RETURN OF THE ‘BLAME AMERICA FIRST’ CROWD: Daily Caller News Foundation’s Chuck Morris reports that  Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economics professor who formed and runs the Lancet COVID-19 Commission to investigate the pandemic, thinks America is a “divisive” force on the world stage, unlike those ever-peace-loving guys running the dictatorship known as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

And in other Lancet-related news, the august medical group’s commission to study the impact of Donald Trump on everybody’s else’s health concluded thusly: “Trump exploited low and middle-income white people’s anger over their deteriorating life prospects to mobilise racial animus and xenophobia and enlist their support for policies that benefit high-income people and corporations and threaten health.”

This apparently is an illustration of that to which The Lancet is entirely devoted, “The best science for better lives: A manifesto for social change.” Uh, huh. If you have the stomach for it, the study can be read in its suffocating completeness here.

GOOD. THE COUNTRY IS OCCUPIED, BUT NOT DEFEATED:  Social media censorship legislation proposed in Kansas.

IT’S HAPPENING MORE AND MORE THESE DAYS:  When They Say The Quiet Part Out Loud.

HE’S RIGHT, YOU KNOW?  The Navy’s Greatest Failure Since Pearl Harbor.

HAVE THEY READ THE CONSTITUTION?  House Democrats introduce bill to ban “Twice Impeached Presidents” from burial at Arlington National Cemetery

Perhaps if we get someone to help them with the long words?

ABOUT TIME:  Cuomo Covid House of Cards is Collapsing.

AND WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE THEY CARE ABOUT THE DISABLED?: The various bills pending in Congress to raise the minimum wage to $15 will also eliminate the special provision in the law that allows Down Syndrome and other seriously disabled adults to take jobs at less than the minimum wage.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a report a few months ago endorsing that move (despite receiving comments from thousands of parents of Down syndrome workers pleading with us not to). My colleagues either (1) don’t understand that a $15 minimum wage for Down syndrome workers will be a huge job killer; or (2) don’t care. My dissent is here.

SAYING THE QUIET PART ALOUD:  Prof. Marc Lamont Hill: Goal of Black Lives Matter is to “dismantle the Zionist project”.

THROWING MONEY TO THOSE WHO WOULD DESTROY US:  Biden to Pay $200 Million in WHO “Obligations,” Reversing Trump’s Decision.

THE LEFT IS KILLING ITS OWN CENTERS OF PROPAGATION:  Harris and Her Spokeswoman Stumble on CNN, NBC Over Questions Regarding School Reopenings.

I’M NOT SURE IT’S A DESCENT. MORE BEING PUSHED:   Our Descent Into Collective Madness?

HE’S FOUGHT THE GOOD FIGHT. NOW IT’S OUR TURN:  02-18-21 Rush Limbaugh 1951-2021.

THE FICUS ASSURES US THIS IS JUST A DIFFERENT CULTURAL TRADITION: Liberal press concealed China’s mass murder of members of Buddhist group.

UNEXPECTEDLY:  New weekly jobless claims unexpectedly rose by 13,000 to 861,000 in the week that ended February 13, the Department of Labor said Thursday.

OUCH:

IT’S ALL ONE PR MACHINE, PUSHING THE SAME NARRATIVE EVERYWHERE: TV Shows Push Gun Control Myths — in Sync With Biden. “Last week, the Biden administration promised gun control groups that it will soon roll out a massive push for limits on firearm purchases and other measures. President Biden reiterated that promise on Sunday. And the television networks aren’t waiting to lay the groundwork for this effort. CBS is in a full-court press for gun control on its evening entertainment television shows. The bad guys are always white supremacists who use machine guns — supposedly AR-15s — to commit mass public shootings. Criminals in Mexico supposedly get machine guns from the United States. A father’s desire to protect his family only leads to tragedy when his daughter gets into the gun safe and uses the weapon in a mass public shooting. And guns in the home pose a danger for children. Gun registration is necessary for solving crime. NBC isn’t to be left out, showing a woman who tried but failed to use a gun to protect herself. Instead, her gun was taken from her and used to kill a police officer. The lesson is that owning a gun will only bring you grief. And that’s just in the first six weeks of the year. Every show gives an inaccurate impression about firearms, thereby helping in this push for gun restrictions. It’s as though these shows were written by Michael Bloomberg’s gun control organizations. Indeed, the networks are working with these groups.”

BIDEN: SO BAD THAT CNN IS FACT-CHECKING HIM: Fact check: Biden makes at least four false statistical claims at CNN town hall.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Media’s censorious gatekeepers are mad — because they’re losing power.

EVEN BLOOMBERG IS EDITORIALIZING: Scrap NASA’s Space Launch System: The government’s new heavy-lift rocket is over budget, behind schedule and plagued with problems. It’s also unnecessary.

