I’VE SEEN THIS MOVIE BEFORE. I’M UNIMPRESSED (AND HAVING TROUBLE WORKING):  Trump: FBI “Stole” My Passports During Mar-a-Lago Raid.

PELOSI MIGHT BE A DAUGHTER OF THE EARTH. MY MOTHER WAS BETTER THAN DIRT:  Pelosi: Inflation Reduction Act Will Appease “Mother Earth”.

AND HIDE THEIR OWN PETTY TYRANNY AND INVINCIBLE STUPIDITY:  Feds Oppose Unsealing Affidavit Used To Obtain Mar-a-Lago Search Warrant, To Protect Ongoing Investigation and “National Security”.

THIS IS HOW AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT ACTS:  Trump: America ‘is in a Very Dangerous Position’ and the ‘Temperature has to be Brought Down’.

IT WON’T. WE’RE NOT CHINESE PEASANTS. IT’S TOO MUCH INFORMATION TO PROCESS: Let’s hope this isn’t our surveillance future.

YES. AND I HAVE A NOVEL TO FINISH:  Has Biden Crossed the Rubicon?

Writing as society comes apart over your head seems…. interesting.  They should be careful. Caesar was a Populist leader. They ain’t.

WELL! IF YOU’RE CATHOLIC, REMEMBER THEY ALWAYS TELL YOU WHAT THEY’RE AFRAID OF: The Atlantic Attacks the ‘Militaristic’ Rosary.

Didn’t your granny tell you it was powerful? Make tomorrow a knee day!

APPARENTLY THEY COULDN’T SEE THE CONSEQUENCES OF DEMANDING WE BELIEVE ALL WOMEN:  New research: #MeToo movement hurt female productivity.

Because you know what? I’m a woman, and I wouldn’t trust half of the hysterics claiming they’ve been abused within three meters of me, let alone in the same meeting room. Once we got to #metoo accusations that boiled down to “he oppressed me with his male gaze” sane men were going to shut the door on any woman, to avoid getting put over the barrel. Only idiots, hysterics and Marxists (BIRM) couldn’t see that coming.

YEAH, IT’S ALL NONSENSE, BS AND SOCIALISM:  Green No Deal.

THEY THINK THEY’LL HAVE IT SO SEWN UP NO ONE ELSE WILL EVER GET A LOOK IN:  The Fifth Law.

THE HILL TO DIE ON IS RED WHITE AND BLUE, AND WE’RE PLAYING FOR THE WHOLE USA:  The Hill to Die On.

IT IS INDEED A PATTERN OF VIOLENCE, BUT NOT AMERICAN: Finally, Rushdie.

#JOURNALISM: Trump Accused of Lying Over FBI-Seized Passports, Then He Dropped the Receipts. “So let me get this straight. The FBI did indeed seize Trump’s passports, which seems incredibly improper given what was legally allowed to be taken by the warrant, and that’s somehow his fault? A passport is not something you just accidentally grab, thinking it’s a presidential record. It’s the kind of thing that an agent purposely took and knew exactly what they were taking. Yet, the big gotcha here is that Trump was wrong about the expiration date on one of the passports. It’s absurd. The big story here is that the FBI took the passports in the first place. It is not that Trump shared an email that ended up embarrassing the bureau’s leadership, who were apparently content to keep lying about the matter via leaks until the former president exposed them. Now, the mainstream media wants to pretend like the seizure was just an honest mistake that shouldn’t be held against the FBI. Yeah, that’s not how any of this works.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY:

OPEN THREAD: Because I love you and want you to be happy.

THE LID: One Year After Biden’s Afghanistan Debacle.

One year ago this week, buoyed by President Joe Biden’s feckless surrender, totalitarian thugs known as the Taliban — an evil group that protected perpetrators of the 9/11 terror attacks — swept into Afghanistan’s capital following the collapse of the country’s government.

Even isolationists and anti-military zealots in the West remember the horrifying images that followed, most notably Afghans falling from cargo planes and an infant being tossed over razor wire.

