MICHAEL WALSH: From Behind the Unreasoning Mask.

So now the mask slips and the truth is revealed: it was never about masks, or Covid, or “the science” at all. It was always—and always will be—about power. The Long March through the Institutions, the hallmark of the Frankfurt School‘s assault on the Western democracies, has now claimed its latest and thus far biggest prize.

Who had the collapse of Canada as a functioning democracy on his bingo card? It was disheartening enough when Australia (with a “conservative” prime minister) fell, and that disarmed and benighted nation quickly transformed from the land of Mad Max and Crocodile Dundee back into the British penal colony it always was.

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Amazingly, and to its credit, so did the editorial board of the New York Times, meekly defending the right of peaceful protest, something Trudeau, Jr., had once claimed to champion:

We disagree with the protesters’ cause, but they have a right to be noisy and even disruptive. Protests are a necessary form of expression in a democratic society, particularly for those whose opinions do not command broad popular support. Governments have a responsibility to prevent violence by protesters, but they must be willing to accept some degree of disruption by those seeking to be heard. The challenge for public officials — the same one faced by Minneapolis and other cities in 2020 during the protests after the murder of George Floyd — is to maintain a balance between public health and safety and a functioning society, with the right to free expression. Entertaining the use of force to disperse or contain legal protests is wrong. As Mr. Trudeau said in November 2020, in expressing his support of a yearlong protest by farmers in India that blocked major highways to New Delhi, “Canada will always be there to defend the right of peaceful protest.”

One of the obstacles to understanding the malign intentions of the Davoisie and its fellow travelers in this mésalliance of corporate leaders and government officials—one of the textbook characteristics of Fascism, along with the employment of private militias to subvert the democratic process—is the highly successful campaign the international Left has waged since the collapse of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact under exigent circumstances in 1941, mostly via the media, to convince you that National Socialist Germany and the international Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were somehow antithetical, when in fact they were two sides of the same hellish coin. The contraction “Nazi” (almost never used by the members of the NSDAP themselves) derives from the first syllable of the German words for “national” and “socialist,” and was used to distinguish National Socialists from “Sozis” in common parlance.

Read the whole thing.

WHEN YOU’RE A DEM WHO’S LOST THE HOUSE OF STEPHANOPOULOS…: ‘Looks Like Jimmy Carter:’ ABC Panel Torches Biden Over Inflation, Economy.

MICHAEL BARONE: Must government be a ‘big, waddling, sluggish beast?’

Itinerant policy journalist Ezra Klein, now with the New York Times, has highlighted something interesting about the Biden Democrats’ now-defunct Build Back Better legislation — something beyond its huge price tag (in the trillions) and its failure in a Democratic Congress, much like the recent failure of California’s single-payer healthcare bill.

The Democrats’ major problem, Klein argues, is that they’re too unambitious, proposing only “a grab-bag of longstanding Democratic proposals” that mostly seek to close the “gaps” between the “social insurance options” of “any Western European nation.”

* * * * * * * *

Gen. Leslie Groves and James Webb were not politically correct choices to head the Manhattan Project and the Apollo program, respectively, but they got their seemingly impossible jobs done. Sometimes, that took scrambling and ignoring ordinary procedures. Reading Dan McLaughlin’s account in National Review of how Operation Warp Speed officials got an air handling unit delivered from the Midwest to a Massachusetts Moderna factory by arranging a law enforcement escort brought to mind Steve Vogel’s account in The Pentagon of how Gen. Brehon Somervell, told that a steel shipment would be weeks late, ordered a truck convoy to ship the stuff from Pittsburgh to Washington overnight.

To achieve anything like Ezra Klein’s ambitious goals, you need clear goals, you need to sweep aside bureaucratic roadblocks, and you need, most of all, to choose the right people to get things done. That’s what Trump did on Operation Warp Speed, and it’s what Roosevelt did on defense production and the Manhattan Project. Absent those things, Big Government remains, as I wrote a dozen years ago , “a big, waddling, sluggish beast, ever ready to boss you around, but not able to perform useful functions at anything but a plodding pace.”

Winning WWII and the COVID vaccines aside, I’m usually pretty happy with a government that moves at a plodding pace, considering some of the “socialists-in-a-hurry” alternatives Ezra has debated in the past.

FAUXCAHONTAS STILL SPEAKS WITH FORKED TONGUE: Elizabeth Warren is Lying About Elon Musk Again.

