Victor Davis Hanson.

When Donald Trump seemed to have a lock on the 2016 Republican primary, the Democratic Party concluded that the people could not be counted on to do the “right thing” of electing the Democratic candidate in waiting Hillary Clinton.

What followed were eight long years of extralegal efforts to neuter candidate, then president, then ex-president, and then candidate again, Donald Trump.

The nonstop efforts were all justified as “saving democracy”—albeit by nearly destroying it.

In 2015-2016, the Hillary Clinton campaign fueled the lie that discredited ex-British spy Christopher Steele had discovered Trump to be a veritable Russian agent.

Hillary did not disclose that she had paid Steele—with checks hidden through three paywalls. The FBI, under Director James Comey, also hired the fraudster.

Yet almost nothing in his “Steele dossier” was true.

Reuters.

While new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer settles into No. 10 Downing St, Haidar is searching for homes in Greece and Monaco, because a proposed inheritance tax revamp will make Britain a ‘no go’ zone for the rich, he says.

Starmer says the overhaul will make Britain’s tax system fairer and raise funds for stretched public services.

Labour never saw a deep pocket that they didn’t want to stick their hand in. Politicians everywhere are firmly convinced that they can spend your money better than you can.

Undecided voters grade Trump’s performance at RNC. See if he passed (CNN) It’s CNN, so what do you think they say, not even having read it?

Anti-party in a ghost town: Trump’s undead GOP holds an un-convention (Andrew O’Hehir/Salon)

A rash of tech billionaires are pivoting to Trump – but not because they’re MAGA bros (Allison Morrow/CNN)

White Men Can Vote: The Logic Behind J.D. Vance for VP (Marc A. Caputo/The Bulwark)

Days After Trump Assassination Attempt, Scripps News Contributor Steve Schmidt Pens RNC Analysis Rife With Nazi Comparisons

BlueAnon Rears Its Head: One-Third of Dems Believe Conspiracy Theory That Trump Staged Assassination Attempt

Digging In: Rep. Mondaire Jones Says He Won’t Be ‘Gaslit’ Away From Decrying Trump as a ‘Threat to Democracy’

Whistleblowers Reveal Security Failures at Trump Rally (House Committee on the Judiciary)

Whoopi Attacks Trump’s Grandkids: ‘They’re Trying to Humanize Him!’  How dare they!

Secret Service Whistleblowers Emerge Following Trump Assassination Attempt

PBS, David Frum Condemn Trump for Using Shooting ‘In an Improper Way’  Uh-oh … David Frum … step back….

PBS Hurls Bad Fact Checks: GOP Voting Concerns Could Mean ‘Political Violence’

Tucker Carlson, Ousted by Fox, Roars Into Milwaukee as a Top Trump Ally (New York Times)

Globalist “Guru” Claims Trump’s Re-Election Will Mean ‘The Death Of Global Order’

Nicolle Wallace: Republicans ‘Totally Codependent on Disinformation’

CBS’s Margaret Brennan: ‘The Strongman Has a Family, Too’

Bulwark Never-Trumper Accuses Republicans of ‘Losing the Plot,’ Confusing Presidents

Excruciating! Trump’s Endlessly Long, Wildly Dishonest RNC Speech (S.V. Date/HuffPost)

EU Parliament Refuses To Condemn Trump Assassination Attempt

Joy Reid Insists Trump’s Speech Proves His Brain Is as Bad as Biden’s

Joy Reid Thinks Masculinity is ‘White-Adjacent’  Well, yeah.

Are Trump Scandals Just Endless Hours of Noise?

Fact check: Trump makes more than 20 false claims in RNC acceptance speech (CNN)

Trump tramples unity theme in two-act convention speech (Zachary Basu/Axios)

Morning Joe Warning To MSM: Do NOT Praise Trump’s New Tone!

The RNC Is Calling This Billionaire Trump Donor an ‘Everyday American’ (Rolling Stone)

Republicans Say They Want to Tone Down Political Rhetoric – But They Keep Calling Immigration an ‘Invasion’ (Casey Murray/NOTUS)  Because that’s what it is. Truth is not ‘political rhetoric’.

Trump shooter used Android phone from Samsung; cracked by Cellebrite in 40 minutes

Post-Speech Roundup: Trump’s a Narcissist Full of Lies and ‘Unity’ Bunk!

Donald Trump Can (and Must) Be Defeated (Dan Pfeiffer/The Message Box)

Colbert Attacks ‘Deeply, Psychotically Weird’ RNC  Like being called ugly by a frog.

