BRUCE BAWER: Denmark Bans the Niqab, and Media Reacts Exactly as Expected.

HEH: New York Times Stands By Recent Editorial Board Hire Joseph Stalin Despite Criticism Of Mass Murder.

Upon the announcement of Stalin’s hire, thousands of readers pointed out that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of up to 25 million people. But on Thursday, The Times released a statement saying that editors were aware of Stalin’s sordid past before hiring him, and that it would not be bowing to “right-wing outrage” over “just a few million deaths.”

“His nationality as a Russian and his identity as a Communist have made him the target of much online harassment,” The Times wrote. “For a period of time, he responded to criticism by lashing out, fighting fire with fire by executing dissenters and implementing policies that sent countless people to their deaths. He now sees this only fueled the rage against him and was not entirely appropriate.”

The Times also wrote that Stalin has promised not to continue to kill people while he is employed by the paper. “He is an important part of the voice of our organization,” they wrote.

Walter Duranty was unavailable for comment, since he was busy burning in Hell.

FAKE NEWS: The NRA Says It’s in Deep Financial Trouble, May Be ‘Unable to Exist.’

Clearly, they want it to be true — Twitter’s Blue Check Mafia is giddy over Rolling Stone’s false report.

BE PREPARED: Leatherman Tool saves the day for USAF C-130.

Personally, I favor the Skeletool.

SARAH JEONG: IT WASN’T JUST A FEW HATEFUL TWEETS:

In the uproar over Sarah Jeong’s hiring by the New York Times, the focus on her history of hateful rhetoric against white people overlooked her many other expressions of hatred — toward males, Christians and police officers, among others. While her new employers have apparently accepted Ms. Jeong’s disingenuous excuse that she was “engaged in what I thought of at the time as counter-trolling… intended as satire,” this cannot explain away her demonstrable habit of deliberately insulting entire groups of people. It is not true, as she claimed, that she merely “mimicked the language of my harassers.”

Consider, for example, Ms. Jeong’s oft-expressed contempt for Christians, including her own parents. She “grew up in a conservative evangelical Christian bubble,” but “became an annoying atheist” as a teenager, when she was “trapped in a fundamentalist Christian school.” After attending the University of California-Berkeley and graduating from Harvard Law, Ms. Jeong pronounced herself a member of the “educated left wing elite.” She says she has now “mostly cut myself off from the conservative evangelical community,” and condemns Christians who “indoctrinate children” with “reality-denying belief systems.” Ms. Jeong’s spiteful denunciation of her parents’ faith was not “counter-trolling,” nor was it “intended as satire.” These anti-Christian remarks appear to express her sincere beliefs, no different from her many similar expressions of contempt for other groups.

Police? “Cops f—king suck” and “they’re f—king horrible,” according to this Harvard Law alumna, who hates the men and women whose job is to enforce the law. She responded to the 2014 race riot in Ferguson, Missouri, by aiming obscenities at the police and declaring “America is f—king racist.” This rhetoric was not a response to harassment, nor was Ms. Jeong “mimicking” anyone as “satire.” Her anti-police sentiments, like her anti-Christian sentiments, are evidently sincere. These opinions are endorsed by her new employers, who share the same “educated left wing elite” worldview. It’s doubtful the New York Times would hire anyone who wasn’t a cop-hating atheist.

Ms. Jeong has routinely expressed her total contempt for males. In August 2014, she tweeted, “Men are too f–king emotional to be let out in public. Jesus Christ,” and followed that with, “Yo. Men. Just get off Twitter. Every man. All of you. You can’t handle this sh—.” She has repeatedly said “all men are garbage.”

By keeping her on and defending her, the New York Times — and the blue-check tribe on Twitter that’s been taking her side — is playing into Trump’s hands. See, Trump can say, this is what they really think of you. Because, you know, it is.

ANDREW SULLIVAN: Is the newest member of the New York Times editorial board, Sarah Jeong, a racist?

