MICHAEL WALSH: No Virgins in the Gray Lady’s Whorehouse.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: ‘How Jack Became Black’ Questions Progressive Racial Politics.

IT’S GOTTA WORK THIS TIME: DNC Chair Tom Perez Affirms: Socialist Candidates The ‘Future Of Our Party.’

ONE IS STILL FOR ALL: Panicked by extremism on the right and the left, too many of our thought leaders and institutions are apologizing for, or even turning away from, supporting free speech and the First Amendment. For the Fourth, FIRE wants to unapologetically remind Americans that free speech is, and has to be, for everyone—not just the folks we like.

THE ROTHSCHILDS STRIKE AGAIN: Iranian commander accuses Israel of stealing Iran’s clouds and causing a drought.

Who does this guy think he is, a D.C. councilman?

Fortunately though, the solution is simplicity itself — just call Kate Bush and Donald Sutherland.

Update: The Times of Israel is, not surprisingly, having fun with this story:

With Iran currently experiencing water shortages causing protests in the southwest Khuzestan region, an Iranian general has accused Israel of stealing Iran’s clouds, and everybody is having a hearty laugh about it.

The paper goes on to embed a tweet from Shoshana Weissmann of DC’s R Street Institute and conservative journalist, who writes, “Weather status update: We apologize for the extreme heat in the northeast. We have repairmen coming to fix. You can track updates here. From, The Jews.” It’s followed by the parody Mossad Twitter account, who adds, “Iran. Seriously. You’re dealing with an enemy that controls your clouds, fault lines, and woodland creatures. Why would you want to mess with us?”

Heh, indeed.™

(Bumped.)

THE PATRIOTISM GAP:  Democrats, college grads, and young people are not so high on America.  And it’s getting worse.

ROGER SIMON: Make Politics Local for the Fourth of July.

Read the whole thing.

DUST IN AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION: A C-17 Globemaster III readies for departure from an undisclosed location, June 23, 2018.

GOOD COP, BAD COP: Lawmakers Urging Trump to Sign North Korea Human Rights Legislation.

MARK BAUERLEIN: The Coming Implosion After Diversity’s Victory. “The administrators and liberal ‘go-alongs’ are in a corner, and they know it.”

CALVIN COOLIDGE WAS A YANKEE DOODLE DANDY:  Born on the Fourth of July, 1872.  Read his entire Independence Day speech (delivered in Philadelphia, July 5, 1926).  Or if you only have time for the best paragraph, read it here.

NO SH*T, SHERLOCK: ABC News suggests to avoid forgetting your child in a hot car to “Leave a purse or important item you will need in the backseat (something like your phone, a purse, or even a shoe).”

Something important. I’m just gonna leave that out there.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why Are There So Many Robocalls? Here’s What You Can Do About Them.

With caller ID basically broken, developers have proposed a call-certifying protocol (known as STIR) and guidelines for implementing it (known as SHAKEN). The names behind these acronyms are long and confusing.

With it, an originating phone carrier could check that a caller has the right to use a number and create a digital fingerprint for the call. The carrier on the receiving end could verify that nothing was messed with in transit.

“They’re actually not saying that the call comes from the phone number. What they’re saying is this user is entitled to use this phone number,” says Jim McEachern, a principal technologist with the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions, a technical working group that helped develop guidelines for this call-certification protocol.

If a bad guy tries to spoof the caller ID, the call would go through, but it wouldn’t be verified. Eventually, users would see a check mark or other indicator for verified calls.

In the meantime, I only pick up the phone when it’s the VodkaWife calling.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Prof claims Hispanic students perpetuate ‘colorblind racism.’ “Maria Isabel Ayala interviewed 50 Latino(a) students at Midwestern University, and was dismayed to find that they attribute their success to hard work and self-reliance while shunning affirmative action.”

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JAMES JAY CARAFANO: Top 5 Movies to Celebrate This 4th of July.

My alternate list includes Stripes, Captain America: Civil War, Rocky IV, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, and the most American movie ever made, Smokey and the Bandit.

WE CAN HOPE: As Protests Multiply, Is Iran On Verge Of Revolution?

THINK REPS LOVE AMERICA, DEMS HATE IT? POLL SAYS YOU’RE RIGHT: Mr. Gallup’s latest survey raises an interesting question for 2018 Midterm election voters — Should people who hate America be running America? LifeZette’s Michelle Blood has the details on a revealing poll.

TIM SCOTT: The Republican Party’s Joyful Warrior.

Over the course of a day I spent with the senator — on Capitol Hill and in Anacostia, a neighborhood in Washington, D.C. — a picture of Scott as a vocal, visionary leader came into focus. He’s the man of the hour, though he might not know it.

If he does know, he certainly won’t admit it. This spring, he and his best friend in Washington, congressman Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.), co-authored a memoir on bipartisanship, Unified: How Our Unlikely Friendship Gives Us Hope for a Divided Country. One section of Gowdy’s acknowledgements is addressed to Scott’s mother, Frances:

This book was supposed to be about your son Tim and your family. It was supposed to be about your hard work, your faith, and your determination that your children would turn out as well as they did. But you raised a son too modest to write a book about himself. Maybe one day we can convince him to do that.

When I mention this snippet to Scott, he chuckles ruefully and shakes his head, as if to say, “I didn’t want him to write that, either.” Truth is, Scott never intended to take up the self-glorifying business of politics. He wanted to be a minister.

Still, even after the doors of ministry were closed to him, Scott wasn’t sure that national politics would be an option. “I had never been to Washington before I got elected to Congress,” he tells me. “I am a reluctant warrior, though I am a joyful warrior. I am thankful that it worked out the way that it has.”

Scott keeps a remarkably low profile for a Senator, but I wonder how much longer that will last.

PRO-GUN-RIGHTS ADVOCACY: Women From All 50 States Travel to DC to Speak to Lawmakers About Gun Rights. “Fifty women from America’s 50 states went to Capitol Hill last month to meet with federal lawmakers in an effort to advocate for gun rights. The D.C. Project spent four days at the end of June walking the halls of Congress and meeting with representatives and senators about firearms policy. This year is the third year in a row in which the group met with lawmakers. The group said their goal was to change the impression many lawmakers have of gun owners as well as counter recent antigun protests.”

UNEXPECTEDLY: Fish for flour? Barter is the new currency in collapsing Venezuela.

Julio Blanco, a 34-year-old motorcycle driver in Caracas, said he now allows trusted clients to make payments by bank transfer because there is simply not enough cash available.

“I prefer food as payment,” said Blanco, while waiting for customers at the poor west end of Caracas. “I do services for food in order to survive.”

In the hillside Caracas slum of La Vega, home to 124,000 people, Alfredo Silva offers a haircut for 1 million bolivars, about 30 cents at the black market exchange rate.

He accepts transfers or food but sometimes takes clients to a nearby butcher shop and asks them to buy him something worth the same as the haircut.

In Rio Chico, Marvin Guaramato arrives at the lagoon driving a car loaded with boxes of oil, pasta and corn flour, which is used to make a Venezuelan grilled pancake known as arepas.

The fishermen scramble to swap their catch in a brief and confused frenzy. One of them, Reinaldo Armas, was satisfied to have picked up products for family members in his village.

Still, sometimes he doesn’t manage to exchange his catch for anything, he says.

“Some days, I spend five hours without swapping anything and I have to take all that fish home,” he said.

Socialism — in his case literally — stinks.

GOD BLESS AMERICA: