GOP MUST THINK IN A NEW (Old) WAY ABOUT ANTI-TRUST: Mike Davis, chief of the upstart Internet Accountability Project (IAP) is now on Substack and offers a bracing analysis of why Republicans need to wake up to reality about Big Tech and monopoly:

“The path forward for Republicans is to think about Big Tech and antitrust in the same way we increasingly think about China: our old operating modes with respect to both were driven by economic theories that did not pan out. In the early 1990s, we were reliably informed by neoliberal economists, including the Chicago School, that if China were allowed to engage in free trade and join multilateral organizations that the country would gradually democratize and embrace America as the world’s only superpower.

“We know now that this theory missed the mark by a wide margin. Instead of democratizing, China became a surveillance state (thanks in large part to the U.S. internet). Contrary to the Chicago School theory, China never engaged in free or fair trade. Three million jobs shipped from the U.S. to China over the past twenty years — and our children get defective toys and contaminated baby formula.

“It took President Trump to wake us from our China slumber before it was too late. Similarly, the Chicago School economic theory applied in Big Tech markets has suffered a similar fate.

“We were told by the Chicago School [‘modern anti-trust] experts that market power in these markets would be fleeting because entry barriers were low and someone would eventually build a better mousetrap. We were also informed by these experts that Big Tech markets—in which many services are provided for free—defied application of the consumer-welfare standard.

“Therefore, there could be no ‘harm,’ as narrowly defined by the Chicago School, to consumers in Big Tech markets. We got that one wrong too, making it time to move on.”

Definitely a Must-Read.

PROTO-MANOLO: Medieval pointed-shoe trend brought ‘plague’ of bunions to Britain.

I HAVE OLDER MEMORIES THAN THAT: Earliest memories can start from the age of two-and-a-half.

“GHOST GUNS” IS JUST ANOTHER MADE UP SCARY NAME: Ghost Guns and the Deeply American Tradition of Gun Privacy.

BOMBSHELL: DEFECTOR CLAIMS TO HAVE EVIDENCE THAT CHINESE MILITARY COORDINATED CREATION AND RELEASE OF COVID-19.

Last week, Jen Van Laar at our sister site RedState broke the news that a high-ranking defector had been working for months with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), unbeknownst to either the FBI or CIA. The defector claims to have knowledge of special weapons programs in China that include bioweapons.

Now, in a new exclusive bombshell, Van Laar reports that the defector has provided evidence that the Chinese military orchestrated the creation of the COVID-19 virus, which did, in fact, leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology:

RedState has now learned some details of the information provided by the defector, including that he provided data proving that SARS-CoV-2 was manmade and leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in addition to evidence confirming that the People’s Liberation Army managed the Wuhan program (and others), as Chinese virologist Yan Li-Meng told the FBI last year.

Technical details provided by the defector, RedState is told, were given to scientists (who were not told how that information was given to the government) who then re-analyzed data from published sources in conjunction with the new data and concluded that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was engineered. And, the defector was able to confirm numerous non-public details Yan provided the US government.

As PJM’s Paula Bolyard writes, “We may never definitively learn the origins of the Wuhan virus, but Americans at all levels of government and industry must relentlessly investigate until we get to the bottom of this. If, in fact, it’s determined that the Chinese unleashed a deadly pandemic on the world—sacrificing its own citizens in order to attack the West—it would be one of the worst crimes against humanity the world has ever seen—one that the media and politicized scientific community turned a blind eye to.”

Flashback from November of 2019: How to Conduct Business with Chinese Companies That See a Dark Future.

SWEET: 43-Year-Old Single Mother Who Drives Taxi for a Living Graduates After Passenger Paid Her School Fees.

FASTER, PLEASE: How Deregulation Could Make Supersonic Air Travel Great Again.

MICHAEL YON ENCOUNTERS Brazilians flying to the US for vaccines.

KEYSTONE PIPELINE’S CANCELLATION SHOWS HOW ARBITRARY PRESIDENTIAL POWER SUBVERTS THE RULE OF LAW. Citizens and companies increasingly cannot count on the stability of the law when making decisions about their lives and businesses.

Unexpectedly!, as Biden and Obama’s hagiographers at Bloomberg would say. Amity Shlaes, the author of Great Society and The Forgotten Man warned correctly when promoting the latter book that business and consumer uncertainty during a regulatory-obsessed socialist regime is a great way to keep a stagnant economy from catching fire.

WHAT IS IT WITH DEMOCRATS AND LOST GUNS? Anti-Gun FL Rep. Val Demings Is Running For Senate, Still Can’t Find Her Old Service Pistol.

Related: GOP Senators ask Biden ATF nominee if he ever lost possession of his service weapon; he denies it. “But a Senate staffer said their office has received information suggesting that Chipman’s answer may not be true, and they are still looking into the matter.”

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: People already infected with COVID-19 gain no additional benefits from vaccination: Study.

NEW CIVILITY WATCH: President Biden and first lady boot BBC crew from pub garden to get their table.

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden kicked out the British media — to get the pub garden table they wanted, video shows.

