THE MAN WHO BROUGHT YOU THE WAR ON FARTING COWS AND AIRPLANES. The Democratic Party Operatives with Bylines at the Washington Post have a glowing profile of Saikat Chakrabarti, AOC’s chief of staff, and the author of her infamous Green New Deal rollout in February, with a curious, and not at all unexpected admission. Just look for the “unexpected” below.

On a Wednesday morning in late May, emissaries of two of the strongest political voices on climate change convened at a coffee shop a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol. Saikat Chakrabarti, chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), was there to meet Sam Ricketts, climate director for Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), who is running for president almost exclusively on a platform of combating global warming. A newly released plank of Inslee’s climate change agenda had caught the attention of Chakrabarti and his boss, who had tweeted that Inslee’s “climate plan is the most serious + comprehensive one to address our crisis in the 2020 field.” Pleased by the positive reception from the demanding Green New Deal wing of the climate struggle, Ricketts had set up this meeting with Chakrabarti to establish a personal connection and share approaches to climate advocacy.

“Congrats on the rollout,” Chakrabarti told him as they sat down. “That was pretty great.”

“Thank you again for the kudos you guys offered,” said Ricketts. “We wanted to be pace-setting for the field, and I think we’re there now. … I want to ask you for input … in addition to hearing what you guys are working on.”

Chakrabarti had an unexpected disclosure. “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal,” he said, “is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.” Ricketts greeted this startling notion with an attentive poker face. “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Chakrabarti continued. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

As conservative national security commentator John Noonan tweets in response, “One of the central tenets of Climate Change skepticism is that the threat is exaggerated to achieve political ends that are divorced from environmental health. Here’s an outward admission that the issue is used as a stalking horse for ambitious economic restructuring.”

The socialists that Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti play footsie with had some ideas on the subject in the 1920s they may wish to crib from.

Related: Democratic Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay unloads on Ocasio-Cortez, chief of staff for ‘using the race card.’

WELL, LESS INTOLERABLE, MAYBE: This Neat Design Could Make a Plane’s Middle Seats Tolerable.

IT’S ALMOST LIKE THEY HAVE AN AGENDA OR SOMETHING: Since its founding in 1998, Birthright has sent approximately six hundred thousand young Jews to Israel on free ten-day tours to connect them with their Jewish heritage. Other than a couple “stranded or brave tourists during wartime” type stories, the Times has covered these trips exactly twice. Once in 2000, when the focus was on a controversy over the costs of the trip and who, if anyone,  should be paying for them, and once in 2007, albeit relegated for some reason to the “New York region” section of the paper.

Over the past year, several groups on the left have protested Birthright, on the typical leftist theory that any nonprofit organization must have a left-wing agenda or die. As a result, the Times has run no less than two anti-Birthright stories, one in June focusing on protests against Birthright for not focusing on “the occupation,” the second yesterday on a politicized “alternative” trip sponsored by the left-leaning JStreet.

It doesn’t take a news maven to see what is objectively the bigger story: Birthright itself, with its 600K participants and one of the most innovative and successful religious/ethnic programs in recent American (most participants are American, as are most diaspora Jews) history, or the handful of activists protesting Birthright plus the forty participants on the “alternative” tour. But the Times has determined that the latter is actually the more important story, because it fits their agenda of hostility to the mainstream Jewish community’s support for Israel.

This is less interesting as a comment on the Times and Israel, and moreso, in my opinion, as an excellent example of how the Times and other MSM outlets don’t simply report the news, they actually shape it by deciding based on their own agendas what to cover and how much.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Beto O’Rourke Explains Why You Shouldn’t Vote for Him.

JEFFREY EPSTEIN USED $46 MILLION CHARITABLE DONATION TO KEEP ALIVE HIS TIES WITH BILLIONAIRE LES WEXNER:

Before hedge fund manager Jeffrey Epstein went to jail in Florida more than a decade ago, billionaire L Brands founder and Chairman Les Wexner was trying to distance himself from the accused child molester.

