I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER WHEN ROCK STARS WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BUCK THE ESTABLISHMENT: Rock Icon Van Morrison Bucks Woke Establishment, Left Goes Nuts.

Predictably, the leftist establishment is enraged at all this, and is out to destroy Morrison for daring to step outside what it has set as the acceptable parameters of public discourse. The ugliest aspect of this has been accusations of anti-Semitism, based on…absolutely nothing. The Los Angeles Times leveled this accusation even in the act of admitting it was baseless: “And about ‘They Own the Media’? While the song doesn’t explicitly name Jewish people as its ‘They,’ it does elevate an anti-Semitic trope that has recently been revived in an even more malicious form by QAnon followers.”

Ah yes, it’s a “dog whistle.” Leftists love those because they enable them to smear conservatives without having to bother with providing any evidence for their accusations. The premier example of this is the claim that Trump incited the January 6 storming of the Capitol, or whatever it really was, even though he told protesters to proceed “peacefully.” His “incitement” was all in “dog whistles,” you see. And likewise, now Van Morrison supposedly is claiming that Jews control the media, even though he never said that, because other people the left hates have said it, and, well, that’s good enough, isn’t it? It’s bad enough in any case that he is exposing the media for what it really is rather than what it claims to be and hopes you think it is.

“The thing we adore about these dog-whistle kerfuffles is that the people who react to the whistle always assume it’s intended for somebody else. The whole point of the metaphor is that if you can hear the whistle, you’re the dog.”

UPDATE: Van Morrison is a sane man in a mad world.

BRAVE SIR ROBIN BRAVELY TURNED AND FLED: Hunter Biden Dodges Questions About ‘The Big Guy’ and His Gun Application Form.

LARRY CORREIA: Why Are There So Many Mormon Writers?

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: We Found Joe Biden’s Secret Venmo. Here’s Why That’s A Privacy Nightmare For Everyone. “BuzzFeed News found President Joe Biden’s Venmo account after less than 10 minutes of looking for it, revealing a network of his private social connections, a national security issue for the United States.”

NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT FOR THE DEMS’ LATE NIGHT PALACE GUARD: Comedians Won’t Touch Dr. Fauci … and That’s a Problem.

The left has turned on Cuomo, but as Glenn suggested last month, “I think all the intra-party hate thrown at Cuomo is because Democrats know [Harris] willl be unpopular if/when she succeeds Biden in the next couple of years, and they want to preclude a primary challenge.”

ANY BETS ON WHEN DOJ SHUTS DOWN MARICOPA AUDIT: Public Interest Legal Foundation’s J. Christian Adams notes that Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Pamela Karlan’s threat to bring federal charges against officials with the Maricopa County 2020 election audit lacks legal authority. And speaking of baseless, when is Karlan going to correct the record regarding her 2009 Duke Law law journal claim about the Bush administration’s alleged failure to file Voting Rights Act suits?

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Nothing says “normal, fraud-free election” like baseless threats to bring federal charges against people auditing the votes.

CHANGE? A Giuliani Wants Andrew Cuomo’s Job…

MICHAEL WALSH: Freedom Begins to Return as Masks Are Removed.

So here we are, 14 months or so after “two weeks to slow the spread” and “fifteen days to flatten the curve,” finally being allowed out of our jail cells and “permitted” by elected and unelected bureaucrats to breathe fresh air without wearing a slave muzzle. As the prisoners in Don Pizarro’s dungeons sing in Beethoven’s mighty opera, Fidelio: “Oh what joy, in the open air / Freely to breathe again!”

How did you enjoy your first taste of totalitarianism, America? And for your own good, too!

Yes, fellow citizens, “cases” of the dreaded COVID-19—a very likely man-made, gain-of-function “disease” with a 99 percent survival rate—are now down in all 50 states. Even with less than half the American population fully vaccinated, the “crisis,” such as it was, is over.

What’s more, after the so-called “red states” began ignoring the pronunciamentos of the almighty health poohbahs, the CDC abruptly announced that masking is no longer necessary in most circumstances, thus pantsing their own senior officials who up until a few days ago were warning of “impending doom” should the country reopen.

* * * * * * * *

Virtue-signaling Leftists, who’ve grown accustomed prancing about in public double-masked and wearing a beekeeper’s suit or deep sea diving gear—fret that if they take off their masks some people (gasp) might mistake them for Republicans or, worse, conservatives, or worst of all, Trump voters.

