FLASHBACK: The College Admissions Scandal Is About More Than Just Bribery: Most U.S. institutions of higher education don’t even try to live up to their egalitarian ideals.

Related: In College Admissions, The Real Scandal Is What’s Legal.

HMM: ‘We’re going to lose fast’: U.S. Air Force held a war game that started with a Chinese biological attack.

So why is this story being pushed out now? (1) AF angling for more funding. (2) Prepping media for U.S. non-intervention when China attacks Taiwan. (3) Pushing out idea that the Wuhan coronavirus was a bioweapon. (4) Other. Discuss in the comments.

WELL, YES: Biden pledge of unity ‘an absolute fraud,’ slams top Republican.

CHUTZPAH ALERT: Andrew Cuomo’s hilarious ‘cancel culture’ excuse.

In keeping with his obstinate posture of denial and deflection, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has come up with a new excuse for his woes: cancel culture.

Yes, Albany’s tyrant, accused now by seven women of sexual harassment, the target of a federal investigation into underreporting COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes, asked to resign by the majority of New York house Democrats and the National Organization for Women, abandoned by the New York Times, New York magazine and other house organs of the left-leaning media, subject of a just-opened police investigation in Albany — yes, Andrew Cuomo is simply a victim of the woke mob (e.g. crazy, hysterical ladies).

“People know the difference between playing to politics, bowing to cancel culture and the truth,” Cuomo said Friday afternoon.

This is as laughable as his brother Chris’s claim last week that to cover his brother’s scandals would be journalistically unethical — despite Chris hosting Andrew on CNN constantly during the pandemic’s height.

“Politicians who don’t know a single fact but yet form a conclusion and an opinion are, in my opinion, reckless and dangerous,” Cuomo said. “The people of New York should not have confidence in a politician who takes an opinion without knowing any facts or substance.”

Says the man who demanded Eric Schneiderman immediately resign after abuse claims, no investigation necessary. Says the man who insisted that Brett Kavanaugh needed to take a lie detector test.

And even as the DNC-MSM pivots into a new narrative for Cuomo…

…He need only look to fellow Democrats Ralph Northam and Justin Fairfax (not to mention Joe Biden) on how to weather scandals when the bulk of the media are members of the same party.

THEY KNOW WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT, AND DON’T WANT: Virginia Dems Balk at Passing Major Gun-Control Reforms Ahead of Election.

And by “major gun-control reforms” you mean “unconstitutional anti-gun laws.”

UTAH, ONE YEAR AGO TODAY:

How’s that coming along? As the metatitle on this January 28th Salt Lake Tribune article notes: Utah judge rules that there is no constitutional right to in-person learning.

FLASHBACK: REIHAN SALAM: The Upper Middle Class Is Ruining America — And I want it to stop.

You might be wondering why I’m so down on the upper middle class when they’re getting in the way of the tax hikes that will make big government even bigger. Doesn’t that mean that while liberals should be bothered by the power of the upper middle class, conservatives should cheer them on? Well, part of my objection is that upper-middle-income voters only oppose tax hikes on themselves. They are generally fine with raising taxes on people richer than themselves, including taxes on the investments that rich people make in new products, services, and businesses. I find that both annoyingly self-serving and destructive. The bigger reason, however, is that upper-middle-class people don’t just use their political muscle to keep their taxes low. They also use it to make life more expensive for everyone else.

Take a seemingly small example—occupational licensing. In North Carolina, teeth-whiteners without expensive dental degrees would like to be allowed to sell their services but are opposed by the state’s dentists, as Eduardo Porter noted in a recent New York Times column. Are the good dentists of North Carolina fighting the teeth-whiteners because they fear for the dental health of North Carolinians? It doesn’t look like it. A more plausible story is that dentists don’t want to compete with cut-rate practitioners, because restricting entry into the field allows them to charge higher prices. We often hear about how awesome it is that Uber is making taxi service cheaper and more accessible for ordinary consumers but how sad it is that they are making life harder for working-class drivers who drive traditional cabs. Notice that upper-middle-class credentialed professionals like dentists, lawyers, and doctors rarely get Uber’d to the same degree. Even when innovative services try to do things like, say, offer a free alternative to expensive insurance brokers, state and local governments will often step in to say, “Oh, no you don’t.” Want to offer a low-cost, high-quality education by, say, replacing expensive professors with Filipino instructors who teach calculus over streaming video? Sorry, pal, you first have to get approved by an accreditation body controlled … by the existing schools you’re trying to out-compete, which employ upper-middle-class people who don’t take any crap.

