IT’S ZERO PERCENT UNLESS THE HOUSE VOTES TO IMPEACH: ’20 Percent Chance’ GOP Senate Will Remove Trump, Fox Source Says.

CLAIRE BERLINSKI PRESENTS: On Mexican State Collapse: a Guest Post by El Anti-Pozolero.

You may have read the news just a few days back: the Mexican military captured not one but two of El Chapo’s sons in the heart of Culiacán, the Sinaloan capital. One son freed himself—which is to say his entourage and retainers at hand overpowered and killed the soldiers at hand—and then, in a decisive riposte, seized the entire city center of Culiacán to compel the liberation of his brother.

The forces that emerged were in the literal sense awesome and awful. Heavy weaponry that would be familiar on any Iraqi, Syrian, or Yemeni battlefield was brought to bear. More and worse: custom-built armored vehicles, designed and built to make a Sahel-warfare technical look like an amateur’s weekend kit job, were rolled out for their combat debut. Most critically, all this hardware was manned by men with qualities the Mexican Army largely lacks: training, tactical proficiency, and motivation.

Then the coup de grace: as the Chapo sons’ forces engaged in direct combat with their own national military, kill squads went into action across Culiacán, slaughtering the families of soldiers engaged in the streets.

Cowed and overmatched—most crucially in the moral arena—the hapless band of soldiers still holding the second son finally received word from Mexico City, direct from President AMLO himself: surrender. Surrender and release the prisoner.

It’s an absolutely extraordinary episode even by the grim and bizarre annals of what we mistakenly call the post-2006 Mexican Drug War. The Battle of Culiacán stands on a level above, say, the Ayotzinapa massacre, or the Zetas’ expulsion of the entire population of Ciudad Mier. Killing scores of innocents and brutalizing small towns is one thing: seizing regional capital cities and crushing the national armed forces in open fighting in broad daylight is something else.

This is getting very little coverage in the US, so do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

IT’S BASICALLY ALWAYS A HOAX: Hoax confirmed: ‘Whites Only’ sign at UW-Madison was part of protest for ‘underrepresented students.’

The administration waved off the possibility it was a hoax in its first response to the signs, tweeting that it “stands against hate and racism” and was investigating the “racist” signs. One commenter quickly raised the hoax possibility.

Two hours later the administration abruptly reversed itself, saying the signs were not actually racist.

It can’t be racist if it’s being used to promote an approved message.

TAIWAN ISN’T RUN BY DEMOCRATS. NEXT QUESTION? Taiwan built high-speed rail, why can’t California?

SCHOOL DISCIPLINE: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights makes the claim that K-12 students of different races misbehave in school at the same rates. Under this view, there is no good reason for the fact that African American students get suspended at  higher rates (and that Asian American students get suspended at lower rates) than white students.  It has to be that teachers–one of the most liberal professions in the country–are a bunch racist pigs (or so the logic of the Commission’s argument runs).   The Commission is simply wrong about the underlying misbehavior rates … seriously and inexcusably wrong.  The Commission’s majority just isn’t good at understanding statistics.

This past week Stanford University came out with a study finding that the black-white achievement gap on standardized tests predicts the black-white discipline gap. This is not exactly a surprise, and it is not clear what causes what, but it is interesting.

I DON’T KNOW …  I THOUGHT SHE WAS NICE:  On this day in 1960, the fourth of the Kennedy-Nixon debates was televised.  This is the debate at which Nixon kept saying, “America can’t stand pat.”

The statement was met with chuckles throughout the land.  (For those of you who were born too late to get it, Nixon’s wife was named Pat.)

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Advice to Faculty Candidates: How To Write An Effective “Diversity Statement.”

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I SPOKE AT PRINCETON’S JAMES MADISON PROGRAM ON THE SOCIAL MEDIA UPHEAVAL A FEW WEEKS BACK, and you can see the video here. My part starts at about 18:40.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Beto Is Wrong About Everything and He’ll Soon Be Gone. “What Beto doesn’t understand is that he is nothing more than a product of the mainstream media’s ‘Turn Texas Blue’ fever dream. He was never going to win his Senate race against Ted Cruz and now he is a weaker version of Pete Buttigieg, offering no real tactical advantage to Democratic voters.”

TORONTO SUN ENDORSEMENT: Andrew Scheer For Prime Minister. “Unlike the Liberals, NDP and Greens, the Conservatives don’t want to remake you in their image. Scheer won’t destroy one region to win votes in another, and he won’t call you a racist if you disagree with him.”

EXPOSED: Mitt Romney’s Fake Twitter Account. “Pierre Delecto?” Romney admits it’s him. “C’est moi.” To his credit, he did like an Iowahawk tweet.

Plus: “More recently, there was a tweet expressing unhappiness at Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria (which Romney has publicly condemned) while also insisting on the Senate’s powerlessness (as Romney a move as there ever was).”

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela’s Water System is Collapsing.

In Venezuela, a crumbling economy and the collapse of even basic state infrastructure means water comes irregularly — and drinking it is an increasingly risky gamble. Venezuela’s current rate of infant mortality from diarrhea, which is closely related to water quality, is six times higher than 15 years ago, according to the World Health Organization.

But the government stopped releasing official public health data years ago.

So The New York Times commissioned researchers from the Universidad Central de Venezuela to recreate the water quality study they had conducted regularly for the water utility in Caracas from 1992 until 1999.

The scientists found that about a million residents were exposed to contaminated supplies. This puts them at risk of contracting waterborne viruses that could sicken them and threatens the lives of children and the most vulnerable.

“This is a potential epidemic,” said Jose María De Viana, who headed Caracas’s water utility, Hidrocapital, until 1999. “It’s very serious. It’s unacceptable.”

It isn’t unacceptable — it’s damn near inevitable, given the lack of maintenance.

