A novel, powerful tool to unveil the communication between gut microbes and the brain.

IT’S OKAY TO TRAFFIC IN MISINFORMATION WHEN IT’S NARRATIVE-SUPPORTING LEFTY MISINFORMATION: “Climate Fraud”: Fusion GPS fingerprints surface yet again.

WHY IS PUBLIC ART IN AMERICA ALWAYS SO AWFUL? Honoring Martin Luther King Jr. with a hilariously/tragically bad monumental sculpture.

WELL, GOOD: Uganda declares Ebola outbreak over; vaccine trials stand ready.

THE COMING GAS-STOVE CULTURE WAR: Don’t believe this week’s denials. Progressive Democrats really are coming for your kitchen appliances.

A sign of the media times is how quickly our leading progressive organs rally to deny that Democrats are doing what Democrats really are doing. A classic example was this week’s flare up in the coming climate war over banning gas stoves.

A Biden appointee on the Consumer Product Safety Commission explicitly threatened to ban gas stoves based on dubious evidence of public-health harm. “This is a hidden hazard,” said commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”

We and others criticized the idea, and the media response was to rush to blame conservatives for starting it all. “Right’s new fight: Gas stoves,” said Axios, which pushes hard for the climate alarmist agenda. The Washington Post assured its readers that “regulators have no plans to ban gas stoves, but Republicans are slamming the Consumer Product Safety Commission for announcing it will examine the health impacts of the appliances.”

But we didn’t make up Mr. Trumka’s quote. We and others responded to it. After withering public criticism, including by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, the CPSC Chairman denied any plan to ban, and the White House said President Biden also doesn’t want to ban gas stoves. But that’s cold comfort given that the climate left does want to ban them, and progressive cities and states are doing it.

Progressive cities such as Berkeley, San Francisco and New York City have already banned gas stoves and other appliances in new buildings. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul this week proposed a ban on gas equipment including stoves in new small buildings in 2025 and larger ones in 2028.

Come 2030, New Yorkers won’t be allowed to replace their gas stoves with new ones if they break down. “As you begin making a transition, everyone will have to switch out appliances,” a state official explained. This is how the left’s green-energy “transition” will work for all things. Come 2035, New Yorkers and Californians won’t be able to buy new gasoline-powered cars either.

The Biden Administration is also aiding and abetting the anti-gas stove cause. . . . There really is a culture war coming over gas stoves, and everything else involving fossil fuels, because climate has become for the left a matter of core cultural identity. Progressives want to impose their values on the lifestyle of everyone else, including in the kitchen. If subsidies don’t work, coercion follows. When they can’t win the political debate, they resort to brute government force. They really are coming for your stove.

Flashback:

I can’t help but feel that the oppression of the masses wasn’t so much a bug as a feature to them.

Making the common people’s lives worse seems to be a steady theme in elite proposals for social change: Less policing making crime worse, less energy consumption for the hoi polloi – but never the jet-setting elites – demands to eat less meat, travel less, live in smaller homes, swap cars for public transit, submit to social media censorship, etc., etc. If it will worsen ordinary folks’ lot, it’s probably on the agenda.

Why the political class feels this way is a question for another column, but look at what they’ve done over the past few years and ask yourself: If they hated us, what would they do differently?

Well?

CHECK IN THE CLOSET WHERE HE KEEPS HIS PLAYBOYS: Still More Classified Documents Found In Biden Home.

Related:

READER FAVORITE: Bowflex SelectTech 552 Adjustable Dumbbells. #CommissionEarned

AND RIGHTLY SO: SAF Rips ATF’s Byzantine Pistol Brace Rule, Vows to Continue Its Lawsuit.

FAAFO, ALBUQUERQUE GUITAR CENTER DIVISION:

Albuquerque guitar center doesnt mess around. pic.twitter.com/hsx01RboQU

— 🥀_Imposter_🕸️ (@Imposter_Edits) January 13, 2023

DISAPPOINTMENTS ABOUND: Self-driving EVs use way more energy than you’d think.

THIS IS THE WAY: NHL backtracks after Florida Gov. Ron Desantis’ office blasts league for ‘discriminatory’ job fair.

