STEVEN HAYWARD: Open Bigotry At The New York Times.

YOU KNEW IT ALL ALONG: Kudos to Michael Isikoff for continuing to dig into this story. Of course the Obama Administration is responsible for lapses in cyber-security. But the pre-programmed responses we’re going to see from the ̶W̶a̶s̶h̶i̶n̶g̶t̶o̶n̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶c̶o̶r̶p̶s̶  DNC stenographers are:

1. Old news, who cares?
2. Collusion! Russia! Manafort!
3. That’s racist.

Note that The Professor has had his eye on this for a while.

IT’S GETTING INTERESTING NOW THAT THE LEFT DOESN’T THINK IT HAS TO LIE ANYMORE: Bernie Sanders Supporters Admit His Socialized Medicine Plan Will Ration Care.

CONSPIRACY FANS WILL BE BUZZING OVER THIS ONE: While it’s true that DNC staffer Seth Rich’s murder was both tragic and mysterious (especially given the theories he was the real hacker) and also given the fact that “Arkancide” is a theory that people dangerous to Hillary Clinton have a way of dying under tragic and mysterious causes, Politico is reporting that a federal court threw out claims against Fox News for reporting on the story:

One, filed by Rich’s parents, claimed that Fox News intentionally tried to inflict emotional distress. The other was filed by a private detective, Rod Wheeler, alleging defamation…Fox News later retracted the article. The report, however, prompted a number of conspiracy theories because it contradicted assessments by the U.S. intelligence community that Russia was behind the hacking at the DNC.

I called this back in March here. As I said then and say now, while I have sympathy for the Rich family, the ability to report on this sort of thing — even if incorrectly on a good faith basis — is too important to penalize and discourage.

OPEN THREAD: Now go for it.

ANDREW KLAVAN: Hey Media, You Started It.

HMM: Boeing shifts schedule for Starliner, calls 2019 crew launch “realistic.”

IRONY: SOCIAL MEDIA MOB COMES FOR SARAH JEONG, WHO CHEERED SOCIAL MEDIA MOBBING OF OTHERS.

WHY IS THE LEFT SUCH A CESSPIT OF REACTIONARY VIOLENCE? New York man arrested for threatening Rep. Steve Scalise’s children.

Related: Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History.

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: When I reviewed Mark Lilla’s The Once and Future Liberal last year, I asked “Can the Left Escape the Identity Politics Trap?”

The New York Times doesn’t seem eager to find the escape hatch anytime soon.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Planet Nine: ‘Insensitive’ Term Riles Scientists.

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PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

● Shot: NBC’s Thompson Promises ‘Environmental Civil War’ Over Trump’s Rollback of Regulations.

—NewsBusters, today.

● Chaser: NASCAR, NBC announce 10-year deal.

—ESPN, July 23, 2013.

● Hangover: Dale Earnhardt Jr. to Sign Multiyear Contract to Be Analyst for NBC in 2018.

—Bleacher Report, July 24, 2017.

As Glenn likes to say, I’ll believe global warming is a crisis when the people who tell me it’s a crisis start to act like it’s a crisis themselves.

IVANKA TRUMP: Family Separations ‘a Low Point for Me,’ but ‘We Are a Country of Laws.’

IT’S WORSE WHEN YOU’RE OLDER: Take a Vacation From Exercise? Your Body May Not Thank You.

In some past studies with healthy, active young people, often college students, the consequences have been swift but reversible. When these volunteers have taken to their beds and chairs for days on end in the interest of science, they often have developed heightened blood sugar and some early symptoms of insulin resistance.

But within a day or two of returning to their normal activities, their metabolisms usually stabilized and blood sugar and insulin levels dropped.

Many of us, though, are not robust, young college students, and whether the impacts of becoming inactive, even for a short period of time, are likely to be as ephemeral for us has been less clear. . . .

The results proved to be consistent if worrisome. The volunteers almost all had developed what the scientists called “metabolic derangements” during their two weeks of being still. Their blood sugar levels had risen, insulin sensitivity declined, cholesterol profiles become less healthy, and they had lost a little muscle mass in their legs while gaining fat around their abdomens.

