MILITARY-GRADE AMPHIBIOUS EXOSKELETON UPDATE: This Technological Breakthrough Could Give Hillary Clinton a Crucial Edge in 2016.
INSTITUTIONAL SEXISM: Research: As A Group, Only Men Pay Taxes. “With the exception of the age group between 45-59 (a 15 year span) years old, women cost more to the state than the tax they provide. In contrast, men generate more tax revenue than they cost between 23 and 65 (a 43 year span). In the brief period in which women generate more or as much tax money than they consume, men outscore them by at least 3 times. y large, the cumulative tax money given to women outweighs the tax money generated by women. The short period of positive impact of women between 45 and 59 is countered by 65 other years in which their allocated tax expenditure is more than what they supply the state. Overall, the research suggests that male taxpayers are the only ones to ever have a positive contribution in taxes. Based on Figure 17, the closest that the average woman will come to having a positive fiscal incidence is when she is at minus $50,000 around 55 years of age. While feminists are demonizing men for benefiting from all liberties and rights they have constructed, they have oddly remained silent over the fact that anonymous male tax payers are paying women to exist. Read that sentence again. The fact that feminists want a stronger government is not a coincidence. While historically, women had to choose a wealthy husband for resources, they can now stay single, be lesbians, marry a poor man, or use the sperm bank, and the state will still transfer male taxes to them.”
No wonder men are going on strike.
A BUNCH OF PRESIDENTS TALKED “ENERGY INDEPENDENCE,” BUT IT WAS THE PRIVATE SECTOR THAT HAS MOVED THE BALL: The World Is Gassing Up on US Shale.
We already know that oil drilled from U.S. shale is leading the rise in global crude output—after all, those U.S. supplies were what helped create the glut that sent oil prices crashing from more than $110 per barrel two years ago to under $50 today—but new projections suggest that U.S. frackers will be key drivers of growth in another hydrocarbon market in the coming years: that of natural gas. . . .
The United States already produces the lion’s share of the world’s shale gas, and those fracked hydrocarbons make up the majority of U.S. natural gas production as well. But Canada, Argentina, and China are all beginning to chase after that shale bandwagon, producing small but significant quantities of fracked gas, and in the coming decades Algeria and, importantly, Mexico will hope to join the club.
Shale producers have so far struggled outside of the United States, running up against any number of hurdles—from poor geology to water scarcity, from opaque government regulations to NIMBYism—but countries and companies will refine their methods and eventually start tapping shale reserves abroad on a commercial scale. The United States will continue to lead the pack, but with Canada and Mexico both ready to join in on this energy boom, North America as a whole is emerging as a new center of global energy supplies.
All of this shale gas is helping to keep natural gas prices down, which in turn is helping to topple Old King Coal from his perch as the world’s cheapest source of power. That’s not just good news for the developing world, it’s also good news for Gaia: natural gas emits far fewer local pollutants and roughly half as much carbon as coal.
And yet Greens are overwhelmingly anti-fracking. That’s the sort of behavior you’d expect from tools of Putin and the Saudis, not Gaia-worshipers.
TO PROTECT AND SERVE: Army Veteran Hangs U.S. Flag Upside Down to Protest Eminent Domain, Gets Arrested.
Homer Martz, a 63-year-old U.S. Army veteran from Iowa, was unhappy about the oil pipeline being built on his property by a private company which had been granted access to the land through eminent domain. Among Martz’s concerns were the risk the pipeline presents to his water supply and the fact that the pipeline could have been placed — much less disruptively, a few hundred feet away from its current path — where it wouldn’t disturb anyone’s home or water supply.
So he decided to protest this public-private intrusion into his home by hanging a U.S. flag upside down.
Then the police arrived.
Read the whole thing.
SHOCKER: Turkey Accused Of Aiding Islamist Extremism In Leaked Report. “Germany has accused Turkey of supporting terrorist organisations like Hamas and the Islamist opposition in Syria, a leaked report reveals. Berlin believes that Turkey has been deliberately financing radical groups with the direct consent of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the Ankara government takes an increasingly Islamist line, according the confidential report obtained by broadcaster ARD. . . . It accuses Turkey’s ruling AKP party of providing ‘many expressions of solidarity and support’ for groups like the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinian terror group Hamas and the armed Islamist opposition in Syria. It adds that this support ’emphasise[s] their ideological affinity with the (broader) Muslim Brotherhood.’ The document also claims Turkey has deepened ties with these groups in recent years.”
Note to Europe: Erdogan sees himself as the next Sultan. The Sultans were not friends to Europe.
EXTREMELY CARELESS: Clinton Foundation Possibly Hacked.
A potentially campaign-ending October Surprise could be in the making for Hillary Clinton in the form of hacked Clinton Foundation emails, according to a report out late Wednesday evening.
