FINALLY: U.S. Navy’s F/A-XX in Design Maturation, Competing Companies Announced.

The Navy issued its formal request for a sixth-generation carrier-based fighter back in 2012 and 11 years later there’s not even a prototype.

UGH: Sen. McConnell Freezes (Again) During Press Conference.

YOU’LL SIT IN THE DARK, BE COLD, AND EAT THE BUGS: Millions Of Brits Told Not To Heat Homes At Night As Part Of ‘Net Zero’ Climate Goals. “Chris Stark, head of the CCC, wants ordinary citizens to turn off their electric heaters (heat pumps) at night as part of a wider drive to deliver ’emissions savings,’ which includes a shift away from gas boilers – which Chris, a hypocrite, still has.”

MR. 81 MILLION VOTES HAS NOTHING TO HIDE, JACK: Why Is Biden Going Into Hiding on the 9/11 Anniversary?

XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT: China’s post-reform era has arrived — and its future is unclear.

“I tell the stream of visitors returning to China after the end of zero-COVID that we’ve entered a new era – the post reform era,” Dake Kang, a Beijing-based correspondent for the Associated Press, posted on social media platform X last week.

Even after the extremely strict pandemic-era controls were lifted earlier this year, “Beijing has clung to a strategy of accelerating government intervention in Chinese life,” Ian Johnson, a China expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote for Foreign Affairs last week.

China’s model of economic growth powered by manufacturing and infrastructure projects has run out of steam, and ideological crackdowns have crushed civil society, targeted foreign businesses and scared off investors.

Those trends have led to comparisons between Xi’s current policies and those that led to the eventual collapse of the Soviet bloc.

Yes, but: These challenges don’t necessarily mean China has now entered a period of decline.

It’s too soon to say whether China’s current economic doldrums are the start of a Soviet-style stagnation or just part of the business cycle but if it’s the latter, it would be the first time a country ruled by someone like Xi has dodged the former.

WITH A COMBINATION OF INFORMED INTELLIGENCE AND MOCKING DERISION: The COVID-19 Alarmists Want You Ignorant and Obedient. How Will You Respond?

DISSENT WILL NOT BE TOLERATED: Oberlin coach ‘burned at the stake’ for Lia Thomas criticism. “The report triggered a series of lengthy disciplinary meetings and a full-fledged character assassination campaign against [Russell] involving Oberlin faculty and the women’s lacrosse team.”

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP [VIP]: Nobody Wants to Buy Electric Vehicles Anymore, They’re Too Popular. “Dealers to carmakers: Stop sending us electric vehicles we can’t sell! That’s the lead crazy on today’s Insanity Wrap, an entire week’s worth of the best bad news.”

Plus:

• Who will speak for Maui’s dead?
• YouTube re-demonetized reality.
• The Gadsden patch kid is just the start.

So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

IT’S ALL GREEK TO ME: Whitmer Administration Used ‘Calculated’ Scheme To Hide Sensitive Email From the Public, Lawsuit Says. “Michigan energy department consultant Andy Leavitt in September 2021 emailed a top adviser to Whitmer to express ‘some major red flags’ with the administration’s response to a lead water crisis in southwestern Michigan, which Leavitt compared to a similar crisis in Flint, Michigan. But Leavitt’s initial message was not written in English—the consultant used letters in the Greek alphabet in place of English ones, a move that ‘appears to be calculated to conceal the statements,’ a June court filing in a class action suit against Whitmer’s government argues. Leavitt’s use of Greek letters means his email would have been excluded from any public records request for government communications that contain the word ‘Flint.'”

Plus: “The apparent scheme to hide sensitive conversations from public records requests comes years after Whitmer promised to bring transparency to the Great Lakes State as governor. In Michigan, the governor’s office is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, a policy that Whitmer promised to reverse during her 2018 campaign.”

Of course.

I STOPPED WATCHING THE OSCARS WHEN E.T. LOST TO GANDHI: Award Shows Aren’t for You, Conservatives.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: United States ‘experiencing a crisis of early death.’

