TO BE FAIR, THAT’S A GIVEN: Post Detroit, the Press Will Redouble Their Attack on Trump as Racist, Roger Simon writes.

YOU’RE JUST JEALOUS THAT THE IMAGINARY VOICES TALK TO HER: LENA DUNHAM MOCKED FOR ASSUMING NFL STAR ODELL BECKHAM JR. SNUBBED HER ‘MARSHMALLOW’ BODY.

And the train wrecks keep piling up from this story: L.V. Anderson of Slate speculates that Beckham isn’t interested in Dunham because, “Perhaps (as the eternal rumors have it) he’s gay. Regardless, Dunham has tapped into a real phenomenon—men who really don’t know what to make of women who don’t sexually interest them—and I, for one, intend to borrow her marshmallow line the next time this happens to me.”

As Dylan Gwinn responds at NewsBusters, “In other words: this event may not have even happened the way this person relates it in this interview. But let’s not let a little thing like proof get in the way of compounding this journalistic malfeasance by implying that he’s gay.”

OK, so the imaginary voices aren’t just talking exclusively to Lena Dunham these days. Slate is the last bastion of Internet journalism owned by the Graham family, which until recently owned the Washington Post and Newsweek. Think about how far the mighty have fallen, going from Woodward and Bernstein blowing the lid off Watergate, to publishing a piece speculating that an NFL player is gay based solely on the fervid imagination of one of the most unappealing 30 year old actresses on television. That’s gotta be worth at least another Pulitzer or two alone right?

MORE THAN A BIT OF IRONY HERE, I BELIEVE: Obama tells Turkey’s Erdogan it’s important to secure the border (Turkish-Syrian border). They met at the G20 economic summit in Hangzhou, China.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1214.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE. What Free Won’t Fix: Too Many Public Colleges are Dropout Factories.

(Via Maggie’s Farm, which has loads more links for your holiday weekend reading pleasure.)

WELL, YES: Competition Works Best to Control Drug Prices.

Companies are indeed greedy, but they are always greedy — it’s a constant, like the speed of light. You don’t see prices suddenly popping up because of a constant. You see prices suddenly popping up because something has changed.

And what might that something be? One thing that changed is that nine years ago, Mylan bought the rights to make the device. And Mylan decided to raise prices.

But that’s not quite enough of an answer. Companies often decide they’d like to raise prices. And yet, we rarely see markets where prices shoot up by a factor of five when there’s been little change in the underlying costs.

However, those markets have something that the market for EpiPens lacks: competition. People trying to produce a generic version of the EpiPen are held back by the difficulties of getting approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

Obviously, the solution is more bureaucracy.

ESPN MAG’S HOWARD BRYANT: ‘WHITE MEDIA’ USED ‘INTIMIDATION’ ON BRAVE, DISSENTING QB KAEPERNICK.

What a way to infer that an NFL quarterback is a pansy – if Kaepernick can be intimidated by a bunch of pencil-necked lefty geeks with iPads and press badges, how can he face down the hulking defensive lines of the Steelers and the Raiders?

YEAH, IT’S NO SUBSTITUTE FOR SUDAFED, EVEN THOUGH IT’S MARKETED AS SUCH: Common decongestant may be worthless, study finds: Doctors and pharmacists call on the FDA to ditch phenylephrine.

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, MY LATEST WAR ON HONESTY COLUMN: (Bumped.) Was Trump’s trip to Mexico rabbit out of the hat election magic? It’s Number XIII in the series. As for the series, just remember that in 2012 the Dems declared Repubs were waging War On Women. But the War On Honesty is for real. Hillary’s certainly waging War On Honesty, aided and abetted by a lap dog mainstream media (subject of Number XI).

A HOSTILE EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT ON ACCOUNT OF RELIGION: ‘UCLA campus has become hostile towards Jews, Israel supporters.’

FORMER NYC MAYOR DAVID DINKINS, 89, ACCUSED OF HIT AND RUN WHICH LEFT DELIVERY CYCLIST WITH A BROKEN ANKLE, SAYS HE WASN’T EVEN AWARE HE HAD BEEN IN AN ACCIDENT.

Huh – David Dinkins morphed into Sherman McCoy from the Bonfire of the Vanities so slowly, I hardly even noticed.

HONG KONG HOLDS AN ELECTION TODAY FOR ITS LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL: This is the first election since 2014’s pro-democracy protests. A younger bloc of voters is mulling independence. “A growing yearning for independence and animosity towards Beijing in the southern coastal city pose one of the central government’s most pressing domestic political issues.” Gee, why don’t they trust the Communist government in Beijing?

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Overpriced Fancypants Vanderbilt University Festoons Campus With Absurd ‘Ze, Zir, Zirs’ Pronoun Posters.

Photo of the latest additions to the Newspeak Dictionary at link.

Related: West Virginia University: Calling Someone The ‘Wrong’ Prounoun Is A Title IX Violation.

MORE LIES EXPOSED AND INCOMPETENCE REVEALED: The Federalist examines Hillary’s FBI interview.

THIS ISN’T THE 21st CENTURY I WAS PROMISED: “The self-destruction of Anthony Weiner is something entirely new,” John Podhoretz writes in the New York Post. “It is a phenomenon of the social-media age. Weiner has been undone both professionally and personally by a very specific fetish that could not have existed at any other time in history — one in which he takes a photograph of his private parts and instantly transmits that photo to a woman he doesn’t know as part of a virtual flirtation that evidently never goes further than salacious texting.”

Plus this warning, which is both Orwellian in its implications and very much true: “In 2016, how we conduct our virtual lives may be more important than how we conduct ourselves in the real world.”

Read the whole thing.

SANTA CLARA POLICE UNION THREATENS BOYCOTT OF 49ERS GAMES OVER KAEPERNICK PROTEST.

Since one of the apparent goals of the Black Lives Matter movement is to create European Muslim-style police no-go zones in America’s worst neighborhoods, why not posh Levi’s Stadium as well?

And given the Bay Area’s legendarily well-behaved youth, really, what’s the worst that could happen if the police choose not to protect a large Northern California outdoor entertainment venue?

THE SAME WAY SHE CALLS HERSELF QUALIFIED: Rudy Giuliani asks how Hillary Clinton can call herself a feminist.

DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE AND THE FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE: Fired Mizzou Professor Melissa Click Joins Gonzaga Faculty.

From Bing Crosby (who attended Gonzaga during the early 1920s) to Melissa Click in less than a century. Now that’s a fundamentally transformed culture.

DAMN, IT FEELS GOOD TO BE A CLINTON: CNN Host Brooke Baldwin Stunned To Learn Hillary Aides Destroyed Phones With Hammers (video).

Ahh, the power of doublethink — I’ll bet Baldwin was genuinely stunned and not just faking it, despite a quarter century of Clinton scandals being in the news — even at CNN.

(Classical reference in headline.)

MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE OF ALL THE UNTREATABLE SEX DISEASES: Young Adults Prefer Eating Burritos To Having Sex, Says Science.

THIS ISN’T THE 21st CENTURY I WAS PROMISED: ‘Gay traffic lights’ leave pedestrians in Trafalgar Square baffled.

ANGELA MERKEL: I WANT A BORDER CONTROL SYSTEM ‘MODELED ON THE US.’

Isn’t that what caused her all the problems in the first place? Especially since the URL of the article,  presumably based on its first draft title, is “angela-merkel-i-would-open-the-borders-for-refugees-again.”

Again? When did she ever close them?

LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: Gonorrhea And Other STIs Are Becoming More And More Untreatable. The 21st Century isn’t turning out as I had hoped.