Thankfully, most of these derangements were reversed once the men and women became active again.

But for unknown reasons, a few of the volunteers did not return to quite the same level of exercise they had engaged in before. They now completed fewer minutes of vigorous activity each week than previously and had some slight but lasting symptoms of insulin resistance, even after two weeks of moving normally.

Hmm.

NEWS YOU CAN USE? How to Pair Wine With Gummy Bears.

YES, BECAUSE THEY’RE THEIR OPPOSITE NUMBER. The NTY’s Defense of Leftist Racism — It Was Just Some “Counter-Trolling” — Looks Suspiciously Similar to Claims the So-Called “Alt-Right” Made About Their Trollish Comments; Why Does One Standard Apply to Leftist Racism and another to the “Alt-Right’s?”

Related: As Iowahawk tweets:

Q: how can you tell if a tweet is racist?
A: it depends, true racism can only come from a position of power.
Q: how can you tell if it’s from a position of power?
A: when the tweeter doesn’t get fired for it.

Indeed.™

UPDATE: Yes, Anti-White Racism Exists.

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED: Why Men Are Bleaching and Waxing Their Butts.

GOOD NEWS: Independent US craft beer production up 5% so far in 2018.

SCRAPPLEFACE: NFL Players to Kneel Over Cowboys QB Anthem Stand.

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NY TIMES’ NEWEST HIRE SENT TONS OF RACIST ANTI-WHITE TWEETS.

So a chip off the ol’ Sulzberger, in other words.

As Rod Dreher warned last year, the elite left “needs to know [that] you aren’t going to be able to count on conservative people like me to help you oppose the alt-right, because you are their ‘respectable’ left-wing mirror image.”

UPDATE: Dreher today: Times Hires Harvard-Educated Honky-Hater.

“Sure, Sarah Jeong’s a bigot,” he writes. But like Alvy Singer, “she’s a bigot for the left.”

COROLLARY TO PARKINSON’S LAW: Scripting expands to fill the bandwidth available for downloading.

I’D LIKE AN ASTON MARTIN: 2019 Aston Martin DBS Superleggera First Drive: Glorious. Glorious. Glorious.

THAT WAS FAST:  The College of Charleston rejects race-preferential admissions policies.  No wait!  The College of Charleston embraces race-preferential admissions policies.

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DOWN BUT NOT OUT: Hardcore ISIS Foreign Fighters ‘Who Represent Some of the Biggest Threats to Our Nations’ in New SDF Battle. “British coalition general stresses ahead of SDF operation that ‘we should be in no doubt that the campaign to defeat ISIS is not yet over’.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE. The World Economy Runs on GPS. It Needs a Backup Plan.

NOT MUCH OF A TRADEOFF: Lung cancer rate rising for women as breast cancer rate declines.

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO SHOW UP: Americans Having Fewer Kids Now Than in Past 42 Years.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN SOMALIA…

AT LEAST IT ISN’T ANOTHER OVER-HOPPED IPA: One of the world’s largest beer makers is about to start producing marijuana-infused drinks.

THIS IS HUGE, AND I’M SURPRISED SO MANY PEOPLE ARE SO GROSSED OUT THEY CAN’T APPRECIATE IT: Research Flourishes on Promise of Fecal Transplants.

RETURNCOAT: Team Mueller’s ‘Star Witness’ Rick Gates May Not Testify Against Manafort After All.

OH: There’s no sign of advertisers boycotting CBS, despite a mounting list of disturbing allegations against CEO Les Moonves.

Has #MeToo moved past knee-jerk condemnation, or is CBS just too valuable a property?

A U-SHAPED CURVE? Teetotalers, Like Big Drinkers, More Prone To Dementia: Study.

JACK DUNPHY: Police Chief Succumbs to Outrage Mob, Fires Officers for Innocent Frivolity.

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: Not drinking alcohol in middle age increases dementia risk, says report.

MARK RIPPETOE EMAILS A LINK TO THIS STUDY: Do statins lower testosterone and does it matter?