A recent study is revealing the dire state of public health in the United States. In comparison to other wealthy nations, the U.S. death rate far outpaces America’s peers — leading researchers to say that the country is actually “experiencing a crisis of early death.”

Researchers from the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) found that more than one million U.S. deaths a year — including many young and working-age adults — could be avoided if the country had mortality rates similar to other high-income nations.

In 2021, 1.1 million deaths would have been averted if the U.S. had mortality rates similar to other wealthy nations. The study refers to these excess deaths as “Missing Americans,” because these deaths reflect people who would still be alive if the U.S. death rate was equal to its peer countries.

“The number of Missing Americans in recent years is unprecedented in modern times,” says Dr. Jacob Bor, the study’s lead and corresponding author and associate professor of global health and epidemiology at BUSPH, in a media release.

Given that the defunct Soviet Union was the first industrialized country to experience shrinking life expectancy — thanks to a toxic political/economic/cultural climate — this news (which isn’t actually new) ought to be the defining story of our time.

Maybe it would be if the people creating that climate in our country weren’t also setting the news agenda.

CHANGE (IT BACK): American Indian Group’s Petition to Restore ‘Redskins’ Garners 128K Signatures.

THE DARK NIGHT OF FASCISM IS ALWAYS DESCENDING IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND YET LANDS ONLY ON THE LEFT: The government’s attack on Elon Musk is the latest regime experiment in repression.

At nearly the same moment that the president was touting his administration’s supposed success in creating jobs for Americans, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit to enjoin Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) from creating jobs for Americans. This is not a polemical mischaracterization; the Department’s complaint hinges on its claim that “from September 2018 to May 2022, out of more than 10,000 hires, SpaceX hired only one [asylee]…and did not hire any individuals who were refugees.” Musk’s company, which unquestionably is a global leader in space and satellite technology, has revenues in the billions of dollars, and employs 12,000 people, is now in the federal crosshairs for only hiring Americans and, presumably, permanent residents. A few years ago, you might be forgiven for assuming this hypocrisy was the consequence of one arm of a bloated bureaucracy not knowing what the other was doing. Not anymore.

More sinister forces are at work. Any informed observer would recognize this move as a deliberate power play: the regime says one thing to deceive its low-information voters while doing another to destroy its opponents. Here, since Elon Musk is a regime opponent, it is irrelevant that SpaceX’s hiring practices are consistent with the president’s supposed economic goals. Musk must be stopped (or at least deterred), even if it means Americans will lose their jobs. In this respect, the suit is a lame attempt to sideline Musk prior to election season. Second, the suit also reveals what the regime (and the ruling class that supports it) think about America and ordinary Americans. They don’t like or care about them.

And:

If the government of the United States of America can sue an American company because it “hired only U.S. Citizens and lawful permanent residents”; can sidestep the jury system, that last vestige of representative government in which American citizens can still participate; can publicly encourage aliens of dubious legal status to snitch on the so-called wrongdoing of Americans and American companies; and can then rely on its propaganda mouthpieces in the mainstream media to pretend none of this is happening, then the country is in bad shape indeed.

The Biden cabal is willing to inflict economic and social damage, no matter how large, in pursuit of political or financial gain, no matter how small.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: However Bad You Think the Border Mess Is—It’s Worse. “Who had ‘ISIS-Friendly Smuggler’ in their ‘What Fresh Hell Can Biden Unleash Next’ office pool?”

THEY’RE GOING FULL BUD LIGHT. EVERYBODY KNOWS YOU NEVER GO FULL BUD LIGHT: NASCAR crosses a legal line in going woke. “It turns out that NASCAR has been running an internship program designed to help younger people get a leg up and break into the business in various capacities. That’s kind of nice, isn’t it? Professional auto racing is a very competitive and expensive sport to dive into, so some interested folks could likely use a helping hand. But there’s one problem with the racing organization’s ‘diversity internship program.’ (You’re probably already able to guess where this is going.) People are welcome to apply, but only if they meet certain “racial criteria.” In other words… whites need not apply.”

