BEHOLD, MY VERY SHOCKED FACE!   Leaked DOJ Docs: FBI Informant Says Proud Boys Did Not Plan to Enter Capitol, Were There to Protect Trump Supporters.

I HEAR THE VOICE OF RAGE AND RUIN*:  Gavin Newsom’s Weird Idea of ‘Freedom’.

*And the tragedy of hair gel abuse.

THERE’S A BAD MOON ON THE RISE:  A Perfect Storm.

WELL, IS CNN REPORTER A REAL HUMAN?  CNN Columnist Says Republican Latina Candidates ‘Not Real Deal’.

I SEE BAD TIMES TODAY*: ‘Inflation is Heating Up’: CPI Hit 9.1% in June, Highest Rate in 41 Years.

*Hey, blame American Thinker for putting the lyrics in my head.

I SEE TROUBLE ON THE WAY:  Protesters Demanding Return of Frozen Funds Attacked by China’s Security Forces.

WELL, WHAT DO YOU EXPECT WITH THE JUNTA IN CHARGE?   Looming Rail Labor Strike To Further Stress America’s Reeling Supply Chain.

The suckage will continue till morale improves.

SAN DIEGO MAYOR TAKES SIDES IN A LABOR DISPUTE:  I wouldn’t have thought this is a great way to keep business in San Diego.

THE DEADBEAT CLUB: Oberlin College hasn’t paid Gibson’s Bakery the $31 million it owes (plus more than $4 million in interest).

THIS CULTURAL REVOLUTION MUST BE ENDED, AND PUNISHED: Chris Rufo: The DEI Regime: Every Fortune 100 company has now adopted “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programming.

NOW OUT FROM CHRIS DURBIN: Treacherous Moon: The Twelfth Carlisle & Holbrooke Naval Adventure.

CHANGE: Tennessee gov: School voucher program to start immediately. “Wednesday’s decision comes as Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed one of the most comprehensive school voucher systems in the country just last week. Under that program, every parent in Arizona would be able to take public money and use it for their children’s private school tuition or other education costs.”

OPEN THREAD: Not so much for the people in the audience as for the people sitting in my mind.

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: ‘Live Aid’ concert raises $127 million for Famine Relief in Africa.

Brilliant live performances, and a great McLuhan-esque “global village,” but it didn’t actually provide all that much famine relief: Live Aid: The Terrible Truth.

And as I wrote at the Weekly Standard in 2004, when Live Aid (minus Led Zeppelin’s disastrous set) was first released on DVD, “While Live Aid was spectacular television, it was just another in a series of Big Events from people who believed that throwing money at a problem eventually solves it. Eerily, it forecast how the left would interact with Iraq: Substitute Mengistu for Saddam Hussein and it’s amazing how all the rest of the players stay the same–the BBC, the United Nations, and celebrities who believe that despots can be reasoned with to do the right thing. We won’t get fooled again? Of course you will.”

SAME: Red supergiant stars ‘dance’ because they have too much gas.

BORIS JOHNSON MISSED HIS CHURCHILL MOMENT: The pandemic was Boris’s biggest test. He failed.

When Johnson’s idol, Winston Churchill, first came to power in 1940, France was in the process of falling to Nazi Germany. Most of the other great European powers had already fallen. For a time, Britain stood alone in the world, the sole defender of the West, with Churchill at its helm. Even when his own ministers urged him to accept Hitler’s peace offer, Churchill held firm to his convictions and chose to fight on.

This is the laudable mantle that Johnson has, all his life, aspired to shoulder. He faced just such a defining moment in March of 2020. The entire world had surrendered to the People’s Republic of China, adopting its totalitarian disease-control strategy, and unlike France or Poland in World War II, we surrendered without a shot being fired. If any man in the world was well-positioned to stand against this, it was the garrulous British renegade, Boris Johnson.

Instead, the United Kingdom became a police state.

Read the whole thing.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Meet the Cori Bush Activist Who Wants To Burn Jews Alive. Neveen Ayesh wants to ‘set Israel on fire.’

ILLEGAL ALIEN ARRESTED IN RAPE OF 10-YEAR-OLD ABORTION PATIENT, BUT QUESTIONS REMAIN.

ANCESTRY MATTERS: Some of Us Are Part-Neanderthal, And It Could Affect How You Process Medicines.

TOOK LONG ENOUGH: US regulators OK new COVID-19 shot option from Novavax.

ORION, WITH A CREW: China is Considering a Nuclear-Powered Mission to Neptune.

Okay, no, just another RTG nuclear “battery.” Though a pretty hefty one at 10 kilowatts of electricity.

NYT: ‘It’s just been hell’ for Ray Epps over the past 10 months thanks to right-wing media figures.

That’s some ratio that DNC stenographer Adam Goldman is racking up:

HAHA:

THE DIGNIFIED RANT celebrates 20 years of blogging.

IT TAKES HORSE SENSE, TO HANDLE HORSEPOWER, PAPA SHOULD’VE INTERVENED: Let This YouTuber’s Horrible Mercury Comet Crash Be a Lesson.