This never should have happened. And it effectively ended Biden’s presidency just seven months in.

Following the Aug. 26 murder of 13 U.S. servicemen in Kabul by an Islamist suicide bomber, I wrote, “The attack that killed 13 Americans and at least 100 in Kabul on Thursday does not spell “the end” of the Biden presidency, but it’s absolutely a moral and political catastrophe for the 46^th president.”

While Biden, who’s enjoying another oceanside vacation, claims Americans agreed with his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, he had over 50% approval on Aug. 19 last year, then dropped 20 points once people saw the horrific images. He’s never recovered.

If only there was a visual metaphor for Biden’s dramatic poll drop. If only.

OLD AND BUSTED: “Men Can Have Periods, Too!”

The New Hotness? Women in Scotland outraged as country’s first ever Period Poverty tsar is announced as a MAN.

The decision to appoint a man as Scotland’s first ever so-called ‘period dignity officer’ has prompted outrage, on the same day the flagship law offering free period products to all in need of them was launched.

Dundee man and former personal trainer Jason Grant is the newly appointed period dignity officer for the Tay region – who has the task of promoting access to free sanitary products across schools and colleges – where he will also discuss issues around the menopause.

It follows the Scottish Government’s introduction of the Period Products Act, which means councils and education providers are now legally obliged to offer out tampons and pads for free in a response to a period poverty campaign.

We live in truly the stupidest timeline imaginable.

SPACE: Virgin Orbit reduces launch forecast while increasing per-launch revenue.

THAT’S NOT CREEPY AT ALL: Amazon studio plans lighthearted show of Ring surveillance footage.

Viral videos captured by doorbell cameras have been hot for a while now. You can catch them on late-night talk shows, the r/CaughtOnRing subreddit, and on millions of TikTok users’ For You page. Amazon’s media properties, perhaps sensing an opportunity to capitalize and soften Ring’s image, are sallying forth with an officially branded offering.

Ring Nation will feature “neighbors saving neighbors, marriage proposals, military reunions and silly animals,” Deadline writes. But Ring Nation might be aiming even higher, according to Ring founder Jamie Siminoff—to something approaching a salve for our deeply divided nation.

“Bringing the new community together is core to our mission at Ring, and Ring Nation gives friends and family a fun new way to enjoy time with one another,” Siminoff told Deadline. “We’re so excited to have Wanda Sykes join Ring Nation to share people’s memorable moments with viewers.”

Ring sharing its owners’ moments with other viewers has been a contentious issue. The surveillance company recently admitted giving police access to Ring recordings without user consent for “emergency” requests. Ring partnered with more than 600 law enforcement agencies to encourage Ring installations in communities and ease police access to footage. Ring has since made it easier to opt out of police requests.

I do not trust the Internet of things, to coin an Insta-phrase.

BRENDAN O’NEILL: From Rushdie to Rowling — how identity politics turned violent.

The Ayatollah Khomeini’s famous quote that “There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious,” is the mantra of the far left as well: THAT’S NOT FUNNY! Hysterical Reinhart Meme Goes Viral After Twitter Ban.

GO OUTSIDE, PROGRESSIVE WRITERS: In which Charles C.W. Cooke asks the (likely rhetorical) question, “Do America’s progressive writers know anybody who isn’t . . . a lunatic?”

Do America’s progressive writers know anybody who isn’t . . . a lunatic? I ask this because, in the course of my morning reading, I came across two widely shared pieces that, had they been presented to mixed company at the pitch stage, would ineluctably have yielded raised eyebrows, widespread confusion, and, eventually, a friendly “are you feeling all right?”