“THE TRUTH HURTS” ISN’T SUPPOSED TO APPLY TO THE TRUTH-TELLERS: YouTube Demonetizes Montage of Democrats Denying Elections, Calls It ‘Dangerous’ and ‘Harmful.’

To be fair, it might be dangerous and harmful to traitorous, insurrectionist Democrats spreading such falsehoods about our super-safe, not-to-be-questioned election procedures.

OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Moment knife thugs armed with huge machetes brawl in street in front of crowds of revellers at Notting Hill carnival – with final day ‘marred by violence’ as eight are stabbed and police officer is sexually assaulted.

FASTER, PLEASE: Smoking Gun ‘Evidence of Joe Biden’s Corruption’ Will Be Released in Coming Weeks.

IT’S TOO POPULAR: China’s Latest Problem: People Don’t Want to Go There.

Foreign travelers’ absence is particularly evident in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai, where the numbers of foreigners who visited in the first half of the year totaled less than a quarter of comparable figures in 2019, before the Covid pandemic.

Nationwide, just 52,000 people arrived to mainland China from overseas on trips organized by travel agencies during the first quarter, the latest period for which national data is available, compared with 3.7 million in the first quarter of 2019. As in past years, nearly half of the visitors came from the self-ruled island of Taiwan and the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macau, rather than farther-away places like the U.S. or Europe.

“The number of visitors from Europe, America, Japan and Korea are all dropping, substantially,” said Xiao Qianhui, a director with the semiofficial China Tourism Association in a speech in May.

Fewer tourists and businesspeople from overseas means fewer opportunities for foreigners to see China with their own eyes and interact with locals, an important factor in reducing geopolitical tensions, experts say.

The dearth of visitors could also be contributing to less investment in China. Foreign direct investment into the country fell to $20 billion in the first quarter, compared with $100 billion in last year’s first quarter, according to an analysis of government figures by Mark Witzke at Rhodium Group, a research firm.

There’s only so much repression, genocide, zero-COVID lockdowns, and social credit restrictions that tourists are really interested in seeing.

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUES ZONES: San Francisco Police Union Blasts Bakery for Refusing to Serve Cops in Uniform.

Reem’s California is an Arab-owned bakery that says it values social justice, one of the three core values listed on the establishment’s website.

In an Instagram post over the weekend, Reem’s doubled down on its refusal to serve police carrying guns.

“In a time of increased gun violence — particularly impacting people of color, youth and queer people – we believe that maintaining a strict policy of prohibiting guns in our restaurant keeps us safer,” the statement said.

It isn’t just political policy allowing crime to devour San Francisco.

FIGHT THE POWER: Jacksonville Sheriff Demolishes the Narrative That Guns Are Inherently Bad.

A MILLION HERE AND A MILLION THERE…: Here’s How Much the Trump Campaign Has Raised Since Mugshot.

SAY ANYTHING: Biden Lies Again, Says He ‘Literally’ Convinced Segregationist Strom Thurmond to Vote for Civil Rights Act.

CHANGE: The end of the Googleverse.

Marwick said that within the internet landscape of the 2000s, Google was the thing that sat on top of everything else. There was a sense that as anarchic and chaotic as the early social web was out in the digital wilderness, what Google surfaced denoted a certain level of quality.

But if that last 25 years of Google’s history could be boiled down to a battle against the Google bomb, it is now starting to feel that the search engine is finally losing pace with the hijackers. Or as Marwick put it, “Google has gotten shittier and shittier.”

“To me, it just continues the transformation of the internet into this shitty mall,” Marwick said. “A dead mall that’s just filled with the shady sort of stores you don’t want to go to.”

The question, of course, is when did it all go wrong? How did a site that captured the imagination of the internet and fundamentally changed the way we communicate turn into a burned-out Walmart at the edge of town?

This is a long but fascinating piece. That the need to stand out on Google ended up homogenizing content is just one of several ironies.

But if you think homogenization was bad, wait until AI dominates.

I WAS SURPRISED THERE WAS ANYONE WHO DIDN’T BELIEVE THAT: The Number of Americans Who Believe Biden Is Too Old to Be President May Surprise You.