LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Strzok, Ellison, the NDAA, and Much, Much More. “Finally.”

Tyler O’Neil is filling in for Liz this morning.

HEADLINES FROM 1968: Democrats used to be for the middle class. Not anymore.

SALENA ZITO: While politicians court Google and Uber, fracking industry offers a different sort of high-tech job.

CANNONSBURG, Pa. — If there is mud on the floor, they say in the shale industry, that means cash is coming in the door. That is, when workers are out in the field and the boots are getting dirty, money is being made.

Thanks to an infusion of high technology driving the natural gas industry, it’s not just about dirty boots anymore – and it’s a good story. It’s a marriage of advanced technologies and dirt-under-your-nails hard work rarely told, because extracting shale is not a popular business politically.

Fracking, it turns out, is the one high-tech industry not embraced by politicians in Pittsburgh who are rushing to embrace the likes of Uber and Google.

Why? Because local progressive Democrats, very vocal climate activists, and the burgeoning Democratic Socialists of America party demand a wholesale repudiation of the natural gas industry. Local Democratic officials thus have to oppose fracking or risk losing in a Democratic primary.

Which is weird, because if you want to hurt Putin, you should want to support fracking.

UH OH: Another Keith Ellison Sexual Assault Charge Surfaces. With 911 records.

HEALTH: A Troubling Rise in Pregnancy-Related Heart Problems.

The rates of heart-related problems in women before and after childbirth have increased in the U.S., a problem that some experts think may be contributing to a rise in the country’s maternal mortality rate. The reasons behind the increase in heart problems aren’t yet clear, though researchers think women delaying pregnancy could be a contributing factor, in addition to traditional cardiovascular risks such as higher smoking rates and high blood pressure.

The number of women having heart attacks before, during and after deliveries increased by 25% from 2002 through 2013, according to a study published in July in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Around 4.5% of women who had heart attacks died, a high mortality rate for such a young age group, the researchers say. While deaths are still relatively rare, the increase in heart attacks is worrisome.

As Robert Heinlein wrote, a society based on “any foundation other than ‘women and children first!’ … is automatically genocidal.” So let’s get on this faster, please.

THIS SEEMS INSANE: “A New Mexico state judge ruled Monday that five alleged Muslim extremists accused of training children to conduct school shootings do not have to remain in jail while they await trial for child abuse. Judge Sarah Backus released the five defendants, Siraj Wahhaj, Hujrah Wahhaj, Subhannah Wahhaj, Jany Leveille, and Lucas Morten, on a $20,000 ‘signature bond,’ according to the Albuquerque Journal. That means that the defendants will not have to pay money unless they violate the conditions of their release.”

DON SURBER: Antifa Is The Future Of The Democrats.

Let’s get something straight: Antifa is the fascist arm of the Democratic Party. If you want to know where the party is headed, look where its youths are. Antifa speaks for all Democrats when it chants, “No border, no wall, no USA at all!”

That’s absurd. If it were true, the Dems’ star politician would be a Marxist former bartender with no actual knowledge of economics.

SUSAN ESTRICH: Donald Trump numbers not as bad as some believe.

What’s striking from the numbers, at least as far as I can see, is not how much support Trump has lost but how, given the daily barrage of tweets and countertweets; ugly chants and ugly corruption trials (his campaign chairman); intense criticism in the media; all-out war in Congress; and foreign policy flubs and domestic failures, much remains firm, and how tough he will be to beat.

Boorish behavior seems like a small price to pay for increased wage growth in a hot jobs market. Or as Estrich’s former (Bill) Clinton campaign compadre James Carville liked to say, “It’s the economy, stupid.” And if anyone in Washington would understand that tradeoff, it would be someone from the Clinton Administration.

What gets me is that 20 years after L’affair Lewinsky, nearly 30 years after the first “Bimbo Eruption,” and longer still since JFK’s antics became widely known, that anyone is still seriously concerned about ill-behaved presidents.

Or is it just different when Democrats do it, because shut up?

STEPHEN MILLER’S INSUFFERABLE UNCLE:

Politico has published a opinion piece by David Glosser called “Stephen Miller Is an Immigration Hypocrite. I Know Because I’m His Uncle.” Glosser’s piece is a shrill, hyper-personal rant of the “Give me your tired, your poor” genre. But for Glosser’s status as Stephen Miller’s uncle, I don’t think Politico would even have considered running it.

Glosser’s great-grandfather came to America from what was then Russia and now is Belarus (my father’s father also came here from there). Glosser’s thesis is that if Trump administration immigration policies, which Miller helped craft, had been in effect in the early 20th century, Miller’s forebears (and Glosser’s) would not have been able to immigrate to the U.S. Instead, they would have been wiped out by German Nazis. Therefore, Miller is a hypocrite for pushing these policies.