BUT REMEMBER, WHEN PEOPLE DON’T TRUST THE PRESS, IT’S BECAUSE OF ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM AND STUFF: The New York Times Editorial Board Just Hired An Insanely Racist Writer.

DID THEY LOSE A BIDDING WAR WITH CNN? New York Times Editorial Board Hires ‘Angry Racist’ Who Gets ‘Sick’ Pleasure Out of Racial Cruelty. “Profanity-laced tirades attacking people due to the color of their skin, joking about eugenics.”

Sarah Jeong was a senior writer for The Verge, which is a tech site owned by Vox Media, (same corporate parent as “young-adult website” Vox.com), which was co-founded by DailyKos himself, Markos Moulitsas.

GINSBURG: ‘I AM MENTALLY FIT ENOUGH TO SERVE THROUGH THE END OF PRESIDENT EISENHOWER’S TERM.’

It’s the Babylon Bee, so it’s satire — I think.

SENATOR ORRIN HATCH: Democrats have gone ‘borking mad’ on Brett Kavanaugh: Sen. Orrin Hatch.

IT’S ALMOST AS THOUGH WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE A FREE PEOPLE: Obamacare is now optional.

WHY IS THE NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL BOARD SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM? LATEST NEW YORK TIMES HIRE ALSO HAD RELATIONSHIP WITH WHITE NATIONALIST HACKER.

THE HORROR… THE HORROR… Donald Trump has no earthly clue about how real people buy groceries.

Flashback: Hillary Clinton hasn’t driven a car since 1996.

TOO BAD KEVIN WILLIAMSON DIDN’T GET SUCH KID GLOVE TREATMENT: New York Times hires a Editorial Board member with a pretty nasty Twitter history. (Image below). It’s always amazing how our intellectual and moral betters don’t understand how Twitter works. And so far, from media critics and observers? * crickets*

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The response from the NYT is basically “sure she said a lot of racist things, but it’s all the fault of white people.”

The “period of time” is about two years, apparently, and many of her tweets aren’t in response to anything.

MICHAEL WALSH ON THE CHILDREN’S HOUR: AMERICAN JOURNALISM TODAY.

Now the White House beat has become an entry-level reporting job, in the course of which the callowest of youths, or the most airheaded among the former beauty queens, can sass the objects of their coverage, mock them, call them liars, and generally act out in public. (Yes, Jim Acosta, we’re talking about you.) Here’s a very small but telling and typical example of everything that’s wrong with journalism today, by Catherine Lucey and Zeke Miller of the Associated Press (emphasis mine):

Read the whole thing.

PAULA BOLYARD: #MeToo on Steroids? “Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation into allegations that he… um… knew or should have known that an assistant coach had been accused (but not convicted) of domestic violence in 2015.”

BILL HOBBS GETS WHY DONALD TRUMP GETS HIS CRITICS: Most presidents possess an abundance of political skills that largely account for their success in gaining the Oval Office, but one in particular that most distinguishes them. For JFK, it was his ability to project energy and courage. For Reagan, it was his vision of America as “the shining city on the hill.”

For Donald Trump, it’s an amazing talent for recognizing and then pouncing on … go here and trust me, it’s worth the read.

IN THE MAIL: The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews of Italy.

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SOCIAL MEDIA: State Dept. Lauds Facebook ‘Aggressive Approach’ to Remove ‘Insidiuous’ Pages Doing ‘Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior.’

HMM: Housing demand sees biggest drop in more than 2 years.

Red-hot home prices, rising mortgage interest rates, very few listings at the entry level and a high rate of student loan debt have weighed on buyers for a while, but a strong economy and growing employment had mitigated those factors. Now, however, a market stalemate is developing as rates and prices continue to rise, further weakening affordability.

As a result, the number of people requesting home tours fell 6.1 percent annually in June, according to Redfin’s index, which is seasonally adjusted and covers 15 large metropolitan housing markets. There were 15 percent fewer offers made on homes as well.

The supply of homes for sale increased very slightly nationally in June, according to the National Association of Realtors, but in Redfin’s major market index, the total number of homes for sale was 3.8 percent lower than a year ago and there were 1.6 percent fewer new listings.

Anything that hot has to cool down eventually.

WING COMMANDER’S LAST FLIGHT: “Fini flight” in an F-22 Raptor.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, INSTITUTIONAL-RACISM EDITION: Economists approve statistical model that finds Harvard discriminates against Asians.

Harvard University has the support of the higher education establishment, and Students for Fair Admissions has the support of statistics that the establishment would prefer to ignore.

That’s the narrative told in friend-of-the-court briefs that side with SFFA in its lawsuit against Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policy, which claims that Harvard discriminates against Asian-American applicants.

Both parties are seeking summary judgment from the U.S. District Court in Boston ahead of trial this fall. Most of the briefs recently filed by outside parties are siding with Harvard, portraying race as essential to “holistic” admissions policies designed to produce a diverse student body.

They were challenged by a group of “leading economists and econometrics scholars,” who told the court that the statistical model used by the Asian-American plaintiffs’ expert witness is “methodologically sound.”

One of them is Prof. Glenn Loury of Brown University, who hosts a YouTube interview show that often deals with racial controversies in higher education.

Related: Asians Get The Ivy League’s Jewish Treatment.

THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP: Hey, journalists: Victims of that actually violent anti-Trump mob in San Jose can sue the police.

OH: NY Dem Governor Attacks Media For Asking Tough Questions.

When you hear about a politician verbally attacking a member of the media the story is supposed to be about President Trump, right? (And to be fair, he certainly does more than his fair share of it.) But this story, which you’re unlikely to hear much about unless you live in New York, isn’t about Trump. It’s about New York Governor (and 2020 presidential hopeful) Andrew Cuomo. During a press conference yesterday, NY1 reporter Zack Fink had the temerity to ask the Governor a question about the latest in a series of campaign finance scandals embroiling Cuomo and whether or not he planned to return some large and very dodgy donations. While he didn’t invoke the dreaded “fake news” claim, Cuomo did go after Fink’s employer, accusing them of fraud, and then went on to seemingly try to implicate the reporter himself in the company’s troubles. (Huffington Post).

That’s different because shut up.

MAKE CARS GREAT AGAIN: Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler explain how reforms to fuel efficiency (CAFE) regulations will lower the cost of new automobiles and increase safety.

This reform is something my colleagues and I have been advocating for for many years. You can see our reaction and some background here.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UW-Madison encourages students to report ‘microaggressions.’ So many American institutions seem to be going out of their way to make themselves ridiculous.

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Paul Manafort Owns an Ostrich Jacket and Much, Much More. “The trial will continue today, so stay tuned for the latest gossip about a trial that has nothing to do with RUSSIA collusion and everything to do with unfortunate fashion choices.”

FINALLY: Man Suspected of Murdering Brian Terry Extradited From Mexico to U.S. “Suspect Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes allegedly used a gun from Operation Fast & Furious, a gun-running scheme established under former Attorney General Eric Holder’s Department of Justice. He will face charges of first degree murder and have an arraignment in Tucson, Arizona.”

THEY’RE DANGEROUS CLOWNS, SO GOOD: RealClearInvestigations: Privately, Intel Officials Back Shutting Out Brennan, Clapper. “President Trump has been criticized for politicizing the intelligence community by threatening to strip the security clearances of former top officials including John Brennan and James Clapper. But numerous past and present senior intelligence officials say the Obama administration started that politicization — and revoking the clearances of those who abuse the privilege for partisan purposes may help right the ship.”

POLLS: Mr. Steady: Trump ‘unique’ with ‘remarkably stable’ support, higher than Obama or Bush had.

More Republicans approve of President Trump than Democrats did of former President Obama at this time according to a new report that expresses surprise at the steady and sustained support for the Republican.

Calling Trump’s solid backing from his base “unique” in recent presidential history, Pew Research Center added, “Over the course of an eventful first 18 months in office, President Donald Trump’s approval ratings have remained remarkably stable.”

