SO, WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN SEPTEMBER THAT’S IMPORTANT FOR THE HUMAN FUTURE?  Save the Date!

EDITH WILSON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Who’s Really Running the Country? A Jill Biden Photo Has Us Wondering.

POLITICS IS THE EXPLANATION: Chuck Grassley to DOJ: Explain Discrepancy In Application Of Law For BLM/Antifa vs. Capitol Rioters.

A VOTING RIGHTS VICTORY: Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds Signs Law Banning Ballot Harvesting.

WE CONTINUE TO WORK ON THE “WELCOME WAGON” PROJECT: People Fleeing Collapsing Economies of Blue States Advise Those Who Remain: ‘Start Making Better Decisions on Who You Vote For.’

NOW OUT FROM CHRISTOPHER NUTTALL: Cast Adrift.

OPEN THREAD: Wishing it could always be this way.

SPACE: Relativity Space raises $650 million round, announces Terran R rocket. “Relativity Space announced June 8 it has raised $650 million in a new funding round to support development of a fully reusable launch vehicle far larger than its original Terran 1 rocket. Relativity said Fidelity led its Series E round with participation from new investors BlackRock, Centricus, Coatue and Soroban Capital. Existing investors also contributed to the round, including Ballie Gifford, K5 Global, Tiger Global, Tribe Capital, XN and a number of individuals. The company did not disclose its valuation after the round, but an industry source familiar with the deal estimated it at $4.2 billion. . . . Terran R is designed to carry payloads in excess of 20,000 kilograms into low Earth orbit.”

Plus: “Relativity is the latest in a line of companies that entered the launch market with small vehicles but are now moving to larger ones. Rocket Lab announced in March its plans to build Neutron, a medium-class vehicle capable of placing 8,000 kilograms into low Earth orbit. Firefly Aerospace, whose Alpha rocket is nearing its first launch, is working on a larger vehicle, called Beta.”

I love what SpaceX is doing, but it’s good to have competition.

GLENN GREENWALD: Yet Another Media Tale — Trump Tear-Gassed Protesters For a Church Photo Op — Collapses.

For more than a year, it has been consecrated media fact that former President Donald Trump and his White House, on June 1 of last year, directed the U.S. Park Police to use tear gas against peaceful Lafayette Park protesters, all to enable a Trump photo-op in front of St. John’s Church. That this happened was never presented as a possibility or likelihood but as indisputable truth. And it provoked weeks of unmitigated media outrage, presented as one of the most egregious assaults on the democratic order in decades.

This tale was so pervasive in the media landscape that it would be impossible for any one article to compile all the examples. “Peaceful Protesters Tear-Gassed To Clear Way For Trump Church Photo-Op,” read the NPR headline on June 1. The New York Times ran with: “Protesters Dispersed With Tear Gas So Trump Could Pose at Church.” CNN devoted multiple segments to venting indignation while the on-screen graphic declared: “Peaceful Protesters Near White House Tear-Gassed, Shot With Rubber Bullets So Trump Can Have Church Photo Op.”

* * * * * * * *

With the issuance of this independent debunking of their claims, the journalists who spread this latest lie have started to come to terms with what they did — yet again. “A narrative we thought we knew is not the reality,” NBC News’ chief CIA Disinformation Agent Ken Dilanian awkwardly acknowledged on Meet the Press Daily. Shortly before publication of this article, Politico begrudgingly admitted that while “the department’s Park Police failed to give Black Lives Matter demonstrators proper warning before it cleared them from Lafayette Park,” their primary media claim was untrue: “its actions were unrelated to President Donald Trump’s photo-op appearance at a nearby church.” Time will tell how readily others who spread this lie will account for how they — yet again — got this story so wrong.

“A narrative we thought we knew is not the reality” sums up most of the DNC-MSM’s daily output remarkably well. And of course their candidate was quick to pile onto the narrative that wasn’t reality last year as well: Government Report Undermines Biden’s Claim That Trump Had Protesters Tear-Gassed.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): A former journalist friend texts: “All their red-faced mea culpas about tear gas or anything else are meaningless until they say, ‘We regurgitated unconfirmed and ultimately false garbage. Not only because we wanted to believe it. But because we wanted to take him down. And it worked! In the end, we are the garbage.’
‘Do not trust us. We suck’ is probably asking too much.” It’s basically true, though.