The first contribution is from the Atlantic. It’s called “How the Rosary Became an Extremist Symbol,” and it claims that those shadowy, ever-present “Christian nationalists” have started combining sacramental beads and “gun culture.” To underscore the idea, its artwork is in the form of an animated gif that replaces a Rosary’s beads with bullet holes. This claim is typical of the whole:

Just as the AR-15 rifle has become a sacred object for Christian nationalists in general, the rosary has acquired a militaristic meaning for radical-traditional (or “rad trad”) Catholics. On this extremist fringe, rosary beads have been woven into a conspiratorial politics and absolutist gun culture. These armed radical traditionalists have taken up a spiritual notion that the rosary can be a weapon in the fight against evil and turned it into something dangerously literal.

The conclusion:

The “battle beads” culture of spiritual warfare permits radical-traditional Catholics literally to demonize their political opponents and regard the use of armed force against them as sanctified. The sacramental rosary isn’t just a spiritual weapon but one that comes with physical ammunition.

As an example of the “I saw a few weird things online and fed them into my paranoia” genre, it’s an instant classic. As a reflection of real life in America, it is a disaster. I would say that the author needs to stop trawling the Internet and go out and meet some actual American Catholics, but, having looked him up, I learned that he lives in Canada. That, at least, provides him with an excuse. I’m not sure what the Atlantic‘s is.

The Atlantic has changed the headlines and artwork multiple times:

BRUCE BAWER: Diving Into a Pool of PC.

Some people are foolish enough to take their political cues from show-business celebrities like Bette Midler, Rob Reiner, and Cher. Not me. I listen to athletes. So when I heard that 28-year-old British diver Tom Daley had made a documentary about the current status of human rights in certain former British colonies, I sought it out at once.

Just in case you didn’t know, Daley won a gold medal at the 2020 Olympics. He’s also come in first at the Commonwealth Games no fewer than four times. The premise of his documentary, Illegal to Be Me, is that, as this year’s Commonwealth Games approached (they were held in Birmingham between July 28 and Aug. 8), he began to think about the fact that, in 35 of the 56 countries competing in the games, it’s illegal to be gay. In three of those countries, homosexuality is punishable by death.

In some of Nigeria’s northern states, he informs us, the penalty for homosexuality is death by stoning. He doesn’t explain why this is the case in the north but not the south. Want to guess?

Daley says that since he himself is gay — he came out in 2013 — and has competed all over the Commonwealth, these statistics give him a queasy feeling. He’s won medals in some of those 35 anti-gay countries: How, he asks, should he feel about those medals? The anti-gay laws also pique his historical curiosity — where did all this hatred come from? — and make him want to “get the sporting world to try to change things.”

His tentative goal, he tells us at the outset of the documentary — which aired on BBC One on Aug. 9 — is to persuade Commonwealth Games officials to deny countries with anti-gay laws the right to host the Commonwealth Games. But he realizes that this stratagem may be misguided. “I still have so much to learn,” he admits. So he travels to a couple of the anti-gay Commonwealth countries to “meet some queer athletes,” see how they live, and bounce his ideas off them.

First up is Pakistan…

Ellipses mine. It’s the BBC, so I think you can see where this is going, but read the whole thing, nonetheless. If Netflix teamed up Daley with Colin Kaepernick to host a series, the level of wokeness and blinkered PC-thinking would likely implode the universe.

Speaking of the latter athlete turned woke activist: Adam Schefter Shoots Down Kaepernick to the Cleveland Browns Rumor: NFL World Reacts.

I think the author may have misspelled “yawns” at the end of that headline.

FASTER, PLEASE: Newly Discovered Molecule Fights Off Over 300 Kinds of Drug-Resistant Bacteria. “The molecule is called fabimycin, and further down the line it could be used to fight off some of the most stubborn infections that humans can get. The new potential treatment targets gram-negative bacteria, a group of hard-to-kill pathogens that are commonly behind infections of the urinary tract, lungs, and even the bloodstream.”

JAY LENO’S GARAGE: Jay drives the 2023 Nissan Z (video):

https://youtu.be/lL6a1q0eoVw

GOODER AND HARDER, L.A.: Los Angeles County DA George Gascon recall petition found ‘insufficient’ to qualify for ballot.

A petition to recall Gascon had nearly 200,000 signatures out of more than 715,000 invalidated.