IT’S DIFFERENT WHEN THEY DO IT: Militant left-wing leader arrested for allegedly inciting violence at 2016 Sacramento melee.

Yvette Felarca, 47, was taken into custody in Los Angeles on Tuesday on charges of inciting and participating in a riot, and assault likely to cause great bodily injury, the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday. The charges come after an eight-month investigation.

Felarca, whose name in public records appears as Yvonne Capistrano Felarca, has been identified as the leader and spokesperson for the anti-fascist group By Any Means Necessary.

She is among several people arrested this week in connection to the wild skirmish that broke out at the state Capitol in June 2016 when more than 300 counter-protesters confronted about 30 members of the Traditionalist Worker Party, which has been called a white nationalist group.

Felarca, who is a middle school teacher in Berkeley, attended the Capitol protest and gave television interviews after the melee. She was captured on video hitting a member of the TWP and calling a man a Nazi before punching him in the stomach repeatedly while shouting for him to “get the f*** off our streets.”

And here’s the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuWoQfZgW7M

SEAN SPICER HAS RESIGNED. But I’ll mostly miss @Sean_Spicier.

PROGRESS: For First Time, On-Chip Nanoantennas Enable High-Bit-Rate Transmission.

MOSUL’S DAMAGED CHURCHES: Iraq’s Chaldean Catholic patriarch and Radio Free Europe take a tour of the city, looking at damaged Christian churches.

MICHAEL WALSH ON AMAZON: “I think it needs to be busted up asap before Jeff Bezos destroys the country.”

But is there a moral argument to forcing people to shop at the mall?

“INSTINCTIVELY, WE JUST ALL RAN INSIDE AND STARTED GETTING PEOPLE OUT.”

ACCEPTANCE: 35% Of Democrats Say A Friend’s Vote For Trump Would “Strain” Their Relationship.

Three possibilities. One: There’s a sore-loser effect. Republicans bear Democratic friends no grudge because they won the election. Democrats do bear Republican friends a grudge because they lost. The left has to live with Trump for four years while the right is free from Clinton. No wonder one side has harder feelings than the other.

Two: The left is less tolerant of partisan disagreement because it assigns to its political beliefs the same moral weight that the right typically assigns to religion. Granted, that’s a simplification — there are many religious Democrats, albeit fewer than there are religious Republicans — but there’s a reason why campus Savonarolas feel impelled to extirpate interlopers like Ann Coulter, Charles Murray, and Ben Shapiro. The left’s favorite candidate has taken to measuring Republican legislation in terms of how many 9/11s it’s equivalent to, for fark’s sake. The right simply seems to offend the left more deeply than vice versa.

Three, the most Democrat-friendly spin: Trump is so uniquely odious a character (the “Access Hollywood” tape, the sexual assault allegations, a million other embarrassing moments) and his flaws are so intensely magnified by the media that of course one’s decision to vote for him will horrify Democrats. All I’d say to that is … have you ever talked to a Republican about Hillary Clinton?

Heh.

A FREE-SPEECH CRACKDOWN WE CAN AGREE ON? China Bans Enemy No. 1: Justin Bieber.

SO “INTERSECTIONALITY” IS JUST WHEN A BUNCH OF DIFFERENT LEFTIES GET TOGETHER TO HATE ON THE JEWS. GOT IT. After Dyke March Scandal, SlutWalk Chicago Bans ‘Zionist Displays’ From Upcoming August Protest.

NO MORE HOSTAGES: US Urges All Nationals In North Korea To “Depart Immediately”, Bans Tourists From Visiting.

MICHAEL LEDEEN: Trump Administration Still Doesn’t Have an Iran Policy.

MARRYING BEARS AND FROGS: Great title for an article discussing integrating the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) into the Department of State.

The USAID-State integration debate has churned for at least thirty years, but it has never been consummated because the two organizations have wildly discordant cultures, missions, and modus operandi. The work of both agencies is focused overseas, and both are deeply invested in globalization. Beyond that, they are as different as bears and frogs.

