ANOTHER CALL TO EAT INVASIVE SPECIES.

I’m on board with that! Though as far as I’m concerned, all meat is guilt-free meat.

And here’s a followup.

MY TAKE ON THE CURRENT CAMPAIGN IN A NUTSHELL:

A TALE OF TWO MEDIA SOURCES: Donald Trump’s last minute decision to change the venue of a political rally in Mobile, Alabama has caused some outlets in the mainstream media to fully reveal their inability to report simple facts without mind-numbing spin. CNN, to their credit, seems to have (mostly) resisted the urge with “30,000 turn out for Trump’s Alabama pep rally“:

The event was previously planned to be held at the nearby Civic Center but was moved to the 43,000-seat Ladd-Peebles Stadium — a venue normally home to high school football games — to accommodate the crowd. The City of Mobile confirmed late Friday that 30,000 people attended.

At least CNN accurately reported the 30,000 attendance. But they failed to mention that Trump’s campaign team altered the venue late Thursday from Mobile’s approximately 2,000 seat Civic Center to the 40,000 Ladd-Peebles Stadium. Notice also that the CNN reporter couldn’t help but snark that the stadium was “a venue normally home to high school games.” While the stadium does host some of the bigger local high school football playoff games (and high school football is very big in Alabama), it is actually principally a college football venue, being the home stadium of the University of South Alabama football team and the GoDaddy Bowl.

The New York Times, as usual, couldn’t resist spinning and twisting the facts in its effort to make Trump (as with all things GOP) look as bad as possible, its headline reading “Donald Trump Fails to Fill Alabama Stadium, But Fans’ Zeal is Undiminished”:

Before Donald J. Trump arrived at a college football stadium here on Friday evening, the colorful guessing games that often accompany his campaign were very much in the air.

Would Mr. Trump actually fill all of the tens of thousands of seats at Ladd-Peebles Stadium, the home field for the University of South Alabama Jaguars? How would one of the largest cities in one of the country’s most conservative states respond to a candidate whose bombast and brashness can sometimes seem limitless? Would Mr. Trump wear a “Make America Great Again” baseball hat, perhaps to conceal the effects of the wilting Gulf Coast heat and humidity on his much-remarked-upon mane?

As usual, the answers — no, loudly and yes — came amid the trademark gusto of both Mr. Trump’s personality and his evolving campaign for the presidency.

“Now I know how the great Billy Graham felt, because this is the same feeling,” Mr. Trump, referring to the celebrated evangelist, thundered from a stage built for the night’s rally, where the vast stretches of empty seats indicated that attendance had fallen short of the more than 30,000 people he had predicted.

Aside from the fact that the New York Times reporter, Alan Blinder (apt name), didn’t realize that his piece had asked three questions but proceeded to answer only two “no, loudly and yes,” he answered his initial, irrelevant question about filling the stadium “no.” Mr. Blinder felt the need to go even further and “report” that there were “vast stretches of empty seats” and that “attendance had fallen short of the more than 30,000 people he had predicted.”

The title of the  New York Times’ piece and its failure to mention the last-minute venue change leaves the reader with the distinct impression that Trump had planned a rally in a large stadium all along, and had miserably and embarrassingly failed to fill it. This, of course, is 180 degrees from the actual truth. Can you imagine how the Times would have slobbered all over itself if Hillary Clinton had scheduled a rally in a 2,000 seat venue and, due to overwhelming interest, had changed the venue at the last minute to a 40,000 seat stadium, filling 30,000 of the seats? The Times would have been so excited it would have wet itself.

Look, whether you’re a fan of Trump or not isn’t the point here. The point is that, love him or hate him, the man is drawing unexpectedly large crowds, which is something no other Democrat or GOP candidate is doing. When reporters can’t seem to report this simple fact accurately, we all realize (once again) that we are being treated like little children who need to be “protected” by those who think they know better.

TURNS OUT THEY WEREN’T MARINES, AS ORIGINALLY REPORTED, BUT THEY WERE STILL AMERICAN BADASSES: 3 American friends tackle and hogtie gunman aboard European train.

French President François Hollande plans to meet three Americans who foiled a suspected terrorist attack on a packed high-speed train running from Amsterdam to Paris.

Friday’s dramatic incident — in which a heavily armed man emerged from a train bathroom with an automatic rifle and started shooting — was being investigated by French counterterrorism authorities. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel described the incident as a terrorist attack.

The three men were friends from middle school and two of them were members of the armed services, according to their family members.

One of the Americans, Airman 1st Class Spencer Stone, was stabbed and remained in the hospital Saturday, said the parents of his two friends. The Pentagon said his wounds were not life-threatening.

Stone, who is stationed at Lajes Air Base in the Azores, was traveling with Spc. Alek Skarlatos, an Oregon National Guardsman, and a civilian friend, according to the Pentagon. Anthony Sadler, a student at Sacramento State University, is their civilian companion, according to their families.

