I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO READING HERCULE POIROT’S WINTER SOLSTICE SEASON: Agatha Christie novels reworked to remove potentially offensive language.

The updates follow edits made to books by Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming to remove offensive references to gender and race in a bid to preserve their relevance to modern readers.

The newspaper reported that the edits cut references to ethnicity, such as describing a character as black, Jewish or Gypsy, or a female character’s torso as “of black marble” and a judge’s “Indian temper”, and removed terms such as “Oriental” and the N-word. The word “natives” has also been replaced with the word “local”.

Among the examples of changes cited by the Telegraph is the 1937 Poirot novel Death on the Nile, in which the character of Mrs Allerton complains that a group of children are pestering her, saying that “they come back and stare, and stare, and their eyes are simply disgusting, and so are their noses, and I don’t believe I really like children”.

This has been stripped down in a new edition to state: “They come back and stare, and stare. And I don’t believe I really like children.”

Why not simply add an introductory note from the publisher that “times change, as does language, and we apologize in advance for any offensive phrases in this novel,” rather than siccing the Ministry of Truth’s airbrushes on Christie, and other deceased novelists?

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: Who funds Antifa protests? We all do. Andy Ngo writes:

Nearly every American city afflicted by mass protesting and rioting in 2020 ended up settling and paying out millions in taxpayer money to radical protesters who were allegedly subjected to force by law enforcement.

Denver settled to pay $1.6 million to just seven people.

Austin settled to pay $17.3 million.

The cities, led by Democrats, don’t even bother to fight the cases, preferring to write a check.

The settlement cash doesn’t just end up rewarding the protesters, awarded inflated attorney fees are used to reinvest in the legal groups to grow the operation for the next cause. Additionally, law enforcement morale declines as they are punished for doing their jobs.

But lawsuit settlements aren’t the only way that militant protesters and riot suspects get paid.

Read the whole thing.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: When Satire Becomes Reality: Nearly 100 Babylon Bee Pieces Have Become Fulfilled Prophecies. “The problem isn’t that our satire is too close to reality, It’s that reality is too close to satire, so our jokes keep coming true.”

BRENDAN O’NEILL: The shameful persecution of Posie Parker in New Zealand.

Next time you’re reading a history book and find yourself wondering how Salem came to be consumed by such swirling hysteria, watch the clips of Posie’s persecution in New Zealand. This is how it happens. This is how the fear of witches can overrule reason and unleash the darkest, most punitive passions of the mob.

And what is Parker’s crime? What did this witch do? She said, ‘A woman is an adult human female’. That’s it. Parker, whose real name is Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, is well known for her criticism of the ideology of transgenderism. She thinks a man never becomes a woman, no matter how many hormones he takes or surgeries he undergoes. She thinks if you were born male, you will die male, and in the time in between you have no right whatsoever to enter any women-only space.

This is heresy. Dissenting from the gospel of gender ideology is to the 21st century what dissenting from the actual gospels was to the 15th. And so Parker must be punished. It was a modern-day stoning, so mercifully they only threw soup and water and planks of cardboard at the blasphemer.

Parker organises public events called ‘Let Women Speak’. She has done it across the UK, in parts of the US, and for the past couple of weeks she’s been doing it in Australia and New Zealand.

It’s a genius initiative. She knows these gatherings of women who merely want to give voice to their profane belief that sex can never be changed will draw out crowds of intolerant trans activists and their allies. She knows the ‘Be Kind’ mob will do everything in its power to stop women from speaking. And she knows it will all brilliantly illustrate her core belief: that trans activism is misogyny in disguise, misogyny in drag, if you like, and that it has devoted itself to silencing women who believe in biology.

Why is the left such a cesspit of misogynistic hatred?

UPDATE: QED:

GIRLS WILL BE BOYS AND BOYS WILL BE GIRLS. IT’S A MIXED UP, MUDDLED UP, SHOOK UP WORLD, EXCEPT FOR LOLA. LA-LA-LA-LA LOLA:

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND WEIMAR AMERICA: West Texas A&M hit with lawsuit after blocking student drag show.

