VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON THE GREAT REGRESSION: “Today, it seems that Orwell’s 1984 would better have been titled 2016,” VDH writes:

Orwell was wrong only on his dates. Had he entitled his novel 2016, we would immediately have recognized his parallels to the present “overseas contingency operations,” “violent extremism,” “undocumented immigrants,” and “man-caused disasters.” The campus diversity czar is our Big Brother. Imagining that all lives matter is a thought crime. Due process on a campus today is counter-revolutionary, and proper sexual congress among students is to be scripted as a politically correct act, as if we were all Orwell’s Winston Smith and Julia. Is the Junior Anti-Sex League with its red sashes far behind?

As the London Guardian lamented on Sunday, “Goodbye to sex: a short and heartfelt eulogy.”

Hey, the Washington Post wasn’t kidding when at the start of 2009, via their then-owned magazine Newsweek, they declared “We Are All Socialists Now” – evidently, they didn’t realize (or care) that the result would be something akin to East Germany, albeit with Justin Bieber and the Kardashians for entertainment, rather than ‘60s London with socialized medicine and the Beatles. (Or Sweden and Abba for that matter.)

I’M SO OLD I CAN REMEMBER WHEN SKEWED INTELLIGENCE REPORTS WERE CONSIDERED A VERY BAD THING BY THE MSM. Former Brigadier General: Obama’s Briefer Told CENTCOM Official to Skew Intel on ISIS.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: When rulers despise the ruled: It’s like The Hunger Games: the Capital City, and its hangers-on, flourish, while the provinces starve.

MARK RIPPETOE: The Olympic Games: Time To Stop.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THE NATIONAL MEDIA, when Louisiana’s devastating floods barely register as a story?

Well for one thing, there’s no political angle to beat up Republicans, when the state’s governor is a Democrat, and so is the president.

IN THE MAIL: The Permission Society: How the Ruling Class Turns Our Freedoms into Privileges and What We Can Do About It.

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AMERICA’S FIRST SOMALI STATE LEGISLATOR EMBROILED IN MARRIAGE, IMMIGRATION FRAUD ALLEGATIONS, Patrick Poole writes:

Now just days after her upset primary victory, Omar faces serious allegations that she engaged in marriage and possible immigration fraud.

In a story broke by attorney Scott Johnson at the Power Line blog on Friday, there are allegations that one of her sham marriages may be to her own brother.

This isn’t the 21st century I was promised; read the whole thing.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1195.

FASTER, PLEASE: Trump Advocates “Extreme Vetting” of Muslim Immigrants in Forceful Foreign Policy Speech, Roger Simon writes.

“Republican presidential candidate Donald J Trump — has just outflanked Hillary Clinton on the Left and announced what can only be described as an ultra-progressive immigration policy,” Milo Yiannopoulos enthusiastically cheers.

MISSING FROM THIS STORY: THE LEAST HINT OF WHO’S BEHIND IT. Cars burn across Sweden as fire-starters roam free. Which means we know who’s behind it, right?

ON THE SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP of Drudge and Trump.

RESET: Russia, for First Time, Uses Iranian Base for Syria Campaign.

Russian bombers launched attacks in Syria from an Iranian air base for the first time on Tuesday, potentially altering the political and military equation in the Middle East.

Long-range Tupolev-22M3 bombers, which would otherwise have to fly from Russia, used an Iranian base near Hamadan to hit a series of targets inside Syria, according to a brief statement from the Russian Defense Ministry.

The agreement to let Russia use the base significantly deepens the country’s military role in the region, most obviously in Iran. And it could help solidify Russia as the main broker of any future peace agreement in Syria.

I was writing almost a year ago about a developing Russo-Iranian Axis, hoping it wouldn’t seem too far-fetched. Eleven months later and it’s nearly a fait accompli.

DER SPIEGEL: Losing Trust: Frustrations Grow Over German Response to Terror. The Merkel era, I predict, will be looked back upon as a disaster.

THE CLINTONS’ POST-BLUE FLOP: The Greatest Failure of Democratic Social Policy.

A new study has found that it would take two hundred and twenty-eight years for black families to accumulate the same amount of wealth that white families have now, if current policy prescriptions remain in place. . . .

No program epitomized the boomer progressive synthesis better than the efforts to increase black homeownership launched by the Clinton administration in the 1990s. Using the power of Fannie Mae and a flexible mortgage market, instructions went out to help get more black and minority families in homes of their own.

There is nothing wrong with the idea in many ways. Home ownership has been the foundation of middle class prosperity and wealth accumulation for many American families: $12.5 trillion in home equity, most of it held by middle class households, provides financial security, dignity and stability to millions of American families. I have written at length about how the owner occupied home replaced the owner-occupied farm as the central institution of American life in the 20th century.

Family farms produced wealth. Homes produce debt. The program to promote homeownership failed because it confused causation and correlation, as summed up in Reynolds’ Law:

The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.

But when you subsidize things, there are glorious opportunities for graft. And when you talk about blacks being sent “to the back of the bus” — a practice that ended years before I was born — you’re not engaged with today’s realities.

GRASSLEY WANTS TO KNOW WHY FEDS AREN’T ENFORCING THE LAW: Federal law bars fugitives from the law from living, even temporarily, in tax-funded public housing. But an unpublished Inspector General report in 2012 found an estimated 1,300 such fugitives in just one region of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to Ethan Barton of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley isn’t buying the HUD IG’s claim the report wasn’t published because of “data problems” when it was completed. The IG also said the report was a draft, despite the fact such status was nowhere indicated on the copy obtained by TheDCNF.

“The HUD Inspector General needs to explain whether the wanted fugitive felon report was final or not and if there are problems with the data,” Grassley told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “And HUD needs to explain why the federal law isn’t being enforced.”

“These discrepancies don’t inspire confidence that the agency has a good handle on wanted fugitive felons in public housing or that the residents are being adequately protected. Inspector general reports should be public with very few exceptions,” he said.

Here’s the really troubling question: If there are 1,300 in one HUD region four years ago, how many are there across the nation today?

MILE-MARKERS ON THE ROAD TO SINGLE-PAYER: Citing Losses, Aetna Withdraws from Most Obamacare Markets.

OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: A Wakeup Call for Donald Trump.

POST-GAY AMERICA: Kentucky Has a Gay Senate Candidate — Does Anybody Care?

Sorry, gays, you’re old news now. Muslims are the new gays.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: When rulers despise the ruled: It’s like The Hunger Games: the Capital City, and its hangers-on, flourish, while the provinces starve.

CATCH, RELEASE, PRAY: 15 Guantanamo Detainees Sent to UAE in Major Transfer.

The transfer of 12 Yemeni nationals and three Afghans to the UAE comes amid a renewed push to whittle down the number of detainees held at the U.S. prison in Cuba that President Barack Obama aims to close.

The Pentagon says 61 detainees now remain at Guantanamo, which was opened in January 2002 to hold foreign fighters suspected of links to the Taliban or the al-Qaida terrorist organization. During the Bush administration, 532 prisoners were released from Guantanamo, often in large groups to Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.

The latest batch of released prisoners had been held without charge at Guantanamo, some for over 14 years. They were cleared for release by the Periodic Review Board, comprised of representatives from six U.S. government agencies.

Once in the UAE, the terrorists will be “banned from traveling and any meaningful communication.”

IT’S SAD THAT THIS HAS TO BE SAID: Evidence, Not Feelings, Should Be Most Important Thing In Sexual Assault Investigations.

PENNSYLVANIA’S ATTORNEY GENERAL IS CONVICTED ON ALL COUNTS: Give the Gray Lady credit for mentioning Kathleen Kane’s party affiliation right in the lede:

She was a rising Democratic star. She was the first in her party to be elected state attorney general. She was one of the most powerful women in Pennsylvania.

But on Monday night, Kathleen G. Kane, the state’s top prosecutor, became a convicted criminal.

A jury found Ms. Kane, 50, guilty of nine criminal charges, including perjury and criminal conspiracy, convicting her of leaking grand jury information, and then lying about it, in an effort to discredit a political rival.

Why are Democrat-run institutions, you know, like the Democratic Party such cesspits of unethical behavior?

NOT GONNA HAPPEN: Here’s what would have to happen to replace Trump on GOP ticket.

JUSTICE: House Republicans detail perjury allegations against Clinton.

“The four pieces of sworn testimony by Secretary Clinton described herein are incompatible with the FBI’s findings,” House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., wrote to U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips. “We hope this information is helpful to your office’s consideration of our referral.”

The Justice Department Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs, Peter Kadzik, confirmed in an Aug. 2 letter to both committees they had the perjury investigation request and the department would “take appropriate action as necessary.”

The one-page response offered no timeline nor specific commitment to act on the allegations.

According to the Justice Department website, Kadzik, “led the successful effort to confirm Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates.” Both women were central players handling the Clinton email matter.

It would seem the fix is in yet again.