Donald Trump Cannot Even Pretend to Change Who He Is (Jonathan Chait/New York Magazine)

TEMP NOT LOWERED: MSNBC ‘Historian’ Claims Trump Win Will Lead to ‘Dictatorship’

This Crew Is Totally Beatable (David Frum/The Atlantic)  But not by that crew.

Comedy Shows Smear Republicans As Racist Cultists During RNC

ABC Melts Down Over Trump’s ‘Dark,’ ‘Anti-Immigrant’ Speech, SLAM Biden for Staying in

What Happens When a Felon Throws a ‘Law-and-Order’ Convention (Will Saletan/The Bulwark)

Maddow Sees ‘Alt-Right’ In Vance’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ Fandom  Maddow sees ‘Alt-Right’ in cloud formations.

PBS’s Capehart: Trump ‘Deified,’ I Am ‘Terrified’ of ‘We Love Trump’ Chant

Charlottesville tiki torch rioter endorses Donald Trump at his Jan. 6 sentencing (Ryan J. Reilly/NBC News)  Trump is his only hope of receiving justice.

Read it.

A Paris police officer was attacked and stabbed by a 27-year-old foreigner on Champs-Elysées on Thursday, mere days before the start of the Paris Olympics. The attacker was shot by another officer, and died from the injuries from that gunshot wound. This knife attack comes just days after a man stabbed and wounded a French soldier patrolling Paris on Monday outside the Gare de l’Est train station in eastern Paris.

Paris police were responding to a call from security personnel at the flagship Louis Vuitton store on one of the city’s most famous promenades, according to a post on X by French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin. The security officers had noticed a man exhibiting “suspicious behavior” outside the store and called the police, according to a police official. The man then attacked one of the officers with a knife.

Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez said the attack did not appear linked to the Olympics and no terrorist motive was suspected. Nevertheless, it comes just days before the world’s premier sporting event starts in the French capital—and hot on the heels of another attack on police.

Read it.

Yesterday, smoke rose from a city of just over 500,000 inhabitants in West Yorkshire, namely the city of Leeds, around 10% of which is now Muslim. A very large number of the Muslim minority took to the streets to riot. A bus was set on fire; buildings and cars were smashed apart; and police personnel were attacked, with many of their vehicles being damaged, including at least one police car being overturned. Police were forced to flee the area in which the violence was erupting, and thereafter, the rioters were seemingly left in peace to continue their rampage.

The proximate reason for this explosion of violence remains as yet unclear, though the media have been reporting that it began with some sort of “family incident.” The general reason for this riot, however, is certainly known to the whole country. For decades, the ordinary English inhabitants of England have witnessed their country being transformed by the colonisation and repopulation of their towns and cities by arrivals from abroad. They have looked to the media and the political class for some critical consideration of what has been taking place, and they have heard nothing but the sound of crickets. If anyone was unwise enough to speak out about what was happening, he was subjected to accusations of ‘racism’ and ‘xenophobia’ and his career was put at risk. This culture of censorship, that soon gave rise to a culture of self-censorship, has been extremely effective.

The Other McCain.

I must confess that sometimes, when I hear about a road-rage incident escalating into deadly violence, I think to myself, “Maybe this isn’t really a bad thing.” Let’s admit that the victim of a fatal road-rage incident is perhaps not an entirely innocentvictim. You probably have to be a very bad driver to cause a traffic situation so bad that another driver decides he needs to kill you. So, a bad driver gets killed, and another driver with serious anger-management issues gets sent to prison for murder. Isn’t it possible to see that as a win-win? The bottom line is, you’re subtracting two drivers from the morning-commute traffic jam, and that’s a net benefit to society.

Good point.

Nature.

You can’t make this shit up.

I’ve always thought the pituitary was the spitting gland.

Roger Kimball.

Human beings are animals that often operate by proxy. Here’s a familiar example from the world of — well, I was going to say “the law,” but what I have in mind is not the law but its perversion, so let’s say “the legal bureaucracy.” Everyone has heard the phrase “the process is the punishment.” It covers a multitude of sins. In its core signification, the phrase describes an increasingly common situation in which the machinery of the law is deployed to harass, enervate, stymie and otherwise hobble someone the regime does not like but whom, for the time being anyway, it chooses not to incarcerate. Sometimes it is easier to bankrupt and demoralize an opponent into submission.

Relevant here is a conversation I had more than a decade ago with a couple of worldly friends who can fairly be described as experts in the operation of the law. A prominent businessman had just been indicted and one of my friends observed that the indictment meant that he was sure to be cashiered, and soon. But what about being presumed innocent until proven guilty? I asked. My friends did not actually laugh, but they did smile as they explained that in our system the actual dispensation was “innocent until indicted.” Once indicted you are a marked man, as your banker will explain.

