Denial has symptoms. Anatomy Of A Cover-Up: The January 6 Tapes (Julie Kelly via American Greatness, ZeroHedge) — “the usual defenders of accountability, transparency, and constitutional rights have been completely AWOL. … Withholding the video is only one part of the massive cover-up about January 6. Republicans should seek similar demands for records, emails, and communications from Capitol Police to expose the full scope of the cover-up. But like all good political scandals, the path to the truth begins with the tapes.” — 

There are consequences and the issues go back to the phenomena discussed in The Bell Curve by Murray and Herrenstein. What Killed Tyre Nichols (Heather Mac Donald, City Journal) — “Did these cops possess the tactical skill and psychological disposition to conduct any high-risk car stop according to professional standards? Given what is shown in the videos, the answer, even more self-evidently, is no. … Either Memphis’s police training is grossly inadequate, or these officers were incapable of processing it.” — Defunding the police, eliminating merit for ‘diversity’ in hiring and behavior standards, lax prosecution and treating criminals as victims and cops as persecutors, … tribalism rears a nasty head.

Then there’s The War on Musk: Washington Post Slammed Over Twitter Hit Piece – JONATHAN TURLEY — “The Post story was written with the usual telltale signs of a hit piece. First, there was the breathless headline (notably amplified on its own Twitter account) expressing a combination of shock and scorn … It has been unrelenting and includes a campaign to get companies to suspend or reduce advertising until censorship is restored. The media has kept a steady stream of hit pieces on Musk that often border on wartime propaganda. … The campaign against Musk reflects a degree of desperation as the control of social media collapsed with his purchase.” — 

It’s about a WaPo hit piece, an astroturf campaign, and the CCDH. Weaponizing Advertising (Robert W Malone) — “Why have legitimate skilled physicians and media organizations been paired with antisemites, white supremacists, and NeoNazis? There can be no explanation other than that this is a clear attempt to delegitimize, censor and defame credible voices who are raising inconvenient (for the current administration) concerns. … The Center for Countering Digital Hate spreads mis- and dis-information for political purposes, and in so doing promotes rather than counters “Digital Hate.” — Then consider the GDI. GDI labels conservative websites “false/misleading” in false/misleading attempt to libel/slander (Eric Utter, American Thinker) — “Progressives have fostered a culture of lies. They are ubiquitous and keep on coming. If prevarication was an Olympic sport, it would now be hard to pick a winner from amongst the Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, Iranians…and a U.S team comprised of Obama-Biden administration officials.”

There are other worries at the American Thinker. The Anti-Freedom Far-Left is Nothing More Than a Squawking Minority (D. Parker) — “it’s time to fight back with what we’re calling cultural guerrilla warfare, using asymmetric tactics.” — The moral gap between left and right is widening (M.B. Mathews) — “Perhaps this is the personality difference between liberal and conservative that seems so evident in the demeanor of both groups: many on the left seem perpetually angry and unhappy and often loath to examine their own probity.  Those on the right seem more willing to examine themselves for behavior that makes them feel less honorable and decent.”

That leads to an observation that America Is Becoming a Corrupt Country (Newt Gingrich, The American Spectator) — “There may be no more important fight in the next decade than the reassertion of basic honesty and lawfulness. … Surrounded by dishonesty, a free society and a free market cannot survive.” — 

The media. It’s how they do it. This example is about the guilt by association innuendo tactic. A Tendentiously Alleged Connection Between Trump and the Kochs (Donald J. Boudreaux, Cafe Hayek) — “Every one of them – including tax cutting and reducing regulations – have long been supported also by mainstream Republicans. To suggest that Trump embraced these policies only because of insidious influence exercised by the Kochs is absurd.” — The censorship issue is under exam by Jonathan Turley: “Free Speech for Whom?”: Former Twitter Executive Makes Chilling Admission on the “Nuanced” Standard Used For Censorship – “it was the testimony of the only witness called by the Democrats that proved the most enlightening and chilling. … Instead of asking just free speech versus safety to say free speech for whom and public safety for whom” — Then there’s the ‘whom’ highlighted by We Have a Serious Misinformation Problem in Congress When It Comes to Hunter’s Laptop – RedState — “They’re so interested in trying to suppress “misinformation” on Twitter, maybe House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) should first check their own house first.” — That leads to the idea that Government policy should be founded in fact rather than fiction (Jack Hellner, American Thinker) — “Here are some actual and very recent climate events that have occurred despite 150 years of exponential growth of coal, oil, cars, planes, gas stoves, methane, and all the other things that we are told cause an irreversible threat of rapid warming and severe storms.”

The idea that government is weaponizing politics is getting good play, too. FBI Declares War on Traditional Catholics in Insidious New Intelligence Report – RedState and Whistleblower Says FBI Mined Bank Records for the J6 Probe as the Bureau Takes a Hard Look at ‘Radical Traditionalist Catholics” (Lincoln Brown, PJ Media) — “So, what is the FBI to do about those pesky Catholics and their rosary-praying ways? Infiltrate them, apparently”

but it’s the Republicans  holding their hearings that are weaponizing and dividing and causing isurrection and riots, you see …

The pandemic panic has provided a mass scale example of mass formation psychosis. Some are noticing. How The “Unvaccinated” Got It Right (Robin Koerner, The Brownstone Institute, via ZeroHedge) citing Scott Adams: “It was a mea culpa in which he declared, “The unvaccinated were the winners,” and, to his great credit, “I want to find out how so many of [my viewers] got the right answer about the “vaccine” and I didn’t.” … “What follows is a personal response to Scott, which explains how consideration of the information that was available at the time led one person – me – to decline the “vaccine.” It is not meant to imply that all who accepted the “vaccine” made the wrong decision or, indeed, that everyone who declined it did so for good reasons.” — Add in an introspection about human behavior to round out some understanding. Thinking Out Loud: Ignorance Scales (Chuck Dinerstein, | American Council on Science and Health) — “The problem with debunking lousy science is that it doesn’t scale; there are no snappy lines to take down carefully constructed but flawed arguments. To evaluate a scientific study dispassionately, you need to be open to contrary views and have the time to let your analytic brain, not your intuitive brain, respond. Based on what our intuitive brain tells us, a mixture of survival skills, confirmation bias, and schadenfreude, Ignorance scales. And that is especially true for social media, the place that 60% of us go for our news.”

