RICHARD FERNANDEZ: “This amazing turnabout partly explains the media’s bitterness for Donald Trump. Their downfall seems so sudden it can only be due to some evil Trumpian witchcraft or infernal magic, for nothing else can explain it. But Albright to her credit understands that what changed since the day Viktor Belenko walked into a suburban Virginia supermarket wasn’t Trump: what changed was the implosion of the information hierarchy.”

Plus: “The Chinese aren’t afraid of Putin, but they are terrified of what they perceive as chaotic process. In the West it’s just the opposite. No one fears a chaotic process. They’re all afraid of a man. Conventional wisdom posits the chief challenges facing the post-Cold War World are Global Warming and the decline of international institutions. But maybe that assurance is a species of Fake News. Suppose the most pressing problems in the next decade is finding new energy supplies to 1) keep the price of oil low enough to contain Russia (and Islamism); and 2) adapting to a disruptive information revolution no one can seem to control. Who will hand you that unconventional wisdom unless you come to it yourself?”

If only there had been some sort of warning about what was coming.

DEB HEINE: Russiagate Roundup.

DAVID STEINBERG: No, 44 States Didn’t Reject Trump’s Election Integrity Commission: Anatomy of a CNN #FakeNews Narrative.

HAVE YOU HUGGED A FRACKER TODAY? Permian Basin Operators, Not OPEC, will Determine Normal Oil Prices from Here Out.

Kleptocratic petrostates hardest hit.

HEY, SPOCK, WHEN DID YOU GROW A BEARD? LOOKS GOOD, DUDE! Snopes: The Lies of Donald Trump’s Critics, and How They Shape His Many Personas: An in-depth analysis of the false allegations and misleading claims made against the 45th President since his inauguration.

Well, okay, Snopes defending Trump isn’t quite bearded-Spock territory, but it’s close.

UNUSED OPPO TRICKLES OUT: Hillary Clinton’s plan to attack Bernie Sanders’ wife.

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ claims that an ongoing FBI probe of his wife is based on partisan politics don’t square with the fact that it began under President Obama and appears to closely track Democratic opposition research revealed in the hacked emails of the Hillary Clinton campaign.

The FBI and U.S. Attorney in Vermont are investigating Jane O’Meara Sanders for her role in a failed 2010, $10 million college land deal that she orchestrated during her seven-year stint as president of Burlington College in Vermont.

According to a series of 2015 emails to and from Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, leaked to and published on Wikileaks, the Clinton team wrote an extensive political opposition memo entitled “Sanders Top Hits-Thematics.” The memo details Mrs. Sanders’ role in the college’s financial failure, and parallels the ongoing FBI investigation, now before a grand jury, into the scandal. Other email correspondence shows the Clinton team believed scandals surrounding the college and Jane Sanders provided an opportunity to knock the Vermont senator’s reputation and chances to win the Democratic primary election.

I’m sure they would have rolled this out if Bernie had done better. Hillary had a plan for every contingency, except being unpopular and a bad candidate.

SINGLE PAYER, SINGLE DECIDER:

Watch your mouth — the judge could always change his mind.

VOX: It’s OK to scare the crap out of people on climate change.

It’s fine for activists to be congenitally positive — that’s their job. But I’m with Slate’s Susan Matthews: it’s just weird for journalists and analysts to worry about overly alarming people regarding the biggest, scariest problem humanity has ever faced. By any sane accounting, the ranks the under-alarmed outnumber the over-alarmed by many multiples. The vast majority of people do not have an accurate understanding of how bad climate change has already gotten or how bad it is likely to get, much less how bad it could get if we keep electing crazy people.

When there are important things that people don’t understand, journalists should explain those things. Attempts at dime-store social psychology are unlikely to lead to better journalism.

Over my 407 years in the climate-o-sphere, I’ve cycled through just about every school of thought on the right way to communicate climate change. What I’ve come to believe is that on this, as on most matters, nobody really knows anything. Even if there are accurate statements about how people in general respond to messages in general, they won’t tell you much about how you ought to communicate with the people you want to reach.

Writing that is consciously pitched to reach and inspire some mythical average reader (as encountered in social science studies filtered through popular journalism) tends to be flavorless and dull.

Similarly, the dry, hedged language of science is not the only serious or legitimate way to communicate, though climate scientists often mistake it as such.

tl;dr? People are too dumb and too irrational to know what’s good for ’em.

I believe it was noted scientist Bill Nye who recently defined “science” as, “If it bleeds, it leads.”

GIVEN THAT ERICK ERICKSON IS A HUGE NEVERTRUMPER, THIS IS SIGNIFICANT: Here’s Why I Think the Donald Trump, Jr. Meeting Sounds Like a Set Up.

BREAKING: Jerusalem’s Temple Mount Shut Down After 5 Dead in ‘Allahu Akbar’ Terror Attack.

NANCY MACLEAN’S DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS: Yet another devastating critique. “In many instances, quotations are taken out of context or abbreviated in ways that suggest meanings radically at odds with the tenor of the passage or document from which they were taken. Critically, these misleading quotations are often central to establishing Professor MacLean’s argument.”

This is beginning to remind me of Michael Bellesiles.

PATRICK POOLE: Captured Tunisian ISIS Fighter Confesses Muslim Brotherhood Encouraged Jihad in Syria.

THIS IS CNN: Host Says President Would Have Sold Uranium to Russia.