Trump’s supporters have tuned out the press, and even many of his opponents have been numbed by the nonstop hysteria.

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FRACK, BABY, FRACK: Oil Edges Lower on Surprise U.S. Crude Stockpile Build.

I had it on godlike authority that we couldn’t drill our way to lower energy prices.

BLUE WAVE? If Trump is disciplined enough to make the economy his headline, there’s not much Democrats can do to counteract his message. “Democrats were left to grumble about the rich benefiting most, and the mainstream press pointed to farmers hurrying silos of soybeans to China ahead of looming tariffs. But others recognized the seriousness of 4.1 percent growth. The Twitter feeds of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and potential presidential candidates like Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), were silent on the numbers — apparently operating under the theory that if you don’t have something mean to say, don’t say anything at all.”

Democrats have gone from “It’s the economy, stupid” to “It’s the stupid economy.”

MEH, IT’S ONLY THREATS OF VIOLENCE. IT’S NOT LIKE THE RA HAD A REPUBLICAN FRIEND OR MISGENDERED SOMEONE. Lawyers Want Removal of Stanford Resident Assistant Who Threatened Violence On Jews.

HMM: The F-22 Raptor Is Basically Wasting Away Thanks To Air Force Mismanagement.

F-22 availability, already diminished by maintenance problems endemic to the complex and finicky stealth fighter, has been further reduced by the small size of F-22 squadrons and the practice of deploying small detachments from individual squadrons overseas. The combined effect has been to reduce F-22 availability to the point where there are neither enough planes to meet mission requirements nor to provide pilots with sufficient training for air-to-air combat, which is the Raptor’s primary role

“The small size of F-22 squadrons and wings has contributed to low aircraft availability rates,” according to GAO. “Further, the Air Force practice of deploying a small portion of a squadron makes it difficult for F-22 squadrons, as currently organized, to make aircraft available for their missions at home station. The Air Force would also face difficulties generating aircraft to support DOD’s concepts for using distributed operations in high threat environments with its current F-22 squadron organization.”

Primary blame rests with former SecDef Donald Rumsfeld, who “arbitrarily chopped the F-22 program down to 180 aircraft.” He was not, in Michael Corleone’s memorable phrase, a wartime consigliere, and should have bowed out after 9/11 when it became clear that George W. Bush’s original intentions for Defense had been obsolesced.

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SCAPEGOATS, SCAPEGOATS EVERYWHERE BUT THE ECONOMY CONTINUES TO SINK: Socialist Venezuela Falling Apart As President Maduro Shockingly Blames Party.

In a surprising twist on Monday, Maduro went against the Socialists United (PSUV) playbook of blaming Washington (especially the CIA) for Venezuela’s troubles.

“The production models we’ve tried so far have failed, and the responsibility is ours—mine and yours,” Maduro told the PSUV party congress.

“Enough with the whining,” Agence France Press reported him saying. “We need to produce with or without [outside] aggression, with or without blockades, we need to make Venezuela an economic power,” he said.

Wreckers, hoarders, saboteurs, Trotskyites, kulaks, Yankee Imperialists, counterrevolutionaries, and Jews can breathe easy — for now.

IS THERE SOME SORT OF ONGOING CAMPAIGN WITHIN THE JUDICIARY TO MAKE ITSELF LOOK SILLY? Legal Duty to Report Your Coworkers’ Off-the-Job Crimes? That’s what a New Jersey appellate court seems to have created, based on the theory that a criminal’s coworkers somehow have a special duty to the victim — even when the crime has nothing at all to do with the job.

VIDEO: O’Keefe Catches Antifa ‘Fight Instructors’ Teaching Activists How To Inflict Pain on Their Targets. “If you get a good liver or kidney shot, it’s pretty much crippling them.”

I’ll be at the range.

ABC NEWS: Pastor praises Trump as ‘pro-black’ at prison reform event.

President Donald Trump was lauded by inner-city pastors, including one who said he may go down as the “most pro-black president” in recent history, during a White House roundtable on Wednesday that was focused on efforts to reform the prison system.

Trump told the group, which included pastors and bishops from across the country, that his administration has been making progress on efforts to make it easier for prisoners to re-enter society and find work.

“When we say hire American, we mean all Americans,” Trump said.

Well, like they say, when your heart is filled with patriotism, there’s no room for bigotry.

Plus:

Among those gathered was Darrell Scott, a black Ohio pastor who was an early supporter of Trump’s campaign and has been working with the administration on urban and prison issues.

“This is probably the most pro-active administration regarding urban America and the faith-based community in my lifetime,” Scott told the group, adding, “This is probably going be … the most pro-black president that we’ve had in our lifetime.”

He compared Trump to his predecessor, Barack Obama, the nation’s first African-American president, and said: “This president actually wants to prove something to our community, our faith-based community and our ethnic community.”

“The last president didn’t feel like he had to,” he added, saying of Obama: “He got a pass.”

During his campaign, Trump accused Democrats of doing too little to help urban communities and often asked African-Americans what they had to lose by voting for him.

The White House has been focusing its criminal justice reform efforts on improving re-entry, rehabilitation and workforce training programs, instead of sentencing reform, which many advocates argue would make a bigger difference.

Trump’s big on jobs.

GOOD FOR HIM: Sen. Mike Lee blocks bill that would ban publication of plans for 3D printed guns.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah blocked an effort to ban the publication of blueprints for 3D printed guns online.

The Hill reports Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, tried to pass a bill that makes it illegal to intentionally publish a file that allows a 3D printer to produce a firearm and sought to do so by unanimous consent.

Unanimous consent is a rule that allows a Senator to set aside rules or procedures to expedite a process. If no Senator objects then the action is allowed, however if any one senator objects the request is rejected.

On Tuesday it was Mike Lee who voiced the objection to Nelson’s request. He said while he had only just recently reviewed the legislation, he immediately saw language that gave him cause for concern.

Prior restraints are always bad.

THE AWARD FOR WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE EXPERIENCE I’VE HAD IN RECENT MEMORY GOES TO: TaskRabbit. I hired a Tasker to move a heavy treadmill from my basement up two flights of stairs. He tried to disassemble it, couldn’t get if fully disassembled, then couldn’t get it back together. Easy-peasy, you’d think, given TR’s “happiness pledge:” either send someone to fix and move the treadmill, or give me credit to buy a new one. Nope. They offered to give me credit to hire another Tasker to move it, with no guarantee it will be fixed or is fixable. And that resolution took weeks and weeks of emails back and forth, and despite the fact that Taskers pay a hefty insurance fee for just such eventualities. And then when the resolution agreement arrived, it had a “non-disparagement” clause and a confidentiality clause, meaning I’d be legally bound to not complain about how awful TR customer service is, nor to explain how they make folks seeking a resolution sign various rights away. To heck with that. I’m not going to sign, I’m going to disparage away, and I’ll find another way of resolving my treadmill problem. Stay away from Task Rabbit, if a Tasker breaks something there is no guarantee it will be fixed, it will take weeks and weeks to reach an unsatisfactory resolution, and then they will want you to sign away various legal and other rights before they will do anything.

By contrast, kudos to Amazon, which eventually offered a generous resolution to a previous problem with Amazon Services.

JERRY BROWN: FIRE-FUELING HEAT WORSE THAN ‘SINCE CIVILIZATION EMERGED 10,000 YEARS AGO.’

I’d ask when does Jerry ban the internal-combustion automobile — but he’s already working on that.

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SOUTH AFRICA SPRINTS TOWARD FULL, RACE-BASED COMMUNISM: ANC to change Constitution to expropriate land without compensation. “The decision has far-reaching consequences for both the South African economy as well as its political space. It comes following yet another quarter in which the South African economy has shed jobs, with Statistics SA announcing an increase in the unemployment rate on Tuesday. The move is set to further dent investor sentiment and confidence by local business in the economy.” The target, of course, is the remainder of white farmers. But chasing them out and taking their land worked great for Zimbabwe, so no worries, right?

