UH OH: Doomsday clock for global market crash strikes one minute to midnight as central banks lose control; China currency devaluation signals endgame leaving equity markets free to collapse under the weight of impossible expectations.

THIS IS WHERE WE DIFFER: Cubans stunned by Kerry speech, but skeptical of change.  I’m, in point of fact, more skeptical of sanity.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Why Markets Work, And Bureaucrats Don’t.

THE STORY OF SOCIALISM in one Bernie Sanders T-Shirt.

TO SEE NEW YORK CITY INEQUALITY, just ride the subway. “New York is increasingly a tale of two states — and Mayor de Blasio presides over the superrich one. This would be good news for a mayor with a real plan: That is, we’ve got the money to start fixing our subway woes, and a historic chance to do it. De Blasio is still on his inequality kick, although he has run out of ideas about how to fix it. But the real inequality crisis is not within Gotham. It’s between New York City and the rest of the state.”

LIFE IN NEW YORK CITY: Order to Clean Towers Strains Crews Amid Legionnaires’ Outbreak in Bronx. “The sweeping order was cast as a pre-emptive strike against Legionnaires’, which has claimed 12 lives and sickened more than 120 people in the South Bronx, the worst flare-up of the disease in the city’s history. People can contract the illness by inhaling contaminated mist from a cooling tower or another water source.”

IT’S GRIM UP NORTH KOREA: EYE-OPENING PICTURES SHOW HOW ORDINARY PEOPLE GET BY WHILE LIVING IN THE WORLD’S MOST SECRETIVE STATE: The photos in this London Daily Mail article recall Theodore Dalrymple’s classic tale of his visit to one of Pyongyang’s Potemkin department stores in 1989. Dalrymple’s story is filled with cargo cult tales of kabuki faux-capitalism, before the good doctor notes, “Department Store Number 1 was a tacit admission of the desirability of an abundance of material goods, consumption of which was very much a proper goal of mankind:”

Such an admission of the obvious would not have been in any way remarkable were it not that socialists so frequently deny it, criticising liberal capitalist democracy because of its wastefulness and its inculcation of artificial desires in its citizens, thereby obscuring their ‘true’ interests. By stocking Department Store Number 1 with as many goods as they could find, in order to impress foreign visitors, the North Koreans admitted that material plenty was morally preferable to shortage, and that scarcity was not a sign of abstemious virtue; rather it was proof of economic inefficiency. Choice, even in small matters, gives meaning to life. However well fed, however comfortable modern man might be without it, he demands choice as a right, not because it is economically superior, but as an end in itself. By pretending to offer it, the North Koreans acknowledged as much; and in doing so, recognised that they were consciously committed to the denial of what everyone wants.

But the most sombre reflection occasioned by Department Store Number 1 is that concerning the nature of the power that can command thousands of citizens to take part in a huge and deceitful performance, not once but day after day, without any of the performers ever indicating by even the faintest sign that he is aware of its deceitfulness, though it is impossible that he should not be aware of it. One might almost ascribe a macabre and sadistic sense of humour to the power, insofar as the performance it commands bears the maximum dissimilarity to the real experience and conditions of life of the performers. It is as if the director of a leper colony commanded the enactment of a beauty contest – something one might expect to see in, say, a psychologically depraved surrealist film. But this is no joke, and the humiliation it visits upon the people who take part in it, far from being a drawback, is an essential benefit to the power; for slaves who must participate in their own enslavement by signalling to others the happiness of their condition are so humiliated that they are unlikely to rebel.

Of course, North Korea’s government can also hypnotize useful idiot outsiders into performing these rituals as well.

THAT’S RESOURCEFUL: Tennessee Teen Uses Siri to Save His Life After Being Pinned by Truck.

AT AMAZON, Beautiful Things, updated daily.

BILL WHITTLE ON THE GREAT UNLEARNING: HOW OUR SOCIETY BECAME SO STUPID: In After America, Mark Steyn quoted from a professor of theoretical medicine at England’s University of Buckingham named Bruce Charlton, who posited in 2010 that “human capability reached its peak or plateau around 1965-75 — at the time of the Apollo moon landings — and has been declining ever since.” After watching the latest Afterburner video from Bill Whittle, I think Professor Charlton may be onto something:

To be fair though, the idiocracy disease may also be impacting some of the men who once walked on the moon as well: Apollo 14’s Edgar Mitchell, “the sixth man to walk on the moon, says that aliens have visited Earth and their peace-loving nature helped us to prevent nuclear war.”