The political landscape is littered with victims of our extralegal legal process, as such names as Mike Flynn, Peter Navarro, John Eastman and of course Donald Trump will remind you. Their fates help to explain why you hear more and more people talking about our “two-tier” justice system, which is just periphrasis for “injustice,” and our “Stalinist” courts and judges, which is just an illuminating historical parallel to what is actually happening.

Read it.

Elon Musk is parting from his home state, publicly endorsing Trump minutes after the former president was almost assassinated at his rally in Pennsylvania. Musk also announced he will be donating $45 million to a pro-Trump political action committee and that he will be moving the headquarters of SpaceX and X from California to Austin, Texas.

He is among many other Silicon Valley billionaires who are announcing their support for Trump following the attack, including Bill Ackman, the Pershing Square Capital Management CEO.

Musk cited California governor Gavin Newsom’s new law that bars school districts from requiring staff to notify parents of their child’s gender identification change as the “final straw,” as the law was “attacking both families and companies.”

California state senator Scott Wiener, a former chair of the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus, called Musk “a textbook example of why kids shouldn’t be forced to come out to their parents.” Musk said he made “it clear to Governor Newsom about a year ago that laws of this nature would force families and companies to leave California to protect their children.”

Well, yeah. This is a surprise?

Keith Richards has outlived Richard Simmons.

Think about it.

Read it.

Fresh from her re-election campaign, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen outlined plans for a new EU Housing Commissioner at a plenary session in Strasbourg on Thursday.

In a classic example of EU overreach, von der Leyen described how Brussels would develop a “European Affordable Housing Plan, to look at all the drivers of the crisis and to help unlock the private and public investment needed,” and that bureaucrats would create a new Housing Commissioner to administer the task.

While von der Leyen was short on details, pundits believe that the EU will direct additional funding to so-called ‘cohesion funds’ originally meant for underdeveloped member states. This funding will support the housing project, and the European Investment Bank will launch a new tool to attract more public and private funding for building projects.

Brett Cooper.

Who knew that ‘Narya’ was ‘Aryan’ with the N moved to the front? (Rachel Maddow)

Read it.

You can steal anything in NYC.

Read it.

Desecrations of Catholic places of worship in France have increased exponentially in recent months. Most recently, a church in Paris was vandalised using acts of extreme violence.

The vandalism occurred on the night of Sunday, July 14th at the church of Notre-Dame du Travail in the 14th arrondissement in the south of Paris. The building was defiled by explicit and violent tags calling for war, decapitation of Christians, and threatening to burn the church down.

The next day, the parishioners discovered a fire had broken out, but fortunately, it did not catch, thus avoiding irreparable damage.

Many of the inscriptions found were explicitly Islamic in nature: “Submit to Allah the infidel, pray 5 times a day,” “Bastard Jesus, only one god, Allah,” for example, could be read on the walls of the sanctuary.

Would a mosque in Riyadh ever get vandalized with Christian slogans? The question answers itself.

Read it.

Sometimes the phrase ‘tone-deaf’ is entirely inadequate.

Adidas said it will revise a campaign that features Palestinian-American supermodel and activist Bella Hadid modeling a sneaker recalling the 1972 Munich Olympics — the Games where 11 Israelis died in a terror attack by a Palestinian terrorist group.

Various Jewish and pro-Israel leaders and institutions said Hadid, who has been harshly critical of Israel in her activism on behalf of Palestinians, was an inappropriate choice to represent a sneaker associated with those games.

The official X account for the State of Israel posted about the 1972 campaign, accusing Hadid and her father, Los Angeles real estate developer Mohamed Hadid, of promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories and asking Adidas for comment.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

Lenin famously said there are decades in which nothing happens and then there are weeks in which decades happen. That is the inspiration for the show title and the show itself, which is a rundown of the events of the last few weeks. Any of these events would probably qualify as a big deal in isolation, especially the curious assassination attempt on Trump last week.

The last few weeks culminating in one of the wildest conventions in a long time has been an incredible ride, but we are just getting started. The years long effort to keep Trump off that convention stage is not the end of it. It is just the beginning of what lies ahead as the regime never takes no for an answer. The ball is now back in their court, so the next few weeks will make this last month seem normal.

The next chapter in this wild summer probably kicks off this weekend with a renewed effort to push Biden aside. The fake news stories about his imminent resignation were flying last night. It would take a heart of stone to not laugh at the sight of regime members getting the fake news treatment. Every story about Biden that contains “sources say” must cut like a knife.

