UP IN SMOKE: Pot Industry in California on Verge of Collapse. “Potheads who thought government legalization of pot would lead to heaven on earth forgot about one tiny detail: getting the government involved in anything either makes it more expensive or ruins it completely. In the case of legal pot in California, it’s both.”

To be fair though, think about Gaia! Greenies Against Grass: Climate Change Believers Now Attacking Legal Marijuana.

A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE! December Sees Antifa Thugs (Finally) Going to Prison!

THE PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK: New York City’s Drug Experiment.

Step off the New York City subway at 125th and Lexington, and you will find yourself in what can only be called an open-air drug market. The subway entrance is an easy place to score—the day I visited, one man stood yelling, “Drugs! Drugs! Drugs!” like a ballpark vendor. On every block, people slump where they stand, “nodding out” from opioid intoxication.

According to one resident, however, last Tuesday morning NYPD cars temporarily replaced the users and dealers in advance of the media-heavy launch of New York City’s Safe Consumption Sites (SCS), officially sanctioned centers where people can use drugs under the supervision of medical professionals armed with overdose-reversing medication. In their first day, the two sites—one in East Harlem and the other in Washington Heights—permitted more than 70 people to consume drugs in a designated “overdose prevention center,” then ride out the high in a DMV-like waiting room.

The launch culminates years of work by outgoing mayor Bill De Blasio; his successor, Mayor-elect Eric Adams, has indicated he plans to support the project. The two seem to agree that the urgency of New York’s drug crisis—2,000 deaths last year alone, and a 200 percent increase in the overdose death rate in the last two decades—justifies this radical approach. As city councilman Mark Levine put it, “This strategy is proven to save lives, and is desperately needed at a moment when fatalities are rising fast.”

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and with 120 of them in operation across ten countries, Safe Consumption Sites are not an untried idea. But contrary to the reassurances of New York’s leaders, a sober reading of the evidence reveals how little we know about how well they work and their social side effects. New York is essentially conducting an experiment—an illegal one—not only on drug users but also on residents of some of its most-challenged neighborhoods, without any clear metrics for success.

The site is a particular burden to the residents of East Harlem, which already hosts many of the city’s drug-treatment facilities. Data obtained by the Greater Harlem Coalition, a neighborhood advocacy group, show that while central and eastern Harlem are home to just 3 percent of New Yorkers, 18 percent of the city’s drug-recovery patients go there for treatment. Just 17 percent of those people are from East Harlem proper, while 75 percent are from outside Harlem altogether.

Related: Theodore Dalrymple in 2003 on England’s drug experiment: “Incidentally, the rise in deaths from methadone in America is probably attributable to the adoption of British methods. For once, the Americans are copying us, with predictably disastrous results.”

GOT WOKE, WENT BROKE: Companies Need to Learn From the Salvation Army Suffering From Their Wokeness.

One recent example of this signaling foolishness cropped up last month, involving the Salvation Army. It was revealed that the church/charitable organization had produced an internal guide about racism, focused entirely on white privilege and what must be done to correct many ills as a result of systemic racism. As I covered a few weeks ago, the claims by the group’s PR division that they were not targeting whites — and they had not called for apologies for being racist — were completely false, based on the contents of the very guidebook they had produced.

Well, this is the time for corporations to take notice. It’s clear that pandering to the activists by telling the bulk of your donors that they are racist, as you ask them for continued support, is not paying off. In just a few short weeks, we are seeing the direct impact this adherence to a woke agenda has had on the Salvation Army, as across the nation they are reporting that donations are not just lower but significantly down. It is sad and amazing to witness, as a completely unneeded social activist agenda has led to severely depleted levels of support.

I have spoken to a number of people who have significantly altered their giving to the organization. One close friend has been an annual donor, and she steered her giving to other outfits. Another said they have turned to local charities. And as a sign of this not being a seasonal effect, one explained they chose to give to a local group, who told him that they are experiencing a flush donation season and cited the drop in Salvation Army donations means more is coming their way.

While I feel for the nice people standing in front of the local Kroger*, I suspect more than a few of these have ended up in Salvation Army kettles this year:

* Speaking of which: Kroger, The Wokest Supermarket.

FREDDIE DEBOER: Where to Now, Chris? Where to Now?

