OUR FASCIST MEDIA: Liberal Media Scream: CNN wants conservative media squelched in ‘national emergency.’

HECKLER’S VETO: Portland Antifa Demands Powell’s Stop Selling Andy Ngo’s Book, Forces Store To Close Early.

ON THE PAYROLL: Organizations Linked to Chinese Military Are a Cash Cow for American Colleges.

SHOT: On the Day Twitter Banned Trump, Parler Downloads Surged by More Than 500%.

CHASER: Bartiromo Says Parler ban coordinated effort ‘to put a competitor out of business.’

How convenient that “doing the right thing” dovetailed with squashing a rival just as they were gaining traction.

REPORT: Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Biggs Helped Plan January 6 Event, Lead Organizer Says.

MATT TAIBBI: Who’s Promoting A Civil War? The Media.

The moment a group of people stormed the Capitol building last Wednesday, news companies began the process of sorting and commoditizing information that long ago became standard in American media.

Media firms work backward. They first ask, “How does our target demographic want to understand what’s just unfolded?” Then they pick both the words and the facts they want to emphasize.

It’s why Fox News uses the term, “Pro-Trump protesters,” while New York and The Atlantic use “Insurrectionists.” It’s why conservative media today is stressing how Apple, Google, and Amazon shut down the “Free Speech” platform Parler over the weekend, while mainstream outlets are emphasizing a new round of potentially armed protests reportedly planned for January 19th or 20th.

What happened last Wednesday was the apotheosis of the Hate Inc. era, when this audience-first model became the primary means of communicating facts to the population. For a hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties, from the advent of the Internet to the development of the 24-hour news cycle to the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the Fox-led discovery that news can be sold as character-driven, episodic TV in the manner of soap operas, the concept of a “Just the facts” newscast designed to be consumed by everyone died out.

News companies now clean world events like whalers, using every part of the animal, funneling different facts to different consumers based upon calculations about what will bring back the biggest engagement kick. The Migrant Caravan? Fox slices off comments from a Homeland Security official describing most of the border-crossers as single adults coming for “economic reasons.” The New York Times counters by running a story about how the caravan was deployed as a political issue by a Trump White House staring at poor results in midterm elections.

Repeat this info-sifting process a few billion times and this is how we became, as none other than Mitch McConnell put it last week, a country: “drifting into two separate tribes.” . . .

The media used to derive its institutional power from this perception of separateness. Politicians feared investigation by the news media precisely because they knew audiences perceived them as neutral arbiters.

Now there are no major commercial outlets not firmly associated with one or the other political party.

Yes, the country badly needs an even semi-neutral interlocutor. But instead we just have various flavors of Chaos Umpire, who by deciding more embroils the fray by which he reigns.

Plus: “What we’ve been watching for four years, and what we saw explode last week, is a paradox: a political and informational system that profits from division and conflict, and uses a factory-style process to stimulate it, but professes shock and horror when real conflict happens. It’s time to admit this is a failed system. You can’t sell hatred and seriously expect it to end.”

CAN’T STOP THE SIGNAL: The Great Purge Begins. “As for myself, I’m just going to keep talking about the things they don’t want to talk about on Twitter (like Biden family corruption and fraud in the 2020 presidential election) until they kick me off.”

A JOB FOR MERRICK GARLAND: “Who is going to break the news to Slow Joe that it is illegal for the federal government to discriminate on the basis of race and sex? I suppose that task will fall to the incoming Attorney General.”

THE SINKING SHIP OF GAVIN NEWSOM:

If you’re a Democrat, you’ve had the cheapest, easiest applause line imaginable for the past four (really five or six) years, some variation of “Donald Trump stinks.” Opposition to Trump was the one giant issue that united the center-left, the woke, economic liberals, social liberals, the Democratic establishment, Bernie Bros, you name it. Among the Democrats, Trump was and is the worst villain imaginable, the cause of all troubles, the ultimate scapegoat.

And later this month . . . Trump’s gone, at least from public office. Being “not Trump” or opposed to Trump won’t be enough anymore; over time, an officeholder’s opposition to Trump will become less and less relevant. The fights of this presidency will fade. (Remember that the Democratic Senate nominee in Kansas didn’t know what the Patriot Act was.) In 2009, Jon Corzine and Creigh Deeds spent a lot of time bashing George W. Bush on the campaign trail. They both lost in November.

