RIP: Ronnie Spector, Girl Group Icon and Leader of the Ronettes, Dies at 78.

UPDATE: Ronnie Spector: a life in pictures.

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: USA Today Tries to Destigmatize Pedophilia, Fails Miserably. “The article quoted no psychologist or forensic researcher with a different viewpoint on pedophilia – those who might rather characterize it as a severe mental disorder rather than a sexual orientation. It only gives a passing mention that the well-being and protection of children should be society’s top priority when it comes to handling such disorders. Instead, the article keeps asserting the need for treatment, allowing pedophiles to live openly without fear of social ostracization, not accounting for the risks involved. USA Today took a beating on social media for the article and subsequently deleted a tweet defending its controversial position…The New York Times, Vice, Salon, and many other outlets have also attempted to destigmatize pedophilia in one way or another.”

Related: ‘Did the Lincoln Project write this?’ USA Today wants you to know that ackshually, ‘there’s a lot we’re misunderstanding’ about pedophilia.

UPDATE: Stacy McCain asks, “‘What would I do with a 7-horsepower wood chipper?’ Trust me, it could come in handy, and I think you might soon decide you need one.”

(Updated and bumped.)

MAKE AMERICA 2016 AGAIN! Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump 2024 — yep, life has become a horror movie.

In the wake of her loss, Clinton asked us to feel sorry for her — rather than the other way around.

Here was a candidate handed the nomination by her party, which flushed out her most serious primary contender, Bernie Sanders, behind the scenes.

If she couldn’t beat a former reality star with that assist — plus the $150 million war chest, the backing of Beyoncé and Bruce and Oprah, the media industrial complex not just firmly behind her but rabidly anti-Trump — what makes anyone, anywhere, convinced she could pull it off in 2024? Trump’s run is a given. So is Hillary’s inevitable loss.

The good news? As we’re learning, even the most stubborn mutations weaken over time.

But perhaps, not fast enough:

DON’T GET COCKY: CNN’s Harry Enton: Why Republicans aren’t likely to lose any Senate seats in 2022.

But that does tie-in with Biden and Schumer’s meltdowns this week. Speaking of the latter: Tom Cotton Skewers Chuck Schumer on the Filibuster by Using His Own Words Against Him.

FAUCI’S IN-KIND CONTRIBUTION TO THE BIDEN 2020 CAMPAIGN: “A close call:” Office of Special Counsel cleared Fauci of violating Hatch Act just days before 2020 election.

Trump, as you remember, notably preferred to try to speak with a more optimistic tone when he spoke about progress being made in battling the pandemic. He likely did that to try to reassure Americans that everyone was doing all they could and that it was a top priority. He was concerned about the collapse of the economy and the high unemployment rate due to business closings. Fauci claimed that Biden took the pandemic more seriously, which is odd, given that by then Trump had successfully used Operation Warp Speed to develop several COVID-19 vaccines and bring them to market for distribution. Fauci thought that Trump was focusing too much on the vaccination and treatment aspect of the virus.

The piece in WaPo was happy to run with the conflict expressed by Fauci. It borders on an in-kind donation to the Biden campaign. The piece pointed to Trump’s campaign rallies and the fact that he didn’t mask-up as Biden and Kamala did at the time.

From yesterday: Unity! Sen. Rand Paul is pleased to announce that ‘Dr. Fauci and I finally agreed on something in our Senate hearing today:’

#EMPTYSHELVESBIDEN: ‘It’s like a Soviet store during 1981:’ Grocery stores across the US have empty shelves as supply chain crisis and COVID combine to make basics like milk, bread, meat, canned soups and cleaning products hard to find.

DEPEND UPON IT, SIR; WHEN A MAN KNOWS THE MIDTERMS ARE IN NOVEMBER, IT CONCENTRATES HIS MIND WONDERFULLY: Should we treat Covid like the flu? Europe is slowly starting to think so.

BYRON YORK: GOP pushes back on Dem ‘big lie.’ “Doomsday for democracy if the filibuster were eliminated! Now, of course, Schumer believes the precise opposite of what he said back then. Given his statements and actions, it is no exaggeration to say that Schumer’s hypocrisy, when it comes to the legislative filibuster, is simply off the scale. (McConnell’s is not; when then-President Donald Trump urged majority Republican senators to get rid of the legislative filibuster, McConnell said no.) Why is this fight happening now? Democrats appear to be deeply frustrated by their inability to pass their current top priorities — the far-reaching voting bills, plus yet another huge spending bill — with their 50-vote non-majority in the Senate. Their ambitions have outstripped their power in the Senate for the last year. Now the approach of midterm elections makes it even more difficult to get what they want done. So they are lashing out at Republicans and seeking to change the rules. Look for more, not less, of that as the elections grow nearer.”

