THAT’S A LOT: NASA readies mission to mysterious $10,000 QUADRILLION Psyche asteroid. “The value of all the nickel and iron that NASA believes makes up 16-Psyche’s oddly-shaped space rock in the asteroid belt’s outer reaches is estimated at $10,000 quadrillion. This is a massive sum, but NASA’s Psyche mission, which has now received approval to enter the final development stages before manufacturing begins for its 2022 launch, is actually after a much bigger prize – revealing how Earth’s origins. NASA researchers believe asteroid Psyche is key to understanding how planetary bodies are formed.”

The real prize will be bringing that thing in close enough to Earth someday to mine for off-planet manufacturing.

NOT THE BABYLON BEE: Mexican president selling his ‘luxurious presidential plane’ to pay for US immigration deal.

JON GABRIEL: Biden, Trump, and the New Normal.

Politicians love fighting the last battle. Every four years, we see a slew of candidates relitigating the last presidential race, often using the same strategy that lost the previous time.

This trend is dominant in 2019 with the rise of Biden’s candidacy and the continuing rear-guard battle by anti-Trump Republicans. Joe’s main message is a return to the supposed normalcy of 2008-2016. “Know what I was most proud of?” Joe said Wednesday, “For eight years, there wasn’t one single hint of a scandal or a lie.”

Hey, there’s a lie right there. Has it never occurred to him that the Obama years are what created Trump?

To admit that would require the kind of reckoning the Democrats simply aren’t prepared to do. Maybe what they need is another four years of Trump.

And do read the whole thing.

OH: California prisoners can legally possess marijuana, appeals court rules.

California inmates are now free to possess marijuana without fear of legal consequences by the state, thanks to a new appeals court ruling.

The 3rd District Court of Appeal overturned criminal convictions for five Sacramento defendants who had been caught with marijuana in their prison cells. The 20-page ruling says, “Consumption, not possession, is the act voters determined should remain criminalized if the user is in prison.”

The reason? The authors of California Proposition 64 — which voters passed in 2016, allowing recreational marijuana use — did not put anything in there that outlaws marijuana possession for incarcerated folks, the court ruled.

But the ruling comes with a major caveat: Consumption of marijuana by California prisoners remains a violation of the state penal code, and possession can still be punished as a rule violation by the California Department of Corrections. But if an inmate wants to keep a jar of weed next to his or her bunk, the district attorney can’t file charges, according to the ruling.

Well, I’m sure they’re just holding it for non-inmates.

CRYBULLIES: Snowflakes Whine About US Women’s Soccer Team Winning 13-0.

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE (CONT’D): Arizona Teacher Pleads Guilty To Molesting 6th-Grade Boy.

VIRGINIA IS FOR LOVERS? Virginia Democrats Just Voted For A Man Previously Jailed For Sex With A Minor.

JOHN STOSSEL: Real X-Men: Designer Babies Are Coming.

NOT ALL HEROES WEAR CAPES: Soldier to become Iraq War’s first living Medal of Honor recipient.

HMM: Changes to Facebook Graph Search leaves online investigators in a lurch. “When Facebook Graph Search launched six years ago, it was meant to help users discover content across public posts on the platform. Since then, the feature stayed relatively low-profile for many users (its last major announcement was in 2014 when a mobile version was rolled out), but became a valuable tool for many online investigators who used it to collect evidence of human rights abuses, war crimes and human trafficking. Last week, however, many of them discovered that Graph Search features had suddenly been turned off.”

I can’t imagine Facebook shut this down due to any genuine privacy concerns.

THIS IS JUST DUMB: Google Protecting Jussie Smollett From ‘Disparaging’ Searches. “Search-engine’s autocomplete feature filters out hate crime related searches.”

DAVID HOROWITZ: LGBTQ Bigotry: Tyranny Masquerading as Tolerance.

ED MORRISSEY: Local CBS Affiliate: Why Isn’t Omar Talking About Her Tax Issues? “The national media might not take a lot of interest in Ilhan Omar’s curious tax filings, but at least some of the local media has awoken to some of it. The local CBS affiliate attempted to get answers from the House Democrat about the questions raised by her tax filings, but got nothing but stonewalled. Why, WCCO wonders, does Omar not want to explain why she filed joint married returns with one man while being legally married to another, a violation of state law, at the least?”

CALVINBALL: Google CEO: YouTube Will Begin Targeting ‘Content Which Doesn’t Exactly Violate Policies.’

CHRISTOPHER ROACH: 2020 Has Echoes of 1996 for the Opposition Party.

The objective facts favor Donald Trump’s reelection for many of the same reasons Clinton was a favorite in 1996. The economy is doing quite well, and his tax cuts and regulatory reforms appear to be at least part of the reason.

Of course, he has not delivered on his main campaign promises, but he appears to his supporters at least to be trying, even in the face of bipartisan resistance. His deviations from promises appear aligned with rather than opposing public opinion.

