SUGAR IS BAD: We Just Got More Evidence For The Strange Link Between Sugar And Alzheimer’s.

SNOWFALLS ARE NOW JUST A THING OF THE PAST: Northeast braces for double snow storms this week with up to six inches falling as commuters are warned of dangerous road conditions.

(Classical reference in headline.)

HMM: Sara Carter: Sources in FBI Tell Me More Resignations To Come.

More:

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was forced to resign Monday, just as the House Intelligence Committee is expected to vote on the public release of a classified memo this afternoon revealing extensive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuse under the Obama administration, sources told this reporter.

McCabe apparently lashed out to his colleagues when he was told he would be asked to resign, according to sources. FBI Director Christopher Wray viewed the four-page memo on Sunday, sources familiar with the discussions said.

McCabe, who is facing three federal inquiries for conflicts-of-interest during his time at the FBI, is one of the numerous names mentioned in the classified memo detailing FISA abuse, according to sources who reviewed the memo.

The federal inquiries into allegations against McCabe, who was expected to resign in March, are based on documents and interviews conducted by this reporter over the past year and range from sexual discrimination to improper political activity.

McCabe, a central figure in the ongoing Russia investigation against Trump, is also part of the Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s ongoing review into the FBI’s handling of former Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to send classified information.

Current and former FBI officials said McCabe’s resignation is the beginning of more resignations to come.

“There are people lining up in the bureau to go after McCabe,” said a former FBI official, with knowledge. “There will be a clean up at the Bureau of his cronies.”

Good.

ANNALS OF FEMINIST AUTOPHAGY: Margaret Atwood is the Next Course at the Feminists Cannibal Feast, Sarah Hoyt writes.

As Megan McArdle wrote earlier this month, funny how the “bad feminists” are the ones “who still believe women have power.”

2018 GRAMMYS HAD THE LOWEST RATINGS EVER AS AWARD SHOW TURNS POLITICAL:

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the CBS telecast was down a staggering 21% from 2017 — potentially an all time low.

This mirrors the slide in NFL ratings that several surveys have attributed to players’ decisions to kneel during games.

“Virtue signaling is tricky business, especially for an entertainment world trying to be holier-than-thou,” Nick Gillespie writes at Reason, wondering why “Grammys Have Time for Hillary Clinton, But Not Lorde, To Perform?”

Let’s assume that the Grammys, like the Olympics, the Oscars, the NFL, and other 20th-century televised institutions, no longer command attention and interest the way they used to. It’s less because of politicization and more simply because audiences have more and more freedom to go elsewhere. (In the case of the Olympics, the loss of audience is precisely because of de-politicization: the end of the Cold War robbed every archery and ski jump contest of specifically political interest.) The more important question for me is whether consumers of art, culture, sports, and entertainment are more or less able to access the fare we want. To borrow the pretzel logic of multiple Grammy-winning band Steely Dan, any major dude with half a heart will tell you, my friend, any minor world that breaks apart falls together again. Music has never been more accessible and varied than it is today. While the “rock star” archetype may well be dead as a meaningful cultural touchstone, there’s more stuff to listen to in any possible genre you can imagine. If the Grammys and boring old fare like it must die for entertainment to live, well, that’s the sort of grave I’m happy to dance on.

* * * * * * * *

Which isn’t to say that the Grammys didn’t go out of its way to bother the majority of Americans who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. For a show that didn’t make time for popular (and political!) artist Lorde to perform despite her being up for the prestigious “album of the year” award, the Grammys still found time to run an explicitly anti–Donald Trump sketch featuring Hillary Clinton reading from Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury. Because when you’ve got a roomful of musical talent, what you really want to see is a failed politician who spent a good amount of her time in power railing against pop culture.

As with most of broadcast television, the Grammys have been heading slowly south in the ratings for ages. Their recent hyper-politicization aligns perfectly with Robert Tracinski’s theory regarding the hard left bias of the network late night TV hosts – it’s the best way for the Grammys, and the network that hosts it, to keep what’s left of a inexorably shrinking audience.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Grip A Semi-Auto Pistol.

CLEVELAND INDIANS: WE’RE DUMPING CHIEF WAHOO — BECAUSE MLB TOLD US TO. With the All-Star Game scheduled to be played in Cleveland in 2019, as Ed Morrissey writes, it sounds very much like league executives threatened the Indians along the lines of, “Nice official event ya got there … shame if anything happened to it, eh?”

