THIS IS THE DUMBEST, FAKEST, DIDN’T HAPPENEST THING HILLARY EVER SAID:

The sexism is less virulent now than it was in 2008, she said, but still she encounters people on rope lines who tell her, “=‘I really admire you, I really like you, I just don’t know if I can vote for a woman to be president.’ I mean, they come to my events and then they say that to me.”

Given who the supporters of the candidate who knocked Hillary out of the primaries in 2008 were, perhaps the real question here is what are Democrat-run organizations — in this case, the Democratic party itself — such noxious cesspits of virulent sexism?

AT AMAZON, Top Father’s Day Gifts.

Plus, deals on Bosch Tools.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Donald Trump Is The Response To Politically Correct Madness: Abusive political correctness drives voters into the impolitic billionaire’s loud embrace.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Triple helices stabilize macroscopic crystals for DNA nanotechnology.

FORMER MISS TURKEY CONVICTED OF ‘INSULTING’ ISLAMIST PRESIDENT ERDOGAN: Welcome to the New Turkey, where people can get locked up for saying something critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Much like Obama’s America, where people can get locked up making a video.

FASTER, PLEASE: Scientists have discovered a new trigger for killing cancer cells.

RUSH LIMBAUGH ON TRUMP: The Press Conference Republican Voters Have Wanted to See for Years.

YES, TRUMP CAN WIN: So argues Sean Trende at RCP:

Throughout this primary season, I’ve had an ongoing fight with a co-worker about whether Donald Trump could win the general election.  I was pretty firmly in the “if the economy collapses, maybe, but he is much more likely to drag the entire Republican field down with him” camp.

To resolve this, my co-worker invited me to set up some benchmarks: what we would have to see in order to believe that Trump really could win the election – not just that he had some sort of outside shot in a perfect storm, but that he had a legitimate, realistic chance of winning.

To cover my bases, I tried to set benchmarks that I thought would be really difficult for Trump to meet: He would have to pull within five points of Hillary Clinton in the RCP Average within a month of wrapping up the GOP race (this was back when he was down by 10), and then he would have to prove that he could lead her in a polling average (rather than in the occasional outlying poll) by the end of the Republican convention.

So, here we are. Last week, Trump was up by 0.2 percent in the RCP Average, meeting both of my goalposts two months ahead of schedule.  I still believe that he is the underdog, but I have to concede that he can win. I would put his chances more around 30 percent today.  If at some point he establishes a durable lead (he returned to trailing Clinton Friday morning), or if he can push his average up into the high forties, I will revise things accordingly.

Why might this continue?  Here are a five reasons . . . .

Read the whole thing.

RELATED: National Poll shows Trump nearly even with Clinton, 47 to 45 percent among registered voters.

THE HOUSE OF STEPHANOPOULOS HAS A SAD. Watch: Trump calls ABC reporter Tom Llamas ‘sleaze.’

Flashback: George Stephanopoulos discloses $75,000 contribution to Clinton Foundation.

Related: This is rich:

“When Democrats are raising questions, the press is also reflecting what your opposition is saying about you,” said another reporter. “We’re not just us throwing questions at you.” *

Trump responded that he didn’t mind the criticism coming from the opposition, but said it’s different when it comes from the press.

“I think the political press is among the most dishonest I’ve ever seen,’ he said. “I have to tell you that. But I think the political press – I see the stories and the way they’re couched.”

As the press conference ended, a reporter told Trump he had “set a new bar in being contentious with the press” and asked whether this is what it would be like if Trump wins the White House.

“Yeah it is,” Trump responded.

“I”m going to continue to attack the press,” he added. “I find the press to be dishonest. I find the political press to be extremely dishonest.”

Well they are. Just ask Katie Couric, Dan Rather, Brian Williams, Scott “Holocaust Denier” Pelley, Face the Nation host John Dickerson who advised Obama in 2013 to ‘Destroy the GOP,’ etc., etc.

All of which is why, “If this news conference turns into a press-driven referendum on how the press is doing,” Ari Fleischer tweets, “Trump will have won the day.”

Or as Jonah Goldberg wrote in 2000 when George Bush was caught on a hot mic calling insulting Adam Clymer, “Here is a secret about presidential politics that nobody is willing to admit but everyone knows: It never hurts to call a reporter from the New York Times an a**hole.”

Last year at the National Press Club, Ben Carson warned the press, “I got to tell you guys, that’s why people don’t trust you anymore. I mean you’re down there with used car salesmen.” I agree – although apologies to used car salesmen for the unfair comparison.

*Right – you’re acting as Democrat party operatives with bylines, amplifying your bosses’ message.

UPDATE: 800 pound gorilla in presidential race grilled for thoughts on 800 pound gorilla in zoo:

BEWARE: Computer Vision Syndrome Affects Millions.

