WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Soul-Sick Leadership Elite in America.

Too bad that we now have to depend on leaks from Putin moles to know what’s going on in our country, but the donor stroking industry revealed in these emails is anything but secret. Thousands of prominent people are involved, either as strokers or strokees. Many of these people are extremely well known to journalists at major newspapers, and not a few of them are married to journalists.

Yet here is the NYT treating these leaked emails as a window into an unknown world. The unwillingness of the press to delve into the Vanity Fair at the heart of modern progressive politics (there is no such reluctance to peer into the mysteries of Republican finance) is a real problem. . . .

The fatheaded stupidity of rich liberals is the subtext of the hacked emails: how easily they are exploited, how gullible their vanity makes them, how pathetically eager they are for the hollow satisfaction of a seat next to the powerful. In one sense it’s refreshing: great wealth does not in fact make a nincompoop powerful. Also, it suggests that the real problem with our republic is that what should be our leadership elite is soul-sick: vain, restless, easily miffed, intellectually confused, jealous…

The sense that people like this—a mix of knaves and fools—are running both parties has a lot to do with the anger that fueled both the Sanders and the Trump campaigns. There’s a spiritual disease at work in this, and over time it has the ability to wreck not just individual souls, but our free institutions and the rule of law itself.

Indeed.

THIS IS NOT THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN I WAS EXPECTING: Donald Trump signs pledge to crack down on Internet porn.

HENCE, TRUMP: Obama Admin Has Online Guide Telling Illegals Where They Can Avoid Deportation.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: War With Russia Looms, Says Former NATO General in New Book.

CIRCLING THE WAGONS: Meg Whitman To Fundraise For Clinton To Take Down ‘Demagogue’ Trump.

AFTER 8 YEARS OF OBAMA’S FAILED POLICIES, CHANGE LOOKS GOOD: Pew: Voters see better future under Trump than Clinton.

WELL, WHAT WOULD DEMOCRATS DO? Conservatives Push Leadership to Deny Obama His Last Lame-Duck Session.

While lawmakers are away from Capitol Hill on August recess, the two largest conservative caucuses in Congress are working to keep a lame-duck spending bill from getting off the ground after the elections.

Before Congress recessed, the Freedom Caucus and Republican Study Committee gathered enough signatures to force GOP leadership into scheduling a conference to discuss the party’s plan for funding the federal government, The Daily Signal has learned.

That moves coincides with a shift in conservative strategy on government funding. Conservatives aren’t trying to reduce spending anymore this year. They’re trying to buy time.

“Are we going to reduce the deficit, yes or no?” Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., asked in an interview with The Daily Signal. “The answer is no and the American people aren’t happy with that. So now we just need to do damage control.”

Reducing government spending remains the long-term goal for conservatives, Brat said. But for now, their immediate concern is preventing any new increases before the year ends.

You do what you can.

Related: In Florida Kaine calls on GOP to cancel recess over Zika fail. GOP responds: “he’s going to drop his filibuster?” Heh.

ASIA PIVOT: North Korean missile lands perilously close to Japan.

If confirmed, this would constitute the first time a North Korean missile had landed within Japan’s exclusive economic zone on the Sea of Japan side of the island chain. In 1998, North Korea fired a Taepodong-1 missile over Japan and into its economic zone on the Pacific Ocean side.

Wednesday’s actions were the latest apparent protest from North Korea over a decision by Seoul and Washington to bring an anti-missile battery system to South Korea.

The medium-range Rodong missile splashed down inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, within 125 miles of the country’s northeast coast, Japan’s Defense Ministry said.

In flight time, that meant the missile was only 20 or 30 seconds from Japan itself, said Euan Graham, who served as a British diplomat in Pyongyang.

“It’s a clear case of walking right up to the line and just putting a nose over it,” said Graham, now an East Asian security expert at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney. “It’s a provocative act.”

Firing missiles at your neighbors doesn’t seem like the best way to dissuade your neighbors from installing antimissile systems.

DNC COLLAPSE: Top staffers leave 100 days before the election in wake of #DNCLeaks email hack.

JUST NBC THE AIRBRUSHING! Washington Free Beacon Catches NBC Scrubbing Old Video of Andrea Mitchell Saying Juanita Broaddrick Is ‘Discredited.’

TO BE FAIR, THEY DO THIS FOR EVERY GOP NOMINEE, EVERY FOUR YEARS: To fight Trump, journalists have dispensed with objectivity.

