LOWER, PLEASE: Pentagon targets lower-tier suppliers on new $60M F-35 affordability effort.

The goal is to get the Air Force F-35A variant down to $80 million a copy, which isn’t all that much more than a less-capable and less-survivable Block 52 or Block 60 F-16.

OBAMA HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY JEH JOHNSON: The 2016 election wasn’t hacked.

So what’s Robert Mueller investigating again?

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: The culture war comes for Dr. Seuss.

As Ryan Holiday noted in a 2015 New York Observer article titled “The Real Reason We Need to Stop Trying to Protect Everyone’s Feelings,” “In the 50th anniversary edition [of Fahrenheit 451], Bradbury includes a short afterword where he gives his thoughts on current culture. Almost as if he is speaking directly about the events above, he wrote: ‘There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.’”

CONSIDER IT DONE. Delanie Walker To Upset Titans Fans: ‘Don’t Come To The Game.’

That’s certainly a generous stand for Walker to make, but apparently the fans are way out ahead of him on this one.

LIBRARIES AREN’T WHAT THEY USED TO BE: Librarian rejects First Lady’s gift of Dr. Seuss books calling them ‘racist propaganda.’

I BLAME “CLIMATE CHANGE:” Debris from 2011 tsunami carried invasive species to North America.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: The Latest on RUSSIA, the NFLOL and Much, Much More.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Facing poverty, academics turn to sex work and sleeping in cars: Adjunct professors in America face low pay and long hours without the security of full-time faculty. Some, on the brink of homelessness, take desperate measures.

See, this is why Betsy DeVos, and the Trump Administration generally, need to halt the exploitation of adjuncts. I think that schools receiving federal aid should have at least 75% of their courses taught by full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty. Sure, that’ll leave less money for “diversity and inclusion” administrators, but is it really fair to have PhD’s forced into prostitution so that people with Master’s in Higher Ed Administration degrees can earn $60K?

DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSWOMAN DEFENDS 2003 PUSH TO BOOT US NAVY FROM PUERTO RICO:

New York Democratic Rep. Nydia Velazquez Thursday defended pressuring the Bush administration to order the U.S. Navy to leave the Puerto Rican island of Vieques in 2003, blaming the military’s munitions for the area’s high cancer rate and ignoring the high jobless rate since the Navy left.

She made the comments as President Donald Trump deployed the USNS Comfort to Puerto Rico after the U.S. territory was devastated by Hurricane Maria.

Velazquez, at a press conference during a press conference calling for hurricane relief and military deployment for Puerto Rico, pounded the point that Puerto Ricans are American citizens.

Here’s a flashback to an ABC article written in 2003 when the Navy departed Vieques, following an edict issued by Bill Clinton in 2000. Note the other Democrat heavy hitters namechecked, including Al Sharpton and Hillary:

For 60 years, American troops have trained on Vieques Island off Puerto Rico. The government bought most of the island because it considered it a perfect place to train sailors and pilots. It’s surrounded by ocean, but far from shipping lanes.

Then four years ago, a pilot made a tragic mistake. He dropped two bombs in the wrong place and killed David Sanes, a security guard. Immediately, activists started leading protests against the Navy bombing. They pulled down fences and invaded the property, saying the Navy must leave Vieques.

The activists claimed the bombing caused cancer and polluted the island.

Famous people joined the protests. Al Sharpton went through the fence. So did Robert Kennedy Jr. and actor Edward James Olmos.

Lots of politicians from New York, which has a large Puerto Rican population, got involved too, including Gov. George Pataki, Rep. Charles Rangel, Rep. Jose Serrano, and Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Back in 2000, President Clinton decided the Navy would stop the training in Vieques. “We have not always been good neighbors on Vieques,” said Clinton.

President Bush supported that decision.

“These are our friends and neighbors and they don’t want us there,” Bush said.

Until they did.

I’LL MISS HIM: Jim Treacher: This Is My Last Blog Post At The Daily Caller Dot Com.

SOCIAL JUSTICE MEDIA: Twitter Says It Found 201 Accounts Linked to Possible Russian Election Interference.

The company also told congressional investigators that the Russian-backed news site RT spent $274,100 on ads on Twitter last year. A U.S. intelligence report said RT sought to meddle in the U.S. election.

The revelations, coming weeks after Facebook Inc. first disclosed Russian actors paid for divisive political ads on its platform, further inflame tensions that Russians sought to manipulate public opinion in the U.S. through social media. Russia has denied interfering in the election.