Reuters is reporting that according to sources familiar with the matter, the Clinton charitable foundation had to hire a cyber-security firm to examine its data systems after seeing signs that they were hacked. The culprits appear to be the Russians, cyber-security experts say.
She can’t even protect her own secrets.
MICHAEL WALSH ON THE MORAL COWARDICE OF THE #NEVERTRUMPUMPKINS.
KATHY SHAIDLE: From Scopes to Snopes.
Read the whole thing.
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COME NOVEMBER, WILL THE RIGHT PARTY LIKE IT’S 2009? The Re-Death of Conservatism?
POOR THING: Clinton Pushed From Left and Right on Health Care.
Democrats have tried to move past debate over the Affordable Care Act, a goal made harder this week when Aetna said it would withdraw from 11 of the 15 state health care exchanges, unsettling the marketplaces and reducing consumer options.
Mrs. Clinton has backed a public option since 2007, and she reaffirmed her support during her Democratic primary against Mr. Sanders. He and others on the left will be pushing to make sure she carries through, especially given their concerns that she will tack to the center if elected president.
Conservatives, meanwhile, say Aetna’s decision shows the law isn’t working and should be scrapped.
“Aetna just today announced that they are dropping out, as are many of the major insurance agencies. Obamacare is a disaster,” Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said at a rally late Tuesday in Wisconsin.
No wonder she’s “often confused.“
ESPN MORPHED INTO MSNBC SO SLOWLY, I HARDLY EVEN NOTICED. ESPN Panel: ‘NFL Players Don’t Speak Enough on Social/Cultural Issues.’
But Gaia forefend they don’t express the current grievance industry-approved thoughts: Cam Newton Criticized for Telling GQ That America Is “Beyond” Race.
DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: ‘There’s not much that’s German here anymore.’ “The debates about the refugee crisis and the burqa ban are touchy subjects in Bad Godesberg. Many people prefer not to comment, or say they’re afraid of being labeled right-wing extremists.”
ROBOTIC RIDE-SHARING: Uber’s self-driving cars will pick up their first customers this month.
Uber’s self-driving taxis will get their first real-world test in Pittsburgh this month, with the semi-autonomous vehicles assigned at random to customers using the company’s app. According to a report from Bloomberg, the test fleet will consist of modified Volvo XC90 SUVs, with each car supervised by a human in the driver’s seat (a legal requirement) as well as a co-pilot taking notes. The trips themselves will be free, with a tablet in the backseat informing the passenger about the car’s capabilities.
Related: Ford will sell fully autonomous cars by 2021 with no steering wheels.
What is really needed is an AI able to pass the Turing Test well enough to make smalltalk during your trip.
Would you ride in a fully autonomous robot cab?
LEAVING HIGH-REGULATION STATES FOR LOW-REGULATION STATES: IRS Migration Data: Taxpayers Leave NY, IL & CA For TX, FL & SC.
FEED THE GORACLE: Soros Paid Al Gore Millions To Push ‘Aggressive US Action’ On Global Warming.
DON’T DO STUPID SH*T: NATO’s Foothold in Eastern Med Is Faltering.
While China and Russia are providing Greece and Turkey with much needed support, their involvement could compromise Western security. Athens and Ankara may side with Beijing and Moscow when it comes to NATO security concerns involving China, North Korea and Russia, for example, if they become too dependent on Chinese and Russian assistance. It would take just one country withholding support to prevent an action by NATO that is not in the interest of China or Russia since NATO only takes action when every member agrees.
Turkish Foreign Minister Cavusoglu has already made some worrying remarks about Turkey’s NATO membership. Cavusoglu has publicly justified Turkey’s growing relationship with Russia bystating, “Turkey wanted to cooperate with NATO members up to this point. But the results we got did not satisfy us. Therefore, it is natural to look for other options.” This is concerning because NATO relations with Russia have been strained since Moscow invaded Ukraine and increased its aggressive behavior on the alliance’s eastern flank. A NATO member making such statements suggests that Turkey finds more value in a closer relationship with Russia. Minister Cavusoglu also warned that “if the West loses Turkey one day, it will not be because of Turkey’s relations with Russia, China or the Islamic world, but rather because of themselves.” The West must address Turkey’s concerns to prevent the loss of a geopolitically significant ally.
Obama wanted us out of the Middle East, and after seven years we’re well on our way — but it won’t stop there.
Do it. If Mike Ditka had gone ahead with his Senate run, we’d have been spared President Obama.
MICHAEL BARONE: Is the end of white Christian America a good thing?
Well, it is for wide swatches of the far left. (QED.) But it’s also a reminder of ExJon’s tweet of the decade:
LOOKING OUT FOR THE LITTLE GUY: Small business owner: FDA rules threaten Florida heritage of hand-rolled cigars.
