WAPO EDITORIAL WRITER TO NYT EDITORIAL BOARD: HOLD MY BEER.

THE LEFT EMBRACES POLITICAL VIOLENCE: “It did not take very long to get from ‘Punch a Nazi!’ to ‘assassinate a congressman,’” Kevin D. Williamson writes.

Needless to say, read the whole thing.

TESLA IS GOOD AT SAFETY: It’s Official: Tesla’s Model X Is The Safest SUV on The Market With 5 Stars in Every Category. But Mercedes and Volvo, who have built their safety reputations for decades, should be embarrassed to be beaten out by an upstart.

WINNING: With Natural Gas Booming, Race Is On To Export It To The World.

GUY BENSON: New York Times Only Partially Corrects-Palin-Giffords Lie.

The Times has added an online correction on this coruscating inaccuracy, reducing the likelihood that they’ll get sued over their libelous bilge. I obviously approve of the decision to alter this grossly inaccurate content, but the fact that their essay was approved as fit to print in the first place last evening is quite revealing. A central piece of their argument was rooted in fantastical left-wing folk lore, repeated so frequently by people who populate institutions like the New York Times editorial board that it morphed into a “fact.” The new version of the editorial still mentions Palin’s map, which is totally unconnected to anything of relevance on this subject. A bizarre non-sequitur. Their utterly wrong, unsupported implication remains intact. How about deleting the entire piece? Also, having made a change to their virtual copy under intense criticism today, will the Times showcase an apology and retraction in tomorrow’s print edition?

Outlook not so good.

IT’S A COOKBOOK! Tim Cook: Technology Should Serve Humanity, Not the Other Way Around.

PATRICK POOLE: Media Gaslights Congressional Assassination Attempt After Gaslighting Orlando Terror Attack Days Earlier.

THE ILLINOIS MELTDOWN (CONTINUED): Powerball, Mega Millions to drop Illinois due to state’s budget crisis.

AT AMAZON, Save big on GoPro Hero 5 Black. Dang. I just bought one of these without the discount.

HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE SO WISE: Gray seals are making a huge comeback.

HMM: Qatar Buys U.S. F-15s Days After Trump Says Country Funds Terror.

DON’T LISTEN TO CLAPPER, HE’S A HACK: James Clapper Says Nerd Magic Can Solve Terrorist Content Filtering, Create Safe Encryption Backdoors.

Nothing that’s happened in the last several years suggests that we can trust these people to do their jobs competently or honestly.

GOP CONGRESSMAN RODNEY DAVIS: ‘Hateful Rhetoric That Has Consumed Politics, on Both Sides, Has to Stop’

He was at the scene of the attack yesterday.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Google Drive will soon back up your entire computer.

The backup feature will come out later this month, on June 28th, in the form of a new app called Backup and Sync. It sounds like the Backup and Sync app will replace both the standard Google Drive app and the Google Photos Backup app, at least in some cases. Google is recommending that regular consumers download the new app once it’s out, but it says that business users should stick with the existing Drive app for now.

It’s not clear exactly how much you’ll be able to do with the expanded backup feature. You’ll presumably be able to open and edit some common file types within Drive, as you’ve already been able to. But it’s not clear if you’ll be able to sync those files back down to multiple other computers, using Drive as an intermediary.

All of those files will very likely count toward your Google Drive storage limit, too. This will be a very quick way of hitting that 15GB cap on free accounts.

No word on whether Google will scan your backups to better target ads at you.

TOM MAGUIRE HAMMERS THE NEW YORK TIMES on its Sarah Palin/Gabby Giffords non-correction correction.

ASK HIM ABOUT DHS HACKING OF STATE ELECTION COMPUTERS: Jeh Johnson to testify publicly in House Russia probe.

No, seriously: More states confirm suspected cyberattacks sourced to DHS. “Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Aaron Diamant has learned two more states’ election agencies have confirmed suspected cyberattacks linked to the same U.S. Department of Homeland Security IP address as last month’s massive attack in Georgia. The two states reporting the suspected cyberattacks were West Virginia and Kentucky.”

WE SHOULD PROBABLY BAN TWITTER AND FACEBOOK, JUST TO BE SAFE: It feels like America is descending into chaos. But, seriously, this is the Democrats’ “rule or ruin” strategy, which has been in effect since the day after Election Day.

ACTUAL MALICE: Sarah Palin may sue New York Times for tying her to Gabby Giffords shooting.

THE BEST SOFT COOLERS you can take anywhere.

UPDATE: Chinese authorities suspect “gas cylinder explosion” for kindergarten blast.

LAST WEEK IN THE HUFFINGTON POST: Sorry Liberals, A Violent Response To Trump Is As Logical As Any.

FAKE NEWS: NY Times Issues A Correction But Their Editorial is Still Garbage.

Do you see the obvious problem beyond fixing a glaring lie?

If there was no connection to that crime, why on earth is the NY Times still referencing what Palin’s PAC did? It’s absurd. “Hey, here’s an example of heated political rhetoric that didn’t do anything but we’re going to do it anyway because it helps us make a point!”