TOLERANCE: Angry feminist Julie Bindel: All men are rapists and should be shot.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Pennsylvania Dem attorney general found guilty on criminal charges.

Pennsylvania’s Democratic attorney general was found guilty Monday of all nine counts in a perjury and obstruction case.

Kathleen Kane, 50, was found guilty of nine criminal charges, convicting her of leaking a 2009 grand jury probe and then lying about it in an attempt to discredit a rival prosecutor.

The charges included two felony perjury counts and criminal conspiracy and obstruction.

At one point, Kane — the first Democrat to be the state’s attorney general — was considered a rising star among her party. She was elected in 2012.

Other state officials, including two state Supreme Court justices, lost their job in the scandal. Though Kane lost her law license, she has remained on the job as attorney general. She did not seek re-election this year.

“There is to be absolutely no retaliation of any kind against any witness in this case, either by your own devices, from your own mouth or your hand, or directing anybody to do anything,” Judge Wendy Demchick-Alloy said in a warning to Kane on Monday, threatening her with immediate incarceration if she failed to follow her directions.

That last is quite extraordinary.

WAS IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY AND IF BILL CLINTON IS A RAPIST, THAT DOESN’T ‘MAKE HIM A BAD FEMINIST,’ Wonkette editor Rebecca Schoenkopf exalts, learning to love both Big Brother – and Big Sister.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: The Slow And Painful Death Of Academic Freedom At Arkansas-Little Rock Law School.

BLUE ON BLUE: Liberals rally to sink Obama trade deal.

Liberals are amping up their opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on and off of Capitol Hill, amid escalating concerns that the package will get an 11th hour vote after the November elections.

Republican leaders in both chambers have said it’s unlikely the mammoth Pacific Rim trade deal will reach the floor this year. But the accord remains a top priority for President Obama in the twilight of his final term, and the critics — leery of pro-TPP members in both parties — aren’t taking anything for granted.

Liberal TPP opponents this month have launched a new wave of petition campaigns and fundraising drives; a free concert series is touring the country through the summer; and lawmakers on Capitol Hill are vowing to do “everything we possibly can,” in the words of Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), to block a vote this year.

“Make no mistake about it, Speaker [Paul] Ryan and the administration are working hand-in-hand to plot a path for the TPP in a lame duck session of Congress,” DeLauro, who’s among the loudest TPP critics, said this week in an email. “They will do everything possible to try to pass the TPP after the election.”

Fueling those concerns, Obama on Friday sent notice to Congress that he intends to deliver TPP implementing legislation to Capitol Hill later in the year — a maneuver dictated by the fast-track trade resolution Congress passed in 2015.

Free trade is good. That doesn’t mean that all trade agreements are good. This one looks to be full of cronyism.

CLINTON NEWS NETWORK: CNN Anchor Cuts Off Jill Stein After She Questions Hillary’s ‘Competency’ For The Presidency.

SCIENCE: Simulated black hole experiment backs Hawking prediction.

Prof Jeff Steinhauer simulated a black hole in a super-cooled state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate.

In the journal Nature Physics, he describes having observed the equivalent of a phenomenon called Hawking radiation – predicted to be released by black holes.
Prof Hawking first argued for its existence in 1974.

“Classical” physics dictates that the gravity of a black holes is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. So Hawking’s idea relies on quantum mechanics – the realm of physics which takes hold at very small scales.

These quantum effects allow black holes to radiate particles in a process which, over vast stretches of time, would ultimately cause the black hole to evaporate.

But the amount of radiation emitted is small, so the phenomenon has never actually been observed in an astrophysical black hole.

On a long enough timeline, even the survival rate for black holes drops to zero.

JILL STEIN ON THE ATTACK: Green Party candidate slams Clinton on email.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on Monday ramped up her attacks on Hillary Clinton for using a private email system while serving as the nation’s top diplomat and maintaining a fuzzy boundary between her official and private duties.

In an interview with CNN, Stein appeared to reiterate her call for the Justice Department to prosecute Clinton for mishandling government secrets, and also joined in the attacks on her relationship with the Clinton Foundation.

“I think there should have been a full investigation,” Stein said. “I think the American people are owed an explanation for what happened, and why top secret information was put at risk, why the identity of secret agents were potentially put at risk.”

“There is much more that is coming to public attention about Hillary Clinton’s behavior, including the recent revelations about favors bestowed on the Clinton Foundation’s donors who got special deals, who got state partnerships,” she added, in a reference to recently released emails suggesting blurred lines between Clinton’s position as secretary of State and her vast personal and philanthropic connections.

