COMPETITION AMONG ELITES FOR POWER, IMPOVERISHING THE COMMON CITIZENRY AND VETERANS: A review of The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic.

Written primarily for those not very familiar with this era in Roman history, The Storm before the Storm is a particularly valuable read for laymen, given that the events discussed are frequently cited – albeit usually erroneously – by politicians and pundits seeking to make points about modern America.

Ouch. A short and sharp review. Read the whole thing.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: FORGET KAMALA HARRIS OR “SCREECHY” ELIZABETH WARREN — HILLARY WANTS TRUMP TO WIN IN 2020. “I don’t see our stumbling, hacking, shop-worn Evita yielding the spotlight willingly to any younger gal.”

REPORT: Microsoft is scrapping Edge, switching to just another Chrome clone.

The report is short on details. The easiest thing for Microsoft to do would be to use Chromium’s code wholesale—the Blink rendering engine, the V8 JavaScript engine, and the Chrome user interface with the Google Account parts omitted—to produce something that looks, works, and feels almost identical to Chrome. Alternatively, Redmond could use Blink and V8 but wrap them in Edge’s user interface (or some derivative thereof), to retain its own appearance. It might even be possible to do something weird, such as use Blink with the Chakra JavaScript engine. We’ll have to wait and see.

I’m old enough to remember when Microsoft bundling a browser into Windows was cause for panic and an antitrust case.

HMM: Amazon on Democrat-Hiring Binge.

Amazon is getting ready for the new Democratic House — and building a wall of protection against any potential focus on its growth and influence.

In the last month the tech, commerce, and media giant has hired three key Democratic aides, who will help with legislation and diversity issues.

The trade outlet Legistorm reported the latest hire and blogged, “Amazon is continuing its hiring sweep of Congress, adding its third Democratic aide in a month.”

It reported the hiring of Tina Tower as a program manager for public policy. She was Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Ed Markey’s assistant to the chief of staff.

And Politico reported two other big hires, House chiefs of staff LaDavia Drane and Tony Clair to handle the company’s ties to the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.

The outlet said that Drane came from the office of New York Rep. Yvette Clarke and Clair from North Carolina Rep. G.K. Butterfield.

Another argument for my revolving-door surtax.

COLD WAR II: China Maneuvers to Snag Top-Secret Boeing Satellite Technology. “The founders of a small Los Angeles firm, which ordered a satellite from Boeing, say it was financed and is now controlled by Beijing.”

About $200 million flowed to the satellite project from a state-owned Chinese financial firm in a complex deal that used offshore companies to channel China’s money to Boeing. It included a discussion with a longtime friend of China’s president, said the startup’s founders.

Such technology would help fill in a missing piece of the puzzle for China as it seeks to secure its status as a superpower alongside the U.S. It would bolster China’s burgeoning space program, as well as initiatives to dominate cutting-edge industries and expand its influence in the developing world.

A web of U.S. laws effectively prohibits exporting satellite technology to China, and its satellites lag far behind those made in America. Current and former U.S. officials, and people close to the startup, called Global IP, fear the satellite could ultimately be used by China’s government or military once in space, or its technology reverse-engineered.

Good grief.

MIKE ALLEN, JIM VANDEHEI: The Democrats’ 2020 Free-For-All.

BLOOMBERG GOES TO IOWA, and immediately sells out. “The big question on everyone’s mind was how he would approach the subject of ethanol. In the past, Bloomberg has been more than sharply critical of corn-based fuel, blaming it for people starving in other countries and calling government mandates and subsidies for the ethanol industry a national disgrace. With that in mind, it takes some real character and conviction to go face down the voters in King Corn’s backyard and explain to them why their pet issue needs to be sidelined. So how did Bloomberg do? Yeah… he totally caved and knelt at the throne of King Corn just like almost all the other politicians.”