[Chris] Hayes clearly hates Trump. But Trump is just as clearly a force that has given his life meaning. It’s hard to look at Hayes’s public persona and not conclude that he begins and ends each day with thoughts of Trump. It reminds me of the obvious but essential insight that our hatreds can structure our lives, lend them purpose, make the hazy and unsatisfying feelings of adult life coalesce into something that feels real and vital. And in all of this Hayes epitomizes liberalism’s essential sickness, its absolute inability to think systemically, its desire to be the pained and righteous victim instead of the compromised leader, its deep attachment to whining and complaining that the system’s not fair, its allergy to power, its implacable dedication to being a sighing chorus that laments the world instead of changing it. He dreads a Trump win in 2024, and he so desperately wants Trump back. A tragic figure.

Donald Trump is 75 years old and unhealthy. Whether he wins back the presidency or not, he will die sooner than later, and will no longer be present to serve as the lodestar for contemporary liberalism and its antipolitics, its addiction to negation. And then where will American liberals go? I suspect their movement will crawl even deeper into a bitter and paranoid culture of zero-sum racial fatalism. That is not a plan; that is total surrender.

Back when he was a writer, Hayes quoted Harry Reid:

After the election, I conducted a kind of exit interview with retiring Senate minority leader Harry Reid. I asked him what the Democratic Party stands for, and after speaking of his own upbringing in deep poverty in the rural town of Searchlight, Nevada, he said: “People have asked me the last year, ‘What message do you want to leave with people?’ And here’s the message: I want everyone in America to understand, if Harry Reid can make it in America, anyone can. And I want those young men and women out there who are looking for a way out to realize, if Harry Reid can make it, anybody can. That’s what America is all about.”

This is, in some ways, a perfect summation of the Democratic Party’s message in the Obama era: In America, anyone can make it out, anyone can rise to the highest heights. Immigrant, native-born, black, white, disabled, gay, straight, male, or female—no matter your background, there’s a place at the top for you.

Does that sound anything like the message American liberalism wants to deliver now? Absolutely not. Today, American liberalism wants to tell you not that America can be a place of justice and equality where we all work together for the good of all, even as we acknowledge how badly we’ve failed that ideal. In 2021 liberalism wants to tell you that the whole damn American project is toxic and ugly, that every element of the country is an excuse to perpetuate racism, that those groups of people Hayes lists at the bottom are not in any sense in it together but that instead some fall higher on an hierarchy of suffering, with those who are perceived to have it too good in that hierarchy deserving no help from liberalism or government or the Democratic party – and, oh by the way, you can be dirt poor and powerless and still be privileged, so we don’t want you, especially if you’re part of the single largest chunk of the American electorate. Anyone who tows the line Harry Reid takes here is either a bigot or a sap, and politics is a zero-sum game where marginalized groups can only get ahead if others suffer, and Democrats fight to control a filthy, ugly, fallen country that will forever be defined by its sins. That’s the liberalism of 2021, a movement of unrelenting pessimism, obscure vocabulary, elitist tastes, and cultural and social extremism totally divorced from a vision of shared prosperity and a working class movement that comes together across difference for the good of all. In fact, I think I learned in my sociology class at Dartmouth that a working class movement would inherently center white pain! Better to remain divided into perpetually warring fiefdoms of grievance that can accomplish nothing. Purer that way. Now here’s Chris with part 479 of his January 6th series, to show us the country’s biggest problems.

Read the whole thing. Yes, there’s plenty of anti-Trump throat clearing, and no, I don’t think Harry Reid is the perfect person to be delivering a patriotic message, either. Wrong guy obviously — but it’s the right message. And with the exception of Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and Tulsi Gabbard, there aren’t many Democrats left who can deliver it.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Now That The Beatles’ Get Back Is Out, Why Can’t We See Let It Be?

However, in the 2010s, the bitter feelings within The Beatles’ camp toward Let It Be started to fade a bit. McCartney expressed interest in seeing the film re-released in 2016, saying that if anyone should be wary about people seeing Let It Be, it should be him (referencing the sometimes bossy manner in which McCartney is seen trying to corral the other Beatles). He then became even more receptive about re-releasing the Let It Be footage in some form when Peter Jackson came to McCartney with the idea of reappropriating the material into Get Back, convincing the Beatle that there was actually a lot of joy and camaraderie in the footage, despite the fact that it also shows some of the internal rifts within the band at the time. While Get Back shows a much more comprehensive view of the Let It Be/Get Back project, it was never meant to replace Let It Be as the definitive document of this time period, as Jackson specifically wanted Get Back to be a companion to Let It Be, intentionally only using footage that wasn’t featured in the 1970 documentary unless they were essential shots where no other footage existed.

