WITCH HUNT: Gen. Michael Flynn Files Restraining Order Against Nancy Pelosi. “Flynn served as Trump’s National Security Adviser for less than a month before he resigned under a cloud in Feb. 2017, having become a central focus of the Russian collusion hoax. He wasn’t serving in the Trump administration in any capacity on Jan. 6, 2020 and had not done so for nearly three years. But that didn’t stop the rabid partisans of the Jan. 6 committee from trying to rope him into something he had absolutely nothing to do with.”

THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO LAW SCHOOL IS A DUMPSTER FIRE: Things Get Worse at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The University of Illinois at Chicago seems unable to correct course and respect the academic freedom commitments that it has made to its faculty. For a year, the university has been hounding one of its law professors, Jason Kilborn, at the behest of some of its students. The fracas started when Kilborn included a hypothetical on his civil procedure exam involving an individual telling an investigating lawyer that former co-workers “expressed their anger at Plaintiff, calling her a “n____” and “b____” (profane expressions for African Americans and women) and vowed to get rid of her.” He has been suspended from teaching ever since as students demand that he be fired.

He reached an agreement with the university that would have settled the matter, but the university reneged on that agreement and the chancellor of the university weighed in demanding that the punishment must continue until morale has improved. . . .

It seems unavoidable that Professor Kilborn will have to vindicate his rights in court. The University of Illinois has disgraced itself in this matter.

I think its accreditation should be re-examined.

THAT’S NOT HOW DEMOCRATS WORK. THEY ALWAYS NEED TO DESIGNATE A GROUP OF AMERICANS AS THE ENEMY:

Related:

EH, PROBABLY: Did a Pulitzer Prize winning former NY Times reporter scam hundreds of musicians?

I mean, Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer, so . . .

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE: Elon Musk Sits Down With The Babylon Bee (Video).

YES. NEXT QUESTION? CNN expert: Cloth masks are useless “face decorations” at this point. And surgical masks are only marginally better. “So why does the White House continue to model their use? That’s a question worth asking. It appears to only function as a way for Joe Biden to wear the presidential seal as a brand.”

BIG GROCERY? SERIOUSLY?

I’m not saying that Elizabeth Warren is the dumbest person in public life–there is a lot of competition for that title–but let’s just say she is having the worst week. First she accused Elon Musk of being a tax freeloader, just before he disclosed that he will pay $11 billion in taxes this year, more than any American in history, to Warren’s slush fund the federal government. Next she blamed skyrocketing food prices on “Big Grocery.” Seriously. . . .

This is almost beyond belief. The grocery store business is notoriously competitive and relatively unprofitable. David Harsanyi writes that “average margins [come] in at a little over 2 percent,” one of the lowest margins of any industry. The idea that there is such a thing as “Big Grocery” is so laughably stupid that only a far-gone ideologue like Elizabeth Warren could take it seriously.

The broader point is that, according to the Democrats, we have suddenly been beset by a plethora of capitalist conspiracies, worthy of Chavez/Maduro Venezuela: Big Oil is responsible for exploding gasoline prices, auto companies–according to Warren–are to blame for rapidly rising vehicle prices, semiconductor companies (again, per the eternally clueless Ms. Warren) are behind the chip shortage, and so on.

It is hard to understand why all of these industries would conspire to raise prices at the same time, coinciding–by coincidence, apparently–with the Biden administration’s wild money-printing and spending spree. Hard to explain, that is, if, like Elizabeth Warren, you don’t know a damn thing about economics.

Oh, she knows. She just hopes her voters don’t know.

OPEN THREAD: It is you and me and a long night.

SPACE: James Webb Space Telescope: The engineering behind a ‘first light machine’ that is not allowed to fail.

Well, then, I hope it doesn’t.

COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: We May Be Prescribing Antidepressants Wrong, Claims Concerning New Review. “In fact, when taken over long periods for mild and moderate depression, antidepressants may be doing patients more harm than good, the review explains.”

One of my doc friends used to run a low-T clinic. He said that most of his patients who were on antidepressants didn’t need them anymore once they got their hormone levels back to normal.

I WOULD BE MORE PLEASED BY THIS IF I HAD MORE FAITH IN THE FBI AND THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: Harvard professor convicted by U.S. jury of lying about China ties.

It’s not that I don’t think that China has a huge variety of hooks into the U.S. establishment — I do, and it does — I just don’t trust the process.

TOP SELLER: SlideBelts Men’s Ratchet Belt. #CommissionEarned

SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Study: Overweight older adults lose weight, keep it off by moving more.

“IT’S IN THE SYLLABUS:” University Of Tennessee Professor Put Clues To A Cash Prize In His Syllabus. No One Noticed.

ONE BIG LESSON FOR CEOs — AVOID CAUSING HEADLINES SUCH AS THIS: Furious Customers Are Suing Hertz for $529.7 Million. Here’s the Lesson Every CEO Should Learn:

More than 180 Hertz customers are suing the car rental company in bankruptcy court, seeking damages of just under $529.7 million. Most of these customers were stopped by police, and sometimes arrested, for driving Hertz cars that they had legally rented.

According to their filings, for years Hertz has falsely reported that its cars were stolen as part of its regular business practice, “ensnaring its customers in accusations of car theft, throwing them in jail on felony charges, prosecuting them, burdening them with criminal records that impact their livelihoods, and separating them from their family and loved ones.”

Why would Hertz claim that its cars were stolen when legitimate renters were driving them? Believe it or not, the filing claims this is a cost-cutting measure. In some cases, the company simply misplaces a car or a rental contract and doesn’t know where the car is. Rather than upgrade its malfunctioning inventory systems or conduct its own investigation when cars are unaccounted for, Hertz simply reports these cars as stolen, the filing claims. The plaintiffs say the company is “effectively using the police, criminal justice system, and taxpayers to subsidize inventory control for a private corporation.” The unfortunate renters who happen to be driving those cars are collateral damage.

Read the whole thing.

DON’T UNDERESTIMATE JOE’S ABILITY TO F*** THINGS UP: Biden’s Net Economic Approval Rating Tanks to -13 Points, Worse Than Jimmy Carter.

Forty-five percent of registered voters said they approved of Biden’s performance on the economy, according to the latest CNN/SSRS poll released Tuesday, a study that has generally been more favorable to the president than others. Fifty-four percent said they disapproved. “The average of all polls taken in December is quite similar with Biden at -13 points on the economy,” CNN said in its findings, noting the figure exceeded even former President Jimmy Carter’s low-water mark in 1978, when a CBS News/New York Times poll found that president with a -8 percent gap.

On Biden’s performance more broadly, 55 percent said they disapproved, while 44 percent said they approved.

The development comes after skyrocketing inflation. Labor Department numbers pegged inflation-related price hikes at 6.8 percent in November, the highest number since 1982, and 6.2 percent in October. November marked the sixth consecutive month the rate fell above 5 percent.

Both Obama (source of the above headline) and Carter himself must laughing at having to dodge the Carter comparisons thanks to Brandon’s ability to indeed, f*** things up.

Was this the moment when everything went pear-shaped?

MICHAEL WALSH: Time to Fire the Decepticons and Get Over COVID.

Here we are, coming up on the second anniversary of “two weeks to slow the spread” of a flu-like virus most likely hatched in a Chinese Communist laboratory in Wuhan, with a little help from Dr. Anthony Fauci and the American taxpayer, and the dreaded COVID-19 chest cold has conquered the planet, instilling fear and loathing in weak minds whenever and wherever it appears in any of its Transformers-like, constantly mutating configurations.

In the Transformers film series, ordinary household machines like cars can suddenly reshape themselves into terrifying robots; the evil ones were known as Decepticons and had scary names like Megatron and Bonecrusher. In the world of socialized medicine, this viral beast has been dubbed by the government the Omicron variant (what a title for a Robert Ludlum thriller), which of course has arrived, right on schedule, to attack the Christmas and New Year’s celebrations around the world.

The irony is, had the novel coronavirus been treated the same way as its immediate predecessors, including SARS, the H1N1 pandemic of 2009, and the Hong Kong flu of 1968, no one would be talking about it, there would have been no lockdowns, no masks, no ruination of the economy, no destruction of the travel industry, no stealth takeover of private medicine and, most important, no unconstitutional loss of personal liberty.

Indeed — Woodstock, Altamont, and Apollo 11 all took place during the Hong Kong flu outbreak. In January of 1969, Paul McCartney even fretted that he might have it, one of many moments in Peter Jackson’s newly edited Get Back miniseries that resonates in 2021.

HEH:

@loganburkhalter

TRANS-RACIAL?!?! #transracial #identifyas #trans #wtf #woketok #race #lgbtq🏳️‍🌈

♬ original sound – 0% LIBERAL

I’M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER WHEN JOE BIDEN WAS GOING TO SHUT THIS VIRUS DOWN:

Plus: “At the speed Omicron is moving it will be gone by the time they send out the first test. Just inept.“

HOW’S THAT WELCOME WAGON PROGRAM COMING ALONG? Americans Fled ‘Woke’ States in ‘Historic’ Numbers in 2021.

SPOILER: IT WON’T WORK. N.Y. Gov. Hochul Now Bribing Counties to Enforce Her Mask Mandate.

TOP SELLER: AeroGarden Harvest – Indoor Garden with LED Grow Light, Black. #CommissionEarned

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: The Covid-19 Pandemic Actually Helped Saved Retail.

The hottest of hot takes from Bloomberg.

NO: A Law Professor Rewrites the Second Amendment…And Eliminates All Those Pesky Guns.

But she turns it into an abortion guarantee!

GROOVY: Psychedelics: The newest tool in nuclear negotiations?

The plan was simple: Give the psychedelic drug MDMA (popularly known as Ecstasy) to Soviet scientists and military personnel set to negotiate with US President Ronald Reagan in 1985, thereby injecting empathy and cross-cultural understanding into the nuclear peace process.

So, that’s just what Rick Doblin and Carol Rosin say they did—and they still believe introducing psychedelics into nuclear negotiations can produce positive results.

I’m dubious this happened, to say the least.