Jon Sopel, the BBC’s North America editor, had been sitting on the patio of Treganna Castle in Cornwall on Thursday when he was seemingly surprised by the unexpected arrival of the commander-in-chief and his wife.

“A first in my career. @POTUS comes and sits down at table in a bar next to me and orders a drink. Am trying to act nonchalant,” he tweeted alongside video of him shouting out, “How’s it going, Mr. President? Are you enjoying it here?”

But the BBC team was soon forced to pack up their belongings to give up their table to POTUS and FLOTUS — even though they clearly had the pick of several other tables in the otherwise empty area.

Don’t sweat it, Beeb – if Biden acts like he doesn’t know you’re sitting there, it’s not an act: he really doesn’t know you are sitting there.

 Just be glad you’re not actually members of the DNC-MSM; they’d get the closet if they didn’t move.

NEXT SPACESHIP ON VENUS: NASA is finally going back to Venus. Here’s what its twin missions hope to uncover.

OBAMA’S REVEALING RESENTMENTS:

Speaking to CNN’s Anderson Cooper recently, Barack Obama scoffed at the backlash to critical race theory. In his view, it is the backlash, not the theory, that is extreme. In the interview, Obama assumed the posture of the dispassionate moderate, carefully dissecting the irrationality of his opponents. He affected great perplexity at their resistance to a “changing America.”

“We have to worry when one of our major political parties is willing to embrace a way of thinking about our democracy that would be unrecognizable and unacceptable even five years ago or a decade ago,” he said. Never mind that his whole political philosophy entails a rejection of America’s original principles. His clamoring for a fundamentally transformed America is nothing more than a project to replace the political order of the Founding Fathers with a new and dysfunctional one, based on liberal imperatives more akin to the French Revolution than the American Revolution.

It is for this reason that Obama embraces the rank anti-Americanism of critical race theory. It is toxic propaganda designed to turn Americans against their own country and lay the groundwork for a new political system rooted in leftism. Obama can pontificate about assaults on democracy while celebrating a theory that portrays America’s democracy as a byproduct of racism. He can talk about Republicans as un-American even as he excuses athletes who boycott the flag.

Republicans, he intoned gravely in his interview with Cooper, have introduced “dark spirits” into our politics. This pretense of moderation is ludicrous given his long history of finding the company of anti-American extremists congenial. He sat in the church of Jeremiah Wright as he cursed America. At Harvard, Obama championed Derrick Bell, one of the progenitors of critical race theory. Obama launched his political career in the living room of Bill Ayers, a domestic terrorist who tried to blow up the U.S. Capitol. Obama cut his teeth as a community organizer pushing the ugly agitprop of Saul Alinsky.

Flashback: Back in 2010 at the New Criterion, the late Kenneth Minogue warned, “My concern with democracy is highly specific. It begins in observing the remarkable fact that, while democracy means a government accountable to the electorate, our rulers now make us accountable to them. Most Western governments hate me smoking, or eating the wrong kind of food, or hunting foxes, or drinking too much, and these are merely the surface disapprovals, the ones that provoke legislation or public campaigns. We also borrow too much money for our personal pleasures, and many of us are very bad parents. Ministers of state have been known to instruct us in elementary matters, such as the importance of reading stories to our children. Again, many of us have unsound views about people of other races, cultures, or religions, and the distribution of our friends does not always correspond, as governments think that it ought, to the cultural diversity of our society. We must face up to the grim fact that the rulers we elect are losing patience with us.”

VITAMIN D UPDATE: Vitamin D deficiency may increase risk for addiction to opioids and ultraviolet rays. “‘If that patient is deficient in vitamin D, the euphoric effects of morphine could be exaggerated,’ says Fisher, ‘and that person is more likely to become addicted.'”

Well, where the sun exposure is concerned it sounds self-remedying.

Your grandmother was right: Fresh air and sunshine are good for you. Stay inside too much and you may become a heroin addict.

#FIGHTFORFIFTEEN: Harvard Business Review: Minimum Wage Hikes Led to Lower Worker Compensation, New Research Shows.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE MONKEY BRAIN: Monkey study highlights brain biology behind ‘doomscrolling.’

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Unvaccinated students ‘branded’ at New Hampshire prom.

TO PARAPHRASE COL. JEFF COOPER, IF I WERE THEM I’D BE PLEASED AND PROUD: Study: Low self-esteem in promiscuous women is a widely-held myth.

DAMMIT! We hate to admit it but The Hill just came up with the greatest zinger of them all for Jeffrey Toobin:

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Dementia Joe Forgets Where He Is Again.

GEE, YOU’D THINK A FORMER ENRON ADVISOR WOULD BE MUCH BETTER AT THIS SORT OF THING…Paul Krugman’s 10-Year History of Being Wrong About Bitcoin.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Kamala’s Kookies Edition.

SOLIPSISTIC POSTMODERNISTS DON’T CARE ABOUT FACTS: Police Have a Few Facts for Liberals Who Spread Crazy Conspiracy About Vandalism at Nancy Mace’s Home.

THE DEMAND FOR WHITE SUPREMACY IN TODAY’S AMERICA FAR EXCEEDS THE SUPPLY (CONT’D): Hate-crime hoax: Black student likely egged her own door, police say.