WELL, WE KNOW WHAT HE’S REALLY INVESTIGATING: RealClearInvestigations: Mueller All but Ignores the Other Russian Hack Target: the GOP.

If Hillary had won and the GOP was blaming Russian hackers, the general press treatment — to the extent it was covered at all — would be a mixture of general derision for “conspiracy theory,” and laughing at the GOP for being dumb enough to be hacked by the Russians. You know it’s true. (Bumped).

IT’S ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK:  Rare Gomphotherium Skull from France.

GOOD:  Astronomers Identified Moons Capable of Supporting Life.

PARTICULARLY THE NARRATIVES:  The Russians and the Narratives.

IT’S TIME THE GLOVES CAME OFF: Politics is Marketing.

STILL WORKING TO UNDERMINE OUR REPUBLIC: Intel Chair: FBI, DOJ Obstructing Trump Probe in Hope of Dem Takeover in Congress.

THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE:  Parkland Crowd Reveals Cluelessness In Daytona Beach.

SURE, SURE, THAT’S WHAT RADICALIZED THE SHOOTER (FACEPALMS):  Pulse Victims Asks Court To Revive Lawsuit Against Social Media Sites.

HOW IS IT RACIST TO CALL HIM SOCIALIST? ONLY THE LEFT THINKS TAN EQUATES WITH COLLECTIVISM. IT’S ONE OF THEIR CRAZIER DELUSIONS:  Obama, Who’s Totally Not a Socialist and It’s Racist to Suggest He Is: Hey, Let’s Give Everyone a Income from the State for Doing Nothing At All.

Oh, yeah, and Obama is still intellectually deficient particularly in economics.  But it’s no more than I’d expect from a socialist. Never met one who could add up two and two without dipping his hand in his neighbor’s wallet.

PORTLANDIA GONNA PORTLANDIA: Art gallery takes down illustration showing Trump being beheaded ISIS style which prompted death threats.

As Glenn has noted, “Trump’s superpower is his ability, just by existing, to bring out the deep and pervasive rot in America’s institutions and the people who run them.”

AREN’T WE ALL?  Still waiting for the outrage on Mexico’s (and everyone else’s) election meddling.

BREAKING: MARINES ARE STILL MARINES. Survey: Military binge drinking drops, but this service stood out in a bad way.

BREAKING: TIMES SQUARE IS STILL TIMES SQUARE. I Posed in a Bikini in Times Square. I Was Expecting Comments from Haters, But What I Actually Heard Was Way More Disheartening.

Standing in the middle of Times Square, it wasn’t super hot, but the pressure of what I was about to do was making me sweat. My fingers slipped against the fabric of my maxi skirt as I fumbled with the tightly-knotted bow. My outfit fell away, revealing my pink bikini beneath it. I heard hollers from strangers, but their words blurred into an indecipherable mess as I tried, unsuccessfully, to remain calm. A sliver of sun peeked out from behind the skyscrapers, reminding me we were about to lose the light. No more time for nerves — it was now or never.

“Let’s do this,” I said out loud. My clothes dropped all the way to the ground, and the voices around me became clear.

“I want to suck on them tasty toes.”

“Hey baby, let me butter them biscuits for you.”

I looked up to see three men with camera phones filming me. Our eyes met, and one uttered, “Twerk for the camera baby, show them how that ass clap.”

Tears began to well up. I was prepared to be pointed at, shamed, and called fat. I didn’t expect to be fetishized.

* * * * * * * *

My tears turned to anger, and the words began to fly out of my mouth: “It doesn’t make it OK. You’re disgusting. Please stop. Please just stop…” The man justified his response by saying that plus women “don’t know they’re f*ckable.” Let me be very clear here, as I stated in the caption for the photo I later posted to Instagram: A plus-size woman’s worth, or any one woman’s worth for that matter, is not contingent on someone wanting to have sex with them. You don’t exist to pleasure someone else … you exist to change the world.

I think the world is all the better for this vitally important scientific experiment. On the other hand, “It’s almost as if it was a dumb stunt and she would have been angry regardless of the reaction, whether it was catcalls, criticism, or getting ignored,” Reason’s Robby Soave tweets.

And Iowahawk’s Rule, which he most recently tweeted on Sunday after FIFA asked its networks’ cameramen to stop zooming in on pretty girls in the stands during matches, remains solid: “Please remember: (1) scantily clad conventionally attractive women = demeaning and sexist; (2) scantily clad morbidly obese women = stunning and brave.”