MARC THIESSEN: Democrats should be careful. They need Manchin more than he needs them. “They need to decide: Do they want Manchin to be their party’s John McCain (R-Ariz.) — a maverick who went his own way on issues but stayed within the party fold? Or do they want Manchin to become their party’s Jim Jeffords, the Vermont Republican who became the first senator in history to hand Senate control to the opposition by switching parties? In May 2001, Jeffords announced he was leaving the GOP to caucus with the Democrats. Then, as now, the Senate was split 50-50 — which meant his defection put Democrats into the majority.”

Plus:

In resisting their radical agenda, Manchin is simply representing his constituents. West Virginia is one of the reddest states in the country — so red that its Democratic governor, Jim Justice, switched parties in 2017. If Manchin chose to do the same, he would be welcomed by the Senate Republicans with open arms. Like Jeffords before him, he would be given a plum committee chairmanship. And he would still be the decisive swing vote in the Senate — except with Republicans in control, he would have even more influence than he does today in setting the agenda.

Instead of complaining that Manchin threatens their far-left policies, Democrats ought to recognize that voters did not give them a mandate to pursue so radical an agenda. They elected an evenly split Senate and gave Democrats a narrow majority in the House — one they are in danger of losing in 2022. The normal reaction to this outcome would be to follow Manchin’s advice, temper their demands and reach across the aisle. Instead, Democrats are acting like they won in a landslide, trying to ram through extreme partisan bills. If they had an actual mandate to do this, one conservative West Virginia Democrat would not be able to stand in their way. Rather than railing about Manchin, they should moderate their agenda and seek bipartisan compromises with Republicans that Manchin can support.

The fact is, Democrats need Manchin more than he needs them — not just to preserve their Senate majority, but also to stop their party from falling over a left-wing cliff.

Falling over? Eagerly running over.

SKYNET SMILES: MIT is Building a Dynamic, Acrobatic Humanoid Robot.

UH HUH: Yoga Teacher Jessamyn Stanley Believes White Supremacy Has Polluted Yoga – and It’s Time to Talk About It. The woke left is composed of ugly people who want to be treated as beautiful people, bad people who want to be treated as good people, stupid people who want to be treated as smart people, and the grifters who profit from the above.

FASTER, PLEASE: New spacecraft will use lasers to transmit video, data in seconds.

I THINK I KNOW THE ANSWER: Are Activists Protecting Asians from Hate–Or Protecting Their Narrative of White Supremacy from Criticism?

CASUALTIES IN THE WAR ON FLYOVER COUNTRY: Study: Death rates from chronic conditions, ‘deaths of despair’ rising in rural U.S.

WELL, GOOD: Study of severe COVID-19 helps uncover the roots of sepsis.

GREAT MOMENTS IN SOVIET PSYCHIATRY:

Here’s the link to the article’s page, and a screenshot, in case there’s eventually Soviet-style airbrushing as well:

ON LAWS TARGETING CRITICAL RACE THEORY: “HOW HAS THIS ACADEMIC CONCEPT BECOME SO POLITICIZED?” That it has can’t possibly surprise anyone, though that doesn’t disqualify it as an academic concept.

Seeing how state bills target it differently is a reminder, though, that CRT is now a grab bag term, like cancel culture or political correctness, that means different things to different people. That doesn’t make it (or criticism of it) meaningless, it just means that you have to pay attention to the details.

NO ONE WILL CARE ABOUT THE HUNTER BIDEN N-WORD SCANDAL:

Along with his naughty words, Hunter also describes the God his father believes in as ‘a fictional character from the imagination of the collective frightened’. The exchange also suggests that Hunter may have accidentally sent George a sext, attempting to reach a woman named Georgia.

This would all be very, very bad for Hunter and his parents, if he were a local TV anchor or a cake-shop owner or a middle schooler or something. If he were any of those things then this story might conceivably consume the national news cycle for at least a day.