I’VE COINED A WORD: “FOOLSPLAINING.” That’s when a moron ties to convince you of something that no rational person could believe, but it takes root with other like-minded fools.

The apologists trying to minimize Biden’s irresponsible handling of classified documents by comparing it to Trump’s is one such example of fools “explaining” things to us hoi polloi.

Their excuses are so sad, even the WHCA lapdogs aren’t buying it as eagerly as they would in the past. “Oh, Biden is cooperating, that’s a big difference.” Nope. It’s like saying, “I shot up the schoolyard, but surrendered when the cops encircled me. Please reward me for my restraint.”

21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Clinical trial results indicate low rate of adverse events associated with implanted brain computer interface.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Why Biden’s backdoor student-debt bailout is a hot mess. “Of course, Biden’s move makes more sense when you consider it as a political maneuver. It will effectively accomplish his goal of funneling tax dollars to a constituency — young, highly educated people — that overwhelmingly vote for the Democratic Party (and possibly saved Dems in the midterms). But shrewd politics don’t change the fact it’s a foolish policy with awful implications — and a raw deal for taxpayers.”

BEATING COVID, DISCOVERING RARE EARTHS, AND NOW THIS: Sweden opens Mainland Europe’s first satellite launch spaceport.

SLOWER, PLEASE: Toyota President: Not So Fast with the EVs. “President Akio Toyoda said he is among the auto industry’s silent majority in questioning whether electric vehicles should be pursued exclusively, comments that reflect a growing uneasiness about how quickly car companies can transition…. [Said Toyoda,] ‘That silent majority is wondering whether EVs are really OK to have as a single option. But they think it’s the trend so they can’t speak out loudly.’”

WHEN DOES BIDEN ORDER AN FBI RAID ON HIMSELF? Five More Pages of Classified Documents Discovered at President Biden’s Home.

MICROBIOME NEWS: Antibiotic use may increase risk of bowel disease. “Among folks who were 40 or older, a new study found that antibiotics may increase the risk for bowel diseases, such as Crohn’s and ulcerative colitis, for one to two years after use. And the greatest risk was posed by two classes of antibiotics – nitroimidazoles and fluoroquinolones – often used to treat gut infections.”

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Why Modern Movies Suck — They Can’t Write Men, Part 1 (Video).

Note the Drinker’s comments about how men are portrayed in TV commercials, a recurring Insta-topic since 2005.

THE LATE PAUL JOHNSON IN 2005: The Anti-Semitic Disease.

The historical evidence suggests that racism, in varying degrees, is ubiquitous in human societies, so much so that it might even be termed natural and inevitable (though not irremediable: its behavioral consequences can be mitigated by education, political arrangements, and intermarriage). It often takes the form of national hostility, especially when two countries are placed by geography in postures of antagonism. Such has been the case with France and England, Poland and Russia, and Germany and Denmark, to give only three obvious examples.

OUT: THE ROE EFFECT. IN: THE DOBBS EFFECT: Massive Wave of Liberal Men are Getting Vasectomies to Protest Overturning Roe. “They are volunteering to leave the gene pool.”

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Corvette Summer Edition.

STAY WARM: Carhartt Men’s Knit Cuffed Beanie. #CommissionEarned

COCKBURN: Ten other places Joe Biden should check for classified documents.

So it turns out that there were classified documents lying around Joe Biden’s office and garage at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, dating from his time as vice president. In a press conference today, the president justified this to Fox News’s Peter Doocy by saying, “by the way, my Corvette’s in a locked garage… it’s not like they’re sitting out in the street.”

The news follows the revelation that classified documents were located in his office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, DC. But is that all? Cockburn has several ideas of where his lawyers should hunt next, to save the president the indignity of an FBI raid or imbroglio with the dorks at the National Archives:

Plus one more from America’s Newspaper of Record: Yet Another Stash Of Classified Documents Discovered During Biden’s Colonoscopy.

A NEW WAY TO RANK LAW SCHOOLS.

At present, law-school rankings function mostly as sales and branding mechanisms rather than providing an actual managerial report that reflects institutional performance. They speak very little, if at all, to the way a school is run operationally and its specific strategic plans.