StrategyPage.

It’s been a decade since the last outbreak of piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the adjacent Red Sea waters was suppressed. Now there is a new campaign by Iran-backed Somali Shia rebels, led by a local militia leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi. Houthi’s group decided to declare war in Israel after the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israelis and other foreigners visiting a music festival near the Gaza Israeli border. Hamas killed over a thousand people, most of them civilians. The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) soon arrived and Hamas has been on the run ever since. For over a decade the Houthi group has been supplied with weapons by Iran. This included missiles to attack targets in Saudi Arabia. The Yemen military was never able to suppress the Houthi violence but that changed when the Houthis began attacking commercial shipping.

The current round of Houthis violence against commercial shipping heading for the Suez Canal or making deliveries to Red Sea countries has led to over a half a dozen NATO nations sending warships to protect cargo ships in the Red Sea by attacking the Houthis rebels and their Iranian missiles in Yemen. American warships and naval aviation have already used hundreds of missiles against Houthi targets in Yemen. This has diminished the Houthi attacks but not entirely eliminated them. That would take a ground war in Yene. For over a decade the Houthis have been leading a rebellion against the Yemen government. For a while Arab nations sent troops to assist in suppressing the Houthis and now the Americans are sending an assault ship with a battalion of marines on board.

Read it.

The serialization of Paul Weston’s book about the COVID-19 scam (most recent chapter here) has made me ruminate on the official mendacity that has been the main feature of whole deadly process. We were lied to about how dangerous the disease was. We were lied to about its origin. We were lied to about the PCR testing regimen that putatively detected infection with the disease. We were lied to about the effectiveness of the measures used to mitigate and contain it.

And above all we were lied to about the safety and effectiveness of the alleged “vaccine”, the experimental mRNA treatment intended to mitigate the effects of infection with the Wuhan Coronavirus.

Most of the liars who told the official lies could fall back on some sort of plausible deniability, no matter how flimsy, to allow themselves to evade responsibility. “Mistakes were made,” “We didn’t know that at the time,” “It was judged to be the best course of action, based on the available data,” etc.

But that wasn’t the case with the promise that the “vaccine” was safe. There is no plausible deniability for those who confidently asserted the safety of the experimental mRNA treatment.

Read it.

A SOGI czar is their independent expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Graeme Reid, who hails from South Africa, is a professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale, and former director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch.

In Reid’s case, “independent” does not mean “nonpartisan,” as his political and ideological bona fides are decidedly progressive.

Read it.

The Polish Border Guard recently lost two legal cases brought by migrants who were injured during their attempts to enter Polish territory illegally from Belarus.

The rulings are controversial considering the extreme violence Polish soldiers and officers routinely face while protecting the border, including the recent stabbing murder of Polish border officer, 21-year-old Sgt Mateusz Sitek.

Read it.

Black women are coalescing around President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in a letter released Thursday indicating their support, reports The Hill.

My, what a surprise.

Read it.

Pediatric transgender surgeries allegedly have become a fraudulent multibillion-dollar industry. The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating whistleblower reports alleging fraudulent Medicaid billing, including at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.

Read it.

They might actually have to do their jobs. Ain’t nobody got time for dat.

Read it.

The shorter school week, which first emerged in a few rural areas decades ago, is now expanding into suburbs and smaller cities. At least 2,100 schools in half the states have embraced the three-day weekend mostly as an incentive to hire and keep teachers, prompting cheers of support from instructors, unions, and many families.

Despite the growing popularity of the shorter week, some researchers and lawmakers are pushing back on the strategy. While its impact on teacher shortages appears to be mixed in different districts, its harmful effects on the academic growth of students – arguably the top priority of public education – is clear. Teams of researchers examining the program in a variety of states have come to a similar conclusion: The four-day week stymies learning in math and English when instructional time is reduced, as is often the case.

The most authoritative multi-state study to date found that students have suffered small-to-medium negative effects, learning “significantly less” than they would have in a traditional five-day program, says co-author Emily Morton of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research.

Read it.

When Google and YouTube first announced that they would be demonetizing a host of channels back in 2017 (including firearms related content) they said is was because advertisers were “complaining” about their ads being featured in videos that were contrary to their messaging. In other words, the excuse was that ads embedded on firearms channels might give their customers the “wrong impression” about those companies and their products, and Google didn’t want to anger their advertising partners.

It’s hard to say how accurate this claim was. The exposure of ESG and Big Tech collusion with government agencies to censor conservative platforms supports the idea that there was probably an organized corporate push to suppress the political opposition on YouTube as much as there was an effort to shut them down on social media.