JONATHAN S. TOBIN: Don’t believe the Jimmy Carter revisionists.

The stock of historical figures rises and falls with the changing times that follow them. That is especially true for presidents. Examples of these top leaders whose reputations have risen and fallen in succeeding generations abound. Some who exit office with low popularity ratings wind up being thought of with respect once the immediate political circumstances pass, and both historians and the public are able to judge their achievements with more dispassion.

The most outstanding example of this phenomenon is Harry Truman, who was deeply unpopular when his presidency ended due to the inconclusive and bloody Korean War, a sagging economy and the nation’s weariness with the Democrats after 20 years of their rule in Washington. But within a few decades, Truman’s reputation would soar. He would come to be appreciated for his postwar leadership against Soviet expansionism and for his plain-spoken style that at the time was judged as something of a letdown after the patrician bearing and soaring style of Franklin Roosevelt, whom he had succeeded. The most recent C-SPAN poll of historians now ranks Truman as the sixth greatest president in history—a development that few but his closest associates would have believed possible when he left the White House in 1953.

Supporters of former President Jimmy Carter are hoping that posterity will treat him in a similar treatment. And with the 39th president now in hospice at his Georgia home and the world anticipating the sad news of the end of his life, the campaign to revive his reputation is already in full swing. In the last month since the news about his terminal illness was released, articles and opinion pieces boosting the 98-year-old and attempting to depict his single term in office as both underappreciated and unfairly attacked have proliferated.

And with the help of one of the men who gave us Rathergate in 2004, the spin has already begun! Malaise Memory Loss:

“Now, as far as whether the hostages would have been released before the election, whether Jimmy Carter would have won, that is unknowable.” And as the New York Times story concedes, “Confirming [Ben] Barnes’s account is problematic,” mostly because William Casey died in 1987 and John Connally passed away in 1993.

John B. Connally III, eldest son of the former governor, told Rolling Stone he disagreed with Barnes’ account. He accompanied his father to a meeting with Reagan and said there was no mention of any message to the Iranians. The hostage deal “doesn’t sound like my dad,” Connally said. “It’s not consistent with my memory of the trip.”

The story all hinges on the word of Barnes, a former Texas lieutenant governor and vice chairman of John Kerry’s 2004 election campaign. So, as Daniel McCarthy writes, “people less sophisticated than a Times White House correspondent might classify partisanship as an obvious motive.”

With Carter, 98, entering hospice care, Barnes set out to change the narrative of the Carter presidency—a rather tall order. As Alter concedes, “there were a number of other factors in 1980, including a wretched economy,” which is true. On Carter’s watch, the “misery index” a combination of inflation and unemployment, topped out at 21.98. Instead of his own inept presidency, the Georgia Democrat blamed the people.

“The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us,” Carter said on July 15, 1979. “For the first time in the history of our country, a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.”

And so on.

Ezra Klein, formerly of The American Prospect and now with the New York Times, began the Carter rehabilitation tour way back in 2009 by trying to explain how, ackchyually, his “Malaise Speech” really wasn’t such a bad moment after all.

FASTER, PLEASE: The Tide Is Turning Against Big Trans.

American progressives have a tradition of citing liberal Europe as a guiding beacon of liberty and tolerance. But they’re out of luck this time. Countries with long, continuous ties to old-world faiths and traditions are more resistant to a postmodern reality reset than we are. World Athletics, after all, was founded in Sweden and is currently based in Monaco. World Aquatics, which last year banned athletes who experienced male puberty from competing with females, is headquartered in Budapest. And it based its policy in part on a joint statement by the International Federation of Sports Medicine and the European Federation of Sports Medicine Associations, which said, “high testosterone concentrations…confer a baseline advantage for athletes in certain sports.”