Moreover, law-school rankings are backward looking: The reviewers and organizers of the surveys are mostly media staff, and their objective is to market and sell the rankings report, as well as to generate advertising spending, newsstand sales, subscriptions, cross-selling, and “hits” for digital data purposes. They flatter a handful of schools, while the rest languish year after year for no apparent reason.

The magazines and media companies that run the annual rankings are not able or qualified to tell you very much about the content of each of the law-school programs they examine. (There isn’t much they can tell you about standard law courses, which merely conform to Bar requirements.) Instead, the rankings honor university endowments, investment and donor activity, and the depth and magnitude of corporate and governmental cross-interests. (Harvard, Texas, and Yale are effective hedge funds, with over $30 billion each in investable assets.)

In an interesting coincidence, the Yale Law School, generally ranked for decades as “#1,” recently decided to pull out of the U.S. News & World Report law-school ranking program. (It actually can’t “withdraw,” but that’s another matter.) Suddenly, the entire rankings status quo seems suspect.

Maybe it always was.

THE WASTE LAND REMAINS CONTEMPORARY: A dazzling new critical biography of T.S. Eliot’s modernist epic.

When I corresponded with Hollis by email about the book, I asked him about [Matthew] Eliot’s idea of tradition, which he treats brilliantly. “All literature is happening at once,” Hollis explained. He went on:

That’s a mind-stretching thought of Eliot’s that deserves some reflection: what exactly did he mean by it? That the writings of the past act upon the writings of the present is hardly a controversial idea, but Eliot was saying something stranger and deeper: that the present also acts upon the past. Influence was not a one-way stream, he believed, but something more like a pool in which time swirls. But how can a contemporary work of art act upon one already made in history? It does so, says Eliot, because the achievements of our age shed new light upon those that have gone before; the past is enlarged because of our contribution to it and is therefore changed by it. We know more than the past because the past is what we know, and we must maintain our connection to it in order to retain our connection to deep culture. Tradition, therefore, becomes a kind of door that we must pass through—and individual talent is the key that opens it.

Hollis also shared with me his sense of Eliot’s astute understanding of how poets help themselves to objects beyond their emotions to express those emotions’ essence—one way out of the narcissistic labyrinth that characterizes too much contemporary poetry. “For an artist to operate across such vast time and space,” Hollis pointed out, “for an art to be transcendental, requires a poet to communicate not with something so private to himself as personal feelings or emotions, but to find a representative for those feelings that can be understood by anyone without a personal connection to the author: it requires, in other words, what Eliot called an ‘objective correlative.’” Since Eliot first broached his famous theory in an essay on Hamlet in 1919 by arguing that Shakespeare’s play was a failure because there was no objective correlative in the play that could have reasonably given rise to Hamlet’s rarefied distress, some readers have tended to see the theory as little more than an excuse for brash revisionism. Yet Hollis is certainly right to see it as one of the governing principles behind the composition of The Waste Land. When Pound spoke of the long poem with all its musical registers as an “emotional unit,” he was nicely encapsulating its achievement. Hollis, too, captures the essence of Eliot’s method: “A reader cannot be expected to take interest in the poet’s emotion, only in the expression of emotion through a form common to both readers and writer alike, namely the senses.” The Waste Land epitomizes that “impersonal” form common to both readers and writer alike. Though a lot of Eliot’s personal emotion went into the composition of the poem, as Hollis so copiously shows, The Waste Land succeeds by giving that emotion its proper objective correlative—not least through its wonderful music.

Read the whole thing.

YES: ‘The Science’ Is Ruining Science.

Nature magazine, one of the premier science journals, carried a startling news story last week about a study charting the precipitous decline of “disruptive” scientific research, concluding that this decline is also reducing technological innovation. Using typically advanced quantitative techniques of a massive data set, the full study reports a more than 90 percent decline in “disruptive” scientific findings across nearly all fields over the last 70 years. One of the authors of the study told Nature, “The data suggest something is changing. You don’t have quite the same intensity of breakthrough discoveries you once had.” The chart Nature produced for the story is striking. . . .

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the story is the sub-headline Nature used: “No One Knows Why.” The best the authors can do is the feeble theory that “larger research teams” hinder heterodox investigations.

