FINALLY, AN IRAN DEAL WORTH ENDORSING: Massive Israeli Raid Hits Iranian Targets in Syria.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Obsessed De Blasio Purging Trump Organization from City Contracts.

Insanity Wrap needs to know: Is it really possible to unperson a billionaire President of the United States?

Answer: Bill De Blasio is doing his best to find out.

Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.

• Twitter caught planing to double down against dissent
• Communist China using U.S. crackdown on free speech to justify their own crackdowns
• BLM undercover at Capitol Riot

Bonus Sanity: Kim Cattrall makes the best career decision ever.

And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

THE PURGE: Colleges revoke honorary degrees awarded to President Trump and Rudy Giuliani.

BRING IT ON: Trump to Declassify ‘Foot-High Stack’ of Obamagate Documents.

HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): Mother Who Let Toddler Decide Their Own Gender States She’s Been Accused Of Child Abuse.

GOOGLE MADE THE SAME PROMISE BEFORE THEY ACQUIRED NEST, THEN BROKE IT A COUPLE YEARS LATER: Google completes acquisition of Fitbit, reiterates privacy promises.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Commie Idiot AOC Is Still the Dumbest Bartender In America. “Squeaky hasn’t been in the news as much as she likes lately because America has been rather preoccupied with plague and election stuff. She’s been lurking though, waiting for the briefest of lulls in any news cycle so she could painfully remind sane people that she’s still here.”

MODERN PROBLEMS: Programmer has two password guesses left to save his $240 million of Bitcoin.

BLUE STATE BLUES: They Can’t Leave the Bay Area Fast Enough

Rent was astronomical. Taxes were high. Your neighbors didn’t like you. If you lived in San Francisco, you might have commuted an hour south to your job at Apple or Google or Facebook. Or if your office was in the city, maybe it was in a neighborhood with too much street crime, open drug use and $5 coffees.

But it was worth it. Living in the epicenter of a boom that was changing the world was what mattered. The city gave its workers a choice of interesting jobs and a chance at the brass ring.

That is, until the pandemic. Remote work offered a chance at residing for a few months in towns where life felt easier. Tech workers and their bosses realized they might not need all the perks and after-work schmooze events. But maybe they needed elbow room and a yard for the new puppy. A place to put the Peloton. A top public school.

They fled. They fled to tropical beach towns. They fled to more affordable places like Georgia. They fled to states without income taxes like Texas and Florida.

Actually, the deal was this: California was where the high-paying tech jobs were, take it or leave it.

Given the opportunity, they’ll leave it.

DECOUPLING: Xiaomi blacklisted by DoD as ‘Communist Chinese military company.’

PRIVACY: WhatsApp privacy controversy causes ‘largest digital migration in human history.’

The Facebook-owned app send a notification to all of its 2 billion users forcing them to accept its privacy policy before 8 February, or else lose access to their account.

WhatsApp’s new Terms of Service includes a data-sharing agreement with Facebook, which prompted widespread condemnation from digital rights and privacy advocates.

The new policy does not effect users in the UK and Europe but it has once again raised concerns about the relationship between the world’s most popular messaging app and Facebook.

People across social media, including Elon Musk and Edward Snowden, encouraged WhatsApp users to switch to more privacy-focused alternatives, such as Signal and Telegram.

My guess is that Facebook saw this coming, but figured they’d still make more money with the data-mining they’d get out of everyone who remains.

HOW’S THAT UNITY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? AOC Wants a Gov’t Commission to ‘Rein in’ Media to Prevent ‘Disinformation.’

LIVE AND ON THE AIR, EVEN IN THE TINY REPUBLIC OF TOGO: VIP Gold Live Chat with Kruiser, Preston, VodkaPundit.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Did Jack Dorsey Just Repudiate His Decision to Exile Trump from Twitter?

Insanity Wrap needs to know: When is an apology not an apology and when is regret not regret and why did Jack Dorsey even bother?