SLATE: If the Democrats nominated a left-wing Trump, liberals would totally vote for him.

Really? You don’t say. Slate is still owned by the Graham family, former owners of the Washington Post and Newsweek, which at the start of the Obama era in 2009 breathlessly insisted:

The left has never met a populist strongman it didn’t like – you could write a whole book the topic!

SECURITY: Microsoft won’t fix Windows flaw that lets hackers steal your username and password.

A new proof-of-exploit shows just how easy it is to steal someone’s credentials.

The flaw is widely-known, and it’s said to be almost 20 years old. It was allegedly found in 1997 by Aaron Spangler and was most recently resurfaced by researchers in 2015 at Black Hat, an annual security and hacking conference in Las Vegas.

The flaw wasn’t considered a major issue until Windows 8 began allowing users to sign into their Microsoft accounts — which links their Xbox, Hotmail and Outlook, Office, and Skype accounts, among others.

Overnight, the attack got larger in scope, and now it allows an attacker to conduct a full takeover of a Microsoft account.

Perfect Privacy advises that to stay secure, “don’t use Internet Explorer, Edge, or Microsoft Outlook, and don’t log in to Windows with a Microsoft account.”

THE HILL: DNC cleans house after emails.

Three top staffers are leaving the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in a staff shakeup spurred by the leak of damaging emails about the primary battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

The CEO of the DNC, Amy Dacey, is departing, as are communications director Luis Miranda and chief financial officer Brad Marshall, the DNC announced in a statement.

Donna Brazile, who is taking the reins of the DNC following the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz (R-Fla.) as chairwoman, made no mention of the email scandal in her statement, mostly thanking the departing staffers for their service.

Hey, Hillary got the nomination, and they’ll be suitably rewarded. A few show-firings don’t cost anything.

HAIL TO THE TOTUS: Obama just became one of the great trolls of our time.

CHANGE MORE OF THE SAME: Huelskamp loses GOP primary after ideological battle.

GOP Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a three-term incumbent and House Freedom Caucus member from Kansas, lost his House primary Tuesday night to challenger Roger Marshall, a physician backed by agricultural interests and several big-spending outside groups.

Huelskamp had lost his powerful seat on the House Agriculture Committee in 2012 after “angering House GOP leadership.”

ECHO CHAMBERS GO BIPARTISAN!

Shot: The Conservative Media Echo Chamber Has Made the Right Deaf to Reality.

Chaser: Joy Reid Shouts Down Guest for ‘Inventing’ Fact that 33,000 of Hillary’s E-Mails Are Missing.

I think their belief that “government don’t work good,” to borrow a classic line from Michael Barone leaves conservatives a bit more grounded, but there’s no doubt that both sides of the aisle loathed traditional mass media and wanted news media that fit their beliefs at the dawn of the Web, and they now have them. Good luck putting that genie back in the bottle.

YEAH, BUT A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE PULLING FOR SMOD2016. Asteroid Strike Could Cause Immense Suffering.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton resigns.

ONLY SOME PUTIN TIES ARE BAD: Media Ignores Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Chairman Bagging $35 Million from Putin.

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: GAO Report: The ATF Is Illegally Hoarding American Gun Owners’ Personal Information.

CURTIS LEMAY KNEW WHAT HE WAS TALKING ABOUT: How to Start a Clash of Civilizations: If the Islamic State wants to renew the Crusades by attacking churches and killing priests, Catholic France won’t run from the fight. “The logic may be unnerving, but it is crystal clear. For Le Pen and Europeans starved for leadership consistent with patterns adhered to for centuries on end, it is Islam’s would-be holy warriors who have invited a defensive Crusade, and the time has come to give it to them.”

Related: Paris Archbishop Calls Allah ‘God of Death.’

IMMIGRATION: The Issue That Got Away?

BECAUSE THEY’RE DEMOCRATIC PARTY TOOLS WHO DON’T ACTUALLY GIVE A CRAP ABOUT WOMEN: Why Aren’t Feminists Up in Arms About the Slut-Shaming of Nude Melania Trump?

BRIBES: U.S. Sent Cash to Iran as Americans Were Freed: Obama administration insists there was no quid pro quo, but critics charge payment amounted to ransom. “The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward. Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.”

$100 million each? Even Jeb’s delegates only went for $50 million per.