DON’T PUNISH THE QANON SHAMAN—OR ANYONE—FOR DEMANDING A JURY TRIAL: “‘You were facing 20 years, Mr. Chansley,’ said the judge, telling him he was ‘smart’ for not going to trial. ‘You did the right thing.’ The ‘right’ thing. At first glance, I’d posit most readers wouldn’t think much of that; plea bargains are a core part of the U.S. criminal justice system. Yet in being frank with Chansley, Lamberth laid bare why those ‘bargains’ are raw deals: Had Chansley insisted on his constitutional right to a trial by jury, he would have been staring down more than 16 additional years in prison. That’s not because the government believes such a stratospheric sentence would serve public safety. It’s because prosecutors routinely inflate hypothetical prison sentences and dangle them over defendants in order to bully them out of going to trial, where outcomes are both costly and uncertain. In plainer terms, Chansley could have received almost 6 times a higher sentence solely for exercising his constitutional rights—something the judge here not only acknowledged but celebrated. This is in no way unique to the January 6 defendants.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Compare and contrast: Man who raped four teenagers gets no jail time, judge says: ‘Incarceration isn’t appropriate’.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Psaki Says High Gas Prices Are Good Because Americans Will Be Forced To Drive Greener Flintstones Cars. “Psaki said people commuting to work, whether they’re a dino-crane operator at Slate Rock and Gravel Company or in middle management at some office job, will enjoy the exercise and fresh air offered by the innovative vehicles. According to Psaki, it will also be great practice for Americans preparing to live in the post-apocalyptic wasteland the nation will become once China nukes us with their space nukes.”

AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING: Kamala Harris’ comms director Ashley Etienne leaves her team following reports staff are furious and the VP is being sidelined by Biden.

IT’S FUN WATCHING BILL MAHER BEING SLOWLY RED-PILLED: Bill Maher Confronts Cuomo, Schools Him on CRT Applied in Classrooms.

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF LAYERS AND LAYERS OF FACT CHECKERS AND EDITORS, AND WHERE’S HUNTER, FAT? David Brooks’ new article in the Atlantic, “The Terrifying Future of the American Right,” contains this amusing gaffe:

But his pants crease was perfect.

LET’S GO BRANDON! Biden’s approval dips to 36 percent in new Quinnipiac poll.

Related: Biden Has Lower Approval Rating Than Any U.S. Governor.

VDH: Can the FBI Be Salvaged? “One could add to such misadventures the mysterious leadership roles of at least 12 FBI informants in the harebrained kidnapping scheme of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. We can also cite the agency’s inability to follow up on clear information about the dangers posed by criminals as diverse as the Tsarnaev brothers, the Boston Marathon bombers, and the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein. For its own moral and practical survival, the FBI should be given one last chance at redemption by moving to the nation’s heartland — perhaps Kansas — far away from the political and media tentacles that have so deeply squeezed and corrupted it.”

HOW KYRSTEN SINEMA BROUGHT GEN X TO THE SENATE:

Somehow, after all the crocheted pussy hats and #MeToo, it was suddenly fine to film a woman in a bathroom. When President Biden was given a chance to condemn the harassment, he wrote off the incident as part and parcel of lawmaking: “The only people it doesn’t happen to are the people who have Secret Service standing around them. So it’s part of the process.”

Sinema responded in kind, not only by sticking to her guns in negotiations on the Hill, but by taking off for Europe for a week in mid-October. Her message to the Biden administration could not be any clearer. Politico may call her “stubborn,” but she has been crystal clear on what she wants for herself and for Arizona:

I have already told the White House what I am willing to do and what I’m not willing to do. I’m not mysterious. It’s not that I can’t make up my mind. I communicated it to them in detail. They just don’t like what they’re hearing.

In the Capitol, a journalist from NBC News stopped Sinema and scolded her: “What do you say to progressives who are frustrated they don’t know where you are?”

“I’m in the Senate.”

“There are progressives in the Senate that are also frustrated they don’t know where you are either.”

“I’m clearly right in front of the elevator.”

Under pressure, Sinema had channeled the ironic monotone of Daria Morgendorffer, the high school heroine of MTV’s 90s cartoon Daria, and left both journalists and activists speechless. If the twentysomething BuzzFeed reporters want to understand Kyrsten Sinema, they should stop drafting listicles about Beyoncé’s hair color and listen to Gen-X “riot grrrls” like Sleater-Kinney.