“If she wasn’t aware that she was violating State Department rules, it raises real issues about her competency.”

Stein has previously criticized the Justice Department’s decision not to indict Clinton or her senior aides for the email set-up, a move that she said gave the Democratic presidential nominee “a pass.”

The explicit reference to her ties to the Clinton Foundation amounts to a doubling-down on the position, and an echo of complaints normally heard from Republicans.

I think she and Gary Johnson should be allowed in the debates, though that’s looking unlikely.

THAT MEANS IT’S WORKING: Aetna to cut back 70 pct on Obamacare plans in 2017.

“As a strong supporter of public exchanges as a means to meet the needs of the uninsured, we regret having to make this decision,” Marc Bertolini, Aetna chairman and CEO, said in a statement.

The insurance giant says it will offer ACA exchange plans in Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska and Virginia, slashing its Obamacare footprint by 70 percent next year. It will offer ACA plans in just 242 counties, nationally, down from nearly 780 this year.

Aetna’s announcement comes two weeks after the company booked $200 million in ACA-related pre-tax losses in its Q2 earnings report and nearly one month after the Department of Justice’s anti-trust division sued to block the health insurer’s acquisition of rival Humana.

Humana has also announced it will cut back sharply from the exchanges. Their pullback, in the wake of UnitedHealth’s departure from all but a handful of exchanges, means that hundreds of thousands of Obamacare plan members will no longer have access to plans from the nation’s three major insurers in 2017.

Customers “taxed” into buying insurance they can’t afford to use from insurers who can’t afford to sell it is a recipe for government-mandated failure.

Free markets will take the blame.

SHOULDN’T THIS HEADLINE USE THE PLURAL CASE? Obama will leave his successor a ticking time bomb.

Whoever the president is come January, he or she will be dealing with arguably even more fallout than the disastrous Carter administration — perhaps literal fallout as well.

THE HILL: Five Things That Could Still Go Wrong For Hillary Clinton.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: Keynesian economics is just the Broken Window Fallacy in a posh accent. – Jeff Gauch

OF COURSE HE DOES: Larry Wiltmore’s Terrible Show Cancelled Due to Reasons of Terribleness; Wiltmore Decries the “Unblackening” of His Time Slot.

HEY, FORD FOUNDATION! Milwaukee is the latest in the Black Lives Matter destructiveness.

QUICK, SOMEONE TELL THEM ABOUT NATIONAL FINANCES THEN MAKE ONE OF THEM PRESIDENT: Toddlers don’t forget a debt, research reveals.

OF COURSE IT WILL: Ford Foundation Will Fund Black Lives Matter Big Time.

AND ALSO OF COURSE: Death by HR: Pink Collar Ghettos Publishing And HR.

AND OF COURSE THEY ARE: ISIS fighters are using ‘Islam for Dummies’ to prepare for jihad.

OF COURSE THEY ARE: Adults are lining up to act like kids again at summer camp.

OF COURSE SHE DID: Hillary scrubs sexual assault pledge after allegations against Bill resurface.

FASTER PLEASE: Black hole made in the lab shows signs of quantum entanglement.

IN MY EXPERIENCE FINDING OUT WHAT QUESTIONS TO ASK IS MORE THAN HALF THE BATTLE: Finding Out What We Don’t Know.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: I’m A Queer Black Woman And This Is How White Girls Use Me, Even When They Love Me.

THIS IS AWESOME: Squirrel Steals GoPro, Accidentally Takes Us On A Beautiful Tour Of The Trees.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Could your next cocktail be made by an ORANG-UTAN?

NOT ME. I WAS VERY HAPPY SINGLE, BUT I’M HAPPIER MARRIED. Karol Markowicz: Who Says Being Single Beats Married Life?

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: When rulers despise the ruled. It’s like The Hunger Games: the Capital City, and its hangers-on, flourish, while the provinces starve.

ROGER L. SIMON: Trump Advocates ‘Extreme Vetting’ of Muslim Immigrants in Forceful Foreign Policy Speech.

DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: “Migrants wielding bats and knives have been smashing up vehicles on roads near Calais as their owners sit in traffic, reportedly ‘just for fun’. Local residents are warning others to avoid the area, saying that the migrants are not even checking to see whether children are in the vehicles before they set upon them.”

You could bring this to a stop in a hurry, but to do that you’d have to admit what’s going on.

TESLA UPGRADE: More radar, triple-camera system for next Autopilot version?

WELL, FEMINISTS WILL PROBABLY TRY TO BAN THEM FOR MEN FIRST: Will Sex Robots Destroy the Human Race? Experts Host a Tech Conference to Discuss.

