GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: Gavin Newsom Includes Health Coverage for All Illegal Immigrants in New Budget Proposal.

FLORIDA ANTIFA MAN — WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Antifa Member Arrested With Explosives in Florida.

INSTAPUNDIT READERS WILL BE UNSURPRISED BY THIS: T cells from common colds cross-protect against infection with SARS-CoV-2.

But beware, while I find this highly believable, the study is from Imperial College, whose Covid track record has been abysmal.

INNOVATION: Farmer Makes His Cows Wear VR Goggles to Increase Milk Production.

MORE PROBLEMS WITH EMORY LAW SCHOOL:  “Citing the ‘harm’ of open discussion, Emory Law’s student government denies recognition to student free speech group.”  (Here’s last week’s Emory problem.)

THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO MADE DONATIONS! I’ve sent out thank-you notes. If I somehow missed you, please know that I appreciate it very much!

WOULD IT BE IMPOLITIE TO ASK WHERE THE MONEY WENT? Feds Blew $100 Billion on Extra Hospital Beds, Got FEWER Hospital Beds.

WELL, IT’S ELIE MYSTAL:

UPDATE: They’re probably spreading this lie to counteract the (true) story about Justice Sotomayor: Delicious: WaPo hits Sotomayor with 100,000 Pinocchios. “Naaah, it was only four, but it’s more fun to use Sonia Sotomayor’s math. Glenn Kessler did what the Supreme Court justice apparently didn’t bother to do and checked the actual figures from the CDC, as well as his own common sense. The fact-check delivers the maximum number of Pinocchios, even though it doesn’t address all of Sotomayor’s ignorant questioning last week.”

THE LEFT ISN’T GOING TO ENJOY LIVING UNDER THE NEW RULES THEY’VE CREATED: Kevin McCarthy: I’m Kicking 3 Democrats Off Their Committees If Republicans Win Back House In 2022.

McCarthy made the remarks in an interview with Breitbart News and said that the move comes in light of to Democrats kicking two Republicans — Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) — off their committees.

“The Democrats have created a new thing where they’re picking and choosing who can be on committees,” McCarthy said. “Never in the history [of Congress] have you had the majority tell the minority who can be on committee. But this new standard which these Democrats have voted for—if Eric Swalwell cannot get a security clearance in the private sector, there is no reason why he should be given one to be on Intel or Homeland Security. He will not be serving there.”

“Ilhan Omar should not be serving on Foreign Affairs,” McCarthy said. “This is a new level of what the Democrats have done.”

McCarthy also said that Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff would be kicked off of that committee as well.

Kurt Schlichter tried to warn them in 2015: Liberals May Regret Their New Rules.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Flashback: Hair pulling time:

There’s an old joke about a boy who complains to his mother that his little sister keeps pulling his hair.

“Oh,” responds the mother, “she doesn’t know that it hurts.”

A few minutes later, the mother hears the girl scream and runs into the other room. “She knows now,” the boy explains.

There’s a lesson for Republicans in that old joke, if they’re smart enough to absorb it.

Maybe this time they are.

RIP: This Is Bob Saget’s Last Tweet.

I’VE SEEN THIS MOVIE BEFORE: Alec Baldwin Wants to Find the Real Killer. “Alec Baldwin still hasn’t given his cellphone to the New Mexico police investigating the death of Halyna Hutchins, the woman Baldwin shot last October on the set of the never-to-be-completed film Rust. And you’ll never guess who the real victim is…”

.30 SUPER CARRY IS THE NEW THING: Nighthawk Custom 1911 in 30 Super Carry.

THE GUARDIAN’S PUFF PIECE ON THE CALIFORNIA SLAVERY REPARATIONS TASK FORCE:  “‘If Not Us, Then Who?’: Inside the Landmark Push for Reparations for Black Californians.”

COULD HAVE FOOLED ME: Matt Drudge confirms he still runs Drudge Report.

THE VITAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN ‘FROM’ AND ‘WITH’ IS FINALLY BECOMING OFFICIAL: CDC Director Makes Stunning Admission About COVID Deaths.

TOP SELLER: New Apple AirPods Pro. #CommissionEarned

ONE CAN HOPE: More COVID-19 School Closures Spell the End of Teachers Unions Empire.

Chicago—where union leaders effectively just voted to strike—is the third largest school district in the country, enrolling more than 340,000 students and spending over $27,000 per student, per year. Just 23% of Chicago public school students can read proficiently. Meanwhile, average Chicago private school tuition is only about $11,000 per student each year.

Detroit Public Schools (reading proficiency rate a staggering 6%) have shuttered in-person classes from at least Jan. 3–5 due to “COVID-19 spread placing employees, students, and families at risk along with excessive staff shortages.” The kicker? The district informed families there would be no in-person nor online learning available: “We simply cannot go online districtwide… because all of our students do not have laptops.”

One has to wonder what the district did with the additional $1.3 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funding it received last year—equivalent to $26,400 per student—according to the Mackinac Center.

In Massachusetts, the head of the state affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers is pushing for a return to remote instruction, wrongly arguing that returning to school for in-person learning “will inevitably make the [COVID-19] crisis much worse.”

According to a school tracker maintained by Burbio, as of early December, just 336 schools were closed. That figure now stands at over 3,200.

It would be much easier to keep believing in public education if our public educators did.

DOMINC GREEN: Antony Blinken’s soundtrack to failure.

