A TRUMP SUCCESS SO BIG THAT NOT EVEN THOMAS FRIEDMAN CAN FIGURE OUT HOW TO MINIMIZE IT: A Geopolitical Earthquake Just Hit the Mideast.

For once, I am going to agree with President Trump in his use of his favorite adjective: “huge.”

The agreement brokered by the Trump administration for the United Arab Emirates to establish full normalization of relations with Israel, in return for the Jewish state forgoing, for now, any annexation of the West Bank, was exactly what Trump said it was in his tweet: a “HUGE breakthrough.” . . .

Just go down the scorecard, and you see how this deal affects every major party in the region — with those in the pro-American, pro-moderate Islam, pro-ending-the-conflict-with-Israel-once-and-for-all camp benefiting the most and those in the radical pro-Iran, anti-American, pro-Islamist permanent-struggle-with-Israel camp all becoming more isolated and left behind.

It’s a geopolitical earthquake.

To fully appreciate why, you need to start with the internal dynamics of the deal. It was Trump’s peace plan drawn up by Jared Kushner, and their willingness to stick with it, that actually created the raw material for this breakthrough.

Well, yes. And without even a Nobel Peace Prize first.

Plus:

This deal will certainly encourage the other gulf sheikhdoms — Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia — all of which have had covert and overt business and intelligence dealings with Israel, to follow the Emirates’ lead. They will not want to let the U.A.E. have a leg up in being able to marry its financial capital with Israel’s cybertechnology, agriculture technology and health care technology, with the potential to make both countries stronger and more prosperous.

I think it’s a stretch to call Joe Biden a winner here, though, except in the sense that if he’s elected in November he’ll inherit a U.S. that is at peace in a more peaceful world, instead of the dog’s breakfast of a diplomacy that Trump inherited from Obama. (And I predict that Joe and Kamala will manage to make a hash of things again if given a chance.) And note that Trump has barely even gotten credit for making peace in the Middle East and — hey, did you notice? — a near elimination of Islamist terror of the sort that we experienced worldwide under Obama.

Related: National Security Advisor Robert C. O’Brien On The Israel-United Arab Emirates Accord: Under Any Other Circumstances, Jared Kushner Would Be Hailed As One Of The Great Dealmakers In American History. It’s been obvious for three years that Kushner has been a successful dealmaker in the region, but it doesn’t fit the narrative.

COUP PORN: Resistance sees military removing Trump from office. “The speculation might have been less fevered had anyone actually noted how Trump has behaved in office. For example, what has Trump, as president, done when a judge tells him to stop doing something? He stops doing it. Starting with his travel ban and going on through his plan to end DACA and his move to impose new rules on asylum, his effort to revoke a reporter’s White House credential and his effort to detain families at the U.S.-Mexico border and his move to stop former national security adviser John Bolton’s book and his action to end sanctuary cities and his plan to impose a ‘public charge’ test on immigrants and his multiple attempts to change various environmental policies and his plan to streamline the deportation process and his plan to liberalize energy restrictions and much, much more, Trump has done what judges tell him to do. No, he doesn’t deserve a medal for simply respecting the rule of law. But his conduct in office suggests he will not defy the legally certified result of an election.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): When I wrote my paper on military coups, I thought I was being entirely theoretical.

Related: Would the Military Side with Leftist Tyranny or with America?

OUR CAMPUSES ARE INFESTED WITH RACISM, OBVIOUSLY: VIDEO: Young Americans say Kamala Harris is an ‘inappropriate’ choice for VP given her law enforcement background.

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RED FLAG TORNADO: A Luftwaffe Tornado strike fighter takes off from Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, prior to the start of Red Flag 20-2. Photo taken March 5, 2020. Yes, it is a German jet that’s in flying condition. In 2018 the Tornado was “being retired” very slowly, but still had a better ready rate than the more modern Typhoons.

From that 2018 update:

When the Americans press Germany to meet its NATO obligations there are promises but no performance. Meanwhile, the United States spends nearly four percent of GDP on defense, accounts for 70 percent defense spending in NATO and is now telling the Germans that they can no longer automatically expect the Americans to bail them out when Germany comes up short in meeting its NATO obligations. This got some attention in Germany, but not a lot.

Burden sharing in still-free Europe? Poland and the U.S. take defense seriously.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Vote Biden-Harris 2020 If You Want to Kill the Republic. “If you want to see the federal government transition from egregious tax collecting to tax vampirism, Biden-Harris is the ticket for you. I mean, it’s no secret that everyone’s taxes will go up under Democrat rule, but — and I didn’t think this was possible — they’ve gotten even more cavalier about gouging the American taxpayer in the last two years.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Roger Simon: Trump Again Proves He Cares More for Israel Than Most American Jews.

