THE DARK SIDE OF GREEN: Are wind farms low-key harming people’s health?

GLOBAL BABY BUST: Tracking the Population Crisis.

PARTY OF YOUTH UPDATE: Sheldon Whitehouse: Dianne Feinstein Should Not Resign No Matter What Because We Need Judges Confirmed. “The fact is simple: if Senator Feinstein resigns, Mitch McConnell gets to decide whether Democrats have a Senate Judiciary majority.”

SPACE TO DESTROY: Property Value Collapse Shows Democrat Destruction of Baltimore Is Nearly Complete.

SO? FOR MAYORKAS IT’S MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: Republicans Skewer DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Over Border Failures.

GOOD: Scientists discover protein required for an effective immune response to invading bacteria.

A BILLION HERE AND A BILLION THERE…: Meta’s Reality Labs has now lost more than $21 billion since the beginning of last year. “Meta said in its earnings report that it expects operating losses in its Reality Labs unit ‘to increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts in augmented reality/virtual reality and investments to further scale our ecosystem.'”

LIGHTNING DEAL: Men’s Sweatpants Tapered for Gym,Running, Workouts.. #CommissionEarned

ROGER KIMBALL: Hunter’s sweetheart deal goes bust.

The chief thing to keep in mind as you savor the soap opera of Hunter Biden’s faux prosecution is that Hunter’s story is inseparable from the story of dear old dad, “the Big Guy,” Mr. 10 percent, i.e., Joe Biden, president of the United States. Yesterday, Hunter was supposed to plead guilty in a Delaware court to a sweetheart deal.

How sweet? Recognized medical authorities say it should come with a warning to diabetics. It’s so sweet, in fact, that Hunter, though he failed to pay more (way more) than $1 million in income tax, was going to be allowed to plead guilty to a couple of misdemeanor charges, avoid all jail time and — added bonus — have a felony gun charged dropped, swept under the carpet or otherwise “disappeared” just like an enemy of an Argentinean junta.

Sweet though it was, Hunter decided that the deal was not quite sweet enough when prosecutors held open the possibility of future liability for the famous once-and-future laptop owner. For her part, District Judge Maryellen Noreika was troubled by the prosecutors’ linking the tax charges to the gun charge: what did they have to do with one another? Was what they were asking her to do even constitutional?

So the plea bargain turned out to be no bargain. Judge Noreika gave the two sides thirty days to “clarify” the matter. Result: the miniseries will proceed for at least another season. The best part came on Tuesday when a lawyer on Hunter’s team rang up the court pretending to be from a GOP congressional committee. “You know that damaging file we sent to the court? Can you please take it down?”

Really? Yes really. Miranda Devine has all the details. Judge Noreika was not amused but it is not yet clear what the outcome or upshot of that “insane” (I quote a former federal prosecutor) behavior will be.

Why, it’s as if: The fix was in for Hunter Biden — until a hero judge stepped up.

OXYGEN ON GANYMEDE: Hydrogen peroxide found on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede in higher latitudes.

FASTER, PLEASE: Nuclear rocket will cut journey time to Mars in half.

THEY’RE NOT SAYING IT’S ALIENS…: Congress Wants More Transparency on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon.

PROBABLY JUST MORE PROPAGANDA FROM “BIG CPAP:” Sleep apnea harms heart health because of reduced blood oxygen, study shows.

I REMEMBER WHEN LAW SCHOOLS WERE HELD UP AS BEACONS OF FREEDOM: Law professors goad police to use Qualified Immunity for gun confiscations.

CHANGE: Anheuser-Busch Restructures with Layoffs. “In a move aimed at streamlining its operations and adapting to changing market dynamics, Anheuser-Busch, the world’s largest brewer, revealed its decision to lay off positions across its U.S. corporate staff. The restructuring, announced by the company spokesperson and quoted by CNN, is intended to simplify and reduce organisational layers to position the company for future long-term success. However, the layoffs will not affect frontline staff, including brewery and warehouse workers, drivers, and field sales personnel.”

The smartest thing they could do is relocate marketing back to St. Louis and become reacquainted with their customers. Marketing execs that would prefer to stay in New York are the problem.

