VIDEO: CNN’s Don Lemon Suggests Trump’s Speech Should Be Censored Before Americans Hear It.

THE CHINA SYNDROME: Samsung provides latest tech scare as it warns of 30% dive after alert from Apple.

YEP: Stench Still Rising From Broward County Sheriff.

COCAINE MITCH IS GOING TO HAVE A LONG TWO YEARS: Dems Eye 33% Corporate Rate Hike.

House Budget Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) has announced that the forthcoming budget blueprint will call for a 33 percent corporate income tax rate increase by hiking the rate from 21 percent to 28 percent. This would make the U.S. a less competitive place to do business and make the U.S. statutory rate higher than many developed competitors.

State corporate taxes average 6 percent across the U.S, so this planned tax hike would give the U.S. an average top corporate rate of 34 percent.

The current combined corporate rate across the 36 member Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) is currently 23.7 percent.

If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, tax it some more. If it stops moving, collect a death tax.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Annual Open Letter to the People of Purdue from Mitch Daniels.

Tuition across the sector continued to increase, but at an apparently slower pace. I say “apparent” because, especially in the private colleges, the practice of back-door discounting, raising the stated “sticker price” while simultaneously offering bigger and bigger financial aid to favored students, clouds the picture. . . .

But any honest report on the sector must be on balance highly cautionary. The multiyear decline in enrollments continued, with total student population falling another 1.7%. . . .

Meanwhile, financial distress continues to broaden. A quarter of non-public institutions reported running at an operating deficit in 2017-18. Finding one in five small private colleges under “fundamental stress,” Moody’s bond rating service renewed its “negative outlook” on the higher education sector, amid forecasts that the number of schools closing their doors would grow from 11 to around 15 per year. That may be the good news. For years, demographers have noted the coming decline in the total number of 18-year-olds. To this challenge, some have added the observation that a rising percentage of future cohorts come from backgrounds historically much less likely to attend college.

If only there had been some sort of warning. But read the whole thing.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. China should think twice before threatening to attack Americans.

China perceived the lack of strategic focus of the George W. Bush administration and the passive “lead from behind” foreign policy of the Obama administration as American decay and decline. In reality, the foundational aspects of the American economy remain surprisingly strong and the American fighting spirit is not dead — merely sleeping. Those who would believe that the sinking of two aircraft carriers would trigger an impulse toward retreat would do well to make themselves aware of the United States’ history and the impact events such as the sinking of the Lusitania, the attack on Pearl Harbor and the collapse of the World Trade Center had on the national psyche. What some have labeled the Jacksonian impulse could be described as a tendency toward great power rage. To be sure, it burns itself out. After all, the U.S. is considering leaving Afghanistan, 17 years later.

But make no mistake: Any attack upon a single U.S. aircraft carrier by long-range aircraft, cruise missiles or ballistic missiles would surely generate a response against the bases from which those weapons were launched, the sensors associated with them and the command-and-control nodes that directed them, and then the United States would turn its attention on the Chinese naval and merchant fleet.

Before China knew what was happening, it would be cut off from the overseas sources of energy and raw materials that fuel its import/export economy. Within weeks it would be without fuel and its factories would be shuttered. The American economy, established in a nation that has most resources domestically available, would be able to ride out the storm, even if China attempted to climb the escalation ladder and attack targets in North America.

There’s a common misconception that if you strike a “decadent” Western nation hard enough, they’ll fold immediately. But history has proven time and again that free nations enjoy deep resources of political will that more-brittle authoritarian regimes don’t posses. If Beijing’s Communists choose to ignore that lesson, it’s to everyone’s peril — but mostly their own.

Flashback to earlier this morning: USS McCampbell Freedom of Navigation Operation Past Paracel Islands Irks China.

ANYTHING TO WIDEN THE MARGIN OF CHEATING: Virginia governor announces bill to repeal voter ID requirement, allow no-excuse absentee voting.

POOR SILICON VALLEY. FIRST IT ALIENATED THE RIGHT, AND NOW THE LEFTIES ARE TURNING ON IT. Cory Doctorow: Disruption for Thee, But Not for Me. The point here isn’t Cory Doctorow’s puerile politics and incomprehension of price mechanisms, but the fact that even lefty science fiction writers now view Big Tech as a hostile force. A politically smarter industry would have tried to hang on to more allies.

JEFF DUNETZ: John Bolton In Israel: What A Dramatic Difference Two Years Make. “Whether one agrees or disagrees with President Trump’s policies, one cannot legitimately dispute the fact that this President has executed a dramatic reversal of the anti-Israel policies of the previous administration. This reversal can be substantiated with the actions Netanyahu pointed out, Jerusalem, the Iran deal, and the U.N. but the most significant substantiation was that lack of a qualifying ‘but’ to Israel’s right to self-defense.”

Scrapping the Iran Deal and reimposing sanctions are making a big difference, too.