The majority of conservative content creators understood that this was not about advertisers, it was about narratives. The exploding popularity of gun channels runs contrary to the media assertion that American society is moving increasingly to the left. And, even though gun channels mostly focus on firearms and instruction, they also promoted conservative and constitutional values which represent a thorn in the side of the establishment.

More proof has surfaced that randomized advertising and company complaints were never the issue. Gun related channels are reporting that Google/YouTube is not only demonetizing them, they are also no longer allowed to feature private sponsors that market gun related products.

New Atlas.

For the first time, scientists have demonstrated how a specific protein increases in our organs as we get older and actively promotes the aging process. By blocking this activity, it could not only help us live longer, but slow the physical decline that is, right now, an inevitable part of aging.

Researchers at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore have previously undertaken three different studies to examine interleukin-11 (IL-11) protein expression and its role in heart and kidney, liver and lung health. The lattermost research has led to an experimental anti-IL-11 therapy that’s currently in clinical trials to treat fibrotic lung disease.

Building on this work, the team identified IL-11’s role in the aging process, with its increased production leading to fat accumulating in the liver and abdomen, as well as reduced muscle mass and strength. By blocking this protein expression, these hallmarks of aging could be drastically reduced.

Read it.

A group of small freshwater animals protect themselves from infections using antibiotic recipes stolen from bacteria, according to new research led by the University of Oxford that could help develop future medicines.

Read it.

A faulty update from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike is responsible for the global outage.

Read it.

Instead of admitting to facilitating an assassination attempt on Donald Trump last Saturday, either through ‘malice or massive incompetence,’ the US Secret Service is ‘appalled’ that people are criticizing their decision to place short, incompetent women on Trump’s security detail.

Read it.

The Department of Health & Human Services:

“Health” means killing unborn children.

“Human Services” hiding the mutilation of children from their parents.

No wonder our population is decreasing.

UPDATE: ‘Usurpation of Parental Rights’: District’s ‘Gender Inclusion’ Training Costs Taxpayers $1.5K

Read it.

Cuts down on the number of suicide bombers.

“They said, Here’s your back pack, and I gave it right back and said no, no, no….”

Read it.

The familiar steam turbines in wide use at power plants today are based on 19th century technology. They typically range in size from less than 100 kilowatts to more than 250 megawatts, depending on the use case. When used to generate electricity in a central power plant they are massive beasts the size of a bus or larger.

Supercritical carbon dioxide turbines are different. They don’t deploy steam as a working fluid. Instead, they use a concentrated form of carbon dioxide — sCO2 for short — that hovers somewhere between a gas and a liquid.

The Energy Department anticipates that new supercritical carbon dioxide turbines can shave energy consumption at power plants by 10%, but that’s just for starters. They have a much smaller footprint than their steam-driven cousins, resulting in manufacturing efficiencies all along the supply chain.

Which supply chain, alas, does not yet exist.

The independent R&D organization Southwest Research Institute is a leading partner in the project along with the firms GTI Energy and GE Vernova. Construction of the building shell took place between 2018 and 2020, followed by the startup of a supercritical CO2 compressor earlier this year.

In the latest update from SwRI, the team has just marked the completion of the mechanical work on the system, including new turbines that are about 1/10 the size of a conventional steam turbine.

Though only about the size of an office desk, household refrigerator, pony, credenza, or golf cart, the new turbines are powerful enough to generate the electricity equivalent of 10,000 typical homes.

Or will, once they get it into operation, which doesn’t seem to be happening all that quickly.

The Other McCain.

Let’s be clear: South Korea is an ally, not an enemy. But acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, while pretending to be “an independent foreign policy expert”? That’s a felony, and Max Boot’s wife has been doing it for 10 years — “allegedly,” I hasten to add.

UPDATE: Leading ‘Trump Russia Hoax’ Propagandist’s Wife Indicted As Foreign Spy

Read it.

The federal government suspended the operations of a wind farm located off the coast of Massachusetts after a massive turbine fell apart, sending debris into the ocean and forcing local officials to temporarily close nearby beaches.

Earlier this week, Vineyard Wind’s developer reported a “blade failure incident” at the facility and said it had dispatched crews to collect debris in the surrounding waters and on beaches in Nantucket, Massachusetts. According to Vineyard Wind, the turbine blade was undergoing testing when it unexpectedly broke about 20 meters from its root.

