WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WALMART DUMPS YOUR TOWN? Question asked and answered by Joel Kotkin.

HILLARY PLANS TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT CHICAGO VIOLENCE.

My question: Does that mean she’ll crack down on the Dem-machine-linked Chicago gangs that are behind it? (My answer: Are you kidding me?)

SPYING: President Obama Is Wrong On Encryption; Claims The Realist View Is ‘Absolutist.’

The President is basically doing the same thing as all the Presidential candidates, stating that there’s some sort of equivalency on both sides of the debate and that we need to find some sort of “balanced” solution short of strong encryption that will somehow let in law enforcement in some cases.

This is wrong. This is ignorant.

To his at least marginal credit, the President (unlike basically all of the Presidential candidates) did seem to acknowledge the arguments of the crypto community, but then tells them all that they’re wrong. In some ways, this may be slightly better than those who don’t even understand the actual issues at all, but it’s still problematic.

Our ruling class want you to have no secrets from them. Meanwhile, they want to tell you as little as possible.

WHEN MEN DO IT, IT’S ICKY AND OBJECTIFYING. WHEN WOMEN DO IT, IT’S EMPOWERING! Henry Cavill says women exhibit ‘double standards’ with street propositions and catcalling.

HMM: Hunt for Intelligent Aliens Should Focus on ‘Transit Zone.’

FASTER, PLEASE: Nutrient drink helps protect memory in early Alzheimer’s patients, study finds: Just one drink a day brought back personal memories. Some drink to remember, some drink to forget.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: The Obama Administration’s Drone-Strike Dissembling: Debunking John Brennan’s claim that “the president requires near-certainty of no collateral damage” to allow a drone killing to go forward.

GIVE THE MAN CREDIT: Notice Grassley’s Not Flinching on Supreme Court Nominee Hearings.

His willingness to take the criticism for this stance is worth noting for two reasons. First, there was a time when Grassley was more likely to be more conciliatory to President Obama, to be seen as “bipartisan” and so on. He was perceived as a “moderate,” voted to confirm Eric Holder, and was, for a while, trying to work out a compromise version of the Affordable Care Act. Years of Obama being Obama, trolling and mocking and ignoring Congress, have demonstrated to Grassley there’s no point in trying to appear “bipartisan” or conciliatory.

Second, if there were signs Grassley was willing to hold hearings or support an Obama nominee, the conservative grassroots would raise hell and support a primary challenger. So if there’s willingness to denounce and punish deviations from the conservative position, why isn’t there corresponding willingness to praise and support a lawmaker who takes the conservative position, particularly when it’s tough?

Good point.

NEVER BRING AN AX TO A GUN FIGHT: Customer with concealed carry permit fatally shoots ax-wielding attacker at 7-Eleven.

Investigators said the shooting happened at the store in White Center at approximately 5:45 a.m. local time. Witnesses said the man entered the store and swung a hatchet toward the customer before turning his attention to the clerk.

As the assailant attacked, the customer pulled out a pistol and fired, hitting the suspect. The clerk suffered minor injuries to his stomach and the suspect was pronounced dead at the scene.

The customer who shot the suspect is described as a 60-year-old Seattle man who visits the store every morning to get coffee. His name was not immediately released.

Authorities said the man who shot the attacker had a concealed carry permit and likely would not face charges as a result of his action.

“This could have been a lot worse,” King County Sheriff’s Sergeant Cindi West told KCPQ. “The clerk could be the one laying there dead on the floor right now.”

Stories like this one deserve more attention, and local merchants should recognize the brave action taken by one of their own customers.

MARS OR BUST: Russia Wants To Test A Nuclear Space Engine In 2018.

If I were President, the United States would be doing the same.

CHUTZPAH: “The Trumpian meltdown and freakshow at Breitbart is a fulfillment of its founder’s legacy,” or so it is said at that bastion of editorial and managerial stability, The New Republic.

NEWS YOUR DM CAN USE: When is a Computer Role-Playing Game a Role-Playing Game?, asks Moe Lane at the PJ Lifestyle section.

DON SURBER: The American Hurt.

YOU KNOW, HE JUST MAY BE RIGHT:

WELL, HE’S GONE UP IN FLORIDA POLLS SINCE CHICAGO: James Robbins: If anti-Trump protests grow, they could hand Donald the election.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE. Call for western civilization courses at Stanford gets backlash:

The Stanford Review’s petition to bring Western Civilization courses back to Stanford has met with some backlash.

Western Civilization courses have been absent from Stanford’s curriculum since the 1980’s when, according to a New York Times article, Rev. Jesse Jackson marched with students to remove the courses. Jackson, along with students, chanted “hey hey, ho ho, Western culture’s got to go.” Protesters complained that the Western culture course had “European-Western and male bias,” and “sexist and racist stereotypes.”

