WOLF BLITZER: ‘WE ARE NOT THE ENEMY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, WE LOVE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.’

…But we at Time-Warner-CNN-HBO are fully prepared to dox any American who gets out of line. It’s for their own good, you know.

Update: As Derek Hunter of the Daily Caller tweets, “Part of the media’s problem is they view the American people as children or pets they’re charged with caring for & making decisions on behalf of because they think everyone too dumb to make decisions on their own. Wolf is an American too, but you wouldn’t know it from this quote.”

OPEN THREAD: We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the open thread began to take hold.

82ND AIRBORNE DIVISION WINS FOR BEST TAKE ON THE ST. PAUL RACCOON:

Heh, indeed.™

WHY ARE DEMOCRAT MONOPOLY CITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF FISCAL PROFLIGACY?  Sloppy city bookkeeping ripe for abuse, Philly Controller says in audit. “Unexpectedly,” that headline at the Philadelphia Daily News completely undersells the problem:

Philadelphia’s government has the worst accounting practices among the nation’s 10 largest cities, with $924 million in bookkeeping errors alone last year, according to an audit released Tuesday by City Controller Rebecca Rhynhart.

That’s on top of the now-infamous missing $33 million, the discrepancy between what the city’s records say it has and what is in the bank — the result of a failure to reconcile the city’s cash account over several years, Rhynhart said at a news conference.

In total, the controller’s auditors found two “material weaknesses” and eight “significant deficiencies” in the fiscal 2017 books. The accounting terms refer to serious issues with the city’s internal financial controls.

“This is a major problem and needs to be treated that way by the mayor and the finance director on down,” Rhynhart told the Inquirer and Daily News. “If the City of Philadelphia is talking about tax increases, let’s get our house in order.”

$900 million here, $900 million there, and sooner or later you’re talking about real money.

STILL PARCHED: California’s failure to store water dramatizes the dysfunctional character of its political leadership.

To paraphrase, former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, never let a crisis go to waste, even if you have to manufacture it yourself. Say what you will about Jerry Brown, young or old, he’s quite consistent in acting like he just doesn’t want Californians to have sufficient water.

Related: Tammy Bruce asks, “Will California’s new water rules push people out of the Golden State?”

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UPDATE ON THE BIGGEST ACADEMIC SCANDAL OF THE YEAR: Duke University History Professor Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains has received a tremendous amount of fawning attention from the left, including some of her fellow historians. She was even selected to be the plenary speaker at this year’s American Association of University Professors conference.

The book posits that the late Nobel-winning prize economist James Buchanan, resentful of the Supreme Court’s racially egalitarian jurisprudence in Brown v. Board of Education, invented public choice economics as a means of undermining American democracy. Charles Koch later stumbled upon Buchanan’s work, and used it to mastermind his own well-funded assault on everything good liberals hold dear.

The book is wrong in its general thesis, and in almost all of its particulars, as various reviewers and bloggers, myself included, have pointed out in excruciating detail. When asked about allegations of error and misrepresentation, instead of responding substantively MacLean has claimed that her critics haven’t read the book, and accused her critics of being part of a Koch-funded conspiracy to undermine the book’s “revelations.”

Until now, it’s been difficult to point the curious and non-closed-minded to a single source that summarizes the range of mistakes and fabrications in the book. Fortunately, Phil Magness has posted a spreadsheet listing these, the relevant page numbers, the sources that demonstrate the relevant problems, and a somewhat subjective ranking of the importance of each error to the book’s overall credibility. Historians and others who continue to defend MacLean will show themselves to either lack an interest in truth, or to be incapable of seeing it. Here’s one hint for her fans: whether a statement in a book is true or false has nothing to do with the identity of the individual who has alleged falsity.

WHICH IS REAL AND WHICH IS PARODY?  It’s not easy to tell.

ABC News:  Transgender teens outrun track and field competitors, but critics close behind.

Babylon Bee:  Man Identifying as 6-Year-Old Crushes Game-Winning Homer in Tee-Ball Championship.

LATE STAGE SOCIALISM: In Venezuela, the End Is Near.

Gosh, that’s a whole lot of bad luck.

WHEN THE ONION BECOMES NON-FICTION:

● Shot: CNN Promises To Maintain Complete Lack Of Editorial Integrity Despite AT&T-Time Warner Merger.

—The Onion, yesterday.

● Chaser: CNN Chief Jeff Zucker Inks Deal to Stay on Through 2020 Election.

—Mediaite, today.

What could go wrong?

I HOPE THEY’RE RIGHT: Fed Raises Interest Rates for Second Time in 2018, Signaling Economic Optimism.

TYLER O’NEIL: Is Corey Stewart a White Supremacist?

Lots to chew on here.

#FIGHTFOR15: Shake Shack Launches Order Kiosks To Eliminate Minimum Wage Workers.

Earlier: Shocker: McDonald’s will have self-order kiosks in all stores by 2020.

FOR YOUR LATE NIGHT VIEWING PLEASURE: Eight Awesome Cult Classics.

HMM: Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen likely to cooperate as his attorneys leave case, sources say.

More to come — but how much more?

KYLE SMITH ON THE CULT OF ANTHONY BOURDAIN:

Bourdain was a wickedly funny writer well-served by his Hunter S. Thompson–like flair for hyperbole and gratuitous venom: “Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn,” he wrote, calling them “the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for.” I salute him for exhorting his followers to go forth and revel in the delicious (except beer or wine, I suppose, which are just for getting buzzed). But for all of his Thompson-like stylings, he was more like the Anna Wintour of food. If he told everyone to wear cerulean, they’d wear cerulean. It was his personality that made his judgments stick, not the other way around. The judgments were beside the point; if he’d told people organ meat was vile and veganism was edgy, they would have happily switched sides and chided the tasteless losers who disagreed. Hey, he’s got arm tattoos, he must be right!

Read the whole thing.

Related: Jim Geraghty asks, “In hindsight, should we have been worried that Anthony Bourdain got falling-down drunk on camera multiple times?”

ARMED AND FABULOUS: Gay Americans are arming themselves to stay alive.

THEY’RE JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU: It’s Time To Stick A Fork In Cynthia Nixon’s Campaign.

PROOF THAT GOD WANTS US TO BE REALLY HAPPY: America’s Gone Beer Mad: 100 Breweries Or More In Nearly Half Of U.S. States.

DR. HELEN EXPLAINS: Why is John Schneider Being Jailed for Not Paying Alimony?

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GLENN’S USA TODAY COLUMN: Blame social media for making us more hasty and emotional. Can we fix this?

TYLER O’NEIL: ‘Incredibles 2’ Is a Clever, Relevant, Guaranteed Box Office Hit.

On a somewhat related note, the VodkaWife and I saw Ocean’s 8 on Sunday. We went in with our expectations set to “Please don’t have screwed this up,” and left the theater smiling at a surprisingly entertaining, non-preachy, and well-executed caper flick.

IT’S AN HONOR JUST TO BE NOMINATED: Trump Nominated for Peace Prize by Norwegian Lawmakers.