I hope they don’t invite notorious robophobe Matthew Yglesias. No platform for robo-hate!

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE? Hate-Speech Laws are ‘Fostering Hatred’

PALO ALTO HOUSING OFFICIAL RESIGNS, REVEALS FAILURE OF CENTRAL PLANNERS.

Failure? It depends upon your point of view — plenty of reactionary socialist elite California grandees are quite happy to maintain Palo Alto’s sky-high housing prices.

THE POLITICAL TRADITION OF PARTY REVOLT: “Never Somebody” isn’t new. The Daily Caller provides some recent history, including examples from the Democratic Party. Ed linked earlier today to this Deroy Murdock essay arguing that #NeverTrump conservatives are “are chauffeuring Hillary Clinton to the White House.” I made a similar case after the convention.

THERE’S NO REPLACEMENT FOR DISPLACEMENT: Infiniti’s variable compression engine is a huge technological leap.

BURKINI BEACH RIOT IN CORSICA: Burkinis banned in Cannes. Cultural and social conflict? Yes. On Corsica the families of the women wearing burkinis objected to locals taking photos of the burkini-clads.

OVER 20 YEARS AGO, Bill Stuntz remarked to me that these days a $25,000 car is so good he couldn’t see why people bought $50,000 cars. That’s probably still pretty true even without adjusting for inflation. Review: The 2017 Honda Accord.

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RACISM IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: White Reporter Pulls Out Of Milwaukee Because Of Racial Threats.

THERE’S A LONG HISTORY OF THIS STUFF AMONG GUN-CONTROL “RESEARCHERS,” GOING ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE MUCH-HYPED KELLERMAN STUDY: Gun Control Researcher: You Can’t See My Data.

And, of course, disgraced scholar Michael Bellesiles, who claimed to have personally reviewed gun records that were in fact destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, then claimed that all his notes were lost in a flood.

MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE, CALL YOUR OFFICE: New Sitcom Mocks Millennials — and They Need a Safe Space.

(Classical allusion in headline; link found via Small Dead Animals, who filed under the appropriate headline of “Generation P.”)

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

In the ramshackle apartment blocks and sooty concrete homes that line the dusty roads of urban India, there is a new status symbol on proud display. An air-conditioner has become a sign of middle-class status in developing nations, a must-have dowry item.

It is cheaper than a car, and arguably more life-changing in steamy regions, where cooling can make it easier for a child to study or a worker to sleep.

But as air-conditioners sprout from windows and storefronts across the world, scientists are becoming increasingly alarmed about the impact of the gases on which they run. All are potent agents of global warming.

—“In Rising Use of Air-Conditioning, Hard Choices,” the New York Times, June 20th, 2012.

Flash-forward to today’s New York Times headline: “In U.S. Jails, a Constitutional Clash Over Air-Conditioning.”  Alan Blinder, the Timesman who wrote the story tweeted a link to his article, noting that “Most of Texas’s state prisons don’t have air-conditioning. That’s not just a Texas thing.”

Given the brutal Texas summer heat, I’m pretty sympathetic to his argument that prisons deserve some level of climate control in the summertime. But I don’t work for a newspaper that has spent the last 30 years or so tut-tutting its benefits for the rest of us. Or as Glenn tweets, “How can air conditioning be a constitutional right? Euros think it’s stupid and WaPo says it’s sexist.”

Not to mention John Kerry’s recent assertion that air conditioning is more deadly than ISIS.

THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT GOING AS WELL AS I’D HOPED: Polio Response in Africa to Be Fast, Difficult and Possibly Dangerous. “After two years with no cases in Africa, experts were elated at the imminent taste of victory on the continent, considered the toughest front in the fight against infectious diseases. Those hopes were dashed this week when two new cases were discovered. Now Nigeria rejoins Pakistan and Afghanistan on the list of countries where the disease has not been completely eliminated.”

THAT’S NOT GOING TO MAKE ENOUGH VITAMIN D: 10-trillionths of your suntan comes from galaxies beyond the Milky Way.

A TALE OF TWO HEADLINES: Juanita Broaddrick Wants To Be Believed.

—BuzzFeed News, yesterday.

On Rape, Clinton Campaign Deletes ‘You Have The Right to Be Believed’ From Website.

—Breitbart.com, today.

HEALTH WATCH: Hillary Clinton’s ‘Erratic’ Behavior Raises Eyebrows.