As Maggie’s Farm notes, “If people do not know the foundational origins and concepts from the Bible and Aristotle through John Locke and Adam Smith, it seems to me that there is very little that you can read with understanding. It is no ‘triumphalist narrative,’ but just the story of how we got where we are. It’s a map.”

But most colleges today have very different notions of which direction they’d like to send their students off to explore.

Related: “Hold Colleges Accountable to the Real World,” Victor Davis Hanson suggests. Outside of engineering classes, do colleges still believe that reality is, err, real?

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: North Korea claims it could wipe out Manhattan with a hydrogen bomb.

FROM BAUHAUS TO NO HOUSE: “I share many of the New Urbanist ideas for cities,” James Lileks writes, “but I can’t cast my lot in with the group because they are screwball-daft when the subject of cars comes up, and will entertain any inconvenience as long as it’s anti-car:”

 I don’t want to ride a got-damned bicycle to work. Most people don’t. Period. So you have to force them out of their cars into something else. If a neighborhood is made sufficiently inconvenient for cars, some will adapt, and some will find a home in a place where they can have a car. That’s your choice. If you stay, fine; glad you’re happy. If you go out into the far-flung exurbs because you want to drive, and are willing to endure a few inconveniences, then fine; that’s your choice. You’d think the Critics of Everyone Else’s Choices would be happy that people are living far out and taking the train in, but no, a fresh new horror has revealed itself as people continue to show the depthless roiling stinky-pitch of their hearts:

While city planners generally welcome transit hubs to their community, they are concerned that, if improperly located, the stations will actually increase sprawl by encouraging people to drive to rail stations instead of walking, biking or taking the bus.

People are driving to the train.

And PARKING.

The horror. The horror. Read the whole thing.

Related: “I lived in a closet-sized apartment — and you can too!” I’m so old, I can remember when THX-1138 was a warning, not a housing how-to guide.

LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy called the Gold King Mine Disaster in Colordao last August an “unfortunate accident.” Actually, the disaster, which polluted drinking water in three states and the Navajo Nation and turned the Animas River yellow for weeks, was anything but an accident.

The disaster was the direct result of EPA incompetence, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton and TheDCNF Energy Group’s Michael Bastasch. The B&B Boys turned up an Aug.7, 2o15, email from the Bureau of Land Management’s Brent Lewis to colleagues in which he said he was told by EPA:

“The EPA’s plan was to slowly drain and treat enough mine water in order to access the inner mine working and assess options for controlling its discharge. While removing small portions of the natural plug, the material catastrophically gave-way and released the mine water.”

The core of EPA’s incompetence was they knew the abandoned mine’s millions of gallons of toxic wastewater was under pressure, but they failed to have on hand the proper equipment to contain and direct the resulting flow when they unplugged it. But don’t expect there to be any consequences such as lost jobs for anybody at EPA because that’s not how the federal bureaucracy works.

Even so, this isn’t going to get any better for EPA because Barton and Bastasch have more stories on this massive screwup coming for the next several days. And it appears Rep. Rob Bishop, R-UT, and his staff investigators for the House Committee on Natural Resources have done some deep mining of their own. Stay tuned.

LIFE IMITATES THE BIG BANG THEORY: Media mogul Dmitry Itskov plans to live forever by uploading his personality to a robot.

Hey, it worked for Sheldon Cooper!

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1040.

JOURNALISM: Since When Do Town Hall Moderators Kiss The Candidate? It’s like the insiders are all one big club.

From the comments: “Backstage they were probably kissing her ring.”

I’VE BEEN WARNING ABOUT THIS FOR YEARS HERE AT INSTAPUNDIT: The Pension Crisis Keeps Getting Worse.

The $2 trillion public sector pension shortfall created by decades of interest group bullying and political fecklessness is not going away on its own. In fact, according to a recent report from a major consulting firm, it’s getting steadily worse. . . .

It’s important to note that the major market indices actually rose substantially over the time period covered by the report. If Wilshire assessed the solvency of public pension funds today, after months of market turmoil, the situation would likely be even more grim.

At least some state and local governments are taking steps to reform their public pension systems before it’s too late. For others, that moment may have already passed. It’s probably only a matter of time before the most indebted states and localities start going hat-in-hand to the federal government requesting massive bailouts. Time for think tanks, academics, and policymakers to start preparing for this eventuality: Should Congress be prepared to offer any assistance, and if so, on what terms?

The problem: Congress is broke too, but still in denial.

Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. Debts that can’t be repaid, won’t be. Promises that can’t be kept, won’t be. Plan accordingly.

SHE’S AS LIKELY TO DOUBLE DOWN AS TO LISTEN, THOUGH: WaPo: Voters deliver a message for Germany’s Angela Merkel: No more migrants.