NEWS YOU CAN ABUSE: Far-Left Group to Host Conference on ‘How to Topple a Statue’ in North Carolina.

WEIRD, THIS ISN’T THE IMPRESSION I GET FROM FOLLOWING THE NEWS: Generic Congressional Ballot Is Dead Even.

BOB LUTZ: It’s Time for Tesla to Replace Elon Musk.

GOOD: Immunotherapy Drugs Slow Skin Cancer That Has Spread to the Brain.

ROCKET REPORT: Vega soars, Delta 2 end nears, hearing a Falcon Heavy launch.

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NEWS YOU CAN USE: Shooting Down Nukes From Space Is Harder Than It Sounds.

GOOD: Hundreds of Millions of U.S. Guns are Unlicensed and Untraceable.

THE JEONG MARCH THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONS: PBS Host Lindsay Ellis: ‘I Get Really Excited About White Genocide.’

Meanwhile, Time-Warner-CNN-HBO continues to hire employees of the highest caliber: CNN employee: “Abolish White People.”

Sarah Jeong’s cloning project is really going into overdrive!

(Via Small Dead Animals; classical reference in headline.)

IF IT WEREN’T FOR FAKE HATE CRIMES, HOW MANY HATE CRIMES WOULD WE HAVE? Children made up story about white man urinating on black child: police.

A story about a white man urinating on a 5-year-old black child and calling her a racial slur was fabricated, police said.

Grand Rapids police and prosecutors late Friday, Aug. 24 said they determined the story was not valid and said no charges would be issued against a 60-year-old man arrested following the initial report on Wednesday.

Police said several children, all 7 or younger, were playing together sometime before 6 p.m. Wednesday when one of the children urinated on the 5-year-old girl.

Kent County prosecutors said the parents of the children, in talking with them, ultimately determined the children “concocted the story to avoid trouble.”

“We appreciate the conscientiousness of the parents in bringing the matter to the attention of the police, and continuing to ask their children questions as new evidence was obtained,” prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said the 60–year-old man had a “verifiable alibi” from other people who vouched for his whereabouts.

The allegations, when first reported late Wednesday, caused concern across the community and NAACP leaders on Friday said the incident should be considered both a hate crime and sex assault.

Maybe don’t be so quick to jump on stories like this next time?

SUCH A SLOW WEEK FOR NEWS, AND YET SOMEHOW, POWER LINE MANAGED TO PRODUCE ANOTHER “WEEK IN PICTURES” POST.

AYN RAND DIDN’T INTEND THE RETURN OF THE PRIMITIVE TO BE A HOW-TO GUIDE: “A Woman Apparently Lost Her Internship At NASA For Telling Homer Hickam To ‘Suck My Dick And Balls,’” BuzzFeed* reported on Wednesday, adding, “Naomi’s Twitter avatar appeared to indicate she was a furry, which has been the focus of many when discussing this story and the privacy she should of had on a personal Twitter account,” and that “Hickam said the woman apologized, and he approached NASA about getting her job back.” As NRO’s Jim Geraghty tweeted when the story broke, “You know, maybe it’s time everyone retired their edgy, in-your-face, no-holds-barred social media personas and just went back to old-fashioned polite decorum, and kept the smack-talk offline.”

Well, it’s a nice thought at least. Today, a Twitchy headline screams, “FURRY FURY! Homer Hickam deletes his Twitter account after uproar over fired NASA intern,”  noting that “Apparently Naomi is a ‘Furry’ — people who dress up in animal costumes — and members of the Furry community got furious at Hickam, which caused him to delete his Twitter and the blog post he wrote where he explained how he was trying to help Naomi.”

Hickam, 75, was a 1st lieutenant in the US Army who served in the Vietnam War, who went on to train NASA crews for the Space Shuttle and wrote the bestselling 1998 book Rocket Boys, which Hollywood adapted as the movie October Sky the following year. He currently serves on the National Space Council. “The Twitter bullies have mobbed and harassed Homer Hickam…into deleting his Twitter account. What a generation. What a generation,” Yomi Adegboye of MobilityArena.com tweets.

* Yes, curious how this BuzzFeed story is sympathetic towards someone possibly losing her job over a rude tweet, when in the past, BuzzFeed played an active role in a woman losing her job over a rude tweet.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Roger Simon on Impeachment for Dummies.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: My professor canceled office hours because KU allows concealed carry, says he ‘no longer feels safe.’

LOYALTY OATH NO LONGER REQUIRED: Clemson University has dropped its requirement that Resident Assistants “demonstrate a commitment to social justice” in order to qualify for the position.

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

CHANGE: Record measles outbreak in Europe reaches 41,000 cases.

