ROGER SIMON: Why the Violence Would Increase under Biden.

When it comes to killing and mayhem, leftism wins the day by a giant margin. Nothing remotely compares, not even ISIS that was only able to muster 20,000 murders in Iraq over two years.  Somehow, the blood lust inherent in leftism is largely uncontrollable (cf. the French Revolution), ditto the level of suppression as we can see from today’s China where concentration camps still exist—incredible as that may seem after Auschwitz—housing upwards of a million people.

Joe Biden is the last person to do something about this. As noted, he didn’t have the gumption to mention a word about the violence in our cities (or of China for that matter) in his speech. Why would he have the courage do something about either of them, especially imprisoned as he is by his left flank?

Just the other day, “Squad” stalwart congresswoman Aryanna Pressley called for continued “unrest,” not that she really had to. Violence tends to feed on itself and grow when not strongly opposed (cf. The French Revolution again).

For that reason alone a Biden administration is likely to see more of it than a second Trump administration.

Read  the whole thing.

BIAS BY OMISSION: Man pulls gun, threatens pro-life group outside abortion clinic. AP’s headline: “Delaware police arrest man with gun at Planned Parenthood.”

THAT’S TRUE. I HELPED SUE A DC HOSPITAL ON BEHALF OF A PARKING GARAGE RAPE VICTIM MANY YEARS AGO: Health care workers have been attacked in parking garages for decades. Why haven’t hospitals done more to make them safe? The rapes had been repeated there, but they didn’t do anything to improve security.

OUT ON A LIMB: History Shows Liberal Reporters Won’t Like This Year’s GOP Convention.

I wonder who will play the role of Lewis Lapham this time around?

LET IT BOIL DRY: Portland Is Boiling.

IF SKYNET UNDERSTOOD PEOPLE BETTER, ITS ASSASSINS WOULD LOOK LIKE CUTE CHILDREN AND ANIMALS: Video: Child Robot Learning to Express Emotions Using Body Language.

A FRIEND ON FACEBOOK SUMMARIZES AN NPR SEGMENT ON EDUCATION:

Hilarious NPR, last week’s edition. They had an hour-long segment on learning pods. Participants: Host (white woman), Black Woman Activist, Asian Woman Parent, School-System Man.

Slightly editorialized (but true!) recollections below.

Host: In wealthy areas, parents get together and organize learning pods. What do we make of it?

School-System Man: Inequitable! Inappropriate! Bad! We do not support it!

Asian Woman Parent: Equity requires that we form these pods to educate our own children! Otherwise, only the rich can get education! Rich bad!

Host: Rich bad.

School-System Man: Rich horrible! They withdraw kids from public schools during the pandemic, so schools have less money!

Asian Woman Parent: We have no choice. You are not teaching.

Host: But what are you doing for the equity?

Asian Woman Parent: Why are the parents supposed to be doing something for the equity? That’s why we pay taxes, so professionals do something!

School-System Man: We cannot fix equity if you are clandestinely educating your own children, but not everyone else’s children!

Asian Woman Parent: The proper solution would have been to end the pandemic. But Trump did not end the pandemic. So, we must do learning pods. As soon as the pandemic is over, we’ll get back to normal, and everyone will catch up.

Everyone [with great relief]: Trump bad. Bad.

Black Woman Activist: No, wait a minute. This sounds as though in a regular school year, black children get good education. And they are getting terrible education! Unacceptable!

Host: Bad Trump!

Black Woman Activist: Foggeraboutit! It’s not Trump! It’s always been terrible! Black children are dumped into horrible public schools, where nobody is teaching them! So, my organization is now helping organize these learning pods for minority kids everywhere.

School-System Man [cautiously]: This is only helping Trump…

Black Woman Activist: Forget Trump! Don’t tell me black kids get no education because things are not normal now. When things were normal, their education was just as bad!

School-System Man: Whut??? How dare you! Our public schools are the best thing that ever happened to black children.

Asian Woman Parent: I’ll second that. Public schools in my neighborhood are just svelte.

Black Woman Activist: That’s the point! You live in a rich suburb, and your kids get a great public school! Black kids don’t!

Asian Woman Parent: If Trump managed the pandemic properly, we would not be having this conversation.

Host: Bad Trump!

Everyone: Bad Trump!

The end.

#OrangeManBad.

IN SOVIET AMERICA, DEMOCRATS MEMORY HOLE THEMSELVES! Good point: Did anyone notice that President Trump’s impeachment ‘didn’t even warrant a mention’ at the Democratic convention?

Video of Democrats’ memory erasure procedure:

TO BE FAIR, SOCIAL POLICY ALSO TENDS TO TREAT BLACKS — AND EVERY OTHER GROUP — AS AN UNDIFFERENTIATED MASS: Biomedical research often ignores the diverse genetic ancestry of Black Americans.

INSIDE CHARLOTTE KIRK’S ‘SUPER AGGRESSIVE’ TACTICS WITH HOLLYWOOD MEN:

The summer movie season is a pandemic-afflicted bust. But Hollywood is overcompensating with a real-life blockbuster: Starring a savvy young actress who takes down two powerful studio heads, it reads like a reboot of “Basic Instinct” meets “Fatal Attraction.”

Despite a lackluster career, 28-year-old Charlotte Kirk snagged marquee headlines this week after toppling the four-decade career of Ron Meyer — formerly one of the most powerful agents in Hollywood (having worked with stars like Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep and Cher) and, since 2013, the vice chairman of NBCUniversal.

Meyer, 75, admitted to settling a lawsuit with Kirk, whom he characterized as a woman with whom he had a “brief consensual affair” in 2012, while still married to his second wife, Kelly. The Los Angeles Times reported that Meyer paid Kirk at least $500,000 as part of a promised $2 million settlement in 2019.

* * * * * * * *

Meanwhile, last year, Kevin Tsujihara, 55, stepped down as the CEO of Warner Brothers Entertainment after it was revealed that he tried to get film auditions for Kirk, with whom he, too, had an extramarital affair.

Flashback: Rob Long on The Moguls Who Couldn’t Deliver the Goods. “The modern Hollywood mogul—like the modern executive in pretty much every other business—has just enough power to get into serious trouble, but not enough to make it go away. He can press the button, but he cannot deliver the goods. One strange by-product of the #MeToo scandal is how it revealed that two of the most powerful men in Hollywood were actually impotent.”

SCIENCE: Pfizer, BioNTech: COVID-19 vaccine on track for review in October.

Related, some thoughts from a friend on Facebook:

Nearly absent from the general COVID discussion is Operation Warp Speed, a stupendously expensive all-out USG effort to create, mass manufacture, and distribute a working vaccine for the disease in under one year. To term it a Manhattan-Project level effort is for once not overstatement: the envisaged timeframe is historically short, and there has never before been a successful vaccine for this sort of virus. The effort alone is crazy, and here’s the really crazy part: it looks like it’s going to work. There are a sufficient number of promising vaccines now in the pipeline that it is overwhelmingly probable at least one of them will make it to full deployment.

Set aside what it means that the United States can beat the world in medicine but not in public health — that’s going to occupy observers for years to come, and in fields well beyond this one. A working COVID vaccine probably doesn’t mean eradication of the disease, barring global herd immunity as a consequence of global mass adoption that isn’t likely. It does mean reduction of COVID to something like Legionnaire’s disease: a deeply serious, endemic, and niche illness that no longer shapes daily life and macroeconomics. It doesn’t matter what your political convictions are, that’s good news.

Right?

But what if we’re only sixty days out from Operation Warp Speed success? What if the announcement of a working vaccine comes on October 21st, and the machinery for its production and rollout starts up on October 22nd? What if the light at the end of the tunnel becomes visible just as the fall colors hit their peak in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin?

It should be good news for all mankind, of course. But guess how it will be covered and received. Just guess. Think about it now.

I expect that a lot of people currently saying “wait until there’s a vaccine” will be saying “not this vaccine.” Of course, my prediction is that — even if this is the timetable — by the time a vaccine is widely available the pandemic will be largely over.

OUTKICK THE COVERAGE: Montrezl Harrell Should Be Suspended For Calling Luka Doncic A “Bitch Ass White Boy.”

The NBA has already set this precedent with gay slurs on the court, why not with racial-based insults as well?

Montrezl Harrell’s comments have already spawned a million “If the races were reversed” conversations on social media and there is no doubt that if Luka had referred to Montrezl Harrell as a “bitch ass black boy,” that the social media condemnation would have rained down from the heavens on Luka. In fact, Luka would probably be suspended for the remainder of the season. He would be crushed, a social pariah in all of sports.

There’s no doubt that the reaction to Harrell is far less condemnatory. At least so far. Which is why the NBA needs to act and explain that equality isn’t just a slogan on LeBron’s sneakers, it’s a way of life in the league going forward. Suspending Harrell would send a powerful message to everyone in the NBA and to all sports fans as well — we have one standard in this league for all players, race-based insults aren’t permitted.

Period.

Read the whole thing.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “The estimable James Lileks—the third greatest living Minnesotan after John [Hinderaker] and Scott [Johnson] —has come up with the perfect one sentence slogan about the hapless nominee of the Democratic Party: ‘The soft bigotry of Joe expectations.’ File that one away and use it often.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE SUMMER OF LOVE: Seattle’s ‘Summer of Love’ Mayor Durkan Vetoes Police Budget Cuts. “On Friday Durkan vetoed the city council’s police budget cuts. But she says she still wants to cut their budget. Just, not by as much as city council wants to. And she wants to see a plan.”

SMOD PREPARING LAST MINUTE ENTRY INTO 2020 PRESIDENTIAL RACE: Asteroid heading our way day before presidential election.

THE CANCEL CULTURE TORPEDOES ARE CIRCLING AROUND:

HIS FIFTEEN MINUTES WERE OVER AGES AGO, AND HE’S THE LAST TO REALIZE IT: David Hogg deletes Twitter poll after majority respond ‘No’ to hearing his 2020 election ‘thoughts.’

SPECIAL VEHICLES GO MAINSTREAM: The latest StrategyPage Special Operations update.

LCAC HITS THE BEACH: These beasts are loud. A Landing Craft, Air Cushion from the USS San Diego hits the beach at Camp Pendleton during an amphibious transport training exercise. Photo taken August 7. Yes, the Pentagon caption says Land Craft. But the photo’s good.

AS TAXPAYERS TIRE OF PAYING FOR THIS STUFF, WE’LL BE TOLD IT’S BECAUSE OF “ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM.” Mandatory U. Pittsburgh anti-racism course: will ‘inspire scholarly activism.’

LOSE YOUR BLUES STATE BLUES, EVERYBODY CUT FOOTLOOSE! Footloose Comes to Life in New York: Governor Cuomo Bans Dancing.

Related: ‘We Do Not Have A Plan’: De Blasio Admits Having No Timeline For Reopening NYC Indoor Dining.

NO STREET MURALS FOR THE VICTIMS OF DE BLASIO’S ANARCHY: NYC shootings: 4 killed since Saturday, including young Bronx mother of 3.

BELARUS: Belarus protesters demand Lukashenko’s resignation.