Programming note: Mark will be back on the telly this evening, talking "peaceful protests" on Tucker Carlson Tonight. Tune into Fox News at 8pm ET / 5pm PT.
Happy New Year and welcome back to a sparkly new batch of Laura's Links. I'm trying to remain optimistic, but I'm hearing rumblings and rumours that the idiotic, tyrannical 'leader' of my home province of Ontario, Doug Ford, is planning a military-style curfew on top of our current lockdown. As of yet, as far as I can see, the only things not currently micro-regulated by the state are how many loads of laundry we peasants can do, what colour underwear we must wear, and how many times we must chew each bite of food that we consume. But I have great hope that these items will soon be under the watchful eye of our Dear Leader.
In many areas of the world infected by China's biological weaponry, "cases" of COVID-19 are rising while we are under curfew, locked into our homes, and barely subsisting in a disgusting Zoomed-Out parallel universe "remotely" resembling reality because our feckless "leaders" have gone Full China on us.
Clearly, if cases are rising exponentially while we are under lockdown and wearing masks everywhere with no entertainment, physical activity, schooling for our children, family gatherings, social events or other forms of human normalcy, what we need is more curfew. A stricter, stronger one – one that is much, much, much more punitive 'coz our leaders have seen that there's not quite enough misery, not quite enough human wreckage, suicides, bankruptcies and overdoses. There's just not enough despair yet, people! Not enough bodies and spirits have been crushed yet by a Thousand Chinese Communist Cuts so the evil, spineless goons governing us are going to put the screws to us even harder and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze.
This past week was another busy one for The Most Totally and Completely Un-Woke Bloke in Bespoke. I shall review in case you missed anything (but really why would you???). He bid Farewell to 2020 guest-hosting Tucker Carlson Tonight, wished us a Happy New Year guest-hosting for Rush Limbaugh, compiled a year's worth of obituaries written about those lost in 2020 to various causes. He also guest-hosted for the peerless, wonderful and valiant Kathy Shaidle on the movie beat, looking at The Film of the Book of the Children of Men before heading back to the airwaves yesterday, treating us to three hours of Steynisms on The Rush Limbaugh Show. Listen to the podcast replay here.
Anyway, on a brighter note...err...let me think...bright, sunny, good news-hmmmm....eh, nope! I'll try again next week. OH WAIT. I've got something! It's not necessarily "bright" but it is a good insight that made me nod and smile, nod and smile (however, this is what I also do when idiots speak to me and it's not worth responding, so you know people, it's a very versatile thing to remember, it works in so many different situations with human interaction of all kinds-YOU'RE WELCOME) anyway this is a keeper via Dan Bongino. Enjoy! Well played, Mr. Bongino, well played.
Take care of yourselves and your loved ones, and remember, as Mark always reminds us, to surrender nothing. See you in the comments!
~
North America:
Gee, D'UH.
Stop harming children. It's abuse.
A look at the way we humans used to be, not so long ago.
The Angel of Death of NY strikes again.
A wickedly depressing summary of where America is at from the great VDH.
~
Jews and Israel:
"Lockdowns are madness". No kidding.
Saw this on Twitter, if you are interested in hearing Holocaust survivors speak on their experience on Zoom.
"My First Taharah". This is a really moving first-person essay on Jewish burial customs. "Helping the dead is called chesed shel emet—true kindness: You give with no possibility of being paid back."
~
New Middle East:
~
The Evil Chinese Communist Barbarians:
~
Europe:
This is evil. Not heartwarming. Evil.
~
The Formerly Great Britain:
Look at how this woke midget imbecile has destroyed London.
We are taking our orders from China. This is indisputable.
Einstein said the definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result. But what if the current result of the lockdowns is exactly what these evil, filthy, disgusting lunatics want?
~
Humourless and Kook Left, Wokestapo and Trans:
Another for the D'UH file. In other words, men are stronger than women. Thanks, geniuses.
The Wokestapo is after Grease. This is the hill I will die upon!!