Sinema isn’t going it alone against her own party because of her voting record or her donors. She’s doing it because she is Gen X, and she’s going to force the media, the Democrats, Joe Biden and his astronomical spending plans to swallow what Alanis Morissette called a “jagged little pill.”

Why, it’s as if: To Understand Sinema, You Need to Understand Arizona. “Progressive activists from Manhattan to Marin can sign petitions and curse her name. SNL and John Oliver can mock all they want. Kyrsten Sinema knows that alienating national media personalities and party leaders will only help her reelection campaign.”

JOHN PODHORETZ: The elites love Succession, but Trump-world-set Yellowstone is TV’s most addictive show.

JUST NBC THE DOXXING! Breaking: Judge boots MSNBC from Rittenhouse trial over jury tracking attempt; Update: NBC confirms? “Judge Schroeder: Kenosha police reported someone followed the bus carrying the Rittenhouse jurors last night while claiming to work for MSNBC. It is under investigation. No one working for MSNBC will be allowed inside the courthouse for the duration of the trial.”

UPDATE:

ANOTHER DEMOCRAT DECIDES TO QUIT: North Carolina Rep G. K. Butterfield is set to announce decision today two weeks after new congressional map was passed as Republicans eye up string of possible seats.

HEH, INDEED: Ron DeSantis trolls President Biden, will sign bills limiting vaccine mandates in Brandon, FL.

NEWPORT NEWS SHIPBUILDING PARENT COMPANY ANNOUNCES SUSPENSION OF VACCINE DEADLINE:

The company’s CEO shared the news in a letter to employees saying the company confirmed that, except for specific contracts, their contracts, “do not include a requirement to implement the mandate.”

The deadline suspension goes into effect immediately.

In his letter to employees, Huntington Ingalls CEO Mike Petters said the vaccine mandate’s implementation has been a complex undertaking and thanked staff for their patience.

RIGHT ON CUE: Biden asks FTC to check for “illegal conduct” on high gas pricing.

Joe Biden sent a letter today asking the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to look into whether oil companies are illegally increasing prices resulting in the pain American consumers are feeling at the gas pump. This move is not completely unexpected. Last week I wrote about his interview with a local Cincinnati television station where Biden floated the balloon. The rise in gas prices at the pump must mean those evil oil and gas companies are price gouging, right?

As brain-dead reasoning goes from this anti-fossil fuel president, this is a beauty. Send the FTC on a wild goose chase for nefarious pricing action by energy companies instead of looking at his own actions, that’s the ticket. Instead of asking his alleged energy experts, I know, about his options in correcting the situation, he points a finger at Big Oil because it’s a favorite whipping boy of the keep-it-in-the-ground wackos.

Straight out of the Sacramento playback for explaining away California’s high taxes on gas and frequent electricity blackouts:

● California governor demands probe of power blackouts.

● “Newsom finally noticed that his state has the highest gas prices in the nation, and he’s angry:”

So angry, in fact, he ordered his Attorney General to investigate the decades-long mystery.

“There is no identifiable evidence to justify these premium prices,” Newsom wrote in a letter to state Attorney General Xavier Becerra. “If oil companies are engaging in false advertising or price fixing, then legal action should be taken to protect the public.”

Newsom correctly identified the symptom but remains clueless about the cause. He at least pretends to be.

Having used the same “demanding an industry probe” stunt at least twice, “Pretends” was the key word here. Similarly, don’t Biden’s staffers know he’s not the first government executive to try this stunt?

Incidentally, Newsom may need to dust off his 2019 letter as well: Read it and Weep: California Hits All-Time High Gas Prices, and Some SoCal Stations Charge More.

But why would blue state Californians “weep?” Aren’t California’s High Gas Prices What The Left Have Wanted?

GOODER AND HARDER: To Fight Climate Change, Los Angeles Bans Restaurants From Giving Out Unsolicited Ketchup Packets.

Some Los Angeles politicians seem to relish micromanaging the behavior of businesses and consumers.

Beginning this week, a new city law goes into effect forbidding restaurants with 26 or more employees from handing out ketchup and mustard packets without the customer first requesting them. Come April 2022, it will apply to all restaurants.

The intent of the new ordinance—which also restricts the distribution of other single-use items like napkins and utensils—is to prevent waste and combat climate change, according to its authors.

