AMSTERDAM PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1939 AGAIN: Amsterdam Comedy Club Tells Israeli Comic to Perform in ‘Jewish Venues.’
Related:
Author Archive: Ed Driscoll
January 22, 2025
THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Mufasa Is Everything Wrong With Modern Movies (Video).
Earlier: Inside Disney’s Cynical, Soul-Sucking Remake Machine.
THIS IS THE WAY:
Pierre Poilievre is easily the best politician at handling the media.
This is yet another masterclass. https://t.co/UO0pl2sKOC
— Samuel Sey (@SlowToWrite) January 22, 2025
WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY:
Bishop Mariann Budde tells "The View": Attacking Trump during prayer service was about "unity" pic.twitter.com/vOZ0BpSXsM
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 22, 2025
GREAT MOMENTS IN DISPASSIONATE, OBJECTIVE JOURNALISM: Press Outlets Accuse Pete Hegseth of Domestic Abuse, but His Ex-Wife Nukes Them.
On the surface, this seems serious. After all, there’s an on-record source making the claim, which is a step up from most press allegations these days. Surely, this is going to sink Hegseth’s nomination, right?
There’s just one problem: Hegseth’s second wife, the one supposedly abused, is unequivocally denying the allegations and threatening to get her lawyer involved.
How do you run that story with a straight face? pic.twitter.com/58DkgSTWlF
— JD Vance (@JDVance) January 21, 2025
And so, it’s come to this:
The Press: “Misinformation is a danger to democracy.”
Also the Press: “We are going to publish allegations that Pete Hegseth beat his ex-wife even though she told us they are completely false.”
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) January 22, 2025
UPDATE: New: Hegseth Attorney Blasts Smear Attempt as Concocted by Dems.
STEVE HAYWARD: In Re: Curtis Yarvin.
From here it is obvious that [Timesman David Marchese] is desperate to change the subject because he realizes that Yarvin, good-natured and patient throughout, will keep running circles around him. Marchese tries, on a couple of occasions, to suggest Yarvin is “cherry-picking” his historical illumination, but what is clear is that Marchese doesn’t even have a minimal background to contest Yarvin on either the facts or how they should be interpreted. Marchese is a museum-quality example of glib liberal ignorance.
There’s lots more, and I recommend watching the entire interview on YouTube below, even though it is nearly an hour long. Yarvin totally exposes the supercilious, presumptuous character of the New York Times “reporters” like Marchese. I’m pretty sure Marchese left this interview, reached in his pocket, and said, “Hey—where’s my lunch money??”
I’m not sure if I agree with with Yarvin’s take — I have no problem viewing the president as something akin to a CEO or (a term-limited) monarch — I just wished he had a much smaller business or fiefdom to run.
In any case, this quote from the Times’ profile is an unintentional riot:
Pretty funny that the first “extreme” idea that the NYT cites is something that basically every mainstream conservative believes pic.twitter.com/tZMKP9qQit
— Nate Hochman (@njhochman) January 18, 2025
Trump may be getting the memo from Yarvin, incidentally:
The reason I went with DeSantis in the primary was that he understood how to use executive power.
Trump never used his power, but instead listened to all the wrong people who convinced him POTUS couldn't really do anything because they wanted to rein him in.
Not anymore.
Trump…
— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) January 22, 2025
TROUBLE IN PARADISE? Matt Margolis asks: Are the Obamas Headed for Divorce?
Whispers of marital discord began after Michelle Obama notably missed former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral. Her office offered no explanation for her absence, only that she had a “scheduling conflict,” but CNN reported that she was in Hawaii on “extended vacation.”
Something didn’t quite make sense there.
Then there was the decision to skip Trump’s inauguration. It was viewed by many as a political statement. Allies of Michelle said she wanted “nothing to do with a man undeserving of the presidency and is making no effort to hide her disdain for Trump.”
“She meant every word she said on the campaign trail with every fiber of her being,” one source told The Hill. “And she’s no hypocrite.”
It was a perfectly believable explanation, though considering she attended Trump’s first inauguration back in 2017. Had she attended Carter’s funeral, the explanation for her absence might be more believable, but missing both of those events raises major questions.
The Daily Mail notes that there have been rumors about Barack Obama and a Hollywood actress.
Meanwhile, there appears to be no strength through joy in camp Kamala these days: Inside former VP Kamala Harris marriage turmoil as Doug Emhoff’s scandals are blamed for losing presidency.
CHURCHILL BUST RETURNS TO OVAL OFFICE:
BREAKING: President @realDonaldTrump has (again) returned Sir Winston Churchill to the Oval Office. Both Obama & Biden removed him. Thank you, Mr President – we Brits are very appreciative. pic.twitter.com/JFftIVUkN8
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 21, 2025
Flashbacks: Nigel Farage: Why Does Barack Obama’s White House Hate The United Kingdom?
“Many observers seem puzzled. I’m not and neither is the UK press. It’s about Kenya,” the blogger Baldilocks noted in March of 2009 when the Churchill bust was drop-shipped to Downing Street and Obama stiffed then-PM Gordon Brown.
To ask why Team Biden removed the bust again in 2021 is to answer the question of who was really running the White House over the last four years.
TRUMP TEARS INTO LEFTY DC BISHOP WHO ASKED HIM TO ‘HAVE MERCY’ DURING NATIONAL PRAYER SERVICE SERMON:
President Trump on Wednesday tore into the “nasty” Democratic bishop who lectured him at the National Prayer Service — as the church leader confirmed she was sending him a political message.
Trump rip after having to sit through Tuesday’s service in which the Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde — the Episcopal bishop of DC — turned it into a rant about illegal migrants, refugees and the LGBT community.
“The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account just after midnight.
“She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way,” he said — saying she did so in a “nasty” tone that was “not compelling or smart.”
But very much Disney-approved:
ITS ORIGIN AND PURPOSE, STILL A TOTAL MYSTERY: What really motivated Axel Rudakubana?
Axel Rudakubana has pleaded guilty to murdering three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport last summer, a crime that left Britain understandably horrified and led to days of inexcusable rioting.
The 18-year-old had originally pleaded not guilty to all charges. But on what was due to be the first day of his trial at Liverpool Crown Court on Monday, he changed his pleas to guilty.
* * * * * * * * *
Part of the blame for this lies with the UK government. Its censorious and narrowly legalistic response to the attack, which limited what the public was allowed to know, created a vacuum in which wild theories and outright lies could flourish. All the authorities were prepared to say in the immediate aftermath of Rudakubana’s arrest was that the killings were ‘not being treated as terror-related’.
However, recent revelations suggest it was not unreasonable to suspect a terrorist motive. We now know that Rudakubana had downloaded an al-Qaeda training manual and had also attempted to produce Ricin, a biological toxin. Furthermore, since his guilty plea, it has emerged that he had been referred to Prevent, the government’s counter-extremism programme, on three separate occasions. He was first referred in 2019 when he was 13, and a further two referrals were made in 2021, all when he was a schoolboy living in Lancashire.
From this it is fair to infer that the attack could have been terror-related. Yet, seven months on, there is still no conclusive evidence as to Rudakubana’s motive. Indeed, the referrals to Prevent were born of concerns around his fascination with violence generally. He poured over materials on school shootings, wars and genocides. It is still not clear if he was attached to any particular ideology. He had been raised a Catholic and there is no evidence of any interest in Islamism, beyond the downloading of the al-Qaeda training manual.
Prime minister Keir Starmer has now ordered a public inquiry into the Southport attack. This may shed further light on what drove Rudakubana to commit this atrocity and how the state failed to stop him. But we are a long way from proving that he acted with a terrorist motive.
