IT’S FAIR TO CONCLUDE THEY JUST WANT PEOPLE DEAD: Bureaucrats and Politicians Seem Determined To Cripple a Lifesaving Alternative to Smoking.

WE’RE SAVED! Hollywood Finally Figures Out How to End COVID. Why Didn’t We Think of This Sooner?

GUN CONTROL IS PEOPLE CONTROL: The Media Make It Clear The Problem Isn’t The Guns, It’s You.

SHOT: EU Commissioner Warns ‘Something is Broken’ in Transatlantic Ties in Wake of AUKUS Sub Snub.

Chaser: Biden Claims He’s ‘Prioritized Rebuilding Our Alliances’ at Debut UN Speech.

ANOTHER RED LINE CROSSED WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE: Another Russian Ransomware Attack on America’s Food Supply Because Nobody Takes Biden Seriously.

SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE IS STUCK LIKE THAT: UC Berkeley’s latest ‘cluster hire’ fails to add intellectual diversity. “Maya Carrasquillo, one of the new hires, describes herself as a ‘Social Justice Engineer’ and ‘Scholar Activist’ whose research combines critical race theory with environmental studies and urban infrastructure.”

SHE’S NOT WRONG: Marcia Lucas Was ‘Furious’ Over Star Wars Sequel Trilogy: ‘They Don’t Get It.’

“They don’t get it,” Lucas writes. “And J.J. Abrams is writing these stories — when I saw the movie where they kill Han Solo, I was furious… Absolutely, positively there was no rhyme or reason to it. I thought, You don’t get the Jedi story. You don’t get the magic of Star Wars. You’re getting rid of Han Solo? And then at the end of this last one, they have Luke disintegrate. They killed Han Solo. They killed Luke Skywalker. And they don’t have Princess Leia anymore. And they’re spitting out movies every year.”

Lucas seems to have little love for Daisy Ridley’s Rey either, pointing to the many unanswered questions surrounding the character and her background pre-Episode IX (when this foreword appears to have been commissioned).

“And they think it’s important to appeal to a woman’s audience, so now their main character is this female, who’s supposed to have Jedi powers, but we don’t know how she got Jedi powers, or who she is. It sucks. The storylines are terrible. Terrible. Just awful.”

If you loved the original Star Wars — and who doesn’t? — Marcia Lucas is a big reason why, having saved her ex-husband’s movie in the editing bay: Five Ways Marcia Lucas Gave Star Wars Its Heart.

I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: COVID has made it tougher for some young kids to communicate.

COVID MAKES FOR STRANGE BEDFELLOWS: When It Comes to Vaccine Mandates, Black Lives Matter Agrees with… Tucker Carlson?!?

If Tucker Carlson is a murderer for opposing vaccine mandates, what does that make BLM supporters who oppose vaccine mandates? Where’s the goofy video about them? Are these Democrat political action committees so afraid of being called racists that they won’t save these misguided African-American anti-vaxxers from themselves?

I don’t believe vaccine mandates are racist. I also don’t believe vaccine mandates are American. You should be able to refuse for any reason, no matter how ridiculous. It’s not up to anybody else to tell you what to put in your body, and the more they try to coerce you, the less you should trust them.

Yes, I’m vaccinated. No, it’s nobody’s business but my own.

So I stand with BLM on this one. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still the right thing.

Guess that’s just my white privilege talking!

Earlier: “Why Bill de Blasio’s COVID Passport Edict Is About to Backfire Hard:” “Black Americans remain the demographic that’s least likely to be vaccinated in the city. I’m just shocked it took this long for the liberals to shoot themselves in the foot on this one. Why would Mayor Bill de Blasio pass such a racist edict? You think you know someone, huh? No, but seriously, he chucked this boomerang and it’s about to break his face. So much for being part of those BLM murals over the summer, huh, Bill?”

RESTORING TRUST IN THE WHITE HOUSE OR WHATEVER: OUCH: Biden’s Approval Ratings Hit a New Grim Milestone.

LOW-FAT DAIRY IS OVERRATED: Sticking to low-fat dairy may not be the only heart healthy option, study shows. “New research amongst the world’s biggest consumers of dairy foods has shown that those with higher intakes of dairy fat—measured by levels of fatty acids in the blood—had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease compared to those with low intakes. Higher intakes of dairy fat were not associated with an increased risk of death.”