WHAT DO THESE FOUR THINGS HAVE IN COMMON? Plastic straws, plastic bags, gas-powered cars and trucks, and the death penalty. Give up? They are just four of the many things Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want to ban if they are elected in November, according to Issues & Insights.

COLLEGE DEATH SPIRAL, CHAPTER TWO: An economic assessment by Steven Hayward at Powerline. Steven examines a column by Megan McArdle and two articles in The Economist. “Where’s the bad news here?” he asks. Read the whole thing.

A.G. BARR: There will be a ‘development’ in the Russia probe today.

GOOD: Trump Condemns Recent Attacks on Press Freedom in Hong Kong.

GUNNING FOR THE NRA: Mark Pulliam on New York Attorney General Letitia James’ politicized abuse of power.

OH:Maine Democrat Sara Gideon Killed Bills Outlawing Female Genital Mutilation. “Gideon leveraged her leadership position in the Democrat-controlled legislature to kill two separate bills that would have criminalized the practice of severing the clitoris of infant girls and sewing their vaginas shut. Instead, the Democrat supported a different law that would have funneled $150,000 to her political allies to educate Mainers about the practice instead of criminalizing it, according to a former state legislator who spearheaded the push to stop the mutilation.”

It’s always about the payouts, and never about protecting the kids.

DEMOCRATS HARDEST HIT: More jobs under Trump-Pence since May than all of Obama-Biden. “With the Democratic ticket finally set for the fall presidential race, Pence has switched to campaign mode, ready with a list of achievements to brag on, led by economic wins since the coronavirus crisis crashed the administration’s earlier successes. Topping that list is the jobs comeback — some 9.2 million since the pandemic hit the United States in March. . . . During the previous administration, some 8.9 million jobs were created. The pandemic cost some 20 million jobs, but many see the creation of nearly half of the loss as a major achievement and a path back to the record jobs that occurred under President Trump’s first three years in office.”

GASLIGHTING, BUZZFEED-STYLE: Facebook’s Preferential Treatment Of US Conservatives Puts Its Fact-Checking Program In Danger.

This is CNN-quality reality-bending.

WELL, TO BE FAIR, THEY HAD THE BENEFIT OF GUIDANCE FROM TOP-FLIGHT ACADEMICS AT OXFORD AND IMPERIAL: Britain’s New Record: A Recession Worse Than in Europe and North America.

“RACIST:” Maine Democrat Sara Gideon Killed Bills Outlawing Female Genital Mutilation: Maine Dems argued legislation was racist.

THEY CHOSE… WISELY: Democrats Severely Limit AOC’s Speaking Role At Convention.

RULES:

IS THIS KAMALA HARRIS’ TICKET TO THE OVAL OFFICE? Check out Section 4 of the 25th Amendment, then ask yourself how long before it’s announced that President Biden suffers from severe dementia and has been removed “according to the Constitution,” thus elevating Vice-President Harris to the presidency?

IF YOU’RE ASIAN, UNIVERSITIES WILL DISCRIMINATE AGAINST YOU, THEN PUNISH YOU FOR COMPLAINING ABOUT IT: University Of Pittsburgh Cardiologist Is Stripped From Fellowship Program After Criticizing Affirmative Action.

A cardiologist who was on the staff of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center was removed from a fellowship program after he published a paper criticizing affirmative action efforts, the University Times reported.

Norman Wang’s paper, originally published in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) on March 24 and later redacted by JAHA in August after it elicited blowback, stated that there “exists no empirical evidence by accepted standards for causal inference to support the mantra that ‘diversity saves lives,’” adding, “Long-term academic solutions and excellence should not be sacrificed for short-term demographic optics.”

That exact sacrifice is the highest value in higher education at the moment, and they just proved it again with this action.

Time to complain to the grantmaking agencies under Executive Order 13864.

NONSENSE. MORALS ARE DETERMINED BY POLITICS TODAY, AND TODAY EVERYTHING IS POLITICAL. Covid Spread Can’t Only Be Explained by Who’s Being ‘Bad.’

There are some weird things going on in the coronavirus data. It’s curious that cases dropped so fast, and have stayed pretty low, in the spring hot zones — New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. And why did cases remain so low in Idaho and Hawaii until recently?

The mainstream narrative is that it’s all about good behavior when cases go down — mask wearing and giving up our social lives for the greater good. And conversely, bad behavior must be what makes them go up. We talk about certain regions having the virus “under control,” as if falling cases are purely a matter of will-power. A sort of moral reasoning is filling in for evidence.

But why, then, have cases plummeted in Sweden, where mask wearing is a rarity?

This is the time to use scientific methods to understand what’s happening. The pandemic has gone on long enough to reveal patterns in the way it spreads. If it’s all about behavior, that’s a testable hypothesis. If, as a few speculate, dramatic drops in some places have something to do with growing immunity in the population, we can also turn that into a testable hypothesis.

But then instead of shaming, you’d have to wait for evidence. Nobody seems to want that.