ANALYSIS: TRUE. As a feminist film, Thelma & Louise fails miserably. “It’s as if [Oscar-winning screewriter Callie Khouri] is trying to paint feminists as given to hysterical overreaction.”

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1067.

ACCORDING TO FOLKS ON TWITTER, THE QUESTIONER WAS A BLACK LIVES MATTER ACTIVIST: Bernie Sanders Berated With Questions About ‘Zionist Jews’ at Harlem Forum.

Why is the Democratic Party such a cesspit of hatred, prejudice, and stereotyping?

LIES ON TOP OF LIES: Obama vows no influence in Clinton email probe, defends terror fight.

President Obama repeatedly vowed there would be no political influence over the Justice Department’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state — in a wide-ranging interview with “Fox News Sunday” in which he also ardently defended his efforts to defeat the Islamic State and other terror groups amid criticism about his perceived indifference.

“I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department, or the FBI, not just in this case, but in any case,” Obama told “Fox News Sunday.” “Nobody is above the law. How many times do I have to say it?”

His remarks came less than three months after White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest publicly downplayed a possible indictment for Clinton.

Obama praised Clinton’s tenure running the State Department from 2009 to 2013 and said he still doesn’t think the emails to and from her private server breached national security.

But remember, he’s not exerting any political pressure on the investigation. Not even a smidgeon!

Related: Hillary’s NSA Problem.

Also: Hillary Clinton Put Spies’ Lives At Risk.

Plus:

THE WEEK IN PICTURES: NEW YORK STATE OF MIND EDITION.

I love the “Sounds of Cylons” Photoshop.

WHEN YOUR TAX BASE IS TOO NARROW: One billionaire moves south — and New Jersey’s budget falls apart. One of many problems with a “tax the rich” approach.

AT AMAZON, fresh deals on bestselling products, updated every hour.

Also, coupons galore in Grocery & Gourmet Food.

Plus, Kindle Daily Deals.

And, Today’s Featured Digital Deal. The deals are brand new every day, so browse and save!

DISPATCHES FROM THE LEFT’S WAR ON BATHROOMS: Reporter Has Some Tough Questions for PayPal CEO After He Pulls Out of NC Over New Trans Bathroom Law.

GRAY LADY DOWN: The New York Times’s bizarre handling of its Gay Talese story.

In 1992, New York magazine reported that Pinch Sulzberger “told a crowd of people that alienating older white male readers means ‘we’re doing something right.’” If one older white male reader in particular that your staffers attempted to eviscerate in your pages is an 84 year old left-leaning journalistic legend, well, the left always devours its own eventually. Even if it’s someone who has written one of the best histories of the Times’ past glory days, 1969’s The Power and the Glory.

As for the slow collapse of the paper in the decades since, Bill McGowan’s 2010 book, Gray Lady Down takes up the story where Talese’s book ends. As this week’s debacle and the earlier quote from Sulzberger combine to illustrate, the self-styled elites who currently populate the Times appear to be remarkably punitive and infantile, not least when compared to their grown-up Timesmen of an earlier and better era in the paper’s long history.

Related: Great moments in unawareness, from both Tina Fey and Salon: “Tina Fey, female writer, is not impressed by Gay Talese.”

More: Gay Talese and the Outrage-Industrial Complex’s Odd Priorities.

IT’S HIS FIRST TIME; HE’LL GET BETTER AT IT: Bill Clinton paid the price for accidentally telling the truth.

IN TRUTH, THAT’S EASY TO DO WHENEVER YOU’RE PAYING ATTENTION: The ugliest face of Bill de Blasio: It was a week when it was easy to lose faith in the mayor.

Related: NYPD corruption probe turns focus to de Blasio fund-raisers Jeremy Reichberg and Jona Rechnitz.

‘TRUMP SUPPORTERS ARE UNEDUCATED:’ British journalist Tom Slater of the anti-PC Website Spiked “finds a fair bit of prejudice among anti-Trump activists in Long Island:”

There are plenty of reasons to dislike Donald Trump. He’s a crass opportunist, who, for all his talk of sticking it to the freedom-squishing status quo, has more than his fair share of authoritarian tendencies. But this protest in a sleepy New York suburb, and the wretching that Trump has sparked among the cosmopolitan classes nationwide, isn’t really about him. It’s about his supporters: the dumb rednecks who, Sally and Co tell us, know not what they do.

Trump may not go the distance at the Republican convention in July, but this fear and loathing of the masses is here to stay.

Read the whole thing.