But then, in the apparent effort to star in a one man version of Leonard Nimoy’s old paranormal In Search Of series, Mitchell says a lot of…umm…interesting…things.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, KANGAROO COURT EDITION: LAWSUIT: Official in charge of sexual misconduct hearing screened ‘The Hunting Ground’ right before.

The university official in charge of a disciplinary proceeding against a student accused of rape had hosted a showing of a slanted documentary about campus rape the day before the hearing, according to a lawsuit by the accused student.

The anonymous “John Doe” student is seeking damages in excess of $75,000 from Clark University in Massachusetts, accusing the school and several officials of “impeding his education, damaging his reputation and causing psychological and emotional harm” in response to false allegations by “Sue Smith.”

Like other lawsuits against colleges by students accused of sexual misconduct, Doe’s suit claims Clark ignored voluminous text-message evidence establishing an ongoing romantic relationship with Smith even after the alleged rape.

Annual Tuition at Clark University, $41,590.

SOME BUSINESSES DEMAND MORE OF THEIR EMPLOYEES, AND THE NEW YORK TIMES IS ON IT: As Sonny Bunch writes at the Washington Free Beacon, the Gray Lady blows the lid off the story that Amazon can be a challenging workplace environment for its employees:

If John Green were truly interested in making change—if he really wanted to hit Amazon in the purse strings—he’d push to have his books removed from the digital shelves of Amazon.com. He’d demand his publisher do no business with them. He’d go on the warpath.

Of course, this would cost him money. A lot of it. So he’ll settle for simply canceling his Prime Membership—note: he’s not boycotting Amazon altogether, he’s simply not paying $100 a year for free next-day shipping and access to the site’s streaming media—and pronounce his Goodness.

Anyway, John Green’s pronunciation of his Goodness was occasioned by this New York Times story, in which we learn that Amazon expects a lot of its employees and sometimes they can’t handle it.

That’s it.

That’s the entirety of the story: Amazon employees work hard and sometimes they quit because a lot is expected of them. The New York Times wrote thousands and thousands of words demonizing the company that funds one of their biggest competitors (the Washington Post) with the most minimal of disclosures* that this story was essentially aimed at trashing a competitor. And what’s our takeaway?

That Amazon expects a lot of its employees and the employees that can’t handle it quit and some of them are very unhappy because they couldn’t hack it.

Of course, one could this very same article about the Times itself — driven CEO with a somewhat problematic worldview? Check! Questionable attitude towards its customers? Check! Difficult workplace environment? Check! Employees who can’t hack it and want to bail…

Part of the late 1970s Sectional Revolution, in which the Times became a multisection publication bulging with soft news and lifestyle journalism…Over time, this transformation crowded out coverage of high culture in favor of an oddball, wink-and-nod popular culture. “The entire social and moral compass of the paper,” as the former Times art critic Hilton Kramer later said, was altered to conform to a liberal ethos infused with “the emancipatory ideologies of the 1960’s” and drawing no distinction between “media-induced notoriety and significant issues of public life.” The Times took on more and more lightness of being. It became preoccupied with pop-culture trivia and über urban trends, reported on with moral relativism and without intellectual rigor.

The change was met by disaffection and derision within the paper’s newsroom. Grace Gluek, who ran the culture desk for a while as replacement editor, was one of the disaffected, and famously once asked, “Who do I have to fuck to get out of this job?”

…And how! Or as Glenn Reynolds noted in 2010, “I talked recently to an acquaintance who just left the NYT and he said that however bad you think the management is from the outside, the view from the inside makes clear that it’s ten times worse.”

Oh and by the way, note which business the Times is willing to spend thousands of words investigating – and which it won’t.

UPDATE: Veteran media observer Jeff Jarvis is “Hacking through Amazon’s jungle of coverage.”

IT DOES IF YOU DO SQUATS: Study: Your Butt Doesn’t Make You Attractive.

WITH OBAMA’S TOOTHLESS IRAN DEAL, THESE THOUGHTS ARE SURE TO GROW: What if it happened again? What we need to do to prepare for a nuclear attack.

GARDEN & GUN: Back Porch Session: Warren Haynes. Thanks to Mark Rippetoe, who sent the link.

BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, IT’S RACIST TO TEST APTITUDE: Former Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo has an oped in Big Government arguing that all voters should be required to pass the same basic civics test (administered in English) that legal immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship are required to pass:

Shouldn’t all voters possess that same rudimentary knowledge of the Constitution and our federal system of government as naturalized citizens? Why not require all citizens to pass the same civics exam as immigrants have to pass if they want to join the voter rolls? . . . .

This proposal is blatantly “pro-immigrant”: it says native-born citizens should live up to the same expectations we have for new citizens. What’s wrong with that?

Of course, if implemented this proposal will not end all voter ignorance. But it would be a giant step in the right direction. It places equal weight on the responsibilities of voting as on the right to vote.

When I first proposed this a few years ago in a speech to the Tea Party convention in Nashville, I was slammed by the New York Times– which is always a good sign you are onto something good. The NY TIMES, lacking any other argument, played the race card, charging that I was advocating a “return to Jim Crow laws.” Isn’t it blatantly racist to assume blacks can’t pass a simple civics exam in the same rates as others?

Why yes, yes it is quite racist, Tom. But the Democrats literally survive on racism–it is the air that keeps the party alive these days. And perpetuating the stereotype that blacks are inferior, cannot be expected to compete with other races, require government programs to survive, etc., are all part of the Democrats’ agenda of keeping blacks distracted and enraged by incessant, false cries of “racism!,” which is designed to keep blacks and other “aggrieved” minorities firmly planted in perpetuity on the Democrat plantation.

HOMELAND SECURITY IS STILL A JOKE: US Admits It Uses Predictions, Not Data, to Blacklist Flyers.

ON ELVIS PRESLEY’S DEATHDAY, some thoughts on his legacy that I wrote a while back.

FOX POLL: Head-to-head: Rubio 46, Clinton 44; Bush 44, Clinton 42. Clinton 47, Trump 42. She’s trending down against all of them.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Another nanotechnology computer memory breakthrough from Feynman Prize winner.

LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Tesla Hands Self-Driving Technology to Select Customers. “Tesla’s beta testers will indeed be drivers, not merely passengers, because Autopilot 7.0 represents only a small step up from the previous package of driver assistance systems. It will manage lane-keeping, mind the gap to the car in front and behind, and handle much of the braking and acceleration. But testers will still have to oversee all operations and register their alertness—if only for legal purposes—by hitting the turn signal indicator every so often.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: 6 steps to better home Wi-Fi.

NO NEED TO “WONDER,” SHE’S NOT: CNN National Security Analyst Unloads On Hillary Over Email Scandal: ‘I Wonder Whether She Is Capable Of Being President.’  Former CIA operative and CNN national security analyst Bob Baer, whom the Daily Caller describes as “not known for being a political partisan,” had this to say about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server to send and receive classified matter while Secretary of State:

“If this was on her server and it got into her smart phone, there’s a big problem there,” Baer said during an appearance on CNN International Saturday, noting that the sensitivity of the information reportedly found on Clinton’s private server was likely more secret than what Edward Snowden pilfered.

“Seriously, if I had sent a document like this over the open Internet I’d get fired the same day, escorted to the door and gone for good — and probably charged with mishandling classified information,” Baer said.

“If this in fact were on her hand held [phone] — was sent to her or she forwarded it in any way — I wonder whether she is capable of being president,” he added.

“If” it were on her phone? Of course these emails were on Clinton’s phone–her initial, lame excuse for using a private email server rather than the secured, State Department server, was that she didn’t want the horrible inconvenience of carrying two different phones for her official versus personal emails.  Any ordinary government employee would already be wearing an orange jumpsuit in federal prison by now. Clinton’s cavalier actions evince a reckless disregard for top secret U.S. national security information. She is utterly unfit to be President, and no “ifs” or other qualifiers are required. Simply put. anyone who supports her candidacy after this revelation is more interested in protecting the Democratic party than American national security.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Hillary Clinton Isn’t the Only One Who Should Be Facing Charges. “Joe Scarborough blasted not only Hillary Clinton, but the entire federal law enforcement community under Obama, charging that they gave the former sec. of State special treatment by allowing the ‘unprecedented’ mishandling of classified documents.”

Related, from Ross Douthat in the NYT:

And here I’m afraid that I am a bit cynical: While the email scandal is a serious business, I simply do not believe that the Obama Justice Department is going to indict the former secretary of state and Democratic front-runner for mishandling classified information, even if the offenses involved would have sunk a lesser figure’s career or landed her in jail.

Laws are for the little people.

WELL, THAT’S BECAUSE IT’S A LOUSY DEAL: Israeli Leaders Unite Across Political Divide Against Iran Deal.