Imagine believing this

Today's unintentional comedy comes courtesy of Obama's former communication director Dan Pfeiffer, making excuses for why the Democrats' prospects look so bad.  It's that darn media!

The biggest problem is that most Democrats continue to believe the best way we’re going to communicate, or maybe the only way to communicate our message, is through traditional press. We’re going to tell the New York Times, we’re going to tell CNN, we’re going to tell the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and they’re going to communicate that to the public. That model hasn’t worked for a very long time.

Sure thing, chief.  That's why Gallup and other sources have reported that the Left thinks the mainstream media is doing a great job while everybody else thinks they stink on ice.

We’re in a world where Facebook dominates, where right-wing propaganda and disinformation dominates. The idea that anyone other than the most plugged-in news junkies are going to have any real information about what’s happening is just folly.

My God, has Dan Pfeiffer ever been on Facebook or Reddit?  It's a masturbatory orgy of self-satisfied virtue signaling.  It's impossible to state the slightest opinion right-of-center on Reddit before brigades of keyboard warriors downvote you into oblivion.  I peeked on my wife's Facebook feed yesterday and it was chock full of stunning and brave people reading "Maus" to demonstrate their bravery and stunningness.

Our party tends to think the press will do our job for us.

Golly, I wonder what gave them that idea.  

Just making stuff up

Gotta serve the narrative.  Daily Wire: "‘Cherry Picked Bullsh**’: Twitter Users Responds To Claims Spotify Lost $2 Billion Following Neil Young Exit."  

The GOAT

Fox News: "Tom Brady to retire from NFL after legendary career"

As somebody living in Massachusetts, let me say it's been a wild ride.  Uncontroversial opinion: Super Bowl 51 will be the greatest highlight in Brady's career such that everybody knows what you mean when you say "28-3."

Side question: does this mean Gronk gets to go back into retirement?

This is a hell of a rumor

All of New England will go nuts if this is true:

When Tom Brady retires, which reports say it is closer than we all think, will sign a one day contract with the #Patriots to retire with the team per source. This was always the plan after he was done playing.

— G.T Bobby Thompson (@BThomps81) January 29, 2022

What an authentic moment!

Twitchy: "‘Unlikely feel-good moment’? Democracy no longer in peril when a president insults a journo, NY Times reports."

Insulting reporters went from a threat to democracy to feel-good fun so quickly, I got whiplash.

Look who's Putin's lapdog now

Red State: "Report: Biden Takes the Toughest Sanctions for Russia off the Table." 

Irony: Young traveled in a "Freedom of Speech" tour

Spiked: "Hippies for censorship - Neil Young’s grumpy war on Joe Rogan is a betrayal of everything he once stood for."  

Oh that's (D)ifferent

Red State: "Flashback: Here’s How Long Dems Including Biden Used 'Jim Crow Relic' to Stall Janice Rogers Brown."

Answer: two years.  Dang, Joe Biden really loved that tool of white supremacy back then.

It was always a grift

Hot Air: "Washington Examiner: BLM charity has no office and no known director." 

The Left hates free speech, a continuing series

Federalist: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren Sued For Asking Amazon To Suppress Covid Book In Search Results."

Matt Taibbi gets it here: "The Folly of Pandemic Censorship"

Censors have a fantasy that if they get rid of all the Berensons and Mercolas and Malones, and rein in people like Joe Rogan, that all the holdouts will suddenly rush to get vaccinated. The opposite is true. If you wipe out critics, people will immediately default to higher levels of suspicion. They will now be sure there’s something wrong with the vaccine. If you want to convince audiences, you have to allow everyone to talk, even the ones you disagree with. You have to make a better case.

That's what I don't understand: if you're so sure about your facts on any topic, why would you feel the need to censor the other side?  That's how you end up with clown shows like "The View."

Very on-brand for her

Hot Air: "Mazie Hirono: I want a justice who won't base her decisions solely on law."  

It's burned into my hippocampus

PJ Media: "Biden's Supreme Court Pick Sexually Assaulted Me 25 Years Ago."

