THE TRANSGENDER POSSE COMES FOR SCARLETT JOHANSSON:  In fairness, she must be used to these posses by now.

Related (From Ed): With Johansson having backed out of starring as a trans man, it’s quite possible that project is about to be shelved. But as this article, written before she caved to the outrage mob notes, the character that Johansson would have played was, well, quite a character: The Amazing life of transgender gangster Mr. Gill.

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MAKE WISCONSIN GREAT AGAIN: I was surprised to see overt support for Trump on the UW campus today.

THAT TRUMP BABY BALLOON ISN’T FLYING — YET — IN NEW JERSEY: Remember that Baby Trump balloon protesters flew in London to express their dissatisfaction with the U.S. president? Lefties here in the states are using the balloon figure to raise funds to fly three of the Trump babies near a New Jersey golf course bearing the chief executive’s moniker. But LifeZette’s Michele Blood reports there are some pre-flight checks that haven’t been completed, so the protest babies may not get off the ground for a while.

BARACK OBAMA: “Democracy demands that we’re able also to get inside the reality of people who are different than us so we can understand their point of view. Maybe we can change their minds, maybe they’ll change ours. You can’t do this if you just out of hand disregard what your opponent has to say from the start. And you can’t do it if you insist that those who aren’t like you because they are white or they are male, somehow there is no way they can understand what I’m feeling, that somehow they lack standing to speak on certain matters.”

MORE EVIDENCE THAT TEENAGERS NEED MORE SLEEP: “Researchers studied 829 boys and girls, average age 13, who wore electronic measuring devices that tracked sleep time, sleep quality and physical activity over seven to 10 days. They also recorded five factors associated with cardiovascular risk: waist circumference, blood pressure, HDL or “good” cholesterol, triglycerides and insulin resistance. Inadequate sleep was common — 31 percent of the children slept less than seven hours a night, and 58 percent had poor sleep efficiency as measured by percentage of time awake after initial sleep onset. Shorter sleep duration and poorer sleep efficiency were associated with higher systolic blood pressure, lower HDL cholesterol, higher triglycerides and higher glucose levels, all indicators of poorer metabolic health.”

THOM NICKELS: At UPenn, Movement To Erase Campus Ties to Slavery Heats Up.

THE LEFT’S GREATEST DESIRE IS TO FIT IN: Sarah Hoyt on the “cool kids” in DC and Hollywood.

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME: Man who is 90 per cent covered in tattoos has his genitals removed because they spoiled the view of his body art.

BIG GOVERNMENT PROGRAM FAILS. GO FIGURE. Large randomized trial finds state pre-k program has adverse effects on academic achievement. “What did the Tennessee study find? Like the Head Start RCT, it found positive effects on student achievement at the end of the pre-k year (e.g., their ability to identify letters and words), but these effects dissipated as children entered elementary school and—in the case of Tennessee—turned modestly negative by third grade, with the control group outperforming the pre-k group in math and science achievement.”

On the other hand, pre-K provides more jobs for Democrat-voting government employees. If it’s bad for kids, well, that hardly makes this unique.

BLUE ON BLUE: Ocasio-Cortez Learns the Agony of Victory as Lieberman Tells N.Y. Dems to Vote Crowley.

I’m not sure how much sway Joe Lieberman holds with today’s Democratic voters.

CHANGE: San Francisco Department of Elections issues voter registration forms for non-citizens.

PUNK GETS PUNKED: Riverside, CA gun store confronts Sacha Baron Cohen after he comes to business in disguise.

NEWS YOU CAN USE? This Japanese Town Is Suffering a Ninja Shortage, Will Pay $85,000 to Anyone Who Wants to Be One.

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Liberals Brand Richard Dawkins ‘Islamophobic’ for Saying ‘Allahu Akbar’ Is ‘Aggressive Sounding.’

DEMANDING REPRESSION: People on social media are flipping out about this Mark Zuckerberg interview, in which he expresses reluctance to blanket-censor Holocaust deniers on Facebook. Do they really want a giant corporation deciding what details of the Holocaust (or any other historical event) are accurate, and punishing those who disagree? That sounds like a nightmare — both for the social media giants and for us.

RAND PAUL BRINGS THE SMACK: “John Brennan started out his adulthood by voting for the communist party presidential candidate. He is now ending his career by showing himself to be the most biased, bigoted, over the top, hyperbolic, and unhinged Director of the CIA we have ever had.”

And he’s right.

FOR THE LAST TIME, ANYTHING YOU PUT ON THAT TELEPROMPTER, RON BURGUNDY WILL READ! Obama Decries the Political Habits That Drove His Career.

Obama said yesterday, “For once solidly middle-class families in advanced economies like the United States, these trends have meant greater economic insecurity, especially for those who don’t have specialized skills, people who were in manufacturing, people working in factories, people working on farms.” Had he focused on this more during his presidency, would Hillary Clinton have lost?

Obama lamented, “In the West, you’ve got far-right parties that oftentimes are based not just on platforms of protectionism and closed borders, but also on barely hidden racial nationalism.” Would those parties have flourished if the Barack Obamas and Angela Merkels of the world had taken citizens’ demands for border security and carefully scrutinized immigration more seriously? How much faith was lost in U.S. immigration controls when the 9/11 hijackers, the Boston Marathon bombers, and the San Bernardino terrorists entered the country legally? Is anyone surprised that many Germans bristled when Merkel decided, unilaterally, to allow in more than 1 million migrants — many of them fleeing the wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan?

Read the whole thing.

BUT THE NARRATIVE! Supposedly pristine South American forest had been pre-Columbian farmland.

Hot take: European colonialism is good for the rainforest.

DO WE NEED WEB SERVERS? I’ve got a new piece up about a “serverless” web.

LOTS OF PILLS THAT ARE SAFE AND EFFECTIVE CAN’T BE BOUGHT ON LINE. WHY ARE THESE DIFFERENT? Abortion pills are safe and effective. Why can’t U.S. women buy them online? Planned Parenthood doesn’t even want you to be able to buy birth-control pills over the counter.

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BOOM: EU hits Google with record $5 billion fine over Android antitrust practices.

PEAK NEW YORK TIMES REACHED: Raising My Child in a Doomed World — Some would say the mistake was having our daughter in the first place.

I blame the overpopulation that was the unexpected byproduct of all of that frenetic Soviet sexual activity.

Related: Some counterpoint to the Gray Lady’s doom: