BUT JOHN KERRY TOLD ME THAT AIR CONDITIONING IS JUST AS DEADLY AS ISIS: Time for a Terrorism Accord, Not a Climate Accord, Roger Simon writes.

(No really, Kerry actually said that.)

SARAH HOYT: Why Common Core Fails the Test.

THIS IS AWFUL: The First Impact of the Climate Deal Withdrawal: Falling Oil Prices.

The real, measurable impacts of Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement are going to be few and far between, but the first one we’ve seen thus far has been a drop in the price of oil. This won’t hurt Trump with his voters: market participants think that the U.S. will now pump more oil, leading to long term lower oil prices. . . .

Let’s not give the White House too much credit here, though. The Obama administration, for all of its gesturing towards renewables, was remarkably friendly towards the shale industry. The recent growth we’ve seen in American production is the result of innovation and falling costs in shale drilling, rather than the rolling back of regulations.

But perceptions matter to markets, and Trump’s announcement yesterday has further strengthened analysts’ belief that this Administration will do everything it can to help out America’s oil and gas industry (even though the natural gas boom is responsible for knocking Old King Coal off his throne in the U.S.).

Russia is paying close attention to U.S. oil production these days, and the CEO of the state-owned oil company Rosneft, Igor Sechin, publicly expressed concerns that surging American supplies could overcome petrostate efforts to cut production and push prices back up.

That would be terrible.

DAVID HARSANYI: Democrats Have Lost On Climate Change, And It’s Their Own Fault.

Moreover, many voters don’t see Democrats acting like people who believe we’re facing an extinction level event. For instance, why aren’t we talking about adding hundreds of new nuclear power plants to our energy portfolio? Such an effort would do far more to mitigate carbon emissions than any unreliable solar or windmill boondoggle –certainly more than any non-binding international agreement. Maybe there are tradeoffs, who knows.

Or take prospective presidential hopeful Andrew Cuomo. Setting intentions aside, in all practical ways, he’s been worse for the environment than Trump. Cuomo claims he “is committed to meeting the standards set forth in the Paris Accord regardless of Washington’s irresponsible actions.” Yet as governor, he’s blocked natural gas pipelines and banned fracking, which has proven to be one of the most effective ways to mitigate carbon emissions. U.S. energy-related carbon emissions have fallen almost 14 percent since they peaked in 2007 according to the OECD – this, without any fabricated carbon market schemes. The driving reason is the shift to natural gas. Why do liberals hate science? Why do they condemn our grandchildren to a fiery end?

Fact is, Obama—as was his wont—tried to shift American policy with his pen rather than by building consensus (which was also an assault on proper norms of American governance, but the “Trump is destroying the Constitution!” crowd is conveniently flexible on this issue.) It’s not a feasible or lasting way to govern, unless the system collapses. It is also transparently ideological.

Indeed.

TUNISIA’S WAR ON CORRUPTION: Endemic governmental corruption sparked Tunisia’s Arab Spring revolt. Prime Minister Youssef Chahed says he means to end it. He’s right when he says “…Even social protests are exploited by this system (of corruption), and terrorists also benefit from it.” Stay tuned.

RELATED: Algeria’s rigged election and mire of corruption. Read the May 4 update.

WHAT HATH MERKEL WROUGHT? Leaked Report Says 6.6 Million Refugees Are Trying to Get into Europe.

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THE PEOPLE OF LONDON ARE BRAVER THAN THEIR GOVERNMENT. And smarter. (Bumped).

FAKE NEWS: Was Trump really getting ready to lift sanctions on Russia for “absolutely nothing”?

WE MAY NEVER KNOW THEIR MOTIVE: London Attacker Shouted “This Is For Allah.”

FREDDIE DE BOER ON WHY LEFTIES ARE LOSING:

The Iron Law of Institutions is this: “the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution ‘fail’ while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to “succeed” if that requires them to lose power within the institution.” . . .

In recent years, a dogged, no-exceptions, don’t-ask-any-questions attitude towards campus activists has taken over the radical left, to the extent where college student organizers are expected to go entirely uncriticized in left spaces. That hurts our movement, but because criticizing college students risks losing status within the left movement, lefties are afraid to do so. That’s the Iron Law of Institutions for you.

Or take random outbursts of street violence against the right. This has been a matter of absolute obsession within the radical left for this entire year. The amount of attention spent on, say, the minor dust up at Berkeley would seem totally bizarre in comparison to the actual material impact on the world of such violence. As Marxists we are, of course, materialists, and thus are meant to privilege the objective facts about material conditions above emotional and cultural commitments. As an objective matter the salience of right-wing political street violence to our constituencies is very low. Compare the number of victims of neo-Nazis, in this country of 315 million, to the victims of poverty and homelessness. Our priorities should be obvious. Meanwhile, our ability to actually create positive change through violent force is incredibly limited even under the most optimistic reading of the facts.