Don't ask me to testify: I'm afraid of flying.

#MeToo

There is no voter suppression

A great review of all the alleged voter suppression laws that do no such thing.  Doing the job that journalists won't:

And that's the end of that foolishness

NY Post: "Biden’s vax-or-test mandate for businesses to be nixed by OSHA tomorrow."

Norms of decency restored

Ace: "President Restore Our Norms, Respect the Press, and Heal The Nation's Whole Soul Calls Peter Doocy a "Stupid Son of a Bitch" for Daring to Ask Him About Inflation."

He asked an angry, nasty senile old man about something the angry, nasty senile old man hadn't been given notes about and didn't want to talk about.

So the man who had vowed that he would fire, "on the spot," anyone who spoke an untoward word to a "colleague" called Doocy a "stupid son of a bitch" while beaming his Nitwit Grin proudly, showing off for his fellow leftwing idiots of the press corps.

In Brandon's mind, he already answered questions for the year 2022.

Presence of malice

I've made no secret that I think the mainstream media is hopelessly biased and prone to make "mistakes" that only go in one direction.  So I'm looking forward to this: "Sarah Palin’s Lawsuit Against the New York Times Has the Media Nervous, Despite Their Claims."

In case you missed it, the New York Times sought to pin the shooting of then-Congresswoman Gabby Giffords on Sarah Palin's political action committee with an editorial that stated:

"Before the shooting, Sarah Palin's political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs."

The map did no such thing, targeting electoral districts and not Democrats.  In addition, there was zero evidence that Gifford's shooter ever saw this map and the Times had to issue a correction.

Legal experts say that there's little chance of Palin winning the case but I've also read that media outlets hate to have to defend libel cases because it puts their bias and errors in the spotlight.  The legal team at the New York Times has their defense ready:

Google easter egg

Today I learned that if you type "Wordle" into Google, a little Wordle sequence appears in the upper left corner.

You're full of malarkey, America

National Review: "Joe Biden Doesn’t Know What You’re Talking About"

The country — not to mention the president — could use a reset.

We’re not getting one. Instead, on January 19, we got Biden’s combative, discursive, and delusional mess of a one-hour-and-51-minute press conference. Among the reasons the occasion was notable — and notorious — was that it forced the White House to clarify later Biden’s comments on not one but two issues: Biden’s ambiguity over America’s response if Russia launches a “minor incursion” into Ukraine, and Biden’s repeated assertion that the Senate’s failure to pass his election-takeover bills throws the legitimacy of the midterm elections into doubt. To watch Biden at the lectern was to experience shock and dismay interspersed with moments of alarm and dark humor. No wonder he hides from the media.

What's worse, in my opinion, is that when asked what he might do differently, President Mushhead said he's going to get out of Washington and speak directly to the American people.  No course correction, no policy changes, no shuffling of his senior staff; all Joey needs is a road trip.

Why must we suffer?

See you in 2023, Joey

The Paper of Record: "Exhausted Biden Returns To Basement To Rest Up For Next Year's Press Conference." 

And then there's NPR

Fake news: "NPR doesn't care about the truth." 

Extra - Reason: "How Many Supreme Court Justices Must Deny NPR's Reporting Before Media Outlets Believe Them?" 

Journalism breaking out all over

Townhall: "The Today Show Cornered Kamala Harris...And Things Quickly Went Off the Rails."

The point is that Harris again seemed unprepared and just incapable of going off-script. All the reasons for why she cannot and will not be president presented themselves in this interview. She’s just bad at her job.

She's a human "deer in the headlights."  It's really something to behold.  On every question, it doesn't matter what is asked, she just repeats her talking point.  If there's a follow-up for clarification, she just repeats the word salad.

What a nice thing to know

 ...two years into the pandemic.

Daily Wire: "CDC Says Natural Immunity Outperformed Vaccines Against Delta Strain." 

I can't believe I'm going to type these words

But here goes: the American mainstream media, the American press corps, did their collective job today.  They managed to ask some tough questions to a Democrat President today.