Additionally, when the release of Get Back was announced, it was also announced that a remastered version of Let It Be would be released for consumption. Any more specific details about when or where this release will be available haven’t been elaborated on, though one would assume (and hope) it will be available on Disney Plus in the near future. This, of course, is an easy thing to be cynical about, considering how ridiculously hard The Beatles have made it to see Let It Be over years and how many aborted attempts there have been to make it more widely available. Yet considering the warm reception that Get Back has received (both from fans and from the living Beatles themselves), there’s plenty of reason to be optimistic that Let It Be will easily be available. Either way, Get Back serves as ample compensation for fans that have been waiting to finally see (or revisit) Let It Be for all these years.

I’m hoping Let It Be will be bundled with the Get Back Blu-Ray discs in time for next year’s Christmas shopping season. And maybe even a limited theater release to promote it. Who wouldn’t want to see a restored version of the rooftop concert on a 25 foot tall movie screen?

Earlier, from your humble narrator:

● The Beatles get Back in Peter Jackson’s New Three-Part Documentary.

● The Beatles’ get Back: The Long and Grinding Road.

● I Question the Premise: The Beatles: Get Back shows that deepfake tech isn’t always evil.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Quidditch to change name, citing J.K. Rowling’s ‘anti-trans positions.’

Real-life quidditch, inspired by the magical game in “Harry Potter,” is changing its name, citing author J.K. Rowling’s “anti-trans positions in recent years.”

US Quidditch and Major League Quidditch announced in a joint news release Wednesday that they will conduct a series of surveys over the next few months to decide on a new name for the sport, which resembles soccer and field hockey, but as a contact sport with broomsticks.

“For the last year or so, both leagues have been quietly collecting research to prepare for the move and been in extensive discussions with each other and trademark lawyers regarding how we can work together to make the name change as seamless as possible,” Major League Quidditch Commissioner Amanda Dallas said in the release.

The leagues say there are a few reasons for the name change. Among them is that the name “quidditch” is trademarked by Warner Bros., which produced the “Harry Potter” movies, and as a result the sport’s expansion has been limited in its sponsorship and broadcast opportunities.

The name change is also part of an effort by the leagues to “distance themselves from the works of J.K. Rowling,” according to the statement, “who has increasingly come under scrutiny for her anti-trans positions in recent years.”

Stunning and/or brave.

WE NEED TO START WORRYING ABOUT WHAT KIND OF WORLD WE ARE GOING TO LEAVE FOR KEITH RICHARDS: Happy 78th Birthday, Keith Richards!

TODAY’S DEEP QUESTION: How many restaurants did Biden desegregate during the Civil Rights Movement, anyway?

Past performance is no guarantee of trunalimunumaprzure:

NEWS YOU CAN USE? 12 things you should never put in your vagina including whipped cream and Vaseline.

Via Iowahawk who tweets, “gotta say that’s a surprisingly short list.”

JAMES LILEKS: “I’m looking forward to the female-centric retelling of 1984.”

Really. There’s no prohibition on telling other sides of a famous story it’s all the rage these days. We retell Oz from the Witch’s point of view, 101 Dalmations from the dog-napper’s side. The trick will be making Julia adhere to the book, and I don’t think that will happen. What we know of her will be chalked up to the Male Gaze, and the character will take inspiration from Susanna Hamilton’s stern performance in the remarkable movie of the same name, and year. She radiates a fierce sense of self-contained power and intelligence.

The Julia of the book is a rather shallow. Almost lightweight.

The Guardian article says:

Publisher Granta said that Julia understands the world of Oceania “far better than Winston and is essentially happy with her life”.

See, that’s not quite right. She has no interest in understanding it at all. She’s “essentially happy” in the sense that a file clerk in Hitler’s office was happy in 1941.

Read the whole thing.

ROGER KIMBALL: Who’s a vigilante anyway?

But of course, the agreement was only rhetorical, not to say disingenuous. It was a little smoke bomb deployed to make room for a distinction made by Garry Wills that deeply impressed the Bezos Bobblehead.

“American distrust of government” [Wills noted] comes in different forms. At one end of the spectrum are insurrectionists, who “take arms against the government because it is too repressive.” At the opposite end are vigilantes, who “take arms to do the government’s work because the authorities are not repressive enough.” They become “vigilant,” Wills writes, in times when they believe “the government is too slow, indifferent, or lax.”