The NY Times should remove any reference to Palin because that map contributed to nothing other than the false narrative the media tried to create at the time and what the Times sought to resurrect yesterday.

Chances are, what the NY Times did today is the extent of what we’ll see from them. And that’s a shame. They had an opportunity to make things right but instead they half-assed it.

They got rid of the Public Editor because they said social media would police their content. This is what we have now.

GOP CONGRESSMAN WALTER JONES: ‘Resentment and Hatred’ in Political Climate ‘Started with President Obama Being African-American’

“I think, truthfully, the world we all live in now, is a world of anxiety and distrust, whether it be a Republican or Democrat or it might be an independent, but too many times the distrust becomes hatred and resentment and I think that’s a lot of this problem, to be honest with you,” Jones responded.

The congressman said he thinks the current political climate “all started with President Obama being an African-American.”

“I just think that was the beginning, and now with the current occupant of the White House, I just hope that maybe he will see this as an opportunity to change some of his tactics, meaning what he tweets out and what he says. I hope that we can change the tone around here, but I don’t know if we can or not,” he added.

Even the New York Times is starting to shy away from blaming Republicans from inciting violence.

BUT IT MET THEIR ECO-FRIENDLINESS TARGETS! “We are still wrapping postwar high-rise buildings in highly flammable materials and leaving them without sprinkler systems installed, then being surprised when they burn down.” Plus:

“We have been very concerned about the introduction of highly combustible products into buildings,” he says. “They are often being introduced on the back of the sustainability agenda, but it’s sometimes being done recklessly without due consideration to the consequences. It’s not uncommon for buildings to have blocks of polystyrene up to 30cm deep on the outside, which is an extraordinary quantity of combustible material to be sticking on to a building. There are often ventilation voids between the rainscreen cladding and the insulation to prevent damp, but this also increases the spread of flames.”

But sustainability.

IN THE MAIL: From Brett McKay, The Illustrated Art of Manliness: The Essential How-To Guide: Survival • Chivalry • Self-Defense • Style • Car Repair • And More!

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BECAUSE IT WAS TOO BUSY POLICING PEOPLE’S FACEBOOK ACCOUNTS FOR RACIST MEMES TO DO THE ACTUAL JOB OF GOVERNMENT: Grenfell Tower – a monument to a broken society: People living in older, high-rise, often council-owned buildings have every right to wonder why the Government did not act when it had the chance.

The more a government, or corporation, or nonprofit, or university talks about social justice and diversity, the more likely it’s neglecting its basic responsibilities.

ANDREW KLAVAN: How the Media Covered the Giffords Shooting.

NEWS YOU CAN USE? Why printers add secret tracking dots.

These “microdots” are well known to security researchers and civil liberties campaigners. Many colour printers add them to documents without people ever knowing they’re there.

In this case, the FBI has not said publicly that these microdots were used to help identify their suspect, and the bureau declined to comment for this article. The US Department of Justice, which published news of the charges against [Reality] Winner, also declined to provide further clarification.

In a statement, The Intercept said, “Winner faces allegations that have not been proven. The same is true of the FBI’s claims about how it came to arrest Winner.”

But the presence of microdots on what is now a high-profile document (against the NSA’s wishes) has sparked great interest.

The EFF has an online guide to help you “read” printer microdots.

BLUE STATES IN CRISIS: The Illinois Meltdown:

Years of cascading fiscal crisis and insoluble political gridlock have driven the Land of Lincoln to the edge of the abyss. . . .

The collapse of governance in America’s fifth-largest state is on a different scale from the problems (and there are many) in other indebted state capitals. But it may not stay that way. Mismanaged pension funds, bloated bureaucracies and special interest carveouts are endemic to blue model governance, especially in big blue cities like Chicago. As the fiscal vise tightens, these institutional failures stand to spill over into the political system, generating vicious fights over resources that bring governance to a standstill.

There is plenty of blame to go around in the Illinois political class—including for Democrats who are circling the wagons around a failed status quo, and for Republicans, who have not produced sustainable fixes beyond holding the line and starving the beast. Meanwhile, the people at the bottom, who rely most on the state’s decaying services, will bear the brunt of the impact from the meltdown.

We need a federal law providing for state bankruptcy. I think that states that go bankrupt should revert to territory status and have to petition for re-admission to the Union.

HAVE YOU HUGGED A FRACKER TODAY? Oil From OPEC’s Rivals to Exceed Demand Growth in 2018.

The U.S., Brazil, Canada and other producers outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will increase output next year by the most in four years, the IEA said. So while the cutbacks should reduce the world’s bloated oil inventories to average levels by the time they’re scheduled to end next spring, demand for OPEC crude won’t be high enough for the group to reverse the curbs without seeing stockpiles rise again.

“Our first outlook for 2018 makes sobering reading for those producers looking to restrain supply,” said the Paris-based IEA, which advises most of the world’s major economies on energy policy.

Oil prices have slipped 14 percent in New York this year as hopes that supply curbs by OPEC and partners such as Russia would end a three-year surplus have given way to concern that the cuts aren’t deep enough and that U.S. shale drillers will fill any shortfall.

I’ve been enjoying watching the unnatural act of gas prices going down just as the summer road trip season kicks into gear.

So it turns out you can drill your way to lower prices — who knew?

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FINALLY: Evergreen State President Grows Some Balls, Says Some Protesters May Be Punished.

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And shop the Digital Deals of the Day.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA: A Canadian Sea King helicopter participates in an operation with a USN Surface Action Group.

TONI AIRAKSINEN: UW Profs Hold Exams After Sunset for Muslims During Ramadan.

ONLY SIX? Top 6 Media Lies That Radicalized the Violent Left.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Why Should We Trust Mueller?

The establishment is praising Mueller up and down. They tell me he’s honest. They tell me he’s incorruptible. But they also told me Jim Comey was a towering paragon of virtue instead of a towering pile of Harry Reid. . . .

Why should we believe this isn’t rigged? Because people in D.C. promise us that “Hey, this guy is honest?”

I guess we’re supposed to think “Yeah, well this time they’ve got to be telling us the truth. They’re totally due.”

But here’s the problem – we now have lots of new facts that change the original picture of our esteemed special counsel. Yes, as the Democrat steno pool that is the media has pointed out as we got woke to what’s happening, a lot of conservatives (including me) were initially satisfied with Mueller when he was appointed to investigate the Trump/Russia connection that everyone now admits doesn’t exist. But then came some troubling revelations which – whoa! – made us re-evaluate our prior understanding. So we – brace yourselves! – changed our minds in the face of new evidence.

Let’s look at all of the evidence. Mueller seems like a good guy. War hero. No scandals as FBI director. Not a known scumbag or skeevy perv. In Washington terms, the last one alone puts him miles ahead of the competition.

But now we find out that he’s Leaky Jim Comey’s bestest buddy there ever was. These guys are pals, and now Mueller is going to investigate the dude who fired his amigo? Does that seem cool to you?

If the HR Department at work is investigating you, do they pick as the lead investigator the guy you go drink Budweiser with? Sure they do, unless Chet the Unicorn is free, because the only thing more unlikely than picking a key player in the investigation’s friend to do it is picking a damn unicorn to do it.

So, Jim Comey – whose hurt feelings seem to be the only thing left of this Schumer-show of a scandal – is the key guy in the pseudo-scandal, and he’s got a motive to shaft the president, yet his friend is investigating it and somehow that’s supposed to be A-OK?

Related: “I’ll say it: If the special counsel’s office is leaking prejudicial information about an investigation, it should be shut down immediately.”

Also: “Sessions can’t sit on this. He’s either got to come out [and say] WaPo is wrong or he’s got to make the entire team recuse itself, start over.”

UPDATE: From Randy Barnett: “Mueller should resign not recuse. If he recuses, the matter will be delegated to one of the Democrat attack lawyers he’s hired.”

By the way, for those who don’t know, this is a celebrated Georgetown Law Professor who’s now calling for Mueller to step down over conflicts.

Related: Mueller Is Conflicted Out.

28 CFR Section 45.2 provides in part as follows:

Disqualification arising from personal or political relationship.

(a) Unless authorized under paragraph (b) of this section, no employee shall participate in a criminal investigation or prosecution if he has a personal or political relationship with:

(1) Any person or organization substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation or prosecution; or

(2) Any person or organization which he knows has a specific and substantial interest that would be directly affected by the outcome of the investigation or prosecution….

(c) For the purposes of this section:

(2)Personal relationship means a close and substantial connection of the type normally viewed as likely to induce partiality….Whether relationships (including friendships) of an employee to other persons [outside his or her family] or organizations are “personal” must be judged on an individual basis with due regard given to the subjective opinion of the employee.

Jim Comey and Bob Mueller have been friends for about 15 years. They were partners in the episode that — I think it’s no exaggeration to say — defined Comey’s professional persona more than any other in his career. It would be surprising if it did not also forge a permanent bond with Mueller. . . .

Comey now finds himself smack-dab at the center of the Russian investigation over which Mueller presides. Questions swirl around Comey — about whether the President wanted/hinted/hoped/asked/directed/or something else the investigation of National Security Adviser Gen. Flynn to be stopped/abandoned/slowed/soft-peddled/something else. This is probably the central element of the obstruction of justice case Mr. Trump’s opponents would like to see made against him.

Questions also swirl about Comey’s notes about this conversation, why he gave them to a private individual (Prof. Dan Richman of Columbia Law) to convey to the press. Additional questions have arisen about whether this curious and seemingly devious means of putting contents of the notes in the public domain (leaking, in other words) was designed specifically to bring about the appointment of a Special Counsel outside the President’s direct reach — and, indeed, whether Comey wanted, expected or intended his friend Mueller to get the job.

There is much to be said of all this, none of it very happy-making. But one thing that can be said with considerable clarity if not comfort is that, under the governing rules (set forth above), Mueller has a long-term relationship with Comey that “may result in a personal…conflict of interest, or the appearance thereof.”

