WHAT IS IT WITH DEMOCRATS AND SECESSION WHEN THEY DON’T GET THEIR WAY? John Podesta War-Games the 2020 Election, and Suggests Biden Might Trigger a Civil War.

DON’T GET COCKY: If This Poll Is Accurate, Trump Will Be Reelected Easily.

Also from Matt Margolis: Ten More Lies About President Trump’s Response to the Coronavirus.

‘MURICA: Thoughts on July’s Record Gun-Buying Spree. “More Americans responsibly partaking in their constitutionally-recognized right to keep and bear arms would be a blessing, particularly in the neverending battle to keep that constitutional protection.”

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NOT THAT THEY MIND: Portland Antifa Rioters Use ‘PRESS’ as a Shield for Violence.

CHARLES LIPSON: Woke Colleges Are Assembly Lines for Conformity.

What views are now considered beyond the pale? They almost always involve ordinary political differences. We are not talking here about direct physical threats. Those are already illegal, and universities rightly deal with them. They don’t have to face neo-Nazi marches. Nor is anyone advocating such noxious ideas as genocide, slavery, or child molestation. Speech about those subjects might be legal, but virtually nobody is making the case for them. That is not what the fight for freedom of speech on campus is about. It is about the freedom to voice—or even hear—unpopular views on topics such as merit-based admissions, affirmative action, transgender competition in women’s sports, abortion, and support for Israel.

These are perfectly legitimate topics, and students ought to be free to hear different ideas about them. They are hotly contested topics in America’s body politic. That’s how democracies work. Not so on college campuses, where the “wrong views” are not just minority opinions. They are verboten, and so are the people who dare express them. Challenging this repressive conformity invites condemnation, severs friendships, and threatens careers. It is hardly surprising that few rise to challenge it.

Worse yet, university leaders seldom do. They have a fundamental responsibility to defend open discourse, and they have largely abdicated it. Shame on them.

Read the whole thing.

DECOUPLING: Six Apple production lines capable of $5 billion in exports allegedly moving to India from China.

UGH: More hand sanitizers recalled as possibly ‘toxic.’ The FDA’s Do-Not-Use List now over 100.

WELCOME TO THE PARTY, PAL: Seattle Police Chief Urges City to Oppose ‘Mob Rule’ After Rioters Target Her House.

BLUE CITY BLUES: NYC has already had more shootings this year than it did in all of 2019.

PRIVACY: Data isn’t just being collected from your phone. It’s being used to score you.

Operating in the shadows of the online marketplace, specialized tech companies you’ve likely never heard of are tapping vast troves of our personal data to generate secret “surveillance scores” – digital mug shots of millions of Americans – that supposedly predict our future behavior. The firms sell their scoring services to major businesses across the U.S. economy.

People with low scores can suffer harsh consequences.

CoreLogic and TransUnion say that scores they peddle to landlords can predict whether a potential tenant will pay the rent on time, be able to “absorb rent increases,” or break a lease. Large employers use HireVue, a firm that generates an “employability” score about candidates by analyzing “tens of thousands of factors,” including a person’s facial expressions and voice intonations. Other employers use Cornerstone’s score, which considers where a job prospect lives and which web browser they use to judge how successful they will be at a job.

Brand-name retailers purchase “risk scores” from Retail Equation to help make judgments about whether consumers commit fraud when they return goods for refunds. Players in the gig economy use outside firms such as Sift to score consumers’ “overall trustworthiness.” Wireless customers predicted to be less profitable are sometimes forced to endure longer customer service hold times.

It’s a brave new world.

CHINA IS ASSHOLE: Coronavirus Shock Claim: Refugee Scientist Says Virus Came from Army Lab.

Just to be clear, we’re referring to the Communist People’s Republic of China on the mainland, and not the well-run Republic of China on Taiwan.

WHO? BidenWatch for August 3, 2020. “Biden promises to shovel trillions into Social Justice and green energy ratholes, how Democrats plan to steal the election, more Slow Joe verbal stumbles, and a potential VP pick has a commie past.”

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: NBA and MLB Are So Woke and So Broke.

Insanity Wrap needs to know: Why does no mean no except when the DNC needs no to not mean no?

Answer: Let us concede that it was a very dumb question.

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

• Crime up, cops down.

• BLM gives MLB and NBA a black eye.

• Best. Mask. EVAH.

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

PERFORMANCE ANXIETY: Democrats Urging Biden Not to Debate Trump.

WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS: China’s Giant Three Gorges Dam Faces Major Test.

