YOU WANT TO BE ON HIGH GROUND: Where the Pacific Northwest’s “Big One” Is More Likely to Strike: Differences observed along the Cascadia fault explain why certain areas see more rumbling.

YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP: As Illinois Celebrates ‘Barack Obama Day,’ 53 Wounded In Chicago Gun Violence.

D. C. MCALLISTER: UNC Football Coach: If We Lose Football, We Lose Our Country.

I THINK STEPHEN GREEN IS WAY AHEAD OF THE CURVE ON THIS: Embracing päntsdrunk, the Finnish way of drinking alone in your underwear. “To Americans, drinking alone can sound, well, lonely, but the Finns see a solitary drink at home in your skivvies as a form of self-care.” Well, the Finns.

BLUE WAVE? Trump Driving Both Dem and GOP Leaders in Florida Governor Race. “Immigration, healthcare, the economy and gun control are at the top of voters’ minds going into Florida’s August primary.”

“YOU THINK YOU HAVE A TOUGH JOB THIS MORNING? IMAGINE BEING THE GUY WHO HAS TO ORGANIZE ‘COPS FOR WARREN 2020’ IN A YEAR OR SO.” Elizabeth Warren: Our Justice System Is ‘Racist, All the Way, Front to Back.’

As Jim Geraghty adds, “It’s not like Elizabeth Warren ever said or did something cynical about race to get ahead, right?”

RENEWABLE NOTHING: New York Spent $5 Million On Wind Turbines That Don’t Even Work.

The project was expensive, with the five windmills costing $4.8 million and another $500,000 for design expenditures. The authority believed that the turbines would pay for themselves, saving as much as $420,000 annually on energy bills.

However, the project did not go as planned. Of the five turbines that are dotted across the thruway from Eden, New York to the Pennsylvania state line, four aren’t even spinning.

“They are currently offline waiting for replacement parts and/or maintenance,” thruway authority spokeswoman Jennifer Givner said, according to Buffalo News. “We’re working with the manufacturer to get replacement parts.”

Between October 2017 and January 2018, all the turbines except for one were taken offline. The issue appears to stem from inoperable parts made from Vergnet, a French renewable energy company that declared itself insolvent a year ago.

The lifespan of a windmill typically spans 20 to 25 years, but these turbines began to break down in less than three.

Yes, but did all the right contractors and union officials get paid?

WORSHIPPING THE FALSE IDOLS OF WELLNESS: Charcoal, “toxins” and other forms of nonsense are the backbone of the wellness-industrial complex.

THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT? Broadway Performers and Rosie O’Donnell to Stage a Musical Protest Outside the White House.

REMINDER: Red meat halves risk of depression: Women who reduce lamb and beef in their diets are more likely to suffer depression, according to the new study. You quit red meat, go vegetarian, and the next thing you know you’ve dyed your hair pink and are leading a miserable life posting hate-tweets about white men on twitter. Have a steak instead!

ANTIFASCISM, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG: Antifa Behind Several Assaults at Patriot Prayer Rally in Portland. “The counter-protest was organized by ‘a coalition of labor unions, immigrant rights groups and artists’.”

THOUGHTS ON TURKEY AND THE WEST.

SO TAKE AWAY THEIR ACCOUNTS: Social media is making children regress to mentality of three-year-olds, says top brain scientist.

It isn’t doing much to benefit adults, either.

KAROL MARKOWICZ: SORRY, DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS — YOU’RE STILL PUSHING POISON.

I happen to know a little something about the transfer of private industry to government control. My grandmother’s father had his bakery seized in the Soviet city of Gomel. He was sent to a gulag, where he then died.

Oh, that’s crazy, Democratic Socialists would respond. No one is planning to seize bakeries. And no one will be sent to prison for owning a business.

No? What if those who own companies in industries that “necessitate some form of state ownership” don’t want to give them up willingly? What happens when the state runs out of money from the industries seized and needs more?

It’s baffling how we can still be considering centralized control of industries when that has never worked anywhere. And how socialism lovers so easily dismiss the underlying foundation in countries that have veered toward some form of that system: capitalism. Countries such as Norway, for example, are helped by a large abundance of natural resources and an essentially capitalist system supporting the welfare state.

On the other hand, nations where socialism continues to wreak havoc and spur poverty, disease and crime, like Venezuela, don’t have much support from capitalism. Fact is, “socialism” only works when it’s paid for by capitalism.

* * * * * * * *

In the fall of 1959, Nikita Khrushchev gave a series of speeches here. In one, he said, “We are catching up with you in economic progress, and the time is not far distant when we will move into the lead.” In Russia, that prompted folks to joke: “When we finally catch up to America, can I get off?”

But it’s never been implemented properly before – this time around, I’m sure top people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will succeed where Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Mao, Castro, Chavez, Maduro, etc. have failed.

SARAH JEONG ACCUSED OF LEAVING DEVASTATION BEHIND IN PURSUIT OF A STORY: Reporting from repressive regimes is tricky business. I’ve had to manage many stories over the years filed from Saudi Arabia, Russia and of course, my experience with China and the way it has been surrendered to is almost legendary. Reporters often forget that they are not the only ones at risk: in these countries identifying sources may expose them to not just public harassment but government pressure or even arrest and in some cases torture or worse.

Now infamous Sarah Jeong of The New York Times Editorial Board is being accused of exactly such recklessness by a young woman in China, who claims that Jeong, working for Vice exposed her to danger:

Vice would endanger me for a few clicks because in Brooklyn certain things are no big deal. This is not journalism and does not deserve to hide behind the protection legitimate use of that title warrants, this is a savage abuse of privilege knowing full well that in China I had no possible recourse against a billion dollar company who thought titillating their readers with my personal details was worth putting me in jeopardy.

Read the Whole Thing. ™

KNOW NUKES, NO PEACE. NO NUKES, KNOW PEACE. Will North Korea Give Us Anything for a Peace Treaty?

MONICA SHOWALTER: It’s Time To Hold Democrats Responsible For Chicago’s Violence.

What’s going on? All of these attacks are gang-related, according to this report, and are happening in the 6th, 10th, and 11th Districts, all led by Democrats. What a massive sludge of corruption and thuggery rests behind that.

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has retweeted an invaluable article from the January 2012 issue of Chicago magazine about how the city’s famed violence is all the result of gangs and Democrats being in bed with each other, one hand washing the other, and in those very districts named above. Democratic politicians sidle up to gang leaders for votes and use their thugs as substitutes for their political organizations. They muscle voters to the polls for the Democrats, and anyone who rebels gets a beating. Gang leaders in turn make demands of politicians for protection from police and get flows of city funds from these same Democrats, generally as city subcontractors, calling it “jobs for youth” and “second chances” or something. The left benefits, so it gives the gangs what they want.

Is this a revolting picture? Obviously, with the stepped up shootings, the Democrats don’t seem to be worrying too much, given that they have the votes and deals they want, so word is out that they aren’t going to do anything. Meanwhile, the cops have been ordered to stand down because of the political ties of the gangs, and word has gotten out about that, too. Now the gangs are challenging each other because Democrats have made the power so easy to get.

President Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act and send federal troops. But Democrats would call him a dictator if he did.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Elites’ War on The Deplorables.

DAVID BERNSTEIN: Something is Amiss in the History Profession.

No, this isn’t another post about that horrible Nancy MacLean book, but it is related. As an early, vociferous critic of the book, I wound up in email, blog, and Twitter debates with some of her defenders among fellow historians, especially those who purport to specialize in intellectual history. And what I learned from this was troubling. While I’m sure there are many excellent historians around, I found that the historians I interacted with not only tended to reason backwards from their political priors, but that their standards of how one makes an appropriate inference from existing evidence are such that they would be laughed out of any decent philosophy or law school academic workshop.

I saw similar behavior when Michael Bellesiles’ fraudulent Second Amendment history was being uncovered. They circled the wagons and depended heavily on mockery and unsupported assertions of intellectual superiority rather than discussing facts. It was very disappointing.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Mark Zuckerberg wanted Facebook to change the world. And it has — but not for the better.

All these companies began with a gauzy credo to change the world. But they have done that in ways they did not imagine — by weaponizing pretty much everything that could be weaponized. They have mutated human communication, so that connecting people has too often become about pitting them against one another, and turbocharged that discord to an unprecedented and damaging volume.

They have weaponized social media. They have weaponized the First Amendment. They have weaponized civic discourse. And they have weaponized, most of all, politics.

Which is why malevolent actors continue to game the platforms and why there’s still no real solution in sight anytime soon, because they were built to work exactly this way. And ever since, they have grown like some very pernicious kudzu and overtaken their inventors’ best efforts at control. Simply put, the inventors became overwhelmed by their own creations, which led to what I can only describe as a casual negligence, which led to where we are now.

At a recent employee Q and A I did at YouTube, for example, one staffer told me that their jobs used to be about wrangling cat videos and now they had degenerated into a daily hell of ethics debates about the fate of humanity.

Social media remains a great place to catch up with old college friends or find silly LOLcat images. But the rest has become a cesspit.

Related: Alex Jones, Michelle Malkin, Facebook, and me.

WHY ARE DEMOCRATS SO RACIST? Sikh man attacked, told to go back to country while posting campaign signs supporting GOP lawmaker.