CHIEFS WIN THE SUPER BOWL. Is there anything Taylor Swift can’t do?

ATTACK AND DEFENSE: My latest Substack essay is on the prospects for a 10/7 attack on America, and what to do about them.

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IT’S COME TO THIS: Yes, really: Disinvited from California Super Bowl party just for cheering the Chiefs. “We’ve lost our bloomin’ minds, Part 999: A friend of ours in California was invited to please stay home from a Super Bowl watch party there because he and his wife favored the Chiefs. You know, because this unacceptable allegiance might have made some 49ers fans at the football fête uncomfortable. Comfort is overrated, people, and becoming more so all the time.”

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Polaris Dawn private astronaut mission slips to mid-2024.

GUESS WHO’S AT THE SUPER BOWL? That Kid Who Got Smeared as a Racist by Deadspin.

SUPER BOWL 2024 LIVE UPDATES: Travis Kelce yells at Andy Reid in shocking scene as 49ers expand lead with trick-play TD.

Related: Question asked:

Why would Travis Kelce act like this? pic.twitter.com/zM0l1UYRbt

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) February 12, 2024

UPDATE:

The Mocking of Christ, by Carl Heinrich Bloch, 1880, 📸 via @BleacherReport pic.twitter.com/Pelq6S4RzU

— ArtButMakeItSports (@ArtButSports) February 12, 2024

WHEN JOBS GO SOUTH: This small New York village made guns for 200 years. What happens when Remington leaves? “Remington is consolidating its operations in Georgia, a state the company says is friendlier to the firearms industry.”

YES, YES I HAVE: “Have you noticed that Michelle Obama was, less than 24 hours ago, up to #3 in the betting markets for likelihood of being the next U.S. President? She was at about 7%. Now it is Gavin Newsom who is #3 at about ten percent. At the same time, the NYT Editorial page, other MSM sources, and Hillary Clinton all seem to be turning on Biden, on the issue of age of course. I would not place too much emphasis on that seven percent number, or that ten percent number, as I suspect there is private information at work here.”

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: New prosthetic hand provides realistic sense of temperature.

I PRAY THAT THIS IS FAKE NEWS:  Beware, a Cheese Crisis Looms.

I’M SURE THEY WANT TO PULL A TORRICELLI, BUT IT’S TOUGH: Could Democrats replace Biden as their nominee?

Both parties have moved away from the era when insiders in proverbial smoke-filled rooms could be kingmakers at the national conventions, and Biden has dominated every primary he’s competed in thus far. . . .

Still, the DNC Charter does make provisions in case the party’s nominee is incapacitated or opts to step aside, and an anti-Biden coup at the convention is theoretically possible, if highly unlikely. So how would it work?

Biden has said he will remain in the race and there is no indication otherwise, but the only plausible scenario for Democrats to get a new nominee would be for Biden to decide to withdraw.

He could do so while serving out the remainder of his term in the White House, as Lyndon Johnson did in 1968.

If Biden were to drop out between now and August, it would most likely create a free-for-all at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.

If Biden calls it quits before he wins the majority of the Democratic delegates, it likely wouldn’t make a difference. Any new candidate who tried to enter the race would be unlikely to get on enough of the remaining ballots and therefore couldn’t win enough delegates.

Ultimately the decision would likely come down to the convention delegates who were initially pledged to Biden.

It takes a majority of the roughly 4,000 pledged delegates to win the party’s nomination. Under recent reforms, the party’s more than 700 superdelegates — Democratic lawmakers and dignitaries — are allowed to vote only if no one wins a majority of pledged delegates on the first ballot, so their votes could be crucial in a contested convention.

Related: “Jill Biden and his other advisers come up with ways to obscure signs of senescence — from shorter news conferences to almost zero print interviews to TV interviews mainly with fawning MSNBC anchors…. [T]he Biden crew clearly has no plan for how to deal with the president’s age except to shield him and hide him and browbeat reporters who point out that his mental state… is a genuine issue.”

But it is, and they can’t hide it anymore.

It was an issue in 2020 too, but they could hide it. Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

BILL ACKMAN DISCOVERS THE GELL-MANN AMNESIA EFFECT:

I am sure all of us have had the experience of reading a story about a subject you know well and finding it replete with inaccuracies and falsehoods. One then turns the page and reads an article about a subject one knows less well and makes the mistake of believing that this…

— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) February 11, 2024

I’ve enjoyed watching him gradually become red-pilled.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: NBC: Taylor Swift arrives in Las Vegas for Super Bowl.

With the help of Tokyo’s 17-hour time difference ahead of Las Vegas, Swift had a window of more than 35 hours to cover the 5,500-mile journey to watch her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, face off against the San Francisco 49ers in the 58th Super Bowl Sunday evening.

Despite buzzy speculation about the tight travel plans, many fans weren’t too worried about her ability to make it. The Japanese Embassy in Washington, D.C., even issued a social media statement earlier this month expressing confidence that the pop star would “comfortably arrive” at her destination if she departed after her concert, which on Saturday ended at around 9 p.m. local time.

“We know that many people in Japan are excited to experience Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, so we wanted to confirm that anyone concerned can be Fearless in knowing that this talented performer can wow Japanese audiences and still make it to Las Vegas to support the Chiefs when they take the field for the Super Bowl wearing Red,” the embassy wrote, referencing albums of Swift’s.

Saturday afternoon in Los Angeles, online sleuths spotted what they believed to be a private or chartered jet containing Swift — who has been the subject of intense scrutiny and criticism for her outsize carbon emissions as a frequent domestic and international traveler — touch down at LAX.

From there, she traveled to Las Vegas, where she is all set to cheer on her 13th (her lucky number) Chiefs game of the season.

Hey, remember back in 2007 when NBC tried to shame football fans for having too many lights on? (Except for the billions of watts of klieg lights illuminating the NFL stadium in Philadelphia. And, err, the lighted Toyota sign, since they were sponsoring SNF.) I remember:

GREAT MOMENTS IN RADICAL CHIC: Hamas a future partner for peace, says Northern Ireland’s First Minister.

AND AGAIN: Lloyd Austin taken to hospital ‘for symptoms suggesting an emergent bladder issue.’ Defense Secretary Austin’s hospital trip “comes a month after he had an extended hospital stay due to complications in treating prostate cancer. The two-week hospitalization in January caused uproar after many officials within the Pentagon, the White House, Congress, and the public were not notified of his hospitalization for days.”

OUT: FOLLOW THE SCIENCE, PEASANTS! IN: He Hunts Sloppy Scientists. He’s Finding Lots of Prey.

BE PREPARED: TROND Travel Power Strip, 2-in-1 Detachable Portable Charging Station with 3 AC Outlet. #CommissionEarned

CHOOSE YOUR ADVENTURE: 52 predictions for how Chiefs-49ers Super Bowl will play out.