DISPATCHES FROM THE HOUSE OF STEPHANOPOULOS: ABC Scolds Pence on Border: ‘Why Are We In This Mess In First Place?’
If only Pence had told his interviewer, “Because Democrats failed to heed the advice of George’s boss on the issue of immigration.”

ROBERT SPENCER: Amazon Removes ‘Offensive’ Qur’an Doormats at CAIR’s Demand.

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ROGER SIMON: Bye-bye, Twitter. Trump Immigration Speech a Good Move.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY, GREAT BRITAIN EDITION: Feminist Mom Booted From Bar Over T-Shirt With the Definition of ‘Woman.’ “Rebeka Wershbale, 34 and a mother of one, told Britain’s Daily Mail that her t-shirt — which simply reads ‘Woman/women/noun/adult human female’ — caused her exclusion.”

It occurs to me that biology isn’t very inclusive.

CULTURE ENCOURAGES PEOPLE TO HAVE KIDS AND WANT KIDS. WHEN YOU BREAK THE CULTURE, THE DESIRE FOR KIDS DOESN’T MAGICALLY RETURN JUST BECAUSE YOU WANT IT TO. China’s population shrinks despite two-child policy. “China’s population shrank last year for the first time in 70 years, experts said, warning of a ‘demographic crisis’ that puts pressure on the country’s slowing economy. The world’s most populous nation of about 1.4 billion for decades limited most families to one child in an attempt to keep population growth sustainable. But since 2016, it has allowed couples to have two children in response to concerns about an ageing society and shrinking workforce. . . . Enforced through fines but notorious for cases of forced abortions and sterilisation, the one-child policy caused birth rates to plummet after it was introduced in 1979. However, childbirths have not increased as much as forecast since the two-child policy came into force and there has been rising speculation the government will further ease restrictions.”

Now it can be told: All that “Population Bomb” stuff was actually a long-range plan to fatally weaken China just as it threatened to emerge as a superpower. Somewhere in CIA headquarters, there’s a plaque with Paul Ehrlich’s name on it and a Presidential Disinformation Citation.

LIGHTNING STRIKES: 31 Air Force Pilots Reveal Why They Love the F-35 Stealth Fighter. “In full production, the F-35A is projected to cost less than the four-plus generation Eurofighter Typhoon, the French Rafale M, or the latest version of the F-15K Strike Eagle. It will outperform those jets and every other four-plus generation fighter in an air-to-surface role, and none of them would fare well against it in an air-to-air engagement.”

The sixth item caught my eye:

A former A-10 instructor pilot said the situational awareness aids associated with the sensor suite of the F-35A allowed pilots to execute close air support missions as well or better than the A-10 in low-threat environments. The F-35A is the only multirole platform capable of conducting close air support in high-threat environments.

The A-10 was designed to crack Soviet armor, and there’s never been a better, pure ground-pounder. But the land-based threat environment has increased radically since the A-10 first flew more than 40 years ago, and stealth is probably the price of admission for this new game.

BUT OF COURSE: Michigan State atoned for Nassar scandal by punishing male sexually assaulted by female.

A Michigan State University professor was found guilty of performing sexual acts on female students and athletes without their consent. He’ll spend the rest of his life in prison.

But when a sober female student performed sexual acts on an intoxicated male student without his consent, the scandal-plagued university blamed the victim, suspending him for two years, according to a lawsuit filed just before Christmas.

A former student alleges that Michigan State’s sexual-assault investigation of him was “tainted from the outset with gender bias” and violated his due process rights.

Brutalizing the powerless innocent while protecting powerful wrongdoers — it’s a bad look for higher education, but a surprisingly common one.

THAT’S KIND OF THE IDEA: Grandfather of Oklahoma teen killed by homeowner in burglary says AR15 made for ‘unfair’ fight.

WHY WON’T NANCY PELOSI ANSWER THESE THREE QUESTIONS? You know, those pesky journalists like Peter Hasson can be real pains-in-the-tush. What would happen if every time Pelosi has a presser she is asked these three questions?

OBAMA-ERA OPERATIVES BEHIND FALSE-FLAG CAMPAIGN AGAINST ROY MOORE: Slowly but surely facts are emerging about the extent to which Obama-era activists in and out of government disingenuously campaigned against Republicans.

The Daily Caller News’ Foundation’s Chris White details how two such activists were involved in the creation of a web page designed to make it appear that Alabama Senate Republican candidate Roy Moore favored prohibition. Moore lost the 2017 special election to Democrat Doug Jones, who has since called for an investigation of activities.

WOW: F-15 jet’s canopy FALLS OFF at 30,000ft, leaving Israeli pilots to face -49F temperatures and buffeting winds as they tried to land.

HIGHER EDUCATION TAKES SIDES: Exclusive Report: Nearly all donations from faculty, admin in Pelosi district went to Dems.

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HIS REAL CRIME WAS EXPOSING ACADEMIA TO JUSTIFIED RIDICULE: Portland State University Says Hoax ‘Grievance Studies’ Experiment Violated Research Ethics.