It’s Wednesday, January 19th, 2022…but before we begin, consider this snippet from Jim Geraghty’s Monday Morning Jolt:

“Back in August, Joseph G. Allen and Helen Jenkins wrote a good op-ed in the New York Times observing that, “Any organization setting a mask mandate at this point in the pandemic in the United States must pair that mandate with an offramp plan. Sleepwalking into indefinite masking is not in anyone’s interests and can increase distrust after an already very difficult year.”

What is happening in Virginia makes abundantly clear that many school boards, public-health officials, and parents do not believe in an offramp. They may not be willing to say it out loud, but effectively, they support masking forever. The population will never be vaccinated and boosted enough, and the virus will never be mild enough. They will always be fearful of another variant emerging, and they will always see justification for keeping masks, capacity restrictions, and other limits on our daily lives. In their minds, March 2020 was a turning point in human history, and they will never allow our lives to go back to the pre-pandemic normal.“

In one of our favorite lines in The Outlaw Josey Wales, Captain Redlegs zealously observed…

Neither does a masking mandate in the minds of power-hungry Progressives and their followers paralyzed with fear.

Here’s the juice: If permitted to pursue their counterproductive policies, this meme from Speed wouldn’t remain mere satire:

Now, here’s The Gouge!

Speaking of those dedicated to feathering their own nests at the expense of others, the editors at NRO belatedly come to the conclusion so many of us reached many months ago:

Fauci Must Go

“…It is past time for public-health policy to shift to acknowledging that Covid-19 is an endemic disease and, for the most part, a risk for individuals to manage. Fauci stands in the way of executing that shift and communicating it to the public.

Fauci’s own behavior has undermined public trust in the response to the pandemic: by sitting for celebrity puff profiles and documentaries, by stifling public debate about the origins of Covid-19 and the proper response to it, by responding in lawyerly and evasive fashion to questions about NIH research dollars supporting work at the Wuhan lab. In his nasty spats with Senator Rand Paul and other officeholders, he hasn’t simply parried criticisms but tried to land political blows himself.

It has always been bizarre that the head of an obscure agency has soaked up so much media attention. Over the past two years, Fauci has done so many interviews with so many outlets — from Sunday shows to obscure podcasts — that one wonders how he had time for his day job. Nearly everyone in Washington enjoys being in front of a microphone, but even the most shameless media hogs might blush at Fauci’s interview schedule. It would be one thing if Fauci were merely delivering updates on the state of Covid. But he has gone way beyond that and delved into pure self-promotion. How did the appearance of Fauci on the cover of InStyle, sitting by the pool in sunglasses, declaring, “With all due modesty, I think I’m pretty effective,” advance public health?

…Fauci’s political dispositions shape his alarmism and discredited him with a large swath of the country that any viable public-health strategy has to be able to reach. He denounced people for attending college-football games in a region of the country where Covid was in seasonal decline. No outbreak materialized. He’s been under fire from Republican senators and House members and has handled it increasingly poorly — he was caught on a hot mic calling Senator Roger Marshall a “moron” during a Senate hearing last week.

Fauci’s claim that he himself “represents the science” and his admitted deceptions of the public are incompatible with each other and intolerably insolent to boot. Most important, they subvert and undermine American self-government. He must go.“

And without his bloated, undeserved, unearned pension.  Oh,…and…

Next, Rich Lowry details…

The Dumbest Voting-Rights Canard

Long lines are the fault of local jurisdictions, often run by Democrats.

“It’s been a bad couple of days for the idea that the country is experiencing a wave of racist voter suppression. President Biden’s Atlanta speech is now widely acknowledged to have spectacularly backfired, and Representative James Clyburn went on a couple of Sunday shows yesterday to try to buttress the president’s case but could only muster farcical non-evidence.

“I want to know what’s going to happen in 2022,” he said on Meet the Press, “when someone is standing in that line and needs a drink of water. When you’ve got these six- or seven-hour waits in line in black communities, and 20 minutes in white communities.” Asked by Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union whether Biden’s rhetoric in Atlanta went too far, Clyburn responded, “Is it going too far to criminalize giving somebody a bottle of water standing in line trying to vote, standing in line for four or five hours?”

Long lines have gotten a lot of attention in Georgia, ground zero for the voting debate, but what Clyburn and his allies will never mention is that localities administer elections in Georgia, and the ones that have been most associated with out-of-control lines are run by Democrats. So, here is an elder statesman of the Democratic Party — who cares deeply about voting issues and repeatedly insists that “history” will judge opponents of the Democratic bills — and apparently the most compelling fact he can offer in support of his argument is a complete canard, either because he’s poorly informed or dishonest or a little of both.

What he is in effect saying is that the Senate filibuster must be eliminated and elections rules nationalized in an unprecedented way because local-level Democrats can’t get their act together and maintain enough precincts to keep voting lines in predominantly black neighborhoods at a manageable level.

The food-and-drink charge is equally ridiculous. To prevent electioneering among people standing in the line, the new Georgia law forbids giving out food and drink, or other gifts, within 150 feet of a polling place or 25 feet of a line. There’s no need for anyone to starve or drop dead of dehydration. (Especially since Election Day is in November!) As long as the circumscribed distances are honored, anyone can provide food and drink — in fact, set up a tailgate party or arrange for cross-country deliveries from the French Laundry…”

Meanwhile, in response to Jen Goebbels doubling down on Biden’s utterly inaccurate, deliberately divisive characterization of those opposed to enshrining undeniable electoral fraud into law as the second coming of Southern Democrats during Jim Crow, Mitch McConnell observed:

“Look, I’ve known, liked and personally respected Joe Biden for many years. I did not recognize the man at the podium yesterday.”

