PUSHBACK: Poll: Vast Majority Of Germans In Favor Of Burqa Ban.

COMING SOON: FREXIT? French support for the EU project is crumbling on the Left and Right.

BIRDS DO IT, BEES DO IT, EVEN OLD-FASHIONED CISGENDERED FLEAS DO IT: Zoos Are Polluting Our Children’s Minds With Dangerous Gender Stereotypes (Study).

POLL: Majority of voters want Johnson on debate stage.

The majority of American voters want to see Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson participate in the presidential debates, a new poll released Thursday shows.

The Quinnipiac University poll shows 62 percent of likely voters nationally say Johnson should be included in the debates this year.

Republicans and Democrats feel similarly about the issue, the poll indicates, with 60 percent of Democrats and 56 percent of Republicans saying Johnson should be allowed to debate Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Among independent voters, 69 percent think Johnson should be allowed to participate in the presidential debates.

As Trump and Clinton experience record low favorability numbers among the electorate, Johnson hopes more voters will flock to third-party candidates and help him claim a spot on the debate stage to increase his national exposure.

I’m as lukewarm on Johnson as he is on libertarianism. But I’d like to see him on the stage.

TORONTO STAR WRITER WANTS AIR SHOW ABOLISHED BECAUSE IT “TRAUMATIZES” REFUGEES: “He complains that it is too loud, but more importantly, that many of ‘our neighbours’ who have fled war torn lands might be ‘traumatized’ by this ‘antiquated’ display of military might. I guess Smith doesn’t realize that many of the ‘neighbours’ Smith pretends to care about were liberated by good guys flying jets just like the ones Torontonians will flock to watch on the weekend.”

Well, that’s one way to land a cushy gig with CNN or AP.

CHICKENS, ROOST: Obamacare sticker shock hits key Senate races.

Senate Democrats might yet snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

AREN’T THEY ALL THIS YEAR? It’s Official: Gary Johnson Is A Left-Wing Candidate — Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson just came out in favor of a big new carbon tax. What the heck is going on here?

At least when it comes to politicians, Newsweek wasn’t kidding in 2009, were they?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Richmond Welcomes 112 1Ls, Down 36% From Last Year’s 175.

I THINK THIS IS RIGHT: Democrats Have Cried Wolf On Racism So Often That This Won’t Help Them Much.

Hillary led off her speech calling Trump a racist and a race-baiter with the same sort of hackneyed misinterpretation Americans have come to expect from Democrats. Joe Biden once said that eminently non-racist, classy Mitt Romney wanted to put people back in chains; it doesn’t go very far when Hillary calls Trump racist for telling black people that they live in poverty and without proper education and home ownership – particularly when Democrats tell black Americans the same thing routinely. Hearing Hillary talk up the “vibrancy of black-owned businesses…or the strength of the black church” is ridiculous, since we know that if Trump said the exact same thing, she’d label him – wait for it – an out-of-touch racist. Trump pointed this out before the speech, and he’s right, at least in that respect.

Plus:

Hillary doesn’t get to say this. She and her husband destroyed Bob Dole as a human being. She routinely savaged George W. Bush. Her party ripped apart John McCain. And this year, Hillary declared Republicans her enemies. The only good Republicans are the ones in her memory.

Yep. Every four years the GOP nominee is literally Hitler, only to be resurrected as one of the “good Republicans” later in contrast to the new guy who’s literally Hitler.

SORRY, NOT FOR ME: The Joy Of Working At 4 AM. Honestly, if I had my druthers I’d keep my student hours, staying up until 3 and sleeping to 11 am. My most productive hours were always between 11 pm and 2 am. Sadly, that’s not conducive to a good domestic life, especially when you’re married to a morning person.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Stop What You’re Doing and Update Your iPhone Right Now.

ACTUALLY, SHE’S JUST HOPING NO PICTURES OF BILL COME OUT BEFORE THE ELECTION: Hillary Clinton Talking About Revenge Porn Is So Important For The Battle Against Online Harassment.

NO: Whiskey’s Next Wave Is Lighter, Mellower, Made for Millennials.

THIS SHOULD SURPRISE NO ONE: “The Penn State study found that, on average, mothers who co-slept past 6 months experienced more fragmented sleep, and they reported less satisfaction in their marriages and in how well they and their partners were working together as parents.”

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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: My latest New York Observer “War On Honesty” column examines a national disgrace, the Clinton State-Foundation.

YA THINK? The Economic Stimulus Perplex: Could Regulation Be the Problem? Progressives and the failure of massive government spending to boost jobs and economic growth.

n his column, Samuelson asks, “What ails the private sector? Can we do anything about it? Those are the crucial questions.”

Perhaps the answer to what ails the private sector is excessive regulation. A recent study by the conservative American Action Forum estimates that the Obama administration is on track to adopt over 600 major regulations (those costing more than $100 million each) by the end of the president’s term. The total cost of complying with all of the new regulations will add up to $813 billion. The libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute calculates that extent and cost of Washington’s rules and mandates is $1.8 trillion annually, amounting to about $15,000 per household each year. Even the New York Times on Sunday called President Obama, the regulator-in-chief whose new rules have “imposed billions of dollars in new costs on businesses and consumers.”

I have reported earlier analyses that found that regulatory drag has made the U.S. economy $4 trillion smaller than it would otherwise have been. That amounts to a lot of foregone jobs and consumption. I would like to suggest that hugely escalating regulatory costs under the Obama administration have mostly offset whatever the benefits that orthodox Keynesians would expect from economic stimulus. In other words, President Obama has been trying to use Keynesian stimulation to rev the economy while simultaneously jamming down hard on the regulatory brakes.

Well, regulation is an important source of graft.

THEY’LL BE RELEASED SEPTEMBER 13: A federal court has ordered the State Department to hand over another batch of Clinton emails by September 13. Given the way the State Department and the Obama Administration obstruct justice we may see them September 13, 2033, if ever.

Get this:

Judicial Watch said the department has admitted in a court filing that some of the emails that Clinton had deleted included some “Benghazi-related documents.” That case involves emails between Clinton and the White House in the week after the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans.

Weren’t these supposed to be personal emails? Didn’t Hillary tell us they were about Chelsea’s wedding and yoga classes?

THE DAMAGE DONE BY COMMUNISM IS LONG-LASTING AND EXPENSIVE: Germany: Former East to lag behind West for years to come.

APPALACHIA’S MELUNGEONS: From The Economist.

Excerpt:

The two big questions about them encapsulate their ambiguous status—on the boundaries of races and territories, and between suffering and hope, imagination and fact. Where did the Melungeons come from? And do they still exist?

NOBODY TELL NOTORIOUS ROBOPHOBE MATTHEW YGLESIAS ABOUT THIS: Squishy “Octobot” Heralds New Era of Soft Robotics.

Interest in soft robots has taken off in recent years, as engineers look beyond rigid Terminator-type machines to designs that can squeeze into tight spaces, mould to their surroundings, or handle delicate objects safely. But engineering soft versions of key parts has challenged researchers. “The brains, the electronics, the batteries—those components were all hard,” says roboticist Daniela Rus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. “This work is new and really exciting.”

The octobot is made of silicone rubber. Its ‘brain’ is a flexible microfluidic circuit that directs the flow of liquid fuel through channels using pressure-activated valves and switches. “It’s an analogy of what would be an electrical circuit normally,” says engineer Robert Wood at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the study’s leaders. “Instead of passing electrons around, we’re passing liquids and gases.”

The prototype in the video doesn’t do much, or do it quickly. But it’s a fascinating proof-of-concept.

IF TRUMP IS SUCH A HORRIBLE RACIST, WHY DID HILLARY ATTEND HIS WEDDING? OH, RIGHT, SHE WAS PAID TO. Clinton links Trump to racists, declares him unfit for office. Standing up to racism boldly — unless someone offers you money!

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Can porn star-turned-Bollywood actress Sunny Leone teach India to be cool about sex?

WELCOME NATIONAL COMPANY OF THE WIZ, SPINAL TAP AND HILLARY CLINTON: Hillary’s ‘Kimmel’ Appearance Beaten in Ratings by ‘Teen Mom’ and ‘Friends’ Reruns.

JOHN SCHINDLER: Hillary’s Secret Kremlin Connection Is Quickly Unraveling.

As part of the reset, Hillary encouraged and enabled American and European investment in Russia, particularly in high-tech firms. A key role was played by the Skolkovo Innovation Center, a sprawling complex in Moscow’s western suburbs that was established in 2009 as Russia’s answer to Silicon Valley. With encouragement from the State Department, American companies jumped aboard. Cisco pledged $1 billion of investment in Skolkovo in 2010, and Google and Intel quickly joined the bandwagon. All three “just happened” to be major investors in the Clinton Foundation too.

This was the consistent pattern. As Schweizer explained, “Of the 28 U.S., European and Russian companies that participated in Skolkovo, 17 of them were Clinton Foundation donors” or had hired former President Clinton to give speeches. How much money these Skolkovo benefactors gave to Clinton, Inc. cannot yet be determined, but Schweizer concluded that it’s somewhere between $6.5 million and $23.5 million, with the proviso that since the Clinton Foundation has yet to reveal all its donors, the true figure could be much higher.

Then there’s the matter of what Skolkovo actually is. In truth, it’s nothing like Silicon Valley except in outward appearance. It’s a fully state-driven enterprise—funded largely by the Kremlin and acting on its orders. It does the bidding of the Russian government, and President Putin has taken intense interest in his high-tech complex, understanding its value to the country’s defense and security sector.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that Western intelligence considers Skolkovo to be an extension of Russia’s military-industrial complex—and its intelligence services.

Smoke, meet fire.

Just earlier today, Ruth Marcus had the gall to write that “Obliging a Donor Is Not Necessarily Criminal” in her latest gambit to help circle the wagons for Clinton.

Anyway, read the whole, sordid thing.