The incident is the latest black eye to both the offshore wind energy industry, which has faced a number of economic setbacks in recent months, and the Biden administration’s green energy plans. Vineyard Wind was the first large-scale, offshore wind project approved in the U.S. The Department of the Interior signed off on the project in May 2021, less than four months after President Biden took office.

Read it.

A liberal nonprofit that claims to fund “voter rights” initiatives in order to “restor[e] … and activat[e] all voices in the United States” appears to be behind a deceptive anti-Trump ad campaign that tried to discourage Republican voters from taking advantage of mail-in voting.

Global Impact Social Welfare Fund, a little-known dark money group, gave $50,000 to PA Values on June 14, according to Federal Election Commission records. Two days after the donation, PA Values paid $48,000 for an ad that urges “MAGA PATRIOTS” to “stand strong WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP” against mail-in voting. Trump was skeptical of mail-in and absentee voting in the 2020 election, but has since encouraged supporters to vote by those methods in order to “beat the Democrats.”

The ad has stoked blowback, as well as speculation about the origin of the cash behind it. PA Values received contributions several years ago from labor unions and the law firm of Sen. Bob Casey’s (D., Pa.) brother. But it entered this election cycle with an empty bank account, up until the donation from Global Impact Social Welfare Fund. The Trump campaign accused PA Values of election interference over the advertisement, and called for law enforcement to investigate the matter. A liberal election law professor writing at Slate called the ad “borderline criminal” and castigated PA Values for its “trickery and voter suppression.”

Watch it.

A sesame-street level video pointing out what I have pointed out throughout my adult life: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.

Property is something where, if I have it, you don’t. That is the essence of the concept of property from the beginning of the world until the government decided it could make money off of an artificial monopoly system in the 17th century, and came up with a name (‘intellectual property’) which is as fraudulent as ‘gay marriage’. Copying something does not impair the property right of the owner of the thing being copied. We have this massive system of legalized fraud built and operated by people who make a lot of money off of it, and have managed to convinced Low Information Voters that it is somehow legitimate.

UnHerd.

If you want to know the secret of J.D. Vance’s meteoric rise, at the age of 39, to Donald Trump’s choice for vice president should he win, just glance at some of the more overheated liberal analyses of Vance’s success. This one, published in the New York Times, is a classic: it is like the X-ray of a liberal psyche outraged by the success of people who are on the “other side”.

Titled “How Yale Propelled J.D. Vance’s Career”, it reveals that “many students and professors remember Mr. Vance as warm, personable and even charismatic. But several also said they were perplexed by what they saw as Mr. Vance’s profound ideological shift.” That’s a real head-scratcher: since when does being warm and personable have anything to do with one’s ideology? Mussolini could be warm and personable. As for charisma, well.

The article recounts, with an air of true perplexity, the conundrum of Vance and his wife, who is of Indian descent and the daughter of immigrants, “deliver[ing]- home-baked treats” to a transgender student who had just undergone, as the Times put it in smug jargon, “top surgery” as if it were an everyday procedure, like a tonsillectomy. It then quotes the student, who said they abruptly ended the friendship after Vance, as senator from Ohio, supported legislation in Arkansas that prohibited transgender care for children.

Of course, they had every right to take offence. But there is no contradiction between treating trans people with kindness, protectiveness and respect and opposing transgender treatment for children. Except in the mind of the New York Times, whose grim, sanctimonious and lucrative prosecution of MeToo, the 1619 Project, the trans revolution, and its stigmatising of everything from a Confederate statue in the middle of nowhere to gas stoves and gas-powered cars had as much to do with Trump’s resurrection as anything else.

Is Donald Trump the victim of stochastic terrorism? (UnHerd)

Trump endorses vaccine conspiracy theory in leaked call with RFK Jr. (Kevin Breuninger/CNBC)

“Staged Theatrics To Win Idiots’ Vote”: Virginia Prof Declares Trump Shooting Was Faked

FBI, DHS Warn of Retaliation After Trump Shooting  Well, obviously, Republicans will respond the way Democrats would–be afraid, be very afraid….

The Dismissal of the Trump Classified Documents Case Is Deeply Dangerous (Neal K. Katyal/New York Times)

J.D. Vance pick unnerves GOP’s business elite, thrills populists (Jeff Stein/Washington Post)

Trump is an authoritarian who must not win. Saying that is not inciting violence (Jan-Werner Müller/The Guardian)

‘Whoa whoa whoa!’ CNN host stops GOP rep for suggesting Secret Service set Trump up (Matthew Chapman/Raw Story)

Yale Law School Snubs J.D. Vance-But Does Mention Taylor Swift (Alexander Nazaryan/The Daily Beast)  Vance got his law degree from Yale Law School; Taylor Swift–not so much….

