DEBATE: When will we have human-level AI?

FUN FLASHBACK: DNC/Clinton Camp Consultants Dispatched Nutters to Provoke Trump Rally-Goers to Violence.

OH: The Virginia Shooting Isn’t About Bernie. It’s About the Right’s Embrace of Guns.

It’s always the object and never the person wielding it.

ZOOM! USA-Austrian and Swiss Nanocars finish first in first Nanocar race.

BEN RHODES: Trump’s Cuba Policy Will Fail.

Rhodes of course is famous (infamous?) for building an Obama Administration “echo chamber” in the American media to sell the Iran nuclear deal. Rhodes also personally insulted that same press, saying, “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns… They literally know nothing.”

That The Atlantic should chose to host someone who admits to using and abusing the press reveals much about that publication’s standards.

WHAT’S BETTER FOR YOU, MASS-PRODUCED OR ARTISANAL BREAD? The results may surprise you. Or maybe not.

PATRICK POOLE: Jihadist Arrests in EU Doubled Last Year, Rising for Third Year in a Row.

ABOUT TIME, NO? Trump Orders Government to Stop Work on Y2K Bug, 17 Years Later.

HMM: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein acknowledges he may need to recuse himself from Russia probe, sources say.

Those private remarks from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein are significant because they reflect the widening nature of the federal probe, which now includes a preliminary inquiry into whether President Donald Trump attempted to obstruct justice when he allegedly tried to curtail the probe and then fired James Comey as FBI director.

Rosenstein, who authored an extensive and publicly-released memorandum recommending Comey’s firing, raised the possibility of his recusal during a recent meeting with Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand, the Justice Department’s new third-in-command, according to sources.

Although Rosenstein appointed a special counsel to lead the federal probe, he still makes the final decisions about resources, personnel and — if necessary — any prosecutions.

In the recent meeting with Brand, Rosenstein told her that if he were to recuse himself, she would have to step in and take over those responsibilities. She was sworn-in little more than a month ago.

I’m dubious of unnamed sources, but we’ll see if Brand steps in.

HELMUT KOHL IST TOT: Helmut Kohl, father of German reunification, dies.

Classical reference in headline, as Ed would say.

NEW MEDIA GUY VS. OLD MEDIA GAL: Alex Jones releases audiotape in advance of the show airing the interview.

RELATED: The ridiculous “controversy” over Megyn Kelly’s interview with Alex Jones.

CLAIM: Solar Power Will Kill Coal Sooner Than You Think.

SPASIBO: Russia Claims It Has Killed Islamic State Leader al-Baghdadi.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a Russian strike in late May along with other senior group commanders.

There had been previous reports of al-Baghdadi being killed but they did not turn out to be true. The IS leader last released an audio on Nov. 3, urging his followers to keep up the fight for Mosul as they defend the city against a major offensive that began weeks earlier.

The spokesman for the U.S.-led anti-IS coalition said in a statement Friday he could not confirm the Russian claim.

Maybe this time reports of his death will turn out not to have been greatly exaggerated.

THE SNAKE ISN’T DEAD AND IT CONTINUES TO STRIKE: The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) Ugandan rebel group is launching new attacks.

It appears Joseph Kony is still alive and in charge. New LRA attacks are occurring along the Congo-South Sudan border. The LRA is definitely damaged, but it managed a fairly large raid on June 7, mustering an estimated 40 fighters. Last year Uganda announced it would end its search for Kony in the Central African Republic and did so in April 2017. The U.S. also ended its “anti-Kony” mission this spring. In 2011 the Obama Administration ordered 100 U.S. special operations troops to deploy to central Africa to help African and U.N. forces capture Kony.

DEFINITELY RELATED: The Facebook world failed to catch Kony.

ROGER SIMON: Does Robert Mueller Want to Cause a Civil War?

SARAH HOYT: How We’re Losing the War to Save The Islamic World Part I: Saving the West.

There’s no way to excerpt from this one, so just read the whole thing.

GOVERNMENT GLUT: Subsidies Encourage Maine Farmers to Keep Growing Too Many Blueberries.

During a multi-year wild blueberry glut, government agencies have been using subsidies and grants to encourage Maine farmers to keep growing the crop. Too bad no one seems to want them. Maine has a glut of the berries, and now the governor of Maine hopes to help sell them off by spending $2.5 million on agricultural marketing.
…
A combination of falling prices, increased competition, and advances in production technology should have reduced the number of blueberry farmers. Yet, government intervention has caused a multi-year surplus. According to Bott, berry prices have plummeted: 100 million pounds sold for $1 per pound in 2011 but only 25-27 cents per pound in 2016.

Despite these low prices, Canada and Maine churned out a bumper crop of blueberries in 2016: 400 million pounds, almost double the typical 250 million pounds. Bott explained that much of the wild blueberry surplus comes from improved production technology, pollination, good fertilizer, and favorable weather.

Last year’s berry surplus prompted the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to spend $13 million buying up some of the berries. A $50,000 grant from the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry helped fund marketing to public schools—the berries will now be served in 19 states.

The solution to a failed government program is always more government spending, in this followed by hectoring school kids into literally swallowing the results.

ANOTHER REASON WHY MUELLER SHOULD RESIGN: Yale Lawprof Stephen L. Carter: Leakers Mess With the Trump Investigation: Insiders need to shut up if they want the public to trust the results.

A presidential obstruction of justice would constitute a serious challenge to both the rule of law and the proper functioning of democracy. But this column is not about that doleful thought. It’s about a different threat to democracy: the fact that the leak occurred at all. That fact, except among partisans, does not seem to me to be eliciting sufficient outrage.

In my earlier column, I argued that leakers are essentially liars. They want the benefit of being trusted with confidences without suffering the cost of keeping what they know to themselves. They sit in meetings and review documents and implicitly promise to keep the secrets, but their actual plan is to decide for themselves which juicy nugget to share with others. In philosophical terms, the leaker always does a moral wrong to the person who entrusted him with the secret.

But like most moral wrongs, the leak can be excused if the cause is sufficiently vital. Consider the corporate whistle-blower who brings to the authorities details of horrific misfeasance by his employer. I argued last time that one might plausibly excuse, for example, the leaks by former FBI Director James Comey, who explained his conduct as an effort to force the appointment of a special counsel to look into links between Russia and the Trump campaign. 1 Perhaps others in the rash of leakers in recent months had the same motive.

You can decide for yourself whether the motive is sufficient to justify the underlying lie. In any case, now that special counsel Robert Mueller III has begun his investigation, that rationale no longer exists. The individual who leaks what’s going on inside the investigation has no excuse. To share the special counsel’s secrets with a reporter is self-indulgence. To go to work the next day is to intensify the underlying wrong. . . .

If Mueller believes there is a case to be made we will find out soon enough. At the moment there is no way to tell whether he is thinking “It looks like there’s probably a crime” or “I don’t see much here, but I have to cover all the bases.” To whisper to a reporter that an investigation is under way only feeds the view among many on the right that the bureaucracy is partisan and unworthy of trust.

This being the season of La Résistance, I am obliged to add that I am by no stretch of the imagination a Trump supporter. I do, however, believe that maintaining the rule of law and the integrity of our governing institutions protects knight and knave alike. And if the answer is that Trump must be taken down by extra-institutional means, then I’m heading for the hills, because America is over.

We increasingly have a Third World political class, so. . . .

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Signs “Bowie Bill.” “Huge news out of Texas. Today Governor Abbott signed into law a repeal of one of the most moronic, and undeniably most ironic knife restrictions in the nation. HB 1935, known colloquially as the ‘Bowie Bill’ removes daggers, dirks, stilettos, poniards, swords, spears and most notably, Bowie knives, from Texas statute, effectively legalizing carry of said knives almost everywhere in the state.”

WAIT, FROM READING THE WAPO I THOUGHT NOBODY LIKED HIM ANYMORE: Trump Approval Jumps Up To 50%.

DREAM ON: Trump Will Allow ‘Dreamers’ to Stay in U.S., Reversing Campaign Promise.

The Department of Homeland Security announced late Thursday night that it would continue the Obama-era program intended to protect those immigrants from deportation and provide them work permits so they can find legal employment.

A fact sheet posted on the department’s website says immigrants enrolled in the 2012 program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, “will continue to be eligible” to renew every two years and notes that “no work permits will be terminated prior to their current expiration dates.”

Immigration rights activists, who have fiercely battled Mr. Trump’s travel ban and increased enforcement of other immigration laws, hailed the decision.

And:

The decision is a reversal from Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric during the campaign and is likely to disappoint some of the president’s most ardent supporters, who view program started by former President Barack Obama as an illegal grant of amnesty.

Indeed.

ACTUALLY, WE’RE TRYING TO UNMAKE THAT NOW: USA: A Third World Country in the making. But we have a Third World political class, and I’m not sure how to change that.

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THERE SEEMS TO BE A SERIOUS LACK OF PROFESSIONALISM AT THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, THE CIA, THE NSA, AND, WELL, EVERYWHERE, REALLY: Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein cautions against anonymous sources in bizarre, strange, curious statement.

Or maybe he’s saying that WaPo is in Putin’s pocket. (Bumped).