When it comes to so-called gender-affirming care for children, Europe has also begun to wise up. Last year, England’s National Health Service closed down Tavistock, its sole child gender-identity clinic, after a review determined that its “unquestioning affirmative approach” to transitioning kids was potentially more harmful than beneficial. This approach, which the review notes “originated in the USA,” involves prescribing puberty-blockers, hormones, and other medical treatments that can cause lifelong sexual dysfunction and raise the risk of certain cancers. That’s to say nothing of the many tragic outcomes of gender-reassignment surgery. In the past few years, Sweden and Finland have also imposed greater restrictions on “gender-affirming” care for children.

If you’re an American who can still recall the contours of pre–Caitlyn Jenner reality, it may seem is if the country has gone too far off the deep end to come back. Research commissioned by Reuters found that some “121,882 children ages 6 to 17 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria in the five years to the end of 2021,” and “more than 42,000 of those children were diagnosed just last year, up 70% from 2020.” In the same period, 17,683 children started puberty-blockers or hormones. And this is undercounting as these tallies “don’t include children whose records did not specify a gender dysphoria diagnosis or whose treatment wasn’t covered by insurance.”

But, as with other causes that seem to seize the national conscience overnight, a public reckoning follows. Like defunding the police, “gender-affirming” the children is now unpopular. This month, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 61 percent of Americans, and 66 percent of political independents, “prefer a [presidential] candidate who opposes allowing medical treatment for minors related to gender identity.”

Related: Mark Judge explores “Transgenderism, Jazz Jennings and The Fly.”

Watching The Fly, it was remarkable how many parallels there were to the transgender cult. After his “transformation” in the teleportation pod, Seth Brundle has a period of euphoria and off-the-chart confidence. His libido is boundless, he can work out for hours, picks up women easily and defeats men who seem much stronger. He “loves who he is.” When someone asks if he’s a body builder, he says yes: “I build bodies then I tear them apart.”

It’s not enough for Seth to have done the experiment; everyone else has to affirm it — and even do it themselves. Seth’s mania, his pushiness that will not tolerate dissent, is a precursor to the angry, shouting, modern trans activists.

Then, reality sets in. Something is wrong with Seth’s body. He’s growing sharp hairs on his back, an ear falls off, his skin takes on ridges and teeth randomly pop out. It echoes the nightmarish medical consultations that happen after Jennings’ grotesque surgeries.

At her talk at the Heritage Foundation I attended, Chloe Cole said she sometimes saw herself as “a monster.” Jazz says something similar: “Sometimes my mind is just a monster.” Then a friend of Jazz’s puts it more bluntly: “I know some people that after they did their transition just went crazy.” But these people aren’t the monsters in this story. Save that term for their parents, their doctors, and our callous Dr. Frankenstein elites.

Still though, good money can be found in the performative arts: Dylan Mulvaney is now doing speaking engagements for $30K–$60K a pop.

JAMES TARANTO: Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Affable Culture Warrior.

In April 2020, businesses in Georgia were shuttered by government decree as in most of the rest of the country. Mr. Kemp was hearing from desperate entrepreneurs: “ ‘Look man, we’re losing everything we’ve got. We can’t keep doing this.’ And I really felt like there was a lot of people fixin’ to revolt against the government.”

The Trump administration “had that damn graph or matrix or whatever that you had to fit into to be able to do certain things,” Mr. Kemp recalls. “Your cases had to be going down and whatever. Well, we felt like we met the matrix, and so I decided to move forward and open up.” He alerted Vice President Mike Pence, who headed the White House’s coronavirus task force, before publicly announcing his intentions on April 20.

That afternoon Mr. Trump called Mr. Kemp, “and he was furious.” Mr. Kemp recounts the conversation as follows:

“Look, the national media’s all over me about letting you do this,” Mr. Trump said. “And they’re saying you don’t meet whatever.”

Mr. Kemp replied: “Well, Mr. President, we sent your team everything, and they knew what we were doing. You’ve been saying the whole pandemic you trust the governors because we’re closest to the people. Just tell them you may not like what I’m doing, but you’re trusting me because I’m the governor of Georgia and leave it at that. I’ll take the heat.”

“Well, see what you can do,” the president said. “Hair salons aren’t essential and bowling alleys, tattoo parlors aren’t essential.”

“With all due respect, those are our people,” Mr. Kemp said. “They’re the people that elected us. They’re the people that are wondering who’s fighting for them. We’re fixin’ to lose them over this, because they’re about to lose everything. They are not going to sit in their basement and lose everything they got over a virus.”

Mr. Trump publicly attacked Mr. Kemp: “He went on the news at 5 o’clock and just absolutely trashed me. . . . Then the local media’s all over me—it was brutal.” The president was still holding daily press briefings on Covid. “After running over me with the bus on Monday, he backed over me on Tuesday,” Mr. Kemp says. “I could either back down and look weak and lose all respect with the legislators and get hammered in the media, or I could just say, ‘You know what? Screw it, we’re holding the line. We’re going to do what’s right.’ ” He chose the latter course. “Then on Wednesday, him and [Anthony] Fauci did it again, but at that point it didn’t really matter. The damage had already been done there, for me anyway.”

The damage healed quickly once businesses began reopening on Friday, April 24. Mr. Kemp quotes a state lawmaker who said in a phone call: “I went and got my hair cut, and the lady that cuts my hair wanted me to tell you—and she started crying when she told me this story—she said, ‘You tell the governor I appreciate him reopening, to allow me to make a choice, because . . . if I’d have stayed closed, I had a 95% chance of losing everything I’ve ever worked for. But if I open, I only had a 5% chance of getting Covid. And so I decided to open, and the governor gave me that choice.’ ”

At that point, Florida was still shut down. Mr. DeSantis issued his first reopening order on April 29, nine days after Mr. Kemp’s. On April 28, the Florida governor had visited the White House, where, as CNN reported, “he made sure to compliment the President and his handling of the crisis, praise Trump returned in spades.”

Three years later, here’s the thanks Mr. DeSantis gets: This Wednesday Mr. Trump issued a statement excoriating “Ron DeSanctimonious” as “a big Lockdown Governor on the China Virus.” As Mr. Trump now tells the tale, “other Republican Governors did MUCH BETTER than Ron and, because I allowed them this ‘freedom,’ never closed their States. Remember, I left that decision up to the Governors!”

Exit quote: “Like Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Kemp, 59, was elected narrowly in 2018 and re-elected handily in 2022.”

BREAKING: FAA Nominee Phil Washington Withdraws His Nomination.

DISPATCHES FROM THE VULVA OWNERS COMMUNITY:

Previously: Answers to Questions Nobody is Asking:

Also answers to questions nobody is asking: how many campers can a Vulva owner jump?

UNEXPECTEDLY: Tech Exodus From China Accelerates. These Emerging Markets May Benefit.

Japanese chief executives aren’t generally known for bold political statements. Hideo Tanimoto, president at electronics power Kyocera (ticker: 6971.Japan) broke with tradition last month to share what he really thinks about China.

“The business model of production in China and exporting abroad is no longer viable,” he told the Financial Times.

Tech heavy hitters across the globe are leaning the same way. Dell Technologies (DELL) the world’s No. 3 computer manufacturer, leaked plans to stop using Chinese microchips by next year. Rival Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is selling out of a 20-year-old IT equipment joint venture, a securities filing by Chinese partner Tsinghua Unigroup revealed. German engineering giant Siemens (SIE.Germany) is looking to invest its next euro in Southeast Asia to decrease Chinese dependence.

Companies and consultants have talked about “China +1” for years as relations between Beijing and Washington deteriorated. The trend is accelerating. “I heard from companies throughout the region an increased appetite to reduce component sourcing or move manufacturing out of China,” says Mehdi Hosseini, senior tech analyst at Susquehanna International Group, just back from an Asian swing.

Potential beneficiaries of the China techxodus stretch from Mexico to Poland, Malaysia and Vietnam. Potential losers are global consumers, who may have to pay more for their gadgets as humming Chinese supply chains, built up over two decades, fragment. “Companies have experienced significant margin improvement from being in China,” Mehdi says. “They’ll have to find other ways to take the cost out.”

Flashback to November of 2019: How to Conduct Business with Chinese Companies That See a Dark Future.

FORMER SOCIALIST “IT GIRL” CONTINUES TO PAY DIVIDENDS: AOC roasted over calling Republican parents’ rights bill ‘fascism:’ ‘Clown show every time she talks.’

Conservative commentator Dale Franks tweeted, “So, limiting government power in favor of individual rights is ‘fascist’. Good to know.”

“BREAKING: Unhinged socialist doesn’t know what fascism is and wants to cut genitals off children,” Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report said.

“AOC thinks parents don’t have the right to know if their child decides to change genders,” the Media Research Center tweeted.

North Carolina congressional candidate Christine Villaverde wrote, “AOC wants the ‘nanny state’ to be in charge of our children. Parents have had enough of government overreach!”

Journalist Ian Miles Cheong wrote, “Breaking: Bartender doesn’t know the meaning of words.”

To be fair, AOC has a lot of experience with various offshoots of the F-word:

● AOC rocks Black Panthers shirt, touts group’s free food program.

● AOC chief of staff criticized for wearing shirt touting Nazi collaborator:

As one wag joked on Twitter in 2019, “Look just because she’s favorably comparing herself to the lady that Franco liked a lot who sheltered Mengele doesn’t mean… OK, I forgot where I was doing with this.”

● “The 10 Most Insane Requirements Of The Green New Deal.”

UPDATE: AOC is simply the latest in a long tradition of Democrats who equate less governmental control with “fascism:”

“If history were to repeat itself,” warned President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1944 State of the Union address, “and we were to return to the so-called normalcy of the 1920s, then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of fascism here at home.”

The “normalcy” of the 1920s that Roosevelt referred to was a time of peace and prosperity. The decade began with Republican President Warren Harding commuting the sentences of political prisoners jailed by the Wilson administration, including the socialist leader Eugene Debs. “Normalcy” meant the end to the Palmer raids aimed at rooting out dissidents, the end of economic rationing, the cessation of domestic surveillance and the state propaganda of the World War I years.

Also, “A return to normalcy” was Harding’s campaign slogan in the 1920 presidential election, which he won in a landslide over Democrat James Cox and his running mate — Franklin D. Roosevelt.

That Roosevelt nurtured resentments against the Republicans for the drubbing he received in 1920 is no surprise. That those resentments ran deep enough for him to smear Republicans in 1944 with the “spirit of fascism” at the height of the war against the real thing is nothing short of disgusting.

But it was effective.

Harry Truman recognized that when he ran for president against the liberal Republican Thomas Dewey in 1948. Truman charged that Dewey was the front man for the same sort of “powerful reactionary forces” that orchestrated the rise of Hitler in Germany.

When a communist assassinated President Kennedy, somehow the American right got the blame. Lyndon Johnson translated that myth into a campaign of slander against Barry Goldwater, casting him as a crypto-Nazi emissary of “hate.”

War is peace, freedom is slavery, laissez-faire is fascism. Repeat whenever the GOP pounces and/or seizes on an issue a majority agrees upon.

(Updated and bumped.)

HORRIFIC TORNADOES HITS MISSISSIPPI, AT LEAST 23 DEAD, MANY INJURED, MASSIVE DAMAGE FOR MILES.

GOT WOKE, GOING BROKE: Ford Says It Will Lose $3 Billion on EVs This Year as It Touts Startup Mentality.

Ford disclosed the figure Thursday while outlining a new financial-reporting structure intended to give investors better insight into the performance of its three business units: Model e, its EV business; Ford Blue, the traditional part of the company that sells internal-combustion-engine vehicles; and Ford Pro, its sizable commercial-vehicle division.

AS A WISE COMMUNITY ORGANIZER ADVISES, GET IN THEIR FACES, AND PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Afroman for the win! “Don’t want to be embarrassed as an officer? Don’t do embarrassing things, like break doors down unnecessarily and roam around with guns in a house only occupied by a scared woman. The couple also have children, and they could have been there but thankfully weren’t. Afroman: I am with you on this one. I hope you make a lot of money off this song. I thought it was hilarious.”

