ROGER SIMON: Donald Trump and the high priests of the press.

“It came slightly ahead of schedule,” The Wall Street Journal gleefully wrote last week, “but Donald Trump’s inevitable self-immolation arrived on the weekend when he assailed John McCain’s war record.”

Uh. Hold the fire extinguishers. Because Trump did not burst into flame. His poll numbers actually went up after he attacked McCain, a man whose political base is largely made up of Sunday TV show bookers.

The Huffington Post was also in a snit. It declared it was not going to report on Trump’s campaign in its political section, but rather in its entertainment section. . . .

But The Des Moines Register nearly came down with the vapors. . . .The paper went so far as to demand that Trump drop out of the race, a decision, I always thought, the American people should make at the ballot box rather than a newspaper on its editorial page.

But what is the real problem? The rodeo clown or the people coming to the rodeo in order to see the clown? And if the people are gathering, should the press keep that a secret?

The mainstream media is also making a clown of itself by its indignant tone regarding Trump, emanating from both the political left and right. Has anyone watched MSNBC lately (to ask the question is to answer it, I know)? The level of discourse there is no more dignified than one would hear in an insane asylum. The editorial page of the New York Times is little better, and its opinion editorials offer virtually no balance.

So why is the mainstream media on both the left and right in such a tizzy over Trump? Because he is winning, and they hate that. The political left hates it because they are insanely afraid that Trump has awakened the silent majority, and they aren’t going to take the progressive agenda anymore. The establishment political right hates it because they are insanely afraid that Trump will beat their preferred “insider” candidates, and they consequently won’t have as much power and influence anymore. Others on the political right are simply not convinced that Trump is truly a conservative.

Whatever the reason for the apoplexy, as I’ve remarked before, it’s fun to watch. And I think it’s actually healthy for the country.

UPDATE [From Glenn]: This is the other Roger Simon, not the PJ Media one.

WELL, YES: Rent Control Makes Sense Only for Politicians.

So I see that Seattle is considering rent control. For a columnist who covers economic issues, this is a little bit like hearing that residents are debating how big to make the reet pleats on their zoot suits. It’s hard to get economists to agree on much of anything, but as Alex Tabarrok notes, this is an area of rare consensus among economists: Rent control creates more problems than it solves.

If you want a vivid example of what those problems look like, you can do no better than a letter written by a resident of Stockholm to the good citizens of Seattle, quoted by Tabarrok: “Seattle, you need to ask your citizens this: How would citizens like it if they walked into a rental agency and the agent told them to register and come back in 10 years? … Stockholm City Council now has an official housing queue, where 1 day waiting = 1 point. To get an apartment you need both money for the rent and enough points to be the first in line. Recently an apartment in inner Stockholm became available. In just 5 days, 2000 people had applied for the apartment. The person who got the apartment had been waiting in the official housing queue since 1989!”

Now, Stockholm is extreme. But the general effect always goes in the same direction. Rent control creates two classes of tenants: people who have the right to rent at below-market rates, and renters who would like to get a long-term lease on an apartment, but cannot, or must pay through the nose for a limited number of uncontrolled properties. Meanwhile, landlords let the quality of the existing stock decline and become very reluctant to build new housing that they can’t make a profit on.

This is not some sort of arcane secret that has not reached the policy analysts in our nation’s fair metropolises. They’re well aware of what rent control does. So why is it ever on the table?

Because it offers copious opportunities for graft.

BRING ON THE REACTIONLESS THRUSTERS: Independent expert confirms that the “impossible” EM Drive actually works. Hope this pans out. Here’s the paper.

ANNALS OF SMART DIPLOMACY: CNN poll: Majority rejects Iran deal, 44/52.

Plus: “Speaking of 2016, the economy numbers in this poll don’t look very good for Democrats, either, and that will matter in the upcoming election cycle. The overall state of the economy only gets a 41/59 overall, 37/62 among independents, and 39/61 among women. Almost every demo except Democrats and liberals has a majority rating the current economy as poor or very poor, and almost no one is undecided on that point.”

TALKING TO THE VICTIMS: The Victims of Chikungunya. “Over a year has passed since chikungunya swept across the Caribbean, and millions have contracted the mosquito borne illness. While most recovered after a miserable ten days, some patients continue to suffer joint pain. For a number of patients, the ongoing pain is nearly crippling.”

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Politicos Put Graft Ahead Of Progress.

MARK LEVIN’S NEW BOOK, Plunder and Deceit, gets a review in The American Spectator.

PBS DOCUMENTARY WHITEWASHES STALINIST THUGS OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY: “Even the filmmaker thinks it’s a ‘pro-Panther’ film,” Ron Radosh writes.

A decade ago, while reflecting back on his seminal “Radical Chic” article in New York magazine in 1970, Tom Wolfe said, “I just thought it was a scream, because it was so illogical by all ordinary thinking. To think that [Leonard Bernstein,] living in an absolutely stunning duplex on Park Avenue could be having in all these guys who were saying, ‘We will take everything away from you if we get the chance,’ which is what their program spelled out, was the funniest thing I had ever witnessed.”

But then 45 years later, the self-styled “Progressives” at PBS still don’t get that the joke is on them — not the least of which because their worldview hasn’t been updated in nearly half a century.

