July 9, 2026
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.
https:/twitter.com/VenusAerospace/status/1949921824176803921
THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Double Crash And Burn — The Mickey Rourke Story.
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
21st CENTURY HEADLINES: Morgan Stanley Agrees SpaceX Can Deploy 8 Gigawatts of AI Data Center by 2028.
THIS IS CNN: Spoof of Life: CNN Mistakes Online Parody Account for Real GOP Politician in Mitch McConnell Health Story.
CNN’s extreme leftwing bias exposed pic.twitter.com/5YEbGToOA7
— Rep. Jack Kimble (@RepJackKimble) July 8, 2026
“As we mentioned, ‘Rep. Jack Kimble’ is a parody account of an elected Republican who represents California’s imaginary 54th congressional district. Don’t tell CNN.”
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.”
GET YOUR VITAMINS: Ensure Max Protein Shake | Milk Chocolate. #CommissionEarned
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.”
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) July 6, 2026
HE’S RIGHT:
The Times won’t tell you this but I will: Yale Law has been violating federal law in its admissions policies well before SFFA, literally for decades. Despite Dean Rodriguez’s remonstrations, the law school is in no position to resist a settlement with the government. pic.twitter.com/xvRL3Wo0Qt
— David Bernstein (@ProfDBernstein) July 8, 2026
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Brown University professor bans take-home exams after mass cheating.
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™.
PEOPLE HAVE FIGURED OUT THAT IT MAKES YOU UNEMPLOYABLE OUTSIDE THE BLOB: North Carolina university gender studies minor sees enrollment decline.
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.
TRANSLATION: CORRECT.
"As long as I am Governor, you will not be able to have a job unless you pay your dues to the unions that then give me millions of dollars every year." https://t.co/R83AD1Culp
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) July 9, 2026
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Tinder activity surges by 34% in NYC, NJ during World Cup — and most lovebirds are international.