Then there’s the idea that Objectivity Is Dead, and the Leftist Media Killed It (Tanya Berlaga, American Thinker) — “Instead of “communication of thoughts between subjects,” the media took it upon themselves to decide which thoughts they will promote and which they will ignore. … instead of promoting unity, the media seek to promote conformity. … If the media can hide the facts that go against their agenda, they will. … It is not your opinion that we object to.  It’s your dishonesty.  You are abusing special protections the founders designed for you to push your worldview on the American people.” — 

It was anti-establishment. Not now. Anarchy, American-Style (Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness) — “The current revolution is much different—and far more dangerous—for at least three reasons. … the greatest levers of influence and power—money, education, entertainment, government, the news, and popular culture—are in the hands of the Left. They have transformed legitimate debate over gay marriage into a hate crime. Transgenderism went from a modern manifestation of ancient transvestism or gender dysphoria to a veritable litmus test of whether one was good or evil. … The common denominator to the anarchy? The hardcore Left is your FBI, CIA, and Justice Department all in one. It is Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is our era’s J. P. Morgan.” — Taking on the Would-be Destroyers of America (Allan J. Feifer, American Thinker) — “The destroyers had to take a functioning country with the world’s largest middle class and tank it.  Not only that, but to tank it with the acquiescence of a significant portion of the population and make it appear noble. … This is not simply another tool of the Destroyers.  Changing our history, how we speak, our country’s iconology and our culture redefines who we are. … We must fight back with force against those with a generation or two head start on the rest of us.  If someone comes into your house to kidnap your baby, no amount of your righteous indignation will suffice in defense.  We must commit to total war against those intruders who hold such blackness in their hearts.” — 

Meanwhile, anther front for divergence and distraction has opened with TDS on display. The Blitzkrieg On Bill Barr And John Durham Is Just Beginning (Margot Cleveland, Federalist) — “what The New York Times wants Americans to believe: that politics prompted Barr to appoint Durham, and politics pushed Durham to reach whatever negative conclusion he details in his final report. … Sadly, we all know from the Russia-collusion canard what this means: The loop has been closed, and the circular reporting has begun. So now, as proof of the Times’ reporting on Barr and Durham, we have the fact that the Senate Judiciary Committee intends to investigate the special counsel probe.” — Senate to take a ‘hard look’ at ‘outrageous’ Durham probe (Kevin Haggerty , BPR) — “much like former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s “bombshell” testimony before the January 6 committee that garnered mass media attention despite being hearsay, it appears as though Senate Democrats are prepared to use a tangent in an already conducted investigation that, on its face, leads nowhere as a potential excuse to generate more hearings in the never-ending public trial of Trump.” — 

Boiling the Frog seems to have been going quite well. DEI Has Already Killed Public Education (David Catron, American Spectator) — “It’s unlikely, however, that many Americans realize just how far the disease has advanced. It has long since spread beyond a few courses embedded into the social studies curricula of secondary schools and elite colleges. … This kind of condescending nonsense, combined with the failure of educators to teach students critical skills, is why the vast majority of voters support school choice.” — California’s fake water crisis (John Horvat II, – American Thinker) — “there is nothing like a good crisis to keep things liberal, especially in eco-friendly California. The good news is that the rains dumped tens of trillions of gallons upon the parched land. The bad news is that most of the water ended up in the Pacific Ocean. … the present crisis should not be happening. However, it is occurring because man-made efforts to harness nature’s solutions have suddenly shrunk. … another strange twist to the California water “crisis” is that voters have approved water bonds with large margins. Consumers and voters want to solve the problem. However, of the $27 billion approved for water storage and flood control since 2000, only a small percentage makes it to the drawing table, much less the construction company’s job list. … Eco-ideologues who oppose human domination over nature don’t want to solve this problem.”

The response has much hand wringing but there are indications that, maybe, the frog is thinking he needs to do something about the water temperature. Kevin McCarthy Hits Nail on the Head on ‘Face the Nation’ After Question on GOP ‘Election Deniers’  (Sister Toldjah, RedState – sad what they do to good content to annoy visitors) — “To describe Republicans who had questions and concerns about the 2020 presidential election, the mainstream media has relentlessly thrown around the term “election denier” so often that, like their routine accusations of “racism,” the word has been diluted of its actual meaning. … when it comes to members of the press who don’t hold Democrats who objected to prior election results to the same standard they do Republicans. And reading between the lines, he also made another good point – that maybe sometimes questioning election results does not always mean “denying” them … Are they kidding? So supporting an audit — something many have done since time in memorium during elections — is “denial”? … The fact is that Democrats will never ever be held to the same standard Republicans are as far as the media is concerned when it comes to questioning and objecting to election results, because as per the norm, when Democrats do it it’s because “democracy is at stake” and when Republicans do it, it’s because they want to “undermine our sacred institutions” or something. … I’m so damned sick of the idiotic game-playing on this, and apparently so is McCarthy. Good on him for pushing back on the nonsense.”

The failure of absolute democracies in history was a less in the founding of the U.S. government. Mob rule, the two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner fable, and ‘scientific consensus’ all highlight the need to build protections for the rights of minorities in how a government is structured and operated. That is a major source of conflict in today’s politics. Like a toddler pushing the limits of what is allowed, the law and politics are both pushing the rules and customs to find weak spots and to create them if possible.

Alinsky suggested making your opponents live by their own rules [rule 4, see Bolen report]. It seems the word did not get to his friends. Pelosi started a war Jeffries has to finish (David Winston, Roll Call) — “Certainly, there have been times when creating a new precedent has been warranted. … Democrats, especially Nancy Pelosi, should have learned from Reid’s mistakes. When breaking precedent, be careful what you wish for. … No one is arguing that Speaker Pelosi didn’t have the power to do what she did. But was it the right thing to do? Her legacy now includes becoming the first speaker to strong-arm a select committee into existence and dictate its composition without the participation of the legitimate minority party leadership. – And it was a major unforced error” — Democrats Hate Being Held to Their Own Standards: Committee Assignments Edition (Guy Benson, Townhall) — “some of this is the ‘play stupid games, win stupid prizes’ effect.  If Democrats didn’t want Republican leaders to pick and choose which of their members could serve on certain committees, they should have left those decisions to the GOP in the last Congress.  Once the die was cast on the other side, it became inevitable that reprisals would follow … Pelosi and company pried open this Pandora’s box, and now they may have to live with the results.” — 

Instapundit » Blog Archive » NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT: Media outlets keep promoting ‘forest defenders’ and ignoring that they shot … is about the ‘whole truth’ being hidden by the media. Are you up on the Atlanta Antifa riots? Major reporting is trying to make it a Floyd type episode – not the real one but the created on. At least the governor is taking the Leftist violence seriously by calling out the National Guard. The fabrication, rationales, and distortions have another exposure in Eggs and weather cause blood clots; ‘stroke season’; and ‘sudden cardiac arrest’ forms for high schoolers (Olivia Murray, – American Thinker) — “Read on for the most notable of the chart-topping absurdities” — and here’s another one: British government data reveal very similar Covid hospitalization rates in vaccinated and unvaccinated people in many age groups (Alex Berenson) — “The British government calculated that to prevent a single case of severe Covid, nearly 1 million healthy adults under 50 would have to receive a booster.”

