NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: US to Deploy 560 More Troops to Iraq in Preparation for Mosul Offensive.

WHY HAVE RACE RELATIONS GOTTEN SO MUCH WORSE? Because, as Roger Simon writes, the fish rots from the top.

LIZ CROKIN: Trump Does The Unthinkable.

Related: I’m A Jew Who Has Worked With Donald Trump For Years. He’s No Anti-Semite.

Remember: Every 4 years the GOP nominee is literally Hitler. A few years later — sometimes, as in Mitt Romney’s case, as few as 4 years after he was accused of giving a woman cancer — that formerly-Hitler nominee becomes the standard of once-great GOP nominees to which the current nominee fall short.

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT THIS WEEKEND: My UT colleague Michael Higdon looks at whether, in an age of “marriage equality,” polygamy should be legal.

THOMAS SOWELL ASKS AND ANSWERS: Is Obama a Socialist or a Fascist?

LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: Rioters Injure 21 Policemen In St. Paul. “When mass murderer Micah Johnson struck during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, a stark line was drawn between the peaceful protesters–everyone except Johnson–and the murderer. But it doesn’t take long for those lines to be blurred. . . . There is no such thing as a political Left without violence.”

HMM: Pressure grows on Clinton aides to lose security clearances.

It’s not clear if Clinton or her longtime aides Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan still hold active security clearances. The information is protected under the Privacy Act and absent permission from each person, the only way it can be made public is if State sees an overriding public interest in disclosing it — an unlikely scenario.

None of the aides implicated in the probe — Abedin, Sullivan and Cheryl Mills — are still employed at State. That makes it unlikely that they continue to hold security clearances, awarded on a need-to-know basis.

But department spokesman John Kirby said earlier this week that former officials could still face “administrative sanctions” for past actions — sanctions that could in theory make it incredibly difficult to be approved for security clearance in the future.

Clinton isn’t going to let a little thing like “administrative sanctions” force her to get rid of her favorite Yes Persons.

AT HOME AND ABROAD, OBAMA DECLARED A FAILURE*. “America’s Worst President? I nominate Barack Obama, the anti-Lincoln,” Myron Magnet, the founder of City Journal writes:

When the president praises the Black Lives Matter demonstrators, as if they alone of his fellow countrymen know that platitudinous truth, he is only reinforcing black grievance, when his proper role is to convince ghetto blacks that their lives matter enough for them to take responsibility for them, to stop going around with chips on their shoulders and Glocks in their waistbands, to be fathers to the children they beget, and to set for them an example of the responsible citizenship that is theirs for the asking, thanks to the efforts of so many of their countrymen, white and black, living and dead.

True to form, Obama went into grievance-mongering mode on July 7, commenting on the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile by cops in Louisiana and Minnesota. He noted that “all of us as Americans should be troubled by these shootings, because these are not isolated incidents. They’re symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system.” And he went on to detail law enforcement’s racial disparities, as if there were not even more stark and troubling racial disparities in lawbreaking. His familiar conclusion: “If you add it all up, the African American and Hispanic population, who make up only 30 percent of the general population, make up more than half of the incarcerated population. Now, these are facts. And when incidents like this occur, there’s a big chunk of our fellow citizenry that feels as if because of the color of their skin, they are not being treated the same. And that hurts.”

Later that day, a black former soldier assassinated five Dallas police officers and wounded seven more, sniping from above with a semi-automatic rifle. A sympathizer of the New Black Panther Party, which professes hatred of whites and especially Jews, the sniper, Micah X. Johnson, 25, told police who cornered and killed him that he was avenging cop killings of blacks by killing whites and especially white cops.

If you want to ignite race riots, a sure-fire way to do it is to stir up black hatred and suspicion of cops, which will in turn make cops warier of blacks and more trigger-happy, and so on, until an explosion occurs. So thanks, President Obama. You have set back American race relations by 50 years.

Meanwhile at Politico, “How The World Fell Out Of Love With Obama: In countries key to the president’s legacy, people express profound disappointment in a man from whom they expected great things.”

Yes people often feel disappointment after being conned. Or as Obama himself would say, bamboozled.

(Not least of which, from Politico itself.)

* Of course, as Glenn noted last week, “Before you call him a failure, you must know what he was trying to accomplish.”

SALENA ZITO: The Real Meaning Of Donald Trump.

CHANGE: Obama blamed for fanning anti-police hate, new surge in gun sales expected.

Former Secret Service Agent Dan Bongino, who worked in the Obama White House, said the president “is to blame for the anti-police culture out there.”

Bongino, a popular author and Florida House candidate, said that Obama for years has ignored police in focusing on racism and victims of police violence. The result, he said, is that Obama has helped create a “permissive culture to go out and crap all over law enforcement, and hey it’s all good because the cops are some subhuman species.” . . .

Law enforcement authorities he has talked to said that “they feel like Obama is actively putting them in danger.”

On Fox News Friday, Clarke added, that Obama “didn’t cause this but he fuels this sort of anger, this misplaced anger.”

Police are especially angry with Obama for blaming racism in the two police shootings this week in Louisiana and Minnesota, though racism hasn’t been cited as a cause yet.

With regard to the Dallas shooter’s motives, on the other hand, Obama says it’s a mystery.

KABUKI UPDATE: Bernie Sanders, Set for Rally With Hillary Clinton, Says Campaigns Are ‘Closer and Closer’

These two crazy kids just might make it work after all.

JOHN LOTT: Obama’s false racism claims are putting cops’ lives in danger.

So he’s acting stupidly, to coin a phrase.

I’M STILL DISAPPOINTED IT’S NOT BORIS JOHNSON: Theresa May on course to be next U.K. prime minister after rival quits.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Obama and company decline to speak honestly about Dallas.

Related: In sharp contrast, An Ex-Cop Organized a Black Lives Matter Protest — and Protestors Got More Than They Bargained For.

MICHAEL MOYNIHAN: Stockholm Syndrome: Spotify threatened to abandon Sweden if the government didn’t address over-regulation and sky-high taxes.

Not much had changed since 1969, when Susan Sontag observed that a “strong conviction of their country’s moral superiority” made Swedes “extremely sensitive to, and defensive about, any criticism published about their country abroad.” My political heterodoxy made the already difficult task of befriending Swedes something approaching an impossibility. By 2007, I had convinced my partner that her expatriation would engender less controversy than my own. In a decision that neither of us has since regretted, we fled to the United States.

So it was with interest that I picked up Finnish journalist Anu Partanen’s book “The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life,” her account of a quiescent existence in the Nordic welfare state upended by love: While I moved from New York to Sweden, Ms. Partanen had made the opposite journey, lured from Helsinki to New York by a charming American academic. In 300 pages, Ms. Partanen offers an expanded version of what my Swedish antagonists could summarize before the herring and schnapps were served: America is a pretty horrible place and would be less horrible if it were more like Finland. Or Sweden. Or Norway. Employing anecdote and meticulously cherry-picked data, Ms. Partanen argues that on virtually every metric the U.S.—a massive, sloppy collection of religions, ethnicities and distinct regional cultures—is bested by tiny, homogenous Finland. Unlike the ersatz liberty she found in America, her native country had achieved “real freedom, real independence, and real opportunity.”

It’s funny, they say that nationalism is evil, but they actually mean other people’s nationalism. And if an American moved to Sweden or Finland and wrote a book about how smug, insular, and close-minded people there are, that would be Ugly Americanism.

CONTINUITY WITH CHANGE: Majority Disapproves of Decision Not to Charge Clinton on Emails.

The FBI had its say last week, but American voters will have their say in November.

SKYNET SMILES: Drones will cause an upheaval of society like we haven’t seen in 700 years.

BYRON YORK: After all that’s happened, Trump fares no worse with Hispanic voters than Romney or McCain.

In the new survey, Clinton leads Trump among Hispanic registered voters on all issues. Just as with overall electorate, Trump performs best on the questions of which candidate will do a better job dealing with the economy and which will do a better job keeping the country safe from terrorist attack. On those issues, Clinton has a 18- and 17-point lead, respectively. Given the realities of this race, that’s close.

On which candidate will better deal with immigration, Clinton has a 48-point lead, 70 percent to 22 percent.

One fascinating note in the Pew survey. Pollsters found that about 57 percent of Latino registered voters are either bilingual or more proficient in Spanish than in English. Forty-three percent are more proficient in English than in Spanish. Among the bilingual and Spanish-dominant group, Clinton has a huge lead, 80 percent to 11 percent. Among the English-dominant group, it’s a genuinely close race — 48 percent for Clinton to 41 percent for Trump. After all that has happened, Trump polls as well or better with English-dominant Hispanic voters than with the electorate as a whole.

Fascinating, yes — but surprising?

GERMAN LEADERSHIP AGHAST AT A BREXIT IT HELPED CAUSE.

Read the whole thing, which ties in the rise of Donald Trump in America and a transatlantic elite that loathes the citizens they want to govern.

(Via Maggie’s Farm.)

DALLAS OBSERVER: One Dallas Cop’s Experience and Thoughts on Thursday Night.

To compound issues a continuation of the demonstration sprung up in front of a convenience store and the crowd there quickly grew from 30-50 to 150-200 angry demonstrators shouting things at assembled officers who stood in a skirmish line between the store and demonstrators. We worked to funnel additional resources there as well as divert some DART busses to provide transportation away for those who needed it.

Some got on and some stayed to hurl insults at officers. One officer later told me “I tried to tell them that we were there to protect them and the guy said, ‘Protect us hell! You guys are the targets tonight!’” and started laughing.

Black Lives Matter is acting like a racist hate group. You can only imagine how the press would treat Tea Partiers or Trump supporters who acted this way.

Related: The Violent Tone of Black Lives Matter Has Alienated Even Liberals Like Me.

REACTION: Dallas protesters embrace the force that took bullets for them.

LBJ gave us Nixon.

ESPN IS SIMPLY MSNBC WITH BETTER VISUALS. ESPN Panelist: Dallas Police Shooting a ‘Revenge Story.’

Kevin B. Blackistone, now with Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post, is a former Dallas Morning News columnist, incidentally.

IN OTHER WORDS, THE SAME ONE THAT’S PROTECTED OBAMA SINCE LATE 2007: Nixonian palace guard now protects Hillary.

THIS IS KNOWN AS BAD LUCK: Venezuela’s democratic façade has completely crumbled, the Washington Post reports.

Note the photo atop the article, which is captioned, “A national guard member patrols a supermarket in Caracas in February of last year.”

Well, that’s the usual endgame when a nation declares “We Are All Socialists Now,” as the Washington Post trumpeted at the dawn of the Obama era, via its then subsidiary, Newsweek.

Related: Freedom Is Receding Around the World.

Unexpectedly. Or as Stuart Chase, the socialist advisor to FDR who coined the phrase “A New Deal” asked in his 1932 book by the same name, “Why should the Soviets have all the fun remaking a world?”

(Classical reference in headline.)