POSTMODERN PROBLEMS: Australian public servant condemns censorship after blogpost cost him his job.

In April, Krook published a post on a fledgling blog called the Oxford Political Review, arguing social isolation was good for big tech companies, because it made people increasingly dependent on online platforms for interaction.

Krook also worked as a policy officer with the industry department, working on tech policy.

His post talked only in generalities. It made no reference to any individual company and did not mention, let alone criticise, the Australian government or government policy.

In no way did Krook identify himself as a government employee or policy officer or seek to conflate his writing with his views as a public servant.

Three months after the post, Krook was invited to a meeting with his superior.

In the meeting, Krook says he was given a choice: remove the blog post or face termination.

Australia is along the road to that happy place where everything not forbidden is compulsory.

OH FER CRYIN’ OUT LOUD: Delta Airlines Bans UBL Killer Rob O’Neill for ‘Not Sacrificing’ by Wearing Mask While Eating Cheese Puffs.

MORE: Trump to announce emergency authorization of convalescent plasma as ‘breakthrough’ covid-19 treatment.

CHARLES LIPSON: Joe Biden offers platitudes, not policies.

What was missing? Three important things. Biden made no mention of

What policies he would implement or how they differed from Trump’s; he simply offered vague picture of a happier, more prosperous future;

Riots and looting in major cities; he ignored them entirely; the closest he came was saying that, during his administration, America would finally rid itself of ‘systemic racism’; he included a sweet vignette of talking to George Floyd’s young daughter, who said her father had changed the world; but there was no mention of the chaos in Portland, Seattle, Chicago, New York, and other cities, which may have begun with Floyd’s killing but is now divorced from it;

Any international threats and challenges, or how he would deal with them differently from Trump, aside from saying he would not ‘cozy up to dictators’. He never mentioned Russia, Iran, North Korea, or terrorism. His one glancing mention of China was that his administration would not depend on them for medical supplies, a policy Trump is already pursuing.

The absence of any policy ideas was striking, especially because so many commentators expected them. The whole convention, they noted, had been devoted to attacking Trump, which left Biden was free to explain what he would do in office and how his policies would make the country better. He didn’t do that. He hardly tried. He simply promised everyone the Christmas presents they were wishing for — and then only in the vaguest terms.

To be completely fair, it was also badly delivered.

THIS IS FINE: New Jersey Election Invalidated Because of Mail-In Voter Fraud.

WHY NOT TAKE A BREAK FROM THE SERIOUS NEWS FOR A FEW MINUTES? Florida Man Friday: You’ll Be in Your Bunk.

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Chicago Mayor Defends Policing Double Standard: ‘I Have a Right to Make Sure That My Home Is Secure.’

JOANNE JACOBS: Say it ain’t so, Joe. “The Democratic Party’s platform, based on a Biden-Sanders ‘unity’ task force’s recommendations, ‘steer Biden away from the coalition of Black and low-income voters who brought him the nomination,’ write Aldeman and Spurrier. ‘Maybe this shouldn’t come as a surprise — given that two of the eight members of the task force are the heads of the two major teachers unions’.”

CRUELTY TO BOTS: I Forced a Bot to Write A Joe Biden Acceptance Speech. Here Are The 10 Most Powerful Lines.

BECAUSE SHE’S SANE: Why, Exactly, Did the ‘Party of Diversity’ Exclude Tulsi Gabbard From Its Convention?

THANKS BUT NO THANKS: Democrats Promise to Bring California-Style Blackouts to Everyone.

THEY CAN’T WIN IF THEY DON’T CHEAT: Dems get Green Party kicked off ballot after pressuring petition-signers; ‘voter suppression’ alleged.

JULIE KELLY: The Democratic Party is Unwell.

The party’s ailments have been on full display this week. Look no further than the freakish music video that closed out the first night of the Democratic National Convention. Billy Porter, a gay black Broadway star, and geriatric Steven Stills of Crosby, Stills, and Nash teamed up to remake Stills’ 1966 classic, “For What It’s Worth.”

The video was a performative display of the party’s schizophrenia: A white ’60s counterculture icon and a Dracula-costumed POC LGBTQ activist offering an inharmonious version of a Vietnam-era tune as the official anthem for the candidacy of a feeble establishment codger and his unaccomplished cackling sidekick quickly shredding their faux moderate façade in fealty to the party’s lunatic fringe of America-hating nihilists.

Read the whole thing.

STACEY LENNOX: If Your School District Pulls What One Tennessee District Has, Know Your Rights. “A founding teacher at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia also took to Twitter to express concern over parent observation of virtual classes. His laments about parents, especially conservative parents, had been retweeted over 1,000 times before he locked his account. Retweeting means other people were sharing his concerns with their own followers.”