Perhaps the knife just went off: ‘Disgrace’ that Axel Rudakubana could buy a knife on Amazon. “Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, said it was ‘a total disgrace’ that Axel Rudakubana was ‘easily able to order a knife on Amazon’ despite being aged 17 and having a conviction for violence. It is illegal to sell knives to under-18s.”
Yes, I’m shaking my head as well over that last quote. But as Robert Tracinski predicted in 2018 at the Federalist: Britain’s Knife Control Is A Bad, Real-Life Parody Of Gun Control.
January 21, 2025
METROPOLIS’ NEWSPAPER OF RECORD IS SUPERMAN-APPROVED!
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Joe Biden‘s shocking response to his demands that the White House do something about the migrant crisis was to ‘be a good Democrat, Eric.’
Which is surprisingly excellent advice from Dementia Joe!
—Twitchy, December 28, 2018.
● “Trump took to Twitter on Thursday to remind Democrats that even former President Barack Obama spoke out against illegal immigration. Trump dug up a 2011 tweet from former President Obama which said: ‘I strongly believe that we should take on, once and for all, the issue of illegal immigration.’ ‘I totally agree!’ Trump wrote, retweeting the former president.”
—The Daily Caller, December 27, 2018.
—Hot Air, October 30, 2018.
—Instapundit, January 31, 2017.
DANA PRETENDS THAT “UNDOCUMENTED” ISN’T A LEFTIST EUPHEMISM FOR “ILLEGAL:”
Watch Dana Bash do a double-take in shock and horror as Tom Homan explains to her that an illegal alien doesn’t have to be convicted of a serious crime to face deportation.
Amazing stuff. pic.twitter.com/QdNAgOhyEe
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) January 21, 2025
HOLLYWOOD WAS ALREADY IN TROUBLE. THEN DISASTER STRUCK LA:
For months, rank-and-file TV and film workers relied on a mantra to get themselves through a dark time in the industry: “Survive till ’25.”
The slogan came after a stint that included the pandemic, strikes by actors and writers, the long and costly pivot to streaming and the continued migration of industry jobs out of Los Angeles. Hope glimmered for January, with theatrical releases on the runway and shoots in full swing.
Then came the wildfires.
“It’s sort of been the perfect storm,’” says film and TV editor Andrew Kasch, a 20-year Los Angeles veteran who, after a year of unemployment, was giving himself just 12 more months to find work or leave the city. “The people who work on the biggest shows and movies are going to continue to be fine—it’s the rest of us facing an existential crisis.”
Though his home was unscathed, the fires have Kasch, 45, seriously considering moving with his two daughters to live with his parents in Chattanooga, Tenn. His health insurance expires next month, and he fears rising costs of living. “It’s basically been one thing after the other.”
Kasch was one of the Angelenos embracing “Survive till ’25,’” but now his view is a little more arch. “I guess it’s been changed to ‘Exist to ’26.’”
This past week, Hollywood got back to work, with shows such as “Doctor Odyssey,” “9-1-1” and “NCIS” resuming shooting after wildfire shutdowns. But on a broader scale, the decline of production in Los Angeles continues, and with it, the exodus of entertainment workers from the city to hubs in states such as Georgia and New Mexico, or to new careers altogether. The fires shine a light on the tightknit community of Hollywood crew, and leaves those gaffers, grips, costumers, makeup artists, location scouts and others wondering how much longer their dwindling ranks can remain in Los Angeles.
In his latest monthly column at Commentary, Rob Long explores the impact of “The Fire This Time:”
It wasn’t immediately apparent, when the news first started to break, that the fire was going to be quite so disastrous. I moved from Los Angeles to New York several years ago, so I tend to get my local LA news from Facebook and Instagram. But as the pictures started to emerge, I watched the streaming broadcast from KTLA Channel 5 and made a list of everyone I knew who lived in the Palisades—friends, colleagues, business frenemies—and texted each one to ask whether they were safe. It was a huge list—I’ve been in the entertainment business for 35 years —and I was struck by how many in my show-business circle live there. Lived, I should say. Most of my career, it turns out, was in the fire zone.
