MAYBE SARAH HOYT WILL LEND ME HER SHOCKED FACE: Some Trump supporters loathe Hillary but love Bill.

I have been struck during recent interviews by how many Trump voters go out of their way to tell me they abhor Hillary but admire Bill. They believe Bill felt their pain; they see Hillary as heartless. They thought of Bill as an Arkansas outsider taking on the established order; they think Hillary embodies that order.

Well, Bill’s a lot more likable than Hillary — or at least he used to be.

JILL STEIN: I WOULDN’T HAVE ORDERED THE CODE DEAD ON BIN LADEN.

Hey, neither would Bill Clinton, which ultimately brought us 9/11, so she’s got that going for her, at least.

CONSPIRACY THEORY:

DNC delegate: If @HillaryClinton withdraws, every indication now committee will vote to replace with Biden. @BernieSanders team scrambling

— David Shuster (@DavidShuster) September 12, 2016

The really juicy stuff going on right now will never make the history books, which is a real shame.

ROGER KIMBALL: The Bumpy Ride of Our Flight 93.

Back in June, Donald Rumsfeld summed up the position that, in subsequent weeks, many (not all) anti-Trump conservatives have come to adopt. Reprising his famous epistemological mot that distinguished between “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns,” Rumsfeld said that, of course he was voting for Trump. Trump was an “unknown known,” perhaps dubious in some ways, but all the world knew exactly what Hillary Clinton represented.

This was the essential point made in a more colorful way in the most remarkable essay I have read in some time, “The Flight 93 Election,” which appeared a few days back in that indispensable journal, the Claremont Review of Books. I have no idea who “Publius Decius Mus”—the putative author—really is, though I speculate on stylistic and philological grounds that he is not unacquainted with the works of Leo Strauss. The historical Decius Mus was a Roman consul during the first Samnite and Latin wars. In 340BC, he sacrificed himself at the Battle of Vesuvius in order to secure a great victory for the Romans. That story, for those who are interested in such things, is told in Book 8 of Livy’s The History of Rome.

Presumably, Claremont’s Publius adopted the name of that self-sacrificing Roman in order to remind his readers of the existential stakes in this election (as well as, of course, concealing his real identity from the wrath of NeverTrump vigilantes). Publius reworks Donald Rumsfeld’s point with a metaphor—with two, in fact: “2016,” he begins, “is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die.”

Read the whole thing.

MICHAEL LEDEEN ON THE SECRET HILLARY CLINTON.

Read the whole thing.

INCREASINGLY, I’M SO DONE WITH THE NFL: A raised fist and more kneeling players as Colin Kaepernick’s anthem protest spreads across the NFL on opening weekend.

I’m so old, I can remember when the left hated Lyndon Johnson. Now they’re borrowing all of the half-century old clichés and poses of his era, as if nothing has changed in America since the mid-1960s. But then, as Jon Gabriel would say, “My favorite part about the Obama era is all the racial healing.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1222.

I DON’T BLAME THEM: High Earners Flee Blue States:

A recent argument produced by blue model partisans to demonstrate the alleged superiority of high-tax, high-regulation policy is that states that practice it, like New York and California, tend to have a higher proportion of affluent people. As we’ve noted, this argument is questionable for a number of reasons, chief among them that it doesn’t distinguish correlation and causation. It may be that these states favor Democrats because they are wealthy and unequal, while Republicans thrive in more egalitarian environments.

But a detailed new analysis by Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox in New Geography points to yet another flaw in this dubious defense of the blue model: High-earners are leaving blue states in droves. . . .

To be sure, there will always be some wealthy people who aren’t bothered by sky-high tax rates and soaring housing costs, and are willing to trade that for a hip cultural scene and a panoramic view of Central Park or the San Francisco Bay. But on the evidence of the past several years, the broad upper-middle class—including small business-owners, professionals, and other high-skilled workers—does not find blue-state government particularly enticing. One of the biggest drivers of this trend, in addition to higher income tax rates and regulatory red tape, is housing policy: Blue states enact more building restrictions, which have put family-friendly housing out of reach for broad swathes of the population.

The Kotkin and Cox data points to a dispersion of high-earners—and the investment capital they bring with them—away from the coasts, and toward less dense, less costly, and more conservative parts of the country. This ought to puncture the widespread illusions about the inherent superiority of the blue coastal model, and exert far-reaching effects on the geography of U.S. economic growth over the next several decades.

My worry is that many of these migrants will bring blue-state voting patterns with them. Instead of squandering hundreds of millions on political consultants, the GOP donor class would be better served setting up a “Welcome Wagon” that would target these movers (easy to do) and send them information on why the states they’re moving to are doing better.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: S. Korea unveils plan to raze Pyongyang in case of signs of nuclear attack.

South Korea has already developed a plan to annihilate the North Korean capital of Pyongyang through intensive bombing in case the North shows any signs of a nuclear attack, a military source in Seoul said Sunday.

“Every Pyongyang district, particularly where the North Korean leadership is possibly hidden, will be completely destroyed by ballistic missiles and high-explosive shells as soon as the North shows any signs of using a nuclear weapon. In other words, the North’s capital city will be reduced to ashes and removed from the map,” the source said.

Well, good — I suppose.

U.S. troops have been stationed in South Korea for decades not only to deter Pyongyang, but to keep Seoul feeling secure enough to stay reined in.

Those days would seem to be over.

THE TORRICELLI OPTION: ‘Expect emergency DNC meeting to CONSIDER replacement for Hillary,’ Dem operatives say.

It’s not personal, Hillary. It’s strictly business.

