IT SURE LOOKS THAT WAY: Are the Democrats jumping off the cliff?

Put aside the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) format CNN in particular adopted of sensational voiceovers, over-the-top music, videos and treating it all like a caged match, the gotcha-questioning is designed not to truly explore issues but to drive a wedge between the candidates in the most trivial of ways.

Even more disturbing is how the candidates have taken the bait and gone so far as to criticize and condemn President Barack Obama, a man with a popularity rating greater than 90 per cent among Democrats in virtually all polls. Why in God’s name would these candidates, no matter how liberal, decide it was wise to rip into the former president?

All they have to do is not act crazy…

BREAKING NEWS FROM 1988: Joe Biden isn’t the boringly reassuring candidate Democrats were hoping for.

AT AMAZON, One Pan to Rule Them All: 100 Cast-Iron Skillet Recipes for Indoors and Out.

UH-OH: Tiananmen Redux? Troops Mass on Hong Kong Border With China as Protests Increase.

HMM: Unnecessary knee airbags may cause more harm than good, study says.

YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Libs, Including Chris Cuomo, Are Okay with Using ‘Fredo’ as an Insult.

There are a lot of ways you can respond when you think somebody has insulted you, but of course Chris Cuomo responded in Chris Cuomo fashion: aggressively hostile and hilariously stupid. He really was about to throw down with this dude, just for calling him “Fredo.”

What better way to shatter stereotypes about Italians than to yell and scream and threaten to beat up a guy in a public place over a harmless slight?

There’s a lot about this that’s funny, but perhaps the most amusing part is Cuomo’s assertion that the name “Fredo” is somehow “like the N-word for Italians.” We know this isn’t true right off the bat, because Cuomo himself keeps saying “Fredo” and not “the F-word.”

Besides that, how many times have people used the Fredo-word on CNN or MSNBC? More than once!

Heck, even Cuomo has called himself “the F-word:”

Cuomo was interviewed by Curtis Sliwa on his AM 970 radio show in January 2010 about whether his brother Andrew might seek the Democratic nomination for governor.

Sliwa said he dubbed the Cuomo family “la Cuomo Nostra.”

“There is a group of people — politicos — who always hint they might run, but not necessarily plunge all the way, and they are members of la Cuomo.”

“Who am I, then, Fredo?” Cuomo asked in response.

“Yes, exactly,” Sliwa said. “So you better be careful that your brother Andrew doesn’t kiss you on both cheeks and then all of a sudden they take you out on the middle of the lake and where’s Chris?”

“He kisses me plenty because he’s a great big brother,” Cuomo said.

As Treacher writes, “If CNN had responded to the release of that video by saying, ‘The guy was with his family, just leave him alone,’ I’d agree. But instead, they’re going to the mattresses. They’re doubling down on Cuomo’s ridiculous claim of racism, so they deserve whatever they get.”

It wouldn’t have come to this point if the true Don, Guy Caballero, was still alive to bring peace to the five network families.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZCkRDltCr4

CHRISTIAN TOTO: 7 Huge Questions Remain Following ‘The Hunt’s’ Demise. “Just What’s in the Film, Exactly?” “What Were They Thinking?” “Will Jason Blum Defend His Own Film?” “Will Hollywood Stars Rally … or Stay Silent?” “Is This Another Sign of Hollywood Buckling to the PC Mob?” “What If The Hollywood Reporter Got It Wrong?” “Will ‘The Hunt’ Ever Be Released?”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Flowchart tells non-minority students they could be ‘taking up space.’

WELL, GOOD: Two Experimental Ebola Drugs Are Saving Lives.

I’M SORRY, BUT HE REALLY IS A VERY STABLE GENIUS, AS DEMONSTRATED BY THIS MOVE: Trump Sabotages Push For Red-Flag Laws, Says Chris Cuomo Is Too Angry To Trust With A Gun. “The argument against red-flag laws is that they’ll be abused to justify confiscating weapons on flimsy pretexts from people who aren’t dangerous to others. Now here’s the president validating that concern before Lindsey Graham’s bill has even received a vote in Congress. Are you worried that the government might exploit the new legal regime to punish its political and media enemies who own guns? Well, per Trump, apparently you should be.”

Allahpundit, of course, thinks Trump’s just an angry toddler who somehow stumbled into this.

COMMUNIST FRONT CORPORATION: Huawei Covertly to Sell Smartphones in U.S. “Chinese telecom sought to circumvent U.S. government ban.”

U.S. intelligence agencies learned of the plans last month and alerted senior policymakers.

According to the officials, the Shenzhen, China-based company planned to ship a large number of its smartphones to Mexico where the smartphones would be re-labeled and shipped into the United States.

As non-Huawei devices, there would be no prohibition on selling them in the United States.

The phones, however, could be identified as Huawei devices by examining their electronic components that can be traced to the Chinese telecom.

No other details of the secret smartphone operation could be learned.

Huawei’s U.S. affiliate did not return emails seeking comment.

They’re desperate.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Predator-style thermal vision could help blind people ‘see’ with brain chip.

Geordi La Forge smiles.

I BLAME THE DEMOCRATS AND THEIR CLIMATE OF HATE: Suspect arrested after allegedly firing shots at ICE office.

SARAH SILVERMAN FIRED FROM NEW MOVIE FOR BLACKFACE PHOTO.

As Seth Mandel of the Washington Examiner tweets, “Comedians can’t do it but governors can. That’s a hell of a cultural standard we’re setting.”

WHEN YOUR LIES ARE TOO MUCH FOR VOX: Vox: Elizabeth Warren And Kamala Harris Are Wrong About Michael Brown’s Death.

IF PAVLOV’S DOGS HAD BEEN RABID: Trump Has Democrats Acting Like Pavlov’s Dogs.

ISN’T IT WEIRD, THOUGH? The less racist the South gets, the more Republican it becomes.

REMEMBERING THE HORRIFIC RED AUGUST: In August of 1966, the Chinese Cultural Revolution was shifting into high gear. Egged on by Chairman Mao, student groups calling themselves the “Red Guard” had been popping up at schools, colleges, and universities all over the country. They were drunk with power and convinced of their own victimhood (rather like our Antifa).

“To rebel is justified!” Mao told them.

At an August mass rally in Tiananmen Square attended by over a million, Mao’s right-hand man, Lin Biao, instructed his young audience on what to do. Standing next to Mao, Lin Biao exhorted them to destroy “all the old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits of the exploiting classes.”

Yes, all of them.

Destroy they did. According to historian Frank Dikötter in The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History 1962-1976, the first death occurred in a school for girls run by Beijing Normal University. On the afternoon of August 5th, self-appointed Red Guard students accused five of the school’s administrators of disloyalty to the Revolution. Forcing them to kneel, the students hit them with nail-spiked clubs. When the vice principal, Bian Zhongyun, after hours of torture, lost consciousness, her body was stuffed into a garbage can.

The students had no need to fear retaliation. Mao had ensured that no measures would be taken against them. At Beijing’s 101^st Middle School, where powerful party leaders sent their own children, more than 10 teachers were forced to crawl on their hands and knees through hot coals. In the same city, at the Third Middle School for Girls, the principal was beaten to death and the dean hanged herself. At another Beijing middle school, the principal was forced to stand in the summer heat while students poured boiling water on him. And at yet another, a biology teacher was tortured and dragged to her death. Her colleagues were then forced to take turns beating her dead body.

Fellow students were not exempt. Students from so-called “bad backgrounds” (i.e. the sons and daughters of alleged capitalists, landlords, rich peasants and counter-revolutionaries) were forced to engage in heavy labor, locked up, and sometimes tortured to death.

Beijing was the epicenter of the most extreme varieties of violence during that month. But in Shanghai, things were nevertheless out of control. More than 150 faculty members were arrested at their homes and paraded around the campus of Huadong Teachers University in dunce caps with heavy signs around their necks identifying them as “Reactionary Academic Authorities.”   Rampaging Red Guard students destroyed everything they viewed as “bourgeois luxuries”—things made of silk or velvet, cosmetics, fashionable clothes and curio shops. Flower shops were a particular target. On August 23, 36 such shops were attacked.

In Xiamen, Red Guard gangs destroyed anything thought to be old and bourgeois or foreign—from ornamental brass doorknockers to antique signs to decorative elements on buildings. Shoes with pointed toes were confiscated, and high heels were sliced off. Wearing foreign or bourgeois fashions or hair styles could get one attacked. Passersby with long braids or foreign hairstyles were forcibly shorn. Stove-pipe pants—a style thought to be foreign—were ripped up.

The Liberation Army Daily, which was directly under the control of Lin Biao (and hence of Mao), continued to support—even rhapsodize—the actions of the Red Guard. On August 23^rd, it cheered them on: “What you did was right, and you did it well!” The following day, it promised the students the support of the army and declared to its readers: “Learn from the Red Guards! Respect the Red Guards!”

As the month wore on, massive book burnings took place in several cities. Temples, churches and public monuments were attacked.  Staggering numbers of homes were ransacked in search of evidence of the occupants’ disloyalty or a piece of porcelain to smash.

