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LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: The House passes a resolution about lotsa stuff and much, much more. “Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a resolution that condemned hangnails, broken shoelaces and paper cuts in a brave and bold moral stance against hate. Controversy surrounded some members’ desire to include condemnation of pistachios with shells that won’t open and flyaway hair that sticks to your lip gloss. Or something like that. The resolution changed so many times, I expected the nutters to throw in a tax hike. Are we sure there isn’t a tax hike hidden in there some where?”

JOHN MERLINE: Democrats’ promise of Medicare for All is remarkably misguided and unrealistic.

Medicare for All backers say that even though it has never been successfully implemented anywhere and would provide “free” cradle-to-grave coverage, their plan will cut national health spending $2 trillion over the next decade by reducing overhead, cutting drug prices, and slashing payments to doctors and hospitals.

Those promised savings are as unrealistic as everything else about Medicare for All.

Private insurance overhead costs account for less than 7 percent of health costs, so even if you were to eliminate it altogether, without adding new paperwork costs on the government side, you’d save a relative pittance. Plus, it overlooks the fact that Medicare and Medicaid are already big drivers of overhead costs for doctors and hospitals, problems that would likely get worse if Medicare were the only game in town.

It’s like running on a platform of flying pigs

Slashing payments to doctors and hospitals is a sure way to drive providers out and force hospitals to close.

And despite all the hoopla over drug prices, prescription drugs account for less than 10 percent of the nation’s health care bill — the same share as in 1960, according to official government data.

They’ll stifle innovation, drive providers out of business, and increase costs on the surviving providers. When Americans notice that they’re paying more, getting less, and waiting longer, Democrats will scream, “We need wider powers!”

And do read the whole thing — it’s filled with useful numbers.

JUST WAIT UNTIL MY BOOK ON SOCIAL MEDIA COMES OUT: U.S. Users Are Leaving Facebook By The Millions, Research Says.

WRECKERS, HOARDERS, SABOTEURS, TROTSKYITES, KULAKS, YANKEE IMPERIALISTS, COUNTERREVOLUTIONARIES, AND JEWS TO BLAME: Venezuela hit by major blackout, government blames ‘sabotage.’

JOHN PODHORETZ: The Democrats and Anti-Semitism: An inflection point in American political history.

Over the past couple of decades, the Democrats have been quite deliberately assembling a coalition containing a lot of antisemites. It is thus unsurprising that the party is becoming openly antisemitic.

American Jews have largely identified with the immigrants the Democrats have sought to encourage, seeing them as akin to their ancestors who fled to America. In fact, they’re more like the people those ancestors were fleeing from.

OF COURSE SHE DID: Ilhan Omar just retweeted an attack on the late Sen. John McCain that calls @MeghanMcCain’s concern about anti-Semitism “faux outrage.”

WELL, ANTI-SEMITES ARE A CORE CONSTITUENCY NOW: The Democratic Party Has Normalized Anti-Semitism: Yes, Ilhan Omar is a problem. The fact that Democrats refuse to condemn her rhetoric is a disaster.

I NEED SARAH TO LEND ME HER SHOCKED FACE: Transgender clinic accused of covering up negative impacts of puberty blockers on children by Oxford professor.

It’s curious. Vegan parents who are horrified by the thought of gluten in their food allow their children to be shot up with puberty blockers and hormones.

CHANGE: There’s now only one Blockbuster left on the planet.

The Oregon location has been open for more than 20 years. It offers customers the newest movie releases, but Harding says the classic older titles are the store’s “bread and butter.”

“You can go to Redbox and you can get the new titles, but they don’t have the older ones,” Harding said. “Netflix and Amazon don’t have everything, either.”

After the last couple Blockbusters closed in Alaska in 2018, the Bend store celebrated becoming the sole Blockbuster in America by selling T-shirts and hats, Harding said.

Now, earning the title of the last one on the planet “is not hurting us,” Harding said. In fact, it will probably be good for business and attract more nostalgia-seeking visitors.

There was something fun about cruising the stacks at the corner video store.

IN THE CLAREMONT REVIEW OF BOOKS, A REVIEW of John Marini’s Unmasking the Administrative State: The Crisis of American Politics in the Twenty-First Century.

PRIVACY: Los Angeles is fighting for e-scooter data.

City officials want to use location data from Uber-owned Jump’s dockless scooters to inform public transit policies. But the company says that could lead to “an unprecedented level of surveillance,” which the city could wield over companies and citizens, Politico reports.

At the moment, it looks like a stalemate. LA city officials claim the data would provide insight into scooters as a growing means of transit, let the city see if scooters end up in the LA River and help ensure scooters are available to lower-income residents. Reportedly, the data would not be shared with police without a warrant, would not contain personal identifiers and would not subject to public records requests.

But privacy experts warn that scooter location data could be enough to reveal a person’s movements and private transactions, especially because scooters don’t stop at docking stations. Instead, they take passengers right up to their homes or businesses.

Creepy.

GROWING UP WITH MURDER ALL AROUND: This New York Times article reviews a grim book—entitled An American Summer—about the Summer of 2013 in some of Chicago’s highest crime neighborhoods.

The good news is that we’ve come a long way since the high crimes rates of the late 1960s through early 1990s. Many neighborhoods that used to be dangerous—minority neighborhoods especially—have since blossomed. The book tells the story of some of the much smaller number of neighborhoods that continue to have obscene rates of violent crime.

My worry is that “deincarceration reform” and other efforts at criminal justice reform could easily go off the rails and throw decades of gains away if they aren’t handled carefully and in a hardheaded manner. Alas, the current rhetoric is anything but hardheaded.  If you agree (or especially if you don’t), take a look at my Commissioner Statement on Police Use of Force: An Examination of Modern Policing Practices.

BLUE ON BLUE: Lesbian Feminist Defends ‘Misgendering;’ It’s Not ‘Inhumane’ to Tell the Truth. “It’s actually inhumane to force women to share intimate spaces with males.”

SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Part II: The Mystery of Senator Richard Blumenthal v. President Donald J Trump. “Judge Sullivan’s decision is now more than 3 months overdue.”

RICHARD FERNANDEZ ON VENEZUELA: Socialism Dies In The Darkness. “Socialism almost never loses to human agency. It’s too good at propaganda and repression to be beaten easily by men. What kills it 9 times out of 10, if one will pardon the expression, is God. Financial collapse, famine, pandemic, hyperinflation do most of the work.”

What did socialists use before candles? Electricity.

FROM BLAKE SMITH:  Hartington Abroad.

Jeriah Hartington is far from home. Born into a wealthy family, he is now reduced to poverty. In desperation, he signs on to a ship headed for the planet XKF-36. Their mission? To search for colonists who’ve been lost nearly as long as Jeriah has been alive.

Jeriah fully anticipates an adventure as they travel into the unknown wilderness. He never expected to find living people, eager to tell the tale of their sufferings. But their hair-raising account could be the downfall of everyone on the planet, even their rescuers. For a villain lurks within the ship’s crew, and no one can say who he might be.

OUR PERILOUS MOMENT:  The Whites of Their Eyes.

UNEXPECTEDLY!  Marijuana legalization has boosted snack food sales, study reveals.

SHOCKED, SHOCKED. THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE:  Buying ‘eco-friendly’ products won’t save the planet: study.

BUT WHICH IS THE CHICKEN AND WHICH THE EGG?  Sleep apnea and snoring linked to Alzheimer’s disease: study.

SO, THEY’LL PUT AN END TO HARASSMENT OF MALE NURSES?  Time’s Up is taking on the health care industry.

OH, MY PEOPLE:  And another one bites the dust.