WHEN YOU’RE PERFECTLY ADAPTED TO YOUR ENVIRONMENT: Study links little crocodile evolution in last 200M years to lack of need.

BRYAN PRESTON: Leader of Far-Left ‘Insurgence USA’ Group Encouraged Rioters to Enter the Capitol. “None of this excuses those who invaded the Capitol. It does shed some light on how it happened. Sullivan has a history of organizing a previous protest that turned violent, from which he faces criminal charges.”

HMM: Fatigue, breathing problems persist for months after COVID-19. I don’t have breathing problems — never did — but I’ve continued to feel kind of blah. I was online less than usual this week because we decamped to the beach for some recovery time. My sense of smell and taste has largely recovered — it was about 90% a week ago and is now more like 98%, I’d say, although it’s hard to tell. I keep noticing little things that I hadn’t realized I couldn’t smell until I could smell them again. But while I feel much better, I guess I’m not quite 100% either; my energy level is low and so is my motivation level. I guess that’s pretty typical with a lot of viral infections; I’ve certainly noticed it after the flu before.

Anyway, it was either a very bad or a very good week to limit my online time. I missed my usual 7-10 day Internet diet/dive trip this year, and I really needed it. This wasn’t a substitute for that, as I limited my online time to an hour or so a day, but it was something.

DON’T THINK PROGDEMS AREN’T BEHIND TECH GIANT CENSORSHIP: Hans Bader points to “hate speech” as the enabling concept behind the unprecedented censorship unleashed by Twitter, Facebook, Google and Amazon. My view is nobody should be surprised when it intensifies after His Fraudulency is sworn-in as President.

RIP: Michael Apted, director of ‘Up’ documentary series, dead at 79. “Apted, the acclaimed British director of the ‘Up’ documentaries series and films as diverse as the Loretta Lynn biopic ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ and the James Bond film ‘The World Is Not Enough,’ has died. He was 79.”

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A MUCH BIGGER BLOG: The All-Out Assault on Conservative Thought Has Just Begun.

RIP: Kathy Shaidle 1964 – 2021. “Following a tedious rendezvous with ovarian cancer, Kathy Shaidle has died, wishing she’d spent more time at the office. Her tombstone reads: GET OFF MY LAWN!”

Definitely read the whole thing.

MOUNT ST. VINCENT UNIVERSITY IN CANADA WILL HIRE FACULTY CANDIDATES OF ANY COLOR–SO LONG AS THEY ARE BLACK: I’m a bit surprised that the Chronicle of Higher Education would publish this ad, give potential legal liability if nothing else.

#UNITY: ‘Utterly Shameful:’ Josh Hawley Strikes Back After Joe Biden Likens Him To Nazi Propagandist.

Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley demanded Friday that President-elect Joe Biden retract comments comparing his and Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s questioning of the 2020 presidential election results to lies spread by a Nazi propagandist.

Biden criticized Hawley and Cruz, stopping short of calling for their resignations but saying instead that he wanted to see them defeated in their next elections. Arguing that they had fed false information about the 2020 presidential election to the American people, he compared their efforts to those of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

WATCH:

Biden knows a thing or two about “the big lie” himself: Years After ‘Back In Chains’ Attack, Biden Calls Romney ‘A Man Of Enormous Integrity.’

Of course, with 2021 Joe, it’s entirely possible he doesn’t remember anything said by 2012 Joe.

UPDATE: Right on cue, CNN fact-checker explains why Biden didn’t call Cruz & Hawley ‘literal Nazis’ when he compared them to Goebbels.

DNC-MSM “fact checkers” are going to be awfully busy cleaning up for Placeholder Joe until President-Elect Harris finally takes office.

(Updated and bumped.)

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Can We Have 2020 Back Edition.

ROGER SIMON: Welcome to West China.

Did you ever wonder what it’s like to live in a one-party state?

Well, wonder no more. You’re living in one. The major means of communication—in today’s terms that means social media—have now been taken over completely by the left.

Not only has Donald Trump—still the president of the United States—been permanently banned from Twitter, its rapidly growing, open-to-all substitute Parler has almost simultaneously been de-platformed by Google.

You can’t get their app for Android anymore.

Apple threatens to be next, demanding Parler kowtow (by Saturday!) to Cupertino’s vision of what the world should be.

I suppose that’s a social-justicey-politically-correct totalitarianism led by left-leaning… or so they want us to believe… tech billionaires.

Sound Chinese?

More than a bit.

Think this was planned?

Just the other day I wrote of the “false flag” (left-wing provocateurs) behind the mayhem in the Capitol. Many in high places pooh-poohed what I and others were saying. I wasn’t too sure of it myself.

But let’s review what’s happened since:

Josh Hawley’s forthcoming book… on Big Tech, no less… is “canceled” by Simon & Schuster. Senator Hawley had been among the most outspoken about investigating the possibility of election fraud.

Twitter permanently blocks General Flynn. I guess they don’t think he has had enough already.

Twitter permanently blocks Lin Wood, the well-known attorney working to unmask possible fraud. Ditto for the courageous Sidney Powell.

Not to be outdone, Facebook blocks President Trump’s account. (Not sure who was first—Facebook or Twitter—not that it matters.)

More insidiously, Facebook starts to delete groups or forums of people who publicly stepped away from the Democratic Party because of its scandals. 

(Elsewhere it’s revealed that Facebook banned accounts at the behest of Hunter Biden.)

YouTube announces it will no longer distribute videos investigating election fraud and that producers of such videos will be punished if they do.

All this in a couple of days, the excuse being, in almost all cases, that the conservatives involved were instigating violence, the “outrage” that occurred at the Capitol.

This from the people who ignored exponentially more violence and destruction for months all across urban America.

Sense a strategy here? A plan?

I know—I’m one of those conspiracy mongers. Everything has been “debunked.” Indeed, it was “debunked” before it happened.

Only I’m not a conspiracy monger, my friends. I’m one of those guys who is perfectly willing to admit it was Lee Harvey Oswald working alone from the Texas Schoolbook Depository.

I’m the opposite. I’m a Occam’s Razor guy—what you see is what you get.

And Occam’s Razor tells me the United States is turning into a near clone of the People’s Republic of China.

As Glenn wrote last night, Trump warned you.

JOURNEY TO THE END OF TASTE: This guy got so drunk he legally changed his name to Céline Dion and has no recollection of it.

(Classical reference in headline.)

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Flagler College political science professor calls Trump supporters ‘enemy of the state.’

BUILDING MEMORY HOLES IS PRETTY ON-BRAND FOR SOMEONE NAMED CASTRO: Representative Joaquin Castro Prepares Legislation To Bar President Trump’s Name From Federal Buildings.

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: No, Olive Garden did not revoke Sean Hannity’s lifetime pasta pass.

COLLUSION: U Alabama under investigation for possible ties to Wuhan lab. “The U.S. Department of Education has requested information from the University of Alabama regarding alleged undisclosed ties between the university and the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. . . ‘The WIV, owned by the Chinese government’s Academy of Sciences, includes a maximum biocontainment laboratory (“MCL”) that may be closely linked to the origin and/or spread of the Chinese COVID-19 virus.’”