The FDA recently released its long-dreaded rule that asserted the agency’s authority to regulate a wide variety of nicotine-delivery products. Much of the media attention zeroed in on the fairly new vaping, or “e-cigarette,” industry. By the FDA’s own admission, its new rule would make 98.5 percent of those products on the market illegal. What has been largely missed by the media, but not the small business owners like my wife and me, is that these regulations would devastate the hand-rolled cigar industry.
The new FDA rules would force all new premium cigars to undergo a “pre-market review process.” This process requires that manufacturers prove their products meet certain requirements before they can go to market by submitting hundreds if not thousands of hours of paperwork per product. Since the FDA defines new cigars to include new blends, which can change seasonally for smaller manufacturers, the compliance costs could overwhelm many small-cigar businesses.
This isn’t about promoting health; it’s about securing money and power.
EXCUSES, EXCUSES. Merkel: Germany Had Islamic Extremism Before Refugee Influx.
Merkel said late Wednesday that “the phenomenon of Islamist terrorism by IS isn’t a phenomenon that came to us with the refugees, it’s one that we had before too.”
She conceded, however, “it can be seen that there are attempts to win over refugees (for terrorism), or we had the case of Paris, where refugees were deliberately smuggled in by IS.”
Merkel was speaking at a campaign event in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where her Christian Democrats face strong competition from the nationalist, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party in state elections on Sept. 4.
The country was shaken by a string of attacks in July, two of which were the first in Germany claimed by the Islamic State group. In those, only the attackers — both asylum-seekers — were killed.
Would she try treating lung cancer with Marlboros?
THE HILL: Trump hurts GOP, but probably not enough to flip House.
Trump’s combative campaign is hurting Republicans down the ballot — but not enough to flip control of the House in November.
The House advantage has shifted steadily in favor of the Democrats since Trump won the GOP nomination, in the eyes of leading election handicappers.
Yet Democrats still appear far short of flipping the 30 seats they’d need to win back the lower chamber. The GOP’s 247 seats represents the party’s largest majority since before the Great Depression.
“In the House, I have yet to see evidence that Republicans are tanking as a result of Trump being on the ballot,” said David Wasserman, an expert on House races at the Cook Political Report.
Election analysts emphasize that a wave election delivering power back to the Democrats remains possible. But Wasserman put the odds at only between 10 and 20 percent and predicts Democrats will pick up between 10 and 20 House seats — far shy of the 30 needed to win back control.
It’s 2016, so the balance of the House will probably be determined by space aliens.
PATTY HEARST: THE ORIGINAL CELEBRITY RADICAL.
Well, I’d go with Leonard Bernstein, but to be fair, he just wanted bankroll the Black Panthers, not go out on terrorist runs with them.
IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP. THANKS, EGON: “Would remind all that this material is classified. So this is leaking of classified material,” tweets…Hillary for America’s communications director Jennifer Palmieri. Cluelessness? Chutzpah? You make the call!
ED RENDELL: Clinton Foundation should be disbanded if Clinton wins.
And, since it’s basically just an influence-peddling operation, it will disband itself if Clinton loses.
I HAVE A WEAK SPOT FOR BLACK CATS: And I can tell you they’re almost impossible to photograph, which is why we have one decent photograph of the late great Petronius the Arbiter and so far none of Euclid-cat. This woman is not just doing something good, she’s doing something amazing. Woman Photographs Black Shelter Cats to Help Them Get Adopted.
THANK HEAVENS AMERICANS CAN DO THINGS DESPITE THEIR GOVERNMENT: Meet The Heroes Of The ‘Cajun Navy’ Who Are Saving Many Lives As Louisiana Floods.
THE REST OF US DEMAND THAT SJWs SHUT THEIR YAPS ALREADY: SJWs Demand ‘Deus Ex‘ Video Game Not Let Gamers Make ‘Immoral’ Decisions. Feminists, they morphed into the Temperance League so gradually that THEY haven’t noticed. The rest of us have though. Oh, have we ever.
BECAUSE MONEY LAUNDERING: $400 Million Payment to Iran Looking More Like Ransom for American Prisoners
IN THAT IT IS ESSENTIALLY A RANSOM: $400 Million Payment to Iran Looking More Like Ransom for American Prisoners.
WELL, WE MUST BE UNDERSTANDING. HE FIDDLES EVEN WORSE THAN HE GOLFS: President Barack Obama emerged from his Martha’s Vineyard vacation for a fundraiser, but he didn’t mention any of the devastating events currently affecting the United States.
OF COURSE HE DID. INTELLECTUAL CONSISTENCY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: EXPOSED: ‘Climate crusader’ California governor Jerry Brown took huge sums of money from “big oil”.
OF COURSE SHE DOES: These intellectual prostitutes always do. Wonkette Writer Forgives Bill Clinton For Rape … Because It Was the ’80s!
IT’S ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL YOU KILL YOUR OWN GRANDAD: Professor solved time-reversal violation. On the serious side, this is fun, but … like a certain branch of mathematics, more or less a beautiful thought experiment. (Don’t tell my husband I said that.)
YES, THIS IS CORSICA, LAND OF NAPOLEON, AND YET THE FEEL OF THIS IS OF A SIGN OF THINGS TO COME: Corsica brawl: Five hurt in clashes on French beach.
HELLO COMMIES, WHEN EVEN THE AP REVILES YOU, IT’S TIME TO GIVE UP: Communist Group Members Go to Milwaukee to Help With the Revolution. Alternate intro “Of course they did.”
THE AUTHOR IS YOUNG. DESPAIR IS NORMAL TO THE YOUNG: He ignores several contrary trends. That said, he’s absolutely right about the Clintons, and the would-be-noblemen.
August 17, 2016
HOW TO REDUCE BURGLARIES: Family becomes firing squad as intruder is shot by almost every member of the household.
OBAMA’S ON VACATION, BUT THESE GUYS ARE STEPPING UP: “Cajun Navy” of Privately-Owned Boats Patrolling Flood-Stricken Louisiana to Save People and Animals.
Flashback: American Dunkirk. More on that here.
LONG-TERM TEST: 2016 Chevrolet Camaro SS Coupe. Oil consumption?
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Every joke from Airplane!, ranked.
IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? How Alcohol Shaped Our Civilization, According to a Beer Archaeologist.
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Rational improvement of DNA nanodevice function.
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IF ONLY THERE WERE SOME WAY TO KILL MOSQUITOES IN LARGE NUMBERS, INEXPENSIVELY: A Better (Smelly) Mosquito Trap, but With Caveats.
THEY SHOULD COME WITH A FREE “INTEL INSIDE” TATTOO: Putting a computer in your brain is no longer science fiction.
FORGIVE THEM, FOR THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO: ‘Ben-Hur’ Remake May Become Summer’s Biggest Box Office Bomb:
Paramount and MGM’s big-budget biblical-era epic “Ben-Hur” is expected to land in theaters this weekend with a Roman armor-plated thud.
Produced for a reported $100 million (which doesn’t count the presumed tens of millions of dollars spent on marketing), multiple trackers are currently setting its opening weekend gross at a paltry $12 million on average.
The studio has more faith, saying its estimates are closer to $20 million — still not great.
Timur Bekmambetov‘s remake of the 1959 hit starring Charlton Heston is the latest in a perplexingly large number of decades-old stories getting dusted off, repackaged and unleashed by Hollywood.
The “perplexingly” is a nice touch, as Fox Butterfield dons his Wayfarers and goes Full Hollywood.
WHEN HISTORIANS WONDER WHAT HAPPENED TO AMERICA IN THE 21ST CENTURY, they should start here.
NEO-NEOCON: TRUMP’S DICHOTOMY—A BRIDGE TOO FAR?
I am assuming many many other people see something similar, and they don’t need the MSM to tell them about it. Trump himself gives them reason to feel that way and very little reason to feel otherwise, and he has no political history that would tell us otherwise, either.
Not to mention his many other character flaws: he defames people (and lies about them into the bargain), and he is impulsive, mercurial, and really does act at times as though he is somewhat unbalanced. He’s not crazy, but he has demonstrated many character traits—even during this campaign season itself—that frighten people and make them not trust him in terms of his basic character as a human being in addition to his character as a political candidate. You may think that shouldn’t matter, but it does matter, and it has always mattered.
Now, you can certainly counter with the idea that Hillary Clinton is a liar and extremely untrustworthy, too. And indeed, she is. And I’m not voting for her, but if I were a liberal in tune with her policy positions, I would actually consider her quite trustworthy in terms of her politics, on which she is consistently liberal/leftist. With Hillary, politically, what you see if what you get, and if you like what you see, you might vote for it despite her flaws. She also has a surface manner (as does Obama) that seems relatively steady and statesmanlike (albeit she is a bit older and more unsteady than before), certainly relevant to Trump, and people care about that sort of thing.
Read the whole thing.
TO BE FAIR, WHAT ELSE DID YOU EXPECT HIM TO SAY? Clinton Campaign Manager Mook: Trump’s Bannon Move Could Push More GOPs to Hillary.
THE REVOLUTION ALWAYS EATS ITS OWN: SJWs Target Ellen DeGeneres Over ‘Racist’ Usain Bolt Tweet.
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IS THE NRC ABOUT TO ENABLE AN AMERICAN CHERNOBYL BY TERRORISTS? Dozens of people died when the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant malfunctioned, melted down and spewed radioactivity over a broad swath of the Ukraine’s geography. A new Inspector General report includes a terrifying peek at what could happen here.
The problem is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s bureaucracy doesn’t know how many digital information systems it has that handle classified information and thus cannot ensure their security, according to the IG, reports the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Katie Watson.
“Failing to assess a system’s risks appropriately before using it could enable hackers to gain access to classified information, although the IG didn’t find any instances of that happening,” at least not yet, Watson reports. It is possible, of course, for hackers to leave no evidence of their presence.
