I’M EXPECTING AN EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOM: A Stunning Revelation Could Mean Betelgeuse Is Set to Blow.

JOHN HINDERAKER SAYS “BRING IT:” IMPEACH JUSTICES? SURE, GO AHEAD. “The Democrats evidently assume that voters share their outrage over, in particular, the Court’s decision banning race discrimination in college admissions. But do they? As we have written many times, affirmative action–race discrimination in academia, business and government–has never been popular. The ABC News/Ipsos poll finds that this is still true.”

BUT OF COURSE: NEW: Hunter Biden Prosecutor Has Staggering Conflict of Interest. “Just how the Department of Justice came to give Hunter Biden a sweetheart plea deal, ignoring protocol and forgoing jail time, has become a question of keen interest for congressional members. Now, a new report is adding more intrigue to the saga. According to The Daily Mail, one of the prosecutors who was intimately involved in formulating the controversial deal once worked directly for one of Hunter Biden’s business partners.”

DO TELL: Giving Robots Rights is a Bad Idea. I wonder if the rest of the analysis came from the campus Confucius Institute, though.

PRIME DEAL: DASH Deluxe Rapid Egg Cooker. #CommissionEarned (Bumped)

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: U.S. manufacturing activity hits record low in June.

SERVES ‘EM RIGHT, IF SO: Democrats’ Voting Rights Act ‘Win’ In Alabama May Backfire, Set Up Republican Congressional Sweep: Democrats thought they would pick up a seat in Alabama, but they may lose the one Alabama seat they currently have.

BOOK REVIEW: Our New Space Race.

The current space race extends far beyond Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson. There’s a New Zealand tinkerer without a college degree who built a billion-dollar rocket company. A Ukrainian multimillionaire who made his fortune off sketchy dating websites. A soothsaying IT executive who attracted millions in investment through relentless optimism, all while blowing up rocket after rocket.

Ashlee Vance’s latest book, When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach, is an ode to capitalism, risk, and innovation. As Vance relays, the private sector has created the new rockets and satellites that are spreading the benefits of space commerce across the planet. Though still an important partner, the government lacks the mindset or motive to discard old habits and embrace new technologies. Vance’s book should give pause to anyone who would expunge the profit motive from space, overregulate space or any other tech sector, or rely solely on the government to innovate.

I have that book sitting on the table in my study, but haven’t gotten around to reading it yet. This moves it up on my list.

GENERALLY, YES: Is old ammunition safe to shoot? I wouldn’t rely on it for critical self-defense needs, though.

CHANGE: Europe’s venerable Ariane 5 rocket faces a bittersweet ending on Tuesday.

The Ariane 5 rocket made its debut in June 1996 with a launch failure, and its second launch a year later was also a partial failure. But after that, the rocket has had a commendable record of success across 116 total launch attempts. For most of its history, the rocket was a true workhorse, launching dozens of commercial satellites into geostationary space and ensuring that the nations of Europe could get their national security payloads into orbit.

The rocket has also lifted a number of important space science missions, including the Rosetta, Herschel, Planck, BepiColombo, and JUICE spacecraft. Perhaps the rocket’s most notable launch came in December 2021, when it lofted the James Webb Space Telescope for NASA into a very precise orbit.

Because Webb did not need to expend any on-board fuel to correct its orbit, NASA was able to double its estimated lifetime for the mission. A NASA systems engineer, Mike Menzel, said an agency analysis found that Webb has enough propellant on board for 20 years of life, up from its original estimate of 10 years.

That was one helluva launch.

The replacement rocket, the Ariane 6, is years late and isn’t reusable, so it likely won’t find much of a market outside of homegrown missions for Europe’s militaries and intelligence agencies.

AMERICAN HEROES THEN AND NOW: If you’re not familiar with web site designer Lori Smith and postal carrier Gerald Groff, you should be because we all owe them thanks for having the guts and courage to stand up and fight the good fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

GOOD LUCK: 2026 Chevrolet Camaro Trades Gasoline for Electric-Only Power.

DOD GETS MACED: The South Carolina Republican wonders why the Pentagon suddenly and with little concrete explanation terminated a multi-million dollar contract for developing a system to manage the defense department’s huge travel operations.

OUT: THE COMING MAUNDER MINIMUM.

IN:

VENEZUELA IS ALWAYS THE ENDGAME: Biden bummer: Confidence in America dragged to ‘lowest’ point. “For perspective, Venezuelans have the same confidence in their government as Americans do in the Biden administration, Gallup said.”

CHANGE: The A-10 Warthog Making One Final Flight — to the Boneyard.

READER FAVORITE: Crocs Unisex-Adult Classic Clogs. #CommissionEarned

JOHN NOLTE: Add ‘Indiana Jones’ to This List of Kathleen Kennedy’s Stunning Failures.

The Disney Grooming Syndicate spent $400 million on Dial of Destiny, which is one of the most popular and beloved movie franchisse in Hollywood history, a franchise that delivered four previous blockbuster hits, a franchise with so much audience goodwill, a chapter that sucked as hard as Crystal Suck grossed $317 million domestic and $790 million worldwide. If you account for inflation, Crystal Suck made $417 million domestic and $1.15 billion worldwide.

If you account for inflation, Crystal Suck opened to $141 million over three days and $212 million over five days.

If you account for inflation, Crystal Suck grossed $385 million worldwide over its three-day opening weekend.

Compare that to Dial of Destiny’s $65 million domestic opening and $140 million worldwide opening.

So pardon me for not inventing an all-new box office category to excuse the potential box office catastrophe called Dial of Destiny. Excuse me for comparing apples to actual apples, but now that the Supreme Court has outlawed the obscene, un-American racism that is affirmative action, it feels safe to tell some truths about the most destructive affirmative action hire in entertainment history: Mz. Kathleen “Franchise Destroyer” Kennedy.

Let us list her now 100 percent failure rate.

Related:

And: Disney Stock On Track For Worst Year Since 1974.

That last headline is from the end of 2022, before Kennedy killed Indiana Jones.

Disney’s problem isn’t just Kennedy’s tortured tenure as the company’s Lucasfilm division chief. They’ve tarnished the Pixar brand, the Marvel properties are on life support, and the company’s endless reboots of classic animation films as live-action aren’t exactly wowing audiences.

Even the theme parks are struggling, with a billion-dollar Star Wars bet gone wrong and attendance still below pre-pandemic highs.

SPIDERS ARE TAKING GENDER STUDIES CLASSES: Arachnid has three versions of `male.’ How does that happen?