Antony Blinken, the secretary of state and first guitarist, has broken with the tired protocols of the past, faced the complexities of the multipolar twenty-first century world, and issued a Spotify playlist. This may be a better way of reaching new audiences than bombing them. But shouldn’t public figures be judged on their records, not their record collections?

“The thread that runs throughout my life is probably music,” Blinken told Rolling Stone last year as he meditated his mixtape. Hitler would probably have said the same about painting had Rolling Stone been around to profile the Viennese amateur who was turning the art world upside down. George Kennan would probably not have said the same, but then, Kennan was the career diplomat whose strategy of containment won the Cold War, not a self-publicizing amateur who can’t contain his own self-regard.

Blinken argues that music “transcends borders.”

Well, not all borders: After Taliban’s Takeover, Piano And Other Musical Instruments Destroyed In Afghanistan.

I’m sure they’re keen fans of Western modernist art, however:

21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: Deep Learning Can’t Be Trusted, Brain Modeling Pioneer Says.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: John Nolte: The 355 Is Another Woketard Box Office Flop.

The 355 does deserve credit for not pulling a Ghostbusters, for coming up with an original franchise and not hijacking a male-driven one, but does a single second of this trailer make you want to go out in the cold, drive to a movie theater, and plunk down $40?

Who in the world is this movie made for?

The liars in the entertainment media will tell you, It’s about time we had a female-driven action movie! How long are we going to continue to buy into that con? Women have been kicking butt in movies for 50 years. Ask Pam Grier about that. The problem is that the whole idea of 85-pound women taking down 210-pound men is becoming a tired cliché, but nowhere near as tired as the propaganda that says this is something new.

* * * * * * * * *

Who would want to spend two hours with five grim, joyless, smug women?

Most of all, where’s the sex?

You cast five beautiful women in a grab-ass spy movie and there’s not a single shot of T&A? Are you insane?

Plus, the whole vibe is stridently anti-male, so there goes half your audience.

Gee, remember when movies like this were fun and sexy and liked men and were desperate to entertain and went on to make $125 million?

The 355 will be lucky to clear $15 million — a movie that likely cost $60 million to produce and at least that amount to promote probably won’t clear $50 million worldwide.

I assume the Chinese spy was added so that the movie could play there to help its box office, but other than, possibly, Death on the Nile (cough, Gal Gadot, cough), I can’t think of a single film previewed in the endless trailers before the last Spider-Man movie that I thought, “Yeah, I want to see that on the big screen.” For an industry that suddenly has to work very hard to lure a mass audience back to movie theaters, Hollywood sure seems to be phoning it in, post-lockdowns.

I HAD MISSED THIS: Drink up! NYC Council ‘legalizes’ distillery industry.

UM: Tesla increases price of Full-Self Driving to $12,000 as demand wanes.

NBC’S SAVANNAH GUTHRIE ANNOUNCES POSITIVE COVID-19 TEST.

Flashback to April: NBC’s ‘Confusion’ Over Red States Handling COVID Better Than Blue States.

In another tease minutes later, [Hoda] Kotb promoted “an inside look at the nation’s confounding trends when it comes to the coronavirus.” Fellow co-host Savannah Guthrie explained: “Yeah, we’re going to go behind the numbers and find out why there’s a surge in certain states and a decline in others, and why people in those states could be getting a false sense of security.”

Introducing the segment in the 7:30 a.m. ET half hour, co-host Craig Melvin again declared that “the trends in COVID cases across the country that have health officials really scratching their heads.” Guthrie chimed in: “Yeah, some states with stricter rules are now seeing surges and then many that were reopened right away and abandoned mask mandates are experiencing sizable drops.”

Related: AOC has COVID:

Notice how libs aren’t attacking her for running around Miami without a mask. Notice how her enablers in the media aren’t acting like getting sick is some sort of moral failing. Notice how none of them are screaming that she’s killing Grandma.

That’s because she’s 1) a fellow Democrat, and 2) a healthy, vaccinated young woman who will be mildly sick for a few days. Then she’ll be fine. It’s not a big deal. She’s gonna be okay, and so are you. Calm down.

Here’s wishing AOC a speedy recovery, so she can blame Ron DeSantis and make Republicans want to elect him president in 2024.

Earlier: The Laptop Class Gets COVID.

VIRGINIA CLOWN SHOW UPDATE: The Washington Post wonders How Ralph Northam Survived His Scandals:

Of course, it’s no big mystery how Northam remained in office. If Northam had resigned or the state legislature removed him from office, the lieutenant governor would take over – and the lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax, was facing two serious accusations of sexual assault. (The Virginia House Democratic Caucus argued that “the allegations against Lieutenant Governor Fairfax are extremely serious,” and also that the state legislature should not investigate the allegations.) If Northam and Fairfax resigned, then state attorney general Mark Harring would be governor — and Harring admitted he had worn blackface to a college party in 1980.

If Northam, Fairfax, and Harring had all resigned simultaneously, then the speaker of the House of Delegates at that time – Republican Kirk Cox – would become governor. And Virginia Democrats believed that a Republican governor was much worse than blackface, wearing a Klan hood, or allegations of past sexual assault.

As apparently (very apparently) does the Washington Post: Ralph Northam and the Washington Post — a story in three acts.

HYPERVELOCITY: Real shooting stars look a lot different than you’d expect.