THE TRUE STORY OF DR ZHIVAGO’S LARA.

IT’S ABOUT TIME: New smartphone batteries lasting twice as long will hit the market next year. Though the geniuses who design smartphones will probably just use this as an excuse to make the phones slightly thinner, but with the same inadequate battery life as now.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Our Caveman Politics: Economic policy based on 100,000-year-old emotions won’t fix healthcare, or anything else.

I’M SORRY DAVE, I CAN’T ALLOW YOU TO DO THAT: The Nature of Evil in Computer RPGs.

THE FOUNDERS MEET Brand X.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: A Guide To Legal Lock-Picking.

NO. WAY. Tens of millions of dollars disguised as ‘consumer relief’ are going to liberal political groups.

The administration’s multiyear campaign against the banking industry has quietly steered money to organizations and politicians who are working to ensure liberal policy and political victories at every level of government. The conduit for this funding is the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, a coalition of federal and state regulators and prosecutors created in 2012 to “identify, investigate, and prosecute instances of wrongdoing” in the residential mortgage-backed securities market. In conjunction with the Justice Department, the RMBS Working Group has reached multibillion-dollar settlements with essentially every major bank in America.

The most recent came in April when the Justice Department announced a $5.1 billion settlement with Goldman Sachs. In February Morgan Stanley agreed to a $3.2 billion settlement. Previous targets were Citigroup ($7 billion), J.P. Morgan Chase ($13 billion), and Bank of America, which in 2014 reached the largest civil settlement in American history at $16.65 billion. Smaller deals with other banks have also been announced.

Combined, the banks must divert well over $11 billion into “consumer relief,” which is supposed to benefit homeowners harmed during the Great Recession. Yet it is unknown how much, if any, of the banks’ settlement money will find its way to individual homeowners. Instead, a substantial portion is allocated to private, nonprofit organizations drawn from a federally approved list. Some groups on the list—Catholic Charities, for instance—are relatively nonpolitical. Others—La Raza, the National Urban League, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and more—are anything but.

It’s almost as though the Obama Administration had turned the Federal government into a giant shakedown operation.

BREAKING: Anthony Weiner Is out as a Columnist for the Daily News.

He was ever in?

GOOD LORD: Illegal Immigrant Crashes Bus Full of Louisiana Flood Volunteers, Kills Two.

HAWAII, THE FINAL FRONTIER: Mock Mars Explorers Emerge from Habitat to End Year of Isolation in Hawaii.

The crew exited the domed habitat for the first time in 12 months without wearing space suits, and were greeted by family, friends, the mission scientists and team members who supported them through the year, and members of the media.

“There’s no place like Earth. It is a little bit like the tornado returning to Kansas,” said Sheyna E. Gifford, chief medical and safety office and crew journalist. “All of a sudden I click my heels three times and stepped several inches, and 100 million miles later [I’m back on Earth].”

Andrzej Stewart, chief engineering officer, said he felt “mixed emotions” about leaving the habitat.

“I’m a military brat, I grew up with my dad in the Air Force, and where you live becomes home after a while and I’m going to miss the place,” he said.

I’d be interviewing future candidates from the Navy’s submarine force. They’re trained to work complex equipment under adverse conditions in close quarters for months at a time.

REPORT: HUMILIATED HUMA FINALLY DUMPS SEXTING WEINER. Hillary’s top aide separates from her husband just hours after he sent an admirer a photo of his crotch while their four-year-old son slept beside him, according to the London Daily Mail.

Not surprisingly, Drudge is having plenty of fun linking to the story, depicting Hillary and Huma in matching togs and the headline, “SHE’S HAD ENOUGH WEINER. HUMA CHOOSES HILLARY.”

Heh, indeed.™

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1208.

SHOCK: KAEPERNICK ENDORSES TRUMP, DEMANDS REPUBLICAN MAYOR IN SAN FRANCISCO.

At least, that’s how I’m reading this AP headline: “Kaepernick Will Sit Through Anthem Until There’s Change,” given that Hillary is running as Obama’s third term, and San Francisco, which has recently been struck with allegations of racism in its police department, hasn’t had a Republican mayor since about the time the Beatles arrived in America. Otherwise he’s just engaging in kabuki, a sort of one-man version of Occupy Wall Street, which never raised much of a ruckus over President Goldman Sachs during their protests.

So, just how much change would you like, Mr. Kaepernick?

IT WASN’T A FAILED COUP; IT’S A SUCCESSFUL PURGE: Erdogan Goes Full Autocrat, Press Freedom Extinct in Turkey.

BUT OF COURSE THEY DO. CNN attacks Associated Press report on Hillary’s Clinton Foundation meetings:

Keep in mind, Byers is blasting the AP for putting out a misleading tweet which didn’t give readers a clear understanding of what the story actually said. And yet here he is not giving his own readers a clear understanding of what the the Post’s Fact-Checker said. It’s the same mistake. Byers continues:

Vox’s Matthew Yglesias was more direct: “The AP’s big exposé on Hillary meeting with Clinton Foundation donors is a mess,” his headline read.

And that’s all the evidence Byers offers that the AP botched its report, one link to a progressive news site. Even the expert Byers quoted earlier in the piece says Yglesias is overplaying his hand:

Boardman argued that the story itself “was not nearly so flawed as Yglesias and others have charged.”