Paradigm shift sometimes seems to be getting rather stale but consider BELICH: Republicans Need a Tech ‘Manhattan Project’ to Win in 2024 and Beyond (RedState obnoxious warning) — “Republicans Stuck: Broken Paradigm, Old Mindset … In a world where data-driven profile marketing is now the norm, list value lies in the quality of the relationship and its common factors. … The direct mail mindset is not compatible with modern expectations, and it needs to be retired. … The Democrats operate technology the same way they run their cultural infestation, by running many, many teams, some unwittingly, all in the same direction.” — There are some indications that this is happening in the voter fraud area. It is also a major issue for sites like Redstate, Townhall, Epoch Times, and many other information sources as they struggle to find ways to monetize their efforts and transition from traditional newspaper and broadcast models to something more appropriate for websites and podcasts.

Murray and Herrenstein, where are you? The War on Competence (Clarice Feldman, American Thinker) — “A Massachusetts congresswoman,  Ayanna Pressley (who represents, inter alia, most of Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts), plainly revealed what is the basis for the war on intellectual achievement: “IQ is a measure of whiteness.” It isn’t, of course. It’s a combination of genetics (dare we say this?), home environment, including familial respect for achievement, personal interests and motivation, and to a certain extent, the caliber of the education received. This is not just a K-12 excrescence. For some years now it has metastasized to higher education.” — The Bell Curve (1994) was about defining intelligence and the fact that people are different individually and by many of the criteria used to identify groups in the aggregate. It is aggregate differences in groups such as defined by race or sex that stimulate some to covetousness or dissonance or greed for power. Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is a story about where society is going on this chimera of equity. 

On the media front Familiarity breeds contempt (Johnson, Power Line) — “Kerr’s story is based on photos and other information extracted from Hunter Biden’s laptop. … The story is highly reliable. By contrast, the Washington Post relies on “person[s] familiar with the matter” … The story is highly unreliable.” …  “How familiar can you get? This familiar: “Biden’s top aides were determined that the legal process would override any political moves or public messaging, not the other way around. They did not want to be seen as trying to shape the investigation’s outcome, according to people familiar with their approach.”

The Bergeron handicap is expressed in other ways as well. How the ‘vaccine lies’ will play out (Susan D. Harris, American Thinker) — “The rise of adverse reaction concern is a good and bad thing.  It’s good for obvious reasons.  It’s bad because the powers-that-be are doubling down on their push to keep the universal vaccination agenda going for as long as possible. … Ultimately, Rucker says, they can’t be allowed to perpetuate their lies.  The truth must come out now in order to stave off whatever they have planned for us next.” — The concern is blame shifting, which has been so successful. A budget battle is on the agenda so Republicans are pushing granny over the cliff and destroying Medicare. Covid shots are turning sour so it’s time to go after the ‘anti-vaccers’ and then to blame Trump. This is quite a contrast to the Lab Leak theory of the pandemic or the recent national election malfeasance where evidence actually supported what was blamed as conspiracy theories.

What’s the ruckus is often not as important as why the ruckus these days. The Media’s Embarrassing George Santos Fixation — Explained – Issues & Insights — “Unlike Santos, Biden is a person of some importance. The scandal he’s currently embroiled in doesn’t involve lying about his background – although Biden has done that repeatedly – it involves the mishandling of highly classified documents, which Biden kept in his possession for six years. … every once in a while the legacy media depraves itself in an entirely new way. The comparative way they are treating scandals involving a congressman of no importance and the leader of the free world is one such example.” — Here’s a novel idea: maybe the media should be honest and its journalists investigative (Jack Hellner, American Thinker) — “Most people pretending to be journalists are just appendages of the Democrat party, pushing the radical leftist agenda.  Facts haven’t mattered for a long time. … What a tragedy that expecting Democrats to represent their constituents (the American people) and members of the media to objectively report facts is a lot to ask of these two institutions.  But their agenda succeeds only in an emotional environment, so it’s really no surprise they’re defined by a unique aversion to truth and reality.” — Un-Scientific Un-American (A.J. Rice, BPR) — “We live in a craven time of opportunism, in which facts no longer matter and principles and truth don’t exist.” 

As for conspiracy theories that turn out to be conspiracies, period: January 6 Was an Inside Job (Albin Sadar, The Stream) — “what’s critical about the forthcoming deep-dive into the unjust, immoral, and unconstitutional jailing of hundreds of January 6 “trespassers” at the Capitol, is a look into how that event ties explicitly into what transpired in the presidential election of 2020. … in the weeks, months, and now years, of intense and thorough investigations by teams of true journalists and computer-hacking experts, and with affidavits by eye-witnesses to massive fraud, the proof of the obvious backs up the truth of the steal. … America must get to the bottom of the misdirection created by the Left about January 6, 2021.” — More revelations about Biden’s mishandling of classified and top-secret documents (Rajan Laad, American Thinker) — “the Washington Post reported on how Biden’s lawyers, the White House, and the Department of Justice colluded to hide vital information from the public. – Since the WaPo is a Democrat mouthpiece, there was abundant spin. … Despite a potential national security threat, all involved were more concerned about managing public perception. … The House Oversight Committee must investigate the mishandling, and the subsequent coverup and monitor the progress of the special counsel.”

Then there’s the behavior. Good-Faith Reading vs. Adversarial Reading – Cafe Hayek – “When someone who has engaged in a thorough good faith reading of author A encounters someone who has engaged in an adversarial reading of author A, it can be quite disorienting. What’s more, to a debate audience the adversarial reader can often sound better informed about A’s views than the good faith reader (hence why so many people choose adversarial reading). But in the end, adversarial reading is just a shallow word game and is the antithesis of genuine scholarship. It mistakes cleverness for knowledge and wit for wisdom.” — To see this, read A Critical Examination of the Six Pillars of Climate Change Despair (Doug R Rogers, Watts Up With That?) — “Why does CC have such deeply negative connotations and harmful effects on people’s mental well being? Because we are constantly reminded of the six dark and destructive consequences of CC:” … ” The activists do it because they think they are saving the planet; the media do it because bad news gets more clicks than good news. Plus, they both do it to appear virtuous. They both keep ramping up the rhetoric so that with each passing year the predictions about each of these consequences become even more frightening and apocalyptic.” … “But is it in any way justified?  What is the truth (if any) behind these catastrophic predictions? That’s what I want to examine here. The fact is, every one of these pillars is made of sand, and crumbles apart when subjected to the slightest critical scrutiny.”

There are consequences when we do not heed the caution signals. Wind, Wolves, and Wrath (Deanna Chadwell, American Thinker) — “Many of us don’t even seem to realize that we’re heading toward a bridge that collapsed ages ago. We have taken ten wrong turns…” – “We are, in fact, lost on a vast plain of wind, wolves, and wrath. Circumstances — i.e. flood, and storm, and economic disaster will go a long ways in correcting our confusions. But each of these silly assumptions will have to be corrected before we are once again America the Beautiful.”

Sundance was curious. UPDATE – So, You Did Not Take the COVID-19 Shot, Why Not? – The Last Refuge — “the responses have reasserted my belief in the scale of our national assembly.  There are far more of us, ordinary, hardworking, commonsense, pragmatic and smart people, than the self-described intellectual elites would ever admit.” — for this one, scan the comments with answers to the question. For many, the numbers just didn’t add up. 

 Then there’s the lies. Some focus on Trump as a liar but the need is to focus on lies of consequence and that leads to the current collection. Start with Gaslighting the Republicans (Greg Irwin, American Thinker) — “Denver Riggleman, who most recently worked for the January 6 select committee analyzing the message traffic that led up to the rush into the Capitol, has written a book treating the matter as an attempted coup.” — it’s a catalog of deceit, dishonesty, and dellusion that has consequence — “Our country is increasingly insane, and we on the right can’t afford the sloppy thinking that characterizes the left.   The problems we face are serious enough.”

From here, there is For Biden Supporters, No Lie Is Too Much To Break The Faith (Jeff M. Lewis, American Thinker). Who is getting gas-lit? –“Through it all, media members and other Biden supporters keep getting played for fools, but they always come back for more.” … “dumbfounding is that these people can be relied upon to rush to any Democrat party official’s or politician’s defense, no matter the charge, without fail. It can be scientifically established as consistent, predictable, repeatable behavior.” — There is a strain. The Corvette Files (Clarice Feldman, American Thinker) — “For Merrick Garland, who oversees the FBI, the discoveries were not a joke. He’s now in the crosshairs of those who, like me, think we are once again seeing a double standard of justice on his watch.” … “Garland, Wray, and the national archivist are not the only ones squirming right now. Don Surber masterfully establishes on the record the two-step the major media is dancing right now, comparing how they viewed the many fruitless investigations and charges against Trump and how they are reporting the planned investigations of Biden”

Those who think the numbers didn’t add up are now finding better numbers that tend to confirm their skepticism. Riggleman may never figure things out but he now has a book that is demonstrably fiction. The top secrets document fiasco is telling the truth about a politically corrupt DOJ. Other issues like election integrity and climate alarmism continue to reveal the difference between many claims and reality. People are suffering the consequences, the wind, the wolves, and the wrath, and becoming aware that sitting passive is no longer a viable option.

Normality seems lost. What Caused the Political Hysteria? (Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness) — “the Republicans retaking control of  the House of Representatives once again raises the question whether they should reply in kind.” — “Somehow supposedly worldly and sophisticated partisans in their self-righteousness ignored ancient laws of what goes around comes around, of Karma, of Nemesis, of payback’s a bit—h, and all that stuff.” — First They Came For My Showerhead And I Did Nothing, Then They Came For My Light Bulbs And I Did Nothing, Now They Want My Gas Stove And …. (I & I Editorial Board) — “In recent decades, regulators have wormed their way into every corner of our lives – banning some products, ruining others, and pricing others out of reach of working families – all allegedly for our benefit. The only thing that’s surprising is that they hadn’t targeted gas stoves earlier.” — “this is junk science, pure and simple. Yet, instead of attacking this flagrant display of misinformation, the ignoramuses in the mainstream press are all too happy to amplify it.” Other stories report that 9 states have now passed firearms restrictions in a knee-jerk ‘up yours’ to SCOTUS and the U.S. Constitution. The Left seems to be hung up on bans for the common man.

“f you don’t like the idea of the government banning something incredibly useful, efficient, and safe when used properly, hoping for the best isn’t enough.

Taking back control over our lives and regaining the ability to make choices about the products and services we buy will require taking an ax to the regulatory state. It will require the public putting unrelenting pressure on Congress to take back the unlimited power it’s been handing unelected bureaucrats.

Until that happens, nothing in your home will be safe from the regulatory Leviathan.

Then there’s the latest where the reporting is on a par with the scandal at issue. Shameless media immediately make excuses for Biden’s mishandled classified documents (Richard McDonough, American Thinker) — “Quite surprisingly (or maybe not), the reaction to this from just about everybody in what passes for our “news” media was completely different from the reaction to Trump’s classified and top-secret documents at his guarded compound in Mar-a-Lago” — a catalog of excuses is presented and debunked. Is this really the strategy Biden wants to use to explain the ‘classified documents’ fiasco? (Maker S. Mark, American Thinker) — “The focus and framing, the talking points, has been that Biden did not know that the documents were there, the lawyers did the right thing in calling the national records group to retrieve the records, and he is not asking what’s there on advice from his lawyers. – IMO, this framing is being done to mask the real issues here.  Let me summarize” — “The spin makes it seem as though Biden does not take possessing, handling, or storing classified documents seriously.” 

The smell from the election lingers: ¡No Pasarán!: 2020: an almost totalitarian effort by the national political and social media to suppress and ridicule any doubt of the accuracy of the election result — this one goes after Peggy Noonan expressing TDS at the WSJ. — “he real problem for Noonan is that she begins to realize Trump’s support is not fading; the Republican Party is his party now, and she and the other NeverTrumpers have lost everything: they were useful idiots for the Democrats and must now wear their responsibility for the probably dishonest election of the most incompetent administration in American history.”

Another issue, same old story: Climate change: What’s in a word? (Harold A. Elkins, American Thinker) — “First and foremost, words, written or spoken, are symbols with meanings.  Sometimes that meaning is skillfully or nefariously crafted.” — ozone holes and warming provide examples. A contrast is provided by explaining why It’s absurd to think carbon dioxide and methane are our enemies (Douglas J. Cotton, American Thinker) — “It is truly a sad reflection on education in the last few decades that so many politicians, academics, and even research scientists have been utterly fooled by what is nothing but fictitious, fiddled physics supposedly proving that water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane can, because of their radiating properties, raise the global mean surface temperature.” But it’s what they want and what thehy don’t want it to be called to think about it. 

