YES: Should the Charges Against Mayor Adams Now Be Dismissed With Prejudice … Because of Prosecutorial Misconduct?

WITH MORE TO COME, YOU CAN BE SURE: More Woke Craziness Uncovered by DOGE.

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, AI IS NOTHING TO GET EXCITED ABOUT…  Using Tools Wisely.

Because of when and where I grew up, I remember when ball point pens were the tech that would destroy the world. Radio was the tech that would destroy the world. And that was before TV and computers.  Chill. It’s a tool.

I MEAN, YEAH. “A gay publicist who only agreed to speak to me anonymously suggested that one reason some gays are drawn to the right wing is that it’s simply more fun. Democrats are the ‘most killjoy people on earth,’ he said.”

HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE NEIGHBORING STATES:  Hochul ruthlessly dismisses Garden State’s congestion pricing concerns: ‘What do we care what New Jersey thinks?

I’M NOT SURE WHAT “FA” STANDS FOR BUT AT A GUESS THE “A” IS FOR ALL:  What can Starmer offer the Don? Sweet FA.

WHEN DID DEMOCRATS REVERT TO BEING NATIVISM?  Dem Congresswoman: Musk Can’t Be Trusted Because He’s an Immigrant.

They’re spicy because he came here legally!

UP, DOWN, FORWARD, BACKWARD, AND SIDEWAYS:  WaPo’s Top Political Reporter Details How Dems Are Totally Screwed Right Now.

IT’S BEEN TIME FOR A WHILE:  It’s time to scrap the asylum system.

SHE WANTED VISIBILITY FOR THIS THREAD:  Before America was even born, and before there was even the first American, the Islamic world ruled at the time by the Ottoman Empire began a campaign of terror against the British of piracy and terror, taking thousands of British sailors and citizens hostage, enslaving them, and demanding high ransom. For two centuries since the late 1500’s, the British didn’t fully fight back and would pay the highest ransom for the release of many hostages and for the protection of various of the Barbary nations.

“FORCED” TO RELEASE HIM UNDER OBAMA, AND NOBODY HAS GOTTEN MEXICO TO GIVE QUINTERO BACK. BUT TRUMP MANAGES IT AFTER A MONTH BACK IN OFFICE:  Mexico sends drug lord Caro Quintero and 28 others to the US as officials meet with Trump team.

I’m torn between ‘nature is healing’ and ‘funny how that happens.’

IT’S BEEN KNOWN FOR 100 YEARS THAT MASKS DON’T WORK:  If “masks work”, why don’t they work? New research suggests the reason.

IT’S AN UGLY TRUTH:  The Truth About ‘Woke’ (It’s a Video).

IT’S MORE THAN HIGH TIME. NO ARISTOCRACY OF BIRTH MEANS NO PREFERENCES FOR CHARACTERISTICS THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH COMPETENCE:  If this happens, it’s a long time coming.

ME TOO:  “I’ve Had it Up to Here” .

THE ENSLAVED “PIG-BUTCHERING” SCAMMERS IN MYANMAR ARE BEING FREED:   ‘I need help’: Freed from Myanmar’s scam centres, thousands are now stranded.

THEY HAVE A LOT OF EXPLAINING TO DO:  Holding Government Accountable.

IOW, it’s time the boss came home. And we’re the boss!

OPEN THREAD: Disport yourselves in the comments.

METAPHOR ALERT: Movie theater ceiling collapses during screening of Captain America: Brave New World.

Two moviegoers got an extra taste of action Tuesday night — and not just from their choice to view “Captain America: Brave New World.”

During a showing of the latest Marvel flick at Liberty Cinema in downtown Wenatchee, Washington, the theater’s ceiling collapsed onto the audience, local officials said.

The Wenatchee Fire Department responded at about 8 p.m. Tuesday, finding two people in attendance. It said in a statement that no injuries were reported.

Having virtually no audience certainly increases those odds! Deadpool Creator Says Kevin Feige ‘Should Get Off the Mound. He’s Spent’ as Captain America: Brave New World Suffers Huge Box Office Drop.

DISPATCHES FROM ABC NEWS: Joy Behar Accuses Musk of Being ‘Pro-Apartheid,’ Begs Not to Be Sued.

The liberals are everything they accuse conservatives of being. During the Thursday edition of ABC’s The View, co-host Joy Behar went on an anti-immigrant tirade directed at billionaire Elon Musk. She viciously attacked him for being born in South Africa – something he had no choice in, accused him – without evidence – of being “pro-apartheid,” a “foreign agent” and “enemy of the United States,” and when she finally was told he was a naturalized citizen, she scoffed and wondered if he came in illegally.

And in an apparent attempt at heading off a possible defamation suit, she begged Musk not to sue her* while weakly walking back only one of the baseless accusations.

Behar was coming unglued as she bloviated about how “Elon Musk kisses [President Donald Trump’s] butt and strokes his tiny ego or big ego, whatever it is.”

She apparently though people born elsewhere were beneath her and that only Americans born in the country should work for the government. She sneered as she decried how Musk “was not born in this country.”

And despite the fact that Musk was a child during and through the end of apartheid, Behar claimed it was something he embraced: “[He] was born under apartheid in South Africa, so has that mentality going on. He was pro-apartheid as I understand it!”