He is therefore disqualified. I hope and believe that Mueller, whom I believe to be an honest man and a partisan of the rule of law, will see this for himself. If he doesn’t, I hope Rod Rosenstein will.

Mueller should resign. Aside from the issues above, I don’t see any way that his office’s work will be seen as impartial, defeating the point of a special counsel. And given that — as even Chris Matthews has admitted — the whole Russia-collusion story has imploded, I’m not sure why his office shouldn’t just be shut down.

MORE: From the comments:

Trust Mueller? From the WaPo article on obstruction we get this gem:

“Five people briefed on the interview requests, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly…”

Five friggin’ people on Mueller’s super-secret investigation team leaked!

Yeah, let’s trust these people.

What percentage is that of the office as a whole?

NORMAL BUT DERANGED: The Washington Times examines James Hodgkinson and angry Democrats.

Trump Derangement Syndrome leads to the obsession that every ill and annoyance of life is the work of Donald Trump, a traitor out to betray the nation to its enemies. Millions of Democrats, disappointed with the results of the 2016 elections, have built their lives around despising the president. It isn’t healthy for the republic, it isn’t healthy for those afflicted and it won’t be healthy for those who die at the hands of assassins.

The Alexandria assassin, slain at the site, seemed to have been obsessed with equal parts hatred of the president and devotion to Bernie Sanders. “He did not come off as a radical,” a friend in his hometown says of him. “He did not come off as an unstable individual. He wasn’t belligerent, he was just a kind of normal guy.”

Normal, but deranged. Mr. Hodgkinson’s “social media accounts” — Twitter, Facebook and the other instruments of the life of an obsession with trivia — showed him, observes The New York Times, “as deeply committed to liberal politics and distrustful of Republican-controlled Washington. In posts, he rails against Republicans, lavishes praise upon [Mr.] Sanders … and shows a deep engagement with the churn of news coming out of Washington.”

Senator Sanders isn’t responsible for Hodgkinson’s criminal act.

But Bernie Sanders is part of those who spread the derangement, of making losing an election, with all the pain that goes with it, both science and art. The derangement he suffers carries over into how he conducts his Senate business. The senator, an atheist, declared he wouldn’t vote to confirm a Trump nominee for a trade post because he doesn’t approve of the nominee’s Christian faith, though the Constitution expressly forbids making a religious test a qualification for office.

Read the whole thing.

SARAH HOYT: Fun House Mirrors.

I am not a prophet. I swear I’m not a prophet. But the vague, cold feeling that has been in my stomach for weeks, which got worse after that “discussion” yesterday has coalesced into a clear fear. I just posted this on Facebook:

A radical from a fringe group, led by insane rumor and innuendo, has shot someone who is not even the leader of the faction he hates.

Is Rep. Scalise’s middle name Ferdinand?

Listen to me now; stop believing crazy people, even those in the media. Yesterday, in a friend’s post someone called me racist/sexist/homophobic or implied it because apparently I want to “suppress voices” in science fiction. NO ONE who knows me can believe that. This woman knows me. And this was over an aesthetic disagreement in fricking tiny, irrelevant science fiction.

LISTEN TO ME NOW, it’s time to believe your lying eyes and accept that people can disagree with you without being evil. It’s time to investigate all news, even the ones you think confirm you bias. It’s time to wake up.

YOU DON’T WANT TO GO DOWN THIS ROAD. There is nothing for you here. It didn’t turn out well in 1914. It won’t turn out well now.

I’ve collected at least one idiot already, who thinks that saying republicans are evil doesn’t prove my post. What the actually? What madness is this? Can it end but in blood?

Read the whole thing.

THIS “GET RID OF TRUMP BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY” BUSINESS IS DANGEROUS. IT FOMENTS VIOLENCE. AND IT MAKES ME WONDER IF DEMOCRATS — WHO CALLED MITT ROMNEY HITLER — WOULD ACCEPT ANY REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT. Lawsuit Against Trump’s Businesses Attempts Impeachment By Other Means.

SETH BARRON: Incitement To Violence. “Democrats may be horrified by today’s attempted massacre of the GOP House baseball team by an avowed progressive, but their incendiary demands for ‘massive resistance’ since November have been an open plea for the escalation of words into violent action. The daily repetition that President Trump is an illegitimate usurper who stole the election through collusion with foreign powers has been a hypnotic incantation in search of an Oswald: a siren call for an assassin.”

Related: From Middlebury to Alexandria, the Left Embraces Political Violence.

Flashback: The Left Won’t Rest Until Somebody Gets Killed. “I’m old enough to remember when ‘violent rhetoric’ was the root of all our problems, and crosshairs on a website no one ever saw was the reason for mass murder. Of course, those were different times, times in which the president had a (D) after his name, not an evil (R). . . . But if liberals believed what they were saying back then, what does it tell us about what they’re hoping for now? There’s really only one conclusion to draw: They want blood, literal blood.”

Related: Leaked Screenshots Reveal BuzzFeed Director Wishing for Trump Assassination.