This finding is ominous, and may help explain the slowing pace of technological innovation, as summarized in Peter Thiel’s famous comment that “we were promised flying cars, but only got 140 characters.” As anyone who follows the holy grail of “innovation” knows, disruption is a prime precursor of progress, highly prized in Silicon Valley as it is in academia. Even before the jargon of “disruption” and “innovation” took over our popular vocabulary, the idea that science progresses by fundamental “paradigm shifts”—or breakthrough discoveries that challenge or overturn the existing consensus—has been widely accepted ever since Thomas Kuhn’s classic explanation in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Nature avoids the most significant and obvious explanation with the myopia of Inspector Clouseau, which is the deadly confluence of ideology and the increasingly narrow conformism of academic specialties. Perhaps this is grasped even more simply by noting the authoritarian attitude expressed in the now-ubiquitous phrase, “The Science,” with the tacit assumption being that science is fully “settled” and that the “consensus” science is unassailable. The epitome of this anti-scientific presumption was best expressed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who declared during the Covid pandemic that “I represent science,” implying an infallibility previously reserved only for popes.

It is hardly news that dissenting from the “consensus” position of the increasingly left-leaning scientific establishment in academic or government is dangerous to your career and reputation. It is sometimes thought that the “hard” sciences such as physics and chemistry are largely immune for the leftist tide that have destroyed the social sciences and the humanities in our universities, but this is less and less true with every passing year.

Hard to be innovative when the conventional wisdom is set so hard.

WELL: McCarthy’s on a roll, approval up, GOP support is 3-1.

TWIRLING TOWARDS FREEDOM:

Kamala: "I think of this moment as a moment that is about great momentum, inspired by, yes, optimism…but also inspired by also our collective effort to see what can be unburdened by what has been.”pic.twitter.com/6gO6YZaxtr

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) January 12, 2023

Classical reference in headline:

More new Kamalapropisms here: Watch: Kamala Harris Arrives Just in Time for Some Comic Relief.

WELL, ALSO BECAUSE THEY’RE BEING BRIBED BY THE CHINESE: Progressives don’t want to address the threat of China because of racism.

Actually, pretty sure the bribery is the reason, and the racism talk is the excuse.

HMM: Supreme Court investigators have narrowed leak probe down to a small group of suspects.

Supreme Court officials are escalating their search for the source of the leaked draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, taking steps to require law clerks to provide cell phone records and sign affidavits, three sources with knowledge of the efforts have told CNN.

Some clerks are apparently so alarmed over the moves, particularly the sudden requests for private cell data, that they have begun exploring whether to hire outside counsel. . . .

The Journal’s description of the brief interviews seems to jibe with the idea that investigators aren’t looking for a confession so much as daring the leaker to lie to a direct question. As the article points out, the leak itself probably wasn’t illegal so there’s no punishment in terms of arrest or imprisonment coming for whoever did this whether they confess or not. However, there could be a case made for disbarment if the clerk can be shown to have lied to the Chief Justice or the marshal. That would certainly be a blow to one of the top young lawyers in the country.

Lying to investigators is probably a crime under 18 USC 1001 even if the leak wasn’t a crime. Guilty or innocent, a smart lawyer would lawyer up — a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client — and clam up.

WAGES ARE UP, BUT PRICES ARE UP MORE: Workers Lose Ground to Inflation Despite Wage Gains. “Worker pay actually fell the past two years after accounting for inflation. Inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings—or real earnings—were down 1.7% in December 2022 from a year earlier, following a 2.1% decline in December 2021.”

Plus:

Despite the possible return of real wage gains, workers could suffer if the economy tips into recession this year, as many economists expect. A recession would likely lead to layoffs and push up the unemployment rate from December’s 3.5%. Fed officials see the unemployment rate rising to 4.6% by the end of the year.

“If you retain a job you’ll be in better shape,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide. “It’s just that there’s going to be an increased risk of layoffs for this year.”

Well, okay then.

FOR THE NYT, THAT’S ACTUALLY A PRETTY GOOD RATIO: Farhad Manjoo’s entry in the gas stove battle is 50% progressive talking points and 50% reality.

NOAH ROTHMAN: The GOP’s Anti-IRS Bill Is Entirely Justified.