LEADERSHIP: U.S. Asserts Authority at NATO in Stinging Criticism: Pompeo criticizes European capitulation to Iran, China, Russia. For 50 years the Europeans have felt that they could play footsie with the West’s enemies, because the U.S. was going to backstop them anyway. But as I keep pointing out, the chief characteristic of the Trump era is the renegotiation of a lot of post-World War II institutional arrangements, which is reasonable give that those arrangements are 70 years old.

PROCUREMENT: B-21 Bomber Completes Another Review, Remains on Schedule.

“Our most recent review was last week, and the B-21 is on schedule and performance,” Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said during the forum in Simi Valley on Saturday.

While Wilson noted the development process is in its early stages, “We are pleased with how that program is going forward,” she said.

Officials have said the Northrop Grumman-made B-21 is expected to reach its critical design review milestone in December. It was not immediately clear whether the review Wilson spoke of is the same one.

“It’s a good example of how to run a major acquisition program well and why delegation of authority back to the services … works to get high quality and to do so quickly,” Wilson told reporters after her panel discussion.

After the delays and cost overruns caused by Pentagon confusion over the JSF program, the Raider’s quick move through the system comes as a welcome change.

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Springfield College Attempts To Ruin Professor’s Life For Teaching About Male Writers.

What might come to mind at this point is the Brett Kavanaugh-Christine Blasey Ford hearing of late September. What’s in play at tiny Springfield College is a version of the same gotcha game: first unsourced vague allegations, then recriminations if the target of the allegations refuses to submit to the attempted intimidation.

Read the whole thing.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. California’s mismanaged high-speed rail project has gone on for long enough.

The CHSRA has also wasted large sums of money through poor management. Tillier has detailed how the Authority plans to spend billions to outfit Bay Area stations with unnecessary tunnels and viaducts, rather than making elementary improvements to operations. A state audit has shown that the CHSRA knowingly incurred massive additional cost risks by starting construction prematurely; desperate to show progress and to meet a deadline for federal funds, the CHSRA began construction in the Central Valley without buying all the land it needed, or even completing negotiations with the freight railroads whose rights-of-way it planned to use. The state auditor also criticized the CHSRA for hiring expensive consultants, over the objections of its former CEO, to do routine budgeting work.

Some of the worst revelations in the state auditor’s report concern basic failures of contract management. The CHSRA paid contractors without inspecting their work, and contract managers’ review of the quality and cost of finished products was often so shoddy that the auditor could not even conclude whether the CHSRA’s spending was justified. In one especially egregious case, in 2017, the CHSRA hired an external consultant to check the work of Parsons Brinckerhoff (now WSP USA), which had been paid $666 million for engineering consulting. The external consultant found that the CHSRA had not received finished work for 145 of 184 tasks that Parsons Brinckerhoff had called “complete.”

It seems clear that the CHSRA is too incompetent to manage a project of California HSR’s complexity.

Meanwhile, the state’s existing water and road infrastructure is a shambles, and Sacramento still has no plan for dealing with a trillion-dollar underfunded pension crisis.

SHOCKER: New Data Shows Women Now Surpassing Men in STEM Fields. Remember, it’s always good when women surpass men, and always problematic when men outperform women.

DON’T BE EVIL: Google’s ‘Filter Bubble’ Can Manipulate Your Search Results, Study Suggests.

Eighty-seven individuals searched for the same terms as part of Measuring the Filter Bubble: How Google Is Influencing What You Click, a study conducted by DuckDuckGo, a search engine that aims to protect users’ privacy. Participants searched Google for “gun control,” “immigration,” and “vaccinations,” but despite the identical search terms, the results varied, even when controlling the time and location, according to the study.

DuckDuckGo also found that logging out of Google or searching in private browsing did not change this variation in Google search results, perhaps suggesting that such tactics don’t actually provide anonymity.

Regardless of whether the users were logged in, logged out, or using the incognito mode feature, variation remained constant—in some cases, different news sources appeared in the results, while in others, the placement of a result differed drastically between searches, according to the study. The variation was also true of the results that appeared in the Google news and video boxes.