"This is the future liberals want."
Definitely one of the dumbest things ever.
"Cancel culture is the digital equivalent of the medieval mob." Yes. Exactly.
"I think everyone's scared to speak up and be canceled or say the wrong thing."
~
Human Grace:
Seeing life in full colour.
How it started. How it is now.
Life-changing surgery. G-d bless the healers.
They didn't hesitate – even for a moment.
David Bowie's widow Iman will never marry again.
What's the best antidepressant?
"I feel at peace, I feel like I've found a home inside me."
It's open thread time! Log into SteynOnline and let Laura know what you think of these stories or other happenings from week that was or the election results that never will be. Commenting privileges are among the many perks of membership in The Mark Steyn Club. While going off topic is permitted on Laura's Links, do stick to the other rules as you engage: no URLs, no profanity, and no ad hominem attacks. Meet your fellow Club members, including Laura, in person by joining us on our rescheduled Mediterranean cruise alongside Tal Bachmann, Michele Bachmann, and Conrad Black among Mark's other special guests.
Comment on this item (members only)
Submission of reader comments is restricted to Mark Steyn Club members only. If you are not yet a member, please click here to join. If you are already a member, please log in here:
Member Login
50 Member Comments
Dan Bongino went on his podcast and brought up a point of how he doesn't want to hear about what happened on Jan 6 until we start to have an autopsy as to how we all got to this point. The left normalized political violence and he pointed it out. They demand condemnation for Charlottesville and Capitol Hill but not CHOP and the fire bombing of a courthouse in Portland? Like I said, one man radical is another's freedom fighter. The media has chosen who their heroes are and they aren't us people.
So, they're coming for Grease, eh? Thereby dashing any hopes that 2021 will be a sane year. As a kid growing up in NYC I LOVED Grease. My mom took me to see it in the movie theater (remember those?) and right away Olivia Newton-John as Sandy became my very first crush. The neighborhood kids loved it too. So much so that a number of us put on a performance of several songs from Grease in a driveway on a warm summer night (naturally). These days I get the feeling that the left will get around to at least trying to cancel just about everything I've ever loved.
PS: Happy New Year!
Sal I agree completely, it's just a great movie and unfortunately, 2021 is not super sane (yet).
Beautifully put, Laura: "our feckless "leaders" have gone Full China on us." The most significant thing, in my view, is that there is virtually no difference between the behavior of conservative vs. progressive leaders in Canada. All are into full lockdown, crackdown, smackdown.
No one seems to be evaluating who is at risk. It took me some internet search to discover that the true reason that Quebec accounts for a very high number of Canadian COVID deaths is probably dreadful nursing homes. Quebec accounts for nearly half the total Canadian deaths, yet I seldom hear anything about that.
Instead, I hear fear porn, accompanied by grand announcements that schools are closed even though children are not typically at risk.
My view: This is about government testing its power, as China takes over from the US as the big world power. Totalitarianism is now fashionable.
The real shock was that the majority of my neighbours are very happy to indulge in fear porn and go along with it - without asking basic questions. This will not be a fun decade.
Yes Denyse, there is complete avoidance of where the major deaths are, in nursing homes. The British actor Lawrence Fox yesterday said that it's like we are harvesting the livers of children to give to old people. It's utter insanity. I'm not sure if this is about government 'testing' power. I think that those in power now just have an excuse to be fully power drunk and it's an absolute intoxicant and there's peer pressure for people to outdo one another in their 'caring' and 'concern' and safetyism. They are out-virtue signalling one another on this very thing.
The majority of people are intellectually lazy and not interested in freedom-they just want comfort. They have grown up with little risk and they are delighted to sacrifice personal liberty for comfort. There is nothing they are willing to defend at the price of risk or security, no matter how little freedom comes with that life.
There already was a scandal about nursing homes in Quebec when there was a heat wave a few years back and many nursing home residents died. There were a lot of promises about putting in air conditioning and better ventilation but not much was done. So when covid came along residents were sitting ducks. Plus most of the workers worked half days at one place and then went to another and were often recent migrants looking for any kind of work.
