RUSSIA! RUSSIA! RUSSIA! Pinocchio Alert! Lickspittle Canadian Reporter Suggests Russia Might Be Behind Historic, Patriotic Trucker Rally.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Flashback: Russians! Under my bed!

ELECTION TAMPERING: Subpoena To JP Morgan Over Hunter’s Business Deals With China Show Damaging Material Hidden From Voters.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Real Americans Are Sick of COVID Kabuki Theater. “There have been signs and anecdotes all over for months that indicate Americans are tired of the drama being forced on us by the peddlers of COVID panic porn. Sadly, a relatively small portion of the population seems to get off on being controlled by the petty tyrants. These two groups get a disproportionate amount of the press which can make it feel as if they are in the mainstream.”

COLORADO: Democrats set to kill GOP effort to make Colorado’s hospital provider charge transparent. “While Colorado Democrats and Governor Jared Polis continue to tout new state and federal regulations that went into effect Jan. 1 requiring all emergency medical costs to be disclosed before a patient is treated, an opaque charge collected on hospital stays, passed under previous Democrat legislation isn’t getting the same reception.”

PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

Matt Margolis: The Top Five Worst Affirmative Action Picks By Democrats. (You’re gonna need a bigger blog.)

Robert Spencer: Not Content with Destroying U.S. Economy, Biden Now Destroying Ukrainian Economy.

Yours Truly: Ranking the Bond Movies: Part 005 (Shaken and Stirring). “These are the Bond flicks elevated beyond mere popcorn thrills, but don’t quite rise to the level of classics.”

And another: Ranking the Bond Movies: Part 006: Bond, Essential Bond. “These are the very few movies — minus two I’m holding in reserve for a very special Part 007 — that for me define a James Bond movie.”

MEGAN FOX: ‘And Just Like That’ Writers Glorify ‘Exciting’ Divorce over ‘Boring’ Stability.

CHINA IS ASSHOLE: Mandatory Olympics iOS and Android apps are spying on athletes for China.

A researcher has found that the mandatory Beijing 2022 Olympics app for iOS and Android is collecting and sending audio to Chinese servers.

On Thursday, researcher Jonathan Scott had posted his findings after reverse-engineering the mandatory MY2022 Olympics app. As it turns out, the app is capable of spying on Olympians and attendees and sending the audio to Chinese servers to be analyzed.

MY2022 is a non-optional app that must be used by both athletes and attendees of the 2022 Winter Olympics. The app is designed to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 and act as a central hub for information on events, weather, travel, and points of interest.

What are we doing, sending our young athletes to a country like mainland Communist China?

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Even Marianne Williamson Backs Joe Rogan, Compares Deplatforming Someone to ‘Book Burning.’

QUESTION ASKED: Can The GOP Take Advantage of Its Big Opportunity?

GERRYMANDERING IS EVIDENCE OF A BROKEN SYSTEM ONLY WHEN REPUBLICANS DO IT: New York Dems Are Gerrymandering GOP Districts Out of Existence.

ORGANIC FARMING CAN BE NICE PROVIDED YOU DON’T HAVE TO FEED LARGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE: Sri Lanka to pay $200m compensation for failed organic farm drive. “A million farmers whose crops failed under a botched scheme to establish the world’s first 100-percent organic farming nation will be compensated.”

PAULA BOLYARD: It’s Time to Fight Back: Refuse to Let Them Destroy Your Children and Your Way of Life. “Over the last year, we’ve seen brave Americans standing up to the mandates—defying them—in an effort to claw back some of the freedom we’ve lost since the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything. Last week we saw courageous young people, including our own Megan Fox’s daughter, walking into school without masks and daring administrators to kick them out. But tyrants like New York Gov. Kathy Hochul are not backing down. They give every indication that they expect the ‘new normal’ to be a permanent condition—they want us masked and vaxxed from here to eternity.”

WHEN HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS MEETS OVERBEARING BUREAUCRACY: How we ended up with the ‘Pregnant Man’ Emoji.

I HAD BEEN ASSURED IT WAS ONLY A HORSE DEWORMER: Rogan Vindicated? Ivermectin Shows ‘Antiviral Effect’ Against Omicron According to Japanese Study.

BREAKDOWN DEAD AHEAD: Amazon And Its Discontents. “Amazon is a modern wonder, but it relies on an affluent, law-abiding, high trust society to work properly. If law and order break down because thieves pay no price for stealing packages off your front porch, how does Amazon function?”

ARE YOU WITH THEM? Whistleblower at T-Mobile Releases Internal Emails: Get Jabbed or Get Lost!

