THE EMERGENT URBAN ANTI-PROGRESSIVISM:

Democrats have puzzled over why Biden did not perform as well in cities as expected, and conversely, why Trump seemed to overperform in them. Overall, Biden won major metro areas, but his slippage compared with Trump’s gains was notable.

Trump gained in every borough of New York City except Staten Island (where he was already a favorite) compared with 2016, recording a gain of 12 percentage points in his share of the total vote in the Bronx and 9 points in Queens. He improved his margin by more than 18 points in largely immigrant and working-class assembly districts encompassing Elmhurst, Corona, and Jackson Heights. New York City as a whole swung toward Trump by 7.6 points between 2016 and 2020, more than any single state swung in the election, as Trump picked up support in 58 of the city’s 65 assembly districts. Compared with 2016, he gained votes in cities such as Philadelphia and Detroit, the latter of which gave Trump 5,000 more votes than in 2016 and Biden 1,000 fewer than Hillary Clinton won. As pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson has noted, even though Joe Biden won major metros as expected, closer scrutiny of a number of blue cities reveals blue doughnuts: As Democrats increased their command of the suburbs, their hold on inner cities weakened.

No one expected this, and there certainly isn’t much about Donald Trump’s policies on trade, immigration, tax cuts, or conservative judges that explains it. It seems obvious instead that in the age of COVID and violent protests, progressive cities overplayed their hand. When you ask your residents to pay too much for subpar housing, pledge to defund the police as crime soars, and force parents to do things they thought their taxes paid teachers to do, you shouldn’t be surprised at the backlash.

Read the whole thing.

A/C: Model shows how air conditioning influences COVID-19 transmission.

TUCKER CARLSON ASKS QUESTION OF THE DAY: The Democrats ‘Won Everything,’ Why Are They So ‘Crazy-Person Mad?’

Evergreen:

WELL, THAT’S ONLY, UH . . . MONTH AFTER NEXT: German Chancellor Angela Merkel pushed back Friday against critics of the country’s slow COVID-19 vaccine rollout, saying vast vaccination centers set up last year will be full to capacity by April.

INSURRECTION: Violent BLM Protest In NYC Leaves Two NYPD Cops Injured, 11 Arrested.

RECALL GAVIN NEWSOM CAMPAIGN REACHES NEEDED 1.5 MILLION SIGNATURES.

A major upgrade could be in order for California: Grenell lays groundwork for California gubernatorial run.

HMM: Study suggests sounds influence the developing brain earlier than previously thought.

GOODER AND HARDER: San Francisco supervisor says lack of tourists has criminals now targeting residents.

Flashback: San Francisco’s New Socialist, Soft On Crime D.A. Is The Last Thing The City Needs.

Why doesn’t San Francisco make it official and simply elect Bane to be their D.A.?

Related: Down south, Los Angeles County Deputy DA Filing Defamation Lawsuit Against DA George Gascon.

THIS IS PLAUSIBLE, SINCE YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM IS ALREADY PRIMED: One dose of COVID-19 vaccine may be good for recovered patients. Of course, it’s still not clear that people who’ve had it need to be vaccinated. I had an antibody test run and my levels were high.

BREAKING: Senate Votes To Hear Witnesses In Trump Trial.

Ted Cruz has some thoughts on potential witnesses:

UPDATE: Or not! Senate strikes deal, bypassing calling impeachment witnesses.

NEWS YOU CAN USE:

21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: I Sexted With A Bot To Quell Pandemic Loneliness.

To boldly go where Raj Koothrappali has gone before!

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The GOP must hammer the Democrats on school reopenings. “Republican members of Congress should be talking about nothing else. Not Donald Trump. Not impeachment. Not QAnon tweets. Nothing. It is clear that President Biden has abandoned the parents of schoolchildren who voted for him for a little peace and quiet coming from Washington, because that is who Joe Biden is and always has been.”

Related: Biden Administration Threw CDC Director Under The Bus After She Said Teachers Can Return To School.

More:

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Impeachment Sequel Edition.

ROGER SIMON: The Democrats’ Chinese Communist Party Envy.

The key to our elites’ (hate the word but using it for convenience) riches and power is access to the giant Chinese market no matter how the CCP behaves.

This began with Kissinger and Nixon. The theory then, or the rationalization, was that if we opened to China, they would become like us.