Plus: The Return of Assassination Fascination.

Also: Assassination Threats Against Trump Flood Twitter.

And: “Question for NBC, do you condone your producers justifying an attempted assassination on Donald Trump?”

Finally: Scott Adams: The Media Are Trying To Get Donald Trump Killed.

UPDATE: Okay, Stephen already ran this quote from Ace, but I’m going to run it again: “At this point in the Dylan Roof Cycle the media already had enough evidence to demand that all confederate flags be stricken from the masts, and yet here, they can’t draw any kind of line between remorseless leftist agitation to violence and the inevitable fruition of such.”

Plus: “The media’s big problem right now is that everyone in the country knows how they’d be covering this shooting if the parties were reversed.”

PUSHBACK: 50,000 Ask Bernie Sanders to Apologize for Attack on Trump Nominee’s Faith.

GOOD LORD: Parents and children killed after explosion rips through Chinese kindergarten as mothers and fathers queue to pick up their little ones.

No word yet on the cause of the explosion.

ABSOLUTELY SHAMEFUL: NYT still peddling trash about Palin and the Gabrielle Giffords shooting.

More: New York Times Determined To Find Political Balance In Shootings, Even if it Means Reviving Old Lie: “Palin might as well sue for defamation. At this point, knowing what we know, this is actual malice.”

“Six years from now, the NYT editorial board will lecture us about that time a right-winger shot Democrats on a baseball field,” Guy Benson tweets. As one of Ace of Spades’ co-bloggers adds on Twitter, “It was only today that I finally understood what it felt like to be subject to ‘gaslighting.’”

Oh, I don’t know; I can remember eight years of the stuff – and so can Bill Whittle:

IF IT WEREN’T FOR DESPICABLE LIES, WHAT WOULD THEY HAVE?

And as Ace wrote last night, “At this point in the Dylan Roof Cycle the media already had enough evidence to demand that all confederate flags be stricken from the masts, and yet here, they can’t draw any kind of line between remorseless leftist agitation to violence and the inevitable fruition of such.”

POLITICAL VIOLENCE IS EASIER TO UNLEASH THAN TO CONTROL: If Donald Trump Befalls the Same Fate as Caesar, We Should All Fear the Ides of March.

ONLY SEVEN? The 7 Most Despicable Reactions to the Virginia Ballpark Shooting.

THE WASHINGTON POST HAS SUDDENLY FORGOTTEN HOW THE ‘CLIMATE OF HATE’ WORKS:

These are exactly the same sort of links many on the left, not just Paul Krugman, made in 2011. Yes, we understand that Kathy Griffin is a comedian. We understand it wasn’t a call to real violence. Neither was the stuff cited by the left in 2011. It was all political rhetoric designed to rev up supporters, exactly the sort of thing Bernie Sanders was doing when he said “Take your anger out on the right people.”

If Sanders had said, ‘Take out your anger on the right targets’ it would be very close to a rhetorical version of Sarah Palin’s target map in both meaning and intent. All of us, right and left understand this. The problem is that, after Tucson, the left suddenly connected this rhetoric to real violence, absent any evidence. And now that there is violence which might actually have some connection to political rhetoric, folks like Dave Weigel have suddenly forgotten how the climate of hate argument works.

If you want to say that the right is wrong to connect the shooting to left-wing rhetoric, fine. I’m all for blaming the shooter. But you can’t denounce the right for making the “climate of hate” argument without first admitting the left was wrong to make the same sort of argument back then when there was a chance for them to blame it on the right.

Read the whole thing.

Flashback: Memo to Paul Krugman and Rep. Van Hollen: My Search Was Not in Vain.

ONE OF THEM IS PAUL KRUGMAN: How Two Nobel Prize Winning Economists Got Oil Wrong.

In a May 12 2008 column, Krugman pooh-poohed the idea that speculation was driving the oil price (then at $125 a barrel), saying: “all through the period of the alleged bubble, inventories have remained at more or less normal levels. This tells us that the rise in oil prices isn’t the result of runaway speculation; it’s the result of fundamental factors, mainly the growing difficulty of finding oil and the rapid growth of emerging economies like China.”

Further, he attributed the tendency to blame speculators on conservatives in this instance, a reversal of the usual politic spectrum, and especially because of their failure to recognize that “a realistic view of what’s happened over the past few years suggests that we’re heading into an era of increasingly scarce, costly oil.” He later doubled down on this, describing “the way ideas go from crazy stuff that only DFHs believe to stuff everyone knows, without ever going through a stage in which the holders of conventional wisdom acknowledge that they were wrong. Oh, and the people who were right are still considered DFHs; you see, they were right too soon.

It looks as if peak oil may be going that way.” [DFH is an acronym that can’t be translated here, but consider ‘treehuggers’ as a good equivalent.]

In this case, the problems are that a) Professor Krugman is not an expert on resource economics, b) he has viewed this through political lenses, c), he has assumed temporary price trends are due to long-term changes; and d) cardinal error: he takes a bad price forecast as evidence of bad underlying theory.