“If a hard drive with classified information is put into a computer only authorized for unclassified information, there could be an information spill and the information may be vulnerable because the computer does not have the proper protections in place,” the IG said.
Could such an event enable hackers working for ISIS or other terrorist groups gaining sufficient access to a U.S. nuclear plant’s controls to cause it to malfunction? Chernobyl was caused by an unexplained power surge.
COMING TO AUDI: Traffic Light Information Systems.
THE BIGGEST PROBLEM FOR ASTEROID MINERS ISN’T TECHNICAL, it’s legal. This legal analysis, however, is just wrong. You can find a better analysis here — in the same magazine.
STREISAND EFFECT SOON TO WORK OVERTIME IN MINNESOTA: College Democrat Threatens Reporter to Demand Apology for Story.
ANJEM CHOUDARY VERDICT: YOUTUBE AND TWITTER REFUSED TO DELETE RADICAL PREACHER’S EXTREMIST POSTS, COURT HEARS.
To the best of my knowledge, Choudary expressed no negative concerns regarding the new Ghostbusters remake, which may explain why Twitter was so willing to give him a pass.
AT AMAZON, the Election Collection.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): “A female substitute teacher is facing rape charges after being accused of having sex with two male students, police said.”
BY THE NUMBERS: China (or Mexico) probably didn’t take your job.
At the high water mark in 1999, import competition was responsible for 2.3 percent of total annual job separations. In 2011, the last year of available data, only 0.1 percent of total separations were due to import competition. As a comparison, government regulation accounted for 1,500 separations (0.1 percent) and the end of seasonal work accounted for 393,000 (35.3 percent) in 2011.
Critics also worry that globalization incentivizes American companies to move overseas. This issue has been raised repeatedly during the election season. Donald Trump has repeatedly condemned U.S. firms like Ford and Carrier for opening production facilities in Mexico, while Hilary Clinton has criticized Trump for offshoring the production of his suits and ties. However, similar to import competition, offshoring does not have a large effect on overall job displacement.
Data in the above table was also taken from BLS’s Extended Mass Layoff Reports. Because BLS stopped collecting information on overseas job relocations in 2004, data is only available until 2003. However, the pattern is clear: overseas relocation is not a giant job killer. Even in the aftermath of NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, offshoring never displaced more than 20,000 workers annually. Furthermore, it only triggers around 1 percent of annual job separations.
Lots of data to soak up from Jacqueline Varas at the American Action Forum, although I’d have more confidence in the numbers if BLS hadn’t stopped collecting overseas relocations in 2004.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is Michelle Jenneke The Anna Kournikova of The Rio Olympics 2016?
NEWS YOU CAN USE: 4 Things Every Man Wants In A Woman. I dunno, “boobies” isn’t on this list.
JOHN SCHINDLER: NSA ‘Shadow Brokers’ Hack Shows SpyWar with Kremlin Is Turning Hot.
For more than three years NSA has been subjected to an unprecedented stream of leaks about myriad Top Secret intelligence programs. Although Snowden claimed his motivation was to protect the civil liberties of fellow Americans by exposing secrets, it’s impossible to miss that well over 95 percent of the programs he’s compromised are purely involved with foreign intelligence. The impact of all this on agency morale has been devastating and NSA is in a state of crisis thanks to Snowden.
This week things took a marked turn for the worse, however, with the exposure of highly sensitive NSA hacking tools on the Internet by a murky group calling itself “The Shadow Brokers” which announced it planned to sell programs purloined from the agency. Like clockwork, NSA’s public website crashed and stayed down for almost a full day. Although there’s no indication this was linked to The Shadow Brokers, the optics for NSA were terrible.
First, some explanation is needed of what’s been compromised. The crown jewel here is a 300-megabyte file containing “exploits”—that is, specialized sophisticated cyber tools designed to burrow through firewalls to steal data. What The Shadow Brokers has, which it claims it stole from an alleged NSA front organization termed the Equation Group, appears to be legitimate.
We don’t appear to have so much as a fox guarding the henhouse.
I’VE GOT AN AMICUS BRIEF WITH ERWIN CHEMERINSKY AND ILYA SOMIN IN THE SEVENTH CIRCUIT, in a case involving prosecutorial misconduct and the “John Doe” investigations of Scott Walker supporters. A press account is here. The brief — which, unsurprisingly, cites my Ham Sandwich Nation piece — can be found here.
OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH EAST ARKANSAS. Kaine in 2002: Bill Clinton should have resigned in disgrace.
IT’S COME TO THIS: Denounce anti-Semitic posts or we’ll threaten your funding, Jewish group tells U. of Tennessee. It’s nice to see a university stand up for free expression by students, though apparently it helps to be a Muslim student if you want to get that sort of protection. . . .
RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Man Without A Country. “The national myth of the 1950s was that America could be different from the old country. But by the looks of it the convenience store operator doesn’t trust either the police, Al Sharpton or Eric Holder. Shop owners appeared later in the day armed to the teeth. Further photos of this shop owner depict him being reinforced by people who look like his cousin, brother or near relation similarly equipped.”
Fundamentally transformed.
DISPATCHES FROM OCEANIA: Ellen DeGeneres Chastised; Forced to Deny She’s Racist After Usain Bolt Meme Controversy.
In Orwellian America, anybody can be declared a thought criminal. But why is DeGeneres even accepting the ridiculous premise of the fellow leftists who are attacking her?
IN THE MAIL: Raising Human Beings: Creating a Collaborative Partnership with Your Child.
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1196.
FASTER, PLEASE: Game Changer? Trump Makes a Play for the Black Vote, Roger Simon writes.
AN OPEN LETTER TO AMERICA’S FIRST FEMINIST PRESIDENT:
Dear President Obama,
Last week you became the first commander-in-chief to declare yourself a feminist. Using Glamour as a podium, you called on all Americans — men in particular — to become feminists, and even boasted about having taught your daughters to expect the men they love to be feminists.
You’re free to call yourself anything you like. But you’re not free to lie to the American people.
Over the past eight years, Obama has also been declared the first black president (or second!, as Bill Clinton’s zanier supporters might argue), the first Jewish president, first Asian-American president, first Hispanic president, even the first “Our first female president,” by Sarah Palin’s bête noire, Kathleen Parker. Our semi-retired president really is the Peter Lemon Moodring of Washington, isn’t he?
MICHAEL WALSH: “Under the administration of President Barack Hussein Obama, guess which group seems to rate most-favored status? One guess.”
TRAIN-WRECK UPDATE: Aetna’s Retreat From Obamacare Is More Than It Seems.
Bigger insurers gain more pricing power against rapidly consolidating provider networks. They also gain more pricing power with customers. Industries dominated by a few major players are not, in general, known for their high quality and low costs. Allowing the mergers to go through could stave off the immediate problem with the Obamacare exchanges at the cost of raising insurance costs for everyone else — and giving Democrats big headaches in 2018 and 2020.
The calculation is further complicated by the fact that the exchanges and the mergers are regulated by different agencies. Health and Human Services ultimately oversees exchange operations, while the attorney general is the one trying to block the mergers. They both work for the same president, of course. But it would not be the first time that internecine battles between different parts of the same government further complicated an already complicated game.
Whatever the truth of the matter, and whatever the outcome, we can expect to see a lot of such quandaries going forward. The exchanges do not seem to be stabilizing; instead, they seem to be growing more unstable over time, particularly outside large urban areas where there are enough providers and slack capacity in the health-care system to provide some check on the problems that have plagued insurers elsewhere.
Insurers cannot simply go on eating those losses forever. They certainly won’t do so for free. Unless the exchanges get a rapid infusion of healthier customers who pay substantial premiums without using much care, insurers are going to keep pulling out of the areas where they are losing money. Or at the very least, they will demand benefits from the government to make it worth their while to stay.
Well, ObamaCare was always meant to fail and lead to single-payer government healthcare. Related: Colorado’s Single-Payer Health Care Would Die a Fiery Death.
QUESTION ASKED: Will Nick Denton have the last laugh?
A Fortune investigation into Gawker Media’s finances reveals that though Denton is down, he is not out. As the company’s websites assailed tech giants like Alphabet GOOGL -0.59% , Apple AAPL -0.26% , and Facebook FB -0.47% for byzantine schemes meant to reduce their tax burden, Gawker Media quietly played the same game. Our investigation reveals that Denton is as much a creature of the tech industry as he is a critic—and that Gawker’s slippery but legal tactics may, in the end, help Denton survive Thiel’s crusade with funds to spare.
Read the whole thing.
DOING MORE THAN THE VACATIONING OBAMA: Taylor Swift Writes Million-Dollar Check To Louisiana After Devastating Floods.
I REMEMBER WHEN DEMS TALKED SECESSION AFTER 2004: Will Texas Stick Around for a Hillary Clinton Presidency? Three out of five Trump voters in the Lone Star State would back secession if the Democrat wins, a new poll finds.
Nobody imagined that the EU would use military force to stop Brexit. Why should secession in America be different. Sure, there was that whole Civil War thing. But we live in a milder, more civilized age in which the self-determination of peoples is regarded as a right. And, anyway, we have to regard the Constitution as a living, evolving document, one that can change to suit the needs of the times. Right?
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IT’S COME TO THIS: Even Jill Stein is spending more on advertising than Donald Trump.
TWO MORE DETAILS on this morning’s Trump campaign reshuffle:
“I want to win,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal. “That’s why I’m bringing on fantastic people who know how to win and love to win.”
