WHAT DIVERSITY OFFICERS all believe.

THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRAFT DRIED UP: Why Venture Capitalists Abandoned Clean Energy.

THE AMAZON REVIEWS ON TIM KAINE & HILLARY CLINTON’S BOOK are amusing.

IMAGINE IF THE PRESS WEREN’T DEMOCRAT OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES: Hillary’s Hellish Week.

FROM KEN PRESCOTT: Not By Sight.

PROBABLY SKINNY MEN TOO.  IN OTHER NEWS, POPE STILL CATHOLIC: Employers are more likely to hire skinny women.

LIKE A DOG RETURNS TO HIS VOMIT: Bill Clinton’s birthday bash proves the Clintons just can’t stop influence-peddling.

FROM DAVID BURKHEAD: Big Blue.

THE FISH DIES BY THE MOUTH: SJW’s biting On The Lure Of Big Organic, An Industry Netting $43 Billion Last Year. You Gotta Fight For Your Right . . . to Microgreens.

NOT COVERED BY THE FORMERLY MAINSTREAM MEDIA: As Bill Whittle puts it, they are now the alternative media. A Danger to democracy.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with 32% saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. This is down eight percentage points from last year.

IS IT RECOVERY SUMMER YET? Moody’s: Sears’ and Kmart’s shutdown is imminent.

ROGER KIMBALL: Kurosawa on the US Election.

TWEET OF THE DAY:

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Georgia Welcomes 180 1Ls, Down 5% From Last Year (27% From 2010).

FORMER McCLATCHY DC BUREAU CHIEF: CLINTON SURROGATE SID BLUMENTHAL PITCHED ME ‘BIRTHER’ STORY IN 2008.

Related: FLASHBACK 2007: MSNBC Blasts Hillary’s Obama Birtherism.

More: Clinton aides claim Obama photo wasn’t intended as a smear, the London Guardian reported in February of 2008. “Barack Obama’s campaign team today accused Hillary Clinton’s beleaguered staff of mounting a desperate dirty tricks operation by circulating a picture of him in African dress, feeding into false claims on US websites that he is a Muslim.”

As Ace writes today, “Well that guy who said point-blank that Sid Blumenthal pitched the Obama Birtherism conspiracy to him in 2008 is more than just an investigative gadfly — he’s formerly with McClatchy, so he has credentials, and you understand the importance of credentialism in the media.”

UPDATE: “Blumenthal pushed McClatchy so hard on birther story that they sent a reporter to Kenya.”

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Hi, I am a cat lady. I may even have kitty litter in my hair. Wanna date?

Related: I have three cats, but don’t call me a crazy cat lady.

AT AMAZON, Fall Deals in Outdoor Heating. We have a couple of propane patio heaters, and they really extend the season.

Plus, deals on Musical Instruments.

HMM: Prostate Cancer Study Details Value of Treatments.

Researchers followed patients for 10 years and found no difference in death rates between men who were picked at random to have surgery or radiation, or to rely on “active monitoring” of the cancer, with treatment only if it progressed.

Death rates from the cancer were low over all: only about 1 percent of patients 10 years after diagnosis.

But the disease was more likely to progress and spread in the men who opted for monitoring rather than for early treatment. And about half the patients in the study who had started out being monitored wound up having surgery or radiation.

The patients are still being followed, which should reveal whether the death rate will eventually increase for the men assigned to monitoring.

Doctors say the findings should help reassure men that surgery and radiation are equally reasonable choices in the early stages of the disease.

Well, stay tuned I guess.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.”

—Lord Melbourne (1779-1848), doing a pretty neat job of summing up the Obama era, as quoted in “It Doesn’t Affect You, But It Does,” at the Political Hat.

JAKE TAPPER: THAT TRUMP PRESS CONFERENCE WAS A “POLITICAL RICKROLL.”

As John Hinderaker adds at Power Line, “What’s funny about this is that reporters were done in by their own partisan obsession with ‘birtherism,’ the now-discredited suspicion that Obama was telling the truth when he claimed for many years to have been born in Kenya. Trump’s tweet said not a word about it, but reporters let wishful thinking get the better of them. To be fair, it isn’t difficult to outsmart most reporters. But it is still fun to see it done in such epic fashion.”

Indeed.™ The DNC-MSM created our current troll-in-chief in 2008. And they’ve chosen the form of their destructor in 2016.

SHOCKINGLY, IT DIDN’T PAN OUT: There was once a plot to drain the Mediterranean sea and link Europe to Africa.

EPISTEMIC CLOSURE: Why We Turned Off Comments.

AT AMAZON, deals on Printers.

Plus, savings on Small Appliances.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: The Infantilizing of the Academy, as diagnosed by David Solway.

Read the whole thing.

Related! Latest Campus Safe-Space Incursion: Wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ Hat (Video).

THE EXCITEMENT OF DRONE RACING: “It’s way more exciting than golf.”