Predictions are hard — especially about the future, as Krugman should know.

A SMALL MEASURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY: Two arrested in wake of melee outside Turkish Embassy: report.

wo Turkish men living in the United States have reportedly been arrested by U.S. marshals for their alleged role in assaulting protesters outside the Turkish Embassy last month in Washington, D.C.

In a Wednesday statement, the State Department confirmed to the Daily Caller that the arrests had been made but wouldn’t release the names of the two men.

“Now that charges have been filed, the Department will weigh additional actions for the named individuals, as appropriate under relevant laws and regulations. Any further steps will be responsive and proportional to the charges,” State said.

In May, bodyguards to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan violently clashed with protesters to his administration while Erdogan, who had just come from visiting President Trump at the White House, looked on.

Lawmakers responded with outrage at the time, saying that political violence wouldn’t be tolerated on U.S. soil.

Well, about that. . . .

THE DEEP STATE STRIKES BACK, THE TRUTH ABOUT QATAR, AND EVERYTHING ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS MORNING: Liz Sheld’s morning brief has it all.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: More On The Declining Quality Of Law School Applicants.

UNLESS SOME CRAZED LEFTY HOPPED UP ON HATE-MEDIA SHOOTS HIM FIRST: Trump Will Probably Be Impeached if Republicans Lose the House.

But maybe the GOP should get serious between now and 2018.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Roger Simon: Baseball Shooter a Big Wake-Up Call for the Left.

This man came from the extreme end of Trump Derangement Syndrome, but he didn’t emerge entirely by himself. He came from a petri dish that we are all submerged in, nurturing hate as never before in most of our lifetimes.

We need look no further than yesterday’s grilling of Jeff Sessions by the Senate Intelligence Committee. This investigation is putatively about Russian interference in our election, but we learned nothing about that. Not a thing. In fact, it was barely mentioned. The entire event was used as a means to “get Trump” and/or his associates. Senators like Heinrich ooze hate, obviously playing to a likeminded crowd. It is indeed a “witch hunt” and any reader ofThe Crucible knows where that leads.

Meanwhile, just this past weekend, here in Los Angeles, we had our annual gay pride celebration. But it didn’t seem to be about pride at all, only about unremitting attacks on our president (and by implication anyone Republican), as if everyone in the streets would have been delighted to see a replay of Kathy Griffin’s nauseating decapitation or the denouement of the current Shakespeare in the Park production where a Trump/Caesar is beheaded nightly. (Ironically, Trump was on record for gay marriage long before Clinton or Obama, but facts mean nothing to the pussy-hatted.)

And then there were the wild accusations of anti-Semitism when nearly half of Trump’s family is Jewish and — as it turned out — of the few such incidents that have occurred since his inauguration none were committed by his supporters. In fact, they all came from the left. This was, of course, barely reported. It didn’t fit the narrative of hate.

And this is to omit the most horrifying examples of all — the absolutely despicable behavior toward conservatives on our campuses. It’s like the return of the Brown Shirts.

Sense a pattern?

Yes.

IN 4.5 BILLION YEARS, YOU’D THINK SOMEONE WOULD HAVE SEEN SOMETHING? Our sun might have had an evil twin that killed the dinosaurs.

DEAR DEMOCRATS, TURN BACK NOW:
A radical from a fringe group, led by insane rumor and innuendo, has shot someone who is not even the leader of the faction he hates.
Is Rep. Scalise’s middle name Ferdinand?
Listen to me now; stop believing crazy people, even those in the media. Yesterday, in a friend’s post someone called me racist/sexist/homophobic or implied it because apparently I want to “suppress voices” in science fiction. NO ONE who knows me can believe that. This woman knows me. And this was over an aesthetic disagreement in tiny, irrelevant science fiction.
LISTEN TO ME NOW, it’s time to believe your lying eyes and accept that people can disagree with you without being evil. It’s time to investigate all news, even the ones you think confirm you bias. It’s time to wake up.
YOU DON’T WANT TO GO DOWN THIS ROAD. There is nothing for you here. It didn’t turn out well in 1914. It won’t turn out well now.
THIS MEANS STUFF LIKE THIS STOPS: MSNBC Invites on “Analyst” Who Called for an ISIS Bombing of a Trump Building to Put Today’s Shootings in Context.

AND THIS STOPS: WaPo “Writer” Hopes Scalise Will Die In Surgery.

AND THIS STOPS TOO: Shooter Was Big Fan of Queen of Conspiracies Rachel Maddow; Driven to Violence By Climate of Hate Pushed by Left and Media.

If you keep driving people this way, you won’t like the results.  And neither will we.

WELL, SOME PEOPLE DO. I NEVER LOOKED: Thanks to Pornhub, we know way too much about how people watch porn.  THEN AGAIN I’M NOT REPRESENTATIVE DAMON PEREZ (D-INSANITY): Again: Democrat RI Lawmaker Tweets Out Screenshot of His Computer Screen; Visible Tabs Include References to “Teen [Redacted]” and “Milf [Redacted]”.

