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BREEDING: Northern White Rhinoceros: Hybrid Embryos Could Save Critically Endangered Species.

IT’S ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: NASA just found rare, extraterrestrial meteorite fragments in the ocean.

SKYNET SMILES: MIT’s Cheetah 3 robot can run up stairs without watching its steps.

THIS AGGRESSION WILL NOT STAND, MAN: Incredibly rude nearby star system is firing particles at Earth like a ‘cosmic ray gun.’

WE MUST DESTROY THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IN ORDER TO SAVE IT: Ed links below to Neo-Neocon’s rebuttal to Max Boot et al. Here’s what I think people must understand:

Here’s what Democrats are campaigning on:

• Raise taxes by a trillion dollars — at least. Trillions more if they got all the programs they want.
• A $15 minimum wage
• Universal single-payer health care
• End pretty much any control over the borders or immigration enforcement inside the U.S. — and while I believe in open borders in principle, open borders and a $15 minimum wage and expanding social programs are, finally, just crazy talk.
• Impeachment — followed by an extended Constitutional crisis, either with McConnell pointing and laughing, or Chuck Schumer trying to push it through, and then failing to get two-thirds of the Senate to vote to convict. Or getting a conviction followed by Pence becoming president, rinse and repeat.

Let’s be real emphatic here: by pushing for votes for Democrats to “punish Trump” or “save the Republican Party” that’s what you’re advocating. Voting for Democrats means voting for their policies.

The notion that it’s worth giving up all of that in order to punish the electorate for electing a crude real-estate developer instead of the Right Kind of People might make you any number of things.

“Conservative,” however, is not one of them.

OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH ANDREW WHEELER: After Praising Scott Pruitt’s Resignation, Left Insists Andrew Wheeler Is Worse.

Wheeler shares many of the Pruitt’s policy views and was confirmed as deputy in April with only three Democratic votes. As with Pruitt, many on the Left find his views on climate change and environmental regulation disheartening. Similar to how many on the Left mourned Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, environmental agencies and liberal commentators took to Twitter to express their dread of the new administrator of the EPA.

The Natural Resources and Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental advocacy group, tweeted that Wheeler was just as nefarious and ill informed as Pruitt, but much more capable. The headline of the article reads “Who is Andrew Wheeler (And Why You Should Be Afraid Of Him).”

Wheeler is Pruitt’s “ideological twin,” just with more “political savvy” according to the article.

Good — because nobody could have less political savvy than Pruitt.

75-YEAR-OLD MAN ARRESTED AFTER THREATENING TO KILL SUPPORTERS OF REP. LEE ZELDIN (R) AND PRESIDENT TRUMP FRIDAY MORNING AT ZELDIN’S CAMPAIGN HEADQUARTERS IN NESCONSET, NY:

According to police, Martin Astrof went to the campaign headquarters on Terry Road and became irate with a campaign worker at about 11:15 a.m.

After threatening to kill the campaign worker and other supporters, Astrof backed his car up in an aggressive manner, nearly striking the worker, police said.

No word yet if his source was the New York Times, or CNN.

Related: Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History.

‘A CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION MASQUERADING AS A POLITICAL PARTY’ is how Michael Walsh, writing in the guise of his leftwing alter-ego, David Kahane, has described the Democratic party on occasion. And the New York Times, its house organ, concurs! In an article yesterday titled “Democrats: Do Not Surrender the Judiciary,” the Gray Lady’s editorial board has a modest plan for their party:

With Republicans controlling the Senate and the judicial filibuster dead, the Democrats’ odds of denying President Trump a second Supreme Court appointment are slim. Barring some unforeseen development, the president will lock in a 5-to-4 conservative majority, shifting the court solidly to the right for a generation.

This is all the more reason for Democrats and progressives to take a page from “The Godfather” and go to the mattresses on this issue.

“I’m confused on if 1. Anyone on The NY Times Ed Board has seen The Godfather or if 2. They have and are suggesting starting a murderous mob war to prevent a SCOTUS pick,” Stephen Miller asks. “Because THIS is what happens when you go to the mattresses,” Twitchy adds:

I’m old enough to remember when the left wanted gun-related metaphors to be considered the equivalent of the N-word; now they’re ready to launch mob wars and put horses’ heads into beds. I eagerly await Paul Krugman’s condemnation of his own newspaper’s eliminationist rhetoric.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Trump Derangement Syndrome and the Lack of Civility.

MAX BOOT JOINS GEORGE WILL IN SAYING THAT DEMOCRATS MUST WIN IN ORDER TO PURIFY THE GOP, OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT:

Personally, I’ve thrown up my hands in despair at the debased state of the GOP. I don’t want to be identified with the party of the child-snatchers. ..

…a vote for the GOP in November is also a vote for egregious obstruction of justice, rampant conflicts of interest, the demonization of minorities, the debasement of political discourse, the alienation of America’s allies, the end of free trade and the appeasement of dictators.

That is why I join Will and other principled conservatives, both current and former Republicans, in rooting for a Democratic takeover of both houses in November. Like postwar Germany and Japan, the Republican Party must be destroyed before it can be rebuilt.

I’m so old, I can remember when conservatives still supported legal immigration, shrinking the government, voted for Republicans, and recoiled at Nazi comparisons.

WELL: Sperm Quality Improved By Adding Nuts To Your Diet. So nuts are good for your nuts?

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

● Shot:

The NYPD used a $3 million counterterrorism plane to shuttle Mayor Bill de Blasio back and forth from his Canada vacation to the Big Apple for an event Thursday, The Post has learned.

Hizzoner, who is in Quebec on a weeklong respite, briefly flew back to the Bronx for a memorial for slain Detective Miosotis Familia.

“NYPD is transporting him in their plane,” de Blasio spokesman Eric Phillips told The Post.

“Their plane” is a Cessna 208 Caravan that cost roughly $3 million and was picked up by the department in 2017, sources said.

The high-tech aircraft is outfitted with special sensors that can detect at a distance radioactive material used to make “dirty bombs.”

Police sources questioned the use of a special plane for mayoral transportation.

“It is very unusual to go on an international flight to go pick up the mayor,” one source said.

—De Blasio used a $3M counterterrorism plane to zip home from vacation, the New York Post, Thursday.

● Chaser:

A week after a brutal snowstorm froze New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio delivered a one-two punch Wednesday in the name of climate change, announcing he will seek billions in damages from five major oil-and-gas companies while moving to divest from fossil fuels.

“It’s time for them to start paying for the damage they have done,” Mr. de Blasio said at a press conference at the Manhattan Youth Center. “It’s time for Big Oil to take responsibility for the devastation they have wrought.”

The two-front attack was promptly pilloried by industry groups as a cynical political stunt, even as it put New York City at the forefront of the environmental movement’s campaign to recruit local governments as allies in the climate change fight.

Flanked by municipal leaders and top climate activists, the Democratic mayor said his goal is to divest the $189 billion public-pension funds from fossil fuels by 2022, which he said would make New York the first major U.S. city to do so.

Mr. de Blasio also announced that the city has filed a lawsuit against five top energy producers, blaming the companies for greenhouse-gas emissions that he said have produced disasters such as Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

“I remember those days after Sandy in the Lower East Side. I remember how desperate it was. I remember how much fear and confusion there was,” said Mr. de Blasio. “And this was a tragedy that was wrought by the actions of the fossil-fuel companies. Let’s be clear: That’s where it came from.”

—New York City mayor seeks billions from oil companies, blames them for climate change, the Washington Times, January 10.

● Hangover: NYC will pay you big bucks for ratting out idling trucks, buses.

—The New York Post, yesterday.

If he actually believed global warming is that existential a crisis, shouldn’t at the very least De Blasio fly commercial, as well as keeping the amount of his personal transportation down to a bare minimum? I don’t want to hear another goddamn word about Glenn Reynolds’ carbon footprint ever again.

TO BE FAIR, WHAT ISN’T? Democratic Rep: Citing Uncomfortable Data Is White Privilege.

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LEANDRA ENGLISH RESIGNS FROM CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU:

What a long, strange trip this has been. Last November, CFPB director Richard Cordray announced he was resigning but on his way out, he appointed Leandra English as his deputy so that she would become the acting director in his absence. According to the law creating the agency, that’s how things were supposed to work.

But President Trump chose to nominate Mick Mulvaney as acting director under the authority of another law which allows him to fill an acting director position with someone who has already been confirmed by the Senate. That left the CFPB with two acting directors for a time, though it wasn’t clear what English was actually doing every day when she came to work.

Here’s an exclusive gender-neutral recreation of her last day in office:

SUPER HERC FIREWORKS: Nice color photo of a C-130J Super Hercules sitting on the flight line during a fireworks display at Yokota Air Base, Japan, July 3, 2018.

IRAN’S INTERNAL WAR: My latest Creators Syndicate column.

Since roughly 1995, this has been Iran’s deep question: when will the Iranian people be willing to spill their own blood to confront the clerical dictatorship.

The ayatollahs are in trouble.

MICHAEL BARONE: AMLO and Trump — The odd couple that could oddly narrow the US-Mexico gap.

WHY ARE DEMOCRATS SO LAWLESS, HATEFUL, AND VIOLENT? Man Arrested After Threatening To Kill GOP Rep. Zeldin Campaign Worker. “A man was arrested in Suffolk County, New York on Friday for making “terroristic threats” against a campaign worker for GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin. . . . According to the release, Astrof threatened to kill supporters of Congressman Lee Zeldin and President Donald Trump at Zeldin’s campaign headquarters in New York.”

Here’s the police report.

HISTORY’S BAD IDEAS ARE AN INSPIRATION FOR PROGRESSIVES, Victor Davis Hanson writes:

Yet 19th-century nullification is the font of the current “sanctuary city” law adopted by nearly 500 American cities that declare federal immigration statutes null and void within their jurisdictions. No matter that such liberal cities would have been the first to call insurrectionary any conservative city that declared federally protected abortion rights, gun laws or the endangered species act impotent within their city limits.

How strange that the entire “liberal” concept of nullifying federal immigration law rest on illiberal legacies that either sought to or actually did start a civil war.

Resegregation on the Rise

Another dark tradition from America’s past was the institutionalization of segregated spaces on the logic that the victims of discrimination did not deserve the protection of their freedoms under the Constitution, given their supposed innate odiousness. Yet once again the progressive Left has returned to its roots for inspiration and implemented an entire array of discriminatory practices. Special landscapes on campuses where particular races cannot enter are called “safe” rather than “segregated” spaces. Entry is entirely predicated on outward appearance—although how one’s genealogy is assessed ad hoc poses the same challenges as it once did for the racists of the Old South who came up with the ‘one-drop’ rule.

Campus dorms are now routinely segregated by race, at least sort of, given that a white “theme” house would be properly declared racist and shut down.

The far left wants Woodrow Wilson’s name airbrushed from history at Princeton, while continuing to practice his pro-Confederacy, pro-segregation beliefs.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Deterring World War III with Trump’s Space Force.