Permanently masking yourself like a bank robber or a welder indicates that you are one of the Good People, a Biden supporter, a person who lives in a home that has a sign out front stating you believe in Science, and that hate has no place here. Which is, of course, why you hate Republicans and conservatives and Trump voters to this day.

Which is why you get quotes like this from deep blue regions of America: “Whenever Joe Glickman heads out for groceries, he places an N95 mask over his face and tugs a cloth mask on top of it. He then pulls on a pair of goggles. He has used this safety protocol for the past 14 months. It did not change after he contracted the coronavirus in November. It did not budge when, earlier this month, he became fully vaccinated. And even though President Joe Biden said on Thursday that fully vaccinated people do not have to wear a mask, Glickman said he planned to stay the course. In fact, he said, he plans to do his grocery run double-masked and goggled for at least the next five years.”

Related: Fauci Admits He Wore Mask Indoors to Avoid ‘Mixed Signals,’ Not Science. “Time for everyone who criticized Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to eat crow. They jumped on him in March when he told Dr. Anthony Fauci, ‘You’re not wearing a mask because of science.’ Two months later Dr. Fauci admitted he wore a mask indoors to avoid mixed signals. He did not base his choice on science. It was all about those pesky signals.”

I WAS EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: Watch Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus Crash Test a One-of-25 004S. “Getting a limited production car on the road requires some very expensive sacrifice.”

CLARICE FELDMAN: A Legal System Corrupted. “I’ve always had great respect for our legal system. It’s as good as any of which I’m aware. No, I’m not naive. I’m fully aware that every institution depends on the competence and integrity of those involved and that means sometimes decisions are rendered that are wrong — muddy thinking and sometimes corrupt judges; self-seeking prosecutors; incompetent counsel; bad and poorly written laws; false testimony by liars — all contribute now and then to unjust resolutions. But in recent years, my faith has been even more badly shaken by continued and obvious corruption all the way down the line.”

Read the whole thing.

IN MY HOUSE, WE BELIEVE THAT SCIENCE IS REAL:

THAT REVEALS MORE ABOUT HIS CAUSE THAN IT DOES ABOUT ISRAEL: Former CNN Contributor Brags That His Pro-Hitler Tweet ‘Contributed to the Palestine Cause.’

COLORADO: Polis pushing mandate on employers to regulate workers’ commutes; rulemaking bypasses legislature.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) is proposing to implement new regulations that would force companies in the Denver Metro/North Front Range area with more than 100 employees to create “Employee Transportation Reduction Plans (ETRP).” This is part of the “ambitious” 2019 law that requires a 26% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 and a 90% reduction from 2005 levels by 2050.

CDPHE is a cabinet-level state agency that falls under the purview of Governor Polis. The new regulations would be implemented under the authority of the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission (AQCC), which is controlled by Polis appointees.

“That’s the most alarming part of what they’re trying to do,” Patrick McConnell, Coalitions Director for the Colorado chapter of Americans for Prosperity told Complete Colorado. “Legislating through the rule-making process is not the way to go about this. It needs transparency and accountability. This is something they should put through the people’s elected representatives.”

If Polis is bypassing the people’s elected representatives — Democrats, mostly — it’s because he knows his plan would get them unelected.

FASTER, PLEASE: New technology makes tumor eliminate itself.

S.E. CUPP TRIPS OVER CNN WHILE BLASTING ANDREW CUOMO’S BOOK DEAL PAYDAY:

This is a great day for media having their hypocrisy blowing up on them.

First, we saw MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, after spending the past year preaching at other people about following the science, tossing the CDC guidance under the bus because she’s apparently not ready to fully take off her mask or understand the actual science involved in being vaccinated.

Now we have CNN’s S.E. Cupp upset with the fact that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is going to get a massive payout of $5.1 million for his pandemic book deal, the book in which he painted himself as a hero fighting against the pandemic as opposed to the reality of his truly scandalous response, which contributed to thousands of nursing home deaths.

But one of the reasons Cuomo got such a “galling” deal was because of the anti-reality coverage provided for him by Cupp’s own network, CNN. Talk about clueless; Cupp seems to have forgotten about the CNN coverage of Andrew Cuomo.

Not least of which in 2020, a CNN commentator named…S.E. Cupp:

Yet another leftist (RINO, in this case) pundit who received a shock case of Cuomosexual Conversion Therapy.

GRANNY KILLER CUOMO: Andrew Cuomo Rakes in Millions for Book on Crisis He Failed to Handle and Faces Impeachment For.

