VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: The Left Loves Nothing Like Women-Oppressing, Gay-Murdering Terrorists.

Insanity Wrap needs to know: What’s the best way to show your support for women, gays, and oppressed minorities?

Answer: By celebrating misogynist, gay-murdering, rocket-wielding terrorists, of course.

Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.

• An Army of none
• Toure — remember him? — calls for racial violence
• Jennifer Granholm says, “Let them eat lithium”

Bonus Sanity: Texas working on a law that says steak is meat.

And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

LAWN GUYLAND FOR TRUMP: What’s All the Noise From Long Island? It’s the Pro-Trump Long Island Loud Majority.

BIDEN TO NOMINATE CATHERINE LHAMON TO LEAD EDUCATION DEPT’S OFFICE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS. She was the head of OCR under Obama, and was the primary person responsible for all of the Obama Administration’s Title IX policy. I wrote a short book about how well this policy worked, called Twisting Title IX.

AND WE’RE NOT QUITE FOUR MONTHS IN: Biden’s Middle East Failure.

The first is the U.S. Navy’s seizure over the weekend of a significant weapons shipment. It contained “dozens of advanced Russian-made anti-tank guided missiles, thousands of Chinese Type 56 assault rifles, and hundreds of PKM machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades launchers … [and] advanced optical sights,” the Fifth Fleet said in a statement.

The cache was destined for Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, whom the Biden administration recently delisted as a terrorist organization. No serious person believes the arms didn’t originate in Iran, though for obviously political reasons the United States Navy prefers not to state the obvious.

In neighboring Iraq, a prominent Iraqi political activist and critic of Iranian influence in his country, particularly the arming and funding of pro-Tehran militias, was gunned down—the latest in a series of Iran critics to turn up dead. The early reporting suggests an Iranian militia is to blame.

Finally, there is the escalating security situation in the Persian Gulf. After several years of tranquility along one of the world’s most important shipping lanes, Iran has returned to harassing American ships.

Let’s not forget that Iran-backed Hamas is testing Biden’s support for Israel — and finding it wanting.

EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT THE END TIMES, BUT NOBODY DOES ANYTHING ABOUT IT. The Center for Applied Eschatology aims to change that. From its FAQ:

Q: Why do you want to end the world?
A: CAE is devoted to practical, pragmatic solutions. We’re interested in the how, not the why.

We can’t keep waiting around in our gas lines (or, for folks unfortunate enough to be anywhere near the Capitol on January 6, jail) for the SMOD to make good on its string of broken promises.

WHEN IN DOUBT, ASK YOURSELF “WWTD?”: The Biden Regime’s Response to Its Many Crises Will Make You Facepalm So Hard You’ll Hurt Your Neck.

(What Wouldn’t Trump Do?”)

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE NEXT GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA: American Idol finalist Caleb Kennedy out after KKK-themed video surfaces.

MICHAEL WALSH: ‘Things Fall Apart’ With No End in Sight.

They’re publicly gunning for the Second Amendment now and, over the course of the post-FDR period, have rendered the Ninth and 10th amendments (which were intended to establish expressed powers/limited government) as nullities.

Now, in a capital still ringed by barbed wire, a confused old man sits at a desk signing “executive orders” designed to overturn any vestiges of his predecessor—whose aim, you may recall, was to “Make America Great Again.” The economy boomed, the nation became energy self-sufficient, race relations had at least stabilized, the Middle East was moving toward stasis, and both the Russians and the Chinese were under no illusions about our international intentions.

And then came the election and huge blunder of Jan. 6, and it all vanished. Well, as they say, elections have consequences.

“Surely, the Second Coming is at hand,” writes Yeats in the second stanza of his great poem. But be careful what you wish for: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

If you thought Biden’s first 100 days were bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

As Glenn recently wrote, “To be honest, a rerun of the Carter years is now a best-case scenario.”

20 MINUTES FROM NEW YORK TO PARIS: Oblique wave detonation engine may unlock Mach 17 aircraft. “Rotating detonation engines, in which the shockwaves from one detonation are tuned to trigger further detonations within a ring-shaped channel, were thought of as impossible to build right up until researchers at the University of Central Florida (UCF) went ahead and demonstrated a prototype last year in sustained operation. Due for testing in a rocket launch by around 2025, rotating detonation engines should be more efficient than pulse detonation engines simply because the combustion chamber doesn’t need to be cleared out between detonations.”

BIDEN ENERGY BACKERS CLEANING UP: Washington Free Beacon’s Collin Anderson and Matthew Foldi connected some green dots and found a bunch of energy folks who are doing quite well for themselves, courtesy of Joe Biden and friends:

“Shortly after becoming president, Biden virtually toured Proterra’s South Carolina plant before hosting company CEO Jack Allen at his State Department’s Leaders Summit on Climate. The move sparked a barrage of ethics concerns from federal lawmakers given that Biden’s energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, holds up to $5 million in Proterra stock. Biden’s infrastructure package includes a $45 billion government investment in ‘clean, zero-emissions buses’ such as those produced by the company.

“Other Clean Energy for Biden leaders also stand to profit from the administration’s promotion of Proterra. At least three members of the group’s finance council work as partners at venture capital firms that list Proterra on their portfolios: Energy Impact Partners‘ Shayle Kann, Ajax Strategies‘ Veery Maxwell, and G2VP‘s Brook Porter. Popple left Proterra to join G2VP in February, according to LinkedIn.”

Trust me, there is much more to come along this same line in the days ahead.

BUT THEN SOMEONE REMINDED HIM THAT HIGHER ED IS PART OF THE DEMOCRATIC APPARAT: FLASHBACK: Biden once blamed rising professor salaries for contributing to ‘skyrocketing’ cost of college.