There are many things much more worrisome about Hillary Clinton than her health.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Twitter Used to Help Organize New Social Movements. Now It’s Just a ‘Honeypot for Assholes.’

And note this: “The head of Trust & Safety at Twitter is a woman who doesn’t use her legal name. Just let that sink in….”

Related: Meet Del Harvey, Twitter’s Troll Patrol.

More: Report claims Twitter forced comedian to delete Ghostbusters joke because it triggered film’s director.

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NEWS YOU CAN USE: Chemtrails Aren’t Real, In Case You Were Wondering.

Yeah, and there’s no alien invasion on the way, either.

WAS IT GOOD FOR YOU?

Shot: “Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three (Which was rather late for me) between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles’ first LP.”

― British poet Philip Larkin, “Annus Mirabilis,” 1974.

Chaser: “Goodbye to sex: a short and heartfelt eulogy:”

Born in 1963, died 2016 – alas poor Sex. We knew you well. Well, not WELL. We knew you. Slightly. That was a good summer.

But it was with great regret and some tears that last week we learned of your death. All of us will remember where we were when we heard, of course – we were not having you. We were sitting on sofas, TV on, loungewear on, jointly scrolling through our phones for more updates on what the millennials are thinking, eating Doritos.

* * * * * * * *

But why? Why have young people stopped having you? Why have they stopped building their lives around you, the peg their tents were tied to, the mistakes they yearned to make? Why have you died just when, some would argue, we needed you most?

—Eva Wiseman, the London Guardian, yesterday.

Hangover: The Unsexy Truth About Millennials: They’re Poor: If you’re wondering why millennials don’t have much sex, and don’t buy cars, forget social theorizing: the harsh truth lies in their near-empty wallets.

—The Daily Beast, August 5th.

(Guardian essay found via Kathy Shaidle.)

21ST CENTURY HEADLINE: How states use facial recognition to sniff out driver’s license fraud.

Deep learning makes it easy and cheap to scan millions of photos for duplicates and fraud, and since it doesn’t involve any extra data collection or access — you just need to find matching entries, not link them to an identity — privacy groups see it as one of the more benign forms of facial scanning. Forty-three of the 50 states have used some form of that technology, with seven of those states adopting the system for driver’s licenses in the last three years. (The holdouts are California, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.) But while the scans are still limited, some worry those systems could be the first step toward something more troubling.

One of the driving forces behind the new DMV systems has been a new wave of federal requirements — and newly available federal money to meet those new standards. The RealID Act was passed in 2005 in response to the 9/11 Commission’s identification requirements — including the requirement that driver’s licenses be stored in digital form. States are still in charge of their own licenses, but if licenses don’t meet the new federal requirements, they’ll stop being valid for use in airports as early as 2018.

What about for voting?

FLASHBACK: How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico.

Now, Eisenhower was one of those “good Republicans” who are somehow all dead now. So if we do what he did, that’ll be good, right?

LET’S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN! Changing History in an RPG via Time Travel 101.

SWEDEN: Summer Inferno of Sexual Assaults.

ANDREW McCARTHY ON CLINTON CORRUPTION AND US: “If someone as squalid as Hillary Clinton is a viable political candidate, that is not a failure of our legal system. It is a failure of our culture.”

Read the whole thing.

WHY CAPITALISM WORKS AND SOCIALISM DOESN’T: ARBITRAGE.

But of course, in a world of socialism — that is, where a government attempts to create perfect fairness and justice by means of coercive distribution — arbitrage poses a mortal threat.  Do you understand why?  If not, there are some good examples coming out of Venezuela, not to mention the ongoing saga of “affordable housing” here in New York.

At the Washington Post’s Wonkblog on Monday, a guy named Matt O’Brien reports on the ongoing disaster in Venezuela.  The title of the article is “Venezuela’s death spiral is getting worse.”   I will give serious credit to Mr. O’Brien for actually doing some investigation of what is causing Venezuela’s problems.  (Contrast that to the likes of idiots from such outlets as the New York Times, CNN and Time Magazine, cited in my posts from May here and here, who purport to give reasons for Venezuela’s economic disaster without ever mentioning socialism, price controls, nationalizations, or anything else of significance.)

Venezuela of course has made a run at creating perfect justice and fairness by the device of price controls.  Included among items with controlled prices are most consumer staples, as well as the currency itself.  As a result, the consumer staples with controlled prices have completely disappeared from stores.  As to the currency, you can’t buy anything with a bolivar, so you need to get dollars; but you can’t get dollars at the controlled price unless you are somehow connected.  On the other hand, if you are importing, say, butter, and you have the right connections, you can get the dollars.  Yet somehow butter still does not appear in the stores.  The government blames “hoarders” — but is someone really hoarding tons of butter somewhere?

