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NONE DARE CALL IT A HOAX: The Jussie Smollett Saga Continues. “In truth, the Chicago police are terrified of even hinting they doubt Smollett’s story. There is no major city in the U.S. where the cops are more distrusted by blacks than in Chicago. The police risk a riot if they let it be known they think Smollett is trying to hoax them.”

ACTING AG MATTHEW WHITAKER: FOOTBALL IMPRESARIO, STOMPER OF DEMOCRATS. “‘Mr. Chairman, I see that your five minutes is up’ will soon be part of congressional legends.”

TEENAGE REBELLION AIN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE: Defying Parents, A Teen Decides To Get Vaccinated.

MEGYN KELLY VS. JIMMY FALLON: NBC’s Double Standards on Blackface.

THAT’S NO SURPRISE. MEDICAL MISTAKES ALSO KILL MORE PEOPLE THAN GUNS BY FAR: More post-surgery deaths globally than from HIV, malaria.

THURSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM:

Eventually the food is served & [Kirsten] Gillibrand starts to eat her fried chicken with a fork. She looks around, sees other people eating with their hands and says “Um Kiki, do we use our fingers or forks for the chicken?”

When FDR had more of a common touch than you, it might be time to ask if you’re out of touch with America’s voters.

To be fair, at least Gillibrand is eating fried chicken. T-Bone’s buddy, who reminds everyone what a committed Vegan he is, should have lots of fun on the Soylent rubber chicken circuit.

(Classical reference in headline.)

WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS: The Ka-Bar Tactical Spork.

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING: AT&T sued by Sprint, must defend decision to tell users that 4G is “5G E.” “Despite AT&T trying to convince consumers that 5G E is different from 4G, OpenSignal measurements in late 2018 found that AT&T’s average download speeds nationwide were slower than Verizon’s and T-Mobile’s 4G networks. Sprint is the only major carrier that AT&T beat in that ranking.”

ELIZABETH WARREN DOESN’T CONTRADICT CLAIM ABOUT ISRAELI “APARTHEID:”

The Democratic presidential field campaigning in advance of the Granite State’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary will be confronted by some uncomfortable questions about Israel, at least if Senator Elizabeth Warren’s appearance here this weekend is any indication.

Warren, on her first visit to New Hampshire as a declared Democratic presidential candidate, answered a question from a voter who volunteered that two of his best friends from college were Jewish before pivoting to ask Warren what she thought of Israel’s West Bank settlements and “basically an apartheid situation in Palestine now.”

Warren didn’t dispute the “apartheid” characterization, but didn’t endorse it, either. Instead she thanked the voter for his question and replied with generalities in which voters from a variety of viewpoints about Israel might find themes to sympathize.

Though Israel has traditionally had strong bipartisan support in the US, some recent polls have found support for Israel to be weaker among “progressive” Democrats than among other Americans.

Yeah, that’s pretty obvious if you’ve been paying attention.

HAVE FUN STORMING THE CASTLE: Judge Calls on Muslims to Disavow Violent Koran Verses.

(Classical reference in headline.)

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How the Witness Protection Program Decides Where To Send People. But if I ran the Witness Protection Program, nothing I told the press would be true.

I’D RATHER HAVE BILLIONAIRES WITHOUT POLITICIANS THAN POLITICIANS WITHOUT BILLIONAIRES: Abolish Billionaires: ‘Kneecapping The Wealthiest Among Us.’

But if we’re starting on that road, let’s go with Tom Steyer, Mike Bloomberg, and George Soros first.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON ON SANDY’S WAR:

“Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” is, at 16 syllables, a mouthful. The day before yesterday, she was “Sandy,” a pleasant-seeming young woman who liked to dance, worked in a bar, worried about her family, and chafed that her advantages and elite education (Boston University shares Case Western’s academic ranking and is significantly more expensive than Princeton: Is there a more appropriate preparation for life in Washington?) left her struggling, obscure, and unsatisfied. And so she set after glory and personal significance in politics, to which she is relatively new — the hatreds and grievances she dotes on are obvious enough and familiar enough that one assumes she has been in possession of those for some time. They are not newly acquired.