“Elon Musk in 2018, we’ve actually seen his tax returns,” she said. “You know how much he paid in taxes? One of the richest people in the world: zero.”

This is a lie.

Yes, it is true that in 2018, Musk paid no income tax—because, after writing off losses and deductions, he had no net taxable income. In fact, he does not take a salary from Tesla, other than the required California minimum wage of roughly $37,000/year. Musk’s billions in compensation come from receiving Tesla stock. So, of course, he doesn’t pay income taxes—they only apply to, well, income. 

But this does not validate Warren’s claim that Musk pays “zero in taxes.” Income tax is not the only tax! (I wish…)

Not even close. Musk must pay corporate and payroll taxes through Tesla, California state taxes, sales taxes on his massive purchases, property taxes, and too many other taxes to count.

And, when Musk cashes out his stock options, he has to pay massive taxes.

Related: Musk accuses SEC of harassing Tesla to chill his criticism of government.

OLD AND BUSTED: Stalin blaming hoarders, wreckers, and saboteurs for the “unexpected” outcomes of his disastrous policies.

The New Hotness, Courtesy of Axios? Biden needs a Trump substitute.

The bottom line: Biden may not find a truly effective GOP foil until after the midterm elections.

• A GOP-controlled House would allow Biden to pick daily fights and present his policies as an alternative.

• The last two Democratic presidents won re-election after losing the House in the mid-term election.

But will Biden, who will be 82 in 2024 (not to mention his vice president, and her world-class poker skills) still be on the ticket that year?

JEFF DUNETZ: President’s Day: A Liberal Homogenized Celebration Of Nothing. “While officially a celebration of Washington’s birthday, after the bill took effect in 1971, it morphed into President’s Day, tearing down an American hero and replacing it with a meaningless day off work (for some). It became a bogus holiday…Suggesting President’s Day is a bogus holiday isn’t about putting down a particular president. It’s tossing out wokeism and teaching an understanding of the country’s greatness.”

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: For India, Justin Trudeau’s Crackdown on Canada’s Truckers Reeks of Rank Hypocrisy.

“Canada will always be ready to defend the right to peaceful protest.” This is what Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had said about the farmers’ protest in India. Without flinching for a second, Trudeau interfered in India’s domestic matter and members of his government like Jagmeet Singh, did the same without a care for the facts on the ground, further denting relations with India which were already on a rocky path.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t start also by recognising the news coming out of India about the protests by farmers. The situation is concerning. And we all are very worried about family and friends,” said Trudeau perhaps in a bid to woo a certain constituency of Canadian voters.

This was in December 2020. More than a year has passed since. Now the tables have turned.

And how: Canada’s Hoax of a Democracy & Tyrant Trudeau : #TruckersForFreedom protesters treated like animals.

• An Ottawa gelato shop owner who was revealed to have donated to the Freedom Convoy claims she has since been doxxed and had her information posted online

• Tammy Giuliani, who owns the Stella Luna Café, received constant abusive phone calls calling her a Nazi, and a sign saying ‘Tammy supports terrorists’

• Giuliani spoke of the backlash she’s faced since news came to light of her donation to the group of Canadian truckers protesting against COVID mandates

• ‘You know, we have been called terrorists. For the first 60 to 36 hours, we were inundated with hatred, with threats of violence,’ she said

• Giuliani is among roughly 92,000 supporters of the Freedom Convoy that had their information hacked after donating to the cause through GiveSendGo

• The crowdfunding website, which describes itself as the ‘number one Christian crowdfunding site,’ had raised more than $9 million of the $16 million goal

• The website Distributed Denial of Secrets said it was given donor information that included including names, email addresses, ZIP codes and IP addresses.

And if you missed it yesterday: A Social Credit System Arrives in Canada.

Last summer, I warned readers of Common Sense that financial deplatforming would be the next wave of online censorship. Big Tech companies like PayPal were already working with left-wing groups like the ADL and SPLC to define lists of individuals and groups who should be denied service. As more and more similarly minded tech companies followed suit (as happened with social media censorship), these deplorables would be deplatformed, debanked, and eventually denied access to the modern economy altogether, as punishment for their unacceptable views.

That prediction has become reality.

What I could not have anticipated is that it would occur first in our mild-mannered neighbor to the north, with the Canadian government itself directing the reprisals. It remains to be seen whether Canada will be a bellwether for the U.S. But anyone who cares about the future of America as a place where citizens are free to protest their government needs to understand what has just occurred and work to stop it from taking root here.”