So it’s not just Marines you shouldn’t tangle with.

NO ESCAPE, EVEN WHILE ON VACATION: I’ll be back blogging next week; I’m just wrapping up a vacation in the Midwest. And even there, the man of the hour is everywhere, including Chicago:

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 835.

CATHY YOUNG: To the new culture cops, everything is appropriation: Their protests ignore history, chill artistic expression and hurt diversity.

A few months ago, I read “The Orphan’s Tales” by Catherynne Valente. The fantasy novel draws on myths and folklore from many cultures, including, to my delight, fairy tales from my Russian childhood. Curious about the author, I looked her up online and was startled to find several social-media discussions bashing her for “cultural appropriation.”

There was a post sneering at “how she totally gets a pass to write about Slavic cultures because her husband is Russian,” with a response noting that her spouse isn’t even a proper Russian, because he has lived in the United States since age 10. In another thread, Valente was denounced for her Japanese-style LiveJournal username, yuki-onna, adopted while she lived in Japan as a military wife. In response to such criticism, a browbeaten Valente eventually dropped the “problematic” moniker.

Welcome to the new war on cultural appropriation. At one time, such critiques were leveled against truly offensive art — work that trafficked in demeaning caricatures, such as blackface, 19th-century minstrel shows or ethnological expositions, which literally put indigenous people on display, often in cages. But these accusations have become a common attack against any artist or artwork that incorporates ideas from another culture, no matter how thoughtfully or positively. A work can reinvent the material or even serve as a tribute, but no matter. If artists dabble outside their own cultural experiences, they’ve committed a creative sin.

Hint: The more people talk about “cultural appropriation,” they less they’ve contributed to a culture worth appropriating.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Of Nationalists And Cosmopolitans.

Among the many deplorable consequences of European elites’ failure to resolve their ongoing migrant crisis is the upsurge of nasty right-wing nationalism across the Continent. . . .

Nationalism is not unproblematic; German history tells us all we need to know on that score. And it is clear that the peace of Europe in the 21st century requires some kind of multinational form of political organization. But when European (or American for that matter) technocrats ignore the importance and validity of the social bonds, and miss the importance of the coherence that national identity gives to political institutions, then equally destructive problems can arise. Soviet history should show us what can happen when technocrats obsessed with ideological designs seek to remake societies without respect for the cultural and social values and traditions that have helped those societies cohere.

Today, in both Europe and the United States, the technocrats and the cosmopolitans have leaned too far ahead over their skis. One of the consequences is the revival of the ugly side of nationalist politics. The answer isn’t to crush the nationalists and the traditionalists with ever more rigid policies of cosmopolitan integration and massive doses of immigration beyond what the body politic is ready for. That is not a way to fight ugly proto-fascist nationalist revivals; it is a way to stoke and empower them.

Yes, but doubling-down on coercion is how these people think.

CHARLIE MARTIN: Hillary’s Air Gap Problem:

There is no (legitimate) way that a computer system could be connected to TS//SI//TK//NOFORN data and to the outside world.

What can happen is that someone copies information, onto a piece of paper or a thumb drive (actually systems that can handle TS shouldn’t have thumb drives either, but it’s too easy to sneak one in or out) and then copied into an email in an uncontrolled system – a cell phone or a laptop or an iPad. The person doing it has to know that it’s coming from a secure system, has to know how sensitive the data really is; they go through lots of training, repeated reminders, and come and go to the office through a freaking vault door that would do credit to a bank.

It has to be done on purpose, and it has to be done knowingly. There has to have been conscious intent to do it.

That, folks, is a violation of 18 U.S. Code § 793 – Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, for which the prescribed punishment is to be “fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.” Which applies both to the sender, and to the recipient.

Well, the sender may do time, but the recipient is Hillary, and she’s above the law.

AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.

Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.

Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

And, Today’s Featured Digital Deal. The deals are brand new every day, so browse and save!

EXACTLY: Trump is not your failing engine; Trump is the frantically blinking red light telling you to CHECK ENGINE.

ROGER SIMON: Looking At The Iran Deal From Anne Frank’s House.

LIFE IN OBAMA’S AMERICA: Should the Government Decide Which Political Positions Disqualify One from Dispensing Chicken?

Again, to be clear: What we have here is a government entity discussing who should and should not be allowed to sell their wares based entirely on whether or not the politicians who make up the entity like their politics.

On the one hand, I’d like to say that this is a compelling reason to privatize airports entirely: The First Amendment implications of such efforts are glaring and, setting aside little things like free speech, it’s altogether idiotic that our elected leaders consider themselves qualified to judge which businesses should be allowed to hawk their wares.

On the other, though, it has become distressingly common for people to politicize every realm of life. Taking the decision making process out of the hands of glorified government bureaucrats and putting it in the hands of private businessmen is no guarantee that people rushing between concourses in Denver would be allowed to enjoy delicious, delicious chicken. Outrage mobs gonna outrage. As I noted at the Washington Post this week, we’d all be happier if we agreed to a form of culture war detente and refrained from attempting to deprive people of their livelihood for daring to disagree with your politics.

