LET’S GO BRANDON: Burger King pulls Whopper off discount menu; parent RBI to hike prices. “Restaurant chains are raising prices because they are paying higher costs for shipping, labor, and commodities including chicken, coffee and cooking oils amid COVID-19 related disruptions. The record inflation levels and staffing disruptions due to the omicron variant dulled profits at McDonald’s Corp (MCD.N) and coffeehouse chain Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O).”

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Too weird to check: Attempted assassin in mayoral shooting a gun-control activist?

Frankly, this looks like a young man in the middle of a mental-health breakdown that’s been a long time coming. His last column at the [Louisville Courier Journal] hinted at this too, a few months before he briefly went missing:

I went to school and became exceptional. I beat the odds. My parents allowed me to invest in a bright, comfortable future where I will have earned the benefit of the doubt in a world where my skin color automatically denies me such right.

I’ve earned the right to say I’m not one of the poor, miserable “others” in the streets begging for a handout. I’m America’s bright future. I’ve become another symbol of neoliberal progress where my title and my “recognized” name will give hope to those in desperate need of food, security and shelter.

And thus I’ve become destroyed. No longer myself. But another tool of oppression.

Picking up a gun to force his “revolution” seems inevitable from this long descent. His “revolutionary love letter” all but promised a violent uprising of some sort. And yet, in a media world where honking horns and Spotify contracts are treated like ackshual violence, no one seemed to notice Quintez Brown’s leap off the deep end until he tried to assassinate another local politician. And even then, the same media outlet on which his descent can be chronicled seems less than interested in tying this violence to either Brown’s clear political support for totalitarian systems or his mental health. Don’t expect much more national media coverage of this either, for the same reasons that the LCJ is treading lightly now.

Flashback: Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History. And additional examples of leftist violence and eliminationist rhetoric at the link.

RIP, P.J. O’ROURKE: Multiple sources are reporting the death at age 74 of P.J. O’Rourke — if they’re correct, one of the great satirists and prose stylists of the last 50 years has passed away. (And if they’re wrong, O’Rourke’s next column has just written itself.)

Earlier today, Jim Treacher linked to O’Rourke’s classic 1979 National Lampoon article: “How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink.”

Here’s my 2014 interview with O’Rourke discussing his-then new book,  The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way (And It Wasn’t My Fault) (And I‘ll Never Do It Again). Sadly updates to PJ Media (no relation, as we confirmed during the interview) over the intervening years have obliterated the graphics and links to the MP3s, but at least the the transcript of the interview, and the YouTube version of its audio, are still online.

DISPATCHES FROM THE RETURN TO NORMALCY, PART DEUX: Biden says he put a dead dog on a Republican’s doorstep while serving as a Delaware county official and promises to ‘work like the devil’ to bring down gas prices in National Association of Counties speech.

DISPATCHES FROM THE RETURN TO NORMALCY:  Even With Sold-Out Concerts, No-Shows Are a Big Problem for Venues.

The concert industry was expecting a full-scale recovery in 2022, but persistent fears about COVID-19 have led to high no-show rates that disproportionately impact venues. So while live music may be back across the county, low attendance still has many venues hurting.

Prior to the pandemic, the average no-show rate — meaning the percentage of ticket buyers who don’t attend an event — averaged around 5%. But now, “sagging consumer confidence is causing national no-show rates as high as 50%,” Raeanne Presley, former mayor of Branson, Mo., and co-owner of the city’s Presley’s Theater, told the House of Representatives Small Business Committee during a Jan. 18 hearing. This is having a “devastating” impact, said Presley, who serves on the board of directors for her local chapter of the National Independent Venue Association, “because most of our venue members rely on in-house spending to pay core bills.”

More than any other sector of the touring industry, venues bear the brunt of high no-show rates because of how they make money from concerts. Artists and promoters generate the bulk of their income before the performance from advance ticket sales. After production costs are deducted, the artist and promoter split the ticket revenue; the artist typically receives 85%, and the promoter gets the remaining 15%. Artists also profit from merchandise sales, of which they often must pay a 5% to 20% cut to the venue. On average, an artist will make at least 85% of their concert revenue from tickets and the rest from merch. While high no-show rates do negatively affect merch sales, most artists and promoters go into a concert knowing how much they will make each night. (For smaller shows, the venue typically acts as the promoter as well.)

