NOW THAT’S REAL SOCIALISM: Venezuela’s largest ISP blocks Tor. “It has become a necessary tool to access blocked news sources online.”

WELL, GOOD: U.S. court dismisses climate change lawsuits against top oil companies.

The cities of San Francisco and Oakland, California sued Chevron, Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N), ConocoPhillips (COP.N), Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L), and BP Plc (BP.L) last year, seeking an abatement fund to help the cities address flooding they say is a result of climate change.

The dangers raised by the complainants are real and worldwide, and that both parties accepted the science behind global warming, Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said in the ruling.

“(However), the problem deserves a solution on a more vast scale than can be supplied by a District Judge or jury in a public nuisance case,” Judge Alsup said.

No matter the judge’s thoughts on climate change, that was a refreshingly sensible ruling.

POT, KETTLE: New York Times CEO Says Facebook’s Approach to News ‘Profoundly Dangerous’ for Democracy.

HMM: The Mystery at the Heart of North Korea Talks. “The parties have yet to agree on what exactly should be ‘denuclearized.’ But one South Korean official has a plan to close the gap.”

UH-HUH: Keith Ellison Says Travel Ban Ruling Will be ‘Marker of Shame’ in U.S. Like Plessy v. Ferguson.

I’m guessing Ellison either doesn’t know about or simply glossed over the explicit anti-racism in today’s majority opinion.

PROCUREMENT: B-21 Program Approaching Critical Design Review.

The review, also known as a CDR, is a key technical assessment for major acquisition programs.

“We haven’t done CDR yet [but] we are on our way to critical design review,” said Randy Walden, director and program executive officer for the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, which is shepherding the B-21 program.

“I suspect it will be done before the end of the year. That’s our plan today,” he said during remarks at an Air Force Association event in Arlington, Virginia.

The B-21 Raider is one the Defense Department’s top acquisition priorities. Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor for the effort.

The Pentagon hopes to begin fielding the platform by the mid-2020s or sooner. The program was put under the purview of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office to try to speed up the development process.

Walden said the service already has a model of the B-21 that has undergone wind testing.

“Any aircraft program that’s going through development, you’re going to wind tunnel testing, we’re no different,” he said. “You’re going to go from an estimate on a piece of paper and drawings, to [doing] the right things that can get you to build out the system, and wind tunnel testing is one of them. And we’re following that line because it makes sense from an engineering point of view.”

Aerospace engineer Will Collier noted on Twitter that “Going from award to CDR in less than three years is pretty darn fast in Big Defense Aerospace time.”

THE NEW RULES: Left-Wing Mob Targets Stephen Miller’s DC Apartment — While He’s Traveling with POTUS.

PIERS MORGAN: Dear liberals, you won’t beat Trump by banning his staff from restaurants, threatening his son with pedophiles, abusing his wife or harassing his Cabinet off the streets – you’ll just get him re-elected.

Liberal outrage against the President has now reached such levels of hysteria that many of them have forgotten what it actually means to BE a liberal.

It’s not liberal to ban Trump staff from restaurants, or threaten to put his son in a cage with pedofiles, or viciously abuse his wife for wearing a jacket, or demand that all his Cabinet be harassed from public view.

In fact, it’s the complete opposite.

This kind of horribly intolerant behaviour only serves to further strengthen Trump’s support, especially amongst those who voted for him, and thus further increases his chances of winning another term in 2020.

As Roger L. Simon noted yesterday, “Anger makes you stupid.” And anyway, the Left has been illiberal for as long as I can remember.

FASTER? PLEASE! Boeing Unveils Hypersonic Airliner Concept.

The initial concept vehicle, unveiled at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Aviation 2018 conference in Atlanta, is a preliminary step toward a long-range development plan targeted at both commercial and military applications. Although not yet defined, the concept is provisionally aimed at a passenger capacity larger than long-range business jets, but smaller than Boeing’s 737, with potential entry into service from the late 2030s onward.

Flying at Mach 5, and with a projected cruise altitude of 95,000 ft., the vehicle would travel at more than 2.5 times the speed and 30,000 ft. higher than the supersonic Anglo-French Concorde, which was retired in 2003.

That’s roughly 90 minutes from New York to Paris.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: The Left Tries to Mop Up After Hurricane Maxine and Much, Much More. “What if cries for political violence and civil disruption aren’t winning campaign messages?”

CBS POLL: 51% of Americans Believe a Border Wall is a Good Idea.

According to the poll, 32% of Americans believe that “a wall along the U.S. Mexican border” is a “good idea that can probably be completed.” 19% of those polled answered that the wall is a “a good idea that should be tried, even if it cannot be completed.” 48% of the 2063 adults polled said the wall was a “bad idea.”