FROM MY COLLEAGUE MICHAEL HIGDON, WHO SOME OF YOU MAY REMEMBER FOR HIS PIECE ON NON-CONSENSUAL PATERNITY, A NEW ARTICLE: The Quasi-Parent Conundrum. My sister and brother-in-law are raising a nephew — and doing an amazing job of it — in their capacity as “quasi-parents,” and I can attest that the law doesn’t make things easier.

OPEN THREAD: Let it roll.

CUE ANOTHER SMUG LECTURE FROM MARGARET SULLIVAN ON HOW TRUMP IS WHIPPING UP VIOLENCE: Massachusetts woman enraged by Trump bumper sticker intentionally rammed into car, police say.

JOHN KASS: Media don’t want to understand Trump voters, all 63 million of them.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: What Your Check Engine Light Means and What To Do About It.

You can get an OBD II scanner quite cheaply nowadays, and many connect with your smartphone.

CHANGE: Private payrolls boom in July, increasing by 219,000 vs 185,000 estimate: ADP.

POST-MILLENNIAL TERROR: How Generation Z Became America’s Most Intolerant Generation. But they were taught to be this way.

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CULTURE OF CONTEMPT: Politico Reporter Apologizes for ‘Caustic Remarks’ After Mocking Trump Supporters at Florida Rally.

Politico reporter Marc Caputo faced backlash on Twitter after he mocked President Donald Trump’s supporters for heckling CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta, calling the president’s supporters “garbage” and saying they didn’t have any teeth.

Acosta checked in with CNN host Wolf Blitzer Tuesday night to report on the environment of the Trump supporters at the upcoming rally in Tampa Bay, Florida on Tuesday evening. He said they were chanting things like “CNN sucks” and “fake news.” He would later post videos on Twitter showing the crowd chanting, prompting reporters and Democratic figures to come to his defense and condemn the crowd for verbally attacking the media.

“Just a sample of the sad scene we faced at the Trump rally in Tampa. I’m very worried that the hostility whipped up by Trump and some in conservative media will result in somebody getting hurt. We should not treat our fellow Americans this way. The press is not the enemy,” Acosta tweeted.

In a now-deleted tweet, Caputo commented on the video, saying, “If you put everyone’s mouths together in this video, you’d get a full set of teeth.”

In another deleted tweet, he responded to a tweet castigating his mockery of Trump supporters. “Oh no! I made fun of garbage people jeering at another person as they falsely accused him of lying and flipped him off. Someone fetch a fainting couch,” Caputo wrote.

Two points: (1) Yes, this is what the press thinks about Trump supporters, and this now-deleted tweet was an honest reflection of that. It’s totally hypocritical for people like Acosta to clutch their pearls about Trump’s “rhetoric” given how they treat, and talk about, his supporters. And as for their fear that Trump’s “rhetoric” might lead to violence, note how they skip right over the fact that Democrat James Hodgkinson shot GOP Congressman Steve Scalise as he tried to massacre the Republican House leadership.

(2) What’s worse is, Caputo’s actually one of the better political reporters, willing to report stuff that hurts Democrats and helps Republicans without sweeping it under the rug. That’s good, but if he thinks this way, what are the rest like?

And yes, he offered a solid apology. But that doesn’t change the attitude that his original statement revealed, or the fact that it seems to be widely shared among his press colleagues.

UPDATE: From the comments: “What Acosta and his ilk are missing is that Trump isn’t whipping up that hostility, he’s just tapping into it.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Oh, this helps: Amy Siskind reports Eric Trump for encouraging violence after he retweets video of Jim Acosta being heckled. Journalists and their hangers-on are doing more to encourage violence against journalists than Trump is.

Related:

JOSEPH EPSTEIN: There’s Too Much Virtue In Politics.

Each party sees in the other the devil. Mr. Trump is the savior of the country, confronting an utterly corrupt establishment. His critics view themselves as brave defenders of democracy, facing down a neofascist. The two sides are not altogether unhappy with what they see, for their separate views fortify each in their own righteousness.