AT AMAZON, Shop Prime Day Spotlight Deals.

ONLY 90%? Nunes Unchained: DOJ and FBI Have Bet All Of Their Chips on Democrats Winning the House, Which Will End Investigations Into Their Misbehavior; 90% of Reporters “Essentially an Arm of the Democrat Party.”

WELL, THAT’S NOT INSANE AT ALL: Ex-Clinton aide Philippe Reines brings air horn to White House to keep Trump awake.

Reines was last seen doxxing a bookstore owner for not allowing another patron to assault Steve Bannon.

All the Democrats have to do is not be crazy, and they can’t even do that.

PRIME DAY: Up to 50 percent off on Jeans

BATWOMAN TV SERIES IN THE WORKS AT THE CW:

The CW is looking to expand its DC Comics world.

The network is teaming with DC’s small-screen universe mastermind Greg Berlanti to develop Batwoman as a TV series. The character of Batwoman will officially be introduced in December as part of The CW’s annual DC series crossover event.

Batwoman revolves around Kate Kane, who, armed with a passion for social justice and flair for speaking her mind, soars onto the streets of Gotham as Batwoman, an out lesbian and highly trained street fighter primed to snuff out the failing city’s criminal resurgence. But don’t call her a hero yet: in a city desperate for a savior, Kate must overcome her own demons before embracing the call to be Gotham’s symbol of hope.

Fredric Wertham to the Batphone, please!

OPEN THREAD: Talk about what pleases you.

ANGELO CODEVILLA: Diplomacy 101 vs. Politics Writ Small.

The high professional quality of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin’s performance at their Monday press conference in Helsinki contrasts sharply with the obloquy by which the bipartisan U.S. ruling class showcases its willful incompetence.

Though I voted for Trump, I’ve never been a fan of his and I am not one now. But, having taught diplomacy for many years, I would choose the Trump-Putin press conference as an exemplar of how these things should be done. Both spoke with the frankness and specificity of serious business. This performance rates an A+.

Well. A performance depends on its intended audience. If the intended audience was the U.S. political class, then Trump gets an F. So who was Trump’s (and Putin’s) intended audience. Audiences?

Meanwhile, some lefties are warning about the anti-Trump hysteria: Steve Vladeck writes: Americans have forgotten what ‘treason’ actually means — and how it can be abused: We are willfully turning a blind eye to the sordid history of treason that led to its unique treatment in the U.S. Constitution. If you cheapen the definition of treason, you had better be ready to be called traitors, and perhaps treated as such.

Likewise, Jay Michaelson in The Daily Beast: Stop Saying Trump Committed ‘Treason.’ You’re Playing Into His Hands.

Treason is clearly defined in the Constitution, which states, in Article III, Section 3: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

This definition does not apply to Trump. He is not levying war against the United States, and to be an “enemy” requires that a state of war exists between the United States and the foreign nation in question.

That does not exist in the case of Russia. Congress has not declared war, and Russia’s alleged cyberattacks, while they may constitute acts of war in the abstract, have not been regarded as such by the United States. (Last year, the European Union announced it would begin regarding cyberattacks as acts of war.)

Even when Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, they weren’t charged with treason, because the Cold War was undeclared, and not a formal “war.” Nor were other Russian spies such as Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen.

In fact, the only indictment of treason since World War II was of American-born al Qaeda supporter Adam Gadahn. Unlike Russia, al Qaeda is a formal “enemy” of the United States, because Congress authorized war against it. And in fitting with war, Gadahn was killed in a U.S. airstrike in 2015.

Perhaps the domestic political class was Trump’s intended audience, and he intended them to go batshit crazy. In that case, A+.

Meanwhile, Roger Kimball writes: What Critics Missed About the Trump-Putin Summit.

As becomes more and more clear as the first Trump Administration evolves, this president is someone who is willing, nay eager, to challenge the bureaucratic status quo, on domestic issues as well as in foreign policy.

Trump inherited a world order on the international front that was constructed in the immediate aftermath of World War II and has subsequently amassed a thick, barnacle-like carapace of bureaucratic procedures. Perhaps those procedures and the institutions that deploy them continue to serve American interests. But what if they don’t?

As I’ve said, the best way to understand the Trump presidency is as the renegotiation of the post-World War II institutional structure. Naturally, the barnacles don’t like that. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong, but the intensity of their screaming indicates their emotional (and livelihood) investment, not who’s right.

Meanwhile, if the argument is that Trump is a Putin stooge, the arguers have to deal with the fact that Trump is clearly harder on Russia than Obama was, or than Hillary, by all appearances, would have been. Even NeverTrumper Eric Erickson writes: Remember, Trump’s Policies Against Russia Have Been Tougher Than Obama’s.

We’ve been killing Russian mercenaries in Syria. We have expanded and enhanced NATO’s footprint in Eastern Europe over Russian objections. We have sold military weaponry to Ukraine. We have been indicting Russians for interfering in our elections. We have imposed sanctions on Russian oligarchs. We have imposed sanctions on Russia itself. We have actively been aiding Britain and other governments that have seen a Russian presence with targeted assassinations. “We” being the United States under Donald Trump. (See also this thread by James Kirchick)

The media and left would have you believe Donald Trump is captive to Russia. Lately, they’ve been pushing the idea that he may be some sort of sleeper cell Manchurian candidate who Putin owns and controls.

A fellow law prof (of the lefty variety) was even speculating the other day on social media that Melania was Trump’s KGB control agent.

As Walter Russell Mead wrote last year:

If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:

Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran

That Trump is planning to do precisely the opposite of these things may or may not be good policy for the United States, but anybody who thinks this is a Russia appeasement policy has been drinking way too much joy juice.

Obama actually did all of these things, and none of the liberal media now up in arms about Trump ever called Obama a Russian puppet; instead, they preferred to see a brave, farsighted and courageous statesman.

So I don’t know if Trump knows what he’s doing. (As proof that his remarks were dumb, he’s already walked them back.) American presidents have historically done badly in their first meetings with Russian leaders, from Kennedy at Vienna to George W. staring into Putin’s soul. And as a general rule, Presidents don’t criticize their own intelligence agencies while at meetings with foreign adversaries. But then, as a general rule, U.S. intelligence agencies aren’t supposed to be involved in domestic politics up to their elbows, as has clearly been the case here. And don’t get me started on John Brennan’s disgraceful comments, which Rand Paul correctly calls “completely unhinged.” Brennan, like his colleagues Comey and Clapper, has made clear the rot at the top of important intelligence agencies, and people like Peter Strzok suggest that the rot extends some ways down from the head. So maybe the general rules don’t apply any more, and Trump is more a symptom than a cause of that.

So maybe his approach to Putin is disastrous, maybe it’s smart. But the most important thing Trump can do is get a better class of people in charge of the institutions where the rot is worst. I don’t know if he can do that at all.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Obama, Who’s Totally Not a Socialist and It’s Racist to Suggest He Is: Hey, Let’s Give Everyone a Income from the State for Doing Nothing At All.

Why, it’s as if there was a certain amount of gaslighting being done to the American people by the MSM from 2007 through the end of 2016. And when I say a certain amount, I mean an endless amount, to paraphrase Monty Python’s Vice Admiral Sir John Cunningham.

HOW MUCH OF THE “SETTLED SCIENCE” WILL TURN OUT TO BE A PACK OF POLITICIZED LIES? Psychology Itself Is Under Scrutiny. Many famous studies of human behavior cannot be reproduced: Even so, they revealed aspects of our inner lives that feel true.

As this New York Times headline suggests, enough that they’re already retreating to the “fake but accurate” defense.

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Obama Loves Telling the Truth… Honest!

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Ninth Circuit upholds preliminary injunction against magazine confiscation in California.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Chief Content Officer Isaac Lee Out at Univision.

History will remember that Lee’s tenure at Univision began as Vice President of its news division, and that his first major splash as such was to greenlight the despicable effort to blackmail U.S. Senator Marco Rubio into appearing on the network (for the purpose of being browbeat on immigration by Jorge Ramos) in exchange for killing a story that suggested he profited from his brother-in-law’s narcotics enterprise. In the 1980s. As a teenager. (Politico’s Marc Caputo, then with the Miami Herald, covered the story, and his summary can be found here.)

On Lee’s watch, Univision’s news operation would increasingly turn to an activism-based model of reporting where immigration reigned supreme, and took it upon itself to enforce the notion that a belief in immigration policy was somehow a central tenet of the Hispanic ethnopolitical identity. I submit Jorge Ramos’ contemptuous opinion column cheering Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio’s defeat in the 2016 presidential primary as an example of the sort of openly partisan behavior that Lee indulged at Univision, which culminated in a massive loss of credibility after the 2016 presidential election.

Read the whole thing.