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PUSHING BACK AGAINST FRAUD: The Voter Purges Are Coming.

MOSUL AND CONTEMPORARY URBAN WARFARE: My latest Creators Syndicate column.

RELATED: Some more details on the continuing combat in and around Mosul. Like I say in the column, it’s not surprising.

USMC LCAC: A Landing Craft Air Cushion participates in an exercise off Hawaii. These things are beasts.

UPDATE: OK, USMC using a USN LCAC, courtesy of American taxpayers. These big air cushion craft are so impressive. I’ve been in the well deck of an LHD and watched them exit and enter. The well deck was dry, too — sort of. Quite a show.

BLUE CITY BLUES: Urban Institute Cites Segregation for Chicago Income Disparity, Homicide Rate.

Why are Democrat-run cities such cesspits of institutionalized racism?

JOURNALISM: NPR Killed Book Interview ‘Because I Sounded Too Reasonable’.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S NEW IRAN SANCTIONS: We need to add a few more.

The U.S. Treasury Department designated 16 entities and individuals for supporting “illicit Iranian actors or transnational criminal activity,” according to a statement.

Some of those targeted had supported the Iranian military or Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) by developing drones, fast attack boats and other military equipment. Others stole U.S. and western software programs, which were sold to the Iranian government, according to the statement.

For the record, the Obama-Ayatollah “nuclear agreement” is a bad joke.

HOW’S THAT MAJORITY WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? House Republicans to fall back on more modest spending plan.

House GOP leaders are resorting to Plan B on their spending strategy after falling woefully short of the support needed to pass a massive government funding package without Democratic votes.

Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced Tuesday night that the House will vote next week on a measure that includes just four of the 12 bills needed to fund the federal government. That decision comes after GOP leaders failed to get enough Republican support to pass the full dozen without the help of their minority-party counterparts.
…
After launching a whipping operation Monday night to gauge interest in voting on the full spate of spending bills, GOP leaders walked away with a tally of dozens of Republican lawmakers who said they couldn’t commit — as well as several hard “no’s” — to voting for the partisan bundle of 12 bills, according to Republican lawmakers and aides.

The survey underscored GOP leadership’s ongoing difficulty in appeasing the party’s most fiscally conservative wing while still holding onto support from moderates, and serves as a reminder that ideological differences within the House Republican conference are likely to force the majority to continue making deals with Democrats to keep the government funded.

This year’s deficit is expected to top $700 billion, and that’s absent a major war or economic downturn.

WHERE ARE THE BODIES BURIED?: Mapping North Korea’s crimes against humanity.

The link leads to a pdf published by South Korea’s Transitional Justice Working Group.

This report presents the initial findings of our project, “Mapping Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea” (the Mapping Project), which identifies locations of suspected mass burial sites, killing sites and possible sites containing documentary evidence linked to crimes against humanity in North Korea.

The report is based on two years of interviews with 375 “former residents” (defectors) of North Korea. The entire document is 60 pages long.

CHARLIE MARTIN: The Legacy Media: Overdrawn At The Credibility Bank. The wages of crying wolf.

BYRON YORK: No surprise: On Obamacare, GOP senators don’t do what they don’t want to do.

Collins, who opposes the current bill, is the only Republican in the Senate who voted against repeal back in 2015. But look at the GOP senators who voted in favor of repeal: Dean Heller, the Nevada senator who’s been very publicly reluctant to support the current effort. Shelley Moore Capito, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman, and more. Would they all vote the same way again with a Republican in the White House and a majority of voters opposed to the bill?

The answer is that it is exceedingly unlikely they will have to cast that vote. Look carefully at what McConnell said. First, the Senate will “vote to take up the House bill.” And then, after it votes to take up the House bill, the first amendment to be considered and voted on will be that December 2015 Obamacare bill. But remember, McConnell’s statement came after it became clear that Republicans would not vote to take up the bill in the first place. So if they are true to their words and vote against sending the bill to the Senate floor, then they will never have to vote on any amendments to it — meaning they won’t have to re-affirm their December 2015 support for repealing Obamacare.

The searing test of Republican hypocrisy — what radio host Hugh Hewitt called #TheHotSeatForHypocrites — won’t happen.

That doesn’t mean Obamacare repeal is dead forever. Just as it happened after initial failure in the House, Republicans will realize they have to do something after agitating for repeal for seven-plus years.

Maybe they’ll do the right thing, once they’ve exhausted all the other alternatives.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Clinton Corruption Update for July 18, 2017.

Huh. Turns out the Clinton State Department was up for sale.

WHY IS HIGHER EDUCATION SUCH A CESSPIT OF WORKER EXPLOITATION? Big City, Ph.D Position, $28,000 Salary.

The average monthly rent for an apartment in Chicago is $1,770, according to real-estate website Zillow.

If you were to take a recently advertised position at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and take an apartment at the average rate, you’d have about $600 left over after paying rent each month, not including money that goes to taxes or food.

The position in question is described as a “visiting lecturer-German basic language program director for AY 2017-2018.” The position is listed with a preference for a candidate holding a Ph.D., and one with experience in language direction experience, although those still working on their dissertations are welcome to apply.