A Gunman Shot at Trump With an AR-15. RNC Visitors Can Win a Free One (Tim Dickinson/Rolling Stone)

‘Do You Just Not Say Anything?’: Biden Blames Trump for ‘Rhetoric’ After Admitting ‘Bullseye’ Comment Was a ‘Mistake’

‘They’ didn’t shoot Donald Trump (Philip Bump/Washington Post)

The View Defends Continued Use of Inciting Rhetoric Against Trump

JD Vance charted a Trump-centric, populist path in Senate as he fought GOP establishment (Associated Press)

Van Jones: Vance Is A ‘More Dangerous Virus’ Than Trump

How Gen Z Responds to Attempt to Kill Trump

MSNBC: Trump’s Bandaged Ear ‘a Spectacle’ to ‘Mine’ for Support

CBS Frets ’24 Trump Opponents Neither Holding Out Nor ‘Resisting the Temptation To Endorse’

Ted Cruz pushes the GOP’s immigrant-voting lie deeper into the slime (Philip Bump/Washington Post)

MSNBC Thinks Viewers Are Morons, Falsely Equates Menéndez and Trump’s Convictions

MSNBC Pushes Debunked Conspiracy Theory that Trump Wasn’t Shot, Glass

The MAGA Plan to End Free Weather Reports (Zoë Schlanger/The Atlantic)

Former Obama Interior Secretary: “really afraid for the future of our planet” if President Trump Wins

JD Vance: prince of the MAGA movement  (UnHerd)

Vance Becomes Face Of ‘New Right’

The extraordinary duplicity of Musk’s $180 million donation to support Trump (Judd Legum/Popular Information)

The phony populism of JD Vance (Noah Berlatsky/Public Notice)

Morning Joe Speculates: Maybe Trump Wasn’t Conservative ENOUGH For Shooter!

NBC Omits Biden Scolding Lester Holt as a Trump Enabler

Editor at ‘major news outlet’ tells media to bury iconic photo of Trump after assassination attempt: report (Yael Halon/Fox News)

Boiled Frog Journalism: Is Trump an Agent of Saudi Arabia, and Other Pressing Questions Buried under Biden’s Age (emptywheel)

JD Vance on Abortion (Jessica Valenti/Abortion, Every Day)

MAGA Makes Racist Attacks Against JD Vance’s Wife (Ewan Palmer/Newsweek)

J.D. Vance’s Stunning Admission About Trump Spells Trouble for MAGA (New Republic)  In your dreams….

A new kind of Republican Party is forming at the RNC (Politico)

‘Arm yourself accordingly’: What the GOP is saying about gun control after Trump shooting (Laura Gersony/USA Today)

Anderson Smears Tim Scott As ‘Uncle Tim or Tom’ After RNC Speech

Court ‘Going To Remove’ Aileen Cannon From Trump Case: Anti-MAGA Lawyer (Ewan Palmer/Newsweek)

‘Scared to Death’: GOP Security Hawks Slam Vance Selection (Jonathan Martin/Politico)

Trump’s choice of Vance ‘terrible news’ for Ukraine, Europe experts warn (Andrew Roth/The Guardian)  Gee, what a pity.

Google Buries Trump Campaign Website Even in Thick of Republic National Convention

Trump’s tariffs mean big opportunities for corruption (Matthew Yglesias/Slow Boring)  At least ten percent won’t be going to the Big Guy.

NY Times Shrugs Off Lefty Conspiracy Theories on Trump Shooting: ‘Hardly Household Names’

Kamala Harris says Trump picked JD Vance to be ‘rubber stamp’ for former president’s ‘extreme agenda’ (Landon Mion/Fox News)  Kemala, of course, aspires to be a rubber stamp some day….

Biden Administration Stonewalls Congressional Investigation Into Trump Shooting

How Trump’s Running Mate J.D. Vance is Connected to Silicon Valley (New York Times)  Dunh dunh DUNH….

J.D. Vance described Alex Jones as a truth teller to the Teneo Network, a Project 2025 partner organization (Jack Wheatley/Media Matters for America) More so than Media Matters.

On MSNBC, George Conway Mocks Religious Republicans for Feeling ‘God Saved Trump’

Networks Cheer Biden in Nevada, Ignore Incendiary Rhetoric Toward Trump, GOP

CAIR Honcho and ‘Squad’ Donor Suggests Israel Behind Suspected Iranian Plot To Assassinate Trump

Wallace Praises Kamala Claims She’ll ‘Wipe the Floor With J.D. Vance  Uh, Vance graduated from Yale Law. Jambalaya went to UC Hastings. I know whom I would put my money on.

