OH: North Korea’s Kim Jong Un Threatens ICBM Strike on Guam to Come ‘At Any Moment.’

IF YOU START WITH THE AXIOM THAT TRUMP IS A MANIAC WHO WILL GET US INTO A NUCLEAR WAR, THEN EVERYTHING IS EVIDENCE THAT TRUMP IS A MANIAC WHO WILL GET US INTO A NUCLEAR WAR: NYT: “Trump’s Harsh Language on North Korea Has Little Precedent, Experts Say.”

“Little Precedent” ≠ no precedent, and, in fact, the “little precedent” is — in the historical scheme, very big.

First, there was President Harry S. Truman, in 1945, demanding that the Japanese surrender or “they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”

Second, there was Bill Clinton, in 1993:

… during a speech in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea that if Pyongyang ever used nuclear weapons, “it would be the end of their country.”

Victor Cha (of the Center for Strategic and International Studies) said “I take Trump’s statement in the same spirit” as Bill Clinton’s. It’s “a message of deterrence, which is important now to avoid any miscalculation.”

I think the real audience is China. Trump is warning China that if this gets out of hand, it will get out of hand for China, too.

THIS IS KIND OF A BIG DEAL: American aircraft carrier to visit Vietnam next year, Pentagon says.

A U.S. Navy aircraft carrier will visit Vietnam next year for the first time, the Pentagon announced Tuesday, in the latest sign of growing ties between countries that 50 years ago were engaged in a lengthy war.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis met Tuesday with Ngo Xuan Lich, Vietnam’s defense minister, to discuss further steps in their mutual defense relationship and regional security challenges, the Pentagon said. The two also agreed to expand naval cooperation and the sharing of information.

“Regional security challenges” is a fancy way of saying “China.”

DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: ‘All white women are good for one thing’: Chilling outburst of member of 18-strong Asian sex gang.

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Can Mayor Rahm Emanuel Manage Chicago?

ANTITRUST: Daniel Greenfield: Bring Diversity To Google By Breaking It Up.

Silicon Valley used to be made up of small, aggressive innovators. Now its made up of flabby monopoly corporations that are run by their HR departments. Some breakups would probably do everyone a lot of good, except for the HR departments, maybe.

MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY: Nailed (virtually) to the front door of the Church of PC. Cue the wars of religion.

The truth is that the mainstream media outlets may be right that it is an “anti-diversity screed,” in the sense that it offers arguments and evidence where none are typically permitted. In this telling, diversity is more of a faith commitment. [Google’s Vice President of Diversity, Integrity, and Governance Danielle] Brown continued her statement:

Diversity and inclusion are a fundamental part of our values and the culture we continue to cultivate. We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company, and we’ll continue to stand for that and be committed to it for the long haul. As Ari Balogh said in his internal G+ post, “Building an open, inclusive environment is core to who we are, and the right thing to do. ’Nuff said.”

The striking thing about this is that it is not even an argument. It is at best a reassurance. The statements in it are all creedal. The same belief is expressed, in barely varying language, in three successive sentences. It is less a paragraph containing thought than a kind of mantra or spell.

The reaction on the outside of Google — even from those who support the memo as if it were Luther’s 95 theses — confirms that religious values are at play.

On a long enough timeline, everything becomes a Monty Python bit.

ATTENTION COMRADES: Big Lena is Listening to You.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Amid Criticism, ABA Pulls Back On Change To How Law Schools Report Jobs.

EYE IN THE SKY: U.S. Army Eyes F-35 As Missile Defense Sensor.

The F-35 could essentially support the Army the same way that the Northrop Grumman E-2D Advanced Hawkeye acts as the eyes of the U.S. Navy for early detecting and tracking of airborne threats. It could provide targeting data to land-based interceptor systems such as Patriot long before those threats show up on ground radars.

An official with the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command (USASMDC/ARSTRAT) says a classified forum has been established to investigate how the F-35 community can support the air and missile defense mission.

Richard De Fatta, director of the USASMDC/ARSTRAT’s future warfare center, says discussions are ongoing about how to integrate the Joint Strike Fighter for taking out ballistic and cruise missiles.

“It’s a great capability, so let’s see where it can contribute as an overhead asset,” he said at a Raytheon-sponsored forum here on Aug. 7, ahead of the annual Space and Missile Defense Symposium. “We’re seeing where we could go with it and what’s the art of the possible.”

The F-35’s sensor suite and networking capabilities are so ahead of the curve that the military may have only scratched the surface of what the plane can do.

NOAH ROTHMAN: Two terrible choices.

