HOUSE DRESS CODE BAD, REVEALING VIDEO GAME COSTUMES, ALSO BAD: Male Feminist Gamers Clutch Pearls Over Female Video Game Character Outfits.

“Male Feminist Gamers.”

TRUMP’S SIX OPTIONS FOR DENUCLEARIZING NORTH KOREA: None of them are good.

PATRICK POOLE: U.S. Soldier Arrested for Supporting the Islamic State.

HITTING A BULLET WITH ANOTHER BULLET: US successfully tests THAAD missile system amid North Korean tensions.

THAAD is used to intercept short and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. It does not target intercontinental ballistic missiles. The U.S. has a perfect record on launches, hitting 14 out of 14 targets.

“I couldn’t be more proud of the government and contractor team who executed this flight test today,” said Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Sam Greaves. “This test further demonstrates the capabilities of the THAAD weapon system and its ability to intercept and destroy ballistic missile threats. THAAD continues to protect our citizens, deployed forces and allies from a real and growing threat.”

Fox News was told it will be a few hours before imagery and video are released.

Soldiers from the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade on Kodiak conducted launcher using the same procedures they would use in an actual combat scenario, the statement read. Soldiers operating the equipment were not aware of the actual target launch time.

Well done.

IT CERTAINLY LOOKS THAT WAY: What is happening with Bill de Blasio? Has he given up even trying to appeal to ordinary voters?

UNEXPECTEDLY: Two years after the bailout, life in Greece has gotten more miserable.

The economy is stagnant, unemployment hovers around 25% and is twice as high for young adults, taxes are rising, and wages are falling. Half of Greek homeowners can’t make their mortgage payments and another quarter can’t afford their property taxes, according to the Bank of Greece.

“All these years, I’ve heard dozens of promises from the current and the previous governments on creating new jobs and bettering conditions in the country, but I never believed anything of what I heard,” said Nikos Theodoridis, 57, who became homeless during the economic crisis that began in 2007.

“Homelessness and the crisis are still here, despite all that politicians are saying,” said Theodoridis, who makes a paltry living hawking magazines on the street.

On July 5, 2015, voters soundly rejected the terms of a proposed bailout with international lenders because the plan demanded too much austerity. Yet, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his left-wing Syriza Party ignored the referendum results and signed a third bailout deal that would provide nearly $100 billion in loans the country desperately needed to avoid collapse.

Tsipras, whose party gained power on a pledge to resist further austerity requirements, reversed itself and adopted more budget and pension cuts. In June, he negotiated the latest payment of $9.7 billion.

Many Greeks now are resigned to living in poverty under the deal. “It’s our fault,” said Vasiliki Gova, 52, a cleaning woman who gained national attention by staging a two-year protest outside the Ministry of Finance where she had been laid off from her job. “People were looking for hope and put all their hopes on politicians. But no messiah will come save us.”

Greeks spent a lot of money they didn’t have, then the bill came due. Greece has been down this road before, but never so far. Belonging to the eurozone allowed them to borrow at the same low rate as thrifty Germans — like giving dad’s Platinum American Express to a reckless teenager. Needless to say, they ran up some big bills. Even worse, their attachment to the euro means that this time they can’t devalue their way out like they have in previous debt crises.

Another case of “bad luck,” I suppose.

SHOT: The new culture war targeting American universities appears to be working.

CHASER: Long After Protests, Students Shun the University of Missouri. To the point of a 35% enrollment decline. Key quote: “I didn’t want to be that person who I guess was stereotyped because I was white.”

Related: That higher education is hurting America should be the consensus left-wing position too.

Well, campuses gradually drifted left, but — with the direct connivance of the Obama Administration — became much harder-left in recent years, and as a result have done more damage to higher education’s brand than any right-wing conspiracy could have managed. The result is something that looks like a preference cascade. With good reason.

Flashback: Professors are overwhelmingly liberal. Do universities need to change hiring practices?

Plus: Exclusive Test Data: Many Colleges Fail to Improve Critical-Thinking Skills.

MORNING BRIEF: It’s Liz Sheld versus the New York Times.

THE DYING MIDDLE CLASS: The Number Of Americans That Can’t Afford Their Own Homes Has More Than Doubled.

