CBS POLL: 51% of Americans Believe a Border Wall is a Good Idea.

According to the poll, 32% of Americans believe that “a wall along the U.S. Mexican border” is a “good idea that can probably be completed.” 19% of those polled answered that the wall is a “a good idea that should be tried, even if it cannot be completed.” 48% of the 2063 adults polled said the wall was a “bad idea.”

The CBS poll was conducted last week from June 21-June 22. The poll comes after nearly two weeks of intense national scrutiny of the Trump administration regarding its handling of the southern border child migrant crisis.

As my friend and colleague Bill Whittle likes to say, “We have to build a wall because Democrats wouldn’t let us have a border.”

HMM: Not satisfied with 4% growth, Trump goes for 5%, ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet.’

Annual U.S. economic growth never hit 3 percent under former President Barack Obama, so when economic adviser Stephen Moore recently told President Trump that growth under the Republican could hit 4.5 percent, he expected the president to cheer.

“This is happening faster than we even predicted,” Moore recalled telling Trump during a short meet-and-greet at the president’s Mar-a-Lago golf resort in Florida.

But instead of breaking into a happy dance, Moore said Trump “just smiled and said, ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’”

It prompted him to recall that during the 2016 campaign, when he and Larry Kudlow, now Trump’s director of the National Economic Council, drew up a blueprint to reach 4 percent growth, the candidate reacted by saying, “I want 5 percent growth.” Times have not changed, Moore said in an interview.

Shadowed by other major stories and the media’s obsession with issues such as the Russia probe and Stormy Daniels, Trump has been quietly checking off campaign promises, the biggest being the 2017 tax cut, a massive reduction in regulations and energy development.

The result is big growth. The Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDPNow forecast model predicted 4.8 percent growth in the second quarter, up from 2.2 percent in the first three months of the year.

Well, stay tuned.

WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY THEY FIRST MAKE MAD: One interesting attribute of the Obama Administration’s education policy was its schizophrenia. On the one hand, it pushed schools into adopting tough anti-bullying policies (at the behest of the “LGBT community” part of its political coalition). On the other hand, it forced those same schools to lighten up on discipline (at the behest of the “civil rights community” part of its coalition). Well … uh … that’s a bit of a contortion: Stop the bullies, but don’t punish them.

The strategy doesn’t seem to work too well. And alas, the Trump Administration has not yet done anything to change that.

(By the way, neither policy is supported by law. If you want to know why the school discipline policy is unsupported by law, read the final version of my article (with Alison Somin) on school discipline. It explains not just why the Obama Administration’s policy is misguided, but why it is beyond the scope of the Department of Education’s authority.  On bullying, I have this Dissenting Statement from the Commission on Civil Rights report that cheered on the Obama anti-bullying policy from a few years ago.

ALASKA RED FLAG BAD GUYS: An F-16 from the USAF’s 18th Aggressor Squadron.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER: Maduro Congratulates Erdogan on Re-election.

“The Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela salutes the brother country of the Republic of Turkey, for its high expression of civility, heightened political conscious, and deep compromise to the Turkish democratic tradition,” the release stated.

Venezuela added that the South American nation will to continue to foster friendship and strategic cooperation with Turkey in joint and productive effort which will mutually benefit their people as well as promote justice, harmony, and peace among nations.

That’s rich.

END OF THE GRAVY TRAIN: Class Action Suits Target Unions: Suits set to recover mandatory dues, fees paid by government workers.

Public-sector workers across the country are seeking to recover back wages they paid to labor organizations in the event the Supreme Court declares mandatory union fees unconstitutional.

Class action suits have been filed against eight unions in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Maryland, California, and the state of Washington, accusing individual unions of violating workers’ rights by collecting mandatory dues payments. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on a groundbreaking case, Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, which challenges the constitutionality of forcing public-sector workers to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment. The suits argue that any public-sector employee who participated in forced dues systems should receive financial “redress” from labor organizations.

“The defendants have violated the class members’ constitutional rights by forcing non-union members to pay compulsory ‘representation fees’ to the Maryland State Education Association (MSEA) or its affiliates as a condition of their employment,” the Maryland complaint says. Similar language is featured in all eight lawsuits. “The compelled subsidy that [plaintiff Ruth Akers] and her fellow representation-fee payers must remit to the MSEA as a condition of their employment violates their constitutional rights.”

Former Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell, who has argued four Supreme Court cases in the past, filed each of the suits.

Stay tuned.

VIRGINIA POSTREL: Before Drug Prohibition, There Was the War on Calico. “In 18th century France, wearing the wrong fabric could get you in big trouble.”

It was Paris in 1730, and the printed cotton fabrics known as toiles peintes or indiennes—in English, calicoes, chintzes, or muslins—had been illegal since 1686. It was an extreme version of trade protectionism, designed to shelter French textile producers from Indian cottons. Every few years the authorities would tweak the law, but the fashion refused to die.

Frustrated by rampant smuggling and ubiquitous scofflaws, in 1726 the government increased penalties for traffickers and anyone helping them. Offenders could be sentenced to years in galleys, with violent smugglers put to death. Local authorities were given the power to detain without trial anyone who merely wore the forbidden fabrics or upholstered furniture with them.

“The exasperation of the lawmakers, after forty years of successive edicts and ordinances which had been largely ignored, flouted or circumvented on a wholesale basis, can be sensed in this law,” writes the fashion historian Gillian Crosby in a 2015 dissertation on the ban. Her archival research shows a spike in arrests for simple possession. “Impotent at stopping the cross-border trade, printing or the peddling of goods,” she writes, “government officials concentrated on making an example of individual wearers, in an attempt to halt the fashion.”

They failed.

Of course they did.

SIGNS OF A FULL-EMPLOYMENT SOCIETY: People are ‘ghosting’ at work, and it’s driving companies crazy.

In fields ranging from food service to finance, recruiters and hiring managers say a tightening job market and a sustained labor shortage have contributed to a surge in professionals abruptly cutting off contact and turning silent — the type of behavior more often associated with online dating than office life. The practice is prolonging hiring, forcing companies to overhaul their processes and tormenting recruiters, who find themselves under constant pressure. “If you don’t love your job [as a recruiter], you’ll beat your head on your desk,” says John Widgren, a recruiter for Central Florida Health, a more than 3,000-employee health system outside Orlando.

Where once it was companies ignoring job applicants or snubbing candidates after interviews, the world has flipped. Candidates agree to job interviews and fail to show up, never saying more. Some accept jobs, only to not appear for the first day of work, no reason given, of course. Instead of formally quitting, enduring a potentially awkward conversation with a manager, some employees leave and never return. Bosses realize they’ve quit only after a series of unsuccessful attempts to reach them. The hiring process begins anew.

Among younger generations, ghosting has “almost become a new vocabulary” in which “no response is a response,” says Amanda Bradford, CEO and founder of The League, a dating app. Now, “that same behavior is happening in the job market,” says Bradford, who’s experienced it with engineering candidates who ghosted her company.

Sorry, but that’s not cool.

OF COURSE SHE DID: In England, Hillary Trashes America’s Electoral College. “We will leave discussion of the American Electoral College for another day.”

BRIDGET JOHNSON: 25th American Sickened by Mysterious Attacks on U.S. Diplomats in Cuba, China. “State Department confirms a ‘number of individuals have returned to the United States from China’ for medical testing of their symptoms and ‘some of them still do remain under evaluation at this point’.”

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN: Army training will now focus on actual battlefield skills, not social issues.

WELL, THAT WOULD BE NICE: Trump’s ‘Space Force’ could fuel a new $1 trillion economy, Morgan Stanley says.

CHANGE: Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (D-NE) named chairman of legislative appropriations subcommittee in House.

In May, Frelinghuysen announced a reshuffle of the powerful appropriations subcommittee chairs, known as “cardinals,” sparked by the retirement of Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), who lead the subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs. At the time, Frelinghuysen named himself legislative branch subcommittee chairman as a placeholder.

The decision to go with Fortenberry skips over Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), the next GOP appropriator by seniority. Womack is prohibited from serving as chairman of an appropriations subcommittee since he is currently head of the House Budget Committee.

Womack had openly speculated about possibly leaving his perch atop the Budget Committee in favor of becoming an appropriations cardinal, but expressed reservations about leading the legislative branch panel.

Not a leg. man.

PRICING WITH INDIE CHANGES VERY FAST, AND I JUST REALIZED I’M UNDERCHARGING:  What is it worth?

WELL, CAN’T ARGUE WITH THAT: Starting a Keto Diet for Fun and Profit. And Bacon.

I’LL NEVER FORGIVE OBAMA FOR NOT BACKING THE INSURRECTION IN IRAN LAST TIME:  Tehran’s Grand Bazaar shuts down as protests mount.

THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH WOKE INTENTIONS:  Sometimes it’s the crime you didn’t commit that nails you.

DO THE DEMOCRATS REALLY WANT A CIVIL WAR? BECAUSE THAT’S HOW THEY GET A CIVIL WAR:  Democrats are just nuts trying to keep Trump off the 2020 ballot, but Trump could have fun with this.

WELL, CARTER WAS TOUGH COMPETITION, BUT OBAMA CLEARED THAT HURDLE BY MILES:  New poll ranks Obama as the worst president since World War II.

THEY THINK A CIVIL WAR IS THE ONLY WAY THEY CAN WIN. THEY ARE WRONG. THEY WON’T WIN THAT EITHER:  Insurrection is Here; How Long do We have Until Civil War 2.0 Starts?

SURE, THAT WILL WORK:  Ben Rhodes insults voters and then promises them More Obama.

PROBABLY, YEAH:  NIMBY in California???

THE LEFT RUNS ON HATE, SO THEY WON’T STOP BEATING THE DEAD HORSE SLANDERING THE SAD PUPPIES EVEN AFTER WE’VE BEEN DORMANT FOR YEARS:  Kickin’ them Sad Puppies again.

DO THEY WANT A CIVIL WAR? BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU GET A CIVIL WAR:  Uncivil war: plenty of people must think the Red Guards were a really nifty idea…