NUCLEAR DEPLOYMENT: Out of Turkey and Into Poland.

Early in 2017, I wrote about the tactical nuclear imbalance between Russia and NATO regarding both quantity and deliverance capability. There are reportedly 150 deployed U.S. controlled, tactical nuclear weapons based in five European countries including Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Turkey in contrast to the estimated 1850 Russian nonstrategic nuclear weapons. I illustrated that Russia possesses the superior tactical nuclear force and likened the imbalance to NATO playing a game of chess without a queen. I will make the case that tactical nuclear weapons controlled by the U.S. should be moved out of Turkey and into Poland. There are four points I will address that make a strong case for this strategic decision.

First is the current security and political situation in Turkey.

You hardly need four reasons when this is the first one.

JIM TREACHER: It’s Wrong To Physically Attack People For What They Say, Even If What They Say Makes You Very Angry.

AN EXCELLENT EDITORIAL FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: The Poison of Identity Politics: The return of white nationalism is part of a deeper ailment.

The White House nonetheless issued a statement Sunday saying Mr. Trump “includes white supremacists, KKK, Neo-Nazi and all extremist groups” in his condemnation. As so often with Mr. Trump, his original statement missed an opportunity to speak like a unifying political leader.

Yet the focus on Mr. Trump is also a cop-out because it lets everyone duck the deeper and growing problem of identity politics on the right and left. The politics of white supremacy was a poison on the right for many decades, but the civil-rights movement rose to overcome it, and it finally did so in the mid-1960s with Martin Luther King Jr. ’s language of equal opportunity and color-blind justice.

That principle has since been abandoned, however, in favor of a new identity politics that again seeks to divide Americans by race, ethnicity, gender and even religion. “Diversity” is now the all-purpose justification for these divisions, and the irony is that America is more diverse and tolerant than ever.

The problem is that the identity obsessives want to boil down everything in American life to these categories. In practice this means allocating political power, contracts, jobs and now even salaries in the private economy based on the politics of skin color or gender rather than merit or performance. Down this road lies crude political tribalism, and James Damore’s recent Google dissent is best understood as a cri de coeur that we should aspire to something better. Yet he lost his job merely for raising the issue.

A politics fixated on indelible differences will inevitably lead to resentments that extremists can exploit in ugly ways on the right and left. The extremists were on the right in Charlottesville, but there have been examples on the left in Berkeley, Oakland and numerous college campuses. When Democratic politicians can’t even say “all lives matter” without being denounced as bigots, American politics has a problem.

We have the worst political class in our history, and a dysfunctional political culture.

THE SCORPION STINGS THE FROG, EVERY TIME: Markos Moulitsas spreads ‘dangerous lie’ about ‘NRA and American conservatives.’

SARAH HOYT: A Message to the Children of the Revolution: Grow Up!

A COORDINATED ATTACK ON NORTH KOREA’S NUKES: And North Korea has blinked.

CATCH AND RELEASE: U.S. Lacking Strategy for Terrorists Leaving Prison.

B-52 WITH THE DESERT BELOW: Another fine B-52 photo. (Readers seemed to like yesterday’s BUFF Lightning photo.)

PERVERSE INCENTIVES: The worse North Korea acts, the more cash aid it gets.

“For Pyongyang, it pays to provoke,” Sung-Yoon Lee, a Korean Studies professor at Tufts University, told CNBC on Monday. “Whereas good behavior buys only indifference from its richer neighbors, being a bad apple buys leverage and billions in aid.”

The same countries admonishing North Korea leader Kim Jong Un for nuclear belligerence still shell out large sums of diplomatic aid under the motive of “damage-control diplomacy, i.e. getting the North to back off and stay out of the headlines for a while,” Lee said. “Exporting insecurity is [Pyongyang’s] time-tested means to reaping concessions.”

Over the past quarter-century, the pariah state has amassed $20 billion worth of cash, food, fuel, and medicine from the U.S., Japan, China and South Korea. That’s come from “repeated lies of denuclearization,” according to Lee, who has testified as an expert witness at U.S. government hearings on North Korea policy.

Maybe it’s time to try something different.

UPDATE: Something different.

CVS AS BORDERS: Amazon Could Probably Conquer Drugstores, Too.

Can Amazon do to the pharmacy business what it’s done to … well, everything else?

Rumor has it they’re thinking about doing just that. They’ve reportedly created a new general manager position to look into such an expansion. In May, when those rumors started floating, Bloomberg’s own Max Nisen explained why they might find the business attractive. . . .

The chief executive officer of CVS appears to be unworried, however. In a recent earnings call, he told analysts, “There are many barriers to entry when you’re looking at pharmacy.”

And true that is. Health care is one of the more heavily regulated sectors of our economy, and regulation is always one of the most reliable barriers keeping new competitors out. As with the grocery business, proximity is another major barrier: If your kid’s got strep, you don’t want to wait two days for their antibiotics to arrive.

And yet.

Over the years, I’ve listened to a lot of earnings calls with CEOs whose businesses were being threatened by Amazon. Those CEOs all had one thing in common: They were quite sure that the Amazon juggernaut was never going to roll into their business. Their business was special, you see.