“Buckle up,” wrote a Trump strategist in a text message Wednesday to The Washington Post.
If this is the start of some professional, traditional campaigning, then that would be a welcome change.
“YOU’RE NOT DONE WITH AL SHARPTON YET,” insists self-admitted JournoList member Ben Smith of BuzzFeed.
Actually, I’ve been done with Sharpton for nearly 30 years now. But apparently, Comcast and NBC, for whom Sharpton remains a highly paid spokesman isn’t done with him yet, but I guess you can’t fault them for continuing to pay his protection money and leave the two intertwined giant corporations alone.
Related: Heather Mac Donald on Why Milwaukee Burns.
CYBER SECURITY: U.S. government offers states help to fight voter fraud.
The government is offering to help states protect the Nov. 8 U.S. election from hacking or other tampering, in the face of allegations by Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump that the system is open to fraud.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told state officials in a phone call on Monday that federal cyber security experts could scan for vulnerabilities in voting systems and provide other resources to help protect against infiltration, his office said in a statement.
Paper ballots, anyone?
BECAUSE THEIR GOAL IS TO ENSURE HIGH BLACK TURNOUT FOR THE DEMOCRATS: Why must the media mislead on police shootings?
Why can’t the media just accurately report what is going on when a police shooting occurs?
The latest example comes out of Milwaukee, Wisc., in which a black police officer shot and killed Sylville Smith, who refused to put down his gun.
This was not another case of a white officer shooting an unarmed black man. It was a black officer, and more importantly the man he shot was armed. Riots and violence broke out in Smith’s neighborhood anyway.
Beyond trying to downplay the race of the officer and the firearm status of the slain man, CNN went a step further by selectively editing what Smith’s sister Sherelle said to reporters.
“Burnin’ down s*** ain’t going to help nothin! Y’all burnin’ down s*** we need in our community,” Sherelle told reporters. “Take that s*** to the suburbs. Burn that s*** down! We need our s***! We need our weaves. I don’t wear it. But we need it.”
CNN stopped rolling the clip after Sherelle’s comments about her own community. They framed her comments as “calling for peace.” Not exactly.
Think of them as Democratic Party operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong.
ASHE SCHOW: Pointless Olympics outrage over female athletes and headlines.
Those looking for sexism everywhere have found it again, at least according to them.
A headline in the Greeley (Colo.) Tribune for an Associated Press story read in large bold print: “Phelps ties for silver in 100 fly.” It then read in smaller print right underneath: “Ledecky sets world record in women’s 800 freestyle.”
Cue the outrage.
I mean, how dare a newspaper try to sell newspapers by leading with the more recognizable name? It was a surprise that most-decorated Olympic athlete of all time, Michael Phelps, only took the silver in the 100m butterfly event. And if you’re wondering why a silver from Phelps leads a gold from swimmer Katie Ledecky, just read that last sentence. Phelps is the most-decorated Olympic athlete of all time. He is a household name.
That’s not saying no one has heard of Ledecky. After her performance in these Olympics, she will no doubt get sponsorship deals and become one of the most well-known athletes in the world. But this is her second Olympics. It is Phelps’ fifth. Ledecky will become a household name after only her second Olympics showing. Phelps didn’t become well known until after his third Olympics in 2008, when he broke the record for most gold medals won in a single Olympics.
The point is to keep women agitated and ready to turn out for Hillary. Likewise, similar treatment for other Democratic constituency groups.
YOU NEVER WANT A SERIOUS CRISIS TO GO TO WASTE: Leaked Soros Memo: Refugee Crisis ‘New Normal,’ Gives ‘New Opportunities’ For Global Influence.
(Classical reference in headline.)
AMERICA FIRST: Manafort tied to undisclosed foreign lobbying.
Donald Trump’s campaign chairman helped a pro-Russian governing party in Ukraine secretly route at least $2.2 million in payments to two prominent Washington lobbying firms in 2012, and did so in a way that effectively obscured the foreign political party’s efforts to influence U.S. policy.
The revelation, provided to The Associated Press by people directly knowledgeable about the effort, comes at a time when Trump has faced criticism for his friendly overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin. It also casts new light on the business practices of campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Under federal law, U.S. lobbyists must declare publicly if they represent foreign leaders or their political parties and provide detailed reports about their actions to the Justice Department. A violation is a felony and can result in up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
This may have something to do with Manafort’s de facto demotion earlier today.
WE’RE GOING TO TAKE THINGS AWAY FROM YOU ON BEHALF OF THE COMMON GOOD: Clinton comes after the rich: ‘We’re going where the money is.’
She’s been channeling the spirit of Willie Sutton throughout her entire career (hence our headline), but it’s nice to see her finally make it official. Of course, once your business reaches the too big to fail level and you’re prepared to partake in what Iowahawk calls “bribery dinner theater” with the Clintons, Hillary’s statement is merely so much corporatist kabuki.