Twitter’s announcement drew a swift rebuke from some congressional leaders including Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat and the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian activities during the election. Mr. Warner called the meeting with Twitter “deeply disappointing” and said the company hadn’t done enough to examine the extent of Russian activity on its platform.

The blue-on-blue action is always fun, but a quarter-million dollar ad buy in a billion-dollar race barely adds up to a pittance. And anyway, the Russians were wise to be so cheap because: A) political ads don’t work, and; B) the Kremlin’s goal wasn’t to pick a winner but rather to sow dissension.

And on that last score, Democrats are proving themselves the Kremlin’s more-than-useful idiots.

SHE SHOULD BE: Betsy Devos rebuts critics during Harvard visit; Proud of ‘school choice’ label. “Betsy DeVos said it’s a ‘badge of honor’ to be dubbed the ‘school choice’ Secretary of Education during an address last night at Harvard, where she spoke as students staged a silent protest just feet away from the podium.”

Somebody tell these Harvard kids to check their private-school privilege.

#FAKENEWS: Kushner registered as male voter, board says, correcting error.

The New York Board of Elections on Thursday corrected information suggesting President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had listed his gender as “female” on a voter registration form.

Kushner, now a White House adviser, did check the box for “male” on his original registration form, the board said, but the information was entered incorrectly in a database.

“It does happen from time to time,” Board of Elections Executive Director Michael Ryan told The New York Daily News. “I wouldn’t call it a common occurrence.”

Reports about Kushner registering as a female vote went viral after the Democratic opposition research firm American Bridge found data in a voter database that said he had checked the box for “female.”

The voter registration data was found through Nexis. The Hill and other news outlets confirmed the information, which was first reported by Wired.

New York voter registration forms require registrants to check a box to denote their gender, M or F, and the Daily News found that Kushner clearly checked the box signifying he is a male voter.

Even if he had checked “Female,” who are those bigots at American Bridge to argue with his gender identification?

FINALLY, SOMEONE IS STANDING UP AGAINST EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION: DOJ files suit against company for allegedly not hiring Americans. “The Department of Justice announced Thursday it has filed a lawsuit against a Colorado corporation for allegedly discriminating against U.S. workers. The complaint alleges that in 2016, Crop Production discriminated against at least three United States citizens by refusing to employ them as seasonal technicians in El Campo, Texas, because Crop Production preferred to hire temporary foreign workers under the H-2A visa program.”

BLOWBACK: NFL protester says father has lost work because of it.

Lions defensive linemen Akeem Spence tweeted Thursday that a contractor denied his father work on a house because of his protests.

There were eight Lions players who kneeled during the anthem on Sunday, and Spence was one of them. After the game, he explained his actions as every protester has when asked — that it is not about the flag or the anthem or disrespecting the military, but rather to raise awareness for racial inequality in America.

“No disrespect to the flag, no disrespect to any of the veterans or anything,” Spence told ESPN after the Lions’ 30-26 loss to the Falcons. “It was just right is right, wrong is wrong, and what the guy said about us as NFL players, I just feel like that’s something that’s us, as NFL players, we have to stand up for that’s not what we are. You know what I’m saying. We’re human beings. We give back to the community.

“We do great things, and our owners, you know what I’m saying, they do great things. So that’s something we don’t represent around the NFL. That’s something every team should have come out and showed this Sunday, that it’s not what that guy said about us.”

It’s impossible to tell from his statement exactly what Spence thought he was protesting or supporting by taking a knee, but it is clear that he fails to understand that freedom of expression is a two-way street.

NARRATIVE FAIL: RUSSIA FACEBOOK ADS SHOWED SUPPORT FOR BLACK LIVES MATTER, CLINTON.

Related: Jeh Johnson: The 2016 election wasn’t hacked.

Just think of the media as Democrat activists with bylines — and airbrushes — and the fake news of the last 10 months starts to make sense.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: How Harvard helps its richest and most arrogant students get ahead: What the elite expect, and receive, from an Ivy League education. “Naive as I was as a grad student, I suspected from the start that teachers’ defeat in clashes over standards was built in, as our humiliations served a clear purpose: Undergraduates emerged more powerful the more obnoxiously they behaved; they felt they owned the system — how else could they induce it to give them high grades certifying their excellence when their work was mediocre or nonexistent?”

Kinda makes you wonder if we shouldn’t just abolish the Ivy League or something.