If you’re relying on barriers to entry, you’re already in trouble. The question is, how loyal are your customers, and how easy are you to undercut? Do you offer service that people are willing to pay a bit more for? Or would people be willing to pay a bit more to avoid dealing with you? . . . .

UTTERLY UNNECESSARY: ‘Crotch charms’ help you bling out your lady bits.

DAILY CALLER: Former Trump Adviser Says He Will ‘Blow’ McMaster, Drudge ‘The F**k Out’ If Bannon Is Ousted.

“If Steve is fired by the White House and a bunch of generals take over the White House there will be hell to pay,” Nunberg, a longtime Trump aide who left the presidential campaign in August 2015, told The Daily Caller in an exclusive interview. His comments came after an Axios report that claimed Bannon’s job is in jeopardy due to damaging leaks against McMaster and anger over a recent book touting Bannon’s role on the Trump presidential campaign.

Nunberg told TheDC that he was “very perturbed” by the Axios story and tied in Bannon’s reported downfall to the Drudge Report, which continues to link to stories that are negative to the White House chief strategist.

“Matt should go back into his hobble hole in Miami and listen to techno,” the former Trump campaign adviser said. “Matt should understand that people like me can blow him the fook up. F-o-o-k, Conor McGregor. Blow him the fook up [sic].” (Nunberg was referencing Irish MMA fighter Conor McGregor, who pronounces “fuck” as “fook.”)

Plus: “I’ll get conservative radio to talk about how Matt Drudge pushed out Steve Bannon so McMaster can control the White House.”

That might not work out as intended.

THE WHITEWASHING OF colleges’ racist history.

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THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S FULL-COURT PRESS: Coordinating U.S. power to squeeze the nukes out of North Korea.

OWN IT: Yes, Millennials Are Narcissists, but We Can Make America Greater Than Our Narcissistic Parents.

Gen X smiles and shakes its collective head, just as Gen Z will learn to do.

GLENN GREENWALD: The Misguided Attacks on ACLU for Defending Neo-Nazis’ Free Speech Rights in Charlottesville.

Last week, the ACLU sparked controversy when it announced that it was defending the free speech rights of alt-right activist Milo Yiannopoulos after the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority refused to allow ads for his book to be displayed on public transit. Lost in the debate was that other groups the ACLU was defending along with Yiannopoulos were also censored under the same rule: Carafem, which helps women access birth control and medication abortion; the animal rights group PETA; and the ACLU itself.

For representing Yiannopoulos, the civil liberties group was widely accused of defending and enabling fascism. But the ACLU wasn’t “defending Yiannopoulos” as much as it was opposing a rule that allows state censorship of any controversial political messages the state wishes to suppress: a rule that is often applied to groups which are supported by many who attacked the ACLU here.

The same formula was applied yesterday when people learned that the ACLU of Virginia had represented the white supremacist protesters in Charlottesville after city officials tried to ban the group from gathering in Emancipation Park where a statue of Robert E. Lee was to be removed.

Related: ‘No Free Speech for Fascists’ Is a Truly Terrible Idea: The ACLU is right: Do you really want Donald Trump deciding who gets free speech?

GOOD QUESTION: Where were the police and National Guard at the Charlottesville race riot?

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Related, from Ann Althouse: “Pathetic. The police were afraid of the guns? But no shots were fired, even in response to punching and brawling. That makes it sound as though those people with guns were quite restrained, and yet they terrified the police.”

There was plenty of time to prepare, and it was pretty clear what was happening, but the police just stood by. I think it’s quite possible — as with previous events at Berkeley and Chicago — that the Democratic mayor wanted to see violence against the marchers, and withheld police protection to facilitate it. I hope the Department of Justice will look closely at the decisionmaking here, and bring charges if appropriate.

ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Pro Publica: Police Stood By As Mayhem Mounted in Charlottesville: State police and National Guardsmen watched passively for hours as self-proclaimed Nazis engaged in street battles with counter-protesters.

Plus, Why Were The Police Held Back In Charlottesville?

Law enforcement was on hand at the dueling demonstrations on Saturday, decked out in riot gear and looking prepared for the worst. Except they weren’t allowed to do their job. Police on the scene were reported to have been ordered to “not intervene until given command to do so,” according to the ACLU. That kept them from suppressing the numerous scuffles that broke out.

When police were ordered to disperse the alt-right rally, that act directed the white nationalists into the antifa demonstrators, leading to further street brawls. Police didn’t seem to try to get in between the two groups or suppress the fights.

As I say, the Department of Justice needs to look very closely at what happened here.

JEFF GOLDSTEIN ON FACEBOOK:

I told you all before and I’ll repeat it now: the alt right is not conservative, and it is every bit as driven by identity politics and blood essentialism as the prog left.

Antifa, BLM, CAIR, the New Black Panthers, La Raza, the Pussy Hatters, the KKK — these are all identity movements and all formed and animated by the kind of identity politics championed by the left, and legitimated by the likes of Edward Said and other academic cultural Marxists who recognized the way to power was to divide, and then control, particular identity groups, whose narratives they seek to create and police.

The alt-right is only “right wing” in the continental sense. The American conservative is classically liberal, while the American progressive is Fabian socialist.

Don’t listen to labels; follow the assumptions made by each movement — the alt right, the prog left — and you’ll soon recognize that they are the same. This is tribalism, no more and no less. What we are witnessing is an attempt to corrupt the ideals of a propositional nation based on individualism and individual universal rights (and that’s how our Constitutional republic is designed to operate) — a lesson Google’s pillorying of a software engineer as “anti-diversity” should have made clear.

You should reject this archaic collectivism from whatever group espouses it, because in the end it is simply anti-individualism dressed in mob attire to bolster cowardice and bigotry in numbers.

You were warned.

Indeed.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Conservatives Must Regulate Google And All of Silicon Valley Into Submission.

There’s sometimes a moment when a system is unstable because one participant has changed the rules, but the other side hasn’t yet reacted – like the period after feminism demanded total female social equality with men, but men still generally picked up the check. That imbalance cannot persist forever; eventually the people on the other side feel like suckers, so they stop playing by the old rules. That’s when the new rules arise. And that’s why conservatives now need to savagely regulate companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. We need to use our political power in Congress and red state legislatures to incentivize Silicon Valley to return to a system where its companies embrace political and cultural neutrality, or suffer crippling consequences.

Yeah, I know that heavily regulating private businesses is not “free enterprise,” but I don’t care. See, “free enterprise” is a bargain, and they didn’t keep their part of it, and I see no moral obligation for us to be played for saps and forgo using our political power to protect our interests in the face of them using theirs to disembowel us. I liked the old rules better – a free enterprise system confers huge benefits – but it was the left that chose to nuke them.

So what are we talking about? Well, size matters, and Silicon Valley’s giants are just too darn big. Time to chop them up like old Ma Bell. Let’s apply the antitrust laws that were made for taming just these types of octopod monopolies. For example, Google and Facebook’s tentacles have slithered into every corner of the web and strangled the competition. There was a word for that back in the day – what was it? Oh, yeah. “Monopoly.” The left used to like breaking up monopolies until its leftist allies starting controlling them. But the leftists don’t control the executive branch. Since Attorney General Sessions isn’t busy investigating the Democrats, maybe he can get his army of lawyers busy breaking up these enormous, bloated, anti-competitive conglomerates.

Remember, no corporation should be too big to fail – or nail.

Google previewed a future of conformity and fascism when it fired that engineer for talking about things that made social justice warriors sad. It’s not hard to imagine that they’ll soon try and silence the rest of us. One way is by weaponizing the information they maintain on all of us from search histories, purchases, and even email, information that gives leftist hacks incredible leverage to intimidate and extort opponents. “Gee, Mr. Conservative, it’d sure be a pity if the world found out about your browser history involving brony and furry erotica….”

So we need legislation – at both the federal and individual red state levels – that will impose staggering, gut-wrenching monetary penalties for not only the active misuse of this information, but even for the mere failure to safeguard it – any failure to safeguard it.

Read the whole thing.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Amidst Controversy Over Proposed Changes In Reporting Of Law School-Funded Jobs, ABA Defers Decision Until Late Fall.

SALENA ZITO: Judgey about the way people dress? You’re killing America.

Fifteen years ago, we didn’t know what people who weren’t like us were thinking, because they were not around us, explains Dane Strother, a Democratic strategist.

“Facebook and 24-hour news and a plethora of news stations and social media has brought focus to those differences. It’s the first time different Americans have ever looked up and seen each other every day. And neither one likes what the other one is seeing,” he says.

Stereotypes are peculiar things. They make targets out of those who are different, be it in language or traditions. And it appears Appalachia remains the last minority population in America for which it is socially acceptable to question intelligence, speech pattern, the way people dress. Their uniqueness.

Last week as the president was delivering a speech in West Virginia, Stu Rothenberg, a respected Washington-based journalist, remarked on Twitter that “Lots of people can’t support themselves or speak English in West Virginia.”

Speaking to me afterward, Rothenberg did not walk back his comment, but he did offer interesting insight. Like lots of people who do not understand why anyone would “buy in” to the president, he was seeking a way to explain it — by dismissing their intelligence.

What he failed to understand is how insulting his explanation is.

The election should have been a cure-all for that kind of condescension, but instead there’s often been a doubling-down on it. People like Rothenberg should be more careful about who they call slow learners.

GOOD LORD: Indian State Suspends Hospital Chief After 60 Children Die.

The head of an Indian hospital where dozens of children have died in recent days has been suspended, as officials traded blame over cash shortfalls that led to supplies of medical oxygen being cut.

The government of Uttar Pradesh state, run by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), suspended the head of the state-run BRD Medical College, Rajeev Misra, late on Saturday and ordered an investigation.

Indian media have said the deaths of 60 children, 34 infants among them, were caused in part by oxygen shortages after a private supplier cut the supply over unpaid bills.

It was a government-run hospital.