American politics have never before felt so divisive, and the chances of this soon changing appear slim. The tone of political discourse slips lower and lower. Donald Trump seems unable to refer to an adversary, current or former, without adding an epithet: Crooked Hillary, Crazy Joe Biden, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, et alia. What these people and his other opponents must call Mr. Trump in private cannot be printed in a family newspaper.

If there are any peacemakers among either the Democrats or the Republicans, they have yet to appear.

Well, as we saw just yesterday, even admitting that you have a Republican friend can get you mobbed in academia.

But I think the real problem started with the Civil Rights era, where thinking yourself morally superior to your opponents was easy. The elites have been chasing that high ever since, even when they have to invent entirely new kinds of prejudice to crusade against.

WAIT, WASN’T THIS A THING IN THE 1970s? The Great Pyramid of Giza Might Focus Electromagnetic Energy in Its Chambers.

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Jim Acosta Remembers When Americans Were All on the Same Team.

That was back in 1996, when CNN’s founder was comparing Fox News to Hitler five minutes after it went on the air, I assume.

JEFF BEZOS TO SEND ALEXA TO AMAZON ROBOT REEDUCATION CAMP IN 3…2…1…Alexa Names Her Favorite Conservative Pundit: Ben Shapiro.

BLESS HER HEART: Andrea Mitchell Compares Trump to Joseph Stalin.

Based on what I read in the New York Times both last year and in Stalin’s obit, I’m not sure if I understand what the problem here is…

MODESTY BE DAMNED ON THIS PLATFORM: I feel obliged to say that the nervous Englishman in the video Mark so kindly recommended below is, in fact, me. I have some more to say on the subject here. And if you’d like a bibliography of books, papers, and articles going into more depth on the subject, you can find that here.

AT AMAZON, READING GLASSES 4 Pack Spring Hinge Comfort Readers Plastic Includes Sun Readers.

Plus, NIKE Unisex Performance Cushion Crew Socks with Band (6 Pairs).

IT’S COME TO THIS: Slate defends “brutalist” architecture, in a piece titled, “Of Course Trump Hates Brutalism —Buildings like the FBI headquarters are everything Trump is not.”

It is also not surprising that Trump the architecture critic has no love for FBI HQ, one of the most reviled examples of the maligned Brutalist style. In the public imagination, capital-B Brutalism—the postwar fad named for béton brut, French for raw concrete, and defined by its heavy, cast-concrete forms—tends to be lumped in with both the shoddy, underfunded modernism of public housing projects and the space-age experiments that followed. As Julia Gatley and Stuart King write in Brutalism Resurgent, a 2016 anthology, brutalist came to be “a pejorative term used to describe monolithic buildings of raw concrete construction that impose themselves on their surroundings.” In the New York that shaped Trump’s aesthetics, that description would have suited affordable housing projects like Waterside Plaza, River Park Towers, Chatham Towers, and Tracey Towers—the antitheses of Trump’s new brand. The far right appears to be leading a broader backlash against architecture self-evidently built with 20^th-century technology. Such structures, in addition to their perceived deviance from the “Western traditions” venerated by American fascists, represent the tastes and lifestyles of America’s treacherous urban elite.

“Fascists?” Wait until the author discovers who the father of brutalism worked for during WWII. Though I have to give the him bonus points for subtextual chutzpah in his phrase “America’s treacherous urban elite.”

(Found via Varad Mehta of the Ace of Spades Decision Desk, who tweets, “‘Brutalism is good because Trump hates the FBI building’” might be the Slate pitch to end all Slate pitches.”)

Headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, The J. Edgar Hoover Building at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., Thursday, March 23, 2017. Construction finished in September 1975, and President Gerald Ford dedicated the structure on September 30, 1975. (AP Photo and caption.)

ME IN POPULAR MECHANICS: Should We Be Afraid of the 3D Printed Gun?

BRUCE BAWER: Freedom for Tommy Robinson.

I’M HOLDING OUT FOR THE STRETCHED MODEL: 2018 Lincoln Navigator 4×4: Three tons of speedy, hedonistic SUV pleasure. Three tons, zero to sixty in just over five seconds.