SPOILER: THEY WON’T BUILD IT. Russia unveils yet another new aircraft carrier design. “Russia appears to do this every year and as most of you will be aware, the designs never progress further either due to a lack of will or resources on the part of the Russian military.”

Post-Soviet Russia lacks the logistical wherewithal to project hard power more than a few miles into neighboring Ukraine, yet continues designing aircraft carriers which will never sail farther than the drawing board.

Call it “projection envy.”

BYRON YORK: Pushups Won’t Make The Biden Campaign Stronger.

Can a candidate who is leading the field by 12 points be weak? That’s the question of Joe Biden’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The fact is, Biden’s campaign is showing signs of weakness. So is the candidate himself. And doing pushups, as Biden suggested he might do to show up President Trump, won’t make him any stronger.

In mid-May, Biden led the sprawling Democratic field by 26 points in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls. By late May, the lead was 17 points. By late June, it was 15 points. Today, it is 12.

So Biden’s lead is still big, but it’s less than half what it was not that long ago.

What might be more concerning to Biden supporters are the signs Biden is not running at full strength, that the 76-year-old former vice president has lost a step.

Some voters became concerned about that at the first Democratic debate on June 27, when rival Sen. Kamala Harris hit Biden with an attack about his opposition to busing to desegregate schools in the 1970s. (Harris began the exchange with a zinger: “I do not believe you are a racist.”) Even though Biden’s old position had been in the news, he seemed unprepared. His response was feeble and disorganized, ending with, “My time is up. I’m sorry.”

Afterward, Biden complained that there was no way to explain a nuanced issue in the 30 seconds required by a televised debate.

In a conversation Tuesday with MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, Biden admitted he was blindsided by Harris. “I didn’t expect that particular attack,” Biden said, “and that question starting off, ‘I know you’re not a racist.'” He complained again about debate time limits.

And then, Brzezinski asked, “The public is interested in how you’re going to fight Donald Trump. Kamala Harris — if you weren’t ready for her, are you ready to fight this guy who doesn’t play fair?”

“My strategy is just to go out,” Biden responded, “and remember that famous expression my grandpop used to use, when they said to Harry Truman, give ’em hell, Harry, and he said no, I’m just going to tell the truth, they’re going to think it’s hell.”

Biden explained that he expects the campaign to be ugly and that Trump will not run an “honorable” race. “But I’m not backing down at all from him,” Biden said. Yes, he was surprised when Harris “said something so off the wall to me,” but Biden pledged to “take on” the president.

It wasn’t exactly confidence-inspiring. And then, Brzezinski asked what Biden would do if Trump “starts making fun of your age, your mental state, starts going after you …”

“I’d say, ‘Come on, Donald,'” Biden said. “‘Come on, man. How many pushups you want to do here, pal? I mean, jokingly. Run with me, man.'”

Uh huh.

WINNING: Wave of Hispanic Buyers Shores Up U.S. Housing Market.

The homeownership rate for Hispanics has increased more during the past several years than any race or ethnic group, including whites. The rate, which hit a 50-year low in 2015, has risen 3.3 percentage points since then, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

The overall U.S. homeownership rate bottomed in the second quarter of 2016 and has grown 1.3 percentage points since then. For blacks, the homeownership rate has fallen to its lowest level on record in the first quarter of this year. This marks the first time in more than two decades that Hispanics and blacks, the two largest racial or ethnic minorities in the U.S., are no longer following the same path when it comes to owning homes.

Minorities bore the brunt of the 2008 housing bust and their return to homeownership has been mixed. Now, a growing population of young Latinos increasingly eager to buy homes offers fresh hope to a slowing housing market, where sales of existing homes have fallen on an annual basis for the past year.

Black homeownership not only failed to recover from the Great Recession, but is still hurting for reasons no one has made clear.

I THINK THIS SEAT ELECTION’S GONNA BE LIT: Ocasio-Cortez gets new 2020 challenger: a Republican immigrant from Jamaica. “Your representative in Washington chooses self-promotion over service, conflict over constituents, resistance over assistance.”