The article suggests the Trump Administration “repudiate USAID’s 2015 manifesto on non-cooperation” with the Dept of Defense. Thank the Obama Administration for that decision. Here’s an important recommendation: “…focus development assistance in countries where we have truly compelling U.S. national security or economic interests. The bulk of USAID tax money goes to largesse, and the biggest savings by far will be in this area.” Ouch — but a great point.

DOWN BUT NOT OUT? How the Islamic State Could Rebound.

As I’ve discussed before, despite the Islamic State’s goal of becoming a truly global insurgency, its success on the ground has been inexorably bound to local conditions, making it more of a “glocal” than global phenomenon. In European and North American countries with democratically elected governments, jihadist organizations like the Islamic State remain small, isolated and unable to pose an existential threat. By contrast, contemporary jihadists have thrived in locations marked by vacuums of authority; governments suffering from crises of legitimacy; and long histories of ethnic, tribal or sectarian conflict. Effective counterinsurgency programs — which also help establish security and justice for the local population — can successfully manage the serious threat posed by jihadism, especially if they balance military might with government policy. But mass executions, especially those that kill innocents, cause irreparable damage and destroy one of the most critical elements of a counterinsurgency: the trust of the local population.

Former Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, himself a very successful insurgent, once wrote that a guerrilla fighter “must move among the people as a fish swims in the sea.” In Iraq and Syria, jihadists were given plenty of room to swim from 2011 to 2014 because of the actions of the al-Maliki and al Assad governments. But after two years of the Islamic State’s brutal rule, the group has largely lost support from local populations — and the freedom and power that come with it. Consequently, now is an ideal time for counterinsurgency forces to use the advantage of negative public sentiment to help find, fix and finish Islamic State fighters.

However, that advantage can be lost, as it was after the death of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in April 2010. Unless the United States and its allies can help create some sort of legitimate and stable government in the Sunni areas of Iraq and Syria, the coalition will not eradicate the group, no matter how many bombs it drops. Jihadists will be able to lay low within the countries’ local populations until the opposition eases its offensive, and then they will re-emerge.

A long, hard slog.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Grade Inflation Is Even Worse Than We Thought:

American high schools are giving out higher and higher grades even as real academic ability stagnates. . . .

The erosion of intellectual standards is worse at the elite level: “the upward creep is most pronounced in schools with large numbers of white, wealthy students. And its especially noticeable in private schools, where the rate of inflation was about three times higher than in public schools.” This is probably explained at least partly by the attitudes of overbearing parents whose children are in the Ivy League rat race: Giving out anything less than an A is likely to lead to email protestations and parent-teacher conferences with mom and dad.

It’s also significant that even as high school grades become less and less meaningful, pressure is building in the educational establishment to de-emphasize or dumb down alternate measures of achievement, like the SAT, which are supposedly unfair to the poor and disadvantaged, and class rankings, which create too much rancor and competition. In the long run, though, this will only help boost the fortunes of elite students even further.

It’s almost as if that’s the plan.

KIMBERLY STRASSEL: Our Self-Interested Senators.

The House bill isn’t perfect—no bill ever is—but it amounts to the biggest entitlement reform in history. It repeals crushing taxes. It dramatically cuts spending. And it begins the process of stabilizing the individual health-care market and expanding consumer freedom.

None of this is good enough for a handful of senators, so now it’s time to make this exercise all about them. Mr. McConnell should make clear that the overwhelming majority of the Republican Party stands ready to make good on its repeal-and-replace campaign promise—and that it would have done so already were it not for a cynical or egotistic few. It’s time for some very public accountability.

That rests in Mr. McConnell giving his caucus a drop-dead date to broker a compromise, after which he will proceed to bring up the House bill. And any Republican who votes against moving forward, “a motion to proceed,” will forever be known as the Republican who saved ObamaCare. The Republican who voted to throw billions more taxpayer dollars at failing entitlement programs and collapsing insurance markets. The Republican who abandoned struggling American families. The Republican who voted against a tax cut and spending reductions. The Republican who made Chuck Schumer’s year.

And that’s only a short list of the real-world accountability.

The Democrats could agree on almost any “reform” bill, so long as it brought more money and power to Washington — the important thing was to bring more booty to Washington for divvying. What the Republicans have to do is much tougher, as any repeal or genuine replacement means less booty.