Which makes sense if you’ve ever been to the Pacific Palisades. It’s true that it’s a very rich area, but it also feels like a very normal, very down-to-earth small town. There are hardware stores and delis that have been there for decades, along with the kind of boutiques you’d find in any upscale suburb in America: a place for high-end sporting goods, a gifty kind of bookstore, a place to buy expensive candles. The local public high school was top-notch, and it even had a thriving Episcopal church. They’ve all been burned to the ground.
There were movie stars in the Palisades, whom you’d see in the grocery stores and Peet’s Coffee, both now destroyed. But the place was mostly the support village for the entertainment business. It’s where you lived if you were one of the thousands of people who worked in show business but wasn’t famous. If you were meeting a talent manager for lunch but neither of you wanted to make it a big deal, you met in the Palisades. If you were in the checkout line at the Gelson’s supermarket on Sunset—gone now—you might, as I did years ago, bump into a network executive and find out that your show is about to be cancelled. The Palisades was the central nervous system for show business. It’s anyone’s guess where that will be now that the Palisades is a pile of ashes and embers.
This recent dashcam video shows what the Palisades looked like before the fire. It’s a bit like holiday snapshots taken during a visit to the World Trade Center in 2000 or the summer of 2001. In this case, it was likely just some video created because it’s so easy to hit the record button these days — but one that becomes very precious after tragedy strikes and the world is upended.
Whoever shot this 17 minute video showing a drive through Pacific Palisades one month ago had no idea how historic it would become.
If you’re not from Los Angeles, this might give you a better idea of what we’ve lost. Please keep in mind this is just ONE street. This doesn’t… pic.twitter.com/AYbW8BlyjF
— Vintage Los Angeles (@alisonmartino) January 17, 2025
UPDATE: Remembering My Lost Los Angeles. “I imagine that my old neighbors in the Pacific Palisades will be making the same walks in the days to come. They’ll recall white stucco walls adorned with neon bougainvillea or ficus hedges shielding some fading star’s privacy. But the rest of the country must understand: this world of The Beach Boys, The Parent Trap, avant-garde architects, physicists, novelists, of soft Southern California light was once here. Now it’s gone, and it will never come back. The imagination that made Old California come to life was snuffed out long ago. It won’t be remade by tech bros, influencers, or anyone else. Here, in this pretty world, Old California took its last bow.”
And perhaps, so did Kamala: Unemployed Kamala Harris’ neighbors annoyed by her return to LA as city burns: ‘I’m embarrassed that she lives here.’
JUST NBC THE EXTORTION! MSNBC’s Al Sharpton Uses Network To Launch Boycott of Companies That Cut DEI Programs.
MSNBC host Al Sharpton announced plans on the liberal network Monday to boycott corporations that have ditched diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, marking yet another conflict of interest for the activist and liberal network.
Sharpton told MSNBC colleague Joy Reid he will select “two or three companies” that his National Action Network will boycott to show that “Donald Trump can’t make us spend money for companies that will not deal and commit and continue with diversity and equity and inclusion.”
“What we said today is that these companies that are now saying they’re going to back up off of diversity and equity and inclusion, should therefore not have a diverse consumer base,” said Sharpton, who hosts MSNBC’s weekend show PoliticsNation.
The campaign comes as Sharpton and MSNBC face scrutiny over a series of Washington Free Beacon reports that the Kamala Harris campaign gave $500,000 to Sharpton’s National Action Network—which paid him $650,000 in 2023—just before the anchor-activist interviewed the Democratic presidential candidate on MSNBC in October. The Society of Professional Journalists, considered the gold standard of media ethics, called the conflict of interest a “black eye” that “harms the credibility of the journalist, the news organization, and journalism overall.” President Donald Trump recently said the arrangement was “totally against the law.”
Nice business you’ve got there. Shame if something were to happen to it…
After Sharpton destroyed Don Imus’ career on MSNBC in 2007, the network knows firsthand what can happen when Sharpton threatens a business: “Sharpton paid to keep quiet about lack of black TV programming: suit.”
MILE MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO DETROIT: Biggest Remaining Tenant in SF’s Biggest Mall is Closing Its Doors.
The largest remaining tenant in San Francisco’s largest mall just called it quits. Bloomingdale’s which is owned by Macy’s announce it will be closing its doors in March.
The store, which occupies 330,000 square feet in the beleaguered San Francisco Centre, is slated to close at the end of March. Bloomingdale’s is by far the mall’s largest remaining tenant, and it is closing the brand’s second-biggest store after its New York flagship…
Bloomingdale’s, which opened in 2006 in the former Westfield mall, is the second anchor tenant to bail on the 1.5 million-square-foot property at Fifth and Market streets. Nordstrom’s flagship store closed in 2023 after 35 years in business…
The closure of Bloomingdale’s deals another setback to the struggling San Francisco Centre mall, which is about half vacant after an exodus of retailers since the pandemic.
This mall has been on the edge of collapse for a while now. The owners of the mall walked away from it in 2023:
The San Francisco Centre is being managed by a receiver after its previous owners, Westfield and Brookfield Properties, walked away from the property in 2023.
The 800,000-square-foot mall was supposed to be sold in a public auction late last year, but the process has been delayed twice by lenders.
Earlier: ‘Don’t invest in San Francisco, because you won’t make it:’ Facing closure, chef unloads on city.
THE REAL BIDEN SCANDAL: Running for a Second Term.
“They had Mr. Biden use a teleprompter for even small fund-raisers in private homes, alarming donors, who were asked to provide questions beforehand. They came up with replacing the grand steps that presidents use to board Air Force One with a shorter set that led directly into the belly of the plane. They chastised White House correspondents for coverage of the president’s age. They hand-delivered memos to Mr. Biden describing social media posts the campaign staff had persuaded allies to write that pushed back on negative articles and polls.”
A similarly-timed article in the Guardian relayed an anecdote from political scientist Larry Sabato. A Democratic senator called Sabato in early 2024 and said, “You do realize, off the record, that Joe Biden is not going to be our nominee?” Sabato, stunned, says the senator then told him: “I just was at a meeting with him with several other senators and he couldn’t even function. We can’t run him.”
That senator tried to talking to the administration about it and “was punished, as several of them were. They gave him the cold shoulder for a while. The point is that a lot of people had figured it out but they didn’t care. I’m stunned that they got away with it.”
But we already knew from past reporting that some of this was going on. Over the summer, CNN reported that members of Biden’s Cabinet didn’t know much about his health because they were so rarely given the opportunity to see the president. An earlier piece in the New York Times reported that Biden’s staff had been stage-managing podcast interviews since 2022. And of course there was the early-July Wall Street Journal report that came under attack from the media and the president’s administration and allies yet turned out to be exactly right about Biden’s condition and the fact that he was essentially a part-time president. The Journal recounted a 2022 meeting abroad with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that the president skipped, even though it was in the early evening, so he could go to bed. The chancellor and his aides didn’t know Biden was flaking on him until Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived and held the meeting in his stead. The president just simply didn’t show up.
The stand-in part of that is the key. Biden may not have been “presidenting” at various key moments, but someone was.
Now the best you can say for anyone who wasn’t a member of the Biden nuclear family is that perhaps they didn’t know the full extent of it either and were made to respond on the fly. But if Blinken knew in 2022 that the president couldn’t handle an early-evening meeting with Scholz, so did plenty of other people—and nobody said anything for two more years.