There’s a reason why “this fear and loathing of the masses is here to stay” — it’s never gone away. It’s been the philosophy of the American left for over a century now, hence the title of Fred Siegel’s 2014 history of the American left, The Revolt Against the Masses, and his observation early on in the book that “The best short credo of liberalism came from the pen of the once canonical left-wing literary historian Vernon Parrington in the late 1920s. ‘Rid society of the dictatorship of the middle class.’”

The middle class is merely returning a long-overdue favor, at least until the full-on arrival of “The Coming Middle Class Anarchy.” In the meantime, as Glenn explored in USA Today a couple of weeks ago in a piece titled “How David Brooks created Donald Trump,” “The political establishment denounced bourgeois Tea Partiers. Now, they must face raucous working-class Trumpsters.”

AS A WISE COMMUNITY ORGANIZER ONCE SAID, PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Fla. gov. Rick Scott releases attack ad against woman who called him an ‘a–hole.’

ASTROTURF R US: Crowd Source: Inside the company that provides fake paparazzi, pretend campaign supporters, and counterfeit protesters.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: B-52s arrive in Qatar to join bombing campaign against ISIS.

As one Twitter user noted, Obama’s “heard some talk of ‘carpet bombing ISIS’ lately, and is trying to keep up appearances.”

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: America’s Cities Have Become Playgrounds For Rich, Childless White People.

NEW DRAFT ARTICLE, “DE-POLICING,” SEEMS TO PROVIDE EMPIRICAL SUPPORT FOR “FERGUSON EFFECT” CLAIMS.

Who could have seen this coming at the time? Other than everyone, that is.

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-RUN CITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF OFFICIAL POVERTY AND ENVIRONMENTAL VIOLENCE? Poorest Sections of Los Angeles Blighted with Most Illegal Dumping, Litter, and Decay.

Victor Davis Hanson frequently sees the strange dichotomy of California up close and personal on his family’s farm and neighboring hometown of Fresno. As he has noted on several occasions, the state’s leftwing elites in Sacramento are utterly obsessed with passing more and more environmental laws, which impact primarily its middle-class citizens (ban the shopping bag!) and its business owners (try building anything in California without obtaining a stack of permits first). Which makes for a sharp contrast with their see-no-evil attitude towards illegal immigrants and their crimes.

As he wrote in 2013, along with a photo he took of refuse dumped alongside his family’s vineyard, “The miscreants had already dumped their trash: chemical drums, paints, solvents, oils, concrete, tires, garbage, and lots of broken fluorescent glass tubes — something a bit worse than the usual toxic brew that is left on San Joaquin Valley property. How strange that the California legislature can pass all sorts of new laws over the last six months — transgendered access to either boy or girl restrooms in the public schools, the banning of lead bullets, driver’s licenses for illegal aliens — but it cannot go after the epidemic of destroying the ecology of the San Joaquin Valley countryside. If only there were a spotted toad or a lavender newt native to the vineyard, perhaps the Bay Area intelligentsia would change their views about unchecked illegal immigration. I think the rationale of the dumpers is that there are always enough law-abiding citizens left to pick up after the casual law-breaking of the fewer. But are the fewer still the fewer?”

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: FBI Warns of Cyber Threat to Electric Grid; DHS intel report downplayed cyber threat to power grid.

Entirely unrelated: The Amazon Emergency Prep Store. Plus, Emergency & Long-Term Storage Food Deals. When bad things happen, it’s good to have food.

Plus, Generators and Portable Power. Also, inverters.

And much more on the subject of preparedness here and here.

REPUBLICAN BIG SPENDING DÉJÀ VU — ALL OVER AGAIN: “But despite these lessons. Despite the fact that cronyism, or, as the left calls it, ‘corporate welfare’ is roundly decried on both the right and the left, despite the fact that the GOP lost the Congress in 2006 in no small measure on the issue of cronyism and spending, here we are again, in 2016.”

Read the whole thing.

Flashback: Glenn’s pre-postmortem for the GOP in 2006.

THE CHALKENING (CONT’D): Newsweek: Armed With Chalk, Trump Supporters Are a New Breed of College Republicans. “Trump is the first politician in a long time to not care about political correctness.”

1979: ANNUS HORRIBILIS—MODERN JIHAD GOES GLOBAL.

ENTITLED TWIT GETS JOB AS GAY TALESE’S ASSISTANT, FAILS, CALLS HIM SEXIST. You’re not above making tea.

AT AMAZON, new releases on Blu-Ray & DVD.

Plus, $150 off the Total Gym XLS.

Also, 50% off on Insinkerator instant hot-water dispensers. We have one of these and love it.