Now I just think Premier Legault is desperate so he is trying anything such as a curfew from 8 til 5 in the morning.
Does anyone know what such a curfew is supposed to do? Does the virus know what time it is? Maybe it does. After all, here in BC, it knows the difference between praying (no) and boozing (yes). I feel as I live back in a time of hopeless superstition where cause and effect relationships don't include facts. But Laura, above, is right. People, seemingly, don't object because they just want to feel comfortable - like cows in the barn.
Of course we all know what the narrative is and shall be, with many on the conservative side signing on to it. This was a terrible move which makes Trump supporters look so bad and will only give fuel to further crackdowns on civil rights.
Baloney. How much further can civil rights be crushed? How much more hatred can they have for us? I think there was a caller who made that clear.
What this has accomplished is to strike fear into their hearts. Who could ever imagine that their tactics could be used on them? Burning cars and private businesses? Okay, if you have political grievances. But invading the very seat of Power, the sanctum sanctorum?! This can not be borne! Some average guy with his feet up on Pelosi's desk? Why, it's 9/11 and Pearl Harbor times a million!
Yeah, right. So far, the only real violence I've seen is the murder of an unarmed woman. I want that cop identified and arrested. The time to play nice is over.
Ordinarily, I think of "Human Grace" stories as the vegetables of my reading diet. I know they're good for me, but I'm more drawn to the red meat of the "Humourless and Kook Left, Wokestapo and Trans" or "The Evil Chinese Communist Barbarians". Today, however, is definitely a broccoli day. Thank you, Laura, for the veggies. Very, very much.
Josh, I wish I could fortify people spiritually and emotionally even more. Those good stories are just a drop in the bucket but I'm so glad you appreciate them.
Laura, this is for the My Idiot People category.
I cannot believe some of the tweets I'm seeing coming out of the NY Jewish community, and I mean the Orthodox community this time. All the denouncing violence, this isn't who we are, uphold democracy tweets.
These are people who, generally speaking, have their heads very much screwed on straight. Which is the reason I am stunned by how dense their reactions are. Do they really have no idea of what's coming? Can they not see that the treatment they got from Cuomo and DeBlasio during corona was just the prelude to the fact that they are going to make NY's Orthodox Jewish community pay dearly for its support of Trump?
"Do they really have no idea of what's coming?"
I'm sure they do. Hence, "all the denouncing violence, this isn't who we are, uphold democracy tweets." It's the least a people can say when they've been targeted as the Orthodox community has been by DeScuzzio. Not that he's needed an excuse to date make them "pay dearly". We are a people driven to madness, and that's never been good for the Jews. G-d protect them, and may they protect themselves.
I hear your point. But why lick their boots when all they're going to do is kick you in the face?
Dafna, read Elie Weisel's Night. Read about the people who escaped Auschwitz and were not believed. There are people who will always refuse to deal with reality, it's too painful and hard-even at the expense of their lives.
I read it, as well as more Holocaust memoirs than I can count. In a way, that's kind of my point. I went to Majdanek (and many of the others) when I was 17, and for the first time I was able to understand why people didn't believe it while it was happening.
But nothing on that scale had ever happened before in human history. We don't have that excuse. And the parallels between the feckless Weimar coalition and the feckless Republican coalition - complete with Pence handing over the White House to President Harris - are too much to ignore.
My point is not that the Democrats are going to rebuild Auschwitz somewhere in Georgia. My point is that we should have learned something by now, and one of those somethings is that appeasement and making nice doesn't make totalitarian thugs go away.
The best comment on this subject I have ever heard was one by the Holocaust scholar Michael Marrus, which I heard in a Holocaust history course I took in university. With respect to the Holocaust and the question of "didn't people know", or "what did they know and when" he said "there's a difference between knowing it and getting it". And that's the only point I was making. Obviously we have a similar point of view on this. And just to clarify-I was suggesting Night as as one of the premier examples-I was not suggesting that you hadn't read it.
