July 9, 2026

ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

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.

Posted at 1:47 pm by Stephen Green

FASCINATING:

Posted at 1:32 pm by Stephen Green

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.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Stephen Green

THE CRITICAL DRINKER: Double Crash And Burn — The Mickey Rourke Story.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

WELL, I’M CONVINCED:

Posted at 12:29 pm by Stephen Green

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.

Posted at 11:43 am by Stephen Green

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

Posted at 11:27 am by Stephen Green

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.”

Posted at 10:41 am by Stephen Green

HE’S RIGHT:

Posted at 10:31 am by Glenn Reynolds