Fear not, though. Hunter Biden will be fine. His story will be restricted to the pages of the Mail and a few conservative-ish outlets. To his immense good fortune, he’s merely the son of a US president who has inexplicably piled up one lucrative opportunity after another despite being a druggie and all-around screwup. Nobody at CNN finds his story interesting.

Now, if Hunter were someone really powerful and important, like an anonymous high-schooler dreaming of cheerleading at the University of Tennessee, then this story would be important. Then, he might get a 2,500-word essay in the New York Times about him and the psychopathic classmate who doxxed him for a two-year-old video.

Of course Hunter will get a pass — no DNC operative with a byline wants to be attacked by his boss: Biden persecutes journalists.

After Biden took office, the department continued to pursue subpoenas for reporters’ email logs issued to Google, which operates the New York Times’ email systems, and it obtained a gag order compelling a Times attorney to keep silent about the fact that federal authorities were seeking to seize his colleagues’ records. Later, when the Justice Department broadened the number of those permitted to know about the effort, it barred Times executives from discussing the legal battle with the Times newsroom, including the paper’s top editor.

This escalation, on Biden’s watch, represents an unprecedented assault on American news organizations and their efforts to inform the public about government wrongdoing.

That’s from the Washington Post, and spotted by Richard Fernandez. Also from the Washington Post, back in September: Washington Post editorial board endorses Biden.

Good and hard, fellas.

I LIKE THE RED DOT FOR ACCURACY AND SITUATIONAL AWARENESS, but I find target acquisition/reacquisition is a bit slower than with iron sights, even after practice. Red Dots vs. Iron Sights: Which is Better for Handguns? That’s less true with rifles than with handguns, though, for whatever reason. With the Romeo optic on my Sig P226, I sometimes have to look to find the red dot. With the Aimpoint on my M4, on the other hand, the dot is always right there. I don’t know if that’s the optics, or the different firearms.

EASY MONEY: Hunter Biden Facilitated Deal for Democratic Consultants Now Under Federal Investigation. “Biden and colleagues at the private equity firm Rosemont Seneca helped Burisma Holdings hire Blue Star Strategies, a firm owned by former Clinton administration officials Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano. Biden’s emails show he played a bigger role than anyone had known in arranging Blue Star’s consulting work for Burisma. Neither Biden nor the Blue Star founders registered their work under the Lobbying Disclosure Act or the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”

HE ALWAYS REVERTS TO THE MEAN: Obama’s Back and He’s Mocking Americans Again.

GOODER AND HARDER: WaPo Publisher: Biden DOJ Launching ‘Unprecedented Assault On American News Organizations.’

#FIGHTFORFIFTEEN: Former McDonald’s CEO Just Explained How a $15 Minimum Wage Would Blow Up in Workers’ Faces.

Proponents of a federal $15 minimum wage like progressive Senator Bernie Sanders argue that it would lift millions of workers out of poverty. But the former CEO of McDonald’s just warned that artificially spiking the cost of labor could hasten the drive toward automation and instead leave many workers replaced with machines.

“They’re going to force the cost of labor up, which means it’s going to force management to find alternatives, which means they’re going to lose jobs,” Ed Rensi told Fox Business.

The former executive said that while mandating higher wages might sound great at first glance, companies like McDonald’s would respond either by hiking prices or finding ways to cut costs, such as increased automation.

QED: Chipotle Raised Its Minimum Wage to $15 and Now It’s Biting Customers in the Burrito. “According to Fox Business, the burrito chain is raising its prices by four percent in order to compensate for its wage hikes. ‘It made sense in this scenario to invest in our employees and get these restaurants staffed and make sure that we have the pipeline of people to support our growth,’ Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol said. ‘And then with that, we’ve taken some pricing to cover some of that investment.’ This could push some burritos into the $8 range that many already thought was overpriced.”

THERE’S A HELL OF A GOOD UNIVERSE NEARBY — LET’S GO: Survey of nearby universe reveals surprising diversity of stellar nurseries.