DAVID BARON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Hiker found dead on Mount Hood was likely killed by cougar: Officials. “Wolfer said about 6,600 cougars live in the state, and reports of them threatening livestock or pets are common, but human attacks are unheard of. Authorities continue to search for the animal. Male cougars can grow to be 120 to 200 pounds and generally hunt deer, elk, hares and wild birds, like turkeys.”

Related: Man’s body found two miles from Cades Cove, bear euthanized after incident. When my sister rides in the woods she carries a gun. It was originally for two-legged predators, but now. . .

#RESISTANCEMEDIA: Another Washington Post book to attack Trump, ‘crime of the century.’

A REMARKABLY SCANDAL-FREE ADMINISTRATION: Top Counterintelligence Official Claims Obama State Department ‘Indulged In Sexual Favors’ At Moscow Ritz.

If the official’s claims are true, it would not be the first instance of sexual impropriety on foreign soil by government employees during the Obama administration. Nearly two dozen Secret Service and military personnel were fired or otherwise punished for soliciting prostitutes during a presidential visit to Colombia in 2012.

The Washington Post later reported that despite denials, senior White House aides likely knew about the misconduct. According to evidence uncovered by David Nieland, the DHS investigator on the scandal, a White House volunteer was among those who had registered a prostitute to his room during the trip. Nieland claimed that the inspector general told him to “withhold and alter certain information in the report of investigation because it was potentially embarrassing to the administration.”

Weird how this is only coming out now, and that Politico buried it under the bemused-sounding headline, “Tinder Woes, Suspicious Landlords and Snarky Bosses: Young and Russian in D.C.”

AS WE TALK ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE, HURRICANES, AND FLOODING, REMEMBER MY PLAN: Tax The Blue Zones!

REPORT THEM TO THE FEC FOR AN UNDECLARED CONTRIBUTION: “Unbelievable”: Facebook Bans Ex-Democrat #WalkAway Founder Weeks Before March On Washington. As Michael Lotus emails, “Back when we had a blogosphere, It wasn’t possible to do this. The whole point of the Internet was it was decentralized. Then everybody voluntarily decided to centralize it. I don’t use Twitter or Facebook anymore. No one should.”

REMEMBER, WHEN PEOPLE GET TIRED OF SUBSIDIZING THIS, WE’LL BE TOLD IT’S BECAUSE OF “ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM:” How a Social Justice Mob Fired a Tenured Professor.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Read A Pile Of Top Nazis Talking About How They Love Leftist Marxism.

Hitler repeatedly praised Marx privately, stating he had “learned a great deal from Marxism.” The trouble with the Weimar Republic, he said, was that its politicians “had never even read Marx.” He also stated his differences with communists were that they were intellectual types passing out pamphlets, whereas “I have put into practice what these peddlers and pen pushers have timidly begun.”

It wasn’t just privately that Hitler’s fealty for Marx surfaced. In “Mein Kampf,” he states that without his racial insights National Socialism “would really do nothing more than compete with Marxism on its own ground.” Nor did Hitler eschew this sentiment once reaching power. As late as 1941, with the war in bloom, he stated “basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same” in a speech published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

Nazi propaganda minister and resident intellectual Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary that the Nazis would install “real socialism” after Russia’s defeat in the East. And Hitler favorite Albert Speer, the Nazi armaments minister whose memoir became an international bestseller, wrote that Hitler viewed Joseph Stalin as a kindred spirit, ensuring his prisoner of war son received good treatment, and even talked of keeping Stalin in power in a puppet government after Germany’s eventual triumph. His views on Great Britain’s Winston Churchill and the United States’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt were decidedly less kind.

Read the whole thing.

CAMERA: Frying Pan Tower Ocean View: Cape Fear, North Carolina, USA.

THIS ISN’T THE FIRST STUDY WITH NUMBERS LIKE THESE, BUT THEY BEAR REPEATING: Data Shows That Suicide Rate Of Transgender Students Is Breathtakingly High.

The study comes from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which reveals that half of those who say they are transgendered attempt suicide at a rate of near or at 50 percent:

Female to male adolescents reported the highest rate of attempted suicide (50.8%), followed by adolescents who identified as not exclusively male or female (41.8%), male to female adolescents (29.9%), questioning adolescents (27.9%).

Compared to the suicide rate of teens who do not identify as transgendered, this is horrifically high, though any suicide rate is bad. The suicide rate among young women is alarming, even without the trouble of gender dysphoria.

Female adolescents (17.6%), and male adolescents (9.8%). Identifying as nonheterosexual exacerbated the risk for all adolescents except for those who did not exclusively identify as male or female (ie, nonbinary).