GOOD: A simple surgical procedure can spare people with irregular heartbeats from potentially deadly strokes. “Removing the left atrial appendage — an unused, finger-like tissue that can trap blood in the heart chamber and increase the risk for clots — reduces the risk for strokes among those with atrial fibrillation, or AFib, by more than one-third, according to the data, which was published Saturday.”

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: China-Owned TikTok Is Banning Satirical Impressions That Mock WHO Apologist Anthony Fauci. “Comedian Tyler Fischer, whose impressions have gone viral, wrote on Twitter Monday TikTok banned his mocking of Fauci, the face of America’s detrimental lockdowns, over violations of its ‘community guidelines.'”

It might not be as debilitating as the Wuhan Flu, but TikTok is every bit as much a virus out of Communist China.

GOOD: Study: CPAP machine cuts heart attack, stroke risk in some apnea patients.

AP SUCCUMBS TO CONQUEST’S SECOND* LAW OF POLITICS: The decline and fall of the Associated Press.

One of the sad features of modern media (and there are many) is that these symptoms of decline have affected the Associated Press. Once considered the epitome of neutrality and fairness, the AP has become a woke organization. It’s hardly the Gender Studies Department at Oberlin, but all too often it spins stories and headlines instead of reporting them straight. That would be troubling at any time, but it is particularly troubling now that financially-strapped newspapers rely so heavily on cut-and-paste reports from outside sources, primarily the AP.

The latest example of AP’s troubled role involves its offices in the Gaza Strip, a territory controlled by Hamas. For some 15 years, the AP has operated out of an 11-story building in Gaza City, the al-Jalaa Tower, where al Jazeera also has offices. According to Israeli military intelligence, journalists weren’t the only ones in that tower. Hamas terrorists also had offices there and were using them to plan terror attacks on Jewish civilians. So, in the midst of Israel’s wider military campaign against Hamas assets, the Israeli Defense Forces  told everyone to evacuate the building, which was then destroyed by aerial bombardment. No one was injured.

The Associated Press went berserk, claiming there were no Hamas offices in the building and that this was not only an Israeli assault on the AP, it was an attack on all journalism. The AP’s CEO, Gary Pruitt, demanded a full investigation and began rounding up support from other news organizations and politicians like UN secretary-general António Guterres, who was ‘deeply disturbed’ by the airstrike.

An investigation won’t turn out the way Mr Pruitt wants, not if it is truly unbiased. There is mounting public evidence, independent of Israeli intelligence, that Hamas was operating out of the building and that other people in the building knew it.

Tommy Vietor, a former spokesman for President Obama, has tweeted that he talked to people who worked in the building and who knew, first-hand, that Hamas worked there. He doesn’t find that surprising since, as he notes, Hamas ‘purposefully co-locate operations with civilians’. Vietor’s comments are especially important because he is not trying to justify the bombing, only to clarify the facts. In fact, he specifically stated that Israel ‘shouldn’t hit that building’, even though Hamas had offices there.

As the evidence mounts, the AP’s stance appears increasingly flimsy. Not that it has stopped their complaints or their protestation that Hamas never had offices in their building. That stance is beginning to resemble Sgt. Schultz’s feigned ignorance in Hogan’s Heroes:  ‘I see nothing. I hear nothing. I know nothing.’ That’s not a good place for a news organization to be. In fact, it’s the opposite of what we mean by a news organization.

Related: Former AP Reporter Said AP ‘Wouldn’t Report’ on Hamas Launching Attacks Outside Gaza Office. “The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby — and the AP wouldn’t report it, not even in AP articles about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas. (This happened.) Hamas fighters would burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff — and the AP wouldn’t report it. (This also happened.) Cameramen waiting outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City would film the arrival of civilian casualties and then, at a signal from an official, turn off their cameras when wounded and dead fighters came in, helping Hamas maintain the illusion that only civilians were dying. (This too happened; the information comes from multiple sources with firsthand knowledge of these incidents.)”

* “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.”

OY: Erdoğan Enlists Pope Francis in Propaganda War to Punish Israel For ‘Crimes Against Humanity.’

WORKING TOO HARD CAN GIVE YOU A HEART ATTACK-ACK-ACK-ACK-ACK-ACK: WHO study links longer work hours to heart disease, stroke, death.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE: Six Months After the 2020 Election, Fulton County Has Failed to Produce Chain of Custody Documents for 18,901 Absentee Ballots Placed in Drop Boxes.

OLD AND BUSTED: Make America Great Again.

The New Hotness? Make America Detroit: New Poll Shows How Riots Have Doomed Downtown Portland.

Related: Leaving Portland.