WHAT HAVE TECHNOCRATS DONE FOR YOU LATELY? OR YOU KNOW, EVER:  Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off.

PAYING A BONUS TO STAY UNEMPLOYED PROBABLY DOESN’T HELP:  Worker shortage stymies vaccine mandates at nursing homes.

Mind you, deplorables don’t always do what they’re supposed to. That’s part of why they’re deplorable… and proud.

I DON’T NEED TO SEE THE NUMBERS TO KNOW THEIR PRESCRIPTION:  UN climate report likely to deliver stark warnings on global warming.

OPEN THREAD: Your chance for immortality.

ROGER KIMBALL: The new McCarthyism.

Are you now or have you ever been a supporter of Donald Trump?

I am wondering when we are going to have Congressional Committees grilling people about such matters. I suppose they could, in homage to a certain senator from Wisconsin, be called the House and Senate American Activities Committee. Nancy and Chuck should preside. They could share some of that expensive chocolate ice cream that the always well-coifed Nancy likes as they root out people who say things they don’t like and vote for people with whom they disagree.

I’m sure they would get a lot of academic support. Just a week or so back, one professor suggested that criticizing St Anthony Fauci or other government officials should be a federal hate crime.

Why not? If you object that such a move would be unconstitutional and therefore against the law, expect to be met with pitying looks. After all, the President of the United States, in flagrant violation of his oath of office, just extended the CDC’s eviction moratorium after it had been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. ‘The bulk of the constitutional scholarship says it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster,’ Biden admitted, but he decided to do it anyway. After all, this whole ‘separation of powers’ fetish is so, well, so 18th-century. We’re better than that now. We know about The Environment. And Systemic Racism. And Masks for the Little People. And the Evils of Donald Trump.

In the meantime: Small-Time Landlords ‘Hanging On by Their Fingernails’ as Eviction Moratorium Drags On.

SPACE: SpaceX lifts huge Super Heavy rocket onto launch stand (photos).

DAVID BERNSTEIN: Revisiting the Right to Bear Arms after Summer 2020 Rioting. “The basic theme of the article is that the inability or unwillingness (often under standdown orders from politicians) of law enforcement to protect life and property during the summer 2020 riots and looting in cities across the country undermines the claim of opponents of the right to keep and bear arms that individual firearms ownership is obsolete given the existence of modern police forces.”

The full article is available here.

CHILLY: 40 Years Ago, a Woman Famously Survived Being ‘Frozen Solid’. Here’s The Science. “She was – apparently – frozen. Her face was ashen, eyes solid, and her skin reportedly too hard to be punctured by a hypodermic needle. . . . Yet within just a few hours, warmed by heating pads, Hilliard’s body returned to a state of health. She was talking by noon, and with little more than some numb, blistered toes, was soon discharged to live an unremarkable life unaffected by her night as a human popsicle.”

Note to the editors, though: The human body doesn’t have an “insatiable need for oxygen.” It has a specific need for oxygen, which is readily sated by appropriate quantities.

REVOLUTION: North Korea official seen not applauding for Kim Jong Un in recent photo.

AUSTIN BAY: Sue the Chinese Communist Party for Coronavirus Destruction.

Eighteen months ago, “correct-thinking people” and media like The New York Times and The Washington Post dismissed the possibility of a viral leak from Wuhan’s Level 4 bio-lab as conspiracy theory folly, in a nutshell. “Correct thinkers” included President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris all but said she wouldn’t trust a vaccine produced by the Trump administration. Now she bewails vaccine hesitancy, without confessing her own self-serving conspiracy theory folly.

In February 2020, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) suggested the virus may have leaked from the Wuhan lab. Yes, courage and foresight. At the time, however, biased leftist media, from The New York Times to CNN to Xinhua, ridiculed Cotton. Xinhua is the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) official news agency. Xinhua provides some honest coverage, but when the CCP dictatorship says jump, the Xinhua frog spews CCP propaganda.

In June of this year, new evidence emerged that the virus did indeed escape from the laboratory.

On Aug. 2, the House Foreign Affairs Committee minority staff (minority at the moment means Republican) issued an updated report titled “The Origins of the COVID-19 Global Pandemic, Including the Roles of the Chinese Communist Party and the World Health Organization.”