TANSTAAFL: Biden’s Plan for ‘Free’ COVID-19 Tests Completely Ignores the Root Cause of the Shortage.

SCIENTISTS BELIEVED COVID LEAKED FROM WUHAN LAB — BUT FEARED DEBATE COULD HURT ‘INTERNATIONAL HARMONY:’

ROGER SIMON: Guilty Conscience? CDC’s Walensky Lets the COVID Cat Out of the Bag.

Was it a guilty conscience that prompted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky to tell the world on “Good Morning America” on Jan. 7 that 75 percent of COVID-19 deaths occurred among those with four or more comorbidities?

If it wasn’t, it should have been.

Four or more? What would the percentage have been for those with a mere two or three comorbidities? Eighty-five? Ninety-five? Ninety-eight?

It couldn’t be more obvious that COVID-19 was a serious danger most of all to those who were very sick in the first place. The obese also had concerns, although that is rarely mentioned because not politically correct. And, alas, sometimes the recently vaccinated.

For that, we all had to be injected, masked up, locked down, and isolated for two years. And they say Jan. 6 is a scandal?

Global corporations have participated in this madness for their own power-hungry reasons, firing their unvaccinated employees. Our large medical institutions have behaved abominably, often motivated by greed or fear of losing government subsidy.

But worst of all by far is what has been done to America’s children as a result. The past two years—and continuing now in many venues—have been the worst case of child abuse in human history.

Unfortunately, that’s not as hyperbolic as it sounds. Think about the numbers and the size of the populations involved.

The pervasive retardation and attendant neurosis of America’s young, indeed millions throughout the world, because they have spent their early developmental years wearing masks and separated from each other, trapped in their homes, staring at computer screens, will be felt for decades to come.

Suicides and suicidal ideation have escalated among the young. What does that say about their futures, not to mention ours? A generation of substance abusers looms.

As a bit of battlefield prep for the midterms, the DNC-MSM has started to turn against Walensky and the CDC: The media suddenly notices the CDC is clueless.

BUILD BACK BRANDON! December prices rise 7 percent, compared to a year ago, as 2021 inflation reaches highest in 40 years.

In March, Robert Reich’s column at Newsweek was headlined, “This Is Biden’s LBJ Moment.” It sure is, Robert. It sure is.

THERE ARE CERTAIN SECTIONS OF PHILADELPHIA, COMRADE, THAT I WOULDN’T ADVISE YOU TO INVADE: Philadelphia Flyers Conquer Red Army: January 11, 1976.

YEAR TWO OF THE ADMINISTRATION FROM HELL: But will it end well in November?

If 2021 was scary, 2022 — the 2^nd. year of the administration from Planet Stupid —  will build on that disaster. You don’t need a crystal ball or the ghost of Nostradamus to see what lies ahead, and it won’t be pretty.

1. The administration will continue to blame everyone and everything for the failure of its perverse policies. We were told that COVID is responsible for snatch and grab, something called the “meat conglomerate” made chicken prices take wing, and greedy oil companies are to blame for pain at the pump. Could destroying domestic energy production possibly have anything to do with rising prices? Impossible! To suggest such a thing shows you don’t understand economics, a la AOC.

2. Chaos at the border will be the new normal. In its move to swamp the nation with welfare-state voters, the administration will continue to open the floodgates to drugs, disease, poverty, human trafficking and crime. The Border Patrol has been replaced by a revolving door.

3.  We’ll continue to fight inflation with spending. – We’ll keep spending to fight a virus that’s increasingly irrelevant. We’ll spend to fight a crime wave that anti-police policies set in motion. We’ll spend to hire more police when fewer and fewer want the job. We’ll spend on education for schools that are closed. We’ll throw money at rising prices – which is like dousing wildfires with gasoline.

And here we go: White House braces for brutal inflation report. Complete with Republicans seizing! “Republicans have seized upon rising prices as evidence Biden’s economic policies — including his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package enacted last March — have done more harm than good.”

