WASHINGTON’S HOLLOW MEN: Victor Davis Hanson fillets American elites.

…our modern American elite is a bit different. Residence, either in the Boston–Washington, D.C., or the San Francisco–Los Angeles corridor, often is a requisite. Celebrity and public exposure count — e.g., access to traditional television outlets (as opposed to hoi polloi Internet blogging). So does education — again, most often a coastal-corridor thing: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Berkeley, Stanford, etc. Net worth, whether made or inherited, helps. But lots of billionaires, especially Midwestern sorts, are not part of the elite, in that their money does not necessarily translate into much political or cultural influence — or influence of the right sort. (Exceptions are Chicago traders who bundle millions for Hillary.) Especially influential are the revolving-door multimillionaires, especially from big banks and Wall Street — the Tim Geithners, Jack Lews, Hank Paulsons, and Robert Rubins, but also the lesser flunkies of the Freddie/Fannie Clintonite crowd, a Franklin Raines (raking in $90 million) or a Jamie Gorelick ($26 million), all of whom came into the White House and its bureaucracies to get rich, but who always seem shocked when the public does not like their incestuous trails of bailouts, relief plans, favorable regulations, etc. Creepy too are the satellite grifters like “investment banker” Rahm Emanuel — who somehow, between the White House and the House of Representatives, made off with $16 million for his financial “expertise” — or Chelsea Clinton, who made her fortune ($15 million?) largely by being a “consultant” for a Wall Street investment group (her fluff job at NBC News was small potatoes in comparison). The locus classicus, of course, is the Clinton power marriage itself, which invested nearly 40 years of public service in what proved to be a gargantuan pay-for-play payoff, when they parlayed Hillary’s political trajectories into a personal fortune of well over $100 million. Give them credit: From the early days, when they would write off as IRS deductions gifts of their used underwear, they ended up 30 years later getting paid $10,000 to $60,000 a minute for their Wall Street riffs. The nexus between Big Government, Big Money, Big Influence, and Big Media is sometimes empowered by familial journalistic continuity (e.g., John Dickerson, son of Nancy Dickerson) or a second generation of fashion/glitz and media (Gloria Vanderbilt and Anderson Cooper), but again is increasingly expressed in the corridor “power couple,” the sorts who receive sycophantic adulation in New York and Washington monthly magazines.

Read the whole thing. Note Mr. Hanson mentions John Dickerson. Dickerson recently provided us with a small but documented example of how crooked elites attempt to manipulate media perception– a “nexus operation” combining the Big Media and Big Influence Mr. Hanson so brilliantly damns. When Dickerson interviewed Hillary on Face the Nation (May 8) he employed Hillary’s fake-description “inquiry” to describe the FBI’s criminal investigation. Yes, a privileged, leftish Washington media elite rhetorically colluding with a preferred political elite.

BREXIT’S COMMON SENSE REBELS: Happy Independence Day, USA. July 4th’s a good day to applaud the British rebels of June 23rd.

The British separation from the European Union of June 23, 2016 doesn’t precisely replicate the American declaration of independence from the British Empire on July 4, 1776. However, Britain’s 21st century rebels and their 18th century American cousins share several provocative and encouraging traits…

TEACH ROLLING STONE NOT TO PUBLISH AND TOUT FAKE RAPE STORIES THAT LIBEL INNOCENT VICTIMS WHO THE POLITICALLY CORRECT HATE: Hey you wonderful readers you, don’t you know the staff at Rolling Stone is perzackly like Katie Couric. Rolling Stone media elites were just trying to start a conversation, like Second Amendment Hater Cute Katie.

THE BAD OLD DAYS MAKE A COMEBACK: StrategyPage’s Wars Update. This is Jim Dunnigan’s semi-annual assessment of armed conflict on the planet. Full disclosure: I’ve been a contributing editor at StrategyPage since 1999.

This is the lead, which may be difficult to believe but the stats back it up:

The post-Cold War trend towards less violence is resuming after a brief interruption. In 2014 over a decade of declining violence was temporarily reversed because terrorism deaths were up by about 20 percent that year and nearly as high in 2015. This was mainly because of ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) in Syria and Iraq and Boko Haram in Nigeria.

Scroll down to read updates on major trouble spots, from Afghanistan to Yemen.

WIDE LANE FOR WIDE LOADS: The Christian Science Monitor has published an informative article on the Panama Canal’s now-completed expansion project and what the new “super big ship” capacity means for US natural gas exports to Asia.

The canal expansion opened on June 26 with a third lane that accommodates big ships such as liquified natural gas (LNG) ships, 90 percent of which may now travel across the canal, including those that hold as much as 3.9 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of fuel, according to a report from the US Energy Information Administration released June 30. Along with a new lane, the canal has enlarged its locks that are 180 feet wide and 60 feet deep, compared to the 110-foot wide and 42-foot deep 1914 canal. The project cost a total of $5.25 billion. The previous canal allowed just 6 percent of the current global fleet, or 30 of the smallest LNG tankers who could carry up to 0.7 Bcf of fuel, the report claims. The reduced travel time and transportation costs for LNG shipments could help United States natural gas exports to northern Asia. With the United States’ natural gas economy growing to the world’s third-largest LNG producer by 2020, the expansion could be a new favorite route.

