THEY’RE BREAKING OUR DOORS DOWN: University of Tennessee in 2024 once again welcomes a record-breaking number of students.

And not in dumb pro-terrorist riots like at Columbia or Harvard.

WELL: RFK Jr. Could Quit Race and Back Trump, Running Mate Says.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, said the two might drop their independent bid for president and join with Donald Trump to block Kamala Harris from becoming president.

Speaking on the Impact Theory podcast published on Tuesday, Shanahan accused Democrats of blocking their independent bid from ballot access through lawsuits, forcing the campaign to spend thousands of dollars on legal fees. The DNC and groups aligned with the party have been part of some lawsuits, including one in New York where a judge found Kennedy wasn’t a legal resident of New York. The campaign is appealing.

“There’s two options that we’re looking at and one is staying in, forming that new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and Walz presidency because we draw more votes from Trump,” she said. “Or we walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump and explain to our base why we’re making this decision.”

Kennedy has denied reports that he has discussed with Trump the possibility of endorsing the Republican in exchange for an administration position. The two met in July ahead of the Republican National Convention.

This would be deserved blowback from the Dems’ lawfare campaign against Kennedy.

PARTY OF HATE AND DISCRIMINATION: Chicago Democrats let anti-Israel protesters march, but block pro-Israel Jews during DNC.

MICROBIOME NEWS: Human gut might be source of powerful new antibiotics.

Here’s the article, in Cell.

PERHAPS ALLOWING THE ENEMIES OF OUR CIVILIZATION TO EDUCATE OUR CHILDREN WAS A MISTAKE:

A troubling thread on the trend toward human utilitarianism as we increasingly equate value with contribution. Beware of this. When ppl stop believing they’re a reflection of a creator, they don’t see any reason why human beings should matter. Dangerous stuff. https://t.co/BrnqLofNcP

— Elizabeth Scalia (@TheAnchoress) August 19, 2024

Of course, the “public health” field has long attracted authoritarians and worse.

MARK JUDGE: Being human in a digitally disembodied world.

I’ve written about this.

SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER: U. Illinois has 42 ‘illegal’ race, sex-based scholarships: federal complaint.

IT’S A BIG CLUB AND YOU AIN’T IN IT: Jeffrey Carter: Not “Elite” But “The Connected Class.”

Classical reference in headline.

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

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

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.”

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:

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.”

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.

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

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.”

OPEN THREAD: Don’t hide your light under a bushel.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY:

NEW: At the pro-abortion rally in Chicago: "Reproductive justice means Palestinian liberation." pic.twitter.com/MaTvcxMwFs

— Tony Kinnett (@TheTonus) August 18, 2024

Lone counter protester holding up an American flag in front of the @MarchOnDNC2024’s stage. He is SURROUNDED by event organizers and pro-Palestine protestors.

Before he said: “God bless America”

Crowd shouted back: “F—- America.” pic.twitter.com/DHRYHkZaeM

— Tim Kennedy (@TimKennedyJr1) August 19, 2024

Totally sane. Good for appealing to moderate voters.