TIME SLIMES AYN RAND AS A FAN OF CHARLESTON CHURCH SHOOTER DYLANN ROOF: Which seems rather odd, when in The Virtue of Selfishness, Rand wrote that “Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.”

LOOKING FOR POPULISM IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES: “There is a disturbance in American politics. But no one in the political class seems to be pinpointing the correct source,” Salena Zito writes in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “Donald Trump gets all of the credit for it from journalists, pundits and academics. They could not be more wrong:”

Think about this: For two administrations, Democrats, Republicans and independents effectively have been told to hold their tongues. During the Bush administration, you were unpatriotic if you criticized the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; during the Obama administration, you’re a racist if you criticize the president or his policies.

And don’t even think about expressing your values if those are outside the elite’s standard of everyone deserving equality and fairness (unless, of course, you disagree with that elitist viewpoint, in which case hatred and character destruction are your reward).

Read the whole thing.

ASHE SCHOW: With Buzzfeed video, Carly Fiorina continues her millennial outreach.

In a video for Buzzfeed, Republican presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina took on the differences between how men and women are treated in the workplace.

I’ll admit that I laughed multiple times throughout the video. On the surface, the lighthearted video is yet another example of Fiorina’s grasp of the importance of reaching people on different platforms. It also showed Fiorina’s willingness to address difficult topics that might appeal to a broad spectrum of voters.

But after finishing the video, I concluded that it was just another attempt to divide people. Amy Miller at Legal Insurrection said Fiorina’s attempt to connect was “pandering.”

“Carly is funny, engaging, and smart — but she used that power for evil. She walked into a young, modern, progressive venue, and threw her own womanhood under the bus in an effort to pander to a base that will never vote for her,” Miller wrote. “Fiorina has defined herself as a businesswoman, CEO, and force to be reckoned with; she should not have to — and should never (NEVER) — have to play into the hands of liberals who work every day to manufacture divides in our society.”

Yeah, that’s kinda my take too. On the other hand, this stuff works.

ARE ISRAELIS AND AMERICAN JEWS ‘ONE’? Michael Oren struggles with the difficult reality.

WHEN YOU DON’T ADDRESS PEOPLE’S CONCERNS, PEOPLE FIND SOMEONE WHO WILL, WHETHER IT’S SOMEONE YOU LIKE OR NOT: Donald Trump is now essentially guaranteed a spot on the debate stage.

IT’S ALWAYS NICE to make Twitchy.

IT’S ORIGIN AND PURPOSE, STILL A TOTAL MYSTERY: Authorities Still Say It’s ‘Premature’ to Speculate About Chattanooga Shooter’s Motive.

Unexpectedly.

RELATED: The Self-Imposed Ignorance of the Mainstream Media. Plus, Some Helpful Clues for TN Terror Attack Investigators and Perplexed Media.

TIGERHAWK ENDORSED: In Connecticut, August Wolf For Senate. “Augie Wolf is a college friend of mine, and stands as good a chance of beating 70 year-old Richard Blumenthal — when did the Democrats become the party of old people? — like a newly imported Persian rug.”

MARTIN O’MALLEY BOOED OFF STAGE AT NETROOTS NATION AFTER SAYING “ALL LIVES MATTER:”

The long knives are out at Netroots Nation 2015, but for once they aren’t pointed at the Republicans. The infighting has gotten ugly because the non-Hillary Democrat candidates were apparently not focused intently enough on the #BlackLivesMatter movement. No other topics of discussion seem to be acceptable this year, and the high profile speakers got an earful if they strayed from that script or dared say something more general about the needs of the entire population of the nation. The first, and probably biggest loser of the day was Martin O’Malley, who showed up there and foolishly began talking about things like income inequality and prison reform. The crowd wanted none of it and began chanting, “Black Lives Matter” until O’Malley was silenced and the stage was given over to a “Black Lives Matter activist” who explained that they didn’t need to hear about those other things. That’s when O’Malley attempted to respond and foolishly uttered the one phrase which will get you hounded to the ends of the Earth with that crowd.

Reading the above passage from Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw, I can’t help but think of a quote from a 2007 article by Norman Podhoretz,  “Do you realize that every young person in this room is a tragedy to some family or other?”

It was of an evening in the year 1960, when I went to address a meeting of left-wing radicals on a subject that had then barely begun to show the whites of its eyes: the possibility of American military involvement in a faraway place called Vietnam and the need to begin mobilizing opposition to it. Accompanying me that evening was the late Marion Magid, a member of my staff at Commentary, of which I had recently become the editor. As we entered the drafty old hall on Union Square in Manhattan, Marion surveyed the 50 or so people in the audience and whispered to me: “Do you realize that every young person in this room is a tragedy to some family or other?”