It’s the opposite for venues, which often make at least 65% of their revenue during the concert from food and beverage sales, parking and their cut of merch sales. The remainder of their income generally comes from fees attached to tickets, rent charged to the promoter or artist and sponsorship money. That reliance on in-person spending leaves venues far more vulnerable. According to Billboard’s own analysis, a 5% drop in attendance equals a 7% drop in revenue for a venue, but only a .4% drop for artists.

Hopefully the massive no-shows at concerts will begin to dwindle, given we spent the fall and winter watching sold-out college and pro football games and other sporting events throughout the US without a comparative spike in COVID numbers, and especially since: The Omicron Wave Subsides.

ROGER SIMON: Durham Reveals Democrats Behaving Like the KGB; Is More Coming?

Electronic spying on the White House at the behest of the Democratic Party? It’s what you would expect from Chinese or Russian intelligence. And we thought the Mueller investigation was bad!

And talk about strange cases of projection. The Democrats were always accusing Trump of colluding with Russia while they were behaving like the KGB.

Trump himself responded that this is worse than Watergate, and he surely is correct. Watergate, it will be recalled, was about a small-time break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters during an election that Republicans won by a historic landslide. Although not to be excused in the slightest, politically, it couldn’t have been more irrelevant.

All this recent eavesdropping occurred during the tightest of elections (2016) and afterward during an actual presidency. It was clearly aimed at destroying that presidency, sabotaging from within—a genuine insurrection, instead of the phony one we know about. Nothing remotely like that has happened in our history.

And it was all instigated by people close to Hillary Clinton or, quite possibly, by Hillary herself. We don’t know yet. One of those involved we do know was Jake Sullivan, currently our national security adviser, charged with overseeing the conflict on the Ukraine–Russia border. Think about that. What a disgrace to our country that is. If you and I know about it, every nation in the world knows it.

This evolving scandal—atrocity might be a better word—has most probably eliminated Clinton from the Democratic presidential sweepstakes. It may even sweep up President Joe Biden.

Or not, thanks to a media near-blackout: Nets Ignore Explosive Report Showing Clinton Spied on Trump.

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their silence makes perfect sense.

Evergreen:

JEFF DUNETZ: Heritage Foundation: U.S. Economic Freedom At Lowest Point Ever.

In just one year of Joe Biden’s presidency, America’s economic freedom index has fallen to its lowest point ever in the survey’s history.

In its annual survey, the Heritage Foundation reports that the U.S. has fallen 2.7 points to an all-time low score of 72.1 and has hit its lowest rank globally of 25th place among nations with the freest economies. The 25th ranking is down from ranking 20th a year ago. Despite the drop in economic freedom, “the Biden administration is still barreling full steam ahead to implement a socialist agenda that would add trillions to the debt, hike taxes, and centralize more federal power over the economy.”

The survey, launched by the Heritage Foundation in 1995, scores countries based on government size, regulatory efficiency, and open markets.

“This year’s Index of Economic Freedom paints a disturbing picture, both at home and abroad,” Heritage President Kevin Roberts said according to Fox Business,  “The decline of American economic freedom is serious cause for alarm and has real and tangible consequences for all Americans, especially low-income families and the working class.

To be fair though, as institutions that are eager to spread socialism nationally noted over the weekend: Why the word ‘freedom’ is such a useful rallying cry for protesters. The word has become common among far-right groups, experts say.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Bill would prohibit Nebraska colleges from denying money to groups based on beliefs.

VLADIMIR POUTINE: Justin Trudeau: Prettiest Fascist Ever?

ROGER KIMBALL: A plague of phony experts and elites.

The tweet links to an article in which we read that “freedom is a malleable term — one that’s open to interpretation.” Well, OK. But after a bit of throat-clearing we come to the nub of the argument. Freedom can mean this, it can mean that, experts say, but “It’s also a term that has thrived among far-right groups,” whose population, “a number of experts [say] is… growing in Canada.”

