LIVING HISTORY: Remembering the Rosemary Lehmberg DWI Arrest 10 Years Later. “Here’s a pro-trip, boys and girls: If you you find yourself driving around at night (well, any time, but especially at night) while drinking from an open vodka bottle (she evidently had a blood alcohol level of .239), you have a problem, and you should seek professional help and/or check yourself into rehab.”

I once asked my bartender to make me a Rosemary Lehmberg, and he poured me a mug of warm vodka with my car keys at the bottom.

I IMAGINE THAT’S TRUE IN THE UNITED STATES, TOO: Analysis shows two in three cosmetic surgery injections in the UK are not administered by doctors.

HALF OF THEM STILL WON’T ADMIT THE LAPTOP IS REAL: Democrat Reaction to MTG Splaying Hunter’s Dirty Laptop Pictures in Public Is Beyond Ironic.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Experts warn that Tik Tok trend of eating borax is highly dangerous.

“FOLLOW THE SCIENCE:” Retract “Proximal Origin?” No, says Nature Medicine editor.

We now have contemporaneous Slack messages and emails where the authors not only express doubts that what they were writing was true, but that prove they thought that the claim they were making–that COVID arose naturally without human interference and that it spread from an animal to a human being via natural processes–was likely not true. . . .

There is now a near consensus that at the very least a lab leak is quite plausible, which has raised the question: why hasn’t Nature Medicine, the journal that published this paper that spawned a million censorships, looked into retracting the paper given its clear contradiction with both reality and with the now apparent opinions of the authors as they wrote the paper?

If the authors lied in the paper, shouldn’t it be retracted?

No. Because Nature Medicine is now rewriting history. The editor now claims that the paper wasn’t research at all, but an expression of an opinion. Just a “point of view.” It wasn’t definitive research, but an Op/Ed or something.

So when they said follow the science, they were really saying “follow the Op/Ed.” Remember that next time.

But the thing is, it wasn’t even an honest opinion. It was intentional propaganda.

DEFUND THE FBI: FBI Improperly Used Surveillance Powers on US Officials. “While the officials weren’t named, the report says the FBI used section 702 of the act, which allows the agency to spy on foreigners abroad without a warrant. It’s been criticized before for being a way to surveil Americans who are in touch with foreigners.”

WATCH: Chris Christie Actually Scores a Direct Hit on CBS News’ Margaret Brennan.

HMM: US Space Command Does Not Provide Blanket Protection for Commercial Satellites, If Attacked. “Dickinson’s statement means that the secretary of defense and the president would have to approve SPACECOM’s protection of commercial satellites, if attacked.”

Well, we have other military space priorities anyway.

LIGHTNING DEAL: Huusk Japan Knife, Hand Forged Meat Cleaver. #CommissionEarned

CHANGE: Israel passes Israel judicial reform; police crack down on protesters. What’s amusing is that everyone in America who’s saying Biden should just ignore Supreme Court decisions he doesn’t like is calling this a “far right” threat to democracy.

BIDEN CRIME FAMILY UPDATE: Hunter Biden’s Ex-Business Partner to Expose Joe Biden’s Involvement.

I HOPE WE’RE NOT TOO MESSIANIC, OR A TRIFLE TOO SATANIC: Report: Fox News matches employee contributions to Satanic Temple, Planned Parenthood.

IT SHOULD BE SEEN AS BULLYING — IN THIS CASE, DRIVING AN EMPLOYEE TO SUICIDE — AND IT SHOULD BE ELIMINATED: Of Course DEI Programming Should Be Seen As Psychological Interventions And Held To The Appropriate Standards: A sad story offers some lessons for an apparently shrinking industry.

It’s shrinking because people are figuring this out:

We’ll never know the precise causes of Richard Bilkszto’s suicide, but it doesn’t seem as though anyone involved is denying the fact that the KOJO Institute training had a serious negative effect on him. And in a certain sense, this is seen as a feature, not a bug, of certain types of trainings — the point really is to instill discomfort in (white) participants. As I wrote in my Times column, many contemporary DEI trainings “often seem geared more toward sparking a revolutionary reunderstanding of race relations than solving organizations’ specific problems.”

They’re basically garbage by grifters — at best. And I think that companies that use such trainings are deliberately creating a hostile work environment based on race and sex.