They told us the dietary science was settled.

REMEMBER ‘WRONG-WAY FELDMAN?’ No, probably not, but the guys at Issues & Insights do and they suggest “Wrong-Way Biden” is now the appropriate title for the guy in the White House who appears to also be lost in the clouds.

CHANGE? Why Democrats are getting squeamish about taxing the moderately rich. “It’s notable that the most avid supporters of SALT cap repeal in Congress haven’t limited themselves to arguing the provision hurts Democrats or makes it harder for states to raise taxes. Rather, they’ve deployed the kind of unabashed anti-tax rhetoric that until recently was almost exclusively the domain of the GOP.”

Trump’s SALT deduction cap continues to pay interesting political dividends.

FAKE NEWS: Leftists, Liberal Media Push Narrative That Border Patrol Agents Whipped Haitian Migrants.

JUST PAY SPACEX TO BUILD ONE? U.S. must prepare now to replace International Space Station, experts urge.

BIDEN VOTERS POSTING THEIR L’S ONLINE:

● Shot: Meghan McCain: Who knew Biden would turn out to be this awful?

—Ed Morrissey, Hot Air, today.

● Chaser: Meghan McCain talks to Joe Biden ‘all the time.’

—CNN, August 2^nd, 2018.

OH: Mayorkas Admits Just 3 Percent of Afghan Evacuees in U.S. Are Special Immigrant Visa Holders.

OLD AND BUSTED: Genetically engineered Frankenfood is a “gigantic experiment with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong.”

THE NEW HOTNESS: Let’s make lettuce that gives you an mRNA vaccine when you eat it! “[We] have long-term goals of people growing it in their own gardens… Farmers could also eventually grow entire fields of it.”

Dr. Ian Malcom’s wisdom is needed now more than ever.

I REMEMBER WHEN THE PRESS WAS DUMPING ON RON DESANTIS FOR CHAMPIONING THIS TREATMENT: Study: Monoclonal antibodies reduce COVID-19 hospitalization, death risk.

10 REASONS TO REJECT VACCINE PASSPORTS: Australian authorities have taken a much more authoritarian approach in several respects than the U.S. to dealing with the Covid pandemic and the availability of vaccines. So perhaps it shouldn’t surprise that an Aussie blogger, Kurt Mahlburg of Cross and Culture, offers a convincing case against vaccine passports that applies here in the states, too.

SKI MASK SEASON: Vail Resorts to require proof of vaccination for guests at cafeterias along with all workers.

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! We need to talk about Joe Biden:

After his speech to the UNGA, he still had a bilateral meeting with Boris Johnson at the White House. As such, Biden’s staff made sure he was armed with a laminated notecard for the meeting, which contained commands like ‘sit’, ‘stay’ and ‘roll over’.

Not really, but the notes snapped by an eagle-eyed press photographer did remind the President to welcome Johnson to the White House and speak positively about the relationship between the UK and the US. An easy thing to forget for a president, apparently.

The most shameful portion of the sit-down, however, came when the leaders began to interact with the press in the room. Biden derisively replied ‘good luck’ when Johnson suggested the pair take questions from the pool reporters then refused to call on any members of the American media.

Once Johnson had taken questions from the British press, Biden’s wranglers cut the British PM off mid-sentence, yelling at the media to leave the room. Biden eventually appeared prepared to respond to a question about the border from CBS’s Ed O’Keefe, but the wranglers continued to shout so that reporters could not hear the President’s answer.

More here: White House Reporters File ‘Formal Complaint’ Against Biden After Aides Shout Them out of Oval Office.

XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT! Twitter Cedes Taiwan to China: “China has finally taken control of Taiwan, according to social networking giant Twitter, which redirects some searches for the word Taiwan to results for the word China. China’s regime has long laid claim to Taiwan, an independent island founded by those fleeing communism. Journalist Jeryl Bier on Friday morning noticed Twitter’s discrepancy, which mirrors Chinese Communist Party talking points. The Washington Free Beacon confirmed the pattern and estimated that between four and five tweets with the word China show up for every one that references Taiwan.”

FILE UNDER SHOW-BIZ HYPOCRISY: The networks are virtue signaling as hard as they can, by creating this pablum. Meanwhile: