FAKE NEWS: ‘Nat Geo’ Photographer Admits Viral Photo Of Polar Bear ‘Dying From Climate Change’ Is False.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College offers course advocating ‘wages for housework.’ What about rent? Will housewives have to pay rent out of those wages?

As for the absurd notion that women should be paid for “emotional labor,” anyone who thinks that only women perform emotional labor has never lived with a woman.

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Plus, Hot New Releases, Updated Every Hour.

And, save Big on Clearances, Overstocks, and Markdowns at the Amazon Outlet Store.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: While Everyone Is Distracted By Russia, Chinese Spying And Influence Runs Wild.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Manafort Trial Begins Today and Much, Much More. “Manafort is not on trial for anything related to treasonous RUSSIAN-collusion, he is on trial for working for President Trump’s campaign and for being a sleazy political consultant, which is a crime every other person is guilty of inside the beltway.”

WELL, IT WAS NICE OF CHUCK TODD TO TRIANGULATE HIMSELF:  So, NBC News’ Chuck Todd thinks the Daily Caller is a “troll farm?”

Just think of Todd as a past and current Democratic Party operative with a byline, and it all makes sense.

Flashback: NBC, Chuck Todd Hide Wife’s Kaine Donation, and Her Firm Getting Millions from Bernie Campaign.

Related: “(Fun fact: [Kaitlan] Collins’s last media job before joining CNN was at … the Daily Caller.)”

LEGACY OF FAILURE: UVA President Who Oversaw Rolling Stone Hoax Leaves Office.

It’s been nearly four years since Rolling Stone magazine published its disastrous article about an alleged gang-rape at the University of Virginia. The story was so unbelievably fake (the main accused rapist didn’t even exist!) that the magazine was forced to settle three lawsuits brought by those who had been harmed by the article.

The president of UVA at the time of the hoax, Teresa Sullivan, leaves office on Tuesday, and has naturally provided some historical revisions as to her role in the debacle.

“People said you didn’t have to change anything because the story was wrong,” Sullivan said in an interview with The Daily Progress. “Well, the story was wrong, but the underlying issue is, were there sexual assaults happening? Yes, there were, and were we responding adequately to those? I thought we could improve and I believe that we have.”

Sullivan makes it seem like she didn’t wildly overreact to an accusation with more holes than Swiss cheese. In the wake of the article, without missing a beat, Sullivan extended a voluntary weekend ban on social activities from the school’s Greek Council for nearly two months. This was a blanket punishment on all Greek organizations, and it continued after the ban was lifted. To resume activities, the organizations had to sign new agreements with the school, which included new restrictions on social activities, such as requiring fraternities to block stairs to residential rooms and place sober brothers throughout the event. Mixed drinks, such as punches, were also prohibited.

Sullivan never apologized for rushing to judgment or assuming the guilt of all Greek organizations. Instead, she claims she was simply improving policies.

The — entirely innocent — fraternity that was victimized by this criminal hoax was the target of faculty-led protests, and vandalism. Has the university ever apologized for this lynch-mob atmosphere?

THE MOST PREDICTABLE CRISIS EVER: The Pension Hole for U.S. Cities and States Is the Size of Japan’s Economy. “Many retirement funds could face insolvency unless governments increase taxes, divert funds or persuade workers to relinquish money they are owed.”

In Kentucky, a major pension plan covering state employees had about 16% of what it needs to fulfill earlier promises, according to the Public Plans Database, which tracks state and local pension funds, based on 2017 fiscal year figures. A fund covering Chicago municipal employees had less than 30% of what it needed in that fiscal year, according to the same database. New Jersey’s pension system for state workers is so underfunded it could run out of money in 12 years, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts study.

When the math no longer works the result is Central Falls, R.I., a city of 19,359. Today, retired police and firefighters are wrestling with the consequences of agreeing to cut their monthly pension checks by as much as 55% when the town was working to escape insolvency. The fiscal situation of the city, which filed for bankruptcy in 2011, has improved, but the retirees aren’t getting their full pensions back.