August of 1966 was a ghastly month in China. But then again the Cultural Revolution was just getting started.

By the end, according to Dikötter, “between 1.5 and 2 million people were killed, but many more lives were ruined through endless denunciations, false confessions, struggle meetings and persecution campaigns.”

(By the way, Lin Biao himself was dead under mysterious circumstances before it was over.)

WE SHOULD GO BACK TO BLAMING “CULTURE” AND “DESPERATION” FOR HORRIFIC VIOLENT CRIMES, BECAUSE FOCUS ON PURPORTED ROOT CAUSES WORKED SO WELL IN THE ’60s: Here is how a daughter and her mom react to a violent daylight rape in their neighborhood:

“That somebody was raped here at 7:30 — we live in a rape culture, and I think we’re going in the wrong direction with it. It doesn’t feel like we’re progressing right now,” Melanie Flaxer, 26, said. “It’s horrifying, it’s horrifying, and it’s really a shame that there’s so much desperation,” her mother, Linda Flaxer, added.

So police should put out an APB for “rape culture” and “desperation?”

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Epstein death: Prison officer ‘removed from suicide watch night before billionaire paedophile died.’

Corrections officers had not checked in on financier and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for “several” hours before he was found hanging in his cell Saturday, a person familiar with the matter said, just one in a series of missteps in the hours leading up to his death.

Officers should have been checking on Epstein, who was being held in a special housing unit of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, every 30 minutes, and, under normal circumstances, he also should have had a cellmate, according to the person familiar with the matter and union officials representing facility employees.

But a person who had been assigned to share a cell with Epstein was transferred on Friday, and – for reasons that investigators are still exploring – he did not receive a new one.

Could this all be innocent? It could be. But it stinks, and this is a case where the “appearance of impropriety” standard should have been followed in spades.

BRYAN PRESTON: Four Questions as Hong Kong Rises to Protest China’s Communists. “2019 is an entirely different world. Social media has proliferated and the protesters are using it to great effect. But. YouTube, Google, Facebook, and Twitter have all been collaborating with the ChiComs and bowing to pressure to censure content there. They have even reportedly helped China craft its ‘social credit score’ — a digital means of reinforcing oppression at an entirely new personal level. Will they censor content coming out of Hong Kong? So far they have not. That might change if Beijing leans on them hard enough. Just this week, Versace, Coach, and Givenchy have bowed to pressure and groveled over a T-shirt design. Will the left-dominated social media giants do the same? The safe bet is yes, they will.”

FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING AND REDUCE SAN FRANCISCO’S WOES BY 50 PERCENT! Brazilian President’s Environmental Plan: ‘Poop Every Other Day.’

Add that to the Green Nude Eeel’s ban on “farting cows and airplanes,” and it’s problem solved.

ROBERT VERBRUGGEN: Joe Biden Is Wrong. There Is No Compelling Evidence That Assault-Weapon Bans Work.

After the [assault-style weapons] ban was allowed to expire, experts were more or less unanimous that it hadn’t had a strong effect on overall homicides. Certainly there were fewer of the banned items in circulation than otherwise would have been the case, but the law’s definition of “assault weapon” focused on features that don’t really affect a gun’s lethality; few murders are committed with long guns of any kind, to say nothing of “assault weapons” in particular; and while smaller magazines force more frequent reloading, it takes only a second or so to pop a new one in.

Recently, though, some have claimed that the law reduced mass shootings in particular, which account for a tiny fraction of overall homicides but command an incredibly disproportionate amount of public attention. What seems to be true is that the ban years were relatively peaceful on this front, despite covering the rash of school shootings that included Columbine. They were especially peaceful compared with the past ten years or so, which have seen an alarming rise in this form of terrorism.

However, the three most important facts about mass shootings are (A) they have historically been incredibly rare, with entire years passing without one sometimes; (B) they are contagious, with high-profile incidents inpiring copycats and competitors; and (C) they are incredibly variable in the number of fatalities, from a low bound of wherever the researcher chooses to set it (the study Biden cites uses four, not including the perpetrator) all the way up to 58 at Las Vegas. Trying to detect a pattern in data like this, and then attributing the pattern to a single law change that covered the entire country for a ten-year period, is madness.

The new study doesn’t add much to what we already know and is downright bizarre at times.

So it’s a lot like Biden then.

GET IN THEIR FACE, AS A FAMOUS PRESIDENT ONCE URGED: As YAF president, Scott Walker vows to ‘open the eyes of the next generation.’