Consequently, in the decades since, the U. S. government more or less looked away, doing little more than raising its eyebrows in UN conference rooms, as the CCP oppressed its minorities (If you can call millions of people minorities) in the Tibetan, Uyghur, Falun Gong, and Christian communities and simultaneously jailed, tortured and/or made life impossible for dissidents who evinced the slightest interest in democracy.

Even the horrors of Tiananmen were no more than a bump in the road. Just twelve years later China was welcomed into the World Trade Organization.

Only the uncouth orange-haired man dared to step in to stem this inevitable slide cum boondoggle for the elite. What a killjoy.  Even Apple had to reconsider having all its iPhones made in China, at least for a while.

No wonder he has to be impeached—twice.  And a third time if that becomes necessary.  It’s not such a joke.

And you can be sure the same treatment will be given to Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida who appears to be a more sophisticated version of Trump who may know how to walk the walk more subtlety and successfully than the now former president.

In fact DeSantis already is being targeted, as our new administration is threatening to ban travel to Florida when his state—without lockdowns—fared far better against COVID than those that did like New York and New Jersey. Again—how very CCP.

What probably goes on somewhere in the head of the average liberal who once—it seems like decades ago—so ardently embraced civil liberties and the Bill of Rights is that the way of Communist China is the inevitable way of the future.  As the digital empire grows and robots take over the work force, competing parties in a democratic republic will seem so old fashioned and just stand in the way of progress (read: getting rich).

Human freedom and liberty are passé 18th century ideas, the kind of thing that gets you banned on Twitter.  Who needs it when the microchip in your sunglasses is telling you the right thing to do, what’s required of a “good citizen.”

When that infantile group of dumbbells invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6—calling that an “insurrection” was ludicrous; if you really wanted to overthrow the U. S. government you would do something that could have an effect, like bringing down the power grid—it was seized upon as an opportunity not only to smash Trump but to open the floodgates to a one-party system.

So what has happened to Nixon and Kissinger’s theory that the Chinese would become like us?

The reverse:  We have become like them!

As Jim Geraghty wrote in October of 2019, when the CCP-NBA connection was exposed for millions of Americans to see, in a sort of prelude to what was to come the following year: We’re Not Exporting Our Values to China — We’re Importing Theirs.

GOOD: 523,000 Fully Vaccinated Israelis: Four Severe Cases Of COVID, No Deaths.

CAFE HAYEK: “This Is the Most Politicized Disease In History.”

BECAUSE DECENCY:

BIDENOMICS PROGRESSING SMOOTHLY: Economists Slam Biden Stimulus as ‘Economically Unjustified’ Plan That ‘Incentivizes Unemployment.’

Related: GOP Senator: Mr. Biden, You’re Creating a COVID Nightmare By Allowing Hordes of Illegals To Enter the Country.

Jared Bernstein, member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors: “One thing we learned in the 1990s was that a surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people at all skill levels, immigrant and native-born alike, to the growing economy is to let the job market tighten up. A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need. One equally surefire way to sort-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”

HEH:

Also:

Plus:

UPDATE:

Yep. From Harvey Weinstein to Jeffrey Epstein to John Weaver, once it becomes public we hear that it was an “open secret” all along. Who was it secret from? Us. Not them. And who was keeping the secret? Everyone who knew but said and did nothing.

UPDATE: From the comments:

FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN: Prof defends music theory against white supremacist claims, then gets demoted. Now, he’s suing.

HMM: France wades into the South China Sea with a nuclear attack submarine. “China lays claim to nearly all of the South China Sea while Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam all also claim parts of the region, believed to hold valuable oil and gas deposits. . . . In geopolitical terms, given the patchwork of competing territorial claims, the South China Sea is not a zone to dive a nuclear submarine into without strategic reflection.”

It’s weird how the French seem to be stirring themselves all of a sudden, even as the Biden Administration establishes itself.

DEMOCRACY DIES IN VEILED THREATS: If Republican senators acquit Trump, they will own the violence that follows.

WOW, THE DEMOCRATS HAVE ONLY BEEN BACK IN POWER FOR A FEW WEEKS AND PEOPLE ARE ALREADY GOING PRO-SLAVERY: Law school defends its right to remove mural depicting slaves being freed.

WISCONSIN: Kyle Rittenhouse Judge Refuses To Jail Him Again Over Procedural Issue.