ELVIS COSTELLO RETIRES FROM PERFORMING ‘OLIVER’S ARMY’, ASKS RADIO STATIONS TO STOP PLAYING IT:

Elvis Costello has revealed that he will no longer perform “Oliver’s Army”, one of his most popular songs, and has also urged radio stations to stop playing it.

Written about the conflict in Northern Ireland, the song contains the lyrics: “Only takes one itchy trigger/ One more widow, one less white n*****.”

The 67-year-old singer defended his use of the slur in the song due to a historical “fact”. But he said he will stop performing it before anyone “accuses” him of “something he didn’t intend”.

“If I wrote that song today, maybe I’d think twice about it,” Costello told The Telegraph. “That’s what my grandfather was called in the British army – it’s historically a fact – but people hear that word go off like a bell and accuse me of something that I didn’t intend.

“On the last tour, I wrote a new verse about censorship, but what’s the point of that?” he continued. “So I’ve decided I’m not going to play it. [Bleeping the word] is a mistake. They’re making it worse by bleeping it for sure. Because they’re highlighting it then. Just don’t play the record!”

Elvis was some piece of work back in his early days: That Time Elvis Costello Incited a Brawl With Racist Remarks.

It started out with slight insults between bands. Members of the old rock guard (the Stephen Stills Band) and the new wave (Elvis Costello and the Attractions) converged in the Holiday Inn bar in Columbus, Ohio, after playing separate gigs on March 15, 1979.

Costello was already drunk when Stills and friends walked in. As he got drunker, his words got nastier in a desperate attempt to inflame the sensibilities of his elders. Stills soon left to go to his room. Backing singer Bonnie Bramlett (of Delaney & Bonnie fame) continued to engage Costello, who kept disparaging America and its most hallowed rock stars. After 2AM he described James Brown as a “jive-arsed n——” and Ray Charles as a “blind, ignorant n——.” In response, Bramlett backhanded the 24-year-old up-and-comer. It all ended in a brawl, quickly broken up by the bartender.

Exit quote: “When asked about the controversy, Ray Charles said, ‘Drunken talk isn’t meant to be printed in the paper.’ In the meantime, members of the American chapters of Rock Against Racism picketed Costello’s remaining concerts. The irony was that some of the pictures of Costello on the picket signs were from a Rock Against Racism gig Costello had played in Europe in 1978.”

HOWARD STERN GOES OFF ON ‘F*CKNUT’ NOVAK DJOKOVIC OVER HIS COVID CONTROVERSIES: ‘Throw Him Right The F*ck Out Of Tennis.’

Howard Stern has already called for Aaron Rodgers to be kicked out of the NFL for his vaccine stance, and now he’s calling for tennis star Novak Djokovic to be banned from playing tennis.

Djokovic has chosen not to receive the Covid-19 vaccine, and is now allegedly being investigated by The Australian Border Force for submitting a false travel declaration upon his arrival in Australia.

“That fucknut Djokovic,” Stern ranted on the latest edition of his SiriusXM radio show. “What a f**king asshole,” Stern added. “The first I’ve heard of this guy is that he doesn’t want to get his vaccine. They should throw him right the f**k out of tennis. That’s it. Goodbye.”

Stern then accused Djokovic of lying about having gotten Covid. “He could be lying,” Stern said. “He could be lying. He’s a douchebag. He’s a f**knut.”

Flashback: Howard’s end: Shock jock Stern has lost his sting — and his mojo.

“The Howard Stern Show,” long in decline, is dead.

In March 2020, when New York City officially went into lockdown, Stern fled to his basement in the Hamptons. Over one year later and now vaccinated, as he first admitted on-air Monday — back from yet another vacation — Stern still has no intention of ever returning to his Midtown studio, his luxury Upper West Side apartment, or any semblance of pre-pandemic life.

The Howard Stern who stayed on air as planes flew into the World Trade Center is unrecognizable.

“Things will never get back to normal,” he declared just two weeks ago. “I do not believe the pandemic will ever be over.”

For a once-constant listener like me, this is heretical, especially here in New York City, where every single neighborhood is struggling to survive. Also, Howard: This pandemic will end, even though you, a germophobic recluse, clearly wish it would not.

* * * * * * * *

Stern’s rants are so expected and so often hit the same notes — personal hygiene, looks, financial status, marital troubles, professional incompetence — that even attacked staffers feel the same boredom that long ago came over the listener.