As Glenn noted on Saturday in regards to Venezuela, “Leftism impoverishes and kills, again and again. But politicians like it because it offers them control, and opportunities for graft. Voters like it because, well, it’s a con game designed to take advantage of greed and envy. Remember, under free markets the rich become powerful. But under socialism, the powerful become rich. Entirely unrelated: Candidate Who Said There Were Too Many Kinds Of Deodorant Buys His Third House.”

And finally, an exit question: Why Couldn’t What Happened In Venezuela Happen Here?

(Via Maggie’s Farm.)

CHANGE: Congress is getting richer.

The median net worth of lawmakers was just over $1 million in 2013, or 18 times the wealth of the typical American household, according to new research released Monday by the Center for Responsive Politics.

And while Americans’ median wealth is down 43% since 2007, Congress members’ net worth has jumped 28%.

I’ve long thought that elected federal officials should be required to place their assets in a blind trust.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: “As for Mr. Trump, he needs to stop blaming everyone else and decide if he wants to behave like someone who wants to be President—or turn the nomination over to Mike Pence.”

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Whole Foods CEO Drops the Mic on Why Socialism Will Never Work.

John Mackey, chief executive officer of Whole Foods Market, recently debated John Roemer, a Marxist economics professor at Yale, on the question of “Capitalism vs. Socialism: Free to Choose or Free to Lose?”

Roemer, a supporter of former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, wrote a book called “Free to Lose,” challenging the theme of free-market economist Milton Friedman’s classic, “Free to Choose.” Roemer blames the 2008 financial crisis and growing inequality of wealth on “greedy” capitalists.

Yet during the debate, hosted at FreedomFest in Las Vegas, Mackey pointed out that countries with high economic freedom such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Chile have improved prosperity, while socialist countries such as Greece, Venezuela and North Korea are poor and getting poorer all the time. He also looked at Sweden as a case study, which he reported has lowered its corporate tax rate and reduced its top marginal tax rates and achieved improved economic growth. More broadly, Mackey contended people are better off financially as they enjoy freer markets.

If you think Whole Foods is expensive, wait’ll you try government ownership of the means of production.

ISLAMIC STATE ALTERS VICTORY CONDITIONS: As it loses territory, the Islamic State is returning to “dispersed organization” mode.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: ‘Nightly Show’ Canceled; Larry Wilmore “Saddened” By “Unblackening” at Comedy Central:

Wilmore, who informed his staff of the network’s decision early Monday, didn’t hide his disappointment. “I’m really grateful to Comedy Central, Jon Stewart, and our fans to have had this opportunity,” he says in a statement to THR, leaning on his “Keeping it 100” mantra as he continued: “But I’m also saddened and surprised we won’t be covering this crazy election or ‘The Unblackening’ as we’ve coined it. And keeping it 100, I guess I hadn’t counted on ‘The Unblackening’ happening to my time slot as well.”

Three questions: On the one hand, if you run with Wilmore’s claim and it’s how it’s framed by the Hollywood Reporter in its headline to its logical conclusion, they’re accusing Comedy Central and its parent company Viacom of institutional racism for cancelling him. If so, why are Democrat-run media outlets such cesspits of racism?

On the other hand, what does Wilmore’s cancellation say about the viewing habits of Comedy Central’s core audience of leftwing coastal elites and those who virtue signal that they wish to be members of the corporatist caste?

And finally, on the gripping hand, didn’t Jon Stewart “jokingly” warn Wilmore in 2010 that his race card had been maxed out?

IN THE MAIL: From Kimberly Strassel, The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech.

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QUESTION ASKED: After Trump, can the Republican Party be rebuilt? From Ricochet’s Jon Gabriel, writing in the Arizona Republic:

Accomplishing these recommendations is far from easy. Not only will it require years of hard work, it also will require elites to place their fellow Americans’ welfare above their own vanity, power, and quarterly dividend statements. This cannot be a temporary pose to trick the “rubes,” but a change in heart, mind and direction. The new party bosses must admit that much of the work they do in Washington is either useless or downright counter-productive.

If the GOP isn’t willing to make these changes, a new party will have to rise from its ashes.

Read the whole thing.

Related: When it comes to rebuilding the GOP, “Evolutionary Change Isn’t Going To Cut It Any More,” one of Ace’s co-bloggers posits.

GERMAN INTELLIGENCE: We Have Evidence ISIS Hides ‘Hit Squads’ Among Syrian Refugees.

