DAILY CALLER: Marxists And Extreme Radicals Seek To Take Over The Democratic Party.

Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Tom Perez said the 28-year-old socialist “represents the future of our party” on Tuesday.

What Perez didn’t mention is that the group behind “the future” of the Democratic Party is teeming with radicals openly dedicated to dismantling and overturning the economic and social foundations of the United States.

“As a DSA chapter co-chair I just wanna set the record straight for a minute: communism is good,” Portland DSA co-chair Olivia Katbi Smith wrote on June 30. Other DSA chairs quickly followed her lead.

The DSA’s Charlottesville chair quoted Smith’s tweet and wrote, “as a DSA chapter co-chair, I would like to cosign this pro-communist statement.” DSA chairs in Seattle and Hudson County, New Jersey added their support as well.

The tweets were first pointed out by Far-Left Watch, a website that tracks left-wing extremism.

The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to the DSA for a statement on the chairs’ endorsement of communism, as well as for clarification of the DSA’s position on communism, but a DSA spokesperson declined the request.

A deeper look into the beliefs of the DSA’s members reveals that a communist faction isn’t an outlier in the group.

Members of the DSA espouse a kind of radicalism that has not been represented in mainstream American politics for generations.

A review of various subgroups, or caucuses, within the DSA and statements by its members show an organization more closely aligned with extreme Marxist views rather than Nordic social democracies.

The constitution of the DSA proclaims its members are “socialists because we reject an economic order based on private profit, alienated labor, gross inequalities of wealth and power.”

Ocasio-Cortez is a dues-paying member of the DSA’s New York City arm, which demanded an end to national borders and private profit during a June 29 march — just three days after her victory.

Read the whole thing.

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE: Campaign for ‘Baby Khan’ balloon smashes £10k target.

Following Sadiq Khan’s approval of a balloon mocking President Trump to be flown over Parliament during his visit to the UK, a counter-campaign has surged to over £10,000 out of nowhere for a balloon depicting the London Mayor to go up.

The campaign’s appeal reads: “To have a giant size Sadiq Khan, ‘Baby Khan’ balloon fly over London to demonstrate our unhappiness with him as our Mayor of London.”

It goes on to explain: “In light of the Donald Trump ‘Baby Trump’ ballon being allowed to fly over London during his visit to the UK, let’s get a ‘baby Khan’ one and see if FREE SPEECH applies to all and whether or not Mr Khan and the London Assembly will also approve this.”

Heh. Make the enemy live up to his own book of rules. And there are a few other Alinsky principles in play here too.

THE NEW RULES: Woman Who Asked Pruitt to Resign in Restaurant Hopes Confrontation Now ‘Empowers Everyone.’

SUPER HORNET TANKER MISSION: This photo shows two F/A-18E Super Hornets. One is “buddy refueling” the other. This capability extends the range of F/A-18E strike aircraft.

HERE WE GO AGAIN? Athens keeps apprehensive eye on Erdogan and Dodecanese islands.

We are fortunate in Europe in the sense that we haven’t had a major military conflict since the collapse of Yugoslavia and the Bosnian-Serb conflict of the 1990s. Maybe we are also fortunate that the refugee crisis is making us aware of wars elsewhere and the need for conciliation and mutual respect.

But there are invisible wars continuing: wars of attrition, wars of diplomacy, economic wars which don’t need bombs, gas masks or even verbal abuse but which thrive on factors which are just as insidious as ethnic cleansing, terrorism and religious prejudice.

Turkey may not officially be at war, but the narrow victory of President Recip Erdogan in last month’s elections will certainly increase the levels of aggression on which he, as executive president, will be able to operate. At home, Erdogan has not only effectively declared war on the opposition (imprisoning dissident academics, teachers and journalists) but makes no secret of his determination to suppress, if not exterminate, the Kurdish minority.

Greece is watching Erdogan’s success with apprehension. He has already carried his arguments into the enemy camp during his state visit here last December when he spoke of rescinding the international treaties under which the Dodecanese islands (including Rhodes, Kos and Patmos) became part of Greece in 1947.

Twice in the past 30 years, Greece and Turkey have been on the brink of war over the ownership of such islands.

Saner minds prevailed then — but are there any of those left?

VICTORY FOR ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN WISCONSIN: The Wisconsin Supreme Court delivers a fantastic victory for Marquette professor John McAdams, who blogged his criticism of in-class censorship by a grad student instructor and was fired by Marquette despite its promises of academic freedom.

IRAN’S INTERNAL CLASH.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Women’s Studies course assigns ‘action project’ to ‘improve women’s lives.’

WELL, GOOD: Army Quietly Begins Pounding ISIS in Syria from New Fire Base.

HMM: China Could Have the World’s Most Powerful Naval Gun by 2025.

“China’s railgun was first seen in 2011 and underwent testing in 2014,” sources told CNBC.

“Between 2015 and 2017 the weapon was calibrated to strike at extended ranges, increasing its lethality. By December 2017, the weapon was successfully mounted on a warship and began at-sea testing, a feat no other nation has accomplished.”

America has been working on its own railgun for more than a decade. The flagship project is the Electromagnetic Railgun Innovative Naval Prototype, launched in 2005 by the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research. The goal was to develop a weapon with a muzzle velocity of thirty-two megajoules and a range of one hundred miles.

I wonder if the Chinese are developing a nuclear-powered ship to handle a railgun’s massive electricity requirements.

