RIDING THE CREST OF MATCHING VIRAL PUBLIC OPINION AND SHOWING HOW OUT OF TOUCH “ELITES” ARE:  ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ singer Oliver Anthony earning $40K per day after turning down $8M record deal.

AND THIS DOESN’T EVEN TOUCH SECURITY THEATER AT AIRPORTS:  Fourth Amendment Abuse.

INDEED:  Some bans are more equal than others.

And for the record, Handmaid’s Tail Tale is bad erotica masquerading as science fiction that has launched a thousand women costumed as ketchup bottles for no explicable reason. It belongs on no curriculum. Much like Wuthering Heights it just gives susceptibly emotional women the vapors. But it shouldn’t be banned.

I’M WITH HIM. WHAT HE SAID:  I will NOT wear a mask, part two.

I will not wear the mask. I will not pretend the panic is real. I will not take the shot (unless I can inject vinaigrette in the lefties of my choice). I will not move to the fifteen minute hell hole. I will not give up my car. I will not give up my gun. I will not eat the bugs. Molon Labe.

Also, while we’re at it:  mene mene tekel upharsin!

FOR PEOPLE WHO KEEP TALKING ABOUT WHAT THEIR EIGHT YEAR OLDS SAID THEY’RE SURE CRUSTY WHEN KIDS SPEAK:  Blacklisted 12-year-old appeals lower court decision saying he has no free speech rights.

OPEN THREAD: Excelsior!

LIVE: Grab a Drink and Join Us for the First GOP Presidential Primary Debate. “Mike Pence is the George Bush 1988 of 2024, except for the winning.”

DONALD KESSLER, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Target of European debris removal mission hit by other debris.

Here’s a piece Rob Merges and I wrote about space debris a few years back.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Trump To Host Live Stream Of Debates Where He Insults The Other Candidates MST3K-Style.

Related: Republicans Gather To Debate Who Will Lose To Trump In A Distant Second.

And of course I’m on drunkblogging duties for the debate tonight over at the mothership, starting around 15-20 minutes before the festivities begin.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Here’s your direct drunkblogging link!

HE’D BE HAILED AS THIS CENTURY’S WOODY GUTHRIE:

Imagine if a republican was in the presidency and they controlled the legislature and Rich Men North of Richmond came out. Do you think the left would still have the same reaction to that song?

— Russ_Noneya (@RussNoneya) August 20, 2023

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: “Elite” cyber unit at DoD hosted Biden’s pseudonym e-mail accounts.

THE UPSIDE OF PARASITES: Radical Trial Shows Hookworms May Protect People From Type 2 Diabetes. “Parasitic worms, like hookworms, have been living inside humans through much of our species’ history, and while some infections can put our health at risk, others barely make their presence known. They might even bring some good. In recent decades, scientists have noticed that in places where parasitic worms are endemic, people report fewer metabolic and inflammatory diseases. What’s more, recent studies have found that when people are ‘dewormed’, their insulin resistance suddenly increases.”

THE WORLD IS RUN BY DOTARDS: What happened to Xi Jinping at the BRICS summit? “It turns out the man who got body slammed into a door was Xi’s translator. You can see the same small guy with glasses in this earlier video shot upon Xi’s arrival. But that was a relatively minor incident compared to what happened yesterday. Xi Jinping failed to show up for a planned speech. Did anything extraordinary happen yesterday that might have unavoidably pulled Xi away from his duties? Maybe?”

NINA PLANCK WAS SAYING THIS OVER A DECADE AGO: New Research Challenges Advice To Limit High-Fat Dairy Foods.

READER FAVORITE: GoveeLife Smart Countertop Ice Maker. #CommissionEarned (Bumped)

CHOOSE THE FORM OF YOUR DESTRUCTOR: How Jon Stewart Made Tucker Carlson.

Flashback: How David Brooks Created Donald Trump.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Four Shocking Truths About the American Economy.

HMM: X suspends DeSantis PAC’s account hours before debate.

X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, suspended the account for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ main supporting PAC on Wednesday.

The Never Back Down PAC’s account, @nvrbackdown24, was suspended early Wednesday morning, according to the organization’s strategic communications director Matt Wolking.

X did not immediately respond to a request for clarification from Fox News Digital, though Wolking speculated that pro-Trump accounts “engaged in mass reporting” against the account.

“X says it ‘seems like our automated systems incorrectly picked it up as “spam.”‘ We have asked X to tell us who exactly reported @NvrBackDown24 as spam,” Wolking wrote from his personal account.

Wolking included screenshots of several X accounts allied with former Prsisdent [sic] Donald Trump that were celebrating the account’s suspension.

Whatever happened, the account is back up now.

CERTAINLY NOT IN LIGHT OF MY EXPERIENCES: Our High Misdiagnosis Numbers Aren’t All That Shocking.

My experience with both doctors and mechanics is that they don’t think much, they diagnose by rote habit. It takes a lot to get them to actually think about what might be going on under the hood to produce a particular problem, and I’m not sure some of them are capable of it.

UPDATE: Wagner Decries ‘Murder’ Of Prigozhin Amid Reports Anti-Air Missile Struck Plane. “At this point it’s looking like the entire top command of Russian mercenary outfit Wagner Group was aboard the private plane that was downed northwest of Moscow hours ago. Wagner itself is confirming Yvgeny Prigozhin’s death, with Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel Grey Zone calling it a ‘murder.'”

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER: Amazon’s Tucker-Disappearing Act.

According to an August 16 press release by All Seasons Press, Amazon received 7,523 copies of Tucker. On the book’s publication date, August 1, Amazon listed it as “Sold Out” within minutes. And yet BookScan, a firm that tracks book sales, reported only 3,227 sales of Tucker during its first week. Which raises these questions, as bullet-pointed in All Seasons Press’s release:

Did Amazon sell out of their 7,523 units almost immediately?

If so, why weren’t those sales reported to BookScan?

If they did not sell out their 7,523 unit inventory, why did they announce that the book was sold out and unavailable for sale?

Some other twists: Amazon fulfilled post-publication orders before shipping books to customers who’d preordered Tucker. And after describing the book as “Sold Out,” Amazon didn’t order more copies from the publisher; on the contrary—and quite incredibly—it “emailed many preorder customers to ask if they wanted to cancel their orders,” and required them “to go on a desktop, not the app, and proactively confirm they still wanted the book or the order would automatically cancel.”

In other words, Amazon made it easy for customers to cancel their orders and made it difficult for them to confirm their orders. What merchant eager to sell a product behaves in such a way?

One who puts political interests above their own shareholders’ interests.

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: India becomes the 4th country to successfully land on the moon.

THERE REALLY IS A GUN CONTROL INDUSTRY: Attacks By Gun Control Industry on Firearm Ads Target the Next Generation’s Gun Rights.

VIDEO: Plane Carrying Wagner Group Chief Who Rebelled Against Putin May Have Been Shot Down.

The video quality isn’t great but the plane appears to have been hit or maybe had a small bomb smuggled on board.

I HAVE A FRESH BATCH OF UNEXPECTEDLIES READY FOR WHAT HAPPENS NEXT:

BREAKING: Seattle police and fire will no longer be answering to mental crisis calls.

“Crisis responders” or social workers, will be dispatched instead. They are not allowed to be armed 🧵 pic.twitter.com/toxYdekPbY

— Katie Daviscourt 📸 (@KatieDaviscourt) August 22, 2023