RESET: Russian Military Forces Staging Near Ukraine.
As many as 40,000 Russian troops, including tanks, armored vehicles, and air force units, are now arrayed along Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia.
Additionally, large numbers of Russian military forces will conduct exercises in the coming days that Pentagon officials say could be used as cover for an attack on Ukraine.
“Russian units will likely practice reinforcing the [Crimean] peninsula through such activities as amphibious landings and air defense exercises, and this may involve the change out of equipment and long convoys of military vehicles,” one defense official said.
The military exercises are an ominous sign. Similar large-scale Russian exercises were conducted near Ukraine a month before Moscow carried out the covert military operation to take over the strategic Black Sea peninsula in March 2014.
Moving that many units around is expensive, even without a fight. Clearly Putin expects to get something out of the effort.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Arizona State Law School Opens New $129 Million Building Today In Downtown Phoenix.
Well, to be fair, their old building — where I spent a fair amount of time some years ago — was a 1970s relic that looked like a UFO. On the other hand, while the downtown location may be better for getting students part-time employment, the ASU campus is really nice.
OUTLAW AIR CONDITIONERS, AND ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE THEM! Why does the New York Times Consider Air Conditioning Vital for Prisoners, Bad for Planet?
MEGAN MCARDLE: Aetna’s Retreat From Obamacare Is More Than It Seems.
The question is: What matters to regulators more? Blocking the mergers, or keeping the exchanges healthy? That’s not an easy question. As of this writing, it looks as if Aetna’s withdrawal will leave at least one county — Pinal, in Arizona — with no insurers at all selling exchange policies. And it seems unlikely that Pinal County will be the last to lose all its insurers unless something pretty drastic changes in these markets.
The state regulator has made hopeful noises about persuading someone to pick up the business. (Remember the regulatory goodwill we mentioned above?) But regulators in relatively small states don’t necessarily have that much clout with big insurers who can afford to keep taking these losses for years. California can plausibly say “Play ball with us or get ready to lose our nearly 40 million citizens as potential customers,” but a big corporation probably does not tremble in fear of the mighty market-shaking powers of the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation. And more locally concentrated firms cannot simply keep eating large losses for an indefinite period. It is obviously a problem — for politicians, as well as customers — if a growing number of people have a theoretical right to buy health insurance but cannot actually buy any.
People no longer have a “right” to buy health insurance; we have a legal obligation to do so. That’s going to be an increasingly difficult obligation to fulfill as insurers abandon one ObamaCare market after another.
SOME PEOPLE CERTAINLY SEEM HAPPY ABOUT IT: Michael Barone: Is the end of white Christian America a good thing? “Sides’s questions and Jones’s answers are pretty much neutral in tone, but many readers will detect a tone of triumphalism in the book’s title and in the thrust of its argument. You white Christians have been the majority for a long time, but it’s not going to be your country any more — or so they seem to be saying.”
TRANSPARENCY: Congress receives FBI material on Hillary Clinton emails.
In a statement, the FBI said the materials were provided to Congress consistent with the agency’s “commitment to transparency” in the Clinton case. The material contains classified information and was provided “with the expectation it will not be disseminated or disclosed” without the FBI’s agreement, the agency said Tuesday.
Furious the FBI didn’t press charges against their political rival, House Republicans pressed the agency to release notes from its agents’ July interview with Clinton. They claim the FBI notes, which are typically kept confidential after an investigation is closed, may show Clinton provided inconsistent answers to questions about her handling of emails containing classified information during testimony last year before the House Benghazi panel.
Republicans are also demanding that the Justice Department open a new investigation into whether Clinton lied to Congress.
That doesn’t really require an investigation, does it?
FILE IT AWAY: “Remember in the olden days when the campaigns didn’t really start until after Labor Day and pundits told us not to pay attention to anything that happened before then?,” Betsy Newmark asks. “That changed when opponents succeeded in defining candidates with advertising in the summer. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth did that with Kerry and Obama did that with Romney in 2012. So now, in August, we can basically see how the campaign is going to be going forward. Barring some black swan sort of event, we’re looking at a Trump loss with the possibility of losing some of the states that McCain and Romney won. It only makes sense for the GOP to focus on keeping the House and Senate and the state legislatures and governorships.”
PRIORITIES: Turkey to Free 38,000 Prisoners as Coup Arrests Crowd Jails.
A government decree published in the Official Gazette on Wednesday allows the conditional release of prisoners with less than two years to parole. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said about 38,000 people will be set free “initially.”
As of last week, Turkey had formally arrested more than 17,000 people and was holding about 6,000 others suspected of links to the botched takeover.
It wasn’t a failed coup; it’s a successful purge.
Prisoners not being released include “those convicted of terrorist acts, sexual offenses and murder.”
BREAKING NEWS FROM 1933: Berlin goes vegan.
I’m sure it all work out fine this time around.