FLASHBACK: Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal.

Take away projection, and all they’d have left is lies and hate.

JOURNALISM: ABC News: Christians Who Believe In The First Amendment Are A ‘Hate Group.’

ABC News’ Pete Madden and Erin Galloway smeared Christians who believe the Bill of Rights secures religious liberty as a “hate group,” in an article this week headlined, “Jeff Sessions addresses ‘anti-LGBT hate group,’ but DOJ won’t release his remarks.” The lede of the story made it clear this was not just the work of a rogue headline writer but the failure of the reporters themselves. . . .

Who is this “hate group”? Alliance Defending Freedom is not a hate group at all, but a civil liberties organization that battles for religious liberty. And they’re not a fringe group either. They just weeks ago won their most recent Supreme Court victory — Trinity Lutheran v. Comer — 7-2. It was their fifth Supreme Court victory in seven years, during which time they’ve had no losses at the high court.

And the group is ranked among the top law firms in the country for its successes at the Supreme Court.

Most recently the non-profit law firm found out that the Supreme Court agreed to hear another one of their cases dealing with artistic freedom and religious liberty.

To characterize such an accomplished civil rights group as a ‘hate group’ is unacceptable and inexcusable.

Do you want more Trump? Because this is how you get more Trump.

Related: How ‘Good Morning America’ hides George Stephanopoulos’ ‘little-boyish mini-legs.’

BLUE MODEL CRISIS: Will Hartford Be the Next American City to Go Belly Up?

The last major American city to go bankrupt was Detroit, which was dealt a mortal blow by the financial crisis and officially filed for protection from its creditors in 2013. Last year, Puerto Rico became the next car on the bankruptcy train, and other U.S. territories may follow suit. But so far, large U.S. cities have remained solvent, even as the public pension crisis festers, and cities like Chicago look to be on the edge.

But it just became more likely that we will see another big city bankruptcy in the near future. . . .

As we noted before, it’s remarkable that this is taking place in one of the richest states in the union and in the midst of an historic bull market. The structural problems in state and local finance run deep, and they will not resolve themselves.We need to be prepared for the fiscal storm that will sweep the country the next time a recession hits.

Despite a superficial prosperity from the financial and construction sectors, New York City is in much worse shape than it appears.

OH: Co-founder of firm behind Trump-Russia dossier will not testify before Senate next week.

The committee on Wednesday announced a July 19 hearing that listed Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, as a witness. His inclusion raised the specter of public testimony about the dossier’s seamy and contested claims of sexual misconduct and a years-long Kremlin conspiracy to get Trump elected.

But the request for Simpson to appear was voluntary, and it’s unclear whether the committee will seek to compel his testimony.

Let the subpoenas fly.

THIS IS TROUBLING: Report: Chattanooga, Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville Among the Worst-Run Cities in Country. “Nashville ranked 112 on the list in overall rankings, and Knoxville ranked 127. Almost at the bottom were Memphis, at 141, and Chattanooga, falling just below Memphis at 142. No other Tennessee cities were included.”

DECLINE OF THE WEST: Seattle Councilman Objects to Hosing Excrement-Covered Sidewalks Because It’s Racist.

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MY LATEST NY OBSERVER ESSAY: Options for dealing with North Korea’s ballistic missile threat.

VOA: For France, Trump’s visit on Bastille Day was deeply symbolic.

President Trump was the guest of honor at the Bastille Day parade in Paris.

The American flag flew along with the French flag on Paris’ famed Champs Elysees, where U.S. troops marched in a parade with thousands of French soldiers, tanks, missile launchers, and armored personnel carriers.

More than 3,500 police took positions along the parade route to guard against potential terrorist attacks.

“We have also found sure allies, friends, who came to help us,” Macron said.”The United States of America are among them. This is why nothing will separate us, never.The presence today of the U.S. president, Donald Trump, and his wife is the sign of a friendship that lasts through time.”

The article’s a good read.

FREEDOM CAUCUS CHAIRMAN: ‘Zero Chance’ for Tax Reform if Congress Doesn’t Start Now.

THUNDERBIRDS OVER LOCH NESS: The USAF air demonstration team flies over some beautiful Scottish countryside.

DAVID HARSANYI: The Insufferable Hypocrisy Of ‘Morning Joe.’

After famously leaving the Democratic Party, Ronald Reagan went on national television in 1964 to deliver a brilliant distillation of his views on limited government and individual liberty in “A Time for Choosing.” Reagan gave the speech, though he knew it would be toxic among his peers and possibly hurt a nascent political career, to help long-shot candidate Barry Goldwater.

Joe Scarborough famously left the Republican Party in 2017 by going on CBS’s “The Late Show” where host Stephen Colbert teed up some preplanned questions that allowed “Morning Joe,” to the delight of a crowd of applauding automatons who couldn’t tell the difference between sanctimony and bravery, to indulge in some self-aggrandizement.

Reagan went to bed the night of his pre-taped speech “hoping I hadn’t let Barry down.” Joe went to bed the night of his pre-taped show believing that Americans enjoyed his cringe-inducing third-rate MOR protest song. “It’s one of the great tragedies of my political life that Democrats get all the great musicians,” the lead singer and guitarist for the band Scarborough had recently explained. Well, fortunately, Joe will have a chance to reverse this historic injustice when he finally registers as a Democrat.

Tell us what you really think, David.