THE PROPER RESPONSE TO THESE COORDINATED EDITORIALS IS TO LAUGH AT THEM: Thoughts on First Amendment theater:

The media misdirect attention to the First Amendment rather than hold themselves accountable for reporting often wrong, misleading, or incomplete. They choose loaded words, add phrases, insert catty remarks, and bury ledes.

We know. We edit such copy every day. The president doesn’t “slap” on tariffs; he imposes them. He doesn’t “slash” budgets; he reduces them. We edit out Improvised Editorial Devices (IEDs) that have no place in journalism, like the clause “Ever the showman” designed to shape the mental battlefield. We rearrange copy to focus on what is significant, not salacious. We ignore petty subjects they favor and request coverage of significant ones they overlook.

A journalist is only as good as the last story written, and journalists should approach subjects with a full set of skills and little baggage. That’s hard to do when some are paid by news sources, fed rumors by unnamed sources, or personally involved with those about whom they report.

Quality news articles should be as accurate and complete as a nautical chart. To navigate into port, no sea captain would trust a chart that inserted non-existent shoals or omitted real ones.

ANDREW MALCOLM: A Journalist Reflects On His Profession’s Anti-Trump Collusion.

Had those elites of both parties paid genuine attention to flyover country’s concerns, frustrations and fears, as silly and stupid as they seem to disconnected Beltway know-it-all’s, they would not be in today’s baffling, powerless position. There would have been no need for a Trump. And by the way, isn’t it strange how a billionaire from a New York high-rise could detect the heartland’s hurt better than those elected from that region?

Trump did not invent many Americans’ visceral dislike of the media. He’s using it, exactly as these 100+ newspapers will use their readers’ visceral dislike of Trump to influence a large audience on this day. It’s all fair game in a free society, even one as bitterly splintered as ours these days.

Many silent Americans see a Washington paper, for example, chronicling in excess of 4,000 Trump exaggerations and lies. Fair enough.

Where was that passion for lie detection during Obama’s endless reign of error when he spewed serial untruths about, among others, Solyndra, Fast and Furious, the IRS scandal, Benghazi’s video roots and how Americans could keep their insurance, doctor and about $2,500 in savings under Obamacare?

Now, some realities: When’s the last time you read a newspaper editorial, online or in print, and thought, “You know, that anonymous writer is right and I’ve been wrong all these years!”

Today’s media “collusion” won’t move the needle one tick, but it will be regarded as a success within the DNC-Media Complex echo chamber because it will suddenly seem so much louder in there. Everyone else will yawn.

Ego drives the media to overplay its hand, every time, for the same reason the scorpion stings the frog.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Prof Claims ‘Responsible Fatherhood’ Reinforces ‘Patriarchy.’ Giving poor dads a leg up supports “hegemonic masculinity.”

I’m pretty sure I saw Hegemonic Masculinity open up for the Clash at the TLA in Philadelphia back in 1982.

WHEN YOU PUT IT THAT WAY…: Newspapers team up to tell Trump they aren’t colluding against him

YOU WILL BE MADE TO CARE: Twitter is “experimenting with features that would promote alternative viewpoints in Twitter’s timeline to address misinformation and reduce ‘echo chambers.'”

THE DEEP STATE WHINES BACK: Brennan, Colleagues Say Security Clearance Revocation Intended to ‘Intimidate and Suppress Any Criticism’ of Trump.

What do you suppose would have happened to dissent if the presidential candidate Brennan voted for in 1976 had actually won?

Update: Second link was wrong before. Fixed now — sorry!

RIP: Aretha Franklin has died.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UMich in trouble with appeals court for not letting students cross-examine rape accusers.

THERESE SHAHEEN: The Belt and Road Illusion. “China’s international-development project reflects its global ambitions but masks problems at home.”

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela’s taps run dry. “Water cuts are the latest addition to a long list of woes for Venezuelans hurting from a fifth year of an economic crisis that has sparked malnutrition, hyperinflation and emigration. Malfunctions in the capital’s water network due to lack of maintenance have taken a turn for the worst in recent months, depriving many in this city of 3 million people of regular running water.”

This is a moving photo essay from Reuters.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Harvard prof: Universities should not ‘respect’ Trump officials.

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Brennan Security Clearance Yanked and Much, Much More. “Farewell, cushy consulting jobs that require a security clearance.”

THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN HIGH TREASON FROM 2009-2016: Pearl Jam shares poster depicting Trump’s corpse and a burning White House.

TANK LIVE FIRE IN GEORGIA: The country, not the state.

RELATED: Ten years ago Putin launched a tsar-war against Georgia. Two columns I wrote at the time provide historical background, there first dated August 13, 2008 and the second dated August 26, 2008.

From the second column:

Personalizing Russia 2008 as Vladimir Putin strikes me as a stretch. Putin runs an oligarchy, not a totalitarian dictatorship, but Putin is clearly at the nucleus of the oligarchy, with ex-KGB pals, friendly billionaires and useful mafiya in close orbits. But dub the pals and billionaires “new royalty,”and Putin might be an emerging “pop Tsar” — a savvy 21st century autocrat leveraging Russian nationalist demands. Orchestrating a domestically popular military ventures fits this frame.