There’s 2 kinds of people: those who seek to construct and build and those who seek to destruct and destroy. Steve Almond’s Failed Ambush of Laura Ingraham (A.J. Rice, American Thinker) highlights an example. — “The media want to reward Almond for this because they don’t like Laura Ingraham. But he shouldn’t be rewarded. Opportunists like him should face the music they want to force on others. Cynically attempting to tear down someone else’s success should never be rewarded.” — Another example, perhaps not as explicit, is CNN’s Gangel: Biden’s Classified Docs ‘Looks Terrible,’ ‘Political Gift to Trump’ (Pam Key, Breitbart) — “CNN reporter Jamie Gangel said Monday on “The Situation Room” that reports that President Joe Biden had classified documents from his time as vice president in his personal office was a political gift to former president Donald Trump.” — All Jamie sees is Trump and reality is disappointing because it doesn’t support the desire to destroy Trump. 

Yet another approach to the media’s ‘gotcha’ destroy those they don’t like approach is described in the report Liberal media is trying to protect the FBI from hard questions about illegal surveillance (Andrew C. McCarthy, New York Post) —

“Besides addressing the crisis at the southern border, there is no more urgent matter for the new Republican House majority to direct its attention to than the conversion of the federal government into a progressive cudgel against civil rights. And there is nothing less surprising than the media-Democrat complex’s determination to strangle the probe in its cradle.

In the left’s playbook, everything is either about race or Donald Trump — if not both. So as night follows day, with House Republicans poised to establish a much needed Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Democrats and their press accomplices are framing the panel as an adjunct of the 2024 Trump presidential campaign.

They can’t be allowed to get away with that. … 

The media-Democrat complex would like you to believe the corruption of the government’s law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus is just Trump propaganda. … 

These are not problems that need addressing for the benefit of Trump. They need addressing for the survival of our constitutional order. … 

Of course Republicans must go about this in the right way. This should not be Jan. 6 committee-style theater. These should be real bipartisan probes, with cross-examination and robust debate. But the weaponization panel is essential, and Republicans must not be cowed by those who want to stifle an investigation and our rights along with it.

Of course! That illustrates McCarthy’s bias. Since when have the Republicans put up a show trial based on false premises like the just terminated 1/6 committee? Is Jourdan as dishonest as Cheney or Shiff? Is the new Speaker of the House and majority as tyrannical as the previous?

The question is what the House can do about it. 

Well. Here’s another example. Trump says something reasonable – that taking an absolute and fanatical binary position is not a good way to sell a point of view – and the usual suspects go bonkers. The headline claims are that he flip-flops his position or that he abandons his based or downhill from there. American Thinker has two essays about this phenomenon. Trump pokes a hornet’s nest with comment on abortion and midterm results (Rajan Laad) — “The knee-jerk reaction is that Trump was attacking his pro-life base.” — “The GOP certainly failed in countering the media narrative and delivering a coherent message on abortion. They failed to expose the Democrat position which isn’t pro-choice but pro-abortion. They failed to reveal that most blue states have unrestricted abortions on demand until the point of birth.” — Trump’s statement on abortions was wise, effective, and prudent (Monica Showalter) — “According to Newsweek, this passsage from Trump’s post-midterm statement “proved” that Trump had done an about-face” … “Trump was basically going where the American people are going, which is for some restrictions on abortion at this point, but not an immediate full-scale ban at one swoop, when the voters aren’t ready for it.”

This is about principle versus reality and growth of an idea. Principles Are A Grand Thing – A Guest Post – by John Ringo – According To Hoyt but — “I’m going to use Dien Bien Phu as an example” — “The Left has been ‘boiling the frog’ for a long time and it has mostly been by weaponizing empathy around ‘cultural issues.’ The Dems have always been win/lose against Republicans but the Left has taken over every major cultural high ground. Academia. Media. Entertainment. Now major corporations.” — “The PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES! crowd has been a Conservative Surrender Chorus for as long as I can remember.” — In light of his view, consider America’s Persecuted Political Prisoners (Jeff Crouere, Townhall)) — “The conditions in these prisons are so horrific that 34 January 6th (J6) prisoners asked for a transfer to the military terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay” — “The harsh treatment of the J6 prisoners is in sharp contrast to the rioters who burned and looted in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd” — “The unrelenting abuse of President Trump by his enemies is obvious.” — principles have a low priority on the Left where identification and destruction of the enemy always comes first.

Then there’s the The Baleful Cargo of Woke Diversity Worship (Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness). — “What do all our notable fabricators—George Santos, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama—have in common? — Well, quite like the Ward ChurchilIs or Rachel Dolezals of the world, one way or another, they lied about their identities. Or they sought fraudulent ways of suggesting their ancestries were marginalized. Or they had claims on being victims on the theory their constructed personas brought career advantages.” — “There are warning signs all around us of our fate to come if we do not stop this nihilism” — “The old 1970s cynical canard that racial quotas would not extend to pilot training or neurosurgery is no longer true.” — “We forget that what once separated the Western world from the rest was not race, climate, or natural bounty, but its gradual creation of meritocracies replacing the pre-civilizational rule of the clan, the tribe, or the race.” — “we are headed, dangerously so, into an historically ugly, hateful, and volatile place—all the more so because we lie that it is utopian when it is pre-civilizational and reactionary.”

neo has a good summary of the election problem and the courts with The Kari Lake election fraud verdict: Part II. — “if fraudsters are creative enough and go outside the bases for challenge established by the statute, it appears that no lawsuit could succeed. … So I’m not going to do a close review of the evidence presented in court, because whatever it was it was not going to be able to meet the requirements unless it was a confession or a record of the plotting itself.” — Sundance also calls it Fishy Business – Arizona Mandatory Recounts Revealing Significant GOP Gains, Hobbs Sealed Results Until After Her Lawsuit Completed — “Then there’s this very interesting development….” — “It appears Mrs. Hobbs intentionally did not want the recount information coming out until her lawsuit to become governor was completed.”

neo also has a New York Times phenomena to explore. Republicans pounce on the poor beleaguered FBI. — “Why are the Republicans doing this to those agency innocents, fighting for truth, justice, and the American Way? It’s because of Trump, of course” — One question is why reporting at this level can be this biased and ignorant. A second level of concern is the propaganda aspect.  

While Hinderaker et al are blinded by bias, Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit joins Don Surber on the latest anti-Trump hoax. — “What he’s saying is that we are PAST the rules, regulations and articles of the Constitution. Which we knew didn’t we? This was a color revolution, which means a revolution that uses the country’s rules and regulations against the country to install a usurping entity under the cover of law.” — “Trump is — as he always does — trying to get people to talk about things. He’s not calling for war or revolution. He never did.” Another take is by David Zukerman: President Trump is the hero of many a Capra film. — “In every one of these wonderful, populist movies, the hero finds himself targeted for destruction by a villainous character representing the establishment … Moral of the Capra quartet: the MAGA-kind must ignore the villainous demonizing from the foes of populism, be aware of the media’s censorship, and remain steadfast in support of the Capraesque MAGA leaders.”