Also, Trump rather decisively defeated ISIS’s caliphate in Syria, but has so far avoided calls for getting involved in another Middle Eastern war. Even Obama could not avoid this temptation, in spite of running as the “peace candidate” in 2008.

In short, we were warned that Trump would destroy the economy, the norms of good governance, and possibly act recklessly with his “finger on the button” in the event he became president. Instead, everything feels quite normal, prosperous, and predictable.

The gap between the Democratic Party’s hatred of Trump and his results mirrors the chasm between Republican Party’s Clinton hatred and the relatively modest evils of Clinton’s first term as president. Then, as now, there is some “outrage fatigue” among ordinary Americans, who are not nearly as partisan or engaged as the political press, volunteers, and donors who follow politics like a sport in both parties.

More important, by combining this background of ideological fervor and a “ho hum” candidate, Dole failed to excite the base, even as Republican rhetoric alienated those in the middle and within the Democratic Party.

Don’t get cocky.

STALIN YOUTH: Church Hosts Summer Camp to Train Grade School Kids to Be Antifa Activists.

THE HILL’S REBECCA KLAR: Trump administration to send migrant children to former Japanese internment camp.

ALEX GRISWOLD ON TWITTER: The “former Japanese internment camp” is also just a U.S. Army base that’s been continually operating since the 1860’s.

PLUS:

I’m old enough to remember when The Hill was a reasonably forthright, centrist publication. But despite the old Instagag, that has me feeling pretty old right now.

HMM: Trial Judge Reverses, Wendi Adelson Will Face Defense Questioning In Dan Markel Murder Case.

This one has been going on for a while, but there’s lots of background from Paul Caron at the link.

JOANNE LIPMAN: Tech overlords Google and Facebook have used monopoly to rob journalism of its revenue.

Over the past decade, the news business has endured a bloodbath, with tens of thousands of journalists losing their jobs amid mass layoffs.

The irony is, more people than ever are consuming news. There’s never been a greater need for factual reporting, from the White House down to the local school board.

Why the disconnect? Look no further than a new study by the News Media Alliance, which found that in 2018, Google made $4.7 billion off of news content — almost as much as every news organization in America combined made from digital ads last year. Yet Google paid a grand total of zero for the privilege. News industry revenue, meanwhile, has plunged.

Nice work if you can finagle it.

“BUT”: Inflation below 1 million percent but Venezuela crisis drags on.

Forget it, Jake — it’s Reuterstown.

THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP: Media Takes Break From Speculating on Trump’s Health to Fret Over Fox News Speculating on Biden’s Health.

REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: It Started With a Lie: Bruce Ohr’s Linchpin Role in Russiagate.

Ohr has since confirmed to Congress who the conspiracy theorists were: “Chris Steele, as I understand it, was hired by Fusion GPS to do research or gather information. He provided information to me,” Ohr has testified. “Glenn Simpson, who is, as I understand it, a principal of Fusion GPS, on a couple of occasions, he provided information to me. And on one occasion my wife, who was a contractor with Fusion GPS, provided some information to me.”

The average opposition researcher would be hard-pressed to get the attention of an associate deputy attorney general, let alone his cooperation. But the Fusion GPS crowd had the right connections. Steele and Ohr are close enough that Steele could sign an email to his old friend with “Love and Best Wishes to you, Nellie and all the family.” Simpson is an acquaintance of long standing. Nellie is, well, Ohr’s wife.

Fusion GPS didn’t just get Bruce Ohr’s valuable attention, the firm used it to make an ask. Nellie Ohr acknowledged in her own congressional interview what Fusion GPS had in mind when Steele invited her and her husband to breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel on July 30, 2016. “Chris Steele was hoping that Bruce would put in a word with the FBI to follow up on the information in some way.” He did just that.

With one phone call, Ohr arranged to take an assortment of unverified accusations — some of them lurid, all of them partisan-financed — directly to the deputy director of the FBI.

Read the whole thing.

NICE: Handshake Deal Shatters F-35 Price Target.

Lockheed Martin has tentatively agreed to a one-year contract with two priced options with the U.S. Defense Department that dramatically lowers the unit recurring flyaway costs for the F-35A a year ahead and beyond the previously stated goal of $80 million by the 14th lot of low-rate initial production (LRIP 14) in fiscal 2022.

If finalized, the “handshake” agreement would lower the cost of a currently $89.3 million F-35A by 8.8%, or $7.86 million each, from LRIP 11 to LRIP 12. A priced option in the deal would further lower the price of an F-35A to less than $80 million by LRIP 13, although Pentagon and Lockheed officials declined to provide specific figures for the option year.

“The handshake agreement, once finalized, will represent the largest F-35 production contract and the lowest aircraft prices in program history,” said Greg Ulmer, vice president and general manager of the F-35 program.

More like this, please.

HE FIGHTS: Trump Blasts Biden in Iowa, Says Obama ‘Took Him Off the Trash Heap’ in 2008.

Well, he’s right.

SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Vietnam says that China is mislabeling products as Vietnamese to avoid U.S. tariffs.