CRACKS IN THE EMPIRE: Biden ICE Director Bucks White House, Calls Sanctuary Cities ‘Inherently Unsafe.’

WELL, YES: Anonymous Democrats on the Special Counsel Report: ‘It’s a Nightmare’ and ‘Beyond Devastating.’

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

SO I FINISHED ANDREW WAREHAM’S The Last Campaign the other day, and honestly it’s the first Wareham book that disappointed me. It’s okay, but it reads like he was just trying to bring the series to a finish. The Battle of Kohima, which it ostensibly revolves around, gets short shrift at the end, which is too bad as it’s probably the most important battle of World War II that no one knows about. Lots of buildup, lots of snarking at dumb upper-class Brits, but not nearly enough actually happens. Well, they can’t all be gems.

On the other hand, I’m now reading Kurt Schlichter’s The Attack, about a large scale 10/7 style attack in America, and it doesn’t disappoint at all. The World War Z style oral history was a genius move, and works really well. My only complaint is that I’m an “escape reader” and this is frighteningly plausible and realistic.

OPEN THREAD: Ring in the weekend. Or as we say around Stately Instapundit Manor, “thank God it’s Friday, only two more working days until Monday!”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Beijing government releases commercial space action plan.

WELL, HE’S GOT A POINT:

You’re wrong. Joe Biden will jail or kill you given the chance. Not exactly as Putin will, but he will. In fact, he threatens to. And the persecution of the January 6 political prisoners, abortion, protesters, and others, proves it.

Given the chance, Joe Biden would do exactly… https://t.co/j5SR095I12

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) February 9, 2024

Plus:

He won’t kill you, but he might jail you. (There would be a pretext, of course, such as that you prayed at an abortion clinic, took a selfie in the Capitol, or posted a meme he didn’t like.) https://t.co/MyfNZ2brIt

— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) February 9, 2024

SPACE: SpaceX sends 22 Starlink satellites into orbit from West Coast.

I WONDER IF HE’LL BE RELEASED WITHOUT BAIL? ‘Armed and dangerous’ teen migrant from Venezuela cries after arrest over chaotic Times Square shooting that injured tourist. “He is also a suspect in a gunpoint robbery in the Bronx from Jan. 27, and another incident in which shots were fired at a park on 45th Street in Midtown on Jan. 25, police said.”

They’re not sending us their best.

BRAIN SCIENCE: “If you feel like the people around you have never appreciated you, the superior colliculus understands.”

ALSO, IT’S A BIT LARGE FOR CONCEALED CARRY: “When I was a young man, the .44 Mag. was really hot stuff. Everybody that was anybody owned and shot them. By selling off a few guns and generally being careful of my spending, I managed to purchase a brand-new Smith & Wesson 4-inch Model 29, a beautiful handgun. That experience quickly revealed that I was not now, nor ever going to be Elmer Keith, Jr.”

SECONDS SAVE LIVES: Chance of surviving cardiac arrest with CPR plummets as minutes pass.

YES, THEY SHOULD. Americans Should Be Less Complacent About Social Security. We are fast approaching a fundamental restructuring of the program that would abandon its historic design and place future benefits at risk.

READER FAVORITE: Apple AirPods Pro (2nd Generation) Wireless Ear Buds. #CommissionEarned

I LIKE THE R8 AND AM GLAD IT’S HANGING AROUND A BIT LONGER: Audi R8 Endures Delayed Demise to Satisfy Demand. “Perhaps if the company gets a rash of phone calls from people desperate to get what is arguably the brand’s most iconic model in decades we’ll hear about production stopping near the end of summer.” I can’t help but notice that they’re also delaying the production of an electric-car successor.

DISNEY V. DEMOCRACY: A Public Choice and Good Governance Analysis of Florida’s Reedy Creek Improvement Act of 1967 and Its Resulting Regime.

In particular the insights from public choice theory are applied to the 1967 Act, the RCID, and Disney for the first time in any substantial way as a matter of academic inquiry. As part of its work, the Report identifies the types of “masks” that Disney has used to obscure the private nature of the legislative deals it has profited from by attempting to clothe the 1967 Act and RCID authority in public interest-sounding frames. This Report also explores the scholarly literature explaining why agencies with single-industry-enhancing purposes or a single- or primary-entity constituency, like the RCID, tend to be captured by entities they govern.

I think all of Florida was captured by Disney for quite a while.

DO CAMPUS SPORTS DO MORE GOOD THAN HARM? I suspect they do at the small colleges the author discusses, but turning large college athletics into a minor league for pro teams has been a big mistake.

I MISS THE DAYS OF DDT: Getting rid of bed bugs is trickier than ever.

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: As God Is My Witness I Thought Trucks Could Surf. “It’s your much-needed break from the serious news and this week we have New York Man stealing Florida Man’s waves, how not to invest $31,000 of other people’s money, and an invaluable lesson in how not to lie low.”

WAIT, THEY HAD SUVS BACK THEN? Ice cores provide first documentation of rapid Antarctic ice loss in the past.

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Shoplifters open fire on security guard in New York City’s busy Times Square hitting an innocent bystander in the leg and sending tourists fleeing for cover.

TUCKER CARLSON SERVES UP A STEAMING BOWL OF “STFU” TO HATEFUL DNC STENOGRAPHERS: When the mainstream media learned that Carlson would have a one-on-one interview with Vladimir Putin, they pretty much lost their minds.

The almost always wrong Daily Beast columnist and observer of Russian media Julia Davis wrote that:

“[B]eing able to show that a well-known American figure is willing to bend the knee to an international pariah is a great opportunity for Putin to re-assert his dominance and standing.”

Davis and other media “experts” were certain that Carlson would genuflect, and throw nothing but softballs to Putin.

(Yes, we’re still waiting for that Daily Beast story about Joe Biden’s rapidly diminishing mental capacity. Anyhoo…)

One has to keep in mind that Carlson — a genuine patriot — has been unfairly vilified as a boogeyman by legislators and DNC lapdogs in the media.

Former congressman Adam Kinzinger completely lost his sh*t, saying that Carlson “is a traitor.” I remember watching the brain-damaged Adam Schiff accusing Carlson on live television of “carrying water for the Kremlin.”

They were wrong. All of them.

After the much ballyhooed interview, even The New York Times had to point out that:

“In an interview released on Thursday, Tucker Carlson urged President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to release an American reporter for The Wall Street Journal who has been held in a notorious Moscow prison for nearly a year […] Mr. Carlson asked, “as a sign of your decency,” if he “would be willing to release him to us and we’ll bring him back to the United States.” Mr. Carlson added: “This guy’s obviously not a spy. He’s a kid, and maybe he was breaking your law in some way, but he’s not a superspy, and everybody knows that.”

Now why hasn’t the Committee to Protect Journalists urged White House reporters to ask Joe Biden about the ongoing grand jury against Julian Assange?

You know the answer. The ignorant mophead who pretends to be the Press Secretary for the White House would simply ignore it, calling it a “rabbit hole.” And The New York Times, Washington Post, et. als, will happily abide.

SCIENCE MARCHES ON: Scientists gain new insights into how small intestine works.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Human Rights Lawyer: UNRWA Is ‘Terrorism-Infested.’

READER FAVORITE: Yes4All Kettlebell Vinyl Coated Cast Iron – Great for Dumbbell Weights Exercises. #CommissionEarned

DEEP SEVENS: Floridians feel magnitude 4 earthquake with epicenter off state’s east coast.