The memory of this quip brought back to life some sense of how unpromising the future had then appeared to be for that bedraggled-looking assemblage. No one would have dreamed that these young people, and the generation about to descend from them politically and culturally, would within the blink of a historical eye come to be hailed by many members of the very “Establishment” they were trying to topple as (in the representative words of Prof. Archibald Cox of Harvard Law School) “the best informed, the most intelligent, and the most idealistic this country has ever known.”

More incredible yet, in a mere decade the ideas and attitudes of the new movement, cleaned up but essentially unchanged, would turn one of our two major parties upside down and inside out.

And because the “Progressive” left is in reality trapped in 1960s-vintage amber, the “fun” never ends:

#nn15 where illegal aliens yell at black activists to STFU lol! https://t.co/5M8oXjG0Sf

— ¡El SooperMexican! ن c137 🦬 (@SooperMexican) July 19, 2015

RELATED: This would make a great wedge issue for the GOP:

Fun GOP gotcha for the media: Start asking Republican candidates if they agree that all lives matter https://t.co/CQ9rbam4zj

— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) July 18, 2015

AS WE FIGHT THE WAR ON TERROR DOMESTICALLY AGAIN, A FEW RELEVANT PIECES FROM OVER A DECADE AGO: First, A Pack, Not A Herd. Second, Disasters and Distributed Responses. Third, American Dunkirk. And, finally, Hardening Our Systems.

NOT BILL HASLAM’S FINEST HOUR: Tennessee pauses as other states quickly arm Guardsmen in wake of Chattanooga attacks.

HMM: Rolling Stone Argues University of Virginia Vouched for Discredited Rape Story.

But maybe most provocative is the letter’s discussion of a woman named Emily Renda. Who’s she?

Here’s how the Columbia School of Journalism report opened:

“Last July 8, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a writer for Rolling Stone, telephoned Emily Renda, a rape survivor working on sexual assault issues as a staff member at the University of Virginia. Erdely said she was searching for a single, emblematic college rape case that would show ‘what it’s like to be on campus now … where not only is rape so prevalent but also that there’s this pervasive culture of sexual harassment/rape culture,’ according to Erdely’s notes of the conversation.”

And now here’s how the Rolling Stone letter to Eramo puts what happened:

“Ms. Erdely did not stumble on Jackie’s story. She was directed to Jackie by Emily Renda, then working closely with Dean Eramo in the Student Affairs office the — same Emily Renda that included Jackie’s account of being ‘gang-raped’ in her Congressional testimony about campus sexual-assault policies. There is no question that both the author and Rolling Stone had full faith in Jackie’s credibility and the accuracy of its Article at the time of publication. In no small measure, Rolling Stone believed in the credibility of Jackie’s story because it came with the imprimatur of UVA, and of Dean Eramo specifically.”

The boldface is in the letter. The publication is essentially arguing that Eramo vouched for the credibility of its main source. And this is potentially important because the letter states “at bottom, any libel inquiry turns on what Rolling Stone knew and believed at the time of publication” and a footnote in the letter also says that Eramo is “unquestionably a public figure.”

Rolling Stone is also asserting in its Answer yesterday that the statements published weren’t made with “actual malice” — the standard if Eramo is deemed a public figure — besides challenging plaintiff’s harm amid other typical defenses.

It’s also worth noting Renda’s reaction once the story came out and was retracted.

Read the whole thing, and note that Renda was the link between UVA, Rolling Stone, and the Obama White House’s college-sex-prohibition operation.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: The Times Are Changing. “The idea that guns provide protection appears to be quickly gaining currency among American blacks. In December, 54 percent of blacks polled by Pew said they believed guns were more likely to protect people than to put their safety at risk. That figure was up from 29 percent two years earlier. For whites, 62 percent said guns protect people, up from 54 percent in 2012.”

SELF-DEFENSE MYTHS that just won’t die.

JUDGE ALEX KOZINSKI ON reforms that can help prevent prosecutorial misconduct.

AT AMAZON, deals on Asics Athletic Shoes.

Plus, back to school deals in Kitchen & Dining.

POINTS AND FIGURES: Disrupting Government With The DeBlasio Feature.