And how could they not? Stern long ago abandoned his best attribute, going after famous hypocrites. Hilaria Baldwin, for example, pretending for years to be from Spain — when really she’s from Boston — and bagging a movie star would once have been Stern show fodder for days.

But Hilaria barely rates a mention. Why? Can’t piss off Howard’s good pal Alec in the Hamptons. Howard’s in with the cool kids — all he ever really wanted, despite claims to the contrary.

As original Saturday Night Live writer writer Anne Beatts famously said, “You can only be avant-garde for so long before you become garde.”

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Normalcy for kids in Florida proves how wrong NYC’s school rules are.

Our family had enough of New York City COVID regulations that target kids, the least at-risk segment of the population, with no off-ramp in sight.

So we moved to Florida. Hello from the other side.

Last week, my children went to school maskless for the first time since March 2020. Was I worried about them getting COVID? No, because there’s a mountain of evidence that their cloth Batman masks do absolutely nothing.

There has been a high cost to needlessly masking kids. Many countries weighed the risk and decided that the effect masks have on learning and human connection was simply not worth it so they didn’t mask small children the entire pandemic.

But blue areas in the United States have refused to accept science, data, reality.

Read the whole thing.

CHANGE: The media suddenly notices the CDC is clueless.

Yet to save Stelter, Darcy and their network any more embarrassment, let me put it bluntly: the CDC lost the faith of the American people last year when business owners were forced to stay home and parents were forced to pull their kids out of school, yet social justice protesters and leftist activists were permitted to flood the streets in protest. You weren’t allowed to open your business, but they were allowed to burn it down.

Since then, amid this overnight changing of “the science” with little to explain it other than Joe Biden’s poll numbers, members of mainstream media have suddenly changed their tune on the never-ending pandemic measures. Simply put: the writing is on the wall for the upcoming midterm elections and they are making their adjustments accordingly at the behest of an administration flailing over its broken promise to “shut down the virus.”

The media’s sudden about-face is not because they now hastily agree with those on the opposite side of the political aisle. Stelter and others are simply trying to moderate their message now that “the good ones” are starting to catch Covid. This is about hierarchy. Journalists and Democrats are experiencing the same draconian-lite measures that the rest of the country has had to go through for the past year, and they are finding them very inconvenient, both to their own lives and to Joe Biden’s approval ratings.

The Politico retreads at Axios have also noticed: The Biden administration has a COVID credibility crisis. “While much of the unvaccinated population is unlikely to be persuaded by any messenger, large swaths of the public are still receptive to expert guidance, but federal health agencies, particularly the CDC, may be squandering their credibility with this population.”

As Steve wrote yesterday in response, “May be? Celebrity medical spokesmodel Anthony ‘Doctor’ Fauci has been on at least both sides of every COVID-related question since the outbreak began.

FBI REFUSES TO EXPLAIN FBI ROLE IN JANUARY 6:

In September, the New York Times confirmed that FBI informants infiltrated the Proud Boys, an alleged militia group, and participated in the first breach of the Capitol perimeter right before 1 p.m. The man seen with the Proud Boys before the first intrusion was Ray Epps.

Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asked Matthew Olsen, head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, whether any plain-clothes officers were at the Capitol on January 6. Olsen, who announced today the formation of a domestic terror unit within DOJ, said he was not “aware” of any plainclothes officers within the crowd or inside the building on January 6. Cotton slammed Olsen for repeatedly refusing to give the committee specific answers. “Did you prepare for this hearing, did you know this hearing was happening before this morning, Cotton asked Olsen.

Cotton also pressed Olsen about Epps; Olsen deferred the question to Sanborn. “Do you really expect us to believe you’ve never heard the name Ray Epps, you don’t know anything about him?” Cotton asked. Olsen said he had “no information at all” about Epps.

Fortunately though, one man in Washington is on the case! ‘Just another misled man:’ Rep. Adam Kinzinger puts to rest all doubts about ‘Ray,’ says he apparently broke no laws so was let off.

BIDEN SAYS THOSE WHO OPPOSE DEMOCRAT VOTING RIGHTS BILL ARE ON THE SIDE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS:

President Biden Tuesday said lawmakers who oppose the Democratic-led effort to overhaul how the country conducts elections are choosing to be on the side of historical villains such as Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Biden, in an unusually vitriolic speech by a president who casts himself as uniting the nation and healing its wounds, suggested Republicans who oppose Democrat-backed election changes stood in opposition to democracy itself.

“So I ask every elected official in America, how do you want to be remembered?” Biden said during remarks from the Atlanta University Center Consortium, on the campus of Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College. “Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”

George Wallace, you say?

But since Obama brought it up, it’s worth noting that the only person in modern American politics to have repeatedly praised Wallace and other segregationists is Joe Biden. It was Biden who bragged that in 1973 Wallace considered him “one of the outstanding young politicians of America.” It was Biden who wrote in 1975 that the “Democratic Party could stand a liberal George Wallace.” It was Biden who in 1981 told a black witness in the Senate that “sometimes even George Wallace is right.” It was Biden who, while campaigning for the presidency in Alabama in 1987, claimed that he’d been the recipient of an award from Wallace in 1973 (it probably wasn’t true; but what a thing to brag about!), and then boasted that Delaware was “on the South’s side in the Civil War.”

“Biden was also buddies with J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and a segregationist and anti-Semite who would later become a mentor to the Clintons.”

And another fellow Democrat, Robert Byrd: Herschel Walker says ‘Democrats do not like America’ and slams media for not grilling Joe Biden over his friendship with former KKK member-turned senator Robert Byrd.

Related: Watch: Joe Biden Suggests to Black Students He Was Arrested During Civil Rights Struggle. “Biden has made similar claims before, most of which were later proved false. In 2020, he had to walk back a false claim that he was arrested in South Africa while trying to see jailed leader (and later president) Nelson Mandela. Biden has also made dubious and somewhat retracted claims about marching personally in civil rights demonstrations. Last week, in a speech on the anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riot, Biden emphasized the importance of truth in history.”

More: Great moments in Stockholm Syndrome:

Flashback to 2012: Biden: Romney’s approach to financial regulation will ‘put y’all back in chains.’

GREAT MOMENTS IN CORPORATISM: Nancy Pelosi – A Socialist Capitalist who gamed the system to make millions of dollars.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

UPDATE:

(Updated and bumped.)

RAND PAUL: A UNITER, NOT A DIVIDER! Unity: Sen. Rand Paul is pleased to announce that ‘Dr. Fauci and I finally agreed on something in our Senate hearing today.’

HOLLYWOOD’S NEW RULES:

There was a feeling, among those who didn’t hew to the new orthodoxy, that it was becoming harder not only for certain people to find work but for a certain kind of content—ballsier, more provocative—to get made.

They were scared of what was happening. The fear, one prominent director said in an email, is “the audience stops trusting us. They begin to see us as a community twisting ourselves into a pretzel to make every movie as woke as possible, every relationship mixed racially, every character sexually fluid, and they decide that we are telling stories set in a fantasyland instead of a world they know and live in. If that happens, and they decide to throw themselves instead into video games 24/7, we will lose them.”

Movies and shows that were once widely acclaimed but are now verboten, writers and directors said, included “Blazing Saddles,” even though it was co-written by Richard Pryor; “The Bad News Bears,” even though it featured a multiracial cast; “Tootsie,” because transgender activists; and “Rocky” (“bad guy CANNOT be black,” a director explained in an email). Nor would “The Wizard of Oz” get greenlit. (“The munchkins? Forget it,” the director said). Nor would “All in the Family,” probably the most influential show of the 1970s. (“Archie Bunker”—the main character—“is basically a Trump voter,” a producer explained.) “South Park,” which debuted in 1997, has been grandfathered in. “Otherwise, no way,” another producer said.

All of which may explain the very strange story of the brand new $484 million Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

Read the whole thing.

GOODER AND HARDER: California Considering Insane Plan to Double its (Already High) Taxes.

The proposed amendment would hike several key taxes to fund a state-level government healthcare scheme. According to the right-leaning Tax Foundation, it would increase the average household’s taxes by an astonishing $12,250.

It’s estimated that the amendment would increase state revenue by $163 billion a year, which is more revenue than California had ever seen in an entire year before 2020. (That means it’s effectively doubling the state’s taxes.)

Related: There Aren’t Enough U-Hauls for Fleeing Californians.

UPDATE: How High Will California’s Taxes Go Before There’s No One Left To Tax?

(Updated and bumped.)