MICHAEL YON IS IN HONG KONG, posting pictures, video, and reports.

DEMOCRATS GONNA DEMOCRAT: Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke slam Trump in wake of El Paso massacre, face backlash for politicizing tragedy.

IS THIS THE REAL LIFE? IS THIS JUST FANTASY? Michael Avenatti Says He’s 50/50 On Jumping Into the Presidential Race.

GREEN ON THE OUTSIDE, RED ON THE INSIDE: Watermelons Use Green New Deal, Paris Treaty to Impose Socialism.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. As Hong Kong fights for its life, an embarrassed China has only violence to offer.

TRYING TO DISTRACT FROM THE FACT THAT SHE WAS A NASTY PROSECUTOR BY POINTING OUT THAT HER OPPONENT IS COZY WITH A NASTY DICTATOR: Kamala Harris Fires Back at ‘Assad Apologist’ Tulsi Gabbard on CNN: She’s Polling at ‘0 or 1%.’

Related: Harris Campaign Blames Russia for Humiliation by Gabbard.

PAUL BEDARD: Trump report card: Numbers for jobs, economy looking good.

ANOTHER MASS SHOOTING, THIS TIME IN DAYTON: 9 dead, 26 injured in shooting in Dayton, Ohio.

Possibly related: The Copycat Effect: How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow’s Headlines.

OR MAYBE HE RESIGNED JUST BEFORE THE PROBE BECAME PUBLIC: Feds probing AOC’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti after sudden resignation. “The two PACs being probed, Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, were both set up by Chakrabarti to support progressive candidates across the country. But they funneled more than $1 million in political donations into two private companies that Chakrabarti also incorporated and controlled.”

Plus, who’s behind this? “The legal quagmire comes on the heels of Chakrabarti’s attacks on fellow Democrats. In June and July, Chakrabarti accused Pelosi of being a weak leader and said that moderate Democrats were racists, ‘hell-bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s.'” Hmm.

Also: “AOC did not show up at a Bronx event on her schedule Saturday.”

CLOWARD-PIVEN, Y’ALL: Is This the Strategy Behind Austin’s Mad Homeless Camping Policy?

IN OTHER WORDS, SHE’S A DEMOCRAT: “Tulsi Gabbard is running for president of a country that she believes has wrought horror on the world, and she wants its citizens to remember that.”

IT DOES SEEM A POOR CHOICE OF TOPIC FOR THE ROYALS: Meghan and Harry are playing a dangerous game: The Duke and Duchess of Woke shouldn’t raise the subject of ‘unearned privilege.’

KAMALA IS A COP: Kamala Harris Didn’t Send 1500 People To Jail For Pot — It Was More Than That.

(Classical reference in headline.)

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: How Barack Obama Contributed to the Left-Populist Wave.

It’s easy to forget, but way back in 2008, Barack Obama ran as a populist. Long before Donald Trump turned “drain the swamp” as his rallying cry, Candidate Obama said he would ban lobbyists from working in the government. As a candidate, Obama said he was going to amend NAFTA, declaring “our trade agreements should not just be good for Wall Street, they should also be good for main street.” He certainly spent enough time criticizing Wall Street and the big banks, never mind the fact that he voted for the bailout in 2008.

Right now, you’re probably scoffing, “yeah, Obama made a lot of promises he couldn’t keep.” And you’re right. As a wise man said, “all statements from Barack Obama come with an expiration date, all of them.” But that dynamic — a bold new president, promising to hold the privileged elites accountable — explains a lot about our current era of politics. In short, a lot of people believed Obama when he made those promises.

Read the whole thing.

IT’S ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT ANTI-EXCELLENCE: Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Excellence: A former dean of the Yale Law School sounds a warning.

Anyone who has followed the news from college campuses over the past few years knows they are experiencing forms of unrest unseen since the late 1960s.

Now, as then, campuses have become an arena for political combat. Now, as then, race is a central issue. Now, as then, students rail against an unpopular president and an ostensibly rigged system. Now, as then, liberal professors are being bullied, denounced, demoted, threatened, sued and sometimes even assaulted by radical students.

But there are some important differences, too. None of today’s students risk being drafted into an unpopular, distant war. Unlike the campus rebels of the ’60s, today’s student activists don’t want more freedom to act, speak, and think as they please. Usually they want less.

Most strange: Today’s students are not chafing under some bow-tied patriarchal WASP dispensation. Instead, they are the beneficiaries of a system put in place by professors and administrators whose political views are almost uniformly left-wing and whose campus policies indulge nearly every progressive orthodoxy.

To be fair, they’re also a small minority of the student body, treated as somehow representative because they in fact represent the views of administrators.

IN THE EMAIL FROM SAM SCHALL:  Betrayal from Ashes (Honor and Duty Book 5).

War is never clean. Honor doesn’t always win out. Betrayal becomes the shadow currency that can tip the balance of power.

Colonel Ashlyn Shaw learned those lessons the hard way. Five years ago, she lost her command and her freedom because of the machinations of those willing to betray Fuercon, the homeworld they’d sworn to protect. Supposed allies conspired with enemies. Now Fuercon and its allied systems face a war on multiple fronts.

A war where the enemy doesn’t want a diplomatic solution. One where the enemy claims victory based on the number of civilian deaths.

This is not a war of attrition. It is a war of survival.

It is also a war Ashlyn and her allies have every intention of winning. But to do so, they must first unravel the layers of a conspiracy that goes much deeper than any of them suspect.

Honor and duty. Death before dishonor.

WORDS AND BELIEFS WILL NOT PHYSICALLY PROTECT YOU. A GUN YOU KNOW HOW TO USE WILL:  Two Chicago Anti-Gun Violence Activists Killed In Drive-By Shooting

LOUDER:  Michael Bane: “Dammit, how many times do we have to say this?”.

WELL, YOU SEE, THE DEMOCRATS, PUTTING THEIR FAITH IN GOVERNMENT, NEED GOVERNMENT TO BE RUN BY PEOPLE WHO ARE MORE THAN HUMAN, SO GOVERNMENT CAN SAVE THEM FROM HUMANS. THIS LEADS TO THEIR ETERNALLY HOPING FOR THE MAN WOMAN HUMAN CREATURE ON THE WHITE HORSE TO COME LEAD THEM TO PARADISE:  Help us, Michelle Obama; you’re our only hope.

OFT EVIL WILL SHALT EVIL MAR:  A Big Thanks to the Democrats.

THEY HATE US. THEY REALLY HATE US:  Seth Barrett Tillman: If You Thought HRC’s “Deplorable” Comments Were Bad—Come Visit My Bailiwick: CONLAWPROF.

WE WON’T KNOW ANYTHING FOR 24 HOURS. AND JUDGING BY THE LAS VEGAS SHOOTER AND THE HALLUCINATORY EPISODE INVOLVING THE UNFORTUNATE SOL PAIS, WE MIGHT NOT KNOW MUCH THEN:  Is this mass shooting linked to others ?

SOCIALISM WORKS LIKE A CHARM:  The problem is that charms don’t work.