And right on cue: Trudeau Government Moves to Make Expanded Surveillance Powers over Financial Transactions ‘Permanent.’

In 2013, Trudeau told Canada who he was: Justin Trudeau Said He Admired China’s Dictatorship. Canadians Should Have Believed Him.

CHINA WANTS TO BUY 100 MILLION METRIC TONS OF COAL FROM RUSSIA.

Via Small Dead Animals, which asks, “Any response from Greta yet?”

MARK FELTON: Erasing Hitler — How The Allies Cleansed Germany of Nazism (Video).

Felton notes that in West Germany, “It would take until the 1960s and 70s for attitudes to change as the old Nazis retired and a new generation of Germans unconnected with the crimes of the National Socialist period came to power and influence.”

That transition would be delayed for quite a bit longer in East Germany, however.

THE 21st CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: #BlackfaceHitler Trends As Justin Trudeau’s Government Cracks Down On Truckers.

Earlier: The left vs the people: The truckers’ protests have exposed liberals as authoritarians and leftists as enemies of the working class.

Speaking of which: A Social Credit System Arrives in Canada. “Last summer, I warned readers of [Bari Weiss’s Common Sense Substack] that financial deplatforming would be the next wave of online censorship. Big Tech companies like PayPal were already working with left-wing groups like the ADL and SPLC to define lists of individuals and groups who should be denied service. As more and more similarly minded tech companies followed suit (as happened with social media censorship), these deplorables would be deplatformed, debanked, and eventually denied access to the modern economy altogether, as punishment for their unacceptable views. That prediction has become reality. What I could not have anticipated is that it would occur first in our mild-mannered neighbor to the north, with the Canadian government itself directing the reprisals. It remains to be seen whether Canada will be a bellwether for the U.S. But anyone who cares about the future of America as a place where citizens are free to protest their government needs to understand what has just occurred and work to stop it from taking root here.”

UH-OH: Queen Elizabeth II, 95, Tests Positive for COVID.

Related: As the Queen Prepares for Transition, Camilla Steps Into the Spotlight. According to palace sources, Charles and Camilla will take on a key role in the upcoming Jubilee celebrations.

LET ME JUST GET OUT AHEAD OF THE STORY AND SAY THAT GHISLAINE MAXWELL DID NOT COMMIT SUICIDE: Ghislaine Maxwell’s Family ‘Fears For Her Safety’ After Epstein “Pimp” Jean-Luc Brunel Found Hanged. “Brunel, 74, was found hanging in his cell in La Santé, Paris, at 1am during a night time check in. Video cameras in his cell were not running at the time he died.” (Emphasis mine.)

Exit question:

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Drudge is Dead.

Durham, probably the most straight-shooting, apolitical lawyer in the federal government, now years into an exhaustive probe, revealed that Hillary Clinton’s campaign sought out both the FBI and the CIA in peddling lies that Trump was colluding with Russia, so as to get every news outlet it could to keep that false story at the top of the news during the 2016 campaign, and then, when that failed, to use it to cripple the Trump presidency.

But if the Drudge site is your go-to news source, you might never have known on Monday that Durham did anything.

The site offered its readers nary a link nor a word – though it did serve them up about a dozen links to sensationalist stories on the Super Bowl and off-field pro football escapades; three stories on Elon Musk having too much self-made money; the mandatory half dozen or so negative stories on either Donald Trump, his allies, or Jan. 6; three links – in red – gloating about Sarah Palin losing her case against the New York Times; and naturally a half dozen headlines on which to click to get your sex, drugs, or Hollywood bizarre news fix.

In early January, Steve linked to an article headlined, “Matt Drudge confirms he still runs Drudge Report.” As he wrote in response, “Could Have Fooled Me.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: University sides with white, trans student against Hispanic feminist scholar’s right to speak and organize for women’s rights.

SHE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED: The New York Times takes aim at J.K. Rowling.

A new YouTube ad introduces us to ‘Lianna’, who, we are told, has subscribed to the NYT since 2020 and is described as a “harmony of flavors.” We are introduced to her various passions for articles on themes such as “a week in crossword land” and “queer love in color” before another suggested newspaper title flashes up: “Imagining Harry Potter without its creator.” It’s the only implicit reference in the thirty-second clip to any notable individual and is clearly something of a deliberate swipe at She Who Must Not Be Named, the outspoken author whose critics have indeed tried to erase her works.