NAH.  THE ONES WHO CAN DECIDE HOW THE MONEY IS SPENT HAS THE POWER: Millennials think whoever has the money has the power.

AND WE KNOW THE FRUITS OF THE POISONOUS TREE: Mark Ruffalo: No More ‘White Conservatives” on NBC. Straight up racism and intolerance brandished as a mark of pride.  Mr. Ruffalo, you’re hired to act.  Shut up and act.

YEP, IT IS A CLIMATE OF HATE: 8 Times Artists Tried to ‘Kill” Presidents Bush, Trump.

I WASN’T GOING TO LINK THIS: Because it’s a bit of inside baseball.  The “gentleman” Larry is taking down has on several occasions used deceptive pull quotes to attack me and my blog. BUT you should read this A Monster Hunter Nation Opinion Piece: Mike Glyer is a Scumbag, followed by this unintentional companion piece: Inside a click farm that helps fake online popularity.  The timing is amazing.

THE CHILDREN OF THE ETERNAL NOW HAVE NO HISTORY: ‘Call Of Duty’ Makers Remove Swastika From ‘Historical’ Video Game.

AHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, wait, they’re serious? Group Calls for UN To Ban ‘Cultural Appropriation’.

YEAH: Rejecting the ‘heckler’s veto’. And that goes double for the “shooter’s veto”.

THE LEFT ELEVATES THE VIEWS OF YOUNG PEOPLE BECAUSE YOUNG PEOPLE ARE GULLIBLE ENOUGH TO FALL FOR THE LEFT’S LIES: Let’s stop treating the young as political sages: We should be challenging the naive, unaffordable views of many under-25s, not kowtowing to them.

ROGER KIMBALL: Trump and the end of the beginning. “There is a small pen of chihuahuas yapping wildly that Trump should be impeached because, because, because—the doggies will get back to us later with a reason. (The real reason is simply that they don’t like Mr. Trump.) Were that to happen, it would precipitate the gravest crisis since South seceded. But I don’t expect it to happen. Why? Because Trump is succeeding like gangbuster nearly everywhere: judicial appointments are one thing all his supporters point to, but there is also his roll-back of the regulatory burden, his plan to cut taxes, to ditch and replace Obamacare (it’s happening), his enforcement of the immigration laws, his revitalization of the military, and on and on. The man has had a startling string of successes, though the media won’t tell you that.”

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THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE. “The photo shows two women in ‘Nasty Woman’ T shirts wearing paper tiaras, with facial expressions so stunted the woman in the foreground looks like she just soiled herself.”

CHINA: Jack Ma’s Libertarian Talk Approaches Red Line.

Sigh. I remember when America’s tech titans were libertarians instead of crony-socialists. You know, back when they actually invented new and interesting stuff.

FLASHBACK: More Reports of Violence, Threats Against Conservative Students.

RICHARD FERNANDEZ: “A civilization at a decision point is almost by definition walking the razor’s edge between two futures. One future may lead to a catastrophe whose survivors must begin again from scratch. The other choice leads to a radical improvement in the human standard of living and greater potential for all. It would seem an easy choice. But the characteristic of a system in institutional crisis, which along with the lack of new energy sources and a failure of public education create our ‘world in disarray,’ is that the right choice is impossible to make.”

BECAUSE DEMOCRATS: Why is it sexist when men interrupt Kamala Harris, but not Betsy DeVos?

IT WAS MY UNDERSTANDING THAT THERE WOULD BE NO MATH: Terry McAuliffe: ‘We Lose 93 Million Americans a Day to Gun Violence.’

COOL: Fantastic Voyage: Polynesian Seafaring Canoe Completes Its Globe-Circling Journey.

PAYBACK FOR FIRING MUELLER’S BUDDY COMEY?

THE INSTA-WIFE ON THINGS MEN SHOULD KNOW.

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MATT WELCH: Bernie Sanders Links Political Rhetoric to Violence When ‘Right-Wing,’ Not When Perpetrated by His Own Volunteer.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN NORTH KOREA: The NorKs prepare for a nuclear test.

TRUE: Trump Didn’t Ruin the Media, Obama Did. “Obama was the first indicator that the media would simply refuse to cover stories they didn’t like about a politician they did. The media covered Clinton’s Chinagate and Travelgate. But they refused to cover the IRS scandal with the same level of vim as they would have under Bush; they downplayed the Obama administration’s involvement in the botched “Fast and Furious” gun operation scandal; and members of the mainstream media openly mocked the right’s anger over the administration’s manipulation of the 2012 Benghazi terror attack. Obama had to be protected at all costs, including the cost of the media’s credibility. Meanwhile, the media savaged 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.”

Think of them as Democratic Party operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong. The thing is, nobody much cares what party operatives have to say.

HMM: Politico Prepares The Faithful For An Ossoff Loss.

SCOTT ADAMS: The Alexandria Shooter was “Radicalized” by Mainstream Media.

MEGAN FOX: Unhinged Rhetoric About ‘Nazis’ and Trump Derangement Syndrome Lead to Bloodshed.