Translation: we do not circa 2021 have enough government in our lives. We need the state to be bigger, more intrusive, more censorious. We need more police bursting into Arby’s and handcuffing patrons for not being vaccinated. We need more social media censorship against people who dissent from The Narrative, especially if they are now or have ever been supporters of Donald Trump. Do you think that it was right that Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted? Then you are part of the problem.

Inquiring minds might wonder where this chap was in the summer of 2020 when gangs of Black Lives Matter roamed city streets throughout the country, smashing up property, setting the Minneapolis police station ablaze in their “mostly peaceful” protests. Those gangs murdered or maimed scores of people and caused an estimated $2 billion damage. Were they not “vigilantes” protesting the death of career criminal (now Saint) George Floyd? Where was left-wing media then?

Ah, but the Capitol is the sacrosanct citadel of “our democracy,” as Nancy Pelosi kept babbling. It’s one thing to torch a police station or federal building, quite another to intrude about the hallowed halls of the Capitol.

But then where was our scribe and his brethren when the mob, which included Senator Karen (h/t Elon Musk), stormed the Capitol to protest the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court and intimidate some still wavering senators? Where were those defenders of The Narrative then?

That’s different, because reasons.

Related: Actor Jay Johnston Banned From ‘Bob’s Burgers’ Over Capitol Riot. The ‘Mr. Show’ and ‘Anchorman’ actor will no longer be voicing the character of Jimmy Pesto Sr. on Fox’s animated hit after he was allegedly spotted at the Jan. 6 insurrection.

PROJECT VERITAS RELEASES NAME OF CNN PRODUCER INVOLVED IN NEW PEDOPHILIA SCANDAL:

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! In an Incoherent Speech, Biden Calls His VP ‘President Harris’ and Stokes Anti-GOP Fears.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why Does Kenny G Drive Critics Crazy? New video from Reason TV:

Related: People Who Like Céline Dion Are People, Too.

WINSTON SMITH TO THE RED COURTESY PHONE, PLEASE: Wikipedia Threatens to Purge ‘Communist Mass Killings’ Page, Cites Anti-Communist Bias.

A SOPHISTICATED, VACCINATED CROWD: Buzzfeed Holiday Party, With Masking and Vaxing Rules in Place, Is a #SuperSpreader Event.

Several BuzzFeed staffers have been infected with Covid-19 following the company’s Holiday party in Manhattan last week, according to a report from Insider.Three BuzzFeed employees who tested positive following the party told Insider that they were vaccinated and received their booster shots prior to contracting Covid-19 at the event, and are experiencing mild symptoms.

BuzzFeed has reportedly strengthened Covid-19 protocols following the party and amid a surge of cases in New York City, including putting a temporary freeze on group meetings over six people, requiring masks in the office until further notice, and freezing all non-essential business travel until the new year.

The company is also conducting contact tracing, as well as offering free testing for close contacts.

The rules were strict, but did not stop the #SuperspreaderEvent:

“BuzzFeed requires vaccinations for staffers, and partygoers had to present their vaccination cards to get into the event,” Perlberg reported, noting that CEO Jonah Peretti was in attendance. “Two days before the party, BuzzFeed updated its rules to require masks ‘unless you are actively eating or drinking.'”

Related: Ben Shapiro asks, “What if I told you there was a variant nearly everyone would get, but that would kill almost no one. Would you shut down society over that? Because that appears to be Omicron. And for a lot of people, the answer appears to be yes.”

Especially now that New York-based media is getting Omicron; their job was to create fear porn even before COVID; they’re going to be doubling their efforts now: As Jon Gabriel writes at Ricochet:

BuzzFeed hosted a staff holiday party in Manhattan that turned into a super-spreader event among the 100-percent vaccinated and boosted attendees. Other Gotham CEOs canceled their soirées and opted for yuletide classics like online yoga and meal delivery.

The Atlantic published a piece, “I’m Starting to Give Up on Post-pandemic Life,” with the subhead “Despair is not a mild symptom.” CNN’s Chris Cillizza wrote about his “long December” and how his “Covid anxiety is spiking.” Neurotic journalists keep using their day jobs as free therapy and insult readers for not being as miserable as they are.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom stopped attacking Ron DeSantis long enough to announce yet another state mask mandate. Politico noted that “many Californians have already reconciled themselves to a perpetually masked lifestyle.”

* * * * * * * *

The shrieking reports from coastal media bewilder those of us in free states. Outside of doctor’s appointments and air travel, I haven’t worn a mask since … I don’t know … May 2020? A handful of my neighbors wear masks while shopping, perhaps 5 percent and nearly all elderly. The rest? We moved on a year and a half ago.

