GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: Maduro’s Son Threatens to Take Over White House With Rifles.

JUST THINK OF HIM AS A DEMOCRAT OPERATIVE WITH A MICROPHONE, AND YOU WON’T BE WRONG. The Acosta of Freedom:

Showboats are nothing new. And there are plenty of reasons to criticize President Trump and his treatment of the press. But at what point does Jim Acosta betray his audience by putting his ego ahead of reporting the facts? He’s not telling a story. He’s becoming the story: the story of Jim Acosta’s crusade against Donald Trump. It’s not terribly interesting, and one has to wonder whether Acosta would be behaving similarly had Hillary Clinton won in 2016.

Perhaps a clue can be found in the “tough questions” the National Association of Hispanic Journalists says Acosta asked President Obama. Like this one, from a press conference in 2015:

And separately, sir, I wanted to ask you about what some people are calling ‘your best week ever’ last week. You had two Supreme Court decisions supportive of the Affordable Care Act and of gay rights. You also delivered a speech down in Charleston that was pretty warmly received. It seems that you’ve built up some political capital for the remaining months of your presidency. I’m curious, how you want to use it? What hard things do you want to tackle at this point?

“A voice for the people,” indeed.

Like Helen Thomas before him, Acosta is best thought of by GOP presidential spokesman as a unknowing ringer to score points off of – and that’s exactly how Stephen Miller treated him at the beginning of the month – armed with facts to Acosta’s performance art and poetry. Or as David Harsanyi quipped, “CNN’s Jim Acosta Read The Statue Of Liberty Poem, Had A Meltdown When Someone Suggested Immigrants Be Able To Read It, Too.”

Or heck, Trump himself today. Trump to CNN’s Jim Acosta: “I like real news, not fake news. You’re fake news.”

Which is why it’s come to this: #Hero: Jim Acosta Now Tweeting Out His Own Statements as Breathless Breaking News.

Nobody tell the DNC-MSM that Ron Burgundy and Ted Baxter aren’t how-to guides for brilliant journalisming.

BACK TO THE FUTURE: A Flying Car from DeLorean Really Won’t Need Roads.

“Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads,” Doc Brown says, before flipping down his reflective goggles and launching his nuclear-powered DeLorean into the air.

If you think you’ve heard that line too many times, try being Paul DeLorean. He’s not just the nephew of John DeLorean, founder of the short-lived automaker that’s now best remembered for its car’s starring role as a time machine in the Back to the Future movies. He is the CEO and chief designer of DeLorean Aerospace, the company he founded in 2012 to develop a real life flying car.

Earlier generations of DeLoreans worked as coach builders, so although he may cringe at the name recognition he has accepted it. “We’ve been in transportation forever—it’s in my blood,” he says.

That heritage has led him into one of the hottest areas of transportation development today. He plans to build a two-seat vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) personal air transport vehicle (what the rest of the world calls a flying car). That moves him well out of sci-fi movie cliche territory and into the company of Uber, Airbus, Darpa, Larry Page, and a ton of startups.

Experts working in the field say that, as far-fetched as flying cars sound, the confluence of new lightweight materials, better batteries, and sophisticated computer controls means these visions—like Uber’s plan to launch a flying fleet in Dubai by 2020—aren’t unrealistic.

Add the business model of ride-sharing, which removes the up-front purchase cost, and there’s even a business case for getting these things to work in cities. The really tricky part, though, will be figuring out how to safely deploy these things, especially when it comes to air traffic control and certification.

I’ve long had the feeling that our betters in Washington would never allow us proles to fly at our own discretion.

MAKE AMERICA SOVIET AGAIN: Elizabeth Warren Is Determined to Drive the Democrats Off a Far-Left Cliff.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): She’s probably just pining for that sweet Soviet-era sex.

RENEGOTIATING NAFTA: Canada Wants to Make Nafta More ‘Progressive.’

Earlier Monday, President Donald Trump tweeted that U.S. lawmakers over the years “have given us (or not fixed) some of the worst trade deals in World History. I am changing that fast!”

She said among the country’s objectives would be a freer market for government procurement across the continent. This could run into opposition from the Trump administration’s push to put more teeth into Buy America directives, which preserve them as part of a revamped Nafta.

She said local-content provisions, such as Buy America, “are political junk-food—superficially appetizing, but unhealthy in the long run.”

Ms. Freeland said Canada also wants to make Nafta more “progressive,” through tougher labor and environmental standards. On the environment, she said Canada wants the countries to support efforts to combat climate change, and cast a skeptical eye toward countries that “[weaken] environmental protection to attract investment.”

Be careful what you wish for.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Colorado Switchblade Legalization goes into effect (with a few stipulations).

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Plus, save in Industrial and Scientific. It’s also a fun section to browse.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Google needs a new CEO, but dumping Sundar Pichai is not enough. “When a gigantic corporation that controls our data and knows us intimately takes a controversial political stance, it ought to make us worry.”

