I’M SKEPTICAL, BUT WE’LL SEE: There’s going to be a “Space Force” TV Show.

MY STATE SECESSION PIECE IS NOW ONLINE IN THE NOTRE DAME LAW REVIEW. The editors were quite pleasant to work with, although I had to put my foot down to keep the math joke — a Fermat’s Last Theorem reference — in footnote 30.

AN IMPORTANT REMINDER: Dear Shutdown Alarmists, the Economic Growth Already Happened. “Governments can’t stimulate economic growth with spending; rather their spending is only possible because of economic growth. Applied to the partial shutdown of the federal government, what limits government spending logically cannot limit economic growth. Figure that if there were a permanent cessation of a quarter of federal activity, the result would be trillions worth of extra resources for private actors to put to work.”

A man can dream.

I’M SO OLD, I CAN REMEMBER WHEN THE LEFT DENOUNCED MCCARTHYISM: Watch: MSNBC Host Suggests Trump Must Know ‘Something Extreme’ About Lindsey Graham.

CYBERSECURITY; Monster 773 million-record breach list contains plaintext passwords.

GILLETTE TO STARBUCKS: “Brand Purpose” Is A Lie.

In recent years, companies have been told that they need a purpose, a reason for existing beyond making money. Consumers look for authenticity, and prospective employees want to work somewhere that makes the world better. “Purpose” has been touted as the key to 21st-century success by both the Harvard Business Review and Fast Company.

Johnson and Johnson claims, “We put the needs and well-being of the people we serve first.” Starbucks exists “to inspire and nurture the human spirit–one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.” State Street made a statue of an empowered little girl facing down Wall Street’s bull.

With the world’s top companies staring nobly into the middle distance, it seemed to be the dawn of something magnificent: capitalism with a soul.

LOL, just kidding.

State Street underpays women. Starbucks paid no U.K. corporate tax for three years on sales of £1.2 billion (about $1.5 billion), thus failing to nurture my local neighborhoods by paying for police, social services, or even street sweepers. Johnson and Johnson kept 98% of its cash offshore in 2017–almost $42 billion.

When companies are talking about something other than their products, I assume it’s because they don’t want us talking about their product — or their management.

UPDATE: Saw a great term on Facebook: “Wokewashing.”

“IT’S OFFENSIVE:” How the word “family” triggered a meltdown at Google.. We’ve been told for years that these leading institutions are run by supersmart people. Maybe they’re actually being run by crazy people.

COMMUNIST FRONT CORPORATION: US pursuing criminal charges against Huawei for alleged theft of trade secrets.

NEIL ARMSTRONG ON MARS: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has displayed her idiocy for quite a while. “The Constitution is 400 years old.” “Today, we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South, exchanging and working.” On and on. But now it’s serious. BuzzFeed reports that:

[A] woman, identified by a pseudonym, claimed in a lawsuit that she was raped by a former employee of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. She says Jackson Lee fired her as she was preparing to pursue legal claims over the alleged assault.

Being an idiot isn’t unlawful. But retaliatory firing of a whistleblower — let alone of an alleged rape victim — certainly is.

THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT LIVING UP TO EXPECTATIONS: Robots Ruin Robot Hotel.

WRITERS ON WRITING: Virginia Postrel.

ONLINE POLLS ARE MEANGINLESS EVEN WITHOUT STUNTS LIKE THIS: Michael Cohen says he paid tech firm to rig online polls ‘at the direction of’ Trump.

Rigging an online poll is like rigging the results of my World’s Greatest Dad coffee mug.

DOWN BUT NOT OUT: Four Americans Killed in Suicide Bombing in Syria. Has ISIS Really Been Defeated?

TERRY BRENNAN STANDS UP TO BIGOTRY: Due to the New APA Guidelines, I Will No Longer Recommend Talk Therapy.

WHAT CRUEL NEW COLONIALISM IS THIS? Toto’s ‘Africa’ to play ‘for eternity’ in Namibia desert.

I DUNNO, I HEAR IT GETS A LOT WORSE THAN THAT AT PENN STATE: Penn State student editors deem sports, playing outdoors ‘hyper-masculine’ activities.

Of course, a hypermasculine guy like me would say that.

GREASED LIGHTNING II: The F-35 was once trounced by F-16s in dogfights, but it just proved it can out-turn older jets.

In exercises where F-35s got “trounced,” they were using earlier controller software which, due to the development process, purposely cut the jets’ performance envelope almost in half.

THEIR OWN DEAN SAYS “HATE SPEECH IS NOT FREE SPEECH,” BUT THAT’S DIFFERENT BECAUSE SHUT UP: UNC-Asheville faces pressure to disinvite pro-Farrakhan Women’s March speaker.

THE DESTRUCTION OF POLITICAL JOURNALISM: My column is up at The Daily Caller.

Thousands of pages have been written about our age of political polarization. Public discourse and political reporting have deteriorated into an “either/or” game, and while polarization has been around since the Jefferson-Adams kerfuffle, the level of anger is unprecedented.

Agree with me or I’ll call you terrible names.