ROGER KIMBALL: The white supremacy phantom: Does Donald Trump’s habit of tweaking the commentariat mean he must be impeached? “I think that ‘the Squad’ are like the jesters that monarchs of old used to have. Not in every respect. They are not, for example, intentionally funny. But they are a source of entertainment. No one takes them seriously.”

Plus:

Some of my readers may forget, but I entered this fray as a dedicated anti-Trumper. I wrote, gosh, a score of articles criticizing Trump in the most categorical terms.

But then the worst happened and the choice was Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. I have rehearsed all of this before and will not repeat it now. Suffice it to say that I regarded the choice as binary. I was not going to throw my vote away on Evan McMuffin or whatever his name was. It was Hillary, who was impossible, or Trump, who was merely frightful.

I chose frightful and have been pleasantly surprised. As I have said many times over the last couple of years, Donald Trump has presided over the most astonishingly successful opening years as President in a very long time, maybe ever. I don’t worry about his “character” or his Tabasco tweets. I rather enjoy them, to tell the truth, not least because they challenge the pieties of political correctness.

My guess is that there are a lot more people who feel like Roger than who supported Trump in 2016 and have abandoned him now because of his tweets.

I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANOTHER GODDAMN THING ABOUT MY CARBON FOOTPRINT: Biden Spent $250,000 on Private Jet Travel in Second Quarter.

DECOUPLING: US senators seek to lock in limits on Huawei and keep it out of trade talks. “Bipartisan group of six are concerned that US President Donald Trump might swap the ban in negotiations with China.”

I NEVER DID RECYCLE PLASTICS: Why It’s Probably Better for the Planet to Throw Plastic in the Trash.

Starting as early as 2017, municipalities across the country, from Douglas County, Oregon to Nogales, Arizona to Broadway, Virginia, to Franklin, New Hampshire, began landfilling many recyclables or simply canceling their recycling programs altogether. The impetus for this disconcerting change? China.

For decades, the country was content to accept, process, and transform recycled materials from across the globe, but no longer. In July 2017, the government announced new policies that would effectively ban imports of most recyclables, particularly plastics. They went into effect last March. Considering that China has imported a cumulative 45% of plastic waste since 1992, this is a huge deal.

Where once China offered a market for the world’s plastic bottles, tubs, and other packaging to be turned into – for example – polyester clothing, now, that market is gone. This means that recycling costs have skyrocketed. A few years ago, Franklin, New Hampsire could sell recyclables for $6 per ton. Now, it costs the town $125 per ton to recycle that same stuff!

Municipalities across the country are facing this startling arithmetic, so hundreds are choosing the drastically cheaper option: throw most traditionally recycled materials in the trash, instead.

While that might sound horrifying, Thomas Kinnaman, an environmental economist from Bucknell University, says it’s actually a blessing in disguise.

“China’s ban may actually reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in the oceans,” he told NPR’s Planet Money podcast. “China was not very careful about what got into their oceans for a long period of time, and if some of the plastic piles were just too corrupted they could do whatever they wanted with it.”

China? Careless? That’s an understatement.

FLASHBACK: Obama: Migrant Children Without Humanitarian Claims Will Be Sent Back.

President Barack Obama took a tough line on the thousands of unaccompanied migrant children who have crossed the nation’s southern border in recent months, saying those without humanitarian claims will be subject to return to their home countries. . . .

“Typically refugee status is not granted just on economic need or because a family lives in a bad neighborhood or poverty,” Obama said. “It’s typically defined fairly narrowly.”

Nowadays it’s racist to say things like that because reasons.

VICTORY GIRLS: #Apollo11: The People Who Built Our Way To The Moon.

ANOTHER DEMOCRAT TERRORIST SUPPORTER: Shaun King: The Antifa terrorist who was killed while attacking an ICE detention facility is a martyr.

KRUISER: Awkward: BofA Sponsors Bank-Hating Bernie’s Interview with WaPo.

The video is priceless.