WATCH: Rand Paul vs. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “Imagine how many government lies could be mopped up and disposed of on a daily basis if the alleged journalists who populate the White House Press Briefing room came to the daily propaganda sessions there with the same tenacity as Paul.”

ANSWERS TO THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: 1,025 horsepower! FAQs: Your 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 Questions Answered.

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Stormy Weather Edition.

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Tucker Slams NPR for Only Supporting Gun Ownership for Trans People.

EYDER PERALTA (NPR HOST): Mass shootings targeting LGBTQ spaces, and a rise in anti-trans rhetoric, have inspired some queer people to take up arms. New Hampshire Public Radio’s Todd Bookman joined a monthly gathering of a gun group that sees firearms as key to their own self-defense. And as you might imagine, this story does include the sound of gunfire.

TODD BOOKMAN: On a recent Sunday morning, the parking lot of Pawtuckaway State Park in southeastern New Hampshire is filling up with hikers. There’s also a different crew packing up warm clothes and weapons.

FIN SMITH: Thank you all for coming to Rainbow Reload.

When that laughably hypocritical segment ended, Carlson returned and laughed at the taxpayer-funded propagandists he just heard suddenly support gun rights after spending decades railing against them.

“Your anti-trans rhetoric makes the trans community carry guns,” Carlson said sarcastically. “Rainbow Reload!! They’re packing heat, they’ll be appendix carrying in more ways than one, watch out.”

For anyone who didn’t grasp the stunning hypocrisy, Carlson pointed it out to them: “Wait a second, we thought. This is NPR? National Public Radio? Suddenly telling you that actually guns are good, they’re valuable tools of self-defense, really against you. So, there are times when guns are good, says NPR.”

“We’ve been listening to NPR since, well, Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers. And we remember very clearly their position on guns,” Carlson added.

Meanwhile at America’s Newspaper of Record: Trans Community Feeling Unsafe Knowing There’s A Hockey Player Somewhere Out There Not Wearing A Pride Jersey.

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: Mohammed Abbkr charged after allegedly setting two men on fire after they left mosque in separate UK incidents.

OLD AND BUSTED: No One Is Coming for Your Gas Stove Anytime Soon.

—The New York Times, January 21st.

The new hotness coldness: New York nears deal to ban gas stoves in new homes.

—Politico, Thursday.

THAT’S WHAT XI SAID! Woody Guthrie’s Daughter Rips ‘Insurrectionist’ Josh Hawley Over ‘This Land Is Our Land Act.’

Hawley’s proposed law would “ban Chinese corporations, in addition to any individuals associated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), from owning farmland in the United States.”

Sounds good to me. He should add the French to the bill for being French.

Nora Guthrie, who followed in the footsteps of her famous father as a folk singer and songwriter, is not happy about “insurrectionist” Hawley using the lyrics from her father’s most famous song:

Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter, said it’s not uncommon for politicians to make use of “This Land Is Your Land” because the song advocates for democratic representation. She said she didn’t mind the song being used politically, as long as it aligns with the song’s values.

“In this particular case, the co-opting or parodying of the lyric by those not aligned with Woody’s lyrics – i.e. misrepresentation by autocrats, racists, white nationalists, anti-labor, insurrectionists, etc. – is not condoned,” Guthrie wrote in an email. “We do not consider Josh Hawley in any way a representative of Woody’s values therefore we would never endorse or approve of his reference to Woody’s lyrics.”

Cry more, Commie.

Since her dad had a guitar upon which he wrote, “This machine kills fascists,” why would she object to anti-CCP-legislature?

XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT! Watch: TikTok CEO Refuses to Answer Questions About China’s Uyghur Genocide.

RAVING AND DROOLING: Roger Waters Comes Across As Antisemitic As Ever in Interview With Der Spiegel.