* Flashback: ABC, Stephanopoulos Must Apologize to Trump, Pay $15 Million to Settle Defamation Suit.

Maybe ABC News needs a Tesla full of lawyers to follow the ladies from the View around whenever they’re planning to hyperventilate about Musk:

CHANGE: Jeff Bezos Announces Major Changes to Washington Post Opinion Page as Top Editor Resigns.

TRUMP WON’T SAY IF HE’LL APOLOGIZE TO ZELENSKYY FOR CALLING HIM A ‘DICTATOR:’

Last week, Mr. Trump called Mr. Zelenskyy a “dictator,” escalating tensions between the two. The comment came after the Ukrainian president accused Mr. Trump of living in a Russian “disinformation bubble.”

Related:

● Not Smart: Zelenskyy Just Blocked Truth Social in Ukraine.

● Ukraine’s Zelensky stays in power despite term expiring.

● Ukraine’s election day dawned with no vote in sight and little appetite for one – for now, anyway.

● Why hasn’t Ukraine held elections since the war began?

NOT DEAD YET: Virgin Galactic to start assembly of first new spaceplane in March.

RIP: Russian chess grandmaster Boris Spassky dies aged 88.

57 YEARS AGO TODAY: The ‘Cronkite Moment’ of 1968: Remembering why it’s a media myth.

CBS News anchorman Walter Cronkite presented a prime-time report about the war in Vietnam and declared in closing that the U.S. military effort was “mired in stalemate” and that negotiations might eventually offer a way out.

It was a tepid analysis, hardly novel. But over the years, Cronkite’s assessment has swelled in importance, taking on the aura of a vital, media-inspired turning point. It is so singularly important in American journalism that it has come to be called the “Cronkite Moment.”

In reality it is a moment steeped in media myth.

Notable among the myths of the “Cronkite Moment” is that President Lyndon B. Johnson watched the program and, upon hearing the anchorman’s comment about “stalemate,” snapped off the television and told an aide or aides something to this effect:

“If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” (Versions vary.)

Cronkite’s remarks supposedly were an epiphany to the president, who realized his war policy was a shambles.

The account of the anchorman’s telling hard truth to power is irresistible to journalists, representing a memorable instance of media influence and power.

But Cronkite’s program on February 27, 1968, hardly had decisive effects. Here’s why (this rundown is adapted from a chapter about the “Cronkite Moment” in my media myth-busting book, Getting It Wrong):

Read the whole thing.

As for Vietnam post-LBJ, here are the Brothers Judd on Lewis Sorley’s 1999 book, A Better War:

The basic premise of the book is that late in 1970 or early in 1971 the United States had essentially won the Vietnam War.  That is to say, we had defeated the Viet Cong in the field, returned effective control of most of the population to the South Vietnamese and created a situation where the South Vietnamese armed forces could continue the war on their own, so long as we provided them with adequate supplies and intelligence, and carried through on our promise to bomb the North if they violated peace agreements.  This situation had been brought about by the changes in strategy and tactics which were implemented by Army General Creighton Abrams when he replaced William Westmoreland in 1968, after the military triumph but public relations disaster of the Tet Offensive.  Where Westmoreland had treated the War as simply a military exercise, Abrams understood its political dimensions.  Abrams, who had worked on developing a new war plan at the Pentagon, ended Westmoreland’s emphasis on body counts and destroying the enemy and switched the focus to regaining control of villages.  He understood that eventual victory required civilian support for the South Vietnamese government and this support required the government to provide villagers with physical security from the Viet Cong.

Abrams was accompanied in implementing this new approach by Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and by William Colby, the new CIA chief in Saigon, who provided greatly improved intelligence reports and oversaw the pacification program.  Together they managed to salvage the wreckage that Westmoreland had left behind and they retrieved the situation even as Washington was drawing down troop levels.  In 1972, with the Viet Cong essentially eliminated as an effective fighting force, the North Vietnamese mounted a massive Easter offensive, but this too was decisively defeated.

Having failed to achieve their aims militarily, the North Vietnamese turned their attention to the Paris Peace Talks.  They were extraordinarily fortunate to be dealing with Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, two opportunists of the worst sort, who were willing to negotiate a deal which left the North with troops in South Vietnam.  When President Thieu balked at this and threatened to scuttle the talks, the North backed off of the whole deal and Nixon ordered the 1972 Christmas bombings of Hanoi.  For eleven days, waves of B-52’s, each carrying 108 500-pound and 750-pound bombs, pummeled the North.  For perhaps the only time during the entire War, the North was subjected to total war, and they were forced to return to the negotiating table.  Sorley cites Sir Robert Thompson’s assessment that :

“In my view, on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attacks on the Hanoi area, you had won the war.  It was over.”

At that point, the Viet Cong had been destroyed, we had definitely won the insurgency phase of the War.  Additionally, the North had been defeated in the initial phase of conventional warfare, and had finally had the War brought home to them in a significant way.  Though the overall War was certainly not over, it was sitting there, just waiting to be won.

So what happened ?  Sorley has identified several problem areas that led to the eventual demise of the South.  First was the really disgraceful way in which the U. S. bugged out.

Speaking of which, for its Biden-approved denouement, Prager U: