NOT THE END, BUT CERTAINLY A THREAT:  Destruction of America.

CONTEXT:  The Missiles to Diego Garcia Subtext. …Aegis Ashore were not USAID projects from the Obama admin…

CALL YOUR CONGRESS CRITTER. TELL HIM YOU’RE UNHAPPY:  Hello Senator Thune, Let’s expose what you’re really doing with “reconciliation.”

I’M CONSIDERING JOINING:  Your Membership Isn’t Just a Card.

GOOD:  Israel Approves Proposal To Establish Permanent US Embassy In Jerusalem.

NEEDED SAYING:  Debating themselves.

WORTH THINKING ABOUT:  Iran and the Axis of Evil. What’s up with Little Rocket Man? And Iranian rocket men?

I VOTED FOR IT TO BE SHUT DOWN AND THE RUINS SALTED:  Department of Education under Trump just took its ‘largest’ step closer to shutting down. ‘I think we’ve been very clear this last week that this is a multiphase process,’ Nicholas Kent, Under Secretary of Education, told Fox News Digital.

WE DEFINITELY NEED TO SHARPEN OUR GAME ON DRONES:  Barksdale And Drones.

THE ALWAYS SHARP AND STYLISH DAUGHTER IN LAW HAS BEEN ADDING A BUNCH OF PRODUCTS TO HER STORE:  Morrigan’s Mercantile.

REVIEW:  Lord of a Shattered Land by Howard Andrew Jones. Hannibal Barca meets Conan the Barbarian in a world where magic is real, the gods are dark and dangerous, and weird adventures are the name of the game!

FROM JEFF DUNTEMANN:  The Everything Machine.

Carrying 800 passengers and their household goods, agricultural animals, and farm-related supplies to Earth’s first interstellar colony, starship Origen’s hyperdrive self-destructs, marooning its passengers near an Earth-twin planet orbiting an unknown solar-twin star. While settling in, the inadvertent colonists name their world Valeron, and discover that Valeron is scattered with hundreds of thousands of alien replicator machines—but there are no aliens nor any other trace of them.

Each replicator is a shallow 8-foot-wide black stone-like bowl half-full of fine silver dust. Beside the bowl are two waist-high pillars about 8 inches in diameter, one pale silver, the other pale gold. Tap on either pillar, and the pillar makes a sound like a drum, one pillar high, the other low. Tap 256 times on the pillars in any sequence, and something surfaces in the bowl of dust. Simple sequences create simple and useful things like shovels, knives, rope, saws, lamps, glue and much else. Complex or random sequences create strangely shaped forms of silver-gray metal with no obvious use. 256 taps on the pillars can create any of 2E256 different things; in scientific notation, 1.16 X 10E77.

That’s just short of one thing for every atom in the observable universe.

The artifacts are dubbed “drumlins,” for the sounds the pillars make, and the replicators called “thingmakers.” Drumlins have strange properties. Although virtually indestructible, drumlins can change shape, especially when doing so will protect a human being from injury. Drumlin knives will not cut living human tissue, but they will cut living animal tissue or human corpses. Press a drumlin knife against your palm, and it will flow and flatten out to a disk. Pull the knife away, and it will slowly return to its form as a knife. Some claim that drumlins read human minds and grant wishes. Others insist they are haunted by invisible and perhaps hostile intelligences.

After 250 years on Valeron, the colony prospers. Starship Origen is still in orbit, and a cult-like research organization called the Bitspace Institute vows to repair Origen’s hyperdrive and return to Earth. With millions of drumlins catalogued using the thingmakers, Valeron’s people live well and begin to lose interest in returning to Earth. This threatens the Institute’s mission, prompting it to launch a covert effort to undermine public faith in drumlins. A low-key war begins between the Institute and those who value drumlins–including farmers, rural folk, an order of mystical women, and several peculiar teen girls who have an unexplained rapport with the thingmakers and their mysterious masters.

AND SPEAKING OF SHUTDOWNS:  Remembering the Shutdowns.

FASCINATING:  Private mission to Apophis gets another customer, two student-built landers.

NO LONGER A JOKE:  Shutdown.

ONLY I’D DISPUTE IT’S NOT “CONSERVATIVE”, IT’S “SANE”:  Hello, Columbus.

WHO DIDN’T SEE THIS COMING?  Drones Swarm Nuclear Bomber Base, Exposing Potential Threat to U.S. Aircrews.

WHEN THINGS COME TO LIGHT…  California cemetery removes banner draped over 9/11 memorial advertising new Islamic section after backlash. Cemetery owner says he gave permission for signage but did not authorize it to be placed over the 9/11 installation.

AND EVERY COMMUNIST I’VE EVER KNOWN IMAGINED HE’D BE ON TOP WHEN COMMUNISM CAME:  Communism’s Cool When You’re on Top.

THE VIRGINIA ATTEMPT TO STEAL “DEMOCRACY” FOR DEMOCRATS:  Stealing an Election as We Watch. Spanberger to Biden: “You think you know how to steal an election? Hold my chablis, and watch what I can do.”

LOOK, I DON’T LIKE THE MAN, BUT I’M SKEPTICAL:  Despicable behavior.

The character of the accusers. How long it took come out. The fact that Cesar Chavez was a rabid opponent of illegal immigration… all of it makes me very uncomfortable saying “yes, this is true.”

YEP:  The Rent Check that Paves the Road to Mars, Tesla’s next CEO will write a check every quarter. He’ll call it rent. Musk will call it a Mars budget.

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS MULTICULTURALISM. THERE’S ONLY ABUSE:  Reject multiculturalism as you would reject fake meat.

THE MAN IS SO TWISTY HE COULD GO DOWN A CORKSCREW WITHOUT TOUCHING THE SIDES:  Precision Imprecision.

AS FAR AS EXCUSES GO, THIS IS A PRETTY GOOD ONE:  This Day Eaten By Dogs.