MORE MONEY LAUNDERING VIA PUBLISHERS:  Dr. Fauci’s life celebrated in upcoming kids’ picture book.

Oh, Dr. Falsy do explain how you completely f*cked up the AIDS response, and then went for a twofer with Winny the Flu. You are so fascinating Dr. Fraudsy.  Why don’t you go directly to China and tell them how to manage public health crisis. We hear you have friends there. At a lab in Wuhan, in fact.

WHY NOT? PASTE EATING POLIS MADE OUR CONVENTION CENTER A SHELTER FOR HOMELESS:  Biden’s HHS turns San Diego’s famed Convention Center into shelter for “unaccompanied migrant children”.

These rank morons think that public assets means their assets, to dispose of anyway they please, because they are the government. (How come none of you has yet made a photoshop of Polis over the Louis XVI “l’Etat c’est Moi” portrait? Am I going to have to take the time to do it myself?)
Those of us who know history know that this doesn’t end well, but these morons think they have won.

YEAH, THEY TRIED TO PULL THAT ON ME YEARS AGO:  U. San Diego Law Prof. Thomas Smith Harshly Criticized Chinese Gov’t, Now Faces False Claims Of Ethnic Bias.

The CCP is not the Chinese people. Much less people of Chinese ethnicity. My most notably sinophile friend hates Winnie the Xi with undying passion.

OPENING OUR BORDERS IS NOT AN ACT OF KINDNESS:  Children in Danger: Where is Madeisy Batista?

HOW DARE PUBLIC SERVANTS RESENT ABUSIVE TREATMENT? Cops’ posts to private Facebook group show hostility, hate.

COMPENSATION FOR BEING SHUT DOWN BY GOVERNMENT?  Wichita Eagle tortures the truth opposing COVID compensation law.

Why, that’s just crazy talk. Next you’ll say there’s a law against illegal takings….

THE TABLE IS ALWAYS SET AT THE CANNIBAL FEAST:  When The Cancel Culture Eats Its Own.

THEY’RE OUT OF IDEAS. THEY’RE RUNNING ON FUMES:  Nah, It’ll Be Fine: Entertainment Vlogger The Critical Drinker Hammers Cultural Corruption.

They’re not just wounded pigs. They’re cornered wounded pigs. And they’re desperate.

BUT MOST OF ALL THE STUPID:  Lockdown Year: The Good, The Bad, The Very Ugly.

This whole thing is the stupid leading the stupid. None of these measures are useful. They’re all, however, completely insane.
Reagan was wrong. The scariest phrase in English is “We’re from the government and we’re here to derp, and you will obey us.”

SHE’S AT LEAST AS DEMENTED AS HE IS:  NY Times Maureen Dowd Thinks Joe Biden Is Cool.

Though if by “cool” she means in deep freeze somewhere and being played by a bumbling double, I’m willing to entertain it. I mean, I don’t think so. I think Zhou Bai-Den was never that smart and now is a potted plant, but what the heck, I’m not a part insider.

SURE, BECAUSE IF TRUMP DIDN’T EXIST BIDEN WOULDN’T BE IN POWER:  DHS Secretary Mayorkas Blames Trump For Biden’s Border Woes.

Hillary would be. And none of us would know about the border crisis. Because anyone leaking it would commit suicide with two shots to the back of the head.
See, it makes perfect sense, right?

IT WON’T WORK:  They Can’t Drag Us to the Past.

The left is a cargo cult at variance with reality. Those can exist only for limited times.  And I’m sick and tired of Doomers and Actchually people.

“WHEN YOU ACT OUT OF FEAR, YOU MAKE SERIOUS TACTICAL ERRORS:” The Filibuster Fight Is About Dems’ Fear Of Losing Control.

OPEN THREAD: Enjoy!

SO EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT WILLIAM SHATNER’S UPCOMING 90TH BIRTHDAY, and mostly about Captain Kirk. But, you know, he owned the role of Denny Crane in Boston Legal.

I REMEMBER WHEN WE WERE PROMISED A RETURN TO NORMALCY. THIS ISN’T THAT. Is Joe Biden Really Doing the Job of President? Nearly Half of Voters Doubt It.

CERTAIN PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO MAKE ANY CRITICISM OF CHINA A POLITICAL THOUGHT CRIME: San Diego Law School “Must Immediately Cease Its Investigation” Into Prof. Thomas Smith Over China Criticism, Demands Free Speech Group. In letter to Dean Robert Schapiro, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education writes: “Smith’s post on his personal blog is an exercise of extramural expression, a right USD Law expressly provides to its faculty…. Accordingly, we call on USD Law to immediately disband its investigation into Smith.”

And you can learn a lot about who’s on the payroll, or at least on the team, by tracking who’s repeating PRC/CCP talking points.

And Dean Robert Schapiro supposedly teaches Constitutional Law.

I STILL SAY IT’S AN ALIEN SPACESHIP: Interstellar object ‘Oumuamua is a pancake-shaped chunk of a Pluto-like planet: The strange tale of our first interstellar visitor keeps getting weirder.

NANCY ROMMELMANN: The Dream of the ’90s Died in Portland.

Wheeler, who’d squeaked past openly pro-antifa challenger Sarah Iannarone to win reelection, issued an anodyne press release, thanking voters for giving him a second chance and stating that Portland “is not a perfect place, and we have many historical inequities to repair, but this is a very special place.”

There were other signs people had had enough of the violence. Commissioner Eudaly, a favorite of the activists, was unseated by someone backed by the police union. And when I asked a local news editor, whose paper had pretty much been in the bag for the protests, if he had a contact at the PNW Youth Liberation Front, he wrote back, “If I had the names of the little criminals who run PNWYLF, I would have published them! [If they] were all torn apart by bears, as in the book of II Kings, I would consider that the work of the Lord.”

The situation in Portland did not improve after the election. Activists kept marching nightly. They swarmed the house of a newly elected city commissioner because he’d voted against the latest measure to defund the police. They vandalized 27 businesses along a six-block strip in Northeast Portland. They established an “autonomous zone” called Red House, ostensibly in support of a black and Native American family facing eviction. And on New Year’s Eve, they used Molotov cocktails and other high-powered incendiary devices to cause tens of thousands of dollars in damage in downtown.

Long but well worth a read, to see a leftist-monopoly city implode gradually, and then suddenly, to paraphrase Hemingway on bankruptcy.

SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: Scientific American asks if climate anxiety is ‘a form of white fragility or even racial anxiety.’

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Yes. The answer is yes.

ENTIRELY ADEQUATE NUMBERS, IF LESS IMPRESSIVE THAN SOME OTHERS: AstraZeneca says U.S. trial shows COVID-19 vaccine almost 80% effective.

Though interestingly, I know one person who got the Astra Zeneca vaccine last summer in a trial, and she also came down with Covid recently. Ironically, she’s the most Covid-paranoid person I know. Her case, however, consistent with the findings above, was quite mild. Her take: “I’ve had worse hangovers plenty of times.”

Then again, that was basically my Covid experience too, with no vaccine.

IF IT’S NOT CLOSE, THEY CAN’T CHEAT: Report: Democrats Going All In to Take Iowa House Seat They Lost by Six Votes.

(Classical reference in headline.)

RACISM STRAIGHT UP: Report: Top Health Insurance Provider Tells Employees Not To Hire White Men.