CHINA: Xi Jinping Is Watching His Back.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s image may be all over the news these days, but in real life, Xi has all but vanished from the world stage. Hunkering down in Beijing for more than 700 days, Xi was a no-show at last year’s United Nations General Assembly, the G-20 summit in Rome, and the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. Xi’s disappearing act is occurring at the same time he and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) face serious domestic headwinds, including rampant energy shortages, rising unemployment, and a real estate market teetering on the edge of collapse.

Times have clearly changed since before the COVID-19 pandemic, when Xi confidently boasted about ushering in a new, China-centric global order. Xi’s refusal to go abroad clearly reflects his fervent desire to stay on top of any renewed coronavirus outbreaks, the second-order effects of which have paralyzed China’s industrial output. But the pandemic alone cannot explain Xi’s refusal to leave his seat of power—or to shelve, however temporarily, his grand international ambitions.

Instead, if Xi’s latest pronouncements are any indication, there is something else keeping him awake at night: growing fears about resistance to his rule from factions inside the CCP.

Put plainly, as China’s economy stumbles and its global standing tumbles, Xi is quickly realizing that after almost a decade in power, his demand for “absolute loyalty” within the CCP remains quixotic at best—and foolhardy at worst. And that is a major cause for concern less than 10 months before the CCP’s 20th Party Congress, when Xi is expected to assume a once unthinkable third term as the party’s general secretary.
…
Xi’s focus on regime security also carried over into remarks later in December before an audience that included nearly every member of the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s highest-level decision-making body. Xi asked that all those present take a pledge to protect the authority of the party’s centralized, unified leadership. Put another way, Xi demanded that the party’s leaders demonstrate their personal loyalty to him. On how many occasions have Standing Committee members repeated this same pledge in recent years? Countless times, for sure. More puzzling is why Xi must constantly hear them declare it in public if, as he so defiantly claims, his political future is all but assured?
…
The simple explanation for Xi’s refusal to leave China and his recent, over-the-top loyalty push is that Xi recognizes he is increasingly vulnerable.

“One-man rule” also means there’s only one man to blame when things go wrong — something every would-be one-man ruler seems to forget along their quest for total power.

VIDEO: Russell Brand Calls Out Fake News Media for Convoy Protest Blackout, Goes Viral.

Related: Uh oh.

BLUE CITY BLUES: Shoplifting kills a Rite Aid — and maybe Manhattan’s comeback chances.

The pharmacy, on 8th Avenue and 50th Street, will close Feb. 8. Last week, it was effectively already shuttered, with most of the store cordoned off with gates. Just a small, strange assortment — children’s coloring books jumbled with vitamins — was marooned on front shelves on “clearance.”

The clearance prices were ironic — because the reason the Rite Aid is closing is mass-scale shoplifting. As The Post reported last week, the shop lost $200,000 in goods in two months.

This store’s workers have had a rough two years. In June 2020 — the summer of “peaceful protests” — the shop suffered looting. The windows were broken and $60,000 worth of drugs stolen.

The Rite Aid was then completely covered in plywood for days.

Since then, the store’s workers — mostly people of color — have suffered the strain of constant disorder.

Related: NY Gov. Hochul issues warning to Manhattan DA: ‘I have options.’

MATT MARGOLIS: Biden’s ‘Anger’ Over High Insulin Prices Is Fake, Here’s Why. “Because he is responsible for it.”

CHARMING: NYC teacher calls for vehicular attack on mourning NYPD officers. “Unfortunately, not everyone was feeling the spirit of paying tribute to the life of the officer who was murdered during a cowardly ambush. One New York City public school teacher took to Instagram and posted a suggestion that someone might want to take a vehicle and plow into the sea of police officers. Christopher Flanigan, a math teacher in Brooklyn, received an immediate response and is probably wishing he’d kept his opinions to himself about now.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Reminder — Some Teachers Are Truly Horrible People. “While not all teachers are awful people, the same can’t be said for the union higher-ups. They’re evil. As I wrote a full year ago, COVID has exposed them for the garbage human beings that they are, especially Weingarten.”

HEH: Elon Musk Mocks Trudeau After Massive Trucker Rally: ‘Fringe Minority’ ‘Is Actually The Government.’

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: Kansas Schoolteacher Joins ISIS, Plots Jihad Massacres in U.S., Leads All-Female Terrorist Battalion.

SHE SOMEHOW JUST BECAME EVEN MORE ATTRACTIVE: Marvel Star Evangeline Lilly Targeted for Cancellation Over Anti-Mandate Post.