The CBS poll was conducted last week from June 21-June 22. The poll comes after nearly two weeks of intense national scrutiny of the Trump administration regarding its handling of the southern border child migrant crisis.

As my friend and colleague Bill Whittle likes to say, “We have to build a wall because Democrats wouldn’t let us have a border.”

BIRDS OF A FEATHER: Maduro Congratulates Erdogan on Re-election.

“The Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela salutes the brother country of the Republic of Turkey, for its high expression of civility, heightened political conscious, and deep compromise to the Turkish democratic tradition,” the release stated.

Venezuela added that the South American nation will to continue to foster friendship and strategic cooperation with Turkey in joint and productive effort which will mutually benefit their people as well as promote justice, harmony, and peace among nations.

That’s rich.

VIRGINIA POSTREL: Before Drug Prohibition, There Was the War on Calico. “In 18th century France, wearing the wrong fabric could get you in big trouble.”

It was Paris in 1730, and the printed cotton fabrics known as toiles peintes or indiennes—in English, calicoes, chintzes, or muslins—had been illegal since 1686. It was an extreme version of trade protectionism, designed to shelter French textile producers from Indian cottons. Every few years the authorities would tweak the law, but the fashion refused to die.

Frustrated by rampant smuggling and ubiquitous scofflaws, in 1726 the government increased penalties for traffickers and anyone helping them. Offenders could be sentenced to years in galleys, with violent smugglers put to death. Local authorities were given the power to detain without trial anyone who merely wore the forbidden fabrics or upholstered furniture with them.

“The exasperation of the lawmakers, after forty years of successive edicts and ordinances which had been largely ignored, flouted or circumvented on a wholesale basis, can be sensed in this law,” writes the fashion historian Gillian Crosby in a 2015 dissertation on the ban. Her archival research shows a spike in arrests for simple possession. “Impotent at stopping the cross-border trade, printing or the peddling of goods,” she writes, “government officials concentrated on making an example of individual wearers, in an attempt to halt the fashion.”

They failed.

Of course they did.

OF COURSE SHE DID: In England, Hillary Trashes America’s Electoral College. “We will leave discussion of the American Electoral College for another day.”

BRIDGET JOHNSON: 25th American Sickened by Mysterious Attacks on U.S. Diplomats in Cuba, China. “State Department confirms a ‘number of individuals have returned to the United States from China’ for medical testing of their symptoms and ‘some of them still do remain under evaluation at this point’.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE? How To Go Out in Public as a Trump Supporter.

MIKE HUCKABEE: Red Hen Owner Followed Sanders’ Party to Another Restaurant and Organized Protest.

WHY DID IT HAVE TO BE SNAKES? Rattlesnakes could be lurking in your pool noodles, Arizona officials warn.

YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU: Rat breaches bank ATM in India, eats $18,000 worth of cash, dies.

MICHAEL WALSH: If you think of the Left as spoiled, nasty children, prone to temper tantrums when they don’t get their way… you’re absolutely right.

MADELINE OSBURN: Steve Scalise’s Call For Civility And Respect Draws Unbelievable Response.

Sean Davis adds, “A congressman who was nearly assassinated last year called for kindness and civility. Leftists responded by calling him a Nazi and lamenting that he didn’t die after being shot by a deranged Bernie bro.”

THE NEW RULES: DHS tells staffers to ‘keep doors and windows locked’ after burned animal found on official’s porch.

(REGIME) CHANGE? Iranian Protestors Take It to the Streets Chanting, ‘Death to Palestine.’ “Trump gutting the Iran Deal is looking pretty smart right now.”

CALEB HOWE: CNN’s Interview with Glenn Beck Is a Perfect Example of Everything That’s Wrong with the MSM.

SOMETIMES NOT EVEN THE PARANOID SURVIVE: Qualcomm Snapdragon 1000 rumored to be specifically built for PCs.

New details on the chip were obtained by Germany’s WinFuture, including that it will be able to match the performance of Intel’s Core processors. Specifically, the SDM1000 system-on-a-chip is said to be a much larger 20mm x 15mm, and use 12W of power, significantly more than a smartphone processor.

The Snapdragon 1000 is also expected to use ARM’s next-generation Cortex-A76 architecture, with a 35% speed increase, while supporting up to 16GB of RAM and two 128GB storage modules, making it clear the chip would be a threat to Intel in the notebook market.

Other rumors suggest that in the coming years Apple will move the Mac line to its own in-house designed ARM processors, which would take a small chunk out of Intel’s i5, i7, and Xeon business.