* * * * * * * *

One of the interesting developments over the last several years is the extent to which totalitarian ideas that, until quite recently, would have been expressed only in veiled, euphemistic form are now out in the open. If you don’t wear a mask, refuse to be vaccinated, express unpopular ideas, dissent from this week’s reigning narrative, you should be locked up and terrorized. And of course, it is not just totalitarian ideas that are out in the open, spreading their wings. It is also totalitarian behavior, as we see on city streets wherever people congregate, peacefully, to demand their rights and the police apparatus of the state, egged on by disgusting media megaphones like the CBC, are out there in force in their fancy black SWAT gear to put those peons in their place.

Read the whole thing.

THE HIGH PRICE OF BEING RIGHT ABOUT COVID:

This past month, [Jennifer Sey was informed that it had become “untenable” for her to stay on at Levi’s. She was offered a $1 million severance package, but she refused to take it, knowing that if she did, she would have to sign a nondisclosure agreement barring her from speaking about why she was leaving the company.

She lost it all: her career, the chance to become Levi’s next CEO, which was well within her grasp, and the money she was owed — all because she questioned one aspect of the COVID narrative and refused to stay silent.

Here’s another example. Eric Flannery, a veteran who owns a burger joint in Washington, D.C., decided that he would not enforce the city’s vaccine mandate, which required all businesses to ask patrons to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 when officials implemented it last month. His reasoning was simple: “I’m not a government agent, and quite frankly, it’s not my job to check your personal medical history for you to come in,” he said. “I’m not a medical doctor. I don’t have any opinions on the vaccine. You should talk with your medical doctor and make an informed decision on your own and decide that.”

As a result, Flannery’s bar, the Big Board, was slapped with multiple fines, and its liquor license was revoked. Ultimately, Flannery was ordered to stop doing business altogether by the D.C. Health Department. And last Thursday, D.C.’s Assistant Attorney General Anthony Celo demanded that D.C.’s Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration make its suspension of the Big Board’s liquor license permanent, arguing its “continued operation places the community at risk.”

Just four days later, D.C. announced it would lift the vaccine mandate.

Read the whole thing — and don’t let the left forget its stance as it dials up the gaslighting between now and November: Democrats Will Pivot to a ‘Return to Normalcy’ in Biden’s State of the Union Speech. “Not since the collapse of the Hindenburg Line in 1918 have such bitterly held positions been abandoned so quickly,” as the BattleSwarm blog noted recently.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Brilliant: L.A. Schoolchildren Dress Up As Super Bowl Celebs So They Won’t Have To Wear Masks.

OUT ON A LIMB: No, Biden, Ending Mask Mandates Isn’t ‘Premature.’ 

It’s a pretty rich stance by Brandon’s handers, since as Ed Morrissey notes, “The disconnect between the White House and other Democrats executives just landed on Joe Biden’s doorstep — literally. Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser announced earlier today that they will stop requiring indoor venues to verify vaccination before allowing entry. And while Biden insists that mask-mandate rollbacks are ‘premature,’ Bowser pledged that the district’s mandates will be ‘rolled back’ in two weeks[.]”

ACE: Hollywood Is Dying and Jessica Chastain is the Grisly Angel of Death Dragging It to the Grave.

And speaking of Woke movie-making: Jessica Chastain’s latest vanity project, her attempt to prove that she can be an Action Movie Star, bombed abysmally, taking in an incredibly embarrassing $4.3 million at the box office in its opening weekend.

After five full weeks at the box office, plus an additional weekend, it took in $28 million worldwide. It’s out on PPV now so that about wraps up its box office take.

The Spider-Man movie is almost at $1.8 billion globally so this can’t be blamed on covid.

Below, the trailer.

* * * * * * * *

Who is this for?, Nolte asks.

Well, it’s for Jessica Chastain. Apparently she conceived of the project expressly as a culture war vehicle — she wanted to “challenge the notion that the action-spy genre belonged to men.”

That’s not an artistic motivation. It’s a purely political one.

It’s not that she has a love of spy action films, it’s not that she had a story idea, it’s not that she had this “idea burning inside me” — she just saw something boys were doing and said “girls should plant a flag there to claim territory from the boys.”

That’s about as far from a creative impulse as you can get. It’s not even a money-grubbing impulse — which could result in good art, because good art will often produce money.