“It’s not only a financial thing,” said 73-year-old former Central Falls firefighter Paul Grenon, who retired from the department after a falling wall punctured his lung, broke his back and five ribs, and left him unable to climb ladders. “It really gets you sick mentally and physically to go through something like this. It’s a betrayal, as far as I’m concerned.”

But Medicare for All will totally work.

AND YET THEY CAN’T SEEM TO HELP THEMSELVES:

It’s almost as if — I’m just spitballing here — the left is actually driven by Russian propaganda designed to divide and destabilize America or something.

OUT ON A LIMB: Donald Trump is Not the ‘Manchurian Candidate.’

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A LONGER LIST: Pentagon Creates ‘Do Not Buy’ List of Russian, Chinese Software.

“What we are doing is making sure that we do not buy software that’s Russian or Chinese provenance,” she said. “Quite often that’s difficult to tell at at first glance because of holding companies.”

The Pentagon started compiling the list about six months ago. Suspicious companies are put on a list that is circulated to the military’s software buyers. Now the Pentagon is working with the three major defense industry trade associations — the Aerospace industries Association, National Defense Industrial Association and Professional Services Council — to alert contractors small and large.

It’s amazing that this didn’t happen sooner.

REAL SOCIALISM STILL HASN’T BEEN TRIED: DNC CHAIR TOM PEREZ SPOTTED CARRYING $1,840 DESIGNER BAG AT AIRPORT AFTER CALLING SOCIALISM ‘FUTURE’ OF PARTY. To be fair, he called it the future of the party, not the present.

WITH ALACRITY: How Trump Turned Around Obama’s Anemic Economy.

GDP growth is an abstraction. What people actually feel are jobs and “job security”—are they afraid of losing their job in the near future? And here, it could be argued, Republicans have an even better argument. Not only is unemployment down to 4 percent, but most Americans believe the U.S. economy is improving. In fact, the job market is so hot that, for the first time ever recorded, there are more job openings than unemployed workers to take them.

That feeling is buoyed by stories about employers dropping requirements for college degrees. According to at least one analysis, the share of job postings requiring a college degree is falling as employers struggle to find workers to fill open jobs. Some businesses are even hiring job seekers who fail the drug test, making drug treatment part of the employee package. That’s a job market that’s growing, not shrinking.

As President Trump tweeted, “Private business investment has surged from 1.8 percent the year BEFORE I came into office to 9.4 percent this year — that means JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!”

I had been assured by some very smart people, around 2009 or so, that business climate is a myth.

NON-STARTER: Bill Kristol Considering Run For President In 2020.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: Millennial Socialism: Stupid, Evil, or Both? It’s the usual thing with socialism: The stupid being led by the evil.

THE DEMOCRATS’ RISING NEW STAR: The Unserious Face of an Unserious Movement.

Speaking to a friendly Trevor Noah, [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez revealed that she does not know the difference between a one-year and a ten-year budget; confused the recent increase in defense spending with the entire annual cost of the military; implied that the population of the United States was around 800 million strong; and, having been asked to defend her coveted $15 minimum wage, launched into a rambling and inscrutable diatribe about “private equity” firms that would have been a touch too harsh as a parody on South Park. If anything, she was worse this time than she had been during her appearance on Firing Line a few days earlier, on which newly revamped show she demonstrated her obliviousness to the fact that the United States economy exploded during the 1990s, to the manner in which unemployment numbers are calculated, and to even the most obvious facets of the Israel–Palestine question about which she has assured her supporters she is so passionate.

“It’s really weird!”

It is, yes. Especially given that, before her two interviews aired, Ocasio-Cortez had taken to exhibiting that jealous penchant for credentialism that so stains the world’s wannabe socialists, and to boasting about her intellectual prowess. At the beginning of July, she tweeted with self-satisfaction — and a noticeably premature use of the word “other” — that she was “Wondering how many other House Democrats have a degree in Economics like I do?”

Graduated fourth in her class at Boston University, which costs $72,618 annually to attend.

BLUE WAVE? Texas GOP, Cruz Claim They’re Running Scared: Could O’Rourke Really Win? “Democrat raised more than $10.4 million in the second quarter to fund his race to unseat Ted Cruz, while senator pulled in $4 million.”