UPDATE: “Trump’s going to suggest Elizabeth Warren be the new Cleveland mascot isn’t he?”

Heh.™

I WAS EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Better erections with nitroglycerin.

Here’s the actual paper.

AT AMAZON, bargains in Beauty.

Plus, savings in Safety and Security.

HMMMM: New York Times: ‘McCabe Steps Down in Widely Expected Move.’ All Other Outlets: McCabe ‘Removed.’

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Vitamin D could help millions of people with irritable bowel syndrome.

AND NOW HE’S OUT, THE DAY AFTER THE FBI DIRECTOR SAW THE HOUSE MEMO: New Book: McCabe Initiated White House Meeting That Led To Leak.

The book is Howard Kurtz’s Media Madness: Donald Trump, the Press, and the War over the Truth, out today.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: From Conspiracy Theories to Conspiracies.

FORGOTTEN BUT NOT GONE: This 40 Year Old Antibiotic Could Fight Back Against The Worst Superbugs. “Based on a new study of the antibiotic and tests on animal models, an international team of researchers thinks octapeptin has the potential to replace colistin, one of the drugs of last resort that bacteria have slowly been able to outsmart.”

MICHAEL LEDEEN: Making Iran Great Again.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: University Of Texas Faculty Rebels Against Use Of Metrics To Assess Scholarly Performance.

A REVIEW OF THE GARMIN SPEAK PLUS, which brings Alexa and a dash cam to your GPS.

But now that Alexa’s gone full SJW, I don’t think I want her.

ANDREW McCABE OUT AS DEPUTY FBI DIRECTOR: “Stepped Down?” Or “Removed?”

IT’S WORTH THE FIVE MINUTES IT WILL TAKE: How to Clean Your Gadgets to Make Them Feel Like New Again.

FATHER. SON. CELLMATES. GENERATIONS OF PHILLY FAMILIES ARE INCARCERATED TOGETHER:

But that there are regular family reunions in the visiting rooms of state prisons reflects an incarceration rate that — despite attempts to turn the tide — remains at near historically high levels and deeply concentrated in poor communities of color. By one estimation, there are 36,000 black men ages 25 to 54 missing from Philadelphia, either killed or incarcerated. Philadelphia leaders are working to cut the city jail roster by one-third in three years, while the state system has shed about 3,000 inmates since the population peaked at more than 51,000 inmates in 2009. But these efforts seek to bend a curve that tracked upward for decades. Pennsylvania admitted more than 19,000 state inmates in 2016, including parole violators; that annual figure remains double what it was 20 years ago, even as the violent crime rate has declined.

The Butterfield Effect strikes again!

(As spotted by Kurt Schlichter.)

EDUCATION APOCALYPSE UPDATE: Is Spending $1 Trillion on Education a Waste of Money? Bryan Caplan Says Yes.

His book is The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Grammy Awards Ratings Down Sharply From 2017 in Early Nielsen Numbers.

Who wants to watch MSNBC with uglier fashions and a lousier soundtrack?

And astonishingly enough, even worse journalism, to boot: ‘Don’t ruin great music with trash’: Nikki Haley complains after Grammys feature Hillary Clinton reading ‘Fire and Fury’ with UN envoy saying she prefers her ‘music without the politics.’

All of which flows into Iowahawk’s observation about the left’s long march into cultural institutions, pop and otherwise:

Related: CBS fail in progress: #Grammys fans are pissed CBS is showing golf instead of the red carpet.

Perhaps the golf game was pulling in better ratings?

JIM GERAGHTY: Koch Network Prepping ‘Largest Investment Ever’ in Midterm Cycle.

Speaking to reporters at the opening session of the Koch Seminar Network’s winter meeting, Phillips said he foresees a “very challenging environment at both the federal and state level to protect the policy majorities that made these victories possible.” (The group is eager to avoid being perceived as partisan, and thus emphasizes its preferred lawmakers as “policy majorities.” The overwhelming majority of political figures the Koch network and AFP supports are free-market conservative or libertarian-leaning Republicans.)

To deal with that challenging environment, the Koch network is prepared to spend a sum “on the high end” of $300 million to $400 million, according to James Davis, a spokesman for the network.

Phillips called that “the largest investment we’ve ever had in a midterm election. To give you a sense of that, that is 60 percent more than we [spent] in the in 2016 presidential cycle.”

That’s yuge, even in a non-off year election.