THE WORST RETAIL POLITICIAN EVER. Hillary on 2016: I won the places that aren’t looking backwards.

“TOTAL BOOMER MOVE:” “You don’t know AARP … and if they have their way, you never will. Because it seems whoever’s running their Twitter account has gone on a blocking spree.”

As “Cuffy Meigs” tweets, “At some point, the millennial social media manager at @AARP has to explain to the boss how they blocked half of Twitter because their personal blocklist app spilled across tweetdeck.”

THE NEWS WE KEPT TO OURSELVES: CNN Used to Run a “Trump Jobs Tracker” as Part of Its “Facts First” Branding Campaign. But Then Jobs Began Growing Under Trump, And They Stopped Tracking Them.

(Classical reference in headline.)

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Swamp Things in the Russia Investigation.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Cheap Eats.

And I guess it’s worth revisiting that Strategic Shopping piece, too.

AT AMAZON, Spring Savings On Appliances.

Plus, fresh deals in Home and Garden.

SCOTT ADAMS KNOWS PERSUASION: ‘Dilbert’ Scoops ’em All On the Inside Story Of Trump Korea Talks.

EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Legacy Media Even Weirder Than We Thought.

Plus an explanation for Trump referring to NBC’s Chuck Todd as “sleepy-eyed son of a bitch:”

In an interview with a combative Chuck Todd, Leo Gerard, President of the United Steelworks, praised the effect of President Trump’s newly proclaimed tariffs would have on the U.S. steel market. Gerard praised Trump for making it clear he is going to “tackle trade deficits” which he called a “wealth transfer” because they are “taking good jobs away.”

Gerard said Trump was able to “see the steelworker agenda” and “he’s going to have a major impact on our members” with what he has done.

…

NBC’s Chuck Todd argued that while there are some countries where there is trade deficits but there is a “national security component” because “we’re exporting values” like democracy to make a financial ally. Gerard said he doesn’t understand his point because these countries aren’t dumping unemployment on the economy when they dump steel in the U.S.

* * * * * * * *

Let me break this Chuck Todd thing down for you people. Chuck was not so nice and, frankly, was more than a little condescending to Leo Gerard of the Steelworkers. Steelworkers get angry… Trump calls Chuck Todd a “sleepy-eyed son of a bitch” and… steelworkers laugh. Get it?

What does NBC have against American steelworkers? The Washington Free Beacon spotted MSNBC’s Ali Velshi smugly patronizing a steelworker on Friday: “You don’t want your son being a steel worker I assume.”

SHOCKER: House Intel finds ‘no evidence of collusion’ between Trump campaign and Russia.

WE DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT HILLARY BECOMING PRESIDENT IN 2020:

MEGAN MCARDLE: Toys R Us still sells lots of toys. Here’s why it’s going under.

But wait. If Toys R Us is going to have such a meaningful effect on overall toy sales, doesn’t that suggest that it’s still, you know, selling a lot of toys? Toys aren’t exactly buggy whips — there’s still a market for them (about $20.7 billion worth of sales in 2017). And Toys R Us seems to command a healthy slice of that market. So why can’t it be saved?

Good question. It turns out that, as with many failures, the answer is a combination of “bad planning” and “bad luck.”

Toys R Us has the problems you’d expect from a big-box retailer in the Age of Amazon. It also has some problems of its own making, notably the large amount of debt it took on during a 2005 leveraged buyout. When the company goes down, you can expect to hear a lot of accounts blaming bad management and greedy bankers. And sure, go ahead and blame them. But don’t be too hard on them. But for a little bad timing, they might well have gotten away with it.

We like to tell ourselves morality plays about failure. Someone is either a victim or a villain, and which is which varies by, among other things, ideology. During the financial crisis, for example, you got two starkly different accounts of the people who got caught short by the housing bubble; conservatives saw them as gamblers who deserved what they got, while liberals thought they must have been rooked by Wall Street.

