THAT WOULD BE A NICE CHANGE OF PACE: New Pentagon Strategy Putting Pressure on Private, Public Maintenance Yards to Deliver Ships on Time.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Are We On The Verge of Civil War? “What is causing America to turn differences into these bitter hatreds — and why now?”

Related: Social Media as Social Disease.

GROPEY JOE: Progressives Aim To Torpedo Biden 2020 Run.

Sixty-three million “dregs of society” could not be reached for comment.

AT AMAZON, Save on Top-Rated Products.

Plus, Hot New Releases – Updated Every Hour.

And, Shop Amazon Outlet – Clearance, Markdowns and Overstock Deals.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Presumed Guilty Until Proven Guilty and Much, Much More. “If the Senate Judiciary can’t stand up to this attempt to derail the confirmation of the President’s nominee to SCOTUS, the Republicans deserve to lose the senate. What’s the point of having control if the Democrats are still calling the shots?”

LUCY JEWEL: Leading As An Introvert.

SHOT: The Logical Fallacy of Christine Blasey Ford’s ‘Choice.’

CHASER: With Kavanaugh, McConnell’s throne is on the line.

HANGOVER: Brett Kavanaugh is a blend of toxic male privilege and affluenza.

The thinner the case against Kavanaugh is revealed to be, the shriller the headlines against him become.

YEP, THIS IS THE BOTTOM LINE: “If the FBI were to find strong evidence implicating Kavanaugh in a crime, Democrats would oppose him. If there were a muddled mix of accusations and memories, Democrats would oppose him. If Kavanaugh were completely vindicated, Democrats would oppose him.”

UM: Watch–Beto O’Rourke to Black American: Illegal Immigrant Labor Needed for Cotton Gin.

THE FOREIGN POLICY ESTABLISHMENT’S TRACK RECORD HAS NOT BEEN EXACTLY BRILLIANT: Trump’s Iran sanctions prove the establishment wrong — again.

PRIVACY: Google Says It Continues to Allow Apps to Scan Data From Gmail Accounts.

In a letter to senators, a top Google official said the company allows app developers to scan Gmail accounts, even though Google itself stopped the practice for the purpose of ad targeting last year. The company also disclosed that app developers generally are free to share the data with others, as long as Google determines that their privacy policies adequately disclose potential uses.

“Developers may share data with third parties so long as they are transparent with the users about how they are using the data,” Susan Molinari, the company’s vice president for public policy and government affairs for the Americas, wrote in the letter. She added that the company, a unit of Alphabet Inc., makes sure the relevant privacy policy is “easily accessible to users to review before deciding whether to grant access.”

For a few bucks a month you can own your own domain with virtually unlimited and secure email addresses. I’ve used HostingMatters since 2002 (on Glenn’s recommendation) and have nothing but good things to say about them.

REMINDER: Yes, The U.S. Leads All Countries In Reducing Carbon Emissions.

“MICHIGAN RANKED 9^th WORST STATE FOR BULLYING”: For some reason, that headline caught my eye today. Really? Ninth worst? Not 3^rd or 23^rd? How does one even measure these things?

A little while ago, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a report on the Department of Education’s intensive efforts to combat bullying in schools.  Somehow this was (and still is) viewed as an issue of “discrimination” in violation of federal law.  As usual, I filed a statement dissenting from the report.  Here’s an excerpt:

Remember when children used to say “Don’t make a federal case out of it”? In those days even fourth graders understood that not every problem is best dealt with at the federal level. These days, however, everything seems to be a federal case—even schoolyard bullies.

The point is not that bullying is unimportant. Few things are as important as ensuring that all our nation’s children can attend safe schools that are conducive to learning. But, in the absence of extraordinary circumstances, the problem can only be dealt with effectively at the local level. Individual teachers and principals backed up by active parents, school boards, school district officials, and students themselves must be in charge. They are the heroes of the story, not the Department of Education. …

One could argue that any help in this regard should be welcome. But help from the 800-pound gorilla can be worse than no help at all. And that is what anything as large and powerful as the federal government inevitably is. The fact that it may be well-meaning is nice to know, but it shouldn’t make anyone want to trust it with a china tea set.