“If we are to overcome the extreme climate challenges we face, we will have to alter or otherwise transform all our habits relating to fossil fuel products, including plastics, and our essential natural resources, like forests,” said Councilmember Paul Koretz, co-author of the ordinance, in a Tuesday press release. “These goods are also sustaining the fading fossil fuel industry, which is a major contributor to climate change,” added Councilmember Paul Krekorian, another co-author.

So we’re back to the climate change narrative, even while the city is pushing pandemic-related laws: L.A. to require proof of COVID vaccination at indoor restaurants, salons, other venues.

‘SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY:’ Rep. Boebert Nukes Eric Swalwell Over His Relationship With ‘Fang Fang, A Chinese Spy.’

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: Allegations of bigotry and calls for impeachment rock College Democrats.

PODCAST: ‘Let It Be 2021 Review — Take a Bad Film and Make it Better.’ From the Beatles Naked podcast, part of the run-up to the Thanksgiving debut of the Beatles’ three-part Get Back miniseries.

Related: Getting Back to ‘Get Back:’ The Long and Winding Saga of Glyn Johns’ Lost Beatles Album.

DEMOCRATS ARE STUCK IN THEIR OWN ECHO CHAMBER:

If Democrats combined the desire for a secure social-safety net with guarantees of actual economic and physical security, they’d be hitting the political sweet spot. But denying political reality is a surefire way to squander any opportunity being presented by a Republican Party that’s catering to its own extremes. Dissatisfied voters always punish the party in power, and right now Democrats will bear the brunt of a disillusioned electorate.

There’s one exception to that rule, however. Manchin, a Democrat representing a state where Trump won 69 percent of the vote last year, is still one of his state’s most popular figures. A new poll from the GOP firm MBE Research found that Manchin holds an enviable 61 percent approval rating, while Biden’s approval is a dismal 33 percent.

There’s a powerful lesson in those numbers: If even in this rough environment for Democrats, a moderate maverick can remain popular in a ruby-red state, there’s still plenty of time for the party to turn things around by moving to the middle. But if Democrats don’t get the message—and there’s little sign they’re receiving it in the wake of this month’s elections—they’re whistling past the political graveyard.

QED: Almost Half of Voters Think Biden is Mentally Unfit to Be President.

BIDEN VOTERS POSTING THEIR L’S ONLINE:

● Shot: This Virginia Conservative Republican Is Ridin’ With Biden. No, I don’t vote for many Democrats, and I’ll probably sit out November. But on Super Tuesday, I’m going to help the Democrats nominate their best candidate against Donald Trump.

—Matt Lewis, the Daily Beast, March 4th, 2020.

● Chaser: Joe Biden Doesn’t Have What It Takes. A candidate in search of a message still hasn’t found one as president, beyond not being Donald Trump—and, polls show, that isn’t nearly enough.

—Matt Lewis, the Daily Beast, Monday.

BYLINES OF BRUTALITY: Media: Yes, Violence Is the Answer (Supercut).

The DNC-MSM long ago dropped the mask, after once pretending to get the vapors over Sarah Palin’s clip art.

And they starting to swing into action once again: Rittenhouse-Lying Media Deliberately Incite Riots in Democrat-run Cities.

(Classical reference in headline.)

WHY THE NEW YORK TIMES REWRITES HISTORY:

With the 1619 Project, the New York Times’s business interests are just as decisive a factor. The Times’s management is well aware that it has to replace its audience of ageing liberals with young adherents of progressive ideologies impassioned enough to pay for the digital subscriptions that are at the heart of its business model. For the Times, this is a matter of existential significance. As a New York Times Company vice president has explained, one of the aims of 1619 is, according to NiemanLab, to “convince more of its 150 million monthly readers to pay for a subscription”.

This makes good sense considering that over a third of the Times‘s revenue now comes from digital subscriptions — and nearly two-thirds of the Times’s American audience is made up of millennial and Gen Z readers. Print subscriptions, meanwhile, are in “steady decline”; advertising is falling by close to (and sometimes more than) double digits each year.

Like all dynasties, the Sulzbergers, the billionaire family that controls the New York Times, are, in part, motivated by financial self-interest. But in the current cultural environment, where a movement of ideological upheaval is at work, it is power as much as money that lies behind what is the most significant journalistic endeavour of the past decade. The Times’s progressive turn (like that of so many American brands) is more top-down than bottom-up; it is a quest for influence rather than principle. The Times knows which way the wind is blowing and in a raging storm why not sail downwind?