I have been watching Uber blow up governments all across the world. In France, taxi drivers didn’t like their cartel being upset, and became violent towards Uber cars and drivers. In St. Louis, Ed Domain was almost killed in a taxi cab that had no insurance. He is exposing the taxi cartel for exactly what it is. In NYC, Mayor De Blasio wants to put a cap on Uber growth. Amazingly, even the left wing NY Times disagrees with the Mayor.

Uber took matters into it’s own hands by creating the “De Blasio feature” on it’s app. I think they can take it further and win by utilizing the Phone2Action app that Jeb Ory developed. Jeb is a friend of mine. We met through the University of Illinois entrepreneurial program.

I began reading a book a friend gave me, Freedom From Fear. It’s a historical recounting of the FDR administration. Interesting reading to me from a number of perspectives. For example, FDR used the fireside chat as his medium of expression because at the time all the media outlets were run by conservatives. Of course, today the exact opposite is true-so as a conservative candidate I need to be creative using the internet to get my message out. . . .

When FDR instituted his new programs, he didn’t get rid of many of the old agrarian rules that existed. As we move forward into a new age, it’s important that policy makers get rid of all the old agrarian rules, and most of the industrialized regulations that don’t fit with the way the future economy works. Unfortunately, most regulators and political candidates are stuck in the mud. Like Mayor De Blasio, and candidate Clinton who skewered the gig economy, they are tied to the way things used to be. They are out of touch. It’s important to remember these regulations are not natural laws of man. They are artificial and were written in a time where many of the things we are discovering and innovating around weren’t feasible, or even dreamed about. . . .

Tech initially toppled major corporations. Motorola and Kodak are shells of themselves. Now, technology has the opportunity to eliminate wide swaths of government and all the cronies, cartels, employees and economic imbalances that come with them. As a society, we shouldn’t fight that. We should embrace it. Automation of government will make things cheaper for taxpayers. Elimination of old fashioned out of step government will make things better for society.

Yes, but it will be resisted by those who understand that freedom offers insufficient opportunities for graft.

PROGRESS: A Red Wine That Eliminates the Post-Drink Headache.

FAST: Tesla’s New ‘Ludicrous Mode’ Makes the Model S a Supercar. “Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk announced today that the all-electric Model S sedan now comes with “Ludicrous Mode,” which will send the four-door sedan from 0 to 60 mph in a shockingly quick 2.8 seconds. That’s supercar territory, and it makes ‘Insane Mode,’ introduced last fall and good for a 0 to 60 time of 3.2 seconds, seem utterly lame. . . . The boost in acceleration doesn’t actually come from the extra battery power, it’s the upside of what Musk calls ‘fairly advanced and exotic electronics.’ To date, the car’s acceleration has been capped by how much current can be safely drawn from the battery, about 1,300 amps. Go much higher than that, and the fuse can melt. Tesla’s developed a new fuse that uses electronics and its own tiny lithium ion battery to detect when it will melt, and cut power if necessary. That lets you build in less of a margin of error, and push the amps higher.”

RUSSELL BLACKFORD: Gawker’s gutter journalism – and worries about freedom of speech.

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SO IF I’M A CHICAGO SUBURB BEING SUED OVER GUN VIOLENCE IN CHICAGO, my response is going to involve a lot of discovery into the well-documented relationships between Chicago politicians and the street gangs doing the killings.

#GREENFAIL: Windfarms Contaminate The Water Supply? “Right. So we’ve gone from wind farms chopping up birds to poisoning the water supply. They’re not economically viable without public subsidy, they never meet their promised power generation or reliability, but, hey, they do give you diarrhea. And maybe kill your unborn child. . . . What on Earth are you complaining about? Now, of course, nothing is proven yet, but I’ll wager dollars to donuts there’s more to this than the hysteria over fracking and earthquakes.”

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Government IT official ran law enforcement data systems for years with faked degrees; Interior official resigned when caught, then took a job at Census Bureau. “The official, Faisal Ahmed, was assistant director of the Interior’s Office of Law Enforcement and Security from 2007 to 2013, heading its Technology division. He claimed to have a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and a master’s degree in technology management from the University of Central Florida—but he never attended either of those schools. He resigned from his position at Interior when the fraudulent claim was exposed by a representative of the University of Central Florida’s alumni association, who discovered he had never attended the school after Ahmed accepted and then suddenly deleted a connection with her on LinkedIn. Faisal did not leave government service, however—he took another government job at the Census Bureau, and is apparently still there.”

MORE PROOF THAT Speciation Is Underway.