For years I have been documenting all of the numbers that show that the middle class in America has been steadily shrinking, and we just got another one. According to a report that was produced by researchers at Harvard University, the number of Americans that spend more than 30 percent of their incomes on housing has more than doubled. In 2001, nearly 16 million Americans couldn’t afford the homes that they were currently living in, but by 2015 that figure had jumped to 38 million.

When I write about “economic collapse”, I am writing about a process that has been unfolding for decades in this country. Back in the early 1970s, well over 60 percent of all Americans were considered to be “middle class”, but now that number has fallen below 50 percent. Never before in our history has the middle class been a minority of the population, but that is where we are at now, and the middle class continues to get even smaller with each passing day.

Michael Snyder argues the main culprit is health insurance premiums rising far faster than mostly stagnant incomes, but the longterm decline in entrepreneurship isn’t exactly helping.

California’s war on affordable housing is undoubtedly another factor.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: How Did Trump Earn an Unprecedented Progressive Backlash?

Celebrities, academics, and journalists have publicly threatened or imagined decapitating Donald Trump, blowing him up in the White House, shooting him, hanging him, clubbing him, and battering his face. They have compared him to Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. And some have variously accused him of incestuous relations with his daughter and committing sex acts with Vladimir Putin, while engaging in some sort urination-sex in a hotel in Moscow.

Yet all this and more is often alleged to be the singular dividend of Trump’s own crudity, as if his own punching back at critics created the proverbial progressive “climate of fear” or “climate of hate” that prompted such uncharacteristic venom.

In truth we are back to 2004-2008, when the Left did to George W. Bush what it is now doing to Donald Trump. . . .

Yet there is one difference. The Bush Administration, to paraphrase Michelle Obama, went high as progressives went low, and thus chose not to respond in kind. The result in part was that a battered Bush accordingly left office demonized, with a scant 34 percent approval rating.

The difference with Trump hatred is not some unique intensity or prior provocation, but rather Trump’s singular counter-punching. It may not be traditionally presidential, but the Trump mode is to nuke those who first attacked him, in an effort to create a sort of deterrence. CNN, to take one example, or Barack Obama to take another, at least knows that their smug, chic Trump putdowns will receive a reply in a manner that is neither smug nor chic. Trump in Samson fashion is quite willing to pull the temple down on top of himself, if it means his enemies perish first.

And since — as with Samson — the temple isn’t worth preserving, that’s a good move.

Plus: “Separate Trump the president from Trump the media ogre, and then most of his policies seem traditionally conservative, logical, popular, a return to normality, and a much needed corrective to the past eight years, which is the true lost era. What is weird is not Trump the ex-reality TV star and tabloid sensation, but his critics who cannot separate the man from message—much less concede that just possibly Trump might succeed because, not despite, who he is.”

THEY’LL CHANGE WHEN THEY THINK CHANGING HURTS TRUMP, JUST LIKE WHEN COMEY CHANGED FROM BEING A VILLAIN: Why Does The Media Still Portray James Comey As A Hero?

THEY PLANNED… POORLY: How Energy-Rich Australia Exported Its Way Into an Energy Crisis.

Australia now exports so much liquefied natural gas, or LNG, it may overtake No. 1 exporter Qatar within several years. It exported 62% of its gas production last year, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy.

Yet its policy makers didn’t ensure enough gas would remain at home. As exports increased from new LNG facilities in eastern Australia, some state governments let aging coal plants close and accelerated a push toward renewable energy for environmental concerns. That left the regions more reliant on gas for power, especially when intermittent sources such as wind and solar weren’t sufficient.

Shortages drove domestic gas prices earlier this year in some markets in eastern Australia to as high as $17 per million British thermal units for smaller gas users such as manufacturers. On the spot market, gas prices have gone from below $1 in 2014 to roughly $7 today—well above the roughly $3 that prevails in the U.S.—causing havoc around the country.

In March, Australia’s largest aluminum smelter cut production and laid off workers because it said it couldn’t secure enough cheap energy.

Bad luck.

CHARLIE MARTIN IS ANGRY. YOU’LL LIKE CHARLIE MARTIN WHEN HE’S ANGRY: And They Claim TRUMP Is Collaborating With Russia?