I really only wanted to hear two questions asked today and question #1 was the third question.  Ace: "President" (lol) Brandon: If Republicans Question the Legitimacy of an Election, It's Treasonous. But Oh, By the Way, If I Don't Get the Election Laws I Want, the Results of the Midterms Are Illegitimate."

For the past year, we've been told over and over that questioning election integrity was tantamount to treason.  And yet here's Brandon clearly setting the new standard: elections are only legitimate when our side wins.  I can't be the only person who remembers the absolute heart palpitations when Trump said the exact same thing in one of the debates.  Nevertheless, Biden persisted.

Then there was the other question I wanted asked: hey, Joey, what was the deal with comparing opponents to that rotten legislation as equal to Bull Conner and George Wallace?  Applesauce Brain Biden: "oh, heavens, no I never did such a thing."  Twitchy: "Biden berates reporter for quoting what he said about opponents of ‘voting rights’ bill."

Brandon's "explanation" goes something like this: I never said they were like Bull Conner, only that they are on the same side of history as Bull Conner.

Oh.  It's similar to Bernie Sanders explanation on why he has three homes.  Many Soviet premiers have a summer home, don't ya know.

Extra - Red State: "Joe Biden Pushes Deceit and Division in Angry 'Presser'."

Ah, yes, the new messaging

Daily Wire: "‘We Need To Change That’: Biden Team Plans ‘Public Reset’ To Rescue President From Plummeting Polls."

I'm looking forward to Biden's press conference tomorrow.  I don't see how he could possibly top his "Jefferson Davis" speech.

Live free or die

Reason Online: "Which States Are the Freest? - Many Americans are fleeing restrictive jurisdictions and moving to places that respect their liberty." 

We're in the endgame now

Hot Air: "WaPo: House Dem moderates rebel, want BBB and voting bills dropped."

The Democrat leadership's strategy for the past half-year has been: "Maybe today's the day Joe Manchin changes his mind."  Now the panic is setting in.

Haha - nice one

 

This is fantastic. pic.twitter.com/wTJftxHxYT

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) January 15, 2022

They'll have a chance on Wednesday

Spectator World: "Will the media ever be honest about Joe Biden?" 

Zombie Joe Biden is allegedly giving a formal press conference this upcoming week, his first since March.  Will the media waste it (again) with multiple questions on the same theme?  Or could they, for once, apply the same standards that Joe Biden set for himself during the campaign?  Because that would be fun to watch.

Biden's career-ending speech

Peggy Noonan: "Joe Biden’s voting rights speech backfired more than he ever could have imagined"

The president’s Tuesday speech in Atlanta, on voting rights, was a disaster for him. By the end of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s answering speech on Wednesday you knew some new break point had occurred, that President Biden might have thought he was just crooning to part of his base but the repercussions were greater than that; he was breaking in some new way with others — and didn’t know it. It is poor political practice when you fail to guess the effects of your actions. He meant to mollify an important constituency but instead he filled his opponents with honest indignation and, I suspect, encouraged in that fractured group some new unity. 

The speech itself was aggressive, intemperate, not only offensive but meant to offend. It seemed prepared by people who think there is only the Democratic Party in America, that’s it, everyone else is an outsider who can be disparaged. 

It was a mistake on so many levels.

This speech was in the same spirit of Hillary's "deplorables" speech and maybe Obama's "cling to guns and religion" quote.  Allegedly, Applesauce-brain Joe is going to deign to give a formal press conference next week and really his best move would be to apologize for that garbage speech.  He should put it behind him and make a new dedication to the "unity" he once spoke about.

But he probably won't, because he's Joe Biden.

How to tell there's a Democrat in the White House

Oh boy, America has become ungovernable again and the Presidency is an impossible job.