THE POOR KIDS OF TODAY, PARENTED AND EDUCATED SO BADLY: Play Deprivation Is A Major Cause of the Teen Mental Health Crisis: Allowing more unsupervised free play is among the most powerful and least expensive ways to bring down rates of mental illness.

WHOOPS: Starbucks Hired Eric Holder To Conduct a ‘Civil Rights Audit.’ The Policies He Blessed Got the Coffee Maker Sued.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: I Couldn’t Believe the Truth About Shoplifting. “It wasn’t until just moments ago that I became aware of just how shockingly bad the shoplifting crime wave is — and I’m the former San Francisco resident who can’t seem to stop writing about the city’s long descent into criminality and accompanying economic decline.”

UNEXPECTEDLY: Abbott has done more to secure border than Mayorkas.

While President Joe Biden’s Justice Department is suing Texas for refusing to remove floating marine barriers in the Rio Grande, people continue to ask how many more congressional hearings it will take until Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas finally acts on the authority and responsibilities delegated to him by the president. As of now, it seems that Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) is more fit for the job of DHS secretary than Mayorkas, considering he has done much more to defend our southern border.

Well, that’s because Abbott isn’t trying to “fundamentally transform America” as these Obama retreads are aiming for:

● Jared Bernstein, member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors: “One thing we learned in the 1990s was that a surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people at all skill levels, immigrant and native-born alike, to the growing economy is to let the job market tighten up. A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need. One equally surefire way to sort-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”

● Former Trump administration senior adviser Stephen Miller: Biden’s Immigration Plan Would “Erase America’s Nationhood.”

● “Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser. Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multicultural’ country, a former Government adviser has revealed.”

UPDATE: Broadcast Networks Are Furious That Texas Buoys Actually Deter Illegal Aliens.

COMMUNIST CHINA’S NAVY KEEPS GROWING IN SIZE: Confronting China’s Rising Strength on the Seas

Donald Rumsfeld got scorched by media rubes for saying:”You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wishto have at a later time.”

But he was right, and his instant maxim certainly applied to America’s response to 9/11’s surprise attacks.

You certainly go to war with your navy as it is, not what it could be in eight to 12 years. Building warships, training naval ship and air crews, modernizing fleet support facilities and maintenance operations: The complex enterprise of creating a war-winning fleet has a very long lead time.

First column in a series of two. Maybe three. Or more.

FCC POWER GRAB REJECTED: House rejects satellite spectrum licensing bill because of space safety provisions. “A bill intended to reform satellite spectrum licensing regulations failed to pass the House July 25 after some members objected to provisions they claimed gave the Federal Communications Commission authority to regulate space safety.”

KOREAN ARMISTICE 70 YEARS ON: July 27, 1953. An iffy anniversary. America’s longest war? (bumped)

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: California’s War on Math.

Math made California prosper.

It’s most obvious in top universities like Stanford, CalTech, Berkeley, and UCLA. Those schools funneled great minds into California STEM enterprises like Silicon Valley, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and aeronautical engineering. Both the Central Valley and Hollywood—America’s main providers of food and fodder, respectively—rely upon engineering to mechanize production and optimize output.

All of this has made California’s GDP $3.6 trillion—making it the fifth largest economy in the world as of last year.

But now “California is America, only sooner” is a warning, and not just because of the exodus of people and jobs and the decay of our major cities, but because of the state’s abandonment of math—which is to say its abandonment of excellence and, in a way, reality itself.

Perhaps you’ve read the headlines about kooky San Francisco discarding algebra in the name of anti-racism. Now imagine that worldview adopted by the entire state.

Decline has been chosen.

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Why Are Leftists Easy to Control? I Have an Answer.

HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): Professor says he was discriminately fired for teaching sex was determined by chromosomes X and Y.

A biology professor filed a religious discrimination charge with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Monday against a Texas community college after administrators allegedly fired him for teaching students sex was determined by X and Y chromosomes.

St. Philip’s College in San Antonio, Texas allegedly fired biology professor Dr. Johnson Varkey in January for teaching his students that sex was determined by X and Y chromosomes and that reproduction must occur between a male and a female to continue the human species. Despite the fact that Varkey taught from school-approved and science-based curriculum, St. Philip’s College claims his teaching was religious.

We’ve reached a place where it’s a religious belief that men are men and women are women, and it’s science to say that they aren’t.

It’s a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world — except for Lola, of course.