Answer: We got maybe two hours of sleep last night pondering that one, and still got nowhere with it.

Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.

• The Language Police are real, and they aren’t in the mood to talk
• Policing the crazies, Left v. Right
• Communist China gets the upper hand on… free speech

Bonus Sanity: Nope, none of that today, sorry.

And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

WELL, MAYBE NOT WORSE THAN YOU THINK: California Is Worse Than You Think.

For example, the California legislature in its progressive wisdom effectively decriminalized theft as long as thieves take less than $950 worth of merchandise, officially reducing such theft to a misdemeanor but in effect making it legal, since progressive California prosecutors don’t like to be bothered by petty criminals. In practice, that means consumer goods are much harder to find in California stores than one might experience elsewhere. For me, the difference was quite revealing, as I recently returned to Maryland after spending close to nine months in Sacramento.

When I go to the Walmart near my wife’s home, I find many things openly are on display in Maryland are behind locked cases in California. Furthermore, California’s draconian labor laws mean Walmart has fewer employees, so if I wish to purchase something I easily could buy in Maryland, I have to wait for a long time and often I just walk away because no one is available to open the glass case. Yet, even with these provisions, shoplifting losses for California retailers are enormous, and the state’s pro-theft laws have encouraged organized grab-and-run rings.

My progressive colleagues, like my philosophy professor friend, see no problem with such developments. To them, the real thieves are the capitalists, the retailers like Walmart which refuse to pay “living wages” to their employees, and, according to Senator Bernie Sanders, the capitalists have “been looting” Americans for years. Thus, the wave of theft in that state is a positive development, according to progressives.

Read the whole thing.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: GOP Congresswoman: ‘I Will Be Filing Articles of Impeachment Against Joe Biden’ on January 21.

THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP: Libs are freaking out because of what GOP Rep. Gohmert said on the House floor … But he was quoting Nancy Pelosi verbatim.

THE PURGE: Chrissie Mayr: NY Comics Making a ‘List’ of Pro-Trump Stand-Ups.

TO BE FAIR, IT WAS ONLY THE MOST RECENT ESTABLISHMENT ‘F-U’ TO HALF OF AMERICA: Trump Impeachment Was The Political Establishment’s “F-U” To Half Of America.

WE’RE FINE HERE, THANKS: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Wants to Liberate Red States From Their Suppression.

THE PURGE: DOJ should investigate social media platform Gab and its CEO over Capitol riots, according to anti-hate group.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Your All-Too-Frequent Reminder That Jake Tapper Is Filth. “There were many like Tapper who use to be more coy about their bias but Trump forced them to peel off their human masks and reveal their biased lizard alien faces.”

COULD EUROPE SAVE US FROM OURSELVES? WHAT A ROLE REVERSAL… Facebook and other tech giants could soon face a flood of court cases in Europe over data privacy.

THEY’RE ANGRY IN PART BECAUSE THEY’VE BEEN TOLD TO SHUT UP OR GOTTEN REMOVED FROM THEIR FORMER HOMES: Meet The Billionaires Behind Signal And Telegram, Two New Online Homes For Angry Conservatives.

IT WAS MEANT TO OBSCURE THE REAL PROBLEM: Trump’s Twitter ban obscures the real problem: state-backed manipulation is rampant on social media.

Since 2016, our team at the Oxford Internet Institute has monitored the rapid global proliferation of social media manipulation campaigns, which we define as the use of digital tools to influence online public behaviour. In the past four years, social media manipulation has evolved from a niche concern to a global threat to democracy and human rights.

Our latest report found that organised social media manipulation campaigns are now common across the world — identified in 81 countries in 2020, up from 70 countries in 2019. The map below shows the global distribution of these 81 countries, marked in dark blue.

In our report, we focus on the use of “cyber troops”, which are teams from the government, the military or political parties which are committed to manipulating public opinion on social media. Cyber troops regularly conduct what we call “computational propaganda” campaigns.

Read the whole thing.