If they don’t want you to know what they’re doing, it’s because they’re up to no good.

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: Biden Will Move the Country Foerwad, Plus Your Duty to Get Robbed.

Insanity Wrap needs to know: If video killed the radio star, then who killed the sitcom star?

Answer: Progressive politics did, and it was premeditated.

Before we get to the sordid details, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.

• It’s your bourgeois duty to get robbed, says a man with much more money than you have

• Biden got trumped in his home state

• Virus gonna virus, yo.

And so much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

GOOD AND HARD: Calif. Dems’ Taxes on Millionaires Could Spell Disaster in Golden State.

The two latest tax proposals, Assembly Bills 1253 and 2088, both explicitly target California’s ultra-wealthy. A.B. 1253, released in late July, imposes an additional 1, 3, and 3.5 percent tax on earnings over $1, $2, and $5 million, respectively, applied retroactively to the first day of 2020. A.B. 2088 would impose a 0.4 percent tax on all personal wealth in excess of $15 million ($30 million for couples), including assets outside of California.

Both bills would hit many of the state’s tech billionaires, such as Oracle CEO Larry Ellison (worth $59 billion), Mark Zuckerberg ($54.7 billion), and Democratic megadonor Laurene Powell Jobs ($16.4 billion). A.B. 2088 would be the first state wealth tax in the nation, mirroring the tax agendas of prominent progressives such as Sens. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.).

Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D.), one of A.B. 2088’s main sponsors, argued that the bill was necessary to fill the $50 billion budget hole left by the coronavirus crisis.

Easy call: It won’t.

SHAKEUP: Kim Jong Un Puts Sister In Charge Of US, South Korea Relations Amid Signs Of Crisis.

South Korean lawmakers later told reporters the country’s National Intelligence Service determined that Kim had delegated responsibility for relations with the United States and South Korea to his sister Kim Yo Jong, Bloomberg reported.

The supreme leader’s younger sister is considered a powerful ally and first gained international attention when she became the first member of the Kim family to visit South Korea during the 2018 Winter Olympics, according to BBC News. (RELATED: Remember When The Media Fell In Love With Kim Jong Un’s Sister?)

Intelligence committee member Ha Tae-keung told South Korean lawmakers that Kim still retained ultimate control and was not likely to adopt a “collective leadership” style found in other communist countries like China, Bloomberg reported. “The absolute power of Kim Jong Un is being shared under the current leadership style of North Korea,” Ha said.

The power shift and warnings of an economic crisis come amid the fallout from a combination of recent flooding in agricultural lands, international economic sanctions and the coronavirus outbreak, according to Reuters.

Reportedly, she’s both smart and vicious.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Biden Manages to Clear Low Bar, Media Weeps Tears of Joy. “It’s true, Biden didn’t make any major mistakes during his big moment at the DNC. Then again, the expectations for his speech have been lowered for months so all he really had to do was get through it without pausing to eat his foot and it was going to be judged a rousing success.”

THIS IS A GREAT IDEA, EXCEPT THAT IT WON’T MAKE ANY GIANT CONTRACTORS CONSIDERABLY RICHER: ‘Missile barges’ could be America’s secret weapon in the Pacific.

NEW? DNC considering new ‘steal underpants’ platform.

WHAT MYSTERY? Denver doctors may have found the answer to a pandemic mystery: What happened to all the heart attacks? “Stauffer’s team found that cardiac arrests at home in Denver more than doubled in the two weeks after the statewide stay-at-home order was issued compared with historical averages. Even compared with more recent data, the weekly average of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests jumped to 46 during those two weeks, versus 26 or 27 in the three months prior.”

Seriously, what mystery?

Plus: “Stauffer and his colleagues found that the number of people in Denver who died of cardiac arrests at home in the two weeks following the statewide stay-at-home order was greater than the total number of people who died of COVID-19 in the city during that time.”

How many of them could have been saved had they made it to an ER?

YOU WILL BE MADE TO CARE: Jimmy Fallon’s Re-Education Wraps in Time for Election Day. “The once-genial host got bullied by the press (and peers?) into his current sad state.”

THAT SOUNDS ABOUT RIGHT: Biden: A Diminished Trojan Horse With an Army of Marxist Transformers Inside.

LIVE: Blogging the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

There are cocktails, but not enough.

UPDATE: “To my ears, this is a well-rehearsed speech — far better rehearsed than it was written — by a man with zero investment in the words he’s saying, other than what and where they might get him.”

It was the worst major political speech I’ve ever heard, and that includes Hillary Clinton.

(Bumped.)

MOSTLY PEACEFUL: Portland Antifa Rioters Turn ICE Office Entrance Into a War Zone, Hurling Softball-Sized Rocks at Cops.