ROSS DOUTHAT: Just. Cut. Taxes.

I’m not saying that Republicans couldn’t still do a comprehensive and permanent tax reform in theory. Set health care aside entirely and there are still lots of clever and plausible ways to overhaul and improve the tax code without sacrificing revenue.

You could cap various perverse deductions that mostly benefit wealthy blue-state taxpayers, like the home-mortgage and state and local tax deductions, and use the savings to lower rates across the board. You could cut the corporate tax rate and raise the capital-gains tax rate to compensate, as Senator Mike Lee has proposed. You could even (gasp, heresy, gasp) raise the top income tax rate, as Steve Bannon reportedly wants to do, and use the savings to cut payroll taxes or fund a new child tax credit.

But Republicans don’t seem equipped to pull off anything complicated, they don’t look united enough to take political risks, and they aren’t ideologically ready to pass anything heretical. So barring a sudden transformation in the party and its leadership, a temporary, deficit-financed tax cut is the only thing that has a decent chance of happening.

And while it’s not the greatest idea, neither is it a terrible one.

Washington may have near-record peacetime deficits, but Washington is also collecting record revenues. In other words, Washington has a spending problem, not a tax problem.

WELL, EXCEPT FOR THE ACID ATTACKS. IT’S HARD TO LAUGH AT THOSE. Politically Correct London is Becoming a Global Laughing Stock.

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ILLUMINATING MARINES: Marines deployed in Afghanistan fire an illumination round from a mortar. Great kaleidoscopic mix of colors.

NORTH KOREA SNUBS SOUTH KOREA BID FOR MILITARY TALKS:

South Korea’s proposed military talks aimed at easing tension between the two Koreas planned for Friday failed to happen after the North snubbed the call, a setback for new President Moon Jae-in’s hopes for dialogue.

The North has remained silent on the South Korean proposal, made on Monday, for talks on ways to avoid hostilities along their heavily fortified border.

Moon took office in May pledging to engage the North in dialogue, as well as to bring pressure on it to impede its nuclear and missile programs.

The fat kid running North Korea continues to believe he can win the Korean War.

President Moon needs to consider some other policy options.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: America’s Media Meltdown. “Between 2008 and 2016, the media were unapologetic about their adoration of President Barack Obama. Now, they are energized by their thorough loathing of President Donald Trump. In tragic fashion, the hubris of deifying Obama has now come full circle to the nemesis of demonizing Trump. The common denominator of the two extremes is the abandonment of disinterested reporting.”

RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA: Grassley Ready to Use Subpoena to Get Manafort, Trump Jr. to Testify Next Week.

RUSSIA’S EVOLVING EURASIA STRATEGY: The Carnegie Institute reports that Russia’s “new geopolitical framework is being referred to as Greater Eurasia.”

The strategic concept:

Instead of integrating into a Western-led system or reintegrating recalcitrant ex-provinces, Russia could develop a “global Russia,” geared to its own values, interests, and goals. This aversion to formal integration should not spell autarky or isolationism. Russia vitally needs to integrate, but into the global system as a whole, not into tight regional or transregional alignments. Also, rather than simply criticizing U.S. global dominance, Russia would do better to engage with like-minded partners to create an international system that no single power would dominate.

Good read.

IF YOU CAN’T BEAT ‘EM… Sears to Sell Kenmore Brand on Amazon.

Sears Holdings Corp. SHLD 10.60% said Thursday it will start selling its Kenmore appliances on Amazon, loosening its grip on one of its historic product lines and becoming the latest big American brand to capitulate to the online-retail giant.

News of Amazon’s move into appliances, one of the categories it hasn’t deeply penetrated, rippled through the industry. Investors dumped shares of big appliance sellers that have been benefiting from Sears’s retreat. Lowe’s Cos. tumbled; Home Depot Inc. HD -4.09% and Best Buy Co. BBY -3.93% fell 4% apiece.

Amazon’s rapid growth has displaced traditional stores and left even powerful brands unable to ignore it. Nike Inc., one of the biggest holdouts, recently decided to start selling directly to Amazon.

All within Prime, nothing outside Prime, nothing against Prime.