DOING THE JOB THAT CALIFORNIA WON’T: Southeastern Ports Work to Help Relieve Supply-Chain Woes.

PROJECT VERITAS: Undercover Video of FDA Executive Admitting COVID-19 Vax Has Lack of Safety Testing for Toddlers, Billions in Profit for Big Pharma.

IT TOOK HER HALF A WEEK TO COME UP WITH THAT? Hillary Finally Responds to Durham Bombshell, Calls It ‘a Fake Scandal.’

GLENN REYNOLDS, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Arizona lawmakers move to return to paper ballots, hand counts.

Previously: Paper ballots are hack-proof. It’s time to bring them back.

A FISH, A BARREL, AND A SMOKING GUN: Hannity Humiliates Anthony Weiner During Interview.

VIDEO: Man Reportedly Kicked Off a Flight Because He Had ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ Written on His Mask.

MORE TO COME: Doxxed Freedom Convoy Donor Forced to Close Her Restaurant After Threats. “Anyone who donated to the Freedom Convoy is now subject to partisan doxxing and potential threats or actual violence.”

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Professor resigns from APA, says woke ideology drives organization to harmful policies, ‘garbage therapy.’

FASTER, PLEASE: LA Elites Are Turning on D.A. George Gascón.

MAKE AMERICA DEPENDENT AGAIN: As Oil Nears $100, Saudis Snub U.S., Stick to Russian Pact Amid Ukraine Crisis.

Rising oil prices and fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine have created a dilemma for Saudi Arabia: Help the West by pumping more crude to tame the market, or stand by a five-year-old oil alliance that is helping Moscow at the expense of Washington.

For now, the world’s largest crude exporter is sticking with Russia.

President Biden has repeatedly called on Persian Gulf producers to pump more oil to reduce gasoline prices that, for Americans, are about twice as high as they were earlier in the pandemic. Those calls have grown more urgent as oil prices have risen toward $100 a barrel for the first time in nearly eight years, and threaten to go higher amid a Russian troop buildup along the Ukrainian border.

Instead, the Saudis have said they won’t pump more than they agreed to last year as part of a deal between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia, an alliance called OPEC+. That pact allows for production increases of 400,000 barrels a day each month, but it has done little to stem the rise in oil prices, and the Saudis have pumped less than their share, according to the International Energy Agency.

On Wednesday, Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, rose 1.1% to $94.26 a barrel. It has surged over 20% this year.

Joe Biden did that.

THE MEDIA-GOVERNMENT COMPLEX: The Media Lied Repeatedly About Trump Being Spied On, and We’ve Got the Receipts.

HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): Meet The Sex Shop Founder Who Is Grooming Children Through Books In School Libraries. “This type of propagandizing has become standard for the left-wing extremists embedded in our education system. But what makes it all the more astonishing is both the thoroughly unnerving — and previously unreported — history of this book’s author and the institutional support that’s propelled him to notoriety.”

DURHAM INVESTIGATION? WHAT DURHAM INVESTIGATION? Conservative Media: Doing the Job the MSM Refuses to Do.

The New York Times finally covered the story online Monday (for Tuesday’s print edition) and managed to insult the intelligence of its readership in the process.

Charlie Savage, the NYT’s Washington correspondent, was quick to dismiss the bombshell as inconsequential, claiming the narrative from outlets like ours that reported on it is “mostly wrong or old news — the latest example of the challenge created by a barrage of similar conspiracy theories from Mr. Trump and his allies.”

How stupid were we to talk about such a huge story? Apparently very, according to Savage, who appears to justify his own publication’s lack of jumping on the story right away by saying it’s just too complicated for Times readers. Savage explains that stories like this “tend to involve dense and obscure issues, so dissecting them requires asking readers to expend significant mental energy and time — raising the question of whether news outlets should even cover such claims.”

Read the whole thing.

WELL, YES: America Is Approaching Financial Doomsday.

Most fiscal conservatives are not surprised that the left-wing imbeciles in the White House and the Capitol Building are running up massive quantities of debt and burdening the American taxpayer excessively with the government’s bills. I mean, hell, more than $2.5 trillion was spent on just four acts of Congress by October of 2020. And let’s not forget the Biden administration’s fool’s gold, the bipartisan infrastructure bill of 2021, which, apparently, none of the 17 Republican senators who voted for its passage bothered to read. If these sell-outs had bothered to read the contents of the bill, they would find a smorgasbord of pork, like the “Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program,” which was allocated $500 million literally to demolish perfectly good infrastructure and completely redesign the layout of entire communities to make access to them more “equitable.” (This is the whole “racist roads” hogwash.) They would also find that the bill contained an allotment of $7.5 billion for the construction of a network of half a million electric vehicle chargers nationwide, even though, by the Transportation Department’s own admission, electric vehicles accounted for only 2.3% of car sales in 2020, or one-third of China’s E.V. car sales (because the moron in the Oval Office thinks everything is better in China, just ask Hunter).

But no, 17 members of the Senate who were supposed to be fiscally responsible decided to obsequiously bow down to Caesar Biden’s demands.

