SOMEBODY GOT TAKEN QUIETLY ASIDE: Never Pelosi Democrat Caves: ‘I Will Support Whoever the Democratic Party Puts Forward.’

SCANDAL: CNN ‘Catches’ Trump Asking Politely For A Coke.

HMM: Study: People with cat-borne parasite more likely to be business-oriented.

SO SHALLOW: Women Prefer Physically Fit Men With Good Jobs And No Criminal Record.

OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH CNN. White House comms aide Bill Shine on banned CNN reporter: Ask her if we ever used the word “ban.”

Various reporters are noting on Twitter that righties were A-OK with journalists shouting uncomfortable questions at the president when Neil Munro did it for the Daily Caller at Obama’s expense in 2012. “That’s what reporters do, try to get their questions answered,” said the Caller’s then-boss, Tucker Carlson, at the time. “And that’s what politicians do, try not to answer questions. They come out and make a statement and run back into their fortress. Why should we play along?” (Fun fact: [Kaitlan] Collins’s last media job before joining CNN was at … the Daily Caller.)

Now it all makes sense! As MSNBC’s Katy Tur said on Monday, they’re not real journalists. The White House should say that they were simply following her cue.

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Why Facebook’s Stock Market Pain Is Necessary—And Will Continue.

Here’s what CFO David Wehner said on the fateful earnings call: revenue growth will probably “decline by high single-digit percentages from prior quarters” and “we are also giving people who use our services more choices around data privacy which may have an impact on our revenue growth.” Wehner also noted that Facebook is trying more to promote its users’ personal Stories timelines, which currently bring in less money—this is as opposed to users’ Newsfeeds, which is where all those problematic fake news issues fester.

So, is this bad? I think journalist-turned-investor Kim-Mai Cutler hit the nail on the head when she noted on Twitter that “the last three to six months have been reporters screaming about [Facebook] to take more civil, public accountability (which I support). So maybe the headline should be that it’s OK [for Facebook to take] a $142B hit to resolve really serious, long-term structural issues.”

The fact is that the changes wrought by the GDPR and the Cambridge Analytica affair were long overdue. Facebook has been able to achieve its mammoth scale largely through its free exploitation of people’s data, and those people are now both wise to the implications and—in Europe and soon California—able to do something about it.

Facebook shares are down about 19% today, wiping out three months of big gains.

CURRENTLY $1.99 ON KINDLE: Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash.

ELON MUSK’S COLONIES WILL FIND THAT USEFUL: Underground Lake of Liquid Water Detected on Mars.

ROGER SIMON: Trump’s Deal with the EU Is Democrat Nightmare.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Six Reasons Why Barack Obama Is the Worst President in History.

YET THEY FOUND THE MONEY FOR EVERYTHING ELSE AND THEN SOME: Congress Fails to Fund Trump’s ‘Space Force’ in Defense Budget Bill.

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: Liberty Makes Us Unfree, Says the ACLU.

As Conquest’s second law of politics states, “Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.”

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

● Shot:

“Climate change is the biggest governing challenge we face. It’s the biggest governing challenge I think we’ve ever faced. One way or another, we’re going to have to dramatically reduce the amount of carbon we’re putting in the atmosphere and the scale and scope of that undertaking is every bit as transformational as the industrial revolution or the transition to the digital age. And you can think about that as terrifying or you can think about it as thrilling.”

—MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, in a 2012 promotional segment for the network.

● Chaser: Liberal Chris Hayes: I’d Like to Cover Climate Change, But It’s a ‘Ratings Killer.’

—NewsBusters, yesterday.

The London Daily Mail disagrees! You just have to find the right, err, angle: “Soaring temperatures are giving men ‘summer penises’: Doctors confirm the heatwave is having a positive effect on the size of male genitals.”

BOTTOM STORY OF THE DAY: Lena Dunham poses in underwear while giving her support of Cynthia Nixon for NY governor.

SHORT TIME PASSING: Where have all Roger L. Simon’s Twitter followers gone?

Plus: Is the American media colluding with Russia?

PATRICK POOLE: After ISIS Claims Credit for Toronto Attack, NYT Reporter Says Killer Could Not Have Been Pro-ISIS. “Terror group that literally recruits for suicide attacks can’t support suicide, can they?”

OLD AND BUSTED “PROGRESSIVE” SLOGAN: “Start From Zero!”

The new hotness? Venezuela has inflation fix: drop those zeros from their currency.

Economic pledges may be par for the course in election campaigns, but in hyperinflationary Venezuela, the candidates’ dueling promises are going further, with the incumbent vowing to lop a few zeros off the currency, while his main challenger calls for the adoption of the U.S. dollar.

President Nicolás Maduro late Thursday briefly outlined his monetary rescue plan. In a country where a dozen eggs can cost 250,000 bolívares ($5) amid worsening inflation, he would chop three zeros off the currency – arguable bringing the price for those eggs down to 250.

Steve likes to say that when it comes to hyperinflation, “the only thing socialist states never run short of is zeros.” What could go wrong with Maduro’s “solution” to this ever-recurring problem?

UPDATE: More zeros being removed: “Venezuela will remove five zeroes from the bolivar currency rather than the three zeroes originally planned, President Nicolas Maduro said on Wednesday, in an effort to keep up with inflation projected to reach 1 million percent this year,” Reuters reported yesterday.

In other news, Oceania reports that the chocolate ration increased last week from 25 to 20 grams.

OH: Clinton fixer engineers Michael Cohen’s turn against Trump. “The PR blitz orchestrated by Lanny Davis is calculated to present Trump’s longtime attorney as someone who will tell truth to power.”

HACK, INDEED: Poli-Sci profs holding ‘Diversity and Inclusion Hackathon.’

PROCUREMENT: New Details About the F-15X That Boeing is Pitching the US Air Force.

The X variant would benefit from upgrades funded by allies who have bought F-15s: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Singapore and South Korea, which have collectively spent about $5 billion to develop new technology for their jets, the sources said. Compared to the Air Force’s existing F-15s, the new ones would have better flight controls, displays, and radars, and more powerful engines that allow the planes to carry a larger payload.

Like the air-to-air F-15C, and unlike the Strike Eagles, the new F-15X would have just one seat. Large digital display screens would replace the analog dials inside older F-15s. The planes could carry all of the existing equipment, like targeting pods, used across the existing Eagle fleet. The F-15X will also be able to carry anti-ship weapons that allies have paid to test and install. In all, the plane could carry 29,000 pounds of weapons.

The F-15’s range, speed and payload separates it from other fighter jets in the U.S. military. “There’s really nothing like it,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice president for analysis at the Teal Group, a Virginia-based consulting firm.

The F-15C used to be the high end of the Air Force’s old “high-low mix” of Eagles and Falcons. The F-15X might make a nice low end fighter going forward, and could help fill in the range gap left by the F-35’s shorter legs.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Colleges Can’t — Or Won’t — Track Where Ph.D.s Land Jobs.

AND MEDIA PEOPLE WONDER WHY PEOPLE DON’T TRUST THEM: ABC News’ Molly Hunter apparently believes that in democracies, privately-owned newspapers don’t fire cartoonists.

THEY TOLD ME IF TRUMP WERE ELECTED, WE’D SEE OPEN RACISM, AND THEY WERE RIGHT: Art Professor Tells Colleagues To Stand Up Against “Whiteness.”. “Whiteness is a myopically destructive form of living that fundamentally denies the multiple dimensions of experience beyond, or in contradictions with, whiteness.”

WHERE DID THE INTERNET GO WRONG? My Daily Caller column (reposted from late last night).