And it pays $28,000 a year.

The job is billed as a “67 percent” position, meaning it’s not quite a full workload. But based on the work description, some are calling that into question, as well as the salary for a position based in a major city.

“I’ve been reading pretty much every ad for a job in German studies for almost a decade, and many of them have robust workloads and modest pay,” said Rebecca Schuman, a writer and former academic with a Ph.D. in German, who publicized the job ad and set off considerable criticism of it. “I have never seen anything like this in all of my years … with such a high workload, that someone disingenuously advertises itself as part-time, and just egregiously low pay.”

Schuman was forwarded the job posting from a Listserv and broke down the workload description in a Sunday blog post that she said had garnered 20,000 views as of Monday. She estimated the workload — coordinating 14 sections of courses ranging from first to fourth semester, supervising and training about 10 teaching assistants, teaching three advanced language and culture courses, and participating in departmental events — could easily top 50 hours a week.

As I’ve said before, I think Betsy DeVos should target worker exploitation at American universities. Perhaps a cap of no more than 25% of total credit hours offered by non-tenure-track faculty as a condition of receiving federal funds. . . .

UPDATE: From the comments: “I wonder how much the diversity officer makes a year there.”

COLLUSION: Postal Service broke law by letting employees do Clinton campaign work.

The OSC determined the USPS “engaged in systemic violations” of the Hatch Act, a federal law that limits certain political activities of federal employees.

The investigation was launched months ago after Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., brought constituent complaints to the OSC in October. The constituent, identified as a USPS employee, was concerned the Postal Service “incurred unnecessary overtime costs” and “improperly coordinated” with the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) when it released members for several weeks of “union official” leave without pay to participate in campaign work.

“The Labor 2016 program sought to ‘elect Hillary Clinton and pro-worker candidates across the country,’” the report said, citing campaign work like door-to-door canvassing, phone banks and other get-out-the-vote efforts.

The Republican Congress ought to keep this in mind the next time the Post Office asks for more money or a friendly regulation.

MESSAGE TO THE GOP — IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN ANYWAY, SO IT MIGHT AS WELL HAPPEN WHILE YOU’RE IN THE MAJORITY: Trump calls on Senate to end filibuster after healthcare defeat.

LIZ SHELD IS ON THE ROAD: So it’s an abbreviated morning brief, but still loaded with links.

Also, that picture she found of Paul Ryan should probably be turned into a meme.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: ‘All options on table’ for U.S. sanctions against Venezuela.

WELL, IT’S MORE LIKE THEY’RE JUST DROPPING THE MASK: LIBERAL TALKING HEADS TURN AGAINST THE WEST.

BUTTINSKY: Girl at lemonade stand threatened by a man who said he’d call police for lack of a business license.

This is the story of a little girl from Discover Bay who set up a lemonade stand on public property.

She just wanted to sell some lemonade and cookies. Her parents told her she could be there for 1 hour.

But as she was setting up she was approached by a man who was all bent out of shape by what she was doing.

(Don’t worry there is a happy ending)

Richard LaRouche is the little girl’s father.

He told me:

“The man just pulled up next to her and asked for her business license and then told her ‘I’m calling the police’ and then got on the phone and began speaking as if he was talking to police.”

“She was so scared that she came home crying and sobbing and said she didn’t want to go to jail.”

The really sad part is that the law is probably on the jerk’s side.

PURPLE STATE BLUES: Small Colorado Town the Epicenter for Anti-Fracking Campaign.

The small suburban enclave of Broomfield, CO has become the epicenter of the national debate over hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Located 13 miles from the campus of the University of Colorado-Boulder, the controversy in Broomfield centers on a recall effort that seeks to unseat the mayor – even though he is term limited and leaves office in November.

The mayor, Greg Stokes, is not a crook or a deviant. He is pro-fracking.

That close to Boulder, that probably makes him a crook and a deviant.

IGNORANCE AND MENDACITY, THE TWIN WELLSPRINGS OF “SOCIAL JUSTICE” SCHOLARSHIP: Nancy MacLean Doesn’t Understand What James Buchanan Wrote. “If MacLean errs on so fundamental a matter as what Buchanan (and the typical economist generally) means by the term ‘allocation,’ she has earned everyone’s distrust in her skills as a scholar.”

NO, ACTUALLY SHE’S STANDING UP AGAINST A LYNCH MOB — WHICH, JUST LIKE A CENTURY AGO, IS MADE UP OF DEMOCRATS: Betsy DeVos Isn’t “Enabling Rape Deniers” by Pushing for Due Process on College Campuses: As Columbia University settles a case with a student found innocent of sexual assault, the Secretary of Education is rolling back a bad Obama-era policy.

SOMETIMES IT’S ALL YOU CAN DO:  Lighting A Candle on the Road to Damascus.

I GUESS I HAVE TO LISTEN TO RADIOHEAD NOW: Radiohead’s Refusal to Back Down from Tel Aviv Gig Shows True Tolerance.