REMEMBER THE ‘AFFORDABLE’ CARE ACT? SUCKERS! Michael Walsh reminds readers that “Obamacare never had anything to do with ‘affordability’ or even ‘health care.’”

It was merely Hussein’s camel’s nose under the tent, in order to seize control of the insurance industry by forcing the citizens to buy their products, then offer substandard, expensive plans and provide taxpayer subsidies for those who — surprise! — couldn’t afford the new mandates. And now you know what the plan really was all along.

Read the whole thing.

WHY ELECT REPUBLICANS IF THEY’RE GOING TO ACT LIKE DEMOCRATS? Ashe Schow: Senate to hold one-sided hearing on campus sexual assault.

The Senate will hold a hearing Wednesday to discuss the alleged “epidemic” of campus sexual assault and how to combat the problem. To the dismay of due process advocates, the hearing panels are stacked against fair hearings for students.

The first panel features four senators — Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.; Dean Heller, R-Nev.; and Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H. All four were original sponsors of the Campus Accountability and Safety Act introduced in 2014, and all four are sponsors on the updated version introduced earlier this year.

CASA will surely be the focus of their panel, which is a shame because the bill is devoid of due process protections for accused students. When the bill was first introduced in 2014, I sent six questions to each of the original sponsors. Of the four sitting on the panel this Wednesday, only Ayotte’s office responded — and the response ignored a question about due process. A series of follow-up questions were never answered.

Neither Heller nor McCaskill’s office ever responded to the original questions. A staffer from Gillibrand’s office called me back but was uninterested in answering questions; instead, the staffer merely gave me an overview of the bill. . . .

Those are the eight people who will be addressing campus sexual assault on Wednesday. It is highly unlikely that even one of them will suggest that the draconian measures being thrust upon universities are fundamentally unfair and biased. Not one person is there to suggest that maybe colleges shouldn’t be adjudicating felonies. Not one person is there to suggest that if colleges do continue to adjudicate felonies, then they need to provide students the same protections an actual court of law would provide.

Those working to combat campus sexual assault should not ignore the rights of the accused or the possibility of false accusations. Current campus policies guarantee an increase of false accusations that will lead to more innocent students having their lives ruined for the sake of a preferred narrative.

It would be nice if these Senators heard from their constituents.

TRUMP: THE CASE FOR DESPAIRING — ABOUT AMERICA, writes John Podhoretz:

And while happy talk (some of which I’ve indulged in myself) may dismiss Trump as this year’s flash-in-the-pan like the 2012 Republican also-rans, right now he’s more likely a version of Ross Perot in 1992 — the man who got Bill Clinton elected. Perot managed to convince people he was only in it to talk about the deficit and the national debt when it was probably more the case he was running out of a long-standing personal animus toward George H.W. Bush and a desire to deny him the presidency based on an imagined slight. Trump doesn’t even have a real issue to bring in Democrats and Republicans dissatisfied with their choices. Trump is Trump’s issue.

These are unhappy times in the United States, and unhappy times generate unhappy political outcomes. Last week I made the case for despair following the Iran deal. I know people always want commentary that offers a path forward, a way out of trouble, a hope for something better. Sometimes, though, you just have to sit back and despair at the condition of things, and maybe from the despair some new wisdom may emerge.

Despair? You’re soaking in it: “Twitter to get much worse [today] with Daily Beast’s story of Donald Trump rape allegation.”

I wonder who dialed up the hit piece on Trump?

THE HILL: ObamaCare’s revolving door.

Marilyn Tavenner, who spearheaded the fraught Affordable Care Act rollout for the Obama administration, is but the latest ACA insider to cash in. Lobbying for America’s Health Insurance Plans is a natural transition for the former director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Tavenner was chosen to run CMS principally because she was not a healthcare reformer like her predecessor, Dr. Donald Berwick, a pediatrician the Senate refused to confirm. Instead she was a colorless former apparatchik for Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), a company that once paid $1.7 billion in penalties for fraud.

The revolving door between industry and government existed long prior to the ACA, but the commingling of industry and government interests under the ACA brings with it new implications. Simply put, the ACA represents the biggest transfer of taxpayer resources to the private sector since Gilded Age railroad barons were beneficiaries.

Hopey-Changey!

FALLEN ANGELS WAS JUST A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL, RIGHT GUYS? RIGHT? GUYS? Ice breakers researching “global warming” called back to clear heaviest ice in 20 years.

(Headline via one of Glenn’s recurring Insta-leitmotifs.)

LEFT-WING CARTOONIST TED RALL FIRED BY LA TIMES FOR LYING ABOUT LAPD: Rall “complains about the police officer taping him and the LAPD using their resources to dig up the now 14 year-old tape.”

Yes, why couldn’t the LAPD “keep rockin’” and keep their tapes locked up in their archives, just like the LA Times?

I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER GODDAMNED WORD ABOUT MY CARBON FOOTPRINT: Video shows Hillary Clinton boarding private jet just hours after launching global-warming push – and she’s using a French aircraft that burns 347 gallons of fuel every hour! “Its itineraries are secret because the owner has asked the Federal Aviation Administration to withhold flight plans from the public.”

IT’S AS IF ALL THESE “SOCIAL JUSTICE” GROUPS ARE JUST SHOCK TROOPS FOR THE DEMOCRATS: Black Lives Matter co-founder threatens to “shut down” GOP convention.