Though to be fair, it’s got more to do with exploding numbers of administrators.

JIM TREACHER: Sophia the Talking Robot Goes Into Journalism.

I haven’t been able to find video of this robot doing whatever the hell this is supposed to be, but here it is on a “date” with rapper and robot-fighter Will Smith:

That was three years ago, so maybe since then they’ve taught that thing how to recognize sarcasm, and that it should search online for a prospective suitor’s net worth before turning down a kiss. But if a robot is this adept at comedy, how tough can journalism be? It requires skill to make people laugh, but pretty much anybody can say things that aren’t true.

Journalists had better hope robots don’t take over their profession, because those things don’t need sleep or paychecks and they’re almost as easy to program.

That is, if robots haven’t already infiltrated the industry. Come to think of it… has anybody ever actually seen Wolf Blitzer walk through a metal detector?

At least interacting with Will Smith, Sophia seems awfully clunky. Why not dust off Ananova instead?

CRISES BY DESIGN: Trump Explains Why Joe Biden Is Worse Than Jimmy Carter. “I see that everybody is comparing Joe Biden to Jimmy Carter. It would seem to me that is very unfair to Jimmy Carter. Jimmy mishandled crisis after crisis, but Biden has CREATED crisis after crisis.”

I’M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER WHEN WE WORRIED ABOUT RAPE ON CAMPUS: If we defund police on college campuses, ‘we will certainly see an increase in violent crime’ in academic institutions.

WHATEVER WORKS: Vlad the Vaccinator: Dracula’s Castle Lures Visitors With COVID-19 Jabs.

COLD WAR II: Taiwan’s TSMC joins American chip coalition in another blow to China’s self-sufficiency drive.

While ostensibly created for lobbying purposes in the US, the coalition showcases US influence over the globalised semiconductor supply chain, and is likely to complicate Chinese government efforts to reduce the country’s reliance on US technologies, analysts said.

China’s chip self-sufficiency ambitions “continue to face headwinds from surging efforts in America to reshore and ring-fence semiconductor value chains and technology” said Alex Capri, research fellow at the Hinrich Foundation and lecturer at the National University of Singapore.

TSMC’s increased investment and participation in building leading edge 5-nanometer (nm) and even 3-nm chip manufacturing plants in America may increase the pressure on Beijing because it appears the Taiwanese company will not do the same in mainland China, Capri said.

You’d have to be a fool, suicidal, or on the take to build an advanced fab in mainland Communist China.

UNFIT: Adults in the Room: Retired Military Brass Not Afraid to Voice Their Concerns About Biden. “On Tuesday, 124 retired military leaders released an open letter warning about key threats to America, from China to the border crisis to the ideologies undermining American freedoms. They also proved willing to address a major elephant in the room: President Joe Biden’s mental capacity and how Democrats’ concerns about nuclear codes undermine the chain of command.”

Much more at the link.

FIRST FRANCE, NOW THIS: ‘His mental and physical condition cannot be ignored’: More than 120 retired generals and admirals sign open letter questioning Biden’s mental health and backing election fraud claims. “‘The FBI and Supreme Court must act swiftly when election irregularities are surfaced and not ignore them as was done in 2020,’ they wrote.”

Related: Doubts about Biden’s mental acuity aren’t the only reason to limit prez’s nuke power.

NO TRANSPARENCY IN CALIFORNIA: State Controller Helen Yee’s office issued $320 billion worth of checks but is unable to track a single one of them. That’s what her lawyers told Open the Books anyway. I’ve covered transparency-in-government issues for more than two decades and this may be the most incredible illustration ever of the lengths to which officials will go to avoid accountabillity.

TEXAS HOUSE APPROVES BILL TO BAN PLANT-BASED FOODS FROM USING ‘MEAT’ ON LABELS. “The Texas House approved a bill Monday that would prohibit plant-based foods from using ‘meat’ or ‘beef’ on labels because it could be misleading to some consumers. South Dakota passed a similar bill in 2019 that was an effort to protect the state’s livestock industry and effectively allows the term ‘meat’ to be used only for protein harvested from animal carcasses.”

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Black Parent Compares Critical Race Theory to KKK Intimidation Tactics.

Unexpectedly:

REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: The High-Pressure Business of Selling Woke Corporate Armor.

You know what’s real armor? Not caring.

CHICAGOLAND: The Chicago Police reportedly bought secret drones using drug money.

The Sun-Times was privy to an email sent by Karen Conway, Chicago PD’s director of police research and development, last summer (the emails leaked as part of a huge hack last month). Conway says explicitly in the email that the department’s counter-terrorism bureau “utilized 1505 funds for a pilot Drone program that operates within the parameters of current laws.”

Those 1505 funds are forfeiture proceeds: assets seized during criminal investigations. As such, that cash is not included in the police department’s official budget and is, for all intents and purposes, untraceable. Unless you’re willing to put that information in an email, apparently.

The Chicago Police says its secret drone program was limited in use to take crime scene photos and work on terrorism-related investigations. These cases are both allowed by Chicago law, despite the city’s drone restrictions being generally tight.

And yet the department still hid its drone program, going as far as to use that off-the-books cash — at least $26,000 of it, according to the leaked emails.

As a general rule, people don’t hide the things they should be doing.

IT’S ACTUALLY SORT OF IMPRESSIVE THAT THEY’VE MANAGED TO WRECK THINGS SO QUICKLY: ‘Biden’s America’: GOP hits jump in gas prices, unemployment, and illegal crossings.