This is a shocking find, though not at all surprising. Transgendered individuals tend to suffer a 41 percent suicide rate, and they are more 19 times more likely to commit suicide if they go through with gender reassignment surgery.

Clearly, people permanently altering their bodies isn’t ameliorating their very real personal issues. Perhaps it’s time we showed some genuine concern for our most-troubled citizens, rather than encouraging them to make matters worse in an irrevocable way.

SPOILER: DANA DIDN’T CRY: After calling Dana Loesch a prostitute multiple times, Montel Williams says he never called her a prostitute.

DEPLOYMENT: Marine F-35 aircraft carrier arrives in Middle East after Russia threatened US forces in Syria.

Until recently, the US had no capital ships and just one or two destroyers in the Mediterranean, but the USS Essex, a small, flat-deck aircraft carrier used to launch US Marine Corps F-35B stealth jets that can take off almost vertically, just arrived off the horn of Africa, USNI News reports.

Though the Essex remains on the opposite side of the Suez Canal from Russia’s ships in the Mediterranean, it’s a quick-moving ship. Additionally, the F-35Bs can fly about 550 miles out from the ship in stealth configurations that make them hard to detect for enemy defenses.

The Essex isn’t technically an aircraft carrier, but thanks to the addition of F-35Bs, it projects more air power than most anything this side of a Nimitz.

PATRICK POOLE: Ted Cruz Renews Call to Designate Muslim Brotherhood a Terrorist Group. “The call follows U.S. designation of group’s Egyptian terror wings in January.”

GOOD FOR HIM: Gov. Greg Abbott calls for end to red light cameras in Texas.

CRYING WEENIES SHOULD BE FIRED, NOT INDULGED: Norm MacDonald Told Not To Show Up To Jimmy Fallon. Fallon Said Macdonald Made His Senior Producers Cry. Yes, Really.

Jimmy came back in. “Can I talk to you buddy?” And he said, he was very, very broken up about it, he didn’t want this, he said, “I don’t know what to do.” I said, “You think I shouldn’t do the show.” “People are crying.” I said, “People are crying.” “Yeah,” he said, “senior producers are crying.” I said, “Good Lord, bring them in and let me talk to them. I didn’t even know I had the capacity to make people cry. So I felt so bad from that comment. Jimmy said, “Come back whatever you want but I think it will hurt the show tonight.” I said, “Jimmy, I don’t want to hurt your show. That’s the last thing I want to do is hurt your show.”

People were crying about Macdonald’s comments? This is just the latest proof that at major shows and websites and publications across the country, editorial judgment is no longer about the judgment of the editors, but about the fuss lower-level staffers can make. We’ve seen this with regard to Bari Weiss at The New York Times; we’ve seen it with regard to Kevin Williamson at The Atlantic; we’ve seen it over and over again. Just so long as some on staff are upset with any given decision, higher-ups will reverse themselves.

Fire a few and this will stop posthaste. Who works for who?

I KNOW SOME OF YOU ARE WAITING FOR THIS.  WE NOW HAVE A PUB-DATE AUGUST 19, AND THIS IS THE COVER REVEAL:

AKA HOW POWER HUNGRY BUREAUCRATS EXPLOIT VAGUE FEARS:  Chemophobia: Origins and Legislated Existence.

MAKING MY HEAD HURT: Feminists, and the Motte & Bailey.

UNEXPECTEDLY!  Incomes Up, Poverty Down in 2017.

IT’S ONLY LIES, AND LIES IS ALL THEY HAVE TO HOLD ON TO POWER: Kavanaugh, Kamala Harris, and Hillary Clinton: A lie gets halfway round the world…

WELL, PERHAPS THAT IS WHAT THEY WANT, BUT I STILL SAY IT’S BARBARIC AND BESIDES ALL THOSE CROSSES WOULD BE A WASTE OF GOOD WOOD. SO WHEN THIS IS ALL OVER, I SAY WE DON’T CRUCIFY THEM:  Our Lefty Friends’ ‘Spartacus Illusion’.

SCIENCE ILLITERATE OR JONESING FOR ANOTHER KATRINA:  WaPo: Trump ‘complicit’ in hurricane Florence.  Didn’t anyone tell them their crazy antics then is part of what got them Trump now? Do they want (much) worse than Trump? Because this is how you get much worse than Trump.

LIKE EVERY POLITY CONTROLED BY THE LEFT:  The Once ‘Golden State’ Is Badly Tarnished.

THEY’RE OUT OF THEIR MINDS:  Liberal Violence Accelerating.  This is not how those confident of their ideology act.