KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Democrats Want All Elections to Be Lawless Fraud-Fests. “Chaos and an election riddled with irregularities worked out well for them last year, so one can see why they’d like that to be the norm. That’s what H.R. 1 is all about. It’s federal oversight that perversely makes sure that states and municipalities can’t do much in the way of, you know, oversight.”

WHY DO MOST LEFTISTS WANT THE CUBAN PEOPLE TO TOIL UNDER A DICTATORSHIP? Obama-Rhodes Legacy In Shambles as Cubans March Against Communism.

EMBRACE THE HEALING POWER OF ‘AND’: Is failure a byproduct or an aim of Democratic policy?

Everywhere one looks, it’s impossible to recruit staff. A local grocery has posted a notice asking customers to be patient with slow service because the place is short-staffed. A builder who’d like to take on more projects amid the real estate boom is frustrated because he “can’t hire people to do the work.” The local YMCA has lost 30 lifeguards because it can’t keep them on the wages it can pay. A lodge catering to whitewater rafting groups on the Kennebec River turns customers away because its diminished staff can’t cope. In its restaurant, tables are left uncleared around other diners because it’s impossible to hire busboys to tidy up. The frazzled manager says bluntly that his inability to match what Joe Biden pays people to stay idle “has something to do with it.” A hostess in another understaffed restaurant put the issue with succinct completeness, saying, “Until the unemployment runs out, no one wants to work.”

Paying people not to work saps morale, slows wealth creation, and becomes a habit of idleness — a malaise even. Does anyone think this is good for the country? Why would one persist in such folly when evidence abounds of the harm it does and the good it thwarts? It’s almost as if the Democrats want not only a torpid public dependent on central government but also actively want America to fail — which is the theme of our cover story by Peter Savodnik.

Here’s a chicken and egg question about which came first. Was it the Left’s wish for American failure and thence its adoption of a deleterious ideology of government interference? Or was it an ideological antipathy to freedom and thus its tenacious embrace of policies that don’t work? Sadly, the answer appears to be that it’s a lot of both.

Read the whole thing.

OUCH:

When you cancel pipelines and try to eliminate fracking, gas prices go up. Blitzer should know that. The Biden Administration certainly does.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: ‘It’s unavoidable:’ Marc Lamont Hill says all white people are inherently racist.

YOU JUST THOUGHT HR1 WAS DEAD: It’s back but this time it’s HR4 and the Democrats are calling it the Voting Rights Act. Capital Research Center’s Hayden Ludwig warns in The American Conservative that “if anyone thinks the flood of mail-in ballots the country witnessed in 2020 was just a one-off fluke, they haven’t been paying attention.”

FROM SENATOR TOM COTTON, ET AL.: A Report on the Fighting Culture of the United States Navy Surface Fleet. “The results of this project are unambiguous. There was a broad consensus across interviewees on numerous cultural and structural issues that impact the morale and readiness of the Navy’s surface force. These include: an insufficient focus on warfighting skills, the perception of a zero- defect mentality accompanied by a culture of micromanagement, and over-sensitivity and responsiveness to modern media culture. Structural issues identified include lack of resources and consistency in surface warfare training programs, and the Navy’s underwhelming commitment to surface ship maintenance—a problem that spans decades. Concern within the Navy runs so high that, when asked whether incidents such as the two destroyer collisions in the Pacific, the surrender of a small craft to the IRGC in the Arabian Gulf, the burning of the Bonhomme Richard and other incidents were part of a broader cultural or leadership problem in the Navy, 94% of interviewees responded ‘yes,’ 3% said ‘no,’ and 3% said ‘unsure.’ And when asked if the incidents were directly connected, 55% said ‘yes,’ 16% said ‘no,’ and 29% said ‘unsure.’ This sentiment, that the Navy is dangerously off course, was overwhelming.”

Plus:

Sailors increasingly see administrative and non-combat related training as the mission, rather than the mission itself. “Sometimes I think we care more about whether we have enough diversity officers than if we’ll survive a fight with the Chinese navy,” lamented one lieutenant currently on active duty. “It’s criminal. They think my only value is as a black woman. But you cut our ship open with a missile and we’ll all bleed the same color.”