TOO NORMAL IS ABNORMAL: Walking the Fine Line Between Being a ‘Bad Mother’ and Absolutely-Freaking-Normal.

REPORT: Mexico fast becoming the US’s largest market for energy exports.

PATRICK POOLE: CBS News Host Norah O’Donnell Pushes Fake ‘Right-Wing’ Terrorism Stats.

But of course.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: You Can Order a Dozen STD Tests Online — But Should You?

THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP:

Think of them as Democrat operatives with bylines. Period.

And over at Hot Mic, a reminder not to play with somebody else’s fixed coin.

THIS SEEMS PREMATURE: Memo to Pence: Prepare to Be Gerald Ford.

MISSING FROM THIS DISCUSSION: DONALD TRUMP. It’s Not Irrational, It’s Signaling Behavior.

But Robert Frank, the author, is also the author of Passions Within Reason: The Strategic Role of the Emotions, an excellent book that caused me to understand a lot of things differently.

TYLER O’NEIL: White Supremacist Website Daily Stormer Called Heather Heyer ‘A Fat, Childless … Sl*t.’

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LIBEL SEEMS TO BE MAKING A MODEST COMEBACK: ABC’s ‘Pink Slime’ Report Tied to $177 Million in Settlement Costs.

UPDATE: Though the article calls it “defamation,” Charles Glasser emails that it’s actually under an agricultural product disparagement statute, not a traditional libel action. You’d think the New York Times, of all outlets, would want to make that distinction. . . .

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE: North Korean missiles came from a Ukrainian factory tied to Russia?

END IT, DON’T MEND IT: Beware the Obamacare industrial complex.

The danger of a Republican bailout of Obamacare is mounting with every passing day. A group of “moderate” Republicans calling themselves the Problem Solvers Caucus is quietly negotiating with Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to throw a multi-billion dollar life line to the Obamacare insurance exchanges.

This bailout, of course, would be an epic betrayal by a Republican Party which has promised to repeal and replace the financially crumbling Obama health law.

Republicans who are “negotiating” this bipartisan deal, such as Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, object to the term “bailout” for this rescue package. The left prefers the euphemism “stabilizing the insurance market.” The Washington Post’s left-wing fact checker, who just can’t seem to get his facts straight, says “bailout” is misleading pejorative language. The Post claims this is merely a payment to low income families to help pay for the escalating premiums under Obamacare. These payments were allegedly always part of the law as passed.

The hypocrisy here is towering. These are the same people who told us over and over again that Obamacare was going to “bend the cost curve of health care down.” These are the same people who promised that Obamacare was going to “save” the average family $2,500 a year in lower insurance premiums. (If Obamacare were lowering insurance costs not raising them, there would be no need for these bailout funds in the first place.)

These were also the same people who swore to us that Obamacare wasn’t going to raise the federal deficit by a dime. Oh really. Where is the $10 to $20 billion to pay for this new federal subsidy going to come from? Pixie dust?

Incidentally, is there even one single promise of Obamacare that has been kept after seven years?
So why is everyone suddenly rallying for an Obamacare bailout?

Read the whole thing.

OF COURSE, NOTHING HE SAYS WILL BE ENOUGH TO SATISFY THE PEOPLE WHO TOLD US MITT ROMNEY WAS HITLER: Trump calls out ‘KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists’ following violence in Charlottesville.

HOW DARE YOU TAKE US SERIOUSLY: Professor: Journalism, outrage over academics’ provocative statements is ‘technique of repression.’

FASCISTS: Violent Antifa Protesters Try to Shut Down Pro-Trump ‘Patriot Prayer’ Rally in Seattle.

MICHELLE MALKIN WANTS TO KNOW: How Did the Dems’ IT Scandal Suspects Get Here?

My question to the House Democrats was simple: Were the Awans and their family and friends H-1B tech workers — like so many of the 650,000 “temporary” foreign guest workers imported into America under that program over the past quarter-century and predominantly working in IT?

And if they’re not H-1Bs, how exactly did Awan and company get here, when did they get here, and who brought them over here and why?

These are simple questions. Given that these foreign IT workers now under investigation were paid for with our tax dollars, Americans deserve to know their path to the public trough. This is especially true when so many members of Congress in both parties continue to clamor for expanding foreign guest-worker programs like H-1B and refuse to enact freezes on corrupted visa programs exploited by foreign tourists (B visas), students (F-1 visas) and workers (H visas) acting in bad faith.

Moreover, U.S. tech workers have grown increasingly vocal about being forced to train underqualified, shoddily vetted foreign replacements before getting pink-slipped — and increasingly alarmed at their access to sensitive personal, financial and health data.

Hey, they’re only doing the jobs Americans want desperately to do.