 Victor Davis Hanson wonders How Corrupt is a Corrupt Media? — “the public cannot trust that the news it hears or reads is either accurate or true.” — Suppression – Fantasy – Chronological Manipulation – Asymmetry – Unethical Behavior – defined with examples to explain why — “there is no media. It has ceased to exist, and the public plods on by assuming as true whatever the Pravda-like news outlets suppress and as false whatever they cover.”

Then there’s the 65 project. The Left is Using Lawfare Including Threats of Prosecution to Ignore Massive Voter Disenfranchisement. Rachel Alexander says “The 65 Project is all over conservative election attorneys in Arizona. I’m the former Maricopa County Elections attorney, and it’s like a who’s who list of my colleagues in Arizona.”

“Unfortunately, the left has convinced people that witness testimony no longer counts as “evidence” in election fraud cases, laughing at patriots when anxiety-prone judges find an easy technicality to throw out a case. Witness testimony alone has been used to send people to the death penalty, but the left has overturned jurisprudence here in an unprecedented trampling of our justice system. The left is also threatening to prosecute rural county supervisors who fight back.

Not only election fraud: What Do You Do When BLM Attacks You in Your Car? — “she’s prepared to go to trial rather than accept a light sentence of six days of community service and her license suspended for a year. … One would have to be nervous as a mouse cornered by the house cat to know that his future and his life hangs in the hands of any jury these days, given the political climate.” — “Make no mistake: it was the protesters who created this dangerous situation and then cried foul when they came up on the short end of things, with several of their members injured. … Self-defense is still a very real and righteous legal defense in America — or at least it used to be.  Everyone will have to make his own choices, if and when the time comes.  Just don’t let the Marxist-Maoists make you a victim.”

The corruption and malfeasance from government ‘persuasion’ is front and center in the Twitter brouhaha. Andrew C. McCarthy explains How the FBI’s nod, wink got social media to censor The Post’s Hunter Biden reporting. — “Stop looking for a smoking gun. That’s not how this game works. … I can explain the apparent disconnect. It is not necessary for FBI officials to issue specific warnings to convey the message that a story should be killed.” … “That’s how this game is played. The players know exactly what they’re doing. They say enough to endorse the lie but leave themselves room to deny that they did so. They think we’re idiots.”

The ‘research’ fraud isn’t only on COVID inoculations and masking, climate change, or ‘renewable’ energy, it’s showing as a general purpose useful tool. Eddie Scarry: Twitter Hate Is Rising, Claims Group That Says So And That’s That. — “It would be easy to laugh in the faces of the ADL people but it’s not a joke. Putting out these junk studies has real consequences.” Baseless allegations, hyperbolic exaggeration, statistical sleight of hand, appeal to authority and other logical fallacies – maybe there’s good reason to think the audience is all idiots.

The 2020 election fraud is back front and center with the Twitter exposure. William Sullivan says the allegation that the Biden campaign and Democrat party colluded with Twitter to swing the 2020 election — “is now an absolutely indisputable fact that even the most dishonest of people would have difficulty arguing against.” — Neo describes how The left circles the wagons on the Twitter censorship story. — “The story about the media and Twitter coverup of the Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 election in order to help elect Joe Biden is now followed by a coverup of the coverup – or excuse-making, minimization, rationalization, and/or counterattack. – This is what they do.”

“if that hunch of mine is true, it is the reason we’re in the crisis we’re in. Too many people – and way too many in the press – are unable and/or unwilling to look at each story objectively. People have learned to look away or dismiss things that don’t fit their ideology. That’s a human tendency anyway – after all, a mind is a difficult thing to change – but it’s been encouraged and exacerbated by a press that should be seeking the truth rather than echoing partisan falsehoods.

Andrea Widburg notes The sound of silence: the media almost completely ignore Twitter revelations. — “When it comes to a real threat to democracy—one of the bastions of the modern public square secretly and systematically working with a political candidate in a presidential election, and possibly working with government insiders, too—they believe that the greatest risk is letting the public know what really happened.” — Brad Slager:  The Press’ Panic Over ‘Twitter Files’ Reveals How They Manipulated the System. — “There are two primary reactions we are seeing in the press. Bob Hoge covered in detail how many of the major news outlets completely bypassed covering the Musk document release. The other is on the opposite end of the spectrum, and that is how journalists are actually working on dismissing this story.” — J. Peder Zane: The Trumpification Of Elon Musk.

“The relentless attacks on Elon Musk since he purchased Twitter should be familiar to most Americans. It’s exactly what Democrats and their media and corporate allies did to demonize Donald Trump.

The McCarthyite formula is simple: Claim you are defending high-minded principles (Democracy! The rule of law! Civil discourse!) to justify efforts to delegitimize someone you’ve identified as a political opponent.
…

Ponder for a moment the ubiquity and ferocity of attacks on this one man and the outrageous effort to cast calls for censorship as ringing defenses of liberty. Consider too that this, like the treatment accorded Trump, has not just been normalized, but valorized.

When authorities lose the power to convince, they coerce. That is what is going on now as they tell us to shut up and submit. Please tweet that out.

Studies on the effectiveness of masking for covid are getting harder to ignore. RedState has some good stories but the nagware is too much. ZeroHedge is more tolerable and presents Ian Miller on Not Even N95 Masks Work To Stop Covid. — “The bewildering lack of awareness of their own hypocrisy seems to be a feature of COVID-obsessed politicians and public health authorities.” — this gets into another Twitter censorship and cancellation topic.

Clarice Feldman thinks The Media Undertakers Must be Getting Exhausted. First up is the FTX scandal and its Democrat and media darling. The there’s Elon Musk feeding the docs to Matt Taibbi and now Bari Weiss. — “the Fourth Estate biggies apparently like suppression of dissent and are happy to keep their readers from knowing what Taibbi reported.” — “In China, protestors against Xi’s absurd COVID lockdowns gather and hold up blank pieces of paper to protest the lack of free speech. What do we have to do? Confine ourselves on social media to cat and dog pictures and pretend we are having open dialogues on matters of interest to citizens?”

On the Trump front, John Hinderaker has jumped the shark and needs to go re-join Mirengoff. He thinks Trump Is Finished. Basically, his TDS bias is repeating the Charlottesville hoax. Don Surber is a bit more sane perception and observation: Republicans can’t win without Trump supporters — “the media manufactured another scandal out of the incident. Conservative poseurs obediently are clutching their pearls over this like the little country club Republicans they are.” It shows how bad the animus is when he cites pundits like Ed Morrissey for “the biggest online stupidity that I read last week”. Hinderaker and Morrissey used to be careful with perceptions and bias but, it seems, they are losing it. When it comes to Trump, it’s any way to find offense no  matter how irrelevant; no matter how loosely a perception. Surber looks at a list of these and says “Maybe Republicans cannot win with Trump. I do not know that. What I can guarantee you is Republicans cannot win without Trump supporters. If he does not win the nomination, we become free agents.”