IT WAS ALWAYS ONLY AN EXCUSE TO FOOL THE — APPARENTLY QUITE GULLIBLE — FISA COURT: FBI’s spreadsheet puts a stake through the heart of Steele’s dossier.

DIRTY TRICKS: Trump 2020 Campaign To Simply Air Unedited Footage Of Democrats Talking.

AND SPEAKING OF NUKING THE MOON (PUT ANOTHER PUPPY IN THE BLENDER, BOSS! IT’S CELEBRATION TIME!*), MY FRIEND FRANK J. FLEMING HAS A NEW BOOK OUT:  Hellbender.

Doug wasn’t sure whether he should trust Satan.

The red flag was that he said he was Satan. But the deal was good: Listen to Satan’s story in exchange for some donuts. And Doug only half-fulfilled his part of the bargain.

But maybe he should have listened better, because during his friend Bryce’s next scheme (theft with light to moderate treason—the usual), Doug and the rest of his friends—Lulu (the fun one) and Charlene (the not fun one)—end up with a powerful artifact, a small metal cube with world-ending power that Lulu decorated with bunnies. And now everyone wants the bunny cube, which means Doug, Bryce, Lulu, and Charlene are being pursued by an insane supermodel general, an army of sadists, a vast criminal organization, a smaller, more-in-startup-mode criminal organization, and an unstoppable killing machine—the worst kind of killing machine.

Doug and his friends may be a bunch of losers who aren’t particularly smart or good at anything, but they have one thing going for them: a really cool name for their mercenary group. And now it’s up to Hellbender to save the world—well, what’s left of it. It’s pretty ruined and war-torn already. But, you know, they live there, so they kind of need it.

It’s a mess, but that’s what you get for listening to Satan. Or half-listening.

*For those who are new to the world of blogs. No puppies were harmed in making this post. It’s a very old joke between Frank J. Fleming’s IMAO and instapundit involving the world’s cheesiest photoshop.
It’s puerile and therefore, of course, appeals to me. Now stop gawking at me and go buy Frank’s book.

ALSO get off my lawn!

AMERICA’S WEBSITE OF RECORD:  Trump Truths: Preference.

AMERICA’S PAPER OF RECORD:  Trump 2020 Campaign To Simply Air Unedited Footage Of Democrats Talking.

BECAUSE TEEN GIRLS WHO ARE GOOD WITH MATH ARE ALSO OFTEN GOOD WITH WORDS. AND? IS THERE A LAW THAT GIRLS MUST ACT LIKE BOYS?  Teen girls on par with male peers at math pick humanities jobs.

HOW INTERESTING. I’M DEEPLY CONCERNED ABOUT THE UN REFUGEE AGENCY:  UN refugee agency ‘deeply concerned’ about US asylum curbs.

WE’RE A NATION, NOT THE CHARITY OF THE WORLD: New Asylum Rule: You Can’t Have it Both Ways.

JON MEACHAM, WORLD’S WORST PSYCHIC AND ALSO STONE COLD PARTISAN AND BIGOT:  Historian Says Trump Tied for Most Racist President.

… Unless socialism is a race. than i suppose trump is racist. of course in that case, i’m also racist. and you’re racist, and you’re racist, and any sane person is racist.

Fortunately socialism and stupidity are just flaws of human nature. not races.

.

NOTHING EXCUSES ILHAN OMAR. SHE WAS OFFERED THE GIFT OF CITIZENSHIP IN THE GREATEST LAND ON EARTH, AND SHE WASTES IT ON HATRED AND STUPID SOCIALIST AGITATION:  Length of Citizenship Excuses Ilhan Omar.

OH, IT’S JUST MORE ATTEMPTS TO SHOCK THE SQUARES. THEIR PROBLEM IS THAT THE SQUARES THEY IMAGINE NEVER EXISTED AND WE, NORMAL HUMAN BEINGS WITH JOBS AND FAMILIES DON’T FIND THEM SHOCKING AT ALL. WE FIND THEM TIRESOME:  Slate: Crude and Classless is Now “Revolutionary”.