BLUE STATE BLUES: California has worst ‘quality of life’ in US, study says.

It’s actually pretty great there — if you’re rich. For everyone else, it’s clogged (and broken) highways, unaffordable rents and mortgages, filthy streets, beggars, rural destitution, and endless nannystatism.

But if you understand progressivism as a system of high-tech feudalism, then California’s high-low split is exactly what California’s progressives have been aiming for.

GOVERNMENT IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER: Cancer Survivor Fined $2,260 for Providing Rides to Hospital Patients: Hospital describes her services as “invaluable.”

For more than three years, the cancer survivor—an unnamed woman—served outpatients at St. Joseph’s Hospital, offering round-trip rides for those in need. Despite years of successful work and those in the hospital calling her a “critical volunteer,” her charitable operation was shut down after being a target of a police sting operation.

The London police can’t handle the acid attacks or the rape gangs, but they’ve got the resources to mount a sting operation against volunteers who drive sick people to the hostpital. But that’s how it works: The worse the authorities are at dealing with actual bad people, the more they crack down on good people so it looks like they’re doing something.

Related: London Now More Dangerous Than New York, Crime Stats Suggest.

SURPRISING PRECISELY NOBODY: YouTube Secretly Using SPLC To Police Videos.

MICHAEL WALSH: Why Can’t a Woman be Less Like a Man?

ANOTHER MUCH-TOUTED PSYCHOLOGY STUDY FAILS TO REPLICATE: An appetite for risk? Failure to replicate the effect of hunger cues on risk taking.

HMM: Enceladus Has Everything It Needs to Host Alien Life, And We’re So Excited.

DO YOU WANT LESS TRUMP? Because this is how Trump gets less Trump.

DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS: “With a Bible quote too! I make a deep, low bow toward the west. Texas, y’all!”

NOT UNDER SOCIALISM. NEXT QUESTION? Can Venezuela Be Saved?

This is a very, very long New York Times feature, with ponderous paragraphs like this one…

Historians have come up with all sorts of arguments about the arc of Venezuelan history and how things went so wrong. A couple of points strike me as indispensable to any case: Venezuela is the birthplace of Latin American independence and sits on the largest proven reserves of oil in the world. How you interpret the role of these factors in any given historic event is a matter of personal politics and granular debate, but you can’t have a serious discussion about Venezuela without taking both into account. For most of the past century, the country has whipsawed between political movements that court and reflect and sometimes renounce the legacy of anti-imperialism and the towering glut of riches.

…and yet can’t find the time for even one use of the word “socialism” or “socialist.”

But there is an answer to the headline’s question: “Get the hell out of my way!” as the wise man once said.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College dropout refuses to leave her dorm room. “She loves the college life — just not the classes. Hunter College is waging a court battle to evict a stubborn student who refuses to leave her dorm room some two years after dropping out. Delaware native Lisa S. Palmer — who has not paid rent since 2016 — refuses to leave Room E579 at the school’s 425 E. 25th St. co-ed dormitory, according to an eviction lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court. The 32-year-old ‘racked up a staggering $94,000 in unpaid residence hall charges on account of her continued occupancy, all the while ignoring Hunter College’s service of additional vacate notices,’ said the suit.”

THE BEST DEFENSE… Putin unveils new Russian nuclear missile, says it renders defenses ‘useless.’

He boasted that Russia’s new ICBM is “powerful and modern and defense systems will not be able to withstand it,” he said. “Missile defences will be useless against it.”

Other new weapons include the Avangard — an intercontinental hypersonic missile that would fly to targets at a speed 20 times the speed of sound — and a weapons system called Kinzhal, already deployed in southern Russia, that uses hypersonic missiles that can strike targets 1,250 miles away.

That’s great. But Russia had better learn to ween its economy off of oil dependency, if Putin expects to buy more than a handful of his new systems. Procurement of Moscow’s new Su-57 stealth fighter and revolutionary T-14 Armata tank has already been cut and/or postponed due to sanctions and low oil prices.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Queer Socialists Mock Barbra Streisand. America’s Largest Socialist Organization’s “Queer Branch” Isn’t Fond of Babs.

And the answer is none. None more woke.

WELL, BASICALLY ANY DEPARTURE FROM THE NARRATIVE DOES, SO YES: Does Concern For Boys Put You In the Alt-Right? Progressives still label worry about men’s and boys’ problems as conservative.

NOAH ROTHMAN: Ben Rhodes and the Democratic Guilt Complex on Russia and Iran.