TRADECRAFT: New Tricks Make ISIS, Once Easily Tracked, a Sophisticated Opponent.

Weeks before Islamic State militant Abdelhamid Abaaoud led the Nov. 13 terror attacks in Paris, French authorities thought he was holed up in northern Syria. Western Intelligence agencies pursuing Abaaoud had tracked him there using cell-phone location data and other electronic footprints.

The Paris attacks, which killed 130 people, showed how badly they were fooled. Abaaoud had slipped past the dragnet and entered the city unnoticed.

Drawing from a growing bag of tricks, Islamic State accomplices located in Syria likely used phones and WhatsApp accounts belonging to Abaaoud and other attackers to mask the group’s travel to Europe, said a Western security official: “We relied too much on technology. And we lost track.”

SIGINT is important, but almost nothing beats HUMINT. We’ve always been better at the former than the latter, but our HUMINT has been hurt by years of malign neglect under President Obama.

DIDN’T TRUMP SAY SOMETHING LIKE THIS? FiveThirtyEight: Black Voters Are So Loyal That Their Issues Get Ignored.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: We need more lawyers, seriously. At least, more lawyers like the ones at the Institute for Justice.

PAPER BALLOTS AND OPEN, MANUAL COUNTS: Hacking the election is nearly impossible. But that’s not Russia’s goal. “Elections authorities and cyber security experts say a concerted effort to alter the outcome of November’s elections through a cyber attack is nearly impossible, even after hackers gained access to voter registration databases in at least two states. But some of those same experts say hackers with ties to Russia aren’t aiming to change election results; instead, their goal is to create a perception that the results are in question, and to undermine confidence in American democracy.”

I suppose it was Russian agents of influence spreading the Diebold conspiracy theories in 2004.

TO FOLLOW UP ON GLENN’S POST ON SATURDAY, FOR THE RECORD, I’VE NEVER BEEN #NEVERTRUMP. But I’m also pro-reality, and that means also reporting bad news when it breaks, such as bad poll numbers for Trump or something goofy he’s uttered. Back in late 2003, a year and a half after Ed Driscoll.com had launched, I linked to a Mickey Kaus quote on the then-recently invented phrase “Liberal cocooning.” As Mickey wrote:

Reporters and editors at papers like the Times (either one!) are exquisitely sensitive to any sign that Democrats might win, but don’t cultivate equivalent sensitivity when it comes to discerning signs Republicans might win. (Who wants to read that?) The result, in recent years, is the Liberal Cocoon, in which Democratic partisans are kept happy and hopeful until they are slaughtered every other November.

Having seen the GOP fail to cross the finish line in 2008 and 2012, I have no desire to write the conservative/libertarian equivalent of that sort of reader cocooning. But if you’ve been a long time reader of mine, it should be obvious that whatever my concerns about Trump’s flaws, the fact that he’s not Hillary Clinton* – and has thoroughly driven her palace guard DNC-MSM insane — is enough for me to vote for him. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you fight back against the left’s war on American values with the candidates you have.

* Or whoever at the top of the ticket with a (D) after his or her name in November.

TWEET OF THE DAY:

FASTER, PLEASE: Sniper takes out ISIS executioner from a mile away.

A sharpshooter killed a top ISIS executioner and three other jihadists with a single bullet from nearly a mile away — just seconds before the fiend was set to burn 12 hostages alive with a flamethrower, according to a new report.

The British Special Air Service marksman turned one of the most hated terrorists in Syria into a fireball by using a Barett .50-caliber rifle to strike a fuel tank affixed to the jihadi’s back, the UK’s Daily Star reported Sunday.

The pack exploded, killing the sadistic terrorist and three of his flunkies, who were supposed to film the execution, last month, the paper said.

Bravo.

OUR REACTIONARY DNC-MSM. The Media’s Russia Policy In 8 Words: If A Republican’s For It, We Hate It.

GALAXY 7 NOTE RECALL: Samsung May Remotely Deactivate Unexchanged Units After Sept. 30.

ROCKIN’ PNEUMONIA: A UNIFYING DIAGNOSIS.

HMMM: Hillary embraces child — despite contagious ‘pneumonia.’

TRANSPARENCY: VA quit sending performance data to national health care quality site.

For years, the VA provided data on a number of criteria to the Hospital Compare web site run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the Department of Health and Human Services. The site includes death and readmission rates and other measures of quality for public and private hospitals around the country, as well as national averages.

After the VA scandal, Congress passed the law mandating the VA to submit even more data. But the VA confirmed to USA TODAY last week that it stopped reporting its information July 1.

Joe Francis, director of clinical analytics and reporting at the Veterans Health Administration, said lawyers at HHS advised the VA to pull the plug until the two agencies could work out a new deal governing the sharing of information.

It must be nice, one executive branch department negotiating with an executive branch agency over how (or whether?) they’ll follow a law from Congress.

JAILED BRIT WHO TRIED TO ASSASSINATE DONALD TRUMP “Sorry for everything.”

Lynne Sandford was allowed to visit her 20-year-old son, Michael, in jail in the US for the first time on Thursday.

Mr Sandford, from Dorking in Surrey, is accused of trying to grab a police officer’s gun to shoot Mr Trump at a Las Vegas rally on 18 June.

Ms Sandford said she did not “for one minute” believe he meant any harm.

“He’s very remorseful and glad that nothing happened, nobody got hurt, and he just feels terrible about the whole thing and the effect that it’s having on the family.”

He didn’t mean any harm? Really? To be fair, he’s probably just a victim of the culture of Trump-hate built up by assassination-talk in the mainstream media and the Democratic Party. But I repeat myself.