PERHAPS COST ISN’T THE BIGGEST BARRIER: New study finds that free community college doesn’t necessarily increase degree attainment.

WELL, BYE: Behind the Curtain: Biden’s bitter, sweet exit.

President Biden hasn’t had much to smile about lately. But we hear he got a huge laugh on a recent call when he was told about this encounter at Fenway Park in Boston:

A former top White House official under President Obama ran into Mike Barnicle — the “Morning Joe” regular, and close friend and ardent defender of Biden — and said: “Isn’t it great that f–king guy finally figured out he had to quit?”

Barnicle was tired, and wasn’t having it. “What guy?!” he replied.
“Joe Biden!” the West Wing alumnus replied.

“You know something? F–k you!” Barnicle replied. “And f–k all your friends with their anonymous quotes in the papers. Put your name on it next time!” And kept walking.

A source familiar with Biden’s reaction to the story told us: “He might still be laughing.”

Why it matters: Biden’s friends tell us that as the president heads to his Democratic National Convention sendoff in Chicago tonight, he’s somewhat relieved and pretty nostalgic — but also still stunned and pissed about the way he was pushed out of his re-election race.

And yet it’s still a kinder political end than he deserved.

DO TELL: Chait: The Goals of Anti-Zionist Protesters Are Not Admirable. “Are the protesters on the right side of history as they claim or are they just riding a wave of publicly acceptable hate (acceptable on the left). Chait believes it’s the latter.”

Well, yes.

Plus: “He notes that when it comes to right-wing protests, the left (and the media) usually judges them by the single most extreme statement or act associated with them. When it comes to anti-Zionist protests they are far more forgiving. In fact, there is seemingly nothing left-wing protesters can do that will be criticized by the left. They are given a pass.”

Well, yes.

HOW’S THAT RETURN TO NORMALCY GOING?

🚨 Kamala’s Best Friend was invited to speak at the Dnc Convention and OMG!

She is Weird!

This is awkward!

This whole event is WEIRD pic.twitter.com/qypd5L3rGu

— Terrence K. Williams (@w_terrence) August 20, 2024

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The Final Ride of Adderall Joe. “Nothing says, ‘We still love this guy and there was no coup,’ like making the President of the United States loll about in the green room while a parade of party lessers comes close to turning his Monday speech into a Tuesday speech.”

IT’S OPENING HER MOUTH: Comrade Kamala’s Kryptonite. “Something changed in the dynamics of the race, however, and it will be very interesting to see what future polling picks up. The ‘something’ is that Kamala Harris has put into words, her words, what that policy and vision for the future might resemble. And it’s a trainwreck.”

WHILE AMERICA IS HEADLESS: China Goes a’Shouldering in the South China Sea. “Another click of the ratchet.”

DON SURBER: THE WAR ON CHILDREN “The Lord said go forth and multiply, He did not mean do your math homework. That Democrats offer [of] free vasectomies and abortions at their convention shows which side they are on.”

CHANGE (IT BACK): Normalcy advocate Robby Starbuck makes Harley-Davidson do a U-turn on woke policies. “Starbuck has now successfully targeted Tractor Supply, John Deere, and Harley-Davidson for their race-obsessive policies, embrace of gender ideology, and other alienating leftist commitments, which appear to be at odds with the conservatives amongst these companies’ clientele.”

Plus:

"Normalcy advocate" might be my favorite new description of me from a media outlet. 🔥😂 https://t.co/EYZux08IPR

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) August 19, 2024

It’s a great title.

NOT BY ACCIDENT: John Lucas: They Have Broken Our System.

OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUD: Biden DNC Speech Is a Historic Trainwreck – With a Slurring, Stumbling, Screaming Speech Full of Lies.

Related: “Women are not without electrical power.” Though with another Democratic presidency, that might change . . .

Plus:

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Muslim Migrant With Journals Vowing ‘Jihad’ Admits to Stealing New Jersey School Bus.

WELL, YALE’S BRAND HASN’T BEEN ABOUT INTEGRITY FOR A WHILE: Jesse Singal: Yale’s “Integrity Project” Is Spreading Misinformation About The Cass Review And Youth Gender Medicine. Part 1 of a two-parter that is not going to increase your faith in highly credentialed experts. “McNamara et al. is an exceptionally misleading, confused, and fundamentally unprofessional document. The authors make objectively false claims about the content of the Cass Review, badly misrepresent the present state of the evidence for youth gender medicine, and, just as alarmingly, exhibit a complete lack of familiarity with the basic precepts and purposes of evidence-based medicine. In some cases, the errors are so strange and disconnected from the Cass Review that they can only, realistically speaking, be attributed to malice, a severe lack of curiosity and reading comprehension, or both. This might sound harsh, but you’ll see what I mean shortly. It is genuinely surprising that any of the co-authors would agree to put their names on a document like this.”

LIMITED TIME DEAL: Camping Lantern, solar Lanterns. #CommissionEarned

HE’S JUST ANOTHER DEFECTIVE PRODUCT OF BOEING: Is Mike Luttig A “Prominent Conservative”? “That may have been true about two decades ago, but conservative is as conservative does.”

WHAT, THE SECRET SERVICE WASN’T HIRING? ‘Most Wanted’ fugitive sought in 2004 murder found working as police officer.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Massive looming Canadian rail shutdown could have economic ripple effects throughout America.

Failing last-minute deals, both Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Kansas City plan to lock out workers from the early hours of Thursday.

It marks the first time that the country has faced a simultaneous labor stoppage at the railroad firms as they normally negotiate their labor agreements in alternate years.