GOING ALL THE WAY BACK, AT LEAST, TO MICHAEL BELLESILES’ BOGUS ARMING AMERICA, IT SEEMS ODD THAT ALL THE SPLASHY ANTI-GUN STUFF KEEPS TURNING OUT TO BE FRAUDULENT: BREAKING: EPIX Pulls Katie Couric’s Fraudulent Documentary “Under The Gun.”

ASKING THE UNIMPORTANT QUESTIONS: How much is Donald Trump really worth?

I demand equal time for an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

COURIC TAKES RESPONSIBILITY FOR INACCURATE EDIT IN ‘UNDER THE GUN’ FILM:

When I screened an early version of the film with the director, Stephanie Soechtig, I questioned her and the editor about the pause and was told that a “beat” was added for, as she described it, “dramatic effect,” to give the audience a moment to consider the question. When VCDL members recently pointed out that they had in fact immediately answered this question, I went back and reviewed it and agree that those eight seconds do not accurately represent their response.

VCDL members have a right for their answers to be shared and so we have posted a transcript of their responses here. I regret that those eight seconds were misleading and that I did not raise my initial concerns more vigorously.

That’s a nice bit of PR spin. But as Mollie Hemingway tweets,  “of course she regrets getting caught. Is film being pulled? Is anything MEANINGFUL being done in response?”

Related: AR-15 Inventor Says HBO Grossly Distorted His Views On Guns.

JOURNALISM:

The truth hurts.

UPDATE: Trump Interrupts Press Conference to Call ABC Reporter ‘Sleaze.’

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 5 Simple Ways To Protect Against Mosquitoes.

I’m a fan of mosquito bits and mosquito dunks. It’s a bacterial larvicide that you put in bodies of water that produce mosquitoes.

17 TIMES THE ONION WENT SOFT ON HILLARY CLINTON.

Really? You mean they’re not Photoshopping her holding the blood-splattered severed head of a Supreme Court nominee like they did with Mitch McConnell and Merrick Garland in March?

But then, punches tend to be pulled when your campaign supporters own your publication.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Donald Trump Is The Response To Politically Correct Madness: Abusive political correctness drives voters into the impolitic billionaire’s loud embrace.

WHICH ROCK STAR WILL HISTORIANS OF THE FUTURE REMEMBER?

If any.  How many best-selling musicians were there in the 1920s? Only a handful of names are remembered today, especially by the average listener. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, the boomers invested a lot in rock as the dominant genre of their time, but tastes change. Once a style loses cultural cache (see also: swing jazz bands the second the Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show), its “immortality” dissolves at an astonishing speed.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Adrift in their own land, Afghanistan’s displaced see their population swell.

More than 1.2 million Afghans are now displaced – a twofold increase in three years. The report, made public late Monday, said that more than 118,000 have fled in the first four months of 2016 alone.
…
“Those forced to flee their homes, by and large, lived in squalid conditions and were often housed in makeshift shelters with no protection from the hot summers and cold winters,” the report said of the nearly 1,000 people who are counted as newly displaced each day.

Those who live in makeshift camps that dot the nation’s urban centers have found themselves in a state of un-ending limbo.

Qand Agha, 32, has spent the last seven years in Kabul’s Chaman-e Babrak camp, which houses more than 700 other displaced families.

The settlement — defined by simple mud houses, open sewers and dirt roads — stands in contrast to its glitzy neighbors.

Eight years ago a young presidential candidate named Barack Obama gave a speech in which he called Afghanistan “A war that we have to win.“

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1118.

I REMEMBER WHEN IMMIGRANTS WERE EXPECTED TO ADAPT TO THE COUNTRY THEY IMMIGRATED TO: Sweden stirs debate with women-only swimming, in nod to Muslims.

BEGUN, THE ICE CREAM WARS HAVE — AND NEW YORK TIMESMEN ARE AT THE FRONT LINES: A Renegade Muscles In on Mister Softee’s Turf.

Attention Saturday Night Live — your next sketch just wrote itself.

THOMAS SOWELL: Socialism for the Uninformed.

Well, of course it is.

IF YOU STRIKE ME DOWN, I SHALL BECOME MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE: The Chinese Christian Crackdown:

Between 1,200 and 1,700 crosses have come crashing down over the past two years in China’s Zhejiang Province, where the brutal repression of Christians has also seen churches demolished and pastors imprisoned, all with the blessing of top party officials. . . .

Having recognized Christianity as a potential threat to the CCP’s grip on power, Xi could be test-driving religious persecution in China’s Christian heartland before taking the policy nationwide. As we’ve said before, the ongoing persecution is not in China’s national interest; if anything, it may make Christians stronger.

Repression is turning a largely placid Christian population into deeply unhappy one. So far in Zhejiang Christian leaders have sermonized against the new policies and their parishioners have organized protests, sometimes going as far as clashing with security forces and blockading churches slated for demolition. Take this policy nationwide, and China’s government may be in for a massive showdown with a Christian community that outnumbers the Communist Party.

Onward, Christian soldiers.