PBS RNC Night 2: Echoing ‘White Supremacist Notions,’ Don’t Say ‘Illegals’

Read it.

Maybe if they were to take their shoes off….

Read it.

Economists are railing against President Joe Biden’s plan to impose rent controls on nearly half of the nation’s rental market as a ham-fisted election year ploy that would disincentivize building new housing and make it more difficult for Americans already struggling to pay their rent.

Biden on Tuesday unveiled his nationwide rent control plan, which would strip federal tax breaks for corporate landlords with more than 50 units who increase rents by more than 5 percent annually. The White House is promoting the plan as an anti-price-gouging measure to stabilize rents, which have ballooned 22 percent since Biden took office, that would last for only two years. But economists who spoke with the Washington Free Beacon said the Biden administration can’t spin its way out of the fact that the policy would almost certainly exacerbate housing shortages and ultimately increase prices for renters.

“Most economists would agree that it’s a pretty bad idea because it has many unintended consequences,” said Tobias Peter, the co-director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Housing Center. “Rents are high because there is more demand than there is supply. And so the solution is not to cap rents, the solution is to build more housing so that rents would naturally come down.”

Imagine that.

Read it.

“I’m about to come out with a major initiative on limiting the court. … I’ve been working with constitutional scholars for the last three months,” Biden said, according to the Washington Post. Sources familiar with the deliberations confirmed to CNN the president is “seriously considering” endorsing significant changes to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks, including proposals to establish term limits for the justices, an enforceable ethics code, and a constitutional act that would overturn the recent immunity ruling.

In an effort to save his stumbling reelection campaign, Biden—who entered the presidency as a center-left moderate—has cozied up to progressive Democrats, who largely have remained faithful to his campaign.

Last week, Biden unveiled a plan to cap landlords’ ability to increase rent prices, as continued inflation has made the cost of housing one of the biggest hurdles for Americans. The move has been celebrated by progressives such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.).

Biden must be the new Mussolini, since the position of new Hitler is already taken.

UK Daily Mail

According to the TV personality, who appeared in the TLC reality series in 2020 and previously went viral for discussing her ‘awful’ experience dating an HBO star, she and the unnamed Senator would have ‘virtual dates’ that involved her consuming meals while he watched in exchange for money.

There’s a name for such a relationship, and it isn’t ‘dating’.

Well, let’s hope he’s learned something from this experience.

I must confess that we aren’t electing the sharpest pencils in the box to public office.

Read it.

In a July 16 article, Bloomberg News reporters Simone Foxman and Michael Hirtzer responded to a John Deere decision to abandon some of the radical DEI policies exposed by podcast host Robby Starbuck. The article completely neglected to mention that their boss has slapped ESG scores on thousands of companies in a massive push to shame them into compliance.

Read it.

President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party insist that “Democracy is on the ballot” this election.

While some of us have challenged that hyperbolic claim, one thing that may not be on the ballot is choice, if the defenders of Democracy have anything to say about it.

Georgia Democrats have joined counterparts in other states to prevent citizens from being able to vote third-party candidates.

The American Mind.

Your driving habits might be secretly influencing more than just your road safety—they could be impacting your wallet, too. While everyone knows about credit scores, fewer are aware of the existence and potential consequences of a driver score. This score reflects various aspects of your driving behavior, including how often you brake suddenly, exceed speed limits, use your phone while driving, or operate your vehicle late at night. Auto insurance companies have increasingly been leveraging this data to adjust insurance rates, aiming for a more accurate reflection of the risk posed by individual drivers.

In the past, for rather obvious reasons, auto insurers struggled to encourage consumers to participate in usage-based insurance plans, which monitor driving behaviors to adjust rates accordingly. Consequently, the industry has adopted alternative methods to gather driving data, such as collaborating with automakers or utilizing existing smartphone apps already in use by drivers. Despite the widespread collection of such data, many individuals remain unaware of the extent to which their driving behaviors are being monitored by insurance companies.

The implications of such data collection extend far beyond insurance rates, touching upon broader concerns surrounding personal freedom and privacy. Recent legislative efforts, such as the mandate for new cars to be equipped with a “kill switch” feature by 2026, raise significant questions about government control over vehicles and the potential misuse of such technology.

Read it.

Nantucket residents are watching their pristine beaches transform into “waste dumps” filled with floating debris and sharp fiberglass shards. This prompted officials to close beaches this week after a massive offshore wind turbine experienced a catastrophic failure.

I’m sure ‘climate change’ is to blame.