CHARMING: Portland Leftists Put Targets on Backs of Cops Involved in Shootings This Week.

CUE THE WORLD’S SMALLEST VIOLIN: Six years later, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign gravy train is almost dried up.“Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign used up almost all its remaining cash reserves during the first half of 2022, Federal Election Commission filings show.”

DOG BITES MAN: Biden and the Democrats Are About to Raise Your Taxes.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Parents, If You Don’t Get A Grip On Your Kids’ Social Media, Trans Activists Will.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Tulsi Gabbard Is SO Close to Being Cool. “It would be nice to think that Gabbard is already moving in our direction, but for now, she is just reminding us that not all Democrats have to be crazy all of the time.”

IT’S NOT A RECESSION: Share of Consumers Spending More Than They Earn Rises on Inflation.

MAYBE THE JAN 6 COMMITTEE WILL LOOK INTO THIS… NAH: Harvard Study Wrecks Insurrection Narrative of Capitol Riot.

HMM: GEICO closes all California offices, lays off workers.

GEICO has reportedly closed all 38 of its agent offices in California, laid off hundreds of employees, and will no longer sell insurance through telephone agents in the state.

Californians can still obtain GEICO policies in the state, but only through a computer or a mobile device, posing a challenge for those who are not technologically proficient.

The precise reasons for the closures in California and massive layoffs remain unclear.

Maybe California’s appeal is just becoming more selective.

PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

Matt Margolis: Is ‘Paid Menstrual Leave’ the Next Big Cause of the Left? “I’m trying hard to ignore that Sara Youngblood Gregory, while calling for paid menstrual leave, refuses to acknowledge that women menstruate.”

Stacey Lennox: Do Not Let Food Be the Next Shortage Biden Tries to Pin on Putin. “In July, Biden’s EPA also proposed new herbicide regulations that touch almost every method farmers have to protect their crops from pests and disease without providing any alternatives.”

Yours Truly: A Tale of Two Joe Bidens: It Was the Best of Joes, It Was the Worst of Joes. “Whatever you want to call it, Democrats right now seem to fall into one of two camps: Those who can’t wait to see Biden go and those deluded few still clinging to the hope that Biden is just one big spending bill away from the love he deserves.”

BREAKING: US kills Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri – Bin Laden’s number two – in a CIA drone strike in Kabul: Biden to address the nation at 7.30 from White House balcony.

HARSH BUT FAIR: Wait, I Thought the Democrats Already Did That: Iran Threatens to Turn New York City Into ‘Hellish Ruins.’

JOE BIDEN’S RETURN TO CLEAN GOVERNMENT: Prominent Senator Predicts ‘Deal’ to Hide Hunter Biden Indictment From American People.

SHE’S RIGHT: Tulsi Gabbard Accuses Biden Administration of ‘Dangerously Promoting Child Abuse.’

NICE, BUT THIS IS ALL MOVING MUCH TOO SLOWLY: US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design.

CHOOSE WISELY: Will Kyrsten Sinema Choose Her Country or Her Party?

HMM: Lebanon Seizes Ship Loaded With Stolen Ukrainian Grain. “The fact that Lebanon, a small and broke country, is willing to defy both Russia and Syria, speaks to how unified much of the world is against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and how little such countries fear Russia’s wrath these days.”

PRIORITIES: ‘What’s a Monkeypox?’ San Fran Leather Fest Goes on Despite Public Health Warning from WHO.

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH: New Media Rule: Don’t Say Gay. “The word is conspicuously absent from media coverage of the monkeypox outbreak.”

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Trust the Artificial Intelligence, Part One.

The next political crisis may be triggered by a further loss of trust in authority, coupled with another institutional demand for power. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, faith in institutions was at an all-time low — and falling. In 2022, trust in organized religion was more than four times higher than in Congress. No branch of government was trusted by more than 50% of the public except the military, not even the police.

Yet this loss in institutional trust coincided with unprecedented demands by institutions for a vast increase in power. These included the power to regulate nearly anything in the name of stopping the climate from changing; the power to redefine society by proclaiming new ‘Woke’ values; and the power to control mass movement and require mandatory medication to control a pandemic. Finally, institutions demanded the power to ‘check facts’ in any speech and ‘de-platform’ anyone suspected of uttering misinformation, thus insulating themselves against criticism.

Since the institutions were so mistrusted, they could not ask for these additional powers on their own account, so they invoked the name of science. “Trust the science,” became the new all-encompassing justification. Politicians proclaimed themselves obliged to reluctantly assume dictatorial powers on expert advice to deal with crisis after crisis. They didn’t want more power, they protested, but they reluctantly had to act because the science forced them to. When one by one, these imperative ‘scientific’ measures were withdrawn or modified as their shortcomings became apparent in the public experience, the aura of infallibility was shattered.

Glenn has been writing about the loss of trust often in recent years and Richard’s piece is an important addition. Read the whole thing.

IF IT MOVES, TAX IT: ‘Fee’ on deliveries a gut punch to Colorado.

DON’T GET COCKY: What the ‘Misery Index’ Really Means: Midterm Misery for Democrats.

MILBLOGGER LAUGHING WOLF PRESENT Nuclear 101: Weapons. “While the primary focus is on nuclear weapons and war, I’m going to talk a bit about other types of special weapons as they can and do play a role in a nuclear war and nuclear strategy. So, let’s start by taking a look at the basic weapons.”

This is the second of a multipart series. The first, here, takes a look at our nuclear adversaries.

I’d hoped with the end of the Cold War that public education on nuclear war would never again be so necessary, but here we are.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Flashback: The Unexpected Return of Duck and Cover.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The Biden Presidency Is a Poorly Written Horror Novel. “At first glance, it may seem that NBC News is doing a mini hit piece on President LOLEightyonemillion but that’s not the case at all. This is really just a roundabout way of making it seem like the old boy is robust, sharp, always on the job, and not the feeble, confused guy we see in public.”

DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Monkeypox Is About to Become the Next Public Health Failure. “Our country’s response to monkeypox ‌‌has been plagued by the same shortcomings we had with Covid-19. Now if monkeypox ‌gains a permanent foothold in the U‌nited States and becomes an endemic virus that joins our circulating repertoire of pathogens, it will be one of the worst public health failures in modern times not only because of the pain and peril of the disease but also because it was so avoidable.”

I BET THEY STILL HAVE A WAY TO GO: Re-Defining Words Hits Peak Absurdity. “It has been overt and in-your-face. Biden’s people attempted to re-frame ideas and concepts and chang the norms of what has been true over time. It’s the same thing the Left has done with the definition of woman, marriage, parents, and recession.”