Golly, folks at WaPo, does no one see the problem here?

The article starts out:

Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.

Okay, look: if it’s so sensitive that it can’t be in the Presidential Daily Brief but it’s delivered “eyes only” to Obama and three aides, what is it doing in the Washington Post?!

Oh, and just in passing, we have Clapper, Obama and three aides. Which three aides? You’ve just told us that someone revealed that information to you, and it pretty much has to be one of those five people. Unless there’s a secret pardon for them, one of them just violated the Espionage Act.

Read the whole thing.

BEGINNING TO DECONSTRUCT A FAILED PRESIDENCY: Politico: How the World Fell Out of Love with Obama: In countries key to the president’s legacy, people express profound disappointment in a man from whom they expected great things.

Heck, Obama even disappointed me, and my expectations were fairly low.

IT’S A TRICK QUESTION: THEY’RE NOT COMING FROM ANYWHERE. Question: Where do Japanese babies come from?

Who knew how prescient the Vapors were in 1980, when they warned, “No sex, no drug, no wine, no women?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LR4XNqrqxrU

HANDS UP, DON’T DOX!  Video: “Milo showed up at the CNN HQ with a camera crew and a sign that read ‘Hands Up, Don’t Dox.'”

AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST WHO BROKE STORY OF JEWISH WOMEN BARRED FROM CHICAGO ‘DYKE MARCH’ REMOVED FROM REPORTING DUTIES.

But of course. As Iowahawk once noted, “Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving,” and as Jim Treacher added, in the 21st century, the profession “is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn’t know because they might reflect badly on Democrats.”

NOW HAPPENING: Amazon Prime Day 2017 – 30 Hours of Deals. Get them while they’re fresh!

JOURNALISM: “Tapper doesn’t think I’M anti-Semitic. He just thinks I ‘revel in casual anti-Semitism.'”

IT’S BEEN LEGAL IN TENNESSEE FOR A YEAR, AND SWORD CRIME HAS YET TO EXPLODE: Should It Be Legal To Carry Swords In Public?

PREPARE YOURSELF FOR MORE “HONEST MISTAKES:” Uh Oh. Pollsters Are Screwing Up Again.

Most national pollsters are back churning out biased and misleading poll numbers after recovering from their shock over President Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory, according to The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group analysis.

“I do know inherently there is a Democratic bias in the polls. And most of them will deny it” says Raghavan Mayur, an independent pollster who is president of TechnoMetrica, which leads the polling operations at Investor’s Business Daily.

A national financial news organization, IBD was one of the few polling organizations to predict a Trump victory, and it has accurately called the last four presidential elections.

“Typically, the mainstream media and the major polling companies will never admit their bias to you,” Mayur said. “This is like an alcoholic not admitting to using alcohol. They are in denial.”

Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell agreed with Mayur, saying “there was a couple of days of shock. And then they moved on because what they could not do is to get to the bottom of their own polling bias.”

Funny how the “honest mistakes” all seem to go the same way.

KC-130 MARINE REFUELING PLANE CRASHES IN MISSISSIPPI; FIVE DEAD.

UPDATE (12:19 AM EDT): AP now reporting at least 16 dead. “‘Most of them are gonna be Marines,’ Sheriff Ricky Banks said. It was not clear whether there were any civilians on the plane. Officials were still searching for bodies after nightfall, more than five hours after the KC-130 spiraled into the ground.”

ON THE UPSIDE, THEY PROBABLY TOUGHEN UP YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM: Reusable water bottles have more bacteria than dog toys.

PURITY SPIRAL: Professor Weinstein’s sin: He stepped outside the progressive bubble and spoke to Tucker Carlson.

I love how threats to defund Evergreen State count as “violence.” Plus: “There’s a certain irony in the fact that a faculty heavily engaged in social criticism of all kinds was unable to criticize even the worst behavior when it took place among their own little corner of society. Instead, they attacked the one person who dared to step outside the campus bubble and say what was obvious to everyone else: Something was badly amiss at Evergreen College.”

And: “Professor Weinstein didn’t embarrass the students, they embarrassed themselves. People left, right and center saw the videos and found the protester’s behavior unacceptable.”