“I am struck by an observation that few others seem to have made about the Biden era: Nobody really ever got fired,” Jeffrey Blehar adds:
I remember that Donald Trump had only one good line during his first (and only) debate against Joe Biden — primarily because he needed do nothing else but remain functional while Biden melted like a wax candle beside him — and it was his point that Biden had never fired anyone for poor performance, not even once in a presidential term that all voters could agree was wrought with massive, avoidable, personally accountable failures. Why not? I flagged it back then (even amidst the chaos of Biden’s meltdown) because I felt that it subtly got to the point that Trump, in that debate, was not expecting to deal with: Biden’s presidency had been a sham from its very first day, a project managed by a group of advisers rather than an actual president, and that cabal couldn’t fire anyone who might reveal the secret.
It really boils down to that: We were stuck with the useless administration Biden announced on Day One, because, on Day One, Biden was already mentally unfit for office. His aides and family hid him, and every single person who accepted a berth working for this fraud of a team inevitably realized it (or came to realize it) as well. That’s why nobody could be fired or let go. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Remember when America’s entire transportation infrastructure, from plane to highway to rail, suddenly convulsed early in the term under Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who at one time happened to be secretly vacationing? Of course you don’t, because no disciplinary action was taken after that PR malfunction. Ask yourself why. The obvious answer is that a Buttigieg cashiered for political purposes would be a Buttigieg free to remark about how he suspected Biden to secretly be a mental vegetable. (Mayor Pete has ambitions, so perhaps he could be trusted to maintain omertà; how about Lloyd Austin?) That’s why they were all forgiven, I suspect. How nice it must have been to work in a presidential administration run with the same mindset as a failing Mafia enterprise, where you weren’t even expected to “produce numbers”; only loyalty to the secret of the dying don was required to keep your sinecure.
In the case of Buttigieg, it’s simply because we mere mortals simply can’t appreciate the infinite capacity of his “cathedral mind,” and the amount of time it will take to fully comprehend the genius of his time in office:
In an exit interview with Politico, Buttigieg blames this not on administrative failures, bureaucratic backlog, or voters’ prioritizing other things but rather on that pesky time-space continuum. “The nature of good policy and being politically rewarded for good policy is it doesn’t tend to happen — in the same way that an artist is not necessarily appreciated in their lifetime, a policy is rarely appreciated in the same political cycle where it happens, especially a good one.” Buttigieg implies Biden shares his frustration — but will also share in his ultimate vindication.
Or to put it another way:
AS IF L.A. DOESN’T HAVE ENOUGH PROBLEMS ALREADY: Oregon arsonist, climate educator couple arrested for impersonating firefighters in LA.
An Oregon couple was arrested Sunday for impersonating firefighters in the area burned by the Pacific Palisades near Los Angeles, California, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Times, citing law enforcement sources, identified the couple as Dustin Nehl, 31, and Jennifer Nehl, 44. Mr. Nehl’s social media accounts say he lives in Woodburn, Oregon; Mrs. Nehl’s say she lives in Jefferson or Scio, Oregon.
The couple allegedly drove a full-size firetruck emblazoned with “Roaring River Fire” into the recently burned area, claiming they were volunteer firefighters. Police were contacted when someone noticed the fire truck, which had California plates, did not look quite right, according to the Times. There is no “Roaring River Fire” in Oregon.
The Nehls combine a longstanding interest in fire, climate change and weather, according to media reports and the couples’ social media accounts.
Dustin Nehl was sentenced in 2016 to five years in prison and three years post-incarceration supervision for arson and possession of a destructive device related to damage caused in incidents from 2013 to 2016 to a country club and a water treatment facility in Woodburn, according to a contemporaneous report from The Woodburn Independent and The Oregonian.
The 21st century isn’t turning out as I had hoped.
In case anyone needs a refresher, here’s how much US armament Biden gave to the Taliban in 2021:
“THE WOKETOPUS:” How Biden’s Administration Became a National Nightmare and What Trump Has to Do to Stop It From Happening Again.
