THE DRAMA OF THE GIFTED CHILD: NYT columnist Bret Stephens quits Twitter, reports critic to his boss for calling him a “bedbug.”

If you wanted to get ugly and compare someone to vermin, “bedbug” isn’t the insult you’d choose. Stephens must realize that, but it’s easier to pretend that Karpf had crossed some sort of line than that he himself did.

The most interesting part of the clip, by the way, is how he rationalizes cc’ing Karpf’s provost. He wasn’t trying to get him in trouble, he claims, he just thinks employers have a right to know how their employees are engaging with the broader public. Laying aside the fact that that does sound like him trying to get Karpf in trouble, where does it leave us with the Times’s complaint yesterday about dastardly right-wing operatives combing through reporters’ social media posts to find embarrassing things they’ve said in the past? if Karpf’s boss should know what his professors are saying to people, shouldn’t Dean Baquet and the Sulzbergers know what their journalists are saying? You can answer yes or no in both cases but it has to be the same answer to each, right?

Related: The New York Times Should Stop Whining. “I think it’s a bad idea for either side to rummage through old social-media postings and writings looking for firing offenses. It’s an inherently punitive project, and often an unfair one (no one is the sum of their tweets). But the rules of this game were established by the Left long ago. It should either change them — or stop whining.”

Exit quote: “What gets lost here, and maybe not to Bret Stephens, is that the prof and the pile on was from the left. Begging to be liked by the left gets you to the place of Bret Stephens. Please don’t compare me to a bedbug, come meet the wife.”

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Obama Blows $15 Million on Mansion Doomed by Rising Tides He Failed to Slow. “As the price of luxuries falls year after year, the cost of feeling smug rises faster than the sea levels ever could.”

MATH IS HARD: Sorry, Bernie: America’s Poorest Are Richer Than 60 Percent of Developed Countries.

NEXT? Even Gillibrand’s Former Staffers Think She Should Drop Out.

RELATED: Gillibrand Spending Thousands on Giveaway In Attempt to Make Debate Stage.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Professor uses fake news to call for boycott of Olive Garden. I blame Russian collusion.

SCENES FROM DE BLASIO’S NEW YORK: Video shows NYPD struggling to arrest man as onlookers taunt them.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UT-Austin instructor: Trump ‘is a Nazi’ and ‘you are too if you still support him.’

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KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: MGGA (Make Greenland Great Again)! “We haven’t done a major real estate deal in over 150 years and we’re certainly not picking up any new territory via warfare these days, so buying Greenland is looking better and better if the U.S. is going to remind the world what’s what.”

HE’S STILL HAVING FANTASIES OF MARTYRDOM, BUT IT TOOK ME A SECOND TO REMEMBER WHO HE WAS: David Hogg Wants Activists To Decorate The Front Steps Of The NRA With His Body If He’s Ever Assassinated.

THE DEEP STATE LOOKS AFTER ITS OWN: McCabe and Papadopoulos: Two-Tiered Justice.

THIS IS USUALLY THE CASE WITH MUCH-HYPED ENVIRONMENTAL STORIES: Everything You’ve Heard About the Amazon Fires Is Wrong.

THE REPUBLIC OF FEAR: Otherwise known as Venezuela.

DELTA IV LAUNCH: A Delta IV missile carrying the GPS III SV2 satellite lifts off from Space Launch Complex-37 at Cape Canaveral, Florida, August 22, 2019. The satellite will become part of a 31 satellite constellation in orbit.

IMPRESSIVE, MOST IMPRESSIVE: Technically Feasible Huge Next Generation Space Station.

This space station would have 11 million cubic meters of pressurized volume versus 931 meters for the International space station. This would be 12,000 times larger volume. It would be 488 meters in diameter. It would have 1.6 times the diameter of the largest stadium dome (300 meters in diameter) in the world which is a sports stadium in Singapore.

It will have the volume of about 20 of the largest cruise ships.

The space station would spin like the space station in 2001. It would generate its own gravity. It would be designed to very comfortably hold 1500 staff and guests.

They have created a technically feasible engineering design. Von Braun Station creation will also form a space construction industry with bots, pods, drones, construction arms, new space suits, and large-scale truss building machines designed for building large structures in space.

And if Psyche 16 turns out to be as metal-rich as is believed, we won’t even have to heavy-lift most of the building materials into orbit.

THAT’S NOT THE NARRATIVE: Trump shows strength with women as 4,600 join 2020 ‘victory’ team.

IS SOCIAL MEDIA WHY MILLENNIALS ARE THE LONELIEST GENERATION? New survey from YouGov finds they are the loneliest despite being the most “connected.” Maybe Glenn’s latest book should top the reading list of every parent raising kids? There’s also a second survey with a deep look at Gen Z’s top values, notable for what’s not among the top five.

GOVERNMENT MEDICINE: I Was a Physician at a Federally Qualified Health Center. Here’s Why I No Longer Believe Government Health Care Can Work.

For example, one of the requirements for federally qualified health centers is that they must maintain a certain number of physician assistants and nurse practitioners. Rural health clinics were the first sites to receive a federal mandate to hire non-physician practitioners.

For me, this meant supervising a physician assistant from day one. And within a few months, a brand new nurse practitioner was added to my list of responsibilities. Despite this extra workload, there was no time allotted in my schedule to provide education, review charts or discuss cases—nor was I compensated for my extra duties.

Federal regulations also create massive amounts of paperwork. While the medical staff worked hard to move patients through the registration process, my schedule often ran hours behind as forms were signed and documents reviewed.

This bottleneck often led to me starting my day late and working into the evening. When I started coming in a bit later than my assigned start time, knowing that patients would not be ready for me, I was given a stern warning by administrators.

Medicine is going to get worse, as those best-qualified to become doctors decide the bureaucratic BS isn’t worth the bother.

And do read the whole thing.

ANDREW STILES: ANALYSIS: How Donald Trump Physically Dominated the G7 Summit.

BRITTANY HUNTER: Kids Ordered to Pay Sales Tax at Children’s Expo Receive a Sad Lesson in Entrepreneurship.

VIDEO: Joe Biden in Keene, New Hampshire: “What’s Not To Like About Vermont? What A Neat Town.”

SALENA ZITO: Small businessmen get a front-row seat for everyday life.