No, this is a spiteful impulse, an impulse to denigrate and beat up on men — while also demanding they come give you money to see your movie.

As Charlie’s Angels did a few years ago.

The (female) writer kind of gives away that spiteful motivation. It’s not about the story, or the genre, or the love of the action-spy format.

Didn’t The Avengers, Modesty Blaise, and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. “challenge the notion that the action-spy genre belonged to men” — over half a century ago? (Without alienating half the potential audience in the process.)

MICHAEL WALSH: ‘The Whole World is Watching.’

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has involved the 1988 “Emergencies Act,” which allows the central government to take “special temporary measures that may not be appropriate in normal times” in order to to crack down on the protest.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday he will activate rarely used emergency powers, including cutting off financing, to end protests that have shut some border crossings and paralyzed parts of the capital. The government, saying the protests were damaging the economy and Canada’s reputation as a reliable trading partner, introduced sweeping measures to support police forces and bring crowdfunding platforms under terror financing oversight.

The “Freedom Convoy” protests, started by Canadian truckers opposing a COVID-19 vaccinate-or-quarantine mandate for cross-border drivers, have drawn people opposed to Trudeau’s policies on everything from pandemic restrictions to a carbon tax. “The blockades are harming our economy and endangering public safety,” Trudeau told a news conference. “We cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue.”

“Dangerous activities” such as peaceful protest… not to mention “temporary measures” like “two weeks to flatten the curve…”

* * * * * * * *

Back in the day, the comic strip Pogo, by Walt Kelly, was immensely popular. Perhaps its most famous moment came on April 22, 1970—the first Earth Day—when Kelly drew a poster depicting his title character, a possum, sadly contemplating a trash-strewn landscape and observing, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The Left loved that sentiment then, and they love it now. Except that the players have switched sides.

And this time, the whole world is watching

Read the whole thing.

Related: Trudeau Goes Nuclear: Invokes Never-Before-Used Emergencies Act to Crush Freedom Convoy.

FASTER, PLEASE: The Receding Democratic Majority.

November 8 to improve both his own political standing and public attitudes toward the Democratic Party. Otherwise, his tenuous congressional majorities—222–212 in the House of Representatives and 50–50 in the Senate—will disappear. Every morning brings him another reminder of his dilemma. Every morning brings him one step closer to what’s shaping up to be the biggest political shellacking in more than a decade.

The odds are not in Biden’s favor. Historical precedent is against him. Only twice in the last century has the president’s party gained seats in its first midterm. Both situations were unique. In 1934, FDR’s Democrats benefited from an enormous amount of support for the New Deal. In 2002 George W. Bush’s Republicans gained from the surge in patriotism and hawkishness after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Public admiration for the leadership styles of both presidents was visible in their high job-approval ratings. That goodwill translated into gains for their parties. There is no parallel today.

Don’t get cocky. As Glenn has written, “If you want to win, donate and volunteer. Winning takes work, and commenting on Internet blogs, even this one, doesn’t count.”

D.C. MAYOR TO DROP INDOOR VACCINE MANDATE FOR BUSINESSES.

The city’s mask mandate for indoor spaces will also be “dialed back” starting March 1, said Bowser. While masks will not be required at restaurants, entertainment venues, churches, grocery stores, or other, similar venues, they will still be required in schools after that date.

Sure, that punishes DC kids, but it at least eliminates the odds that Bowser will be caught violating her own mask mandate:

TRUCKERS GET RESULTS: Ontario to end COVID-19 vaccine passport system March 1.

YESTERDAY I WAS LEVI’S BRAND PRESIDENT. I QUIT SO I COULD BE FREE. I turned down $1 million severance in exchange for my voice:

Then, in October 2020, when it was clear public schools were not going to open that fall, I proposed to the company leadership that we weigh in on the topic of school closures in our city, San Francisco. We often take a stand on political issues that impact our employees; we’ve spoken out on gay rights, voting rights, gun safety, and more.

The response this time was different. “We don’t weigh in on hyper-local issues like this,” I was told. “There’s also a lot of potential negatives if we speak up strongly, starting with the numerous execs who have kids in private schools in the city.”