But recall in 2008 the Obama-Clinton Democrats and their media cronies blamed George W. Bush for lousy U.S.-Russia relations. And in 2009 Obama and Hillary “reset” U.S.-Russia relations. How? From September 22, 2009: by giving Putin a “sphere of influence” and cashing in missile defenses in Eastern Europe.

Seizing Crimea in 2014 — on Obama’s watch– was initially a “domestically popular” military venture in Russia.

Obama, Clinton, Clapper, Brennan, Lynch, Comey, McCabe, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN — they want you to forget this sorry history.

WE NEED THE SPACE FORCE TO LOOK INTO THIS: US concerned by Russian satellite’s ‘very abnormal behavior.’

RECOVERY SUMMER, THE UN-IRONIC EDITION: Retail Sales and Manufacturing Are Powering U.S. Growth This Summer.

Retail sales—a measure of spending at U.S. stores, websites and restaurants—rose a seasonally adjusted 0.5% in July from the prior month, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. That was well ahead of economists’ forecasts for a 0.1% increase.

Compared with a year earlier, they grew 6.4% in July. That’s more than double the pace of inflation, which increased 2.9% in the year to July, as measured by the Labor Department’s consumer-price index.

Robust hiring and low unemployment mean more households have income to spend. That is being amplified by tax cuts, which have resulted in less paycheck withholding.

With demand strong, production is also up. U.S. factory output rose 0.3% in July, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday, and was up 2.8% from a year earlier, largely on higher auto and computer production.

Nice.

CLAIMING INDEPENDENCE, ACTING LIKE A HERD: Jack Shafer: America’s Newspapers Just Played Right Into Trump’s Hands.

MICHAEL BARONE: Either Trump is delivering on his economic promises, or he’s very lucky.

Is President Trump fulfilling candidate Trump’s promises?

You can make a case that he is, based on some surprising and widely unexpected economic developments. Vice President Mike Pence, writing in the Des Moines Register, put it succinctly: “The evidence is clear: America is back.” He adds, “It’s not an accident.”

Pence and other Trump enthusiasts can point to increasing macroeconomic growth. GDP growth ran at a hot annualized 4.1 percent in the second quarter, and for the year it’s up more than 3 percent. Unemployment was down to 3.9 percent in July. The S&P 500 stock index is up 6 percent during the Trump presidency while the rest of the world’s stock markets are down 6 percent. These are numbers any recent administration would boast about.

More notable are positive trends among subgroups who weren’t doing so well before Trump took office. Obama administration chief economic adviser Jason Furman, writing at Vox.com, notes that in the past three years “recent wage growth … at the lower end of the wage scale has been stronger” than among those higher paid. Similarly, Bloomberg columnist and portfolio manager Conor Sen makes the point that job growth has been greatest among “goods-producing workers and the least-educated workers.”

Both Furman and Sen contrast current trends with those in the 1998-2001 period of torrid economic growth, when income gains were concentrated at the top of the economic spectrum and employment gains were concentrated in office jobs and “meds and eds” — the government-financed or heavily regulated healthcare and education sectors.

So maybe growing income inequality isn’t inevitable after all. And maybe the economic prospects of groups clustered at the low end of the economic scale are not as dire as has long been assumed.

Go figure.

TRACKING EARTH’S MINI-MOONS: There could be many minis in orbit.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Andrew Cuomo Was Never That Great. But who would have figured that Chris Cuomo would turn out the be the smarter Cuomo brother?

HMM: How Bruce Ohr Could Implicate High-Ranking Obama Officials In Spygate.

We don’t know what Yates knew about Ohr’s role. When Yates testified before Congress in May 2017 about the Russia investigation, Ohr’s involvement was still secret, leading the Senate Judiciary Committee to focus instead on her role in instigating the firing of Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn.

Once again, Ohr and Steele’s exchanges detailed by Solomon provide a hint: The day after Yate’s firing, Steele contacted Ohr, texting “doubtless a sad and crazy day for you re-SY,” a clear reference to Sally Yates. “Just wanted to check you are OK, still in situ and able to help locally as discussed, along with your Bureau colleagues,” Steele added. Then, after Ohr confirmed “I’m still here and able to help as discussed,” Steele stressed that if Ohr was out at DOJ, he needed another “(Bureau?)” contact.

This exchange suggests Yates’ removal concerned Steele and left him worried that without Yates at the helm, Ohr’s continued role as a DOJ liaison for Steele was at risk, and that without Yates or Ohr, he would need to work directly with the FBI.

Was that because Yates approved of Ohr acting as a dossier courier for Steele and the FBI? If so, the Spygate scandal reaches into even higher echelons of the Deep State than previously known.

You’ll want to read the whole thing about our previous, remarkably scandal-free Administration.

JIM TREACHER: It Seems Twitter’s ‘Trust and Safety Council’ Is Working Overtime to Ban Conservatives.