IT’S THE STORY, STUPID: Love him or hate him, Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” commands such devotion and loyalty from millions of regular Americans because it does what Rod Martin told us in 2010 the Right had to do if it hoped ever to defeat the Left.

Rod recently republished his 2010 essay in which this striking passage appeared:

“It is common sense that if jobs are flowing to China we should both negotiate better deals with them and also make our own competitive environment better. It is common sense that we shouldn’t turn California’s Central Valley into a desert for the sake of a tiny fish that isn’t even native to the area, at the cost of putting ex-farmers in food lines instead of in their fields feeding the world.

“It is common sense that American foreign policy should first and foremost serve America’s national interests rather than the interests of foreigners. It is common sense that budgets should be balanced, that people should have not just the opportunity but the duty to work for a living, that faceless bureaucrats in Washington don’t understand or care about your family as much as you do, that the safety net should encourage advancement, not stifle it. It is common sense that schools should focus on subjects that will help kids become good citizens and perform well at work, that families should be reinforced, that neighborhoods should be safe.”

I have no idea if Rod Martin has been the political genius behind Trump but, if you read this lengthy essay that first appeared 14 years ago, you will likely find yourself wondering why we all haven’t been reading and re-reading it ever since.

IF YOU WORK FOR KAMALA HARRIS: Don’t you dare look her directly in the face unless you are a longtime senior staff aide who has been permitted the privilege. That’s according to the Washington Free Beacon’s Jessica Costescu.

LAST WEEK’S NETANYAHU CAPITOL PROTESTS JUST A WARMUP? Former New Left mob tactics trainer Richard Pollock observes in his latest column that “the latest violence in Washington has been part of a slow, but escalating set of acts.  The Palestinian who wrote on D.C.’s Christopher Columbus monument that ‘Hamas is Coming’ wasn’t an idle threat.  Palestinians are seeking to up the ante.”

Pollock also talked Ryan Mauro of the Capital Research Center (CRC), another guy who is an expert on who is funding, organizing and strategizing for the pro-Hamas/pro-Palestinian mobs. Mauro sees a new and disturbing characteristic in the D.C. mob violence around the U.S. Capitol:

“These aren’t just critics of Israel They’re not Republicans or Democrats. They’re not liberals. We really have to think of these groups as a new paradigm because they’re communists, anarchists, radical Islamicists and anti-Americans. It really sets them apart from the categories of people that we’re used to dealing with people like liberals and those demonstrating for women’s rights. No, this is separate. This is an eco-system that is against both political parties, against liberals and conservatives.”

Liberals, are you listening?

THOUSANDS OF TAX CHEATS WORK FOR IRS: New report from the Treasury Department’s IRS watchdog says more than 5,800 agency employees and contractors have nearly $50 million in unpaid taxes.

MEET THE VEEP’S RADICAL PASTOR BUDDY: Barack Obama had Jeremiah Wright. Kamala Harris has a second Brown, Amos Brown (former California House Speaker Willie Brown was the first, but that’s a whole different sort of story). The Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross has the details on the far-Left radicalism of Pastor Brown.

THE REST OF THE LIDDELL STORY: Thanks to Instapundit reader Larry who pointed out the superb documentary on Tubi entitled “Eric Liddell: Champion of Conviction.” I watched it and it is indeed, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story. So it’s up today on HillFaith. It’s just short of an hour but is well worth your time.

Liddell had become a national superstar with his Olympic performance and could have remained in Scotland to bask in the glory and live the good life. Instead, he returned to China as a Christian missionary at a time when WWII was on the horizon.

Following Japan’s invasion of China, Liddell lived the last four of his 43 years in a Japanese internment camp. The Tubi documentary does a tremendous job of reporting how those terrible years showed what a genuinely great man of faith and conviction was the Scots’ great champion.

TRUMP ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT UP CLOSE: My Epoch Times reporting colleague Janice Hisle offers a stirring and revealing first-person account of the terrifying events at Butler, Pa.

REMEMBERING OLYMPIAN ERIC LIDDELL: The 2024 Olympics launch today in Paris, a century after Scot sprinter Eric Liddell won the gold in the same city for an event – the 400 meters – that was a good bit longer than his specialty.

Liddell’s inspiring story was the basis for much of the great “Chariots of Fire” movie. But the flick barely mentioned the years after his Olympic win, years in which Liddell served as a missionary in war-torn China, including interminable days in a Japanese prison camp where he was especially devoted to protecting the children, many of whom were orphans. HillFaith remembers.

WARNING! PRE-CRIME LAWS ON THE HORIZON: They are under consideration in Canada and, as I explain in my latest PJMedia column, odds are you don’t realize how much the ground has already been prepared here in the U.S.

PRO-HAMAS PROTESTORS WARN HARRIS, TRASH THE CAPITOL: Yesterday’s massive and violent protests around the U.S. Capitol grounds by pro-Palestinian/radical far-Left activists were a blunt warning to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

That’s according to Richard Pollock, the former Saul Alinsky tactics trainer of New Left radicals in the Chicago 7 era. Pollock saw the light years ago and, after a successful career with ABC Good Morning America, has been one of the best investigative journalists on the Right. To say Pollock knows how the Far-Left operates is an understatement.

In his latest column on Substack (composed shortly after observing on-scene the protests throughout the day) Pollock pointed to comments by radical activist Linda Sansour:

“’Don’t be surprised that a war criminal has been invited by a country that harbors our own war criminals,’ she said. ‘And at the top of the list is President Joe Biden,’ she declared to vigorous applause.

“Sansour was direct. She warned the Democratic Party might lose the Muslim and Far Left votes in November. ‘Let us be clear. Our votes are still to be earned.’

“It was a direct warning to both Harris and to the Democratic Party that their election in November could be imperiled if they ignored anti-Israel voters. Similar warnings were issued earlier this year after voters in American Muslim enclaves voted to boycott then candidate Biden.”

As I’ve previously noted, Pollock was a much-valued colleague on my Watchdog investigative reporting teams at the Washington Examiner and Daily Caller News Foundation. The man knows the Far Left from the inside out and he knows how to dig out the facts the MSM refuses to report.

16 MISTAKES BIBLE SKEPTICS OFTEN MAKE: Interesting morning, going from Cheatling Congress to A+ political impersonations to a lesson in exegetical logic. Check out the latter on HillFaith. (Skeptics, please note the last sentence).

IS THIS GUY THE BEST IMPERSONATOR EVER? The transition from Trump to McConnell is arresting. And his Tucker Carlson is all but perfect. Hat Tip to Bill Ackman for pointing this out.

THE CHEATLE CHALLENGE TO CONGRESS: Here’s why Congress must not ignore the former Secret Service Director’s middle fingers. It’s my latest PJ Media column. PROMOTED FROM LAST NIGHT.

AUDIO POINTS TO TWO BUTLER SHOOTERS: Instapundit readers have all kinds of skills and knowledge, so could some of you tell the rest of us if there are flaws in Chris Martenson’s claim his audio analysis of the nine shots fired in the Trump assassination attempt strongly points to the presence of two shooters.

CAN YOU HANDLE ‘THE TRUTH IN TRUE CRIME?’ That’s the implicit challenge in the title of J. Warner Wallace’s latest book. He’s the now-retired Los Angeles Police Detective and former NBC Dateline regular who is a master at solving murder cases that have gone unsolved for decades.

Wallace is also one of the world’s most effective and personable apologists for the Christian faith and in his latest book, which I enthusiastically review on HillFaith this morning, he digs deep into what the realities of death teach us about life. It’s a fascinating and unusual approach to a subject that we instinctively avoid.

CAN THE LEFT END ITS VIOLENCE? Richard Pollock, who has been chronicling the roots of the Pro-Palestinian protests and violence in the teachings of Saul Alinsky, sees no end to the protests, demonstrations and attacks:

“For the hard Left, violence has been part of their political religion. I know, as I once was a hard Left activist as I was a roommate with Chicago 8 defendant Rennie Davis. I personally became friends with Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and hard-left lawyer Bill Kuntsler. I understand that political violence is part of the Left’s DNA. Over time, I moved toward a more conservative outlook.

“Of course, Left-wing political violence has been on display in America ever since Big Bill Haywood’s Industrial Workers of the World, known as the Wobblies, sparked strikes and riots throughout the United States early in the Twentieth Century.”

