IF YOU STRIKE ME DOWN, I SHALL BECOME MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE: What Has Trump’s Endless Prosecution Accomplished? As more and more effort is spent trying to put Donald Trump behind bars, he keeps growing politically. Is it time to wonder if there’s a connection?

OPEN THREAD: When will it end?

SPACE: Virgin Galactic selects Arizona for spaceplane manufacturing facility. Makes sense. Lots of aerospace in Phoenix, and you don’t have to be in California.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN OF THE EXCELLENT PROTEIN WISDOM BLOG COULD USE SOME HELP: Supporting our family.

As many of you know, Satchel’s battle with brain cancer resulted in a loss of his pituitary, and with that came a lifetime medical bill that requires replacement therapies and drugs that are hugely expensive out of pocket. His particular cancer is very rare (1 case per 1mil); and much of his treatment — mood balancers, growth hormones, testosterone, et al — is not common. We get our health insurance through my wife’s company. It isn’t very good, and as a result, we start each year $36k in the hole.

We’ve weathered the storm for 5+ years. But we’re at a crossroads now. Inflation has crippled us, as I’m sure it has many of you. We’re maxed out on credit. So we either come up with $40k or we’ll lose our house — or be forced to sell in an unkind market.

I pitched in.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Bumped, and I donated too. Jeff’s a good guy who goes back to the earliest days of the blogosphere. He raised a lot of money, only to discover that GiveSendGo takes a truly whopping cut. Help him out if you’re willing.

ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): My mistake, the problem is with Stripe, not GiveSendGo. Sorry, I was confused.

HMM: Many Men Lose Y Chromosomes as They Age. Now We May Know Why It’s So Deadly.

DO NOT ALLOW SOCIETY TO BE RUN FOR THE BENEFIT OF NEUROTIC BULLIES: “People are being prescribed how they should talk, how to write, and now how to party. This prudish nannying of the politically correct brigade must stop. We are heading for an anti-fun society.”

COMING HERE IF YOU LET IT: Eco-extremism has brought Sri Lanka to its knees: An obsession with organic farming ‘in sync with nature’ triggered an unsustainable but predictable economic crisis.

GENERATION MENTALLY ILL: 11% Of Law Students Had Suicidal Thoughts In 2021. What Can Law Schools Do?

A CLASSIC SUPREME BEINGS OF LEISURE VIDEO, from when they were still Oversoul 7. Geri looks adorable in her hood and pigtails.

And you can see they spared no expense on special effects.

YES: Leave campaign emails in spam, FEC commenters demand.

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY: Smokey and the Lawnmower Bandit,

READER FAVORITE: Shark NV752 Rotator Powered Lift-Away TruePet Upright Vacuum with HEPA Filter. #CommissionEarned

HMM: Stephen Carter Makes the Case for Barring the Bar Exam.

So Steve Carter — who’s one of my old lawprofs — is a very smart guy. And at one point I would have agreed with him. But given that I no longer trust the people in charge of legal education to do their jobs, I welcome outside metrics, even flawed ones. Likewise I’m not a huge fan of the LSAT, but I really don’t trust the people doing law school admissions.

HMM: Amazon executives have discussed ditching Amazon Basics to appease regulators. “The conversations at Amazon around abandoning its private labels occurred on-and-off for several years as scrutiny of the business line heightened, the source said, with executives expressing a desire to keep this potential remedy under wraps so that it could come across to regulators as a major concession. Leaders in favor of such a decision believed that Amazon had a right to sell private-label brands as many retailers do, but that the business was not strategically crucial enough to defend in the face of more severe potential remedies sought by antitrust enforcers. When a company like Amazon offers such a concession, it does so with the hope of closing down any current investigations.”

DON’T BLAME TWITTER FOR CANCEL CULTURE: Our Problems Aren’t Procedural. Attributing responsibility for political discord to social media ignores the events driving dissatisfaction with contemporary American society. Woke ideology existed long before the Internet. It reigns now in institutions because of a generational shift as the baby boomers retire.