Or take immigration policy: Dean Baker of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research has called for increasing the number of doctors, dentists, and other professionals allowed into the U.S. while limiting the number of less-skilled people, like would-be retail clerks, custodians, and housekeepers. The reason is that high-skilled immigrants squeeze the wages of upper-middle-class professionals, who can afford to take a hit while lowering the cost of various services for poorer people by giving them the option of going to cheaper doctors and dentists. By contrast, bringing in retail clerks, custodians, and housekeepers makes life cheaper for the upper-middle-class professionals while squeezing the wages of working people, particularly immigrants who already live in the U.S. Want to guess how popular the idea of increasing the wages of nannies is with the upper-middle-class people who employ them? I’d love to know, but I’m sorry to report that upper-middle-class pollsters have yet to ask the question.

Yes, but I know the answer. Plus: “Even more egregious is the way that upper-middle-class NIMBY-ism pushes for strict land-use restrictions that drive working- and lower-middle-class people out of the country’s most desirable and productive cities.”

Also: “The upper middle class controls the media we consume. They run our big bureaucracies, our universities, and our hospitals. Their voices drown out those of other people at almost every turn.”

Still true.

PROGRESSIVE LEFTISTS LIVE BY RHETT BUTLER’S MAXIM: James Freeman: Name a Great Civilization Created by Progressive Leftists: What exactly has the cancel mob ever built?

Rhett Butler: “I told you once before that there were two times for making big money, one in the up-building of a country and the other in its destruction. Slow money on the up-building, fast money in the crack-up.”

FLASHBACK: HOW WE ROLL IN KNOXVEGAS:

A crowd gathered as Knoxville Police Department Lt. Gordon Gwathney struggled with the screaming black woman in the public housing development.

Gwathney already had shot his stun gun at the 5-foot-2-inch tall woman, but her crack cocaine high made her impervious to the electric jolt designed to freeze the muscles of large men. She ripped the metal wires from her body and continued to fight.

As he tussled with the 110-pound woman, the crowd of onlookers in Walter P. Taylor Homes swelled. Gwathney’s radio was ripped from his uniform as he forced the woman to the ground, so calling for help as the crowd closed in around him was not an option.

As he fought to get handcuffs on the squirming woman, two people from the crowd jumped into the fray.

“I saw something I thought I’d never see — people come to the aid of an officer,” Dewey Roberts, former president of Knoxville NAACP, told a community group last week. “They were telling her to calm down and they got his radio that had been knocked loose.”

Roberts witnessed the event through a window at the Dr. Lee Williams Complex, a senior citizens center he oversees in Walter P. Taylor Homes. Roberts had seen the confrontation develop despite Gwathney “trying to de-escalate the situation” and worried as he saw the crowd of black onlookers encircle the lone officer.

“With my experiences with police over the years, I was just amazed,” said the 69-year-old Roberts who led Knoxville’s black community through the racial tinderbox in the late 1990s when several black men died during confrontations with Knoxville officers.

“And it wasn’t just a few people, it was the whole crowd. I was shaking my head in disbelief, but it was a good feeling.”

Well, good.

JULIE KELLY: One Year Later, Vindication for Lockdown Skeptics.

One year ago, I tweeted: “This is what the Left wants. They want people stripped of wealth, isolated, and terrified. They want sources of joy—church, sporting events, vacations, large social gatherings—eliminated. This is how they get control. And it’s far scarier than any virus.”

It was not a popular sentiment at the time.

My initial reaction to government-ordered lockdowns, promoted by politicians on both sides and President Trump, was in the slim minority to say the least. “Flattening the curve” required deep personal sacrifices, we were warned.

Anyone skeptical of the alleged effectiveness of lockdowns or concerned about the long-term consequences was condemned as a bloodless “grandma killer” or “greedy capitalist” defying science and lacking compassion.

