THE WAR ON FIRST RESPONDERS: And Just Like That, Washington State’s Fire Marshal Will Lose Job Over Forced Covid Shot. “The marshal, Charles LeBlanc, a 33-year-veteran of the agency, says the state has granted him a medical exemption from getting the shot, but that it can’t ‘accommodate’ the exemption.”
To be fair, that makes as much sense as anything else we’ve seen in the last 18 months.
THE SELLING OF AXIOS’ SOUL: Axios is an up and coming entrant in the digital news media platform universe and claims it has “no B.S. for sale.” Well, Chuck Ross at Washington Free Beacon shines a much-needed light on the latest way journalists sell their souls, by helping corporate lobbyists corner the politicians they seek to persuade.
PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: CMU College Republicans respond to student who tweeted about defacing their sidewalk display.
CITY VS SUBURBS WAR IS OVER. SUBURBS WON: That’s the verdict of Allan Berger and David Gordon, writing for Joel Kotkin’s Newgeography. How long will it take the enviros and their urban planning allies to figure this out?
“Here’s what we found: Most — 63 percent — of those the U.S. Census defines as ‘urban’ Americans are actually suburbanites who commute by car from auto-dependent places. An additional 18 percent live in exurbia and also commute by car. People that live relatively close to city centers and ride in by public transit are another 13 percent. Still, even they rely on cars in their home communities.
“Any realistic route to a sustainable urban future needs to harness this combined population, a racially and economically diverse 92 percent of U.S. ‘metropolitan’ residents, and their automobile-based mind-set. It’s these suburbanites in their much-dissed ‘bedroom’ communities and anything-but-iconic houses that can create the radical changes we need.”
Berger and Gordon are high on Electric Vehicles. I’m not, as I suspect most Instapundit readers aren’t. But putting that issue aside, the key implication of their findings — the suburbs, and the exurbs, are here to stay — is that, if you want to save the environment, you better figure out how to do it with something other than forcing people to move back into the cities.
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Sea Power Makes Great Powers.
The United States currently faces many of the same strategic challenges that Britain confronted just over a century ago. Much as the Balfour ministry faced strategic strain from the distant Boer War—as well as expanding domestic social instability and the rise of Germany—the United States is dealing with the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, domestic civil unrest, and a rising China. Additionally, the White House Office of Management and Budget has attempted to impose on the Defense Department similar fiscal strictures to those that Balfour levied on Fisher’s Admiralty: flat to declining budgets and demands to be more efficient. As a result, the Pentagon has made the decision to cut back on its shipbuilding plans, starting construction of only eight new ships in the next year, half of them auxiliaries, while accelerating the decommissioning of seven cruisers, dropping the fleet to an estimated 294 ships. Congress has indicated that it will seek to expand these numbers, but the future is increasingly murky.
The U.S. naval strategy will produce a fleet too small to protect the United States’ global interests or win its wars.
Given that even the most capable ship can only be in one place at a time and that the world’s oceans are vast, the fleet as planned will not meet the demand for a naval presence detailed by the various four-star regional combatant commanders around the world. On average, their requests equate to approximately 130 ships at sea on any given day, nearly half of the present fleet. Today the Navy deploys, on average, fewer than 90 ships per day, creating gaps in key regions where America’s interests are not being upheld.
There’s also some excellent (and frighteningly relevant) history in this piece, if you’re interested.
TWO PEAS IN A POD: Stuart Rothenberg has seen it all in the nation’s capital, over and over and over … Can you guess which congressional crisis he refers to it in this Roll Call oped?
“Congress often waits until the clock is running out before it actually gets down to dealing with big issues, whether spending or policy matters. … But the current hyper-partisan political environment makes it even less possible than usual to negotiate deals well before the clock strikes midnight. That’s because party leaders and activists spend most of their time playing to each party’s political base, rallying supporters behind their agenda and mobilizing their base against the opposition.”
Sounds a lot like the current impasse on Capitol Hill, doesn’t it? But Rothenberg wrote that passage back in 2011. And that’s the problem, Rothenberg and the rest of sentient America have heard this same song over and over and recognize it for the sham that it is. And just in case you missed the Motown reference, remember this?
IRA STOLL: The Varsity Blues Trial Is a Reminder of Our Corrupt Criminal Justice System. “Plead guilty and get ‘punishments ranging from probation to nine months in prison.’ Insist on a trial and face decades in prison.”
FREE SPEECH AND PELOSI’S JANUARY 6 INQUISITION: Writing at The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson puts it bluntly: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is mounting “a brazen attack on the First Amendment rights of peaceful, law-abiding Americans.”
Observes Davidson:
“Let’s be clear on this point. Since its inception, the Select Committee has amounted to a show-trial for House Democrats and leading NeverTrumpers who are attempting to make examples out of ordinary citizens who dared to protest the election, just as President Biden’s Justice Department is throwing the book at anyone connected to the events of Jan. 6 to make examples of them.”
BLUE CITY BLUES: Will the Last Office Worker to Leave San Francisco Please Turn Out the Lights?
“There’s nothing to do”, complain some residents of one of the most expensive cities in the world, thanks to the ongoing pandemic restrictions.
The skyscrapers are dark. Retailers are leaving. Crime is surging. The streets remain notoriously filthy.