Glosser makes no real effort to support his claim that Trump’s policy would have stranded his great-grandfather in Belarus. Trump has not ended the taking in of refugees. Rather, he has cut the number of refugees admitted per year in about half — down to 45,000 per year — with further cuts a possibility.

Would Jews facing pogroms in Eastern Europe in the early 20th century, and Jews threatened by Nazism 30 years later, have been among those excluded under a Trump-like refugee policy implemented back then? There’s no way to say for sure, but I think it’s unlikely they would have been. Nor does Glosser engage this question.

The analogy further disintegrates with the story that the left-leaning Tablet ran in April: “While [FDR] was uncertain about whether [Jewish refugees] would be better off on the slopes of the Andes or the savannahs of central Africa, there was one place he knew he didn’t want them: the United States of America.”

GOOD IDEA: The Air Force Wants Helicopters to Help Defend Nuclear Missiles. “The helos would carry rapid reaction security troops.”

The United States has 400 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles on alert across the western United States. Sixty feet long and weighing more than 37 tons, each Minuteman III carries a 300 kiloton thermonuclear warhead and has a range of more than 8,000 miles, enough to strike any target in the Northern Hemisphere. The missiles sit in reinforced concrete and steel silos in Wyoming (Warren Air Force Base), Montana (Malmstrom Air Force Base, and North Dakota (Minot Air Force Base.) Each silo is unmanned, with up to ten silos controlled by a nearby manned Launch Control Center.

Security is generally excellent but the spread-out nature of the missile fields means they are isolated. The fact that they control nuclear weapons makes them potential targets to anyone from anti-nuclear protesters to special forces troops and saboteurs. To deal with such situations, the Air Force has special security teams trained to fly in by helicopter and secure a threatened missile site.

The Achilles Heel of the security teams are their helicopters—old, slow UH-1N Hueys. They’re the last Hueys in the Pentagon’s inventory, and the Air Force would like to replace them.

Indeed.

I remember the climax of an old Tom Clancy novel that depended in part on a US black team, inserted into China and taking out their ICBMs on the ground, by damaging the silo doors. Surely something similar has occurred to people more dangerous than a technothriller novelist.

TROLL LEVEL: ANDREW STILES. 10 Ridiculously Old Celebs Who Are Still Younger Than Nancy Pelosi.

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: Why Germany Should Get the Bomb.

CHUTZPAH: Fired FBI Agent Peter Strzok Starts a GoFundMe Page: ‘He Needs Your Help.’ “We are asking you to support a man who has dedicated his life to defending America.”

I’m taking a hard pass on this one.

I’M SORRY, BUT ALL THE BEST PEOPLE HAVE ASSURED ME THAT THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE: Trump’s foreign policy is actually boosting America’s standing.

EVERYTHING THEY TOUCH, THEY CORRUPT: Using the Truth to Lie.

READING THIS, I REALIZED THE SAME COULD BE SAID ABOUT THE DARLINGS OF THE LEFT IN SCIENCE FICTION: A fundamental truth behind PC humor reveals something critical about the modern Left.

NOW?  HEAVENS, DON’T YOU REMEMBER WHEN OBAMA WAS ELECTED “WE’RE ALL SOCIALISTS NOW?” THE MASK JUST SLIPS MORE AND MORE:  Democrats Now the Socialist Party.

HAVE WE REACHED PEAK UNHINGED?  Dem Desperation Dialed to 11.

THEY KEEP TELLING ME TRUMP IS WAGING WAR ON THE PRESS: I’d pay good money to see Jim Acosta shoot his petulant self-important mouth off in China. Or Singapore. Or Saudi. Or Thailand. Or Venezuela. Or Cuba. Or Turkey. But unlike Washington DC, it’s hard to get a good facial massage in those places, and a man’s got to have his priorities.  All in the name of brave journalism, you know.
#MeanTweetsHurtsMyFeels

EVERYONE HAS SOME HORRIBLE RELATIVES:  Stephen Miller’s insufferable uncle.

QUICK, AIRLIFT FACTUAL BOOKS ON THE HISTORY OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION TO COLLEGE CAMPUSES:  Male Professors of Pallor to Get “Reverse Mentors”.

DO THE PEOPLE USING THIS FOR BLACK POWER OR FEMINISM OR WHATEVER THE HECK REALIZE THE RAISED FIST IS TO COMMUNISM AS THE EXTENDED HAND SALUTE IS TO NAZISM AND THAT BOTH WERE VILE, RIGHT?  The Hypocrisy of the NFL’s Raised Fist and Kneeling Players.

HEY, SOME WOMEN LIKE TO DATE FELONS AND SOME PROGRESSIVES LIKE TO GIVE MONEY TO FELONIOUS, SMIRKING CORRUPT OFFICIALS.  MAKES SENSE:  Fools And Money: Peter Strzok Is Raking In Cash Via GoFundMe.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF COA AS FAST AS YOU CAN: Climate Change Caused the California Fires, Not Negligent Power Line Maintenance.