CORRUPTION OF THE BLOOD: Conor Daly loses Lilly Diabetes sponsorship over remark his father made over 30 years ago.

Summary:

This is social “justice.” And Lilly Diabetes should be ashamed.

KAVANAUGH: Influential black farmers group backs Trump’s ‘excellent’ Supreme Court pick.

President Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has won the support of a group that advocates for social justice for 17,000 black farmers.

The Memphis, Tenn.-based Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association, which has fought racial discrimination, especially by the federal government, cited a case Kavanaugh decided for black farmers last October.

The group’s president, Thomas Burrell, and its ecumenical advisor Bishop David Allen Hall, praised the federal appeals court judge and said that he would be an “excellent” addition to the Supreme Court.

In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee and provided to Secrets, the two wrote, “During Judge Kavanaugh’s tenure, he was prepared, attentive and had command of the facts. If confirmed, these are the traits that Judge Brett Kavanaugh would bring to the bench as an associate justice.”

Interesting. Full letter at the link.

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: From Reality TV to Reality Politics: What Cohen, Omarosa, and Avenatti know that Democrats don’t.

Trump’s fame, wealth, and marginal position in the worlds of government, news media, and finance exempted him, in the minds of his supporters, from the informal rules that had conditioned the words and actions of candidates and presidents for years. Such freedom allowed him to bring into the political arena methods and practices from the worlds he knew best: tabloid journalism, professional wrestling, and reality television.

Shocking claims, conspiracy theories, and hints of lurid revelations that never quite pan out are straight from Page Six and the National Enquirer. The tent-pole rally, the braggadocio, posturing, invective, and prowling around stage are drawn from the WWE, and Trump’s long ties, Brioni suits, and unmistakable hair are all part of his “character.” His flair for operatic and unexpected shifts in direction, ambiguity and unpredictability in relationships, Twitter as “confessional,” emphasis on appearance, and love of the cliffhanger made his job-competition game show remarkably successful and durable.

Trump went from star of reality TV to sole practitioner of reality politics. He turned Republican, national, then world politics into a riveting spectacle, a new sort of contest in which the stakes are nothing less than the fate of the United States and the protagonist must face down a staggering number of opponents to win the prize. And Trump had an advantage. He alone was familiar with the contents of the reality politics rulebook. Which meant that his antagonists, from Bob Corker to Robert Mueller, from Chuck Schumer to Elizabeth Warren, from the media to the NFL, from Ayatollah Khamenei to Xi Jinping, were on defense.

This asymmetry ended last month. On July 25, Trump confronted something he had not seen before: An opponent who not just understood reality politics, but who also could practice them wholeheartedly because he was not beholden to elite institutions. Michael Cohen’s announcement that he had secretly taped Trump discussing payments to Stormy Daniels exemplified the new political mode. It was a stunning betrayal by a shameless man who said he had more secrets to spill. And the tapes themselves, surreptitiously recorded, played perfectly in a heated media environment where audio and visual recording is much more important than the gab-gab-gab of punditry.

It cannot be an accident that, in another development fit for sweeps week, Cohen was soon joined by a second Trump protégé. Last week, when Omarosa launched her new book by playing tapes of her own on NBC, she began executing a series of moves familiar to any Trump watcher. She made headlines not only with her charges against the president, but also with her suggestion, without any evidence, that there exists a secret recording in which Trump says the N-word.

What Cohen and Omarosa learned from Trump is that, whether it is true or not, the media will latch on to a hyperbolic statement just for its sensationalistic value.

Yep. Trump exists because our news media suck. Their response so far has been to suck more.

GOOD: Trump Cuts US Aid To Palestinians.

The Trump administration late Friday announced that it had cut $200 million in U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority until it can ensure this American taxpayer money will not be used to fund terrorism, according to U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.

The announcement follows the recent passage of the Taylor Force Act in Congress, a bill aimed at providing greater oversight over how U.S. taxpayer dollars fund the Palestinians. The PA has for years been accused of using aid dollars to pay accused terrorists and their families annual salaries.

President Donald Trump directed his administration to freeze $200 million in aid dollars allocated to the PA for economic support, according to an announcement by the State Department issued just a short time after lawmakers on Capitol Hill were informed of the move, sources said.

The “aid” just props up pathologies and enables murder.

DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: Drowned in the bath, slashed with knives and chillies in eyes: the torment of the children being accused of witchcraft in the UK. “Beliefs in demonic possession are still prevalent in many African countries, meaning thousands of kids who come over to the UK from them are at risk of abuse and cruel torture in the name of religion – and experts say these cases remain hidden from the police and social services.” Who, based on past evidence, probably don’t want to notice anyway, for fear of being called racist.