Even if the DPRK can be deterred from mounting a nuclear attack on American assets or allies using a weapon with a return address, it may be harder to deter the North Korean regime from executing covert operations using a nuclear weapon. The cash-strapped DPRK may also be tempted to contribute to the proliferation of those weapons by providing nuclear material or technology to rogue-state or non-state actors. American policymakers will have to hope they can communicate to Pyongyang that the consequences of these actions will be as grave as they would be if the Kim regime were directly responsible for an attack on American assets or allies. Such threats are likely to be empty, and they will ring hollow in Pyongyang.

The other option is no less attractive: neutralize North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. That’s a near impossible task. DPRK nuclear facilities are diffuse, hardened, and underground. Their delivery systems are road mobile and disguised. North Korea’s solid-fueled rocket capabilities may not be 100 percent reliable, but eliminating the necessity of fueling a rocket before launch makes those rockets harder to detect. The most success that American policymakers can hope for is to degrade, not destroy, North Korea’s capacity to make and deliver nuclear weapons.

Any strike on the regime in Pyongyang brings with it the potential for a regional war of the kind humanity has not seen in a generation.

Three US Presidents kicked this can down the road, until it smacked into an ICBM tipped with a miniaturized nuclear warhead.

MEGAN MCARDLE: Sick of Slow Wage Growth? Here’s Who to Blame.

The U.S. unemployment rate is 4.3 percent. That’s not just good; it’s fantastic. The last time unemployment was that low, “Stutter” was topping the Billboard charts, George W. Bush had just been sworn in as president, and Osama Bin Laden was a name known only to a few national security wonks.

Everywhere you look, you see signs of a tight labor market. Employers are complaining that they can’t find the workers they need, and when you look at the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (aka Jolts), you see that openings are up, while unemployment claims have fallen. Americans are less likely to be laid off than they have been in decades.

There’s just one place that the good news doesn’t seem to show up: wages, where growth remains, as the Washington Post recently remarked, “somewhat tepid.” If employers are having such a hard time finding workers, why don’t they do the sensible thing and offer more money? This, says Kevin Drum, is “the mystery of the tight labor market.”

It’s no fun reading a mystery without a solution, and as it happens, I have a few here in my pocket. Look at other recent trends in the labor markets: Both the supply curves and the demand curves for labor have been undergoing substantial transformations that may simply have shifted the economy to a new equilibrium. Which is an economic jargonish way of saying this may be the new normal.

Read the whole thing.

HMM: FBI conducted predawn raid of former Trump campaign chairman Manafort’s home.

PATRICK POOLE [WITH UPDATES AS THEY COME IN]: Car Ramming Attack on French Soldiers Outside Paris, Arrest Made as Terror Police Investigate.

CONOR FRIEDERSDORF: The Most Common Error in Media Coverage of the Google Memo: Many headlines labeled the document “anti-diversity,” misleading readers about its actual contents. They wanted a white-male hate object, even if they had to invent one.

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SHERLOCK HOLMES INVESTIGATES DEBBIE WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ AND HER ROGUE COMPUTER TECHNICIANS.

WELL, GOOD: Bipartisan Pair Asks Sessions to Stop Asset Forfeiture Expansion.

FUSION GPS AND ITS RUSSIA CONNECTIONS:

Here’s where it gets weird: Fusion GPS is the same firm that was hired to put together the infamous “dossier” on Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. The dossier is said to have been commissioned by the campaign of a Republican primary opponent before the project was taken over and funded by some unidentified Democratic client after Trump won the GOP nomination. It contained a wild mix of allegations, some salacious, some provably false, many of them hard or impossible to corroborate. Despite questions about the document’s reliability, the FBI relied on it in part to procure a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to eavesdrop on Carter Page, a former national security adviser to the Trump campaign.

In short, it appears Fusion GPS was simultaneously on the payroll of Democratic interests seeking to discredit Trump on the basis of his ties to the Russian government even as it was working on a lobbying effort whose beneficiaries would be Vladimir Putin and his billionaire cronies.

As someone around here once said, “Heh.”

UPDATE (from Steve): Democrats working hand-in-hand with shady Russian characters for domestic political gain? But that’s unpossible!

SEARCH AND RESCUE IN THE CORAL SEA: This photo was taken August 5, right after a Marine MV-22 Osprey crashed and three Marines went missing. 23 others were rescued. The Australian ship HMAS Melville located the downed MV-22. The Marine Corps has determined the missing Marines are dead: 1st Lt. Benjamin Cross, 26, Cpl. Nathaniel Ordway, 21, and Pfc. Ruben Velasco, 19. All of us regret their loss and thank them for their service.

RELATED: The V-22 is an expensive aircraft.