EXPERTS, EXPLAINED:

PARTY LIKE IT’S 1975: ROGERS: WE ARE WATCHING PRESIDENT BIDEN’S SAIGON MOMENT UNFOLD BEFORE US.

OPEN THREAD: We’re gonna rock it.

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: Joe Biden Thanks ‘Heroes’ Forcing Mask Mandates on Children.

THE SUICIDE OF EXPERTISE: CDC Took Mistaken Data on Delta Variant Transmissibility From a New York Times Infographic.

Related: Oh well: Indian study relied on by CDC for new mask guidance has been revised, no longer shows higher viral loads in vaxxed.

(Classical reference in headline.)

HOW’S THAT SPACE PROGRAM COMING ALONG? Scientists fine-tune odds of asteroid Bennu hitting Earth through 2300 with NASA probe’s help.

CAPITALISM: THE UNKNOWN IDEAL. Biden’s eviction moratorium isn’t just illegal and bad for landlords — it hurts renters, too.

WHERE’S HUNTER, FAT? Video Shows Naked Hunter Biden Telling Hooker The Russians Stole His Laptop.

(Bumped.)

THAT’LL SHOW ‘EM: European Union threatens Taliban with ‘isolation’ if it seizes power in Afghanistan.

GOOD: “A two-arm molecule can effectively deplete cancer-protecting cells inside tumors, allowing the immune system to fight off tumors without becoming overactive.”

THE BAT IS MY ATTORNEY, CARL LASZLO: How to escort a bat out of your home.

UPDATE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARIES ACCORDINGLY: Not satire: The Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine just one-upped the term “birthing person” with “human milk-feeding individual.”

IT WAS MY UNDERSTANDING THAT THERE WOULD BE NO MATH:

UPDATE: “This correction is still wrong. It doesn’t correct a 7-day period mistake with a 7-day period figure, instead opting for period of more than a month, which would obviously produce a larger number. This does not look like an attempt to inform, in either version,” Mary Katharine Ham tweets.

GOODER AND HARDER: What Did San Francisco Expect When It Elected the Progeny of of Militant Marxist Terrorists?

MIGHT AS WELL JUST GIVE UP AND LET IT SPREAD THEN: AstraZeneca Scientist Says Delta Variant Makes Herd Immunity Impossible. Here’s Why.

Also, this is likely bullshit.

WHY IS THE LEFT SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM? Black ATF Agent Says Biden Nominee Falsely Accused Him of Cheating on Promotion Assessment.

YES:

RIOTS IN THE AGE OF MORAL NARCISSISM: ‘Let’s start a riot:’ Illinois man sentenced to nearly 9 years in prison for setting Minneapolis store on fire after posting his crimes on Facebook.

(Classical reference in headline.)

YOU’RE STRUGGLING TO UNDERSTAND WHERE ALL THIS VACCINE HESITANCY COMES FROM. LET ME HELP YOU:

The same people who told you Brexit would never happen, that Trump would never win, that when he did win it was because of Russian collusion but also because of racism, that you must follow lockdowns while they don’t, that masks don’t work, that masks do work, that social justice protests during pandemic lockdowns are a form of “health intervention,” that ransacking African American communities in the name of fighting racism is a “mostly peaceful” form of protest, that poor and underserved children locked out of shuttered schools are “still learning,” that Jussie Smollett was a victim of a hate crime, that men are toxic, that there is an infinite number of genders, that COVID couldn’t have come from a lab until maybe it did, that closing borders is racist until maybe it isn’t, that you shouldn’t take Trump’s vaccine, that you must take the vaccine developed during the Trump administration, that Andrew Cuomo is a great leader, that Andrew Cuomo is a granny killer, that the number of COVID deaths is one thing and then another … are the same people telling you now that the vaccine is safe, that you must take it, and that if you don’t, you will be a second-class citizen.

Understand vaccine hesitancy now?

Read the whole thing.

