Highlights of the News

Chairman Xiden's mouthpiece, Jen Psaki, answered a tough question at a press briefing, "We've only been here 3 1/2 weeks." 

Then she added, "I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies."

ITEM 1: Vanity Fair reported, "A White House official tried to quash a story about his relationship with a reporter by issuing threats and using derogatory language to another reporter pursuing it, according to two sources familiar with the incident. In a sympathetic profile Monday, People revealed that White House Deputy Press Secretary TJ Ducklo is dating Axios political reporter Alexi McCammond, who covered the Joe Biden campaign. But behind the scenes, Ducklo had previously lashed out at Politico reporter Tara Palmeri, who was reporting the story, exhibiting behavior that led to tense meetings between the Washington news outlet’s editors and senior White House officials.

The story also said, " 'I will destroy you,' Ducklo told her, according to the sources, adding that he would ruin her reputation if she published it.

"During the off-the-record call, Ducklo made derogatory and misogynistic comments, accusing Palmeri of only reporting on his relationship—which, due to the ethics questions that factor into the relationship between a journalist and White House official, falls under the purview of her reporting beat—because she was jealous that an unidentified man in the past had 'wanted to fuck' McCammond 'and not you.' Ducklo also accused Palmeri of being “jealous” of his relationship with McCammond. (Palmeri had no prior relationship or communication with McCammond before calling her to report on the Playbook item, which was a story that she was assigned and had not independently pursued.) "

Misogyny and F-bombs have returned to the White House after a 4-year absence.

CNN reported, "White House suspends deputy press secretary for one week for threatening reporter over story about him."

One week?

ITEM 2: Chairman Xiden 3 1/2 weeks ago told his staff, "If you’re ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise I will fire you on the spot. On the spot, no ifs, ands or buts. Everybody, everybody is entitled to be treated with decency and dignity."

Psaki had to duck low when reporters asked why her deputy still has a job. 

ITEM 3: The Daily Mail reported, "Claudia Conway, 16, told American Idol judges social media has meant her 'voice is being heard' after she has been 'suppressed' for most of her life.

"The 16-year-old daughter of former Donald Trump aide Kellyanne Conway and Lincoln Project cofounder George Conway is seen speaking out about her 'hard' upbringing during a new clip of her audition on the show."

Someone needs to tell Tubs and his wife that you do not shield a teenage girl by allowing her to audition for a national TV show.

Maybe they can do a reality show: Real Train Wrecks Of New Jersey.

ITEM 4: The Daily Wire announced, "Actress Gina Carano is partnering with The Daily Wire to produce and star in an upcoming film exclusively for Daily Wire members.

"Carano and The Daily Wire announced the new partnership on Friday, two days after the actress was ousted from her role in the Disney Star Wars spinoff show The Mandalorian. Disney cut the actress on Wednesday in what critics alleged was a politically-motivated hit."

Good.

This is how you fight anti-conservatism in Hollywood.

ITEM 5: The New York Post reported, "A group of Democratic state senators demanded Friday that Gov. Andrew Cuomo be stripped of his emergency authority to deal with the coronavirus crisis in the wake of The Post’s revelation that his administration covered up nursing home death data because of a pending federal probe."

Ignoring the Constitution always is a bad idea because it leads to sloth and incompetence.

Using his emergency powers, Cuomo-tose turned his state into the world's covid 19 epicenter, while at the same time pushing it into the Top 5 states in unemployment.

Voters need to make him Cuomo Toast in 2022.

ITEM 6: The Daily Wire reported, "On Wednesday evening, veteran NBC News reporter Andrea Mitchell ripped Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz after he stated that the Senate impeachment trial of former President Trump was 'like Shakespeare: full of sound and fury signifying nothing.' :

Mitchell tweeted back, "No, that’s Faulkner."

She was an English literature major.

And she was wrong.

Cruz tweeted, "Methinks she doth protest too much. One would think NBC would know the Bard. Andrea, take a look at Macbeth act 5, scene 5: ‘[Life] struts & frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound & fury, Signifying nothing."