Better get that last copier in the woods ready. Twitter has shut down Trump.
Also FB and IG.
The pictures from that Italian nursing home had me in tears. And furious that this kind of insanity is being touted as helpful, caring, heartwarming, insert-sappy-emotional-tearjerker word here.
That Einstein quote is a reference to an approach to quantum mechanics that Einstein found lacking. That shortcoming, which Einstein identified while being roundly ignored, showed clearly how weak and profoundly unreliable scientists can be when they get carried away with their own theories. All this 'follow the science' business is like an evil cartoon version of what Einstein confronted. Our expert class of today would treat Einstein quite badly. He probably never would have gotten out of the patent office; they would have been too jealous of their high status to let him in through a nonstandard route. I have certainly met many professors who would have so treated him. It is said that when Einstein lived in New Jersey he was unqualified to teach in the public schools, because he lacked the necessary credentials.
I am inspired by the indefatigable Laura Rosen Cohen's list of links to mention the following url, from a perhaps ironic source:
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/06/18/155277740/why-einstein-was-disqualified-from-teaching-high-school-physics
Really it is not 'follow the science' or even 'follow the money' (which is admittedly often useful) but rather more centrally it is 'follow the credentials.'
I look forward to the day when we once more have the 'credentials' to move about outside and give our relatives hugs without permission.
I was glad to hear tobogganing was safe. Here we have steep hills of white sands and we pretend they are snow slopes. You would think the list of what is safe is rather narrow by now, that they might've published a list of those three things allowed by law a while back and saved us all from getting our hopes up for having any fun too soon. It's the jerking us around I find most aggravating.
I thought it was interesting that the "Talk Radio" page was deleted off of YouTube just when the Mitch video was going viral. They (graciously, I'm sure) reinstated the channel, but I'm betting it was a huge buzzkill on that story getting out.
And Loeffler reneges on her promise. Of course.
You know nothing about Loeffler.
Chaos erupts and now they condemn the violence. Now they call this an insurrection when we do this. The Uniparty has made this clear: Only they can do that and have it be "legal". Just what did they think was going to happen. I warned everyone this was inevitable but no one listened. You can only hold back for so long. Once again we get blamed for everything yet the party that has watched cities burn and people get murdered during the riots is somehow vindicated because it was all in the name of social justice. What about our justice? Why should we shut up and comply?
If Trump supporters did indeed get violent, they would be justified. However, I don't trust the media narrative that says they were violent. The only ones to come out of the Capitol dead or injured were Trump supporters.
Because we're the new invisibles. Our jobs now are to be invisible, pay our taxes, don't procreate,
to please shut up and pay some more taxes. And while we're at it, hurry up and die especially if we're into our religion. We're excluded from the process because our thoughts are outmoded. I think it boils down to that.
If Rowan Atkinson can bring back Blackadder, it might be the only thing on the tele worth watching. It would have to bring in some of the other actors too, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, to pull it off. Then the insults have to be there to make it real. The true test is if the wokestapo want it off the air, which would tell us that it is good.
Rowan Atkinson and Lawrence Fox should create a show. It's popularity would send quite a message.
Now let's see how those "I back the Blue" Trump supporters fare.
For the left and the squishy, Hong Kong is a model.
Okay, first of all, I want the cop who shot that woman today to be arrested and charged with murder.
You're forgetting something, white lives seem not to matter as much. If the mayor helps paint "WLM"
out in the pavement in front of the US Capitol building this week, I'll be the very first one to apologize.
I have a feeling he won't be. She doesn't belong to the approved victim class.
On the link to the gynecologist and what the future holds, I had something like that happen a couple or three years ago. I was at the gynecologist -- who had been my doctor for many years and who had just done my exam -- when she sat down with me to fill out paperwork and to see if I had questions. It was a routine part of the visit except that year she asked, "Do you identify as male or female?" I couldn't believe it. I was stunned. Anyway, there was a pause while I thought how crazy it was that she would ask that, not because I was pondering the response to her question. Finally the doctor looked up at me. I simply asked if she had new questions on her form and if she had to ask all her patients these new questions. Yes! she did. Anyway, she has a medical degree, had just completed my physical exam, so it was reasonably safe to check the box for female/woman. The doctor has since retired. I could identify as Martian, Mercurian, or Venusian, but I would still be a Earthling -- and a human female from Earth.