The only problem with this approach — in business as much as in life — is that it doesn’t work. As Captain MacWhir in Joseph Conrad’s novella The Typhoon shouts through the raging storm to the story’s young protagonist: “They may say what they like, but the heaviest seas run with the wind.” In its cynical embrace of progressive politics, the Times runs the risk of capsizing in storm waters it mistakenly believes it can control.

The Gray Lady is also perfectly willing to gaslight the first draft of history as well: New York Times Writer Sarah Jeong Says Inflation in the News Is Just ‘Rich People Flipping Their Shit.’

You may remember Jeong from her prior instances of ill-advised tweeting, which presented a wrinkle when the Times hired her as a tech writer back in 2018. Those tweets, from 2013 and 2014 when she was 25 or 26, read: “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy i get out of being cruel to old white men” and “are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” Jeong has long been hobbled by her extremely online style of tweeting—ironic detachment coupled with racial generalizations against disfavored groups like white men—which is fashionable among certain sets on the left.

For Jeong, this is par for the course. But choosing flippant tweeting over thoughtful analysis is a bad look for New York Times contributors* who really ought to be more concerned with the plights of everyday Americans forced to tighten the purse strings for reasons far beyond their control.

Joe Biden believes that paying higher taxes is “patriotic” — or least did so before his brain became tapioca. What he didn’t tell voters is that he’d be raising everyone’s taxes: “government-driven inflation is essentially a hidden form of taxation.  The ability to inflate currency to stealth-tax citizens matters politically, aside from the erosion of our incomes and savings, because it enables politicians to grow the government and spend more taxpayer money than they would be able to get away with if they actually had to directly raise peoples’ taxes. This is bad news for anybody who values economic freedom, free-market capitalism, and the prosperity they bring.”

WHISTLEBLOWER SAYS AG MERRICK GARLAND LIED, FBI TARGETING PARENTS AS ‘THREATS.’

NIGHTMARE FUEL: Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm sings the praises of banning gasoline in music video that should’ve been left in the ground. “It’s like they don’t understand the clothes, the shoes, the sunglasses the, the synthetic fibers are all derived from oil. And the electric [sic] used to power the camera the editing machine etc all from oil.”

● Psaki on skyrocketing gas prices: “Our view is that the rise in gas prices over the long term makes an even stronger case for doubling down our investment and our focus on clean energy options.”

● Joe Biden’s nominee for the Comptroller of the Currency Saule Omarova on oil, coal and gas industries: ‘We want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change.’”

Earlier: Great Moments In Self-Awareness: Biden Shocked by Price of Gas During Biden Administration: ‘Did You Ever Think You’d Be Paying This Much?’

“People have a little more breathing room than they did last year, and that’s a good thing. But it also means you’ve got higher demand for goods at the same time we’re facing disruptions in the supplies to make those goods,” he continued. “This is a recipe for delays and for higher prices. And people are feeling it. They’re feeling it.”

He then brought up an example that, generally speaking, politicians have been loathe to mention out loud unless the other guy’s party is the one in power.

“Did you ever think you’d be paying this much for a gallon of gas?” Biden asked. “In some parts of California they’re paying four dollars and fifty cents a gallon!”

Does Biden know at the point in his life that he’s an Obama-era retread? Why would anyone be shocked by skyrocketing gas prices in 2021?

● Aren’t California’s High Gas Prices What The Left Have Wanted?

Well, it’s a start, as Steven Chu, former President Obama’s then-incoming energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

So is it fair to ask if Biden is on the payroll of Putin? As Walter Russell Mead wrote in 2017:

If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:

Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.

“Yep,” Glenn added in late 2019. “You know who did do these things? Obama. You know who supports these things now? Democrats.”

All of which leads to the photo that Mark Tapscott posted this morning:

OSHA SUSPENDS ENFORCEMENT OF BIDEN’S VACCINE MANDATE: “Some lawmakers and pundits have speculated that Biden’s strategy with the vaccine mandate recognized that the order would likely be indefensible in court but hoped that its chilling effect would pressure employers to comply in advance of any litigation. After the federal appeals court first issued a motion to stay the order, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki still urged employers to implement coercive measures to increase vaccination numbers among their labor forces, although without the teeth of government enforcement.”