Yet for months, we’ve fixated on the potential for left-wing victory through antifa tactics and street violence. Why? Because of the Iron Law. Loudly braying on social media about how we’re going to punch and kick our way to socialism has if anything net-negative effects on our movement. Indeed, dismissing the left as thugs who are unable to win through the actual process of democracy is a constant right-wing canard, one they have used to great effect for decades. But for people already within the left’s social spaces, arguing for political violence is associated with a kind of cool or cachet. It marks you as a radical, as someone who’s in favor of “really doing something.” It brings with it a sense of left-wing machismo. And so the incentives for the left are misaligned: to advance the movement, we should treat political violence as the distraction that it is, but to advance inside the movement, people have to showily associate themselves with the tough guys calling for armed revolution.

Social media exacerbates that problem, of course. And I’ll note that this is exactly where the Left was in the early 1970s, just before it suffered a 35-year eclipse.

And yes, De Boer has basically just rediscovered Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy. Or perhaps the iceberg-tip of public-choice economics. What’s funny is, if you expand this insight beyond politics, you understand why lefty big government is doomed to fail.

THESE ARE THE CRAZY YEARS: ‘Pastafarian’ Successfully Gets Driver’s License Photo Wearing Colander on His Head. I see that he’s a Conservative Pastafarian, because he’s wearing the traditional perforated metal colander. Reform Pastafarians favor a plastic colander with slots. And then, of course, there are the breakaway schismatics who hardly count as Pastafarians at all.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Frank Bruni: These Campus Inquisitions Must Stop.

He’s very upset about Evergreen College. Evergreen is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities. Maybe the accreditors need to hear about how the threats, closings, and other misbehavior that the Evergreen administration has tolerated is impacting the school’s educational environment and reputation.

IS THERE NOTHING IT CAN’T DO? SJW Blog: Modern Veganism ‘Completely Erases’ Trans People.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Florida Dean Resigns After Giving Effusive Reference For Employee Fired For Downloading Porn Through University Email Account. Best bit: “As the University of Florida’s deputy Title IX coordinator, Chris Loschiavo heard complaints of gender discrimination that sometimes included allegations of sexual battery. But it has been learned that using a university-supplied email, he also bought pornographic videos with titles that included erotic torture and rough sex, cyborg sex, threesome sex and more. Loschiavo was fired last year with officials pegging it publicly to a conflict of interest that came to light during the Title IX hearing of UF football player Antonio Callaway.”

Pegging? I see what you did there.

But why are his personal sexual preferences a conflict of interest? Does that mean that gays and lesbians can’t be involved with matters that relate to their sex preferences? Are women who read or saw 50 Shades of Grey similarly disqualified? And what’s wrong with “cyborg sex?” Heck, it’s the only kind I have.

IS THE NEW YORK TIMES A LIBERAL NEWSPAPER? OF COURSE IT IS: Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet Accidentally Admits He’s A Liberal (Video).

Just think of the paper as being staffed almost entirely by Democrats with bylines, and it all makes sense.

(Classical reference in headline.)

YOU KNOW, IT’S ALMOST ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU THINK WE SHOULD JUST TREAT EVERYBODY EQUALLY REGARDLESS OF RACE, BUT THAT PROVIDES INSUFFICIENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR GRAFT AND POLITICAL AGITATION: Why Social-Justice Warriors Think It’s Okay to Be Racist Towards Asians.

It happened to Jeff Sessions’s granddaughter at his confirmation hearing on January 10. When MTV News writer Ira Madison III saw an Asian-American girl, the child of John Walk and Ruth Sessions Walk, sitting in her grandfather’s lap, his first thought was to write, “Sessions, sir, kindly return this Asian baby to the Toys ‘R’ Us you stole her from.” This is 2017, and yet MTV News writers are dehumanizing Asian Americans and playing into common racist tropes. The same self-proclaimed liberals who tweet #BlackLivesMatter and #ChangeTheName, who work for a social-media network that fills its YouTube page with explainers telling you all you need to know about racism, have revealed a shocking blind spot when it comes to racism against Asian-Americans. Madison finally apologized (after digging himself an even deeper hole), but the failure of social-justice liberals to take seriously racism against people of all races is a much broader phenomenon. As the New York Times’ Luo told CNN about his Twitter campaign, “It’s resonating because Asian Americans have this feeling that racism against them is not taken as seriously as other groups.” The dominant narrative promoted by SJWs almost always divides everyone into two camps — black and white — and makes no allowance for individualism, to say nothing of ignoring the fastest growing race in the nation: Asians. In MTV News’ video, “5 Things You Should Know About Racism,” for example, there is no reference to any specific examples of racism against Asian Americans. In another MTV video, “If You Farted Every Time You Were Racist,” the Asian-American character is the subject of racism by a white character, but she was also shown dishing out racism to a black character. The black character, of course, wasn’t racist to any other character, because, according to MTV News, she can’t be.

This is how you got Trump.

Related: Asians Get The Ivy League’s Jewish Treatment.