If past performance is any indication, the Republican-led House is as interested in good governance as they are in good headlines. The Post senses, probably correctly, that Republicans believe they will secure political advantage by going after one of the most despised law-enforcement agencies in the United States. Fashionable anti-IRS sentiments have been deemed “bad for democracy,” which is a claim that rests on a theory drawing a direct proportionality between the health of the American republic and the success of Democratic political initiatives. The IRS is not popular, and capitalizing on that fact is not dirty pool.

Given the makeup of the Senate and the occupant of the Oval Office, the House GOP’s gesture amounts to a positioning statement. That doesn’t mean it’s valueless. As statements go, Republicans could do worse than to oppose an initiative that will complicate the lives of average Americans without addressing the real obstacles to an efficient federal revenue-collection service.

Also from the new GOP House: McCarthy ‘Sends DC in Utter Panic’ After This Statement About January 6.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Thursday he is considering releasing security footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot—all 14,000 hours of it.

“I think the public should see what happened on that day. I watched what Nancy Pelosi did, where she politicized it. Where, for the first time in the history as a speaker, not allowing the minority to appoint to a committee, to pick and choose,” he told reporters. “We watched the politicization of this. I think the American public should actually see all what happened instead of a report that’s written for a political basis.”

Faster, please.

THAT’S OKAY, THAT ISN’T WHY HE WANTS TO DO IT: Biden has no legal or scientific case to steal your gas stove.

Flashback:

I can’t help but feel that the oppression of the masses wasn’t so much a bug as a feature to them.

Making the common people’s lives worse seems to be a steady theme in elite proposals for social change: Less policing making crime worse, less energy consumption for the hoi polloi – but never the jet-setting elites – demands to eat less meat, travel less, live in smaller homes, swap cars for public transit, submit to social media censorship, etc., etc. If it will worsen ordinary folks’ lot, it’s probably on the agenda.

Why the political class feels this way is a question for another column, but look at what they’ve done over the past few years and ask yourself: If they hated us, what would they do differently?

Well?

DRESS UP: Van Heusen Men’s Dress Shirt Regular Fit Flex Collar Stretch Solid. #CommissionEarned

SUNDOWN JOE APPROACHING SUNSET? Biden’s 2024 Ambitions in Jeopardy With Democrats Over Handling of Classified Documents.

Democrats, even those who ran in 2020, showed signs in 2022 they want to run in 2024. Gabriel Debenedetti wrote in New York magazine about the skepticism of another Biden run in 2024 rumbling quietly through the Democratic Party.

Vanity Fair reported Biden would likely make his 2024 presidential run official in February.

Poll after poll shows Americans don’t want Biden or Trump to run in 2024.

Time for the Party of Youth’s ice floe politics to kick into action. “The next time a Democratic politician makes an anonymous observation about the age or vigor of a colleague with whom they disagree, be skeptical. The remarks are made to reporters as if in sorrow, but the message is about as subtle as a shiv in the prison yard.”

WITH A PERCENTAGE FOR THE BIG GUY: How Biden’s Green Agenda Runs Through Beijing.

JOE FRIDAY LEFT THE COP HOUSE A LONG, LONG TIME AGO: LAPD bans Thin Blue Line flag over complaint it represents ‘racist, bigoted views.’

FORMER UVALDE POLICE CHIEF: I Left the Gunman Unhindered to Continue Killing the Children He Held Hostage, So I Could “Evacuate” The Children Who Were In No Danger Whatsoever.

HE’S SO AWFUL: Watchdog: Buttigieg refused meetings with Democrats and Republicans during paternity leave. “Let’s be honest. Buttigieg failed up into his current position. He was a failed mayor of a small city in the Midwest, unable to keep the potholes filled. From there he ran for president and failed to secure his party’s nomination. As a consolation prize for endorsing Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, he was nominated as Secretary of Transportation. He wasn’t qualified for the job but he checked an important identity box for Democrats and Biden owed him after his endorsement, so Pete got the job.”

Luckily we haven’t had any transportation problems in the last couple of . . . never mind.

FROM LAURA MONTGOMERY:  Under the Earthline: A Science Fiction Lost Colony Adventure.