That’ll only happen when this sort of attack becomes unacceptably painful, on a personal level. So make ’em regret it. Demonize, personalize, go after their jobs and their position in the community. You know, act like lefties.

CUSTOMER SERVICE: “I was a Yankee raised to be terrified of The South. But I love its friendliness and charm. And also the fact that black and white people know each other as people. For another thing, you can get grits for breakfast in the South. In the Deep South, I was happily surprised to find that you get grits whether you order them or not. And what has surprised YOU, friends, good and bad, in the realm of customer service?”

WENDELL COX: California: “Land of Poverty:”

For decades, California’s housing costs have been racing ahead of incomes, as counties and local governments have imposed restrictive land-use regulations that drove up the price of land and dwellings. This has been documented by both Dartmouth economist William A Fischel and the state Legislative Analyst’s Office.

Middle income households have been forced to accept lower standards of living while less fortunate have been driven into poverty by the high cost of housing.Housing costs have risen in some markets compared to others that the federal government now publishes alternative poverty estimates (the Supplemental Poverty Measure), because the official poverty measure used for decades does not capture the resulting differentials. The latest figures, for 2013, show California’s housing cost adjusted poverty rate to be 23.4 percent, nearly half again as high as the national average of 15.9 percent.

Back in the years when the nation had a “California Dream,” it would have been inconceivable for things to have gotten so bad — particularly amidst what is widely hailed as a spectacular recovery. The 2013 data shows California to have the worst housing cost adjusted poverty rate among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. But it gets worse. California’s poverty rate is now more than 50 percent higher than Mississippi, which long has set the standard for extreme poverty in the United States (Figure 1).

Well, that was before Mississippi was taken over by Republicans, and California was taken over by Democrats.

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Steven Spielberg And The Temple of Obama: Building the Barack Obama post-presidency, one liberal billionaire at a time.

The closest I’ve ever come to glimpsing hell was on Monday, when I read an article in the New York Times headlined, “With High-Profile Help, Obama Plots Life After Presidency.”

Reporters Michael D. Shear and Gardiner Harris reveal the “methodical effort taking place inside and outside the White House as the president, first lady, and a cadre of top aides map out a post-presidential infrastructure and endowment they estimate could cost as much as $1 billion,” or about as much as Obama fundraised for the 2012 campaign.

This effort began in November 2012, shortly after his reelection, when the president hosted filmmaker Steven Spielberg at the White House for a screening of Lincoln. President Obama was “spellbound,” the Times reports, as Spielberg held forth “about the use of technology to tell stories.”

Such technology, Spielberg went on, could also be used to tell Obama’s story—to somehow convince future Americans, against all evidence to the contrary, that his presidency was an experience they would like to repeat. “Ideally, one adviser said, a person in Kenya could put on a pair of virtual reality goggles and be transported to Mr. Obama’s 2008 speech on race in Philadelphia.” I’m sure they’ll be banging on the door to get into that exhibit.

The president has raised, to date, “just over $5.4 million from 12 donors,” which puts him $994.6 million from his goal. Those donors include “technology entrepreneur” Jim Symons, whose co-CEO Robert Mercer, a Republican, was described by the Times the very next day as a “hedge-fund magnate.” These two billionaires are business partners—can’t they both be magnates? Or are some technology entrepreneurs more equal than others?

More remarkable than the Times‘s bias, however, is the fact that Obama’s team, led by a former Washington Post reporter, has been unable to come up with a unifying idea—or even a single location—for his post-presidency.

Can’t we just wake up in bed next to Suzanne Pleshette and discover it was all a crazy dream?

PROOF IN THE PUDDING: Hillary’s Air Gap Problem. The very fact that TOP SECRET information made it to Hillary’s email shows a crime was committed.

YEAH, HE’D BE A STEP UP: Inspector Clouseau was unavailable.

MOSTLY, I NOTICE HOW SKINNY BILL LOOKS IN THAT PICTURE. It’s like he has Al Sharpton Wasting Syndrome. Little Kid Heckles Bill Clinton During His Birthday Golf Outing.

WHEN CORRUPT OFFICIALS PLAY DAMSEL IN DISTRESS: Pennsylvania Attorney General Says She’s Victim of Porn-Obsessed Men: Kathleen Kane is accused of leaking grand jury information to reporters; she says it’s a vendetta from state office skin fans.

When that’s the best you got. . . .

NO, THIS ISN’T MY KNOXVILLE NEIGHBORHOOD, but the drone video promotion seems like a smart idea.

FOR STARTERS, DON’T STAY UP LATE BLOGGING. UH OH. How not to get bags under your eyes.

SERENDIPITY IS REAL: Forgetful scientists accidentally quadruple lithium-ion battery lifespan.

AT AMAZON, deals on Luggage & Travel Gear.

Plus, up to 25% off Groceries.