Residents have had enough and are voting with their feet.
This one is just for our PJMedia/Townhall VIP members, so if you’ve been thinking of becoming a member, you can do so here — and don’t forget to use that VODKAPUNDIT discount code.
WOKE UNIVERSITIES CAN’T BE TOO CAREFUL ABOUT WHOM THEY HIRE: New job postings at the University of San Diego reflect the university’s plunge into wokeness. Just to get an interview for a job as a philosophy professor, a communications studies professor, or an architecture professor, you must submit “a diversity statement in which you address A) your values with respect to diversity, equity, and inclusion; B) your experience working with minoritized populations and/or on issues that disproportionately affect diverse populations, and C) your plans related to diversity and inclusion in your teaching and research.”
Similar requirements have popped up at other colleges and universities. USD used to be a little better than the average school at avoiding such nonsense. But that was then, and this is now.
AU REVOIR? Allo, Allo, Mr. Brexit — France Is on the Line.
When the United Kingdom succeeded in effecting independence from the European Union, Brexiteers hoped that, in concert with Pitt the Younger, they could say “England has saved herself by her exertions, and will save Europe by her example.” When Pitt voiced these sentiments in the midst of the Napoleonic wars, nine years were to follow before victory at Waterloo.
Today, Britain has yet to enjoy the full promise of sovereignty regained; indeed, there have been as many setbacks for liberty as triumphs. Nevertheless, the Brexit hope remains alive in Britain. And, if what is happening in France turns out to have legs, it is not impossible to imagine France beginning to think about whether it was on the wrong side of Brexit.
France must “regain our legal sovereignty,” Mr. Barnier declares as he campaigns for president. If elected in April 2022, he proposes to halt all immigration from non-EU countries for five years. As a corollary, he would limit the reach of the European Court of Human Rights. Even Germany takes a hit, as Mr. Barnier takes aim at the Teutonic tilt within the EU.
Such campaign screeds are controversial primarily in the bien-pensant salons. Limiting immigration, though, is crosswise to EU ideals — and the Schengen agreement on borderless Europe — that Monsieur Barnier defended when he conspired against UK independence. His volte face is therefore surprising. Is he now endorsing Frexit? Sacre bleu, M. Barnier!
The French people have been trending rightward for years now, but the French government so far has been able to ignore or suppress most of the shift.
Maybe that’s changing.
mRNA INVENTOR DECRIES MEDICAL CENSORSHIP: The vaccine insanity is global, Dr. Robert Malone. He knows a thing or three about Covid vaccines.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Vax Nazis Gleefully Pushing People Into Unemployment. “People don’t leave careers just because they’re in the mood to make a political statement. The fact that so many healthcare professionals have misgivings about the vaccine should be enough to spark a real conversation.”
PLEASE CLAP: “Are we blowing this?”: McAuliffe and friends plead for online cash.
Maybe donate to Glenn Youngkin instead.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Supply Chain Disruption Update. “Expecting these problems to be transitory? Dubai’s largest port operator says to expect supply chain problems to extend in 2023.”
FOISTING THIS DOTARD ON AMERICA WAS A TREASONOUS ACT: “Frustration is at an all-time high”: Behind Biden’s falling poll numbers.
THE DARK MONEY GIANT YOU NEVER HEAR ABOUT: It’s called Majority Forward (MF) and, according to Capital Research Center’s master dark money tracker Hayden Ludwig, it helped channel $230 million into the Democratic Senate campaigns in 2020.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) probably bows and thanks the MF every morning before he goes to work. But putting the Democrats back in control of the Senate is just one of the many ways MF channels dark money. Ludwig has more, much more.
“HE’S BEEN PUSHAWED:” Another one bites the dust! Christina Pushaw so badly NUKES NPR journo who came after HER for her Southwest Airlines tweet he blocks and RUUUNS.
Also: “Churnalist.” Heh.
AN OPEN LETTER TO PARENTS: They’re Your Kids, Not Wards of the State. Don’t Let Anyone Convince You Otherwise. “The enemies of freedom, having gotten away with sneaking subversive content into K-12 curricula for the last two decades, were emboldened by their successes. Protected by the teachers’ unions and largely flying under the radar, the radicals had no fear of exposure or retribution.”
Read the whole thing.
THE POWER LINE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES DAY COLUMBUS DAY IN PICTURES.
Flashback: Beyond the Culture of Repudiation. “In all of his political writings, [the late Roger Scruton] takes on the Left for scorning existing norms and customs, and for promoting a ‘culture of repudiation.’ The Left is ‘negative.’ It dismisses ‘every aspect of our cultural capital’ with the language of brutal invective: accusing every defender of human nature and sound tradition of ‘racism,’ ‘xenophobia,’ ‘homophobia,’ and ‘sexism.’ Like 1984’s ‘two minutes of hate,’ this language tears down, intimidates, and can never build anything humane or constructive—it is nihilistic to the core. At the same time, Scruton wants to reach out to reasonable liberals who eschew ideology and who still believe in civility and the promise of national belonging. His conservatism can discern the truth in liberalism (another Aristotelian trait) while the partisans of repudiation see half the human race as enemies.”
UPDATE: And speaking of the left’s culture of repudiation:
(Updated and bumped.)
InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.