STACEY ABRAMS MEANS BUSINESS, GEORGIA: Georgia Governor Declares State of Emergency, Deploys National Guard after July 4th Weekend Violence.

HMM: Covid-19 news: One in ten cases in England have been in health workers.

MEANWHILE, BACK ON THE SUB-CONTINENT: StrategyPage’s latest India-Pakistan update really focuses on Communist China’s duplicity, border violations and general trouble-making. The post is long but detailed and informative.

I’ll highlight one section (about a third of the way through the article), since major media appear to have little interest in the Pangong Lake dispute.

In June China revived the border war over Pangong Lake, which is largely in Tibet and patrolled by a small Chinese naval force. This is the longest lake in Asia and part of the 134-kilometer long lake extends 45 kilometers into the Indian Ladakh region. China is using its usual “sneak, grab and stay” tactics to slowly move the border into territory long occupied by India. The portion of the lake shore in dispute has no native population. The only people who visit the area are soldiers from India or China.

Given this newly declared foreign threat China has, since 2019, sent new Type928D Patrol Boats to guard the lake. This fast (70 kilometers an hour) boat is armed with an RWS (Remote Weapons System) using a 12.7mm machine-gun plus two or more smaller (7.62mm) machine-guns that can be outed elsewhere on the boat and operated by one of the ten sailors on board. There is also seating below deck for up to twenty troops. India has smaller boats patrolling it portion of the 4,200-meter high lake, except for the few months when the entire lake is frozen over.

The article also discusses the Galwan River Valley dispute. This essay from 2015 analyzes Communist China’s “cabbage” imperialism in the South China Sea. It’s a slower version of “sneak, grab and stay,” but seeks the same imperialist territory-gobbling results.

READY IN JAPAN: Quite a show. From the Pentagon caption: “Twelve U.S. Air Force F-16CM Fighting Falcons, 12 Japan Air Self-Defense Force F-35A Lightning IIs, two U.S. Navy EA-18G Growlers, a U.S. Navy C-12 Huron, two U.S. Air Force MC-130J Commando IIs, and a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon participate in an elephant walk at Misawa Air Base, Japan, June 22, 2020.” The caption goes on to say the photo records Misawa’s first “bilateral and joint elephant walk.” This article from January 2020 discusses F-35 acquisition by Japan and Singapore. Both countries are purchasing F-35As and F-35Bs (the vertical takeoff and landing variant). Here’s a USMC F-35B taking off from Futenma, Okinawa.

WAVES: Behind the Dead-Water Phenomenon.

CHARLES LIPSON: The Fierce Fight Over America’s Ideals and History. “Most Americans think our nation’s history and aspirations are good, sometimes noble, sometimes flawed, not rotten to the core. They recognize the cruelties, such as slavery and Jim Crow, and want them taught, not glossed over. But they do not think our republic was founded to perpetuate those cruelties. Rather, they think our collective story is one of hope and progress, of confronting and overcoming the worst abuses. It is a story of expanding opportunities, sometimes too slowly but ultimately for everyone.”

THIS IS CNN: Don Lemon Speaks Over Terry Crews: Dead Black Children Are ‘Not What Black Lives Matter Is About.’

Related: When Black Lives Matter to Democrats — And When They Don’t.

CURVE, BENT: COVID-19 May Soon Lose Status as an ‘Epidemic’ Under CDC Guidelines.

UM, SLOWER PLEASE? Earth’s magnetic field can shift 10 times faster than scientists thought.

HALLE BERRY SELF-CANCELS NEW FILM PROJECT OVER “TRANS ISSUES:”

You’ll notice how many among the offended masses referenced the short-lived effort to get the movie Rub and Tug onto the silver screen. They had signed on Scarlett Johansson for the lead role, also a transgender male character. (Johansson is similarly afflicted with the same curse of being a “cisgender” female.) The pressure got to her and she dropped out. And what happened to Rub and Tug? The entire project collapsed and wound up in the burn file. That means that the screenwriter, the director, the other actors who would have performed in it and the entire production crew all lost out on that work.

The reasons are obvious. As anyone who has worked in or around the industry will tell you, it’s incredibly hard to get a script from the drawing board to the big screen. There are literally millions of scripts floating around Hollywood and the rest of the country. Pretty much every waiter and waitress in Los Angeles has one in their glove box at any given time. But if the people pushing the project can sign on a really big name for a leading role, your chances shoot up astronomically. Halle Berry is one of those names. Anything she agrees to act in is almost assured a full theatrical release.

So what’s going to happen to the film now? Nothing is ever a sure thing in Hollywood, but it’s a safe bet that it will go the same way that Rub and Tug did. And everyone else associated with this new project will see the same fate.

Apparently, motives are far more important than actually getting a story out on film. In accordance with the prophesy: Scarlett Johansson Under Fire For Agreeing To Play Giant Sandworm In Upcoming ‘Dune’ Adaptation. “‘Scarlett really needs to stay in her lane,’ said a representative for the Sandworm Actors Guild of America. ‘Until you’ve lived it, you can’t possibly understand what it truly means to live underground generating spice. Back off, girl!’”

LIVING HISTORY: Sixth-Great Grandson Of Thomas Jefferson And Sally Hemings Says Americans MUST Unite.

