RABBI MICHAEL BARCLAY: Judge Not by the Flask, but by What It Contains: The Courage of Boy George.

NATALIE WINTERS: Top American Generals Joined a CCP Spy Front’s Backchannel Pushing China’s Military Agenda in Washington. Some Ended Up on China’s Payroll.

The Chinese Communist Party did not need to penetrate the Pentagon to gain access to America’s military leadership.

It built a private network around it.

For more than a decade, some of the most powerful retired officers in the United States participated in closed-door meetings with senior Chinese military leaders. The discussions covered Taiwan, the South China Sea, missile defense, cybersecurity and the future of relations between the two militaries.

The American participants included:

Gen. Peter Pace, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Adm. William “Bill” Owens, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Gen. John Abizaid, former commander of U.S. Central Command
Gen. Raymond Odierno, former Army Chief of Staff
Adm. Jonathan Greenert, former Chief of Naval Operations
Adm. Timothy Keating, former commander of U.S. Pacific Command
Gen. Ronald Fogleman, former Air Force Chief of Staff
Gen. Dennis Reimer, former Army Chief of Staff
Adm. Joseph Prueher, former commander of U.S. Pacific Command
Gen. John Keane, former Vice Chief of Staff of the Army
Gen. Walter Sharp, former commander of U.S. Forces Korea
Gen. Charles Jacoby, former commander of U.S. Northern Command
Gen. Charles Wilhelm, former commander of U.S. Southern Command

The program was called the Sanya Initiative.

Read the whole thing.

SPOILER: They will not do what Biden’s importations cost taxpayers.

Now do what Biden's importations cost taxpayers. https://t.co/SBRcY7ay1g

— Doug Powers (@ThePowersThatBe) August 6, 2026

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: I Just Saw the Future in a Phone Call.

Link was bad before, sorry — fixed now!

UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Bernie Sanders Just Found a Socialist He Won’t Endorse.

REMINDER: THE WORKING CLASS IN THIS COUNTRY HAVE NEVER GONE FOR LUXURY BELIEFS LIKE SOCIALISM.

Michigan was useful in that it revealed that there's **no part** of the working class coalition that wants anything to do with the DSA.

Black voters in the inner city? Nope.

Rural voters? Nope.

— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) August 6, 2026

21ST CENTURY QUESTIONS: Do I Dare Trust a Social Media App With My Money? X Thinks I Will. “Banking with X? I wasn’t so sure, so I dug deeper.”

MAYBE NEXT THEY COULD TRY CLEARING OUT THE ENCAMPMENTS: Seattle drug trafficking kingpin who targeted ‘The Jungle,’ homeless encampments sentenced to 10 years in prison.

I’m kidding about Seattle doing anything, of course — Octavio Salazar Palma was convicted on federal charges.

THEY BOTH SOUND LIKE HASAN PIKER:

Darryl Cooper and Tucker Carlson bizarrely assert that the "Zionist lobby" corrupts Americans on purpose, to "rot the souls of the host nation," so that nobody objects to their tax dollars being used to "ethnically cleanse" Gaza and Judea & Samaria.

(Both populations have… pic.twitter.com/7hdihIXugQ

— Max 📟 (@MaxNordau) August 6, 2026

LEFTIES DON’T CARE WHO THEY RULE OVER, JUST SO LONG AS THEY RULE: Spanish Leftists’ Push to Replace ‘Right-Wingers and Racists’ With Migrants: Is It Full Speed Ahead?

THIS FEELS VERY WRONG: Anthropic Destroys Books. “Shades of Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End, where a tech company shreds books in the process of scanning them. If Anthropic took inspiration from that, they must have missed the part where the entire destruction process was unnecessary, as non-destructive methods were just as effective. Just as in the real world, there are a wide variety of non-destrictive overhead scanners. With an estimated post-IPO value of $500 billion to $1 trillion, I think Anthropic can afford to hire a few more people to run the scanners.”

BY THE NUMBERS:

US data centers directly use approximately 17.5 billion gallons of water annually, compared to the 3.2 trillion gallons used for residential lawns and turf.

AEI’s @ProfDanielLyons explains that data center pushback focused on water consumption is overblown. pic.twitter.com/asyLwGvDZm

— American Enterprise Institute (@AEI) August 6, 2026

And according to Grok, golf courses use roughly 30–31 times more water than all U.S. data centers combined.

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Liberal White Broads: the Kamikazes of Politics. “This tragic beldame is referring to Abdul El-Sayed, who will run for a Michigan Senate seat in November. Never mind that Islam is currently being all rapey and stabby throughout Western Europe. This affluent white female liberal (AWFL) proudly supports him, and is brainwashing her kids to think the same way.”

Related:

Liberal women will literally scream for decades about the Handmaid's Tale then vote for sharia effing law. pic.twitter.com/WZ04sUc3jf

— Anna D. West 🇺🇸 (@SlimWiggy) August 6, 2026

HE’S DEAD, JIM: Iran president met supreme leader in darkness — and isn’t convinced it was him. “Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian was whisked to a secret location in Tehran, shoved into the back seat of a dark car with blacked-out windows and told he was sitting next to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei — except he never actually saw the man, according to a bombshell report from Iran International.”

YES:

Despite all of the histrionics leading up to the primary, look at how Democrats fall in line. Do you notice that there's no #NeverAbdul movement?

