Happy New Year, everyone

I wish everybody a happy and prosperous 2024. 

A well-deserved decline

AMAC: "2023 – Media’s Year Of Moral Collapse"

Journalism schools may someday point to 2023 as the year of a final moral collapse for the corporate media – a point of no return ultimately reached after years of ethical decline and loss of credibility with the public.

This year, perhaps more than any other in history, America’s once lionized major news organizations proved they were not about “the news” at all, but about the protection of those in power and partisan politicians they favored.

And how.  Republicans - who make up just 3.4% of journalists - should be pushing back on the media relentlessly and without decorum:

There have been plenty of signs this year that the establishment press has entered a terminal decline. Future generations may see as a tipping point the moment when Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy used his platform during the GOP debate hosted by NBC News to turn the tables on moderator Kristen Welker and demanded that she apologize for her network’s dishonest coverage of the “Russiagate” hoax. Though perhaps no better indicator exists of the media’s current moral collapse than its inability to retract and apologize for the spectacular lies involved in its “Russiagate” hoax or its cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop just before the 2020 election.

They're not even hiding their bias.  Just like Harvard, the media will wear your disapprobation like a badge of honor as they continue to shed jobs and fall into irrelevancy. 

The Martha's Vineyard maneuver

CNN: "Texas is sending asylum seekers to major cities by bus with little notice. These mayors want to pump the brakes."

Sending migrants to sanctuary cities has been a masterstroke.  Don't make me tap the sign at the base of the Statue of Liberty, mayors.

When the President suborned obstruction

Here's Jonathan Turley two weeks ago:

If this latest allegation is true, the president was speaking with his son about committing a potentially criminal act of contempt. Hunter was refusing to give testimony focused not on his own role but on his father's potential role in the alleged influence peddling. The House can pursue evidence on that conversation and how the president may have supported his son’s effort.

,,,

Indeed, President Biden himself has maintained that defying subpoenas cannot be tolerated. When subpoenas were issued to Republicans during the House’s January 6 investigation, Biden declared: "I hope that the committee goes after them and holds them accountable criminally.”

What did Dementia Joe tell Crackhead Hunter?  We may never know since Joey stopped doing anything remotely resembling a press conference and he's currently sunning himself in St. Croix on his endless vacation.

But now this development: "Comer, Jordan: We Are Exploring Impeaching Joe Biden for Advising His Crackhead Bagman Son to Defy a Congressional Subpoena and Obstruct Justice."

What did Joe know and when did he know it?  Does it involve Corn Pop and traveling to the Tibetian Plateau with Xi and Angie pinching his cheeks and saying "Joey baby"?  Possibly!

The 24/7 basement strategy

The Messenger: "Biden Thinks He’s Got Bad Media Coverage? Hold a Press Conference and Answer Some Questions."

Yeah, he's not going to do that.  

Tell me about the fascists again

Matt Taibbi: "Democracy Dies in Daylight - Eight years ago the Washington Post pledged to save democracy, but now argues we need to be saved from it."

A month ago in the Washington Post, not long before the Colorado mess, neoconservative icon Robert Kagan wrote, “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.” We may accuse Kagan — husband of Victoria Nuland, co-founder of the Project for a New American Century, and co-author (with Bill Kristol) of the “benevolent hegemony” theory of world conquest that was the real reason for America’s Iraq invasion — of much. We can’t accuse him of not knowing history. The graphic was a bust of Caesar, perfect for a six thousand word opus on stopping Donald Trump at all costs, whose sniper-scope subtext was as subtle as the Bullwinkle float at the Thanksgiving Day parade. It could have been headlined, “Where’s Hinckley When You Need Him?”

I pointed out the same opinion a month ago.  The Kagan article has all the subtlety of Henry II blurting out "will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"  

Then there's the Maine Secretary of State who singlehandedly - without even the imprimatur of the Courts - decreed that democracy was too precious to allow Trump on the Maine ballot.  She followed this up with a "Let the People Decide" hashtag which just shows how broken these people are.

Extra - Spiked: "The year America became a banana republic."  "Time and again, Democrats accuse Trump of being an authoritarian threat to democracy, only to then show the world how it’s really done. They are the ones destroying democracy, even as they purport to be saving it." 

Kafka would be proud

Legal Insurrection: "Jack Smith Wants Judge to Exclude Trump’s January 6 Evidence From Trump’s January 6 Trial." - "It makes me think Smith knows he has nothing to convict Trump." 

It's the NY Times, Jake

Tilting at Windmills: "This is why you don't hate the media enough."  "A United States senator with close ties to the White House writes an op-ed about using the military to put down rioters—and rioting was going on nightly in many places right about then—and it’s somehow an affront to all that is good and decent to run it, but when a member of Hamas who also holds political office in Gaza wants to write an op-ed, they’re silent." 

