IF WE’RE GOING TO HAVE A CLOWN SHOW GOVERNMENT, WE MIGHT AS WELL GET SOME LAUGHS OUT OF IT:

Holy shit this is funny! @MarlonWayans killed it! https://t.co/SzsUA5zUA9

— Joe Rogan (@joerogan) June 20, 2024

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Pentagon picks SpaceX, Blue Origin and ULA for $5.6 billion launch deal.

AS IT SHOULD: Joel Kotkin: The media’s great awokening is alienating the masses: Audiences are fed up with newspapers, Hollywood and Big Tech all singing from the same woke hymn sheet.

It’s bad enough that it’s oppressive groupthink. It’s also dumb-as-rocks, batshit-crazy groupthink.

WHY IS THE IVY LEAGUE SUCH A CESSPIT OF ANTI-SEMITIC CONSPIRACY THEORIES: Columbia Professor: Avoid MSM Because It’s ‘Owned by Jews.’

THIS IS UNFAIR. GARTER SNAKES ARE USEFUL AND HARMLESS. Don Surber: Garter Snake Mitt speaks. “In 2012, he begged Trump to endorse him.”

And in 2016 he sucked up in the hopes of being Secretary of State. Then when he was passed over, he suddenly developed principles.

JOHN LUCAS: The Continuing Politicization of the Military.

Insignia and patches on a soldier’s uniform used to serve the purpose of telling you something about the military qualifications and experience of the soldier. Under the Biden administration, they can also signal whether a soldier ascribes to the Democrat party’s current political trends.

A glance at a soldier’s uniform can tell you a lot about the person including their current assignment, the unit they served with in combat, their time in service and in overseas deployments in a combat theater, campaigns in which they have served, and, sometimes, their performance in combat.

The patches and badges on a soldier’s uniform are not just informative, they are sources of immense pride in military assignments and achievements. For example, soldiers take great pride in being assigned to an elite unit, such as the Ranger Regiment, Special Forces, or the 82d Airborne, and proudly wear their patch or insignia on their uniforms. When you see a soldier proudly wearing a Ranger scroll as the patch on his right shoulder, you know he has served in combat with one of the most elite military units in the world.

The Combat Infantryman’s badge, known as a “CIB,” also is a prestigious and coveted award that veterans of infantry combat wear proudly. In short, these and other insignia, patches, and ribbons on a soldier’s uniform are like a biography of his military career and accomplishments. They tell you who he is, where he’s been and what he’s done. And, although they are not called “pride” patches or insignia, they are worn with pride in what they represent. . . .

The latest example of this politicization (and there are many) has been revealed by the Stars and Stripes. It reports that the commander of the OSAN airbase in South Korea has authorized troops on the base to wear a “pride morale patch” on their military uniforms, in public and while on duty.

The commander’s spokeswoman told Stars and Stripes that “The patch represents the advancement of the Air Force’s commitment to diversity, inclusion, dignity, and respect within the mission.” Now, there is a commander who understands what his political masters want to see.

Frankly, I would prefer an Air Force that prioritized a “commitment” to winning our wars, but that’s just old-fashioned me.

Like, say, Boeing, they’re put diversity over their actual mission. Put simply, the rewards for parroting the ruling class’s sacred phrases exceed the rewards for being good at your job, even in the military.

ANNALS OF CENSORSHIP: My First Job, at the Stanford Internet Observatory: The research center, which is shutting its doors, was supposed to tackle “misinformation.” Instead, they hired a bunch of interns to flag social media posts.

To me, that meant ending internet abuse like the glamorization of anorexia on social media or financial scams that steal billions every year. But mostly I worked on the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), which SIO ran during the 2020 and 2022 elections. The purpose of that project was to identify so-called “fake news” spreading on social media.

In actuality, SIO hired a load of interns to scan social media for posts deemed to be mis- and disinformation. It turns out that the posts we students flagged were often sent along to moderators at Twitter (now X), Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, which took them down in order to quash dissenting viewpoints—viewpoints that sometimes ended up being right, as in the case of Covid likely being the result of a lab leak, or Hunter Biden’s hard drive being his actual hard drive—not Russian disinformation.

Thanks to the work of independent journalists, the SIO’s work has come under a lot of scrutiny, including in Washington. A recent House Judiciary Committee report alleges that, by cooperating with the Department of Homeland Security, the SIO’s Election Integrity Partnership “provided a way for the federal government to launder its censorship activities in hopes of bypassing both the First Amendment and public scrutiny.”

Well, that’s what it was.

SHOOTING: The Things You Learn In Competition May Save Your Life One Day.

OPEN THREAD: Be here now.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover enters new Red Planet territory: ‘Bright Angel.’