That didn’t stop Epstein in 2008 from essentially bankrolling one of Wexner’s first nonprofit foundations with a contribution of more than $40 million in stock and other assets. The transactions were received only months before Epstein was sentenced to a term in a Palm Beach County jail on a charge of soliciting an underage prostitute.

Related: Victoria’s Secret parent company L Brand’s stock drops on ties between CEO Les Wexner and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein’s New York City mansion, where prosecutors say they found a trove of naked pictures of underage girls last weekend, was once owned by Wexner. He reportedly transferred the home for as little as a dollar to Epstein, his onetime financial adviser.

Perhaps all investors need to know about how Victoria’s Secret has adapted to the marketing realities of today’s Me Too movement is this: The investor relations page for corporate parent L Brands is headed by a picture of eight young, lingerie-clad women. At the center of the image is model Taylor Hill, who began posing for Victoria’s Secret at 18. She is now 23. The picture was taken in early 2015.

L Brands owns Victoria’s Secret, yes, but it’s not the company’s only brand. It also owns the beauty products retailer Bath & Body Works, which these days is its fastest growing chain of stores. Yet there are no pictures of soap or fragrances on L Brand’s main investor relations page, just the image of women in their underwear.

To be fair, that’s from CBS News, which has had its own #MeToo issues.

OKLAHOMA! WHERE THE WIND COMES SWEEPIN’ DOWN THE PLAIN, AND THE RADIOACTIVE SNAKES CAN SURE SMELL SWEET: Oklahoma man allegedly driving stolen vehicle filled with uranium, a rattlesnake, and Kentucky Deluxe Whiskey.

Oklahoma man is going all-in to rapidly catch up with the legend of Florida man. Hopefully he has the right accessories in his mobile bar to do his cocktails up right:

CESSPIT BLUES: Worldwide Twitter Outage Leaves Users Unable to Express Their Outrage.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Tips From a Diver Who Was Lost at Sea for Nearly Eight Hours.

RESTORING ORDER ON BART: In its transit system, at least, San Francisco may be rediscovering what New York City learned a generation ago.

Three months ago, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system that serves San Francisco and surrounding counties began a “blitz” to deter morning rush-hour fare evasion at four downtown stations. As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, the first month’s results were startling: proof-of-payment citations rose 13 percent, new ticket sales rose 10 percent, add-value transactions to existing tickets rose 29 percent, and—most significantly—average weekly calls to police dropped a remarkable 45 percent. This rapid turnaround in behavior was achieved simply by staffing the stations with extra police officers, fare inspectors, and BART managers wearing bright yellow vests so that anyone trying to jump a fare gate or use a bypass door saw their way blocked by an official.

These results should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Broken Windows theory of policing developed by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling. The theory’s simple premise: responding proactively to minor crime (vandalism, disorderly behavior, and fare evasion) also reduces serious crime, including violent crime. Before he made New York City the safest large city in the country as commissioner of its police department, William Bratton put Broken Windows into effect as the head of the New York Transit Police, directing his officers to focus on fare evasion. The effect of the policy—first in the subway tunnels and then on the streets of New York—is now legendary.

San Francisco’s BART “blitz” demonstrates the effectiveness of Broken Windows. Just by putting people at the gates who looked to be in charge—neither the fare inspectors nor the yellow-vested managers were badged police officers—BART was able to cut crime in those stations almost in half. Exactly as Broken Windows predicts, those willing to commit serious crime often start by committing minor crimes, like fare evasion. Keeping such people out of the transit system means that everyone paying the fare is safer.

Huh. All the best people told me that San Francisco merely needed to paint over George Washington murals and banish the Betsy Ross flag to achieve utopia.

Related: Down the coast, the L.A. Times has a third world-sounding headline this week, “Desperate to get rid of homeless people, some are using prickly plants, fences, barriers.”

I’M NOT SAYING IT’S ALIENS, BUT IT’S ALIENS: Two Dutch Shipwrecks From WWII Just Vanished Near Malaysia.

DAVID SOLWAY: The Republic Is Collapsing: The Time to Act Is Now.

CHANGE: The Bentley EXP 100 GT Showcases a Plan to Make EVs Luxurious.

AT AMAZON, Shop Amazon Warehouse Deals – Deep Discounts on Open-box and Used Products.

