MAN, MEAT OR MIND? Seems like a rather stark choice, but neurosurgeon Michael Egnor explains why it really isn’t. And what that tells us about the case for Intelligent Design.

KERRY INVESTED IN CHINESE FIRM: Alana Goodman of The Washington Free Beacon details climate czar John Kerry’s investment of at least $1 million in a firm “that is a major funder of China’s artificial intelligence sector—including a tech company blacklisted by the United States for human rights abuses against the Uyghurs.”

HEALTHCARE RATIONING IS HERE: Don’t go to the Cleveland Clinic seeking a kidney transplant if you aren’t vaccinated. Didn’t there used to be something in that Hippocratic Oath about doing no harm?

CENSORSHIP KILLS: That’s the message from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who cites the censorship of videos of doctors discussing how they successfully treated Covid patients with Ivermectin and other repurposed drugs.

HOW TRUMP DIDN’T KILL DEMOCRACY: Another day, another evil caused by Donald Trump. This time, it’s an “intensifying erosion of American democracy” because those gutless Republicans won’t silence the former president, according to The Hill’s Niall Stanage. Except the erosion didn’t start with Trump, based on the survey data I cover today in my PJ Media column.

THE SELLING OF AXIOS’ SOUL: Axios is an up and coming entrant in the digital news media platform universe and claims it has “no B.S. for sale.” Well, Chuck Ross at Washington Free Beacon shines a much-needed light on the latest way journalists sell their souls, by helping corporate lobbyists corner the politicians they seek to persuade.

CITY VS SUBURBS WAR IS OVER. SUBURBS WON: That’s the verdict of Allan Berger and David Gordon, writing for Joel Kotkin’s Newgeography. How long will it take the enviros and their urban planning allies to figure this out?

“Here’s what we found: Most — 63 percent — of those the U.S. Census defines as ‘urban’ Americans are actually suburbanites who commute by car from auto-dependent places. An additional 18 percent live in exurbia and also commute by car. People that live relatively close to city centers and ride in by public transit are another 13 percent. Still, even they rely on cars in their home communities.

“Any realistic route to a sustainable urban future needs to harness this combined population, a racially and economically diverse 92 percent of U.S. ‘metropolitan’ residents, and their automobile-based mind-set. It’s these suburbanites in their much-dissed ‘bedroom’ communities and anything-but-iconic houses that can create the radical changes we need.”

Berger and Gordon are high on Electric Vehicles. I’m not, as I suspect most Instapundit readers aren’t. But putting that issue aside, the key implication of their findings — the suburbs, and the exurbs, are here to stay — is that, if you want to save the environment, you better figure out how to do it with something other than forcing people to move back into the cities.

TWO PEAS IN A POD: Stuart Rothenberg has seen it all in the nation’s capital, over and over and over … Can you guess which congressional crisis he refers to it in this Roll Call oped?

“Congress often waits until the clock is running out before it actually gets down to dealing with big issues, whether spending or policy matters. … But the current hyper-partisan political environment makes it even less possible than usual to negotiate deals well before the clock strikes midnight. That’s because party leaders and activists spend most of their time playing to each party’s political base, rallying supporters behind their agenda and mobilizing their base against the opposition.”

Sounds a lot like the current impasse on Capitol Hill, doesn’t it? But Rothenberg wrote that passage back in 2011. And that’s the problem, Rothenberg and the rest of sentient America have heard this same song over and over and recognize it for the sham that it is. And just in case you missed the Motown reference, remember this?

FREE SPEECH AND PELOSI’S JANUARY 6 INQUISITION: Writing at The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson puts it bluntly: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is mounting “a brazen attack on the First Amendment rights of peaceful, law-abiding Americans.”

Observes Davidson:

“Let’s be clear on this point. Since its inception, the Select Committee has amounted to a show-trial for House Democrats and leading NeverTrumpers who are attempting to make examples out of ordinary citizens who dared to protest the election, just as President Biden’s Justice Department is throwing the book at anyone connected to the events of Jan. 6 to make examples of them.”

mRNA INVENTOR DECRIES MEDICAL CENSORSHIP: The vaccine insanity is global, Dr. Robert Malone. He knows a thing or three about Covid vaccines.

THE DARK MONEY GIANT YOU NEVER HEAR ABOUT: It’s called Majority Forward (MF) and, according to Capital Research Center’s master dark money tracker Hayden Ludwig,  it helped channel $230 million into the Democratic Senate campaigns in 2020.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) probably bows and thanks the MF every morning before he goes to work. But putting the Democrats back in control of the Senate is just one of the many ways MF channels dark money. Ludwig has more, much more.

FRANCIS COLLINS IS NO HERO: Departing NIH chief Francis Collins has been something of a rock star among secularists and evangelical Christians alike, but Dr. John G. West of the Discovery Institute presents a comprehensive case for a profoundly different assessment.

BIDEN WEAPONIZES COVID VACCINE: Being discharged dishonorably from the U.S. military isn’t merely a matter of which box is checked on the separation papers. Here’s how His Fraudulency, or those behind him, is weaponizing the vaccine against service members who choose not to get the jab.

TODAY’S BILLY MITCHELL: Jed Babbin, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, notes the multiple points of favorable comparison between Gen. Bill Mitchell — who was court-martialed for critiquing military leadership’s purposeful ignorance of air power — and Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller — who faces court martial for critiquing the lack of accountability for the Afghanistan debacle among military leadership.

A TALE OF TWO OLD KARMANN GHIAS: Those of you of a certain age will recognize the vehicle in the title, but what you likely didn’t know is what J. Warner Wallace claims can be learned about human beings from a couple of humble VWs graced with Italian bodies.

UPDATE: Unforgivable! Misspelling Karmann, that is. As penance, I will subject myself for the next six months to driving a British-made vehicle with Lucas (“Prince of Darkness”) Electrics. If you aren’t sure about that reference, ask Charles Glasser.

UN RELIEF AGENCY SHOT THROUGH WITH ANTISEMITISM: It required hours of laborious digging but The Lid’s Jeff Dunetz unearthed an internal report that found dozens of United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) members and staff promoting hatred for Israel and the Jewish people on social media.

“Entitled ‘Beyond the Textbooks,’ the UN Watch document identified 100 UNRWA educators and staff who have publicly promoted violence and Antisemitism on social media. It highlights explicitly ’22 recent cases of UNRWA staff incitement which clearly violates the agency’s own rules, as well as its proclaimed values of zero tolerance for racism, discrimination or antisemitism,’” Dunetz reports.

And that’s just for starters. The UNRWA comes under the UN’s Human Rights Council, which Dunetz describes as “the most anti-Semitic/anti-Israel organization in the United Nations.” There should be a photo of council in the definition of “Hypocrisy” in Webster’s Dictionary.

Is it too much for the U.S. to ask that, if the UN wishes to remain on our soil and accept our funding, the world body must live by its own charter and expel nations and groups that fund, practice and defend terrorism, anti-Semitism and incessant, vicious lying about Israel and America?

TALK ABOUT MIXED BLESSINGS: The Covid Lockdown led to millions of Americans discovering how great working from home can be. No more hour-long commutes, more time with family and friends, etc. But there is another side to it, according to Ashe Short:

“Potential buyers are sometimes offering hundreds of thousands of dollars above the asking price of a home and offering to waive inspections, only to have their offers declined. Buyers are losing out to cash offers or in insanely competitive bidding wars. Because of demand, 50 percent of the homes sold in July were on the market for 17 days or fewer, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported.

“Limited housing supply is due to many reasons, including supply chain disruption, the increased price of lumber, housing regulations, lack of labor, and demand going up as more people realize they can move and work remotely. Another widely reported issue with the market comes from large businesses buying properties to rent and pushing out buyers with more modest budgets.”

Ashe and her husband have a happy ending to their search for a new home they could customize on a lot of their choice, but most others don’t. Like the adage goes, things that can’t continue, won’t.

PARAGRAPHS I NEVER EXPECTED TO READ: Big Labor is a bastion of the Democratic Party’s New Deal coalition, right? So how to account for this by Ben Frederick, writing in The Federalist:

“For professional trade unions in Michigan — as for any entity focused on longevity, opportunity, fewer regulations, and lower taxes for hard-working people — Republicans aren’t just one ally in Lansing, they are the only ally in Lansing. Where Democrats once advocated for trade union values, they now choose activism over job creation, time after time.”

If these Michigan unions aren’t exceptions that prove the rule, much of the conventional wisdom about the 22 and 24 elections will be out the window.

AG GARLAND’S CONFLICT OF INTEREST: Hans Bader points to the conflict-of-interest behind Attorney General Merrick Garland’s memorandum on the “domestic terrorism” of parents criticizing school boards that allow teaching of hateful doctrines like Critical Race Theory:

“Attorney General Garland has a conflict of interest in bringing this investigation. Erika Sanzi of Parents Defending Education notes that ‘Parents are concerned over intrusive surveys and ‘screeners’ that ask 12-year-olds if they are pansexual or gender fluid. The surveys are often created/administered by’ Panorama Education. ‘Merrick Garland’s daughter is married to the president and founder.’

“As PDE’s Asra Nomani observes, ‘In its survey @PanoramaEd asks students if they are ‘pansexual’ or ‘gender fluid.’ She argues that by investigating parents, ‘US Attorney General Merrick Garland is freezing parents protesting fraud and protecting his son in laws business interest.'”

WILL SEIU OWN MCAULIFFE? Terry McAuliffe, a long-time Clinton fund-raiser and enforcer, wants a second stint as Virginia’s governor and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is spending big to make it happen, according to Capital Research Center’s Hayden Ludwig, writing in the Washington Free Beacon.

After handing $40,000 to a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that specializes in registering new Democratic voters, Ludwig reports, the SEIU “endorsed a mailer that contains a partially pre-filled absentee ballot application form sent by the D.C.-based Center for Voter Information, a left-of-center vote-by-mail advocacy group.

“The mailers, one of which was obtained by the Virginia Project, have targeted over two million voters across 134 Virginia counties and cities, urging them to register for mail-in ballots ahead of the November election, when Virginians will vote for their next governor and control of the House of Delegates.”

McAuliffe is in a close race with Republican Glen Youngkin, so the SEIU-funded effort could make the difference. Given his record, McAuliffe will be only too happy to accommodate whatever the union demands in return.

THINK TWICE BEFORE BOLTING TO THE EV FUTURE: Looks like General Motors officials may well be second-guessing their wokey decision to invest billions of dollars in developing Electric Vehicles.

There are more than 143,000 Chevy Bolt EVs on the road, but GM recently put out a bulletin advising owners of certain, uh, precautions they are strongly encouraged to take, according to Ronald Stein, writing for the Committee For a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT):

• Not to park your Chevy Bolt within 50 feet of other vehicles in case it catches fire.
• Highly recommends that Bolt EV owners not to park within 50 feet of anything you care about.
• Recommends parking on the top floor or on an open-air deck and park 50 feet or more away from another vehicle.
• Requests Bolt EV owners to not leave their vehicle charging unattended, even if they are using a charging station in a parking deck.

The information Stein provides about the GM warning is his opening illustration of a whole passel of problems EV enthusiasts, global warming alarmists and environmental radicals don’t want people who buy cars and trucks to know about.

THE TOP 10 PEOPLE BOOKS HAVE BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT: One list was compiled by a CIA analyst in 1999, the other by a former Los Angeles Police detective in 2020. The same name tops both lists, but there are some surprises in who’s where and how the rankings changed.

UPDATE: For commenters who question the accuracy of the Google search results, I should point out that Wallace notes the results are based on “every country, every publisher, and every kind of author (including self-published).” 

BUILD BACK BETTER’S UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME FOR ILLEGALS: Joseph Simonson of the Washington Free Beacon went dumpster diving, again, in that $3.5 trillion spending and taxing explosion and look what he found this time. Senate Parliamentarian, are you watching this?

WRONG AGAIN, BERNIE: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) regularly claims “the working people of America” want His Fraudulency’s gargantuam $3.5 trillion “Build Back Better” spending and tax hike explosion. Bernie should check out Issues & Insight’s latest TIPP survey that found most Independents are in fact opposed to the Biden Blowout.

AND THEY WONDER WHY THEY ARE HATED: Politico newsroom poo-bah disses a Gold Star family on Twitter. Learns nothing.