We’d respectfully suggest Mitch simply never knew the real Joe Biden.  Though it must be noted, WE knew him without ever meeting him!!!

Since we’re on the subject of a serious failure of IFF (Identification Friend or Foe), FOX reports a…

UCLA grad student is stabbed to death while working at LA luxury furniture store

Police said the attack on Breanna Kupfer, 24, was random

“…Brianna Kupfer, 24, was working alone inside Croft Furniture on North La Brea Avenue on Thursday about 1:50 p.m. when a man walked in and attacked her with a knife, according to the Los Angeles Police Department. He fled through a backdoor and was captured on surveillance cameras casually walking down a rear alley behind the store, police said in a press release.

Twenty minutes later, a customer entered the shop and found Kupfer in a pool of blood on the floor. The stunned shopper called 911.

The suspect is believed to be homeless and there is no known motive for the attack, police said…Police described the suspect as a tall, thin, Black male, wearing a dark hoodie, sunglasses, a white N-95 mask, dark skinny jeans, dark shoes and carrying a dark backpack…”

At least Gavin Newsom can rest easy knowing the perp was complying with his indoor mask mandate.

In a related item, we learn a…

NYC woman dies after being thrown in front of subway train

“…New York City Police have identified the victim in Saturday’s attack as Michelle Alyssa Go, a 40-year-old female from the Upper West Side…NYPD identified the suspect in Saturday’s attack as Simon Martial, a 61-year-old homeless man who has a multi-decade rap sheet…”

These two women weren’t murdered as much as they were sacrificed: Sacrificed on the altar of pagan Progressivism.  Which brings to mind one of the great movie scenes of all time:

The Socialists are out there.  They can’t be bargained with, they can’t be reasoned with.  They don’t feel pity or remorse for the innocents slaughtered through their single-minded pursuit of political power and personal profit.  And they absolutely will not stop…EVER,…until either you or they are dead!  Soooo,…here’s to open season on Socialists!

As The Stranger in High Plains Drifter responded when Dave Drake offered him $500 a head, “$500 an ear?”.  Done, done.

Moving on, we offer a quintet of articles specially selected for inquiring Conservative minds:

(1). The authors of a study which found fairness in sports can only be achieved with the “reconceptualization” of the male category as “Open” and the women’s category as “Female,” where female refers to the sex recorded at birth specifically conclude:

“For trans women who have successfully suppressed testosterone for 12 months, the extent of muscle/strength loss is only an approximately (and modest) -5% after 12 months. Testosterone suppression does not remove the athletic advantage acquired under high testosterone conditions at puberty, while the male musculoskeletal advantage is retained.”

(2). Kevin Williamson offers his usual insightful brilliance in defense of wealth, and the wealthy.

(3). Having obviously learned nothing from Terry McAuliffe’s November shellacking in Virginia, in a now-deleted Facebook post, FOX reports the Michigan Dimocratic Party stated, “The purpose of public education in public schools is not to teach kids only what parents want them to be taught. It is to teach them what society needs them to know. The client of the public school is not the parent, but the entire community, the public.”

(4). The Dims are truly becoming desperate.

(5). Jim Geraghty explains why the reprehensible comments (see our Video of the Day, accessible through link #2 immediately below the Quote of the Day at the top of the page) of venture capitalist and Biden-backer Chamath Palihapitiya about the Uyghurs are even worse than you’ve heard:

“…Amid the resulting firestorm, Palihapitiya issued a brief statement declaring he recognizes he “came across as lacking empathy…My belief is that human rights matter, whether in China, or the United States, or elsewhere. Full stop.”

No, that isn’t his belief. This is damage-control public relations. He specifically said in this conversation that if he said he cared, he was lying. He said the “hard truth” is that nobody cares — and what a statement like that means is that Chamath Palihapitiya cannot conceive of anyone else genuinely caring about China’s human-rights record. He thinks everyone else is virtue-signaling, too, and that he’s the only one brave enough to say that China’s ongoing effort to exterminate an entire ethnic group doesn’t really matter that much.

…Palihapitiya is much angrier with the people calling out China’s abuses of the Uyghurs than he is with China for actually abusing the Uyghurs…”

As Marcus Aurelius noted, Palihapitiya is no different than Walter Duranty, infamous New York Times writer and unapologetic apologist for Stalin’s atrocities.  And had he been able to make money currying favor with Hitler, Palihapitiya would have happily called into question the fate of six million Jews.  As we’ve noted many times before in reference to abortion advocates, we don’t know that there are levels in Hell.  But if so, Palihapitiya has a reservation for one of the hottest seats in the house.

Which brings us, inappropriately enough, to The Lighter Side:

Then there’s these from Ed Hickey…

…and Balls Cotton…

…along with this discredited piece of medical optimism courtesy of the lovely Shannon, both in English…

…and Español!

Finally, we’ll call it a day with yet another reason not to retire to the Sunshine State, as a…

Florida woman is attacked by bear in her own driveway while walking her dog

Lions…

…gators…

…and bears…

…Oh my!

Magoo

Video of the Day

Courtesy of The Washington Free Beacon, a shocking video clip which tells you all that need be known about the wholly heartless mindset and worldview of contemporary Progressives.

Tales of The Darkside

In a forward from James Nichols, The Babylon Bee takes a satirical look at the MSM’s disparate treatment of the Capitol Hill riot and the Summer of Blood.

On the Lighter Side

Joe Biden: Yeah, he’s THAT stupid!