Indeed, the line has been carefully picked out to adorn advertising boards in New York and DC too, suggesting that the paper knows exactly what it is doing by highlighting Rowling. The NYT is running its campaign under the tagline of “independent journalism” — even though by blindly following the herd on this one it doesn’t exactly suggest much in the way of independent thought.

Clearly, being well-informed isn’t one of the benefits of subscribing to the NYT. For, without its creator, “Lianna” wouldn’t be imagining anything about Harry Potter at all.

Also at the New York Times: Study Finds Severe Obesity Raises Risk of Covid-19 Hospitalization and Death.

LEAKED RCMP MESSAGES: “Time for the protesters to hear our jackboots on the ground.”

ROGER SIMON: Djokovic, the Trucker? Tennis Star Sticks to His Guns as Sports Press Explodes.

The sports press—those noted “progressives” who almost uniformly praised Colin Kaepernick for “taking a knee” and did their best to ignore LeBron James’s coddling of the genocidal Chinese communists— immediately jumped all over Djokovic as if here a leper on the loose.

Said Sports Illustrated: “Novak Djokovic Is Still Making Bad Decisions.”

The Guardian chimed in: “Novak Djokovic’s propensity for self-sabotage has become a defining trait.”

Tennis World opined: “Novak Djokovic’s darkest moment.”

And, of course, our friends at The New York Times wrapped it all up for us:

“For now, Djokovic will still not get vaccinated against the coronavirus, no matter how much it costs him, as he made clear in an interview with the BBC that was broadcast on Tuesday and in which the interviewer, Amol Rajan, summed up a fair share of the global mood by abandoning journalistic sang-froid and imploring: ‘Why Novak, why, why?’

“‘Because the principles of decision-making on my body are more important than any title or anything else,’ Djokovic answered. ‘I’m trying to be in tune with my body as much as I possibly can.’

“That approach has him out of tune with his sport and his times,” the NY Times concluded.

Oh, really? Tell that to the brave Canadian truckers and their supporters who are having their bank accounts frozen by a despotic leader who arrests peaceful protesters with impunity.

But it’s a safe bet the NY Times doesn’t have much sympathy for the truckers or anyone else who doesn’t toe their line.

In other news from the world of sport:

DISPATCHES FROM MOSTLY PEACEFUL TRUDEAUPIA: Rebel News journalist Alexa Lavoie attacked by Ottawa police.

As police and “Freedom Convoy” demonstrators faced off in downtown Ottawa on early Saturday morning, police turned physical towards the protest line, deploying riot suppression devices and striking multiple protesters.

On Saturday, the gridlock continued as police, who formed a line in front of the protesters, attempted to push back against demonstrators gathered at the city center.

Amid loud pops, Rebel News’s Quebec-based reporter Alexa Lavoie was directly hit by police during the melee, injuring her.

Prior to the melee, at least two police officers can be seen accidentally dropping some of their less-lethal firearms and attempting to pick them back up as other officers push back the line.

Seen earlier today on Twitter, here’s an Economist cover that’s aged like fine milk:

UPDATE: Past performance is no guarantee of future results:

(Updated and bumped.)

DRUNK WOMAN ON MOTORIZED SUITCASE CREATES HAVOC AT ORLANDO AIRPORT:

Video has surfaced of an intoxicated woman accused of wreaking havoc at Orlando International Airport. The footage can be viewed in the player [at link].

The 31-year-old woman has been arrested and is facing a string of charges, including battery on a law enforcement officer, assault on a law enforcement officer, resisting officer with violence, criminal mischief and disorderly conduct.

According to an affidavit, the April 2021 incident began around 6:30 p.m. when officers were called to Orlando International Airport for a disorderly passenger.

Police said the 31-year-old woman was denied boarding because she was drunk, slurring her speech and yelling at people around her.

The officer said he tried to explain that he could help her get onto a different flight after she sobered up, to which the woman responded by “angrily rolling away, yelling profanities while atop a motorized luggage bag.”

I blame Jeremy Clarkson:

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Meet the California Dem Who Invited the CCP Into His Local Classrooms.

A Democrat running for Congress in California worked to bring an educational program sponsored by the Chinese Communist Party into his community’s K-12 classrooms.