When you’re good at something, you should never do it for free. That’s perhaps why Barack Obama’s former deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes, is gearing up to politicize national security issues once again in a professional capacity.

On Tuesday, Rhodes revealed his intention to join former Obama administration officials, Hillary Clinton staffers, and a handful of career civil servants to form “National Security Action,” a 501(c)(4) that will not endorse candidates but will campaign against them. You can probably guess who this organization’s primary target will be. “We’re a temporary organization,” Rhodes told the Washington Post. “Our hope is to be out of business in three years.”

There’s more of that revolving door action, assuming Rhodes means what he says — which by his own admission is a dangerous assumption.

But Rhodes’ problem since leaving the Obama Administration is that his audience no longer consists exclusively of 27-year-olds who literally know nothing. As you can see for yourself at his sad (and widely mocked) Twitter feed.

SO IT’S “#TIMESUP WHEN I SAY IT’S UP!” HERE: Defiant Mayor Megan Barry Refuses to Resign: ‘The Tennesseean Is Welcome to Their Opinion.’

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Should Law Schools Shift Scholarship Money From Merit (LSAT & UGPA Medians) To Need?

OH MY! George Takei Steps in It With Tweets About Gun Control.

IT APPEARS TRUMP’S SMART ENOUGH NOT TO BREAK WITH HIS BASE HERE: Trump, The Day After: “Respect 2nd Amendment!” “Republicans will face a tough midterm election in 2018, and it may be even tougher in 2020 to hold the White House. Trump’s not going to win converts on the Left by cutting ties with the NRA, but he’ll lose lots of votes by attacking the NRA as a big conspiracy and casting them in the same light as the mainstream media that Trump loves to attack. And Trump doesn’t have that many votes to spare.”

I think Tom Maguire’s theory of what happened is probably right:

LIZ PEEK: Trump is ramping up for a 2020 run (but Democrats STILL don’t get it).

Someday, Trump watchers are going to figure out what makes this man tick. Here’s a little secret: President Trump likes to win. Bowing out after only one term would look like losing. He won’t do it.

But there are some who apparently didn’t see it coming. Michael Wolff, who got a lot of notice for his gossipy and error-laden book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” has suggested the president probably wouldn’t run again.

According to Wolff, who pretends to have an inside track, President Trump doesn’t like his job. Wolff told an Australian Broadcasting Service interviewer earlier this year: “In the end, I think that the real truth is he does not want to be the president – the president of the United States.”

Turns out Wolff’s “track” is a lot like Amtrak’s – unreliable.

The official announcement usually comes years later than Trump’s did, but every President’s reelection thoughts begin shortly after they remove their hand from the Bible — if not sooner.

THE PLAN IS TO DRAG THINGS OUT UNTIL THE VOTERS GIVE UP: The Brexit Talks Are Going in Circles. The truth is, the UK political class doesn’t want Brexit.

IT’S A TERRIBLE IDEA: House passes sex trafficking bill that could limit free speech online.

If you don’t want “human trafficking,” legalize prostitution.

VIETNAM, FEBRUARY 1968, THE TET OFFENSIVE: A Marine 4.2 inch mortar (Four-Deuce) shells Viet Cong positions.

CHANGE: Walmart Statement on Firearms Policy.

In light of recent events, we’ve taken an opportunity to review our policy on firearm sales. Going forward, we are raising the age restriction for purchase of firearms and ammunition to 21 years of age. We will update our processes as quickly as possible to implement this change.

In 2015, Walmart ended sales of modern sporting rifles, including the AR-15. We also do not sell handguns, except in Alaska where we feel we should continue to offer them to our customers. Additionally, we do not sell bump stocks, high-capacity magazines and similar accessories. We have a process to monitor our eCommerce marketplace and ensure our policies are applied.

We take seriously our obligation to be a responsible seller of firearms and go beyond Federal law by requiring customers to pass a background check before purchasing any firearm. The law would allow the sale of a firearm if no response to a background check request has been received within three business days, but our policy prohibits the sale until an approval is given.

We are also removing items from our website resembling assault-style rifles, including nonlethal airsoft guns and toys. Our heritage as a company has always been in serving sportsmen and hunters, and we will continue to do so in a responsible way.

“If an object resembles something we think is bad, then it is bad,” is the sloppiest kind of magical thinking.

YOU’RE GONNA LOVE THE NEW RULES: The “Revolutionary Student Front” at UT-Austin revealed Wednesday that its Twitter account was suspended for “promoting violence against a group of people [capitalists].”