Why is the U.S. government building a space rocket? In particular, why is it building a space rocket that has cost nearly $20 billion and counting, is years behind schedule, relies on outdated technology, suffers by comparison to private-sector alternatives, and has little justification to begin with?

That’s the question President Joe Biden should bear in mind when pondering the future of the Space Launch System, the two-stage, heavy-lift rocket that aims to bring American astronauts back to the lunar surface and then — someday in the distant, hazy, not-too-specific future — to Mars.

Initiated in 2011, the SLS was the result of unfortunate compromises and unholy politics. By congressional mandate, it was built using technology and components that dated to the early space-shuttle era. That requirement all but ensured that the new rocket would be hugely expensive, heavily reliant on traditional aerospace contractors and — in all likelihood — antiquated before it ever reached a launchpad.

Perhaps predictably, the program has been plagued with problems from the start. A report last year from NASA’s inspector general warned of “rising costs and delays,” “shortcomings in quality control,” “challenges with program management,” “technical issues,” “development issues,” “infrastructure issues,” “performance issues” and more. A watchdog report in December found “uncertain plans, unproven cost assumptions, and limited oversight.” . . .

Perhaps the oddest aspect of this entire undertaking is that the SLS is being expensively assembled just as the private rocketry business has started to boom. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has created rockets that are not only dependable but reusable, drastically reducing the cost of spaceflight. It has also disrupted an unconscionable contractor monopoly on national-security launches, spurring competitors to invest in reusable heavy-lift rockets of their own, including Blue Origin’s New Glenn launch vehicle.

A few years down the road, such competition is likely to result in more choices, lower costs and more innovation. Musk estimates that, in due course, each launch of SpaceX’s reusable super-heavy rocket will cost about $2 million — or roughly 0.1% of the cost of a comparable flight of the single-use SLS. Even if that prediction turns out to be highly optimistic, there’s simply no contest.

Right?

GUYS IN VIKING HELMETS AT CAPITOL: INSURRECTION!!! MUST BE SUPPRESSED!!! Death threats to Ted Cruz: Meh, if he wants to be safe he shouldn’t be a Republican. Sen. Ted Cruz arrives back in Texas with armed police escort.

OPEN THREAD: Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. Or is it?

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Media Informs Ted Cruz You Can Only Travel During A Crisis If You’re A Democrat.

To be fair though, it was one helluva trip!

NEW SPACE RACE: How Mars became the prize for a new space race — and why China is hellbent on winning it.

HOW IT STARTED:

During her annual State of the City address on Thursday, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf called on her constituents to open their doors and residences to the city’s homeless, as union workers picketed against her for her administration’s handling of the city’s rampant housing problem.

“Give up that Airbnb. Fix up that back unit,” Schaff said, encouraging property owners to lease apartments at more affordable rates to recently homeless individuals, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“In Oakland, we don’t step over the homeless we step toward them,” Schaaf said.

The city’s uptick in vagrants is tied to a general gentrification in the Bay Area, stemming from San Francisco, where artists and innovators unable to afford skyrocketing rents have migrated to Oakland.

In May, the Chronicle noted that a survey by Everyone Counts found that the number of homeless persons in Oakland had increased by 25 percent since two years ago.

— “Oakland Mayor Urges Residents to Take in Homeless: ‘Give Up That Airbnb,’” Breitbart.com, November 4^th, 2017.

How it’s going:

Residents living near homeless encampments, vandalized and abandoned warehouses, and lines of motorhomes and stripped-down cars say the police department isn’t doing enough, so they have formed vigilante patrols to clean up their East Oakland neighborhood.

Those living closest to the defunct plant owned by Owens-Illinois along Alameda Avenue say an uptick in crime has led them to keep watch over their streets and spend their own money to add lighting and security cameras to protect their properties.

“We’re can’t depend on the city to do it,” neighbor Denise Gray said. “It’s just getting too far out of hand.”

Records show Oakland police are called to the area surrounding the abandoned plant nearly once a day for reports of robbery, assault, auto theft and drug crimes.

Additionally, with sprawling homeless encampments adjacent to the warehouses, the fire department has responded more than 500 times in the past three years, records show.

—“’Oakland looks like a trash can:’ neighbors form vigilante patrols to curb crime,” Bay Area Fox affiliate KTVU, today.

Related (from Glenn): When the Dawn Patrol’s got to tell you twice, they’re gonna do it with a shotgun. “Anyone with a brain and a bit of historical knowledge could have seen this coming, which is no doubt why it eluded so much of our political class.”

THE HEIRS OF BUCKLEY AT NATIONAL REVIEW: “At 14 years old, I bought and enjoyed Al Franken’s book Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations.”

You’d think it would get better from here, but it really doesn’t.