I NEED MY TANNING PILLS: How a small molecule can induce UV-free tanning. “Dr. Fisher and his team tested the molecules in a laboratory culture of human skin and discovered that the more molecules they applied, the more the skin darkened. The artificially induced tan lasted for several days.”

IT’S TIME FOR SENSIBLE FRUM CONTROL: David Frum Writes Gibberish. His Trump-era breakdown has been impressive, even by the standards of many people’s Trump-era breakdowns.

OH, THAT LIBERAL FASCISM. ‘F*ck Steve Scalise’: HuffPost writer Jesse Benn wishes ‘violent resistance’ were more ‘organized.’

A year ago, Benn wrote a screed at the HuffPo headlined, “Sorry Liberals, A Violent Response To Trump Is As Logical As Any:”

In the face of media, politicians, and GOP primary voters normalizing Trump as a presidential candidate—whatever your personal beliefs regarding violent resistance—there’s an inherent value in forestalling Trump’s normalization. Violent resistance accomplishes this. In spite of this, such resistance is apparently more offensive and unacceptable to societal norms and liberal sensibilities than the nastiness being resisted in the first place.

A year ago, I would have written the snarky Allahpundit-inspired “What could go wrong?” rejoinder. Today, sadly, we know.

ANITA PALLENBERG, MUSE FOR THE ROLLING STONES, DEAD AT 73.

Mad, bad, and dangerous to know – not least of which because of how smoking hot she looked in the late ‘60s, before the heroin, coke, booze, and God knows what else took its toll.

DEMOCRATS’ 2011 NEW CIVILITY PLEDGE GOING SWIMMINGLY: Unhinged Rhetoric About ‘Nazis’ and Trump Derangement Syndrome Lead to Bloodshed.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Shot: ‘Of course’: Journos concerned about ‘rush to blame Dems’ after Alexandria shooting.

Chaser: The Tucson Massacre’s Hall Of Shame: Liberals Who Used Tragedy To Smear The Right.

“Note the media has two modes for coverage of politically motivated shootings: 1, a rightwinger did it, or 2, we must not politicize this,” Ace of Spades tweets, linking to a 2012 New York Post article which notes, “Media assumptions that violence is right-wing are routine — and routinely wrong.”

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER WEBSITE: Chris Cillizza Ask For Examples Of Incorrect CNN Stories. Here You Are, Chris.

Then there’s CNN’s role in building the Wright-Free Zone — a week after praising Wright to the hilt:

And this worshipful report from North Korea:

And a real oldie but a goodie, the news they kept to themselves.

2015 FACEBOOK POST SHOWS GUNMAN HODGKINSON DIDN’T LIKE REPRESENTATIVE SCALISE: The Daily Caller has published a Facebook post by James T. Hodgkinson. In the post the would be mass murderer maligns one of his victims, Congressman Steve Scalise. Remember, Hodgkinson was a Bernie Sanders supporter. Hey, Paul Krugman. That vote and the Facebook post strongly suggest Hodgkinson was a Democrat of some type. Some type.

MORE FOR PAUL KRUGMAN: Hodgkinson was a Trump-hater. Just like you, Paul. A Trump-hater. Of some type.

THE KRUGMAN PRECEDENT OF 2011:

You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.

Stand up, Paul! Stand up against the Democrat hate-mongers right now!

DON’T BE SILLY. ALL CUTS ARE “DEVASTATING,” EXCEPT WHEN THEY’RE “DRACONIAN.” Trump’s education cuts aren’t ‘devastating,’ they’re smart.

TALCUM X BRINGS THE SELF-HATRED: NY Daily News Writer Shaun King Goes Nuts Over Scalise Shooting, Blames White People for It.

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VIDEO: Sen. Sanders saying Trump is the “worst and most dangerous president in the history of our country” on Saturday.

MORE LEFTY VIOLENCE: Dem lawmakers receive phone calls saying, ‘You guys are next.‘

WE’RE GOING TO BE SEEING A LOT OF THIS IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS: MSNBC Analyst Who Called for Terrorist Attack on Trump Hotel Now Bashing Guns for Today’s Shooting.

BEN SHAPIRO: All the Rage.

Now, anger is nothing new in politics. Anger has dominated political discourse since the times of the Bible (ask Moses how he felt about a stiff-necked people seemingly ready to throw him overboard every few weeks). And some anger is justified. If you are angry at corruption in Washington, D.C., you have every right to be. If you are angry at a heedless leviathan grasping at your wages, that anger is justified. Even if you channel that emotion in the wrong direction, we can at least understand the anger.

But something new has happened to American politics in the last few years: Politicians have realized that the simplest path to power is to humor everyone’s anger. If you take someone’s anger from them, you’ve emotionally castrated them. More important, you run the risk of driving them into the arms of someone who will feed their anger — an anger that will now turn on you for the sin of having discounted that anger in the first place.

This is deeply unhealthy.

Indeed.

ELIMINATIONISM: Van Jones’ sympathy for white men dying from opioid abuse isn’t quite resonating with libs on Twitter.

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