And there is much more in Pollock’s latest column on Substack, penned in the aftermath of the failed assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump. If you aren’t subscribing to Pollock, you are missing one of the most unique and insightful analysts on the Right.

BIDEN’S BULLSEYE FOR TRUMP: Issues & Insights (I&I) points out that President Joe Biden on July 8 said he was done talking about the debate and observed that “It’s time to put Trump in the bullseye.” That kind of rhetoric prompts radical nutcases to do things like shooting at former President Donald Trump, so does Biden bear some degree of accountability for the day’s tragic events?

WHAT IF WE KNEW THEN WHAT WE KNOW NOW ON COVID? The Heritage Foundation’s Bob Moffit, writing in The Daily Signal, offers this fascinating fact:

“Did you know that four months before the world had ever heard of COVID-19—on Sept. 3, 2019—authorities in the Veneto region of Italy discovered COVID-19 antibodies in local blood samples. Of course, you didn’t. The deadly and mysterious COVID-19 was around much longer than anyone had previously suspected.”

And this:

“The genomic features of the novel coronavirus are incompatible with a natural origin. Among the many reasons pointing to a lab origin, Dr. Quay noted, ‘ … the genome of SARS-CoV-2 has seven features that would be expected to be found in a virus constructed in a laboratory and which are not found in viruses from nature. The statistical probability of finding each feature in nature can be determined and the combined probability that SARS2 came from nature is less than one in a billion.’”

And that’s just for starters!

Just think – How many lives would have been saved with a four-month head start on responding to what became the Pandemic that has thus far killed an estimated six million people around the world, including 1.2 million Americans.

FAITH ALL OVER THE PLACE: Stephen Kruiser and Chris Queen introduce a new PJMedia podcast, “Faith All Over The Place,” which promises to be an interesting mix of faith perspectives from Catholic Kruiser and evangelical Queen. Love the accompanying shot-glass artwork, too.

Earlier this week, PJMedia Editor-in-Chief and Writer Lincoln Brown debuted their podcast, “The Intersection of Faith and Politics.” Some really interesting stuff going on with PJMedia, folks!

ABOUT THAT ‘BIG BOY’ NEWS CONFERENCE: Where were the big boys of the Mainstream Media is the question I ask in my latest PJMedia column. Threat to democracy? How about when independent journalists stop being independent?

WHOA! More than two-thirds of Hill staffers, including Democrats and Republicans, responding to survey say President Joe Biden should end his campaign for a second term. And here’s another shocker: 68 percent of staffers under the age of 30 say Biden should quit.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: In the St. Louis district of Rep Cori Bush (D-Mo.). She boasted recently of securing nearly $1 million in federal tax dollars for a Far-Left pro-Palestinian activist group, Young Voices with Action. Washington Free Beacon’s Meghan Blonder reports.

HOW TO VOTE WHEN BOTH CANDIDATES STINK: That is not meant as an allusion to any particular race on the ballot in 2024, but being unsure of who to support can especially be a problem in local and state elections. The latest “What Would You Say” video on HillFaith from the Colson Center offers three interesting suggestions.

THE INTERSECTION OF FAITH & POLITICS: Super debut today for PJMedia Editor-in-Chief Paula Bolyard and writer Lincoln Brown with new podcast. They talk at length about the GOP platform’s retreat on the pro-life issue and a bunch of related topics at the intersection. Definitely worth signing up for!

DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH ON INTER-STELLAR TRAVEL: Assume a modest-sized spacecraft carrying three crew members and everything they would need for a journey that would consume on their watches 5 years enroute to a nearby planet thought to be sufficiently like Earth to support life. How much energy would be required to make the journey?

Writing in Evolution News and Science Today, Retired Physics Professor Eric Hedin did the calculation and concluded that 140 quadrillion kWh would be required:

“Believe it or not, it’s equivalent to 4,800 times the total energy consumption of the United States in the year 2022. This means all the electricity, petroleum, natural gas, and any other form of energy used to power everything in the U.S. for one year would be 4,800 times too small to get our modest-sized spaceship to a relatively nearby star in a reasonable amount of time. I think it’s fair to say that interstellar space travel isn’t even remotely possible with our current understanding of physics and technology.”

I hope either Hedin is wrong or such a vast amount of energy becomes feasible at some point in the future, as I’d like very much to be part of a astronomical Lewis & Clark expedition.