From one perspective — that commonly held by people outside the confines of the political left — she obviously is. A series of tweets from 2013 to 2015 reveal a vicious hatred of an entire group of people based only on their skin color. If that sounds harsh, let’s review a few, shall we? “White men are bullshit,” is one. A succinct vent, at least. But notice she’s not in any way attacking specific white men for some particular failing, just all white men for, well, existing. Or this series of ruminations: “have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation. there’s literally nothing. like skiing, maybe, and also golf. white people aren’t even allowed to have polo. did you know that. like don’t you just feel bad? why can’t we give white people a break. lacrosse isn’t for white people either. it must be so boring to be white.” Or this: “basically i’m just imagining waking up white every morning with a terrible existential dread that i have no culture.” I can’t say I’m offended by this — it’s even mildly amusing, if a little bonkers. (Has she read, say, any Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson?) But it does reveal a worldview in which white people — all of them — are cultural parasites and contemptibly dull.

A little more disturbing is what you might call “eliminationist” rhetoric — language that wishes an entire race could be wiped off the face of the earth: “#cancelwhitepeople.” Or: “White people have stopped breeding. you’ll all go extinct soon. that was my plan all along.”

I’ll take that as a Yes then.

And do read the whole thing.

MORE ON STRAWS: A thorough debunking of the straw man arguments (sorry) from my colleague Richard Morrison.

NOTE THE WORD “MODERATE” HERE: Moderate Drinking May Be A Brain Buffer.

CALEB HOWE: Frenzied, Angry Mob Turns on Reporters in a Dangerous Physical Altercation #Throwback Thursday.

AT AMAZON, deals on Drinkware.

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT: Erdogan calls on Turks to convert hard currency, gold into lira, after the local currency tumbled to a record low this week.

If Erdogan’s wider powers don’t already include the authority to confiscate gold, they soon might.

COMMIES LIE A LOT: An Imaginary Arsenal: 10 Pieces of Russian Vaporware That Never Came To Be.

TOMORROW’S SPIN — TODAY! Record High Jobs, Low Unemployment, Doom Trump.

FASTER, PLEASE: Bezos throws cash, engineers at rocket program as space race accelerates.

OH: Osama Bin Laden May Have Planned 9/11 to Unleash the Apocalypse.

Maybe he was onto something — do MOABs count?

NOTHING TO SEE HERE. MOVE ALONG. Longtime staffer for Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein was reportedly a Chinese spy.

AMERICA’S FAVORITE DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST USED TO LIKE ADAM SMITH: According to this story, at least. It appears that she changed her mind after contracting malaria in Niger, in Africa, where she was astonished at the different price of drugs.

Life expectancy in U.S.: 79.3. Life expectancy in Niger: 61.8.

CHANGE: Venezuela Eases Currency Controls Amid Economic Meltdown.

Venezuela repealed portions of laws governing foreign exchange, enabling businesses and individuals to swap money at designated trading houses and increasing access to hard currency after more than a decade of strict controls.

The changes passed by the politically omnipotent constituent assembly Thursday are to take effect Aug. 20, when the government is simultaneously planning to slash five zeroes off denominations of its near-worthless bolivar currency. Inflation that could reach 1 million percent this year and a deep depression have forced President Nicolas Maduro to begin dismantling a Byzantine system that has left citizens desperate for food and medicine.

Well, good. But it’s weird how the new Assembly’s wider powers failed to stem the country’s currency woes and they ended up having to inject a little capitalism back into the system.

HOW TO READ THE NEWS LIKE A PRO: Can the press get anything right about Venezuela — or anything else?

CLOWARD AND PIVEN, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Roger Simon asks, Are Liberals and Progressives Sabotaging the Economy?

MATT MARGOLIS: Six Times the Obama Administration Should Have Appointed Special Counsel. “Their sham investigations were used to keep up the ruse that Obama was scandal-free.”

SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: One Year After He Was Nearly Killed, Scalise Is Still Receiving Assassination Threats.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Related: Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History.

I KNOW YOU’RE AS SHOCKED AS I AM TO HEAR THIS: STUDY: Researchers falsely frame Trump supporters as racists.

A Columbia University sociologist recently published a study showing that much of the academic research into President Trump’s voters is marred by prejudicial designs, distorted data, and outright misrepresentations.

Musa al-Gharbi points out, for instance, that one data set used in a Washington Post article to accuse Trump voters of racist motivations actually shows that Trump voters were less racist than those who voted for Mitt Romney.

It’s all about the narrative, as usual.

Related: The Suicide Of Expertise.

HMM: AFL-CIO’s Trumka Won’t Rule Out Unions Endorsing Trump in 2020.