But from the start, “the curve” was bogus stagecraft. As I explained last year, the curve the authorities presented to Americans wasn’t accurate.

“It’s not unreasonable, in fact, it’s necessary and responsible, to consider that COVID-19 has been in the states since the first of the year,” I wrote March 19, an assessment we now know is true. “If this is the new normal, where incomplete data and media-fueled panic rule the day, that is an even more frightening prospect than what’s happening right now.”

Sadly and shamefully, it has been America’s new normal for one year and counting.

Read the whole thing.

Like most of the books I link, I haven’t read this one. This one is special though, because I also don’t personally know the author. However, anyone who takes as much trouble to track me down and send me a link to his book to promo here? Deserves a link.

FROM SCOTT JOHNSON:  Death’s Harvest.

He ran from her, and was never seen again.

Will disappeared through the portal, and they have no way to get him back.

That was not how the story would end.

Kim has to find him, but the portal is destroyed and nobody knows how to build a new one. They have to go back to basics by experimenting with dimensions, with physics…

With her.

Because, somehow, Kim’s special abilities are tied into the technology that created the portal. Mike has theories she doesn’t trust. Tonya has ideas she doesn’t understand. Spencer has tech that’s held together with bailing wire and duct tape. But Kim doesn’t have a choice. They have to get Will back.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the galaxy, a brand-new D-ship pilot is waiting anxiously for her captain to return.

PASTOR TIM KELLER HAS A MESSAGE FOR JESUS: Stop saying all those mean things about your opponents. No wonder they won’t forgive you!

THE LEFT KNOWS ITS LIE IS SO MASSIVE EVERYONE CAN SEE IT:  Today’s blacklisted American: Students condemn UConn student president for defending free speech.

So they’ve gone to war with free speech.

FORGET CATS, CALL FOR PIPERS!  Rodent plague leaves Australia town covered in ‘carpet of mice’.

HEY, AMAZON, IS THIS WHAT SANITY LOOKS LIKE?  Woman says she found true love, had children with rollercoaster.

THIS DOES SEEM TO EXPLAIN A FEW THINGS:  Liars are more likely to believe other lies: study.

Like why the left keeps drinking their own ink.

AND AGAIN, THE LEFT PROJECTS LIKE AN IMAX:  It’s Criticism, Not Harassment, So Stop Squawking About Censorship.

WEARING 1-STAR YELP REVIEWS WITH PRIDE. AND THEY SHOULD: Kava bar bans masks and teachers who do virtual classes.

CHUGGING RED PILLS WITH HIS MORNING COFFEE NOW:  Glenn Greenwald Testifies to House Subcommittee About Big Tech and Media Aligned Censorship.

THE LEFT PROJECTS LIKE AN IMAX:  They Called it “Armed Insurrection”?

THAT’S…. NICE, I GUESS. I MEAN, THEY CAN CONTINUE WEARING MASKS FOREVER:  Leftist U.S. Public Health Experts Proclaim The “Pandemic” Will Never End, We Should Embrace The New Normal.

I mean, look, we’re talking about people who man on man and woman on woman, and yep, ornate building who is also a wingless yellow dragon on ornate building who is also a wingless yellow dragon couldn’t find normality of any kind with two hands, a seeing eye dog and sonar.

But for me and mine? Oh, h*ll no. If I were going to cosplay anything it would be The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.  In fact….  well, why not?  America Luna shall be free! We’ll make d*m sure of it.

WELL…. WE ALREADY KNOW THEY ARE:  Alarming Parseltongue, White House Press Secretary Cannot Answer if Illegal Aliens are Released With COVID Infection.

WE GOT HERE BY BEING QUIET AND POLITE. IT’S TIME TO SHOUT:  No More Silence Now.

DON’T LET THEM IN YOUR HEAD:  Psychopathy and the Origins of Totalitarianism.

BECAUSE THE WAY TO ENSURE THE EQUALITY OF THE RACES IS TO DEMAND NOTHING OF ONE OF THEM:  Georgetown Law Prof Fired for Complaining About Performance of Her Black Students.