In fact, if you interviewed those folks, you generally found that they were well aware that they couldn’t really afford their house if the payment reset. They just expected to be able to refinance it when prices climbed, or they got a raise, or at worst, to sell if they couldn’t afford the payments. Then prices collapsed, and they ended up in a whole world of trouble.

What they did was undoubtedly risky. But plenty of people took that exact same risk in 2001 — buying more house than they could afford. But those people had no trouble refinancing to more affordable mortgages, because the market was soaring and they had loads of equity. The same risk produced two very different outcomes depending on when people happened to take it.

You’ll see this pattern repeated over and over if you look at failures, from major disasters to corporate collapses: They start with people taking risks that others (or they themselves) had taken before. Only this time, something goes wrong, and that little risk turns into a big problem.

Yes, Nassim Taleb has some things to say about this.

GET WOKE, GO BROKE: It’s So Much Fun Knowing ESPN’s Relationship With The NFL Is Horrible.

KURT SCHLICHTER: Why Democrats Would Lose the Second Civil War, Too.

YES, BUT AS A NAZI, HOW DOES HE COMPARE WITH EVERY* PREVIOUS REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT? Johnny Carson and David Letterman Producer Peter Lassally: Trump’s America Reminds Me of What It Was Like Living in Concentration Camp.

Curiously though, he’s free to make the comparison on national TV without fear of reprisal. As Tom Wolfe wrote, paraphrasing the late German intellectual Gunter Grass, “You American intellectuals—you want so desperately to feel besieged and persecuted!”

* At least dating back to Coolidge.

EVERGREEN HEADLINE: California’s Reputation for Loony Left Behavior Only Gets Worse.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is It Racist to Call Maxine Waters Stupid, Considering How Stupid She Is?

THE GOOD NEWS IS, WITH ATLANTA TRAFFIC THEY WON’T HAVE TO GO MORE THAN 15 MPH. Waymo’s Self-Driving Trucks Will Hit the Road in Atlanta.

I HAVE A UROLOGIST FRIEND WHO PERFORMED HIS OWN VASECTOMY, BUT THEN THERE’S THIS: Midwife assists with own C-section delivery.

PAULA BOLYARD: Kasich Power Grab Could Give Unelected Bureaucrats Almost Unlimited Power Over Education.

DOING THE JOBS AMERICANS WON’T DO: Arizona border officer falsely claimed to be US citizen; he is actually a native of Mexico.

IF IT MOVES, TAX IT: California’s first proposed per-ride city tax to raise Uber, Lyft prices.

If the effort is successful, Oakland could become the first city in California—Uber and Lyft’s home state—to impose such a tax. However, it’s not clear whether Oakland or any other city in the Golden State has the authority to do so under current state rules.

Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan told the East Bay Express that she wants the city council to put forward a ballot measure that would tax such rides.

“The power to tax is a separate power regardless of whether or not you can regulate something,” said Kaplan in an interview with the alt-weekly. “They’re using our streets to do business, and we don’t currently have any revenue from it.”

Your typical politician exhibits a level of greed which would make most businessmen blush.

FROM RUSSIA WITH COLD WAR LOVE: It appears the Kremlin used a nerve agent named Novichok A-230 in the botched assassination attempt in Britain targeting a former spy. It’s highly toxic. “One of the group of chemicals known as Novichok – A-230 – is reportedly 5-8 times more toxic than VX nerve agent.” Some variants are liquid, other types can possibly “be dispersed as an ultra-fine powder as opposed to a gas.”

BUT OF COURSE: Giving a Stellar Example of Dishonesty, Daily Show Uses Deceptive Editing of CPAC Conservatives to Brand Them as Mindless Buffoons.

AN OFFER TO DUKE UNIVERSITY HISTORIAN NANCY MACLEAN: I’m not exactly holding my breath waiting for her to take me up on this offer, but maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.