PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: An American security expert was targeted by North Korean hackers — so he responded by turning off North Korea’s entire Internet. “Thoughts and prayers to North Korea’s one IT guy who’s surely having the worst few weeks of his career if he’s not already dead (he’s probably already dead).”
JUST NBC THE CATACLYSM! “NBC is facing a cataclysmic loss of audience for the 2022 Winter Olympics as viewership tanked for Friday’s Opening Ceremony, averaging just 16 million.”
It is a record low for the Opening Ceremony (20.1 million for 1988 in Calgary was the previous record) and a whopping 43 percent below the 2018 Games in South Korea that notched 28.3 million viewers despite also dealing with a less than advantageous Asian time zone for American audiences.
It comes on the heels of Thursday’s ratings disaster that saw just 7.7 million people tune in, dramatically below same-night audiences of 2018 (16 million) and 2014 from Russia (20.02 million).
NBC said the 16 million is a “total audience delivery” and includes all of its networks and streaming. The television-only average audience was below 14 million for the day, per the preliminary data released by the network.
While ratings tend to increase over the first week, as more viewers get caught up in the action, NBC will have to work out of a ratings hole.
The host country, China, is a serious problem.
Yes, totalitarian gulag-filled communist hellholes tend to be that.
More here: Televised Coverage of Beijing Winter Olympics is a Snow-filled Ratings Bust.
TOP SELLER: Overcoming the COVID Darkness: How Two Doctors Successfully Treated 7000 Patients. #CommissionEarned
DOMINIC GREEN: Vladimir Putin is rolling over the United States.
Vladimir Putin doesn’t need to send troops into Ukraine. He has already achieved his strategic goals — for now.
The leading European Union powers, France and Germany, are competing against each other for Putin’s ear, while Britain is competing against them by shipping arms to Ukraine. The United States is exposed as an unreliable protector, unable to defend its overextended position on Russia’s doorstep in Ukraine. NATO is divided and powerless, a shadow of imperial overreach.
A decrepit caste of corrupt leaders is incapable of managing a controlled retreat from imperial overreach. America today, or Russia the day before yesterday? Vladimir Putin witnessed the decay and collapse of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent expansion of NATO up to Russia’s borders. He is now returning the favor. He is pushing American and European influence out of Ukraine, and unpicking the already frayed bonds of NATO and the EU.
Geopolitics is not about morality. It is about the effective use of power. For thirty years, the smart opinion in Washington was that post-Soviet Russia was no threat to anyone because it had an economy the size of Portugal and its economy ran on carbon fuel exports. That these statistics were true shows how well Vladimir Putin has played his limited hand — and how arrogantly the US has mishandled relations with Russia while its experts tell each other flattering fictions.
Why, it’s as if: Biden acts much more like Putin’s puppet than Trump ever did.
BILL TREANOR TAKE NOTE: NY Times Columnists Agree: Georgetown Law School Should Not Punish Ilya Shapiro For His Tweets. When even the NYT crowd thinks you’re too woke.
LIKE KHADDAFY, THEY F*CKED UP, THEY TRUSTED US: Ukraine gave up nukes 30 years ago. Today there are regrets.
“We gave away the capability for nothing,” said Andriy Zahorodniuk, a former defense minister of Ukraine. Referring to the security assurances Ukraine won in exchange for its nuclear arms, he added: “Now, every time somebody offers us to sign a strip of paper, the response is, ‘Thank you very much. We already had one of those some time ago.’”
Ask Muammar how that worked out for him.
UPDATE: From the comments: “What is the likelihood that a consequence of Joe Biden’s presidency is that many technologically advanced nations are going to obtain nuclear weapons. I look forward to the same folks who were surprised at how quickly Afghanistan fell expressing surprise at this new development.”
Yep. As the Pax Americana ends, that’s the rational thing to do.
DON’T GIVE THE BIDEN PEOPLE ANY IDEAS: Cuban dictatorship imposes new 10% tax on private sector food sales.
RIP: Todd Gitlin, a Voice and Critic of the New Left, Dies at 79.
Dr. Gitlin personified the cultural and political ambitions of the ’60s, with a continuous readiness to confront orthodoxies of whatever stripe. He was a president of Students for a Democratic Society, the national flagship student organization that called for constructive social change, whose ranks swelled with protesters against the war in Vietnam and then collapsed into factionalism. At S.D.S., he assisted in organizing the first national demonstration against the war and helped lead the first protests in the United States against apartheid in South Africa.
He later became a chronicler of the decade. He was sometimes a caustic commenter on the left and its tactics, which opened him up to harsh judgments by erstwhile kindred spirits.
Dr. Gitlin spent his entire adult life as an academic, practicing his commitment to social change through teaching and writing. He considered himself first and foremost a writer; in an interview, Harvey Molotch, a sociologist and longtime colleague from the 1960s, called him “a contemplative activist,” one who “searched for ways to integrate the urgent needs of everyday life with larger political and social goals.”