UPDATE (From Ed): W. Joseph Campbell, of the Media Myth Alert blog emails, “I don’t believe it’s ever been conclusively proven that Jefferson had children by Hemings. That, at least, was the finding of a panel of Jefferson experts who issued a hefty report back in 2011. It’s available on Amazon. And here’s a link to a CSPAN3 video of the book launch. The principal editor, a UVA law professor named Robert Turner, retired early this year. I haven’t kept up with developments in the controversy but Turner may have. Here’s a pertinent link from the Jefferson Heritage Society. I’m no expert on Jefferson or this topic, but I did want to mention the dispute, FYI.”

HMM: Accuracy of COVID-19 antibody tests depends on timing, analysis finds.

GLEICHSCHALTUNG: Oklahoma State University football coach takes $1M pay cut for wearing OAN shirt while on vacation.

LIFE IN DE BLASIO’S NEW YORK: Video: Gunman opens fire at rival as child scrambles to get inside Brooklyn NYCHA apartment building.

DISPATCHES FROM THE LULULEMON RIOTS: The gentrification of revolt — liberals distract from real change in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. “The most selfish generation isn’t doing this for Black Lives. They are doing it for Instagram.”

Hollow gestures of corporate solidarity are meant to appease everyone apart from the people living with the every day stigma of police profiling, who couldn’t care less. Nobody asked to remove old episodes of the Golden Girls over mud masks or for white actors to give up their work voicing black characters. But the companies know that if the media and politicians will use a a private citizen in Central Park’s confrontation with a bird watcher as a symbol of systemic racism to distract from their disastrous decades of policies, then they will surely come after a corporate brand of rice or syrup.

* * * * * * * *

Renaming a plaza in Washington DC or painting giant yellow letters down 5th Avenue in New York outside Trump Tower is the perfect kind of shiny object for the media to focus on. Just keep ignoring the Democrat politicians who have failed these communities over and over again.

Earlier: The neoliberal counter-revolution. “Does anyone seriously believe the American establishment — Walmart, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, the trustees of Ivy League universities, the major sports leagues, even Brooks Brothers, for God’s sake — would sign on to a movement that genuinely threatened its material interests?”

CHINA SYNDROME: The Chinese Government is Accessing YOUR Network Through the Backdoor and There Still is NO Place to Hide. More “adversary technology,” where you don’t know whether your tech is working for you, or for someone else.

DEMOCRATS ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR A GIMMICK TO INSULATE THEIR CANDIDATES FROM CRITICISM, BECAUSE THEIR CANDIDATES ARE SO VULNERABLE TO CRITICISM: Whenever you talk about Tammy Duckworth, you must talk about her legs.

It’s terrible that she suffered this injury, and we owe her great respect and empathy, but if she’s going to be the VP candidate, it better not be because we’re not allowed to criticize her ideas and her political intentions.

Well, their talent pool is pretty shallow.

WHY IS THE WASHINGTON POST SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACIST, SEXIST HATRED? Washington Post opinion editor calls America a ‘racist and patriarchal society’ and thinks ‘it’s time to bury the cutesy “Karen” nickname for dangerous white women.’

EVERYTHING MUST GO: ‘Cancel Hamilton’ Trends As Leftists Demand Disney Pull Musical That ‘Glorifies Slave Trader.’

DISPATCHES FROM THE NATIONAL (SOCIALIST) FUHRER LEAGUE: NFL star DeSean Jackson defends fake Hitler quote, shares Louis Farrakhan anti-vaccine video. “Football coach wears an OAN shirt and it’s the biggest news of the day and leads to him losing $1 million of his salary. Wide Receiver promotes Louis Farrakhan and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and it barely even trends on Twitter.”

NOW OUT FROM KURT SCHLICHTER: The 21 Biggest Lies about Donald Trump (and you!).

BRYAN PRESTON: NYC’s De Blasio Blames Coronavirus For City’s Violence, But His Own Top Cop Blames De Blasio And His ‘Reforms.’

WE CAN HOPE: Is The Pandemic Coming To An End At Last? “Well, firstly, it’s not actually us saying this. It’s the Centers for Disease Control, which reported that the death rate has fallen so far it’s now roughly equal to the threshold for even qualifying as an epidemic, which isn’t as severe as a pandemic.”

Death rates aren’t following case numbers up, at least not yet. In my area we had our first Covid deaths in two months last week, as case numbers climb — but we’ve had a total of 9 deaths in a county of over 400,000 people since the beginning of the pandemic. We’ve almost certainly lost more people to flu in the same period.

But case numbers are climbing, and death is a lagging indicator. Even so, though, if the disease is as fatal as it was in, say, March, deaths should be climbing much faster than they are. Some of that is no doubt because we don’t have the nursing home outbreaks we had back when Grandma-Killer Cuomo and other governors were sending infected patients into nursing homes, and some of it may be because Vitamin D levels are higher this time of year, and coronavirus fatalities seem closely tied to very low Vitamin D levels. Also, thanks to the marches and the general laxity that followed them, more of the infected are younger people, who typically don’t get as sick. That’s good, because it’s moving us toward herd immunity with as few fatalities as possible. But stay tuned; it’s still too early to know what’s really going on.

COMMUNIST FRONT CORPORATION: TikTok Banned in US? SecState Pompeo Says We’re ‘Looking At’ It.