I refused to stop talking. I kept calling out hypocritical and unproven policies, I met with the mayor’s office, and eventually uprooted my entire life in California—I’d lived there for over 30 years—and moved my family to Denver so that my kindergartner could finally experience real school. We were able to secure a spot for him in a dual-language immersion Spanish-English public school like the one he was supposed to be attending in San Francisco.

National media picked up on our story, and I was asked to go on Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News. That appearance was the last straw. The comments from Levi’s employees picked up—about me being anti-science; about me being anti-fat (I’d retweeted a study showing a correlation between obesity and poor health outcomes); about me being anti-trans (I’d tweeted that we shouldn’t ditch Mother’s Day for Birthing People’s Day because it left out adoptive and step moms); and about me being racist, because San Francisco’s public school system was filled with black and brown kids, and, apparently, I didn’t care if they died. They also castigated me for my husband’s Covid views—as if I, as his wife, were responsible for the things he said on social media.

All this drama took place at our regular town halls—a companywide meeting I had looked forward to but now dreaded.

Meantime, the Head of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the company asked that I do an “apology tour.” I was told that the main complaint against me was that “I was not a friend of the Black community at Levi’s.” I was told to say that “I am an imperfect ally.” (I refused.)

The fact that I had been asked, back in 2017, to be the executive sponsor of the Black Employee Resource Group by two black employees did not matter. The fact that I’ve fought for kids for years didn’t matter. That I was just citing facts didn’t matter. The head of HR told me personally that even though I was right about the schools, that it was classist and racist that public schools stayed shut while private schools were open, and that I was probably right about everything else, I still shouldn’t say so. I kept thinking: Why shouldn’t I?

Read the whole thing.

NBC EXPOSES MASKLESS CELEBRITIES AT SUPER BOWL ON NATIONAL TELEVISION:

It’s simple: These celebrities are part of a system that has pontificated about the pandemic for months. Everyone knows at this point that the idea of “we’re all in this together” is a complete lie. Although there are probably plenty of people at SoFi Stadium not wearing masks, they do not need to be held to the same standards as public figures.

Times seem to have changed for Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, who raised eyebrows kissing with masks on at the MET Gala in September. And while Lebron James has previously criticized bizarre masking policies for high school athletes, one would think he’d be more in line with left-wing orthodoxy, as he is online.

California’s State of Emergency is still ongoing, despite hosting the massive event in Inglewood, and the statewide mask mandate is not scheduled to be lifted until Tuesday.

Even if it is not considered hypocrisy for everyone involved in this latest incident, it still shows that people of all social classes and levels of influence are sick and tired of ridiculous coronavirus restrictions put forth by Democratic politicians. At the end of the day, this has nothing to do with public health and everything to do with coming across as a good person.

As Remy of Reason TV says, “It’s Magic!”

GEORGE ORWELL, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Why the word ‘freedom’ is such a useful rallying cry for protesters. The word has become common among far-right groups, experts say.

Based on that headline and subhead, Winston Smith has been working at Canada’s CBC for quite some time.

THIS IS CNN: CNN says Joe Rogan using the N-word is ‘another January 6 moment.’

The CNN article’s title has since been changed to “Why shrugging off Joe Rogan’s use of the n-word is so dangerous,” but the first two paragraphs of Blake’s writing still encapsulate the idea behind the original headline given to the piece.

“The podcaster Joe Rogan did not join a mob that forced lawmakers to flee for their lives. He never carried a Confederate flag inside the US Capitol rotunda. No one died trying to stop him from using the n-word,” wrote Blake.

“But what Rogan and those that defend him have done since video clips of him using the n-word surfaced on social media is arguably just as dangerous as what a mob did when they stormed the US Capitol on January 6 last year,” he continued.

RAMS DEFEAT BENGALS TO WIN SUPER BOWL 56.

Related:

Here’s the video of every celebrity without a mask during the Super Bowl. But every kid in California will have to be wearing them tomorrow in school. They must all be holding their breaths the entire game. pic.twitter.com/Dc9yVd7RPf

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) February 14, 2022

RIP: Ivan Reitman, producer, Ghostbusters director, dies at 75.

WAS IT OVER WHEN THE RUSSIANS BOMBED SANTA MONICA?