WHO SCIENTIST: China pressured us not to mention lab leak in the report and maybe there’s a reason for that.

HONESTLY I’M STILL LUKEWARM ON THE RED DOT FOR HANDGUNS: Red Dots vs. Iron Sights: Which is Better for Handguns? I still feel like target acquisition for me is faster with the iron sights, which is mostly because that’s how I’ve done it for decades, though I’ve practiced regularly with the red dot. On the other hand, the red dot lets you keep both eyes open.

I don’t find the same acquisition issue with red dot optics on a rifle for some reason.

CUOMO BY DESIGN:

As allegations of sexual abuse have occupied the headlines, far less has been said of the ex-governor’s aesthetic abuse of New York. And Cuomo was a serial abuser, wantonly so and without remorse. From Albany, he dreamed of the glories of Rome. Regrettably, he was only looking as far as the City of Rome in Oneida County, just over a hundred miles from Troy, New York. And yet, from his state house by Empire State Plaza, Andrew was our latter day Aeneas. If only Mario, his Anchises, had lived to see those Hesperian shores.

Just consider Dandy Andy’s many design ambitions: in 2018, the New York Post reported that Cuomo wasted $30 million on a change order to replace the tiles of the Midtown Tunnel. Why? Because he wanted his stripes, that’s why. Cuomo drew his particular blue-and-gold color scheme on everything. In doing so, he ensured that his state, from Buffalo to Plattsburgh to Montauk, would one day look like the same office of the DMV.

* * * * * * * *

With the expiration of Madison Square Garden’s lease — which sits atop our transit pipes like a toilet bowl — the governor had a chance to right a historic wrong by rebuilding Old Penn. To do so would have followed a widely popular and feasible plan that has been independently studied (that’s because the old tracks are all still in the same place).

But why fix a broken neighborhood when you can break even more? Instead, Cuomo threatened to level the existing historic buildings that still surround the station in a master-builder plan he called the ‘Empire Station Complex’. This complex might even — you know, I don’t know — contain a ‘Cuomo Station’. The governor already did much to scrub the name of Daniel Patrick Moynihan from the new station that the late senator ingeniously envisioned carving out of the old Central Post Office building across the street.

Cuomo also played a role in another architectural debacle: Cuomo is Guilty of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis Too.

It was Cuomo’s role in the subprime mortgage crisis, which he still has not been held fully accountable for. That malfeasance merits revisiting as the 13-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers fast approaches.

Politics is, apparently, a vocation where it does not matter if you were a complete failure in a previous role—the chances of getting promoted are still high. Cuomo’s part in the worst financial disaster since 1929 proves that.

Of course, Cuomo’s contribution does not excuse the other culprits in the 2008 recession, such as Alan Greenspan and his loose monetary policy, former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, who blocked the Bush administration’s efforts to reform mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, or President Bill Clinton. But Cuomo’s role in this event must be explored because it shows that he should never have been allowed to become New York’s governor in the first place.

In the late 1990s, Cuomo was appointed Clinton’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Under his watch, HUD oversaw the easing of lending standards on Federal Housing Administration home loans, with the maximum size of FHA-approved loans for single-family homes in low-cost areas increasing from $86,317 to $121,296, while minimum down payments fell from 7 percent of the asking price to 3 percent.

At the time, the then housing secretary wanted to reduce redlining, a term describing home-lending practices that discriminate against ethnic minorities. Here he is in a YouTube clip admitting that by asking the banks to take on more risky loans, their portfolios were at a greater risk of defaulting. He also bragged that he sued a bank in Texas for redlining.

Susan Wachter, who served as assistant secretary for policy development and research at HUD under Cuomo, told Institutional Investor that easing lending standards was probably not a good idea.

That’s a bit of an understatement:

PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1975: Marines Prepare to Evacuate Kabul Embassy ahead of Possible Taliban Assault.

THE FIRST ONE HAS WORKED PRETTY WELL: JPL’s Plan For The Next Mars Helicopter.