BREXIT AND THE DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT: “These people are not our servants. They are a hostile elite. Their interests are not ours. They despise us. They fear us. They are determined not to give us even the shadow of what we were – perhaps unwisely – promised.”

COLLUSION: Emails Show Zuckerberg Recommended Hires for Buttigieg Campaign. “Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recommended colleagues as potential hires for Pete Buttigieg’s campaign soon after the South Bend, Ind. mayor launched his presidential bid in mid-April…. Zuckerberg overlapped with Buttigieg at Harvard, where the two shared mutual friends, and Buttigieg was one of the first 300 users of Facebook.”

Plus: “Facebook has come under fire from other Democratic campaigns during the election cycle, especially by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), who has called for the breakup of giant tech firms. In July, leaked audio revealed Zuckerberg called Warren an ‘existential’ threat to the company.”

HMM: China Makes A Move On OPEC’s No.2. “Following a political backlash in Iran over details of its plans to make Iran effectively a client state through various multi-layered oil and gas deals, China has switched its attention – for the time being at least – to Iran’s equally oil and gas-rich neighbor, Iraq. China has the advantage in Iraq that the northern part of the country – the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan – is already under the control of its increasingly close ally, Russia, with its corporate proxy Rosneft having secured control over Kurdistan’s oil and gas infrastructure in a deal in November 2017.”

The more we frack, the less any of this matters.

DAVID BERNSTEIN: The Irony of Antisemites for Bernie.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Tulsi Gabbard is Anti-Hillary, But Still Far-Left Fringe.

PROGRESS? The US nuclear forces’ Dr. Strangelove-era messaging system finally got rid of its floppy disks.

In 2014, “60 Minutes” made famous the 8-inch floppy disks used by one antiquated Air Force computer system that, in a crisis, could receive an order from the president to launch nuclear missiles from silos across the United States.

But no more. At long last, that system, the Strategic Automated Command and Control System or SACCS, has dumped the floppy disk, moving to a “highly-secure solid state digital storage solution” this past June, said Lt. Col. Jason Rossi, commander of the Air Force’s 595th Strategic Communications Squadron.

It’s tough to beat the security of a format nobody else can read anymore.

THIS IS TRUE: “Researchers say the relationship between testosterone and aggression is weak or nonexistent.” In fact “roid rage,” to the extent it exists, is generally the result of excess estrogen buildup, as testosterone or various steroids are broken down into that hormone, leaving users moody and irritable.

On the other hand, the larger project of separating male and femaleness from biology is basically leftist twaddle.

JOEL KOTKIN: Media Meltdowns and Political Polarization.

The mainstream media increasing appears much like the classic tale of the boy who cried wolf so often that when the wolf showed up no one believed him.

Similarly, since the bust of the Mueller report, and the evaporation of countless other “blockbuster” exposés, the media’s credibility in the ongoing impeachment saga is now widely doubted, even if this time they may actually be right about presidential misdeeds.

This divide can be seen in public perceptions of the news media. Although somewhat improved from its low point in 2016, only 40 percent of Americans, according to Gallup, trust the media, compared to over 50 percent in 1999. As befits the media’s increasingly partisan stance, the small improvement over 2016 comes almost entirely from Democrats. Only 15% of Republicans and barely a third of independents now trust media compared to nearly 70% of Democrats.

Once the news business had enough sense of propriety and professionalism to at least maintain an appearance of objectivity. There’s ample reason, as Glenn Reynolds suggests, to see many mainstream journalists as little more than “Democrats with bylines,” willing participants in what long-time leftist and fiercely anti-Trump reporter Matt Taibbi describes as the upper bureaucracy’s “permanent coup” against Trump. If this “coup” now actually succeeds, it will be one that will simply accentuate hostility to the media among a large segment of the population.

At the very least.

SMART: Home builders ditch Nest products after Google takeover.

This year, we finally started seeing results from Nest’s 2018 demotion from a standalone Alphabet company to a merger with Google. “Nest” is no longer a line of products developed by a company or division and now seems to be a general-purpose sub-brand for any of Google’s smart home devices. We’ve seen several existing product lines be rebranded from “Google” to “Google Nest” like the Google Nest Mini (formerly the Google Home Mini), the Google Nest Hub (formerly the Google Home Hub), the Nest Wifi (formerly Google Wifi), and the Google Nest Learning Thermostat (formerly the Nest Learning Thermostat).

In addition to the death of Nest the company, we’re also seeing the death of the Nest ecosystem. The “Works with Nest” smart home program is being shut down in favor of Google Assistant compatibility, and that means devices that used to communicate with Nest now work differently or not at all. Nest’s account system is also being shut down, and in the future, users will need a Google account.

Even if you’ve never had an account with Google or any of Alphabet’s other subsidiaries, you’re much deeper in with the company than you might realize.

THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND MUCH AT THE ATLANTIC, BUT THEY UNDERSTAND THIS: How Hillary Clinton Boosted Tulsi Gabbard. “Her decision to inject herself into the 2020 election was a mistake. It was exactly the kind of clumsy, self-absorbed move that, despite Clinton’s lifetime in the public eye, revealed a total misunderstanding of how politics work. Far from exposing or thwarting Gabbard, as Clinton loyalists want to believe, the former secretary of state overshot the mark by making an accusation without proof. Gabbard will now dismiss real concerns about her as just so much conspiracy theorizing.”

And this is from Tom Nichols, who actually thinks Gabbard is a Russian asset, so you know Hillary’s stuff is playing badly.

Plus, seen on Facebook:

UPDATE: From the comments: “They accuse their enemies of being Russian agents to deflect attention from the increasingly obvious fact that their side – from the NBA to Apple – are all Chinese agents.” If you assert it, it must be so. That’s how this works, right?