Signifying nothing is what she does for a living.

But don't be so harsh. When the Dick Tracy comic strip folded, she lost her gig as Pruneface.

ITEM 7: The Guardian reported, "For decades, residents of Centreville, a nearly all-Black town of 5,000 in southern Illinois, just a 12-minute drive from downtown East St Louis, have been dealing with persistent flooding and sewage overflows. The smell of it is in the air all over town after a rain, and bits of soggy toilet paper and slicks of human waste cling to the grass in neighborhoods where children used to play on warm days, locals said. Kids don’t play outside any more. Gardens don’t grow."

The story also said, "Though Centreville was once a larger town, it has lost more than half its population and nearly all its white inhabitants since 1970."

Patricia Greenwood, 71, "If all of those white people were still here, this wouldn’t happen."

Yep.

ITEM 8: Michael Barone wrote, "When you've been consuming and producing political commentary for many years, you get used to certain recurring themes. One is the imminent disappearance or relegation to permanent minority status of the Republican Party.

"This was widely predicted after the Barry Goldwater defeat in 1964, after Watergate in the 1970s, after the elections of Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in 1992 and 2008, respectively, with considerably larger Democratic congressional majorities (a 57-43 Senate majority and 259-176 House majority for Clinton, and 58-41 and 257-178 majorities for Obama) than President Joe Biden now enjoys (51-50 and 222-213).

"Those predictions didn't pan out then, and I suspect they won't pan out now.

"The Republicans do face some difficulties. Donald Trump gave them a presidential victory they didn't expect, and some policy victories and new support from modest-income constituencies such as those in Appalachia and Hispanics.

"But nothing is free in politics; there is only some question about when you pay the price. Trump's idiosyncratic approach to covid 19 and his refusal to propitiate hostile constituencies produced defeat by an even narrower margin (42,918 votes in three states) than his victory in 2016 (77,736 votes in three states)."

Barone articulated what many of us know in our hearts: That Republicans were not prepared for success under President Trump.

And no, Republicans are not going away, which is why Never Trumpers are forming their own party because they know Republicans do not want them.

ITEM 9: The New York Post reported, "David Hogg has stepped down from his gun control advocacy group in the wake of his public spat with conservative My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell.

"Hogg, 20, announced on Twitter on Thursday that he is taking a leave of absence from his position as a board member for March For Our Lives.

" 'I’m going to take the time to focus on school, my passions, and my overall well being,' he said in a separate tweet.

"Hogg went on to allude to his public confrontation with Lindell last week, when he said he’ll take the conservative on by launching a competing pillow company."

The little publicity hog served his purpose. Now the gun grabbers want him to go away.

ITEM 10: The Washington Times reported, "Homeland Security will allow tens of thousands of migrants blocked by the Trump administration from jumping the border to enter the U.S. starting next week, erasing the brunt of a policy that had helped solve the last border surge. 

"The migrants are part of the Migration Protection Protocols, more commonly referred to as the ;remain in Mexico' policy, which allowed border authorities who encountered illegal entrants to process and return them to Mexico to await their immigration court dates."

Visas? We don't need no stinking visas.

ITEM 11: Breitbart reported, "According to Critical Race Theory investigator Christopher Rufo, who obtained the documents and spoke to a source within the William D. Kelley School in Philadelphia, a fifth-grade teacher designed a social studies curriculum 'to celebrate the political radical Angela Davis, praising the ‘black communist’ for her fight against ‘injustice and inequality.’ "

Change the name of the school. Immediately. William Darrah Kelley was an honorable, decent, and respectable man who fought slavery decades before emancipation.

Kelley was born in Philadelphia to a watchmaker and his wife. His father died when the lad was 2. The family was destitute. Their home became a boarding house. He went to work at an early age. But through luck and pluck, he apprenticed as a lawyer, became active in politics, and helped found the Republican Party in 1854.

As a congressman, he was exempted from military service. Nevertheless, he enlisted as a private at age 48.