Just as concerning is the assertion by interviewees that, when combat lethality and ship fighting are emphasized, they are treated in a box-checking manner that can seem indistinguishable from non-combat related exercises. “The Navy treats warfighting readiness as a compliance issue,” said one career commander. “You might even use the term compliance-centered warfare as opposed to adversary-centered warfare or warfighter-centered warfare.”

One junior surface warfare officer, still on active duty, confessed “I don’t think that the [surface community] see themselves as people who are engaged in a fight.”

More here:

The impetus for the report was a series of recent catastrophes—a ship burning in San Diego last year; two destroyer collisions in the Pacific in 2017. Were these isolated events? Or did they indicate “larger institutional issues that are degrading the performance of the entire naval surface force”? The report surveyed active and recently retired service members of various ranks, conducting 77 candid hourlong interviews. A key finding: “Many sailors found their leadership distracted, captive to bureaucratic excess, and rewarded for the successful execution of administrative functions” rather than core competencies of war.

“I guarantee you every unit in the Navy is up to speed on their diversity training,” said one recently retired senior enlisted leader. “I’m sorry that I can’t say the same of their ship-handling training.”

Plus: “After negative news stories, the report found, ‘the senior ranks are perceived as quick to sacrifice junior personnel’ to save their own tails. Discipline is ‘bent to the unsteady whims of public perception, not the Navy’s own standards and regulations.'”

CHARMING: Abortion Activists Vandalize Jesus Statue, Calling Abortion a ‘Miracle.’

PUTIN’S NOT SCARED OF BIDEN, HE KNOWS BETTER: Will the Russians add “crossing US red lines” to the 2021 Olympics?

Flashback:

Ted Cruz notes, “[B]asically what Joe Biden has decided is pipelines in America, bad. Jobs in America, bad. Pipelines in Russia, good. Jobs in Russia, good. And this is exactly backward. It is asinine. And four months into it, Joe Biden is crawling in bed with Putin and Russia and the enemies of America. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Flashback: So is it fair to ask if Biden is on the payroll of Putin? As Walter Russell Mead wrote in 2017:

If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:

Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.

You know who didn’t do those things? Trump. You know who is doing those things? Biden.

GLIMMER OF NEW HOPE FOR THE BLACK FAMILY: Focus on the Family’s Tim Goeglein writes in the Washington Times about what might be an encouraging indication that the Black family could be heading for the recovery room:

“Among Black high school seniors, the proportion living with their biological fathers has risen from a woeful 24% to 30%. While this is still tragic, there is a glimmer of hope this upward trend will bring about the eventual restoration of the Black family.

“If we are to truly solve the numerous issues that the Black community faces, the restoration of the family is the foundation upon which those solutions will be built – and that goes for families from all races as well.”

THE GODS HATE SELFIES:  Lightning strike kills 18 selfie takers on tourist tower in Jaipur.

To be fair, there weren’t any mobile homes nearby.

OLD COP’S LAST RIDE IS WITH HIS SON, THE NEW COP: Here’s a great story out of Mesquite, Texas, where retiring police officer takes the wheel on his last patrol with his son, a recent police academy graduate, in the passenger seat beside him.

THE ULTIMATE PRONOUN: No identity confusions here! The first of the seven “I Am” studies is up on HillFaith, for those with an interest.

THINK BEFORE YOU POST:  Stop Collaborating With The Enemy.

ONLY THING KEEPING ME FROM HAVING THE FULL COLLECTION OF MONUMENTS IS MONEY:  LEGO crimes.

Clown shoes. These lunatics are clown shoes. They drink their own ink and think we will too.

THROW THEM IN THE DRUNK TANK:  Texas Democrats Consider Abdicating Their Duty–Again.

BE THE AMERICA CUBA THINKS YOU ARE:  ‘Down With Communism!’: Thousands of Cubans Demand End to Dictatorship.

WE URGE ANY SANE AND HONEST FBI AGENTS TO STOP THIS INSANITY:  FBI Urges People To Report “Family Members And Peers” For “Suspicious Behaviors”.