Gitlin’s 1983 look at the American TV industry, Inside Prime Time served as a textbook at my college, and presumably, loads of others.
SOROS PROSECUTORS GONNA SOROS PROSECUTE: Chesa Boudin’s office accused of rigging case against cop. “It’s bad enough that Boudin is working overtime to make sure that as few actual criminals as possible ever spend a day behind bars. But if these allegations prove to be true and it turns out that he’s been working to unjustly frame cops so he can put them in jail, then this situation has shifted from gross incompetence to criminal malfeasance.”
WHITE GUY SAYS THERE ARE TOO MANY ASIANS:
#RESISTANCE:
A reader sends this: “In Blue Illinois.”
Another from Salton, California:
Plus this from Farmingdale, New York:
The #resistance is everywhere, and it’s just getting started.
And in a related development, a reader sends a pic that could use an “I did that” sticker: “I took this photo at a Giant supermarket that is about 3 miles from the President’s place in North Shores near Rehoboth Beach. Sussex County is the No. 1 broiler producer in the entire US, with Kent County just north of it in the top 15. Just amazing-or maybe not.”
Everything is going swimmingly.
BE PREPARED: Augason Farms 30-Day 1-Person Emergency Food Supply. #CommissionEarned
The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF), which is widely considered to be the umbrella for most BLM grassroots organizations, raised $90 million dollars in 2020.
Now it may stand as one of the biggest charity scandals in recent memory.
Founding BLMGNF member Patrisse Cullors didn’t waste any time in finding herself in a financial scandal and has since stepped down.
Cullors, a committed socialist and a woman who once bragged she was a trained Marxist, suddenly found herself the proud owner of over $3 million in personal real estate holdings.
Two of those purchases, making up the bulk of her real estate assets, came after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 — the same year her nonprofit exploded with donations.
Cullors denies that any ‘organizational resources’ went toward the purchase of her properties.
But regardless, it looks like social justice can be a very lucrative business.
Read the whole thing.
1972: IN 50 YEARS, WE’LL HAVE FLYING CARS!
2022: Scientists Find Putting Pantyhose on Your Head Makes Your Mask Safer.
IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES: Long-time Instapunditeer Lee Dise — aka the “Reformed Trombonist” in the Comments section — is an admirer of the great Richard Weaver and quite a good writer himself.
He launches an illuminating series of daily posts today on HillFaith, surveying how Western Civilization came to be, how it got to where it is today and what it may look like tomorrow.
Yes, it’s quite an ambitious agenda, and, having read it through already, I can tell you Lee has much to say that is perceptive, wise and insightful. You may not agree with everything he writes. But it will be worth the reading. Enjoy.
“UNACCOUNTED FOR” AND YET WE ALL KNOW WHERE IT WENT: BLM’s millions unaccounted for after leaders quietly jumped ship.
ICYMI: READING THE NEW YORK TIMES DOESN’T HELP: NYT: Suburban women stuck in “politics of gloom” ahead of midterms. “Well, who isn’t? Inflation has hit a 40-year high, we’re edging up to another wage-price spiral, another war is brewing in eastern Europe, and we’re entering Year 3 of pandemic life. Anyone not perceiving political and cultural gloom at this moment might need their head examined. Even so, the second successive focus-group test covered by the New York Times shows the risks for Democrats in perhaps one of the most significant demographics. Suburban women may not dislike Joe Biden, but they are very unimpressed by his handling of the presidency.” Well, with reason. Plus: “Despite claims from Biden that he’d “outperformed” expectations in his first year, those voters unanimously had an entirely different assessment. And they’re also rejecting the January 6 argument just as completely.”
Flashback: Democrats’ war on suburban women includes inflation-fueling reckless spending.
I THINK NEO WOULD LOSE THE BET ABOUT WHAT THE MASK AND COVID PANICKERS WANT: COVID: hope and fear.
Look, both of us lived quiet among lefties. But she’s older than I. My generation? I heard them wish for “Earth changes” that would kill most of the population and only live “the good people” (leftists) alive. Same with plagues and other horrors.
No, they want Covid to be deadly and kill all the “deplorables” and prove they were right. These are very bitter, self-aggrandizing people, who hate free trade mostly because it doesn’t give them the attention and power they think they deserve.
PUSH THEIR NOSES IN EVERYWHERE: Pushback: Doctor suspended for opposing mandates sues hospital.
If we bow before the mandates, we owe the cursed dead of Nuremberg an apology.
I DIDN’T KNOW THIS WOMAN: Jordan Peterson and Dr Julie Ponesse Discuss the Status and Future of Canada.
It’s time to stand up, America. Your hat is outdoing you.
AND SPEAKING OF ITS BEING TIME…. This Is The Alarm Bell.
NEVER ASK FORGIVENESS. THE LEFT HAS NO CONCEPT OF REDEMPTION: Joe Rogan Apologizes for Being Joe Rogan, Begs Woke Forgiveness.
When they attack you, ignore them. It drives them nuts.
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