But then, are they actually fiscally responsible? In the past few years, Republicans have become nearly as fiscally reckless as Democrats. Donald Trump, in just four years, added $8 trillion to the national debt. Barack Obama, who added more to the debt than all of his predecessors combined, added only $9 trillion in eight! And Jeff Van Drew, who made headlines when he switched political parties from Democrat to Republican shortly after he was elected to Congress, and who also happens to be the representative of the district in which I live in New Jersey, voted in favor of the bill in the House — and this man claims to be a fiscal conservative.

We’ve been going broke gradually for a long time. It’s the suddenly that really hurts.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Flashback:

It’s not that the problem isn’t noticed — a recent Pew Research Center poll found that 53% of people view the federal deficit and thus the debt as a serious problem, significantly outweighing other more-discussed issues such as climate change, terrorism or racism.

Right now, yearly deficits are going up, but the debt — essentially the sum of all previous deficits — is skyrocketing. It has done that for a decade, except for a couple of years when it briefly leveled off due to the influence of the Tea Party movement. I’m sorry to say I’ve kind of given up talking about it because nobody seems to care, and I’m afraid the politicians in both parties will kick the can down the road until something really drastic happens.

When the crisis comes — and it will — people on the right need to have a plan to slash government to and beyond the bone, and to implement it quickly and ruthlessly.

HMM: Biden’s National Security Advisor Could Be in Trouble Next. “Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, was a senior adviser to Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016 and played a key role in pushing the bogus Trump-Russia collusion narrative, as well the allegations of a secret line of communication between Trump and the Kremlin via Alfa Bank, cited in the latest motion filed by Durham—which also wasn’t true.”

STAND FAST, SENATOR: Poll on Joe Biden’s Disastrous State Approval Ratings Shows Why Joe Manchin Holds All the Cards.

The numbers reaffirm why it’s him and not Biden who holds all the cards when it comes to the various stalemates between the two on issues like the filibuster, Build Back Better, and so-called “voting rights” legislation. Manchin is pretty close to “King of the Hill” territory in his state while Biden is floundering and flopping no matter what he does.

They also point to the reason that Manchin has publicly stated that he doesn’t care if Democrats try to primary him. Manchin knows that won’t go well.

All of that said, though an attempt at ousting Manchin through the primary process likely would be unsuccessful for his most vocal Democrat critics, Manchin is likely to face another strong general election fight should he run for re-election in 2024 as a Democrat. Because not only is the state getting redder by the day, but Manchin narrowly won in 2018 over his Republican opponent by 19,000 votes in an election where the Libertarian candidate got 24,000 votes.

Manchin understands that the only way to survive as a Democrat in today’s West Virginia is not to be a Washington Democrat.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Stacey’s Right — Republicans Could Still Ruin Everything. “I was called a ‘sell-out’ for wanting the GOP to embrace the 21st century and pitch a story that would make undecided voters show up for them. The Capitol Hill Club Republicans all live in 1988. The new stuff scares them.”

DECOUPLING: America Is Showering China With New Restrictions. “In recent years, Washington’s China policies have expanded rapidly into technology sectors such as telecommunications, semiconductors, data security, and financial services. Growing bipartisan concern about Beijing’s actions and intentions have fueled these developments, with little difference between the Trump and Biden administrations or between the White House and Congress.”

Well, good.

DON’T GET COCKY: Republicans Hold a Massive 13 Point Lead on a Generic Ballot — Don’t Underestimate Their Ability to Blow It. “What Republicans should not be doing is unveiling plans that include amnesty for millions of illegal aliens as seven House members are.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Seattle’s Transit System ‘Unusable’ due to Toxic Fentanyl, Meth Smoke.

The Times reported the transit system has become overloaded with reports of toxic fentanyl, meth smoke and volatile behavior. It has created a toxic work environment for employees and has scared off travelers.

In an attempt to turn things around, the city plans to release a new “Safety, Security and Fare Enforcement Initiative” in February. The initiative incorporates surveys and comments from 8,000 people.

The Times reports that plan hopes to improve the dangerous environment, welcome back commuters, but also show compassion to those who are doing drugs, and especially homeless people, as “a necessary step on its journey to becoming an anti-racist mobility agency” according to the King County website.

Translation: They’re doubling down on stupid.

I’M OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER WHEN THE ENTIRE COUNTRY WAS A LIBERTY DESTINATION: Liberals and Conservatives Agree: Florida Leads in Liberty — and in Tourism.

BREAKING: Ottawa Police Chief resigns.

BIDEN’S NEGOTIATING PARTNERS: Iraq’s Security Forces Overrun by Iranian-Backed Militants. “For first time, DOD discloses that Iran controls large portions of Iraqi security forces.”

ROBERT SPENCER: If We Had a Real President, Here’s How He (or She) Would React to Trudeau’s War on Canadians’ Freedom. “He would address Trudeau directly, and remind him that freedom of assembly and freedom of speech are cornerstones of any free society. He would detail how dangerous a precedent the Canadian prime minister is setting by freezing the truckers’ bank accounts and would note that such tyrannical measures could just as easily be used against Trudeau and his allies if the opposition were ever to come to power.”

Joe Biden doesn’t believe in anything other than Joe Biden.

IF YOU WANT MORE OF SOMETHING, SUBSIDIZE IT: Denver to spend $3.9M to expand managed homeless campsites.