ME? Quo usque tandem abutere, Bidentia, patientia nostra? 

Or in other words: even with all the painting, cleaning, etc, I’m having a heck of a time keeping the inner berserker down.

ALSO SCIENCE SHOULD BE QUESTIONED:  Science And Politics Belong Apart.

If you can’t question it? It’s not science, it’s religion.

HE’S RIGHT YOU KNOW?  It’s all Bullshit and we’re Fucked.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Masks are here to stay as long as libs need to shame their political enemies.

WHY SO MUCH OFFICIAL ANTI-SEMITISM IN BLUE AREAS LIKE AUSTIN, TEXAS? Austin ISD ‘holy day’ attendance form raises concerns from some parents.

WELL: Round Two: Rose McGowan Claims Newsom’s Wife Involved in Attempt to Buy Her Silence on Harvey Weinstein Scandal.

Highly plausible.

OPEN THREAD: Let us all get to know one another.

Yeah, it’s early tonight.

MEDIA MYTH ALERT: Challenging the media-driven mantra that 9/11 ‘changed everything.’

The attacks of 9/11 certainly led to change — and fresh intrusions — in airport security and personal privacy. The federal government was expanded. The country fought a prolonged conflict in Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda planned the attacks.

But when considered closely, it becomes clear the 9/11 attacks did not “change everything.”

The attacks were not fatal to American political or economic power. Public opinion polls reported that after 9/11 many Americans felt a surge of patriotic fervor, a deeper commitment to the religious and spiritual side of life, and a newfound sense of political unity.

Such responses proved fleeting, however. They faded in time.

They faded, in part, because as Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal noted on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, “For activist and professional Democrats, the most ignominious day in their collective political lives occurred a year earlier—the Florida presidential recount. The 2000 election ended only when the Supreme Court resolved it in favor of George Bush. Republican and independent voters moved on, but many Democrats never did; they were now being governed by an illegitimate president. The chances that any Bush policies would retain their support were minimal, with or without 9/11.”

Thus, by 2004, what the late Charles Krauthammer dubbed “The Pressure Cooker Theory of Hydraulic Release” finally burst:

The hostility, resentment, envy and disdain, all superheated in Florida, were not permitted their natural discharge. Came Sept. 11 and a lid was forced down. How can you seek revenge for a stolen election by a nitwit usurper when all of a sudden we are at war and the people, bless them, are rallying around the flag and hailing the commander in chief? With Bush riding high in the polls, with flags flying from pickup trucks (many of the flags, according to Howard Dean, Confederate), the president was untouchable.

The Democrats fell unnaturally silent. For two long, agonizing years, they had to stifle and suppress. It was the most serious case of repression since Freud’s Anna O. went limp. The forced deference nearly killed them. And then, providentially, they were saved. The clouds parted and bad news rained down like manna: WMDs, Abu Ghraib, Richard Clarke, Paul O’Neill, Joe Wilson and, most important, continued fighting in Iraq.

With the president stripped of his halo, his ratings went down. The spell was broken. He was finally, once again, human and vulnerable. With immense relief, the critics let loose.

The result has been volcanic. The subject of one prominent new novel is whether George W. Bush should be assassinated. This is all quite unhinged. Good God. What if Bush is reelected? If they lose to him again, Democrats will need more than just consolation. They’ll need therapy.

Unfortunately, they’ve never received it.

DON’T UNDERESTIMATE JOE’S ABILITY TO F*** THINGS UP: Biden droned the wrong guy, innocent aid worker killed in Kabul strike: NYT. “A US airstrike in Kabul against a supposed Islamic State bomber actually killed an innocent man who worked for a US aid group and his family, according to newly published testimony and footage — raising the specter that the Pentagon lied to the public about the strike. The reported case of mistaken identity also further tars President Biden for his chaotic pullout of US troops from Afghanistan, which left behind hundreds of US citizens and thousands of at-risk Afghans.”

Which makes yesterday’s speech by Biden seem like more stray voltage: “One wonders if the Biden Admin knew this drone strike story was coming out yesterday.”

(Classical reference in headline.)

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME, KIDS: A Pilot Spent 17 Years Building a 1:3 Scale Replica of the B-17 Flying Fortress Bomber—and Yes, It Flies. Curiously, the author buries this minor detail a few paragraphs in, instead of putting it in the lede:

The replica has an aluminum-riveted fuselage, retractable landing gear and a wingspan of 34 feet, which is relatively large for a homebuilt plane. It’s also not an inch-perfect replica, as the cockpit had to be made larger so that a full-sized adult could fly the plane.

Unlike Fantastic Voyage, you don’t have to “get small” to fly in this miniature plane.

STRAY VOLTAGE: Department of Education Civil-Rights Arm Launches Investigation into Florida Mask-Mandate Ban.

Critics of the governor’s action claim that it subjects vulnerable students to an unsafe learning environment, giving them justification to levy discrimination complaints against the state and appeal to the Office of Civil Rights. Proponents, however, argue that the measure doesn’t outlaw masks, but merely the mandate of masks for young children on school grounds, deferring to parents rather than school boards to make the decision.

Your body, Biden’s choice.

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE: DeSantis on Biden’s new vaccine mandate: What about people with natural immunity?