CHANGE: Hispanic-Latino Unemployment Rate Hits Lowest Level on Record in June.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Portland State University is offering a course this fall on “Ecofeminist Spirituality,” which combines “feminist biblical interpretation” with the idea that “the oppression of women and the exploitation of the earth are related.”

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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Will Pocahontas Take a DNA Test and Much, Much More.

A MEASURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY: San Antonio Police Arrest Man Suspected of MAGA Hat Attack.

Meanwhile, if I lived in San Antonio I’d be plastering this on light poles. And it’s true: He’s probably worth 100,000 votes for Trump.

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Can China Save Venezuela’s Collapsing Oil Industry?

China hopes to stem the losses at Venezuela’s Orinoco heavy oil belt. “Upgraders operated by foreign joint-venture partners in the vast Orinoco heavy oil belt are breaking down and running below capacity due to the stress associated with sourcing diluents, payment and corruption issues and staff security,” the IEA said. “Flows from Venezuela’s ageing conventional oil fields are falling fast.”

But it isn’t at all clear that China’s investment will slow the decline. For one, the sum is too small to have a significant impact. But in a broader sense, Venezuela has been taking out loans from China for years and it hasn’t led to economic progress. A report earlier this year from the Center for Strategic & international Studies argued that far from being an economic boon to Venezuela, China’s financial assistance has kept Venezuela hopelessly dependent on oil, while other sectors of the economy have been entirely hollowed out.

Moreover, as Venezuela racks up debt defaults, as seems unavoidable, China will be there to pick up the shattered pieces. The state-owned oil companies from China and Russia “will probably market a significant share of PDVSA’s exports and operate an increasing share of its production, guaranteeing the repayment of their loans,” Francisco Monaldi wrote in a report from the Atlantic Council in March. While China may offer some financial assistance, but it probably won’t lead to a rebound. The most likely outcome will be Venezuela continues to decline and is forced to hand over slices of the country’s assets to China.

If China intends to pick the bones of Venezuela’s corpse, maybe Trump asking about a possible invasion last year wasn’t all that crazy.

THEY TOLD ME IF DONALD TRUMP WERE ELECTED PRESIDENT, WE’D SEE OPEN RACISM AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT, AND THEY WERE RIGHT! FEC Dem rips ‘white, old, rich, male’ donors, ‘not really representative.’

The top Democrat on the Federal Election Commission is lashing out at the profile of today’s top campaign donors: old, rich, white guys.

In a conference focused on ridding money from the political system, Ellen Weintraub, FEC vice chair, said the nation’s big Democratic and Republican donors are not representative of the overall voting population.

Speaking at an American Promise conference she said that donors plan to spend $750 million in the midterm elections, up from $550 million in 2014. And, she said, the top 1 percent of donors, or some 541, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, have already funded 93 percent of 2018 donations.

“Who are these guys,” she asked in a YouTube video of the late June event just recently posted.

After this racist remark, I think she should have to resign.

MAX BOOT: I left the Republican Party. Now I want Democrats to take over.

Given the choice between several conservative principles and none, Boot has chosen none. Which I suppose tells us a lot about Boot’s principles.

CHANGE: Corporate M&A Activity Hits All-Time High. I’m agnostic as to whether it’s good change or bad change. . . .

CLAIM: Ocasio-Cortez’s Socialism Can Work in the Midwest — With a Rebrand.

The most radical economic policy on Ocasio-Cortez’s platform — a federal job guarantee — meanwhile, actually polls quite well in “flyover country.” In a survey commissioned by the Center for American Progress, a supermajority of voters agreed that “for anyone who is unemployed or underemployed, the government should guarantee them a job with a decent wage doing work that local communities need, such as rebuilding roads, bridges, and schools or working as teachers, home health-care aides, or child-care providers.”

Critically, support for this premise was almost exactly as strong among rural-dwelling demographic groups as it was among urban ones: According to DFP’s modeling, CAP’s proposal boasts roughly 69 percent support in urban zip codes, and 67 percent in rural ones.

There are a lot of reasonable, technocratic objections to the job guarantee as a policy. But polling suggests that there is majoritarian support for a massive public-jobs program of some kind — and that framing said program as “guaranteed jobs” might be politically effective.

Other items on Ocasio-Cortez’s platform poll similarly well. A bipartisan majority of voters have espoused support for “breaking up the big banks” in recent years, while nearly 70 percent of Americans want the government to take “aggressive action” on climate change, according to Reuters/Ipsos.

Everything is popular until the bill comes due.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): There’s always been support for WPA and CCC-like programs. But the unions, which hated them even back in FDR’s day, have blocked them. Bundle this with repeal of the Davis-Bacon Act’s “prevailing wage” rule — which is basically a union subsidy — and you might have something. Of course, with today’s critical labor shortage, none of this is exactly a priority.

WINNING: The U.S. labor shortage is reaching a critical point.

WELL, IT’S A START: Pew study: Rest of the world takes in more refugees than US for first time. There’s a whole lot of rest-of-the-world, after all. It should start doing its share.

LAW OF THE JUNGLE: Lions Eat Suspected Rhino Poachers On South African Game Reserve.

A ranger taking guests at the Sibuya Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape on a safari drive on Tuesday afternoon discovered human remains close to a pride of lions.

“We suspect two were killed, possibly three,” Sibuya owner Nick Fox said.

An ax and three pairs of shoes and gloves were found later when police and an anti-poaching unit arrived. The lions had been heard making a commotion in the early hours of Monday.

“We thought they must have been rhino poachers but the ax confirmed it,” Fox said. “They use the rifle to shoot the animal and the ax to remove the horn.”

No pity here.