"We did it, Joe!"

Twitchy: "Border Patrol on Track to Break Record for Most Migrant Encounters in December."

Breaking his own previous record.  Impressive.

Update - Uh-oh, looks like the internal polling just landed: "Blinken Suddenly Wants to Talk to Mexico About Border Crisis." 

Who could have foreseen this?

Red State: "California Unexpectedly Hit by Bad Luck As Top Wealth Producers Flee the State."

Yahoo Finance: "'Severe revenue decline': California faces a record $68 billion deficit." 

Merry Christmas, everyone!

 

A love letter to MST3K

The Corner: "A Child’s Christmas in Space."

Although my dad couldn’t possibly have intended it, what happened next altered the course of my life, and profoundly for the better: I was exposed to Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K for short) for the first time. And “exposed” is the right word; the experience was as instantly catalyzing a moment for me as a rapid chemical reaction. It was the Christmas episode from a few days earlier, and the show was mocking something called Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, about which more later. Before I could even begin to absorb what was going on on-screen, I first had to adjust to the nuttiness of the premise.

MST3K is a treat in part because the commentary is sarcastic but intelligent, usually diving deep into pop culture and trivia.  You don't need to get every joke but, when they land, they're sublime.

Citation needed

pic.twitter.com/DKhzELA3sH

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) December 22, 2023

Hey that is great!

Wall Street Journal: "The Great Blue to Red State Migration Continues - The latest Census data finds that on present course six progressive states would lose 12 House seats in 2030 reapportionment." 

Another "what have we done?" article

This time by former Clinton advisor Douglas Schoen:

The Colorado ruling undermines the Democrats’ argument that the election is about preserving democracy, strengthens Trump’s position as a political martyr, and allows Trump to have a counternarrative in the general election that the issue is not his behavior, but rather the behavior of the legal system that’s trying to deny him his rights in the context of our American democratic tradition.

Make no mistake and let me be clear: I am not here as a Trump supporter. I will not support his candidacy under any circumstances, but it is absolutely the case that the four indictments, the two civil trials, and now the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court only strengthen Trump in the Republican primary and arguably makes him a more compelling general election candidate, as the evidence appears to validate his narrative about how the American legal system really works.

Democrats and the media (I repeat myself) are now the square parents telling their daughter that they can't date that bad boy.

Friday night news dump

Guess what got revealed late last night: "The secret U.S. effort to track, hide and surveil the Chinese spy balloon."

Administration officials at first hoped to conceal the balloon’s existence from the public, and from Congress, according to multiple former and current administration and congressional officials.

“Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it,” said a former senior U.S. official briefed on the balloon incident.

That was a great plan until somebody, ya know, saw it.

Weekend's here: Camp David or Delaware?

It's the underdog Camp David beating out Delaware for vacation this week.  Dementia Joe needs to rest up from this grueling schedule.  

That's a lot of discussion about the weather

Here's Joe Biden in 2019:

"I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or with anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses. Period. And what I will do is the same thing we did in our administration. There will be an absolute wall between personal and private [business interests] and the government."

And today from NBC News: "Records released by House Republicans show that Joe Biden repeatedly emailed Hunter Biden’s business associate in 2014."

The Democrats insist this was just financial advice discussion except they coincided with trips to the Ukraine:

All told, then-Vice President Biden emailed Schwerin 35 times before and after his 2014 trips to Ukraine. Five emails were exchanged just prior to a trip by Vice President Biden to Ukraine on June 7, 2014, and 27 emails were sent from the end of June to a second trip to Ukraine by Biden on Nov. 21, 2014. 

Dementia Joe has decided to address these allegations in an open press conference today.  Just kidding: he's spending the day sniffing kids and ducking the press.

So painful that it turns funny

Red State: "KJP Channels Her Inner Kamala, Delivers Rambling Minute-Long Word Salad on Border That Says Nothing."

I don't know why they have these press conferences since White House airhead KJP is committed to say nothing - nothing at all - of any value.  Yesterday she was asked a simple question: is there any immigration policy that the White House would agree to?

Reporter: I understand you don't want to negotiate from the podium, but can you tell the American people if there's any immigration policy that this White House is willing to talk about and is working on with Republicans?

She can't answer with any substance whatsoever and just rambles on.  It's said that Kamala always sounds like somebody giving a book report who hasn't read the book.  KJP has her enormous binder in front of her and she still can't say anything remotely intelligent. 

This is interesting

Volokh Conspiracy: "Jack Smith Lacks Standing to File in the Supreme Court Because He is Only a Private Citizen - The Justices must sua sponte address Jack Smith's lack of standing."