The update hasn’t received a lot of notice. But the biased left-wing media have a political investment in ignoring it. Remember, they dismissed Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation. The laptop is criminal evidence. Apparently, some of Hunter’s laptop files indicate he has connections to CCP-financed companies.

What does the House Foreign Affairs Committee minority staff update say regarding the coronavirus pandemic?

I’ll paraphrase and quote. The preponderance of evidence suggests the virus “was accidentally released from a Wuhan Institute of Virology laboratory sometime prior to September 12, 2019.” The virus “was genetically manipulated” and likely collected in Yunnan province “between 2012 and 2015.” Chinese researchers, “officials within the CCP, and potentially American citizens directly engaged in efforts to obfuscate information related to the origins of the virus and to suppress public debate of a possible lab leak.”

It is time for the Biden administration to take this report seriously. The U.S. government, American businesses, and individual Americans harmed by the virus should sue the CCP and its various corporate cutouts for gross negligence and criminal cover-up. Seek triple damages.

If the feds won’t do it, State AGs should.

HMM: France to offer COVID booster shots to elderly, vulnerable from September.

Plus: Moderna says new COVID-19 boosters appear to work against Delta variant.

But: W.H.O. chief urges wealthy nations to pause COVID-19 vaccine boosters. “The head of the World Health Organization on Wednesday called on wealthier countries to stop allowing people who are fully vaccinated to receive booster COVID-19 shots and instead send those doses to poorer nations.”

SO WOKE, SO BROKE: CNN Achieves Embarrassing Viewership Milestone.

LAWMAKERS PROBE BIDEN ADMIN BID TO NIX SANCTIONS ON IRAN.

HAS CIVILIZATION LED TO FEMINIZATION?

CRISIS BY DESIGN: Biden Wants to Cut Funding for ‘Border Security Assets and Infrastructure’ by 96%.

CRISIS BY DESIGN: Shocking Photos Show the Horrifying, Inhumane Conditions of Biden’s Border Crisis.

STRATEGYTALK: To Train The Fleet. Jim Dunnigan and Dr. Al Nofi discuss Al’s now classic naval history To Train The Fleet. The books is especially relevant now.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Debunking the ACLU: It’s Gun Control, Not the Second Amendment That’s Steeped in Racism.

SHUT UP, KAREN: ‘Freedom, not force’: Hundreds protest Jeffco Schools mask mandate days before kids return to class.

The district wants to force children as young as three to wear masks at school, despite the science.

GIVEN THEIR RECORD, THE MORE THEY TALK, THE MORE “HESITANT” PEOPLE ARE: Is the CDC trying to deter the vaccine-hesitant from getting jabbed?

LIVE AT 3:30PM EASTERN: ‘Five O’Clock Somewhere’ with Kruiser, Preston, VodkaPundit.

GORDON CHANG: The Delta Variant Could End The Chinese Communist Party.

There have been more than 30 outbreaks around China after the initial cases in Wuhan of last year, including a particularly devastating flare-up hitting Guangdong province ports beginning in late May. Draconian measures were seemingly successful in isolating China’s COVID-19 cases, however. The Party, beginning early last year, used its handling of the virus as proof of the superiority of its system over, among others, “Western democracy.”

Totalitarian-style tactics, unfortunately for China’s rulers, have not worked with the hardy Delta variant. The coronavirus, unlike other pathogens, has become more transmissible and more virulent over time. Delta, as a result, is now killing off the triumphalism of the Communist Party.

Therefore, a nationwide spread of the disease is a potentially existential threat to the Party. At the moment, Delta is running through many societies around the world, but China appears to be the only one where the variant could end the ruling group’s tenure.

Don’t get your hopes up — Chang has been predicting the end of CCP rule any day now for 20 years.

WELL, THEY’RE NOT WRONG: Police Recruiting Ad Lists “Qualified Immunity” as “Unique [Job] Benefit.”

Though it’s not really unique, since university bureaucrats, unaccountably, enjoy it as well.

HMM: Texas Rangers May Be Investigating Witness Tampering Allegation Against Travis County’s DA in Austin Protest Shooting Case.