A NYC-based journalist friend was dumbfounded when I told him this, and more than a little envious. The national media is stuck in a different world, and a different time. It’s like the White Witch’s Narnia, but with the additional horror of online yoga.

I wish a Merry Christmas to the vast majority of the country and a Dreary Covidmas to those unquestioning minds trapped in locked-down cities. If these New Yorkers, Angelenos, and Washingtonians happen to own an old wardrobe, perhaps they could step through it to celebrate Christmas with the rest of us.

Ignoring Them Is the Only Way Out.

ANSWERS TO THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What Will It Cost You To Live Full-Time On A Cruise Ship? (Video.)

‘THE OLD NORMAL IS NOT GOING TO RETURN:’ Federal Appeals Court Rules Biden Vaccine Mandate Can Continue. “It’s very likely this case will be further adjudicated at the Supreme Court. In the meantime, many employers are already beginning to implement the provisions of the ETS—and many employees are either submitting (fearing for their jobs) or leaving their professions for greener and less-Stalin-like pastures.”

JIM TREACHER: Now the Cops Want to See Alec Baldwin’s Phone.

The last time anybody cared about Baldwin’s phone was 10 years ago this month, when he refused to turn it off on a plane because he was playing Words with Friends. He got kicked off the flight, because the rules apply to him too, and then he whined about it.

Delaying a flight to play your dopey little phone game is between 5-7 on the Asshole Scale. Killing somebody is off the charts.

Read the whole thing.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Harris says Biden administration failed to see either delta or omicron variants coming.

UPDATE:

Related: Our veep is not having the best of times this holiday season: Kamala Harris was asked during an interview who the “real president” is and man she got mad about it.

THE 21st CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT AS I HAD HOPED: Huge Yikes! Lutheran Church Hosts Drag Queen Prayer Time For Children.

In accordance with the prophesy:

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Unhappy Liberal Holidays Edition.

NEW YORK TIMES FIRES ‘WIRECUTTER’ EDITOR ACCUSED OF LEAVING PROFANE VOICEMAILS FOR GUN RIGHTS GROUP:

The New York Times has fired an editor for Wirecutter, its popular product recommendation service, who was accused of leaving profane voice mails for a gun rights advocacy group, the newspaper said Friday morning.

The editor, Erin Marquis, had joined Wirecutter in July as lead editor for a section of the reviews site.

On Dec. 2, two days after a high school student shot and killed four classmates in Michigan, Marquis posted a message on Twitter criticizing a group called Great Lakes Gun Rights for urging supporters to oppose gun control legislation proposed in the aftermath of the shooting.

“Just got a news release from the Great Lakes Gun Rights organization about protecting gun rights from democrats in Michigan and I am literally shaking with rage,” wrote Marquis, who has since deleted her Twitter account following online criticism that she had violated journalism standards by promoting a political viewpoint. “I hope there is a God and they meet that God someday.” She also tweeted out a phone number and email address for the group, which is the Michigan state affiliate of the National Association for Gun Rights.

The national organization reacted by publishing an audio recording that it said contains voice-mail messages that Marquis had left at its offices, expressing her anger at the group. In the messages, which could not be independently verified as coming from Marquis, the speaker identifies herself as “a journalist at the New York Times” and asks: “How do you sleep at night? And aren’t you just, like, a little bit worried that there might be a hell, and when you meet God, he will send you there?” The speaker then says she is “letting everyone at the New York Times know” what she thinks of the organization.

Letting this person go is a bold statement by New York Times owner Tom Cotton.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Deadliest Political Gaffe Of The Year Goes To: Keeping Parents Out Of Classrooms.

At least people like Sharon Kass of Washington seem to get it. In a Nov. 22 WaPo letter to the editor, she noted that public school libraries, though full of pro-LGBTQ material, are “leftist indoctrination centers.” Moreover, she notes, they would never feature books like former diplomat and Voice of America Director Robert R. Reilly’s “Making Gay Okay: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior Is Changing Everything.” There’s that pesky double standard again!

The current education debate in this country is the gift that keeps on giving. The more we press secular educators, curriculum developers, and their advocates in the media, Hollywood, and the academy, the more they disclose their true intentions. They want our children’s minds (and bodies), and they want us to either surrender them or play along by what Cohen calls “child-to-parent intergenerational training.” It’s ideas like that parents need to keep demanding leftist activists explain. I have a feeling the answer will be yet another gift.

Comcast approved!