LIKE A SCENE FROM A 21ST CENTURY CASABLANCA: Defiant Hong Kong Children Drown Out Chinese Anthem With Stirring ‘Les Mis’ Song. Except that Hollywood wouldn’t make a movie about this, because Hollywood is in the pocket of the Chinese government.

BAN ALL THE THINGS! Joe Biden Just Lost Any Claim to Being a Moderate With His Embrace of the Green New Deal. “At this point, America has two options in 2020. It’s either Donald Trump or socialism. There doesn’t seem to be an option outside of these two.”

I’M NOT SURPRISED: NC Lt. Gov. Candidate Mark Robinson Sees Surge In Conservative Grassroots Support.

OPEN THREAD: Have fun!

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Beware Greta Thunberg’s Science Fiction — The End Of The World Is Not Nigh.

Related: CNN’s Presidential Climate Change Town Hall Was Insane. “It’s really one of the tragedies of our age that so many anxious young people have been brainwashed into believing they live on the cusp of dystopia when, in fact, they’re in the middle of a golden age — an era with less war, sickness, poverty, and suffering than any in history.”

I’m so old, I can remember the 1970s, the first time the world was coming to an end:

CHANGE: Air Force changes message on Space Force amid criticism it stifled debate.

THEODORE DALRYMPLE ON JEFFREY EPSTEIN’S WEB:

My guess about the late Mr. Epstein’s taste for orgies is that it was only partially sexual in origin. After all, a man in his situation could have paid for any amount of sex, of any kind, in private. What he really enjoyed (I surmise) is corrupting others—and not just others, but prominent and powerful others. He enjoyed being, or playing, Mephistopheles, quite apart from any sexual gratification he may have had on the way.

He was born into a modest family and pursued no glorious academic career. Clearly he was of high intelligence and very ambitious. One might have thought that his achievement of great riches (by whatever means obtained or accumulated) would have assuaged any feelings of inferiority that he felt vis-à-vis those who had succeeded via family connection or the conventional academic route, but it is a curious thing about great success from humble beginnings that it does not always, or perhaps even generally, extinguish the flames of resentment, but rather fans them. In these circumstances, to prove that the great ones whose ranks the parvenu has joined are actually no better than he—that underneath their polished exterior and behind their inherited or academic distinction there is still a person of crude and basic appetites—is a joy and a relief. To implicate them in his own depravity gives him a certain power over them: the power of equal standing. Never again will they be able to consider themselves his superior. His apparent generosity toward them is in reality no such thing; it is, rather, the establishment of the relationship of a blackmailer to his victim, of a spider to a fly. They are caught in his web.

As Lee Smith wrote in October of 2017, when Harvey Weinstein became a household name, “You know the old joke about Washington: That it’s Hollywood for ugly people…But it turns out that the joke works in the opposite direction: Hollywood is for ugly people, too. That was Harvey Weinstein’s essential insight, and how he managed to combine the worlds of politics, entertainment, and media. They’re all repulsive—and I know they’re disgusting or else they wouldn’t be courting, of all people, me.”

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

● Shot: Teen Vogue Writer Ties Perceptions About Obesity to White Supremacy.

—Debra Heine, American Greatness, today.

● Chaser: “As millions of teens pack on extra pounds, they’re facing a troubling future. Teen Vogue reports on the hazards of youth obesity–and how to keep yourself healthy.”

—Teen Vogue, June 3, 2009.

(Via Ace of Spades.)

BRYAN PRESTON: CNN’s #ClimateTownHall Does the Nation a Great Service.

Seriously, if you see all of the above — which is just a sample — and vote for any of these people for any office at any level, it’s on you. If you like Venezuela, voting for any of them will bring you a whole lot of Venezuela.

Thank you, CNN, just for letting these people talk. Do it again next week? Please?

And they will! (Although later in the fall, not next week.) CNN, Human Rights Campaign to host Democratic presidential town hall focused on LGBTQ issues.