Sustained torrential rains have caused extensive flooding in central China in recent weeks. Nightmare memories have been revived of 1998, when severe floods left more than 4000 people dead and caused extensive economic damage. Thousands of People’s Liberation Army soldiers have been sent to the Yangtse River basin to provide emergency services to build dykes, enforce embankments and dig channels to release water.

In response to the build-up of floodwaters upstream, authorities have been discharging large amounts of water from the dam. The swell of water caused by upstream flooding reached 55,000 cubic meters per second late last week, exceeding the official warning level of 50,000 cubic meters. The emergency discharges have inevitably exacerbated flooding in areas downstream from the dam.

Massive flooding along the Yangtze is nothing new for China. In 1931, more than 3 million people died during a huge flood in one of the worst natural disasters of the 20th century. Nevertheless, the current situation is the first major test that the Three Gorges Dam has been put to.

There is no reason to think that the structure of the dam itself is under threat.

Other than the fact that Communist QC isn’t exactly top-notch.

RADICAL CHIC: Leading Democratic VP contender Bass defends stance on Cuba. “Bass said she was trying to express her condolences to the Cuban people when she referred to Castro as ‘Comandante en jefe,’ a term that roughly translates as commander in chief but is reviled by some Cuban exiles in Florida. Bass, who represents California in Congress, said she was unaware of the phrase’s political significance in Florida when she issued the 2016 statement, which called Castro’s death a “great loss to the people of Cuba’.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Keeps Finding New Ways To Be Stupid. “It’s not just that AOC is wrong about so many things, it’s that she’s always spectacularly wrong. Her hot takes sound more like the ravings of a toddler than what one would expect from a member of Congress. In this particular case, it seems that she knew nothing more about St. Damien than that he was white.”

Isn’t that enough?

OOPS: Chinese Propaganda Campaign Blames Pandemic on U.S. Army Facility Closed in 1969.

UGH: Ransomware feared as possible saboteur for November election. “Federal authorities say one of the gravest threats to the November election is a well-timed ransomware attack that could paralyze voting operations. The threat isn’t just from foreign governments, but any fortune-seeking criminal.”

DECOUPLING: How to Stop China From Imposing Its Values. “America’s alliances were built to address a Soviet military threat. The economic bullying that Beijing uses requires a different kind of collective self-defense.”

New threats demand new responses. During the Cold War, the U.S. created not just NATO but also the CIA and the Air Force to respond to Soviet threats. The period brought about a wholly new form of intelligence competition between the West and the Soviet Union. This led the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to enter into the alliance commonly known as Five Eyes, which allowed unprecedented intelligence sharing among nations in peacetime. This approach would have been unimaginable before the Soviet geopolitical threat.

Similarly, a new kind of alliance—like NATO, but for economic rather than military threats—is needed to respond to the kind of statecraft that China is practicing. Under such a system, participating nations would provide mutual support when China threatens one or more members with economic repercussions for political actions. That assistance could involve the imposition of tariffs on Chinese goods by all member nations; the creation of a pool of capital to help a targeted nation withstand Beijing’s pressure; the release of strategic reserves of essential materials, such as rare-earth metals, that China produces and could withhold; and other forms of collective economic defense.

Read the whole thing.

MOSTLY PEACEFUL: 150 Shots Fired, High-Powered Lasers Deployed By Portland Protesters As Feds Begin Withdrawl.

MY LATEST FOR THE PJ MEDIA MOTHERSHIP: Joe Biden’s Veep Delay Underscores a Campaign and a Candidate in Chaos.

Presidential candidates usually announce their running mates very close to the start of the convention which this year doesn’t begin until August 17.

Why Biden chose to announce that he’d announce early and then announced that his early announcement would be delayed, is unknown.

This will-he/won’t-he routine is symptomatic of a campaign — and a candidate — that has no idea what it stands for.

Perhaps most telling is Biden’s Triple Lindy (it’s way more than a mere backflip) on his support for police.

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THE NOMENKLATURA ARE IMMUNE FROM A LOT OF THINGS THE REGULAR PEOPLE HAVE TO ENDURE: Are Members of Congress Immune From COVID-19? DC Mayor Bowser Seems to Think So.

TYLER O’NEIL: Is This a Scene From Nazi Germany? No, It’s the Portland ‘Peaceful Protesters’ Burning Bibles.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): If you burned Korans this way and somebody shot you, you’d be told that it was your own fault for “provoking” them.

WHY NOT TAKE A BREAK FROM THE SERIOUS NEWS FOR A FEW MINUTES? Florida Man Friday: $300,000 Lamborghini Bought with Stolen Stimulus Money.