But no mean tweets

This is really not Biden's week:

Federal takeover of elections: DOA.
Nuking legislative filibuster: impossible.
Private employer vax mandate: struck down.
Producer Price Index: surges to all-time high.
Consumer Price Index: highest since 1982.
Public support: craters to 33%

— Spencer Brown (@itsSpencerBrown) January 13, 2022

To which I would add: 

Build Back Better: Dead or cut down to sub-trillion range

Empty store shelves: Spreading everywhere

Jobless claims: up again

Kamala: still Vice President 

Bare shelves Biden

It's been a while since I've been to the local Stop and Shop.  I went tonight for some basics and, sweet mercy, the rumors are entirely true: the shelves are empty.

Absolutely NO bagged salad.  No cat food.  The meat section was decimated and reduced to some Johnsonville brats.  In the chicken section, there were four packages of in-bone thighs.  Forget about cream cheese.

The only thing missing was a babushka searching for some instant borscht.

Extra - A series of pictures of empty shelves at Instapundit. 

Complete trash

Rich Lowry: "What a Garbage Speech"

The supposed promise of President Joe Biden in the 2020 election was that he’d be the adult in the room, but if there was any doubt, today’s speech removed it — he’s the same hack he’s always been.

If you're Joe Manchin or Kirsten Sinema, looking for some conciliatory words that might soften your opposition to changing Senate rules, well it was good to know you're just a big racist:

At one point during his speech, Biden pulled the “you’re either with us or you’re evil,” card, suggesting that those who disagreed with him and his fellow Democrats on federalizing elections were akin to racist Democrats of the past including Jefferson Davis, Bull Connor, and George Wallace.

I listened to this verbal vomit on NPR driving home today and Biden's strident and desperate tone didn't surprise me.  What did surprise me was the commentary straight from the liberal bubble of NPR where the analysts were talking about how Biden was reaching out to two audiences: the American people and the holdout Senators.  They universally agreed that we would have to wait and see how effective it would be in changing anybody's mind.

No.  Wrong.  This was the oratorical equivalent of following Sinema into a women's bathroom.  There was zero persuasion and 100% shaming in this speech, just more division and moral grandstanding.  Like Rich Lowry, I don't know why Biden is committed to projecting weakness and fecklessness.  He's an enervated, spent politician that nobody listens to anymore.

Extra - Legal Insurrection: "Biden Lies About His Past and Georgia’s Voting Law to Justify Getting Rid of the Filibuster."  

The WashPost hates headstrong women

Twitchy: "What media bias? WaPo reports Sen. Kyrsten Sinema remains ‘stubbornly opposed’ to ending the filibuster."  Nevertheless, she persisted!

Heck of a job, Mayor Pete

Freight Waves: "New year brings new all-time high for shipping’s epic traffic jam - Record 105 container ships wait to berth in Los Angeles and Long Beach."

Punching at inflation ghosts

The Corner: "WaPo Editorial Board: Biden Is Lying about the Causes of Inflation."

The Post doesn’t mention it explicitly, but what is described as Biden’s “foolishness” is properly understood as Elizabeth Warren’s foolishness. It was Warren who started this preposterous trend of casting inflation as a corporate plot, and Warren who encouraged the White House to follow suit. Biden, the fool, has merely taken the bait and run with it.

It's so easy to blame those big bad corporations when you don't want to take responsibility for your own failed administration.  Remember when Biden claimed he wouldn't blame others?  Good times.

Yeah, "satire"

Babylon Bee: "Legal Experts Ask Justice Sotomayor To Recuse Herself From Case Due To Her Being An Idiot."  Hey, I said that first.

My offer is this: nothing

NY Post: "Joe Manchin pulls his $1.8 trillion spending compromise off the table: report."

I can't believe the strategy of calling him a racist hick and harassing him at his houseboat didn't change his mind.

Sonia Sotomayor is an idiot

Twitchy: "Justice Sonia Sotomayor just keeps racking up the hot takes over Biden’s OSHA vaccine mandate."

In case you missed it, the so-called "wise latina" Justice told a bunch of lies about covid during oral arguments, essentially admitting evidence that was not part of the legal briefs.  Then, in the link above, she stated that the federal government should ignore the Tenth Amendment.

I've always thought Sotomayor was a dim bulb and those suspicions were confirmed with her "bake me a cake" argument in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado.  The Constitution is merely an inconvenience for her and her legal arguments consistently seek to scramble the law to meet her social justice ends.  I can't wait to read her legal reasoning how the OSHA law can force Americans to take a vaccine.

Klain's retweet comes back to haunt

They're arguing the OSHA vaccine mandate in the Supreme Court today and I caught this blurb:

Chief Justice Roberts makes reference to a tweet retweeted by White House Chief of Staff Ronald Klain, which described the OSHA mandate as a "workaround."

"I mean, this has been referred to the approach as a workaround. And I'm wondering what it is you're trying to work around?" he asks.

At the time, several legal bloggers called this an unforced error, all but admitting the Biden administration is trying to circumvent standing laws.  Great job, Ron!  The adults are back in charge.

Also:

So far all three liberal justices on the court have made it clear that they would back the federal mandate, and have in fact appeared somewhat astonished by the opposition to it.

No kidding.  Leading the charge is Sonia "Bake me a cake" Sotomayor who consistently views the law as some kind of roadbump to social justice.  As I've said many times: if they can twist a law that tells you how to set up a ladder into a national mandate for vaccinations, there is no such thing as limited government and no end to the "emergencies" that would be engendered.  

Extra - Hot Air: "Today's deep question: Will Twitter suspend Sotomayor for COVID misinformation?"  A font of misinformation and lies.

Perhaps a musical number from "Hamilton" will help

Hot Air: "Huge miss: US added 199,000 jobs in December -- less than half expected."

Headline from Real Clear Politics: "Biden job disapproval climbs to all-time high."

Mistakes that only and always go in one direction

Twitchy: "The Washington Post ‘adjusts’ a fact-check of Sen. Tom Cotton from last year."  Turns out his prediction was a lie at the time, but it turned out to be true.  You read that right: he was fact-checked on a prediction.

Did the insurrection groundhog see his shadow?

Ben Domenech: "Jan. 6 And The Curse Of Whataboutism." - "It’s a good thing that good old Joe Biden, Mr. Civility and Normalcy, is back in charge." 

Happy Insurrection Eve!

Discourse Blog: "January 6 Isn’t an Electoral Strategy - Everything we've seen so far suggests voters just don't care." 

Don't worry: the adults are in charge

The Corner: "$4.5 Trillion in Covid Relief and People Still Can’t Find Covid Tests."

Another benchmark for the U.S. economy

The Truth About Cars: "Toyota Is Now America’s Best-Selling Automaker"

Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp looks set to embarrass American automakers on their home turf by ending the year as the U.S. market’s top-selling brand for 2021.

Toyota had previously reported it moved 688,813 vehicles in the United States from April to June, outperforming General Motors and setting the stage for the rest of the year. At the time, the domestic manufacturer claimed its numbers were down due to the global semiconductor shortage that continues to disproportionally impact American automakers. While there are a few sound logistical reasons for that, the chip deficit also becomes a convenient excuse for brands that cannot seem to get their general supply chains under control. No matter how you slice it, GM looks to have screwed up managing inventory and Toyota is picking up the slack.

I blame Big Chip for the chip shortage.

Sad

The Corner: "Afghan Parents Are Selling Their Children to Afford Food." 

CDC goalposts are mounted on wheels

Federalist: "CDC Now Treats Unvaccinated The Same As Un-Boosted, Just As DeSantis Predicted."

And, still, there's little guidance from the CDC on the contribution of natural immunity or hybrid immunity.  That's because they're all-in on the jabs.

Bernie Sanders has 3 homes

Reason: "Against Champagne Socialists - Why Bernie Sanders, Hasan Piker, and Elizabeth Warren should open their wallets before they open their mouths."

#11 - Kept looking at his watch

Marc Thiessen: "The 10 worst things Biden did in 2021"

This was the worst first year of any president in my lifetime.

Yes, and the correction starts in 2022.