They track you when you’re sleeping, they know when you’re awake.

And if former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s infamous line is anything to go by, you’d better be good for goodness sake.

GEE, YA THINK? Outgoing Dem Senator Claire McCaskill: I lost because Democrats mishandled Kavanaugh. If they’d just voted against him without the smear, he might not have made it, but they might well control the Senate now. But thanks to #MeToo fever, Kavanaugh’s on the Court and the GOP has a bigger Senate majority. Plus, the whole #MeToo movement has been substantially discredited by the performance. Other than that, it worked out well.

ARE THEY? ARE THEY REALLY? People are wondering why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn’t getting the Dan Quayle treatment.

TRUMP SHOULD AGREE WITH HER AND DEMAND THAT THE HOUSE CLEAN UP ITS ACT. GOOD JOBS AT GOOD WAGES! ‘This is a disgrace’: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams her future colleagues in Congress for employing unpaid interns and failing to pay staffers a ‘living wage.’

But look who’s dancing to her tune already: “Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet came just a few hours after a reporter said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, another New York Democrat, is hiring an unpaid intern. And her message may have made an immediate impact, because later on Monday Schumer’s office announced the job posting had been made ‘in error’ and his interns will be paid a stipend in the new congress.”

STORMY DANIELS ON AVENATTI: ‘Sometimes People Just Need a Swift Kick in the Ass.’

BERNIE CAMPAIGN MADE GLOBAL WARMING EVEN WORSE: Yes, Vermont Socialist and likely 2020 Democratic presidential nomination aspirant Sen. Bernie Sanders believes the global warming/climate change/greenhouse gasses problem “poses a catastrophic threat to the long-term longevity of our planet. The transportation sector accounts for about 26 percent of carbon pollution emissions.”

But campaigning for nine Democrats in nine states during the 2018 midterm election was even more important to Bernie than saving the planet, so he rented a private jet to fly to those nine campaign stops, at a cost of more than a quarter of a million dollars., reports Washington Free Beacon’s Brent Scher.

And oh by the way, according to Scher, commercial aviation is a huge source of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Private jets like the one Bernie leased are even worse than airliners because they carry far fewer passengers. No hypocrisy to see here folks, move along.

21ST CENTURY SENTENCES: While I was watching a rocket lifting some of my friend’s satellites into space from my driveway yesterday, my new electric Tesla car was delivered to that driveway.

BIDEN ON BIDEN: ‘I’m the most qualified person in the country to be president.’

Flashback: It’s time to talk about former Vice President Joe Biden, the open sexual predator.

Biden Swims Naked, Upsetting Female Secret Service Agents:

“Agents say that, whether at the vice president’s residence or at his home in Delaware, Biden has a habit of swimming in his pool nude,” Kessler writes in the book – due for release Aug. 5.

“Female Secret Service agents find that offensive,” he writes.

“Biden likes to be revered as everyday Joe,” an unnamed agent told Kessler. “But the reality is no agents want to go on his detail because Biden makes agents’ lives so tough.”

Plus: Washington Post: What Are We Going To Do About Creepy Uncle Joe Biden?

And: ‘Creepy Veep’ Joe Biden ‘nuzzles’ wife of colleague and claims he is friends with lots of Somali cab drivers.

Also: Joe Biden’s Woman-Touching Habit.

Related: Talking Points Memo: Why Does Creepy Uncle Joe Biden Get A Pass From Liberals?

Plus:

SO, MY FRIEND HAS A NEW BOOK OUT:  Book launch for A Star-Wheeled Sky.

ASK YOURSELF WHAT THEY’D DO IF THEY DIDN’T ACTUALLY BELIEVE IN ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING.  THEN LAUGH:  UN Climate Summit To Emit More CO2 Than 8,200 American Homes Do In A Year.

INTERESTING:  Now visible: Comet as big as the full moon.