SHE’S OBJECTIVELY PRO-TERRORIST. NEXT QUESTION? Why Is Ilhan Omar Making It Harder to Hit Terror Groups?

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Two Huge Reasons Why Emmys Have Become a Joke.

Watch any episode of “Landman,” and you’ll come away with one thought.

Billy Bob Thornton is as good as it gets.

The veteran actor’s turn in the Paramount Plus show is everything binge-worthy TV should be – smart, compelling, unpredictable and engaging.

You can quibble about the rest of the program, and some do. Loudly. Thornton’s performance is sublime.

Not to Emmy voters, apparently.

The main thing that keeps me coming back to “Landman” is that in every scene with Billy Bob Thornton, the writers give him at least one perfect Billy Bob Thornton line.

But do read the whole thing, which is really about the not-so-amicable divorce bettwen Hollywood and Taylor Sheridan.

ICYMI: SHOCK REPORT: The New York Times Almost Has Standards. “Not that exact piece, you say? So — there is some version of Kristof’s baseless canine consent irregularities story that Kahn’s news division would have run? Help me out here, because I’m a little confused.”

UGH: In the post-literate society … Look! A meme!

The End of Reading is Here, writes Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic. Everyone’s reading less — if you don’t count Instagram captions — and people who do read are choosing shorter and shallower books.

The best-selling novel of 1958 was the English translation of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, she writes. Last year, the top-selling novel was Sunrise on the Reaping, the latest in the Hunger Games young-adult series.

Adults are choosing young-adult fiction and romantasy (romance and fantasy). School librarians are stocking graphic novels and manga to match students’ lower reading levels and shorter attention spans.

In 2024, in a national test, just 35 percent of high-school seniors were “proficient” at skills such as analyzing complex fictional themes and evaluating the effectiveness of an author’s argument.

Reading is fundamental, they told me. And it still is.

SO STILL NO ARREST FOR THEIR FIRST OBAMA? Remember Andrew Gillum? The Democrats’ Next Obama Just Got Arrested Again.

I HATE THOSE THINGS: Wind Turbine Blade Dump Disposal Drama (Plus A Modest Proposal).

Wind turbine blades are made of fiberglass, which is very hard to recycle. Basically you have to shred them up, melt them and then pour them into new molds. Evidently Global Fiberglass Solutions just thought they’d take the same shortcut so many municipalities have by simply omitting the expensive “recycling” part of the recycling cycle.

But because I’m a waste-not, want-not sort of guy, I have a modest proposal to solve the dilemma of having too many wind turbine blades: use them for segments of the border wall.

Maybe sharpen them first.

I’M SORRY, THEY SPENT HOW MUCH ON WHAT? Come Meet California’s Million-Dollar Eco-Friendly Sidewalk Square.

WELL, GOOD: US seeks cheaper hunter-killer drones after Iran destroys $1B worth of Reapers.

In a call for industry pitches, the Defense Innovation Unit’s notice described the US military’s current reliance on drones and crewed aircraft, each costing more than $30 million, as being “unsustainable against adversaries utilizing layered defenses enabled by increasingly low-cost antiaircraft capabilities.” It envisions deploying more “cost-effective” drones to “overwhelm enemy air defenses even while experiencing numerous [drone] losses.”

That is, in practice, what Ukraine’s military has been demonstrating with its long- and mid-range strike campaign against Russian supply lines, oil refineries, and various energy or industrial targets within Russia or occupied Ukraine. The Ukrainian campaign has been overwhelming Russia’s overstretched air defense capabilities by launching hundreds of relatively inexpensive drones and missiles on a daily basis to attack targets far behind the frontlines, while continuing to damage or destroy Russia’s most sophisticated air defense systems.

Maybe the Pentagon is waking up to the new reality.

FASCINATING:

Consistent with the simulation hypothesis.

Like a video game, objects are randomly generated, with positional certainty only when observed. pic.twitter.com/8SUIqjJ8oC

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 9, 2026

PROFILES IN COURAGE: So NOW Jon Ossoff Wants to Denounce Graham Platner — Kinda Sorta.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Revolutionary rocket engine company Venus Aerospace raises $91 million to scale design. “RDREs differ from conventional rocket engines in the way they ignite and expel their propellants. Typical engines burn fuel as part of a controlled process inside a combustion chamber, which is directed through the engine nozzle and bell. RDREs use a ring-shaped combustion chamber and feature a continuously circulating detonation wave, which produces higher pressure and increased thrust while burning less fuel, in theory.”

Last year’s test flight impressed.

Update: Not sure why the X embed didn’t work, other than that just happens sometimes. But now there’s a link.

WELL, I’M CONVINCED:

Marco Rubio confirmed he’s also spoken with Senator Mitch McConnell this morning. 😆 pic.twitter.com/fPF3keYnja

— Mike Bales 🫡🇺🇸 (@MikeBales) July 9, 2026

HMM: Something Else Is Amiss: Don’t Believe Everything You Read About Venezuela Right Now.

THEIR SILENCE SPEAKS VOLUMES: Hate studies experts won’t comment on allegations Southern Poverty Law Center funded KKK.

Experts on “hate” and “extremism” have ignored numerous requests to comment on allegations that the Southern Poverty Law Center funded informants who used money to buy Ku Klux Klan hoods and cross-burning materials.

A federal indictment alleges that more than $4 million in donor funds went to pay confidential informants within extremist groups. The latest indictment alleges some money was used for “recruiting new members and purchasing materials for cross burnings and Ku Klux Klan robes and hoods,” according to CBS News.

The College Fix contacted seven university centers that study hate and extremism and asked for a reaction to the indictment, the ethics of funding Klan materials, and best practices for monitoring extremism.

None of the groups responded to emails and phone calls in the past several weeks.

If we’re being honest, their expertise is in creating hate and extremism where there was none.

THE FIRST HALF IS ON-TARGET, BUT I’M LESS SURE ABOUT THE SECOND:

Just like socialists think they can reject capitalism but still keep the fruits of capitalism, so immigrants think they can reject Christendom but still keep the benefits of Christendom.

Both are vastly mistaken.

— Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith) July 9, 2026

SHOCK REPORT: The New York Times Almost Has Standards. “When is a mea culpa not a mea culpa? Probably when the New York Times does it mostly in secret.”

JOEL KOTKIN: Can Los Angeles be saved?

LA is currently hosting the World Cup, and two years from now, it will host the Olympics. The city should be ready for its closeup — but it isn’t.

This is a painful change for anyone who, like me, came to the City of Angels 50 years ago and embraced its eclectic mix of cultures and businesses. In the 1980s, LA was what the conservative historian Fred Siegel called “the entrepreneurial dynamo.” Unlike New York or the Bay Area, where academic pedigree and family ties were the keys to success, LA was an everyman city, a place where you could afford to start a business and live in a house like Galicia’s, all within the perimeter of a great metropolis.

Aesthetes long preferred New York or San Francisco, but the masses headed to LA. Between 1900 and 1940, the city’s population surged to 1.5 million from barely 100,000. After the war, LA expanded again, enriched by its huge oil and defense sectors, and by 2020, hit its peak population of 3.8 million, with another 6 million living in surrounding Los Angeles County. These areas once domiciled 13 Fortune 500 companies, including Disney, Northrop Grumman, Security Pacific Bank, First Interstate, Union Oil, Getty Oil, and Arco, and a long list of successful growing businesses, as well.

Since then, the Fortune 500 locals have dwindled to seven, with just one, Farmers Insurance, inside city limits, and that just barely, on the furthest fringes of the San Fernando Valley. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times, once a critical part of the city establishment, has abandoned Downtown for El Segundo, amid severe financial strains and a paid circulation that’s a fraction of its once vast readership.

Most critically, Los Angeles County now suffers the highest poverty rates in the state, and among the worst in the country.

Read the whole thing. It left me wondering, alongside the recent election, whether Los Angeles even wants to be saved.

Related (From Ed): Perhaps they don’t. As L.A. and San Francisco slowly morph into Detroit, it’s worth remembering what Jay Nordlinger once wrote about the collapsed Motor City: “If people are voting a certain way — maybe it’s because they want to. Maybe they know full well what they’re doing. Sometimes you have to take no — such as ‘no to Republicanism’ — for an answer.”

SAME ONE AS USUAL:

Platner drops out. Now Maine is going to let 600 Democrat party insiders pick the new candidate, replacing the guy that 156,000 people voted for. Just like the party kicked Biden to the curb and replaced him with Kamala. Tell me again which party is a threat to democracy.

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) July 9, 2026

When European voters don’t do as they’re told, Europe keeps holding votes until they get it right. When Democrat primary voters pick the wrong candidate, Democrat insiders are happy to pick a new one for them.

Either way, that’s Muh Democracy™.

WATCH: Trump Humiliates MS NOW Reporter During Ankara Presser.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Blue Origin reportedly raising $10B at $130B valuation.

Billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space rocket company Blue Origin is raising $10 billion at a $130 billion pre-money valuation from Coatue Asset Management, Bezos himself, and other large investors, The New York Times reported.

Coatue is expected to invest about $4 billion in the round, which would be Blue Origin’s first external fundraise. Bezos is said to be committing $2 billion, and the other investors will account for the remaining funds, according to the report.

Hardly SpaceX figures, but not bad for a company whose only orbital-lift rocket is grounded and whose only launch pad is blown up.

GIFFORDS.ORG TURNED OFF REPLIES TO THIS POST:

Yeah, the illegal that’s living in a nicer home than the average American citizen just tried to murder an ICE agent.

Weird how you left that part out. https://t.co/WUvkIxuq8i

— The Dank Knight 🦇 (@capeandcowell) July 9, 2026

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: OK, I’ll Bite — Bernie 2028? “Sure, Sanders is old, but it seems like he’s been old forever. He’s not senile, he’s just commie crazy. He’s got some kind of Energizer bunny vibe going on. He can probably handle one more election.”

MORE CAPACITY IS GOOD: Trump Says US Will Let Ukraine Build Patriot Systems: ‘We’ll Show Them How to Make Them.’

“I’ve got a little bird telling me that we’re going to give them the right to make Patriots. We’ll show them how to make them,” Trump said during a joint news conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey.

Calling the Patriot system “elite equipment,” Trump added that the arrangement would allow Ukraine to produce the systems itself.

“One of the things we’re going to be talking about is we’re going to give a license to you to make Patriots. That’s pretty cool, right? This way you can’t complain that we’re not giving them enough. It’s a make-them-yourself,” he said.

I don’t know if Kyiv can get production up in time for this war, but it sure feels like there’ll be another one.

LEAVE THEM KIDS ALONE:

The Children’s Hospital of Colorado has admitted to medically transitioning 800+ kids per year in 2024 and 2025.

Insurance data in the five prior years showed 22 per year.

They were no doubt committing fraud and used alternate insurance codes to show lower figures, but current… https://t.co/0QG442VG6P

— Billboard Chris 🌎 (@BillboardChris) July 8, 2026

IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: How to Turn $750,000 into $400 Million With This 1 Weird Trick. “Yes, I’m talking about Obsession, the low-budget horror flick that gushing critics point out isn’t based on an established intellectual property, has no superheroes, no CGI, hardly any marketing worth mentioning, and a budget that likely wouldn’t cover the catering for Avengers: Doomsday due out later this year.”