WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Crazy time: Illinois schools will test students’ mental health.

Illinois schools will provide annual mental-health screenings for all students in third grade and up, under a new bill signed by Gov. JB Pritzker. Students already are tested for vision and hearing problems.

The goal is to detect anxiety, depression and trauma before it’s “too late,” said State Senator Laura Fine (D-Glenview).

Parents can opt their children out of the screenings. If they don’t and their child is identified with a psychological issue, they’ll be given access to information on mental-health care in the area. What will schools do? That’s unclear.

I’m reminded a bit of what Stalin said about voting. It isn’t so much what’s on the tests, but who grades them.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The Palestinians Don’t Deserve a State.

AS A LONGSTANDING MEMBER OF THE PRO-HOTTIES CAUCUS, I ENDORSE THIS MESSAGE: ‘We Need Hotties to Convince More Lefties That Gun Ownership is a Good Thing.’

Get them down to the range where they’ll meet some of the friendliest and most helpful people in the world, and the next thing you know, they’ll be voting Republican.

Of course, some lefties are so anti-hottie that the messaging might backfire — but you don’t want those people armed, anyway.

CLEAN UP THE ROLLS:

🎂 Happy Belated Birthday to Maxine (129), Andrea (125), and Charlotte (118)!

🧟‍♀️ According to PA voter data, they’re still active voters — despite being born before airplanes, radio, and women’s suffrage.

🧐 The oldest living American is 114. So… what’s going on,… pic.twitter.com/Gyfq7C9fsY

— Audit The Vote (@Auditthevotepa) August 4, 2025

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Josh Hawley’s $600 Checks: Populist Gimmick or Tax Policy Breakthrough?

CHANGE: Trump’s Tariffs: Rewriting Economic Thinking About Free Trade.

With the OBBB rewarding income generation and tariffs penalizing consumption, the combo is revolutionary in modern times.

Since Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty, the U.S. has transformed into a consumption-driven service economy with increasing income redistribution, i.e. social welfare programs. Apparently believing that a dead-end formula, President Trump is trying to reverse all three elements: less consumption, more production and less income redistribution. The idea is that more production will generate more income at all levels, reducing the need for social welfare programs. Take note, Democratic Socialists.

Will it work? There are no guarantees. Tariffs could unleash inflation, or, worse, stagflation or, even, recession. Will it be easy? Trump himself has said it will involve some pain, mostly the aforementioned risks. More worrisome is the President veering off-course to use tariffs as an instrument of non-economic foreign policy, penalizing Canada for its Mideast policy.

In the main, though, strategic use of tariffs is rewriting economic thinking about free trade. When first developed, free trade theory did not contemplate the mobility of capital. Yet, under globalization, capital can move swiftly to locations with the lowest labor cost. Over the last two to three decades, capital moved to China to leverage its low labor costs. The result is a manufacturing juggernaut, which has an absolute advantage that overwhelms the notion of comparative advantage central to free trade theory.

Putting American workers in competition with low-cost labor three decades ago led directly to Trump.

Turning a potential rival like Communist China into a manufacturing powerhouse was just stupid.

WINNING: American Eagle Just Earned a Million Customers.

CHINA: After Xi.

Xi will have multiple ways to credential his successor, but as the story of Mao’s troubled succession suggests, no facet of his successor’s dossier will be more important than his ties to and rapport with the military. Outside observers tend to downplay the role of the PLA in Chinese politics. After all, the Chinese military has never seized political control, as have armed forces in autocracies such as Argentina and Pakistan. To many, this suggests that modern China has cultivated strong norms of civilian control—such that the party unquestionably “commands the gun,” as Mao famously put it.

But the absence of direct military rule belies the quiet power that the PLA wields in China. The reality is that the Chinese military exercises a form of coercive control, shaping interactions among decision-makers. The reason is simple: even though Chinese leaders don’t fear a direct challenge from the military, they constantly face that risk from civilian rivals. And in such struggles, the PLA acts as an implicit kingmaker as civilian leaders try to manipulate the levers of control over the military to ensure that they, and not their opponents, have the upper hand. When Deng needed to bolster the standing of his chosen successors, for instance, he appointed his close ally Admiral Liu Huaqing, the father of the Chinese navy, to the Politburo Standing Committee—an unusually high promotion for a military officer that has not since been replicated.

It is tempting to think that China is so fundamentally different today that the military’s latent role in succession is the artifact of a bygone era. In reality, the military remains pivotal in China’s elite politics, and control over it will remain a key asset for future political leaders.

Other unknowns: Will Xi hang on until death like Mao, or step down but quietly still run things unofficially like Deng? Completely stepping aside like Hu seems unlikely at best.

TRUE, BUT ONLY BECAUSE OF APPEASERS IN PARIS, LONDON, AND OTTAWA HOPING THE CROCODILE EATS THEM LAST: Hamas Official: Oct. 7 Made Palestinian State Possible.

FINALLY:

You can now bet on what color the next dildo thrown on a WNBA court will be. pic.twitter.com/8il9I85dJi

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) August 2, 2025

JESSE ARM: The Rise of Luigism.

Wesley LePatner was a senior managing director at Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager. She was CEO of the firm’s Real Estate Income Trust—a $53 billion portfolio. She was also a mother of two, a philanthropist, and an engaged member of New York’s Jewish community. On Monday, she was shot and killed in the lobby of her midtown Manhattan workplace, one of four victims of Shane Tamura’s murder spree.

There’s some evidence that her killer was targeting the National Football League, which shares an office building with Blackstone. But within hours, it was clear that his motive was irrelevant to the hordes now celebrating LePatner’s execution online. Across Reddit, Facebook, X, and other social media platforms, users—many anonymous, and some displaying transgender or Palestinian flag emojis—seized on the executive’s death as symbolic retribution. Her position at the investment firm became a license for cruelty. Commenters mocked her success, dismissed her philanthropy as sinister, and portrayed her employer as an unmitigated force for evil. The message was unmistakable: her death was something to relish.

This grotesque display is part of a broader trend of class rage and Internet nihilism that justifies violence by turning innocent victims into scapegoats for moral fury. The permission structure for such ghoulishness is now fully operational. What were once the disturbing mutterings of the fringe are now public, performative, and proudly cruel.

A political movement is testing its power. Call it Luigism.

Read the whole thing.

KDJ: To Kill an Operation Mockingbird: Tulsi Goes to War With the CIA’s Propaganda Yobbos. “Former Democratic Party presidential hopeful and current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is giving the CIA an enema, and she’s putting the hose where it is most needed: in the sketchy, unofficial offices of Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s not-so-secret department dedicated to propaganda.”

2026 PREVIEW: The billionaire mall magnate who could jolt the California governor’s race. “For months, the prospect of Harris’ entry into the governor’s race froze the 2026 contest as candidates and donors waited to see if she would seize the frontrunner’s mantle. But if Harris was the largest domino still teetering, [Rick Caruso] the Los Angeles billionaire and former mayoral candidate was widely seen as a close second — and Harris’ pass has given him options.”

MOMMAS, DON’T LET YOUR BABIES GROW UP TO BE COWBOYS: It’s Time for Jerry Jones to Sell the Dallas Cowboys. “If the fundamental purpose of sports is to compete for championships, then your trophy case is the only measuring stick that matters.”

HARDBALL:

Hold on, 5 minutes ago weren’t ‘mainstream libs’ trying to add two new states, pack the courts, get rid of the filibuster, and dismantle the EC? https://t.co/X8aZHBcqjN

— Coddled Affluent Professional (@feelsdesperate) August 4, 2025

The tit-for-tat won’t end until the Dems have been made to hurt the way they’ve hurt the GOP and conservatives — if then.

They were going to pack the Supreme Court. They were going to end the Electoral College. They were going to take Trump off the ballot.

Yes, sir. All bets are indeed off. https://t.co/NMRUxQWVOQ

— Rep. Mitch Little (@realmitchlittle) August 4, 2025

Related: Gov. Abbott to Fleeing Dems: ‘You’re Fired!’

BUBBLE? Silicon Valley’s AI Spend Goes Berserk as Microsoft Starts Cashing In.

This week, Meta said it’s expecting to shell out between $66 billion and $72 billion this year, and that it expects to spend even more next year on data centers and hiring.

Microsoft, on the other hand, said that it is expecting to spend more than $100 billion next year, with much of it going toward AI. This upcoming quarter alone, the company is eyeing $30 billion in capital expenditures, again mostly for AI, in what is a record forecast for the company.

Apple also posted better than expected revenue on its earnings report this week, but that was mostly attributable to iPhone sales. Despite that, CEO Tim Cook told investors during the company’s earnings call that the tech giant was planning to “significantly” increase its investments in AI to catch up with rivals and was open to acquisitions to do so.

This sure feels like a repeat of the dot-com bubble. That’s just an awful lot of money going into something that doesn’t yet return any profits.

If there is a shakeout, it’ll be brutal.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Dems Keep Bringing a Wiffle Ball Bat to Trump’s Game of Hardball. “There’s a decided mood shift now. He’s not getting lost chasing Democrat-induced side quests. Dems are confused by the fact that Trump is doing what he promised because, let’s be honest, the GOP has been talking about a lot of these things for decades and never doing a thing about them. Things that didn’t seem possible before are happening now.”

IT’S A SOLID HYPOTHESIS BECAUSE IT MATCHES VIRTUALLY ALL THE DATA WE’VE SEEN:

My hypothesis is that the only thing that changed is we found out every institution is corrupt and always has been. https://t.co/HFmmMRs8bZ

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) August 3, 2025

More from Weinstein’s address:

“I have no doubt that given an hour, the people on this panel could point to 100 examples of the pattern I have just described, while finding even a handful of exceptions would pose a significant challenge. We are left in a fool’s paradise. Our research universities spend huge sums of public money to reach preordained conclusions.”

“Professors teach only lessons that are consistent with wisdom students have picked up on TikTok, even when those lessons contradict the foundational principles of their disciplines. Once proud newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post only report important stories after they have become common knowledge.”

“Morticians must now raise the alarm over patterns missed by medical examiners. The CDC has become an excellent guide to protecting your health, but only for people who realize you should do the opposite of whatever it advises. The courts, the last holdout in this ongoing inversion of reality, are now regularly used as a coercive weapon of elites against those who threaten them.”

“We have literally witnessed the Department of Homeland Security attempt to set up a truth ministry and declare accurate critique of government as a kind of terrorism. To my fellow patriots in the West, The pattern is unmistakable.”

And until fairly recently, nearly unthinkable.

IF YOUR OPPONENT IS TEMPERAMENTAL, SEEK TO IRRITATE HIM: Israeli minister sparks anger by praying at sensitive Jerusalem holy site.

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has visited the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem and prayed there, violating a decades-old arrangement covering one of the most sensitive sites in the Middle East.

Photos and videos of his visit show Ben-Gvir leading Jewish prayers at the compound, which is known by Jews as the Temple Mount, in occupied East Jerusalem.

Praying at the site breaks a long-time arrangement that allows Jews to visit the site but not pray.

To borrow the Left’s language, that mosque is an artifact of Arab settler-colonialism.

MIDDLE EAST: The Absolutely, Positively, Worst Campaign of Genocide in Human History.

TARIFFS CAN’T DO EVERYTHING: India to still buy oil from Russia despite Trump threats, say officials.

Earlier this week, Reuters reported that Indian state-owned refineries had suspended Russian oil purchases amid the tariff threats and narrowing price discounts.

But on Saturday, the New York Times cited two unnamed senior Indian officials who said there had been no change in Indian government policy related to importing Russian oil. One said the government had “not given any direction to oil companies” to cease buying oil from Russia.

“These are long-term oil contracts,” one of the sources said. “It is not so simple to just stop buying overnight.”

The sources cited by ANI said Indian oil refineries operated in full compliance with international norms, and that Russian oil had never been directly sanctioned by the US or EU. “Instead, it was subjected to a G7-EU price-cap mechanism designed to limit revenue while ensuring global supplies continued to flow.”

They added: “India’s purchases have remained fully legitimate and within the framework of international norms.”

The sources also noted that if India had not “absorbed discounted Russian crude combined with Opec+ production cuts of 5.8 mb/d [millions of barrels a day], global oil prices could have surged well beyond the March 2022 peak of US$137/bbl [a barrel], intensifying inflationary pressures worldwide”.

Russia is the top oil supplier to India, responsible for about 35% of the country’s supplies. India says that as a major energy importer it must find the cheapest supplies to protect its population against rising costs.

On the other hand, keeping oil prices low isn’t exactly doing Moscow any favors

LAWFARE: Court Restricts L.A. ICE Raids — Again.

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Introducing Unhappy Gilmore. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn when it’s better to play through, how not to bury the competition, and what Kentucky Woman did to become an honorary Florida Woman.”

SOME THINGS ARE MULTIUNIVERSAL:

Doctor Strange Reveals That Across 14 Million Universes, Colbert’s Show Bombs In Every Single One https://t.co/iJ6Np0FNBT pic.twitter.com/uiaORTQqy5

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) August 1, 2025

“THIS IS WHAT REPUBLICANS VOTED FOR”: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Just Made a Big Announcement—and You’re Gonna Love It.