Without Trump as a punching bag, governors such as Gavin Newsom will need to build public support on their own merits. Judging from the vaccine rollout in many states, that’s going to be a lot more difficult.

Perhaps that explains why Andrew Cuomo is finally re-opening the state economy he’s battered for many months. And how will Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer be judged when she can no longer do government as performative art? Betsy DeVos resigns, Gretchen Whitmer lets a t-shirt do her talking. Which is a repeat of the same stunt from April: Michigan’s Governor Beclowns Herself by Trying to Troll Trump With a T-Shirt.

As Glenn noted in May, “Trump’s wrecking a whole generation of Democratic governors who might otherwise have been presidential or vice-presidential timber, simply by letting them run things as they see fit.”

CHILLING: Public School Teacher Pays a Steep Price for Attending the D.C. Trump Protest.

I HUMBLY PROPOSE THIS STRATEGY:  Dance to the Line.

At least for now.

POINTS AND FIGURES: Republicans Have To Fight.

Both political parties are in disarray. Don’t kid yourself, the Democrats are in disarray too. Winning the White House papers it over. When you lose elections the tide has gone out and you see who is naked.

We can’t look to institutions for guidance, because almost all of them are shells of themselves. They are warped.

Karl Rove wrote about the Republicans. He makes some good points. However, in redefining itself, the Republican Party must not cave to the establishment Republicans. They are like the Washington Generals. They are patsies for the Harlem Globetrotters.

Establishment Republicans do not know how to win. They do not know how to hold and consolidate power. They don’t know how to use power effectively. They are talkers, not doers.

Democrats have their own problems. If you are a centrist Democrat you are out of power. I know career centrist Democrats that cannot get jobs within the party. Too white, too old, too centrist. The hard left-wing genie is out of the bottle and it won’t be going back in. If you think Biden will govern as a moderate, don’t fool yourself. This is the party of AOC and Bernie now. They have 18 months of total power and they will use it. Centrist Democrats rode the white tiger of socialism to power and it will be untamed and eat them alive.

They should become Republicans.

YEP. GUYS. WE’RE THE ONES WE’RE WAITING FOR:  Conservatives — we have to be our own deus ex machina.

CHINA WOULD NEVER LIE:  China denies coercive birth control measures in Xinjiang.

SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THAT “FELONY MURDER” THEY’RE TRYING TO STICK ON THE PROTESTERS:  If you look at this video from the totally non-partisan Lincoln Project. (Truly. Severe Conservatives, they say.)

And follow along with their outrage, you might miss some facts illustrated in a comment from one of my regular commenters:

If there is one thing you always have to remember, it is to read or watch things that purport to contradict your view of what happened.

There is another thing – whether it is contradictory or supporting, look at it with a critical eye, and verify it.

This is no exception.

This video shows people trying to enter the Capitol Building, against opposition from people (reasonably assumed to be officers, either DC Metro or Capitol Police). That is a truth.

What it also shows is that mace was being sprayed from inside. Reasonable. It also shows batons being wielded from inside. It shows what appears to be an officer down (there is a typical arm patch, although not completely identifiable). It shows him on his face, pointed OUT of the building entrance – which says he was struck from BEHIND. Ah. Who was behind him that might have struck him? Only other officers. Slightly later, as the batons were still being frantically wielded, it shows a protestor standing over the fallen officer, holding up his crutch as a makeshift SHIELD over the officer.

Doesn’t look at all like the claim that this was a beating BY the PROTESTORS, does it?

Then look at the source of the video. You have to go to the Twitter account of Hull, where he attributes it to one Ron Filipkowski. Hmm. Look up that name, and his posts elsewhere. Ah. This person is a rabid TRUMP HATER from Florida. Registered as a Republican, true – but that is meaningless in this day and age. What is he doing in DC, among the protestors, when he wants nothing more than to demonize and destroy Trump? No, he’s not a “journalist” either official or citizen – he’s a lawyer that had a political appointment to a judicial selection committee (which he resigned from when one of the CoViD panic scammers in his State was raided). There is also one INDIVIDUAL voice that comes clearly in the video – one that had to be very close to the camera, and most likely Filipkowski himself. That voice utters one phrase – “Get that son of a b**** out of there!” That was undeniably an incitement to further violence – but by WHOM?