I wonder if school children still say “Don’t make a federal case out of it.”  It might not make any sense to them anymore.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: Venezuela murder toll worse than some war zones.

Amnesty’s report highlighted violence carried out by security forces during operations against criminals in impoverished neighborhoods of Venezuela’s biggest cities.

“State officials, adopting military methods, use force in an abusive and excessive manner, in some cases intentionally killing during security operations,” said human rights defense organization Amnesty in a statement.

“In cases documented by AI, victims were unarmed. Autopsies revealed bullet wounds in the neck, throat, head. They were killed while on their knees or lying down,” said Esteban Beltran, director of Amnesty International Spain.

“The number of murders in Venezuela is greater than those in many countries at war.”

Venezuela’s murder rate is 89 per 100,000 inhabitants, three times more than crime-wracked neighbor Brazil, said Mariana Fontoura Marques, director of international justice policy at Amnesty International Argentina.

I’ll say what Amnesty won’t: Socialism is war — of “The People” against the actual people.

BUT HOW DOES IT COMPARE TO WHEN THE BABY BOOMERS WERE TEENS? Marijuana use is now as common among baby boomers as it is among teens, federal data shows.

THAT’S BECAUSE THEY’RE INSINCERE HACKS: “CONCERNED” DEMS AREN’T CONCERNED ABOUT PAST SEXUAL ASSAULTS BY DEMS.

THE GROWING THREAT OF REPRESSIVE “SOCIAL JUSTICE.”

It’s all part of the Gramscian Damage.

THEY CHOSE… WISELY: The Russian military has backed down after the US Marine Corps called its bluff in Syria.

Russia warned the US twice on September 1 and again on September 6 that the Russian military, together with Syrian and pro-regime forces, planned to carry out counterterrorism operations inside the 55-kilometer deconfliction zone. It accused the US and its coalition partners of harboring terrorists.

Immediately following Russia’s threats, the US Marine Corps conducted a live-fire demonstration at the At Tanf garrison to drive home the point that the US military did not need Russia’s help eliminating terrorists.

In the nearly two weeks since, the Russians have not contacted the US military about operations inside the deconfliction zone, an area the Syrians and the Russians want to access to build a strategic land bridge between Tehran and Damascus.

The story stressed the Russia angle, but the real significance is that the USMC hampered Iran’s imperial ambitions in the area.

TWO-EDGED SWORD: HHS Controls New National Biodefense Strategy Against ‘Poor Man’s Nuclear Weapon.’ “All of the great research that we do to advance biomedicine has its opposite side, which is the threat potential.”

A relatively inexpensive bioweapon, properly deployed, has the potential to kill far more than a single nuclear weapon.

CORNELL FOOD RESEARCHER RESIGNS AFTER A FINDING OF SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT. His work, now discredited, was the basis for Michelle Obama’s disastrous school lunch “reforms.”

BUT I THOUGHT THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED:  The Nastiest Feud in Science.

WHAT KIND OF INSANITY IS THIS? JUST BECAUSE THEY KNOW MEDICINE, WHY DO THEY THINK WE’RE INTERESTED IN THEIR POLITICS? HUBRIS AND INSANITY, JUST LIKE THE HOLLYWOOD CRAZIES:  Doctors Across Nation Plan Stand Against Gun-Related Violence.  Maybe the surgeons among them can set about removing the mote from their eyes.

PISSING ON THOSE WHO PROTECT THEM:  UC-Berkeley Police Asked Not To Use Restrooms So As To Not Trigger Students.

BRACE. THEY HAVEN’T EVEN BEGUN TO GO CRAZY:  The Left Seeks to Return to Familiar Ground, Confident that 2016 Was an Anomaly.