Another example of this Trump negativity is highlighted by reports of the search and seizure. Sundance has the story President Trump Special Master Appointment Overturned by Appeals Court – If Secret Search Warrant is Valid, All Seizure Valid – But You are Not Allowed to See Search Warrant, Because National Security. — “the appeals court essentially said if the search warrant was legally predicated and legally valid, and if the search warrant was used legally, then all the seized documents are valid for the investigative purposes of the DOJ – regardless of their content.  The only way to fight the authority of the DOJ seizure is to challenge the legality of the search warrant.  However, here’s where things get weird.” It’s another case of trying to find a crime to hang on the man no matter what gets trampled in the process. The Salam Witch Trials are being outdone in front of us. 

It’s coming to Nevada. It got the ballots to enshrine it into law in the last election. Selwyn Duke explains The New Voting System that Gave Democrats a GOP House Seat is Dangerous. Here’s Why. — “The result is that while it seemed the voters were being given more of a choice, they essentially were robbed of choice by a system” — 

Charles Lipson is talking about fifty years of black privilege and it isn’t just a slathering of allegation and accusation but rather measurement and observation. The Zombie Survival of Affirmative Action — “How will they skirt the high court’s ruling? By eliminating statistical evidence that they are actually discriminating, even as they continue to do so.” … “The differences have remained large and persistent.” … “A judicial ruling won’t end this debate. These issues are among our country’s most profound and vexing, legally and historically. Blacks were denied equal education for centuries.” .. That last is a canard that illustrates the core issue. There has been no ‘denial’ as education is not something given or denied but rather something earned. The question is why one racial group has not earned it despite many examples of members of that group have earned it. This shows in the topic Lipson uses for measures – standardized testing – and it also shows in crime statistics. The ‘deny’ idea is removing responsibility for behavior and imposing a victim status that, like socialism, fails every time it is exposed to the light. Glen Reynolds cites PROF. ROBERT STEINBUCH: Measuring qualifications by merit — “Objective merit is bad because it limits the discretion of people in power, thus hampering their ability to favor people they like and harm people they dislike.” — Conrad Black gets to the question Conrad Black: Is America In Decline? — “Those of us who are appalled by the weakness, incoherence, corruption, and hypocrisy of the Biden administration would do better to recognize the implications of the disaster in the midterm elections and the extent of the task that confronts those—apparently a significant majority—who believe that Bidenism is a straight boulevard to catastrophe.”

For the majority who still believe in the traditional America, sensibly updated and cleansed of discrimination, the country is entering mortally perilous times. The midterms were a wake-up call, but has anyone awakened?

A part of this ‘why?’ is another behavior. David Zukerman observes that the New York Times notices ‘political violence’ and blames…Republicans — “For the left, officeholders, media, and elsewhere, dissent is equated with “extremism” that must be banned, extinguished, erased from the homeland, and to hell with the First Amendment.” — This is another example of a canard based on a slathering of allegation and accusation without clear definition or example and in blatant contradiction to what can easily be seen. — “The New York Times should really be asked to show cause why its November 27, 2022 editorial is not a demand for limited popular government, preferably under the stranglehold of just one political party, the Democrat party.”

The election introspection continues. Robert Merz: Why the Midterms Didn’t Surprise Me — “what can you expect when it isn’t a level playing field, and the non-socialist team is fragmented?” — “This brings us to trying to understand what propaganda (disinformation) is, where it came from, and how it is used.” — Victor Davis Hanson: Was Trump Our Captain Queeg? — “Fact-checkers” doted on every Trump statement, nitpicking them to find some exaggeration, or untruth. Fine. But then these same hypercritics simply went comatose during the Biden Administration, with little care that Biden spins fantasies daily, from a son lost in the Iraq War to insulting claims that he passed his student loan amnesty in the Congress by a close vote, and on and on. With Trump, voters got real achievement with coarseness, with Biden utter failure with near senility.” — The analogy to a movie highlights the injustice being done and the damage it causes.

Medicine is a worry as its bureaucracy failed in applying established principle and practice resulting in a pandemic panic. That was costly in money, public health, and deaths. William A. Jacobson: The incoming House of Representatives should hold hearings on the destructive racialization of medical schools and medicine — “Medical School education is in crisis, with ‘social justice’ and race-focused activism being imposed on students, faculty, and staff,”

The media is in the news. CBS had a twitter fit and then agreed with the obvious that the Biden laptop was real. AP is also having problems dealing with this laptop. What Elephant? AP Denies that There is Any Evidence That Joe Biden Discussed Hunter’s Business Dealings – JONATHAN TURLEY — “this weekend, the Associated Press made a whopper of a claim that there is no evidence even suggesting that President Joe Biden ever spoke to his son about his foreign dealings. … The statement of the Associated Press at this stage of the scandal is breathtaking but telling” — But wait! there’s more! The Climate Cons – Issues & Insights — “The world’s climate criminals aren’t the energy companies selling the fossil fuels needed to power a modern economy, nor those that make the products that burn those fuels. The real offenders are the global warming alarmists who have once again revealed what the game is, and it has nothing to do with protecting the environment.” … “We hate that the lie has become the truth in the West, regarding the climate and so much more. It’s gone on for far too long. The game needs to end.” — See also The ‘Insurrection!’ House of Cards Is Collapsing where Julie Kelly warns that “The American people should prepare for more stunning revelations about the FBI’s key role in the events of January 6. … More likely than not, Wray’s latest claim that the FBI didn’t  instigate or orchestrate what happened that day will be the latest in a long list of his falsehoods.” 

VDH calls it an “expression of the most toxic and creepy culture in America.” The Strange Morality of the Bay-Area Billionaire Left . That’s all about an effort to make Mr. Ponzi’s scam look tame. Sundance looks at another example in Sunday Talks, Paul Ryan Dismisses 75 million Member MAGA Movement, Claims Corporations Will Win Power Struggle Within GOP Battle. Lloyd Billingsley pulls up Pious Candy-Ass Sidewinder from Blazing Saddle to describe another of the Ryan ilk. 

On the warfare front, William A. Jacobson describes the nature of the conflict: We Are Transitioning (again). “It’s tough out here in the real world.” Bonchie has a rundown on the latest TDS assault. Special Counsel Investigating Trump Has an Eyebrow-Raising History. — “Smith led the corrupt prosecution of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. The DOJ went to such absurd lengths to broaden the federal bribery statute to target the Republican politician that the Supreme Court eventually overturned the conviction.” — he’s got more at Another Ridiculous Criminal Investigation of Donald Trump Emerges.