REALITY OBSERVER

Honestly, I think I need to do a post on “reading news when your press is not truthful.” Trust me, you can still extract information, but it’s not the one the government and the press (BIRM) are trying to feed you.

And please, guys, very seriously, don’t fall for this crap and don’t go silent. Because without us, the republic truly is dead forever. And you don’t know how horrible things will get. I do.

TO WARN THEM OR RECRUIT THEM?  FBI agents visited extremists ahead of Capitol riots in DC: report.

THIS IS A SURPRISE? THEY’VE BEEN REMOVING ON KEY PHRASES ALL ALONG: Orwell Was Right – Facebook Will Remove Content With ‘Stop The Steal’ Phrase.

THIS SHOULD BE ENTITLED “THE DEEP STATE IS CLUELESS”:  The Deep State Is Rattled.

And yes, I am absolutely serious.

From the article:
Beyond the security question, this person told me the mob action has been a psychological blow on the DC bureaucracy which didn’t think such an open expression of tangible disrespect for the government was possible.

Wait, they think we respect the government? That we have respect for the people who work for us and who, frankly, over the last four years have done their best to to “punish” us for stepping out of script?
These poor idiots are going to find out Trump wasn’t protecting us from them. It was protecting them from us.  And their escalating the repressive measures and getting the potted plant to declare us thought criminals is only going make things worse.

They have no clue.  I used to keep a tiny fish. I think he had more brains than these people do. And probably a greater understanding of the world.  Buckle up. It’s going to get rough.

SO, WE HAD OUR LAST EVER STAY AT MARRIOTT SOMETIME LAST SPRING:  Marriott, Other Companies Vow to Suspend Donations to Politicians Who Voted Against Biden Certification.

And tomorrow I’ll go over those articles about this and make lists. And it will reduce our options for a bunch of things.

LOOK, THOSE OF US WHO ARE NUMERATE ALREADY KNEW THE ELECTION WAS FRAUDULENT:  Impeachment redux.

The fact that the courts then went on to refuse to even look at the case, on crazy technicalities, rather than allow discovery, was a huge, massive red flag too. Look, in a system like yours, if you think that the election was stolen, both parties should be interested in showing it wasn’t. This is why Trump allowed the entire Russia!Russia!Russia insanity to run its course.

But if you’re one of those terminally polyannish people who think “but maybe it was okay” this should be your biggest flag.  No one makes it a crime to talk about the election being fraudulent if it was above board.

I stand by my prediction. This will end in tears. And almost certainly blood. When the alleged victor is scared enough to want to silence everyone else?  It’s bad. They’re scared. They are also nearly invincibly stupid.

SAY HER NAME: ASHLI BABBIT

STOMPING ON FREE SPEECH IS A SIGN OF MASSIVE INSECURITY:  Why it doesn’t matter what Parler allowed.

It is also profoundly stupid, particularly for a party so sucker punched by the unexpected support for their opponent that they had to add last minute, clumsy fraud to what must already have been….. let me see if I remember “the most extensive and inclusive fraud organization ever employed in America.” Something like that.

Doing what they’re doing is akin to smashing the fire alarm and thinking this will keep you safe from fires.

HE’S NOT WRONG:  Political Reprisals and the Death of the Republic.

He is, however, missing the root cause of this.  When the electoral (and incidentally the judicial) system becomes so corrupt that a party can be assured of winning even if they run a potted plant and a blowup sex doll who campaign exclusively from the basement and promise to raise everyone’s taxes and keep them house arrest indefinitely, why not hold show trials? Why not cancel every “enemy’s” ability to access the net? Why not arbitrarily declare all ideas in opposition to your own seditious?

I mean — why not? If you’re utterly sure that you can retain power forever and the greatest danger is someone tumbling to the con, you are in fact going to move ahead with all the punishment, all the shutting down of speech, and the destruction of all opposition. Because that’s the only way you can retain power.

STOCK MARKET LOSSES FOR TECH COMPANIES THAT TOOK SIDES: The Costs of Wading into Politics.

MICHAEL S. MALONE SAW IT COMING BACK IN 1998: Technofascism.