THE PENTAGON SEEMS TO BE IN DENIAL: From the Front Lines of Ukraine: A Soldier’s Warning to America.

What does this war look like now?

A 20-year-old soldier sits in his bunker with a small team, on a mission he planned himself, flying $500 drones that were assembled by volunteers in some basement according to a constantly updated distributed protocol. Refinements to the drones are made at his battalion’s informal drone lab, where some parts are 3D-printed and others are crowdfunded. The young soldier monitors via Starlink a constantly rotating livestream of quadcopter or fixed-wing expendable drone ISR platforms, either freely asking to kill or waiting to be directed by a duty officer to do so. His team is always making small adjustments and trying new things with their drones, ground stations, and antennas, even though most of them had zero engineering experience before finding themselves here. This is a far cry from the duties of a U.S. Marine infantry lance corporal.

From his position a few kilometers from the front, our drone soldier will fly his drones against infantry just one to ten kilometers deep into enemy territory. The infantry they hunt walk relentlessly forward, around the clock, like zombies, singly or in pairs (or small teams) through rubble, tree lines, and even open fields. They have little choice but to take a rifle and press forward for a quick death – what waits behind them is worse. Some ride motorbikes just to speed the process.

Even if 95% of them are killed in their march, a small percentage will pass through the large gaps in the porous, thin Ukrainian defenses, and could surprise and gun down the unsung Ukrainian infantry or mortar teams. Some may even make it far enough to slaughter drone teams in their hides. If they take even one tree line a day across a front, it is more than enough.

Win, lose, or draw, Ukraine has changed how wars are fought — and Russia, the laggard until the last year, has played an impressive game of catch-up.

But few in NATO capitals seem to be paying much attention.

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: CNN Admits That Americans ‘Vastly Prefer’ Trump’s Approach to Crime.

IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: All That Jazz.

Legendary jazz vocalist Cleo Laine died last month, age 97, at her home in Wavendon, England. Hardly anyone outside of the most dedicated jazz fans seemed to notice. I’m 56, and probably among the youngest to mourn her passing.

Even so, I didn’t think to write the obit I’d been carrying around in my brain for years. Cleo, you see, was born too late. British music critic Derek Jewell once called her “quite simply the best singer in the world,” but even at the height of her success in the 1970s, the Washington Post’s Mark Kernis had to admit that “She is not a household name. In fact, to many people, she’s no name at all.”

This week’s essay is not about Cleo Laine, although the power and clarity of her four-octave voice, her impressive career, and her almost unrivaled ability to work an audience certainly make her worthy of one.

When Cleo was coming up in the ’50s, a jazz artist like her dying would have been big news. Maybe not “LENNON MURDERED IN NEW YORK” or “ELVIS DEAD ON TOILET” big, but still a noteworthy passing.

Again, this isn’t really about Cleo — it’s about the near-silence that followed her death, and what it says about the music she thrilled audiences with for seven decades.

What happened to jazz?

Much more at the link.

Related (From Ed): John Coltrane and the End of Jazz.

HMM: Wholesale Inflation Surges to 3.3% in July.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK: Ex-Gov. David Paterson backing Eric Adams for NYC mayor— after endorsing Andrew Cuomo in Dem primary.

Related? ‘You’re Not Welcome’: Patrons Boo Commie Mamdani Out of Restaurant.

A CALIFORNIA CONSERVATIVE DISCOVERS WHAT MIGHT BE California’s Last Hope.

WELL, SHE’S RIGHT:

Yes. Gavin Newsom proved that you can end homeless encampments overnight when Xi Jinping came to visit.

— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) August 14, 2025

Trump is derailing an awful lot of gravy trains — now including Homeless, Inc.

ALL THE BEST PEOPLE ASSURED ME THIS NEVER HAPPENED: Two Michigan Politicians Indicted For More Of That Election Fraud That Doesn’t Exist.

RUSSIAGATE: Clapper Pushed to ‘Compromise’ on ‘Normal’ Procedures for Creation of Russia Collusion Intel Document.

IMPRESSIVE. MOST IMPRESSIVE:

US oil production is booming:

Total oil liquids production is now up to a record 21 million barrels per day in the US.

This marks +50% growth in daily production over the last 4 years.

In the first 5 months of 2025, US total petroleum output averaged 20.5 million barrels a… pic.twitter.com/gHHoRj7SWd

— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) August 13, 2025

News of fossil fuels’ death has been greatly exaggerated.

PLEASE DON’T GIVE THEM ANY MORE BAD IDEAS: How to Win the Democratic Party’s 2028 Nomination (and Destroy America!) in 3 Easy Steps.

FAIL, BRITANNIA: 10 Examples of Absurd Fallout From the U.K.’s Online Safety Act.

For U.K. residents, the options are either to accept that their internet experience will be sanitized as if they’re children, to circumvent the law by surfing the web exclusively using a VPN, or to submit to all sorts of different age-verification services (including ID checks and facial scans) that could leave their identities and information vulnerable.

“Even when these systems ‘work,’ they’re creating massive honeypots of personal data,” points out Masnick. “As we’ve seen repeatedly, companies collecting biometric data and ID verification inevitably get breached, and suddenly intimate details about people’s online activity become public. Just ask the users of Tea, a women’s dating safety app that recently exposed thousands of users’ verification selfies after requiring facial recognition for ‘safety.'”

U.K. residents are already reporting a host of troubles with accessing all sorts of content. Let’s dive into these mishaps, shall we?

Much more at the link.

YES:

The fact that a recently-retired Army general felt it was OK to write an article that is essentially calling for a military coup d'etat tells you all you need to about the challenges faced by Trump and Hegseth in restoring our military to a lethal, apolitical, warfighting force. https://t.co/Vl40nhAQtr

— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) August 14, 2025

PEACEMAKING: Trump and European Leaders Agree on ‘Red Lines’ in Ukraine Before Alaska Summit.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: After first operational launch, here’s the next big test for ULA’s Vulcan rocket.

Complicating ULA’s ability to ramp up its Vulcan launch cadence is the rocket’s design. Unlike SpaceX, which has a fleet of reusable Falcon 9 boosters, ULA has doubled down on building single-use boosters. This will keep ULA’s factory humming in Decatur, Alabama.

But the most pressing bottleneck restricting ULA’s ability to ramp up its launch cadence is at the launch site. United Launch Alliance has a single launch pad at Cape Canaveral and is outfitting another at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. What’s more, the company has just one active rocket integration hangar, where technicians vertically stack Atlas V and Vulcan rockets on their launch platforms.

Construction crews are racing to finish work on a second integration building a couple of miles south of the existing hangar. ULA officials project the new building to be ready to start stacking rockets before the end of this year, but teams have already missed an earlier schedule that would have brought the hangar online this summer.

ULA is also preparing a third mobile launch platform, giving managers more flexibility in moving rockets around the spaceport. Ground crews assemble the pieces of each rocket atop the launch platforms, which then transfer the complete launch vehicles to the launch pad for final countdown preps. Ultimately, this will give ULA the capacity to work on three simultaneous launch campaigns at Cape Canaveral, plus one at the Vandenberg spaceport on the West Coast.

Wentz told reporters earlier this week that the second rocket assembly building will theoretically allow ULA to launch as often as once every 13 days. This would get the company to its goal of flying 25 missions per year.

ULA does some impressive work, but their model is still pre-2017 — the year SpaceX first re-used a Falcon 9 rocket — going into the 2030s.

SAD: Australia’s Palestinian Recognition Is the Latest in a Long Line of Retreats.

BLUE CITY BLUES: Inflation in NY outpaces national figures. It’s the rent, tuition, child care…

Bruce Bergman, an economist at the bureau, said the Consumer Price Index for the New York City area was up 3.2%, compared to the national figure of 2.7%. He attributed the increase in large part to the rise in rent, which is up 4.7% in New York and the region compared to 3.9% nationally.

But Bergman said the cost of living in the city, although higher than the national average, has eased somewhat from the steep rates of change in recent years, when it was as high as 6% in 2022 and over 4% through much of last year.

“ Recently we have seen those shelter numbers come down a bit,” Bergman said of local housing costs, “but we’re still at a point where it’s still elevated compared to where it was prior to COVID.”

Don’t worry, front-running Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has a plan to make things so much worse.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. There Aren’t Enough Shells on the Beach to Hide James Comey’s Blackmail Treachery Against Trump.

I HAD BEEN ASSURED THAT THIS WAS IMPOSSIBLE WITHOUT AN ACT OF CONGRESS: Illegal Aliens Staying Away From Border Amid Trump Admin’s 3-Month Zero-Release Record.

In July, there were just 24,628 total encounters at the U.S. border, down from 170,180 in July 2024, marking the lowest monthly number of encounters in CBP history, according to the White House. No illegal aliens were paroled into the U.S. in July, compared to 12,365 in July 2024.

“Under President [Donald] Trump, the border is the most secure it’s ever been in American history,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday. “When you fortify the border, restore deterrence, and empower Border Patrol agents to do their jobs and enforce the laws on the books like President Trump has—this is the incredible result.”

Border Patrol encountered 4,601 illegal aliens between ports of entry at the southern border in July, marking a 23% decline from June and a 90% decline from July a year ago.

The crisis was always by design.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Oh, NOW the Dems Are Worried About ‘Rewriting History.’ “Conservatives have no need to rewrite American history — we’ve always liked it here, warts and all. We’ve never downplayed the awful stuff, and we’re still able to be patriotic. The Democrats rewrite American history because they hate the United States of America, it’s that simple. That’s why Obama blathered on about fundamentally transforming it. Democrats have been hell-bent on doing just that ever since, and won’t stop until they’ve Sovietized the place to their liking.”

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Washington Gun Dealer Asks Supreme Court to Void State’s Magazine Capacity Limit Law. “It’s a longshot, since the country’s highest court receives 7,000 to 10,000 petitions each year, but typically only hears around 80 cases.”

ICYMI: Houston, We Have a Spending Problem.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE KEEP TRYING TO MAKE “STACY” ABRAMS HAPPEN: Harvard touts two-time loser Stacey Abrams as ‘political mastermind’ in new seminar taught by radical professor.

Harvard University touted two-time failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams as a “political mastermind” in a description for a new seminar exploring the history of how race and gender impacted American laws.

The Democrat’s name is also embarrassingly misspelled as “Stacy” in the description for the fall 2025 class, titled “Race, Gender, and the Law Through the Archive,” which dives into “the role that Black women and non-binary people have played in shaping politics, grassroots organizing, the legal bar, and higher education during Jim (Jane) Crow and beyond.”

Abrams lost back-to-back bids to run for governor of Georgia in 2018 and 2022 to Republican Brian Kemp and has never held a federal office — but the Ivy League course names her as among the leading black female figures of 21st-century politics.

“From First Lady Michelle Obama to political mastermind Stacy Abrams [sic] to Vice President Kamala Harris, Black women have left their stamp on 21st-century politics and grassroots organizing,” reads the description of the course, taught by radical professor and historian Myisha Eatmon.

An undergrad year at Harvard now costs an estimated $86,926.

WINNING: Trump Scores Yet Another Yuge Appellate Victory.

PREPARE TO HEAR THE LAMENTATIONS OF THEIR WOMEN:

🚨 BREAKING: Tom Homan just announced that DC’s illegal alien Sanctuary City status has been REVOKED under President Trump’s federalization. pic.twitter.com/jtiCfablbT

Oh, they are going to lose it over this.

“D.C. under federal control is not going to be a 'sanctuary' city. We're…

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 13, 2025