Oh, my. I had a very similar experience when pregnant a little over a year ago. My doctor asked me my gender, if I was attracted to men or women or both, etc. Why are they asking such bizarre questions?
Thanks again, Laura! Great batch of links!
Good for Rowan Atkinson. The easy thing is to stay quiet or nod along approvingly. Which is, of course, one of the main reasons college sophomores are now running the culture.
Those pictures of the Italian nursing home are just vile. I cannot imagine being fortunate enough to live into my 90's and having a government tell me that I'm only allowed to see my family in a plastic "Room of Hugs." I'd rather take my chances in Dexter's kill room!
Thanks, Richard. Yes, that Italian story was infuriating and purely evil.
Regarding "Grease," in the original stage version, the characters were not cute and cuddly Richies from "Happy Days," but greasers with switchblades and tough, working-class girls with beehives. The original lyrics to "Greased Lightning" are, for a lack of a better term, "dirty," and the song itself was about a stolen car.
There are plenty of reasons to dislike the film, from its juvenile approach to the story and the director's complete inability to stage musical numbers, but to call it "rapey" is, as usual, moronic. Why should we be surprised? They ruin EVERYTHING.
OMG David, you are dissing Grease? HOW DARE YOU!
Regarding "Grease":
From the Daily Mail: "It [that would be "Grease"] prompted one outraged Twitter user *** to write: 'Grease is far too sexist and overly white and should be banned from the screen. It is nearly 2021 after all.'"
I don't know if I'm sexist, but I'm entirely white. Since it now actually is 2021, do I get banned, too?
*** Is there any other kind?
Great list, Laura.
From "The Federalist": "Take a case this past week in Kentucky in which a pharmacist, realizing that the pharmacy's doses were set to expire, gave them to two customers who were not on the approved list. That sounds like plain good sense, but under Emperor Cuomo's proposal, it would be a criminal action.
"This is inexplicable."
It would be more than just criminal, but eye-wateringly expensive. Unfortunately, in Cuomo-World, it makes perfect sense. He gets to play Caracalla, while, as he sees it, holding life and death power over NY citizens, something which he has tried before, with his care-home policy.
The MSM relentlessly praised this fraud, to the extent that he (ghost-)wrote a self-congratulatory tome and was awared an "Emmy" (whatever that is). Oddly enough, some Democrats even tried to parachute Cuomo into the Presidential campaign, in place of Biden.
But what was wrong with Biden? He was good enough to get the biggest ever vote in US history. Errmmm, wasn't he?
Thanks, Owen. I give it under 60 days till it's President Harris.
As Mark has pointed out, the Democrats really need Biden to survive until 2023, but I think you are right.
I believe the 25th amendment shenanigans they were flirting with regarding Trump was just the recon for now. They've got all the papers inked.
Even if they aren't inked, they can shove 'em into the Dominion scanners and "adjudicate" them.
So, am I going to be allowed to comment on this open thread or have I been banned?
"'Lockdowns are madness'. No kidding." Don't even need to follow the link.
I stay away from the propaganda called the "news" on modern mass communication system, but I understand the pro-Trump forces are in full riot mode in Washington DC and elsewhere. I hope its true. Burn Baby Burn.
That money photo the media is using of a demonstrator waving a red flag on the steps is an Antifa guy. Photo of him at a Philadelphia antifa rally and he has a tattoo on his hand of a sickle.
Reichstag fire 1933 moment. Blame Trump and his supporters. Biden had a lengthy speech already prepared which is highly suspicious.
Nicola, I hope that yesterday was the GOP's funeral and accompanying funeral pyre.
Amen Laura