BLUNT TRUTH ABOUT WASHINGTON DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS: The Federalist Chris Bedford and Conservative Partnership Institute’s Rachel Bovard confirm everything you ever feared explains why Republicans never achieve major reforms and Democrats always do.

IT’S ALL POLITICS:

The health stuff is just a masquerade.

FLASHBACK: “No country was ever saved by good men,” Horace Walpole once observed, “because good men will not go to the length that may be necessary.”

I TOO HAVE A VALID ALIBI FOR DURING THIS TIME PERIOD: DC congresswoman bizarrely denies letting zebras loose.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton said she has an ‘alibi’ for when the zebras escaped.

As Siraj Hashmi of the Washington Examiner tweets, “exactly what someone who let six zebras loose from the zoo would say.”

ARIZONA SCHOOL SHOWS SHOT MANDATE ABOUT POWER, NOT THE KIDS: If it was about the kids, the building operations director wouldn’t have been demoted to being a (substitute) teacher in the classroom.

LEE SMITH: What Afghanistan Teaches Us About Our Ruling Class.

It was not inevitable that what began in the wake of the Sept. 11 as an act of retribution would end in a theatre of self-pity. With lower Manhattan still smoking, Americans entrusted their political and military leadership with their safety and continued prosperity. Many of the most high-spirited among us offered America their service and some gave their lives.

But as the leadership class foundered in Afghanistan—Osama bin Laden had escaped, Afghan democracy proved to be a fantasy, neither its army nor national police force could stand on its own, and so on—it saw that the failures prolonging the war in fact created opportunities for personal advancement. They used Afghanistan as a financial instrument to launder their spoils and purchase the power and prestige that are naturally owed victors. Like all habitual losers, America’s ruling class escapes the shame and humiliation it merits by forcing others to bear responsibility for the crimes it alone committed.

And that’s the context in which to understand the massive airlift for which the Joe Biden administration keeps congratulating itself. Never mind the thousands of Americans sent to their death for no strategic purpose and the trillions of U.S. taxpayer money wasted on the fantasy of turning Afghanistan into a democratic state. The message is: We’re good guys—we’re rescuing Afghans from the clutches of the Taliban.

The ruling class’ phony atonement comes at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer. No one knows how many Afghans will be coming to the United States. Tens of thousands have been settled already, with others reportedly on their way, totaling according to some reports around 120,000. Government sources say that after refugees start bringing over family still in Afghanistan the final tally will likely reach a quarter of a million, maybe more.

The resettlement abuses the generosity of Americans, most of whom don’t understand that the Afghans sent to their communities are not the Afghans who helped Americans. The media, local political, social, and religious organizations have misled them to believe these are the interpreters and others who assisted U.S. troops and other agencies. But according to reports, the Biden team left many of those Afghans behind. So, who are these people?

No one really knows. The problem is not that they are unvetted but that they are unvettable. The biometric information collected by U.S. authorities—and has now reportedly fallen into the hands of the Taliban—documented the Afghans who worked for them. Those among the warring tribesmen who opposed the U.S.-led coalition are undocumented, unless they are so notorious for shooting at Americans that they wound up on terror lists. Those Afghans are known. There are also records of those who committed crimes during earlier stays in Western countries and were deported. As for the rest, they pushed their way into Kabul airport, forced their way on to planes, and now they’re here.

Gen. H.R. McMaster famously showed Donald Trump a 1970s photograph of young Kabul women in miniskirts to dissuade him from withdrawing forces. Trump’s advisor was trying to show that just underneath the country’s primitive violence was an open-minded and liberal core just waiting to be liberated.

But the type of people in those pictures are not part of this wave of Afghan migrants because all those open-minded and liberal Afghans left for the West years ago. The people coming now are poor and illiterate.

Some will make good citizens. Some won’t. None will trouble our ruling class.

SO MUCH FOR THAT BIG MOMENT HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BUY HIMSELF BEFORE HE BUNGLED THE BUGOUT: Biden Will Not Deliver Live Remarks on 9/11 Anniversary.

RULE OF LAW: Florida Appeals Court Reinstates DeSantis’ School Mask Ban.

Even The Atlantic reports that masking kids is a bad idea.

“DON’T UNDERESTIMATE JOE’S ABILITY TO F*** THINGS UP”: Grateful Migrants in Pennsylvania Send Thousands of Dollars to ISIS.

HMM: Major study finds convalescent plasma doesn’t help seriously ill COVID-19 patients. “A major study has found that convalescent plasma does not reduce the risk of intubation or death for COVID-19 patients. However, the study also revealed that the antibody profile in the blood of people who have had the virus is extremely variable and this may modify the response to the treatment. . . . ‘These findings may explain the apparent conflicting results between randomized trials showing no benefit, and observational studies showing better outcomes with higher titre products relative to low titre products.'”

Well, we have the Regeneron monoclonal antibodies now anyway.

REAL JOURNALISM: RealClearInvestigations’ Jan. 6-BLM Side-by-Side Comparison. “Many in the political and media establishment consider the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot to be one of America’s darkest episodes. Others say the nationwide protests last summer over George Floyd’s murder were worse. With polling indicating Americans see two sides to the story – and major media dwelling on only one – RealClearInvestigations has developed the database below allowing readers to draw their own conclusions.”

What a great resource.

BECAUSE OF COURSE HE DOES: Paul Krugman Gushes Over Biden’s Fascistic Vaccine Mandate.