Back to the “climate criminals” is The EV Boondoggle. John Hinderaker. It’s all about the money — “This whole sordid business is hopelessly corrupt, and it is antithetical to America’s economic and strategic interests. Nevertheless, it appears that EV mania will march on until it becomes obvious that the entire project is impossible.” — Medicine is also suffering from similar pressures. The gods of diversity are killing the ‘golden age’ of medicine. Andrea Widburg notes that “Those who came of age in the second half of the 20th century or later, have been blessed to witness a time of extraordinary medical progress. Now, though, thanks to academia’s mindless push for diversity, we are almost certainly on the precipice of a steep decline in the quality of medical care in America.” … “Everything the left touches it destroys and, when leftism destroys medical schools, we will all suffer.” — an example of where this leads is in The Truth About Ivermectin by Marina Zheng via The Epoch Times.  

The polling didn’t do so well in predicting results. Anomalies like a ‘Biden Bump’ keep cropping up. Delayed results in close races are showing up in the usual places. Equipment malfunctions seem to have a pattern, too. Mia Cathell notes that These Counties Experiencing Election Issues Have One Thing In Common. — “These five jurisdictions supposedly under in-person DOJ supervision throughout Tuesday suffered major muck-ups.” — Richard Moss has What Really Happened in the Midterms and Why – “This was their chance to bury Trump and avoid a great deal of damaging unpleasantness at very low to no real cost.”

The fear is that whenever one is dealing with the devil, or playing with fire, or even failing to do one’s level best, the risk of serious loss is much higher than the players are willing to believe going in.

Roger Kimball picks up on this as the NeverTrump Fraternity Parties On. Find fault and blame it on Trump but “Was it? Ninety-three percent of the hundreds of candidates Trump endorsed won their primary contest in the 2022 election. Eighty percent won in the general. That is a far higher percentage of wins for Trump-endorsed candidates than ever before.” Square this with the stories about some high profile Trump backed losses and Democrat campaign meddling? Then, on another front, consider Tim Graham with Democracy Dies in Climate Panic. — “The United Nations is one of the most sacred political cows in the liberal media. This is especially true when they convene the global elites on the perils of “climate change.” — The current president is apologizing for his predecessor calling the fraud in Paris. — “Journalists consider anyone who questions this my-way-or-hell viewpoint as not only a “denier” of science but an enemy of the people.”

Powerline is getting pushback on their Trump’s fault opinions, The Gateway Pundit has several election integrity stories such as Poll Pads Caught Adding *Hundreds* of Voters in Real Time as Poll is Being Closed and WAYNE ROOT: You’ve Been Gaslighted – Democrats Just Stole Another Election and Behind Closed Doors: More on Runbeck Election Services in Maricopa County and the Scanning of Ballot Envelopes and then there’s Tens of Billions of US Dollars Were Transferred to Ukraine and then Using FTX Crypto Currency the Funds Were Laundered Back to Democrats in US. Another set of opinions is looking at election wins and wondering why. Why vote for crime, infanticide, socialism, inflation, election fraud, conditional basic rights, political corr8ption, and myths about energy, disease, weather, and economy? Enough ballots were counted to support these issues to put irrationality in place as policy. Bongino and others are wondering just how much pain will be inflicted before enough people wake up to smell the odors.

Behavior patterns are telling. Victor Davis Hanson delves into Permissible and Impermissible Incendiary Speech? to provide an example. “As we enter the final week before the midterms and likely near-historic Democratic losses in Congress, this effort to manipulate violence in the news for last-minute political advantage will increase—but certainly it is not new.” He lists three predictable characteristics: Things Just Happen to Conservatives, Acceptable Violent Rhetoric? and Projection Again with description and example. “let us by all means tone down the political fireworks lest the nation’s unhinged translate such rhetoric to violence. But let us also remember that for many on the Left, what most see as incendiary and violent rhetoric is simply contextualized as the necessary talk of social justice.”

That’s one way to try to explain how The Press Has Officially Lost Its Grip On Reality – Issues & Insights. “hyper-partisanship hasn’t improved the public’s knowledge or understanding of events. It has destroyed the public’s trust in the media.” 

long read on the state of affairs: A transcript of remarks originally given in Miami at the National Conservatism Conference in September 2022.”we fight because we want a better life for us, our kids and grandkids. But we also fight because we owe a debt of gratitude for those who have come before us. And we need to do justice to their sacrifice. And we would not be doing that if we were running away from the fight before us. God bless you all.” — Governor Ron DeSantis: Florida Versus Davos – The American Mind

true perspective will out? – “The storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 by Trump supporters has been characterized by liberals in the usual hysterical — if not psychotic — overtones that is one of the characteristics of fanatics. And we are most definitely in the midst of a totalitarian movement.” — January 6 Will One Day Be A National Holiday — It Will Be America’s Bastille Day – Issues & Insights

a sad and sorry tale – “The interview makes plain that it was Trump who broke Burns. Beginning in 2016, Burns transformed from a garden-variety leftist into a person who sees Hitler lurking behind every Republican in America” — Andrea Widburg: Ken Burns’s hatred threatens to destroy his legacy – American Thinker — “Trump broke a lot of people. The notion that America could elect a showman who stood for principles that were a completely normal part of American life before 9/11 changed everything (mostly because it unchained the American left) was too much for many, including Burns. It’s a shame, too, because Burns is a remarkably talented man when his monomania hasn’t filled him to the brim with hatred and ignorance.”

fantasy isn’t reality – “a prime example of how the left lies to appease its narrative” … “Not only does the movie massage the events of the past to fit a progressive narrative, it outright reverses the polarity of history entirely and makes heroic a kingdom that was, in reality, one of the biggest drivers of the slave trade. It only takes a brief look at the primary sources to completely debunk the entire plot of “The Woman King.” — Mike Coté: Anti-Historical ‘The Woman King’ Lies About Africa’s Slave Trade — “the left tends to overreach and make unforced errors; the laughable treatment of history in “The Woman King” seems to be one of them. Conservatives and historians could ask for no better example of this absurdity than a film that presents a genocidal, slave-raiding kingdom as beneficent defenders of freedom.”

takedown, point by point – “it is unrealistic to simply assume that low flows in the six rivers upon which the CNN article focuses are caused by a lack of rainfall and the “relentless heat waves” that have supposedly swept the planet.” — David R. Legates: What is Drying up the World’s Rivers? – American Thinker — “As is often the case, the facts usually disprove the alarmist position associated with climate change. This is no different with respect to the CNN article.”