According to Politico, Manfred Hauser — the vice president of BayLfV, the Bavarian region’s intelligence gathering apparatus — told the BBC Thursday that officials must “accept we have hit squads and sleeper cells in Germany.”

“We have substantial reports that among the refugees there are hit squads,” he added. “There are hundreds of these reports, some from refugees themselves.”

Hauser stated that BayLfV is currently following up on the reports of ISIS operatives inside German borders, but maintained the investigation is far from complete.

Why must Germans “accept” this?

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1194.

KATIE PAVLICH: ‘THERE AREN’T AS MANY CONSERVATIVES IN THE COUNTRY AS WE THOUGHT.’ “When people like [conservative Sen.] Ben Sasse are the ‘enemy,’ we’re in a really bad spot,” she added.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Anti-Semitism At The Olympics Is Completely Out Of Control.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. PAC Operative Confesses, “We Killed the Tea Party”

What began as an organic, policy-driven grass-roots movement was drained of its vitality and resources by national political action committees that dunned the movement’s true believers endlessly for money to support its candidates and causes. The PACs used that money first to enrich themselves and their vendors and then deployed most of the rest to search for more “prospects.” In Tea Party world, that meant mostly older, technologically unsavvy people willing to divulge personal information through “petitions”—which only made them prey to further attempts to lighten their wallets for what they believed was a good cause. While the solicitations continue, the audience has greatly diminished because of a lack of policy results and changing political winds.

A lot of well-intentioned people have been duped out of millions of dollars, with nothing to show for it but increasing electoral outrage.

SUBSIDIZING THE RICH AND CONNECTED: Poor Ohioans’ Tax Dollars Fund Rich People’s TV Shows.

If the existence of the show “Vanilla Ice Goes Amish” is not ridiculous enough, try the idea of giving it government funding. Believe it or not, Ohio taxpayers paid for this show’s production.

Under the recently revised Ohio Motion Picture Tax Credit, annual funding for film productions in the state will double to $40 million. This credit is refundable, meaning Ohio taxpayers actually have to cut checks to production companies that film timeless classics such as “Alpha Dogz Presents: Pups United.” (Buckeyes, you need to watch this trailer to see how your tax dollars are being used.) To be fair, since the state’s film tax credit program was first passed in 2009, blockbuster hits including “The Avengers” and “Captain America: Winter Soldier” have also been filmed in Ohio. But does subsidizing film actually pay off?

Well, it pays off for some people. . . .

I had a piece about this in the Wall Street Journal a while back. Also, repeal the Hollywood Tax Cuts!

THE CALIFORNIA BAY AREA IN A NUTSHELL: Housing official in Silicon Valley resigns because she can’t afford to live there.

Related: The Extinction of Palo Alto?

DON’T DO STUPID SH*T: U.S. allies unite to block Obama’s nuclear ‘legacy’

The governments of Japan, South Korea, France and Britain have all privately communicated their concerns about a potential declaration by President Obama of a “no first use” nuclear-weapons policy for the United States. U.S. allies have various reasons for objecting to what would be a landmark change in America’s nuclear posture, but they are all against it, according to U.S. officials, foreign diplomats and nuclear experts.

Japan, in particular, believes that if Obama declares a “no first use” policy, deterrence against countries such as North Korea will suffer and the risks of conflict will rise. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe personally conveyed that message recently to Adm. Harry Harris Jr., the head of U.S. Pacific Command, according to two government officials.

U.S. allies in Europe have a separate, additional concern. They don’t want any daylight between their nuclear policies and those of the United States, especially since Britain, France and the United States all are permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. In the case of an emergency, those differences could cause real coordination problems.

Nuclear deterrence against rogue states and bad actors just isn’t as important as giving progressive voters a temporary case of happy feelz.

ROGER SIMON: Donald Trump Should Go for the Black Vote—NOW!

As Roger writes, Trump needs to change the narrative ASAP – and here’s the plan. Read the whole thing.

ANOTHER RUBE SELF-IDENTITIES: Once Skeptical of Executive Power, Obama Has Come to Embrace It.

In nearly eight years in office, President Obama has sought to reshape the nation with a sweeping assertion of executive authority and a canon of regulations that have inserted the United States government more deeply into American life.

Once a presidential candidate with deep misgivings about executive power, Mr. Obama will leave the White House as one of the most prolific authors of major regulations in presidential history.

That was always the intention.

THAT ’70S CATALOG: Absolutely Hilarious JCPenney Catalog From 1977.