OPEN THREAD: Enjoy the weekend!

THE NEW SPACE RACE: U.S. government warns of foreign intelligence threats to the space industry.

PREVENTIVE MEDICINE: Some Doctors Get Their Appendix Removed Before Going to Antarctica. Here’s Why.

For most expeditioners on Antarctica, the doctor is available to help in the event of appendicitis, as in the thrilling case of Heard Island station cook Jack Starr, operated on by doctor Otto Rec in October 1951, during the spring. But if the doctor themself is so stricken, things suddenly become a lot more complicated.

“What are the odds?” you are no doubt wondering. High enough that it has happened twice.

I don’t want appendicitis, and I’m not even in Antarctica.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: What if Joe Biden’s Senile routine is all an act?

Some New Yorkers may remember Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, the mob boss who pretended to be crazy for 30 years to throw off law enforcement.

Gigante was part of the Genovese family crime mob, and the feds eventually nailed him.

The Biden family syndicate, meanwhile, has been raking in tens, possibly hundreds, of millions from shady foreign sources, something that begs for the kind of law enforcement attention that the Genovese family got.

Read the whole thing, but you know that.

FASTER, PLEASE: “A Crack in the Armor” – Scientists Discover Potential Drug Candidate for Incurable Brain Tumor.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Binge drinking, marijuana and hallucinogen use reach all-time highs, NIH says.

UM: 2023 Toyota Sequoia Review – A Three-Row Prius? I’ve heard the complaint about Toyota deliberately holding back on some of their models, and in this case I think they want customers favoring a luxe vehicle to upgrade to the Lexus LX600. In fact, they tend to denature the top Toyotas to encourage people to go for the Lexus.

CONTRARY TO WIDESPREAD BELIEF, THERE’S NOTHING ABOUT BEING “NICE” IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE: Christian Publication Goes After Oliver Anthony’s Working Man’s Anthem Because It’s Too Mean.

And criticizing people on welfare isn’t un-Christian. See Thessalonians: “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you: that if any would not work, neither should he eat.”

But, you know, Christianity Today. Personally, I think “If you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds, Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds” captures that sentiment pretty well.

UPDATE: America’s newspaper of record is on it! 6 Ways Jesus Failed To Love His Neighbor — And How We Can Do Better – Guest Article by Christianity Today.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: LOL: Eric Adams Complains That Kathy Hochul Isn’t Helping Him Enough With Illegal Aliens, and She Replies That He Should Shut Up and Put On His Big-Boy Pants.

PRETTY MUCH: Who Can You Trust After a Defensive Gun Use? Your Attorney.

READER FAVORITE: Frigidaire Window Air Conditioner. #CommissionEarned

I HOPE WE’RE NOT TOO MESSIANIC, OR A TRIFLE TOO SATANIC: Taxpayer-Funded Minneapolis Art Center Holds ‘Family’ Class on Summoning Demons.

WHY YOUR DOG needs to smell the world.

GENTLEMEN, START YOUR AIRBRUSHES! Wiki Wow! Damning Emails Reveal Manipulated Biden Wikipedia Entries.

THEY HAD SUVs BACK THEN? Study shows that wildfires once fueled extinctions in Southern California; will it happen again?

MATT TAIBBI: “Thirty years after Bill Clinton ditched the ‘Peace Dividend,’ we seem to be in conflict everywhere, with no end in sight. Do we need a fundamental re-think of our foreign policy priorities?”

TRUMP PLANS TO SKIP FIRST GOP DEBATE, SIT FOR TUCKER CARLSON INTERVIEW INSTEAD: Report.

I’M NOT AGITATED: Alarm as FDA fast-tracks first antipsychotic drug for agitation in dementia.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (CONT’D): Binge drinking, marijuana and hallucinogen use reach all-time highs, NIH says.

THOUGHTS ON TEACHING:

The lingering inertia of the ‘normal’ exerts an enormous pull even among those who should know better. In spending time among homeschoolers and those in the Classical education movement one commonly encounters the notion that if only things were the way they were five, ten, twenty, etc. years ago, there would be no need for their independent approach, and a kind of bunker mentality where, if we simply wait out this storm, the sunshine will come again soon.

This will not happen and the system is your enemy. By system I don’t specifically mean the public school system, although that is a major part of the problem. I mean managerialism as a method of rule and neoliberalism as the ideology behind it. . . .

The homeschool movement is one of the two most important phenomena in education in the last century, along with the ascent of progressive education in the 1920s and 30s. While the latter hammered the final nail into the coffin of public education as the culturally-informed pursuit of excellence, the former represents a guerilla movement aimed at the entire progressive ascendency. Nothing signifies dissent from the neoliberal consensus like withholding one’s children from Mammon, and homeschooling signifies the fullest possible assumption of personal and familial autonomy. Nothing terrifies the managerial elites like homeschooling; if they ruled over a disarmed population it would already have been banned, as it has been among the beaten peoples of Western Europe. Much of the discourse around capitalism’s demand that women work outside the home ignores the fact that the two-income trap is designed as much to keep the public schools going as the reverse. . . . Nothing terrifies the managerial elites like homeschooling; if they ruled over a disarmed population it would already have been banned.

20 years ago I would have thought this was overwrought and paranoid.

BOOK OF THE DAY: From Dan Bongino, The Gift of Failure: (And I’ll rethink the title if this book fails!). It comes out next month but I thought it sounded interesting. #CommissionEarned

THEY DIDN’T “EAT” IT. IT NEVER REALLY EXISTED, EXCEPT AS THEIR TOOL. How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement. They created it, wielded it as a political weapon, used it for graft, and then, when it was no longer useful, they killed it.

OTHER SIDE OF THE SNOW WHITE MYTH: Leave it to Babylon Bee to report the news other media absolutely will not touch.

BECAUSE THEY KNOW BULLSHIT WHEN THEY SEE IT? Feds paid $300,000 to study why white, male physicists don’t fight racism, sexism in STEM.

IF YOU LIKE AMERICA, THANK CHRISTIANITY: It’s not just that the 1619 Project is slanderously inaccurate, such “history” completely and purposely obscures the deeply faith-driven roots of the American political and cultural experience. That’s the view of Bradford Littlejohn, writing in “Public Discourse: The Journal of the Witherspoon Institute.”

The specifics of the Christian influence on the founding are subject to various interpretations, to be sure, but in a review of  Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land: How Christianity Has Advanced Freedom and Equality for All Americans by Mark David Hall, Littlejohn impressively and critically marshals the facts, connections and logic that long pre-date the Philadelphia convention.