THIS IS AWFULLY CONVENIENT FOR AN AWFUL LOT OF PEOPLE: Jeffrey Epstein, accused sex trafficker, dies by suicide: Officials.
UPDATE: More here. “It was not immediately clear how Epstein could have killed himself if he was under suicide watch after being found unconscious three week ago in his cell in Metropolitan Correctional Center. He had suffered injuries to his neck in what appeared to be a suicide attempt or jailhouse assault.”
CHANGE: Aus PM joins transgender backlash. I dunno — I know it’s wrong of me, but I’m kind of enjoying seeing women’s sports taken over by men, in the name of equality.
SO I’M NOW READING Monster Hunter Guardian, by Larry Correia and Sarah Hoyt. Just started, but great reading so far — it’s from Julie Shackelford’s point of view, which Sarah seems to have little trouble identifying with. Which, since I know Sarah, isn’t really much of a surprise.
UPDATE: “Mammal blood should stay on inside.” Analysis: True. (Bumped).
THE DEMOCRATS’ PUZZLE: “No candidate received a polling bump as a result of the Detroit debates.” To be fair, was there anything that happened to make anyone there more likeable?
THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO SHOW UP: HuffPost provided people overcome by eco-guilt a forum to work through feelings about having kids ‘in an era of climate crisis.’
But if you perceive that in the future the environment will be so horrific that you’ll forgo having kids, should you be online in the first place? As the London Guardian warned its own lefty eco-readers in 2015, “Data centre emissions rival air travel as digital demand soars.” Curiously, the Guardian hasn’t shuttered its Website, though…
THE LEFT WILL DO ANYTHING IT CAN GET AWAY WITH IN SEARCH OF POWER, AND THEN A BIT MORE: Doxing Trump Donors Is Just the Beginning. “Federal law requires the name, address, occupation, and employer of anyone who gives over $200 to a federal candidate to be published in a government database. The threshold hasn’t been adjusted, even for inflation, in over 40 years. At that level, the law doesn’t just capture big donors — it captures ordinary Americans, too. When Americans who make political contributions find themselves doxxed by a congressman and harassed by anonymous lowlifes, many may decide it’s too risky to support candidates. That would be a real loss for democracy.”
But it’s their goal.
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MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Guns And The New Class: Why The Gun Control Issue Is So Polarized:
What was once an intra-new-class fight over the size and scope of government has become a struggle to define the American nation between the new class on one hand and Donald Trump, his national populists, and a few new-class fellow travelers on the other. The new class has incredible resources at its disposal, from the expansive and appealing ideology of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” to communications, tech, state and local governments, bureaucracies, and the courts. Trump has a Twitter account, half of a cable network, Mitch McConnell, the Supreme Court, and 63 million voters.
One reason the battle is so pitched is that, as the new class multiplied in numbers and strength, the divide between it and the rest of the country grew into the Mariana Trench. The culture of the new class, which originates in Charles Murray’s “super-zips” and extends into the suburbs, has little in common with, speaks even a different language than, residents of exurban and rural America whose votes go to Trump.
It is on the issue of guns that this incomprehension is most pronounced. The cable news anchors expressing frustration and disbelief that the latest shooting may not result in tighter regulation of firearms are sincere. They live safe and satisfying lives without guns; why can’t the rest of the country do the same? Yet the spokesmen for “doing something” do not appreciate the equal sincerity of gun owners, whose weapons are not just possessions but also, on some level, part of their identity.
Guns are especially frustrating to the new class because they are the rare case where the courts, which normally are its ally, have not achieved its objectives. The Heller decision (2008) irks Democrats to no end because the Supreme Court said that Second Amendment guarantees rule out some forms of regulation. Gun owners have been adept at using the language of rights—usually the preferred means of the new class—to attain ends the new class abhors. That has forced advocates of gun control back into the democratic arena, where the new class has so often been repudiated.
Their counterparts in Europe have beaten their own deplorables into near-total submission. The American New Class can only envy that.
Related: When Rulers Despise The Ruled. “If the rulers feel neither loyalty nor empathy toward the ruled, the ruled can be expected to return the favor.”
THANK GOODNESS FOR FRACKING: New U.S. pipelines poised to start price war for shale shippers.
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION SOUNDS LIKE THE CARTER ADMINISTRATION HERE: Trump’s EEOC is filing disparate impact cases that sound a lot the kind of cases the Carter Administration used to file. (I’m working on article about the history of disparate impact liability and why it’s a terrible idea. I’ll post it when I’m done.)
POLICING: The body cam revolution: What it has, and hasn’t, accomplished.
The cameras have put a lens on a job that’s already fraught, difficult, and often thankless. And some say it is all for naught. Indeed, studies show the body camera revolution hasn’t curbed police shootings of unarmed Americans, nor has it led to more prosecutions of police officers for misconduct.
Yet the cameras, veteran police monitors say, have nevertheless had profound and often positive impacts on policing, if in subtle ways. For officers, they have become important backup in a video era when controversial arrests go viral. And for a public demanding answers about police shootings of Americans, particularly people of color, they provide fact-studded narratives that, while rarely complete, offer a way forward.
And they have provided crucial evidence in a few egregious cases of law enforcement misconduct.
They’re sources of evidence. And evidence is not always determinative in and of itself.
IMAO… YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE SATIRE: Beto O’Rourke Compares Trump Campaign Event to Nazi Rally – Doesn’t Explain How He Knows So Much About What Nazi Rallies Are Like.
THESE ARE THE DAYS WE LIVE IN: One Bad Turn Deserving of Another.
HERE A BOT, THERE A BOT, EVERYWHERE A BOT BOT: Ellen DeGeneres, Katy Perry have the most fake Instagram followers.
ABOUT AS INSPIRED BY TRUMP AS THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO WAS INSPIRED BY ME: Has anyone actually read the El Paso killer’s manifesto?
AND THEN THERE WERE THE MANUFACTURED ONES… Psychologist: Google generated at least 2.6 million votes for Hillary.
OH DEAR LORD: Rashida Tlaib Meets Janna Jihad.
BETTER HIM THAN KAMALA HARRIS WHO GIVES ME SERIOUSLY “EVIL” VIBES: Will Slow Joe Make It to the Primaries?
You know, in case they manufacture enough votes.
HOW’S ABOUT NO: Want Gun Rights? Become an Indentured Servant.
THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE: Mitch’s Timeout and Twitter Bias.
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