DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Shoplifters open fire on security guard in New York City’s busy Times Square hitting an innocent bystander in the leg and sending tourists fleeing for cover.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Human Rights Lawyer: UNRWA Is ‘Terrorism-Infested.’

2024 KEEPS GETTING WEIRDER BUT THIS ONE MIGHT PROVE TO BE USEFUL: Mutant wolves roaming Chernobyl Exclusion Zone have developed cancer-resilient abilities.

KRUISER: Trump Derangement Syndrome Meltdown of the Week — Dem Broads Are the Real Misogynists Edition. “Women hating women is nothing new, of course. They can whine about misogyny and the Patriarchy all they want, but the biggest roadblocks in almost every woman’s path to bigger and better things are other women. The notion of a modern day sisterhood that is going to take over the world is persistent fiction.”

GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: Progressive Culture and the Crisis of the American Male.

As I look out at that culture, I notice a few critical things. I notice that it was not Trump who launched campaigns to eliminate toxic masculinity, mansplaining, manspreading, microaggressions and the Patriarchy (whatever that is). It is not agents of Trump who write articles with headlines like “Workout Culture Is White Supremacy”or even “Straight Black Men are the White People of Black People.” It was not Trumpian comic book executives who attacked their mostly male audience by “re-centering comic art to defeat the male gaze”… as if there were something definitionally wrong with an appreciation of the female form. It’s not Trumpian education officials telling young naturally hyperactive boys that they must sit still in one place for eight hours or else be put on dangerous psychoactive drugs, and then making good on the threat. It wasn’t Trump who shamed and cancelled an accomplished rocket scientist for celebrating the first landing of a spacecraft on a comet while wearing a shirt featuring whimsically drawn sci-fi comic book-style women in bikinis. It was not Trumpian studio executives who decided movie stars should be built like Timothee Chalamet rather than Arnold, Bruce and Sly. It was not Trump who declared that certain popular video games like Call of Duty, table-top games like Dungeons & Dragons, or the Lord of the Rings series of novels… things enjoyed primarily by men… represent right-wing extremism, toxic male culture or both. It was not a right wing publication which labeled OPPENHEIMER’S Golden Globe win “a troubling return to Hollywood’s macho ‘dad movie’ days.” And it was not the Trumpian Right who browbeat NFL quarterback Drew Brees so badly that he felt the only way to recover his reputation and career was to put the name of a violent man with a history of alleged sexual assault on his football helmet. All for the crime of telling an interviewer that because of his family history of military service, he did not agree with disrespecting the American flag by kneeling for the National Anthem.

These were all humiliation rituals… struggle sessions aimed at traditional American men and their favorite pastimes. All of them engineered and prosecuted by the Progressive Left. And they are working precisely as they were intended, which is to say badly, for American men.

No wonder so many men are leaving the Democrat Party… it has been an abusive relationship for quite some time now.

Read the whole thing.

PLEASE DON’T STOP UNTIL THE JOB IS DONE: Netanyahu Claims That Israel Is ‘Just a Touch Away’ From Declaring Victory Over Hamas.

FASTER, PLEASE: Fusion research facility’s final tritium experiments yield new energy record.

The Joint European Torus (JET), one of the world’s largest and most powerful fusion machines, has demonstrated the ability to reliably generate fusion energy, while simultaneously setting a world record in energy output.

These notable accomplishments represent a significant milestone in the field of fusion science and engineering.

In JET’s final deuterium-tritium experiments (DTE3), high fusion power was consistently produced for five seconds, resulting in a ground-breaking record of 69 megajoules using a mere 0.2 milligrams of fuel.

Not exactly commercial grade but maybe it’s time to reset the “ten years to cheap fusion power” clock once more.

THEY SHOULD BE LAUGHED OUT OF THEIR OWN COURT: Hawaiian Court Cites Little-Known ‘Spirit of Aloha’ Clause to Deny Gun Rights. “It is my overly amused duty to tell you today that those are not the words of a well-meaning but ignorant-as-toast 10th grader — those words are an exact quote from a decision written by the State Supreme Court of Hawaii.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Small Banks Are Teetering. Expect More Failures. “There is a systemic risk of large-scale bank failures in the U.S. in 2024 due to charge-offs and write-downs emanating from the commercial real estate sector. Bank regulators have been vocal about their concerns that the too-big-too-fail banks would have sufficient capital to cover losses and a recession. However, they do not appear to be as concerned about how the projected losses will impact the large number of community banks in the country.”

As expected by the regulators who work hand-in-glove with the too-big-to-fail banks that will scoop up the failed regional and community banks as they grow even more too big to fail.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: RIP Jurisprudence — President Séance Judged Too Senile to Get in Trouble. “Of course, the notion that Biden is presenting himself to anyone is absurd. He is whatever his handlers decide he needs to be in a given situation. They’ve got a situational ‘upper/downer’ combo chart that has precise dosages for what they need him to achieve at the time. The problem that they’ve been running into lately is that there doesn’t seem to be enough Adderall in the world to get Biden through more than 45 seconds before he goes into full Max Headroom glitch mode.”

THESE INCIDENTS ARE BECOMING MORE FREQUENT: JetBlue plane clips second JetBlue plane at Boston’s Logan International Airport.

TO BE FAIR, THEY HAD NO CASE: Kavanaugh Destroys Colorado’s Case to Kick Trump Off Ballot.

IF IT ISN’T ONE DAMN THING…: China to export deflation to the world as economy stumbles.