HOW THE WOKE CAME TO POWER: Seizing the Means of Knowledge Production. A shrewd chronicle and analysis of the Left’s long march through institutions. It didn’t start in academia, and it’s been going on for more than a century.

NICHOLAS WADE: The Myth of the Wronged Heroine. No, Rosalind Franklin wasn’t robbed of the credit for discovering the structure of DNA. Her contributions were recognized at the time. Building on the work of others, she took a good photo of it but misinterpreted its structure, and she was too arrogant and snobbish to consult with colleagues who could have helped her figure it out.

IF IT MOVES, TAX IT: New Colorado retail delivery fee causing issues for small businesses. “Colorado has a new 27 cents retail delivery fee that applies to all deliveries by motor vehicles. This includes Amazon deliveries, florist deliveries, food delivery and more. Many small business owners in Colorado Springs are not happy with the new fee, and one small business owner tells KKTV 11 News that it’s costing her more than $100,000 to implement new software and systems around the fee for all her business.”

LITTLE FLUFFY CLOUDS: NASA sampled a ‘fluffy’ asteroid that could hold clues to our existence.

BIDEN VOTERS POSTING THEIR L’S ONLINE: ‘America Has Become Unsafe:’ Starbucks CEO Rips Politicians In Decaying Cities After Closing 16 Urban Stores.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz blasted the leadership of Democrat-run cities for abdicating their duty to address crime and homelessness after the chain shut down several stores due to safety concerns.

The coffee chain said in a Monday memo that it would shutter 16 stores in major metropolitan areas, including Seattle, Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.

In videos of an alleged internal company meeting obtained by The Post Millennial editor Ari Hoffman, Schultz argued that “America has become unsafe” and noted that the stores facing closures are nevertheless “not unprofitable.”

“It has shocked me that one of the primary concerns that our retail partners have is their own personal safety,” Schultz said of conversations with employees. “And then we heard the stories that go along with it about what happens in our bathrooms, the issue of mental illness, the issue of homelessness, and the issue of crime.”

Flashback: Starbucks barista arrested for spitting in police officers’ beverages.

AMERICAN HERO: Manchin torpedoes Democrats’ hopes for passing sweeping climate action and tax hikes.

ALSO, IT’S DELICIOUS: Study explores the effects of eating dark chocolate on the brain.

SOON THE LEFT WILL HAVE TO BUILD A WALL TO KEEP ITS PEOPLE IN: Lefty scholar flees progressives’ “real chilling effect” — and joins free-market think tank instead. “This is pretty easy to grasp when considering the incentives involved in wokery. It’s entirely based on immutable characteristics, and now to intersectionality between them, rather than on philosophy or proper ideology. If everything is race and sex/gender, what room is there for rational philosophy and policy debate on the merits?”

CHRISTIAN TOTO: ‘Bill Burr: Live at Red Rocks’ Wobbles on Woke Humor, Shreds Feminism. “’Bill Burr Live at Red Rocks’ starts poorly but slowly hits its stride by shouting truths others fear to whisper. Again and again. It’s amazing what a stand-up comic can achieve that way.”

NYT: REPUBLICAN POUNCING IS INFLATIONARY, YOU KNOW!

And again, Republican ads and conservative commentary don’t cause recessions any more than Democratic ads and liberal commentary cause it in Republican administrations. The impact of Federal Reserve monetary policies, high prices themselves, energy costs and shortages, and other natural market conditions will have much more impact on consumer spending than a few weeks of political ads. It’s insulting and certainly condescending to assume that voters aren’t paying attention to all of those market signals already, especially — again — since they tell pollsters over and over again that inflation and the economy are already by far and away their biggest concerns in this election.

This is just a stupid attempt to transfer blame for the wreckage of Joe Biden’s policies to the people who opposed them in the first place. It’s an embarrassing attempt at narrative journalism and media water-carrying for the current leadership clique, and yet another marker on the long decline of media credibility in the US.

Evergreen: