KENDALL JENNER’S PEPSI AD IS THE DEATH KNELL FOR OBAMA’S BELOVED PROTEST CULTURE, Stephen Miller writes at Heat Street:

If this sounds familiar, it’s because this is the exact same phenomena that elected Barack Obama president. It’s the same phenomena as attempting to make 75-year-old socialist Bernie Sanders into some kind of hip cool kooky pop culture meme.

Obama was also a product. He was packaged up with a slick logo, catchy slogans and a great marketing campaign and people were allowed to attach whatever they wanted to him.

Obama was a can of delicious and refreshing Pepsi. His domestic policy never amounted much to other than “fair shot” or “yes we can” and having subordinates in the media push his message out to take to the streets or block traffic as a means of somehow attempting to get politicians to change what they believe and vote the way he wanted them to on issues he cared about. Legislating was never an option. Symbolic gestures of marching across bridges is what sold.

When a Cambridge police officer arrested a professor friend of his, he wasted no time calling the officer stupid, encouraged protests, and in the end lectured the country over a beer summit over the mistake he himself made.

Jonah Goldberg and Rod Dreher have compared Pepsi’s ad to Columbia’s infamous late ‘60s “But The Man Can’t Bust Our Music” ad; others have compared it to the finale of the TV series Mad Men, in which Don Draper audits an est session at Big Sur, and then in a flash of inspiration, creates the famous Coca-Cola “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” ad. But music companies have been selling rebellion since the days of Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and Elvis; in the ‘60s, Decca made its fortune selling “transgressive” Rolling Stones records, and Columbia made their money selling Blood, Sweat & Tears, Simon & Garfunkel, Santana, and in the following decade, Bruce Springsteen and Pink Floyd.

As Mark Steyn wrote a decade ago in his essay on Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind and its chapter attacking rock music, “unlike most revolutions, the regime itself—in the shape of RCA, Columbia, Warner Brothers, and the other corporate entities that dominate the business to this day—proved far wilier survivors than Louis XVI. They’ve made a very nice living out of ersatz revolution.” Columbia’s biggest mistake in their “Man Can’t Bust Our Music” ad was explicitly calling attention to what a sham ‘60s rebellion by way of rock and roll actually was. Unlike Coke’s pioneering multi-culti “Teach the World” ad, the same can be said of Pepsi, for crafting an ad that turned out to be too on-the-nose, thus angering those who should have been its biggest supporters.

THE INTERNET OF THINGS ISN’T LOOKING ANY BETTER: IoT garage door opener maker bricks customer’s product after bad review. And I don’t think I’ll buy anything from Garadget, ever.

TOMORROW’S THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE LILLELID MURDERS. The Insta-wife’s documentary on the killings, Six, has gotten nearly 4.5 million views on YouTube.

MICROBIOME NEWS: ‘Young poo’ makes aged fish live longer: The gut microbes of young killifish can extend the lifespans of older fish – hinting at the microbiome’s role in ageing. “Previous studies have hinted at a link between the microbiome and ageing in a range of animals. As they age, humans and mice tend to lose some of the diversity in their microbiomes, developing a more uniform community of gut microbes, with once-rare and pathogenic species rising to dominance in older individuals. The same pattern holds true in killifish, whose gut microbiomes at a young age are nearly as diverse as those of mice and humans, says Valenzano. ‘You can really tell whether a fish is young or old based on its gut microbiota.’ . . . The young microbiome ‘transplant’ also had dramatic effects on the longevity of fish that got them: their median lifespans were 41% longer than fish exposed to microbes from middle-aged animals, and 37% longer than fish that received no treatment (antibiotics alone also lengthened lifespan, but to a lesser extent).”

CAMPUS SNOWFLAKE CAUGHT MELTING ON VIDEO: This Texas University Student Completely Freaked Out When He Saw a Pro-Life Demonstration.

FLAGLER COLLEGE FINALLY APPROVED A STUDENT’S FREE SPEECH EVENT… DAYS AFTER THE EVENT TOOK PLACE — And only after initially prohibiting the student from hosting the event at all.

WE NEED A VACCINE: One in 10 Pregnant Women With Zika in U.S. Have Babies With Birth Defects.

“I DON’T THINK BILL DID ANYTHING WRONG.” President Trump Defends Bill O’Reilly Against Sexual Harassment Allegations.

PROGRESS: Marines Testing Polymer Solutions to Cut Ammo Weight.

“We have to have lighter equipment,” Williford said, adding that the service is interested in using “polymer magazines, polymer rounds” and other polymer products to reduce ammunition weight.

The Marines have tested polymer-cased .50 caliber ammunition, but companies also make polymer ammunition pallets that offer significant weight reduction.

“On a .50-caliber pallet, we think we can save 1,000 pounds per pallet,” Williford said.

The U.S. Army has had a strong interest in reducing the weight of ammunition for a decade. The service has invested in the Lightweight Small Arms Technology program, which has produced a matured lightweight squad automatic weapon that is about half the weight of a 17-pound M249 squad automatic weapon.

I wonder if lighter rounds would be easier on the barrels as well as on the shooters.

ROGER KIMBALL: Susan Rice Is a Horrible Liar, ‘Incidentally’ Speaking.

SILENT SQUAW: Elizabeth Warren Goes Silent on Equal Pay Day After Free Beacon Report.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) failed to acknowledge Equal Pay Day for the first time in her Senate career after it was reported on Tuesday that women working in her Senate office earned just 71 percent of what was earned by men.

Warren has used Equal Pay Day, which fell on April 4 this year, in years past as an opportunity to speak out on the gender pay gap. Last year she took to the Senate floor to call Equal Pay Day a “national day of embarrassment” and pledged to continue her “fight” until the pay gap was erased. She gave similar statements on Equal Pay Day in 2015, 2014, and 2013, her first year in the Senate.

This year, Warren was the only female Democratic senator who ignored Equal Pay Day entirely, and it was not due to a lack of opportunity.

She delivered a nearly 10 minute speech Tuesday afternoon and made no mention of equal pay. The topic of speeches during the session was the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch, but that didn’t stop fellow Democratic Senators Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), Tammy Duckworth (Ill.), or Kamala Harris (Calif.) from acknowledging Equal Pay Day.

Heh.

IT’S MORNING IN AMERICA: How calm is America these days? So calm that Black Lives Matter and the anti-Trump “Resistance” have time to argue over a Pepsi ad they find problematic, because it co-opts their “movement.” Which is why half the left resembled these poor sods last night on Twitter:

I blame the Frisbee Ion.

FIREBRAND: Nikki Haley Slams ‘Assad, Russia And Iran’ In United Nations Speech.

UN Ambassador used to be such a sleepy little job.

THAT MUST HAVE REQUIRED QUITE A SHOEHORN: Someone Stuck a Quad-Turbo V12 Into a Toyota 86.

BUT OF COURSE: Whites Banned From ‘Black Lives Matter’ Event in Philadelphia.

The new anti-racism is nearly indistinguishable from the old racism.

ASTRONOMY: Citizen scientists may have located candidates for Planet Nine.

I’M NOT SURE I WANT THEM MAKING THAT DECISION: IBM Program Would Help Robocars Decide Whether to Cede Control to Human Drivers.

A BOTNET IS BORN: Navy to Demo ‘Motley Crew’ Collaborative Drone Attack.

The next big thing for unmanned naval aviation is a group of unmanned aerial systems that can share information and then assign tasks and make strategic targeting decisions based on available intelligence.

This concept, called Motley Crew, will be demonstrated by the Navy in 2018 or 2019, said Rear Adm. Mark Darrah, the service’s program executive officer for Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons.

Speaking at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference Tuesday, Darrah said there are many factors still to be decided — which unmanned systems to feature, for example, and what the target sets would be — but the goal is clear: Develop autonomous systems that could be strategic, collaborative and efficient.

SkyNet smiles.

IS ANYBODY HERE NOT O.K. WITH THIS? You May Not Live Long Enough to Ride a Driverless Car.

Well, maybe not me, but Glenn has plans to live for a very, very long time.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Well, it’s as much a hope as a plan, but . . .

WELL, THAT’S DISAPPOINTING: Samsung’s Tizen is riddled with security flaws, amateurishly written. I’m not excited about the Internet Of Things.

PERHAPS, BUT WHICH PEOPLE? House Intel Dem Predicts ‘Some People End Up in Jail’ After Russia Investigation.

SO ON A WHIM, I started re-reading Ric Locke’s Temporary Duty the other night. It’s every bit as good as I remembered. His untimely death was sad for a lot of reasons, of course, but I also regret that he never finished the sequel.

I’M SURPRISED TO SEE THIS IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS: The Case Against Immigration Why the United States Should Look Out for Itself.

ANDREW MCCARTHY: On Susan Rice, the Issue Is Abuse of Power, Not Criminality. “At her direction, the Obama White House violated the public trust. . . . If the new reporting is to be believed, Rice orchestrated the unmasking of communications involving the Democrats’ political rivals — the Trump campaign. Her current stress on the lawfulness of the intelligence collection is a straw man.”

I’m pretty sure there’s illegality in the mix, too, and that it will come out.

Related: Fresh evidence the Russia ‘scandal’ is a Team Obama operation.

DARKER THAN DARK: A Visual Guide to Vantablack, the Darkest Substance Ever Made.

It’s so dark, photos of things coated in it look like bad photoshops — I had to triple-check to make sure Vantablack wasn’t an April Fool’s hoax.