Global investors expect falling prices in China to push down inflation rates worldwide this year, as excess capacity in its slowing economy prompts Chinese exporters to cut prices on goods they sell abroad.

Prices of Chinese exports have been falling at their fastest rate since the 2008 financial crisis, indicating the world’s largest exporter is starting to send deflation outward to developed economies that have been battling high inflation.

“China will be exporting deflation to the rest of the world, and you will find various countries dealing with the fact that China has built up overcapacity,” said Chetan Sehgal, lead portfolio manager at Templeton Emerging Markets Investment Trust, a UK-listed fund.

But then there’s this: The Global Tremors From China’s Real Estate Crisis Are Only Just Starting.

Chinese investors and their creditors are putting up “For Sale” signs on real estate holdings across the globe as the need to raise cash amid a deepening property crisis at home trumps the risks of offloading into a falling market. The prices they get will help finally put hard numbers on just how much trouble the wider industry is in.

The worldwide slump triggered by borrowing-cost hikes has already wiped more than $1 trillion off office property values alone, Starwood Capital Group Chairman Barry Sternlicht said last week. But the total damage is still unknown because so few assets have been sold, leaving appraisers with little recent data to go on. Completed commercial property deals globally sank to the lowest level in a decade last year, with owners unwilling to sell buildings at steep discounts.

Regulators and the market are nervous that this logjam could be concealing large, unrealized losses, spelling trouble both for banks, who pushed further into bricks and mortar lending during the cheap money era, and asset owners.

Interesting times…

BUT TOO YOUNG TO FIRE! Special Counsel Finds Biden Is Too Damn Old to Be Charged in Classified Docs Scandal.

TOO KIND: Biden’s Unannounced Nighttime Speech an Absolute DISASTER.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

Maybe old man Biden is past blame but surely institutional Washington, by this monstrous act of elder abuse, is guilty of foisting a fraud on the voters without parallel since Woodrow Wilson governed from a coma. How the hell was Joe going to make it to 2028?

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) February 9, 2024

Flashback: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

Plus:

Kamala Harris watching Biden tonight. pic.twitter.com/1vsMM8wscI

— Dustin Grage 🇺🇸 (@GrageDustin) February 9, 2024

Or maybe it’s not Kamala: Michelle Obama may have notified people in ‘22 of her White House ambition: ‘I plan to run.’

NO KIDDING? Biden DOJ Calls Biden a ‘Well-Meaning, Elderly Man with Poor Memory.’ “Never mind the weasel language about how Biden would present himself to a jury because an ‘elderly man with a poor memory’ is how he presents himself to members of the press, gathered audiences, and various deceased foreign dignitaries from countries he gets mixed up sometimes.”

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE: A Distraught Portlander Gets the Mayor to Finally Apologize for ‘Summer of Love’ Riots.

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Impeachment witness says no record of work, loan to James Biden before payment to brother. “Carol Fox, the trustee who represented Americore during its bankruptcy proceedings, said she could neither determine what role James Biden played nor identify any paperwork backing up the loans made to him from the struggling company in 2018.”

SOMETHING UNDENIABLY OBVIOUS, ANYWAY: Wow, Did CNN Finally Admit Something Huge About Joe Biden?

CNN CHYRONS, MAN:

I'm pretty sure Airbus products will also suffer from the same problem, but… man, Boeing is just having a bad run of publicity these days, huh? pic.twitter.com/ZDTtD6Tb8P

— Rusty (@LieutenantRusty) February 7, 2024

SPOILER: THEY AREN’T. Sen. Murphy Accidentally Reveals Dems’ Favorite Americans.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Nose-Up Dream Chaser Spaceplane Gets the Shakes Ahead of Historic Mission.

The spaceplane is at the Armstrong Test Facility not solely to be shown to the media, but to undergo crucial testing to see if it can survive the hardships of going to orbit, but also the extremes of space.

The facility NASA operates in Ohio is home to the world’s most powerful shaker system. That’s a piece of hardware meant to rattle spacecraft to their core, in a bid to simulate the vibrations they will experience during launch and re-entry. The Dream Chaser has already gone through it, and nothing fell off.

Now that this crucial step is out of the way, NASA will move the plane in a huge vacuum chamber, this time in a bid to simulate the coldness and emptiness of space, complete with low pressure, low temperatures, and dynamic solar heating.

If all goes well the ship will eventually move to the Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida for launch. It will reach the pad installed in the fairing of a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket, the same kind that was used for the first time in January to launch the failed Peregrine lunar lander.

Dream Chaser’s first mission will see it perform all sorts of tests to validate its systems. On approach to the ISS, it will perform far-field and near-field procedures to test its attitude control, translational maneuvers, and abort capabilities.

Godspeed…

WAIT, WHAT? Think You’ve Got It Bad? Martha’s Vineyard Is Now a Low-Income Area.

WHAT WOULD WE DO WITHOUT OFFICIAL WARNINGS? Don’t wear Apple Vision Pro while piloting a self-driving Tesla, officials warn. “As The New York Times asks, are people legitimately attempting to use the headset while driving, or is it all a stunt? ‘Several of the videos taken in cars appear staged, and in many, it is clear that someone other than the driver is recording,’ writes Jesus Jiménez for The New York Times. ‘The videos are not widespread.'”

But still worthy of Pete Buttigieg’s official attention.

FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY: Dem Paradise: Squatters Occupy 1,200 Atlanta Homes, Open Strip Club.