WELL, HE FACED PERJURY CHARGES IF HE LIED TO CONGRESS. HE DOESN’T WHEN HE LIES TO AMERICA. Dr. Anthony Fauci writes COVID-19 lab leak is a ‘conspiracy theory’ in memoir — but told Congress it wasn’t.

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED. FOLLOW THE SCIENCE. Cheese Makes You Happy And Could Boost Healthy Aging, Study Suggests.

SCHMALTZ FOR THE WIN: Poultry Power: Transforming Waste Chicken Fat into Clean Energy.

METAPHOR ALERT:

‘Big’ cockroach crashes State Department press briefing, alarms spokesman in awkward scene https://t.co/2rqtSWxNTz pic.twitter.com/yPGLHLV0lr

— New York Post (@nypost) June 20, 2024

WHY ARE DEMOCRATS THE UNFEELING PARTY OF CONTEMPT?

I called Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D) to ask what’s so funny about a minor getting r*ped by an illegal. I think we all missed the joke. Hopefully she returns my call! @PramilaJayapal @RepJayapal https://t.co/dohSXZSC2Q pic.twitter.com/XW2yTIJ0hd

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 20, 2024

Related: Migrant charged with murder of 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray was released into US just weeks ago.

Plus, compare and contrast: Donald Trump calls mom of Rachel Morin, jogger murdered by illegal immigrant: ‘Deeply touched.’

DON SURBER: NYC sees Trump was right.

The story not reported often is better than the one not reported. And in this case, the story reported is pretty darned good: A man stalked the illegal alien who raped a 13-year-old girl and with the help of neighbors, beat the crap out of him and tied him with a belt until police arrived. . . .

That paragraph is telling for what it doesn’t say. The paragraph does not say the rapist (the illegal alien admitted the rape) was stalked and beaten. There is no mention of tying him up. Instead in NYT’s world, people just held the man.

In an earlier age, NYT might crusade against vigilantism and maybe it still will. Its story was sympathetic to the rapist “After his arrest, Mr. Inga told officers that he had a drug problem” and downplayed fears of rape, “Sexual assaults by strangers are relatively rare. Only about 20% of rapes are committed by someone who is a stranger to the victim” — only 20%. The Me Too movement is not only dead but with a wooden crucifix driven through its heart.

But I doubt NYT or the rest of the Democrats want to draw attention to this case because it points out that violent crime and the number of illegal aliens are rising under Biden.

What NYT and the rest of the propagandist media decried as racist when Donald Trump said it 9 years ago has been shown to be the truth.

On the upside, the crowd that beat him was made up of immigrants too. They haven’t been denatured by the U.S. legal and educational system yet.

Plus: “The 77% who say illegal immigration is a crisis or a major problem are not saying that because there is too few illegal aliens.”

The priorities of our ruling class — shrinking population, “degrowth,” open borders, climate hysteria, trans-rights, etc. — are not those of the voters. That’s why the ruling class is working hard to make sure that voters don’t matter.

COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: Walking brings huge benefits for low back pain, study finds.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF GIANT SUVs: 2024 Toyota Sequoia Interior Review: Everything Is Huge but Thoughtfully Designed. I do not like the big screen. It doesn’t say if you can turn it off, but you can opt for a smaller one. Plus: “The finer radio and navigation controls have all been relegated to the touch screen. That’s an inevitability. However, we applaud Toyota for keeping the climate controls as hard buttons and switches below the screen. Here, you can control fan speed, temperature, fan direction, defogger, and available seat heating and cooling all with button taps. Much less distracting.”

Knobs and buttons are superior.

JUST SAW A TRADWIFE INFLUENCER ON INSTAGRAM DESCRIBE HERSELF AS A “FIRST GENERATION STAY-AT-HOME MOM” AND IT MADE SENSE TO ME. I suspect that we’ll see more of this in response to population changes.

IMPROVING PISTOL SKILLS: Practicing Precision and Transitions.

A BIG WIN FOR THE INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE: Supreme Court Rules Government Officials Cannot Arrest their Political Opponents Without Consequences.

IS IT JUST ME, OR ARE WE SEEING A LOT OF NEWS ABOUT OFF-LABEL USES FOR EXISTING DRUGS? Drugs for enlarged prostate may also protect against dementia with Lewy bodies.

I’m fine with that, I just remember a lot of shade thrown at “unapproved uses” of drugs a few years back.

THE EV BUBBLE IS DEFLATING: Why Americans aren’t buying more EVs.

HACK GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE UNION ENDORSES HACK GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE: EPA’s largest union endorses Biden for president.

COLOR ME UNSURPRISED: Study: Heavy strength training at retirement age helps keep you mobile.