Byers deserves credit for including the quote undercutting Vox in his piece but, looking at the material he assembled for this story, the entire piece could just as easily have been framed as ‘the AP botched a tweet but not the underlying report.’ It’s what the journalism dean told him. It’s what the Post’s Fact-Checker seemed to say. I understand reporters often don’t write their own headlines but then they probably don’t write their own tweets either. The headline of Byers’ piece is every bit as bad as the AP tweet he is blasting for inaccuracy.

And CNN’s young successor to Howard Kurtz is playing palace guard as well: Stelter Attacks AP for Exposing Clinton Foundation Donor Access to State Department.

As with creating “The Wright-Free Zone” to keep Obama afloat in 2008 and Candy Crowley sabotaging Mitt Romney during his debate with Obama four years later, this is simply what the propaganda wing of Time-Warner-CNN-HBO does for their party during every election year.

HMMM: Iran Arrests Person Linked to Negotiations on Nuclear Deal.

The disclosure, reported in the state news media, appeared to be the latest sign of the Iranian leadership’s frustration over the agreement, which has failed so far to yield the significant economic benefits for the country that its advocates had promised. Iranian officials have blamed the United States for that problem.

Despite the relaxations of many sanctions under the accord, which took effect in January, Iran faces enormous obstacles in attracting new investments and moving its own money through the global financial system.

It isn’t as though Iran’s mullahs regime was known for its economic prowess even before the nuclear sanctions were imposed.

WEALTH AND POVERTY:

Even if worried progressives are right that the poorest of the poor are doing worse since welfare reform, that doesn’t settle the question. A life of work offers cumulative benefits: You gain good work habits and experience, which enables you to earn more money in the future, and sets an example of self-reliance for your children to follow. The experience of welfare reform suggests that welfare was enabling people to make a rational short-term decision — welfare benefits are better than working an entry-level job — that was a disastrous long-term decision, because the longer you go without working, the harder it is to get your foot on the first rung of that vocational ladder, and the less time you have to enjoy any cumulative benefits.

A government policy that helps people with bad long-term decision-making was probably not “the greatest good for the greatest number.” On the other hand, making the badly off even worse off doesn’t sound like great policy either. Which problem you think is more important is a value judgment, not an empirical question.

But what if we don’t have to choose? Scott Winship of the Manhattan Institute has just released a paper arguing that “Children — in particular, those in single-mother families — are significantly less likely to be poor today than they were before welfare reform.” How can he come to such a radically different conclusion from other authors? Because official measures of poverty aren’t very good.

Well, to be fair, they aren’t meant to be, really.

RETIRED MARINE GENERAL JAMES MATTIS: US Influence ‘At Lowest In 40 Years’

Mattis offered the example of World War II to back his point. He noted that Americans watched Germany overrun France and bomb Britain, while Japan invaded China, yet they felt it was not a U.S. problem.

“The result was we were attacked [at Pearl Harbor],” said Mattis. “Then, like it or not, they had to get engaged.”

The general said winning the war was not the end of America’s role, pointing to the Marshall Plan and creation of the United Nations, which helped repair the diplomatic relations and broken economies of both allies and former enemies.

“That had never been done before,” Mattis said. “We created the Marshall Plan, three years after Nazis were burning Jews. We offered them locomotives, rail lines, anything to help get their economies going again. That’s the greatest generation. The point is, it’s more than just fighting battles.”

Like Europe in World War II, Mattis explained that issues in the Middle East cannot simply be “contained in the Middle East.”

“We know that intellectually, but there’s a tendency to want to put a pillow over our heads.”

America’s activist postwar foreign policy has hardly been perfect, but up until recent years it was a much smarter strategy than our near-isolationism during the interwar period.

WINSTON SMITH, CALL YOUR OFFICE: CNN, The Hill attempt to shield Hillary Clinton from her former KKK ‘mentor.’

Just think of them as Democrat operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense. CNN in particular can always be counted on dispatching a Democrat’s awkward allegiance with an openly racist longtime mentor into the memory hole during an election year.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Gun ownership rises to 44% of all homes.

It’s good to see so many Americans exercising their constitutionally protected rights.

ROGER SIMON: Will the Clinton Foundation Mark the Fall of Our Republic?

We’ve witnessed the decline. Is the fall of our constitutional republic next?

LIKE BARACK OBAMA AND RACE, SHE’LL MAKE IT WORSE THAN IT’S BEEN IN 50 YEARS: Could a President Hillary Clinton erase sexism? Young Americans say no.

THE MASKIROVKA COMES OFF: Russia putting central bank and ministries go on war footing.

As part of Putin’s plan to check the readiness of the armed forces, the Central bank and the vital ministries of industry and trade, will switch to war-time operation, Radio Svoboda reports Aug. 29.

The readiness of the ministry of communications and military-industrial complex in the south of Russia to repair and supply weapons will also be checked.

It isn’t often appreciated, but banks and networking systems are just as much a part of modern war as armored vehicles and fighter jets.

LEADERSHIP: Hillary Clinton had the chance to make gay rights history. She refused.