I’m not sure though, how many people are watching: “Fox News And MSNBC’s Regular Programming Beat CNN’s Climate Change Town Hall In TV Ratings,” the Daily Caller reports. But for assembling video clips for the GOP, these CNN-DNC town halls are tough to beat:

● Dems at Climate Forum: Ban Everything! [Supercut]:

● Trump War Room’s video showing the Dems’ obsession with being ‘America’s food police’ is something else:

Fortunately, even CNN doesn’t believe their own “climate change town hall’s” doomsday rhetoric: CNN Runs Luxury Travel, BBQ Ads During Climate Town Hall.

All the Democrats have to do is not be crazy, and they can’t even do that, to coin an Instaphrase.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD HAS AN APP TO LET YOU ORDER BIRTH CONTROL. But read this: “The Trump administration is doing everything it can to undermine Planned Parenthood’s law-abiding, science-based reproductive health services. But Planned Parenthood has a powerful weapon in its arsenal: tech that increases access to care.”

Except that Republicans have been trying to make birth control pills available over the counter, and Democrats have blocked it — to protect Planned Parenthood’s profits.

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SO SHE’S TREATED THE STAR TRIBUNE PRETTY MUCH THE WAY SHE’S TREATED AMERICA, THEN: “The Star Tribune has treated Omar almost entirely as a hometown hero. When it comes to the Star Tribune, Omar is both an ingrate and a liar.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Here’s how much sleep you should get a night to avoid heart attacks according to new study.

REPORT: BLOOMBERG REPORTERS BEING TOLD NOT TO PROMOTE NEWS OF LEIF OLSON’S REHIRING. “At some point Bloomberg will stop piling further disgrace upon itself over this story. Just not today.”

CATHY YOUNG: (Almost) Everything You Know About GamerGate is Wrong — Harassment campaign? Misogynist hate mob? Alt-right test run? It’s much more complicated:

If not Trump, what is GamerGate’s legacy? It did change the cultural landscape, for better and worse. It was the first rebellion against the politicization of popular culture by the “social justice left.” (It’s probably not an accident that this pushback came from gamers, who are used to being defensive about their chosen medium being blamed for social ills.) It did not exactly reverse this trend, even in video game culture: witness recent attacks on the upcoming game Cyberpunk 2077 as “transphobic” because of an in-game poster featuring a supposedly fetishistic image of a possibly transgender model as well as a later-deleted “did you just assume their gender?” joke on the game maker’s Twitter account.

If anything, GamerGate probably made the progressive culture guardians more zealous and intolerant of dissent. But it also encouraged resistance to ideological diktat, and ultimately promoted debate. Lapine, who says she regrets being too “edgy” and “obnoxious” in her GamerGate days — for instance, mocking Quinn with gratuitous nastiness in some of her videos— still believes GamerGate played a positive role: “The internet was overrun by preachy, authoritarian feminist-types,” she wrote in an email. “And they absolutely needed to be called out (and still do!).”

Today, the dead horse of GamerGate is beaten mainly by its foes — usually as a way to discredit criticism of the social justice left. But there are important lessons from the GamerGate experience that are still relevant today, and that have nothing to do with video games.

You may need a scorecard to keep track of the players, but well worth a read to make sense of one of the Internet’s more convoluted battles.

WELL, IT IS THE 21st CENTURY, YOU KNOW: The Silicon Valley Heavyweights Who Want to Settle the Moon.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Removing Pubic Hair Probably Won’t Increase Your Risk of STDs, Study Finds.

GOOD. NOW GET BEN PENN FIRED FROM HIS FOR TARGETING AN INNOCENT MAN: Leif Olson to Rejoin Labor Department Days After Resignation.

HE’S FINE, REALLY: Real Joe Biden Quote: ‘You Can’t, in Fact, Preach to the Choir if You Can’t Sing.’

OF COURSE SHE DID: Williamson Asks Supporters to Use ‘Power of the Mind’ Against Hurricane Dorian.

WESTERN ILLINOIS’ WALKING DEAD: 16 years after its supposed elimination, WIU’s “zombie free speech zone” still hobbles along. As one victim of the undead menace put it, “I was four when this policy was supposedly eliminated, but the unconstitutional free speech zone somehow still lives on.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Tips & Techniques for Defensive Shotgun Patterning.

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ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Ilhan Omar burns the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.