As a member of the Hacienda La Puente school board in 2010, Democrat Jay Chen spearheaded an effort to bring the Confucius Classroom program to his district. The program is funded and run by China’s Ministry of Education, an arm of the Chinese Communist Party that provides American K-12 schools with teachers and curriculum materials to teach their students Chinese language and culture. It’s also linked to the CCP’s Confucius Institute program, which provides similar resources to colleges and universities across the United States. The State Department in 2020 labeled that program a Chinese propaganda entity aimed at “advancing Beijing’s global propaganda and malign influence campaign,” and CCP officials have acknowledged that Confucius Institutes are “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up.”

Roughly a decade after voting to bring a Confucius Classroom to Southern California, Chen is running to unseat freshman congresswoman Michelle Steel (R., Calif.). But the Democrat isn’t distancing himself from his school board tenure—in fact, he’s fundraising off of it. In a recent campaign email, Chen accused Steel of engaging in “anti-Asian racism” and contributing to the “rise in violent, anti-Asian hate crimes” after Steel highlighted Chen’s support for “CCP-sponsored schools.” Chen also dismissed criticism of Confucius Classrooms, which he described merely as a “Chinese language and culture program” that is not tied to the CCP.

Steel spokesman Lance Trover brushed off Chen’s anti-Asian racism charge as “ridiculous,” noting that Steel is one of the first Korean-American women to serve in Congress.

Sure seems to be a lot of white supremacy in California schools these days: Recalled San Francisco School-Board President Claims ‘White Supremacists’ Are to Blame for Her Loss.

Speaking of which: Hate Hoax: Black student confesses to vandalizing California high school with racist graffiti.

Mark T. Harris, the district’s race and equity monitor, told CBS13 that a black female student has confessed to the vandalism, and was caught on camera in the act. Harris said that he believes the vandalism was not a racially motivated act.

DAVID SOLWAY: Who Is Justin Trudeau?

Indeed, his outrageous slandering of the truckers as racists and haters, his refusal to meet with them, his craven flight from office as the convoy assembled in Ottawa, and his invoking of legislation to seize the financial instruments and assets of both the protesters and of ordinary citizens who contributed to the trucker fund is unprecedented in Canadian history. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has brazenly authorized the RCMP to share with banks “the names of individuals, businesses and crypto wallets associated with the protest convoy.”

As of this writing, the banks now have the power to freeze protesters’ accounts, including, it appears, the accounts of people who over the last two weeks donated in good faith. The retroactive application of fiscal reprisals is an egregious violation of legal norms, as is the sequestration order itself. It is a sign of unmitigated tyranny that compares with the typical excesses of the totalitarian despots Trudeau reveres. It seems to be a truism that small men with power are the scourge of their nations.

Read the whole thing.

Exit question:

WEIRD HOW THIS KEEPS HAPPENING: Jeffrey Epstein’s Alleged Model-Agent Pimp Jean-Luc Brunel Found Hanged in Cell.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Biracial NC House candidate blasts school board over CRT (Video).

“As a parent, I speak to other parents,” he told the board members, “And there’s a few things we don’t want.”

“I’m biracial, I’m multilingual, I’m multicultural. The fact is in America and North Carolina, I can do anything I want — and I teach that to my children,” [Brian] Echevarria said forcefully. “And the person who tells my little pecan-color kids that they’re somehow oppressed based on the color of their skin would be absolutely wrong and absolutely at war with me.”

Echevarria closed out his remarks with a parting shot, stating that “What the masks showed us is the parents, the most powerful group in the country, are taking back the wheel.”

Much more like this, please.

More here: North Carolina Father Destroys Critical Race Theory: Racism ‘Only Happening at the Government Level and On the Media.’

DOES HE WORK FOR THE DAILY PLANET? Olympic Photographer Catches Bullets in Mid-Air with the Sony Alpha 1.

While Nikon’s flagship Z9 can shoot at a staggering clip of 120 frames per second for 11-megapixel photos, the rival flagship Sony Alpha 1 is no slouch either, capturing 30fps with the electronic shutter.

“When Sony Alpha 1 came out, I got myself one as quickly as possible, mainly for 30 frames per second and 120 autofocus calculations every second,” Dranginis tells PetaPixel. “For a sports photographer like me, accurate focus and speed are absolutely necessary.”

That and a massive telephoto lens a la Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window combine for some brilliant photos.

ALANIS MORISSETTE, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Isn’t It Ironic? Canada Condemns Cuba’s Treatment of Protesters.