Davis bought rifles for black militants who shot up a courtroom, and killed a judge.

Any school that honors her is unworthy of the name William D. Kelley.

ITEM 12: Just the News reported, "Day Four of Trump impeachment trial wraps after senators question both sides, vote set for Saturday."

The story said, "Trump's defense had up to 16 hours to present their case but used less than 4 hours on Friday. Senators had up to 4 hours to question both sides after Trump's defense presented. The questioning lasted for more than 2 hours. The Senate is scheduled to reconvene tomorrow at 10 a.m.

"Trump's defense team accused the House impeachment managers of taking Trump out of context with edited video clips during their oral arguments. His attorneys argued that Trump's rhetoric on Jan. 6 was protected by the First Amendment.

"The defense team on Friday played video clips of Democrats' past speeches about 'fighting' in the Trump era. After showing harsh rhetoric from Democrats, Trump's defense queued up footage of the violent protests that happened in major cities last year after the death of George Floyd."

Well, that's nice.

What will they impeach him for next year?

Cheating at golf?

I want to thank all those Democrats who were brave enough to stand up to this unconstitutional lunacy, but sadly there are none to thank.

ITEM 13: Ryan Chelius of Outdoor Life reported, "As someone who grew up 30 minutes outside the city, I never thought wild game would inhabit any part of the Five Boroughs. Seeing deer, coyotes, ducks, and other kinds of critters was common here in the wilderness areas and waters near my home in Long Island, but on the streets of New York? Our city centers continue to expand with development and urban sprawl, which means human infringement on animal habitat continues. So it’s not surprising that humans are encountering these animals within city limits more and more.

"Residents of Houston’s suburbs are now capturing videos of coyotes on home security cameras. Some videos show coyotes walking through driveways, right under basketball hoops. In the summer of 2020, in West Milford, New Jersey, an 82 year-old man was attacked by a black bear in his garage. Ronald Jelinek received more than 30 stitches to his face after the bear took a swipe at him. The bear was later captured and euthanized by the state.

"Woodcock and other migratory birds are flying into the windows of tall buildings, deer are well-established in the suburbs, coyotes roam city streets, and mallards are spending their days on man-made ponds within neighborhoods and apartment complexes. So how are these wild animals adapting—and thriving—in such places?"

We decided in the 1970s to protect wild animals.

They reproduced.

Now they are encroaching on man's territory. And guess what? They are not hiding indoors because of covid 19.

ITEM 14: CNN reported, "The Senate on Friday approved legislation to award a Congressional Gold Medal to Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, who became a national hero for his actions defending the Senate during the siege of the Capitol on January 6."

Schumer said, "Here in this trial we saw new video, powerful video showing calmness under pressure, his courage in the line of duty, his foresight in the midst of chaos and his willingness to make himself a target of the mob's rage so that others might reach safety."

So the mob was so violent that a security guard stopped them just by talking.

Too bad he wasn't in Kenosha stopping the mostly peaceful protesters from burning down Car Source Pre-Owned Vehicles.

The owner later committed suicide after losing $2.5 million worth of cars.

ITEM 15: Peggy Noonan wrote, "A Vote to Acquit Trump Is a Vote for a Lie."

Dumber than Andrea Mitchell.

Too dumb for The View.

ITEM 16: The Associated Press reported, "A Florida man stole an engagement ring and wedding bands from a girlfriend and used them to propose to another girlfriend, according to authorities.

"Volusia County Sheriff's deputies said Thursday they have issued an arrest warrant for Joseph Davis, 48, who had not been found as of Friday."

A one-man crime ring.

FINALLY, I watched a rerun of the Tonight Show last night. Johnny Carson and his first guest, Mel Brooks, both wore three-piece suits. They engaged in a conversation. Imagine that. Brooks was pitching "Young Frankenstein."

Then the other guests came on and Brooks remained on the set, moving to a seat further from Carson. Brooks joined in the conversation, however, as he did with the next guest as well.

It was all so grown up that I could not change channels.

Well, that and it was funny.