Plus, Shop Amazon Outlet – Clearance, Markdowns and Overstock Deals.

ELECTIONEERING: Pete Buttigieg Panders to Black Voters With Intensive Affirmative Action Plan.

“THE GANG’S ALL HERE:” Woody Allen, Katie Couric, and George Stephanopolous Attended Post-Sentence Epstein Party.

Related: “Graydon Carter’s Air Mail, his new weekly newsletter for the jet set, is gearing up for launch next week just as the veteran Vanity Fair editor faces an accusation that he buried allegations against Jeffrey Epstein, the financier indicted for child sex trafficking.”

Gosh, why would he do that?

GREAT. SO NOW WE’RE SUPPOSED TO WORRY ABOUT THIS, TOO? Earth’s Core Has Been Leaking for Billions of Years.

REFORM: Trump Administration Announces Plans To Shake Up The Kidney Care Industry. “President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday directing the Department of Health and Human Services to develop policies addressing three goals: reducing the number of patients developing kidney failure, reducing how many Americans get dialysis treatment at dialysis centers and making more kidneys available for transplant.”

BRYAN PRESTON: The Census Should Ask About Citizenship to Keep House Representation of Citizens Fair.

It’s an idea so radical that “Up to the 1950 census, citizenship was asked either directly or as a follow up of all respondents. Citizenship was removed from the short questionnaire in 1960 but was included on the longer questionnaire that went to a subset of census respondents starting in 1970 – until 2010. President Obama dropped the long form altogether in 2010, thereby dropping the citizenship question.”

HUH: Jeffrey Epstein’s Fortune May Be More Illusion Than Fact.

Mr. Epstein is routinely described as a billionaire and brilliant financier, and he rubbed elbows with the powerful, including former and future presidents. Even after his 2008 guilty plea in a prostitution case in Florida, he promoted himself as a financial wizard who used arcane mathematical models, and he often dropped the names of Nobel Prize-winning friends. He told potential clients that they had to invest a minimum of $1 billion. At his peak in the early 2000s, a magazine profile said he employed 150 people, some working out of the historic Villard Houses on Madison Avenue.

Much of that appears to be an illusion, and there is little evidence that Mr. Epstein is a billionaire.

Mr. Epstein’s wealth may have depended less on his math acumen than his connections to two men — Steven J. Hoffenberg, a onetime owner of The New York Post and a notorious fraudster later convicted of running a $460 million Ponzi scheme, and Leslie H. Wexner, the billionaire founder of retail chains including The Limited and the chief executive of the company that owns Victoria’s Secret.

ALSO FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES: Jeffrey Epstein Was a ‘Terrific Guy,’ Donald Trump Once Said. Now He’s ‘Not a Fan.’

“Now?”

Trump reportedly kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago more than 15 years ago, long before his recent legal troubles, or even those of 11 years ago:

President Trump has not said much about the arrest of his former friend Jeffrey Epstein, but court documents suggest that he made his opinion of the convicted pedophile well known years ago.

An ongoing lawsuit between Epstein and Bradley Edwards, who represented multiple underage victims in their civil suits against the convicted pedophile, reveals that President Trump banned Epstein from his private club in Palm Beach, Mar-a-Lago.

The reason for that, according to the filing, was that Epstein had ‘sexually assaulted an underage girl at the club.’

That “now” story was a truly shitty attempt at a hit job from the NYT’s Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman, but nothing unexpected.

HMM: Subclinical heart disease may cause more falls in older people.

BETO SAYS AMERICA FOUNDED ON WHITE SUPREMACY. THIS FORMER SLAVE SAW IT DIFFERENTLY: Frederick Douglass was unmatched in his fiery denunciations of slavery, but he and Beto saw two completely different American foundings.

THAT’S KIND OF THE IDEA: North Korea Says South Korea’s F-35 jet acquisition extremely dangerous action.

YES. THAT’S WHY DEMS OPPOSE IT SO VICIOUSLY. The Census Should Ask About Citizenship to Keep House Representation of Citizens Fair.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is “Trump Derangement Syndrome” a Real Mental Condition?