Life in America has gotten worse because the bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., kowtowed to the priorities of woke elites rather than focusing on the issues Americans truly care about. Biden celebrated drag queens at the White House, pushed “racial justice,” and directed billions in funding to climate activists while Americans struggled with inflation, crime, and the sense that things are falling apart at the border and across the world.
None of this is an accident. In fact, Biden revealed his hand when he awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest civilian honor—to George Soros, the man who launched and helped fund the soft-on-crime “rogue prosecutor” movement. Due to Soros’ advocacy, prosecutors across the country routinely ignore certain crimes, enabling lawlessness. Yet, Biden considered Soros an American hero because of his “philanthropy” to “strengthen democracy, human rights, education, and social justice.”
As with so many leftist platitudes, these terms mask the true nature of what Soros does with his money—and it is extremely charitable (if not downright mendacious) to call his efforts to transform society a form of “philanthropy.”
George Soros founded the Open Society Foundations, and its money fuels the broader engine of woke activist groups that advised the administrative state under Biden.
These activists support a constellation of liberal issues that I summarize with the term “woke,” from critical race theory (the notion that America is systemically racist in favor of whites and against blacks, a notion driving efforts for “diversity, equity, and inclusion”), to gender ideology (the notion that an internal sense of “gender identity” overrides biological sex), to climate alarmism (the belief that human burning of fossil fuels is destroying the earth), to a preference for technocratic government by experts rather than by elected representatives.
It is the height of hypocrisy when the Left screams about “democracy,” all the while supporting a bureaucratic apparatus that intentionally insulates the Mandarins who actually write the rules Americans must live by, protecting them from the people’s elected representatives.
Yet this preference for experts to call the shots—even after the public health experts repeatedly lied and attempted to silence debate during the COVID-19 pandemic—forms a centerpiece of the comprehensive worldview of woke activists. It explains why former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe would say, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
This ideology is deeply rooted in America’s elite institutions, from academia to Hollywood to corporate boardrooms. It reared its ugly head most strongly after the death of George Floyd in police custody in 2020, when the legacy media ignored or covered for Antifa riots, parents watched teachers pushing CRT on kids, and companies rushed to release diversity, equity, and inclusion statements.
Read the whole thing.
Related: Biden’s Crowning Legacy: 20% Bidenflation And The Economic Carnage Left Behind. Biden Holds a Unique Distinction Among the Last Five Presidents—Highest in Both Annualized Inflation Rate and Total Inflation.
JONATHAN TURLEY: The final corruption of Joe Biden.
With only 15 minutes to go as president, Joe Biden snatched infamy from the jaws of obscurity.
With record-low polling and widely viewed as a “failed” president, Biden completed his one-man race to the bottom of ethics by issuing preemptive pardons to members of his own family.
The pardons were timed to guarantee that the media would not focus on yet another unethical act by this president. He need not have worried. For four years, the media worked tirelessly to deny or deflect the corruption scandal surrounding the Biden family.
The pardoning of James Biden, Sara Jones Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, John Owens and Francis Biden brought an inescapable clarity to the corruption of what is known in Washington as Biden Inc.
Exit quote:
Biden sealed his legacy with a finality that escapes most presidents. While his diminished mental capacity will remain an issue for historians, his longstanding lack of ethics was conclusively established with these pardons. It was Biden’s final act of corruption.
Read the whole thing.
FINALLY, A PRESIDENT WHO IS HAVING FUN AGAIN:
🚨NEW: The best thing you'll watch tonight. Trump and JD Vance do the YMCA…but with swords. pic.twitter.com/zYPfsRiYWw
— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) January 21, 2025
THAT WAS THE QUADRENNIAL THAT WAS:
JOE BIDEN’S DISASTROUS PRESIDENCY IN 25 PHOTOS
I am not an artist, but I love the power of photos and the stories they tell.
Here are 25 photos I think tell the story of the Biden years.
Please share yours in the comments!
——
1. “A Socially Distant Cabinet” pic.twitter.com/LahxV8pRF1
— Ben Kew (@ben_kew) January 19, 2025