The stoppages could cripple the shipment of food grains, beans, potash, coal and timber which form a large part of Canada’s exports, while also impacting shipments ranging from petroleum products to chemicals and cars.

In addition to billions of dollars of economic damage, the stoppages could disrupt rail trade across the North American continent.

“Unless there is an immediate and definite resolution to the labor conflict, CN will have no choice but to continue the phased and progressive shutdown of its network which would culminate in a lockout,” CN said in a statement.

“Despite negotiations over the weekend, no meaningful progress has occurred, and the parties remain very far apart,” it said.

Plus: “The two Canadian rail operators’ networks connect with several key U.S. rail and shipping hubs such as Chicago, New Orleans, Minneapolis and Memphis.”

HAHA:

Rumors Swirl That Kamala Harris Is Being Influenced By Russian Agent https://t.co/KNKAC2xmro pic.twitter.com/7QDQnesvqi

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) August 19, 2024

Is the incoherence that they’ve relabeled “Joy” really the product of Kamala being drunk? Or is she just not capable of speaking coherently in general? And do we want two presidents like that in a row?

JOEL KOTKIN: The Democrats Didn’t Just Take Over California, California Took Over The Democrats.

New York is only the fourth most populous state; its influence is waning while California, with all its problems, has a far greater economy, as well as greater cultural and technological influence.

Much as Ronald Reagan defined the Republican ethos until the emergence of Donald Trump, figures like Newsom and Harris will shape the post-Biden Democratic Party. Both come from progressive central casting in the deep-blue haven of San Francisco; both Newsom and Harris have built their careers around support from lawyers, tech oligarchs, progressive trust-funders, Hollywood and public employee unions, especially teachers.

Yet here’s the rub. Buying the California model today is increasingly like buying a lemon, and not the tasty kind we grow in our front yards. California today is not the land of opportunity that it was in the Reagan, or for that matter the early Jerry Brown, years.

Of course Newsom, Harris and other boosters claim the state as a social justice model. “Unlike the Washington plutocracy,” Newsom boasts, “California isn’t satisfied serving a powerful few on one side of the velvet rope.” But this view, still widely accepted by many progressives and their media acolytes, seems out of touch with reality. Nearly one in five Californians — many working — lives in poverty (using a cost-of-living adjusted poverty rate); the Public Policy Institute of California estimates another fifth live in near-poverty — roughly 15 million people in total.

The old ideal of California as the apex of the American dream has been shattered. Since the 1970s, middle-class incomes, once ebullient, have stagnated. The state may be home to the most billionaires in the nation, but it also suffers the widest gap between middle and upper-middle income earners. It also faces a deep budget deficit, tepid job growth and the nation’s highest unemployment. The state is home to 30 percent of the nation’s homeless population, with some now living in caves.

In contrast, key competitors such as Texas, Florida, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada have over the past three decades enjoyed considerably faster income and job growth. This reflects the sad fact that the lodestones of California supremacy, culture and technology, are clearly in decline. When Reagan was an actor and president of the Screen Actors Guild, and even into his time as president, Hollywood reigned supreme. To be sure it was primarily liberal in its leanings, as Reagan himself was once, but its cultural product was tailored to conventional tastes. Today’s Hollywood prefers to impose a new race and gender orthodoxy, even at the once family-friendly Disney. Not surprisingly, the entertainment business, one of the state’s high-end industries, has also lost jobs, due to technological changes and incentives offered by other states and countries.

“The audience,” as one film historian recently told the Los Angeles Times, “has moved on.” And where are they moving? To places like Nashville and Austin whose country music more often reflects the primacy of patriotism, heterosexual relationships and the ethos, and pain, of hard, often physical labor. These messages do not stir the MFAs and MBAs who now dominate Hollywood and much of the cultural community.

Forget your audience.

WELL, YES: NYT’s Dowd: Celebrate All You Want, Dems, But It’s Still a Coup. Link’s not to NYT, but Dowd writes: “It’s going to be a glorious coronation — except that everyone’s mad at one another. Top Democrats are bristling with resentments even as they are about to try to put on a united front at the United Center in the Windy City. A coterie of powerful Democrats maneuvered behind the scenes to push an incumbent president out of the race.”

Related:

'I'm Not Dead Yet!' Insists Biden As He's Loaded Onto Cart Of Corpses https://t.co/TCGZKBa9Om pic.twitter.com/0NdDkYTuB2

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) August 19, 2024

I COULDN’T POST YESTERDAY, SO TODAY I’LL LINK THE PROMO POST FOR (MOSTLY) INDIE AUTHORS I DO ON SUNDAY:  Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

There’s also a vignette writing challenge that has launched a hundred novels.

SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE GRIFT: The Final Insult: Biden Pushed Out of Primetime.

OUT: EVERYBODY NEEDS A 303.

IN: Everybody needs a .50. “Before we go one step further, I want to go on record as stating that every American son of liberty should have access to and experience with a rifle that fires the greatest cartridge that John Moses Browning ever made, the .50 BMG (Browning Machine Gun) round.”

SEEMS THE TIME TO NEGOTIATE THAT DEAL IS WHILE HE STILL HAS SOME LEVERAGE – BEFORE HE LEAVES, NOT AFTER:  ‘Gold Bar Bob’ Menendez negotiating pardon from Biden for leaving Senate race: sources.

HIS … BATON. DEAR LORD:  Biden to ‘pass the baton’ to Kamala Harris on first night of DNC – then jet off to California,