CORRELATION OF FORCES:

pic.twitter.com/4R4WwrYLBe

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) July 22, 2023

BEIJING-MOSCOW AXIS: China secretly sends enough gear to Russia to equip an army.

These shipments point to a China-sized loophole in the West’s attempts to hobble Putin’s war machine. The sale of so-called dual-use technology that can have both civilian and military uses leaves just enough deniability for Western authorities looking for reasons not to confront a huge economic power like Beijing.

The wartime strength of China’s exports of dual-use products to Russia is confirmed by customs data. And, while Ukraine is a customer of China too, its imports of most of the equipment covered in this story have fallen sharply, the figures show.

Russia has imported more than $100 million-worth of drones from China so far this year — 30 times more than Ukraine. And Chinese exports of ceramics, a component used in body armor, increased by 69 percent to Russia to more than $225 million, while dropping by 61 percent to Ukraine to a mere $5 million, Chinese and Ukrainian customs data show.

“What is very clear is that China, for all its claims that it is a neutral actor, is in fact supporting Russia’s positions in this war,” said Helena Legarda, a lead analyst specializing in Chinese defense and foreign policy at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a Berlin think tank.

Is anyone surprised?

HISTORY: Islamic Terror and the Church Bells of Noon: The Siege of Belgrade. “Yesterday in history, on July 22, 1456, the West scored one of its greatest victories over the jihad — and, in so doing, inaugurated the ringing of church bells at noon.”

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: New York Times quietly admits COVID deaths were overcounted by ‘almost one-third’.

Buried in the 17th paragraph of a newsletter titled “A Positive COVID Milestone” by David Leonhardt, a former Washington bureau chief for the outlet wrote: “The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had [the] virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other CDC data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.”

Leonhardt added, “Almost a year ago, President Biden angered some public health experts when he declared, ‘The pandemic is over.’ He may have been premature to make that declaration. But the excess-deaths milestone suggests that it’s true now: The pandemic is finally over.”

It’s been over.

TRANSPARENCY: Yale law library shuts down attempt to investigate status of its Clarence Thomas portrait.

NBC ATTACKS REPUBLICANS FOR NOTICING BIDEN’S CRUELTY TOWARD HIS GRANDDAUGHTER:

It seems that some in the corporate press have made covering for President Joe Biden’s many faults a priority.

The latest example comes from NBC, which wrote, “President Joe Biden’s family story has long been one of his greatest strengths politically. Republicans are starting to think they can turn it into a liability.” How do they plan to do that? By pointing out that Biden categorically rejects one of his seven grandchildren, presumably because his son had her with a stripper. He says he loves his six grandchildren. But he has seven.

The piece continues: “That [the attacks] have now boiled over to the presidential campaign trail and focused on this young girl and her role in the Biden family underscores how Republicans are leaning into a deeply personal issue for the president — and that it isn’t going away.”

The framing is notable: It suggests the real story is Republicans attacking Biden over refusing to acknowledge the existence of his granddaughter rather than, you know, the cruelty of Biden doing so in the first place. The title of the piece, “Republicans up the personal attacks on Biden and his family,” all but confirms this.

Evergreen:

HEH: The Based and Hilarious Reason Gen Z Bros Are Flocking to the New Barbie Flick.

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT? The ‘Club’ That Used To Solve Hollywood’s Labor Problems Is Extinct. So Now What?

DECADENCE IN ACTION:

Remember that time a billionaire child trafficking ring was busted, but then no one was named other than 1 woman?

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) July 23, 2023

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Trump Thinks That the Dems Might Want to Be Careful What They Wish For. “Trump is right though. Not only are the hardcore ‘Escalator MAGA’ supporters passionate, but there are a lot of people who had grown ambivalent about him who are outraged by the Democrats’ relentless election interference witch hunts. At this point, they may even be minting brand new Trump supporters.”

THE DELIBERATE ABANDONMENT OF COMPETENCE AS A STANDARD: State Bar Examiner Resigns Because ‘NextGen Bar Exam Is Complete Abandonment Of Competence As Standard’ For New Lawyers.

DECLINE IS A CHOICE. SO IS COLLABORATION.

Even 10 years ago, journalists would be too embarrassed to say the US Govt has a role to play in censoring the internet to "tamp down" on "falsehoods."

Because online censorship is now so central to the liberal establishment, they don't realize how twisted it is to say this: https://t.co/EZNRB7reaq

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 21, 2023