Let's put the rest this ridiculous lie that Republicans fall in line and Democrats fall in love. The opposite is true. https://t.co/jbI77QS2Bo

— L A R R Y (@LarryOConnor) August 6, 2026

BREAKING: Anthony Fauci Held in Contempt of Congress.

HERE WE GO AGAIN: AI agents fake identities, target real people in new security incident.

Anthropic’s most advanced artificial intelligence model used fake identities to deceive real people and try to plant malicious code during testing by Britain’s AI Security Institute (AISI) –– the latest example of an AI model going rogue.

Anthropic and OpenAI models were tested with lowered security guardrails in lab environments, but, in a first, were found to engage in “social engineering” to pressure a human approver while carrying out an unsanctioned task, the government research lab said.

“This is the first time AISI has seen deception of this severity that was targeted at a real person, unprompted, in the real world,” the institute said Tuesday. There has been no evidence of real-world harm, it added.
…
In the most serious incident, the agent attempted to get approval from human reviewers to “insert malicious code into a publicly used open-source project” by creating “multiple fake identities,” according to the institute.

Keep a close eye on those human reviewers for any likely to succumb to AI “social engineering.”

THE MENSHEVIKS NEVER LEARN THAT THEY’RE ALWAYS THE FIRST ONES UP AGAINST THE WALL:

The Mensheviks are not having a good day.

And not for the last time.https://t.co/pEjNHImOjP

— Will Collier (@willcollier) August 5, 2026

IT’S ALWAYS SOMETHING: No Guac for You: Security Alert Squeezes Mexican Avocado Pipeline to the U.S.

DEMOCRATS, I HATE THESE GUYS: Colorado gun sales surge ahead of permit-to-purchase scheme.

Democrats who worked to pass SB-003 took a victory lap in the days before the law took effect, arguing it will save lives.

“High-capacity magazines are what put the ‘mass’ into mass shootings, which is why over a decade ago Colorado Democrats passed legislation to prohibit magazines that hold over 15 rounds of ammunition,” Sen. Tom Sullivan, a prime sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. “This law further enforces that ban. It will save lives and increase safety for all Coloradans. The people of Colorado have mandated that we do something about the public health crisis that is gun violence, so that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

While the law officially took effect on August 1, the deadline to purchase was effectively July 28, since Colorado requires a three-day waiting period for all firearm purchases, the Colorado State Shooting Association (CSSA) pointed out.

“This is an attack at the very core of what it means to be an American,” CSSA Executive Director Huey Laugesen said in a statement. “For generations, the fundamental premise has been that our rights belong to the people — they are not privileges handed down by the government. Beginning August 1, Colorado will turn that principle on its head.”

CSSA, along with Mountain States Legal Foundation, are suing in federal court over the law with the case Del Toro v. Polis.

Whatever you think you know about Dem-dominated Colorado’s gun laws, it’s almost certainly worse.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Dems Might Regret Acting Like Trump Is on Midterms Ballot. “The old Republican playbook would have eschewed the use of a dig like ‘maniacs.’ The Trump playbook, however, was written to win. Call the commies commies, and never pass up a chance to point out that they’re unhinged”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: SpaceX wants to launch next Starship this month (and catch it, too), Elon Musk says in 1st earnings call since historic IPO.

I’ll have more on this later today for PJ Media.

BLUE ORIGIN UPDATE:

Wanted to give an update on the hotfire anomaly investigation. Progress continues. The anomaly originated at the main oxygen valve on one of the BE-4 engines, which was later confirmed by hardware recovery and inspections. Extensive component-level and engine hotfire tests have…

— Dave Limp (@davill) August 5, 2026

More:

Extensive component-level and engine hotfire tests have been conducted to understand the failure mode better and inform mitigations. The path forward is clear. We’re making small modifications to the valve that can be quickly retrofitted to existing engines. We’re manufacturing the updated hardware, which will be ready by the end of this month. In parallel, we’re working through the remaining fault tree analysis.

Rebuilding LC-36 also seems to be progressing faster than many experts predicted. Great news, if true.

This new iteration of Blue Origin doesn’t exactly move at SpaceX speed, but they’ve picked up the pace.

SOMETHING A LITTLE LIGHTER FOR THIS WEEK’S THURSDAY ESSAY [VIP]: One Small Family, One Smaller Puppy, One Major Battle.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: US District Court in Texas Rules That With $200 Tax Gone, NFA Registration is Unconstitutional.

A federal judge in Texas has ruled the 1934 National Firearms Act’s registration requirement, which has remained in force despite repeal of the enabling $200 tax, is unconstitutional, handing a victory to the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

The ruling was issued Wednesday by District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Donald Trump appointee. He serves in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

The case, known as Jensen v. ATF, was filed in October 2025 and is supported by the Second Amendment Foundation, which has a separate action known as Brown v. ATF and is also supporting another case known as Roberts v. ATF. In the Jensen case, CCRKBA is joined by the FPC Action Foundation, Texas Rifle Association, Hot Shots Custom and three individuals.

Congress acted last year to end the special federal tax on short-barreled rifles and suppressors as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill. The tax had enabled the NFA requirement under Congress’ authority to levy taxes. With the tax gone, there was no viable constitutional authority to continue registering SBRs and suppressors, compelling CCRKBA and its partners to take legal action.

Nice.