If you spend enough time around politics and/or media, you have seen this figure before. Years ago, a young woman beginning what would turn out to be a successful turn on the Washington cursus honorum asked me, earnestly: “Is it wrong to want to be famous?” I asked her what she intended to do with the celebrity she sought — for what purpose did she want it? “Why?” The question obviously had never occurred to her. I might as well have asked her why she wanted two eyes rather than one. She has a lot of Twitter followers now.

* * * * * * * * *

About the details of the Green New Deal, such as they are, there is not really much to say. On Friday, I spoke with one of the world’s leading authorities on North American building practices and asked him about the plan to “retrofit” these structures in the service of a “net-zero energy” agenda. Neither “scathing” nor “derisive” quite captures his response. He has been involved in a number of net-zero retrofits and understands how complex and expensive they are — and how they can destroy a building when done poorly. Ask a farmer, an aerospace engineer, the manager of an electric utility, or a truck-driver about these highfalutin’ schemes and sentiments and you will get another superfluous proof of Robert Conquest’s maxim — “Everyone is conservative about what he knows best” — and Williamson’s First Law: “Everything is simple if you don’t know a f*****g thing about it.”

Read the whole thing.

THE JOHN DINGELL ERA – CONGRESS AS PROTECTION RACKET:

In those days, I had a role as a lobbyist in various coalitions of trade groups as part of my legal practice. Lots of people in Washington had really wonderful jobs as lobbyists for several decades because liberals would faithfully introduce bad bills with enormous potential harm to business, the lobbyists would report that threat back to their employers and clients, trade associations and large firms would then pay them to defeat this threat. Then Dingell or some other titan would simply kill it anyway and the lobbyists could rack up another “victory,” steer contributions to the right people and stay flush. Clean Air amendment legislation routinely died in each Congress because Dingell faithfully represented the automakers and Byrd the coal industry. But anybody ‘working’ the issue could claim results.

Senior Democrats like Dingell racked up large contributions from business because by the 1980s Congress was largely designed to be an extortion racket. “Pay us to either kill what you don’t like or to insert protections for you in the bad bill we are about to pass or else.” Before 1986, high tax rates were part of a code festooned with countless arcane provisions to lessen the blow but only for paying customers. Enormous regulatory assaults were legislated but with hundreds of arcane provisions to protect those who stepped up and paid up.

If you were paying for protection, this was not a one time fee. Once your protections were enshrined in a paragraph or a sentence in legislation, there was the eternal threat of repeal or amendment so the payments had to continue.

Once I recall that all the reps in one coalition I worked with got a letter from Dingell’s AA which said: “The Chairman may lose interest in your issue if your support is not more forthcoming.” If you think of it as an invoice, it makes more sense.

Exit quote: “Frankly, I would rather have a Congress that I could bribe rather than a majority of AOC-type ideologues.”

Read the whole thing.

I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER WHEN ROCK MUSIC POSED AS BEING REBELLIOUS: Nancy Pelosi gets rock star treatment at Clive Davis’ annual pre-Grammy Awards gala. “The audience at Clive Davis’ white-hot gala included Barbra Streisand, Joni Mitchell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, but it was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who got the most requests to take a selfie.”

Pelosi’s sarcastic handclap and smirk to President Donald Trump at his State of the Union address went viral last week and launched hundreds of memes. So when Davis announced that she was in the audience — Pelosi has attended in the past — she received a standing ovation, while some people even imitated her now-famous handclap.

At the top of the event and as she tried to exit, people asked to take selfies, almost creating a line as Pelosi smiled through them all.

As they said at Columbia Records while Clive was president, the man can’t bust our music!

OH SURE, JUST IN TIME FOR AOC TO BAN CARS: Austin Tech Firm May Have Solved Drive-Thru Ordering Mishaps.