The article says that the “updated Canal” should spur the expansion of American East Coast ports. In late January 1995 I got to open a Panama Canal lock. It was a bit of a thrill to tug one of the brass handles in the lock control room. I was serving a brief Army Reserve tour with SOUTHCOM, which at the time still had its headquarters in Quarry Heights, Panama.

OPERATION CATAPULT, JULY 3, 1940: The Royal Navy attacks the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir.

In 1940, the French fleet was the fourth largest naval force in the world after Britain, the United States and Japan. Its strength included seven battleships, 19 cruisers, 71 destroyers and 76 submarines. Shortly after the Germans attacked France on May 10, 1940, most of the vessels in French ports sailed to other harbors. A powerful French naval force was anchored at Mers-el-Kebir, just to the west of the French Algerian port of Oran.

Churchill knew that the French warships could not be allowed to fall into the hands of the Axis. If Germany and Italy could add these units to their existing naval force, Britain would face an overwhelming threat that it could not adequately meet.

HILLARY GRILLED AT FBI HEADQUARTERS: The Washington Examiner reports Hillary’s campaign confirmed she’d met with FBI investigators at FBI HQ. At least one report on Friday claimed she’d arranged to meet investigators at her Washington home. Apparently not. Seems they brought her downtown for questioning  — an echo of a 1940s Hollywood cops and robbers flick.  However,  her campaign described her meet up as a “voluntary interview.” Hmmm. Hillary’s voluntary interview lasted three and a half hours. That sounds a lot like a grilling, doesn’t it? Perhaps not. But now even Hillary’s staff admits it’s a criminal investigation. Squish language spewed for media dissemination is classic Clinton. The Observer essay at the link surveys Hillary’s insistent use of rhetorical squish. Remember, she insisted the FBI investigation was an “inquiry?” It also documents a blatant example of a mainstream media outlet echoing her preferred lingo. The timing of Ms. Clinton’s FBI meet up also strikes me as negotiated. Her grilling occurred during a three-day holiday weekend–typically a burial ground for bad news. However, the Loretta Lynch-Bill Clinton Phoenix Airport Connivance was so sensationally corrupt even pro-Clinton mainstream media corpses can’t ignore this story.

HELIUM HIGH: Drill baby drill — this time for helium. Peak helium? So doomsters claimed.

Drillers in Africa’s Great Rift Valley have discovered significant helium reserves. “…volcanic activity in the Rift Valley releases helium buried in ancient rocks, which rises up and becomes trapped in shallower gas fields.”

Gas fields. And drilling. When will Obama object?

Well, helium is a gas, and like natural gas it’s a valuable gas. Researchers from Oxford and Durham universities worked with a Norwegian exlporation company, Helium One. Private industry inventiveness scores again.

There’ve been other recent helium discoveries. This link discusses one in Montana, though the reservoir’s geology appears to differ from the find in Tanzania.

AG LYNCH’S PHOENIX AIRPLANE CHAT WITH SLICK WILLIE: My latest Observer.com essay. The meet-up between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton is an explosive story mainstream media cannot resist. Given Ms. Lynch’s official position and the current legal circumstances facing Bill and Hillary Clinton, the Phoenix Airplane Chat was a PAC of sorts, a political action conference or –my preferred word, connivance–a complete, unapologetic abuse of government power where party and personal interest trampled the rule of law. Remember that next time you hear the Democrats call an opponent a fascist, which, these days, roughly translates as an imperious abuser of power the Left doesn’t like.

THE NEW YORK OBSERVER has a breaking story on the Lynch-Clinton meeting.

Critical paragraph:

According to this source, whose credentials were checked and confirmed by the Observer with sources inside both the FBI and the United States Secret Service, the Attorney General was caught completely off-guard by the meeting and the source dismisses suggestions that have been raised alleging that she waited there to see Mr. Clinton or accommodated his request to see him. In fact, it seems from this source that it was Mr. Clinton who was maneuvering for face time with the Attorney General, because his plane had been scheduled to leave before hers arrived.

As Glenn says, read the whole thing. Full disclosure: I frequently write for The Observer. An essay I wrote on the Lynch-Clinton confab will appear in the publication.

THE DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION asks if the Bill Clinton-Loretta Lynch Phoenix Airplane Chat (a truly opaque PAC) was a plea-bargaining session –with Slick Willie begging on behalf of himself, not Hillary and her national security crimes.

Here’s the vastly probable scenario and don’t let mainstream media propagandists scorn it as a right wing plot: The FBI (which works for Attorney General Lynch) discovers evidence of Clinton Foundation corruption, say, the selling of political appointments to donors. At the minimum, rule of law supporting Feebs will solicit Ole Slick’s testimony –if not demand it with a subpoena. He’s the Clinton Foundation’s biggest fish. Fair bet former US Attorney Joseph DiGenova had this scenario in mind or one like when he told the Daily Caller that he believes Slick Willie

“is at least a witness in two criminal investigations, probably a subject in two criminal investigations. He is a person of interest officially to the Department of Justice.”

So Bill’s the slick person of interest. SPOI. The oily Mr. Clinton’s new acronym just begs for an L, doesn’t it? An apt L lurks in his past. In 1999 a federal judge fined him $90 grand for LYING.